Overview: Open to New Light is not only for readers interested in exploring Quaker history and principles, but also for anyone interested in different faiths and the relationships between them.

The topics covered include Quakers’ historic interfaith encounters, as well as more recent engagements with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Jains, Sikhs, Baha’is, followers of Indigenous religions and Humanists.

Verdict: To give you and overview, Quakers have acknowledged the existence and significance of other faiths from the start. George Fox quoted from the Qur’an in writing to the King of Algiers about slavery. William Penn in 1682 spoke to the Native Americans, as an equal in their own language, of ‘the Great Spirit who made me and you’.

John Woolman a hundred years later, with the support of his Monthly and Quarterly Meetings, engaged with them in the same way, asking “…if haply I might receive some instruction from them….” (Quaker faith & practice 27.02) The Friends Foreign Mission Association (founded in 1868) reflected nineteenth century concerns to convert the ‘heathen’.

By 1928 the Association had become part of the new Friends Service Council which recognized how its witness had gradually evolved. Its former secretary Henry Hodgkin wrote in 1933, ‘I really find myself wanting to learn from people from whom I would previously have regarded as fit objects for my missionary zeal’ (Quaker faith & practice 27.07).

As so-called unprogrammed or silent tradition Friends, BYM should be aware that programmed Evangelical Friends in the USA actively continue to evangelize at home and abroad mainly in East Africa and Latin America. Indeed, their recent books of discipline (1960 & 1995) have invited them to recognize the spirituality and good works of those faithful to other religions. Their present QCCIR, branching out from an existing Quaker Committee on Christian Relationships, got its current name and wider interfaith remit in 1991.

Quaker Quicks: Open to New Light: Quakers and Other Faiths, by author Eleanor Nesbitt, is an sincerely, and lovingly well-researched and highly accessible account of liberal Quaker (Society of Friends) encounters with other faith traditions over the past 350 years.

Acting as a follow up to her Interfaith Pilgrims (2003), what is explored here within these engrossing pages are, amongst other things, an eye-opening prose on how in their travels, the Quakers commonly exhibited a readiness “to learn from others” and “to work with other communities of faith” and, at home, following “an imperative of being a good neighbor to newcomers from different faith backgrounds.”

Also an exploration of other various Quaker interfaith initiatives, what this book does is bring forth a detailed background that makes for a most enduring read, due to having been written by a most knowledgeable person associated with the subject matter.

About the Author - Eleanor Nesbitt is a member of Central England Area Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and a Professor Emerita (Religions and Education), University of Warwick. In 2003 she gave the Swarthmore (annual Quaker) Lecture Interfaith Pilgrims. She lives in Coventry, UK.

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