Issue 14-12-2012
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Standing up
Are you working towards the removal of social injustices? Have you attempted to examine their causes objectively, and are you ready to abandon old prejudices and think again? Do you, as disciples of Christ, take a living interest in the social conditions of the district in which you live? Do...
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Prisoners of conscience
Alain, a Pentecostal Christian from Eritrea, was imprisoned because he was following a ‘banned’ religion. Originally captured by military police while praying, he was placed in an underground cell that was two metres long by two and a half metres high. It was not possible to straighten his legs and...
Climate crisis and spiritual community
Hope is disappearing for a safe resolution of the climate crisis. Climate change is happening, in many respects faster than scientists were expecting – with the disappearance of Arctic sea ice and a rapid increase in extreme weather events. The impacts on human society are greater than had been expected. In...
It’s a gamble
For seven years I have been a critic of the proposal by our local mayor to licence a large casino in Middlesbrough. He thinks it will benefit the local economy. I think it has great dangers for many vulnerable people.
Mindful of the gap
The operation had been a great success and I lay in bed motionless hour after hour, listening to the cacophony of sound all around – the nurses’ quickened footsteps rushing from one scenario to another, peels of laughter from visitors over some feeble joke.
Mount of Olives military base protest
Quaker campaigners have condemned proposals for an Israeli military base on the Mount of Olives. The plan has caused controversy because the Mount has sacred significance for Christians, Jews and Muslims. It is also on Palestinian land that is widely perceived to be occupied by Israel.
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Homelessness rise endangers lives
A leading housing charity has predicted an increase in the number of people dying from the cold while sleeping on the streets. Housing Justice, an ecumenical Christian group, said that government policies are contributing to a rapid increase in homelessnesss. They cited evidence of a forty per cent rise in...
PM’s backing of religious same sex marriage welcomed
Quakers have welcomed the prime minister’s decision to back the right of religious groups to host same sex marriage ceremonies.
Dickens goes to chancellor by bike
A Quaker will cycle to George Osborne’s constituency office this week – to give him a copy of Charles Dickens’ festive classic A Christmas Carol. Alan Pinch from Manchester and Warrington Area Meeting believes that the chancellor is at risk of ‘turning into a modern day Scrooge’.
Census figures
The number of Christians living in England and Wales has fallen by four million in the past decade, the 2011 census reveals.
Sustainability forum at Banbury
Sustainability – and the huge challenges the subject raises – were highlighted recently by Banbury Quakers. More than one hundred and twenty citizens of the town, the surrounding villages and others from much further afield, came together for an event to consider the future of our world, this planet on which we...
Now
The uses that Friends make of Meeting for Worship are varied. Many of us, no doubt, spend the time turning over issues in our lives and in the world around us. But there is a well-established view that we should seek to clear our minds of such things in order...
Letters - 14 December 2012
Experience Twenty-seven years have passed since my first contribution appeared in the Friend and, with my ninetieth birthday imminent, the time has come for me to put down my pen. To ‘sign off’ I have chosen a passage from Thomas Kelly’s Reality of the Spiritual World that is relevant...