Fellowship of Reconciliation

Since its founding in 1914, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) has been an outspoken advocate of pacifism, economic justice, and racial equality. The FOR has been an international organization with a global perspective from the beginning. Its membership and identity are rooted in liberal Protestant Christianity, and this strong religious identity distinguishes it from other pacifist organizations of comparable vintage, such as the War Resisters League. By the end of the 20th century, the FOR's culture had become considerably more interreligious, with Catholics, Jews, and Buddhists, as well as Protestants, ranking among its most prominent members.

The FOR began in Cambridge, England, during the first months of World War I. The next year saw the formation of an American branch, FORUSA. Many of the FOR's early members had been missionaries overseas, and their experiences caused them to question the fierce nationalism that fueled the war. During the conflict, they spread their pacifist convictions through other Christian organizations such as the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association), as well as in military camps for conscientious objectors.

[Page 395]Between the world wars, in the United States, FOR leaders such as A. J. Muste and Reinhold Niebuhr developed alliances with the labor movement as they began to see economic justice as an extension of the peace agenda. Revolutionary labor called into question some of the organization's core convictions; as World War II loomed, it stood nearly alone among its allies in opposition to the conflict. The International FOR sent “Ambassadors of Reconciliation” to world leaders in the hope of easing tensions. During the war years, its members in Europe smuggled Jewish refugees to safety and protested the Allies' practice of saturation bombing.

It was also during the 1930s that its leaders began to discover Mohandas Gandhi and his nonviolent independence movement in India. FOR member Richard Gregg traveled to India to learn from Gandhi and synthesized his teachings in The Power of Nonviolence. After the war, the FOR promoted Gandhi's ideas amid the burgeoning African American civil rights movement. In particular, Bayard Rustin and Glenn Smiley worked closely with the movement's leaders to ensure that it would take a nonviolent form. Those turbulent years of civil rights and the Vietnam War witnessed the FOR's greatest prominence, counting Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and Thich Nhat Hanh among its active membership.

At the start of the 21st century, the FOR continues its work around the world alongside a variety of other organizations, secular and interreligious. As tensions grow between the West and Iran, it has sent members to Iran to foster dialogue. The FOR facilitates nonviolence training for youth and maintains a program in war-torn Bogota, Colombia. In all, it has a presence in 48 countries around the world.