As an organisation, we sometimes face puzzlement about why we’re a Peace Board, rather than a committee, council, network, association or some other collective noun. It is unusual for us to face a situation, as we have this week, in which the pairing of those two words has come to be of global significance, with the setting up of the Trump organisation with a similar name.
Our name originates from the conference held by a group of Northern Friends in January 1913, who decided to set up a permanent peace board with the remit to ‘advise and encourage Friends in the North, and through them their fellow Christians and citizens generally, in the active promotion of peace in all its height and breadth’.
Some of those involved in the 1913 conference were business-people and maybe the concept of a board made more sense to them. Or perhaps it was simply what one Friend suggested at that January conference, that then appeared in the minute; and the rest is both history and continuity.
For now, we are still the Peace Board, often known as NFPB. As from our earliest days, we have members serving on behalf of Friends from across the North, and receive most of our funding from Northern Friends. In 1913, those who established NFPB were particularly exercised by growing geopolitical tensions in the world and the need for a clearer and more deeply rooted Quaker response. That too feels uncomfortably familiar.
Last year we published ‘Responses to War’, a collection of Friends’ considerations and reflections to current crises, building on exercises of exploration and discernment that NFPB had been undertaking. And bringing to light the height and breadth of the ways in which Friends have lived, and still do live, their peace testimony. As Mary Lou Leavitt said when speaking to NFPB about the 1980s US ‘star wars’ proposals, ‘No one ever said it would be easy.’
Our work continues; to support Friends and others to learn about and support one another in finding what we can do in promoting peace. Our NFPB meetings bring members and others together several times a year, and this June we are planning a larger gathering for Friends. We look forward to meeting Friends throughout the year, at these and other events, as we go forward as a community to see what we are called to do for peace today. A Peace Board but not bored of peace.
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You can read more about our work on our news pages, annual reports and recent NFPB updates and Bulletins.
Categories Challenging militarism, nonviolence, peacebuilding, Quakers