Letters - 05 June 2026

On song

My three-year-old son attended Yearly Meeting, where Tim Gee led All-Age Worship with some songs. The children’s program had practised the day before. Since coming home, my son has asked to listen to the ‘Riverside song from Meeting with the nice man’. We have been listening to it for days, on continuous repeat. He absolutely loves it! So thank you!

Becky Riddell

Doing all right

Keith Braithwaite (Letters, 29 May) says there are ‘right’ opinions for Quakers. I agree.

For example, in 1727 London Yearly Meeting censured slave trading. Quakers believe slave trading is wrong. I hope Keith does not disagree. I hope there would indeed be social exclusion for a Friend who expressed a view contrary to this minute.

Ceri Morgan (Letters, 22 May) is welcome among Quakers. We recognise, or most of us do, that Ceri is expressing her inner light, her true self. Again, I hope Keith agrees, and that there would be social exclusion for a Friend who expressed a contrary view.

Quakers stand against the orthodoxy of Trump’s USA and Putin’s Russia, and, alas, apparently Starmer’s Britain, not only on authoritarian suppression, but also on trans people, who only want to live our lives as ourselves. I was delighted to see the Australian appeal court stand against this orthodoxy. I hope Keith will stand against it too.

Abigail Maxwell

Pole positions

In the discussion on the Friend’s website following the report of the Swarthmore Lecture, Keith Braithwaite says he prefers the ‘effective’ contributions of John Woolman to the ‘obnoxious street theatre’ of Benjamin Lay. Woolman was inspired as a younger man by Lay, but took a very different, Quietist approach to his abolitionism. The Pokeberry juice Lay used in the bladder he exploded is highly toxic to dogs and cats. It also stains indelibly. Wouldn’t want to get it in one’s eyes. And, Lays’ practice of inviting children to his cave and keeping them there after dark while their frantic parents searched for them didn’t exactly endear him to his Quaker neighbors, no matter how visceral a message about slavery it sent. 

Lay had a large library and was sought out by two other notable Benjamins: Franklin and West. Franklin appreciated Lay’s understanding of philosophy; West had his studio paint Lay’s portrait.  

Lay’s legacy is complex, and Woolman’s equally so (leaving his wife to run the farm alone for months on end). To my mind they each represent the polarities so aptly described by Stuart Masters in his talk. I appreciate being able to define and contrast the lives of these two early Friends as equal parts of our Society and its traditions.

George Schaefer