
A Ministry of Risk: Writings on Peace and Nonviolence
Reviewed by Robert Levering
February 1, 2025
By Philip Berrigan, edited by Brad Wolf. Fordham University Press, 2024. 272 pages. $95/hardcover; $24.95/paperback; $23.99/eBook.
One of the iconic photos from the anti-Vietnam War movement shows a small group of Catholic activists standing around a pile of draft files they had just burned using homemade napalm. Among them is Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest and renowned poet who wrote more than 50 books, and his younger brother Philip, a Josephite priest. Later known as the Cantonsville Nine, they all were sentenced to time in jail.
Philip Berrigan spent nearly 11 years in prison for his numerous acts of civil disobedience, starting in the 1960s for destroying draft records (which he called “human hunting licenses”). From 1980 until his death in 2002, Berrigan participated in several actions with Plowshares (an antinuclear and Christian pacifist movement) where he and others entered restricted military sites to damage nuclear weapons; each act landed him in prison for a lengthy sentence.
The book contains 100 of Berrigan’s short essays, letters, journal entries, and talks from 1957 until shortly before his death. He wrote many from prison, often to fellow activists such as Dorothy Day, or to his brother Dan or wife, Liz McAlister. Frequently, he wrote justifying his civil disobedience actions by showing they were spiritually motivated, reflected in titles like “The Nature of Christian Witness,” “The Gospel Means Peacemaking,” and “Following the Man of Calvary.” The editor, Brad Wolf, has arranged this collection chronologically so we can follow Berrigan’s evolution over time from conventional priest to radical activist.
Though not a poet like his brother Daniel, Philip is often quite eloquent. For instance, writing from the Richmond, Va. jail after he and others had poured blood on pillars in the Pentagon, he wrote:
If we want peace, we will have to stop making war. If we are silent, we are making war. All this government needs to lead the world to nuclear ruin is an irrelevant vote every four years, a sizable slice of our income (for war), and silence. We trust that sisters and brothers will awake—as the Gospel entreats. And respond in time.
Berrigan realized that the demands of his faith were total. In reflecting on Luke 11:28—“Happy are those who hear the word of God and obey it”—Berrigan writes: “Let those who hear God’s Word and try to hear it better, along with those who obey it and strive to obey it more perfectly—let them be forewarned. It can get you killed,” as it did for Christ.
Few of us can hope to follow our leadings to that extent. But it’s certainly worth listening to someone who was willing to take such risks for his faith. As a lifelong antiwar activist myself, I found the book quite inspiring, or to be more accurate, challenging. To me this book has the same kind of impact as reading the Gospels or Old Testament prophets. It makes me question my own willingness to take risks for my beliefs.
On the other hand, many Quakers and other peace activists raised concerns at the time about whether destroying property is consistent with the practice of nonviolence. Having engaged in numerous civil disobedience actions myself over the years, I understand the strategy of deliberately violating the law to make a point. But, while sympathizing with the objectives of Berrigan’s actions, I was not persuaded by this book that such tactics should be encouraged.
Where does one draw the line? If you say it’s okay to destroy draft files, how can you disapprove of those who smash the windows of restaurants and stores in a street demonstration? Or bomb a military facility? Such actions also require secrecy to be effective, making it difficult to build a large movement with enough people to successfully challenge the warmakers and pressure them to make a change.
In these writings, Berrigan does not address such questions that absorbed many movement activists like myself. Rather he focuses on what it means to be faithful to his Christian faith. In Quaker terms, he grapples with what it means to be led by the Spirit. A Ministry of Risk gives us a powerful picture of a twentieth-century prophet whose actions were his primary means of communicating. Because the writings in this book are linked to those actions, readers get to look back in time at Berrigan’s inner struggles with his faith during a tumultuous period in U.S. history.
A member of Santa Cruz (Calif.) Meeting, Robert Levering was a full-time organizer with American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and other peace groups during the Vietnam War. He is the executive producer of The Movement and the “Madman,” which premiered on PBS in 2023 and is now streaming on Prime Video.
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