Issue 02-09-2021
Featured story
For God’s sake: Neil Morgan’s thought for the week
In Meeting for Worship recently, I was moved by the image of someone I know who washes his car nearly every day. I was tempted to say he did it ‘religiously’.
Top stories
Prison break: Mike Nellis on Friends and criminal justice
Back in 1996 I undertook a year-long Joseph Rowntree Travelling Fellowship on ‘Revitalising penal reform in the Society of Friends’. I had been drawn to Quakers a decade or so earlier by their peace witness and their long involvement in penal reform. The latter was already an established interest of mine....
The making of a minute: Jane Mace, part of the eldership team, reflects on Yearly Meeting Gathering
This year’s Yearly Meeting (YM)was unlike any before it, yet it was completely grounded in all the old principles. As a Gathering, there was much more going on than in the standard YM programme – and while non-residential in one sense, Friends were very much residential, just in our...
XR Quakers spotlight City of London
Quakers helped highlight the role of the UK’s financial sector in the climate crisis as part of the latest witness by Extinction Rebellion (XR).
Beginning with oneself: Alastair McIntosh shares a lesson from Raimon Panikkar
COP26, will soon take place a mile away from Glasgow Meeting House. What might we and other faith groups have to offer? We are the bearers of centuries-old spiritual insights. If we are awake, might these speak to our times?
Green in judgment? Oliver Penrose on investment over tax
The 30 July issue of the Friend contained a report that Milton Keynes Council, encouraged by local Quakers, had voted in favour of a ‘Carbon Fee and Dividend’ proposal. In this scheme (also known as ‘Climate Income’), a tax is levied on the sale of fossil fuels, and the revenue of...
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Friends mark forty years since Greenham Peace Camp
Quakers were among those marking the fortieth anniversary of the Greenham Women’s Peace Camp this week.
Bristol Quakers work for peaceful schools
Bristol Quakers are starting a new online course for promoting peace in schools following a renewed interest in the programme since the pandemic.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell wins Copley Medal
The Quaker astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell has become the second woman to win the Copley Medal for her work on the discovery of pulsars.
Quakers send ‘messages from the heart’
Friends have been submitting ‘messages from the heart’ to feature on a large Quaker banner going to the UN Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November.
Honest to God: Abigail Maxwell on being an atheist Christian
How can I claim to be Christian if I do not believe in God? As an Anglican I said every week, ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty’. Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians all regularly say the same. I do not believe in an all-powerful creator, eternal and so in...
Hope’s Work, by David Gee
David Gee, a long-time peace activist, wrote this book to ask if there can be a future in an age of crisis. Crisis seems to be a hallmark of our collective existence and recent history. The experience of it directs us to a turning-point. Which way to go? We have...
Come to my house
Some would number us in lost accounting piles: a wind toppled abacus of old Quakers. Our vestments of truth may be frayed to lace, the burlap of equality clotted with centuries of mistakes.
Letters - 2 September 2021
‘The Life between Live’ Tony D’Souza in his article ‘Double Cross’ (20 August) gives us a beautiful example of exemplary Zen logic – if we follow these steps, then that will happen. But is it that simple? I have tried this for a ninety-four-year lifetime but without success, as there always...