by Michael Moulton
After a nice gathering in Green Street Meeting mingling with people from different area congregations and a stirring performance from spoken word artist Paradoxx Rhapsodist, I bicycled down to Broad and Poplar to a large North Philadelphia Church for worship. Coming out of the cold I was greeted warmly by a church volunteer at the door who let me bring my bike in (always a plus for people like me looking for bike friendly parking). The service was upbeat and the church was full with people with some spilling out into the upper aisles. The march to Colosimo's gun shop afterwards was organized and tight. I heard the police on-duty say there were 600 plus present. People at the end of the march gathered in front of a stage just past the gun shop. Speakers testified about the negative role of straw-purchased guns in urban life. A mother who's son was slain in 1990 by someone using an automatic rifle made her point clear. The gun that killed her son was made for killing people and was sold illegally to his killer. A change is needed. As the rally continued, Colosimo's gun shop remained open for business -- its entrance ringed by police officers and detectives keeping it safe from the dove-banner-waving protesters singing hopefully outside in the Philadelphia cold.

by Dan Coppock

Like every day this week, Friday opened with a themed worship. This time it was going from Raising Voices to Taking Action. Rt. Rev. Gayle Elizabeth Harris spoke of her time in the Episcopal church as someone who embraced conflict. She reflected on her early associations with the scripture from Romans of loving enemies and by kindness heaping coals on their heads. She shared an African folk tale demonstrating that what affects one has the potential to affect all. She also said that justice is not our definition of fairness and judgment, but rather the cornerstone to God’s peace in which we are captured. We can’t be dazzled by our own brilliance, and there is no issue that we cannot minister to, she concluded.

The morning discussion was new in that it replaced the panel format of previous days but it also asked the congregation, a new congregation called “Heeding God’s Call”, to make decisions regarding an epistle to be issued to the world from the Gathering. The congregation was also asked to think and speak from the Gathering instead of the component churches.

There was time for people from faiths other than the Historic Peace Churches, who had been observers of the Gathering, to speak of their experience and to contribute. Rabbi Arthur Waskow talked about his playing hooky from the conference to go demonstrate in Washington, D.C. He also reflected on the false dichotomy of ‘are you with us or against us,’ noting that in the original, the angel says ‘NO’. He spoke of all of the brothers in Genesis estranging themselves for decades before reconciliation and gave a Talmudic interpretation of Jesus and Caesar’s coins - everyone bearing God’s image was unique whereas the coins bearing Caesar’s were identical. Lee Phillips, a Muslim, weighed in on her experience of welcome and of peculiarity of singing for quite a bit of the service. She spoke of the need for trialogs and of consciousness of words and language. A Buddhist Jew gave insights from her ‘beginner mind’ in appreciation of the conference. Among these were that in the over two years of planning that preceded the conference, there was much accountability and care. She spoke of the experience being 3 or 4 days of worship with some other activities thrown in.

In the afternoon, a group of about twenty activists continued the witness at Colosimo’s gun shop. Seven more were arrested after police were able to procure a paddywagon. Later, Dr. Vincent Harding concluded the pastoral part of the conference by noting that God is calling us to something larger than we thought. Peace is more than the conference, more than getting arrested and more than working exclusively on foreign peace, what one speaker called “trickle down peace.” Radical relationship is needed for as long as it takes. Our unity is God’s will, but we do the fixing at great cost. God is calling us to something larger than we thought. Thank God.

By Dan Coppock
With the news of the arrest of five Gathering attendees in their witness at Colosimo’s Gun Shop still fresh in our minds, we learned of the huge outpouring of support the night before. $3,000 had been needed immediately to cover bail while Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Sufferings fund was unavailable. Over $6,000 in loans and donations were received. We also learned of the charges of trespass and criminal conspiracy that were leveled against these activists.
With this in mind our morning worship focused on the lamentation and prophetic vision of our witness. Our worship leader, Dr. Matthew V. Johnson, noted that lament is the soul of prophetic vision, and that lament is soulless without love and the self-recognition of lost opportunities. “No vision and you perish, no ideal and you’re lost” he concluded. The words of Martin Luther King Jr., who spoke of the church being the state’s conscience, independent but present, undergirded the day. It was especially significant as he would have been 80 years old today, had he lived.
A panel of advocacy and lobbyists followed, and continued this theme. They spoke of the relationship between the grassroots and church organizations and the Washington-based offices. Martin Shupack, associate director with Church World Service, spoke of explaining prophetic visions to politicians, noting that it was like “singing the lord’s song in a foreign land.” He shared with us some of the successes of lobbying including funding for HIV/AIDS and debt forgiveness. Julie Schumacher Cohen, with Churches for Middle East Peace, spoke of the dual nature of being a conscience for the state but also building up conscience in the church, taking down physical and spiritual walls. She also spoke of her re-excitement with democracy and of a call to be engaged. Joe Volk, from Friends Committee on National Legislation, spoke of the team effort of movements and lobby groups, likening it to an orchestral concert where each instrument is heard balanced together. He noted that without a people’s movement lobbyists have nothing to communicate. Phil Jones, of the Church of the Brethren’s Witness/Washington Office, noted that, despite the words of our founders, the church can be and is co-opted. He noted that Christians are called to speak truth to power on all levels. He consistently asks, “What’s the plan?” and spoke of filling the hole left by the deaths of two of his friends by stepping up witness.
That evening, meeting at the Constitution Center, a draft epistle was read including a reaffirmation that this is the year of the Lord’s favor, asking what must die so that a commitment to peace can grow, noting that silence to listen to God is crucial, silence when God calls us to speak is treason, and concluding, “This is our time to embody the goodness that is happening in these terrible and wonderful times.” The whole group engaged in a rotating discussion of ideas, experiences, and brainstorming, laying the transition to the theme of Friday: taking action.

By Katherine Carlson

In a society saturated by violence, the question, “How do we navigate the consumer culture?” comes to mind as the gap between traditional values and violence promoted by the media increasingly widens. Today in his workshop, “How Does Pop Culture Reinforce Conflict or Encourage Healing?” author Gareth Higgins discussed the need for people in the United States to find the spiritual within our culture, focusing particularly on movies and film. He urges viewers not to avoid the sometimes unsavory cinema or to live in separate spheres of church and pop culture, but to embrace both as an opportunity to learn from one another.

Higgins supports the medium of film as a potentially positive means of experiencing mainstream society. In this way, he encourages people to engage with popular culture on a higher intellectual level because many films offer the viewer the opportunity to relate to issues of fear, power, relationships, or morality without having to experience the extreme circumstances presented on the big screen. This ability to find relatable material within our often flimsy Hollywood flicks is beneficial but also identifies a problem: the inundation of and fascination with violence. Higgins refers to this as the “myth of redemptive violence,” where in contemporary culture the ideal that from chaos, or violence, order emerges. The generic superhero movie, incredibly popular with U.S. audiences, follows this basic pattern, where an individual undertakes saving the world by strong-arming the bad guys, leading to a predictable happy ending.

Despite the mass appeal of attractive celebrities portraying superpower-wielding or gun-toting heroes, Higgins asks, “Are we going to continue to feed off this myth? How can we make nonviolence as cool and as sexy as dropping a bomb? This is our question, and movies are our most important mechanisms to convey information to the public. I think we can do it.” Often, it is not the quality of an idea, but the coolness. Higgins recommends that viewers ask themselves, “Why do I want to see this?” when attracted to overly gory or incendiary film, to prevent promoting violence for the sake of violence.

Stopping this cycle on a purely personal level, however, is simply not enough. After his prepared lecture, discussion was opened to the workshop participants, who probed deeper at this national problem. The lack of ability to equip our children to navigate the consumer culture as peacebuilders was a key point touched upon. With the absence of structured sharing about popular media, young people are left to conform to popular standards. Communities should become more involved with book and movie clubs to promote more faith-based interpretations of the consumer culture.

“Gareth Higgins, Ph.D., has worked as an academic and activist, and is a freelance writer and research consultant specializing in Northern Ireland affairs, religion, peacemaking, film and post-modern culture. He is the co-chair of the zero28 Project, a post-sectarian peace building initiative.” (From the “about the author” blurb for his book How Movies Helped Save My Soul: Finding Spiritual Fingerprints in Culturally Significant Films.)

By Dan Coppock

Wednesday’s theme of worship was one of hope. As the first full day, the evening of greeting and collection and transition from travel put behind us, we were now presented with the laying out of our hopes for the conference, our anticipation of work to be done, and the beginnings of moving forward. Our morning worship helped lay out something more fundamental: our grounds for hope in the first place. Colin Saxton from Northwest Yearly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends, spoke on the prophet Micah, a "nobody" from "nowhere," who, though he had relatively little influence during his life, led the King Hezzekiah to sponsor a revival of the morality of Israel. Colin Saxton spoke of nonresistance and about the cross. He spoke of breaking through a numbness that our society seems to value and reconnecting to the radical nonviolent message of Jesus Christ, a theme visited the previous night by Ched Meyers. This message was underscored by the reminder immediately after worship that we were building up to a day of action and that members of the gathering were facing arrest even that afternoon in their witness and prayer for the owner of a local gun shop.

A panel then followed discussing the various faith bases. Christina Amalia Repoley, an unprogrammed Friend from Atlanta, spoke of the power that comes from worshiping expectantly and that manifested in the corporate waiting is the grounding of faith that produces the fruit of peace work and allows us to "ive in the virtue of life and power that takes away the occasion for all war." Paul Anderson, an Evangelical Friend from Oregon, spoke of a biblical, radical third way that heaps coals on the heads of adversaries and prevents a co-option of truth by presenting a third choice between two undesirable options. Belita D. Mitchell, a Brethren from Harrisburg, Pa., spoke of the transformation in her life experience and how by practicing and living out her faith with her community she has discovered the meaning of sharing the Presence by taking it to the streets. Jordan Blevins, another of the Brethren, shared his commitment to ecojustice and relationship both with the Earth and with each other, seeking in each other and in oneself embodiment of the living Christ. Mimi Copp shared stories of her travels and family to illuminate her experience of the justice side of "peace and justice." She spoke of the women in white of West Africa and her own experience in Shalom House, the Brethren in Christ house in West Philadelphia. In the afternoon she was arrested while praying at a gun shop. Gilberto Flores, a Mennonite minister, spoke of his reluctant participation in an indigenous peace resistance movement in Guatemala, and of his subsequent exile to the United States, the end of his personal peace.

The group moved then to small group and individual discussions. The themes for pondering and mindful discussion, drawn from the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. were of hope, of purpose, and of prophetic vision. My workshop had the notable absence of another of those who were arrested.

We reconvened in the evening to hear the faith witness of Alexie M. Torres-Fleming, who moved the group gradually from thinking towards acting. We heard of the arrest of those who prayed and the execution of Curtis Moore at the hands of the State of Texas. The group heard Alexie Torres-Fleming speak powerfully of her early life in the poorest Congressional district in the United States, in South Bronx; her wrestling with the myth of escape; and her divinely inspired decision to return to the community in which she was brought up. She spoke of her prophetic dreams, which played a large role in her actions as community worker. She reflected on the struggle for dignity and the incarnational aspect of God's power. She laid out lessons that she had learned along the way, challenging and affirming the group as a whole. She ended her time reflecting on the discomfort and disorientation that came with acting as God's servant but with the invocation to tease the power out of the powerless. The evening closed with reflections on Dr. Howard Thurman surmising that there is no security in this life. The ground is laid for the theme of Thursday’s worship: lamentation and the remorse of a not clearly visible God.

By the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And greetings from the 35 member communions of the National Council of Churches. With violence the order of the day in such places as Gaza, Afghanistan, Congo, Somalia, Darfur, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, it is imperative that the followers of Christ proclaim a different vision of life in human community – which is why I am so grateful to Thomas and the other organizers of this historic conference. May God grant that our time together be a visible and vital witness to God’s gift of Shalom.

In this brief welcome, I want to emphasize one point: the ecumenical movement, of which the National Council of Churches is an instrument, is most essentially a movement of peace. Part of the point is sociological: Christian divisions (which ecumenism seeks to overcome) often exacerbate political conflicts and hinder effective peacemaking. War is too massive an evil to be responded to denominationally. The real point, however, is more theological. God’s gift of reconciliation is for the world; but the church is entrusted with this message of reconciliation – and the church delivers the message not just by what it says or, even, by what it does, but by what it is, by the way we live with one another. The church’s calling is to be a demonstration project of God’s gift of peace; and the fact that Christians are so obviously fragmented and co-opted by the powers of the world is what drives the ecumenical movement.

Ecumenical Conferences have declared all of this unambiguously for the past one hundred years, perhaps never more so that at the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948. “War,” said the delegates, “is contrary to the will of God.” This has been repeated at various ecumenical conferences and I am going to repeat it here: War is contrary to the will of God. It is true that many Christians still see war as a last resort. But there is now broad agreement that war is “inherently evil” (WCC) – which means that Christians should never identify human violence with God’s purposes. Contrary to political leaders and old Hollywood movies, it is never redemptive.

You see why it is so important to remember this at the beginning of our conference. Radical peacemaking is usually associated with one segment of the Christian community: the Historic Peace Churches. “Another peace protest? It must be the Quakers and Mennonites and Brethren.” What I am stressing, however, is that radical, costly, insistent peacemaking is not simply your witness. Peace is the message of the church ecumenical!

This is not to be taken for granted. In the history of the church, those who emphasized peacemaking have often feared that unity would weaken the prophetic edge of their proclamation, while those who have emphasized unity have often feared that peacemaking would prove divisive. That’s why the historic peace churches have, at times, been sectarian, while churches more inclined to collaboration have generally left matters of war and peace to the individual conscience.

But the modern ecumenical movement has rejected this dichotomy – and I hope we will as well. We are Christians: recipients of the gift of peace. We are Christians: called to be ambassadors of reconciliation by the way we live with one another. May it be so, even here, even now.

The Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon , a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) clergyman and a long-time educator and ecumenical leader, is the ninth General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA.

The NCC is the ecumenical voice of America's Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican, historic African American and traditional peace churches. These 35 communions have 45 million faithful members in 100,000 congregations in all 50 states.

By Christina Soo Lee

To be honest, I was a little nervous and a bit anxious when stepping through the doors of Arch Street Meetinghouse. As someone who does not identify as a Quaker, I only had a vague idea of what to expect during the first worship session of the Peace Gathering. My mind was occupied with little formalities as I tried to remember when I was supposed shake peoples' hands and what I should say while doing so. All my anxious thoughts were almost immediately put to rest and my soul was calmed as a sweet voice sang “Come by here Ama”. With this invitation to worship, it became evident to me that it didn't matter that I wasn't Quaker. This was reinforced as one of the presiders introduced the different faiths that were represented in the meetinghouse. I was surprised, impressed and delighted as he called forth people of the Muslim faith, Jewish faith, Baptists, members of the Church of the Brethren, Quakers, Presbyterians, and many more, to stand and be welcomed by their fellow believers in peace.

And it was obviously the inspiring message of peace that united this diverse group of people. Heads nodded and various 'Amens' rung throughout the meetinghouse when Michael Kinnamon from the National Council of Churches passionately declared that “War is contrary to the will of God”. Even more “Amens” were heard when he spoke about the unity that is needed among the people of God, despite denominational differences, in order to work for peace in this broken world ridden with violence.

Surrounded by people who have committed themselves to learn from one another in order to further the work for peace in the world, and hearing all their voices raised up in song together, I could not help but feel an overwhelming sense of hope. The theme of hope resonated throughout the rest of the worship as Reverend James Forbes convinced us that this is “the year of God's favor.” As Reverend Forbes spoke about how to use God's favor for the cause of peace, while occasionally giving us previews of a praise song he's been working on, his words rung true with the overall mission of the Peace Gathering. He urged us to offer ourselves and the gifts we have been blessed with, so that God may use them to aid those who so desperately need it. And who more in need then those without peace in their hearts or in their daily lives?

Reverend Forbes' message left not only a sense of hope but also a sense of purpose as the choir asked “Do you believe in freedom? Do you believe in justice?”, and the congregation shouted back “Yes, we do Lord! Justice for all”! And before I knew it, I was shaking the hands of my neighbors, quietly saying to them “Peace be with you.”

By John Lohac, Philadelphia, via peace@friendsjournal.org

I wonder what the goal of this conference is? Is it to convince believers of the supremacy of nonviolence? Is it to spread the notion of the supremacy of nonviolence over violence? Is it to unite people who understand the supremacy of non violence into common action?

People who are in opposition to the use of violence are a minority in all faiths. A very large percentage of humans still agree with the use of violence to solve problems. Nonviolence is superior to violence, but few people know it and fewer are convinced of it. Of course it is good for pacifists of all faiths to unite. Of course it is a valuable goal to unite pacifists. They are minority in our time. It is a valuable goal to increase their numbers among believers and non believers alike.

If the goal is to create a strong peace movement, then pacifists should welcome non-believers with open arms. We do not need to agree on belief in order to act together.

People who are in favor of non-violent management practices, which include sustainable management of natural resources as well as nonviolent management of human resources, should not insist on faith to develop action.

Because of the very small percentage of believers who are for peace and non-violence, compared to the large number of believers who feel at ease with the use of violence as a way to resolve problems, it would be a very useful goal to make large portions of believers question their assurance that violence is a way to go.

As a practical matter, and because of the large number of people who strongly claim having faith in Jesus’ divinity and are not disturbed by even the most forceful violent actions, I feel that in our present time and circumstance it is more important to unite people who do not want violence to be used at all, whether they believe in God or not. Pacifism need not be rooted in faith to be strongly anchored in a person. For action, there is no need to distinguish between believers and non believers. Why split people on belief when action requires unity? However, if the goal of this conference is to reach out to the very large number of believers of the Christian faiths who are in agreement with the use of violence as a method to solve problems, then this peace conference should say so boldly and clearly. It should use slogans saying just that. In this case, then, this conference should attempt to convince people of faith of the superiority and ancientness of non-violence. It should say boldly that Jesus was a pacifist and would be opposed to any violent action for any purpose what so ever. In this case, then, believers who are pacifist should go to churches where there is support for war, death penalty, etc. to propagate that good news publicly.

If Christians for peace want to be of service to the Gospel and to the cause of nonviolence and pacifism, they should attempt visibly, boldly, and squarely to confront believers who agree with war and violence, to make them doubt their righteousness. That would spread the notion of peace among believers through the media, through culture and songs, and by all nonviolent means necessary. Considering the very large number of people who are believers and are in favor of violence, it would be a good service to the cause of nonviolence and peace to make believers question the use of violence.

People claiming a Christian faith who are in agreement with the use of violence usually point out to the example found in the gospel of Jesus overturning the tables of merchants and especially money changers in the Temple. It should be explained that this is no justification or approval of Jesus for violence but that this event is more likely to fit Jesus’ teaching if it is understood as a nonviolent direct action than a violent one. Overturning the money changers set up is not really violence. It really is a disturbance and cannot be equated with fighting with people without bloodshed and even less with taking arms against people with the intent to wound or kill. Other examples of nonviolent direct action found in the Old and the New testaments should be taught in order to explain how old and how successful a method it has been recorded to be. And, of course, more modern examples of nonviolent direct action should be taught as well.

What is the goal of this conference? Is it to oppose violence? Is it to unite in action for pacifism? Is it to convince the faithful that faith and violence are irreconcilable?