Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation
Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation
Working for peace, social
justice and principled nonviolence since 1976
Home |
Contact Us | Donate or
Volunteer
The Fellowship of
Reconciliation seeks more than modest reforms.
We work actively for very profound change, including a peaceful and just
foreign policy, a just and nonviolent society at home.
We are up against powerful and entrenched interests that profit and
benefit from the status quo. It can
feel lonely – but we are not alone!
The Fellowship of Reconciliation extends
far beyond Olympia. We are active at
the regional, national and international levels.
The national FOR’s
Vision Statement is indeed very sweeping:
FOR's Vision:
We envision a world of justice, peace, and freedom. It is a revolutionary vision
of a beloved community where differences are respected, conflicts are addressed
nonviolently, oppressive structures are dismantled, and where people live in
harmony with the earth, nurtured by diverse spiritual traditions that foster
compassion, solidarity, and reconciliation.
The Olympia Fellowship
of Reconciliation is a local chapter of a
nationwide
organization that began in 1915 and has opposed every war from
World War I onward. The FOR has a
rich history
http://forusa.org/about/history.html
In 2001 Richard Deats,
one of our long-serving national staff members, wrote this about the FOR’s first
85 years:
http://forusa.org/nonviolence/0900_63deats.html
The national FOR is
part of the
International FOR, which began in Europe
in 1914 just as World War I was breaking out.
National FOR branches exist in about 40 nations, and local and regional
FOR groups exist in dozens of places throughout the US.
This summarizes the FOR’s origin in Europe:
In 1914, an ecumenical conference was held in Switzerland by
Christians seeking to prevent the outbreak of war in Europe. Before the
conference ended, however, World War I had started and those present had to
return to their respective countries. At a railroad station in Germany, two of
the participants, Henry Hodgkin, an English Quaker, and Friedrich
Sigmund-Schultze, a German Lutheran, pledged to find a way of working for peace
even though their countries were at war. Out of this pledge Christians gathered
in Cambridge, England in December 1914 to found the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. The FOR-USA was founded one year later, in 1915.
FOR has since
become an interfaith and international movement with branches and groups in over
40 countries and on every continent. Today the membership of FOR includes Jews,
Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and people of other faith traditions, as well as
those with no formal religious affiliation.
A few years after its
founding, FOR members from various countries came together to found an
explicitly international level of the growing Fellowship of Reconciliation
movement. Here is some information
from the website of the International FOR (www.ifor.org):
Founded in 1919 in response to the horrors of war in Europe,
IFOR has taken a consistent stance against war and its preparation throughout
its history. Perceiving the need for healing and reconciliation in the world,
the founders of IFOR formulated a vision of the human community based upon the
belief that love in action has the power to transform unjust political, social,
and economic structures.
Today IFOR
has 81 branches, groups, and affiliates in 51 countries on all continents.
Although organized on a national and regional basis, IFOR seeks to overcome the
division of nation states which are often the source of conflict and violence.
Its membership includes adherents of all the major spiritual traditions as well
as those who have other spiritual sources for their commitment to nonviolence.
Peace
Prize Laureates:
IFOR also has six Nobel Peace
Prize Laureates among its former and present members. Jane Addams (1931), Emily
Green Balch (1946), Chief Albert Luthuli (1960), Dr. Martin Luther King (1964),
Mairead Corrigan-Maguire (1976), Adolfo Perez Esquivel (1980) have all been or
are actively contributing to dissemination of the teaching of non-violence.
The Olympia FOR is
part of our regional network, the
Western Washington FOR (WWFOR).
Chapters also exist in Lewis County (the Fire Mountain FOR, named after
Mount St. Helens), Tacoma, Seattle, Spokane, and elsewhere in our region.
The
Oregon FOR is active too.
Every year on the
Fourth of July weekend more than 200 FOR folks of all ages from infants to
people in their 90s come together from Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and
elsewhere for our annual conference at Seabeck on Hood Canal in Kitsap County
WA. We have done this for more than
50 years. The FOR’s Seabeck
Conference has helped to inform, inspire, and strengthen the FOR’s network
throughout the Pacific Northwest.
This has been a major strength in our whole region’s network for peace, social
justice and nonviolence. Contact the
WWFOR, the Oregon FOR, or the Olympia FOR for more information.
Pre-registration materials usually become available in April, and it
helps to pre-register by late May or early June.