In Brief: Quaker Quests: A Second Report from Philadelphia

Edited by Gregory A. Barnes. Self-published, 2024. 158 pages. $10/paperback; $3.99/eBook.

This slim volume, a follow-up to Barnes’s 2022 Quaker Service: A Report from Philadelphia, is rich with detailed short essays by Friends on a wide range of topics. Two of the 40 some essays in this second report are from traveling in the ministry and updating a historic Philadelphia meetinghouse.

Patricia Stewart recalls drinking tea with Afghan refugee mothers and their children in Moscow at the Center for the Adaptation of Refugee and Migrant Children. The mothers unequivocally called for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan. The women detailed the hardships they face as they and their husbands work poorly paid jobs, if they are fortunate enough to find work at all. Stewart also records accounts of Congolese refugees being exploited by human traffickers posing as immigration lawyers.

Mary Ellen McNish, president of the trustees at Byberry Meeting in Northeast Philadelphia, Pa., writes of the history of the building and surrounding grounds as well as the current members’ commitment to preserving and updating the facilities. At the current Byberry Meetinghouse that was built in the early 1800s, Lucretia Mott once offered messages about the atrocity of enslavement. Byberry Hall, another building on the meetinghouse grounds, is the only still-standing debate hall in Philadelphia that was constructed to foster discussion about abolishing slavery. The construction was funded by free African Americans named Harriet and Robert Purvis.

Friends will find this collection of Quakers following leadings of the Spirit in various arenas informative and inspiring.

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Sharlee DiMenichi is a staff writer for Friends Journal. Contact: sharlee@friendsjournal.org.