Open for transformation
Ian Kirk-Smith shares some reflections from Friends on the published version of the 2014 Swarthmore Lecture
This year’s Swarthmore Lecture, Open for transformation: Being Quaker, considers the symptoms of illness in a patient and offers some remedies in a clear and confident voice. It is a voice that, for some, contains traces of a dreaded word: preaching. Others discern leadership and a prophetic vision.
The book of the lecture provides an extended version of what was presented by Ben Pink Dandelion, this year’s lecturer, at Yearly Meeting Gathering in Bath.
Tim Rouse, a recent coeditor of The Young Quaker, echoes the views of many: ‘for me, the strength of the lecture was Pink Dandelion’s emphasis on what Quakerism should be rather than what it is’ and Anne Ullathorne, of Central England Area Meeting, welcomes a ‘call to return to the roots of our faith and to be clear about our theology’.
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