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.
The day before New Year, I walked into my bedroom to find a Peacock butterfly, open winged and fully alive. Our house was a cool enough place for it to hibernate, and the sun had awakened it.
Are Quakers antisemitic? That’s been a claim in articles and letters in the Friend, most recently in October last year. What’s your answer?
The Holocaust is often exemplified by Auschwitz. The barbed wire, watchtowers and gas chambers have become known as the epitome of evil, a place that carries a moral weight unlike any other. It stands as a warning of what happens when technology, bureaucracy, and ideology converge to murder. Yet this focus, while understandable, risks narrowing our moral and theological understanding of the Holocaust.
‘Going to Calais to sew sleeping bags for refugees? Why can’t they just get out their own needle and thread?’
At our early morning discussion group recently, we paid attention to how we describe ourselves: The Religious Society of Friends. The founding Quakers added a bit more: they proclaimed themselves to be ‘Friends of the Truth’.
Sing, sing of synchronicity,
the prayers now answered though unprayed,
signs signalling infinity,
God’s signatures until they fade.
Serenade serendipity.
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