Issue 28-08-2020
Featured story
‘Some differences which seem obvious to me are invisible to my grandchildren.’
I have been thinking about Catherine Henderson’s article on classifying things (31 July), which I loved. Yes, artificial, culturally-created divisions are the source of much world conflict, encouraging us to see difference negatively. No one could deny the need for classifications in science and medicine but it’s nonsensical to...
Top stories
XR Friends get ready for action
Quaker climate campaigners begin a ‘long weekend of civil disobedience’ this week as part of Extinction Rebellion (XR)’s latest witness to the emergency.
‘By temperament, they hated ritual and loved simplicity.’
There is not an obvious kinship between Quakers and the puritan Separatists who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620. As you’ll know, the Quaker movement emerged around thirty years later, and little more than ten years after that Quakers were being executed by puritans.
‘Their stories were never fully shared but one could sense something of what they had once endured.’
At the end of world war two there were huge numbers of displaced people: the Heimatlose Ausländer. Various collection camps were built to house them, some of which attracted Quaker volunteers. One of these, the Valka Lager, near Nuremberg in Bavaria, was particularly large. Over the next ten years...
‘I took my eldering in good part, but it did shake me a bit.’
What is ‘eldering’ in relation to spoken ministry? And how do you discover what it is before it happens to you? In my case, and I suspect the same is true of others, you don’t. So, it was only when an elder approached me after meeting to say in...
‘Many guests are in need of succour and a gentle holding.’
Unlike Woodbrooke or Swarthmoor Hall, Claridge House is not so well known among Friends. The house was bought by the Friends Fellowship of Healing in 1954 to be a place of healing, rest and renewal for those in need of physical, emotional and spiritual recovery – peaceful, accepting and nurturing. I had...
All articles
‘Debt of gratitude’
The director of Quaker Social Action (QSA) has said that the organisation owes ‘a debt of gratitude’ to Quaker Homeless Action (QHA) for their merger later this year.
Ministers challenged on Channel crossings
The representative body for Quakers in Britain joined faith bodies and human rights campaigners in urging the government to end dangerous Channel crossings by introducing safe and legal routes of entry to the UK.
Irish Quakers discuss sustainability
Almost one hundred people signed up for a ‘Re-imagining Society Sustainably’ online conference last month to consider how to rebuild society after the pandemic.
Book on local Quaker history
A Herefordshire Friend has written a book about the history of Quakers in Leominster.
BYM joins call for Gift Aid relief
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has joined a campaign calling for a temporary increase in Gift Aid to help charities struggling with a sizeable drop in fundraising income due to the pandemic.
Telling the Truth About God by Rhiannon Grant
If you think theology is now irrelevant to Quakers, think again. Rhiannon Grant shows us that to ‘theologize’ remains an exciting and, indeed, daring venture, once we acknowledge how it might be misused. Her own efforts to be honest about God fall within a radical tradition. She writes: ‘Any form...
A Black Theology of Liberation by James Cone
Every now and again I encounter a book that gives me such a jolt it demands to be talked about. This book was first published in 1970 but I read it recently and it has stirred me up. James H Cone’s work has been much discussed within the black theological...
Letters - 28 August 2020
Worship and love Having long memories of that so stirring hymn ‘Guide me O thou great Redeemer, pilgrim through this barren land’, and comparing this with the current Covid state of the nation, has roused in me thoughts about Whom we worship and why. It seems to me that,...