Uncategorized

How can we find inner stillness in our lives today? What is it for and how can we use it? Inspired by the fiery writings of early Quakers, such as George Fox and Margaret Fell, this book calls on their advice to go within and wait, adapting it to create a modern, relatable method for finding stillness and peace. This meditation is for us to use however we most need it, whether to explore and heal the self and others or to help us be more effective in the wider world.

Author: Joanna Godfrey Wood
Publisher: Christian Alternative, 2021
ISBN: 9781789047073
Paperback, 104 pages

Part of the Quaker Quicks series, short paperbacks very useful for outreach and religious education.

How the Jesus story and the Quaker way fit together.

‘What is Quakerism?’ can be a difficult question to answer, especially when Quakers today struggle to find a shared religious language. In this book, Mark Russ answers this question from a personal perspective, telling his story of trying to make sense of Jesus within the Quaker community. Through this theological wrestling emerges a ‘Quaker Shaped Christianity’ that is contemporary, open and rooted in tradition. In reflecting on how to approach the Bible, the challenges of Universalism, and the key events of the Jesus story, this book offers a creative, inspiring and readable theology for everyone who has wondered how Christianity and Quakerism fit together.

Author: Mark Russ
Publisher: Christian Alternative
Paperback, 88 pages

Tim Gee tells the story of why he became a pacifist and what it means to him. Gee reflects on the lives of peacemakers past and present to provide responses to questions like “Don’t we have to hit back if we’re hurt?”, “Don’t we need war to respond to evil?” and “Doesn’t religion justify wars?”. This is a critique of war, but more than that, it stakes a claim for pacifism’s feminist and anti-racist qualities. This is a call for a more nonviolent world.

Author: Tim Gee
Publisher: Christian Alternative,  October 2019
ISBN: 9781789040166
Paperback, 88 pages

Part of the Quaker Quicks series. This series of short paperbacks is very useful for outreach and for religious education.

Margaret Fell was an inspiring and practical leader in the early Quaker movement in 17th-century England. Remembered as the wife of George Fox, her writings have been largely forgotten. This book brings them to life again, with excerpts and reflections structured around the four testimonies that have continued to shape Quaker witness to this day: Simplicity, Truth, Equality and Peace. To do this, Joanna Godfrey Wood follows each passage with a modern adaptation of Fell’s words and then explores her own personal responses from a 21st-century perspective. We are left with a sense of a strong and beautiful bridge linking past and present. (review excerpted from Friends Journal)

Author: Joanna Godfrey Wood
Publisher; Christian Alternative (2021)
ISBN: 9781789045772
Paperback, 88 pages

Part of the Quaker Quicks series. This series of short paperbacks is very useful for outreach and for religious education.

Economic issues pervade the testimonies. Quakers value equality, yet we see economic inequality increasing dramatically. We value integrity, yet our economic system has no place for conscience. We value simplicity, yet our growth economy requires ever-increasing consumption. We value community, yet our society throws out those on the margins. We value stewardship, yet are running through finite resources at an alarming rate. We value peace, yet the violence and devastation caused by our economic system’s exploitation of people and the planet is tragic. Thus this walk through the Quaker testimonies with particular attention to our economic system.

Part of the Quaker Quicks series. This series of short paperbacks is very useful for outreach and for religious education.

Author: Pamela Haines
Publisher: Christian Alternative. 2019
Paperback, 80 pages
ISBN: 9781789040890

Lessons from the Quakers On Blending Faith, Daily Life, and Activism

This book invites all people of faith to consider how our personal and communal faith practices in growing deeper spirituality should bring us to a fresh engagement with the needs of this world. This includes being active in promoting those values which align with our understanding of the gospel and standing against injustice, oppression, and evil inflicted on any of God’s children. Such activism, rooted in deep spirituality, may include being what Quaker civil rights activist Bayard Rustin called “angelic troublemakers.”

Author Bio: John Brent Bill is Quaker minister, author, retreat leader, conservationist, and photographer. He has written many books, articles, and fiction pieces and teaches writing at the graduate school level and in adult continuing education courses. He has also served as a writing coach to a number of published writers. He lives in Mooresville, Indiana.

Previous Titles: Beauty, Truth, Life, and Love: Finding an Abundant, Good Life with God; Life Lessons from a Bad Quaker: A Humble Stumble Toward Simplicity and Grace; Finding God in the Verbs: Crafting a New Language of Prayer 

Endorsements: In these troubling times it’s easy to feel “I’m too insignificant to make a difference”. Brent Bill draws deeply on age-old and modern Quaker insights to show how each of us how can find our own way forward from hopelessness, and move through contemplation and onward into action. He suggests that effective engagement in large and small issues needs to be based on faith, prayer and love of other people.  -John Lampen, author of Quaker Roots and Branches.

Author: J. Brent Bill
Publisher: Christian Alternative, August 2021
ISBN: 9781789046199
Paperback, 88 pages

Quakers Do What! Why? is an introduction to Quaker oddities. Based on a question and answer format, it is for anyone who has learned a fact about Quakers – perhaps only that Quakers exist – and wants to know more.  

Author: Rhiannon Grant
Publisher: Christian Alternative, August 2020
ISBN: 9781789044058
Paperback, 88 pages

A Quaker Ecology: Meditations on the Future of Friends

In our best moments, Friends have been in the middle of the action around the social justice issues of each time period, discerning to the best of their abilities the direction the Inward Light leads and speaking truth to power. In our own time, climate justice can no longer be ignored if we want to have a healthy planet to live on and if we want to participate in the heart of the justice movements of the twenty-first century.

To work on climate justice requires Quakers in the United States to revisit the practices and history of the Religious Society of Friends, recognizing the ways we have been complicit in unjust land acquisition, natural resource depletion, the intersecting injustices surrounding environmental racism, classism, and gender disparities, and the impacts of globalization. This book offers a series of meditations on the Quaker ecology, both internally in our denomination as well as in our connections to the world around us. It forms an invitation to participate in an Eco-Reformation, altering the trajectory of our Society through re-membering our history and reimagining our future as participants in the community of all life.

Author: Cherise Bock
Pubisher: Barclay Press, 2022
ISBN: 9781594980343
Paperback, 114 pages