Quaker Strongrooms

In a week’s time, the annual assembly of Quakers in Britain will take place in Friends House (Friday 25 to Monday 28 May). The place will be buzzing, thronged with Friends from all over the country and abroad. It will be a packed programme of business, and there’s plenty taking place in the intervals too, including a group fair and the Salter and Swarthmore lectures.

Friends House garden entrance. Hubert Lidbetter photograph album 1925-1927 (Ref. 93/AL/12)

The Library will be closed the week before, but open to Friends attending the Yearly Meeting over those four days. As usual, we’ll be open between sessions. If you’re attending Yearly Meeting come into the Library for some quiet reading, to ask questions, or just to have a look around – you’ll be most welcome! We’ll also be taking the wraps off our new Library exhibition, a display of artefacts and documents about relief work during World War I. More about this in a future post.

To help Friends attending Yearly Meeting prepare for the two major themes this year, some preparatory learning resources were suggested in Documents in advance for sessions two and five. These  resource lists are below. If you want to refresh your memory, or if you just haven’t had a chance to read them all yet, you’ll find copies of all the books and pamphlets available in the Library reading room during Yearly Meeting.

Resource list for session 2 Economic justice and sustainability

• Living Witness, Quaker Peace & Social Witness Sustainability & Peace Programme. Sustainability toolkit. London: Quaker Life, 2011
•  Minute 36 of Britain Yearly Meeting 2011.
•  Jonathan Dale. Beyond the spirit of the age (Swarthmore Lecture 1996). London: Quaker Home Service, 1996
• Cave, Elizabeth and Ros Morley (eds). Faith in Action: Quaker Social Testimony. Reprinted 2007. London: Quaker Books, 2007
• Pam Lunn. Costing not less than everything: Sustainability and spirituality in challenging times (Swarthmore Lecture 2011). London: Quaker Books, 2011
• Wilkinson, Richard and Kate Pickett: The spirit level. Allen Lane, 2010.

Resource list for session 5 What it means to be a Quaker today

• Quaker identity and the heart of our faith. Study material based on a Quaker Life conference in 2008. London: Quaker Life, 2008. Also available online at http://www.quaker.org.uk/files/Faith-and-practice-proceeding.pdf
• Committee on Eldership and Oversight. Moving into membership. Revised 2011. London: Quaker Books, 2011
• Ashworth, Timothy and Alex Wildwood. Rooted in Christianity, open to new light: Quaker spiritual diversity. London: Pronoun Press, 2009
• Boulton, David. Real like the daisies or real like I love you? Essays in radical Quakerism. Dent: Dales Historical Monographs, 2002
• Dandelion, Ben Pink. Celebrating the Quaker way. 2nd ed. London: Quaker Books, 2010
• Durham, Geoffrey. Being a Quaker: a guide for newcomers. London: Quaker Quest, 2011
• Halliday, Robert. Mind the oneness: the foundation of good Quaker business method (George Gorman Memorial Lecture 1989). London: Quaker Books, 2010
• Quaker Quest. Twelve Quakers and… series. London: Quaker Quest, 2004–2007. Also published in New light: 12 Quaker voices, ed. Jennifer Kavanagh (2008)
• Kavanagh, Jennifer (ed). New light: 12 Quaker voices. Winchester: O Books, 2008
• Winning essays in Friends quarterly May 2010, also available online at http://www.thefriend.co.uk/fq/
• Best, Simon. “Sustainable, radical Quakerism: a faith for the twenty-first century” (George Gorman Memorial Lecture 2011) in Friends quarterly (January 2012)