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Articles

Irish Quaker Faith in Action Funded Projects 2010-2011

Irish Quaker Faith in Action (IQFA) has funded the following projects between June 2010 and June 2011:

Masizame Children’s Shelter, Prettenberg Bay, Republic of South Africa.  Since 1992 this early childhood development centre has been caring for deprived children from the streets and from dysfunctional families.  Masizame aims to get these disadvantaged children back into main stream education and society.  IQFA provided €2,000 in June 2010 to extend the shelter to accommodate the increased number of children (120 in June 2010).

Cork Penny Dinners: 4 Little Hanover Street, Cork, has been providing a nourishing mid-day meal to hungry diners in return for a small coin for many many years.  In June 2010 IQFA gladly supported this entirely voluntary charity by providing funds to upgrade a bain marie.  Take a look at Cork Penny Dinners excellent website for pictures and news.www.corkpennydinners.ie

Afri: 134 Phibsborough Road, Dublin 7. In June 2010 Joe Murray, Afri Coordinator applied for funding from IQFA for the cost of the production of an information booklet on depleted uranium and towards the cost of holding two public meetings. IQFA gave €2,300 towards the cost of producing the booklet. The booklet, with a foreword by Denis Halliday, has been published and politicians, including every TD has received a copy.

Relebohile: Day Care Centre, Tumahole, Parys, 9585 Free State, South Africa.  Relebohile means “we are grateful”.  It was established in July 2007 by a German organisation and run by Murray and Margaret McMillan since 2009.  The centre received €2000 for Christmas food hampers, school uniforms and other school needs, books, emergency food aid, blankets and medicines.  The centre cares for 220 orphans (June 2010) on a daily basis providing food twice a day and other supports.

Let Agogo: (meaning ‘Flowing Milk’) Dairy Project, Haiti, a Christian Aid project in association with local partner Veterimed, received €4,500 in 2010. Also in 2009, thirty women were provided with loans to purchase a cow. A small dairy supplies locally produced  pasteurised milk to schools; training is offered to breeders; herds are vaccinated; technician training in agroforestry and other agricultural techniques is also provided;  Although damaged by the earthquake the work continues and IQFA will again support the project in 2011.

Mutoto Friends Church, PO Box 365, Mbale, Uganda received £stg.500 in June 2010 in respect of an appeal following a landslide which happened on 1st. March 2010.  More than 340 residents of hamlets on the slope of Mount Elgon were swept away.  Many people lost everything and the funds were to provide essentials.

La Source Centre, Madagascar was founded in 1990 and registered since 1996; La Source is a specialised school and training centre for children and adolescents with learning disabilities. The centre is non-residential and families are consulted and helped so that there is an integrated approach to the child’s training and support  Activities include communication and general life skills, basic numeracy and literacy, adapted sport, vocational training in vegetable growing, poultry rearing, crafts.  A bakery funded by IQFA in the past is currently inoperative because of high cost of ingredients.  IQFA sponsored twelve children’s fees in 2010 which amounted to €2634.12

Maitiú Ó Murchú
Clerk – July 2011

Articles

Quaker Marriage

An article by J. Glynn Douglas

For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only, and not the priests’ or magistrates’; for it is God’s ordinance and not man’s; and therefore Friends cannot consent that they should join them together; for we marry none; it is the Lord’s work, and we are but witnesses.
George Fox, 1667

George Fox circulated a paper to Friends in 1653. This, with an epistle of Margaret Fell in 1656 and Advices from various General Meetings, established the basis of Quaker marriage procedure early in the days of the Society of Friends.  The procedure stressed the three principles of adequate preliminaries, an open ceremony (including an exchange of declarations and the signing of a certificate), and an efficient method of registration.

Two years after the restoration of Charles II in 1660 came the Book of Common Prayer, the Act of Uniformity and the restoration of the Church Courts with their responsibility for proving Wills.  Quaker marriages were not legally recognised by the established church and their doubtful status was liable to be disputed by non-Quaker relatives anxious to prove the illegitimacy of children and thus claim an inheritance.  All marriages according to Friends usage are recorded in the registers which have been kept, along with registers for births and deaths, since the 1650s.In Ireland this started in 1669 with the setting up of Men’s and Women’s Meetings.

From 1661 onwards Friends had secured successive civil law judgements upholding their marriages as good in law. Nevertheless, the precarious position of Quaker marriage made Friends very careful to ensure that they could demonstrate adequate preliminaries, an open ceremony and efficient registration procedures.These early preliminaries were cumbersome: both parties had to appear before the Women’s Monthly Meeting and then before the Men’s Monthly Meeting and, if there was no objection, Friends were appointed to report on clearness from other engagements, on parental consent and if the man belonged to another Monthly Meeting on a certificate from that body.The couple had to appear and declare their intentions a second time.If there were objections to be overcome the couple might have to appear at ten or more meetings.When finally agreed the marriage could be solemnised at the mid-week Meeting for Worship in the Meeting House to which the woman belonged.

The social and legal problems associated with clandestine marriages in the 17th and 18th Centuries were notorious.Wealthy young men were plied with liquor and paired off with unsuitable girls. Unfortunate heiresses were abducted and married under duress to scoundrelly adventurers.Even Quakers were not immune. Mary Pike of Cork, became a cause célèbre in 1797 when subjected to this treatment.

Lord Hardwicke’s Act of 1753 regularised the situation in England and Wales.The Act provided that all marriages, other than those of the royal family or covered by special licence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, should be conducted in the parish church and publicity was ensured by public banns or common licence.There were two exceptions, the Act did not apply ‘to any marriage amongst the People called Quakers or Persons professing the Jewish Religion where both Parties to any such marriage shall be of the People called Quakers or professing the Jewish Religion respectively’.Quaker marriage was thus recognised implicitly in England and Wales and eventually explicitly in the Marriage Act of 1836.

Things were very different in Ireland.The Irish Parliament did not enact a similar act to Lord Hardwicke’s and the problem was to continue in Ireland for nearly another 100 years.At the end of the 18th Century some Friends protested against the increasing formalism of the Society in Ireland as evidenced in the numerous and unnecessary formalities associated with dress, language and Quaker marriage.They also disagreed with the reverential attitude to the Bible.In 1801 this led John Rogers and Elizabeth Doyle to publish their intention of marriage in the town of Lisburn and one month later, in the presence of 16 well concerned Friends at the school house on Prospect Hill, they took each other in marriage.For this rebellion against authority the two Rogers and most of the witnesses were disowned.The spread of the New Light opinions resulted in many resignations and disownments. All those holding the office of Elder in Ulster Quarterly Meeting resigned.The result for the Society was tragic: many able and thoughtful persons were lost to Friends and the effects were to be felt in the Society in Ireland well into the next century.

It was not until 1844 that an Act established the registration districts in Ireland, similar to those in England and Wales, and made Quaker marriages solemnised after 1st April 1845 ‘good in law’.The 1847 Act provided that Quaker and Jewish marriages solemnised before the Acts of 1836 and 1844 were to be ‘good in law’ provided that both parties were Quakers or Jews. The 1860 Act provided recognition for Quaker marriages solemnised in England, Wales and Ireland in accordance with Friends usages where only one of the parties is in membership provided that the other is ‘professing with Friends’.In 1872 the ‘professing with Friends’ clause was removed and replaced by a certificate of permission to marry from the Quaker Registering Officer involved.

The disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869 had interesting repercussions.The Archbishop of Armagh, like the Archbishop of Canterbury, could issue Special Licences for a marriage at any time and place on behalf of the established church. The Act of 1870 extended this privilege to the heads of most of the other churches, including ‘The Clerk to the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends in Ireland’.Irish Friends were seriously exercised by this development and the Yearly Meeting of 1873 ‘whilst gratefully acknowledging the kindly feeling manifested by the Legislature towards our Society’ minuted two pages of regulation to safeguard the privilege from possible abuse!The privilege applied only to marriage of member to member.

The setting up of the two jurisdictions in Ireland in 1922 did not affect marriage legislation and they both continued to use the 19th Century Westminster legislation.The Special Licence provision was modified in 1954 by Northern Ireland Parliament and in 1972 by Dáil Eireann so that it applied to marriages where only one of the parties was in membership.When the Clerk of the Yearly Meeting resided in the Republic of Ireland the NI regulations required that the Clerk appoint a deputy, living in Northern Ireland, to act in his/her place.

Irish Quaker marriage regulations have long been a source of wonder and concern to the Monthly Meeting Registering Officers, each revision becoming more complex than the one it replaced, and taking up one third of the content of the 1929 Christian Experience book. This growing complexity was in response to the changing legislation. Initially they were only for Quaker marrying Quaker, then Quaker to non Quaker was added, then neither party being in membership was allowed, then marriage by Special Licence had to go through the same procedure. Each revision of the regulations had to leave earlier clauses in place because the Act they referred to had not been withdrawn and thus new sections had to be added.

Traditionally Canon Law has prohibited the marriage of a man with his deceased wife’s sister although this was allowed by civil law. Ironically the 1836 Marriage Act, that gave recognition to Quaker marriages, referred to the Canon law prohibitions of affinity and consanguinity, thus suddenly making marriage with two sisters illegal.Amongst Friends opinion was divided on the issue.Some Monthly Meetings went as far as disownment, whilst others, reluctantly, accepted it as fait accompli.Jonathan Pim (1806‑1885) of Dublin published, anonymously, in 1860 Is it right for a Christian to marry two sisters? This was then countered by another Quaker leaflet, also anonymous,An examination into the scriptural lawfulness of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister and the principles and enactments of English law respecting such marriages. Repeated attempts to change the law were always defeated in the House of Lords and it was not until 1907 that the Deceased Wife’s Sister Marriage Act made all such marriages legal.Quaker Books of Discipline have always required Quaker marriage to comply with the law of the land but have not included a list of prohibited relationships.The Civil Registration Act, 2004, in the Republic of Ireland and the Marriage (Northern Ireland) Order, 2003, both set out in detail the allowable degrees of affinity and consanguinity which now govern all marriages on the island of Ireland.

As the Clerk of the Committee that drafted the marriage regulations in Organisation and Christian Discipline I am delighted that the complicated 31 pages of Chapter 14 have now been superseded and can be relegated to the Society’s Archives in the Historical Library. The new regulations are more easily understood and hopefully Friends and their families will find them less irksome than they have been in the past.I am indebted to Ted Milligan’s booklet, Quaker Marriage* and Irish Quaker Books of Discipline of the 19th and 20th centuries in the preparation of this article.

*Quaker Marriage by Edward H Milligan published 1994 by Quaker Tapestry Booklets, c/o Friends Meeting House, New Road, Kendal, CumbriaLA9 4AY

This article was first published in The Friendly Word: Ireland’s Quaker Journal
Jan-Feb 2009 Vol 26, No. 1, pp 13-15

Archive, Articles

Quaker Spirituality and the Sacraments

by Irene Ní Mháille

About the Author

Irene ní Mháille of Monkstown Meeting entered an Irish missionary order in 1952 and served as a missionary sister from 1959 to 1980, mostly in Africa but also for a five year period in a black community in North Central Philadelphia, then after 10 years working in Religious Education in Ireland she returned to Africa as a lay person 1991 to 1996.  This article is based on a talk she gave in January 2011 in a series on Quaker Spirituality at Eustace Street Meeting House in Dublin.

First Impressions

When I first visited a Quaker service of Worship in 2003, I was filled with many emotions of delight and wonder. There was no sacrament of the Eucharist! Way was made, instead, for the presence of God’s Spirit!

For much of my life, I was required to believe that in the sacrament of the Eucharist, I received the body and blood of Jesus who is God. This doctrine distorted both my understanding of Jesus, and of God. Release from this distortion brought great joy!

These emotions of delight and wonder grew as I attended discussions – between 2003 and 2006 – in preparation for the revised draft of the Irish Quaker book Christian Experience (1962). During these discussions I learnt how Quakerism, while letting go of sacraments as external rites, had preserved the many treasures of Christian spirituality that lie hidden in the deeper, mystical notion of sacramental. For Quakers, the word sacramental seemed to me to refer to the throbbing heart of the whole of creation as it carries the imprint of the sacred, in the whole of the secular.

Roman Catholicism and the Sacraments

I had participated, for well over three decades before that, in the often very inspiring, but ultimately, as I see it, unsuccessful, efforts of Roman Catholicism, to revive Christian spirituality. The finding again of the sacred, not in a separate supernatural world, but in the heart of the secular, was the method used to bring the external rites of the Seven Sacraments into line with what people really believed. This involved a re-look at the development of the practice and theology of sacraments throughout the centuries, not only in Catholicism, but also in all the other Christian churches. It also involved getting down to the business of re-creating Christian communities. It was a most exhilarating time, full of promise!

I cannot speak with authority of Quakerism as I am a ‘blow-in’ of only eight years experience. I can, however, speak out of the inspiration and blessing that my encounter with Quakerism was and continues to be for me, on my own personal journey of Faith. I hope to be excused for interpreting Quakerism through the eyes of my former Roman Catholicism, the only eyes I have!

Reformation in Roman Catholicism really started in 1943 with the publication of Pope Pius 12’s encyclical, “Divino Afflante Spiritu” (With the Holy Spirit Blowing ) This encyclical marked the acceptance by Roman Catholicism of the historical/critical study of the Bible that took place, at first, among Protestant scholars, from the 18th century onwards. From then on, a literary interpretation of the Bible was impossible without belittling human scholarship. The teaching that Jesus founded the sacraments of the church, was seen to be very unclear from Scripture and so it became possible for Roman Catholics to discuss sacraments, from all angles.

In trying to refashion the sacraments, Catholics turned to the model of the Adult Catechumenate (community of adult Faith) of the early Christian church. As the early church developed, the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist were received at the end of 1-3 years of Christian living. For early Christians, what was important was Christian living. Sacraments did not cause or effect this, they were simply celebrations of it.

Sacraments understood in this way, were part of the living adult community of Faith and were not divorced from the sacredness of all of life.

Theology of Redemption

Gradually, however, as the image of Jesus, as Redeemer, took over from the image of Jesus as teacher, a theology of Redemption started to underpin the sacraments. Christianity taught that a sinful, passive humanity, unable, of itself, to approach God, was bought back into God’s favour by the merits of the death of Jesus. As Saviour, this Jesus, we were taught, washed our sins away. A deposit of the merits won for us by Jesus, enabled the Church to distribute these merits through the sacraments. Gradually, Christians, in the modern world, were starting to question this doctrine, so a discrepancy between faith and practice was a constant threat.

Sacraments, underpinned by Redemption theology, became separated from the sacredness of life and lent themselves to being perceived as magical, supernatural acts. Clergy, who actively administered, were separated from laity who passively received the benefits of Christ’s Redemption, made available through the sacraments.

The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century was a very serious attempt to deal with this growing crisis. It had goals very similar to the reformations of Vatican Council 2, in Roman Catholicism, in late 20th century. Both represented a huge attempt to bring outward rites into line with inward experience.

Outward Rites, Inward Experience

But in both Protestant and Catholic churches, it seems to me, this struggle took place, only at the tactical level of structures and institutional conformity. Only gradually, in the 20th century, did more strategic questions, such as why Redemption theology, who is Jesus, what other doors are open to a vibrant Christian Faith, begin to surface for Catholics. Then, as strategic questions about people’s real beliefs surfaced, these were often crushed by clerical authority. And, alas for Catholicism, the hoped for reformation only happened in areas where clerical authority allowed it. That did not include Ireland!

The Difference with Quakers

Quakerism was different. Away back in the 17th century, it had asked, and answered, the most strategic question of all, do we need sacraments! But Christian history barely recognised this event! Was this strategic question too big a threat throughout past centuries? Is it still a threat today? Should it not be, today, at the heart of ecumenical discussion?

As part of the radical Protestant Reformation, the Swiss reformer Zwingli marked, it seems to me, an important milestone between institutional Christianity and Quakerism. He returned to the original meaning of the word “sacrament”.

The original Latin word “sacramentum” had a military use. It indicated the oath of allegiance that soldiers of the Roman army swore to the Emperor, before going to battle. This is hardly a word that would delight the heart of George Fox! But, wishing to rid the sacraments of their magical elements, Zwingli recommended bringing back this original idea of oath of allegiance.

Zwingli’s idea was that this oath should now be made, by a Christian, as a pledge of his faith in God. Thus, the reception of a sacrament would no longer be a passive act but an active renewal of an oath of fidelity to Christian Faith. Maybe, this is close to the idea of the early Christian catechumenate that stressed Christian living over sacramental rites. In the renewal of the oath of fidelity, Zwingli sought to deal with the problem of sacraments as merely outward rites, that lacked inward experience: over a century later, early Quakers claimed the inward experience without the external rite!

The Inward Experience

At the heart of Quaker spirituality is the inward experience, the inner light, the inner Christ, the eternal Shekinah of which the sacraments are but a sign. Living in tune with this inner Spirit is what constitutes religious life for Quakers. As long as one can have this inner experience of God, directly, of what use are the rites of the sacraments? Quakers ask. They are, therefore inessential.

Quaker worship is the place and time, par excellence, when Quakers seek the inner spirit but they, then, carry this dependence on the guidance of the spirit into all their activities. Worship in spirit and in truth replaces the Eucharist, the Mass or the Holy Communion services in other Christian churches. Quakers believe that human beings are capable of access to the divine without external intermediaries. They seek to find the divine within themselves first, and then in each other, and to live their lives in obedience to this belief.

This does not mean that access to the divine is seen as easy. George Fox taught that each human being must deal with this challenge of seeking and finding the divine life within themselves. He wrote:

“This worship in the spirit and in the truth, touches every man and woman: they each have to come to the spirit in themselves, and come to the truth of their own inner being. And this is public worship we are talking about, not private. If they are really to worship God in spirit and in truth, they have to surrender in spirit and truth and enter into them personally….They have to come to the truth in the heart, to the hidden self in the heart and to a humble and quiet heart.” (Epistle 222)
Finding the spiritual reality of which the sacraments are but a sign, requires a huge surrender, and is a constant sacrifice and challenge for each of us, as Quakers. I think the implication of what Fox means by, “the hidden self in the heart” is, that part of ourselves is hidden from ourselves but can be awakened by God’s spirit, particularly when we are gathered in communion of spirit, with others. Quakers use the lovely expression, “a gathered meeting” to express the outpouring of the spirit as it flows through the gathered group. This happens, not by receiving external rites, but by listening attentively to what our own being and that of others is saying in the silence, whether this is outwardly expressed or not.

A Bold and Colossal Claim

The Quaker book of Christian Experience (1962) carries this great quote (p.39), from A. Barratt Brown (1887-1947):

“It is a bold and colossal claim that we put forward – that the whole of life is sacramental, that there are innumerable “means of grace” by which life is revealed and communicated – through nature and through human fellowship and through a thousand things that may become, “the outward and visible sign” of an “inward and spiritual grace.”
In this quote, Barratt Brown does something wonderful for me. He takes the theological terms of sacraments as rites such as “means of grace”, “the outward and visible sign”, “inward and spiritual grace” out of the prison of theological discourse and releases them into the cosmos of God’s creation. Thus, the “bold and colossal claim that we put forward – that the whole of life is sacramental.”

There is further evidence of this movement from theology (sacramental rite) – to creation (life as sacramental) – in a beautiful passage from “Essays and Addresses” by John Wilhelm Rowntree(1868-1905), quoted in Christian Experience, p 40:

“To the soul that feeds upon the bread of life, the outward conventions of religion are no longer needful. Hid with Christ in God, there is for him but small place for outward rites, for all experience is a holy baptism, a perpetual supper with the Lord and all life is a sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This hidden life, this hidden vision, this immediate and intimate union between the soul and God, this, as revealed in Jesus Christ, is the basis of the Quaker Faith.

“We do not make use of the outward rites of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper but we do lay stress on the inward experiences they symbolise. Our testimony is to the reality of this experience without the external act”
As an example of the inward experience, without the outward act, D. Elton Trueblood (1968) is quoted in the two revised draft copies of Christian Experience as describing baptism by fire as, “one loving heart setting another on fire”.

When I first met these quotations during discussions on the new draft of Christian Experience, I realised the full significance of Quakerism for Christianity. Jesus, the Jew, has for me the same message that early Quakers re-discovered; years of theological accretions have hidden its awesomeness.

Knowledge of the Heart

Knowledge, for Quakers, is knowledge of the heart. It is the gift of God’s Spirit and is born in the “inner light”. When we read Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, not literally, but through its eternal images, we find it full of this invocation to inner knowledge. When the Hebrew psalmist sings “deep calls unto deep”, it is of this knowledge of the heart that he speaks.

Yet in the course of the centuries this ability was weakened, as head knowledge, prevailed over heart knowledge and the message of Jesus was packaged for “fallen man”. How come that George Fox could allow full sway to the presence of God’s Spirit, at a time in England when Anglicans, Puritans and Roman Catholics saw Christianity in terms of the redemption of “fallen man”.

There is a mystical passage in George Fox’s Journal (p 27 ff, Nickalls) that helps me to understand this a little:

“Now was I come up in the spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new and all the creation gave a different smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness and innocency and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell.”
Fox never denies darkness or evil but he does not see them as primary. This is evident in several of his Epistles, for example in Epistle 240, Fox refers to the power of God that “goes over the fall to the beginning, where all things are blest”. For Fox original blessing preceded original sin. In this extract from his Journal, it’s clear that he sees the state of innocence as primary, “the state of Adam which he was before he fell.”
The struggle between darkness and light leaves us always in a state of humble striving. But a return to a state of “pureness and innocency” beyond “the flaming sword” that guards paradise, is, rather, a mystical vision that we strive for and need to keep constantly before us as the goal towards which God’s Spirit is guiding us.

I am making the claim here, for 17th century Quakerism, that it moved Christianity forward, out of an image of Christ as redeemer and mankind as sinful, into a new paradigm change that took Christianity out of the Roman Empire and back into the simple teachings of the human Jesus. Jesus lived so intensely with God that he became known as the Christ, the one who is anointed by God’s spirit. This is how I understand Fox’s “inner Christ”. This opens up a very difficult, but a very dignified way to live as a human being. Though elderly now, I feel ever new on this road and am aware that I have a lot to learn every day!

Eco-Quakerism

Eco-Quakerism is today a new, yet old, way of expressing a hymn of joy for God’s creation that makes “springs gush forth in the valleys, giving drink to every wild animal”! (Psalm 104). The colossal claim of Quakerism that all of life is sacramental, infuses our world and all that inhabits it, with immeasurable value! It gives rise to a Christian vision that can address the present ecological crisis. It allows human beings to, once again, walk with God in the Garden of Eden and even, perhaps, share this privilege with the creatures of planets yet to be found!

Does inner experience ever need external rites and could that be the sacrament of silence?

Irene Ni Mhaille died on 11 September 2022.

Articles

Ireland Yearly Meeting Epistle – April 2010

The Yearly Meeting Epistle is a traditional greeting, written in the course of each country’s Yearly Meeting and agreed to by all the participants.  The Epistle is sent to Yearly Meetings throughout the world.

RELIGIOUS  SOCIETY  OF  FRIENDS (QUAKERS)

IRELAND YEARLY MEETING

Quaker House Dublin, Stocking Lane, Dublin 16
Fax/Phone/Answering – 01 4956889
e-mail – office@quakers-in-ireland.ie

To Friends everywhere

Dear Friends

We send loving greetings from Ireland Yearly Meeting met in spring sunshine from 8-11 April 2010 in Lisburn.  The underlying theme which emerged was one of being true to our vision.  Our Testimonies are a vision of a way of living.  They express our beliefs in words which leads to action. Jesus taught us to think positively and to live our lives in God’s enabling love.

Continue reading Ireland Yearly Meeting Epistle – April 2010 →

Articles

Darwin and the Divine

by
Christopher Moriarty

This article is based on a talk arranged by Monkstown Meeting in the Darwin bicentenary year.  It was first published in The Friendly Word January-February 2010.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. Continue reading Darwin and the Divine →

Events

Quaker Quest Belfast ’09

A Spiritual Path for Our Time

Four consecutive Wednesday evenings

From 30th Sept 2009

Quaker Quest Explores the Quaker way

It has actually happened!

We shared our individual and common insights through presentations, discussions, questions and an experience of Quaker worship.

Quaker Quest, an outreach programme tried and tested in the Britain Yearly Meeting ,took place in South Belfast Meeting this autumn.

Each evening the host or hostess introduces 3 speakers for the evening. Each speaker speaks on the chosen topic for up to 6 minutes and then the meeting breaks into small discussion groups. Following the discussion groups, each speaker gives another short talk on a more personal level on the same topic. There is an opportunity for questions and finally a Meeting for Worship lasting about 25minutes.

The topics covered were :

  • Quakers and the Spiritual Path
  • Quakers and Worship
  • Quaker Faith in Action
  • Quaker Values

Quaker Quest was jointly organised by South Belfast and Frederick St Meetings with support from Lisburn Meeting. Speakers, group facilitators, hosts, welcomers and caterers were drawn from these Meetings. A big effort went into publicity, from a leaflet drop in the local area, to posters and radio interviews and new road signage provided by the City Council.

After a lot of planning and effort we wondered if anyone would come to find out about the best kept spiritual secret! We need not have worried attendance was large the Meeting House buzzed with conversation, the hospitality was generous and the welcome warm. On the first night there were 90 people and on succeeding evenings 70 or so. Each evening there were between 35 and 45 visitors or Questors.

The Speakers were chosen to reflect the diversity of views within our Society, questions posed by Questors ranged from, What Quakers believe about original sin to how to join our Society?

Considering that many present had never attended a Meeting for Worship, it was striking that the time of Worship was settled and reverent. The presence of God was evident.

Prior to the 4 evening sessions, 2 Friends from BYM came to train us in the process, this was open to all and even sceptical Friends became enthused and committed.

Successful or not?

Judging by attendance and appreciation expressed yes. At a deeper level, we may never know the extent to which people were encouraged and challenged spiritually. More recent members and attenders of our Meetings found it very helpful and since QQ there have been a small number of new attenders.

www.quakerquest.org

Articles

Mary Leadbeater and the Annals of Ballitore

Article first published in The Friendly Word November-December 2009

by

Christopher Moriarty

This year saw the triumphant conclusion of years of work by Mario Corrigan and his colleagues at the Kildare County Library in the publication of the definitive edition of a very remarkable 19th century book. Of particular interest to Friends because of the Quaker life of its author, The annals of Ballitore is also a vital source work in social history.

Continue reading Mary Leadbeater and the Annals of Ballitore →

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.

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.