Issue 18-10-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Ethical investment
A quiet revolution has been progressing amid the worst financial crisis for decades. It is one that Quakers helped to pioneer and that they are continuing to develop. It is a bright, encouraging light amid a period of darkness and one that should be celebrated and supported. Ethical investment is...
Top stories
Disagreeing about God
We Quakers are committed to the notion is that there is ‘that of God in everyone’, that every human being is to be respected and valued as we are – unique and precious – with the potential to shine as lights in a sometimes very dark world. How each of us interprets...
British Quakers: Mission and message - Boundaries
The earliest Friends saw no need for a formal membership system. They wasted no time on establishing processes for receiving, assessing and recording membership applications. However, this does not mean that the maintenance of a clear Quaker identity was unimportant to them. Indeed, in terms of belonging, they drew the...
Faith groups take Lobbying Bill fight to the Lords
Quakers are working with other faith groups to oppose the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill (known as the ‘Lobbying Bill’) as it moves to the House of Lords. Critics fear the Bill will prevent charities from campaigning on issues of public concern, particularly in the...
Witness or whitewash?
Friends House is to host an open panel debate on 17 October about ‘Church Investment: witness or whitewash?’ during National Ethical Investment Week, which runs from 13 to 19 October. The debate will explore whether the churches invest in a way that fully reflects their Christian message. It will discuss examples of...
Call for decisive action on corruption
Organisations and partners representing millions of people across the globe have issued an open letter challenging the world’s governments, financial institutions and church leaders to act decisively on corruption. EXPOSED, the global call to action against corruption in all its forms, has issued the letter in the run...
All articles
Banbury hosts sustainability forum
Banbury Meeting’s second annual sustainability forum has been hailed as a great success. The clerk to Banbury Meeting, Judith Mason, said the forum was attended by over a hundred people, including Tony Baldry, MP for Banbury. She continued: ‘It went extremely well. It was good to have a...
New Peace Trail
The statue of Quaker Joseph Sturge (1793-1859) in Birmingham is included in the newly launched City Centre Peace Trail. The trail is one of a number of Peace Trails being established in British cities. The public monument of Joseph Sturge, which was unveiled just three years after his death in 1862,...
Outreach in Wimborne
The new Quaker Meeting in Wimborne, Dorset, celebrated another ‘first’ during Quaker Week when it mounted an exhibition displaying the Quaker Homeless Action mobile library.
The workshop
The assignment that strikes fear in most reporters’ hearts is: the workshop. These mini-conferences are greatly favoured today for stimulating debate and furthering ideas in a more informal setting than a major gathering, where those attending aren’t participants but audience.
Spare Room
Faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest way to enhance and develop these qualities in each of our spiritual lives is through hospitality. (the Friend, 20 September) In 1996 Wanstead Preparative Meeting, after a long process of discernment, felt the way for Friends to respond to the needs...
Silence unites
Having agreed to speak on ‘My Spiritual Life’ I might have been expected to accept an invitation to do so on ‘Christianity in the marketplace’ – but I declined. Had it been ‘Spirituality in the marketplace’ I would have accepted. One word made all the difference. I have tended to...
On first seeing www.quaker-animals.org.uk
While earth, great dumb stepchild of the sun lumbers slowly round First Day again, a dusty caravan clops and pads up the steps to the Meeting house.
Eye - 18 October 2013
Tasty trays of treats Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre celebrated its 110 year anniversary recently… with a tray of Tottenham cake! Woodbrooke was founded in 1903. John Wilhelm Rowntree had previously led a campaign within Quakers for a permanent site for religious and social study. Within a few years George Cadbury, local chocolate...
Letters - 18 October 2013
Disinvestment The decision by Quakers in Britain to disinvest in fossil fuels is welcome, but, as the press statement mentions, at the moment we all rely on fossil fuels. The use of fossil fuels is a result of consumer actions as well as producer pressure. Many Friends recognise we need...