Quakers embrace podcasts

'Quaker writer Jennifer Kavanagh contributed to the ‘Nomad’ podcast series.'

Locked-down Friends have been using the pandemic as an opportunity to embrace podcasts, reflecting an overall boom in the medium over the last twelve months.

As Spotify recorded a doubling in podcast listening-hours in the fourth quarter of 2020, Friends have also been embracing the trend. Quaker writer Jennifer Kavanagh contributed to the ‘Nomad’ podcast series, in which she spoke about practical mysticism and ‘how to subvert hierarchies by being silent’. The series has also featured what she describes as ‘august company’, including Rowan Williams, Matthew Fox and Gynthia Bougeault. In ‘The Quaker Way’ (available at https://tinyurl.com/nomadjk), Jennifer Kavanagh talks of her journey from her Anglican childhood roots to discovering the Religious Society of Friends as an adult. She also discusses ‘how to be part of a Christian religion without being a Christian, how to have a church without a leader, and what not to call the queen’.

‘I didn’t know that they would base it on a book written nearly twenty years ago. But hopefully it’s good publicity for Quakers,’ Jennifer Kavangh told the Friend.

Britain Yearly Meeting and Woodbrooke also partnered in December 2020 to produce the relaunched ‘A Quaker Take’ series, with issues exploring the Bible, climate activism, sex and spirituality, and immigration. Meanwhile, a former member of Winchmore Hill Children’s Meeting, Katy Maydon, has co-produced a podcast on George Fox as part of the ‘Have You Ever Heard of?’ series (available at https://tinyurl.com/hyehofox). A Friend from Winchmore Hill Meeting said that Katy’s mother said that ‘she hadn’t realised, until she heard it, how much Katy’s Quaker exposure had influenced her’.

---

Comments

Please login to add a comment