Speaking outside RAF Lakenheath, to those protesting the potential return of US nuclear weapons to the site, Paul Parker, a senior staff member for Quakers in Britain said last month:
”Our faith helps us to face the chaos and pain in the world with love and hope. It anchors us in a community where we can find the resilience to take action for a sustainable and peaceful world. Our practice of silent worship allows us to discern the deepest truth we know – and to live according to that truth.”
”Love calls us to build a sustainable and peaceful world. This is not just about opposing war or calling for climate action. It is about how we live well together on this planet, from the local to the global level.. It means resisting systems built on relationships of extraction, exploitation and violent control of each other and the living world. It means striving instead for loving and just relationships. And it means using our understanding of harm caused to facilitate repair.
Love calls us to work for peace. Peace is an active process and we work for a ‘just peace’: for a world not merely defined by the absence of violence but by the flourishing of equality and justice. We work for good relationships at every level – from the interpersonal to the international – and believe peace can only be brought about through nonviolent means. To build a peaceful and sustainable world, we need international disarmament and the redirection of military spending and production towards activities that help regenerate life on this planet. Our history of peacebuilding work tells us that patient investment in constructive ways of addressing conflict – such as conciliation, mediation and diplomacy – works.”
Read the full text of Paul Parker’s address here: