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.
I’m a Catholic deputy head in a Quaker independent school, and the chair of governors at a Catholic secondary. These roles present me with unique opportunities to integrate elements of both faith traditions. I can serve as a conciliator between them, fostering connections and partnerships.
In the late nineteenth century, US and then British Quakers supported the founding of two Quaker schools in the Middle East. These continue to thrive today, despite regional turmoil and instability.
During Meeting for Worship at Bridgend Meeting one Sunday, Friends shared feelings of incredulity and despair at the content and tone of recent news bulletins. Escalating conflict in the Middle East, stalemate in Russia’s war against Ukraine, a rhetoric of fear and retaliation – these all leave us with the distinct impression that we are on a slippery slope to global conflict, and that we can do little about it. How do we speak truth to power and live out our Peace Testimony in such a bellicose environment?
Friends’ School Lisburn is one of two Quaker schools on the island of Ireland, and the only one in the North. At the time of its foundation in 1774, Ulster Friends played a prominent role in society, not least in the thriving linen industry on which the town’s prosperity was built; it is unsurprising that they wanted to set up a school for their children. John Gough, a Quaker from Kendal, was the first headmaster, and although he had only thirty-five girls and boys in his care, his textbooks in English grammar and arithmetic ensured that his influence extended to other schools across Ireland and in Britain.
Teach Peace Secondary is a new education resource published by Britain Yearly Meeting, featuring lessons from across the Peace Education Network. A sequel to the award-winning pack for primary schools, it is an example of the breadth of peace education in Britain today.
A peaceful path
Peterborough Meeting’s garden has grown to be a gift for a whole community, after one Friend’s vision of the testimonies in flora.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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