Steve Smith’s Eastern Light: Awakening to Presence in Zen, Quakerism and Christianity is a remarkable book in the form of a quasi-autobiographical reflection on the author’s reembracing of Quaker tradition, broadened through the assistance of Buddhist insigh…
The mission of the Bridging the Gap Foundation is to improve reproductive health and contraceptive decision-making of women and men by providing up-to-date educational resources to the physicians, nurses and public health leaders of tomorrow. Quakers once had a…
What do Quakers say about the dilemma provided in the biblical Book of Job? Mark Larrimore’s The Book of Job: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2013) focuses the reader’s attention on the experience of injustice, the success of the wicked, and the suffering…
Given our recent theme of exploring non-theism and secularism, it seems useful to publish a slightly reedited version of this March 2012 review of George Levine’s The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now (2011) This collection of essays could be titled…
Brent Nongbri is a post-doctoral research fellow in early Christianity at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His 2013 book, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept , offers a corrective to the conventional modern uses of the term “religion.” The topic…
A Principled Stand: The Story of Hirabayashi v. United States , by Gordon Hirabayashi (University of Washington Press, 2013). In 1942, University of Washington student Gordon Hirabayashi refused to obey the curfew and mass removal of Japanese Americans on the West…
This review was originally published in Universalist Friends , Fall/Winter 2003, Volume 39. See Universalist Friends for other issues of that journal. Rhoda Gilman is a historian, a founding member of Quaker Universalist Fellowship, and a long-time…
A Quaker Prayer Life , by David Johnson (Inner Light Books, 2013; see excerpts). Johnson has a long commitment to nonviolence and opposing war and the arms trade, and has worked with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. He delivered the 2005 Backhouse…
The Essential Elias Hicks , by Paul Buckley (Inner Light Books, 2013; see excerpts). Paul Buckley attends Community Friends Meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a Quaker historian and theologian, known among Friends of all stripes for his workshops, short courses, and…
Universe as Revelation: An Ecomystical Theology for Friends, by Jo Farrow & Alex Wildwood (London, U.K.: Pronoun Press, 2013) … Can one give an anthropic twist to the Big Bang? It has been tried, most notably in 1988 by physicist Brian Swimme and theologian Thomas…