Everyone looks forward to Memorial Day, right? It’s the official start of summer. Fire up the grill for the first time, go to a parade, maybe watch the Indy 500 on the tube. For the nine Quakers who met on a spring Sunday after their meeting for worship at the Oak Park Art League studio, however, Memorial Day is a source of ambivalence at best.
The problem for Quakers-or Friends as they often refer to themselves-is that though they can honor the sacrifices made by many in America’s wars, they cannot in good conscience support the goal for which those lives were given.
The origin of Memorial Day goes way back to 1866 when May 30 was set aside as a time to place flowers on the graves of soldiers who had died in the Civil War. Since then it has become, at least officially, a time to honor all who have died in the wars in which the U.S. has participated.
The ambivalence felt by Quakers comes from their belonging to what is known as a “peace church.” Along with Mennonites and Brethren, they teach non-violence, not just in reference to war but as a comprehensive lifestyle. Friends are famous for having been conscientious objectors to the war in Vietnam and for being advocates and educators for peaceful solutions to human conflicts.
Lois Platt, for example, a psychotherapist who lives in Oak Park, has formed a group for teen boys called American Families for Peace. She started the program as a way to “counter military recruitment and inspire humanitarian values” in her own 14-year-old son and other boys his age.
Another example is an exhibit called “Eyes Wide Open” which was shown in Chicago’s Grant Park, May 24-28. The exhibit, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker activist organization, includes 504 pairs of boots, each tagged with the name, rank, age and home state of a fallen soldier or Marine. Ironically similar to laying flowers on graves, the purpose of the exhibit is to protest the tragedy of war itself along with honoring the supreme sacrifices that have been made.
This emphasis on non-violence is rooted in what, for many Quakers, is a shared view of human nature. Burke Shipley, a longtime member of Oak Park’s Quaker meeting, said, “I have become convinced that, as we say, there is of God in all of us and to do violence against another person is to do violence against God.”
Thus, for at least nine Oak Parkers, Memorial Day presents a conundrum.
Judith Erickson observed, “I feel sad for all of the victims of violent conflicts. I don’t believe that violence solves problems. The people who fight wars are the victims of political decisions to use violence to try to solve problems.”
Jim Holmes feels ambivalent about the holiday because of the Quaker understanding of human nature. If there is of God in every person, then every person needs to be respected. The problem is how do you respect people when you disagree with what they stand for. Holmes explained, “It’s confusing for me. I don’t want to dishonor people who have sacrificed, but at the same time, it’s hard to honor war. I respect the people and their decisions, but I don’t respect war … so I escape by listening to the races all day.”
Geoffrey Plank, a professor of American History at Cincinnati University, feels a special tension regarding the issues raised by Memorial Day for Quakers. Many of the students in his college classroom are also enrolled in ROTC, the program which allows college students to prepare to be officers in the military when they graduate.
“Generally these students are better than other students,” he said, speculating that the discipline they experience in ROTC gives them an edge. “I develop very good relationships with these people, but part of me doesn’t want the politeness or kindness to reach the point where I’m approving of the decisions they are making.
“Politeness,” Plank said firmly, “is something Quakers should oppose. We’re called upon to say the impolite thing, to speak truth to power.”
Barbara Sherman said the reason she got involved with the Quakers back in the 1960s was their non-violent activism against the Vietnam War. “Pacifism is not the same as passivity,” she noted.
Plank added, “The difficulty is finding a way to do that without becoming angry or causing conflict yourself. I’m just like Jim. I end up in sort of a muddle. We all try to be perfect Quakers, and we all fail. You can’t be a pacifist without being a pacifist in your daily behavior.”
Practicing what you preach
And that’s another part of Quaker ambivalence regarding Memorial Day. It’s the recognition of many individual Friends that their own lives don’t reflect completely the ideals they believe in.
Rosalind Larsen admitted she isn’t an absolute pacifist but is trying to become one. “It doesn’t mean all of us are absolute pacifists,” she said. “It means we choose a direction in life. We choose a goal that we’d like to become more like, but as individuals we’re at different stages and have different experiences at different times in our life.”
Shipley agreed, pointing out that he served in the Army in World War II. What changed him was the result of a long process which began with his participation in a small Quaker meeting in New York, moving away from the Friends as he taught at different colleges around the country, and then rejoining the Friends when he moved to Oak Park.
Elinor Fallert, a member of the Oak Park meeting for 40 years, is as convinced a Quaker as you will find but still hedges against absolute pacifism. “I think World War II was very different from other wars,” she said. “Many Quakers served in WWII because they found no solution to Hitler at the time.”
Then she hedged her hedge, saying that many interventions should have been made in Europe in the 1930s that might have headed off the whole bloody conflict.
A man who goes by the moniker “Paz” (Spanish for “Peace”) said he is an absolute pacifist, even “if it was a choice to be killed or kill,” he said. “I don’t feel like killing anyone else. Thou shalt not kill.”
Conscientious objection
Wil Rutt’s family has had what amounts to conscientious objectors in three different generations. His grandfather did alternative service as the director of a civilian public service project during World War II. Rutt himself worked as a physician for two years in a hospital in Haiti during the Vietnam War.
“My son,” he then said proudly, “who could think of nothing but eating hamburgers, playing touch football and sleeping till 2 p.m., all of a sudden became a draft non-registrant in 1980 and wrote a series of 10 letters to President Reagan. He was finally convicted and now has the honor of being a federal felon.”
Suffering, as in the case of Rutt’s son, often goes along with peacemaking in the stories Friends tell to explain where they are coming from. Suffering can range from being uncomfortable with family members who see the world differently than you do on Memorial Day all the way to being put in jail. Friends know from experience that being a religious non-conformist often results in suffering.
Douglas Steere, a Quaker himself and an expert on the Quaker experience in America, is the editor of a volume titled, Quaker Spirituality. In it he wrote that the persecutions of Quakers in 17th century England “brought hundreds and later thousands of Quakers into sizable terms in the stinking jails of that period and often included ‘praemuniring’-which involved government seizure of their land, their livestock, their houses.”
Quakers are notoriously individualistic, so it is no mystery to them when even a small group of Friends don’t agree. One thing on which they quickly reach consensus, however, is their agreement with the declaration printed on an American Friends Service Committee bumper sticker:
WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.
