Issue 30-07-2021
Featured story
Thought for the Week: David Lockyer on a big ask
I was asked the other day what Quakers believed – or, more precisely, what I believed. I realised that I was completely unable to answer this apparently simple question. I was left floundering.
Top stories
Reporting for duty: Rebecca Hardy talks to the Swarthmore Lecturer, Thomas Penny
How long have you been a Quaker and how were you introduced to the Society? Most of my life. My Mum’s family were Quakers and, after a spell going to the Church of England Sunday school in the village where we lived, I grew up in Gloucester Meeting. There...
Matthew 5: Elaine Miles on some spoken ministry
We call it ‘The Sermon on the Mount’, but that name is not in the original Greek. All we are told there is that, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the hillside, sat down, and began to speak (literally just ‘opened his mouth’). This does not suggest something...
Salter Lecture 2021: Quaker Values in South Africa’s Struggle, by Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge
The Quaker Socialist Society’s (QSS)Salter lecture, as most Friends will know, is named after social reformers Ada and Alfred. This year’s lecturer, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, former deputy minister of state in South Africa, began by speaking of their ‘amazing lives’. The pair were not thought to have had...
FWCC announces new general secretary
Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) has announced the name of its new general secretary.
We gather
Then, we gathered each week round a broken branch of cherry, or three camellias: one bruised by gusts; one infurled like the fist of an infant, another opening to perfection. Now we gather round the light of this screen: its quilt work of faces stitched by the unseen. We gather...
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Quakers lobby for ‘climate income’
Milton Keynes Quakers are celebrating their council’s decision to call on the government to consider the merits of introducing a ‘climate income’.
Cuba Meeting speaks on embargo and violence
Cuba Yearly Meeting has issued a statement after thousands of Cubans took to the streets, driven by food shortages, high prices and other anti-government grievances.
Half of furloughed spent 2020 out of work
Almost half of the people made workless under the 2020 furlough scheme remained out of work for the rest of the year, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF).
Friends back climate assembly
Quakers helped launch a West Midlands climate assembly this month in preparation for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26). The event on 20 July was organised by councillor Olly Armstrong and Climate Action Network West Midlands (CANWM) to ‘involve as many people and groups as possible’.
Jews Don’t Count, by David Baddiel
Many Quakers feel uncomfortable when approaching the issue of anti-Semitism. This year there have been firm statements from Friends House condemning the activities of the Israeli government, but nothing specifically about the increasingly violent incidents of anti-Semitism in this country. It is almost as if some Quakers feel that Jews...
Letters - 30 July 2021
Truth and integrity This year’s Swarthmore Lecture will ‘address Truth in the era of fake news’. Anyone who has read Peter Oborne’s book The Assault on Truth will be concerned with the state of probity in our public life. He describes the ‘moral emergency in British public life’....