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Apr 21st, 2005 - 21:10:55
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Voices of Peace
The November 5 elections will have a significant impact on FCNL's legislative work starting as soon as next week with the "lame duck" session, and continuing throughout the next two years of the 108th Congress. The Republican Party will assume the leadership of the Senate, putting both Congress and the White House under the full control of the Republican Party once again.
Many may now be asking questions about the importance and efficacy of continuing to lobby Congress and working on national policy issues, to which we offer the following replies.
Will the election outcome change the importance of bringing our spiritual values to bear on national legislation and policy? No. FCNL's witness and yours will be as important as ever. Matters of profound importance to every American, people around the world, and future generations will be decided by this Congress and this administration. These will include decisions about war and peace, civil liberties, social and economic justice, health care, and environmental protection. Many of our core values will be at stake as senators advocating policies with which we strongly disagree assume leadership positions in key committees. FCNL and people across the country will need to do even more to organize communities and coalitions to defend what is right and just in existing public policies and oppose harmful new legislation.
Will the election outcome change how FCNL goes about its work? Not at all. We remain dedicated to bringing our light to Capitol Hill. We will continue to meet with members of Congress and their staffs to press our concerns, to listen to theirs, and to discover common ground as way opens. Whether Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, we will continue to seek to "answer that of God" in all whom we meet and, in that process, discover unanticipated new opportunities and understanding.
Will the election outcome change FCNL's legislative strategies? Likely. The new Congress will have new and different legislative priorities to which we at FCNL will have to respond. We will likely have fewer champions who are in positions to advance our causes. Thus, we will have to invent new approaches and forge new relationships and partnerships. But then, this is nothing new to us. This has always been the nature of our work, responding to the ebb and flow of political change in the nation's capital in the context of national and world events.
We will carry on, faithful to our calling, with the same loving, cheerful, determined spirit that has sustained Friends in struggles throughout the past 350 years. We hope you will be with us to meet the challenges of the 108th Congress.
SILENCE IS BETRAYAL. We offer the following inspiring words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered at Riverside Church, New York City, April 4th, 1967.
A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls "enemy", for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." A nation that continues year and year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities over the pursuit of war.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, clan, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursed this self-defeating path of hate. We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who posses power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves in the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. May our country, on the brink of war, take to heart the final refrain of "America, the Beautiful": "America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law."
To contact Friends Committee National Legislation:
Mail: 245 Second St NE, Washington DC 20002-5795
Email: fcnl@fcnl.org
Phone: (202) 547-6000
Fax: (202) 547-6019
Toll Free: (800) 630-1330
FCNL Web
FCNL Congressional Information
Your contributions sustain our Quaker witness in Washington. We welcome your gifts to FCNL, or, if you need a tax deduction, to the FCNL Education Fund. You can use your credit card to donate money securely to FCNL FCNL also accepts credit card donations over the phone. For information about donating, please contact the Development team directly at development@fcnl.org. Thank you.
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