Issue 06-09-2019
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Thought for the week: ‘Jesus’s new wine can never be held in the old wineskins of the past.’
‘Let us listen to the Word of God as it is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.’ For many years I listened to this pronouncement from the pulpits of Presbyterian churches across Scotland. This declaration was traditionally followed by a reading of reverence and solemnity.
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‘What seemed a simple task to raise funds became a chance to give ministry to a wider audience.’
It was an easy decision. Cardiff’s Victorian Meeting House was in serious need of renovation and not just the fitting of double glazing or central heating in some rooms but an investigation into why switching on the cooker made the lights in the Meeting room go out. The fundraising...
‘Words are awkward enough. They are like pre-used bricks with bits of mortar still stuck on them.’
A number of Friends are uncomfortable with the use of so-called God language. It may not have been ever thus, but it certainly has been so for quite a long time. I remember some years ago a Friend standing up in Meeting, which had been silent up to that point,...
‘The whole world stands in need of a non-dogmatic spirituality.’
Geoffrey Hubbard, who died in 1998, was a polymath: a physicist, scriptwriter, futurologist and educational technologist. In 1974 he wrote Quaker by Convincement. This neat paperback is still offered to enquirers as an honest road to Quaker faith and practice (if I may coin a phrase). What those of us who hand...
‘A workcamp to restore an old Meeting house in the Lake District sounded enticing.’
‘On your own? A bicycle?’ The agent for the travel company sounded incredulous and I was about to abandon my search for space, hills and air when I spotted an ad in the Friend. A workcamp to restore an old Meeting house in the Lake District sounded enticing, and the...
O brother man
O brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother; Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there; To worship rightly is to love each other, Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.
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Friends protest DSEI
Hundreds of Quakers flocked to London this week to take part in the Roots of Resistance (RoR) mass protest against the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair at the ExCeL centre in London’s Docklands.
Quakers stand against prorogue of parliament
Friends made their voices heard against the hugely controversial decision to prorogue parliament made by prime minister Boris Johnson.
Ethical Landlords Association closes
The Quaker-founded Ethical Landlords Association (ELA) has dissolved due to ‘the difficulty of establishing a new body from scratch’.
Record-breaking animal rights march
Friends from Quaker Concern for Animals (QCA) were among the 12,000 vegan activists who took part in a record-breaking march last month demanding ‘an end to all animal oppression’ and blockading Trafalgar Square for almost an hour.
Quaker board game
Quaker and former Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) employee Jessica Metheringham has received enough pledges for her new board game Disarm the Base to be produced. With a minimum goal of £5,000, the game had to have 173 people pledging to pay £29 through Kickstarter for the game to be made.
Letters - 6 September 2019
Planet on fire The discussion about theism and nontheism is interesting and thought-provoking. There are clearly a number of Friends who feel deeply exercised about this, and I’m aware that some Friends, of every persuasion, have been hurt by others who seem unprepared to tolerate a perspective they donâ€...