QuakerQuaker

Vice.com covers war tax resistance, quotes Quakers

Whatever you do, whichever amount of risk you choose to accept, at least consider something that [Quaker] Hartsough told me: “We all have a responsibility to listen to our own conscience, and if that lands us in jail or means economic hardship, that’s not as bad as the curse of having killed people.”

Emerging Diane: Do we really want community? A woman's view

Diane reacts to Micah Bales’s “Do We Really Want Community”

We can hardly build a new community without being conscious—acutely so—of what has gone before. Even in Quaker circles, which tend to be less sexist than the wider society, the unconscious sexism we have all internalized ought to be addressed.

Generous Grasp Paul on Friends and money and opportunities

How do we handle (and talk about) the money in our midst?

Quakers are lousy when it comes to talking about money. We’re lousy about asking for it, lousy about handling it as a group, and worst of all, lousy about admitting we have it. In my experience, many Quakers treat money as if it were some filthy thing, and never own up to having much.

Michael Jay: Simplicity and culture

Isn’t going along with our culture’s love of money the simpler option?

Christian simplicity is challenging in this culture, not because our culture is complex but because our culture is simple. Because wealth is held as the highest good, and as the source of our salvation, it is very difficult for people to break away from the culture and trust God.

George Amoss Jr: Only Love Remains

Does Paul’s letter to Corinthians still need God?

But for us, too, love does not fail. We do not need theistic faith, nor do we need hope for a new world, in order to love. Love is the ground of our identity-in-relationship.

Justimore Musombi: Reconciling My Faith With Being Gay

A personal story from a Kenyan Friend

Even though I was saved and had the assurance of eternal salvation, I believed I was all alone and I felt that God hated me for being gay and that I would go to hell.

Olivia on QQ: The call to inaction

How do we know if our calls to action are spirit-led?

What gives us the sense that we already know what the work is that needs doing and are just supposed to aim straight toward doing it? These questions are not as rhetorical as they sound.

Michael Resman on heaven

A mystical take on the simplicity of God and love.

God is love. God loves me. Two simple sentences, only three words each. When fully embraced, they are big enough to encircle our lives. What bliss! What perfection!

More on spiritual leadings from Ashley Wilcox

Leadings can start off deceptively simple:

At the beginning of a leading, everything feels easy and rightly ordered. I am afraid, of course, because I am taking on something new, but I also have a deep sense of joy. As I go on and follow that leading, things become harder.

ReleasingMinistry.org profiles Marcelle Martin

The story of a contemporary Quaker ministry:

I felt called to stop teaching college writing classes and give all my time to teaching people how to know God more clearly and  allow the Spirit to change their lives, as mine had been changed.