2025 Woolman Peacemaking Forum to Address Global Reconciliation
Reported by Katelyn Lam
Photographed by Luci Lettau
The 2025 Woolman Peacemaking Forum will take place on Feb. 25 in Hoover 105, with sessions from 3:30-5 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. The forum, named after 18th-century Quaker John Woolman, is a platform for discussing peacemaking issues at George Fox University (GFU).
“I think the Woolman Forum can bring us back to a centering place of our faith, healthy conversations, and healthy relations,” said Tamara Wytsma, who has been involved in organizing and promoting the event. She is also the director of outreach, engagement, and innovation for the Division of Engineering, Science, Art, and Business.
“Hopefully, we'll go out from there across different communities because we invited people from Friendsview, churches, and students from other universities and our students,” she said. “So you got a really interesting mix of people, and they’re going to come with a common message and fresh perspectives that they aren't getting from other media sources.”
John Woolman was an American Quaker who spoke out against slavery and urged his fellow Quakers to abandon the practice. He also advocated for the fair treatment of Indigenous peoples. The John Woolman Peacemaking Forum was established in 1986 to promote discussions on peace and justice issues at GFU.
“Its purpose is threefold: to provide a forum for those involved in peacemaking to offer insights and challenges; to inspire and equip us to invest our energies in the diligent pursuit of peace; and to enrich the ongoing work of the Center for Peace and Justice, both through contact with leading peacemakers and through greater public awareness of our programs,” GFU’s Center for Peace and Justice states on the GFU website.
The first panel will feature peacemakers discussing the historical and political complexities behind ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
“Attendees will gain valuable insights into how these principles can foster restoration and healing in seemingly irreconcilable global conflicts and their own personal and community relationships,” GFU’s Woolman Peacemaking Forum website stated.
The panel includes David Katibah, a Christian of Syrian descent; Lamma Mansour, a Christian Palestinian living in the West Bank; Ned Rosch, a Jewish man from a Zionist background who was transformed by his work in Gaza; and Lana Thurston, a Quaker with field experience. They will explore the importance of approaching peace and justice from a biblical perspective.
“He [God] brought reconciliation in justice, turning things back as they ought, that's the work of justice that we're called to back to,” Wytsma said. “It's about grace. It’s about love. It’s about reconciliation. It’s about kind of that upside-down kingdom, serving others and using our privilege to help other people.”
The second panel will feature Dr. Lamma Mansour, who will discuss the principle of bearing witness as a central practice of Christian peacemaking. She will explore how this concept could be an antidote to apathy, despair, and erasure that often characterize responses to prolonged injustice.
According to GFU’s Woolman Peacemaking Forum website, “She will draw from the lived realities of Palestinian Christians and the Biblical call to be peacemakers, in a talk that invites Christ-followers to embrace their responsibility to advocate for justice, dignity, and peace across Israel-Palestine.”