Issue 11-08-2023
Featured story
Real talk: Alastair McIntosh’s Thought for the week
Last month, just as the welcome news came in that the Dundonian Jim Skea has been elected chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was reported that over forty people had died in the wildfires that are ravaging the Mediterranean coasts of Africa and Europe.
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Laws of nature: Jo Flanagan says Quakers should support a change
It is high time that those of us who form faith groups addressed the destruction of nature. To this end a report has been published, offering Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Christian-Pacific and Indigenous Sámi and Vodun perspectives on the urgent need for an ecocide law. ‘Faith Voices for...
Quakers remembered in suffrage anniversary
The influence of five Quaker women on the US movement for women’s suffrage was marked last month, on the 175th anniversary of its inception.
Milk and human kindness: Maggie Brookes-Butt on Quaker relief in the Spanish civil war
A tiny handful of dedicated British Quakers saved the lives of countless children during the Spanish civil war. They stepped in during the autumn of 1936 as refugees began to trek north, escaping the advance of Franco’s fascist army. Madrid was under heavy bombardment, and trainloads of women and children...
What would Jesus do? Simon Webb on George Keith, theology, and the slave trade
n 1889, Charles Hildeburn, a collector of old books, discovered a copy of George Keith’s An exhortation & caution to Friends concerning buying or keeping of negroes. This had been published in 1693, and had been referenced by Benjamin Franklin, among others. But until Hildeburn’s find it had been lost...
Exploring Isaac Penington: Seventeenth-century Quaker mystic, teacher and activist, by Ruth Tod
Isaac Penington was one of Quakerism’s earliest, most articulate spokespeople, working deeply with images of the Inner Light and the seed. The son of a prominent Puritan, Penington spent his early adulthood carousing with the smart metropolitan set. Yet these fast times and high living didn’t lead to...
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Friends mark Menwith Hill ‘Declaration of Independence’
Quakers joined the annual ‘Independence from America Day’ last month at RAF Menwith Hill, where there have been protests for twenty years.
Friends spread welcome at Pride
Nine London Friends joined the city’s Pride march to spread the Quaker message of inclusion, despite the fact that London Quakers as a group did not join. Friend Abigail Maxwell took a Local Meeting minute and described how the group stood along Piccadilly in groups of three, holding foam...
BYM pledges to stand with trans community
Paul Parker, recording clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), has signed a ‘Charity So Straight’ pledge to support the rights of trans, non-binary, and gender diverse communities.
Riots prompt rethink in security
The Quaker-led French group Stop Fuelling War (SFW) has said that last month’s riots in France have made the need to rethink security more pressing than ever.
Back in the USSR: Peter Jarman has a tale of two Russians
I’d like to tell the story of two Russians. One of them relinquished power over another country; the other seeks to gain power by invading Ukraine.
Eye - 11 August 2023
A dubious honour On the seventh day of the seventh month, seven Friends approached the headquarters of the Severn Trent water company. Pete Duckworth, of Coventry Meeting, told Eye that the Friends ‘joined over fifty protesters from a range of groups marching through the city to Severn Trent head office...
Words for the end of the day
Before sleep can sweep your face with its cloak, cradle in your heart the passing day: re-run all you did, with whom you spoke: what memories to take away, what lessons learnt? Those you love, go round them, each in turn, friends too and some you know less well, share,...
Letters - 11 August 2023
Privations and promise I am delighted that Sergei Nikitin’s latest project has been successful (28 July). The dreadful famines that followed world war one in central and eastern Europe could so easily be forgotten, particularly in Russia where they remain a brutal and inconvenient reminder of some of Russia’s...