Quaker Updates

In July, I joined the staff as FCNL’s associate general secretary for community and culture. In that position, I lead the new Community and Culture department made up of FCNL’s Quaker outreach, young adult, and human resources teams, as well as Friends Place on Capitol Hill.

Anne and Hal now devote much of their time to working on racial injustice, Indigenous Peoples’ justice, and immigration reform. Their Quaker faith calls them to advocate for others and to bring awareness to organizations, such as FCNL, who focus their work on similar issues.  

To say the students at the Ramallah Friends School have had to grow up too fast under the Israeli occupation is an understatement. They described life under the restrictive system of checkpoints and other forms of control and repression.

Cai Quirk spoke with FCNL staff in a late-June Zoom lunch, and discussed the ways Spirit has been leading them to explore gender, faith, and nature through art.

One of the tenets of Quaker faith is to always be open to new revelation, to change. Sometimes the revelation comes quickly, but more often, it comes through ongoing collective discernment.

On May 4, FCNL welcomed Dr. Sa’ed Atshan, associate professor of Anthropology at Emory University, to share his experiences with Quaker education growing up, his life’s journey with Quakerism, his thoughts on Quaker institutions, and his overall reflections on faith.

It’s been a little more than three months on the job, and I can confidently say that the Spirit is alive and well within the FCNL community. Here’s a look at what I am seeing and hearing as I travel among Friends.

There is a glimmer of hope in the effort to end the war in Yemen. On April 1, a two-month Ramadan truce took effect. While the ceasefire has not entirely held, several fuel ships have finally been allowed into Yemen, and there are discussions of flights taking off from Sanaa airport for the first time in years.

When Bridget Moix began her tenure as general secretary in January 2022, she came back to an organization she knows well.

With anxiety about nuclear war looming large in the minds of people around the world, we discuss the moral and ethical questions at play when it comes to developing nuclear programs, and the case for disarmament. Hear from Negar Mortazavi, an Iranian-American journalist and political analyst who is also the host of The Iran Podcast; and Alicia McBride, Director of Quaker Leadership at the Friends Committee on National Legislation or FCNL.