Issue 27-10-2017

Featured story

Thought for the Week: Experiencing the Spirit

FREE 26 Oct 2017 | by Andrew Sterling

What is the core of Quakerism? What does it mean to be a Quaker? It is often said that you will get as many different answers to these questions as the number of Quakers you ask. Many Friends today worry that Quakerism is in danger of becoming no more than...

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Top stories

Friends of Martin Luther?

26 Oct 2017 | by Stuart Masters

A portrait of Martin Luther, 1528. By Lucas Cranach the Elder. | Photo: Via Wikimedia Commons.

Five hundred years ago Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses (also known as the Disputation on the Power of Indulgences), an event that has come to symbolise the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Emerging a little over a hundred years later, the Quaker movement was one product of these momentous...

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Supporting communities

26 Oct 2017 | by Paul Henderson

Balloons released during a community vigil held four weeks after the Grenfell Tower fire. | Photo: Steve Eason / flickr CC.

On 14 June 2017 Grenfell Tower, the twenty-four-storey block of public housing flats in North Kensington, London was destroyed by fire. At least eighty people died and more than seventy were injured. It was a truly shocking event. The grief of families, friends and neighbours was heart-rending to watch.

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Interview: Marina Lewycka

26 Oct 2017 | by Jonathan Doering

Marina Lewycka. | Photo: © Penguin Random House UK.

Marina Lewycka revealed her talent for comic writing in 2005 when her debut novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Two years later she was shortlisted for this award again, along with the Orwell Prize for political writing, for her thought-provoking Two Caravans. She...

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Call to increase funeral funding

FREE 26 Oct 2017 | by Harry Albright

Quaker Social Action procession in Parliament Square. | Photo: Quaker Social Action.

The Fair Funerals campaign, which is run by Quaker Social Action, held a funeral procession in Parliament Square on 17 October to deliver a letter to chancellor Philip Hammond, calling on the government to increase the fund to cover basic funeral costs annually in line with inflation and stop families on...

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White poppies – a left-wing agenda?

FREE 26 Oct 2017 | by The Friend Newsdesk

White poppies for peace. | Photo: Peace Pledge Union.

The decision by over 100 teachers to support the campaign to sell white poppies in schools, made at the recent National Union of Teachers conference, has prompted a lively public discussion on the subject of war, peace and remembrance.

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All articles

Kenyan Quakers call for calm

26 Oct 2017 | by Harry Albright

Quakers in Kenya are calling on Friends in Britain and around the world to uphold them as the political crisis in their country deepens.

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Living Wage accreditation

26 Oct 2017 | by Harry Albright

Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Area Meeting (AM) has recently joined the list of those organisations accredited as a Living Wage employer. Living Wage rates are independently calculated based on what people need to get by.

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Quaker peace campaigner on trial in Burnley

26 Oct 2017 | by Harry Albright

The trial of Quaker campaigner Sam Walton, who along with Methodist minister Dan Woodhouse is charged with criminal damage for their attempt to disarm warplanes being sold to Saudi Arabia, was due to start on 24 October in Burnley Magistrates’ Court. The trial was expected to last three days.

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Quaker work in North Korea

26 Oct 2017 | by Harry Albright

Lucy Roberts, the regional director of the Asia Programme of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), recently talked to about sixty people at an event organised by members of Bradford on Avon Meeting.

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Digging the Dirt on tour

26 Oct 2017 | by Harry Albright

A play set partly in the world of the seventeenth century Digger movement is presently touring Quaker Meeting houses in Britain.

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From the archive: Farewells

26 Oct 2017 | by Janet Scott

At the end of June 1917 Isaac Sharp, the recording clerk of London Yearly Meeting, retired. He was one of the most remarkable and quietly influential Friends of his time. On 9 October he died. On both occasions the Friend published tributes to him and appreciations of his work. These extracts are...

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Letter - 27 October 2017

26 Oct 2017 | by The Friend

Fairtrade Okehampton Meeting raised a concern at Area Meeting about Sainsbury’s move away from Fairtrade Foundation accreditation on their economy tea to their own Fairly Traded scheme. We wanted to raise awareness of this change. The advice given was to write to the Friend. Our concerns with this development...

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