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the Friend

INDEPENDENT QUAKER JOURNALISM SINCE 1843

CONTENTS – VOL 167 NO 50 3 Copenhagen cop-out 4 Meeting for Sufferings 5 Quakers ‘wave’ at the world 6 19.21 revisited

Roger Seal 7 Comment

Jo Fisher and Tim Crump 8-9 Letters 10-11 Spirituality: the forgotten dimension

Laurie Michaelis 12 Hard Rain

Rowena Loverance 13 The fruits of conversation

Jez Smith 14 To evict or not to evict?

Emma Green 16 Qeyewitness 17 Friends & Meetings

Quaker essayists are thriving The art of essay writing is alive and well! An overwhelming 105 entries for the Friend’s Quarterly Prize Essay have been received, all addressing the theme: ‘The future of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain.’

The Prize has excited a lot of interest and the response is far greater than expected.

The Review Panel is grateful to all entrants and its task now is to determine who should be granted the two prizes of £1,000 and £500.

Publication of entries is being considered so that new thinking can be made available to all, but authors’ consent will be sought first.

After looking at the pile of MSS and wondering what he had unleashed, Tony Stoller, FQ editor, said: ‘The entries represent a vast corpus of ideas about the present and future of Quakers in Britain. It’s humbling but assessing them will be a wonderful challenge.’

Cover image: Living Witness Project banner at The Wave. See page 5. Photo: Andrew Rendle.

Equality Bill raises hopes of a religious character for civil partnership ceremonies

There is a possibility of significant movement on same-sex marriage within the next few months.

Quakers are hoping to have an amendment added to the Equality Bill currently before the UK Parliament that would remove the bans on religious words and premises being used in civil partnership ceremonies and allow the use of Quaker registering officers. However, achieving full equality for same sex marriages would take much longer – according to Michael Bartlet, Britain Yearly Meeting parliamentary liaison secretary,

‘that is something we’re not going to see this side of an election and probably not for five to ten years.’

General Meeting for Scotland was formally asked to take forward Quaker concerns with the devolved Scottish authorities: two relevant petitions are currently before the Scottish Parliament. Meetings are also planned between with the UK justice minister Maria Eagle and with other sympathetic religious groups, particularly the Unitarians and Liberal Judaism.

See other Meeting for Sufferings reports on page 4.

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Editorial

Editor: Judy Kirby

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the Friend 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ Tel: 020 7663 1010 Fax: 020 7663 1182 www.thefriend.org Editor: Judy Kirby editorial@thefriend.org • Production editor: Jez Smith jez@thefriend.org • Sub-editor: Trish Carn trishc@thefriend.org • Arts editor: Rowena Loverance arts@thefriend.org • Environment editor: Laurie Michaelis green@thefriend.org • Subscriptions officer: Penny Dunn subs@thefriend.org Tel: 020 7663 1178 • Advertisement manager: George Penaluna, Ad department, 54a Main Street, Cononley, Keighley BD20 8LL Tel: 01535 630230 ads@thefriend.org • Clerk of the trustees: A David Olver • ISSN: 0016-1268 The Friend Publications Limited is a registered charity, number 211649 • Printed by Headley Bros Ltd, Queens Road, Ashford, Kent TN24 8HH

the Friend, 11 December 2009