Latest News
Tuesday
Every week we provide you with news, features, personal stories, arts, humour and friendship. With the Friend you can keep up to date with contemporary Quaker thought and action.
q-eye: Eye on the media
Same-sex marriages in Canada since 2005
Same-sex marriage in Canada was legalised as a result of court cases in which provincial or territorial justices ruled existing bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Full legalisation occurred on 20 July 2005, although same-sex couples had been obtaining marriage licences before then. Provinces and territories, which have jurisdiction over marriage issues, had...
A view of Yearly Meeting Gathering
This has been an extraordinary Yearly Meeting. Not just because it has combined Junior Yearly Meeting, Summer Gathering and Yearly Meeting into a single event, not just because of the subject matter or the numbers participating. Above all, it has been a supreme vindication of our business method well used,...
What have we done?
The Friends in the Yearly Meeting sessions on committed relationships this year were engaged in doing theology. Quaker theology is a process as well as an outcome. What we do is to start with our experience, reflect on where within it we find the Spirit of God leading us, test...
Commitment to change
From a talk by Colin Billett, to a creative listening session, to a Meeting for Worship for Business to the full Britain Yearly Meeting session, committed relationships have been a theme that have recurred throughout Junior Yearly Meeting (JYM) this year. They have, of course, been an issue that was...
Some views from outside
Understandably, the decision by British Quakers to allow same-sex marriages won praise from groups and individuals campaigning for gay rights. Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner and Green Party candidate in Oxford, told the Friend that ‘the Quakers’ decision to open up marriage to same-sex couples, on exactly the same basis...
Minutes of BYM
Minute 23 of Britain Yearly Meeting, 31 July 2009 Further to minute 17 (see below), a session was held on Tuesday afternoon at which speakers shared personal experiences of the celebration and recognition of their committed relationships. These Friends had felt upheld by their meetings in these relationships but regretted that whereas there was...
Quakers make historic decision on same sex marriage
The Religious Society of Friends, more commonly known as Quakers, agreed on 31 July to conduct same sex marriages in their Meeting houses and to push for these to be recognised by the state. An earlier session on the subject recorded strong support in favour of changing from the current position,...
Lessons from the language of life
So said David Cadman at the launch of his book Holiness in the Everyday. Instead, he explained, dwelling in prayer, in the depths of silence, enable us to find the ways to change things.