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.
Sixty years ago my physics degree focussed on nuclear power. Seeing how this might be used led me to speak at Hyde Park Corner in favour of CND. I believe that the highest moral stance on the nuclear weapons question is to disarm unilaterally. But, this needs to be done with a realistic acceptance of the possible consequences. Also, how does this relate to the overarching issue of nonviolence?
The echo across a century is chilling. In 1910, Japan justified its military annexation of Korea with a claim of strategic necessity: better Japanese control than Chinese or Russian dominance. Thirty-five years of brutal colonial rule followed, ending only with atomic fire in 1945. Now, in 2026, we hear similar language from a US president regarding Greenland: if the United States doesn’t take control, China or Russia will.
Creativity is a more important, impactful and underrated aspect of the human experience than is acknowledged, yet its reputation is often aligned with frivolous or unimportant pastimes. But Quaker faith & practice (Qf&p) 21.38 describes creativity as a gift given on the ‘eighth day of creation’, suggesting that in ‘naming and re-making the world’ through various activities (gardening, cooking, painting, programming), humans become co-workers with God in an ongoing act of creation. Creativity is something we all have; being ‘talented’ is not a necessity.
There seems to be a traditional list of excuses for why so many Quaker Meetings fail to reflect the racial and social diversity of their local communities. These include: ‘Silent worship doesn’t suit everyone’; ‘We shouldn’t be trying to proselytise’; ‘They prefer their own churches, which have lots of singing’; ‘Muslims wouldn’t want to come to a Quaker Meeting anyway’; ‘We do have lots of diversity, in people’s beliefs’; ‘We welcome everyone, but we can’t force people to come’.
It was good to see the article from Rachel Muers (12 December), reporting from the Faith and Order Conference of the World Council of Churches. This was basically a celebration of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea. But other non-Nicene Christians were there as well as our Friend.
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Written by and for Friends on the bench
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