Friends Journal

08/31/2026

On a Sunday morning this past May, the Friends of Appoquinimink Meeting in Odessa, Delaware, gathered to honor one of their nineteenth-century members, John Alston, with a plaque that commemorates his dedication to abolitionism.

Appoquinimink Meeting honors abolitionist John Alston 152 years after his death.

08/28/2026

In this episode of QuakerSpeak, Whittier Mikkelsen speaks on her experience living with cerebral palsy and the way Quaker practice opened the way for self love.
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Watch the full video at quakerspeak.com (link in bio).

08/28/2026

God spoke to Elijah out of silence: “a still, small voice” (as it’s described in the King James Version) but a living presence.

The living Word, our Eternal Teacher, continues to speak to people out of silence. When we listen closely, we can hear the still, small voice asking questions that encourage us to think about how we are leading our lives.

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

08/27/2026

Like many Quaker adherents, John Dickinson (1732–1808) was a suite of contradictions. He appreciated pacifism, but supported the American Revolution. He believed in radical equality and individual liberty, but opposed the Declaration of Independence—which arguably was what the Revolution was all about. The son of a half-hearted Quaker, he became an abolitionist and freed the people his father had enslaved.

A collection of letters from the eve of the American Revolution reminds us that speaking truth to power is not new, nor has it gone out of style.

08/26/2026

"Let love be genuine," says Paul (Romans 12:9); the first generations of Quakers would have read, in either the Geneva or King James Bible, that they should “let love be without dissimulation.” Sincere, unfeigned, free of hypocrisy or hidden agenda.

That kind of love doesn’t always come easy—but, as this week's Look to the Light message discusses, Friends refuse to allow themselves to be overcome by the evils of this world.

https://quaker.org/2026/08/24/do-not-be-overcome-by-evil/

08/25/2026

Joan Slonczewski, a Quaker microbiology professor, has microbes on their mind. And they’re willing to share them with you!

Slonczewski’s four decades of science fiction open doors to worlds where technology and ecology merge and where sentient microscopic beings might just be the death of us, or our salvation.

Joan Slonczewski’s latest science fiction novel seems to say: if you think things are complex now, just wait!

08/24/2026

Hazel Guindon Badilla grew up between two spiritual worlds, and also between two different ways of understanding the role of women, power, and the relationship with the Divine. Her Quaker paternal grandparents had come to Costa Rica in the 1950s, but her father married an evangelical Christian, and she was raised in that faith.

"When I entered seventh grade at the Friends school in Monteverde," she says, "a profound transformation began—one that was neither immediate nor linear but constant and radical."

The author's uniquely powerful experience among the Quakers of Monteverde: silence, community diversity, and connection with nature.

08/23/2026

Because Whittier Mikkelsen didn't meet anyone else with cerebral palsy until she was twenty-two, she felt strange growing up. "The Quakers gave me the strength to be myself," she confides. "I found this wonderful community when I was very young, fifteen, and we were all about the hugs, you know? And they just brought me right in, even with my spastic body... Nobody pushed me away, so I felt absolutely seen and included, really for the first time, above and beyond my family."

When Carl Sigmond is with other Quakers, he tells us, he does not feel like his cerebral palsy sets him…

08/23/2026

"All around us today are people proclaiming allegiance to a version of Jesus I do not recognize—a version that supports war, nationalism or White supremacy," the Rev. Jeny Carlson observes at Presbyterian Outlook. "The simple question, 'Who do you say that I am?' has never felt more important. Like Peter, our ability to answer depends entirely on how carefully we attend to Jesus’ voice through the Holy Spirit."

Quakers of the nontheist persuasion might pursue an alternative vocabulary, but the core message is still one for us to sit with and discern.

Isaiah 51, Psalm 138, Romans 12, and Matthew 16 challenge us to move beyond one-sided prayer toward truly listening for God's voice.

08/22/2026

In a new edition of Quakerism: The Basics, Margery Post Abbott and Carl Abbott bring the experience of active and engaged Quakers, the discipline of scholarly historians, and gentle attention to that of God in the varieties of Quakers, Quaker beliefs, and Quaker processes from 1652 to the present day.

By Margery Post Abbott and Carl Abbott. Routledge, 2025. 240 pages. $28.99/paperback or eBook. This book is about more than…