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Quaker Action on Housing Living out Our Faith

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Quaker Action on Housing Living out Our Faith 1 May 2015 £1.80 the DISCOVER THE CONTEMPORARYFriend QUAKER WAY Quaker Living action on out housing our faith the Friend INDEPENDENT QUAKER JOURNALISM SINCE 1843 CONTENTS VOL 173 NO 18 3 Thought for the Week: 16 Tax justice Be the message Richard Murphy Ian Kirk-Smith 17 Worship God, don’t use God 4-5 The housing crisis: Peter Speirs putting faith into action 18 The Book of Discipline Dorothy Hamilton Rhiannon Grant 6-7 News 19 New series: Gleanings 8 Bearing the keys The holy mountain Harvey Gillman Laurie Michaelis 9 Space for the Spirit? 20 q-eye: a look at the Quaker world Paul Parker and Helen Drewery 22 Promises and plain speaking 10-11 Letters Roland Carn 12-13 Where to for religion? 24 Friends & Meetings Gillian Metheringham 14-15 Quakers and the European Union: Cover image: the future Photo: Joey / flickr CC. Oliver Robertson See pages 4-5. The Disasters Emergency Committee have issued a plea for donations to alleviate the suffering of people in Nepal. http://www.dec.org.uk/ The Friend Subscriptions Advertising Editorial UK £79 per year by all payment Advertisement manager: Editor: types including annual direct debit; George Penaluna Ian Kirk-Smith monthly payment by direct debit [email protected] £7; online only £59 per year. Articles, images, correspondence For details of other rates, Tel/fax 01535 630230 should be emailed to contact Penny Dunn on 54a Main Street, Cononley [email protected] 020 7663 1178 or [email protected] Keighley BD20 8LL or sent to the address below. the Friend 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ Tel: 020 7663 1010 Fax: 020 7663 1182 www.thefriend.org Editor: Ian Kirk-Smith [email protected] • Sub-editor: Trish Carn [email protected] • Production and office manager: Elinor Smallman [email protected] • Journalist: Tara Craig [email protected] • Arts editor: Rowena Loverance [email protected] • Environment editor: Laurie Michaelis [email protected] • Subscriptions officer: Penny Dunn [email protected] Tel: 020 7663 1178 • Advertisement manager: George Penaluna, Ad department, 54a Main Street, Cononley, Keighley BD20 8LL Tel: 01535 630230 [email protected] • Clerk of the trustees: Nicholas Sims • ISSN: 0016-1268 • The Friend Publications Limited is a registered charity, number 211649 • Printed by Headley Bros Ltd, Queens Road, Ashford, Kent TN24 8HH 2 the Friend, 1 May 2015 Thought for the Week Be the message iving out our faith in the world’ is the theme of this year’s Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM). It follows three years in which BYM addressed the question: ‘What it means to be a Quaker today’. The themes represent ‘Ltwo sides of the same coin. It is impossible to imagine one without the other. William Penn urged Friends to be ‘possessors as well as professors of the truth…’ It is instructive to consider what it means to ‘profess’ today. George Fox travelled the length and breadth of England preaching – professing – a message with enormous personal conviction. This Yearly Meeting will celebrate a different kind of preaching: one that Quakers value and cherish. Early Friends lived out their faith in the late 1660s by acting on principle. They endured, in doing so, the most grievous persecution. Joseph Besse has meticulously recorded it in A Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers. Later, released from this persecution and able to act with openness and generosity, Friends chose to live out their faith in the world through an active witness. This witness, grounded in a deep personal transformation, was rooted in their experience of an Inward Light and nurtured in the gathered stillness of Meeting of Worship. The professing became putting faith into action. Quakers have always put their shoulder to the wheel in addressing injustice and inequality. In the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Fry was appalled by what she saw in prisons and was convinced that ‘there is a sphere of usefulness open to all.’ Paul Parker and Helen Drewery cite other examples in their article in this issue. ‘Living out’ requires action on issues of concern. It demands focused and organised activity. The local Quaker initiatives, described in this issue, which address housing need today, are a wonderful example of this kind of service. As William Penn, in 1682, said: ‘True godliness don’t turn men out of the world but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavours to mend it…’ There are, of course, many ways of ‘living out’ or ‘professing’. Living out our faith also requires an attention to the everyday, to ordinary encounters, to how we treat people at work, at home, at Meeting, at leisure. Quaker faith & practice is a treasure trove of inspiration – an endless well to dip into for wisdom and guidance. Many quotes celebrate Friends who lived their lives, at an everyday level, in a spirit of love and tenderness: ‘Our beloved Friend was a man of few talents… he grew up in piety and virtue, and became an encouraging example of true Christian simplicity, humility, meekness, self-denial and universal charity’ (Quaker faith & practice 18.01). These ‘ordinary’ lives, transformed by the Inward Light, can be extraordinary in their gentle impact and tender influence. They are inspiring. We need to remember that the most enduring way to profess the Quaker message is to ‘be the message’ in the way we live our lives and treat people. Ian Kirk-Smith Editor of the Friend the Friend, 1 May 2015 3 Living out our faith The housing crisis: putting faith into action ‘It is always a joy to see an applicant’s face light up…’ Photo: Joey / flickr CC. / flickr Photo: Joey Dorothy Hamilton reports on how Friends in Britain have been putting Quaker property to good use in imaginative social housing projects inchester Meeting is housed in a large, smooth sailing. Much time and effort has gone into late-eighteenth-century building, set in a working out how to finance the house on our modest beautiful garden, close to the historic city rents, and our warden works hard to increase our Wcentre. Its upper two floors are occupied by a warden’s other house income from hiring rooms for meetings or flat and seven rooms, which are let to residents who counselling. have housing needs. In fact, the house was purchased, Over the years we have created a restorative and in 1973, with the express purpose of serving this dual peaceful place to live, centred in communal spaces use. The purchase was driven by the vision of Friends like the kitchen and garden. These offer friendly areas who were aware of the severe housing needs around for people to meet and to engage in community-based them, even in a relatively privileged city. Following a activities. Our house manager says: ‘It is always a joy to recent refurbishment of the building, our project has see an applicant’s face light up on being told they have a been given a fresh lease of life. place in the house.’ We are now, also, discovering ways in which other Meetings in Britain are putting their Dedicated work property to good use for housing. Winchester Social Housing Project lets its rooms at Addressing local needs modest rents to people who are homeless or have other housing needs, but who have a reasonable chance, given Two initiatives, at Hemel Hempstead and Ross-on-Wye time in a supportive environment, to get their lives Meetings, are typical of smaller projects where flats have onto a more sustainable footing. Tenants are referred by been created in existing buildings. Helpfully, the former various social agencies, in particular Winchester Night has a gardener and the latter a cleaner in residence, who Shelter, and any professional support needed is provided are employed by the Meeting for their services! by those referrers or other agencies. Rents are paid by Tunbridge Wells Meeting, like Winchester, has a large the tenants or by housing benefit. Most are short-term house in an area usually thought of as privileged, but tenancies, initially of six months, and are renewable, if where Friends have become aware of acute housing needed, for terms of up to a year or occasionally more. need. Friends at the Meeting are working on a project The project’s success is largely due to the dedicated similar to Winchester’s, but with a particular focus on work of members of the Meeting. It has not all been the young. 4 the Friend, 1 May 2015 The intention in Tunbridge Wells is to create ten single- Larger housing trusts occupancy flats to provide ‘move-on’ accommodation: affordable housing for young people moving from the Besides these comparatively small-scale ventures, there care of local agencies to eventual independence. This are a number of larger housing trusts and associations will be done whilst still preserving part of the building inspired by, or closely related to, Quakers: in some as the Meeting house. Friends have teamed up with cases these are still actively administered by Friends. Habitat for Humanity and West Kent YMCA to form Wensleydale and Swaledale Quaker Trust inherited the aptly named Stepping Stone Housing Partnership. a legacy of property and land over several centuries. Some of the prospective tenants may be able to help Some of it has been let to local people in need who are with the conversion, as Habitat for Humanity train connected with Quakers. volunteers to help with building and decoration! In the A Swarthmoor trust owns seven residential properties, words of one young person with first-hand experience let on a similar basis to that of social housing. Keswick of the gap in provision this project aims to meet: ‘If Community Housing Trust was set up by Churches you have something to bridge the gap, it makes the Together following a survey that exposed the effect transition much smoother and means people will start on local people of high house prices, second homes out with way more confidence.’ and the scarcity of affordable housing; throughout, Bournemouth and Fordingbridge Meeting intends Quakers have played a leading part, both financially to do a similar project, this time by demolishing the and administratively, and a Quaker now chairs the current Meeting house and raising a bigger property in Trust.
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