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Do Quakers Mean Business?

• Authored by:
• Rob Pierson

Recently a Methodist church invited me to a book study. They had been reading books on ethically based business, including Deborah Cadbury’s Chocolate Wars, and had grown wildly curious about these peculiar Quakers and their century and a half of confectionary success. The group leader tabulated a list of famous Quaker business leaders – not only in cocoa, but also in ironwork, railways, footwear, chinaware, household goods, pharmaceuticals, and banking. Why, she asked, was the list so long? Why were there so many Friendly industrial innovators? Why so many business names they now recognized as Quaker – from Cadbury chocolates to Barclays bank to Clarks shoes? What was it about this relatively small, seemingly austere, and ethically demanding faith that drove such a disproportionate share of business enterprise?

On Production (May 2014)

Attending to the Intersections of Oppression

• Authored by:
• Cimmeron ‘Cims’ Gillespie

This article was written on behalf of North Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Peace and Social Concerns Committee: Kate Hunter (Clerk), Tom Ewell, Cims Gillespie, Rose Lewis, Steve Willey, and Ruth Yarrow.

On Pride (July 2014)

Race to Incarcerate, A Graphic Retelling - Review

• Authored by:
• Maya Wright

Written by Sabrina Jones and Marc Mauer

On Pride (July 2014)

A Field Guide to Evil

• Authored by:
• Bruce Folsom

Whether we talk about it or not, we hold strong views about evil. So I’d like to share with you some vocabulary about evil that I’ve learned, which can allow us to describe evil a little more accurately than we usually do, especially when our feelings get roused up. I’m not interested in catastrophic evil or cosmic evil. I’m interested in the day-to-day stuff – the times I forget to say thank-you or the times I take a shortcut and inadvertently hurt somebody else who doesn’t take the shortcut.

On Temptation (November 2014)

All Against the Haul

• Authored by:
• Susan Estep

Susan Estep is a founding member of All Against the Haul, an environmental action coalition supported by Friends in Montana. It was formed to stop the construction of a permanent industrial corridor for massively oversized loads of oil production equipment – longer-than-a-football-field megaloads – through Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana to the Alberta Tar Sands mine. Susan spoke by phone with Western Friend on October 23, 2014. Following are edited excerpts from a transcript of that interview.

On Temptation (November 2014)

Not the Final Word

• Authored by:
• David Hartsough

Part of my dad’s job with the American Friends Service Committee was to take speakers around to various college campuses, churches, and summer institutes. As a kid, I sometimes went along and got to meet such spiritual giants as peace activist A.J. Muste and civil rights leaders Bayard Rustin and Ralph Abernathy. During spring vacation in 1956, my dad decided to take my brother Paul and me to Montgomery, where the bus boycott was four months old.

On Difference (July 2015)

The Economy of Unknowing

• Authored by:
• Tom Head

As an economist, I study and teach about money, markets, and the economy. Given that I have been on this professional journey for nearly half a century, something makes me feel that I should have it all pretty much figured out by now. But I don’t. In some ways, I know less now than I once did. Perhaps this is good. Perhaps some unknowing is just what we need to improve our understanding of what the economy is and how it should work.

On Money (November 2015)

Building a Moral Economy from the Ground Up

• Authored by:
• David Henkel

Whether entailing the use of money or other resources, economic transactions allow us the means of subsistence just as they tempt us to excess. It would do us well to remember that the etymological origins of the word “economy” are from the Greek meaning of “managing the household.” A moral economy would be one that manages the “household” of our planet to emphasize mutual care, community health, and a society of sufficiency and sustainability.

On Money (November 2015)

Public Banking – Friendly Values

• Authored by:
• Nichoe Lichen

Quakers introduced public banking to the original colony of Pennsylvania, helping the colony prosper. North Dakota created its public bank in 1919, and is currently the only state to own its own bank. There are public banking efforts in more than thirty states, many of them in the west (Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and my own State of New Mexico).

On Money (November 2015)

Voluntary Poverty Has to Be a Choice

• Authored by:
• Kyle Chandler-Isacksen

I have read quite a few articles recently about “green” living, reducing footprints, and sustainability. None of them have mentioned one of the greatest ways of creating positive change in the world. Voluntary poverty is a far more fundamental and effective way to decrease consumption and impact, while increasing human connection and improving life all around. Our family of four lives on about $7000 a year, and our lives are more enjoyable, fuller, richer, healthier, and more interesting to us than the life we see being lived in the mainstream economy. This is nothing new of course; sages and mystics have been sharing the joys of voluntary poverty and simplicity for eons. But voluntary poverty is rarely seen as a positive lifestyle choice in modern-day America.

On Money (November 2015)