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American Friends Service Committee — Part 2
Page 53
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munity Relations, International Affairs, International Service,
Peace Education, and Youth Services—are all seen as expressions
and implementation of the same basic concern.
Our concept of service has broadened over the years to
include efforts to prevent violence as well as te counteract its
effects, but the roots have remained constant, nourished by our
religious faith and our desire to serve God more fully. We see a
basic unity in all our efforts, whether they be directed to saving
lives, or changing them, or refusing to be party to their destruc-
tion. It is all of a piece and cannot be divided. It seeks to show
the whole relevance of the life and teaching of Jesus to present-
day life.
This unity of purpose requires us to have a point of view on
the great issues of the day. We are not neutral. We work for a
world society that is nonviolently ordered and in which men are
neither debased nor exploited for any reason or for any purpose.
We work for it because we think it is the kind of world God
intends men to live in.
The AFSC has not interpreted the Quaker peace testimony
as a purely individual and negative matter. We are a community
impelled by the conviction that it is God’s will for men to do no
grievous hurt to the personality of other sons of God nor prepare
to do so, and by a belief in the practical relevance of love as
taught by Jesus. Like other testimonies it is built upon individual
sense of duty and upon personal abstention from what conscience
forbids. It does not end there, any more than did Quaker objec-
tion to slavery limit itself to individual clearness from slave
owning. Friends, then and now, have felt responsibility to act
collectively as well as individually. ar1 to inform their own
members and the general public of their concern.
~~"The AFSC does not seek to advance any particular political
theory. It believes that nonviolent att-tudes and practices would
' create their own beneficent result wtnin any system. Out of its
faith in the unique and finest values of our national wav of life,
it does undertake to sustain and strencthen these values for the .
benefit of all. It is concerned with those freedoms which are
both the cause and the effect of man’s responsible behavior.
This is the Committee's philosophy of service, suggest-
ing why it has gone beyond emergency relief to involve
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