Learning from Our History, and Making Our Own

Introduction to our August issue.

Gabriel Ehri

Features

Black Resistance to Quaker Enslavement

A moral reckoning.

Jim Fussell

Features

The Burning of Pennsylvania Hall

What our Quaker ancestors can teach us about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Trudy Bayer

Features

Led by God to Help Educate Freedmen

The history of Laing School.

Lynette Love

Features

A Fine Union of Serenity and Adventure

How Rufus Jones recovered his lost radiance.

Barbara Birch

Features

Quaker Witnessing During Philadelphia’s MOVE Crisis

Moving toward risky solidarity.

Natalie Fraser and Chioma Ibida

Features

A Union Unlike Any Other

U.S. Quakers’ shifting views on same-sex marriage.

Sharlee DiMenichi

Poetry

Pondering

His mother isn’t mentioned in the parable / of the prodigal. No surprises about that. But

Dora Dueck

Poetry

While We Sleep

Last night, / a creature / bounded / down the / path and / brushed against / my tent

Joan MacIntosh

Poetry

My daughter at twelve

She searches the crowd at the school carnival, / seeking ramps that reach the merry-go-round’s edge.

Diem Okoye

Forum

Forum, August 2025

Letters from our readers.

Staff

Viewpoint

Hold Yourself in the Light

We must daily submit ourselves to the work of the Light.

Dave Leverett

Bible Study

Blessed Are the Meek

New for 2025, the Bible Study column runs four times a year in the February, May, August, and November issues.

Judith Inskeep

Reflection

Nantucket Bones: My Quaker Identity Considered

The foundational qualities—my past, my body, my mind—are all informed by Quakerism.

A.V. Crofts

QuakerSpeak

QuakerSpeak, August 2025

Quakers sue DHS over immigration enforcement.

Staff

News

Hoopes Pleads Not Guilty to Charges Related to Protest Against Ice [Updated]

Robert “Jacob” Hoopes, a Portland, Oregon man with ties to Newtown (Pa.) Meeting was arrested by FBI agents on Friday, July 25.

Sharlee DiMenichi

Gene T. on Recovering from the Shame of Combat

This is really an extremely important and profound issue. I’m not sure I have the right…
Gerard Guiton on We Are Having an Effect

While I admire, and learn from, Greg Rolles’ activism, I am moved to comment on his…
Philip Fitz on A Union Unlike Any Other

One milestone in the process of acceptance of same-sex marriage was not in the article. Goshen…
Tom Smith on A Union Unlike Any Other

In 1999, Portland Friends School was established. It was a culmination of a committee made up…