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One of the things probably best known about Quakers is that we have a testimony against participation in war, which we call the peace testimony. As the Quaker movement was developing, Christian bodies did not generally take a pacifist stance. Friends themselves took a little while to become clear about it as a movement. In the very early years of the movement in the mid-seventeenth century in Britain, some Friends served in Cromwell's army. As late as 1659, prominent Friend Isaac Penington wrote a paper To the Parliament, the Army, and all the Well-affected in the Nation, who have been faithful to the Good Old Cause, in which he said the army had been "glorious Instruments in the hand of God."
Development of the Peace Testimony
Although the peace testimony was not a clear testimony of the movement as a whole at first, it does seem to have been clear early on to George Fox, generally called the founder of Quakerism. In his Journal, Fox notes that he was asked to take a position as a captain in Cromwell's army, and he reports, "I told them I knew whence all wars arose, even from the lusts, according to James' doctrine; and that I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars."
Fox records the following from 1654:
The next morning I was moved of the Lord to write a paper to the Protector, Oliver Cromwell; wherein I did, in the presence of the Lord God, declare that I denied the wearing or drawing of a carnal sword, or any other outward weapon, against him or any man; and that I was sent of God to stand a witness against all violence, and against the works of darkness; and to turn people from darkness to light; and to bring them from the causes of war and fighting, to the peaceable gospel. When I had written what the Lord had given me to write, I set my name to it, and gave it to Captain Drury to hand to Oliver Cromwell, which he did.
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