Reviews Articles
Remembrance today
Autumn rushes ever onwards. The weather has changed. The leaves that gave such a brilliant display of colour only a few days ago are now cascading down like the poppies at the Festival of Remembrance in the Albert Hall. Remembrance Sunday has gone with its solemnity, ceremony and massed crowds...
The burning question
…avoiding unacceptable risks of catastrophic climate change means burning less than half of the oil, coal and gas in currently commercial reserves – and a much smaller fraction of all the fossil fuels under the ground. This warning is from the first paragraph of The Burning Question: We can’t...
From Beatrice to Beatrix
I recently came into Quaker membership and my Area Meeting clerk asked if I would like Quaker faith & practice as a gift. It was lovely to know that my becoming a Quaker would be marked in this way, but I already had a copy and, so, proposed an alternative:...
The history of silence
Sometimes, as Quakers, we may be inclined to think that we have a corner in silence, that this marks our special place within the broad range of Christian practice. But that is hardly so and this remarkable book puts us in our place. It is the latest work by Diarmaid...
Sam Peel
It is exciting to come across a new book that tells a remarkable story of a Quaker life. Sam Peel: A man who did different is a biography written by his granddaughter, Susan Wild, and was recently published by the Wells Local History Group. Sam was born in Stapleford, Hertfordshire,...
Journey into life
Of all Christian traditions, Quakers are most committed to a mystical understanding of religion. They share this understanding with the Carthusians and Cistercians, and with the mystics of the Church. This explains why George Fox felt such affinity with the sixteenth-century Lutheran mystic Jakob Boehme. It is also why our...
Lover of souls
The love I bear to the souls of all men makes me willing to undergo whatever can be inflicted on me – Elizabeth Hooton Elizabeth Hooton’s words came to life for me on 21 June in Rugby Meeting House. Lynn Morris’s one woman show, Lover of Souls, opened with...
Endings and beginnings
While visiting Cape Town recently, I was shaken by an inequality that made it hard to relax. Townships with savage poverty exist as ghettos a few miles away from the most expensive real estate in Africa. In the modest flat where we stayed there were three lines of security. A...
The Last Runaway
This quietly remarkable novel teaches us a good deal about mid-nineteenth century American Quakers. In doing so, it has confirmed and enlightened for me what it means to be a Quaker in early twenty-first century Britain.
Lincoln and leadership
Abraham Lincoln had many qualities a Quaker would want in a leader: clear vision of what he sought to achieve based on ethical principles, combined with a sensitive and compassionate approach to the people he met. These qualities came out strongly in the recently released Steven Spielberg film, Lincoln, which...