Issue 23-10-2009
Featured Story
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Advices, queries and the database state
There must be something about the Quaker determination to focus on injustice and do something constructive and compassionate about it which accounts for the Society’s extraordinary record on social justice and civil liberties. I am still only now learning about the scope and detail of that history, but every week…
Top Stories
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New film highlights inspiring Quaker work in Rwanda
Staff at Friends House in London last week previewed ICYIZERE:hope, a moving and provocative documentary by Patrick Mureithi about a Rwandan Quaker initiative that brings together survivors and perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. The film, still a work in progress, features a three-day workshop entitled Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities.…
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The children of Theresienstadt
The combined ghetto and concentration camp at Theresienstadt (in what is now the Czech Republic) housed many prominent Jewish artists, writers, composers and intellectuals. Its rich cultural life was exploited by the Nazis who presented it to the Red Cross as a model community, even producing a propaganda film in…
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Friends ‘stand up’ to fight world poverty
Friends across the country ‘stood up’ last weekend as part of the three day Stand Up campaign coordinated worldwide by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) movement. As well as the symbolic act of literally standing up, repeated in homes, public spaces, schools and churches around the world,…
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Union branch backs Friends’ same-sex marriage decision
A branch of the Unite trade union has passed a resolution supporting Britain Yearly Meeting’s minute regarding same-sex marriages, and pushing for its principles to be enshrined in British law. Secretary Mary O’Brien described the LE/524 branch as ‘a large voluntary sector branch which has most of the national charities… -
Quakers prepare to launch new ‘inreach’ materials
Becoming Friends, a specially developed education programme for new Friends and enquirers, has now successfully completed trial runs in Meetings across the country and is ready to launch in early 2010. It came about as a joint enterprise between Quaker Life of Britain Yearly Meeting and Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre…
All Articles
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Actor inspires students at school
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Terry Waite welcomes charity to new home in the neighbourhood
Staff, supporters, volunteers, trustees and partners of Quaker Social Action (QSA) gathered last week to watch Terry Waite open the east London charity’s new premises in Bethnal Green. Waite, who has recently become a Quaker, spoke movingly of the problems that affect those at the bottom of the economic ladder… -
Is applause Quakerly?
A recent Hampstead Meeting I attended finished with a musical performance by a group of children and adults that elicited a ripple of applause, which was publicly reproved after the Meeting by the clerk who read out the week’s announcements. When I asked her why she had done so she… -
Inclusion? Or equality?
Sue Jarvis, in her piece on ‘Inclusion’ (16 October) describes the first and later visits of three people ‘with special needs’ to Doncaster Meeting. They came for a ‘few weeks’. She and they found that we have nothing clear and simple that would tell them what they want to know… -
Debate: helpful or not?
There’s nothing like a good debate to clarify positions. The wits are sharpened, the arguments refined and defined, and we finish with a clearer idea of where we stand. This is democracy’s gift to us. Or is it? In one of her many thoughtful explorations of religions, Karen Armstrong looks… -
Letters - 23 October 2009
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Cole Sahib: Quaker educationist
Cole Sahib: The Story of a Multifaith Journey by Owen Cole. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN: 9781845193362. £16.95. ‘This story has three intertwining strands. One is my deep interest in religious education from 1954 onwards… until now; the second is the multifaith journey that I have travelled since about 1968; and… -
Spreading the equality message
Earlier in the year the Friend carried a review of an important new book The Spirit Level: Why equal societies almost always do better. The authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett are professional academics who present their research in a very serious way. Then in March there was an offer… -
Carrying on the spirit of The Retreat
Bloomfield Care Centre, the mental hospital and nursing home owned and managed by Irish Friends, has recently completed its phase 2 development at Stocking Lane in the hills south of Dublin. The official opening was performed by Mary Harney, minister of health, and the launch included a short Meeting for… -
An Englishman in New York
Some of what you hear about America is true. Things are big. The cars are big. Ridiculously big, very shiny and a deep black, and with shaded out windows, of course. They are imposing monstrosities. In most British cities, the number of pedestrians attempting to cross a road can force…
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