Fellowship of Reconciliation

   The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) is an international Protestant interfaith group that has worked to support pacifism and other political causes in line with its view of Christianity.

   The group originated in one of several Protestant efforts to prevent World War i. British Quaker Henry Hodgkin (1877-1933) and German Lutheran Friedrich Sigmund-Schultze manifested their concern at an ecumenical conference in Switzerland that was cut off by the outbreak of the war. Before leaving Switzerland, Hodgkin and Sigmund-Schultze agreed to stay in touch.

   in December that year, Hodgkin helped found the Fellowship of Reconciliation to continue the effort against war. An American branch was started the next year. Among its early accomplishments was the formation of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, later reorganized as the American Civil Liberties Union. The bureau worked for the legal recognition of conscientious objectors and later for the rights of those arrested for actively opposing the war. In the 1920s, it helped organize the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

   In 1919, an International FOR organization was formed to network the autonomous national groups that sprouted up after the war. FOR has involved itself in a wide variety of issues and causes. During World War II, it sought ways to oppose the war, lobbied against the internment of Japanese-Americans, and helped rescue people fleeing the Nazis. In the 1960s, FOR staff supported the movement begun by Martin Luther King Jr., staging workshops to train people in nonviolent resistance. It has consistently opposed the successive wars that have plagued humankind, worked to pose alternatives to war, and assisted people in postwar situations.

   FOR has come to include people from a wide variety of faith communities. It has branches in more than 40 countries. The United States organization is headquartered in Nyack, New York, and the international headquarters at Alkmaar, the Netherlands.

   Further reading:

   ■ 40 Years for Peace: A History of the Fellowship of Reconciliation 1914-1954 (New York: Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1954)

   ■ William R. Miller, Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Life, Martyrdom and Meaning for the World (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1968)

   ■ Jill Wallis, Valiant for Peace: A History of the Fellowship of Reconciliation 1914-1989 (London: Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1991)

   ■ Walter Wink, ed., Peace Is the Way: Writings on Nonviolence from the Fellowship of Reconciliation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2000).