Issue 04-09-2020
Featured story
‘Like modern existentialists early Quakers emphasised that fullness of truth implies its inwardness’
In my local Meeting there are often discussions about truth, science and religion, revelation, and how we can know things with confidence.
Top stories
‘He became determined to do what he could for what he called “my brethren, the African race’’.’
I first came across Paul Cuffe over twenty years ago in Rufus Jones’ 1911 history The Quakers in the American Colonies. Unfortunately this classic study only makes one passing reference to ‘the famous seacaptain, Paul Cuffee, of Massachusetts’ and identifies him as a slave or freed slave who was one of...
‘A way of understanding spirituality which makes it integral to the experience of being human.’
Consider the following account, from Raynor Johnson’s The Watcher on the Hills (1959): ‘I prayed for help from out of the darkness, and there, behold, as a flash, the scene changed. All became alive, the trees, the houses, the very stones were animated with life, and all became vibrant with...
‘The ability to generate distanced silliness is a key skill in lockdown Britain.’
A singular summer experience this year was Quaker Camping at White Mark Hill, in Watlington, Oxfordshire. Covid rules were observed but didn’t prevent campers enjoying a wonderful holiday experience.
‘I still have the liquidator’s medal, which he pressed on me.’
An unkempt stranger once fell passionately in love (or maybe lust) with me on a public bus in Minsk. It was not a good experience. He was drunk and disinhibited, and I couldn’t understand most of his Belarussian advances. He knew no English. His clothes were shabby, and he...
Friends split on XR
Quaker Extinction Rebellion (XR) campaigners have been split on the issue of whether the recent XR ‘rebellion’ in Bristol, London, Manchester and Cardiff should have gone ahead. There was debate on the XR Quakers Facebook page where one member posted he could not support this week’s action despite being...
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Campaigners welcome pause to airfield plans
Quakers have welcomed the news that plans for the RAF Valley station in Anglesey to use Llanbedr Airfield in Wales to develop their training programme have been ‘formally paused’.
The Penn Club in ‘perilous position’
The Quaker-affiliated Penn Club is in a ‘perilous position’ after bookings have stayed significantly low since the lockdown.
Trump pardon rejected
The Susan B Anthony Museum has rejected Donald Trump’s pardon of the eponymous Quaker suffragist who was arrested in 1872 for voting when it was illegal for women to do so.
Quakerism and GreenSpirit movement
A member of Malton Meeting wrote a magazine article last month about the affinity between Quakerism and the GreenSpirit community.
The Myth of Religious Neutrality by Roy Clouser
I have been a Christian for more than forty years. Until about three years ago I attended an Anglican church but I now believe that I simply did not understand my own faith. I am indebted to Roy Clouser and his book, which explains, in a way that I could...
The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku
Eddie Jaku was born Abraham Jakubowicz, in Germany in 1920. He is a holocaust survivor, recently turned 100, and a large part of his book describes his experiences in Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps. In 1950 he migrated to Sydney, where he has lived ever since with his wife, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Letters - 4 September 2020
Swarthmore Lecture What an exciting read the Swarthmore Lecture, Openings to the infinite ocean, A friendly offering of Hope, is this year! If one cuts through the excessive plethora of quotations (and surely the editors could have helped with this) to Tom Shakespeare’s own words, what a challenge it...