Articles
Scholarly works, interviews, and personal reflections by Universalist Quakers and others.
Quaker Universalist Fellowship Interview with Rhoda Raasch Gilman
Rhoda Raasch Gilman … To download an audio file of this interview of this interview click here. QUF : This is Cherie Roberts of the Quaker Universalist Fellowship, or QUF, as it is known. Today is August 26…
Quaker Universalist Fellowship Interview with Daniel A. Seeger
Daniel A. Seeger … To download an audio file of this interview of this interview click here. QUF : This is Cherie Roberts of the Quaker Universalist Fellowship, or QUF, as it is known. Today is Monday…
Quaker Universalist Fellowship Interview with Gary Patton
To download an audio file of this interview of this interview click here. QUF : This is Cherie. PATTON : Hi, Cherie; this is Gary; we rhyme this morning.
QUF Interview: Mary Conrow Coelho
The “New Story,” as expressed by Mary Conrow Coelho, was discovered after a spiritual awakening, and integrates science and spirituality. This story has the power to change our way of seeing and understanding ourselves and all that is, and is a basis for integrating diversity within Quakerism.
I Have Called You Friends
Let the first concern of the friends of Jesus be to cooperate with and to encourage, rather than to convert, anyone who is already promoting the Realm of God on earth. Let us look forward to a new millennium when all humankind’s great religions will collaborate full-heartedly in the mutual building up of a civilization based on love. Let us recognize that while spiritual life in its externals often presents us with a bewildering diversity, the saints of each spiritual tradition are practically indistinguishable from each other in their lives, their way of being. Though their theological concepts may be different, their feelings and conduct are amazingly similar. They dwell in love, and God dwells in them because God is love. In the beautiful prayer with which he closes his final discourse in the Gospel of John, Jesus acknowledges that he came so that “all might be One.” Increasingly in this modern age, the capacity to apprehend the One in the many constitutes the special responsibility of those who would dwell in love. As we embrace our heritage for the new millennium, may this capacity to apprehend the One in the many, and the love it expresses, be our special gift as the friends of Jesus to people of all faiths everywhere!
Commerce, Community, and the Regulations of Universal Love
John Woolman’s essay “A Plea for the Poor” provides a starting point for Dan Seeger’s reflections in this pamphlet, was a vigorous argument for justice and equality in economic relations. Thus, according to the author, if the universalist principles of Quaker belief extend an inner light and a spirit of love to all humankind, then certainly in today’s global world the ethics of Quakerism must extend to global economy. Seeger both reminds and makes the reader aware, therefore, that Friends from George Fox’s generations and beyond have questioned the moral crime of making human beings (as distinct from human labor) into a marketable commodity.
In Praise of Gandhi: Technology And The Ordering Of Human Relations
During the 20th century, Friends were deeply influenced by Gandhi’s concept of nonviolent resistance as a tool for social and political change. They have been less sympathetic to his ideas on technology, although as Sibley makes clear, those ideas were rooted in Gandhi’s religious beliefs and in a testimony of simplicity not unlike that of traditional Quakers.
Hazardous Engagement: God Makes a Friend
This spiritual autobiography, written during 2001 and 2002, is framed as a series of monthly letters to the spiritual presence. The author later discovered that this spiritual presence who had been her teacher during those seven years had taught lessons that were in close accordance with the theology of the first Quakers!