Issue 15-04-2022
Featured story
Human interest: Neil Morgan’s Thought for the Week
In the twenty-first century, many do not take the existence of God as certain. We are, some say, too sophisticated for that. But we have reached a tipping point where it is not God as answer that is at stake, but God as question. The question of God remains an...
Top stories
All work and no pay? Anne M Jones reflects on her volunteering journey
It was collecting empty jam jars from neighbours that introduced me to the fun and adrenalin of volunteering. I was nine years old, helping with a summer fayre run by Brownies ‘in aid of poor children in Africa’. Fast forward many decades, and, like so many retired people, volunteering has...
Quakers advise on citizen diplomacy with Russian people
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has launched a new initiative to help Friends engage with the situation in Ukraine.
Compassion and suffering: Clive Ashwin has some lessons from the arts
Landscape with Man Killed by a Snake, by the French seventeenth-century painter Nicolas Poussin (on display at the National Gallery, and pictured) tells a curious and macabre story. In the foreground a man lies dead at the edge of a lake, in the coils of a huge serpent. A second...
Hefted
to the scittery paths down, up, slant-ways, in a heart race that longs for height, for much more than just ground underfoot
A good idea? Abigail Maxwell on a confused concept
‘Good’ is a confused concept. Sometimes, it is harmful. ‘You do not have to be good,’ wrote the poet Mary Oliver. But children want to be good, to please their parents. It gives a sense of safety. Too many people retain this into adulthood. If I think I can discern...
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Edinburgh Meeting seeks charities for festival
Edinburgh Friends are looking for charities to host theatre performances at their venue this summer during the Edinburgh Festival. The shift away from profit-making theatre groups is due to new demands by Edinburgh Council that venues who want to host any commercial profit-making events need an all-year licence.
Former recording clerk talks on hosting refugees
Gillian Ashmore, a former recording clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), spoke on radio last month about her experience of hosting refugees.
Quaker Mount School hosts army recruiter
The Mount School in York, which is a Quaker Recognised Body, has hosted a military recruiter as part of its Careers Week.
Friends urged to ‘keep up pressure’ on policing bill
Friends are being urged to continue lobbying against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which has been going back and forth between the House of Commons and House of Lords in a process known as ‘ping pong’.
New BYM department
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has set up a new department called Quaker Church Affairs.
The Jesus Myth: A psychologist’s viewpoint, by Chris Scott
This short book is an accessible, non-scholarly exploration of who Jesus was, and what his life and death can mean for us. It challenges what it regards as the Anglican Church’s interpretations or misinterpretations, offering a fresh look at Jesus and the myths that surround him. It looks at ...
Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is taking over the world, by Elle Hardy
Pentecostals now comprise one quarter of the world’s Christians, up from just six per cent in 1980. By 2050, one billion people will be part of the movement. The cliché about Pentecostalism is that it is about health, wealth, and the second coming of Christ. It holds that after forgiveness we...
Letters - 15 April 2022
Quakers and Judaism Thank you for Elizabeth Coleman’s article on the now-lost traditions of Jewish Christianity (‘Finding a way’, 1 April). It often seems to me that theologically liberal Quakers, such as I am, have more in common with Reform Judaism than we do with any contemporary Christian church. I...