Issue 20-10-2023
Featured story
Post modern: Joseph Jones’ Thought for the week
‘Thank God we have Jewish ethics available to us’, says Elizabeth Coleman in her piece about the Bible (page 12). I took a deep breath when I read it.
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On show: Ben Clayden follows his art
I owe a lot to the witness and practice of Russian Orthodoxy, but I left the church soon after the invasion of Ukraine. I was deeply shocked that one Orthodox country, with the support of its church, was bombing and killing civilians in a neighbouring Orthodox country. I wandered in...
The good book? Elizabeth Coleman on Quaker history and the Bible
History is important to Quakers. When we first become interested in Quakerism, we learn about George Fox and his contemporaries, and later of John Woolman, who campaigned against slavery in the eighteenth century. There are many things in Quaker history to make us proud: our peace work, our anti-slavery campaigning,...
BYM ‘shocked and deeply saddened’ by Israel and Palestine
Quakers in Britain are shocked and deeply saddened by the major escalation of violence in Israel and Palestine, Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) said last week.
Integrated company: Alastair McIntosh on gender
What of human sexuality? What of its spirituality? Let me come at it obliquely.
The dance
Not like Matisse’s ‘Dance’, as Touch for now, is merely a hopeful thing, and for them, not a dancing ring of five; nor, it seems, just communal friendship, but something more: a longing to embrace, but never quite achieving that closeness.
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EAPPI volunteers safely home
Two Irish nationals who monitor the human rights situation in Palestine, in a programme managed by Quakers in Britain, have been evacuated.
Quakers flag state of UK prisons
Quakers have spoken out about the conditions of prisoners, highlighted in a major newspaper investigation last month.
Sexual assaults at army training college
Nine rapes were reported to the police at Harrogate’s Army Foundation College last year, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has shown.
Meeting for Sufferings: Ecocide
Some Area Meetings (AMs) have been calling for Quakers in Britain to support the campaign to make Ecocide an international crime. On Saturday evening, Mike Coote, co-clerk of Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee (QPSWCC), gave a verbal report from the engagement group who had been responding to the...
Meeting for Sufferings: Central reviews
Friends also heard from the group appointed to review Yearly Meeting (YM), Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG) and Meeting for Sufferings (MfS). Keith Walton, a member of the review group, spoke to its proposals following the criteria laid out at July’s YM.
Meeting for Sufferings: Memorandum of Understanding
Later, Friends heard about the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the organisations together comprising the Religious Society of Friends in Britain, which amounts to more than seventy charitable bodies.
Meeting for Sufferings: Sustainability
Caroline Howden spoke to the Sustainability Monitoring Group’s report, compiled with Oliver Robertson, head of witness and worship for BYM. ‘As Friends we need to balance how we engage with a changing approach to sustainability and climate change, and our approach to discernment and concerns,’ she said. ‘At times...
The Unexpected Marriage of Mary Bennet by Alison Leonard
It is always fascinating to read fiction by a Quaker author. Even when there isn’t a single Quaker character in the novel, the sensibilities still shine through. Here, Alison Leonard chooses one of the more overlooked members of the Pride and Prejudice Bennet family to build her story around.
Letters - 20 October 2023
Heeding authenticity It is without much surprise that I saw a fake Buddha quote in ‘The Secret’s Out’ by Tony D’Souza (15 September): ‘The Buddha rightly observed, “We are not punished for our anger, we are punished by it”.’ This is one of hundreds of utterances falsely attributed to...
Eye - 20 October 2023
Found in fiction John Lampen, of Stourbridge Meeting, popped into Eye’s mailbag with a fictional Friend penned by Daniel Defoe. He writes: ‘Your mention of a fictional Quaker about a warship in the eighteenth-century (1 September) reminded me of a forgotten but very entertaining book, The Life, Adventures and Piracies...