Issue 02-02-2018
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Why am I a Quaker?
Is it because of all those abstract nouns – Integrity, Simplicity, et cetera? I’ve never Been keen on abstract nouns myself, but Weary of all those quarrels in re God I come home to them now. I reckon God’s Is the hand on the shoulder that means It’s...
Top stories
The ‘Great Beast’
What is the problem with religion in the contemporary world? Never in human history have so many people prayed to a God unseen, and never in human history has so much suffering, mayhem and death been caused by the followers of religion.
The Reformation and Friends: Thomas Müntzer
The early Quaker movement emerged out of the radical wing of the Reformation, and was influenced by the ideas of a range of radical religious groups and individuals. One such figure is Thomas Müntzer (1489-1525). He was a German theologian who became a rebel leader during the German Peasants’...
Dunblane Friends
The life of a religious society consists in something more than the body of principles it professes and the outer garments of organisation which it wears. These things have their own importance: they embody the society to the world, and protect it from the chance and change of circumstance; but...
A Friend at Swarthmoor
There is perhaps no better place to mix past ghosts and future hopes than at Swarthmoor Hall, the so-called ‘cradle’ of Quakerism. Nestling in Cumbria, on the edge of England’s Lake District, the Tudor manor (built in 1586) holds a cherished place in the history of English Quakers. It was...
The Quaker business tradition
Ten years ago I came to Quakers as a direct result of repeatedly hearing, over the years I was in business, that there were famous businesses of yesteryear run by a group of people called Quakers, who were leaders in industrial innovation and driven by their religious fervour. These businesses...
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Sharing sustainability stories
The Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) is gathering stories of Quaker sustainability-in-action projects from around the world. The organisation has already brought together testimonies from Rwanda, the United States, Bolivia, Switzerland, and European and Middle East Young Friends (EMEYF).
Quakers back straw campaign but say more must be done
Quakers have backed the Evening Standard’s ‘Last Straw’ campaign but called for more action in the fight against climate change. The campaign, initiated recently by the free London newspaper, highlights the environmental damage caused by plastic straws.
Kindness and Kindertransport
The role the Quakers played in helping Jewish people in the second world war escape from Nazi Germany to Britain was the subject of a presentation at Bootham School in York on 31 January.
Friends welcome cut in Dignity Simple Funeral costs
Quaker Social Action (QSA) has welcomed the news that the UK’s biggest privately-owned funeral operator, Dignity, recently announced it is reducing the cost of its Simple Funeral by twenty-five per cent.
Numbers of those in poverty will rise in 2018, says JRF
This year is set to be an increasingly difficult one for low-income households, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has predicted, with average price inflation for the UK standing at its highest since April 2012.
Peacemakers branch out in new decade
Friends visiting the Quaker Meeting House in Bull Street, Birmingham, can enjoy seeing the creative results of a special anniversary day held last year: a ‘Peace Tree’.
Yorkshire Friends petition MPs for nuclear ban
Huddersfield Quakers have written to four Kirklees MPs asking them to sign the parliamentary nuclear ban pledge. So far one, Thelma Walker, MP for Colne Valley, Huddersfield, has signed.
Friend takes issue with army adverts
A London-based Friend has criticised the British army recruitment adverts to ‘find where you belong’ in an article in The Big Issue.
BYM backs Oxfam ‘inequality report’
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has called for the ‘inequality gap’ to end, following a report by Oxfam which shows that the gap between the richest and the poorest has widened.
Pledge to reduce animal products
Friends House has announced it will make a public commitment to further promote sustainable, compassionate eating by becoming a ‘CreatureKind’ institution.
Quaker-Buddhist crossover
A Quaker and Buddhist scholar is a keynote speaker at the 2018 Earlham School of Religion (ESR) Spirituality Gathering in the USA this spring.
Eye - 02 February 2018
An inspiring exit A visit to the British Museum’s exhibition ‘Living with Gods: people, places and worlds beyond’ has inspired one Friend to put pen to paper. The exhibition examines how people believe, rather than what, by exploring stories, objects, images, prayers and rituals. It builds on a Radio 4...
Letters - 02 February 2018
Thanks and applause Thank you for the letter from Jan Lethbridge (19 January) concerning ‘thanks and applause’. I may be able to explain this practice, which probably dates back to early Friends’ rejection of ‘flourish’ and exaggeration that led to what became known as ‘plain speech’. When I was a child...