The Global Quaker Witness on the Holy Spirit and Peacemaking

“That Spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world; that the spirit of Christ which leads us into all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward Weapons neither for the Kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdom of this world.” This 1661 statement endorsed by Quaker founder George Fox, and eleven other leading Quakers, ultimately presents a challenge, not just to members of the Religious Society of Friends, but also to adherents of Christianity (and other faiths) throughout the world, to understand the motions of the Holy Spirit (or “the Spirit of Christ,” in the rendering of Fox et al.2) as leading inexorably to a witness of peace and disarmament