In February of 1984 Friend Judy Brutz, then a student at Iowa State University, wrote and published in The Journal of Marriage and Family a study of liberal Quakers and family violence. She was expecting to find that, because of our peace testimony, and our public commitment to pacifism, we would experience less domestic violence than the general population. What she found shook her to her core. We are on par with everyone else in the United States in terms of violence in the home. We have at least as high a rate of domestic violence as every other population.

The following are recollections of Judy’s impact by Joan Liversidge, elder to Life and Power’s convener Windy Cooler at their home meeting of Sandy Spring (Maryland).

On Saturday, April 15th 2023, Life and Power’s convener, Windy Cooler, joined Stephanie Krehbiel, the executive director of the survivor’s advocacy organization Into Account With Our Stories Untold,, and Friends General Conference (FGC) in a public discussion of the Academy Award winning film about discernment in response to abuse, Women Talking. The film, taken from the book of the same name, is a fictional account of a plain community of Mennonite women and children who, in response to sexual assault, spiritually discern to leave their homes together. What follows is the transcript of the discussion which ranges from the question “is this movie really about Mennonites?” to “how is power relevant to discernment processes?” The transcript begins abruptly while Stephanie answers Windy asking about whether one can say that this film is about Mennonites. The answer, you will see, is complicated.