Issue 04-12-2009
Featured Story
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‘Water is like gold’
The title was a statement by Esther Musili, Ukamba Christian Community Services (UCCS). Friends seem persuaded of the urgent need to prevent further global warming. What I wish to impress upon you is that while climate change is an issue of livelihoods, peace, security, comfort and, ultimately, survival – it…
Top Stories
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Seeing ourselves as others see us
The Good News: people have heard of the Quakers. The Bad News: a lot of them think we are fundamentalists. These were two of the conclusions drawn from a wide market research survey backed by Quaker Quest that may change how Friends tackle outreach in future. The research was organised…
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An invented people?
The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand, translated by Yael Lotan, Verso. 2009. ISBN: 978 1 84467 422 0. £18.99. Spanish Jews are largely descended from converted Berber tribes from North Africa; Yemenite Jews are descendents of an Arabian tribe; many Jews from Eastern Europe come from Turkic…
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Not all of one mind
Occupied Minds: A journey through the Israeli psyche by Arthur Neslen, Pluto Press. ISBN 0 7453 2365 0. £16.99. Who are the Israelis? We may think we know – proud, motivated Jews defending their right to a homeland. But is it true? Some of the people Arthur Neslen spoke to…
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What is our message?
Recently I was reading a 1936 edition of Studies in Quaker Thought and Practice in which Maurice L Rowntree writes: ‘George Fox did not set out to found a sect’, but he ‘came to see that disembodied spiritual movements cannot succeed and do a permanent work in the world’. We,…
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How do we make a new economy, and fast?
Woodbrooke was overflowing with representatives from Area Meetings at a conference about the future of economics, which followed up the day conference in London. It seems the most urgent task is for us to take our part in creating the new kind of economy, rather than engaging with the current…
All Articles
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Quaker online discussion group relaunched
Friends have been using a new version of the Quaker discussion forum at www.quaker.org.uk to share thoughts about Quaker worship and beliefs, Quaker work and running Quaker Meetings in Britain. This was launched with new ‘Advices and boundaries’ following concerns about how discussions on previous forums were moderated. The new… -
Quaker Business Conference 2009 – Looking at Success
What is success these days for Quakers in the business world? Over forty-five Friendly business people (seventy-five per cent in membership, twenty-five per cent in sympathy, with a further twenty-five people prevented) met on an evening and throughout the following day, for Quaker Business Conference 2009 to work this year’s… -
Cumbrian Quakers recovering from floods
Friends in west Cumbria are continuing to get back to normality following the flooding of the past two weeks. Keswick Meeting House was badly flooded but has been cleared of debris and is being disinfected and dried out with dehumidifiers. -
Quakers keep close eye on finances
As the shockwaves of the dramatic cuts made by American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) – which recently cut its staffing by a half, reduced wages and cancelled programmes around the world – continue to reverberate (6 November), Britain Yearly Meeting is working hard to ensure that such a situation is… -
Activists challenge Friends House Hospitality bookings
Anti-extremism campaigners have expressed concern about bookings at Friends House. The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) had invited a leading Hungarian far right MEP and ally of the British National Party, Krisztina Morvai, to speak at their conference later this month. This invitation was subsequently withdrawn following the withdrawal of Labour… -
Parliamentarians back armed forces recruitment age increase
For several years Quakers, with others, have campaigned against the recruitment of children into our armed forces, and expressed concern about the terms of their enlistment. November’s ‘Children’s Rights’ report by the parliamentary all-party joint committee on human rights (JCHR) concurs. -
What’s wrong with the picture?
The General Meeting for Scotland met for a residential weekend against a background of severe flooding across the UK and in a hydro-carbon dominated city: Aberdeen. Our hosts kicked the event off as we arrived on Friday night, 20 November, with a showing of the Franny Armstrong documentary The Age… -
Letters - 4 December 2009
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Music brings faiths together
The sound of music echoed around the Watermans Art Centre in Brentford, West London. Nothing unusual in that, except this struck a different chord. One after another, a Jewish cantor sang psalms, Hindus and then Sikhs sang the words of an ancient Indian poet, Christian choirs sang in Latin, English… -
Climate change prayer, and details about The Wave
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