Launching of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation
During his decade in Britain from 1910 to 1920, Hodgkin became active on the pacifist scene. In the summer of 1914, he had joined a group of about 150 European Christians who were convinced that a major conflagration was coming soon in Europe and who had gathered in Constance, in southern Germany, to envisage possible actions to avert an actual war. This conference was far from successful since it was interrupted by the actual declaration of war! While conference participants were hurriedly returning home by train, Henry Hodgkin and the German Lutheran pastor Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze made a mutual commitment before parting in Cologne that while their countries might be at war with each other, "We are one in Christ and can never be at war." This commitment implied of course to abstain from any direct personal participation in the conflict, in line with the traditional pacifist Quaker position, but also to work relentlessly to reestablish peace between their two nations no matter the policies of their governments.
Hodgkin kept his word immediately and initiated a first meeting at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he lectured in philosophy: an ecumenical group of about 20 people came together to reflect on the implications of war on their personal and community life. They wrote a common declaration stating they could conceive God as a nationalist and couldn't accept the idea of a moratorium on the Sermon on the Mount on hold for the duration of the war. The first chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) was born. Another meeting gathered 128 people at Trinity College, Cambridge, where Henry Hodgkin was elected president of the FOR.
In 1915 Hodgkin travelled to New York City with a group of 66 people and convened a meeting at Union Theological Seminary that included some very influential theologians and ministers the day, including Reinhold Niebuhr (who would become critical of Christian pacifism in the ’30s and consequently break with the FOR). Among those present that day were Edward Evans, Norman Thomas, socialist educator Jessie Wallace Hughan (who would later found the more secular War Resisters League), Episcopalian bishop Paul Jones (who would be forced to resign his Utah see in April 1918 because of his outspoken opposition to World War I), Grace Hutchins et John Haynes Holmes. The American chapter of the now International Fellowship of Reconciliation was then founded.
