Light in Emptying Darkness: London Calling – South Jersey Friends

London’s Calling her South Jersey Friends

Friends of South Jersey, Yearly Meetings and Quaker peace organizers,

In Silent quiet of Meeting Houses, in gentle rhythms of worship, we may speak of peace, of equality, and of equality of that still, small voice within, of knowing rightness. But what happens when this world’s turmoil crashes against our very doors? What is Testimony when a state, we seek to hold to a higher standard, acts not as a protector, but as the prosecutor of conscience?

Across the Atlantic, our fellow Quakers at Westminster Meeting House in London are living that very question. For the second time in a year, the Metropolitan Police have breached the sanctity of their worship space. Last month, over ten officers entered the Meeting House and arrested 15 young people who had gathered for nonviolent direct action training with the group Take Back Power who were practicing the art of peaceful protest, learning how to bear witness to economic injustice. They were swept up on suspicion of conspiracy, held in cells, and subjected to the full hard, cold, violent weight of a state militaristic police apparatus determined to silence them fully.

Let us be clear: no charges have been filed. The same was true after the first raid: What do we do when the state breaches Meeting House doors?

What it seems like is the government intent was not to solve a crime, but to disrupt, to chill dissent, to force cooperation, to intimidate, to reduce a very right to assemble and speak truth to power. Caroline Nursey, clerk of Westminster Meeting, powerfully reminds us, “Quakers have been accustomed to oppression by the state for over 350 years.” This is in our DNA, we know it. 

We are descendants of a people who were jailed, fined, and persecuted for refusing to conform. There are many F/friends who believe there is an arc of the moral universe that is long, but it bends toward justice because people of faith and courage have been willing to stand in the gap.

But today, faces of the oppressed look different. They are young F/friends in London, a young man who suffered a panic attack as police closed in. They are young people in South Jersey, and across our nation and world, who are looking at a climate crisis, at economic inequality, erosion of democratic norms, at war, and feeling a profound sense of fearful hopelessness.

They feel increasingly threatened. They see a future on fire, a political landscape that feels rigged to harm them, a government that, as we see in the UK – echoes here – is actively working to restrict any right to protest, that very tool we all have to demand change. New “cumulative disruption” laws in Britain are a warning to us all. Vague and broad, they could be used against anyone who raises their voice too persistently for peace, Palestine, climate justice – for peace.

Where are they to turn? Where can they find sanctuary? Where can they train for the hard work of peacemaking without fear of being criminalized?

This is the lesson evolving for Quakerism today. The world does not just need our quiet worship—though that is the foundation. It needs our open doors. It needs our unwavering commitment to the principle of #SanctuaryEverywhere.

Sanctuary is not just a place to hide. It is a sacred space to be brave. It is safe love and brave living to find order. It is a community that says, “Struggle for justice is our struggle. Thee risk comforts our risk. Thou are not alone.” It is any radical act of embodying our testimony of equality, recognizing rising Divine Light in every frightened young activist, and saying, “Enter, be welcome here.” We are transsituational in the interbeing at work in transhumanistic nature.

The Westminster Friends did not vet these young people for ideological purity. They vetted them for their commitment to nonviolence. That is our only litmus test. As Oliver Robertson of Quakers in Britain stated, we support peaceful nonviolent direct action, including symbolic acts that draw attention to injustice. We may not agree on every tactic, but we must agree on the principle: that love in action, confronting evil, must have a place to gather.

This is what it means to #LoveThyNeighborNoExceptions. Our neighbor is the young person terrified for their future. Our neighbor is the activist being led away in handcuffs. Our neighbor is even the police officer, acting on orders, who is also a child of God in need of a different path.

So, I ask you, Friends of South Jersey: What is our call?

Are we ready to offer sanctuary, not just in word, but in deed? Are we prepared for the possibility that our own Meeting House might one day be seen as a threat because we dared to host a training on peaceful resistance? Are we willing to stand with young people in our communities who are organizing for climate action, for racial justice, for a world where everyone has enough? Recently, news is surfacing that protestors who have been detained by our government are being swabbed without giving permission for DNA collection. Is this a line too far to cross?

Just imagine – without allowing for any disaster fatigue –  the alarming cost to [Gaia creation] Earth for engulfing poisonous smoke from millions of barrels of crude and refineries on fire surrounding the Persian Gulf. The cost of every missile in sheer systemic harm to our children; and, the ecosystem; violated and collapsing; it can all be held with a fiercely loving freedom and in infinitude attitude; a fearless knowledge of intraperfectability collaboration with radical inter responsibility within the interbeing; this interaction exists that is Truth. It can coexist even in a world freshly bereft of nuclear arms control and not agreeing on ecological treaties [START].

The lesson from London is clear. The state’s overreach is not their problem; it is ours. The fear in the hearts of young people is not a passing trend; it is a spiritual crisis. And our ancient Quaker testimonies are not museum pieces; they are living tools for this very moment.

Let us pray for our friends at Westminster. Let us support them. And let us prepare our own hearts and our own Meeting House to be a beacon of that defiant, enduring love. 

Let us be ready to say, with our lives and with our open doors: You are safe here. Your cause is just. We all have a Spark of the divine and a measure of Inner Light is with you. And so are we.