National Secretary Paul Jones wrote in 1921 that the Fellowship of Reconciliation was established as one vehicle to aid in the application of Christian principles to "every problem of life.
"[2] In addition to the impossibility of harmonizing war with "the way of Christ," Jones stated that members of the organization had come to believe in the parallel necessity of a "reorganization of Society as will establish it on a Christian basis, so that no individual may be exploited for the profit or pleasure of another.
"[2] Rather than the FOR itself serving as the primary fulcrum for this activity, "in general the members of the Fellowship endeavor to work out their aims through existing organizations and discussion," Jones noted.
Fellowship's contributors included Mohandas Gandhi, Vera Brittain, Norman Thomas, Oswald Garrison Villard, E. Stanley Jones, Walter P. Reuther and Muriel Lester.
[3] In 1947, FOR and the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, which had been founded by FOR staffers James Farmer and George Houser along with Bernice Fisher, sponsored the Journey of Reconciliation, the first Freedom Ride against southern segregation in the wake of the Supreme Court's 1946 Irene Morgan decision.
Smiley and FOR executive secretary and director of publications Alfred Hassler[4] later spearheaded FOR's production and distribution of the 1957 comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story.
[8] In the 1970s, FOR founded Dai Dong, a transnational project linking war, environmental problems, poverty and other social issues, involving thousands of scientists around the world.
It works to counter military recruitment of young people in the United States – through FOR's "I Will Not Kill" campaign,[9] and in partnership with the Ruckus Society, the War Resisters League, and others in the Not Your Soldier project.
In the Middle East, FOR's Interfaith Peace-Builders program (now independent) builds relationships between Israeli, Palestinian, and North American peace activists.
Founded in 2005, its Iran program has drawn on FOR's legacy of sending delegations to nations that are labeled as enemies by the US government, and is working to prevent war and create peace-centered connections between ordinary citizens of both countries.
After reviewing the workshop's handouts, Sherman wrote, “[The Workshop] material is not just false, but is anti-Semitic and should have raised immediate red flags with LAUSD… I am concerned that LAUSD would promote an education program on the Middle East established by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FORUSA), an organization who openly supports Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), a highly polarizing movement that singles out Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and has led to anti-Semitic hostility.