Basingstoke Quakers

03/06/2026

Sharing the Quaker message today does not mean sharing it [only] in English. It means carrying it in French, from Burundi Yearly Meeting to Madagascar. Or standing in Kenya, telling of your faith as a Bolivian Friend in Aymara to be translated into Spanish and then into English and then whispered into Luragoli for the old Friend in the back row! Those who carry the Quaker message today are not only those who worry about whether sanctions against South Africa are right or wrong. Quakers today are the victims of violence and racism in Soweto. Quakers today are not simply watching pictures of famine on their televisions; they are farming the inhospitable altiplano in Bolivia; they are facing drought in Turkana.

Val Ferguson, 1987
Quaker Faith and Practice 28.12

03/06/2026

Simple melodies and words sung over and over can be extraordinarily powerful, especially when each chant emerges from and returns to deep silence. Become part of a sacred river of sound and silence, trusting the current to take you where you need to go.
For more information visit https://ow.ly/gm5f50YYRNH

03/06/2026

On Friday 12 June at 15:30, we’re holding an information session offering a glimpse into our Silence and Spirituality module, delivered in partnership with The Queen’s Foundation.

This is a great opportunity to explore the role of silence in spiritual practice and experience our approach to Quaker Studies in a welcoming and reflective space.

The module begins in September and is delivered fully online as part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Theology and Transformative Practice.

Book your place on the information session here: queens.jotform.com/261164014139853
Find out more about the modules on our website: www.woodbrooke.org.uk/research/taught-degrees/

03/06/2026

03/06/2026

Quakers in Britain has signed an international statement calling for the release of two women imprisoned in Russia for their work defending Indigenous rights and the climate.

03/06/2026

Testimony concerning Amy Lewis (1893–1951):

In 1920 [Amy and Warren Lewis] joined the Society of Friends, and some years later moved to Eccles to establish the home which is inseparable from Amy Lewis’s life and work. She did not allow her outside activities to impoverish her home, but rather enriched all her service with the generous warmth of her family life. She and her husband have shown us that under the exacting conditions of our modern world it is possible to build a new kind of Swarthmoor Hall; the outward circumstances may be different but the spirit is the same… Things were never easy materially, and faith and works, conjoined to prayer, were their principal resources. As the years went by, countless men and women, young and old, came to this home to talk out their problems and to share in its blessings.

Hardshaw East Monthly Meeting, 1951
Quaker Faith and Practice 22.23

19/05/2026

This dreamy, sing-along tale, is about a Sleepy Bear who after enjoying a wonderful summer eating berries and humming his summer song, snuggles up in a moss filled warm hollow log to go to sleep... But he can't!

19/05/2026

Our Act of Hope: sharing your volunteering stories Quaker Voluntary Action (QVA) is an official partner of A Million Acts Of Hope and this blog post […]

18/05/2026

We had been talking for an hour and a half with a clergyman neighbour, and afterwards I sat by the fire and thought. He had maintained that war has not as yet been grown out of, and that God still uses it as a means of training His children. As I thought over this, old thoughts and memories awoke from sleep. I remembered the familiar words about William Penn’s sword – ‘Wear it as long as thou canst’: and it seemed clear to me that if William Penn had given it up from self-interest or cowardice, or for any reason short of the ‘witness of God in his own soul’, he would have been wrong. And then the thought extended itself from the life of one man to the life of mankind, and I remembered a sentence in the Epistle to Diognetus: ‘What the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world’. Then I seemed to see that war cannot rightly come to an end from self-interest or cowardice or any worldly reason but only because men and women, by one and one, without waiting for the others, have become loyal to the spirit of Christ.

Marion C Fox, 1914
Quaker Faith and Practice 24.13