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Events

Southern Schools’ Quaker Pilgrimage 2009

In late September, Jane Chittick, Katherine Mills and Tory Lawson, from Friends’ School Lisburn ventured to England to take part in a Quaker Pilgrimage called ‘The Foxtrot’. Four other Quaker schools; Sibford, Sidcot, Leighton Park and Friends’ School Saffron Walden, also participated. Tory Lawson gives her account of the expedition ….

When I was invited along with Jane Chittick and Katherine Mills to participate in a ‘pilgrimage’, particularly one called the ‘foxtrot’ I wondered what it was all about. ‘Pilgrimage’ has associations of pious holiness, hooded monks winding their way up hills and so on….and this is certainly (to my relief) not what happened! We learnt about the extraordinary and turbulent events which led to George Fox founding the Early Quaker movement in 1652. ‘Foxtrot’ is just a nickname for the ‘Pilgrimage’ based upon our travelling around the region of the Northwest of England ‘in the footsteps’ of George Fox. We visited significant places and buildings such as Pendle Hill, Firbank Fell and Swarthmoor Meeting House. At these places historical events involving George Fox took place and have subsequently inspired successive generations of Friends from all over the world.

On the trip we met up with 16 other students representing all southern Quaker schools. For four days we travelled together, shared the cooking, mealtimes, duties, free time, walks, talks and meetings of worship. Throughout the trip a great sense of fellowship was generated and many happy memories were brought back. Friends were quickly made and we have already made plans to meet up again! All of us had a fascinating and moving experience and will never ever forget it.

Archived News

Coming from the Silence

Coming from the Silence :Quaker Peacebuilding Initiatives in Northern Ireland 1969–2007

Edited by Ann Le Mare and Felicity McCartney

‘Coming from the Silence’ describes the work of four major projects and a number of smaller initiatives taking place between 1969 and 2007. It sets the work in a wider Quaker context and analyses it from an international development perspective. Quaker House Belfast, Ulster Quaker Service Committee, the Centre for Neighbourhood Development, and the Quaker Peace Education Project in Derry are covered in depth and a general chapter refers to a variety of smaller initiatives by Friends.

Published 24th September 2009

To order by post from Sessions of York, go to http://www.sessionsofyork.co.uk or telephone 01904 697855/ 01904 697892

Also available on Amazon website or over the counter from the Quaker Care charity shop, 514 Lisburn Rd, Belfast.


Events

Special Meeting for Worship in former Friends Meeting House in Tramore

Twenty Nine Friends and others attended a special Meeting for Worship in the former Friends Meeting House in Tramore, Co. Waterford on 16th August 2009.

Regular Meetings for Worship ceased about ten years ago. Among the 29 were Friends who had attended Tramore meeting as children many years ago.

The building has since been substantially renovated and is now used by the Tramore Development Trust for the education of children.





Talk Script

From Experience, What Can I Say?

Helen Haughton, Churchtown Meeting

Public Lecture, delivered at Ireland Yearly Meeting, April 22, 2006

In choosing what I wanted to say this evening, I am returning to an important early event in Quakerism.

On one occasion, George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, attended a church service at which he was permitted to speak from the pulpit. He pointed out that the prophets, including Jesus, and his apostles, spoke from what they understood God to be saying to them, – not from readings or from the scriptures. This spiritual individualism and the acceptance of diversity, is at the core of Quakerism. So, from my experience, what can I say?

Continue reading From Experience, What Can I Say? →

Articles

Reflections on a Home-coming

Doreen E Dowd

Address to Ministry and Oversight at Yearly Meeting, 2005

Good Evening, Friends;

For those of you who do not know me, I am a life-long member of Ireland Yearly Meeting, Dublin Monthly Meeting and attend Eustace St. Meeting. In 1992 I left my job as a respiratory physician in Dublin, and went to work in a Salvation Army hospital in Zambia. My work permit described me as a missionary. In 1998 I moved to Lesotho, which is a tiny mountainous kingdom, completely land-locked by the Republic of South Africa, and worked for six years as the Flying Doctor. I was officially a civil servant, but as I was flown several times a week to various remote mountain clinics by the pilots of Mission Aviation Fellowship, I was close to the missionary community in that country.

Continue reading Reflections on a Home-coming →

Articles

In and Out the Meeting House

David Butler, Britain Yearly Meeting

A talk delivered at Ireland Yearly Meeting 2004. David is the author and illustrator of the definitive book on Quaker Meeting Houses in Ireland, past and present, which is about to be published.

These remarks are lightly-connected incidents in Quaker life, mostly from Ireland, gleaned from a life-time spent looking at meeting houses and reading about them, and from a mere five years enjoying Irish meeting houses. They include many small events, few of which one would wish to make permanent, but which I thought you might like to hear before they sink back into the sands.

Continue reading In and Out the Meeting House →

Articles

‘All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny’

by Christopher Moriarty

This article was published in Teaching Religious Education Issue 3 December 2008

Christopher Moriarty is Clerk of the Historical Committee of the Religious Society of  Friends in Ireland and a member of a group of volunteers who care for the archives and library of the Society at its headquarters in Ireland: Quaker House Dublin, Stocking Lane, Dublin 16. The library is open to the public on Thursday mornings from 10.30 am to 1 pm.

The Religious Society of Friends was founded by the 17 century Christian visionary George Fox.  Its members came to be known as ‘Quakers’.  Their beliefs were based firmly on the doctrine revealed in the Bible, and particularly on the teaching of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Four Gospels. They adopted a belief, in distinct opposition to the feelings of the times, that the meaning of the Commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ was unequivocal.  Even more important was the instruction of Jesus to ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you’.  As early as 1651, Fox was jailed for refusing to fight in the English Civil War.  William Edmundson, who established the Society’s first meeting for worship in Ireland in 1654, had served as a Cromwellian soldier but renounced violence soon after the end of hostilities in 1651.

In 1660, following the Restoration of King Charles II, Quakers put their views on non-violence in a formal declaration addressed to the king in person.  Known over the centuries as ‘The Peace Testimony’ its first paragraph reads as follows:

Our principle is and our practices have always been, to seek peace, and ensue it, and to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and the welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all.  All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fighting with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world.  That spirit of Christ by which we are guided is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the spirit of Christ which leads us all into all Truth will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.

The declaration was prompted in part from a legalistic angle. Loyalty to the king was required from all his subjects – disloyalty was treason and punishable by death.  To refuse to enlist in an army and fight for the king could be construed as treasonable.  Quakers were not engaged in any subversion of the legal status quo and insisted on the truth of their claim that they were loyal and law-abiding subjects.  The reasoning behind their refusal to bear arms therefore needed to be expressed very clearly.  For this and for a number of other points of principle, many Quakers suffered imprisonment.

The Williamite warfare in Ireland in the 1690s saw the first serious test of the peace testimony and the great majority of Quakers acquitted themselves honourably.  Four took part in the fighting and they were disowned by the Society.  Of far greater importance was the fact that Quakers gave help to people on both sides in the conflict.  This seems to have led to a recognition and respect rather than to any attempt at revenge by the victorious Williamites.

A hundred years later, the impending rising of 1798 brought about a vigorous campaign within the Society to take practical steps to ensure that its members would both privately and publicly renounce violence.  The all-Ireland National Meeting in 1797 agreed:

The Subject of some in profession with us having guns in their houses, which might be made use of for the destruction of mankind, as well as other instruments of a like nature, having come weightily under the consideration of Friends in the three provinces, this meeting, under a solid feeling, is of the judgement that all such should be destroyed, the more fully to support our peaceable and Christian testimony in these perilous times…..

A committee was appointed to visit Quakers around the country and make sure that they had destroyed their firearms.  At least one of them made a public display of his voluntary disarmament.  Joseph Haughton, a member of the committee, took his fowling piece to the main street in Ferns and broke it up.  Once again, the more positive – and extremely hazardous – practice of giving help to people on both sides of the conflict was followed in 1798.  But, with few exceptions, it seems that the reputation of Quakers was so well established that their communities survived the hostilities without reprisals being taken.

The 20th century, with two world wars, the War of Independence in Ireland and the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ imposed a succession of major challenges.  During and after both world wars, Quakers, amongst them a number of Irish members of the Society, were involved in two international movements.  The first was the Friends Ambulance Unit in which young men enlisted.  While they would not take up arms to fight any enemy, they were equally determined not to shelter from danger by staying away from the fighting.  The Ambulance Unit, serving only to give help to the wounded – without discrimination as to whether friend or enemy – was a solution to the dilemma.  The second came after the wars, when Quakers played an active role in bringing relief to those who suffered in the conquered countries – putting into practice the ideal of loving their enemies and establishing a reputation for their humanity.  They continue to lobby the United Nations and the European Union, through Quaker offices in new York and Brussels.

In Northern Ireland, from 1969 onwards, Quakers became deeply involved in a variety of efforts to achieve reconciliation between the parties in sectarian strife.  Quaker Cottage, on the outskirts of Belfast, was established to provide holiday breaks for families from both sides of the divide.  The essential was that adults and children who, in the normal course of things, would avoid each other, were brought together.  They discovered that the differences between them were remarkably few.  As with the broader thrust of a world-wide renunciation of violence, Quakers have not been so na�ve as to believe either their international work or the example of Quaker Cottage would convince a majority of people within a short time.  The point is that their devotion to the cause of non-violence has changed the thinking of many individuals, actually saved the lives of others and is an essential step in spreading the message of peace.

The Quaker House project in Belfast city was –and still is – a centre giving fulltime employment to a small number of Quakers with skills in bringing national and local political figures together and, in an uncounted number of cases, defusing difficult and dangerous situations.  It is easy to count the numbers of people who died during the Troubles.  While it is impossible to enumerate the numbers saved by behind-the-scenes actions, there is no doubt that Quaker House was instrumental in averting countless tragedies.  The need for unpublicised handling of such situations has meant that the institution rarely achieved public recognition for its achievements.

Another seminal activity in Ulster was the establishment of visitor centres, initially at the Maze and later at Long Kesh prisons.  The abhorrence felt by the involved Quakers towards the violent actions that had led to the imprisonment of the inmates, was equalled by their belief in the humanity of each and every one of them. The ideal had been expressed poetically by George Fox in the 17th century; ‘Walk cheerfully over the world, answering to that of God in every man’ and it continues to be a core belief of Quakers everywhere.  The visitor centres were places where the families who came to visit the prisoners could find shelter, relax over a cup of tea and, if they wanted, find someone willing to listen them.  The work of  the centres developed from an outside fringe activity to being accepted by the authorities who understood their value, not only in supporting people in great difficulties, but also in helping to keep families together and rehabilitate the prisoners when their eventual release came.

Meanwhile, in the Republic, individual Quakers, with official support from the Society, have been active in parallel activities to those of their northern counterparts in attempting to nurture a spirit of peace, even amongst people who are undergoing punishment for violent behaviour, often of an extreme nature.  Quakers, with other religious groups, have been active in establishing and staffing visitor centres in prisons.  At a more direct level, Quakers have been in the forefront of implanting AVP, the Alternatives to Violence Programme, which involves practical training sessions with prisoners.

This article gives some examples of the work undertaken by Irish Quakers towards sowing the seeds of peace and nurturing the rather delicate flowers that spring up.  Similar projects are taking place in all countries in which there are Quaker communities.  The Mission Statement of South Africa Quaker Peace Centre in Capetown gives an excellent summary of essentials that are applied throughout the world:

Our mission is to build a non-violent society where diversity is celebrated, the energies of conflict are turned into a positive transforming power and where the democratic rights of every individual are respected, protected and pursued.

Further Reading (more obtainable from ‘historicenquiries@quakers-in-ireland.ie’)
Maurice J Wigham (2nd Edition 2006) The Irish Quakers, a short history of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland Dublin: Historical Committee of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland.

Richard S Harrison (1986) Irish Anti-war Movements 1824-1974. Dublin: Irish Peace Publications.

Glynn Douglas (1998) Friends and 1798: Quaker witness to non-violence in 18th century Ireland. Dublin: Historical Committee of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland.

Talk Script

How I Read the Bible

Irene Ni Mhaille

A Dublin Monthly Meeting Seminar on February 20, 2006.

I have to admit that I didn’t really begin to read the Bible seriously until I arrived in West Africa, as a missionary, at the age of 30. Bible stories did not nourish my early childhood, as a Roman Catholic. Yet, the Bible, as something sacred, was always in the background of my consciousness from an early age. Certain facts about it were drilled into us in secondary school – that every part of it was inspired by the Holy Ghost, that therefore it was inerrant, and that the right to interpret it belonged to the Hierarchy. But this was somewhat off-putting and intimidating and since I wasn’t allowed to interpret it, it remained remote and irrelevant during my growing up, formative years.

When I decided to become a missionary in Africa at the age of 21, the daily reading of the Divine Office was part of my life. The Divine Office was Bible-centred but was chanted in Latin, five times a day. We covered the 150 psalms of the Bible each week. This chant had a beauty of its own and as I got to know the meaning of some of the psalms, I found them spiritually up-lifting and they provided a welcome respite in the midst of a busy working day. But because The Divine Office was chanted, not recited or simply read, and because it was in Latin, it remained remote and somewhat on a higher level to ordinary daily life, for me, so the temptation to enter into any kind of personal dialogue with the text was zero. I couldn’t really call that, reading the Bible.

But that was about to come. Nigeria where I worked first, as a missionary, was a British colony and the educational system was British. “O” Level Scripture formed part of the curriculum in Second level schools. As well as teaching her own subjects, each teacher had to take one religion class. I suddenly found myself in a crisis situation . Before I understood the Bible myself, I had to start teaching it! The idea was that I was supposed to present the text and use a Commentary to explain it. But any teacher knows that there is much more to teaching than taking hold of words on paper. It is particularly difficult to teach the Bible in a trans-cultural setting and if the students are intelligent and curious as many Nigerians are, the task is full of landmines. Meeting that challenge was the single biggest influence on how I read the Bible today.

Africa taught me, very quickly, and in a very stark way, that the Bible is basically a non-Western book. that favours imagery over facts. Through the insights of African clergy, laypeople and the students I taught, I began to understand that the spiritual message of Scripture is expressed in story and in symbol and can’t be taken literally. There is nothing trivial about this – quite the reverse. Since we don’t have human language to express inner reality and to talk to each other about the presence of, and the struggle with, the divine, deep in our own hearts, we must turn to images and stories. The Bible is a treasure house of these images of uprootedness, wandering, exile, and of arrival, new birth, yeast of risen life. These images echo our own spiritual yearnings and remind us all, young and old, that we are on a very special journey and that our destiny lies ahead. In this symbolic world , I became aware of the closeness of Old and New Testaments and of the way in which the images, symbols and stories of the Old, echo, resound, reverberate within the Old and are re-interpreted and re-echo throughout the New.

Stories, unlike literal facts, can be opened up into millions of meanings that enrich each other without any conflict as we each interpret them differently. This seemed to be the opposite to what I was taught in my childhood, when a literal, single, clear, inerrant meaning was given to much of the Bible. My conflict with the religion of my birth was starting! I was beginning to grow up spiritually and to realise that I could own my own thoughts about what the Bible might mean! A dangerous revelation for a Roman Catholic in the early 60s! This led me into a whole re-construction of the received doctrines of my youth. I had to ask myself, what does the Bible mean when it says that Jesus is “the son of God “or that “Jesus rose from the dead?” Through these questions, I was led gradually to find the human Jesus, the Jew, a man who with the help of the Hebrew Scriptures, came to understood the full meaning of living by God’s Spirit and who showed me that there is no greater goal for any human being.

Then, The Second Vatican Council took place, in the Catholic Church, in themid 60s and this allowed for a new openness towards Scripture and to accepting a lot of the critical studies of Scripture that were undertaken over several previous decades by Scripture scholars. However in 1967, the Civil War started in Nigeria and all missionary teachers had to leave. It was 10 years before I got back again.

The 10 years out of Nigeria gave me an opportunity to study what the Scripture scholars were saying. Just as I had found the human Jesus in Africa, now I was to find out, through the insights of Scripture scholars, what a human document the Bible was. As a result of historical criticism, we know now that both Old and New Testament have undergone a history of human transmission. Our previous understanding rested on historical misconceptions. Not only is the transmission of the text more complicated than we thought, but like the Kingdom of God ,as described by Jesus in the parable of the wheat and cockle, the Bible harbours evil as well as good. It must be read critically and with discernment, like everything else in life. Far from destroying my Faith in the Bible, I felt that this led me into a far more convincing way of understanding it and vindicated much that I had learnt in Nigeria, about a non-literal reading. For Quakers who always practiced a spiritual reading of Scripture, the impact of modern scholarship was less important but for Catholics, it questioned the whole authority structure of Biblical interpretation. I am now convinced that if we make false claims for the Bible, to-day, we do the Bible itself the greatest disservice.

The present debate about homosexuality is a case in point. Some Christians condemn homosexuality today on Biblical grounds while ignoring present day understanding of sexual orientation. The Book of Leviticus, for example, condemns homosexuality and it also says we should stone adulterers to death. Further, it says that women (but says nothing of men) who enter marriage in a non-virginal state should be stoned to death. But why if we no longer take Scripture literally about stoning adulterers to death, do some Christians concentrate on homosexuality for this literal interpretation of the Word of God? The answer to this question is, I believe, that the issue is not about homosexuality, as such, but is rather about how we read the Bible. Some continue to find ready-made, literal truths therein. But, surely the whole Hebrew/Christian religion, in its prophetic strain, is a gradual progression in understanding that the inner law of love replaces the law that is written on tablets of stone? Thus Jesus words about the woman taken in adultery and his similar words to the crowds, “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” (Luke 12;57). We, women, moreover, have put up with a patriarchal assessment of what is right and wrong for centuries, in the name of Biblical truth so we can hardly be expected to turn to the Bible today for a readymade solution to our moral problems!

And so is the issue of peace in relation to the Bible an ambiguous claim. The Bible has some of the most up-lifting passages about peace : it is also the originator of religious hate. We cannot, it seems to me, reclaim the one without the other. In the Old Testament, the Hebrews called on God to curse their Canaanite pagan neighbours : There are several passages in the New Testament, notably in the Gospels of Matthew and John, in the Book of Revelation and Acts of Apostles, that have set in train an anti-Jewish polemic. I feel that if we become aware of Christian hatred of Jews in our own Christian tradition, then we can understand how any religion demonises another in its search for identity and how difficult is the way of peace. Without condoning recent Muslim violence in relation to cartoons of Muhammad, I can begin to understand it a little if I try to see it, in the context of the wider picture of religious violence of the past against Muslims, in which we Christians have, shamefully, been a part. Good and evil, like the wheat and cockle of the Gospel parable, grow together. This, for me, is the context of understanding peace as a constant struggle.

Finally, when I retired and settled in Ireland I found myself back in an authoritarian Church and I didn’t fit. Since I joined the Quaker community, I feel an extraordinary openness to The Spirit, that not only allows me to continue my spiritual journey, but challenges me to deepen it. I don’t find this an easy journey but it is really worthwhile. I am constantly amazed to find that George Fox who lived before the beginning of modern scriptural scholarship, was so much part of its insights. From what I have read so far of George Fox, he understood the Biblical notion of The Word of God as not just a word on paper but a living, creative, communication between Divine and Human. He called it “the light of Christ within”. The structures for worship that he set up in the 17th century, allow me ,today, to be faithful to new insights about the Bible, to listen and be enriched by the individual insights of those around me while at the same time living in the real world of modern Ireland and for that I am so grateful.

Irene Ni Mhaille died on 11 September 2022.

Events

Ireland Yearly Meeting Epistle 2009

To Friends everywhere, Greetings!

Irish Friends have met from 22nd-26th July in 2009, rather than at our customary Spring-time. It has been a residential Yearly Meeting, in the Kings Hospital School where the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) Triennial was held two years ago, and in similarly wet weather.

We have welcomed Friends from other Yearly Meetings including USA, Britain, Germany and Netherlands and Quaker international agencies, also particularly two Friends from Kenya and Georgia who have spoken eloquently of life in their country and their work as Quakers.

The Theme of Ireland Yearly Meeting was from Galatians 5, vv 22 & 23: ‘The Fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control’. Our morning worship each day began with a meditation on one or two of these ‘fruits’, and it was inspiring to see how frequently throughout the Meeting the words of Friends on various topics related back to the guiding Theme.

The public lecture was given by John Dunston, Headmaster of Leighton Park, the Quaker School in Reading, UK. The title was ‘The Stranger who lives within thy gates’ and the speaker drew on particular insights from his Jewish background as well as his understanding of the practical application of Quaker testimonies.

There was evidence of the guidance of these testimonies in the eighteen Epistles received from Yearly Meetings world-wide. Likewise, much of the work being undertaken by Irish Friends at the present time shows the palpable inspiration of one or more Testimony, in particular the overseas work of Irish Quaker Faith and Action, the Peace Committee, the aims and ideals of the newly-formed EcoQuaker Ireland committee, and the beautiful handworked quilt which is but one outcome of the continuing cross-community work of Quaker House Belfast.

Regarding the ‘Why Violence’ campaign, we can report that the initial concern of a small number of Friends has become a catalyst for a much bigger Irish movement against violence, involving other churches and peace organisations.

During Yearly Meeting there have been nine well-attended special interest groups, healing group meetings, bible study and worship sharing, swimming and guided relaxation sessions. Excursions to places of interest filled a free afternoon and we enjoyed an evening performance of the thought-provoking Quaker play about John Woolman ‘On Human Folly’.

Before Yearly Meeting began we sang together the Quaker poet John Whittier’s beautiful hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’. We take our leave from you, dear Friends, with his words :

‘Take from our souls the strain and stress,

and let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy Peace’.

Signed on behalf of Ireland Yearly Meeting on 26 July 2009

Alan C Pim – Clerk