Reviews Articles
Progressive Friends
Last year I spent three months at Pendle Hill near Philadelphia. One of the things that made that time special was encountering Chuck Fager, who was there undertaking research into a branch of American Quakerism called Progressive Friends. Chuck is known as a prolific, if sometimes controversial, writer on a...
Fraudcast News
Press corruption is, sadly, a subject we’re now familiar with, from the press’s own coverage of the Leveson Inquiry and, more recently, the trial of Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and others who – in what might become the longest criminal trial in English history – are charged with phone hacking...
Dear George…
The testimony written after his death in 1982 starts: ‘George Gorman was one of the few members of London Yearly Meeting who was known in every Monthly Meeting and possibly in every Preparative Meeting; he was also known to a great many Friends in Yearly Meetings of continental Europe and of...
Only a Signal Shown
Garnishing a love story and the lives of the characters within it with some personal experiences, Leela Dutt’s Only a Signal Shown is an enjoyable, emotional journey. This journey starts with a burnt marmalade-basted chicken. Eleanor and Alec share the results of his limited cooking skills and both...
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins is not at all the misanthrope, thinking poisonous thoughts about humanity, which some people suppose. On the contrary; he loved his parents, his boyhood in Africa, Oxford, science, poetry, music and many of his colleagues. He had fond parents. His father, a botanist who had studied at...
Two worlds or one?
A play about the experiences of wounded soldiers, in their own words, is currently touring. The Two Worlds of Charlie F won an Amnesty Freedom of Expression award. A documentary about it was shown on BBC1. The drama is based on interviews with thirty-two wounded veterans, mostly from Afghanistan....
The historical Jesus
I am part of a small Quaker group using the ‘Friendly Bible Study’ method to study Mark’s gospel. Often we come across problems relating to our lack of knowledge of the context in which Bible stories are set; for example, why was Jesus visiting people who herded pigs? I...
Money for everyone
A citizen’s income (CI) is an unconditional, non-withdrawable income paid by the state to every individual as a right of citizenship in addition to other forms of income. Money for Everyone: Why we need a citizen’s income by Malcolm Torry demonstrates how such a policy can solve many...
The Forty Rules of Love
The Forty Rules of Love is a fictionalised account of the encounter in the year 1244 between the Dervish, Shams of Tabriz, and the Turkish theologian Jalaluddin Rumi in Konya. The account is woven around the story of Ella Rubinstein, wife of David, a successful Massachusetts dentist, who comes to realise...
A speaking silence
Delight first, followed by analysis. A speaking silence: Quaker poets of today is a grand subtitle to a collection that is the first of its kind in Britain for more than a century. The anthology, which is edited by RV Bailey and Stevie Krayer, gives Friends a timely opportunity to...