A Centennial History Of The American Friends Service Committee

Devised in 1917 as a means of providing young Quaker males and other pacifists alternate wartime service, the American Friends Service Committee has gone on to become, in the 21st century, a major peace-building and community-building organization. Part 1 of this centennial history explores its early and occasionally heroic service in rebuilding France and feeding German and Russian children at the climax of World War I, followed by its unprecedented feeding in Spain of refugees on both sides of that country's civil war and similar relief efforts in Depression-torn Appalachia; it concludes with a description of renewed feeding programs across Europe in the aftermath of World War II and more significantly for its future work, attempts to build good relations with Japan. Part II explores the AFSC's often-controversial efforts in the period 1950-1990 to bring justice to the underserved both overseas and in domestic arenas, with special reference to work with Martin Luther King in matters of civil rights. The concluding Part III focuses on the modern organization's shift in focus to work behind the scenes in lessening ethnic and other tensions, such as work on immigrants' rights at home, alternative-to-violence projects in Africa, youth exchanges between Cuba or Puerto Rico and the United States, and service in "unlikely places" such as North Korea in an effort to defuse political animosities. Pervasive themes in the book have to do with the AFSC's standing in the larger, sometimes impatient community of the Religious Society of Friends and the organization's own growing sensitization to the power of diversity in its ranks--such that today it may be considered a model of Affirmative Action. The major activities of the book are complemented by maps, photos, and a bibliography. A thorough index appears in the published copy.

This book provides the first comprehensive history of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the central aid agency of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers, from 1917 to 1945. Implying a thoroughly transnational approach, it sheds a light on the important role American Quakers played in the emergence of a humanitarian sector both within the USA and beyond. Through the Quaker lens the book adresses important tensions inherent to the history of humanitarianism in the 20th century: Following the AFSCs aid operations from the First World War, through post-war Germany and Soviet Russia to the Spanish Civil War and into the Second World War, it deals with the AFSC’s conflicting roles as a specifically American aid organization on the one hand and its position within transnational religious and pacifist networks on the other and it opens a window to processes of professionalization, the development of a humanitarian “market place” and the complex relationship of religious and secular strands in the history of international relief.

The period from 1830 to 1937 was transformative for modern Quakerism. Practitioners made significant contributions to world culture, from their heavy involvement in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements and creation of thriving communities of Friends in the Global South to the large-scale post–World War I humanitarian relief efforts of the American Friends Service Committee and Friends Service Council in Britain. The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity, 1830–1937 explores these developments and the impact they had on the Quaker religion and on the broader world. Chapters examine the changes taking place within the denomination at the time, including separations, particularly in the United States, that resulted in the establishment of distinct branches, and a series of all-Quaker conferences in the early twentieth century that set the agenda for Quakerism. Written by the leading experts in the field, this engaging narrative and penetrating analysis is the authoritative account of this period of Quaker history. It will appeal to scholars and lay Quaker readers alike and is an essential volume for meeting libraries. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Joanna Clare Dales, Richard Kent Evans, Douglas Gwyn, Thomas D. Hamm, Robynne Rogers Healey, Julie L. Holcomb, Sylvester A. Johnson, Stephanie Midori Komashin, Emma Jones Lapsansky, Isaac Barnes May, Nicola Sleapwood, Carole Dale Spencer, and Randall L. Taylor.