Letters - 18 April 2025
From protest to a musical note
A word on protest
Is it time to ditch the words ‘protest’ and ‘protestor’? Have they become too negative in the public’s mind?
A major objective of ours is to favourably influence those outside the Religious Society of Friends of the merit, justness and benefits of the values embodied in our testimonies. I am afraid that, by some of our support for protest actions, the opposite is being achieved.
Are we not inviting non-Quakers to form a less than positive view of us, by our support for disruptive protestors? Have we actually invited the establishment overkill that took place at Westminster Meeting House (see News, 4 April)?
By what logic is it that, by disrupting the lives of others, we hope to turn them to our point of view? By what reasoning do we feel that, by dropping a constant stream of letters and complaints on the desks of members of parliament and other officials, forever reminding them of their failings and shortcomings, we will incline civil servants, ministers and the police service to look upon Quakers and their goals favourably?
Quakers encourage better husbandry of the planet and its climate. We encourage more social equality and compassion for the less fortunate. Quakers encourage honesty and integrity not just in business but throughout all sectors of society. And Quakers encourage the universal love of humanity and the nurture and care of our neighbours, and therefore we encourage peace and the avoidance of all instruments conflicting with it.
Should we not be replacing ‘protest’ with ‘encourage’, and ‘protestor’ with ‘encourager’, and, in so doing, observe the golden rule of doing to others what we want done to us?
Stephen Feltham
Public nuisance
I am happy to be in The Religious Society of Public Nuisances also known as Quakers.
In peace and friendship.
Gerard Bane
Silver lining
Every cloud has its silver lining, and the reaction to the recent police raid is the biggest one to come our way in generations. In recent days the Society of Friends must have received the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds in good free publicity.
Now we should build on this wonderful windfall, and make hay whilst the sun shines. We are never likely to get this opportunity again.
Virginia Pawlyn
Moral compass
I am profoundly depressed that it is only when Quakers themselves are threatened that the genocide in Palestine reaches the feature pages of this journal. Somewhere, the moral compass of the Society of Friends has gone awry.
Nicola Grove
The wit of man
In the aftermath of the debacle at Westminster Meeting House, I’m sure many Friends will unite with me in condemning what took place there. In fact, following on from the police raid, I very much hope that Meetings will cease to give succour to such organisations as Youth Demand, or other dubious single-issue organisations such as Alcoholics Anonymous, asylum seekers or Ukrainian ‘refugees’. Hopefully they will find no place on Quaker premises from now on.
Fortunately, Friends House has already taken a lead on this, recommending that all Meetings cease to hire out their premises to women’s groups. A laudable decision, in my view (after all, who knows what these women are planning behind the closed doors of our Meeting Houses?). I assume that Friends House intends this as a blanket ban on all women’s groups, including such suspect organisations as The Women’s Institute, The Mothers Union, flower arranging classes, knitting circles, and, of course, the Girl Guides. I certainly hope so!
It’s early days yet, but Friends House’s firm action against women sends a very clear message that certain behaviour is simply not to be tolerated within the Society.
Before sending this letter, I took the liberty of sharing it with my colleagues at the Barking Institute for Social Change. I’m happy to say that they entirely agreed with my sentiments. To a man.
Simon Risley
History lesson
Reading the news that some twenty police officers had invaded Westminster Quaker Meeting, I can’t help but be reminded of an incident in 1916, when my grandfather, John Henry Barlow, then clerk of Yearly Meeting, was arrested and eventually brought to trial at The Guildhall.
The issue at hand was the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act, which gave the government wide-ranging powers, including censorship, which curtailed the publication of anti-war pamphlets. It was decided that to submit to this would be to give up the whole case for liberty of speech. As clerk, John Henry drafted a minute which said,
‘…there is a deeper issue involved. It is for Christians a paramount duty, to be free to obey and to act and speak in accord with the law of God, a law far higher than that of any State and no government can release men from this duty… and it is with a sense of gravity of the decision, that the Society of Friends must on this occasion act contrary to the regulation and continue to issue literature on war and peace without submitting it to the censor.’
So, the Society continued to issue pamphlets, such as ‘A Challenge to Militarism’.
Members present at the Yearly Meeting of 1916 were concerned of the danger to my grandfather of prosecution and imprisonment as the only signatory to this pamphlet. Eventually, my grandfather rose and ‘his voice ringing out across the crowded hall’ saying, ‘Surely at such a time, no one is playing for safety. The Society is not and nor am I concerned with what is safe, but what is right, and I propose to sign the document.’
As a result John Henry was brought to trial in 1918, where he beseeched Friends ‘to devote themselves to silent prayer’. The New York Times wrote that: ‘Future historians may record it as a landmark as probably the first occasion since the Stuart period on which an organised religious body has deliberately challenged the State’s authority.’ Maybe it is time to do so again.
Antony Barlow
Crash landing
In recent weeks there have been a number of letters on the subject of trans rights. For those who have kept up with the conversation but feel unsure around the language used, or what gender identity and sex refer to, I would like to say that you are not alone. Language is constantly evolving and it can be a challenge to keep pace. We are making new discoveries about the human body all the time.
If you want to learn more but are unsure of where to start, I would like to recommend ‘CrashCourse Sex Ed Episode 4: What is Gender Identity?’ (https://bit.ly/CrashCourseEp4). This short video walks you through the current understanding of gender and sex based on scientific research.
CrashCourse is hosted by a range of experts in their field. This particular series is hosted by Shan Boodram, an expert in Sexology, and is produced in partnership with the Kinsey Institute which is a reputable source in this subject. Each episode also contains a list of sources used in the video description, so you can factcheck anything you are unsure of.
Wren Argent
Musical note
In reading Tim Gee’s interesting article on Quakers and singing (‘On Song’, 4 April), I have one or two thoughts to share.
Instrumental music, which had been in use in Jewish worship in the Temple, was discontinued in all places of Jewish worship worldwide after the destruction of the Temple in 70AD, as an expression of national mourning. The earliest Christians, who worshipped alongside their fellow Jews in the synagogue, would have observed this same token of mourning. Hence, there was no need for an explicit ban on instruments in the written records of Primitive Christianity, since everyone would have understood this to be prohibited, and why. Singing, however, was continued, without musical accompaniment.
Clive Gordon
Comments
Simon Risley speaks to my condition.
By Robbie Spence on 17th April 2025 - 12:47
Quakers have had more publicity in the last month than at any time since Britain Yearly Meeting came out in support of same-sex marriage over ten years ago. This time it was about the arrests of six members of Youth Demand on 27 March at Westminster Meeting House.
Without wishing to comment on Youth Demand’s particular brand of resistance activism, I’d like to point out an inconsistency. Quakers are generally in favour of freedom of speech and speaking truth to power. However, since 2017 Quakers have shut down speech by people, mainly women, who sought to hire meeting spaces to raise awareness of the dangers of gender self-ID.
I attended Meeting for Worship on Sunday 30 March where a Friend ministered from Advices and Queries 33 - https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/chapter/1 -
“Are you alert to practices here and throughout the world which discriminate against people on the basis of who or what they are or because of their beliefs?”
How ironic to hear Quaker ministry about not discriminating against people on the basis of their beliefs. It was clearly aimed at the heavy-handed policing of freedom of speech by the state and completely unaware of the policing of freedom of speech within our own Meeting Houses.
I know of many individual Friends who have been side-lined, silenced and denigrated over the past five to ten years for our beliefs in perfectly ordinary facts of life about the binary and immutable nature of sex.
By Robbie Spence on 17th April 2025 - 12:50
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