A panel of four soft-spoken, resolute women opened last weekend’s Quaker peace conference in Dana Auditorium, outlining the reason for the assembly of 300 Quakers on campus:
To respond, as members of the Religious Society of Friends, to the growing likelihood of global war.
The conference, called nine months ago by the Section of the Americas Friends’ World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), is the fifth such convention in that organization’s 66-year history.
“A lot of folk raised the issue of the war on terror at last year’s annual FWCC meeting, and the question was how this umbrella group of different Quakers should facilitate consideration of Quaker peace testimony,” said Max Carter, director of Friends Center and campus ministry coordinator.
The peace testimony is an integral part of all Quakerism, which spans from evangelical Friends, who mostly emphasize the Bible and the state of the soul over pacifism, to Universalists, who often hold pacifism as a major aspect of their faith, and who don’t necessarily identify as Christian.
“Differences were left aside, and nothing got in the way of the conference,” Carter said. “The focus was the peace testimony, not on the disparity between how one group regards gay and lesbian Friends, for example.”
Carter mentioned the issue of gays and lesbians as one o fthe most contentious that the different Quaker traditions deal with today.
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Coming to Greensboro
Chuck Fager, a member of the planning committee, suggested holding the conference at Guilford, where his son, Asa, is a first-year. Asa is a member of the Friendly Gangstaz, a Quaker rap group that performed Saturday night as part of the conference.
The committee called Carter, who shared with the college administration a great interest in hosting it. Carter cited the help of people like Rebecca Saunders, Greg Keener, and Mary Ellen Chijioke, library director, in assuring a smooth conference.
The Greensboro area, Carter pointed out, also has the largest concentration of Quakers in North America, numbering 15,000. The majority of these are evangelical, who outnumber unprogrammed Friends about three to one, both here and nationwide.
“The rank-and-file don’t tend to come to conferences like this. They rather handling things more locally.
“But folk do enjoy coming to Guilford, and part of that is the energy from the students,” Carter said.
Carter means students like Crystal Waitekus, Guilford senior and co-leader of a workshop called “Individual Witness in the Third World: Africa and South America.” Waitekus, a Quaker, interned for the Quaker African Great Lakes peace initiative.
Other workshops included “The Iraq War: 12 Years and Counting,” and “Ramifications of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security.”
“All participants I’ve talked to felt really appreciative of what went on this weekend,” said Liz Baltaro, a senior Quaker who attended the three conference events. “We all felt that a lot happened for our thought processes concerning peace in Iraq and in the world.”