Issue 18-07-2025

The Friend

The Friend is a weekly magazine in which Friends speak to each other and to the wider world, offering their insight, ideas, news, nurture and inspiration.

Nurturing Quaker community, each issue offers a space for Friends to share their concerns, and to support each other in faith and witness.

The Friend: enriching, inspiring and connecting the Quaker community since 1843.


Latest issue: Issue 18-07-2025

Thought for the week

Stranger things: Sanjive Mahandru’s Thought for the Week

by Sanjive Mahandru

‘We risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together’? Keir Starmer, is he joking?!

Features

Singing adventurously: Mark Waistell on music, outreach, and the muse

by Mark Waistell

There’s a quote from William Penn that many Friends are fond of: ‘True godliness don’t turn men out of the world but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavours to mend it.’ But perhaps we forget that it goes on, ‘Not to hide their light under a bushel but set it on a table in a candlestick’.

Features

Trying a man’s soul: Tony D’Souza extols a pioneer of human rights

by Tony D’Souza

Was Thomas Paine (1737-1809) the ultimate Quaker? He had strong convictions, believed in God but not in organised religion, and had an unerring capacity to annoy both friends and foes alike. So that’s probably a yes.

Features

Common cause: Howard Grace twenty years after 7/7

by Howard Grace

Twenty years ago, fifty-two people were killed in London by Muslim extremist suicide bombers. This caused a big backlash against Muslims, the vast majority of whom were as aghast as anyone else. 

Features

Lasting legacy: Tessa Brown of the Green Olive Trust

by Tessa Brown

The Green Olive Trust (GOT UK) has been generously supported by individual Friends and Local Meetings during the last eleven years, since our partnership with the Green Olive Foundation (GOF) in Kenya was formed. 

Reviews

The Identity Parade

by Susan Mitchell

This fascinating book is a unique artwork and a poetic novel, combining concrete poetry and outsider art. 

Features

Poem: How to hold a gun

by Ilana Jones

They came into your school one time
And told you it’d be fun
If one day you grew up
And knew how to hold a gun.

News

Quakers among Palestine Action arrestees

by Joseph Jones Quakers were among the twenty-nine people arrested in London earlier this month, as part…
News

Quaker wayside marker unveiled

by Joseph Jones A new stone monument remembering Quakers has been unveiled next to a main road in St…
News

Quaker burial ground granted listed status

by Joseph Jones One of the oldest Quaker burial grounds has been recognised for its historic importance.
News

World Plenary documentary announced

by Joseph Jones A documentary about the World Plenary Meeting (WPM) 2024 will be launched next month, said…
Q-eye

Eye - 18 July 2025

by Elinor Smallman Quaker bakes Cakes and biscuits on a Friendly theme have been arriving in Eye’s mailbag…
Letters

Letters - 18 July 2025

by The Friend Whatever we can offer Jan Arriens (Letters, 4 July) explains Friends’ current…

Past issues