Lynne Taylor’s In the Children’s Best Interests is a timely reminder of the universal plight of migrating children throughout history. It highlights the chronic inadequacy of government mechanisms for the management of their needs and lives. More telling, it shocks us with the recognition that our current national and global controversy over refugees from violence is just the latest in a string of moral failures.

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The Books section of the September 2018 Friends Journal includes reviews of three exemplary works to help “white” readers go deeper into self-awareness about the hidden dynamics of racism. This post offers an excerpt from each review. We strongly encourage you to read the linked reviews and to seek out the books themselves.

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Terrorism is universal in all cultures, in all traditions, in all times. Terrorism is only a means not an end, in human behavior. When other means are not perceived as effective, terrorism is a final option. The only way to stop terrorist is talking.

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“This book … differs from some recent atheist writings on religion in two ways. First, it is not about the truth of religious belief but about its meaning: what it means to believe in religious ideas, what it means for believers, and what it should mean for nonbelievers too.… Second, it differs from much recent atheism in the picture of religion it draws.” – Author Tim Crane

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Reader #1 is a collection of essays, addresses, and lectures about Quaker universalist themes originally published by the British Quaker Universalist Group (QUG) as a series of pamphlets. In 1986, Quaker Universalist Fellowship (QUF) republished the first six essays with permission, adding “Is Coexistence Possible: Christianity & Universalism in the Religious Society of Friends,” a talk given in America by Daniel Seeger during the Friends General Conference Gathering of 1984.

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Angell and Dandelion have shepherded a wide and global diversity of new specialist authors. They organize the volume around an overview of Quaker history 1650-2015, and they summarize Quaker relationship to literature, social justice, environmental sustainability, peace, education, and practical life simplicity.

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Matthew Sweet’s Operation Chaos is the compiled story of six U.S. misfit deserters from the Vietnam War who were clandestinely transported to Sweden. The book is a study of young men in a struggle between loyalty and dissent in a chaotic time.

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The key concept for Friends Mustafa and Tamari is a political reality known as settler colonialism: the replacement of indigenous populations with an outside settler society. The authors argue that native history must be centered in working for justice for indigenous people.

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I was asked by a Catholic friend if I knew Benjamin Lay, the Quaker abolitionist. I did not. She gave me an article in the September 2017 issue of the Smithsonian magazine, “The Cave Dwelling Vegan Who Took on Quaker Slavery and Won,” by Marcus Rediker.

I of course know of John Woolman, almost revered by many Friends including myself, but why had I never heard of Benjamin Lay? Indeed, Lay’s portrait, painted by William Williams in 1790, is in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.

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Have Quakers humanized themselves since the 17th century? If there have been changes, are these changes conscious through a process of “continuing revelation”?

The new book by Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, indicates that this humanization process is indeed the case for Quakers and other religious groups.

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