We seek a world free of war and the threat of war We seek a society with equity and justice for all We seek a community where every person’s potential may be fulfilled We seek an earth restored
When Don Reeves first called a few months ago to invite me to speak at Great Plains Yearly Meeting, I really felt called—partly because Don has a historic role at Friends Committee on National Legislation as the first legislative director and partly because I knew of Don Reeves before I really knew about the Religious Society of Friends—back when I first started getting involved as a peace activist here in Nebraska.
In the past month I heard from both Don and Laura Duggan about the theme: Walking in the Light. Laura shared the Bible verses she planned to use and her hope that Great Plains Yearly Meeting would feel the challenge to be inventive, hopeful and confident.
And so this evening, I’m going to talk about my experience of Walking in the Light and how I see the work of the Friends Committee on National Legislation to be inventive, hopeful and confident. And I hope to challenge you to consider the work you are called to as part of the body of the Religious Society of Friends in your community and political lives.
For me, “Walking in the Light” means stepping out in faith, sometimes with unreasonable confidence. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
In 1983, I left my job teaching high school English in Millard Public Schools to work for the Omaha Nuclear Freeze Campaign. There was nothing logical about that choice—it paid less than half of what I was earning as a teacher: I had no idea of how to run a non-profit organization, and I didn’t know a whole lot about nuclear weapons other than what I perceived as folly in building up a nuclear arsenal at enormous taxpayer expense. The choices being made by the USA and USSR seemed imprudent and wasteful—the opposite values of what I had learned growing up in my family and in my Lutheran church. Responding to the injustice of the nuclear arms race felt consistent with the teachings of Jesus as I understood them. I didn’t engage in this work to be political; I engaged because I felt called to do something about peace.
In fact, when I started working at FCNL in 2011 and began to pay closer attention again to nuclear disarmament, I was reminded why I felt called to that work nearly 30 years earlier. David Culp, FCNL’s lobbyist for disarmament describes nuclear weapons as the only real “weapons of mass destruction.” Back in the 80s when I was a new mother, the notion that I could create a better world for my child and for all the children of the world compelled me.
During the time I worked with the Freeze, I started learning about the US federal budget and military spending, and it saddens me that in the past 30 years, as a nation, we have dug ourselves deeper into the darkness of militarism. Just 3 weeks ago, our Congress approved authorization of a defense bill that would spend some $640 billion between October 1-September, 30, 2013. This budget doesn’t include the cost of the war in Afghanistan, rather it is for the vast array of nuclear and conventional weapons, military contractors and support of the military establishment that runs the Pentagon and the some 800 US military bases around the world. In fact, a report we’ve been using in our lobbying called Debt, Defense and estimates that the Pentagon wastes $38 billion a year through fraud and corruption.
I left Nebraska in 1986 to move to Connecticut, and I thought about returning to teaching, but landed in a variety of part-time jobs related to peace and justice—including the CT Network Against the Death Penalty and the Peace Center of the Christian Conference of CT. While both of these positions presented a small slice of my working life, they were pivotal in helping deepen my understanding that the kind of systemic changes for healing the brokenness of injustice and militarism have to be connected to decision-makers—to elected officials and to those who influence elected officials.
I began to better understand that Walking in the Light involved speaking truth and listening carefully to power.
Speaking truth to power—it’s a well-loved phrase among Friends and beyond Friends, and I imagine that each of us here might have a slightly different interpretation of it. Let me share first what speaking truth to power is NOT for me before I offer examples of how I do see Friends walking in the Light speaking truth to power. Notice that this phrase isn’t “speaking truth about power” or complaining about people in power who disagree with my political viewpoint or fretting about the influence of money on politics or reading about and watching people in power—all activities that I confess to participating in but which I have to count as walking outside the Light.
Speaking truth to power while walking in the Light means knowing why the concern that you carry compels you to use your voice; it means knowing the spiritual ground that you stand on. And I take it as literally using my voice to speak to the people I grant power to by virtue of being a citizen of this country. Our country’s governmental structure expects the participation of all of us. I speak to the people who represent me—at the federal, state or local levels—even if I voted for their opponents, even if I voted for them and trust their judgment. It doesn’t mean knowing all the answers to every issue I feel convicted about. It does mean knowing enough to speak with confidence and conviction.
Here’s what speaking truth to power looks like for FCNL as a Quaker lobby in the public interest:
FCNL lobbyist for Middle East Peace, Kate Gould, patiently explaining to members of Congress why diplomacy with Iran should be given a chance despite overwhelming Congressional support for a hard line that promotes increasing sanctions and military readiness against Iran. For Kate, this means helping to write the letter circulated by Rep. Barbara Lee of CA and signed by 36 members of Congress that called for diplomacy first.
FCNL lobbyist for sustainable environment and energy, Jose Aguto, talking with colleague environmental and faith-based organizations to open the dialogue in Washington for the morality of climate change. In the same way that the Freeze Campaign 30 years ago made us more aware of the perilousness of our planet, FCNL is asking Friends to talk to members of Congress about what calls us to seek an earth restored.
Getry Agizah of Friends Church Peace Teams in Kenya leading workshops for Alternative to Violence and Healing and Reconciliation with Quakers and others who were victims and perpetrators of post-election violence in 2007-2008. This work is done in an intensive and focused way to prevent violence in key hotspots in the upcoming Kenyan presidential elections in 2013.
FCNL educating the US State Department and staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about how US public policy can provide leadership for civilian peacemaking and international leadership to prevent election violence in Kenya in the coming months.
Constituents throughout the country asking our Congress to cut military spending by $1 trillion over the next decade as a way to deal with our federal deficit without further harming domestic human needs—housing, food, education and health care.
How will your representatives and senators know that their constituents are willing to reduce Pentagon spending by 15% over the next decade by cutting $1 trillion? How will they know that spending $640 billion in the coming year for defense is not a good idea unless they hear from the people who can vote for them? How will they know that citing anti-ballistic missile silos along the East Coast is not in our national security interests? How will they know that the polls indicating that 70% of the US electorate who wants the US military out of Afghanistan includes people in their districts unless you and Friends in your meetings tell them that? The fact is that your elected officials in Washington hear every day from a multitude of people who profit from the military expenditures and they hear from the military.
I want to speak a bit about what I call “Listening carefully to power” as part of speaking truth to power. Listening carefully to power means “listening to that of God” in the people who are in power. Indeed, just as the destitute person who is homeless or the cashier at Wal-Mart or the local librarian need to be acknowledged as having that of God in them, so do your elected officials. At FCNL, we try to practice lobbying using the spirit of listening that we incorporate into our worship—with the imaginative and mysterious way that the Divine can touch us—the notion that God may speak to me through a person or in an experience that I wasn’t counting on.
Walking in the Light for me has meant reconciling my spiritual life with my political life. It has meant a willingness to be close enough to politicians to NOT agree or approve of everything they do, but to walk with them as they learn to use their power to make change. My experience is that it is often easier in politics to use our voices to speak out against a problem than it is to do the difficult and imaginative work to develop and sustain solutions to a problem. And to balance strategic activism with relentless patience for change. This is as true of politicians as it is of citizens. And for people in power who have the amplification of the media, their voices carry weight.
War is not the answer. Some of you may have this message on your bumpers or in your front yards. But the question—if we’re walking in the Light—is what is the answer? What can we do to promote the peaceful prevention of deadly conflict? For the last 10 years, FCNL has been working on promoting prevention of war and deadly conflict, along with other colleague organizations dedicated to peacemaking, ending genocide and preventing mass atrocities. And progress is happening. New tools for peace have been launched in the US State Department; a new Bureau of Conflict Stabilization has been established as of 3 months ago and last month President Obama named an Atrocities Prevention Board. FCNL is walking in the Light with these initiatives—helping to shape the responses to both promote prevention of conflict and promotion of peacemaking.
While my journey of walking in the Light has meant work as an advocate for effective public policy, you don’t have to be a lobbyist or even a political activist to exercise your faith as a Friend in political life.
As in anything we undertake as Friends, I believe that Quaker-based ministry of lobbying requires us to practice our faith, to speak from the Center. Preparing ourselves both spiritually and intellectually for advocacy is critical. If you are speaking truth to power, you need to know why your speech is truthful. You need to know what is the spiritual truth that calls you and what is the intellectual or scientific or fiscal backing for your conviction.
So, I have some advices for walking in the Light in public life.
Ground your action.
Pray. Discern. Listen. Read. Think. Talk to those who agree with you and those who disagree with you. Listen. Pray. Being grounded seeds confidence. Being grounded gives us a foundation for speaking truth to power. It is not from us but through us. George Fox wrote about “living in the virtue that takes away the occasion for all wars.” Test your leadings, test your doubts through discernment with your faith community.
Talk to the people making decisions.
More than once. Develop relationships with elected officials and the people who they listen to: Write to them. Visit them. Friend them on facebook; follow them on twitter; write letters to the editor about them; always find something nice to say about them. Get to know the journalists and others in your community who shape opinions. Tell the truth. Figuring out how to communicate with people who disagree with us requires inventiveness.
Return to Center.
Worship. Sing, Pray. Meditate. Run. Practice Yoga. Dig in the dirt. Make the time and space to be intentional with God. Staying close to the ground fosters hope.
The possibility to live fully into who God loves us into being allows us, even requires us to walk in the Light. This may be a lifelong practice for many of us: moving from the inward life of prayer and attention to manifesting the authentic voice that God has given us. Through the devotional life of inward stillness and corporate worship, we come to understand how we can walk in the Light—what our unique call to the ministry is and what we are called to corporately. We learn to trust God; we learn to trust one another. It is this basis of trust, of listening to and with Friends, of listening to and speaking truth to power, that has shaped FCNL’s voice in Washington.
God willing, we will continue our witness in Washington with confidence hope and imagination, always moving toward the world we seek. I’ll share briefly what I see as important initiatives in FCNL’s future, most of these are borne of the long legacy of contributions that Friends throughout the country have made to FCNL—in their financial support, their talents and their time.
First: I hope that each of your meetings participated in FCNL’s priorities-setting process this past year. We send out queries and guidelines to all meetings and churches every two years to prepare for the upcoming congressional session. It is a way for all Friends to give input into what FCNL should focus on; now our policy committee is sifting through the responses and will spend the next 3 months discerning what their recommendations are for our general committee who will approve priorities at our annual meeting in November. And next year, we’ll look at our policy document—the foundational document that helps frame the priorities and gives us backbone. I have never seen a non-profit so effectively engage a wide constituency and adhere to the agreed upon policies and priorities. We refer to these documents on a daily basis.
Second: We are working to engage more Quakers and others in our grassroots and grasstops advocacy. It’s why we send out action alerts every week and offer draft letters to send; we know that constituent voices matter. When we participate in policy coalitions, FCNL is often relied on for having a strong network of activists—people who will contact their elected officials by e-mail or phone call or visits. This is particularly important in districts that aren’t already with us on key issues. We are investing time and resources this year for our Quaker Public Policy Institute—a one day educational program on Nov 15, coupled with a lobby day on November 16. More about that to come. And we have a growing Spring Lobby Weekend—with a big emphasis on young adults.
Third: Young adults: like many Quaker organizations, we want to build our young adult program. When I arrived at FCNL 15 months ago, I was struck by how many young people worked there
I hope each of you experience FCNL as a voice you trust—both on issues that have been identified as important to our faith community but also as a voice you can trust on how to be an advocate in the policy arena—on any issue. Not everyone feels called to lobby, but I want to leave you with a practical challenge of how you might align your spiritual selves and your political selves. Take what speaks to you but don’t shy away from being engaged in the public life as a Friend.
