Latest News
Debate opened, not dogma pronounced
If Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG) was discussing climate change, nuclear weapons or the ecumenical movement, the pages of the Friend would be full of articles, setting out people’s hopes, fears and leadings. It would be seen as part of coming to YMG with heart and mind prepared. Do any...
Waging nonviolence website launched
Waging nonviolence highlights news stories and people’s personal reports of marches, sit-ins, strikes and other ways of responding to perceived injustice without resorting to violence. In little over a month of operation, it has received reports of actions in seventy-six countries, including conflict zones like the Democratic Republic of...
UK prisons must be guided by ‘penal moderation’
In its final report, published at the end of a two-year investigation in the UK and abroad, the Commission on English Prisons Today recommended that prison policy be guided by a new underlying principle of ‘penal moderation’. This would place ‘the humanity of victims and prisoners at centre stage’ and...
Beyond defence: towards conflict prevention
Although the report, by influential think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), stops short of calling for the UK to abandon its Trident nuclear weapons, it calls on the government to consider – in the context of a full ‘strategic review of security’ – whether the UK needs to maintain...
Taking courage in challenging times
‘Is the Society in rude health?’, asked Gillian Ashmore, when she spent the afternoon with General Meeting for Scotland last month. Her natural inclination is to give optimistic answers to this big question, but she confessed that finding hard evidence to support her optimism is not always easy.
Friends continue to highlight G20 policing concerns
The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee argued that overall the policing of the protests was ‘remarkably successful’ and warned that incidents of violence ‘have the potential to seriously damage the public’s faith in the police’. It also expressed concerns that ‘untrained and inexperienced officers’ were deployed on the...
‘Recognising our personal gifts’
Swiss Friends gathering for their Yearly Meeting at Aeschi in the late spring focused on the theme ‘Recognising our personal gifts’. It was an opportunity to explore skills and talents, as organisation of the programme was handed on to a younger generation. Instead of the common practice of inviting guest...
Meeting at the fourth plinth
An unusual Meeting for Worship will take place later this month – alongside Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth. Peter Davies of Bridgend Meeting has been selected as one of 2,400 volunteers taking part in sculptor Anthony Gormley’s ‘One & Other’ project, in which each person spends an hour on top...
Legacy facilitates Cuban seminary
Cuban Quakers are to build their own seminary, thanks to a legacy from a Canadian Friend. Cuba Yearly Meeting, which has a tradition of employing pastors to serve Quaker Meetings, currently has no dedicated space to train them. But Friends decided at their Yearly Meeting to ‘create a facility...
Three conversions necessary: heart, mind and purse
Quakers need to stop treating money like a taboo subject and start thinking about it as part of their spiritual life, a gathering of Quaker treasurers has heard. At the Annual Conference of Treasurers, which was told that donations from individuals and Quaker Meetings to the centrally managed work...