Carlos Figueroa, Ph.D. Associate Professor (Politics Department and Legal Studies Program Coordinator) publishes an essay titled "The Duty to Resist" in Friends Journal (April 2022). Friends Journal is published by Friends Publishing Corporation with a mission "to communicate Quaker experience in order to connect and deepen spiritual lives."
Friends Journal (FJ), Executive Director Gabriel Ehri writes in FJ's April issue introduction:
"When one sits down to write words that won’t be read for weeks in a time of escalating disaster, understatement is all but assured. The unprovoked and atrocious invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces is but one of many sinister processes underway. No doubt the situation will have worsened by the time my words are read; no doubt more unnecessary death, destruction, and suffering will have occurred. Perhaps there will be tangible steps toward peace.
Friends are not alone in advocating diplomacy rather than an escalation in the fighting, rightly resisting calls for the U.S. to intervene militarily. War is not the answer, as Vladimir Putin is learning, but this is a lesson sadly drenched in the blood of innocents. Our prayers are with Ukrainians as they resist and endure; we pray that peace may prevail and that the Light within every person, civilian and combatant alike, can once again flourish and brighten what has become a dark time in the absence of justice.
Both the Viewpoint and the News column in this issue address the conflict in Ukraine from Quaker perspectives. Also relevant is Carlos Figueroa’s exploration of twentieth-century U.S. civil rights hero Bayard Rustin’s Quaker faith. America in Rustin’s time was not far removed from a world war, a time when the Quaker peace testimony, pacifism, and nonviolent resistance were being rigorously put to the test. Rustin’s words in an address to his fellow Friends ring just as true today, and are just as challenging, as when he delivered them in 1948. Our faith in the power of peace and nonviolent resistance will continue to be tested in the weeks, months, and years to come, and in the faith and words of Bayard Rustin we have a blazing beacon of moral consistency."
Link to essay: https://www.friendsjournal.org/the-duty-to-resist/
Excerpt from "The Duty to Resist":
"Bayard Taylor Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1912 and raised by his grandmother Julia Wilson, who attended Quaker meetings, and his grandfather Janifer Rustin. Both grandparents were active in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and the civil rights campaigns of the 1910s–1930s. His grandparents taught Rustin about the importance of the Judeo-Christian traditions.
Rustin started his political activism under the tutelage of A. Phillip Randolph, a labor union leader and chief strategist of various march-on-Washington movements in the 1930s and 1940s. By the late 1940s, Rustin was a well-known organizer for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR).
Rustin’s faith-based message for civil disobedience and nonviolent action was on full display when he gave the prestigious William Penn Lecture in 1948 at the Race Street Meeting House in Philadelphia, Pa. The lecture provided Rustin with a platform to address his new Quaker community more directly on the importance of 'brotherhood' and resistance politics. Rustin was committed to his pragmatic Quaker faith that would carry him into the 1950s–1960s Civil Rights Movement until his passing in 1987."
