The Rights of Conscience Committee played an integral role in carrying out the mission of the American Friends Service Committee, as well as Quaker testimonies, for the duration of its existence, 1955-1973. Recognizing that the Constitution has no impact unless the people demand that its words are upheld, the Rights of Conscience Committee sought to support individuals and groups who, as a matter of conscience, took action to protest injustice and to secure their constitutionally guaranteed rights. Through a variety of funding sources, the Rights of Conscience Committee made both sufferings grants (a Quaker tradition from the religion's inception in the 1640s) and legal grants to individuals and groups who took a stand of conscience in four main areas - race, personal beliefs and associations, conscientious objection to war, and loyalty oaths. This committee is an illustration of religiously-based civic activism, which was a vital expression of the quest for social change and democratic activism, which was characteristic of many reform movements in the mid-twentieth century.
