Issue 06-03-2015
Featured story
Thought for the Week: The People of the Cross?
The Cross today might seem obscure. Not so, in the so-called ‘Islamic’ State’s recent video of beheading twenty-one Coptic Christians. Its captions make two mentions. The first proclaims: ‘A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross.’ The red jumpsuits worn by the impending martyrs evoke Guantanamo...
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Quaker Equality Week
Equality is a core value in Quakerism. It has been a testimony of the Religious Society of Friends for centuries and has its roots deep in faith and personal experience. A key part of the commitment to equality is, increasingly, a concern with economic equality. The importance of equality is...
Engaging with creation
Some time ago a piece of ministry at my Meeting referred to Matthew 18:3: Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven This set me thinking. It is a commonplace that we experience creation through the web of our accumulated experience....
Death Cafe
Death Cafe is a worldwide movement. It’s seen as a time for people, often strangers, to gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. Its objectives are ‘to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives’.
Conference of school governors
The role of Quakerism in education was a central concern at the recent Friends School Council Annual Governors’ Conference. The conference brought together forty-six governors, from 27 February to 1 March, at the University of Warwick’s Scarman Centre. Eight were governors of maintained or denominational schools and the remainder governors of...
Paying our way, almost…
The Friend is published by a charity, The Friend Publications, which has a board of Quaker trustees and a small number of paid staff. Both editorially and in governance, we are independent of Britain Yearly Meeting. In the last financial year to June 2014, our subscription and advertisement income covered nearly...
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Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Cage
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) has defended its past funding of the campaign group Cage. In a press conference last week Asim Qureshi, research director of Cage, accused the security services of contributing to the ‘radicalisation’ of Mohammed Emwazi, the British militant who has featured in a number of...
BYM and ForcesWatch in joint statement
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has joined charity ForcesWatch in criticising a recent government resource for schools, that they feel promotes ‘military values’. The organisations used a written report and a graphic to argue that the British Armed Forces Learning Resource (published in September 2014 by the prime minister’s office) is...
Climate change highlighted
There are approximately two decades left to achieve the large-scale decarbonisation necessary to avoid dangerous climate change, Irish Friends were told recently in Cork by a leading researcher on climate change.
New home for Christchurch Quakers
Christchurch Meeting of the Yearly Meeting of Aotearoa/New Zealand has found a new home. The original Meeting house and surrounding land were destroyed in the September 2010 Canterbury earthquake.
Conscientious objector joins the Peace Hub celebration in Birmingham
Second world war conscientious objector Hugh Maw was among those marking the official opening of a new peace centre in Birmingham. The Peace Hub, a Central England Quakers project, opened on 26 February. Local school children and members of the public joined Paul Sabapthy, lord lieutenant for the West Midlands, and...
Conference highlights building peace in diverse Britain
An inspiring talk on the experience of being a Muslim woman growing up in West Yorkshire and working for peace in the area was a highlight of a recent Northern Friends Peace Board (NFPB) event.
Friends to host hustings
Quakers will host hustings with the main political parties in the approach to the general election. Hustings will take place around Britain, including at Friends House in London. The aim is to stimulate an alternative conversation on topics such as justice, democracy and peace, Trident, sustainability and economic inequality.
Eye - 06 March 2015
Spring has sprung Two baby lambs have arrived at Sibford School in Oxfordshire. The one-week-old ewe and two-week-old ram are the latest addition to the school’s animal husbandry initiative.
Letters - 06 March 2015
Membership and unconditional love Why all our kerfuffle about membership? As Sheila Stevenson (8 February) observes, our procedure is in some ways not ‘unconditional love’. Unfortunately, our trouble is that Quakers have no creed or statement to define who or what we are: we only have ourselves as living statements. This...