The Friend

Critical to peace: Lindsey Fielder Cook hears from a Gazan

‘I’m writing this to you while starving.’

She writes to me from Gaza. A young woman: intelligent, professional, recently engaged to her love. Her name is Serena. 

Look who’s talking: Mark Russ wants an end to Quaker transphobia

With our reputation as peacemakers and generally good people, Quakers have a tendency to think that if we just keep listening to one another, if we keep space open for dialogue and debate, we’ll eventually arrive at a place of unity. Discussion of different views is seen as healthy and inclusive. But is this the case when the words we use are actively harmful? Some Quakers in Britain today continue to question the legitimacy of trans identities in the name of protecting cis women and children. They insist that debate and dialogue should be ongoing, that room be continually made for their anti-trans views. Resistance to their demands is met with accusations of voices being silenced, beliefs being policed, and ministry being suppressed.

Housedogs in the elsewhere: Damian Entwistle offers an inclusive theology of sex and gender

Sadly, much of what mainstream institutional Christian churches have to say about persons who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or non-binary, bears as much likeness to the gospel proclamation of Good News as crumbs do to the feast on the banquet table. LGBTQ+ persons have been seen as curs in G-d’s commonwealth. 

A Quaker book? Stephen Cox opens the doors

I own the 1883 Christian Discipline of the Society of Friends, and a stern Victorian voice it is too. Castigating all sorts of diversions – like musical entertainments – it says that ‘books may be regarded as companions’, with a clear inference that the sceptical or entertaining should be shown the door.

Poem: A small village in Suffolk

At the end of the lane is the end of the line,
a front line – and to rational actors, a line
in the sand. It was once, just a lane – pitted, rutted.
Before host nation cared, before the tack tarmac
laden trucks backed up one morning, without warning.