Issue 18-03-2016
Featured story
Thought for the Week: The Judaean Spring
On Palm Sunday traditional Christians process around their churches, politely flourishing palm crosses. They are celebrating the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, riding a donkey along crowd-lined streets. The whole Easter story is a neatly-packaged summary of a series of fast-moving situations laced with gnomic statements that mostly make sense...
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Friends talking about God
Last year Meeting for Sufferings set up a Book of Discipline Revision Preparation Group (RPG) and asked it to do some preparatory work intended to help Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) discern whether a revision should be made of Quaker faith & practice. The RPG has encouraged British Friends to read...
Actions and solutions
In looking back to Yearly Meeting 2015 and reflecting on where we had arrived after the gathering, it seemed to me that we were essentially standing at the same threshold as before: asking what steps we could take to reduce inequality and injustice, and how we could determine and uproot the...
Working with others
I leave home at seven o’clock. A drive, two trains and a bus later, I arrive just before eleven, with Friends I met on the train. Others have been more adventurous: one, aged seventy-eight, cycling to her local station. Friends in St Andrews welcome us warmly for the gathering,...
Welsh concerns
Looking at the map of Wales, the distance between Colwyn Bay in the north and Bridgend in the south is about 130 miles as the crow flies, but windy Welsh roads, however beautiful, were not built by crows. To have thirty-five Friends from all over the country at our Meeting shows...
Gleanings: Making a connection
I meet a lot of Friends who want to know how they can communicate better about climate change. Some are frustrated or distressed because they think too little is happening to implement our Quaker commitment to sustainability. Perhaps others in their Meeting do not share their concern, their clarity about...
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Becoming ‘a nonviolent extremist’
At a recent Woodbrooke workshop organised by Maud Grainger on Understanding Islam: Challenging Islamophobia, members of Birmingham’s Muslim community told us astonishing stories of experiencing and surviving Islamophobia. They included Moazzam Begg, who survived torture in a US army prison, and the usual maltreatments given to inmates of Guantanamo...
Eva Koch scholars announced
The Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham has announced the 2016 Eva Koch scholars. This year’s recipients of the scholarships are Jane Pearn, Joycelin Dawes, Anne de Gruchy and Rhiannon Grant.
Campaigners launch TTIP prayer pack
Campaigning organisation Global Justice Now has developed a prayer pack for those concerned about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Shed man recognised
The Friend who founded the UK Men’s Sheds Association has been named a ‘point of light’ by prime minister David Cameron. Mike Jenn of Friends House Meeting established the first community Men’s Shed in the UK in 2011 as a place for retired older men to make friends and...
Quaker philanthropist commemorated on stamp
The chocolate manufacturer Joseph Rowntree is among six humanitarians commemorated on special stamps issued on 15 March 2016.
BBC film in Friends House
A team from the BBC visited the library in Friends House on 10 March to film an item for BBC News at Ten and to record a piece for BBC Radio Four news.
Website relaunch
The Quaker Concern Over Population (QCOP) has relaunched its website. QCOP’s new site offers a wide range of resources, including sections on women and population, consumption and Quakers’ views on over-population. It features links to videos, books and articles on the subject.
Leaveners look to past to inform future
The Leaveners, the Quaker arts charity based in Birmingham, is to develop an archive.
New project on Quakers and the first world war
A Quaker academic is to examine the effects of the first world war and its aftermath on the attitudes, activities and theology of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain.
Eye - 18 March 2016
The curious attention of Voltaire The French Enlightenment writer Voltaire is best known for his satirical novella Candide. He also penned, however, a series of Letters on the English. Four of the twenty-four letters, written during Voltaire’s exile in England, were on the subject of Quakers. In his very...
Letters - 18 March 2016
Conscientious objectors I was astonished to hear an item on a BBC religious programme on Radio 4 last Sunday about conscientious objectors in the first world war that failed to mention Friends. Somehow their focus for the piece was mainly around the Methodists, who in the broadcast claimed no special connection...