Lucy Gardner

Overview

Lucy Gardner born Leeds, England April 25, 1863 (d. 1944). Quaker peace leader; founding secretary Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) 1914; Secretary Conference on Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship (COPEC) 1924, influential ecumenical pacifist Christian socialist body; sponsor of American Alice Paul as head of Charity Organization Society London 1907; edited FOR magazine Reconciliation; founder International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) 1919.

Quotations

On suffragists destroying property: “It is very inconvenient to have our letters destroyed and to feel a sense of insecurity with regard to our property; it is distressing to read of women who are rightly and suitably punished for making war upon our material possessions, having so little sense of the justice of their punishment that they prefer to starve rather than submit. . . But what if, in some sense, they are right? What if they see more deeply into the heart of things than those of us who are content to give—not ourselves—but what we can spare easily from our normal life? What if they are the prophets and have a vision of a world redeemed by suffering and selflessness that we have not?” (The Friend, 1913, p. 573, in Pam Lunn, “You Have Lost…” 1997, p. 46)