A Call to the Religious Society of Friends To A Conference on the Treatment and Prevention of Torture Friends Journal 2005

Dear Friends,                                                                                January 2005

I believe the time has come for Quakers to create a conference on torture.  Increasingly, there are corners without Light in American culture and places of American domination where there is no longer simply the threat of abduction, imprisonment or death, but also the likelihood that this includes torture.  This calculated brutality has become so large a part of our culture that the U.S. president has “found” legal grounds to sidestep the Geneva Conventions on torture perpetrated by our military on captives.  What was once small and secret is now widespread, public, and stated policy.  Opposition would be the essence of Friends’ Peace Testimony, practice, and faith and would add to our history.

Because there is indication that torture will continue and increase, I believe it is time for Friends to study this with a conference.  Let us become informed, spread information, and choose action in education, investigation, prevention, and treatment.

I know this is the most repulsive topic to conference on.  It may only draw a small number of people at first.  But the problem of torture is the most without Light aspect of the current spiritual condition of the human family.  It is the ugliest act of our species, and it is a furtive American crisis at home and abroad.  These negative features make it more urgent that it be examined. Friends’ history makes us a good group to begin that very hard work. 

Approaching great wounds with even the least amount of light will draw resistance and trouble.  An effective conference will involve very careful planning.  If its purpose and program are explained well, it may draw the widest possible audience, including experts from a wide range of fields.  Since taking in such information is a burden of some density, to avoid exhausting participants the schedule will keep to a measured, reflective pace.  The topic calls us to learn new ways to carry this realm of ideas, whose horror is well beyond the relative simplicities of hunger, homelessness, disease, and simple violence.       As so many of you, I have neither the time nor energy to create such a conference. But I also know that I cannot turn away. There is much good that needs doing, and the work is mine, and ours.  Of course, it would be best if an established Friends group(s) created this.     I ask 3 things of you- 1-  Please share this call to conference widely among Friends, Friends meetings and Friends organizations. This letter will be on my website www.johncalvi.com <http://www.johncalvi.com/> with future updates. 2-  Please take this call to heart and hold the effort in the Light. 3-  If there are talents, gifts, resources you or your organization have to help make this conference happen, please be in touch with me directly, e-mail is BEST calvij@sover.net. With many thanks,