Issue 07-05-2021
Featured story
A peace of the action: Bernie Kennedy’s thought for the week
A Friend at our Meeting recently ministered about the word ‘meek’. It was contained in a quotation, part of a reading we had heard: ‘The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one...
Top stories
Prisons within prisons: Juliet Lyons makes the case for whole-institution vaccination
As we begin to recover from Covid-19, it’s important to give thought to those of us who must remain locked down. Throughout the pandemic, people have spoken of loss of liberty, loss of loved ones, loss of choice, and loss of movement. ‘It’s like being in prison’ some...
Naming names: Kristin Swenson looks at Biblical titles for God.
‘Gosh’, we’re taught to say, instead of ‘God’. Or ‘Golly’ or ‘Jeez’. The impulse comes from prohibitions against blaspheming the name of God, ‘taking the name of the LORD in vain’, or otherwise misusing it. In the ancient world out of which the biblical texts came, people would invoke...
Brought to heal: Elaine Miles on Luke
It is easy to think that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John clubbed together to tell us about the life and death of Jesus, and that it does not really matter which one you quote. But in fact they were very different characters, whose lives covered different stretches of history. They...
Met Office remembers Quaker weather scientist
The Met Office has marked the work of the Quaker scientist Lewis Fry Richardson, who, 100 years ago, began numerically forecasting the weather.
The Struggle for a Human Future: 5G, augmented reality and the internet of things, by Jeremy Naydler
One of the many consequences of the pandemic has been that we have become increasingly dependent on technology to connect with one another. I have found my smartphone and Zoom essential. But I have also been aware that this increasing interaction with technology may also impact on our lives in...
All articles
Bristol Friends act on ‘Kill the Bill’ divisions
Bristol Quakers plan to offer workshops in nonviolent activism to help reduce tensions between protesters and the police. Bristol Area Meeting set out its intention in an open letter sent to all Avon and Somerset police and crime commissioner candidates.
Quakers help improve new law
Quakers and other campaigners have secured a key change to the Overseas Operations Bill.
Friends study new declaration on anti-Semitism
The Quaker-recognised group Friends with Jewish Connections has been studying the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism (JDA).
Newbury Friend speaks on Greenham links
A Newbury Quaker and former clerk has spoken more about life within the Meeting during the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp.
The Spymaster of Baghdad, by Margaret Coker
The spymaster of Baghdad is Abu Ali al-Basri, who was the head of counter-terrorism for the national intelligence agency in Iraq. His unit, the Falcons, had a spectacular record of success against Islamic State during the prime ministership of Nouri al-Maliki. Over the course of sixteen months, it stopped thirty...
The minute was good enough
Yet what of that time can be explained? Are we engaged or are we looking away? Can we expunge her eyes as she looked back from the boat shipping her to Barbados without husband, friend or child? Sweet Parthenia did you have faith in us, the unborn, friends to go...
Letters - 7 May 2021
William Penn According to your report (16 April) on Meeting for Sufferings, trustees decided that the William Penn room would be changed on the grounds that Penn had enslaved people in his household. The report does not say if the trustees consulted historians first. Penn was a close associate of...