Under the heading “Harbingers” (pp.180 ff), Barnes mentions a letter from a Presbyterian pastor’s wife addressing Dr. I often have wondered what would happen today to the letter I originally sent to the regional office, given that so few of the staff are now Quakers, fewer than one half percent according to Barnes.Ī Centennial History of the American Friends Service Committee is divided into sections by years, mostly four-to-seven-year stretches, in which Barnes covers changes in AFSC staff and structure, programs, and tensions within AFSC, as well as criticisms of AFSC from Quakers and others. After that, my involvement was limited to contributions and occasional visits from fundraisers until 2003, when I joined the AFSC Board of Directors for six years. The Minneapolis office was terminated after my time on that regional board, causing considerable pain and anger among local Friends. By then Warren Witte was the Regional Director. I was clerk for two years, during which time I attended the Des Moines regional board meetings. That started our Quaker adventure.Ī few years later I joined the local Twin Cities/Minneapolis regional board of AFSC. In response we got a personal, informative, and warm letter from Cecil Hinshaw, then Executive Director of that region. In the late 60s we wrote a letter to the Des Moines office of the AFSC.
Unhappy with our own church’s stand on the war, we decided to inquire about Quakers. We were active in the peace movement in the days of the United States war against Vietnam, and frequently ran across AFSC in those efforts.
The AFSC is the reason I became a Quaker.
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I include them with full awareness that Barnes could not cover everything in a book that is already long. Some things Barnes did not include were important to me in my experience with AFSC. My comments here are not a book review but some personal reactions and reflections. Thomas Hamm, a Quaker historian, has reviewed the book for Friends Journal (April 2017, p.29). I do recall there were things I wanted to talk about that he was not interested in. I think the book resulted mostly or solely from his study of the archives, the secondary sources listed and the interviews and email correspondence he lists.īarnes did interview me, but I do not recall much about the interview and did not keep notes. It is not clear to me what personal experience Barnes had with the AFSC. Barnes had full access to the extensive American Friends Service Committee ( AFSC) archives. This book is a prodigious effort, and I thank Barnes for that-486 pages, with around 100 end notes after almost every chapter. Barnes (Friends Press, Philadelphia, 2016, 486 pp.) See AFSC Centennial for more information about the organizational history.Ī Centennial History of the American Friends Service Committee, by Gregory A. This piece rises from Friend Richard’s own long history with the American Friends Service Committee ( AFSC). In 2016 we published his review of Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifetime Activist, the autobiography of David Hartsough. Richard Van Dellen is a member of Rochester (MN) Friends Meeting and a longtime convinced Friend.
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