The Friend is a weekly magazine in which Friends speak to each other and to the wider world, offering their insight, ideas, news, nurture and inspiration.
Nurturing Quaker community, each issue offers a space for Friends to share their concerns, and to support each other in faith and witness.
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For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in… (Matthew 25:35)
Matthew 25 suggests that Christians should see everyone as ‘Christ’ in the flesh. Indeed, scholars argue that in the New Testament, ‘stranger’ and ‘neighbour’ are, in fact, synonymous. Thus the Golden Rule, ‘love your neighbour as yourself,’ refers not just to people you know – your ‘neighbours’– but also to people you do not know.
Building on a heritage of welcoming newcomers to Britain, and a conviction there is that of God in every person, Quakers across Britain are working to welcome people seeking sanctuary. This includes hosting people at home, providing legal support, volunteering in Calais and Dunkirk, local campaigning, providing English lessons, visiting detention centres, providing holidays, and holding anti-racism events. Many Friends serve community projects as individuals or through work. Some Meeting houses are hubs for welcome projects hosted by the Meeting as a whole.
Recently my partner Ruth and I had the opportunity to open our home to a special visitor. Like many others, our home became a place of welcome for a refugee from a war-torn country. In this case the country was Syria and, more pointedly, the city of Aleppo. At one time it was a beautiful city, the most populous in Syria, and one that served as the capital of the Aleppo governorate.
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world
Paul Farmer
At the heart of the Quaker tradition in which I stand lies the conviction that every life is equally precious. As Advices & queries 22 puts it: ‘Remember that each one of us is unique, precious, a child of God.’ Thankfully, we Quakers are not alone in thinking this way and many other traditions, both religious and secular, share a common conviction that every life is precious.
The United Nations International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture is on 26 June. What is known is that there is a significant relationship between being a refugee and the likelihood of having been tortured. A high proportion of refugees and asylum seekers have been tortured and are left coping with lifelong physical and mental scars, no matter where they finally end up living. The US Center for Victims of Torture has estimated that, of the refugees reaching the US, at least forty-four per cent had been tortured. In the UK the Freedom from Torture charity stresses that many Syrian refugees in this country may be survivors of torture.
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