June 2024

QUAKER  UNIVERSALIST  GROUP  NEWSLETTER JUNE 2024

Andrew Cowan

We are saddened to announce the death of Andrew Cowan, who did so much for QUG.

Andrew joined the QUG committee in 2010 and took over as Chair in 2011 when the committee was struggling to survive. He was Treasurer, Membership Secretary and Chair in 2012, which kept the committee going until others could take over. Andrew continued to be on the committee until recently and he played a very active role in many of our conferences.

An ex-committee member wrote recently about Andrew that ‘he certainly managed to have a long life full of kindness and spiritual wonder.  I don’t think anyone who knew him could have failed to be inspired by his caring nature and thirst for knowledge.’

We will write an appreciation of Andrew in the next edition of Universalist and any memories and contributions will be very welcome. Please reply to this email.

There is a gathering arranged by Andrew’s family, supported by his local Quaker meeting, to celebrate his life. This will be at Rugby Friends Meeting House at 2.00 p.m. on Saturday 20th July. All will be welcome. It is hoped that the gathering will also be available online: if you would like to attend online please send an email to contact@qug.org.uk and we will be able to give you more information. 

QUG at Britain Yearly Meeting

QUG will have a presence at Yearly Meeting this July, so do join us if you can.

All the special interest meetings are online and ours is on Saturday July 6th from 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. We will be giving a brief review of our 2024 conference and looking forward to our 2025 conference (see below).

We will be in person at the Groups Fair at Friends House in London on 27th July. This will be at lunch time – c. 12.45 to 2.25 p.m. Do come and talk to us and look at our publications. 

Articles for Universalist October 2024

We are in the process of preparing the October edition of our journal, Universalist. We would love to have some more articles – prose, poetry, reviews, etc. We welcome all articles of a universalist nature. Please send them to contact@qug.org.uk or reply to this email.

Quaker Universalist Group Annual Conference

April 19th – 21st 2024 – The future of religion worldwide.

We are delighted that this conference went well. It was always difficult to follow up our conferences in Woodbrooke, but High Leigh in Hertfordshire proved a good substitute. There were 50 participants, half in person and half online.

In due course we will print a pamphlet and place the recordings of the talks on the website.

Monthly meeting for worship and sharing

Our meetings for worship and sharing continue by Zoom on the third Wednesday of each month.

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday July 17th at 7.00 p.m., when Carol Beck will talk about her spiritual journey from being born and raised in the Christian Community “Bruderhof”.

The meetings start at 7.00 p.m. The Zoom will open at 6.45 p.m. We send out reminders two or three days beforehand to everyone who has registered. If you do not have the joining instructions and would like them please send an email to contact@qug.org.uk

QUG Committee

The QUG Committee has lost several members in recent times. We also have several sub-committees where we would like more help: you could join one of these groups without joining the full committee.

Here are the extra groups carrying out specific tasks for the main committee:

  • publications (including reviews)
  • planning the 2025 conference
  • the website and social media
  • the monthly Wednesday evening meeting for worship and sharing. 

If you are interested in helping us in any of these ways please contact us by replying to this email.

QUG Annual Conference 2025

Next year’s QUG conference will again be at High Leigh in Hertfordshire.  It will be a blended conference over the weekend of 25th to 27th April. The topic will be in the area of women and spirituality (the exact title has not yet been decided).

Please put the dates in your diary. Further details will be in later newsletters. 

A planning group has been set up and has had one meeting so far. We have come up with a list of topics, some of which we will cover at the conference:

  1. Women as activists, e.g. for justice and peace
  2. Women as mystics
  3. The way women think – feminist epistemology
  4. Celebrating women – their positive contributions to spirituality
  5. Images of women in religious art around the world
  6. Women and Quakers
  7. Women’s response to oppression
  8. Women in the Divine – God and Goddess

We welcome any ideas related to these topics. Do you know of any suitable speakers? Could you speak yourself? Could you write something for our journal about one of these topics? Could you write a review of a book related to one of these topics for our journal? If you can help in any way please respond to this email.

Membership of QUG

If you have not done so already, have you considered becoming a member of QUG? For a small sum (£18.00 per year for hard copy of the journal, or £12.00 for an e-copy) you will receive our journal twice a year and the pamphlet we produce after our annual conference. You will also support the work of QUG. As a welcome pack new members receive two free pamphlets.

Membership details are all on our website at https://qug.org.uk/membership/

Any questions about membership can be sent by email to contact@qug.org.uk or by post to the Membership Secretary at 5 School Street, Church Lawford, Rugby, CV23 9EE.

Talk by Rex Ambler – George Fox and Universalism

We are delighted that Rex Ambler has been asked by Woodbrooke to give an online talk as part of the celebrations of George Fox’s 400th birthday. The title is George Fox at 400: a universalist perspective. It will start at 4.00 p.m. (British time) on Saturday 7th September.

The link is https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/courses/george-fox-a-universalist-quaker-perspective/

Contacting us, questions and unsubscribing

If you have any questions or wish to unsubscribe from this newsletter please reply directly or send an email to contact@qug.org.uk