WESTERLY — In what looks like a modest home among the stately houses on Elm Street, members of the Westerly Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, sit quietly for an hour each Sunday, as they have on First Days for 350 years, practicing their discipline for inner inspiration.

Outside, a six-foot banner stretched between two fence posts declares, in white lower-case letters on a black background: “torture is wrong.”

The Westerly Friends reached a consensus at their June 8 business meeting to join the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, endorse its “statement of conscience” and display a banner during June, observed as Torture Awareness Month.

The Westerly Friends put their banner up June 23 and will take it down this month, said member Jane Johnson, a Stonington, Conn., resident who retired May 1 as the Westerly Public Library’s community services manager.

Donations will pay for the $100 banner, Johnson said.

The Providence Friends Meeting, at 99 Morris Ave., also joined the campaign, choosing the other banner option: “Torture is a Moral Issue.” The NRCAT Web site, www.nrcat.org, also lists Westminster Unitarian Church in East Greenwich as one of the three religious organizations in Rhode Island that have joined the campaign.

“If there was any reservation at all,” Johnson said about the Westerly Friends discussion, “it was whether to be that visible about it.

“The consensus was that this issue is important enough and that the fact that it was even an issue made it important to stand up,” she said. “Why would we be even discussing this in our country?”

They decided on the “torture is wrong” version of the banner.

“If I could add anything to the banner, I would add a ‘duh,’ or ‘no duh,’ ” Johnson said.

The NRCAT Web site says more than 26,000 people have “signed” the following statement of conscience:

“Torture is a Moral Issue: Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest ideals, hold dear.

“It degrades everyone involved — policy-makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation’s most cherished ideals. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable. Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now — without exceptions.”

Clicking on www.tortureisa-moralissue.org takes visitors to the NRCAT site, where they can fill out a form to endorse the statement.

Johnson’s husband, Kit Johnson, expressed his viewpoint:

“My opinion just as a solitary individual is: People know torture is wrong. What they say is ‘Well, it was a dire situation and we had to do something.’ I think the message, what people should get, is torture doesn’t work. Professional interrogators will tell you that. People will say anything to stop the pain. The amount and quality of the information that comes from torturing people is minuscule.”

According to the Web site at www.quaker.org, Rhode Island has six Quaker gathering places. Besides the ones in Westerly and Providence, they are in Woonsocket, Jamestown (May to September), Block Island and Lincoln.

Johnson said the New England region’s annual meeting in early August will, for the first time since the war in Iraq, have the theme of war and peace.

dnaylor@projo.com