Exeter Quakers celebrate diversity
'Our own contribution was Quakerly in its gentleness – paper peace doves, decorated and hung round the necks of visitors, information about the Society and invitations to come and sample our form of worship.'
Exeter Quakers took part in the city’s weekend-long Respect Festival, designed to promote peace and tolerance. Friends hosted a tent and two days of Meeting for Worship. Despite ‘limited interest’, there were ‘moving conversations’, said Bob Lovett from Exeter Meeting, showing ‘there is spiritual hunger out there’.
He said: ‘The constraints of lockdown seemed to have given a new energy and a desire to let the city know the festival was back. The noise, the sense of exhilaration and the tangible atmosphere of love and tolerance was quite overwhelming. The range of ethnic groups was nigh on global and the number of voluntary groups providing a forum and support for other often marginalised sections of society was impressive. Our own contribution was Quakerly in its gentleness – paper peace doves, decorated and hung round the necks of visitors, information about the Society and invitations to come and sample our form of worship. On each of the two days a Meeting for Worship was held outside our tent at two o’clock, just as the festival was getting into full swing.’
The festival is now in its twenty-fifth year, with Quakers regularly taking part.
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