Friends Journal

From our archives: Debbie Humphries & Diane Randall reflect: What does it mean to be called to public ministry within the Religious Society of Friends? What does it mean to submit to the discipline of the corporate community? What can monthly meetings do to respond to individual leadings of ministry?

Engaging with a Monthly Meeting about Ministry - Friends Journal What does it mean to be called to public ministry within the Religious Society of Friends? What does it mean…

HOW LONG, O LORD? That question weighed heavily on the mind of the 13th Psalm’s author. “How long will you hide your face from me?” David asked God. “How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”

Such anguish might have resonated with the earliest Friends, especially the ones who had been publicly tortured or thrown into prison—nevertheless, they (like David) continued to believe in God's steadfast love. We can learn from their example.

https://quaker.org/2026/06/22/my-heart-shall-rejoice/

What does God want? That’s one of Thomas Gates’s main concerns in Turning Toward the Victim. Our glib summation is that God wants us to be the best that we can be; more precisely, we should love God and love one another, of our own free will, as intently and as intensely as God loves us.

The Quaker framework of spiritual formation, Gates says, points us in that direction.

REVIEWED: Turning Toward the Victim: The Bible, Sacred Violence, and the End of Scapegoating in Quaker Perspective By Thomas Jay Gates. Wipf and Stock, 2025. 326 pages. $53/hardcover; $38/paperback or eBook. The French scholar René Girard developed…

"Our children and youth are not works in progress to help us get to some other place in the future that is better," Melinda Wenner Bradley advises.

"I yearn for a concern about younger generations to be woven across all our other interests and ministries, and for there to be greater support for those Friends called to religious education service."

How Do You Feel the Light Inside You? The ministry of religious education.

Quakers often have a wary relationship with the concept of theology, even though our faith is grounded in a belief in the ongoing presence of a Divine that speaks to us and guides us. "That's a fundamentally theological statement," says Christy Randazzo, the author of Divine Ecosystem.

The problem, they continue, is that Friends, relying on the example set by other spiritual traditions, often conflate theology with dogma.

The Mistake People Make About Quaker Theology - QuakerSpeak Quakers often have a wary relationship with the concept of theology, even though our faith is grounded in a belief…

From our archives: "For years," Micah Bales, a Quaker pastor in California, wrote, "I have lived with an ongoing tension: How can I make enough money to support myself and my family while at the same time being faithful to the full-time calling that God has put on my life?"

Free Ministry for All? - Friends Journal What happens when our free gospel ministry meets market economics?

Community requires compromise—and communities centered around the gods of this world, the world of Empire, require compromise with the gods of this world.

In this week's Look to the Light message, we consider the prophet Jeremiah: He tried to fit in; he tried to keep quiet. But once Spirit removed the veils from his eyes, he could no longer continue compromising. Silence ate him upside, “like a burning fire shut up in my bones.” And the earliest Quakers, millennia later, knew exactly how he felt.

https://quaker.org/2026/06/15/whenever-i-speak/

NEW PODCAST 🎧❗️Quakers Today co-hosts Peterson Toscano and Diana Yañez turn toward one of the largest and most difficult questions of the series: How do Friends live with integrity inside capitalism?

In this episode, Peterson names the friction many Friends feel: the sense of being trapped in a massive economic system built on extraction, inequity, colonialism, and environmental harm. With their guests, they examine the spiritual dissonance between Quaker values and capitalist structures—and rather than offering easy answers, they ask what it means to stay on a journey with truth.

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.

Kathleen Lonsdale came to Quakerism in her 30s and embraced her chosen faith with energy. From the 1940s through the 1960s, she delivered lectures and wrote papers on the importance of pacifism in our modern, messy, and often bloody world.

Thankfully, one of her most important publications, Is Peace Possible?, has just come back into print. Lonsdale’s pacifism was not the wispy notion of someone who strikes a liberal pose or embraces peace because it seems nice. For her, a scientist who had lived through two world wars and was writing during the Cold War, pacifism made simple sense.

REVIEWED: Is Peace Possible? Pacifism, Kathleen Lonsdale argued, wasn’t just morally right; it was also logical and essential for the preservation of humanity.