Living the testimonies

Making the world a better place starts in each Quaker’s life, reflects Helen Drewery

by Helen Drury 1st October 2009

A new colleague put his head round my office door late one Friday afternoon. He was not a Quaker and had been hired short-term for particular professional skills, but found himself rather bemused by the Friends House (the base for centrally-managed work of Quakers in Britain) ethos. We somehow manage to have a hierarchy of responsibility alongside basic assumptions that all staff are inherently of equal worth and should be listened to with respect. I admitted it wasn’t always easy, but that’s the way it is – and the way I wanted it to be. He asked whether this Quaker emphasis on equality was a recent development.