Tag Archives ⇒ Britain Yearly Meeting

UK Quakers will not profit from the occupation of Palestine

November 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

British Friends become first church in UK to pull invest­ments in com­pa­nies prof­it­ing from the occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine. From record­ing clerk Paul Parker:

As Quak­ers, we seek to live out our faith through every­day actions, includ­ing the choic­es we make about where to put our mon­ey. We believe strong­ly in the pow­er of legit­i­mate, non­vi­o­lent, demo­c­ra­t­ic tools such as moral­ly respon­si­ble invest­ment to realise pos­i­tive change in the world. We want to make sure our mon­ey and ener­gies are instead put into places which sup­port our com­mit­ments to peace, equal­i­ty and justice. 

As you’d might expect, there’s been back­lash. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has con­demned Britain Year­ly Meet­ing’s deci­sion as a “biased and petu­lant act.”.


Quakers will not profit from the occupation of Palestine

Quak­ers will not prof­it from the occu­pa­tion of Palestine 

Quak­ers in Britain has today become the first church in the UK to announce it will not invest…

Quakers Quakers 

Paul Parker: 5 ways to make Quaker meeting houses work for the future

August 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The record­ing clerk of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing looks at five ways we can keep our wor­ship spaces active and visible:

We can often get very loy­al to our meet­ing places, and I think that’s nat­ur­al. We’ve often had some of our most pro­found per­son­al expe­ri­ences there. They are impor­tant places of com­mu­ni­ty and wor­ship, and they can and do work hard for us. But our loy­al­ty to them does­n’t mean that they’re going to work for every­one, and if they’re not going to become ‘steeple hous­es’, then I think it’s impor­tant that we look at them every now and again and ask our­selves some questions. 

http://www.quaker.org.uk/blog/5‑ways-to-make-quaker-meeting-houses-work-for-the-future

The Rise of Liberal Quakerism

May 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son is nerd­ing deep into Quak­er his­to­ry, specif­i­cal­ly the process in which younger mem­bers of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing start­ed for­mu­lat­ing a new kind of Quak­erism. Here’s his explana­to­ry intro­duc­tion and here is part 2:

Mean­while, mem­ber­ship dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly, as meet­ings applied dis­ci­pline increas­ing­ly rig­or­ous­ly for walk­ing dis­or­der­ly in all man­ner of ways. In 1859, a prize of one hun­dred pounds was offered by an anony­mous British Friend for the essay that best explained this decline and that offered the most promis­ing solutions

The process was any­thing but overnight. As I under­stand the his­to­ry it would be anoth­er half cen­tu­ry from the prize to a yearly-meeting-wide shift. I don’t think many Friends in Eng­land appre­ci­ate just how Evan­gel­i­cal their year­ly meet­ing has become in these years; their refusal to rec­og­nize Amer­i­can Hick­sites led to the lat­ter’s shun­ning from the world Quak­er fam­i­ly and meant mod­ernist Quak­er respons­es would evolve on large­ly sep­a­rate paths.

I won­der if British Friend William Pol­lard will make an appear­ance in Steven’s posts. I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed how Philadel­phia Hick­sites took to him despite the for­mal insti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers. [Update: Steven just dropped part three and there’s Pol­lard!]

The Rise of Lib­er­al Quak­erism — Part 2

Words and Wounds: Reflections from Britain Yearly Meeting

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Words and Wounds: Reflec­tions from Britain Year­ly Meeting

I was par­tic­u­lar­ly moved by the pres­ence of our inter­na­tion­al Quak­er vis­i­tors. To trav­el all that way just for our lit­tle gath­er­ing! It struck me that, when we say ‘our diver­si­ty is our strength’, this must include all the ways that Quak­erism is expressed through­out the world. It must even include those expres­sions of Quak­erism that make us uncom­fort­able. For our diver­si­ty to tru­ly be our strength we must pay a price, and that price is the need to have deep and dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions with each oth­er, face to face, about what we hold most dear.

Words and Wounds: Reflec­tions from Britain Year­ly Meeting