Pages tagged "Business"

A story about the Cadbury family in the 1800s.

The following two epistles were written in July 2017 to introduce and welcome a new Quaker yearly meeting in the Pacific Northwest – Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends, a community of evangelical Friends churches that affirm same-sex relationships and welcome the participation of LGBTQ+ people.

The rain has swept in from the Pacific, drenching bike-crazy Portland’s inner eastside industrial district. A rainbow arches over the airy Islabikes warehouse, where twenty-six-year-old Tim Goodall assembles and sells children’s bikes. It’s the British company’s only outlet in the United States.

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?

George Fox and the early Quakers made their witnesses to authentic and original Christianity public by their testimonies. The English word, testimony, derives from the Latin word for “witness,” which is primarily an outward expression “to the whole world … actions and words, intended to proclaim, demonstrate and convince” (from The Quaker Peace Testimony, Friends House, London, 1993).

Henry Ford, the father of mass production, is famously known for declaring, “History is bunk.” Thus, he relegated “History” to “the trash heap of history.” (The word “bunk” comes from the Dutch word for “rubbish,” bunkum.) Histories exist to make sense of people’s lives, to reveal the meanings of humanity. Assembly lines exist to maximize the output of people’s lives, to boost the means of production. Between history and industry, humanity and mass production, tensions are too often resolved by treating the sacred as garbage.

Dear Western Friend: Thank you for publishing Rob Pierson’s article in the last issue of your magazine. The article is substantial, but does not cover what I experience as some Quakers’ suspicion of any companies, even small ones, including non-profits – ones that practice prudent business processes and employ management, ones that may ask their Boards to use Robert’s Rules rather than “consensus.”

I am a huge fan of the self-help genre. I have turned to self-help books when I wanted to heal from trauma, to let go of guilt, to be more nurturing of myself, and to be a better parent.

An interview with Jeff Perkins