Issue 20-05-2011
Featured story
Jennifer Kavanagh: faith in action
How did you become a Quaker? As so often, it was in the wake of trauma – the break-up of my marriage, my daughter’s serious illness. It cracked me open and enabled me to access another dimension. Something was going on, which I had to explore. I went into...
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Marching truth to power
‘What Parliament does, the streets can undo,’ declared a sign fixed to a wheelchair on the Thames Embankment last week. The young woman in the wheelchair was part of a 5,000-strong crowd who had descended on central London from all corners of Britain to protest against the impact of...
Living wage campaign
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) are among signatories of a joint letter urging FTSE 100 companies to support the campaign for a living wage. The FairPensions organization has just launched ‘JustPay!’ – a campaign designed to increase awareness of the Living Wage and to campaign for a wider implementation of...
Right to conscientious objection not respected
A member of the royal navy who objects to the war in Afghanistan is facing imprisonment for ‘disobedience’. Michael Lyons will be court-martialed in Portsmouth on Friday 20 May.
Government urged to reduce income inequality
Over forty MPs from at least six parties have urged the government to promote policies that reduce income inequality.
The nuclear threat
Like many others, I have been protesting against nuclear weapons on and off for most of my adult life and, during the 1980s, was an enthusiastic member of the Medical Campaign against Nuclear Weapons. Then came the implosion of international communism and, somehow, things seemed less immediately threatening: so, along...
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Writing the Spirit
‘Writing the Spirit’ is the title of a series of creative writing workshops, led by Judy Clinton, in which she encourages people to write whatever they are experiencing in the present moment.
The testimonies: a theological muddle?
Roger Hill (letters, 6 May) challenges us by suggesting that present-day British Quakers ‘have invented four testimonies… which have been raised to credal status’ creating ‘a theological muddle’. He finds our present concepts of peace confused, truth and simplicity insincere, and equality unbiblical; so the four ‘fail the test of religious...
Letters - 20 May 2011
Testimonies Our Friend, Roger Hill (6 May), speaks my mind. I share his disquiet at the proliferation of so-called Quaker testimonies. As he says, the peace ‘testimony’ arose out of a need to express the position of Friends as regards warfare (even ‘righteous’ war) at a particular time in history. I,...
Pharaoh’s dream
A woman from Malta recently told me a story about her everyday life: ‘We used to go to school early and finish at four o’clock in the afternoon, with a two-hour gap for lunch and a siesta. Now, children go later and return at two o’clock because it...
Learning to turn the tide
When faced with a situation of shocking injustice and/or suffering, we can be fired to rush in and set about trying to do everything possible to change it. Alas, all too often we achieve far less than we had hoped. We can then experience burn-out and feel defeated by...
Eye - 20 May 2011
Below the belt? To claim that the Journal of our notable founder, George Fox, offers no advice in the lingerie department would be questionable and maybe even below the belt, Eye reasons. David Hitchins wrote in to dispute this claim made by Kevin Redpath (Eye 29 April), quoting the Rufus Jones...