The Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, is a pacifist church of Evangelical Christians founded by the English traveling preacher George Fox in the 17th century. Quakers see the Light of God within every person and wait for spiritual movement and the word of truth in the silence of meetings for worship. Last year, the public broadcaster BBC Radio 4 told the British audience about the Ukrainian Quaker Yurii Sheliazhenko, who is persecuted for his pacifism. In this article, we briefly tell the Ukrainian audience about one of the Quaker meetings for worship that took place on Sunday, February 15.
Ukrainian Friends gather for worship online every Sunday at 14:30 and every Wednesday at 20:30 Kyiv time. Anyone who wishes can join them: the Zoom link is published on their website and Facebook page. Sunday meetings for worship are recorded, and the video recording is published. After a short greeting, the meeting is embraced by silence. In this silence, anyone can turn on their microphone and speak the words of the ministry if they feel led by the Spirit.
Meetings for worship are conducted in Ukrainian and English, and participants are invited to translate their own words of ministry. If they do not know one of the languages, they receive the necessary help. For example, Kristen Richardson lives in Philadelphia (USA), studies Ukrainian, and has visited Ukraine several times. She can say hello and say a few words in Ukrainian, but she needs an interpreter when she speaks about the spiritual significance of a Ukrainian musician’s interview, when he said that Ukrainians need to overcome Russian aggression without becoming alike the aggressor state.
For Quakers, faith and everyday life are inseparable, as is the determination to bring the life around closer, even by small steps, to the spiritual principles of peace, equality, simplicity, sustainability, and truth, which Friends call testimonies. So, ministries at meetings for worship often touch upon the experience of reflection, faith, and action in connection with personal, social, and political problems — especially when Friends sympathize with human pains or needs, or are concerned about injustice and feel led to act to correct it.
Jesus said to his Friends (John 15:15): “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). When Friends pray with love and care for someone or something, remaining open to heavenly guidance for action, it is called “upholding in the Light.” For example, at the meeting for worship, Artem Denysov speaks about another death during military mobilization, which is carried out with systemic violations of human rights, and suggests holding in the Light everyone who suffers because of this. Such prayerful support is simultaneously an invitation to delve into the inner light of Christ’s love and wisdom and to reflect on what each Friend and the entire religious community together can do to solve this problem or at least alleviate human suffering.
The summary of the February 15 meeting in the YouTube video description is relayed as follows: “In these days, Friends of Ukraine prayed for all who suffer from war and resist war by peaceful means. They spoke the truth about the dangers of the Munich Security Conference and rejoiced in the refusal to kill expressed in the speeches of conscientious objectors who gathered for the alternative International Munich Peace Conference. They held in the Light the participants of the upcoming meeting at the Office of the President of Ukraine, so that the Lord would help them to respond with dignity to the flawed logic of the Ministry of Defense regarding the ‘inexpediency’ of alternative non-military service, and convey the truth that respect for human rights is a matter of the survival of a democratic society and European integration, not military-political ‘expediency’ in narrow departmental interests. They also held in the Light Yurii, as he faces an upcoming court hearing.”
At the beginning of his ministry, Yurii Sheliazhenko apologizes for speaking at length. Modern Quakers try not to interrupt silent worship with long speeches, although George Fox reportedly used to preach for several hours in a row. However, Ukrainian Friends sometimes feel the need to say a great deal, just as early Friends might have felt during times of persecution for their faith in the 17th century.
Here are the words of this ministry:
“Friends, I ask you to hold me in the Light, as I have a court hearing this Wednesday, February 18. I face stereotypes and discrimination, as do all pacifists in Ukraine, but I hope that the truth will be spoken and heard.
Also, on Tuesday, a meeting will take place at the Office of the President of Ukraine to discuss — and I quote — the ‘expediency of introducing a mechanism for alternative (non-military) service under martial law.’ Among the first speakers will be the Ministry of Defense, which opposes the protection of the human right to conscientious objection to military service. Conscientious objectors have not been invited; I was not invited — I simply know about this meeting. It seems Zelenskyy’s aides do not quite understand that the protection of human rights is not a matter of ‘expediency,’ but a matter of the survival of a democratic society and the key to the doors of Europe, which will be closed if we decide here in Ukraine — God save us from this, — to build a military dictatorship. Let us hold in the Light those who will be there, in the President’s Office, so that Christ may come, awaken their consciences, and remind them of the need to protect human rights.
This week, we witnessed a troubling event: the Munich Security Conference. ‘Security’ is a selfish version of peace, a false feeling that one can prosper by harming others. For example, it is the selfishness of Putin, who invaded Ukraine to ensure his dominance in the post-Soviet space. Such ‘security’ is deeply dangerous. It is a false, militaristic conception of security. Only a just peace is secure. President Zelenskyy stated at the conference that the United States can stop Putin by weapons supply and sanctions, while the conference organizer, Ischinger, suggested Europe could fight Russia on her own. Preparations for even more horrible war are ongoing, but where are serious preparations to overcome the scourge of war by peaceful means as the UN Charter demands?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Munich with a message that the United States want to defend ‘Western civilization’ together with Europe, which means European countries must prepare for war, build up their armies, and buy more American weapons. Lamenting the weakness of diplomacy, the top US diplomat blamed the United Nations for its inability to bomb Iran, invade Venezuela, and restrain the ‘barbarians’ — that is a quote — in Gaza, as American leadership has done. Ironically speaking, it is an old ‘civilized’ habit — in quotation marks — to ruthlessly exterminate barbarians, such as supplying the Israeli army with an abundancy of genocidal weaponry, including thermobaric munitions that have evaporated thousands of Palestinians.
Rubio declared the United States a ‘child of Europe’ and began to scold the parents. He said it was a foolish idea to hope that every nation would be a liberal democracy, that ties formed by trade and commerce would replace national statehood, that a rules-based global order would replace national interests, and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone becomes a citizen of the world. Rubio criticized Europe for its openness to migrants and for policies of survival in an era of climate change that cut corporate profits. Rubio’s main accusation was that European nations invested in general welfare and social protection, as he put it, ‘at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves’ — in other words, spending public budgets on making happy the people, rather than American shareholders of arms manufacturers.
While saying all this, he saw fit to remind everyone that the US and Europe belong to the same Western civilization with a shared culture, including the Christian faith, Dante, and the Beatles.
Think about that.
Christ called to make peace, to love enemies, and to welcome strangers, Jesus called for brotherhood between all humans; he foresaw that the whole world would be united in the Kingdom of Heaven. According to the Holy Bible, humans are called to care about the garden of nature, and one day nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
Dante, in the Divine Comedy, placed all those greedy and violent in Hell, where warmongers are drown in rivers of blood.
When Rubio admitted that he hates Europe for her best aspirations and deeds — the things that make the West tolerable and even attractive to the rest of the world — it is a pity no one in the room reminded him of all this. It is also a pity he wasn’t reminded that the Beatles sang to bosses like him: ‘When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out’ and ‘You better go back home.’
I want to say with special joy that Europe is not hopeless, because during the Munich Security Conference, protests took place in the streets where people called for preparing for peace, not for war.
The Defence Intelligence of Ukraine cooked up a conspiracy theory that all pacifists in Europe are Putin’s puppets and they are going to organize protests in Munich with Russian propaganda slogans, but it turned out that a few little-known ‘Ruscists’ named by the military intelligence as leaders of the peace movement have long been banned from entering the EU, and among the real pacifists in Munich, there were no slogans supporting the Russian war of aggression.
And there was also the International Munich Peace Conference, where peacebuilders and conscientious objectors took the stage. There were two objectors from Ukraine and Russia who publicly refused to be enemies and killers.
Let us pray that millions of people say ‘no’ to military slavery, and that this stops Putin’s war of conquest against Ukraine. Let us hope that this refusal to kill will end all wars in the world forever.”
Source: FREE CIVILIANS