Friends World News The Bulletin of the Friends World Committee for Consultation Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) Due to the COVID-19 pandemic this is a single but larger edition for 2020. fwcc.world FWCC 2020 Vol. 2 No. 190 About the Friends World Committee for Consultation The purpose of the Friends World Committee for Contents Consultation is to encourage fellowship among all the branches of the Religious Society of Friends. The Nothing Can Keep Us from the Love of God Quaker community circles the globe, spanning a rich diversity of regional cultures, beliefs and styles of Greeting from the General Secretary 1 worship. FWCC programs unite Friends around the world through Spirit-led fellowship. What Canst Thou Say? Our work with the Quaker United Nations Offices, both by appointing members to their governing com- Message from the FWCC Clerk 3 mittees and by providing consultative status, offers a means to engage Quakers in world affairs. Our consul- Report from the FWCC Treasurer 5 tation extends to those of other faiths through work with the World Council of Churches and Christian World Communions. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected Our Mission Friends around the world? Section Secretaries Answering God’s call to universal love, FWCC brings share their reports 7 Friends of varying traditions and cultural experiences together in worship, communications, and consulta- Asia-West Pacific Section 7 tion, to express our common heritage and our Quaker message to the world. (Approved 2006) Africa Section 9 History Europe and Middle East Section 10 In 1937, after years of concerned work to reconnect Section of the Americas 12 a fragmented Quaker world, the Second World Conference of Friends created the FWCC “to act in a consultative capacity to promote better A good news story from the FWCC Africa understanding among Friends the world over.” Today, Section: How Covid-19 saw churches working Friends from yearly meetings and groups in 75 nations continue this work. Around the world there are four together like never before 14 cooperating, autonomous FWCC Sections serving Africa, the Americas, Asia and the West Pacific, and Europe and the Middle East. FWCC’s World Office is Bringing Friends Together Online in 2020 17 in London. Sustainability Programme Update 18 FWCC World Office The world office is based at Friends House in London, QUNO Representative shares their resources England. It serves four main roles: • Organise world gatherings, including triennial with Friends worldwide 19 meetings and consultations of Quakers world-wide. • Support and maintain contact with the work of General Secretary Search 21 the four FWCC sections and the Quaker United Nations Offices. • Coordinate the International Membership pro- gramme, which joins isolated Friends and worship groups to the wider Quaker community. Thank you for your donations to FWCC, • Promote an understanding of the world-wide character of the Society of Friends, through confer- past, present and future. ences, staff travel, correspondence and publica- tions, and through ecumenical and interfaith work • Together we are building a strong and on behalf of Friends. Further information about FWCC and its activities can vital Religious Society of Friends. be obtained from the World Office or the Section Offices, whose addresses are on the back cover of • Together we are strengthening the Friends World News. Contributions to the work of worldwide network of Friends. FWCC are always welcome and can be sent to any of the offices. • Together we are bringing our Quaker Friends World News message to the world. Friends World News, the bulletin of FWCC, is pub- lished twice yearly. If you wish to receive a personal copy, please contact the World Office (or the Section Please give generously to support the of the Americas if you live in North America). There is no set subscription fee, but a donation would be world family of Friends. welcome. Please send to the World Office anything you would like considered for publication in Friends Please consider FWCC in your will. World News — articles, letters, news, photographs and other illustrations, about the activities and For more about FWCC please visit our religious witness of Friends. All materials received will be acknowledged although the editor cannot make website: fwcc.world any commitment to publish. Please say if you wish photographs or other materials to be returned. Nothing Can Keep Us from the Love of God I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, not powers, nor height, nor depth . (my insert) nor coronavirus, nor lockdown, nor deprivation, nor social distancing . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8: 38–39 This bible quote has stood by me these last many months. Indeed, there is nothing that can separate us from our love of God. Throughout these many months of uncertainty, my strength has come from my love of God and my love of Quakers, not only those people I love, not only the supportive spiritual community that refuses to be inactive, but the Quaker way of being in the world. I gain insight and courage from the balance of patience and persistence of Friends, when it comes to supporting people where they are, to listening, to helping one another up with a tender hand, and speaking truth to power. We have a great yearning for change — both on the wings of the Spirit, and with our feet planted firmly on the soil. The pandemic is the great revealer, allowing us to see with new eyes the inequities of our world structures, which have been building ineffective walls over centuries of history. Written by several church leaders, Calling for an Economy of Life in the Time of Pandemic reflects this Quaker sense. In its light we see anew and afresh the distorted realities and inequities powerful interests have passed off as ‘normal’ and unquestionable. Covid-19 could become the great leveller if we harness its revelation for a transformation which raises up those who have been cast down by exploitative and supremacist systems. This is a call to conversion, where we are called to listen to the groaning of all creation and its hope of redemption (Romans 8: 22–23). The path toward change is rarely free from challenge, but our faith makes us strong and gives us courage for the journey. Even in darkness, our steps are illuminated by the Light, as described here by Quaker theologian Howard Thurman: Waiting is a window opening on many landscapes. It is the experience of recovering balance when catapulted from one’s place. It is the quiet forming of a pattern of recollection in which there is called into focus the fragmentary values from myriad encounters of many kinds in a lifetime of living. It is to watch a gathering darkness until all light is swallowed up completely without the power to interfere or bring a halt. Then to continue one’s journey in the darkness with one’s footsteps guided by the illumination of remembered radiance is to know courage of a peculiar kind — the FRIENDS WORLD NEWS 2020 / VOL. 1 / NO. 190 1 courage to demand that light continue to be light even in the surrounding darkness. To walk in the light while darkness invades, envelops, and surrounds is to wait on the Lord. This is to know the renewal of strength. This is to walk and faint not. — Howard Thurman, The Inward Journey, pp. 81–82 Let us renew our strength. Let us move steadily toward the Light in this dark night. Let us feel the presence of Love at this Christmas time, for there is nothing that can separate us from our love of God and our love of one another. Stay safe and stay close to those you love. In God’s care, Gretchen Castle general secretary, fwcc world office 2 FRIENDS WORLD NEWS 2020 / VOL. 1 / NO. 190 What Canst Thou Say? Recently I heard a comment made by the late and former Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth Jonathan Sacks to the former Anglican Bishop of Liverpool James Jones. Sacks asked Jones what the three most important words that Jesus ever said were and then pointed out that in his opinion they were ‘But I say,’ telling the Bishop that the Rabbis of Jesus time would never have used those words in addressing the people. We in the Quaker community have our own well known quote from Fox on this issue. These words were recorded by Margaret Fell on remembering George Fox’s first visit to Swarthmoor Hall and the impact it had on her. ‘And so he went on and said, How that Christ was the Light of the world and lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and that by this Light they might be gathered to God, etc. And I stood up in my pew, and I wondered at his doctrine, for I had never heard such before. And then he went on, and opened the Scriptures, and said, The Scriptures were the prophets’ words and Christ’s and the apostles’ words, and what as they spoke they enjoyed and possessed and had it from the Lord’. And then he said, ‘Then what had any to do with the Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth. You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?’ Margaret Fell records that she had never heard a message like this before.