This issue of
Peace Notes honors a variety of
peacemakers— A Native American, an African, a Presbyterian staff
member, a dedicated scholar and proponent of non-violence, the son of a
Presbyterian minister, a peacemaking friend, an
environmental campaigner, authors--
Their stories give us a better understanding of how and where God’s
work is taking place, and who is doing it.
Let us remember all peacemakers in our prayers.
Peace Notes
is planned and prepared by the Peacemaking Committee members three
times a year. Articles are intended
to be thought-provoking and consciousness-raising, as well as informative
about peacemaking efforts of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and First
Presbyterian Church. Viewpoints
expressed do not necessarily reflect positions of the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.) or our local congregation. (Thanks to Jackie Sharp for layout and
design.)
Your Invitation The Peacemaking Committee invites anyone interested to submit articles for the First Pres publication. Peace Notes is usually distributed in February, Summer and September or October. Deadlines for copy will be listed in Tower Notes.
I first heard about Dr. Johnston on the NPR radio program
“Speaking of Faith” when he explained his work of building a bridge between
politics and religion in preventing and resolving conflicts. He is
president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy
(ICRD). The focus of this organization is on the positive role that
religious leaders and institutions can play in building trust and overcoming
differences.
Dr. Johnston is a distinguished graduate of the U.S.
Naval Academy and earned a Masters in public administration and a Ph.D. in
political science from Harvard University. He has a broad range of
experience in government, academia, the military and the private sector. He
was the youngest officer in the U.S. Navy to qualify for command of a
nuclear submarine.
His assignments have included planning officer in the
President’s Office of Emergency Preparedness, Deputy Assistant Secretary of
the Navy, and faculty member international affairs and security at Harvard
University. His deep interest in religion and conflict resolution stems
from his extensive involvement with the National Prayer Breakfast
fellowship.
Dr. Johnston states, “ The greatest threat in the post cold war
world is the prospective marriage of religious extremism with weapons of
mass destruction. Yet the United States spends most of its time, resources,
and weapons fighting the symptoms of this threat, not the cause. The
diplomacy of the future must engage religion as part of the strategic
solution to global conflict.” He has edited and authored several books,
including Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (1994) and
Faith-based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (2003).
Dr. Johnston and the ICRD staff work in places such as Pakistan,
Syria, Iran, Kashmir, Sudan and Afghanistan. They incorporate religion as
part of the solution in conflicts where traditional diplomacy is not
working. These conflicts more often than not are in the form of ethnic
conflict, tribal warfare, or religious hostilities.
Regardless of one's spiritual persuasion, there are two
compelling reasons why the Center's work is important: (1) the need for
more effective preventive measures to minimize the occasions in which we are
forced to send our sons and daughters in harm's way and (2) the need for a
stable global environment to support the kind of economic growth that can
benefit an expanding percentage of the world's population. By linking
religious reconciliation with official or unofficial diplomacy, ICRD has
created a new synergy for peacemaking that serves both of these needs. Dr.
Douglas Johnston has led in the implementation of this vision for the past
eight years.
---Phyllis McPherron
The Tree Woman of Africa
Wangari
Maathai of Kenya was the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Dr. Maathai has
received worldwide recognition but is lesser known to the general American
public. This environmentalist and champion of social justice issues for
women in her native Kenya has earned her the affectionate nicknames “Tree
Woman” and “The Tree Mother of Africa.”
Born April 1, 1940, in Nyeri, Kenya, Dr. Maathai studied in the
U.S., receiving a B.S. in Biological Sciences in 1964 from Mount St.
Scholastica College (now Benedictine College) in Kansas. She earned an M.S.
from the University of Pittsburgh and is the first East- and Central-
African woman to earn a Ph.D. (in veterinary medicine) from the University
of Nairobi in 1971.
A 2004 BBC News profile of Dr. Maathai included the following
information: “Her role as an environmental campaigner began after she
planted some trees in her back garden. This inspired her in 1977 to form an
organization, primarily of women, known as the Green Belt Movement aiming to
curtail the devastating effects of deforestation. Her desire was to produce
sustainable wood for fuel use as well as combating soil erosion. Her
campaign to mobilize poor women to plant some 30 million trees has been
copied by other countries. The Green Belt Movement went on to campaign on
education, nutrition and other issues important to women.” Dr. Maathai
said, “It took me a lot of days and nights to convince people that women
could improve their environment without much technology or without much
financial resources.”
In her political career, she served as chairperson of the
National Council of Women of Kenya, and ran for both the presidency and
Parliament of Kenya (defeated). She has also been arrested and attacked for
speaking out against injustices perpetrated by the corrupt regime of Kenyan
President Daniel arap Moi and pervasive destructive male domination in her
country.
The Green Belt Movement is in its 31st year of
promoting grassroots “environmental conservation, good governance, and
peace.” Wangari Maathai and the United Nations Environment Program launched
the Billion Tree Campaign “with the goal to plant one billion trees
worldwide in 2007.” (Pledges are accepted at the following website:
www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/.)
The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s announcement of the choice of
Wangari Maathai for the 2004 Peace Prize included these accolades: “Maathai
stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social,
economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa. She has taken a
holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human
rights and women’s rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts
locally….Through education, family planning, nutrition and the fight against
corruption, the Green Belt Movement has paved the way for development at
grass-root level…. She (Maathai) represents an example and a source of
inspiration for everyone in Africa fighting for sustainable development,
democracy, and peace.”
Dr. Maathai has written an autobiography entitled Unbowed:
One Woman’s Story (2006). More information about the Green Belt
Movement is available at its website:
www.greenbeltmovement.org.
---Sandy Peterson
Exploring Nonviolent Alternatives
Gene Sharp
Gene Sharp has devoted his life to the study and
practice of nonviolence. The keystone of his work is a three-volume work,
Politics of Nonviolent Action, published in 1973. A more recent
work, 1993, is From Dictatorship to Democracy. These and other
writing have been translated into dozens of languages and used to shape
strategies for revolution throughout the world. They serve as how-to guides
for achieving freedom and democracy.
He writes: “Since 1980 dictatorships have collapsed before the
predominantly nonviolent defiance of people in Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Slovenia, Madagascar,
Mali, Bolivia, and the Philippines. Nonviolent resistance has furthered the
movement toward democratization in Nepal, Zambia, South Korea, Chile,
Argentina, Haiti, Brazil, Uruguay, Malawi, Thailand, Bulgaria, Hungary,
Zaire, Nigeria, and various parts of the former Soviet Union.”
He has documented 198 methods of nonviolent action. These have
been categorized as follows: Protest and persuasion; social, political and
economic noncooperation (such as boycotts and strikes; and nonviolent
interventions. To show the role of nonviolence throughout history, Sharp
cites the Boston Tea Party, the Russian Revolution, resistance to the Nazis,
the Prague Spring, Gandhi’s campaign for Indian independence, the overthrow
of Milosevic in Serbia and others.
He has always stressed the importance of training before
participating in nonviolence. A chapter offering a complete curriculum for
a course in civilian defense is prominent in his Politics of Nonviolent
Action.
“(Sharp’s) a giant in the field,” says David Cortright, a
research fellow at Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International
Peace Studies. “He’s the world’s leading scholar on nonviolent action as a
means of political change. And his reputation is so commanding, and his
work is so established, that you can’t even begin to work in this field
without acknowledging and working from his foundation.”
Sharp’s background includes bachelor and graduate degrees from
Ohio State University, study at the Institute of Philosophy in Norway and at
Oxford, and research at Harvard’s Center for International Studies. He
founded and still staffs his own research group, the Albert Einstein
Institution. Incidentally, he is the son of a “stern” Presbyterian
minister.
Check out the web site
www.aeinstein.org.
---Barbara Redford
A Peacemaking Friend of Mine
Albert Curry Winn has a rich history of faithful service
in the Presbyterian Church and has been a wonderful model for me of a
pastor, a preacher, a teacher, and a peacemaker. He is now retired and
lives in Winston-Salem, N.C..
One of his earliest books was for the Layman’s Bible Commentary on
The Acts of the Apostles. For the Covenant Life Curriculum of the early
1960s, he wrote The Worry and Wonder of Being Human. For the
Presbyterian Women, he was the writer of the 1982-1983 Bible Study Book on
Colossians, sub-titled “Christ the Peacemaker.”
I got to know Dr. Winn when I was a seminary student in Richmond, Va. He
was the pastor of a downtown church and taught several courses at the
seminary; I was fortunate to take a few of them. He was also a fellow bus
rider with Elysa, my wife, when both of them worked downtown. Al Winn was
always practicing what he preached; in this case, using public
transportation to get around.
When he was president of Louisville Theological Seminary in the late 1960s
and 1970s, the Vietnam War was raging. He opposed the war on moral grounds,
feeling that it was wrong and unjust; therefore, he chose to have his salary
at the seminary lowered so that he would not have to pay taxes to support
it. Here again, Dr. Winn was walking the walk and not just talking the talk.
Dr. Winn stood up and spoke out bravely against the scourges of American
society such as poverty, racism, war and sexism. As a pastor, he often found
himself in opposition to the war policies of our government. He marched for
civil rights in the ‘60s; he marched against the war in the ‘70s; he
demonstrated and was occasionally arrested for his civil disobedience.
He served on committees and task forces and brought a prophetic vocational
identity to the task at hand. One of his greatest achievements to me is the
influence of his hand and mind on A Declaration of Faith, the
Southern Presbyterian’s faith document that, most unfortunately, was not
passed as a denomination for inclusion into our confessions, but was
approved for worship and study. We use it often here at First Pres.
As a scholar and writer, Dr. Al Winn was interested in a wide variety of
topics. For the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, he wrote “Ain’t Gonna
Study War No More: Biblical Ambiguity and the Abolition of War.” In
place of a Defense Department, he encouraged a Peace Academy. Twice I have
led a discussion of his study of the Gospel of John, including here in
Decatur. The title is A Sense of Mission: Guidance from the Gospel of
John. I still have close at hand his A Christian Primer: The Prayer,
the Creed, the Commandments. I would recommend any of his writings to
you who love peace and seek concrete ways to be faithful.
Have you read anything by him? I recommend that you do. You will be
enriched and blessed with an inspired enlightenment by this man, who is also
a former moderator of the Presbyterian Church as well as a faithful
peacemaker and obedient servant of Jesus Christ.
---Rev. Jim Montgomery
Middle East - One Peacemaker.
Douglas Dicks is the
liaison for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the Israel-Palestine-Jordan
region. His work brings him in contact with patriarchs and priests, elected
government officials, human rights groups, prominent members of Israeli and
Palestinian societies and the common people.
He was stateside last fall as a part of the Mission Challenge 07
interpretation team for the Presbyterian Church and also to attend a meeting
of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network. Betty Smith and I had the
opportunity to hear him speak Nov. 11, in the Chicago area.
Douglas spoke of some of the issues in Israel/Palestine:
Jerusalem:
It is important to three monotheistic faiths and needs to be shared.
Water:
Israel controls water resources as it is an occupying power. Palestinians
are allowed restricted water (once/twice weekly) or pay more than Israeli
citizens.
Settlements. Borders. Refugees—all
issues: Gaza has 1.3 million population, with 70 percent 1948 refugees.
The Separation Wall.
Douglas works with others in an attempt to provide greater
understanding in the ministry of peacemaking and reconciliation in the
Middle East. He has resided and worked out of Bethlehem and the surrounding
areas for 12 years. Currently he lives in Amman, Jordan.
Further information available at the following websites:
IsraelPalestineMissionNetwork.org, B'tselem.org, mecchurches.org, sabeel.org, pcusa.org/Palestine
---Jean Gift, guest contributor
Fighting Domestic Violence on the Pine Ridge Reservation
Karen Artichoker
attended elementary and
secondary schools in Pueblo, Colo., and earned a degree in sociology from
Colorado College. She started as a counselor on the Rosebud reservation and
was assigned to a group home and then worked in detention for the Oglala
Sioux Tribe. She also served on the staff of the psychiatric ward at the
Indian Health Service Facility. Artichoker later worked at Sioux San
Hospital, the Indian Health Service facility in Rapid City, S.D., where she
first saw the victims of domestic violence close up.
In 1987 she opened Cangleska, Inc. (http://www.cangleska.org/).
This program (“sacred hoop”) provides shelter, intervention and legal aid
for battered women. Cangleska also focuses on retraining batterers to act
out anger in other ways. The aim is to rehabilitate abusers, not just stop
them for the moment. Now used as a national model, the Cangleska program
includes shelters in Kyle on Pine Ridge; in Martin, a community on the edge
of Pine Ridge; in Rapid City, some 90 miles away; and Sacred Circle, a
national crisis center, also in Rapid City. Cangleska is breaking ground
for a new residence to house women who have left abusive homes. Today, the
program has a staff of 15--many of them former abusers or victims--and
consults to more than 550 Native American tribes on combating domestic
violence. Hundreds of women and children have been helped by this program.
There are many
reasons for Cangleska’s success. Respected men on the reservation are active
participants. The tribal council and courts--the authorities on the
reservation--support the program. The community has been convinced that
domestic violence is not part of the Lakota tradition, and therefore
unacceptable. Tribal police have been
retrained. Cangleska has taught more than 100 police officers how to
approach a domestic conflict situation and take charge. Cangleska has
redefined existing domestic violence laws and pushed for tough new ones.
Under the tribe’s Spouse Abuse Act, it is illegal not only to cause physical
harm but to threaten it as well. This program has surmounted all the
barriers that stop women on the reservation from getting help, including
transportation, day care, legal advice and job training. Cangleska is a
program that actually works.
Karen Artichoker
and Cangleska, Inc. have received numerous honors, including the Marshall's
Peace Prize and the Charles Bannerman Fellowship. Cangleska’s innovative
approach has won the Innovations in American Government award from Harvard
University and the Ford Foundation. Artichoker is the recipient of the
national award ''21 Leaders for the 21st Century 2006,'' awarded by Women's
eNews, which puts her on a list of honorees who have worked to make a
difference in society and in people's lives.
Although there
has been much progress, there is still a long way to go and Karen Artichoker
works on. In an interview with Washington Monthly, she said, “It'll
take all of our values as Native people to keep us strong, keep moving
forward," she says. "But if I didn't think it would work, I wouldn't be
here, raising my children. We have to teach people that this is not who we
are as Lakota people. This is not how the Creator intended us to be with
each other.
---Jim Rauff
A Hero and a Peacemaker
My
sister Lori is my hero. She learned from a professor that the Pacific
Northwest was where the most politically active students were settling. So
off she went with three friends from college in 1984 from Virginia to
Oregon! They camped all the way across the country – one morning waking up
to a herd of buffalo outside their tent (Lori praying that her dog
wouldn’t bark!). She watched the sun set and the moon rise over the Badlands
of South Dakota. Lori said, “the earth gave me back awe and hope and
meaning. It made me want to change how my country did business with the rest
of the world – so that I could enjoy and learn from the wealth of our
abundant natural resources but also do something about our global
citizenship.”
Isn’t she amazing?
She
now works for ELAW which stands for Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide
and, as I write this, she is in Mexico for a week. She will be on
national television there, speaking fluently in Spanish about protecting the
Mesoamerican Reef. It runs along Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula past Belize,
Guatamala and Honduras.
As
Lori explains, the future of those four countries depends on the health of
the Reef and the coastal watersheds that are connected to it. Some believe
that the world’s reefs may hold a cure for cancer of HIV.
So
we each do what we can. Lori is helping four countries work together for
good. That’s why she continues to be my hero.
---Elysa Montgomery
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