Friends Journal

09/04/2026

"Each of us must reconcile with our own leadings regarding nonviolence and how we use our resources to promote peace," Michelle Downey writes. "When we examine our differences, we can enter into those discussions with tenderness and from a place of safety."

At Fayetteville Friends, in the shadow of the most heavily populated military base in the United States, Quakers reach out to those who may need a helping hand, listening ear, and fellowship as they face the many challenges and difficulties that military life can bring.

How one meeting ministers to military personnel.

09/03/2026

In 1996, Joseph Olejak decided to stop paying his federal taxes in protest of U.S. involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The choice not to pay taxes and withdraw my money from the war system came from a spiritual place," he writes in a memoir of his eventual incarceration, 26 Weekends in County Jail. "Whether it was worth it didn’t really apply because it was a choice made beyond fear."

On November 22, 2013, Joseph Olejak entered the holding area of the Columbia County Jail in upstate New York for not paying his taxes.

09/02/2026

“Whenever you hear a word from my mouth,” God tells Ezekiel, “you shall give them warning from me.”

That doesn't mean God calls on Quakers to run around telling people about their personal failings. "We don’t fight the Lamb’s War with an army of scolds and cavilers," Ron Hogan explains. "But neither would God want us to remain silent as the moral arc of the society around us bends further and further toward injustice."

https://quaker.org/2026/08/31/you-shall-give-them-warning/

09/01/2026

"A Quaker testimony that goes unexamined is not a testimony at all, but a creed by another name," FJ executive director Gabriel Ehri writes in his introduction to our September issue.

So: What have Friends today discerned concering the peace testimony and how it shapes their lives?

September 2026

09/01/2026

What does it mean to be authentically African and authentically Quaker?

The search for an answer to this question that led corresponding editor Alfred Mbai with excitement and curiosity to approach Rooted and Reimagined, a book he describes as "neither a rejection of inherited Quaker tradition nor a formation of a new tradition but a recovering of the radical spirit of Quaker faith in the context of Africa today. "

John Muhanji's inspiring, challenging, and necessary new book sets the foundation for further study into African Quakerism.

08/31/2026

On a Sunday morning this past May, the Friends of Appoquinimink Meeting in Odessa, Delaware, gathered to honor one of their nineteenth-century members, John Alston, with a plaque that commemorates his dedication to abolitionism.

Appoquinimink Meeting honors abolitionist John Alston 152 years after his death.

08/28/2026

In this episode of QuakerSpeak, Whittier Mikkelsen speaks on her experience living with cerebral palsy and the way Quaker practice opened the way for self love.
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Watch the full video at quakerspeak.com (link in bio).

08/28/2026

God spoke to Elijah out of silence: “a still, small voice” (as it’s described in the King James Version) but a living presence.

The living Word, our Eternal Teacher, continues to speak to people out of silence. When we listen closely, we can hear the still, small voice asking questions that encourage us to think about how we are leading our lives.

The Bible Study column runs four times a year in the February, May, August, and November issues.

08/27/2026

Like many Quaker adherents, John Dickinson (1732–1808) was a suite of contradictions. He appreciated pacifism, but supported the American Revolution. He believed in radical equality and individual liberty, but opposed the Declaration of Independence—which arguably was what the Revolution was all about. The son of a half-hearted Quaker, he became an abolitionist and freed the people his father had enslaved.

A collection of letters from the eve of the American Revolution reminds us that speaking truth to power is not new, nor has it gone out of style.

08/26/2026

"Let love be genuine," says Paul (Romans 12:9); the first generations of Quakers would have read, in either the Geneva or King James Bible, that they should “let love be without dissimulation.” Sincere, unfeigned, free of hypocrisy or hidden agenda.

That kind of love doesn’t always come easy—but, as this week's Look to the Light message discusses, Friends refuse to allow themselves to be overcome by the evils of this world.

https://quaker.org/2026/08/24/do-not-be-overcome-by-evil/