Letters - 14 February 2025
From violence against women to alleviation
Violence against women
I think it is most unfortunate that Clive Ashwin’s article on the evolution of sexual mores in British society was published in the Friend on 10 January, immediately before Elizabeth Coleman’s article on Quakers in the displaced persons camps of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The previous week (3 January) there was an article by Damian Entwistle on why patriarchy must be resisted. This was very welcome as Quakers rarely seem to talk about male domination over women and the violence to ensure this continues as with all forms of power and control.
Elizabeth Coleman talks of a fourteen-year-old Quaker girl raped, and of the risks and destitution that Quakers and others in the camps live under. We know that rape is used as a weapon of war and has been since time immemorial (see the Book of Judges), but rape and sexual assault are also used by far too many men to ensure domination. We also know that from time immemorial men have been allowed to have sex with more than one woman (Abraham, Jacob and others).
Rather than believing that the popular enthusiasm for the trials of men accused of many instances of historic sexual assaults is because of unease with sex, it is more likely that the #MeToo movement has enabled many women to overcome their fear and shame and break the silence to speak of what happened to them. As one woman said of being raped by a man accused also by many women in different countries, ‘He enjoyed seeing the fear in our eyes’. Crimes of sexual assault by powerful or ordinary men have not been viewed as crimes for most of recorded history. We know that even now placards can be held up at a televised protest calling for women to be raped, killed, beheaded. The unfortunate politicians who spoke only later expressed anger and upset (since the placards were behind them they had no knowledge of them).
Quakers, with some isolated exception of individuals, Local Meetings and Area Meetings, are silent about violence against women (VAW), despite on the news and in newspapers there are accounts of domestic abuse and sexual assault/rape as well as other forms of VAW. (I don’t participate in any form of social media so may be missing a great deal.) If our sympathy lies with those accused and not with those who suffer (the police have recently reported that more women who have experienced domestic abuse now commit suicide than are murdered by their ex/partner), then when asked ‘What Didst Thou Say’ against the evil of violence against women, we said almost nothing.
Kate Arnot
Methods of management
Beth Allen (31 January) praises managers’ skills to promote efficiency and effectiveness, but she does not mention values. For example, if the managers’ values-led aim for UK PLC is to enrich the rich and to run down and privatise state services, then they are very effective.
The power and status generally accorded to managers can limit their insights and efficiency. I know nurses, teachers and care workers who tell me they understand how to make their work much more effective, but managers do not listen. And are technical management skills so hard to learn? There is evidence that the most efficient companies are cooperatives where the workers, instead of being managed, are committed to decisions that they shared in making – a more Quakerly method?
Priscilla Alderson
Unforgettable event
On 10 January, we joined a gathering organised and led by the Bristol Quaker-initiated Climate Choir to sing for Quaker Gaie Delap in HMS Eastwood Park Prison, near Bristol, on her seventy-eighth birthday. She was having to experience this behind bars after being recalled from her early release due to poor health because Serco, the security giant, was unable to fit her with an electronic tag.
Our meeting point was a nearby pub where, during a short rehearsal of the choir outside, the evening’s plan was outlined for the rest of us. Shortly after, the by-now nearly 300-strong candle- and lantern-lit procession made its way slowly to the prison’s main entrance, led by the singing choir.
When we got to the main gate, we gathered in a semi-circle for a thirty-minute Meeting for Worship, which all were invited to join. Many were moved to give ministry, not all of which everybody could hear, but one, clearly and loudly spoken by a Friend, movingly summarised the occasion: the collective energy, solidarity, pain and love which no prison wall could stop reaching Gaie and the many more climate and political activists behind bars.
We then heard a recording of Gaie reading her case presentation and motivation for doing what she had done and was arrested for, which she was not allowed to do in court.
With laws brought in by the former government and not reversed by this one, climate and peace activist defendants are forbidden to explain and defend the reasons for their actions. Hence the Defend our Jury movement sparked by Trudi Warner, who sat outside a court during a Friend activist’s trial with a sign saying: ‘Juries have the right to give their verdict according to their Conscience’.
After moving renditions of ‘Sing Truth to Power’ and ‘Let us Stand’, two of the songs written for this choir, we sang ‘Happy Birthday to Gaie’ many times. We walked back while singing ‘Gaie’s a jolly good woman!’
Someone spotted silhouettes waving from some lit cell windows, so we started waving back and shouting like crazy. Quickly, the lit windows went dark and all I was left from that remarkable momentary connection was to imagine that in one of those windows had been Gaie.
We resumed making our way back for a short briefing and many ‘thank yous’ from Delap family members before we set off for home. Another unforgettable event with my people.
Maris Vigar
Duck-rabbit image
I was interested in Damian Entwistle’s article (31 January). He mentions Ludwig Wittgenstein. This brings up an interesting question.
Wittgenstein suggested (as I read him) that religion and atheism should not be understood as rival theories. More, they are different ways of feeling and looking at things. His point is that religion enables one to see a different world, to detect possibilities and patterns of meaning that are otherwise closed to us.
One way he illustrated that was with the famous image of the duck-rabbit. One person sees it as a duck, the other as a rabbit. They are looking at the same picture (no dispute about that). Nonetheless, what each sees is different. It is not a composite duck-rabbit. It is either a duck or a rabbit. (See Brian Clack: An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion.)
If theism and atheism are more different ways of feeling than thinking, what should and could theists and non-theists talk about together, and where is the element of risk? Aren’t they bound to disagree in a duck-rabbit way? This is not just an academic point.
Neil Morgan
Inspiring
Thank you, Bob Ward (24 January), for the inspiring review of Marilynne Robinson’s new book, Reading Genesis. I am an enthusiastic reader of her novels, and feel sure that she can make Genesis interesting, even for Quakers.
Our oldest daughter and her family live in Iowa, and I have encouraged them to read this brilliant Iowa writer.
I have visited their Local Quaker Meeting and feel that any British Quaker would feel at home among them. We have so much to learn from our Friends in the USA, and friends, and must not be misled by anti-US sentiments in our media.
John Myhill
Alleviation
Might not ‘Meeting for Sufferings’ be more positively updated to ‘Meeting for Alleviation of Suffering’? (As with ‘Advices’, those terminal esses are superfluous today.)
Rosamond Cynthia Reavell
Comments
What could theists and nontheists talk about together?
Our experience of worship, and our ideas of what is going on in business meeting
Our spiritual journey, and what has affected our belief/nonbelief
Our values
We could find what we agree on, and build trust. Then we could hone into real differences between real people, rather than differences imagined from outside. For me, the experience of being Moved to minister is different from having an interesting point occur to me which I want to share. I believe that comes from something beautiful and valuable within the person speaking, not from a Holy Spirit moving on the face of the waters, but to me the experience is more important than the theoretical underpinning I use to describe or understand it.
We could go on to concepts of God including the Via Negativa, what God is Not. I say, “God the Father Almighty” is the God I do not believe in. I could unpack that.
For many years David Boulton did not join the RSoF because he did not believe in God, until his meeting said to him, “Of course you are one of us”. Personal encounter is essential: here we have two named groups, “theists and non-theists”, a division arising from the language we use to describe a potential dispute. Speculation about what the other may believe, or what effect it could have on meeting, could drive us apart.
What of someone who sees a duck, then turns the paper slightly and sees a rabbit? I used to say, “I am rationally atheist and emotionally theist: I have a strong spiritual relationship with the God I do not believe in.”
By Abigail Maxwell on 13th February 2025 - 10:43
I don’t think the ‘s’ of Advices is superfluous. It indicates that there are several pieces of advice, not one big block.
If Friends want to change the name of Meeting for Sufferings then it should be changed not simply tinkered with.
By Moyra Carlyle on 17th February 2025 - 12:46
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