Below you will find an archive of our news letters saved as PDF (portable document files).

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If you do not have it already you can download the free version of Adobe Acrobat from the link below.

This pdf file their first national newsletter from March 2010.
1st-newsletter

News letter for Summer 2010
QGP Summer-newsletter

This pdf file is a small form that you can print out to take part in the national survey of the current state of Meeting House gardens.
Survey

As convenor of Norwich and Waveney’s Quakers and Kindred Animals Committee (QUAKA), I was there to represent the only faith-based CSD organisation concerned specifically with the well being of animals in world trade. My main task was to develop awareness of the spiritual nature of our fellow creatures, which we had already begun to ease - very gently – onto the EU agenda.

The prime mover in bringing about the forum was the charismatic Adolfo Sansolini, whom some of you met when he came to Norwich to speak at Friends’ Meeting House in March. QUAKA will be taking an active part in a blog being set up to develop the ideas that came out of that meeting. It will be posted shortly on the forum’s website http://www.animalwelfareandtrade.com. The views expressed will in turn be reflected in the final submission that is made ahead of the 2009 meeting.

What follows is the mission statement which I took to Brussels on behalf of QUAKA. Copies were made available to all delegates.

Valerie Macfarlane

Factory Farms - We’re in This Together

The intensive rearing of livestock has until recently been a matter of concern to only a minority of people. It was considered solely an animal welfare issue. Increasingly however, evidence is coming to light showing the serious effect it can have on the people who work in this industry.

Casual attitudes are inevitable where thousands of creatures are processed on an un-ending conveyor belt of feeding and killing. Repetition is bound to desensitise anyone to the welfare of individual animals. But to see where this can lead you only have to go on the internet, key in Cruelty on Factory Farms, and read the accounts of former employees. Almost anything you can imagine happening in an understaffed, ill-supervised environment where low overheads and high through-put are paramount – happens.

Peer Pressure

One of the worst cases of cruelty to get into the newspapers happened in England on a Bernard Matthews turkey farm. Two young men, using poles intended as aids for rounding up the stock, were secretly filmed playing baseball with live birds. Their lawyer said they had been influenced by “peer pressure.” He told the court: “In this sort of environment the one thing you cannot do is step outside what everyone else is doing.”

The risk of certain individuals being led into sadism is always present where respect for living creatures has been eroded. Despite the secrecy policy of the majority of factory farms, it now appears that exposure to this behaviour can lead to brutality being regarded as normal. Today, therefore, we must face the fact that what was once seen as an animal tragedy, is in fact one which embraces human beings as well.

It doesn’t end there. Research suggests a clear link between cruelty to animals and violence towards people. In America, an FBI analysis showed that a high proportion of those convicted of violent crimes have histories of animal abuse. One study by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Northeastern University put it as high as seventy per cent.

At the same time it has become clear that we can no longer justify the division which we have always maintained between the animals and ourselves. In recent years science has taught us a great deal about what we and our fellow creatures have in common physically. It is now accepted that they are sentient beings which experience fear and pain as we do. In many cases their senses are far superior to our own. And these “dumb” creatures have their own means of communication.

Differences of Degree

We can no longer claim that what separates us is more than a matter of degree. And in many ways they have the advantage over us. So what grounds do we have for continuing to treat our fellow creatures as different in kind from ourselves? Encouraged by the Church, man has always clung to the soul as the single thing that separates him from the rest of creation. But spirituality in man manifests itself through such qualities as love, symbiosis and altruism. And anyone who has lived close to animals knows that these are not the monopoly of homo sapiens. Those most aware of this – and who live their lives accordingly – are indiginous peoples such as the First Nation Americans, the Inuit and the Aborigines.

The evidence today is that these groups - often looked down upon as primitive - have been right all along. Each life form is really an aspect of a single, indivisible whole. There may be variations when it comes to individual development. And we progress at the pace of the slowest. But in the end we are one. On the factory farm – as in everything – we are in this together.
QUAKERS AND KINDRED ANIMALS (QUAKA)
Email: valmacf@btinternet.com

The Face on the Fiver

By Sue Debbage

During the seventeenth century Quakers were imprisoned for their beliefs and recorded for themselves the dreadful conditions inside. Most later Quakers continue on the concern for the welfare of prisoners.

Elizabeth Fry was born on 21` May 1780, the third child of Joseph Gurney, a wealthy Quaker manufacturer of cloth, and his wife Catherine, in Gurney Court, Magdalen Street, Norwich. Amongst the ‘plain Quakers’ of Goat Lane Meeting, the Gurneys stood out because of their bright clothes and fashionable manners. At that time most Quakers wore simple clothes without trimmings, and still used ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ in conversation believing everyone was equal before God.

Convinced that girls should be educated as well as boys, so the family learnt history, geography, French and Latin. Catherine also told her girls Bible stories and read to them from the psalms. She visited and helped the sick and poor in the district taking her daughters with her. Catherine died when Elizabeth was only twelve leaving her deeply upset.

At eighteen years old, Elizabeth recorded in her diary going to Goat Lane (wearing purple boots with scarlet laces) and hearing William Savery, from America, speak in First Day (Sunday) Meeting for Worship. Dining later at her uncle’s house, she became very impressed by Savory ‘a truly good man;…I have felt there is a GOD… ‘, began to understand true worship, but remained reluctant to become a ‘plain Quaker’.

In 1799 Elizabeth visited London again having the chance to meet Savery. She also visited the theatre and operas, but found herself wondering whether it was right to enjoy them. ‘I think them all so artificial… ‘. She felt much more comfortable in the company of her cousin Priscilla Hannah Gurney, a ‘plain’ Friend whom she visited in Coalbrookdale. In Meeting for Worship there Deborah Darby spoke about Elizabeth becoming ‘a light to the blind, speech to the dumb and feet to the lame‘.

Elizabeth’s changing views began to set her apart from her family, but plain dress clearly signaled the decision she had made. People stopped inviting her to social events realising that other things were more important to her now. Her faith and prayer being a great source of strength, she found it easier to be practical and to make great efforts to help others. She ran a Sunday School in the laundry at the family home at Earlham. The children - many already working in Norwich factories- to whom she told Bible stories, and taught to read and write, were called “Betsy’s Imps” by her sisters.

In the summer of 1799 another Quaker, Joseph Fry - a wealthy tea, coffee and spice merchant who later became a banker - visited the Gurneys. A plain Friend, shy and seemingly very dull, he admired Elizabeth but at first she refused his proposal of marriage. She did come to love him and on 18th August 1800 they were married. They lived first with his parents in the London building which also housed the warehouse.

Their first child, Katherine, was born in August 1801 and over the next twenty years Elizabeth gave birth to eleven more children. Constant child bearing and the demands of a large family ruined the health of numerous contemporary women. Like many others, at times she felt her life was being taken over by motherhood. Of course she loved her children and missed them while away, but recorded that she feared she might become “the careworn and oppressed mother… “

Progressively more active in the work of the Society of Friends, respect for Elizabeth’s spoken ministry grew especially when she began to travel some distances to other Friends’ Meetings. Nevertheless her diary for 1812 records that she felt her “life [was] slipping away to little purpose… “.

Stephen Grellett was a French aristocrat who had gone into exile in America where he had become a Quaker. Given permission to visit some British prisons he was horrified by the conditions at Newgate. He found women prisoners lying on the bare stone floors, and newborn babies without clothing. This became the impetus for Elizabeth’s new life. He went to Elizabeth who immediately sent out for warm material and asked other women Friends to help her make clothes for the babies.

The following day Elizabeth and her sister in law went to the prison to see for themselves. The turnkeys (warders) were reluctant to admit them believing the women prisoners wild and savage. The sisters were very shocked at the conditions they found there - particularly when they saw two prisoners stripping the clothes off a dead baby to give them to another child. Warm clothes were left for the babies, ill prisoners were comforted and clean straw laid for the sick to lie on. On a third visit Elizabeth prayed for the prisoners who were moved by her sincere words of love for them.

Her visits continued and just before Christmas 1816, she went in calmly and picking up a child asked the mothers, “Is there not something we can do for these innocent little children?” The women prisoners recognised her concern for them and began to listen. She suggested they might start a school for the children to give them a better chance in life. When she returned the next day she found a waiting crowd who had tried to tidy themselves and their surroundings.

Elizabeth set up a committee of twelve women - eleven Quakers and the wife of a clergyman. With her husband’s help she invited the authorities to discuss her plans and after much debate the school was allowed.

The Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate organised this school for the children, appointed a female matron to supervise the prisoners and paid her wages. Materials were provided for the prisoners to sew, knit and make goods for sale; the proceeds would buy food, clothing and fresh straw for bedding. The committee made daily visits to Newgate reading from the Bible believing in its redeeming powers.

In 1818 Elizabeth gave evidence to a committee of the House of Commons on London prisons, the first woman to do so. She described in detail the lives of the prisoners and recommended that women, not men, should look after women prisoners, stressing her belief in the importance of useful employment.

She made important changes in the treatment of prisoners sentenced to transportation to the colonies. Some women were on the point of rioting, about to be taken in irons on open wagons to the waiting ships. Fry arranged for them to be taken in closed carriages to protect them from the stones and jeers of the crowds and promised to go with them to the docks. In the five weeks before the ships actually sailed the ladies of her Committee visited daily and provided each prisoner with a ‘useful bag’ of things they would need. Patchwork quilts were made on the voyage which could be sold on arrival to provide some income. During the next twenty years there was regular care for all the convict ships.

Elizabeth later set up District Visiting Societies to work with the poor, libraries for coastguards and a training school for nurses. When a small boy was found frozen to death near her home, another Committee was established to offer hot soup and a bed to homeless women and children.

Her work became very well known leading to the setting up of Ladies’ Committees in other towns in Britain and Europe, also attracting royal patronage.

But at various times her work attracted criticism; prisoners complained that they had lost their entertainment no longer being able to gamble or read novels as Elizabeth’s workers encouraged them to “higher things”. The new prison act of 1823 cost the local authorities more money and ladies visiting prisons were still made unwelcome. Elizabeth was especially sensitive to the criticism from Friends who thought that she valued public esteem too much, and that she was neglecting her family. Some of her children married non Quakers; in fact only one of her children remained in the Society.

Then in 1828 Fry’s Bank failed precipitating her husband’s disownment by the Society on the presumption that he had put other people’s money at risk. Elizabeth herself was wrongfully accused of using the bank’s funds for her charitable work. The Gurneys’ Bank underwrote Fry’s debts thus restoring Joseph’s financial integrity (and so his Society membership). Elizabeth continued to work in prisons and lobby parliament, recounting her observations in the penal system. Her travels “in the Ministry” took her farther and farther afield including on several occasions this Meeting House at Goat Lane in Norwich where she is minuted for her stirring vocal ministry.

On October 13th 1845 Elizabeth died after a stroke which had rendered her unconscious. Almost before she was buried she had become a legend of piety and philanthropy. Nevertheless, in her seminal biography based on Fry’s own diaries, June Rose sums up the outstanding achievements of the woman whose face now appears on the reverse side of the British five pound note:

“Through her personal courage and involvement, Elizabeth Fry alerted the nations of Europe to the cruelty and filth in the prisons and revealed the individual human faces behind the prison bars. Her own passionate desire to lead a useful life disturbed the placid, vapid existence of women in Victorian England and changed forever the confines of respectable femininity. The name of Elizabeth Fry broadened the appeal of the Quaker faith… Over two hundred years after her birth, she seems a brave and modern woman, battling with the injustices of her time… “

copyright Sue Debbage. 2003.

For more information on Elizabeth Fry and her work in prisons see:

Georgina King Lewis (1910) Elizabeth Fry Hedley Brothers, London.
Janet Whitney. (1937) Elizabeth Fry. George Harrap and Co. London.
June Rose. (1994) Elizabeth Fry: A Biography. Q.H.S.

A member of the Wells next-the-sea meeting, Stuart Burbridge, tells how he discovered Quakers and why he became a member of the Religious Society of Friends.

Why I became a Quaker

My Journey

For most of my adult life I have not belonged to any church or religious group.
But I have always had a strong interest in spiritual matters including that question which I believe is at the heart of all religions: “what happens to us when we die?”

Neither of my parents are churchgoers although my mother was brought up in a fairly strict Church of England family and my father among even stricter Baptists. There is no doubt that a good deal of their East Anglian Puritanism rubbed off on me. I received my early religious education at a Methodist Sunday School. There I had no difficulty in the concept of being an immortal soul living in eternity. But the idea that we have just one life on earth to prove ourselves and then spend the rest of eternity in either Heaven or Hell seemed to me ridiculous and not the kind of system a loving and forgiving God would arrange.

In my early 20s an instinctive need to fill a God-shaped hole in my life led me to flirt with several religious sects including the Mormons and the Moonies (before they became infamous). What stopped me from joining any of them was my perception of an essential hypocrisy in so many groups that claim to be Christian based. While there is much in the bible that may be open to interpretation there is no ambiguity about the commandments not to kill but to love both your neighbours and enemies. It has always seemed to me that it is impossible to be truly Christian without being a pacifist. But all the groups that I explored found it acceptable for their members to join the armed forces and far from loving their enemies, in some instances, expressed positive hatred for certain people.

Discovering Quakers

I became involved in a great deal of voluntary work in my late 20s and eventually trained for a professional qualification in social work. Over several years I noticed that wherever there was good work being done there always seemed to be a Quaker present. I was intrigued. Like many people, I had thought Quakers were confined to history. All I knew about them was from seeing films like Friendly Persuasion, which tells the story of a Quaker family and their personal struggles with their faith and conscience amidst the violence of everyday life during the American civil war.

When I eventually crossed the threshold of a Quaker Meeting House to participate in a Meeting for Worship, like others before me, I had a strong feeling of having come home. Sitting in a circle together in a still and welcoming silence each person, in there own way, waits upon God. Occasionally, someone may feel impelled to rise to their feet and speak. But a Meeting for Worship may pass in complete silence and often these may be the most profound. You may find yourself with a new awareness of issues that you have never before considered. It’s happened to me more than once.

The Quaker Faith

Being a Quaker is, for me, a matter of listening as best one can to that part of you which is, or is in touch with, the Divine. During silent worship, of course, but more importantly through everyday life. Some might describe this as simply paying attention to your conscience. But it is not enough just to do no harm. The uncomfortable consequence is that one must constantly strive to do what is right and it is largely up to you to determine what that is.

There is no written set of ideas and beliefs that you must hold to be a Quaker but over the centuries they have accumulated a number of testimonies that they try to bear witness to in their daily lives. Among these are: Peace, Equality, Truth and Simplicity. Exactly how these are expressed will naturally vary between individuals just as it has changed through the generations. For instance, in the 17th century as an affirmation of equality Quaker men would keep their hats on at all times except when praying which caused considerable offence at a time when it was customary to remove your hat when in the presence of your social superiors. Today there is no such custom, few people wear hats and those who keep them on in all circumstances are assumed to have cold (possibly bald) heads.

A Meeting House is not a consecrated building or regarded to be in any way especially sacred. To do so is to deny the sacredness of all things. Similarly, Quakers in Britain do not have ordained priests or ministers. All members, irrespective of age or gender, share the responsibility for the maintaining the spiritual community as they have for the past 350 years.

Finally, here is a tip on how you can check if the building you have entered is a Quaker Meeting House or some other place. Nowhere other than a Quaker Meeting for Worship will you see such a gathering of sensible shoes.