Issue 16-12-2011
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Fairness
We have heard a lot about fairness recently. Is it fair for bankers to be rewarded with millions of pounds every year? Are the government cuts affecting everyone fairly? What do we really mean by fairness? Where do our ideas of fairness come from?
Top stories
My life, my faith
Like many other Meetings, we wonder how we can get to know one another better. Every week after Meeting we drink tea together and talk. But there are lots of us and many things to attend to: meetings, rotas, you know the sort of thing. Then there is the important...
Rise in homelessness expected
Quaker Homeless Action (QHA) are expecting more people than usual to visit their Christmas shelter this year – as a result of government cuts. ‘I suspect that the numbers of people we encounter this Christmas will be up,’ said QHA’s director, Kate Mellor. She expects to see ‘more...
Being Salt and Light
The growth of several new Quaker groups in the former Soviet Union, partly due to the influence of the internet, was one of the interesting facts to emerge from a lively conference held in late November at the Glenthorne Quaker Centre in Cumbria. The conference, led by Jocelyn Bell...
Meeting for Sufferings: Changes at The Retreat
Meeting for Sufferings, which met at Friends House in London on 3 December, heard how changes at The Retreat aim to renew Quaker influence and connect the vision of founder William Tuke with the mental health issues of today.
End of the roses, Quaker meeting
Her shadow on the carpet paler and paler, although no cloud has come over the sun; her hair thinner even than an hour ago when she was wheeled in. Although I did feel something coming over as I was arriving. It was the sky itself, a heavy silence, then this...
All articles
Threat to civil partnerships in religious buildings
Quakers in England and Wales are now able to host same-sex civil partnership ceremonies in their Meeting houses. The legal ban on the use of religious buildings to host the ceremonies was lifted on 5 December.
Occupy spreads to universities
As the ‘Occupy’ movement spreads to universities, at least one protest camp has included several Quakers, a Meeting for Worship and a very visible Quaker banner.
Quaker charity wins national award
A Quaker charity has won a national Plain English Award. The charity, Life in Palestine, is run by six Quaker trustees from across the South Lakes region and received the award, from the Plain English Campaign, for their booklet Children of War.
Planning to retire
Martina Weitsch and Liz Scurfield, joint representatives at the Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA), are planning to retire in the autumn of 2012. The QCEA was founded in 1979 and is based in Brussels. It promotes the values of the Religious Society of Friends in a European context and works closely...
Co-ops and peace
Campaigns for economic alternatives should be linked to movements for peace. That’s the message coming from delegates at a world gathering of co-operatives meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
Going green at Swarthmoor
The Meeting House at Swarthmoor was gifted to Friends by George Fox in 1686. Much of the structure is probably at least 350 years old, has exterior walls two foot thick, is not well insulated, has suffered from long term damp, and is difficult to heat either effectively or efficiently. Even the...
Making change happen
I approached this book with caution. I have read many books about ‘making change happen’ and been disappointed. Some consist of tortuously convoluted theories that fall to dust as soon as an attempt is made to apply them to the messiness of real-life struggles. Tim Gee’s Counterpower: Making...
The Spirit: alternative views
‘No, I’m not religious, but I am spiritual!’ We regularly hear this nowadays and often from members of the Religious Society of Friends. It could mean various things. For some it involves serious doubts about traditional pictures of God ‘out there’ as a Super person, although Simon Best in...
Letters - 16 December 2011
Legalised counterfeiting Sue Holden (4 November) says that ninety-seven percent of our money has been invented by commercial banks. I do not know if her horrifying percentage is correct, but, however much it is, it is too much – it is nothing but legalised counterfeiting.