Geoffrey Durham, 2010
Quaker 'testimonies' are not a set of rules, but an interlocking set of shared values which naturally flow from Quaker faith. The testimonies of British Quakers today are truth, simplicity, peace, sustainability, and equality.
Each of these testimonies is a kind of umbrella, covering many of the tiny decisions we take each day, each month, each year. They apply as much to our relationships with one another as they do to the big, global picture. They are ways to live now, with integrity.
So the testimony to truth, for example, can be applied in dozens of small but significant ways every day, but it can go further than that, to encompass transparency and authenticity in every aspect of our private and public lives and, for some, a lifelong search for a more profound truth.
The testimony to simplicity has greater implications than may first appear. The simplicity of our core spiritual practice is one aspect of it. It is also a call to avoiding material extravagance and waste, and encouraging clarity and openness in our behaviour.
The testimony to peace is not just about stopping wars – most of us are not in a position to do that. But we can learn to handle conflict in our everyday lives, and find ways to mediate when our relationships come under strain. We can sidestep behaviours that contain what Quakers call ‘the seeds of war’ – not necessarily war-like in themselves, but designed to hurt, damage or provoke. We can learn the futility of trying to solve problems with violence.
If the peace testimony encourages us to live our lives in ways that avoid the seeds of war, our testimony to sustainability is about a way of behaving that does not contain the seeds of destruction. Quakers and non-Quakers alike are aware of the urgency of the problem and understand the need to address it in our everyday lives with selflessness and generosity.
And so the last Quaker testimony, the one to equality, now speaks for itself. It is not a testimony to sameness – we all have different talents – but to the fundamental right of each person to be treated with equal care and love. Without it, none of the other testimonies makes sense. It is fundamental to the Quaker way of life.