Reviews Articles
See you soon Caroline!
During the first two years of the second world war America was a neutral country and American Quakers, unlike British ones, were able to conduct relief work in mainland Europe. A glimpse into the records has enabled Bernard Wilson, a Canterbury Friend, to write a young person’s novel about...
Happier people healthier planet
Happier people healthier planet by Teresa Belton is a fascinating book that took me a lot longer to read than I expected. It is, a bit like Quaker faith & practice, a book that few would, I feel, want to read from cover to cover in a sitting. I think...
The Turning Circle
Janni first saw Alice when she was eight, but only briefly: ‘even as she looked, the girl began to look transparent, like a projected picture and then she faded away entirely’. Janni is a child of our time but Alice, who becomes her only real friend, lived in the same...
Open for transformation
This year’s Swarthmore Lecture, Open for transformation: Being Quaker, considers the symptoms of illness in a patient and offers some remedies in a clear and confident voice. It is a voice that, for some, contains traces of a dreaded word: preaching. Others discern leadership and a prophetic vision. The...
The Quaker way
Most of those who become Quakers today will have made a spiritual journey to arrive at this destination. We are now a Society of convinced Friends rather than cradle Quakers. Many daughters and sons of Friends continue their parents’ questing and move beyond the Society, even if holding to Quaker...
Watford’s Quiet Heroes
On 15 June 1916 Howard Marten was led from a prison cell in Boulogne to stand in front of thousands of soldiers on a parade ground. Howard, a thirty-one-year-old Quaker from the Watford area, then heard an officer declare that he had been found guilty of disobeying an order while on active...
Living eldership
Elders are the arteries through which the spiritual life of the Yearly Meeting flows. Long neglected, they have, I believe, become hardened and thus restrict the flow of life. When Alastair Heron was clerk to Yearly Meeting elders he used his position to lead a group to clarify and publish...
For God’s Sake
It is surprising what a male enterprise the current debate between theism and atheism is. The atheists, Jack Smart, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, AC Grayling, attract as opponents male heavyweights like John Haldane, Antony Flew, David Bentley Hart, and Deepak Chopra. As in other male preserves, the debate takes on...
Open for transformation: Being Quaker
Open For Transformation: Being Quaker is, for me, one of the most important and timely Swarthmore Lectures for a long time. I write from the perspective of one of the majority of British Friends who was not at Bath to hear the lecture by Ben Pink Dandelion at first hand....
Quakers remembered
A unique piece of community theatre, Quakers in the first world war: A commemoration, was given two performances on Saturday 13 September at Jordans Meeting House in Buckinghamshire. The performances coincided with the one hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU), whose first training camp was at...