Peace and Christianity

For those of us standing outside the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions looking in often wonder how these religions claim to speak peace while at the same time they draw boundaries and build walls between themselves, each feeling that they are the chosen ones of God.  I have no doubt that this is why John Lennon wanted us to imagine a world with no religion.  It does simplify the equation.  But the same religions used to bash and genocide indigenous cultures with are the same religions that often inspire the work of peace and justice.  I support my religious siblings who take that vow of peace by peaceful means, working for justice and equality in this world.

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship is recruiting and hoping to unite Christians in their latest campaign against gun violence.  So many of our youth are embracing violence as the primary conflict resolution method because it's all they know.  This is how our country settles all it's conflicts abroad and the way that Hollywood portrays all of humanity.  There are many alternatives to this violent option and we, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, ALL of us, must set aside our petty differences and work to save our species.  We must engage our natural love of life and help remove the fog of hatred and fear from the eyes of others.  Here's but one initiative you can engage in.

Gun Violence: Heeding God's Call

Friends,

The National Committee of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship has spent the last six months discerning how to get more deeply involved in the work of preventing gun violence in communities here in the United States. We have made a decision that we would like to partner with a project called “Heeding God’s Call” that started last year in Philadelphia.

Heeding God’s Call is a partnership between urban and suburban churches who band together to ask gun dealers to sign onto an agreement that they will act responsibly. If dealers refuse to do so, the churches organize to use nonviolent direct action to call attention to the irresponsibility of the gun store owners. HGC is interested in expanding into other communities across the country, and is looking for partners like the PPF to do so.

If you would like to get involved with our effort to support and expand the work of Heeding God’s call, please send an email ppfwitness@gmail.com to let us know. We will respond with the information you will need to participate in a conference call on Wednesday night, June 2, at 9:00 Eastern Time.

Rick

 To learn more about the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship here's a nice video to help you meet some of the good Christian Peacemakers in our world.

No More Guns

Well it was Sunday bloody Sunday
When they shot the people there
The cries of thirteen martyrs
Filled the Free Derry air
Is there any one amongst you
Dare to blame it on the kids?
Not a soldier boy was bleeding
When they nailed the coffin lids!

—John Lennon and Yoko Ono "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

My first trip out of my own country was to (London)Derry Ireland in October 2001.   It was also my first experience in a conflict zone.  From the moment I arrived I was confronted by a new reality of what it means to live with the constant threat of violence and the remnants and artifacts of the violence both past and present.  The city of Derry is a walled city, surrounded by a medieval, defensible fortress. Armored police vehicles crawl the streets after dark.  The shop windows close their eyes at night, cold metal eyelids shuttering out the world.  Any windows not covered have spiderwebs of cracks or shattered holes.  Concertina wire adorns the tops of fences and walls.  Surveillance equipment seems to follow your every step along these ancient streets.  Graffiti and vandalism scar much of the visible facade of Derry, never letting you forget that death and violence are walking nearby in the hearts and minds around you.

There is sanctuary from the street, the pub.  At night the residents of Derry take solace in jolly camaraderie.  I joined in, eager to imbibe the stories of these people.  How did this happen to them and why?  And more importantly why does it keep happening?

By the late 60s the "Troubles" of Northern Ireland found the Roman Catholic nationalists and the protestant unionists openly fighting one another.  January 1972 the people on the bogside of Derry organized a peaceful protest against the violence.  The protest ended in bloodshed when the British soldiers opened fire on the protesters.  These were fatal shots for 11 people, while two others were run down by armored vehicles.  By firing on a peaceful gathering the British radicalized the youth of Northern Ireland, sending them to the doors of the IRA (Irish Republic Army) to pick up guns for their retaliation.  Violence began to escalate, spilling the blood of many innocents.  No one felt safe in their yards and homes.  Everyone became suspect and neighbors lost trust and hope of each others humanity.  If only Nonviolent Peaceforce, or other unarmed civilian peacekeeping, had been available to them then, much suffering might have been avoided.  The walls of this city have witnessed bloody battles since the 1600s, and it was clear that it was not yet to see peace.

Few in Northern Ireland have escaped the harm of the Troubles.  Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams were deeply affected by the violence in Belfast when the three children of Mairead's sister, Anne, were run down by a member of the Provisional Irish Republic Army (PIRA).  Betty Williams witnessed the event.  the grief stricken mother, Anne, ended her own life.  This event galvanized the women to action and they began "Women for Peace" which later became the "Community of Peace People", winning them the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.  The group began the modest work of re-education, planting the seeds of peace and nonviolence in hopes that one day these concepts would grab hold the collective imagination of the people.

I sat in my hotel room in Derry in 2001, watching the local news.  Martin McGuinness, a Derry local and leader of Sinn Fein,  was making an announcement to the people of Northern Ireland.  McGuinness is highly respected in the local community, he was also one of the youth that had been driven to join the struggles as a member of the PIRA after Bloody Sunday.  After so many years of violence, he stated, the IRA was ready to begin disarming and handing over their weapons.  I sat in disbelief.  As I spoke with locals I found this skepticism to be the norm.  Yet there was hope.  Could these people, after so many decades of fear and mistrust, learn to live in peace?  Most seemed weary of violence and ready.  This was a big moment.  As time passed it has happened, but not until 2006.  I guess it takes time for those seeds to sprout, but unless they're planted nothing will ever happen.

My five year old daughter brought in the mail the other day.  Inside was a coupon booklet from Bi-Mart.  It had hearts on the front for Valentine's Day.  She flipped through the book to find other sweet gifts of love on the pages.  She came up to me with a very concerned look on her face and showed me the page that earned this sad look.  There were guns.  She said "Aren't guns for war, for killing people and animals?"  I told her yes, that is what guns are intended for.  We both agreed that guns should not be a gift for a day dedicated to love.  We will write a letter to Bi-Mart, stating of protest of their sale of guns.  The members of the IRA had to obtain guns illegally, yet in our country we have the "freedom" to walk into a large box store and buy a lethal weapon.  Some claim that owning a gun keeps them free, but I'd suggest that the people of Derry discovered otherwise.  That the more guns on the streets, the less free they were.  The more concertina wire, surveillance equipment and shuttered windows are the cost of that kind of freedom and it's not the kind of freedom we should be asking for.  Let's disarm our hearts and our homes, and truly be free.

Commitment to a Dream

On the evening of October 10th the members of United States Nonviolent Peaceforce Chapters Association (USNPCA) listened to a story, a remarkable story. As part of our annual retreat we invited David Hartsough and Mel Duncan to tell the story of their own dedication to a vision, their meeting and their courageous effort and sacrifice to bring this vision into reality. That shared vision was Nonviolent Peaceforce.

Throughout their lives both of these men have been moved to action in the face of injustice. At the early age of 15 David Hartsough shook the hand of Martin Luther King Jr. When he went to college he selected Howard University, a black college, which allowed him opportunity to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. He and his college mates began lunch counter sit-in in Arlington, VA., where they endured insults, being spit on and having lit cigarettes dropped in their shirts, but they continued their nonviolent struggle. At one point David was confronted by a switchblade wielding man who gave him two seconds to leave or die. Rather than attempt to physically protect himself, he told the man, "I'll still try to love you, but do what you think is right". The man left and David continued to sit.

In the 80's David went to Guatemala during the worst period of the "scorched earth" campaigns by the US backed Guatemalan military. Over 800 villages vanished during this program of death and destruction on an indigenous people. Torture and disappearances were common. In 1985 a group formed to attempt to find out the truth of their missing loved ones. Two of the leaders were kidnapped and brutally tortured and killed, including pulling out the fingernails of the two year old son of one of the victims. The two remaining leaders of this group approached Peace Brigades International (PBI), which David was with, and requested 24 hour accompaniment so that they could continue to speak out but not die. PBI did this and more, emboldening a people. To learn more about PBI and this work please read Unarmed Bodyguards: International Accompaniment for the Protection of Human Rights. ‘Their courage inspired others. And they didn’t die. Walking down the street with these courageous people was one of the scariest things I’ve done.’

David has continued his journey to support nonviolent struggle abroad by going to Kosovo in the 1990s, where civil society groups were working diligently to build a nonviolent movement against Milosevic and the encroaching ethnic cleansing. He went to the Hague Appeal for Peace in December of 1999 to encourage nonviolent support for the people of Kosovo. He had a vision of a large team of peacekeepers, global in scope, that could be rapidly deployed to areas nearing a flash point of violence. This vision was shared with another man in the crowd of 9000 peacemakers, Mel Duncan.

Many years before the Hague, Mel had also felt the call to help protect human rights. He joined with other witnesses to go to the border between Honduras and Nicaragua where the US backed Contras were targeting civilians for torture and murder. The situation was very similar to that of Guatemala, except that the US was backing the rebels against the the Nicaraguan government while in Guatemala the US backed the military controlled government. This became an area dominated by terror for the citizens during the Reagan administration. Mel shared in the feelings of fear, but like many of his fellow witnesses, was inspired by the fact that as long as internationals were present the Contras did not attack. This observation germinated into Nonviolent Peaceforce.

Like David, Mel went to the Hague to organize other peaceworkers around the idea of a global peace army, like the one envisioned by Gandhi, the shanti sena. Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, 9000, he stepped back and listened, taking the loving advice offered by his wife. While listening he heard a man standing on chair asking a speaker about why we couldn't have a global peace team that could be deployed to conflict areas. Mel pushed his way through the crowd and grabbed the man, David, by the elbow and asked if he was serious about that idea, and if so he wanted to help organize it.

While in the Hague, President Clinton announced that ethnic cleansing in Kosovo had begun and that the world had two choices, to turn a blind eye or to send in a military solution. David and Mel, and many others at the Hague, knew that in fact there was a third choice. The nonviolent choice would have minimized both the loss of lives and the lasting effects of the environmental damage of chemical and radioactive by-products that continue to harm the people that NATO had hoped to save. When Milosevic fell, it wasn't by bombs or a violent revolution, but by a nonviolent people's movement in Serbia. This movement is documented in the film Bringing Down a Dictator.

From 1999 to 2002 David and Mel worked diligently, "maintaining the focus", as they say and bringing in people from all over the world. They borrowed cars, slept on couches, made up fliers in the middle of a rain storm, brainstormed in the cabin in the woods while a blizzard snowed them in and so many stories and minds joined together to make the convening event in New Dehli a reality.

Luckily for all of us, one of the members of USNPCA had taken a leave last year to hone his skills as a documentary filmmaker. David Berrian recruited a couple volunteers and together they captured this amazing story on film. So I will stop telling the story now in hopes that by this time next year you will have the opportunity to hear it as it unfolded for all of us on the evening of the 10th.

I will add that everyone in that room was deeply touched by the story of Nonviolent Peaceforce. The previous night we had listened to Rita Webb, who had spent 5 1/2 years in Sri Lanka on the first team deployed. Her powerful talk reminded us of why we work so hard each year telling Americans not only about the power of nonviolence, but how Nonviolent Peaceforce is taking that vision and making it a reality in the lives of real human beings. It is for these people, trapped in conflict areas, that we tell this story. It is for their safety and security that we bring the story to others so that you too can help continue the story for them and many more.

In celebration of the ten year anniversary of their journey, Nonviolent Peaceforce asks you to become a founder too. Mel will soon join David in retirement, leaving his position as Executive Director (but don't think we won't hear more from these two). If you share the vision of a less violent world with us, then join the founders circle by committing financial support over a three to five year period. Learn more here.

Nonviolent Peaceforce has teams in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. We were also able to send a rapid deployment to Guatemala for 10 months to protect human rights workers there during election time. To learn more visit the website. If you would like to get involved with a local chapter of the USNPCA just ask me, or visit here.

The following video will show you more about Nonviolent Peaceforce. Thanks for reading. I hope to see you in the founders circle.

New Nonviolent Peaceforce Video

Back to the Blog

I've been too long gone from the blog world. New love blossomed this Spring and I found myself lost in that wonderfully warm and fuzzy world of fresh beginnings. But the world has continued to spin, people have continued to fight and die, there are new widows and orphans and more pain. There were also small victories happening too. On February 13th, Umar Jaleel, a Sri Lankan peaceworker with Nonviolent Peaceforce was kidnapped by nine armed men from the NP house in Mindanao in the Philippines. He was released by his captors last week, ending the four month ordeal. His freedom was not bought with ransom, but rather with words. You can learn more about Jaleel's release here.

The GLBT world community is gaining recognition of their human rights after many decades of nonviolent struggle. In March, Sweden became the seventh country to recognize same-sex marriages. Although the US is not quite there yet, just this month New Hampshire became the sixth state to recognize same-sex marriage. Ironically, California slid backwards in this effort, but only temporarily.

As we celebrate Jaleel's release, and celebrate the growing recognition of love and relationship in our world, we also watch the unfolding trial of another nonviolent hero, Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi was coming up for release from house arrest, but that possibility is being challenged. An American man violated the terms of her house arrest by swimming to her island home, believing he'd recieved a message from God to protect Suu Kyi. Her generous heart could not force the exhausted man to leave without giving rest and food first. As a result she is facing up to five years in a prison known for torture and harsh conditions. The world is not standing by idly, but letters, phone calls and protests are growing as the junta drags out the proceedings. If love calls you to act on behalf of this great woman visit Amnesty International for ideas. The Buddhist Peace Fellowship is also posting actions as they learn about them.

Here at home things have been grim as I listen to Cheney explain his great fondness of waterboarding. Reviewing the Pew survey on American attitudes toward torture shows that 4 out of 10 Americans believe torture is "often" or "sometimes" justified. If we look at the demographics more closely we find that this number increases to 6 out of 10 for Southern Evangelicals. I find it troubling that these self proclaimed warriors of God entertain the idea that threat power and pain are the best methods for getting answers and control over others. The life of the nonviolent, self-sacraficing Jesus was clearly wasted on them.

Of course when the graphic photos and videos slip out the crap rolls downhill and it's our young girls and boys in uniform that are labeled "bad apples" and are portrayed as going off on their own to torture. Philip Zimbardo, notorious for his controversial Stanford Prison Experiment has much to offer on this topic. I do warn that the images he shows of Abu Ghraib in this TED talk, even edited as they are, are quite graphic. If these images trouble you, can you even begin to imagine the ones that our President has decided to keep from us because they are "too troubling". Zimbardo gives us a way to the future. Instead of teaching our children to go with group think, let's teach them to be heros and nonviolent heros at that.

In closing, we've seen lots of ups and downs in the world of nonviolence over the last three months, but at least we're seeing both. In honor of our hero Aung San Suu Kyi, I will end with quote by her and with the wish that we all have the opportunity to live up to our full potential. "Human beings the world over need freedom and security that they may be able to realize their full potential."