International Fellowship of Reconciliation

The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) is an international faith-based nonviolent movement created shortly after the First World War, in 1919, to draw together national Fellowships of Reconciliation that had been founded during the war.

Origins in wartime

The first body to use the name "Fellowship of Reconciliation" was formed as a result of a pact made in August 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War by two Christians, Henry Hodgkin (an English Quaker) and Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (a German Lutheran), who were participating in a Christian pacifist conference in Konstanz, southern Germany (near Switzerland). On the platform of the railway station at Cologne, they pledged to each other that, "We are one in Christ and can never be at war".

To take that pledge forward, Hodgkin organised a conference in Cambridge in 1915 and founded the "Fellowship of Reconciliation". In this Cambridge conference have been set out the principles that had led them to do so in a statement which became known as "The Basis". It states:

* That love as revealed and interpreted in the life and death of Jesus Christ, involves more than we have yet seen, that is the only power by which evil can be overcome and the only sufficient basis of human society.
* That, in order to establish a world-order based on Love, it is incumbent upon those who believe in this principle to accept it fully, both for themselves and in relation to others and to take the risks involved in doing so in a world which does not yet accept it.
* That therefore, as Christians, we are forbidden to wage war, and that our loyalty to our country, to humanity, to the Church Universal, and to Jesus Christ our Lord and Master, calls us instead to a life-service for the enthronement of Love in personal, commercial and national life.
* That the Power, Wisdom and Love of God stretch far beyond the limits of our present experience, and that He is ever waiting to break forth into human life in new and larger ways.
* That since God manifests Himself in the world through men and women, we offer ourselves to His redemptive purpose to be used by Him in whatever way He may reveal to us.

Shortly afterwards, an organization with the same name was founded in the United States. After the end of the war, in 1919, these organizations agreed to found the International Fellowship of Reconciliation as an umbrella organisation to which they affiliated as members.

Muriel Lester became "Ambassador-At-Large" in 1934 and later "Traveling Secretary".

Current commitment

IFOR is present in 50 countries (Cf. Fellowship of Reconciliation in UK and US). Its office is based in Alkmaar (Netherlands) and its Honorary president is Dr Hildegard Goss-Mayr. IFOR is a member of the International Coalition for the Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. It maintains a permanent presence at the United Nations in New York and Geneva and at the UNESCO in Paris.

Nobel Peace Prizes

Six Nobel Peace Prizes are members of IFOR:

* Jane Addams (1931)
* Emily Green Balch (1946)
* Chief Albert Luthuli (1960)
* Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1964)
* Mairead Corrigan-Maguire (1976)
* Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (1980)

External links

* [http://www.ifor.org/ International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR)]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/remembrance/faith/pacifism.shtml BBC.co.uk]
* [http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/DG100-150/dg117/dg117jsayreint.htm List of papers of John Nevin Sayre held at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, and Sayre's biographical details] ]