Through our history, our scripture and our communities, justice and peace have become a central focus within our 21st-century faith community. By knowing our past, we can begin to understand who we are today and just as importantly, the path our future will take us.
The history of peace throughout the world does not form a straight path, but one that alternates between stories of violence and peace, a pattern that seems to repeat itself many times over. As a people dedicated, along with many others, to bring about peace in our world, this blog will share our unfolding story of the past but also the present. Stories from individuals, from congregations, groups and from our Mission Centre.
International Conscientious Objectors Day - sharing by the Leicester Congregation
In World War I there were 20,000 conscientious objectors (COs) in Britain. They had a rough time - 73 British COs died from their treatment, 31 went insane, 42 were send to France to be shot. This is the story all over the world and continues today. Yet COs continue to lead the resistance to the folly and inhumanity of war.
Every year in Leicester, one of the most diverse cities in the world, all COs are remembered at a CO memorial stone down from the large war memorial. This year because of the pandemic local people were invited to leave a flower on the stone during the day and join in a Zoom call in the evening. Then on-line, 85 people from Leicester, all over the country and the USA heard stories about a WWI Quaker CO, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Buddhist COs in WWII Japan, Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian Catholic farmer in WWII who was beheaded in 1943, and the Jain influence on Gandhi. Leanne Grooms told the story of F Henry Edwards, a British WWI CO and Community of Christ member.
Andrew Bolton organised the event working with Jains, Catholics, Buddhists, Quakers and scholars of Jehovah Witness conscientious objectors to bring the programme together. Joey Williams organised and introduced the songs at the beginning and end of the event.
