Reviews Articles
Courting rendition
Respect the laws of the state but let your first loyalty be to God’s purposes. If you feel impelled by strong conviction to break the law, search your conscience deeply. Ask your Meeting for the prayerful support which will give you strength as a right way becomes clear. Advices ...
God in a nutshell
At the heart of God in a nutshell is a deep concern with the discord and divisions that have been produced in the name of religion. The atrocities of today have been happening, in one form and another, for several thousand years. Why? Author Rex Andrews, who is a Quaker,...
Good reads
Marcus Tullius Cicero said: ‘A room without books is like a body without a soul.’ Friends may or may not agree with this opinion. However, they certainly enjoy reading them and 2015 has been a productive year for many Quakers involved, in different ways, in the written and printed word. ...
The Joy of Tax
Richard Murphy’s new book, The Joy of Tax, is subtitled ‘How a fair tax system can create a better society’. The author’s intriguing title conceals a carefully crafted discussion of the central importance of tax within a nation’s economy and social policy. Tax is little discussed or...
World in chains
It has always intrigued me that we Quakers manage so seamlessly to bridge the split between the nurture of our worshipping community and our concern to confront the ills of the wider world (specific ‘concerns’, of course, are tested by the worshipping community in Meetings for Church Affairs).
A little book of Unknowing
‘Cogito, ergo sum.’ I think, therefore I am. René Descartes came to this memorable conclusion after subjecting his ‘world’ to the most rigorous, uncompromising doubt. Even his senses, he believed, could deceive him. What could he be certain of?
A Man that Looks on Glass
In this searching and provocative new book (the title is taken from a poem by George Herbert), Derek Guiton diagnoses a crisis among British Quakers; that of ‘growing secularisation, the emergence of incompatible belief systems and a readiness, in very many cases, to embrace ideology as a substitute for faith’.
Twelve Quakers and prayer
Prayer, writes one of the contributors to Quaker Quest’s latest pamphlet, is ‘an intimate experience of the heart’ that can leave you feeling ‘naked and exposed’. This makes the contributions in Twelve Quakers and Prayer even more impressive, for their honesty and clarity on a topic that is, in...
Stories to grow on
Books are low on many children’s Christmas wish lists, but we continue to give them as presents. Nothing else has such power to take children into the lives of other people and enlarge their sympathies. The quality of writing for children has never been higher. Here we offer suggestions...
As we live…
Antony Barlow’s new book is an account of the service and lives of various branches of his family over several hundred years and encompasses many of the better-known Quaker names.