Issue 9 April 2010
Featured Story
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No-nonsense guide to religion
The No-Nonsense Guide to Religion by Symon Hill. New Internationalist. ISBN: 978 190 65232 99. £7.99. This No-Nonsense Guide series is new to the reviewer and judging by their first list, it is welcome, slipping into a pocket, readable and contemporary. This Guide to Religion also does what is says…
Top Stories
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Stepping over the poverty line
I have recently returned from a two-week trip to Bangladesh on behalf of Quaker Service Sweden, to visit Sabalamby Unnayan Samity (Self-reliance Development Group, abbreviated as SUS), an organisation whose projects we support. It was my second visit in two years. The SUS working area is the rural rice-growing district…
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The Way of the Cross
In his The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer famously wrote: ‘He comes to us as One unknown’. The unknowability of Jesus is one of the great mysteries of Christianity. During the week leading up to Easter, as we follow the details of his life and death, do we…
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The eldered the better
I usually think of ‘being eldered’ as an admonishment. But I heard a Friend minister recently, how, during a coughing fit during Meeting, he went to leave the room in search of respite. But an elder appeared with a glass of water for him. He was, reported the Friend, being… -
The time bomb in our shopping baskets
The tangled web of influences that make it so hard to protect the global environment is nowhere better exemplified than in the controversy over palm oil. Found in about one in ten supermarket products, from soaps and detergents to cosmetics and foods, this oil is now so widely used that…
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Equality bill makes it through
‘You did brilliantly.’ So said Britain Yearly Meeting’s recording clerk Gillian Ashmore as she updated Friends on the same-sex civil partnership and Equality Bill developments at Meeting for Sufferings last month. At the previous Sufferings in January representatives were exhorted to be in contact with any peers that they knew…
All Articles
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No longer frocked
It really hit home to me, when I read Sheila Hancock’s remark (9 October 2009 ), ‘I loathe a man in a frock telling me what to do’. Strangely, because as a minister I didn’t really tell people what to do – except when giving ‘stage directions’ for a wedding… -
Who is a funeral for?
Following on from the Friend’s special edition on ‘Let’s Talk about Dying’ (19 March) and particularly the article on ‘Saying Goodbye with Style’, I am offering this personal experience. Last autumn my son died at the age of thirty-eight. For the previous three and a half years, he and all… -
Letters – 9 April 2010
Diversity Friend Gerard Guiton (26 March) contrasts ‘unity in diversity’ with ‘a coherent theology’. A Friends Meeting in Melbourne that ‘applauds’ diversity is ‘atrophying and seen as irrelevant’, he tells us, while ‘an emergent church group’ with a coherent theology is ‘expanding, exciting and meaningful’. No contest, then! Abandon Quaker… -
Outreach through the tapestry
From the woman who came in following an Ash Wednesday service, where no-one spoke to her, through the man who slept on the Meeting House porch, to the young man who said: ‘Cool’, when I described Quaker faith & practice to him, they all came. Yet again I marvelled at… -
Aliens living in a different galaxy?
When even the director general of the CBI speaks of ‘aliens’ living ‘in a different galaxy’ (The Guardian, 31 March), it is clear that pay packages of executives of Britain’s top companies is high on the political agenda. As noted in the Friend (26 March), the Church Investors Group (CIG)… -
Warm welcome to new US-Russia arms cuts deal
Friends and other campaigners have given a warm welcome to a deal between the US and Russian governments that will see major cuts in nuclear arsenals. But there have been warnings that the UK government is failing to show the same level of commitment. US president Barack Obama and Russian… -
Who’ll be at your Meeting on 9 May?
The independent scrutiny of membership of the Religious Society of Friends is about to enter its final stage with a new questionnaire for Meetings. -
The elder Quaker tree gets watered
The importance of eldership was the theme at the Europe and Middle East Section of Friends World Committee for Consultation annual meeting last weekend. -
Quakers call on justice minister to end immigrant child detention
A Quaker protest at the immigration detention of children was one of the last to be received by the Ministry of Justice before the general election campaigns got underway this week. -
Equality would improve London health
Rates of obesity, mental ill-health and teenage pregnancy would plummet in London if the income gap between rich and poor were reduced, according to a report produced last week. While the researchers take London as their focus, many will conclude that similar consequences can be predicted elsewhere. -
Letter to Jack Straw
Letter to Jack Straw: 1 April 2010 We are writing on behalf of Meeting for Sufferings, our national representative body, to express our dismay at the continued detention of children who are subject to immigration control in Britain. We remain deeply concerned at what amounts to the imprisonment of children…
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