Rachel Shabi. Photo: By Mike Pinches for BYM.
The Middle East: A moral catastrophe?
The 2026 Salter Lecture, given by Rachel Shabi
Rachel Shabi seemed genuinely moved to be asked by Quakers to present this year’s Salter Lecture. Indeed, she began not in the present crisis in the Middle East, but with Alfred and Ada Salter – Quakers whose lives of patient, principled service had modelled what it means to live universal values with moral consistency. Their witness reminded us, she said, that transformation rarely comes through grand gestures, but through steady faithfulness: small acts of justice, repeated without weariness. From there, Rachel traced a thread forward to modern voices such as Angela Davis and Ruha Benjamin, both insisting that a better world must be imagined before it can be built, and that care enacted locally can ripple outward.
