Issue 29-04-2022
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In good time: Peter D Leeming’s Thought for the Week
I sit in Meeting and look across at the friendly face of our old clock, gazing down on us as it has done for many years. As I settle into worship, I try to catch the sound of its ticking, something which I always find helpful in quietening my mind....
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Grace period: Tony D’Souza sings from a well-known hymn sheet
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see. Grace came to me (as it must come to any of us) as a complete surprise. It came as something totally unexpected – out of...
Easter protests outside Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s
A group of Christians held a protest outside Westminster Abbey in London during its Good Friday service, calling on the Church of England to take its investments out of fossil fuels. As worshippers left Westminster Abbey, the protestors from Christian Climate Action handed out leaflets outlining why the Church of...
Brought to book: John Wattis on early Friends and the Bible
Sometimes we forget that early Quakers were among the first people in Britain to have reasonably-easy access to the Bible in the vernacular. It informed a great deal of early Quaker thinking, and it was foundational to George Fox’s understanding, along with a personal encounter with Christ as ‘one...
Out of order? Elizabeth Coleman on personal responsibility
Some decades ago, a Quaker called Rachel Pinney taught me the slogan ‘Obedience is a sin’. She said that, in her experience, much more evil happened because people were obedient to authority than because they rebelled. She told of surgeons who drank heavily and were a danger to their patients,...
Different class: Sarah Barrett on Brummana High School, Lebanon
I’ve just returned from eight days listening to staff, students and parents at Brummana High School in Lebanon, which is owned by Quaker International Educational Trust (QuIET). Lebanon’s deep financial crisis is causing huge problems, but there’s also much to celebrate. I hope the following excerpts from...
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Quaker climate expert in call for British Museum to ditch BP
A leading Quaker climate expert has put his name to a submission placing renewed pressure on the British Museum to cut ties with BP.
Friends welcome hunger striker’s success
Quakers have said they are delighted that the hunger striker Angus Rose has achieved his aim for MPs to be briefed on the climate crisis. The fifty-two-year-old heard on his thirty-seventh day of fasting that the scientific advisor Patrick Vallance would give a public address to MPs and ministers. The...
Quaker women speak out for International Women’s Day
The Quaker astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell has said that she would love to see young girls being given more opportunities to play with STEM-inspiring (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) toys and encouraged to take leadership roles.
Sacked AFSC worker says goodbye
A former director at American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), who was fired after criticising the organisation’s restructuring programme, has urged her colleagues to continue ‘fostering the distinct message and principle of Friends’.
Set, apart: Rob Paton on our own ‘unco guid’
Rabbie Burns, Scotland’s national poet, had an uneasy relationship with the kirk – to put it mildly. Presbyterians, like Quakers, were ‘dissenters’. They became fierce defenders of their self-governing communities of the faithful, where each individual could have direct access to Divine inspiration by reading the Bible. This was the...
Dowlais Educational Settlement and the Quaker John Dennithorne, by Christine Trevett
Merthyr Tydfil has a long, colourful history. The valley is made up of many distinctive communities, including Treharris (with its Fox, Fell and Penn Streets), through Quakers Yard (with Friends’ burial ground), and on to Aberfan and Dowlais. The area was once famous for iron works and coal mines, but...
The Struggle for India’s Soul: Nationalism and the fate of democracy, by Shashi Tharoor
This book was precipitated by Narendra Modi’s second term as prime minister of India. The country is becoming more autocratic, like Hungary and Turkey. The title suggests that something mystical, or at least spiritual, is in danger of being lost, but that is not what Shashi Tharoor is arguing...
Strange meeting (after Wilfred Owen)
And suddenly we came upon fellow men, sipping tea in a basket of darkness underneath a hollowed gentle moon. Their voices overcame the stillness of the silvered glade, the whereabouts of mystery
Letters - 29 April 2022
Pacifism I appreciated the thoughtful letter from Jan Arriens (15 April). But I think his view of Quakers as ‘standard bearers of the peace movement’ in the century following the Napoleonic wars, should be qualified; the era of ‘Pax Britannica’ was largely based on the military (and particularly naval) superiority established...