Marieke Faber Clarke
I am a third-generation Christian pacifist as my Dutch grandfather, a Unitarian parson in the Netherlands, was an active pacifist. My parents met through the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). (See the booklet published by Oxford Meeting about Conscientious Objectors and Oxford Meeting). My mother died in childbirth four days after I was born on 30 November 1940.
My father’s sister Phyllys, another active Christian pacifist, and my father together with their mother, my Granny, brought me up from the age of one year. We all regularly attended the Congregational Church in Bishop’s Stortford. I became a church member shortly before I went to Oxford University.
When I was about fifteen, my father arranged for me to attend a FOR youth conference. My father had had very difficult experiences during the War because he was a Christian pacifist and he had lost his job when my mother was pregnant. He could not find suitable work near our home for some time, so he lost his job, his wife, and access to his daughter in the crucial early years.
The Fellowship of Reconciliation was absolutely crucial to my father and his CO Friends. One of my earliest memories is that I was told we could always trust fellow FOR members: they were our real friends. In the youth conferences we were taught that Christian pacifists must stay within their church, whichever that might be, and bear witness to Christian pacifism. We should not join Quakers as it was ‘too easy’ to be a pacifist there.
I continued as an active Congregationalist till I returned to Oxford having been deported from my job teaching at a brilliant Congregational Mission School in what white settlers then called Rhodesia. That regime could not tolerate a politically aware history and current affairs teacher in an all-black school. I had for some years been deeply involved with the Anti-Apartheid Movement and anti-racist activities. Many of my close friends (including former students at the school) were striving to bring about democracy in Southern African countries.
In Oxford I started to attend St Columba’s Church, as there was no city centre Congregational Church. The ministry was limited to biblical stories, so far as I remember, and my beloved Aunt Phyllys remarked on how conventional it was. My father had remarried and become a Quaker. This shocked me because of what the FOR had taught me.
But I found settling into Oxford the second time very difficult and was spiritually very lonely. Finally in 1966 I thought “Well, my father seems to be happy with the Quakers so let me go to 43 St Giles.” I did so and during the second meeting I attended, someone ministered and prayed for Botswana, which was shortly going to become (very successfully) independent. I had found a place of worship where people were saying things that were of burning concern to me!
I immediately began to meet Quakers who shared my views, were pacifists and social activists. In addition to Southern African issues, I became involved with peace demonstrations. I found that Quakers could at that time be called ‘Oxfam at prayer’, and as I worked for Oxfam for 35 years my work and my religious life became happily entwined. When I married a man born into a Hindu family, my commitment to Quakers strengthened as he also loved the meeting.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 519 • July 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW
Copyright 2022, Oxford Quakers