Reviews Articles
A Man that Looks on Glass
In this searching and provocative new book (the title is taken from a poem by George Herbert), Derek Guiton diagnoses a crisis among British Quakers; that of ‘growing secularisation, the emergence of incompatible belief systems and a readiness, in very many cases, to embrace ideology as a substitute for faith’.
Twelve Quakers and prayer
Prayer, writes one of the contributors to Quaker Quest’s latest pamphlet, is ‘an intimate experience of the heart’ that can leave you feeling ‘naked and exposed’. This makes the contributions in Twelve Quakers and Prayer even more impressive, for their honesty and clarity on a topic that is, in...
Stories to grow on
Books are low on many children’s Christmas wish lists, but we continue to give them as presents. Nothing else has such power to take children into the lives of other people and enlarge their sympathies. The quality of writing for children has never been higher. Here we offer suggestions...
As we live…
Antony Barlow’s new book is an account of the service and lives of various branches of his family over several hundred years and encompasses many of the better-known Quaker names.
Not in God’s name
While former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks does not give answers as to how the violence and atrocities being perpetrated by Islamic State might actually be stopped, he does suggest how they arise, how wrong are the reasons given by the perpetrators and how, when all their bloodletting is done, they...
Women of courage
On the door of one of the prison cells in the former Inquisitor’s Palace in Birgu, Malta, there is an unexpected notice. The first lines read: Sarah Cheevers, 50 years of age British Quaker from Wiltshire, wife of Henry Katherine Evans, 40 years of age British Quaker from Somerset, wife of...
Voices of Kagisong
There is something totally serene about the colour photo of Kagisong on the cover of Voices of Kagisong: History of a Refugee Programme in Botswana. There are some trees coming into fresh spring leaf; sundry dogs; a few 200-litre oil drums to remind us of the transience of piped water...
While it is yet day
In an afterword to While it is yet Day: The story of Elizabeth Fry Averil Douglas Opperman, an Irish journalist brought up in a Quaker family in Dublin, sets out her hopes for her version of the life of Elizabeth Fry. She wishes to keep the story ‘light’ in order...
Inequality: What can be done?
Professor Anthony Atkinson is the author of a hefty new volume called Inequality: What can be done? The book is well known to many politicians and many more economists throughout Europe and America. I suspect that it is already an irritant to a certain class of politician. It is interesting...
With a tender hand
On the cover, it is subtitled ‘a resource book for eldership and oversight’. In her Epilogue, the author calls it ‘a toolkit for discernment’. I would go further than both. I have read Zélie Gross’s With a tender hand three times now, twice from cover to cover, once...