This page, under continuing development, serves as a repository for information, commentary, and resources relating to the concerns and service projects of our local Greater Grand Forks Quaker Worship Group. For information on Quaker service activities at the national and international levels, visit the website of the American Friends Service Committee, and for information about Friends' civic engagement at the national level, visit the website of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
The plight of refugees around the world remains an urgent concern, and immigration policy has become a divisive political issue in the United States. As refugees are resettled throughout the country, we are called to take action that promotes their safety and welfare. In this section we hope to assemble a collection of resources that provide background on migration and enumerate the many reasons for welcoming refugees to this country.
We have it from numerous sources that early Christians were committed to non-violence and refused to participate in warfare. This section will review the Old and New Testament content that provides a solid foundation for understanding Christianity as the "way of peace."
In this section we will compile information that provides context for addressing the problem of our country's economic and political dependence on war and the manufacture of weapons.
We are deeply distressed by a world order dominated by heavily armed nation-states. We apply our gifts -- of spirit, of intellect, of time and energy -- to work for a new international order under God within which our communities will be able to redirect their resources from overdependence on the manufacture of arms to human needs and the preservation of the earth. [Faith and Practice, p. 78]
While an international agreement to renounce warfare seems impossible in the near future, we should remember that it took the Christian world more than 1800 years to reach agreement that slavery was an unacceptable violation of God-given human rights.
We have to take responsibility in our own countries for the trade in weapons, which will continue unless we intensify our actions against it. ... Quakers have often taken on a prophetic role in the past. We should be glad of the example of the slave abolitionists and remember their strength, their courage, their witness, and do likewise now. [Advice 218 (by Jo Vallentine, 1991) in Faith and Practice, p. 152]
This section will contain reflections on economic justice and sustainability. We are called to share the earth's resources and to do so without catastrophic damage to the earth's life-sustaining ecosystem. We are accountable to the least among us as well as to future generations in the millennia to come.