Quakerly readers Message Board

I will start us by saying that I am now reading People Called Quakers by Elton Trueblood and am just finishing the chapter that describes the theological complexity of the Peace Testimony and how it is not a black and white issue. Fortunately, most Quakers are comfortable with gray! Also in light of the Quaker Journal's July issue on money, I would note that the Cadbury Foundation in the UK has put out a book on The Right Use of Money.

Anybody listening in? Anyway, just wanted to tell you about a novel I just finished: Voyageurs by Margaret Elphinstone. I wrote a review on it. Any other opinions?

I just bought Voyageurs and will take a look at your review.

So glad you let me know about this group. My Quakers Downunder group was primarily created for members and attenders of the Western Australia Regional Meeting (but anyone is welcome to join). We have a number of remote meetings who rarely get to our wonderful little library in Perth. We are using Librarything as a public catalogue for these folks, though we have not yet begun entering our titles.

I have just finished reading Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy by Robert O Byrd. Though published in 1960, I found it to be a wonderful history and deeply thoughtful statement of the Quaker peace testimony and Quaker forays into influencing governments to be better servants to the needs of their citizens.

I have just begun Bates's 1938 The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature and Genesis by Bill Moyers, et al. This will complete my first complete read-through of the Christian bible, which began with my reading a couple of years ago of The Original New Testament by Hugh Schonfield, which I found to be fascinating reading. At least now when someone says they read it in the bible, I'll have some notion of what group of sentences they are interpreting to their service.

I am currently working on an html transcription of an 1844 publication with one of those overly descriptive titles: Some Account of the Conduct of the Religious Society of Friends towards the Indian Tribes in the Settlement of the Colonies of East and West Jersey and Pennsylvania: with a Brief Narrative of Their Labours for the Civilization and Christian Instruction of the Indians, from the Time of Their Settlement in America, to the Year 1843. by the Aborigines' Committee of The Meeting for Sufferings. The text is worthy of preservation and a quite interesting read, but the book has become too fragile and valuable to be lent out. We plan to put it on our website and will most likely also donate it to the Gutenburg Project.

As an attender of only two years, I am very interested in the rich body of Quaker literature.

Welcome aboard and thanks for the suggestions. We will be interested to look at your meetings Perth Library once its posted as well as the publications on your website.

Greetings to all of you. I just want to let you all know that there is a large collection of Quaker publications online at the Earlham School of Religion's Digital Quaker Collection website. They bill it as 17th and 18th century works, but there are a lot of 19th century titles as well (including Some Account of the Conduct. ... . ).
It's at http://esr.earlham.edu/dqc/index.html

Their FAQ notes that they are planning on stable URLs for their resources, and they seem to have a static bibliography page -- the URLs are really long. (Is it fair to add LT listings for electronic editions that aren't on my own network/system? I haven't yet, but I've read many of these titles, mostly in paper, and want to find them again.)

I'm currently working my way through Companions Along the Way: Spiritual Formation Within the Quaker Tradition.

I am reading Friends for 350 Years by Howard H. Brinton, which is an updated edition of Friends for 300 Years, but something annoyed me at the start and seem to have trouble getting past it. Brinton starts by saying that he takes as his thesis that Quakerism represents a third strand of Christianity, set beside two main strands represented by Roman Catholicism and Protestantism writ large. No where does he even indicate awareness of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which with 100+ adherents, would seem also to be a main strand. Now admittedly there are other elements of Christianity which might be hard to fit in one of his two main strands,
but Orthodox Christianity to me clearly stands in the same category as the other two. Those other elements are usually much smaller (though most are larger than Quakerism) and arguably need not be gone into for the sake of his thesis. While Orthodox Christianity probably had little to no influence on Quakerism, to fail to mention its existence, seems to me to undermine the rest of his argument/arguments about Quakerism's place in the pantheon of Christianity. There, I have got that off my chest and feel better.

I just finished Encounter with Silence by John Punshon. Towards the end, I could have underlined entire pages if I were marking what I felt to be important. It is a wonderful combination of personal journey and Quaker history and practice, and beautifully written. Quite a lot of food for thought for such a slim volume.

Dear Quartzite,

I hope you will continue your reading of Brinton's work, getting past what is a stumbling block for you. I sympathize, since I often run into them...though of course, mine are different!

I was pretty frustrated, actually, with M.H. Bacon's editing of Brinton's work. I felt she often "corrected" things without giving adequate, or even any!, documentation to back-up her understanding versus Brinton's.

I have forged a head a bit, but still have strong tendency to put it down for long stretches.

Hi. I haven't read Voyaguer, even though it's set in Canada where I live, but I have read Elphinstone's Light, which is wonderful.
If anyone's interested, I moderate Book Buzz, Toronto Public Library's online book club, and Margaret Elphinstone will be chatting with us sometime in July.
Anyone who's interested is welcome.
http://bookbuzz.torontopubliclibrary.ca

I was just re-reading these posts. Since I first joined, I have moved from one side of the world to the other, leaving Western Australia earlier this year and settling in my former home of Houston, Texas USA. But before leaving my treasured Mt. Lawley Quaker Meeting in Perth, I entered more than 1,700 books in the WARM (West Australia Regional Meeting) library's LibraryThing database. I did include several electronic editions and had planned to include more, for the very reason you cite. I wanted these "books" to be available to all members who own or have access to computers. There could certainly be a case made for the idea that the Internet is Everyperson's Library, and there's no reason not to include these titles when they are of interest.

Hello Friends! Greetings from mildly hot Geelong, Australia.

In a holiday mood - and needing a break from working with books - I decided to read some of our fiction section. Some treasures there. Delighted in "Quaker Silence" by 'Irene Allen'. Enjoyed it so much that I've ordered the other 3 in the Elizabeth Elliot series from our local library.

So, can anyone recommend any other recent (ie 1995 onwards) Quaker fiction? Maybe to be added to our collection...

Blessings to all,
Bevianne at Victoria Regional Meeting