The Quaker testimonies enumerated by the Southeastern Yearly Meeting (SEYM) are integrity, equality, peace, and simplicity, but this is by no means complete. The Friends General Committee adds the testimonies community and care for the earth as common testimonies.
Minute Concerning the War in Iran and Lebanon
Jacksonville Quaker Worship Group
3/17/2026
Guided by the Spirit of Love and Truth, the Jacksonville Quaker Worship Group express its anguish, shared by many across the world, over the ongoing was in Iran and Lebanon and its hope for peace, justice, and reconciliation. Since the conflict began, thousands of people in the region have been killed, including schoolchildren lost in an errant U.S. missile strike. U.S. service members have also died. War, under any guise, violates the sacredness of Life and leaves lasting physical and emotional wounds. It does not resolve the root causes of conflicts and therefore cannot create true and lasting peace. Instead, it does the seeds of future violence, oppression, and suffering.
We also lament the language of violence and vengeance used by our national leaders. They have named the war “Operation Epic Fury” and described it as “our retribution.” At the start of the bombing campaign, they promised “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” Earlier statements declared that the military would now focus on “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.” Such language erodes the moral conscience, it encourages the dangerous fallacies that the ends justify the means, that might makes right. 1
Our peace testimony, expressed by the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, for nearly 375 years, is not mere opposition to war and violence, it springs from concern for the well-being if all humanity and knowledge, gained through experience, that there is “that if God in every person.” Quakers refer to this as the divine Spirit, the Light of Christ, or the Inward Light. It guides us to become peacemakers, to seek the “beloved community” Based on justice, love, and mutual care. It is a world foreseen by the prophet Isaiah, in which the “wolf shall dwell with the lamb” and people “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; no nation shall lift up sword against another, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 11:6; 2:4).
Friends and others concerned about the war in Iran and Lebanon can respond by supporting Quaker organizations – such as the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), which advocates for peace and justice in government, and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which provides humanitarian aid and promotes nonviolent solutions – and contacting their elected officials to encourage policies that prioritize diplomacy, peace, and reconciliation.
November 18, 2023
As Quakers, we respect the universal sanctity and dignity of all people. We urge our government and all those who have influence in the Middle East conflict to set aside violence and aggression. We encourage them to devote diplomatic, financial, and material resources to peace rather than war.