AFSC was founded in 1917 as a combined effort by American members of the Religious Society of Friends to assist civilian victims of World War I.

By the mid-1920s, AFSC focused on improving racial relations, immigration policy, and labor conditions in the U.S., as well as exploring ways to prevent the outbreak of another conflict before and after World War II.

In areas where the pacifist churches were more wildly recognized, such as Pennsylvania, several of draft boards were willing to assign COs to AFSC for alternative service.

[4] In addition to organizing alternative service programs for COs, AFSC collected relief in the form of food, clothing, and other supplies for displaced persons in France.

Young men and women were sent to work in France alongside British Quakers, providing relief and medical care to refugees, repairing and rebuilding homes, assisting farmers in replanting fields damaged by the war, and founding a maternity hospital.

[5] After World War I ended in 1918, AFSC expanded its work to Russia, Serbia, and Poland, assisting orphans and victims of famine and disease.

The organization also supported striking mine workers and helped unemployed individuals develop new skills, such as crafting furniture and other goods.

On December 7, 1948, UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie officially invited AFSC to participate in a one-year emergency relief program for Palestinians displaced by the creation of the state of Israel.

One of the initial tasks was registering the refugees by their village of origin and establishing a rationing system, including a baby milk program.

In April 1950, they transferred their entire program to the newly created the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

[18] In 1966, AFSC developed programs to aid children and provided medical supplies and artificial limbs to civilians in both North and South Vietnam.

When U.S. State Department approval to send medical supplies to North Vietnam was denied, the committee routed goods through Canada.

[19] In 1955, AFSC published Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence, authored by a group including Stephen G. Cary, A. J. Muste, Robert Pickus, and Bayard Rustin.

[20] Focused on the Cold War, the 71-page pamphlet aimed to demonstrate "the effectiveness of love in human relations"[21] and became a significant statement of Christian pacifism, receiving widespread commentary in both secular and religious press.

AFSC describes the programs as united by "the unfaltering belief in the essential worth of every human being, non-violence as the way to resolve conflict, and the power of love to overcome oppression, discrimination, and violence".

[26] AFSC's international programs often work in conjunction with Quaker Peace and Social Witness (formerly the British Friends Service Council) and other partners.

Recently AFSC opened a traveling art exhibit called Windows & Mirrors, examining the impact of the war in Afghanistan on civilians.

[32][33][34] Since the 1970s, criticism has also come from liberals within the Society of Friends, who charge that AFSC has drifted from its Quaker roots and has become indistinguishable from other political pressure groups.

[38] In 2010, Fager described that AFSC was "divorced" from Quakers' life as a faith community due to "an increasingly pronounced drift toward a lefty secularism" since the 1970s.