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The FoR Basis


Challenge

Jesus taught us to love our enemies and not to retaliate against those who wrong us. He urged his disciples not to seek wealth and power, but to serve others in love. His death on the Cross showed God's way of overcoming evil with good. By contrast, the world we live in lays great store by wealth and power and trusts in force of arms to overcome dictators or defend the nation's interests.

The early Church took the way of Jesus literally and would have nothing to do with the armed forces of the state. Sadly, when the Roman Empire became Christian, the Church took over the ways of the state and from then on became involved in its wars. But that may be changing. When the World Council of Churches set up its Programme to Overcome Violence, it urged the need to "confront and overcome the spirit, logic and practice of war ... and to become a [fellowship] dedicated to the pursuit of a just peace."

Response

This is exactly what the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) has been trying to do since 1914. It started as a response to the challenge of World War I, but it stands for and seeks to express a whole way of life. While opposing war and militarism, it strives to promote those things which make for peace, justice and human rights - to show the way towards what its founders called... "a world order based on Love."

Beginnings

The FoR began in 1914 when, on the brink of war, a German and an Englishman parted company on Cologne station with the words "We are one in Christ and can never be at war." Inspired by that pledge, about 130 Christians of all denominations gathered in Cambridge at the end of 1914 and set up the FoR. They recorded their general agreement in a statement which became 'The Basis'. In 1919 representatives from a dozen countries met in Holland and established the International FoR, which now has many branches in all five continents.

The 1914 Basis

  • That love as revealed and interpreted in the life and death of Jesus Christ, involves more than we have yet seen, that is the only power by which evil can be overcome and the only sufficient basis of human society.
  • That, in order to establish a world-order based on Love, it is incumbent upon those who believe in this principle to accept it fully, both for themselves and in relation to others and to take the risks involved in doing so in a world which does not yet accept it.
  • That therefore, as Christians, we are forbidden to wage war, and that our loyalty to our country, to humanity, to the Church Universal, and to Jesus Christ our Lord and Master, calls us instead to a life-service for the enthronement of Love in personal, commercial and national life.
  • That the Power, Wisdom and Love of God stretch far beyond the limits of our present experience, and that He is ever waiting to break forth into human life in new and larger ways.
  • That since God manifests Himself in the world through men and women, we offer ourselves to His redemptive purpose to be used by Him in whatever way He may reveal to us.


Please note that the Basis was an expression of general agreement and was never intended to be a fixed form of words.