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submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

"Quakers are a byword for quietness and—given that many people still confuse them with the Amish—for restraint, purity, and 'properness,'" Kate Fox says. "But I am finding attending the meetings thrilling. The hour brings me entirely alive."

submitted 11 hours ago • 1 comment

"Taking care to enlarge our circles, to make room for more in what we think of as our Quaker family, is a task to which Spirit is calling us," Gabriel Ehri writes in his introduction to this month's issue dedicated to neurodiversity among Quakers.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

This is an excellent piece on what we can learn from dissenting traditions’ relationship to the state, and groups that “cultivated the kind of imagination that refused to let the future be preordained”

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

"Oaths are promises that fetter us to the state’s way of organizing the world through coercion and violence... Oaths barricade against the possibility for transformation because swearing them binds us to a fixed way of interpreting reality."— @melissaf-b.bsky.social in @christiancentury.bsky.social

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

"Should we now be sensible of what [God] requires of us, and through a respect to the outward interest of some persons... neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy[,] it may be that by terrible things in righteousness God may answer us in this matter.” Woolman's warning remains relevant!

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Quakers took up the cause of abolition, but not all at once; Friends like Benjamin Lay and John Woolman were often not embraced by others because of their testimonies. Daquanna Harrison invites us to identify similarly radical Friends today—and asks if we can say we stand in solidarity with them.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Daniel Hunter has been doing a lot of interviews since his "10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now that Trump Has Won" article went viral late last year. During one of them, he suddenly realized that he was no longer just working for justice alongside Friends... he had become one himself.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Quakers win a preliminary judgement on stopping ICE enforcement at meetinghouses. Unfortunately the judge didn't extend this to all house of worship, at least for now. @friendsjournal.org .

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

If any of us had been through what Peter experienced at the Transfiguration, we'd likely scramble to make sense of it just as he did—and if we’d just spent several months on an immersive spiritual journey, we'd probably leap straight to the divine for an explanation, too. quaker.org/2025/02/24/a...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Well, this is certainly an encouraging way to start the week.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

A really wonderful episode. ♥️✨️

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

🎧NEW Quakers Today podcast! In this month's episode, @petersontoscano.bsky.social and Miche McCall explore the deep connections between Quaker spirituality, nature, and Indigenous wisdom.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

"You did not choose me," Jesus told his disciples, "but I chose you." What if we find the idea that God has chosen us terrifying? What if we try to convince ourselves that God must have gotten it wrong, that we can’t possibly do whatever God has called us to do? quaker.org/2025/02/17/y...

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

In her latest book, Grace Ji-Sun Kim asks why God is so often portrayed as a White man and how a White Jesus came to dominate the Christian imagination. She discusses the damage caused by these portrayals and offers us a more liberated understanding of God, free of worldly hierarchy.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

More frequent and severe natural disasters that result from climate change take human lives, cause homelessness, and threaten people’s health, both physical and mental. Quakers around the world are drawing on their spiritual resources to respond to climate-related calamities.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Decolonizing Quakers is doing some fantastic work toward healing relationships with indigenous communities; I encourage fellow Quakers to get involved with them, in addition to figuring out ways we can build relationships (through our own meetings) with indigenous groups in our local communities.

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

As Friends have become more aware of evils carried out within Indigenous boarding schools run by the U.S. and Canadian governments and religious institutions, including Quakers, Alaska Friends Conference has taken several steps in recent years toward healing and repair, Jan Bronson reports.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

A Ministry of Risk contains a wide range of Philip Berrigan’s writings, arranged chronologically so readers can follow his personal evolution from conventional priest to radical activist. The collection offers, Robert Levering writes, "a powerful picture of a twentieth-century prophet."

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

Quakers in late 17-century England must have seen in Jeremiah’s warnings to Israel a mirror of the chaos following the overthrow of the Stuarts. And, like the prophet, they warned: "Hadst thou, oh Nation, walked in the Light of the Lord, it had been better with thee." quaker.org/2025/02/10/l...

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Here's a Spanish-language version of today's story on the latest lawsuit by religious groups against the Trump administration. www.friendsjournal.org/la-conferenc...

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Opposing immigration enforcement in houses of worship, Friends General Conference joined an interfaith lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and two of its enforcement agencies, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

Bridget Moix, general secretary of @fcnl.bsky.social, poses three queries in Forging Beloved Community with Friends: What will be forged in us and through us from today’s crucible? What is the great refiner’s fire exposing in us? And how can it transform us and our world to new possibilities?

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

UPDATED: New England Yearly Meeting Secretary Noah Merrill talks to Friends Journal about NEYM's decision to join other Quakers in a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, which he hopes can be "an encouragement—to Friends and many beyond—in these troubled times we have been given."

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Several Quakers in Los Angeles County lost their homes and possessions in January's wildfires. Other Friends did not suffer material losses but found themselves emotionally shaken. Sharlee DiMenichi reports on how Quakers in the region have offered each other practical and spiritual support.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

In his family history, Os Cresson found "over 1,550 people enslaved by 246 of my close relatives—counting Quaker and non-Quaker grandparents, uncles, aunts, and first cousins with their spouses." But his family's story is also the story of Friends being led to recognize the imperative of abolition.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

"In 2022, burnt out from the slow pace of social justice, I realized that I was beyond my measure: doing far too much and some of it not in the right spirit. From worship, I discerned (individually and with others) that I needed to take a break from half of what I was doing."

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

I had a nice interview with Wisconsin Friend Kat Griffith. She actually loves going door-to-door in her "purple" district and talking politics to strangers. She's a wonderful storyteller and it was hard not to laugh as she talked about some of these adventures (spoiler: she's far braver than I am!).

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

Kat Griffith joins FJ senior editor @martinkelley.com to discuss "Rhapsody in Purple," where she shares some of the things she's learned canvassing door-to-door in a politically mixed community.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

With the climate emergency drawing together all the threads of inequality and injustice from centuries of colonial and economic oppression, Ashley Dawson's ambitious Environmentalism from Below contends that we need to look to Indigenous communities for wisdom on the path to a sustainable future.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

New York Yearly Meeting (I don't think they're on the Bluesky yet, but somebody feel free to tap them in if I'm wrong) has now joined the lawsuit against DHS as a co-plaintiff. We're keeping an eye on this story; when we can publish something, I'll be sure to let you know!

submitted 26 days ago • 1 comment

Robin Wall Kimmerer imagines a system where resources circulate through communities, creating webs of independence that nourish both humans and nature. Her latest book, The Serviceberry, is "like a beautiful poem filled with love," says Ruah Swennerfelt.

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

Los cuáqueros están demandando al Departamento de Seguridad Nacional de Estados Unidos (DHS por sus siglas en inglés) para evitar las posibles redadas de inmigración en lugares de culto. (Quakers are suing the Department of Homeland Security over potential immigration raids at houses of worship.)

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

God draws near to us for judgment, and—as Friends have recounted through the centuries—judgment feels like being thrown into a refiner’s fire: all our comfort, all our complacency, utterly annihilated. Who, Malachi asked, could bear to live through that? quaker.org/2025/02/03/w...

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

"Maybe it is a weird quirk that I actually like going door-to-door to talk to complete strangers about politics," Kat Griffith muses. "[But] occasional unpleasant moments weigh so much less than the moments of unexpected connection and even intimacy with people I might never have met any other way."

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Your voice mail message could wind up being played at the end of our next podcast!

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

In May 2025, we'll focus on Housing and Homelessness. Housing insecurity—brought on by economic conditions and climate crisis, among other factors—has millions of people struggling to hang on to the homes they have, while others find themselves unhoused. Our deadline for this issue is February 17.

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment

"If you are a Quaker who wants to get involved and wants to participate in the issue of immigration," Pedro Rios, the director of AFSC's U.S.–Mexico Border Program, advised in this 2015 video, "begin with your local Meeting or begin with local organizations that you are already in contact with."

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

"True my eye and keep it squared, focused on the one fact that matters, in whose name pray we all." —from "True My Eye" by Mike Wilson

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Peterson's the co-host of our monthly Quakers Today podcast. This month's episode is about how the ways Friends manage financial resources can be a testimony of our faith. Have a listen!

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Last week, Donald Trump attended a prayer service at the National Cathedral led by the Episcopal bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. You may have heard. A reading from the prophet Isaiah may help us understand the significance of her message & the inevitability of his response. quaker.org/2025/01/27/w...

submitted 34 days ago • 2 comments

Quakers are suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, arguing that their religious liberty is violated by the Trump administration’s January 20 rescindment of protections for people without legal status in “sensitive locations” such as places of worship.

submitted 35 days ago • 1 comment

"Central Philadelphia Meeting finds itself with a significant endowment that its members had no hand in creating but are now responsible for stewarding," Arlene Kelly and Pamela Haines report. "Over the years, we have had various opportunities to reach for integrity as we engage with money."

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

The 2012 sale of the New England Friends Home in Hingham, Massachusetts, provided New England Yearly Meeting of Friends with an abundance of $1,100,000 net proceeds—and the challenge of discerning what God was calling them to do with it.

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

We're looking for writers!

submitted 36 days ago • 1 comment