Letters - 29 November 2024

‘Wish you were here’

I was disturbed by your advert of 8 November entitled ‘Wish you were here’.

It is difficult to square such encouragement of holiday home ownership with Quaker principles of simplicity and equality.

The effects of second homes include: unaffordability of property for local people to buy or rent; fragmentation of families; fragmentation of communities; breakdown of public services (for example, shops, transport, surgeries, and schools), which cannot continue while so many properties remain empty out of season.

We can all enjoy particularly beautiful areas while staying in the B&Bs mentioned in the advert, or in hotels.

Carol Williams

Elders and overseers

A few years ago I left the Society of Friends. A major reason for my doing so was my misgivings over the title and mode of appointment of elders and overseers.  

The terms elder and overseer seem antiquated and hierarchical. They might suitably be replaced by ‘pastoral Friend’ and ‘facilitating Friend’.

Members of the Society may then put their names forward to take up one or other of these roles, with a brief account of their availability and aptitudes.

Those attending a Business Meeting of the Local Meeting might then be asked whether they wish to approve the appointment, and pass the name to the Area Meeting for endorsement. 

If more than half of those attending the Business Meeting of the Local Meeting do so, the name could then be passed to a Business Meeting of the Area Meeting for endorsement by the same process. 

The number of pastoral Friends and facilitating Friends need not be limited.

The names and photographs of pastoral Friends and facilitating Friends might then be displayed at the Local Meeting, and members and attenders may then choose their preferred pastoral Friends.

This change of process may make the Society of Friends more participative, and more attractive to potential new members and it may help to retain existing members.

 Members of the Society and those who have left the Society may suitably be canvassed on this issue. 

Name and address supplied

Just stop oil

Oil. Black gold. A portable high-energy source that has raised living standards, making travel, food and possessions available to much of the world’s population, increased wealth disparities and brought the world to the brink of ecological and environmental catastrophe. 

Stop. Cycle, walk, car-share and use public transport. Eschew single-use plastics. Find alternatives to lightweight cheap plastics when buying cars, furniture, clothes and children’s toys. Avoid travel by air or car and refuse to use food, tools, electricity and batteries manufactured using oil. 

Just. Herein lies the rub. Nothing is simple. Do we feel justified in stopping other people from driving to funerals, hospitals, work and leisure, until we have completely stopped using oil ourselves? 

If everyone stopped using oil immediately, urban life would disintegrate. There would be mass unrest, rioting, waste and hunger.  

The climate crisis is unlikely to result in the end of the world; viruses, bacteria, insects, trees, sharks and crocodiles will probably still be here long after the human species is extinct. 

In the medium term, there may be a huge reduction in the human population, dwarfing past genocides and epidemics, with famine, drought, plagues, mass migration and war. 

We need radicals and prophets, particularly at times of impending crisis. 

Some of us feel able only to do our imperfect, pragmatic best. 

We need to work together, using heart and mind, personal discipline, influence and protest to make the necessary fundamental changes quickly. 

Just Stop Oil’s laudable target of stopping extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030 is challenging, internationally and personally.

Robert Jeffery

George Fox in Lichfield

Although George Fox rationalised that it was the blood of a thousand martyrs in Roman times which he saw flowing in the Lichfield streets, he did not need to go so far back to justify his vision. 

Catholics and Protestants had been burnt in the market place over the century before his eruption in the city following his release from prison in Derby. 

While there he had been testing his emerging testimony to the point of near martyrdom, and I surmise that it was this which drew him to Lichfield in the winter of 1651. 

As it was the ecclesiastical centre of the English midlands, he would not have expected the sympathetic reception which he received there. 

This was the theme of the re-enactment of the ‘bloody city’ event (27 October), in the very place where concerned people had responded to his outburst with ‘Alack, George, where are thy shoes?’ 

After this he was able to make his way northwards with a sense of inward peace. This Lichfield event is given little attention in most accounts of George Fox’s ministry: preceded by his experience in Derby, it is seminal to his understanding of his mission.

Anthony Wilson 

Hell

I am writing in response to Barbara Marks article ‘Hate’ in the Friend (18 October).

This inversion has been recognised by writers on the subject since the 1960s but this is the first time that an organisation has started to take it seriously. 

Results show that one per cent suffer from it due to poor behaviour in life. 

I suggest that if a bomb were to kill all of Putin’s war cabinet in one go, this percentage would be a lot higher.

However, while this research might come across as ‘good news’, I suggest there should be a warning about elements which use it to support unhealthy beliefs and violence, including religions.

How to move forward with this information in the field of peace-keeping might be an issue for Friends to discuss. 

It is not proof of eternal hell, although many people and religions will suggest it is, but it is a warning to those who are responsible for cruelty towards others. Maybe the best these unreformed characters can hope for is a horrible death.

Neil Crabtree

‘Transformation’

I was both intrigued and a bit worried and disturbed by the chosen image for the front cover of the Friend this week (1 November).  

It is a week before a very important USA election. The cover seems to show George Fox in what looks to me like a Trump MAGA [Make America Great Again] cap! (Albeit without the MAGA.) This is to illustrate the Future of British Quakerism conference. 

So, what sort of ‘transformation’, I wondered, does the Friend lead us to expect in our Religious Society of Friends, as people prepare to vote in the USA? 

Neil Morgan 

Quaker whalers

Many thanks, Paul Hodgkin, for his moving article about the Quaker whalers of Nantucket (8 November).  

As someone with ancestors in Hull, I knew something about the whaling industry, but Paul’s two pages stretched my knowledge in every possible direction. 

‘The whalemen were simply acting the Lord’s will’, he writes, and I shudder. 

Alison Leonard

The Future of British Friends 

I spent a weekend at a conference with Friends exploring what the Future of British Friends might look like.

I came away feeling uplifted at the prospect of doing and being Quaker in new and different ways with a dual focus on inreach and outreach and communicating our message to a new audience, relating our message and core values to the over-sixties and under-sixties, and to young people and diverse communities too.

‘Be patterns be examples…’

Gerard Bane