Gerry was born in Stockport (Greater Manchester) into an Irish family, his mother hailing from Co. Sligo and father from Cork city. After a mostly Catholic schooling, he completed teacher training at Manchester University while studying philosophy and theology. This period saw him exiting Catholicism, studying Eastern and Western mysticism, and Jesus’ central focus, the Kingdom of God. He believed then, as now, that the Beatitudes were revolutionary, the basis of a progressive, liberating theology. So began a life-long concern to help spread the Kingdom which he now calls The Way. This concern underscored an already strong family commitment to social justice.

 His opposition to war began as an eight-year-old when colouring in pictures of Jesus’ healing miracles and seeing A Friendly Persuasion. As an undergraduate, stark injustices in Northern Ireland, Vietnam and South Africa, alongside Stalinist oppression in Eastern Europe through which he later travelled extensively (1971-2), only strengthened a long-held, Kingdom-inspired determination towards peace, justice and compassion. Back in ’68, a poster outside the Manchester Friends’ Meeting House proclaiming ‘Tanks Can’t Crush Ideas’—a reference to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia—became an abiding personal motto for his nonviolence.

 Upon graduating B.Ed. (1971), Gerry taught upper primary in low-income neighbourhoods in the Manchester region. Applying The Way to all aspects of his teaching, presenting Jesus as one who cared passionately for people and a peaceful world, he repeatedly observed over time how the children under his care moved from aggressive behaviour to cooperation and kindness. In 1976-7 he taught in Melbourne before returning to the U.K. for M.Ed. research at Sheffield University. His Melbourne experience helped pay for the degree and to maintain himself and his new wife, Geraldine. After his postgraduate course, and while teaching in Sheffield, their daughter, Laura, died tragically of SIDS. As time passed, they felt a fresh start was needed and they returned to Melbourne where Gerry resumed teaching, this time in a secondary school.

 He first attended Friends in 1984 via the peace movement. The contemplative silence of his first Meeting (at Toorak) wonderfully amplified the same of his Catholic days and individual practice. He has fond memories of the Melbourne Friends who were important to him then, and who remained so in the years ahead during which he served on various committees of Victoria RM and helped initiate the Victorian Annual Gathering and Northern Suburbs LM.

 Continuing his involvement with the peace and anti-nuclear movement post-convincement, he retired from teaching in 1987 and joined World Vision Australia where he established a new primary/lower secondary section within the agency’s education department producing written and visual materials that were distributed nationwide annually to 150,000 children (8-13 year-olds) and 5,000+ teachers. He also produced short videos for Channel 10, workshopped teachers and teacher trainers, and spoke in schools in all states. Gerry saw his time with World Vision as a gift to enrich his Kingdom concern and to pursue his Quaker commitment to the Peace Testimony by again strongly emphasising peace, justice, compassion and environmental issues in his work. During this time, he also enjoyed membership of the Education Committee of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (now ACFID) and the Foreign Affairs’ Committee for Development Co-operation. Crucially, it was a time, too, for understanding the conservative religious mind, something which held him in good stead when later travelling extensively among Friends worldwide, and in theological discussions with evangelicals-fundamentalists.

 On leaving World Vision, Gerry accepted the new National Publications Officer position at Community Aid Abroad (now Oxfam) where he founded a quarterly development journal, Horizons, other publications, and raised a great deal of money for the agency. In the mid-90s, he returned to academic life after being awarded a scholarship from Monash University to write a systematic theology (doctoral) thesis on the spiritual underpinnings of Quaker mediation work in Third World military settings, which he converted into a book, The Growth and Development of Quaker Testimony, when Cadbury Scholar at Pendle Hill (2004-5). Gerry went on to publish The Early Quakers and the ‘Kingdom of God’ (2012), What Love Can Do (2016) and a second edition of his 1994 work, Stillness. His new book, The Spiritual Nature of Consciousness, will be published this year.

 A member of the Quaker academy, he continues to submit work for Quaker publications while delivering papers etc. to non-Quakers on philosophical and theological issues. He has taught at Silver Wattle, Pendle Hill and the Quaker Settlement in Aotearoa.

 Gerry’s two now adult children, Joseph and Verity, contributed much to Young Friends. And Oscar, son of Verity and husband Paul, is his three-year old grandson. He lives with his partner, Friend Anne Price, a retired teacher and now permaculturalist, in Alstonville (Northern Rivers, NSW). They belong to Lismore Quaker Meeting.