The 350th anniversary of the Quaker Peace Testimony has been prompting interest and concern among Quakers throughout the world.

At the recent Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting, where the 190th annual session was held at the campus of Earlham College, Friends turned their attention to the historic text.

The 1660 Declaration was celebrated by the drafting of a letter to US president Barack Obama and the United Nations general secretary Ban Ki-Moon on the subject of peace. It was produced by a testimony sub-committee of the peace and social concerns committee. Fourteen Friends somehow found twelve hours during a busy Yearly Meeting to meet and draft the letter.

The Yearly Meeting was attended by more than 150 Friends. The main theme of the gathering was ‘Celebrating Friends as Family: Nurturing the Future’. One session centred on the query: ‘How have you experienced Friends as family: in your Meeting, through Quarterly and Yearly Meetings, and in the wider Quaker world?’

Ohio Yearly Meeting also mourned those who had died on 31 May 2010 while trying to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, and made a plea, in a minute, to the United States government to stop providing military aid in the region. The minute read: ‘We recognise that Palestinians and Israelis have suffered too long. We ask governments in the region to allow freedom of international travel and commerce for all persons. We ask the United States government and the governments of the region to work together constructively for a negotiated settlement of all the issues that have stood in the way of peace. In particular we ask the United States government to stop sending military aid to the region.’