Letters - 24 November 2017
From Brexit to Iran
What can we do about Brexit?
With our departure from the EU less than two years away, Janet Kreysa’s question (3 November) should be taken literally and not as merely rhetorical. Simply spending time in lamentation or celebration, depending upon one’s point of view, is time wasted. Here are some practical suggestions for maintaining Quaker testimonies in a post-Brexit future.
Britain has an admirable tradition of welcoming refugees that long predates the inception of the EU. We should build upon this, making ourselves a model of compassion to the world.
Britain has a commendable record of protecting human rights, enshrined in a legal system that has provided an example for other jurisdictions. We can lead the way in promoting and improving upon this.
Our scientific and technical resources equip us to lead in the care and improvement of the global environment.
The relaxation of protectionist tariffs will enable us to trade freely with many more economies outside the EU, some of which desperately need our business.
At the personal level, if you have a European language, improve it and use it. Avoid isolationist ‘all-inclusive’ resort holidays; when abroad, try to interact and integrate with local cultures and language groups. Support your local twinning arrangement. If you live near a university, invite foreign students to your Meetings and homes. Make them feel welcome.
Quakers – at a national, local and personal level – need to rise to the challenge of life after leaving the EU and lead the way. Be positive, loving, compassionate and cheerful. Be patterns, be examples.
Clive Ashwin
Fracking
The Quakers in Britain website states: ‘We call for a ban on shale gas fracking and all forms of intensive fossil fuel extraction in the UK… Instead, we wish to see an energy system based on renewable, efficient energy that is affordable to all.’
I do not oppose fracking in the UK. I believe fracking’s negative environmental effects are not worse than those caused by other technologies that supply us with energy. Think about open-cast coal mines, or the disaster at Aberfan just over fifty years ago.
I heat my house with gas, as do many people in the UK. It is unrealistic to expect a significant switch to another energy source soon. If we do not use gas from the UK we will, instead, use imported gas, probably from a country where environmental controls may be less strict.
The global impact on the environment could be worse because there will be more methane leakage and because of the energy needed to transport the gas to the UK.
I definitely look forward to a future energy system based on renewable, efficient energy that is affordable to all, but this is still some way off. Better insulation, more efficient household and industrial devices, less air travel, cleaner ships, more solar and wind generation – we can work towards all these. Meanwhile, the UK will, however hard we wish for change, continue to use gas.
Peter Bullman
Led by God
I believe in God. In 1965 my parents and my two elder brothers were talking about going to work in Africa, and I asked them whether there wasn’t enough to do here in England.
But in 1966 I was in Lomé, Togo, in West Africa to work for a Quaker programme based there, and that was where I met my wonderful and very dear German wife, Marianne. We were married in Germany in 1968, and in the forty-five years (she unfortunately died in November 2013) that we were together we never had a row. I am convinced that God led me to go to Togo in order to meet and later marry Marianne.
Tim Brown
Martin Luther
I am a Quaker, but before I was a Quaker I was a Lutheran, and I still regard myself as being part of that religious tradition after ten years of active membership and employment in Lutheran congregations and institutions in Germany.
Martin Luther did not, in fact, write the first Bible in German. There were at least eighteen complete translations and over ninety vernacular versions of the gospels before Luther’s version. His great achievement was to produce a text in inspiring language which everybody could understand – alongside his tireless teaching, hymn-writing, preaching, travelling and pushing forward the Reformation.
However, within Germany he had one very important predecessor, who is held in high esteem today by many Lutheran theologians: Thomas Müntzer, an early campaigner against indulgences and probably the first to adopt a complete German liturgy. He was an idealist, and whereas Luther campaigned ruthlessly for the suppression of the peasants’ revolt against their overlords, Müntzer was on their side. His uncompromising approach led to his early death after the battle of Frankenhausen in 1525.
Although it was his theology that led him to stand up to feudal authority, and not any pre-socialist analysis of an unjust society, he was regarded in the former East Germany as a champion of the proletariat.
We should, of course, honour Luther and his achievements. He was a genius, but as an individual he was complex and contradictory, and a pragmatist. The visionary Thomas Müntzer would possibly have been more sympathetic to some of our Quaker ideals and attitudes.
Barbara Forbes
Red and white poppies
In November each year the pages of the Friend reflect people’s inner conflicts over which poppy they should wear. Arguments for the true and meaningful purpose of each are paraded, but set against a backcloth of misunderstanding on all sides.
This conflict is one I have played out myself. I have concluded that it is an unnecessary conflict that only arises because we feel the need to show our support for the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) at the same time as the Royal British Legion is running its fundraising campaign for its work with veterans and their families.
Surely we can support the PPU at another time – such as International Peace Day? Choosing a time to support peace work without appearing to challenge those working to alleviate the damage of war seems to me to make it much easier for the peace message to be heard. For myself, I’ve decided to support both causes in the same way I support others by making regular donations when I feel led and without ‘virtue signalling’ by poppy wearing.
Richard Drake
Edmund Harvey
In 1906 Edmund Harvey, the Quaker social reformer, wrote a sociological essay entitled A London Boy’s Saturday in which he described how children slept three to a bed, left school at fourteen and were lucky if they had a job selling newspapers.
Today, a few generations on, most children, far from selling newspapers to supplement the family income, have access to information technology of a kind inconceivable even in their parents’ lifetime, let alone in 1906. That we may be shocked by the innocent sexism in Edmund Harvey’s title shows how far our moral understanding, as well as our material wellbeing, have progressed.
We can learn much from deep study of the lives and work of our illustrious predecessors, like Edmund Harvey, without having to attend to those non-Quakers who are set up over us to tell us what we should think and do.
Mark Frankel
Labelling
I was interested to read John Myhill’s letter (22 September) where labelling was seen as a form of legalising discrimination. It has often been used in this way.
On the other hand, we label ourselves Quaker to be recognised as different. Gay, lesbian and transgender people have turned round a derogatory term to present solidarity for people to own and celebrate their sexual identity.
In the area of mental health, labels have been changed so that manic depressives are termed bipolar (a much less emotive term). People are now deemed to have ‘learning difficulties’ when more value-laden terms have been used in the past.
I don’t see labelling as wrong. It is, rather, a question of how a label leads to interpretation. It is open to stereotyping. We in Quakers are well cushioned not to fall into this trap as we enjoy a diversity of beliefs, and in getting to know one another ‘in the things that are eternal’ we celebrate and value the individual.
Maureen Anderson
Iran
In Friendship to the people of Iran and in response to the terrible earthquake they have suffered I am sending a Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) cheque for Red Crescent to the Iranian embassy.
I believe that if a lot of generous Britons do the same there is a better chance of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe [the British-Iranian mother imprisoned in Iran] being released than if we rant at the Iranians.
Tony Crofts
