Richard Seebohm
As a new recruit to the Meeting’s Ecumenical and Interfaith Team, I went along to the January Zoom meeting of the Oxford Council of Faiths.
We talked about the March 2021 Census and how to get isolated minorities into it – it is of course compulsory, and necessary for securing Local Authority funding. We noted that Holocaust Memorial Day is/was 27 January. We hoped that the Ashmolean would go ahead with faith-based displays.
Our keynote speaker was Meryem Kalayci, the newly appointed Chaplain at St Hilda’s College. She is a Quaker, now in our Meeting. Her father comes from a city on the Turkish-Syrian border where there was a strong Quaker presence before and during the First World War. Her appointment, she says, is owed to the Quaker testimonies. She will not be conducting services, but her watchword is service. The College has lost its chapel to redevelopment, and instead has a multi-faith sanctuary space. Meryem still has a History Faculty post researching the Armenian genocide – with a focus on silence as a vehicle for remembrance as well as forgetting. Before being exiled from Turkey she was a resource for Syrian refugees. She has been appointed a chaplain at Bullingdon Prison. Her College web photo is by Trio Watson.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 502 • February 2021
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW