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Nederlands We see a Europe that is striving to become a peaceful, compassionate, open, and just society.
Fully aware of the deficiency of our understanding, the weakness of our resolution, and the imperfection of our contribution, we pursue these goals with love and compassion.
We see Europe as a community of peoples that acts towards itself and other peoples as it would have others act towards it.
Genocide, slavery, and ethnic cleansing have always been with us. We Europeans have industrialized them, made them political instruments, and are abetting others in their savagery.
We see a Europe that has found an alternative to the inevitable self-destructiveness of imperialism. Europe's immediate past is an agonizing series of tragedies wrought by ambitions of expansion and delusions of glory. We acknowledge and must share the burden of righting the wrongs inflicted on other continents, on other peoples. We are working to lay finally to rest all the self-serving and fanciful racial myths that have been served up by flawed science along with all the competitive nationalisms and murderous ideologies that have so scarred our last century. We recognise and rejoice in the diversity of the world's peoples and cultures and strive to assure the fundamental right to cultural integrity.
We see a Europe where success is measured by conflicts resolved peacefully and justly, not by wars won or vengeance taken.
Europe is a continent of war cemeteries, mostly forgotten, and new ones are even now being dug. May we never forget these cataclysmic insanities when whole nations have run amok. We abhor and radically reject war as a way to resolve international conflict. Our ambitions must shun dominance and aim rather for harmony, equity, reconciliation, and shared prosperity.
We see a Europe, shorn of arrogance, that accepts its responsibility for, and dependence upon, the global environment, that looks on our small planet as one ecosystem, one equitable economic system, one home for all. We recognize our interdependence and realize that our success can be secured only by the success of the entire world system. We seek an earth restored and respected. We reject an economy in which there must inevitably be exploitation and losers. We will strive to convert to constructive activities those parts of our economy that produce the means of destruction.
We see a Europe where its governments are at the service of their communities. They must also transcend private and limited interests, look wisely and prudently beyond the next quarter, the next annual report, and the next election to the long-term good.
A government can liberate, create opportunity, assure security, provide the rule of law necessary for civilization, for any human relationship. It can protect us from chaos, from our own selfishness, from our own shortsightedness. While a government may not be able to convince us that our economies and lives should be driven by something other than greed -- for this is something we must discover for ourselves -- it can mitigate the effects of that greed.
We are keenly aware of what a government cannot do for us.It cannot give our lives meaning, make us happy, or absolve us from the need to make our own choices in the worlds in which we live our private and public lives. What formal law does not prohibit is not necessarily permitted. We are also keenly aware that governments can often make us unhappy and force moral choices upon us we should not have to make. Governments and social structures can stunt and inhibit our souls and minds and bodies.Life in community must not blind us to the divine in ourselves and in the other.
We see a Europe that recognizes the fundamental, inalienable sanctity of each individual. Our law must be and be felt to be liberating and protective, not repressive or exploiting. The strong need not protection but regulation; the weak need law for their very survival. Our laws must be of service to all.
We see a Europe that is hospitable to those who would seek shelter in it. We are a continent of refugees, many of us and our families having taken flight ourselves. If history is to be a gauge, we may well do so again. Therefore, let us be sensitive to the plight of the stranger in a strange land. Let us also honestly recognize and prudently deal with the problems that may be generated by flows of refugees and immigrants. The newly arrived must not be marginalized but must be allowed to integrate into our communities as we have done.
We see a Europe that recognizes all the myriad forms its citizens use to express themselves and gives hearing to them. The right of the free exercise of religion and political association must be guaranteed and fostered. The right of free association is essential for the proper functioning of a society. Individuals must be able to combine together to foster their interests lest they be overwhelmed by the sheer mass of complexity. However, the associations they form must also recognize the essential right of others to associate and compete under the rule of impartial law. What we claim for ourselves we must grant to others. Organized religion, too, must finally put behind itself the perennial temptation to impose rather than invite, to compel rather than convince.
We see a Europe of just and equitable structures, a Europe that is governed transparently, a Europe where the principle of subsidiarity gives substance and form to democracy, where information is freely accessible, where institutions and individuals are accountable, where integrity is rewarded. We know that there will never be a system so perfect that no one will need to be good. Moral decisions will always have to be made by individuals in the realization that their personal responsibility can never be shifted to an organization.
The citizen must be enabled to exercise judgement if democracy is to be more than an empty shell. The right to free expression is empty if it cannot be exercised intelligently on the basis of adequate information. Truth is as crucial as it is elusive. The media, the monopolization of which by global conglomerates is cause for real concern, and the informational organs of governments have a vital role that needs independent monitoring lest their attempts to inform degenerate to mere public relations and propaganda.
We see a Europe in which the private corporations strive not only to make profit but also to contribute to the society that makes those profits possible. They have a rightful place in civil society and must contribute to it according to their means, abilities, and talents.
Commercial companies have an obligation to the society that provides the rule of law that makes their profits possible. Their obligation is not satisfied by the mere payment of taxes. Society is much more than an arena for exploitation: its well-being is the very reason for their existence. They, too, are held to the obligations of justice, compassion, and honesty, particularly toward their employees and stockholders. Human beings are not commodities, not resources to be bought and sold, to be plugged in, burned out, and discarded. The products and services they sell must not only be able to be sold but also be worthy of being sold.
Finally, we, European Quakers, see our Europe at peace with itself and with all others on our very small planet, and we take to heart the counsel George Fox gave us in 1656:
"Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one."
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Further Information
Please follow the links below for further information on:
• What is QCEA?
• The Aims of QCEA
• A Quaker Vision of Europe
• What does QCEA do?
• QCEA's Achievements
• How is QCEA funded?
• Quaker House |
