Woodbrooke is delighted to announce that Stuart Masters will give the 2026 Swarthmore Lecture. Stuart’s lecture will focus on the faith and practice of the first Friends and explore how their complex legacy presents Quakers today with a range of challenging choices and dilemmas.
Stuart Masters is a member of Central England Area Meeting. He is a teacher and writer with a focus on the Quaker faith, its history, theology, spirituality and relationship with other traditions. For fifteen years he worked for Woodbrooke, and following his retirement continues to offer courses and events as an Associate Tutor. His book The Quaker Faith: Friends of Love and Truth will be published by T&T Clark in October. A previous book, The Rule of Christ: Themes in the Theology of James Nayler, was published by Brill in June 2021. He is a Regional Representative for the Anabaptist Mennonite Network, and a member of the Advisory Council for the American journal Quaker Religious Thought.
Kersti Wagstaff, Clerk of the Swarthmore Lecture Committee, said: “We’re really pleased that Stuart Masters will be giving next year’s Swarthmore Lecture. Many Friends will know him through his work for Woodbrooke and he has enormous experience of Quakerism from this. He also has a great gift for sharing and communicating about Quaker spirituality and theology in ways which are accessible, challenging and illuminating.” Kersti added, “the committee hopes that Stuart’s lecture will deepen Friends’ understanding of the spiritual and theological foundations of the Religious Society of Friends and what that means for Quakers today”.
In his lecture, Stuart will explore the diverse mix of characteristics visible in the early Quaker movement that produced several creative tensions which subsequent generations have had to navigate. These include the tensions between inward experience and outward tradition, communal order and individual freedom, the quietist and the charismatic, and the new creation and the world. He will argue that engaging with these issues can help Friends better appreciate the diversity present within the global Quaker family and enable them to discern how to respond to these dilemmas today.
Further reading:
- The Swarthmore Lecture is funded and organised by Woodbrooke, an international Quaker learning and research organisation. You can find out more at https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/swarthmore-lectures/
- Information about Stuart Masters’ writing and teaching can be found on his website at https://stuartkmasters.com/
- The lecture will take place during Britain Yearly Meeting, which is to be held 1-4 May 2026. Information about Yearly Meeting 2026 will be available on the Quakers in Britain website in due course at https://quaker.org.uk/ym
