Lilian Stevenson


Lilian Sinclair Stevenson was a Christian peace activist, historiographer and one of the founders of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Personal Life

Lilian Stevenson was born in Dublin, Ireland on 16 November 1870 to Reverend William Fleming Stevenson, Presbyterian minister for Christ Church in Rathgar and his wife, Elzabeth Montgomery née Sinclair, a wealthy but religious family. A strong Christian, she became one of the leaders of the Student Christian Movement of Great Britain.

Career

In 1914, she participated in the conference in Cambridge that launched the Christian peace group in the UK. Shortly afterwards, over the Christmas of 1914–1915, this group formed the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
She took part in the Bilthoven Meetings of 1919, 1920 and 1921. From the 1919 meeting that brought together some fifty people, her quote of the event was: "We met as strangers: we parted a Fellowship." As a result of these conferences, MTCI became the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Also involved in this was Pierre Cérésole who participated in these meetings and decided to found the Service Civil International in 1920.
In July 1920, a group of Christian pacifists met in Stevenson's home in Cooldara in Ireland for a conference and prayer meeting for Ireland. The group appealed to the churches to take the initiative to call a conference to deal with Irish independence.
Stevenson briefly assumed the General Secretariat of MTCI in 1922.
She travelled to Germany in 1932 with an international group to talk to the young socialists and those interested in Hitler. Her writings can trace the history of Christian peace movement in the 20th century.
She died in 1960 and remains known as "the Grand Dame of Christian Pacifism".

Works

In addition to her composition of the words of a hymn, Stevenson wrote several works: