Issue 24-02-2012
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Minimum pricing of alcohol
For the first time, minimum pricing per unit of alcohol is being seriously considered in Westminster (Scotland is already in the process of pursuing it). If it were adopted at 50p, over four hundred lives would be saved in the first year. By the tenth year, this would rise to...
Top stories
Marriage equality?
I was really excited when the law changed,’ says Rachel Xerri. ‘I thought it would allow us to register a same-sex partnership in a Quaker Meeting house’. Then things began to go wrong.
Quakers and creation: Quakers and the Green Bible
A number of key characteristics of the Quaker tradition, as highlighted in the previous articles of the series, reveal a spirituality that is creation-affirming and a witness that is proto-ecological. Quakers have tended to view the creation as essentially good and have expected the kingdom of heaven to be established...
Trident beleaguered from all sides
A Quaker is facing imprisonment in Scotland for her protest against what she regards as an unfair trial. Janet Fenton was found guilty of criminal damage on Friday along with fellow peace activist Barbara Dowling. They had sprayed slogans on the walls of a court building in Dumbarton in 2010...
The pilgrimage paradox
‘To kneel where prayer has been valid.’ This line from TS Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’, quoted in the preface of Arthur Kincaid’s new book The Cradle of Quakerism, sums up the paradox that Quakers have to surmount when deciding how to commemorate and celebrate their roots. For prayer can...
Eye -24 February 2012
Let it snow! This ‘Snow-Quaker’ was built by the children from Sawley Meeting a couple of weeks ago. Ben Pink Dandelion tells Eye that after Worship, all of the Meeting, including the octogenarians, went sledging before they realised that they were meant to be having Business Meeting!
All articles
Challenge on ageing
Poetry, research and technology have been brought together by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) as they challenge society to rethink attitudes to growing old. JRF last week launched a series of briefings, a dedicated website and a poem by Andrew Motion, the former poet laureate.
History lessons to be learned
History is repeating itself as the Greek debt crisis mirrors the debt scandals that have affected parts of Africa. That was the message from the Jubilee Debt Campaign as they urged Europe’s leaders to learn the lessons of the past.
Quaker relief worker on new stamp
Joan Mary Fry is one of the ‘Britons of Distinction’ featured in a set of ten stamps released on 23 February. The British Philatelic Bulletin reads: ‘Born into a rich Quaker family in London, Joan Mary Fry grew up to become a Quaker relief worker and social reformer who exercised a...
Northumbria rejig
Friends in the northern county have decided to trial a new format to make their Area Meetings (AMs) more attractive to those who never go. There will only be four AMs per year, held on Sundays, with a new working group meeting monthly to progress routine business matters. However, these...
Marginalising religious education
Pupils in British schools have had a statutory entitlement to religious education, which has been enshrined in law, since 1988. However, it seems that the importance of religious education (RE) teaching is being downgraded. Two significant factors are: the expansion of the academies programme, which appears to have diminished that entitlement –...
What is the Society for?
I love the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) more than I can say. Words fail me in expressing my deepening conviction of its vital importance in our difficult world – but then verbal failure is ubiquitous. The continued existence of the Society is awesome. Who would believe it?
Letters - 24 February 2012
Unwitting support Following on from Philip Austin’s illustrations of further ways in which we, unwittingly perhaps, support arms manufacturers in our daily activities (10 February), here is another one: ‘The four major high street banks held £9bn worth of shares in arms companies in 2008’ (War on Want).