Issue 06-12-2019
Featured story
‘Most people know what it is to feel the sun has set.’
[Biblical] writers speak of a light which is not artificial, neither is it the light of the sun or stars; [they] associate its manifestation with God… To Zechariah, the departure of the sunlight conditions, and prepares, the way for its appearance. Perhaps it is especially upon the latter thought that...
Top stories
‘Anxiously, almost with dread, one asks oneself how this is all going to end.’
Ten years after world war two there were still many refugee camps in western Europe, and international aid agencies were obliged to continue their work. In October 1956 the uprising in Hungary against the Soviet occupation caused a flood of refugees into Austria, which appealed for help. The crisis caused great...
‘We are a gentle, angry people and we are singing, singing for our lives.’
The Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company, based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), owns the ExCeL Centre in Newham, London. The UAE also forms part of the Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemeni civilians. The country has a dismal record of coercion. Human Rights Watch has documented abuses by proxy forces under...
‘The truth must be as accessible to us now as it was to the people of George Fox’s time.’
Perhaps the most remarkable fact about Quakerism, and what makes it almost unique among other religious societies, is that at its heart is individual experience. This is hardly ever spoken about today, which makes it even more remarkable. But the fact remains: George Fox founded the society on his own...
‘The foods I enjoy are so convenient to me that I forget they are a luxury.’
If you’ve ever considered trying to buy more ethically, or spent any time looking into single-use plastics, you’d be right to realise it’s an environmental nightmare. I recently found myself in the milk aisle, wondering about the most ethical choice. I told myself that, today, I didnâ€...
A Quaker Woman Sends a Christmas Card to a President
This woman burns a mouse-bitten pinch of wax that passes for a candle, as she focuses the diamond of her mind on Donald.
All articles
London Quakers sleep outside for homelessness
A team of five London Quakers are to swap their duvets for sleeping bags this weekend to sleep on the streets in order to raise awareness of global homelessness. With a target of £4,200 through the Virgin Money Giving website, the team of five Friends will brave the cold of Londonâ€...
BYM sets out demands for politicians in election season
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has drawn up a list of key issues that it believes politicians should focus on for their general election pledges. The key demands, drawn up by the Quaker Peace & Social Witness team, include: climate justice; criminal justice; migration; peace and disarmament; and civil discourse. The...
Better websites for all Quaker Meetings
The Quaker Meetings Network (QMN) initiative set up to provide help in creating websites has announced that the first swathe of Meeting sites will go live this month.
Friends hold Interfaith Death Cafe
Leicester Meeting held a ‘Death Cafe’ as part of Inter Faith Week last month. Anne Fishenden, from Leicester Meeting, told the Friend that the café, now in its third year, was ‘a very successful way to get a deep conversation going with a variety of participants through the Interfaith network’....
Youth strikers push for Tory climate debate
Friends were among a crowd of protesters who gathered outside the Conservative Party headquarters last month demanding that the party should have a climate debate to push the environmental crisis firmly into the general election spotlight.
Mairi Campbell-Jack moves to Green Party
Friends have paid tribute to Mairi Campbell-Jack, the former parliamentary engagement officer for Quakers in Scotland, who has moved to the Scottish Green Party at Holyrood.
Letters - 6 December 2019
Disturbing book I am reading No Cross, No Crown, William Penn’s exposition on the Quaker testimony to simplicity. He condemns all worldly pleasure-seeking, sends all who make their living from the pleasure industry to the plough, and expects us to get all our pleasure in Heaven after a life...