Useful theology from a Quaker-shaped Christian
In May 2019, the annual Swarthmore Lecture was given by Eden Grace, a member of New England Yearly Meeting and Director of Global Ministries for Friends United Meeting (FUM). Eden’s lecture was entitled ‘On earth as it is in heaven: The Kingdom of God and the yearning of creation.’ I’m blogging my reflections on the lecture, chapter by… Continue reading Reading the 2019 Swarthmore Lecture – Ch 2: Staying low
In May 2019, the annual Swarthmore Lecture was given by Eden Grace, a member of New England Yearly Meeting and Director of Global Ministries for Friends United Meeting (FUM). Eden’s lecture was entitled ‘On earth as it is in heaven: The Kingdom of God and the yearning of creation.’ I'm blogging my reflections on the lecture, chapter by… Continue reading Reading the 2019 Swarthmore Lecture – Ch 1: The Kingdom is come and coming
In May 2019, the annual Swarthmore Lecture was given by Eden Grace, a member of New England Yearly Meeting and Director of Global Ministries for Friends United Meeting (FUM). Eden's lecture was entitled 'On earth as it is in heaven: The Kingdom of God and the yearning of creation.' This lecture set out a solid,… Continue reading Reading the 2019 Swarthmore Lecture – Introduction
Hello Jolly Quaker readers. I hope you've had a good summer. Mine's been busy, often too busy, but full of things to be thankful for. Here's a short update about my blog and the plans I have for it. You may have noticed that I've posted very infrequently over the last year. That's because I've… Continue reading An update from Jolly Quaker
From 24-27 May, Quakers in Britain met to consider issues of privilege, diversity and inclusion and climate justice. You can read the Epistle here. Friends who were hoping for clear decisions to made, or actions to be agreed upon, may be disappointed. Some may worry that the gathering constituted a lot of 'naval gazing'. To… Continue reading No shortcut to the Kingdom: Reflections from Britain Yearly Meeting 2019
As a Christian Quaker living in a post-Christian Quaker culture, I'm occasionally called upon to explain my Christianity to my fellow Quakers. I recently did this by saying 'Jesus is the key that unlocks my experience of the world'. I was then asked 'could you say more about that?', and I didn't really have an… Continue reading Jesus the key to my experience
In the last few months, I have become increasingly involved in diversity and inclusion work within the Quaker community. Although challenging and emotionally demanding, this work is bringing lots of really important questions to the fore. One cluster of questions that has emerged is: Is Christianity by its very nature exclusive? Is a universalist Quakerism… Continue reading Does Jesus exclude?
I recently helped organise and co-facilitate a British Quaker diversity and inclusion national gathering at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. It was challenging and rewarding in equal measure, and I've put together some thoughts on the event for the Woodbrooke blog, which you can read here.
Dear readers and followers of Jolly Quaker, 2018 has been a quieter year on the blog than I'd anticipated, and I haven't produced the bumper crop of posts I'd hoped for, but in many ways this has been a good year for the blog behind the scenes. I'm still operating on the principle that when… Continue reading Thank you to my readers in 2018
This is a theological 'threshing'. In the Quaker tradition, threshing is a lively process of getting to the heart of an issue, separating the wheat from the chaff. When a theological problem bugs me, I want to thresh it out! I may not come up with an answer, but hopefully I'll bring out some important… Continue reading Do Quakers have souls?
Jolly Quaker 