The Friend is a weekly magazine in which Friends speak to each other and to the wider world, offering their insight, ideas, news, nurture and inspiration.
Nurturing Quaker community, each issue offers a space for Friends to share their concerns, and to support each other in faith and witness.
The Friend: enriching, inspiring and connecting the Quaker community since 1843.
We are all afraid of dying, some more than others. The pain we might suffer, but, more particularly, anxiety about disappearing: what happens to me – the conscious me?
There is a particular kind of grief that comes to a parent second-hand, not felt in one’s own body, but absorbed entirely through a child’s. I have known this grief. My son, when he was a boy in a Korean primary school, once came home and asked me to dye his hair black. His hair was, and is, a warm dark brown, the colour it had been since birth. I asked him why he wanted to change it. He told me that his classmates said he could not be Korean. Real Koreans, they told him, have black hair. He had explained, patiently and more than once, that his father was Korean. It made no difference. ‘I want to be a real Korean someday,’ he said to me.
The memorial Meeting for the Quaker peace activist John Lynes was held at Hastings Friends’ Meeting House on 9 May 2026. John fundamentally changed me during the brief time I spent with him in the occupied Palestinian Territories in 2005.
The commercial division of Quakers in Britain (formerly known as Quiet Company) is one of the most quietly influential Quaker businesses in the UK. At Friends House, the team runs a thriving conferencing and events business, the Quaker Bookshop, and the much-loved Seed Café. At Swarthmoor Hall, the team oversees the house, accommodation, conferencing, café, and shop.
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has told the new prime minister two things this month: halt Rosebank, and shift investment away from fossil fuels.
Bold. Clear. Prophetic, even – the kind of testimony Friends have always been good at delivering to other people.
This is one of the most beautiful and most meaningful films I have ever seen. It is an account of the life of a conscientious objector by the renowned filmmaker Terrence Malick. It is also a love story, about the Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter, who refused to fight for the Nazis.
Bring me a piece
Of the meal you are eating.
Share please a sip,
Of the cup you are drinking.
Become a subscriber to enjoy unlimited access to our articles, dating back to 2009! Online subscribers get the Friend to their inbox each week, can comment on articles, and dive into our 1914-18 digital archive too!
Whether you are new to Quakerism or have been going to Meeting for years, you’ll find something here to inspire, inform and challenge you.
News | Views | Reviews
Written by and for Friends on the bench
Subscribe