Friends Journal

"How might meetings for worship with attention to business be different," Hope Ascher wonders, "if we somehow decluttered our agendas and kept our focus on the spiritual life of the meeting?"

She's found that Jennifer Kavanagh's new Pendle Hill Pamphlet, Letting Go, offers answers to that (and similar queries) with each new reading.

REVIEWED: Letting Go: Steps in the Spiritual Life We are not helpless, Jennifer Kavanagh advises. We have gifts, abilities given for us to use in service of the Divine.

"The Church was not established to be changed or redesigned; it was established to be obeyed, regardless of our personal opinions," writes Gustavo Adolfo Recinos, who joined the Friends Evangelical Church in Guatemala in the 1980s. "It was not designed to satisfy our preferences but to instruct us—and at times to discipline us. It should be loved like the anvil upon which red-hot iron is forged through repeated blows, becoming both refined and immensely useful."

The Renewal of Our Spiritual Schooling - Friends Journal Fostering a wisdom of peace in Guatemala.

In 2023, nearly 20 Ukrainians gathered in Poland for a two-week workshop organized by Friends Peace Teams and Alternatives to Violence Project. After nearly two years of brutal warfare following Russia’s invasion, even the most experienced Ukrainian facilitators admitted that the war had deeply shaken their belief in nonviolence. One described this belief as a bright Light that had almost gone out.

But during the workshop the Light was rekindled.

Learning the Art of Presence A workshop for justice and peace in Ukraine.

Tom Weiner and Amilcar Shabazz's In Defiance offers twenty profiles in abolitionist courage, many of whom were influenced by their proximity to and knowledge of Quakerism.

REVIEWED: In Defiance: 20 Abolitionists You Were Never Taught in School Twenty profiles in defiant abolitionist courage, many of whom were influenced by their proximity to and knowledge of Quakerism.

In the latest Quakers Today podcast, Peterson Toscano and Diana Yañez learn that reparations are about living amends—transforming our economic relationships and material conditions so that historical and ongoing racialized violence cannot be repeated.

Together with guests Anthony “Ant” Smith and Lucy Duncan of Reparation Works, Peterson and Diana examine how one Philadelphia Quaker community used half a million dollars to put faith into practice.

Quaker Podcast - Podcast Exploring Quaker Life & Religious Beliefs Quakers Today, hosted by Peterson Toscano, features writers, musicians, and thinkers who are seeking wisdom and understanding in a rapidly changing world.

In his 2005 essay "The Burden of the Gospels," Wendell Berry turned to a promise Jesus makes as he unpacks the parable of the good shepherd: “I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)

He noted that Jesus doesn’t offer his followers greater abundance IN life. No, instead of material wealth, Jesus invites us to a greater abundance OF life—a life filled with greater joy, greater peace, and above all greater love.

https://quaker.org/2026/09/14/live-manner-worthy-gospel/

The nineteenth-century Friend Abby Hopper Gibbons’s letters and journal illustrate her strong personality and advocacy for justice, even when it challenged assumptions of the day—especially as related to equitable treatment of and recognition for the full humanity of Black people, whether enslaved or free.

REVIEWED: Mercy in Disaster: Abby Hopper Gibbons’s Journals and Letters from Four Years of Civil War Nursing The writings of a Civil War-era Quaker showcase a time of civil disorder and upheaval and reveal how to tangibly care for those caught in crisis.

"It’s such a tangible way of living into our peace testimony and our community testimony," Scotty Utz says of his work breaking fi****ms down into scrap metal that then gets transformed into gardening tools. "I feel so fortunate that all these different strands of my life have sort of come together and brought me into this place—feels like a real blessing."

Turning Weapons into Peace: A Talk with Scotty Utz - Friends Journal A conversation with Scotty Utz, author of “Forging Peace and Disarming Hearts: Inside the Guns to Gardens Movement.” In this…

"Why must I defend conscientious objection and convince good people of the evils of war and violence?" Andrew Gorby asks. "Violence lurking, stalking, and controlling: how many times do we need to hear the same version of death and war to understand the viciousness and inhumanity?"

We Must Sing Our Laments Together On conscientious objection to a world of violence.