A Silent Witness: GFU’s Peace Poles

Reported By: Sophia Lumsdaine

Photographed By: Allison Martinet

Every day, George Fox University (GFU) students pass by two peace poles on their way to and from classes, meetings, social appointments, and study sessions. One pole is located outside the Murdock Library and the other is in front of Bauman Auditorium. Each pole has four sides with the phrase “May Peace Prevail on Earth” written on each in four different languages. 

These poles, while serving as pieces of campus art, also tie GFU into a broader national and international network centered around this simple prayer for peace. Poles of this type can be found at schools, places of worship, and historical sites all over the United States and all over the world. Each follows the same style and four-sided structure, though the languages the text is written in may vary from site to site.

The peace pole phenomena began when Masahisa Goi, a Japanese survivor of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, created the verbiage of the prayer in 1955. In the following years and decades, the concept of the peace pole, and the movement dedicated to making them, grew. Now, there are over 200,000 peace poles represented on every continent. 

GFU’s own peace poles are a fairly recent addition to campus. In 2017 Newberg’s Noon and Early Bird Rotary Clubs launched an effort to establish 50 peace poles in the Newberg-Dundee area. As reported by The Crescent one year later in 2018, Fred Gregory, then assistant to GFU President Robin Baker, worked most directly with Rotary to put poles on the GFU campus. On Earth Day, in 2017, the poles were set up on university grounds.

According to a booklet published by the Noon and Early Bird Rotary of Newberg, other local peace poles can be found on the Hoover Park Memorial Trail, at Newberg elementary and high schools, and the Chehalem Cultural Center. Several Newberg churches (St. Michael/San Miguel Episcopal, Family Life Church, First Presbyterian Church, and St. Peter Catholic Church) also have peace poles.

While GFU did not originally initiate the effort to put peace poles on campus, their presence is compatible with the Quaker heritage of the university. The Quaker church has historically been known as a peace church, and in the 17th century, George Fox and other Quakers wrote that “the spirit of Christ, which leads us into all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.”

  In many ways GFU is far removed from the war and violence of the modern world, but the presence of peace poles on its campus reminds students and staff of an individually felt and globally shared prayer–that peace would prevail on Earth.