Issue 12-08-2011
Featured story
Epistle
We send our loving greetings to all Friends everywhere. Friends from Britain, together with Friends from other countries, gathered in Canterbury, a city with a special place in the Christian history of our islands, to reflect on “Growing in the Spirit: changing the way we live to sustain the...
Top stories
The time is now
It was uncomfortable. It was unsettling. It was wrong. And yet there was a sense that we all knew where it was coming from: from people who were all too human and felt frustrated. In several decades of attending Quaker business meetings in Ireland, it was a sound that...
A powerful force for progress
Veteran activist Tony Benn has described Quakers as ‘a powerful force for progress’. He urged Friends to take a stand against those who hold power in the world. He made the comments while giving the Salter Lecture to hundreds of Friends at Yearly Meeting Gathering last week. The lecture...
Interfaith at YMG
Friends have received a challenge to live out their testimonies from an unexpected source – a panel consisting entirely of non-Quakers. Around 120 Quakers squeezed into a small room for an event at Yearly Meeting Gathering looking at other faiths’ approach to sustainability. As the room became packed, other Friends were...
Changes to Meeting for Sufferings
The decision to change the composition and size of Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) was one of the more significant ones made at Yearly Meeting Gathering. The session, on Tuesday afternoon, included the Review of Meeting for Sufferings and Britain Yearly Meeting Trustees, which revealed the deliberations of a group...
Economic justice
British Quakers have committed themselves to a statement describing the world’s economic system as unjust. The description appeared in a minute of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) last week. ‘The global economic system is posited on continued economic growth and, in its pursuit of growth, it is often violent,...
All articles
Peace 350
Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) have rededicated themselves to active nonviolence with a new declaration based on comments from Meetings across Britain. While the word ‘pacifism’ does not appear, the statement declares: ‘We are convinced that no end can justify the means of killing another human being’. It...
Quaker marriage procedure
British Friends have affirmed their commitment to same-sex marriage with the approval of a revised chapter in Quaker faith & practice. But uncertainty over changes to the law means that it is likely to be rewritten again next year. The new chapter sixteen, entitled ‘Quaker marriage’, allows couples of...
Sharing the miracle
When Nick Perks finished the introduction to the Friday morning Yearly Meeting (YM) session, I wept. The minute that followed makes a ‘strong corporate commitment’ to becoming a low carbon sustainable community, to making funds available for the work entailed and to a cycle of annual reporting to YM by...
A new look for the Friends Quarterly
The new issue of the Friends Quarterly looks very different. This is a redesign that will carry the periodical through the coming years, while seeking to stay true to a tradition that was begun 144 years ago. Every editor knows that you play around with the look of a publication at...
Snapshots from YMG - Part 2
Indefinite detention The injustice of indefinite detention was highlighted in a workshop at Yearly Meeting Gathering hosted by the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network.
Letters - 12 August 2011
Outreach I am struggling to understand how the new posters for Quaker Week 2011 on the theme ‘make peace a way of life’ (as seen on the front cover and page 13 of the recent edition of ‘Quaker News’) could possibly create any positive interest in Quakers amongst the general public.
Curmudgeonly sonnet at YMG
More humility, please. For we did not ‘Abolish slavery’. The record also shows How slaves at fearful cost themselves arose To fight, forgive, and change the global plot.
Unconditional kindness
Prior to Yearly Meeting Gathering 2011, the letter arrived asking if I would volunteer on the children’s programme. Without giving it too much thought, I responded to the internal prompt – ‘if you can you should’ – and replied in the affirmative. In all the newness and excitement of the first days...
The other pilgrim
A Quaker was there also, as ye wistė That I had almost forgot from my listė So silent was he – when that it was Sunday, But talkėd more than any by the Monday.