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.
After my first Quaker Meeting I got talking to Albert. Nearly three hours later I set off home, amazed and grateful for his spending so much time with me. He recalled his life in Nottinghamshire, his emigration adventures, and told me what Quakerism meant to him. Albert was saintly, humble, gentle, down-to-earth. Active in Quaker peace committees, I saw just how Friends loved him.
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) welcomed six Quaker MPs to parliament, after a dramatic general election in which Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a landslide victory.
The phrase ‘adding coals to the embers’ arose in our ministry, from Deborah Rowlands, who remembered a period twenty-five years ago when a sense of constructive renewal was needed. It seemed to fit well with the range of matters being raised at this Meeting.
This year’s Yearly Meeting proper begins on 26 July, but Friends have already begun to gather online for a series of preparation sessions, scheduled over 5-10 July. Special interest groups and Quaker Recognised Bodies have also been running online events. Staff from the Friend will be getting to as many as possible, but if we missed yours please let us know and we’ll try to catch up another way. This week’s coverage takes us up to Sunday 7 July.
Become a subscriber to enjoy unlimited access to our articles, dating back to 2009! Online subscribers get the Friend to their inbox each week, can comment on articles, and dive into our 1914-18 digital archive too!
Whether you are new to Quakerism or have been going to Meeting for years, you’ll find something here to inspire, inform and challenge you.
News | Views | Reviews
Written by and for Friends on the bench
Subscribe