Issue 01-08-2014
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Being Friends
‘We did conclude among ourselves to settle a meeting, to see one another’s faces, and open our hearts one to another in the Truth of God once a year, as formerly it used to be.’ Yearly Meeting in London, 1668 Quaker faith & practice 6.02
Top stories
Open for transformation: being a Quaker
Ben, could you tell me about your background? My mother and father were very strict atheists. They also believed in private education. When we moved north, when I was eleven, they had to choose between a Catholic school and the Quaker one at Wigton, and they chose the Quaker one...
Called to be poets
I first came to Friends as a teenager after a period of intellectual seeking. I had read Towards a Quaker View of Sex and peace posters outside Mount Street Meeting house in Manchester. I was convinced (persuaded) by what I read there. But I left after a year, convinced (persuaded)...
The futility of war
On Friday 1 August Sally Beamish’s Violin Concerto, based on the theme of war, is being given a London premiere at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms season. The programme, commemorating 100 years since the outbreak of the first world war, includes William Walton’s Symphony No.1...
1899 Peace Conference
On 6 December last year, Bruce Kent wrote in a letter to the Friend that he had learned of three packed public meetings in Britain, supporting the proposal in 1898 by czar Nicholas II for a Peace Conference to consider the possibility of halting, or at any rate slowing down, the arms...
From the archive
In the months leading up to war Friends were reminded that in Australia and New Zealand there was already conscription and conscientious objectors were suffering imprisonment. This is an extract from the report for Meeting for Sufferings held on 3 July 1914. Coming to his special work in regard to the Defence...
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As we are one in Christ, and can never be at war…
While 4 August will be the centenary of the outbreak of first world war, it is less known that it is also a significant centenary in the history of peace. On 4 August 1914, on the platform of Cologne station, Henry Hodgkin, a British Quaker, and Friedrich Sigmund-Schulze, a German Lutheran pastor, made...
Liverpool Friends open café
Friends in Liverpool have just launched a new project that will help Quaker outreach in the city. The Quaker Meeting house café is a collaboration with local charity Blackburne House. Its menu is vegetarian, with an emphasis on fresh, seasonal food.
Hlekweni closes – Friends of Hlekweni continue
Hlekweni Friends Rural Service Centre (near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) has closed. The centre was founded forty-seven years ago, but is no longer financially sustainable. Thousands of young Zimbabweans owe their livelihoods to the training they had there. The last students graduated in mid June.
White Feather Diaries go live
The white feather diaries website will go live on 4 August at Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG) 2014 in Bath. Quaker writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Durham will read extracts from the diaries at the launch event.
New Meeting at St Neots
St Neots, the largest town in Cambridgeshire, now has its own Quaker Meeting. Local Friends had been travelling to Huntingdon to worship until eighteen months ago, when a monthly Saturday Meeting for Worship was launched in the United Reformed Church. Friends at St Neots later decided that a Sunday Meeting...
Civil partners denied marriage ceremonies
Many Quaker couples in Britain have reacted with disappointment to the news that the conversion of civil partnerships into marriage will not involve a marriage ceremony. The publication of a draft government regulation has revealed that couples wishing to convert their civil partnerships to marriage will be required to attend...
Quaker backing helps Canada’s Tsilhqot’in people
Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC) last month congratulated the Tsilhqot’in people on an historic victory for the rights of indigenous peoples. Following a campaign supported by CFSC and Amnesty International Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada recognised the right of the Tsilhqot’in people to own, control and enjoy...
Honey, I shrunk the state
I can think of no more fundamental question for social justice than this: how big should our state be? Those who argue for a small state place themselves within the right or libertarian tradition, while those who want more state intervention place themselves within the left or social democrat tradition....
Blind to disability?
I was looking at a Friend’s concern about being put in a tent or caravan at the coming Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG), when she had booked and hoped to be provided with a private room, as she considered she had paid for that. Numerous Quakers, including myself, do not...
A vision in pink
On 9 August Yearly Meeting Gathering will be drawing to a close but a vision in pink will be blossoming. The day marks the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. The Wool Against Weapons campaign, in a direct action protest against nuclear weapons, will be unfurling a seven-mile-long pink...