Pax Romana, the peace of Rome was a governing notion of the Ancient Roman Empire. Peace came to the streets, because anyone found disturbing the peace was severely punished. There were all forms of legal violence, but for the average law-abiding citizen of the Roman Empire there was little threat to their safety and there was the protection of the sword. Diana Francis uses the term “pacification” to sum this concept up [1]. In our modern civilization, citizens of privileged nations are pacified by our culture and our privilege so much so that we mistake being passive for peace.

In other words, I know what peace is not, but what does peace really mean? Sometimes I have glimpses of it. I am still disturbed by what our society accepts as normal. Peace is intricately tied in with the notion of justice. This concept is often so disturbing to Friends that we shun thinking about it. It is more comfortable to accept the world we live in as normal and nice, and it is easier to be annoyed at people flying drones, blocking streets or causing a ruckus in our Meetings than it is to deeply consider if we know peace or if we are merely pacified.

Benjamin Lay was known for causing a ruckus in Friend’s Meetings [2]. In Philadelphia, when weighty Friends would rise to speak in Meeting he would shout “N**** owner! N**** owner!” (He used the word meaning Black African- American, though never showed foul intent in any of his language). He is obviously most famous for stabbing a book filled with fake blood and rubbing it on the heads of weighty Friends during Meeting for worship. For his actions he was cast out of the Philadelphia Meeting-  written out!

His message? Slavery is immoral. Owning human beings is wrong and the way slaves lived and were treated was inhumane.  Things that all Friends in Australia, I say with confidence, agree with me, we don’t even bother to talk about it. Was Benjamin Lay peaceful?

There were contemporaries of Lay who supported him and asked him to tone down his witnessing. They often asked for more rational solutions to slavery. The demands were for more food and better housing for the slaves. I’m sure Lay’s friends saw themselves as trying to maintain peacefulness in the Meeting.

Of course,  Friends in Australia today are more enlightened. We know slavery and racism is wrong. We would never support such a system. And yet, we do. The violence of our pacified lives is not as immediate as slavery was to 18th Century Friends, but we are as acutely aware of it. The climate crisis affects people of colour in places like Bangladesh, Micronesia and many other Majority World countries. These are countries who have been so ravaged by the economic violence that has created our own lifestyles, so much that they have little or no buffer to recover land and crops destroyed by droughts and other severe weather events.

Yet most Friend’s (*including me), undertake action that harms far more lives of people of colour than slavery in the West did. I don’t just mean using petrol in our car, though that is harmful. Or flying, that is much more harmful. I mean borrowing money, investing in stocks that grow businesses. Any extraction of capital without labour damages the environment. It is theft. I see no proof of green investing or green capitalism. It is simply more theft and  destruction.

Violence, less bloody in front of our eyes than slavery, but definitely larger in scale is right there. As someone born with privilege in a Minority World country I can travel anywhere, throw food away with abandon and choose what level of responsibility I take for the suffering my lifestyle causes. In many ways, the peace of the sword and politeness works better for me. In my carnal interests, I don’t want world peace, I want to stay on top of the economic pile.

What does peace mean in all of this? Does it mean everything stays the same and we all just be nice. When the Benjamin Lays of our day lie on city streets and cry foul do I shake my head and wish for a better way to do things? If I was a Quaker in 17th Century Philadelphia, would I call out slavery? Or would I not want to offend my weighty Friends? Or, as I now drive the van that I live in, would I own a slave and just accept this is the way of things? Is any of this truly peaceful?

Martin Luther King Junior said in his Nobel prize acceptance speech in 1964.

“I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history… I refuse to accept the view that humankind is so bound to the starless night of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and fellowship can never become a reality…I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three square meals a day for their bodies,  education and culture for their minds with dignity and equality for their spirits”.

Martin Luther King Junior said those words not that long ago. Though he was talking about racism in North America as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, he was talking about the same issues as Benjamin Lay and decent climate activists everywhere are saying today.  Peace, like politics, is not a passive term. When we use terms like peaceful to mean passive, polite or nice, I believe we profane the Holy call for justice.

Many of us in Friends are as asleep to the violence of our lives as Quaker slave owners were in the 1870’s. We rely on the institutions that caused and profit from the violence and refuse to call them out. We speak of wanting to die now, to reduce our carbon emissions to zero, rather than try to embody the loving nonviolence these times require.

I have striven for years to seek funding and involvement from Friends for frontline activists: witnesses who have stopped shifts at coal mines, protected old and long-term regrowth forest from land clearance for months and years. These are people whose lives have had tangible effects on the damage our lifestyle and passivity creates. They are outsiders, pariahs, unrespectable. And they are not passive. They call out violent, profit driven institutions such as churches, parliaments and businesses.  Their message: harming our poorer neighbours is wrong; defiling the earth for profit is evil;  those of us with privilege should be doing everything we physically can to get in the way of the system of profit that causes this racism and ecological damage. We have a moral responsibility, especially if we try to call ourselves moral people.

The end of legal slavery in the West and the rights of women and many other human rights were won from the government only after enough people took up the call of the Benjamin Lay’s of their age.  So justice will only come from people willing to lay down in front of the gears of the machine, the roads, the rail, the forestry clearers. Justice can only come from people who seek peace through justice, not through passive politeness, people who step up and be counted. These people have few resources. They have to work other jobs, live on the dole or steal to support their lifestyle as they work. If Friends feel too old to get involved in working for justice, we can gear our Meetings to directly support those who can. This includes those without homes, income or a safety net of high privilege.  This would be money well spent.

At a recent peace and social justice meeting for Queensland Friends, I heard that the new poppies will incorporate the word justice with peace. I am grateful. None of us should take up the word peace, peace work or peace activism until we sit with the full ramifications of what that truly means for our lives. Benjamin Lay died alone in a cave, with no friends. Evaline Hilda Burkett was force fed 292 times in prison over five years for the suffragettes in England.

I have lived through minor suffering of state violence, small amounts of incarceration and homelessness that comes from choosing my conscience over comfort. The pain of compliance with the system of respectability and violence is far higher than any suffering I have endured. I would rather be awake to the violence around me, and my role in it, than asleep to that eternal call “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

By Greg Rolles with special thanks to Marylin Wright.

[1] https://www.dianafrancis.info/books/from-pacification-to-peacebuilding/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lay