Quakers to hear publisher of international Friends Journal

NEWTOWN - Gabriel (Gabe) Ehri, the executive director of “Friends Journal,” an international Quaker monthly with a 185-year legacy, will speak at Newtown Friends Meeting, 219 Court Street, on Sunday, Jan. 13 at 9:45 a.m. The public is invited.

“Friends Journal” is the largest paid-circulation Quaker publication in the world and circulates all 50 states and 43 foreign countries in its print edition. Its website, www.friendsjournal.org, reached more than 70,000 unique visitors in 2012, from 179 countries, including such diverse sites as Russia, Tahiti, Ghana, Australia, Austria, Kenya, Iceland, India, Cuba, Guatemala, China and Azerbaijan.

Ehri’s topic will be “Friends Journal in 2013: Communicating Quaker Experience Today and in the Future.”

“Friends Journal” is published by the Friends Publish- ing Corporation, based in the historic Young Smyth Field building in Center City Philadelphia (a plaque in the lobby notes that it was once the Quaker Maid Stocking Factory). The magazine is published in print 11 times a year and continuously online with an annual operating budget of more than $1,000,000.

The mission of “Friends Journal” is to communicate Quaker experience in order to connect and deepen spiritual lives. The Journal publishes articles, poetry, letters, art, and news of interest to members of the Quaker community and fellow seekers of religious and spiritual truths worldwide.

Ehri is a native of Seattle, Washington and a lifelong Quaker. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Bonnie, and sons, Thomas, 3, and Nicholas, two months. He is a member of Green Street Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia, a graduate of Haverford College and a member of the Haverford College Corporation.

Newtown Friends Meeting, co-founded in 1815 by Quaker minister and artist Edward Hicks is open to the public for First Day School with classes for children and adults at 9:45 a.m. and worship “after the manner of Friends” at 11 a.m. Childcare is provided.