In the 2019 Backhouse Lecture, Jason MacLeod shares what he has learnt about accompanying West Papuans – and to a lesser extent Aboriginal people, Bougainvilleans and East Timorese – in their struggle for self-determination.  Through personal stories, he tries to make sense of this experience in ways that might speak more broadly to Quakers.  His lecture is a deeply personal re ection on what one person thinks it takes to animate freedom and accompany Indigenous peoples on a journey from empire to the ‘good life.’

In the 2019 Backhouse Lecture, Jason MacLeod shares what he has learnt about accompanying West Papuans – and to a lesser extent Aboriginal people, Bougainvilleans and East Timorese – in their struggle for self-determination.  Through personal stories, he tries to make sense of this experience in ways that might speak more broadly to Quakers.  His lecture is a deeply personal re ection on what one person thinks it takes to animate freedom and accompany Indigenous peoples on a journey from empire to the ‘good life.’

The 2024 Backhouse Lecture God’s ways, not our ways: A dissident Quaker response to disability was delivered by Jackie Leach Scully on Monday July 8th 2024 in Adelaide. Disability has shaped Jackie’s family, career, personal and professional life, and her engagement with faith and spirituality. Drawing on her personal and professional experience, she looks at traditional and contemporary theological engagement with disability. She uses Quaker testimony to explore how Friends are called to respond to disability and impairment and shares some “dissident thinking” about disability with Australian Friends, and others, to help build a world more inclusive of all kinds of difference and diversity.

In the 2022 James Backhouse Lecture, Yarrow Goodley looks at the critical issue of climate justice—at how our responses to the climate emergency have the potential for great suffering, as well as great redemption. In a world where the rich pollute, and the poor suffer, we do not just need to address our rapidly-warming planet, but also the injustices which drive this environmental catastrophe. In conversation with Quaker and non-Quaker activists, Yarrow explores the history of this crisis, and the despair and hope we must negotiate in coming to grips with a problem of planetary proportions. This crisis offers us an unparalleled opportunity to remake our political, economic and social systems, in ways that support a liveable planet, while addressing the profound injustices of our age, especially racial inequality. Yarrow asks us ‘What can we do?’ and seeks to offer ways forward that create hope not just for all people, but for all the living creatures on our small bluegreen planet.

For over twenty years, Fiona has participated in facilitating the Meeting for Learning (a year-long program for spiritual nurture, designed to explore Spirit and Quaker ways), and lives with her partner in a small intentional community that has been a place of spiritual nurture and learning. She has worked as a social worker for many years and now as a university teacher, particularly in fostering critical reflection and spirituality for social workers and critical spirituality for pastoral care workers. A continuing challenge in her spiritual life has been how to integrate her spiritual being in all of these aspects of her life.In the 2010 Lecture, Fiona asks Why seek to live life in union with Spirit? Such a life, in my experience and that of many others, is a fuller, richer, meaning filled and deeper life, connected to that which is eternal. It means moving from what is often called the divided life, beyond opposing forces to a place of wholeness, to integrating all of who we are in all that we do. To do this means holding together these opposites.

Leading scholars demonstrate how colonial subjects, national liberation movements, and empires mobilized human rights language to contest self-determination during decolonization.

In this theory-rich study, Shelby Johnson analyzes the works of Black and Indigenous writers in the Atlantic World, examining how their literary production informs "modes of being" that confronted violent colonial times. Johnson particularly assesses how these authors connected to places—whether real or imagined—and how those connections enabled them to make worlds in spite of the violence of slavery and settler colonialism. Johnson engages with works written in a period engulfed by the extraordinary political and social upheavals of the Age of Revolution and Indian Removal, and these texts—which include not only sermons, life writing, and periodicals but also descriptions of embodied and oral knowledge, as well as material objects—register defiance to land removal and other forms of violence. In studying writers of color during this era, Johnson probes the histories of their lived environment and of the earth itself—its limits, its finite resources, and its metaphoric mortality—in a way that offers new insights on what it means to imagine sustainable connections to the ground on which we walk.

"The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a culmination of a centuries-long struggle by indigenous peoples for justice. It is an important new addition to UN human rights instruments in that it promotes equality for the world's indigenous peoples and recognizes their collective rights."--Back cover.

The New York Times bestselling author of Writing My Wrongs invites men everywhere on a journey of honesty and healing through this book of moving letters to his sons—one whom he is raising and the other whose childhood took place during Senghor's nineteen-year incarceration. “A visceral and visual journey for the ages . . . the perfect road map for us to remove the barriers and obstacles against our true feelings.”—Kenya Barris, creator of black-ish ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Essence Shaka Senghor has lived the life of two fathers. With his first son, Jay, born shortly after Senghor was incarcerated for second-degree murder, he experienced the regret of his own mistakes and the disconnection caused by a society that sees Black lives as disposable. With his second, Sekou, born after Senghor's release, he has experienced healing, transformation, intimacy, and the possibilities of a world where men and boys can openly show one another affection, support, and love. In this collection of beautifully written letters to Jay and Sekou, Senghor traces his journey as a Black man in America and unpacks the toxic and misguided messages about masculinity, mental health, love, and success that boys learn from an early age. He issues a passionate call to all fathers and sons—fathers who don't know how to show their sons love, sons who are navigating a fatherless world, boys who have been forced to grow up before their time—to cultivate positive relationships with other men, seek healing, tend to mental health, grow from pain, and rewrite the story that has been told about them. Letters to the Sons of Society is a soulful examination of the bond between father and sons, and a touchstone for anyone seeking a kinder, more just world.