Quote of the Week

"Justice will bring about peace. . . . If you want peace, work for justice."

Pope Paul VI (1897-1978)

Quote of the Week

"I am so tempted to give up on a Christianity where preachers from their pulpits preach a personal piety that ignores public responsibility. Like Muslim apologists who keep reminding us that true Islam does not condone terrorist acts, I am placed in the position of having to argue that true Christianity does not condone torture."

Read the full article here.

Miguel De La Torre
Associate Professor of Social Ethics at Iliff School of Theology

Peacemaking Begins at Home

We often think of peacemaking in terms of negotiating a cease-fire between two warring countries, arranging a truce between street gangs, or even breaking up a fight between two angry kids on the playground. While all of these efforts are important and worthy of our support, we should not forget the importance of modeling peacemaking at home in our personal relationships with our spouses and children.

Below, I have reposted an article from M&M's monthly health update which offers some helpful tips for doing precisely that. While my wife and I do not have children and, consequently, have not used this exact approach in our own home, we are familiar with and, on occasion, have used the speaker-listener technique for couples which is very similar to the method outlined below.

Peacemaking is something that is needed and can be practiced at all levels of society, ranging from small disputes between spouses all the way up to major geopolitical conflicts involving several nations. Perhaps if we were to practice peacemaking more on the personal level, we wouldn't find it to be so challenging in other, more complex areas of our lives.

A FAMILY ROUNDTABLE

Occasional family conflicts are normal, so it's best to have a strategy for resolving disagreements. Try a family roundtable with these steps.

• Gather the group and appoint a moderator. For initial meetings, this should be a parent. As family members learn the routine, the moderator role can be rotated.
• Explain the ground rules. No blaming, labeling or name-calling. Everyone has an equal voice.
• Work on one problem. Clearly state the issue to be discussed, such as: "We're here to discuss how to divide the responsibility for walking the dogs."
• Allow each family member to state his or her opinion. No interruptions allowed.
• Brainstorm solutions. List all ideas without judging or reacting to them.
• Narrow the field. Give each person a chance to choose his or her preferred solution.
• Seek agreement. If you can't agree 100 percent on one solution, look for a compromise. For example, combine two solutions, or agree to try each idea for one week and discuss the outcome.
• If tempers flare, take a timeout. Meet again at another time.
• Ask for help. If, after repeated attempts, your family members aren't able to resolve a challenging problem, consider using a mediator, such as a clergyperson or a licensed mental health provider. Some communities also offer local mediation services. Check with your local government to see if one is available in your area.

R.I.P., Amparo Palacios, 1939?-2008

In memory of Amparo Palacios, Baptist peacemaker extraordinaire:

Peace Activist Amparo Lopez Palacios; Fought U.S. Aid to Salvadoran Military

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2008; B05

Amparo Lopez Palacios, 69, a Mexican-born peace activist who fled El Salvador in 1989 under armed guard and then lobbied Congress to stop U.S. aid to the Salvadoran military, died of lung cancer Nov. 14 at the Washington Home hospice.

Mrs. Palacios and her husband, the Rev. Edgar Palacios, had worked to stop the 1980-92 civil war in the Central American nation, actions that landed them on the military junta's death-squad list.

It was a violent time -- in March 1980, Archbishop Óscar Romero was shot during Mass, a month after publicly asking the U.S. government to stop military aid to the government. At his funeral, bombers and snipers massacred 42 mourners.

A National Guard death squad raped and murdered three American nuns and a laywoman in December 1980. The El Salvador government killed tens of thousands of civilians during that decade.

David R. Nagle, then a Democratic member of Congress from Iowa, was the couple's guest during a fact-finding trip to El Salvador in the late 1980s. He recalled visiting a prison where thousands of people were crowded into cells meant for 400, and how activists would suddenly disappear after irritating the military.

"She and her husband were just fearless," Nagle said. "It was intimidating enough to go there once, because bombs were frequently placed in buildings where opponents to the government were gathered. I remember going back to Washington, and it wasn't like I'd been in a foreign land, but on a foreign planet."

The couple ran the National Debate for Peace, which Nagle described as a "middle way" group between the opposing forces of government and rebel fighters. But after six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were killed in November 1989, the Palacios left El Salvador under the protection of United Nations troops.

Mrs. Palacios began working as executive director of the Washington office of the Debate for Peace in El Salvador. She also began walking the halls of congressional office buildings, urging an end to U.S. aid to the military in her country.

"Ultimately, she was successful," Nagle said. "No one could have been as effective as she was, because she had been there."

She and her husband sat in the front row at the United Nations General Assembly when the peace treaty was signed in 1992.

Mrs. Palacios was born in Guadalupe Victoria, in the north-central Mexican state of Durango. She graduated from the Hispano American Baptist Seminary in Los Angeles and married in 1969.

After coming to Washington, she joined Festival Church, a small, multicultural, ecumenical church in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, where she was ordained in 1993 and served as an outreach pastor. She also belonged to Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, where her husband is pastor of a Spanish-speaking congregation and the minister of education.

Since 1996, Mrs. Palacios had been a caseworker at the Family Place, a drop-in center serving pregnant women and young families. She taught prenatal and parenting classes, ran support groups for victims of domestic violence and accompanied people to court, hospital and school conferences. Her home in Washington became a refuge for destitute women and children over the years.

Besides her husband, survivors include three children, Edgar Palacios Lopez of Navojoa, in Mexico's state of Sonora, Amparo Palacios Lopez of Washington and Ana Xochitl Palacios Lopez of San Salvador; three brothers; and six grandchildren.

Making Peace and Justice a Post-Election Priority

Will the outcome of this year's U.S. presidential elections make a difference for the world's poor, oppressed, and marginalized?

Seven months ago, while the presidential primaries were still underway, Baptist ethicist Miguel De La Torre argued that:

So far in this campaign, all three (Clinton, Obama, and McCain) have ignored the fact that the gap between the rich and poor has more than doubled between 1980 and 2005. All three candidates will defend free-market policies and none will seriously address the undemocratic distribution of wealth, resources and privileges in this country.

Noting that "all three (of the candidates) are ontologically white males," De La Torre went on to explain that:

It does not matter if a black man or a white woman is elected president. If the national politics and economics of the captains of industry were to be threatened with a reversal caused by the needs of U.S. marginalized communities--be they blacks, women, or poor whites--the future president would rally all the forces at his or her disposal to maintain the prevailing economic power structures that exist, even if those structures are detrimental to communities that share their gender or skin pigmentation.

On the international scene, whoever the future president may be, it will be her or his job to protect the interests of the empire abroad. Therefore, in terms of U.S. global economic policies, it really doesn't matter if we elect a black man, a white woman or conclude that all the change we really need is another white man.

Ultimately, De La Torre concludes that regardless of who wins the White House in November, that person will simply be the new "face of a global neoliberalism that continues to privilege the few at the expense of the vast majority of the world's population."

Sadly, this year's elections are turning out just as De La Torre has predicted. Even though economic justice for the poor is one of the central themes of both the Old and New Testaments, neither of the two major party candidates, both of whom claim to adhere to the Christian faith, have addressed this concern in the last three presidential debates. While John McCain tries to dance around the fact that his economic policies favor America's wealthiest citizens, Barack Obama has firmly positioned himself behind American's so-called middle-class, most of whom--while not anywhere near as rich as McCain's constituency--are still amongst the world's wealthiest people.

The good news is that, just a few days ago, the leadership of the National Council of Churches in the USA wrote an open letter to Senators Obama and McCain, calling upon them to make the poor and poverty, both in the U.S. and abroad, a major priority in their campaigns. While it seems unlikely that such a letter will be cause for a major shift in either candidate's campaign at this late date, it is still important because it alerts the candidates, the nation, and the world to the political priorities of the American church. Regardless of who wins the election, the NCC has made clear that it stands on the side of the poor and will seek to hold the occupant of the Oval Office--whomever that may be--accountable to that priority.

Poverty, of course, is just one of many priorities that we as Christians should have when it comes to the struggle for peace and justice. And like poverty, few--if any--of those priorities have been addressed by McCain and Obama. Regardless of the outcome of this year's elections, we will clearly have our work cut out for us.

Just Peacemaking: A New Ethical Paradigm

My friend Michael Westmoreland-White has recently posted an index to his blog series on the ten practices of just peacemaking. I'm providing a link to that index here and would strongly encourage others to read through the series and consider how these practices might be applied in their own contexts.

As a college student, I remember having many frustrating and, generally, non-productive debates (or, more precisely, arguments) with my roommates about the merits of pacifism versus militarism. My biggest problem, of course, was that I was rarely able to offer credible alternatives to war and the few that I could manage to come up with (e.g., the violent resistance of Gandhi and King) were often dismissed as being unpractical methods of resistance to modern warfare. Thanks to Glen Stassen (and the many colleagues that have joined him in this endeavor), just peacemaking theory--based on a synthesis of Christian ethics and international relations theory--seeks to scientifically identify and articulate those specific practices that help to promote peace in our global, local, and interpersonal relationships. It bypasses the age old ethical debate of pacifism versus just war theory by focusing on the practices that actually work when it comes to peacemaking.

For pacifists, then, just peacemaking theory provides credible and scientifically proven alternatives to war. For just war theorists--all of whom would argue that war should only be used as a last resort anyway, just peacemaking theory offers an inventory of "first resorts" that can and should be attempted before opting for war as a last resort. In other words, the brilliance of this theory is that it stakes out common ground where pacifists and just war theorists can work together to further world peace.

As you might suspect, the practices of just peacemaking are hardly foolproof and, of course, don't prove effective 100% of the time. So even if they are practiced diligently, there will still be occasions where pacifists and just war theorists may have to part ways as the latter opt for war as a last resort. Nevertheless, if these practices were better known and more widely implemented, the reality is that we would probably find ourselves in a world where war and violence were much less commonplace than they are now.

Rwandan Genocide Survivor to Speak in Nassau

Come hear an inspiring story of a harrowing escape from death, and the power of compassion and forgiveness to resolve conflict and change lives for the better . . .

Immaculée Ilibagiza
survivor of the Rwandan genocide,
author and philanthropist

FREE LECTURE
Thursday June 5, 7:00-9:00pm
St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, West Street, Nassau

With the sponsorship of the John Templeton Foundation, Immaculée llibagiza, an ethnic Tutsi and a survivor of the horrors of the 1994 holocaust in the Central African republic of Rwanda, is coming to Nassau. lmmaculée, author of the inspiring book Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (Hay House publishers), will share the remarkable story of her 91 days in hiding from murder gangs, from which she emerged with a great spirit of understanding and forgiveness that allowed her to pardon those who massacred her parents, two of her three brothers and other members of her family. This is an unforgettable story offering hope for all who live in these challenging times. Left to Tell is available at Logos in the Harbour Bay Shopping Centre and Chapter One Bookstore on Thompson Boulevard.

For further information, contact Eileen Fielder at The Counsellors Ltd at (242) 322-7505/1000.

Global Baptist Peace Conference

The fourth Global Baptist Peace Conference is planned for February 9-14, 2009, in Rome, Italy. This international event will inaugurate the 400th anniversary year of the Baptist heritage being recognized in various locations around the world.

Like previous conferences in Sweden (1988), Nicaragua (1992), and Australia (2000), this gathering will bring together Baptists who are active in nonviolent struggles for justice and for strengthening the witness of Baptist peacemaking in various global contexts.

The conference will consist of six days including intensive training in conflict transformation, nonviolent prophetic action, and other relevant topics, inspiring speakers, workshops, and worship. There also will be optional opportunities to tour Rome and the surrounding area on Friday culminating in a magnificent time of worship in the Waldensian church.

For the latest information on the Global Baptist Peace Conference, including downloadable brochures, programs, posters and registration forms, visit the event website at: www.globalbaptistpeace.org.

The Global Baptist Peace Conference is sponsored by American Baptist International Ministries, the Alliance of Baptists, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, Unione Cristiana Evangelica Battista d'Italia, and the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia.

Christian Peace Blogger Interviews

Michael Westmoreland-White over at Levellers has been conducting a series of interviews with members of the Christian Peace Bloggers webring. Yesterday, my interview was posted in two installments (see here and here). Be sure to take a look at the eight other interviews in the series as well. They are all quite interesting! I believe there are now 62 bloggers involved in the webring and my interview was just the ninth. So there should be plenty of forthcoming interviews in this series.

So far I've found that the most striking feature of this series is the diversity of personal backgrounds, theological traditions, and political ideologies that characterize Christian peacemakers. We are by no means a monolithic group!

Bringing Peace to da Streets

Gang related violence has been an ongoing problem in Nassau's inner-city neighborhoods since at least the 1980s. Carlos Reid, a former gang member and author of Out of the Hood, has been ministering to Nassau's at-risk youth through his organization Youth Against Violence for well over a decade.

Amongst other things, Reid has been successful in training at-risk youth in conflict resolution skills, creating employment opportunities, as well as providing positive alternatives to violence through programs such as the Nelson Cooper "Peace on da Streets" Basketball Classic, which is held every July.

While I have not yet had the privilege of getting acquinted with Carlos, I have read his book and heard many good things about his work from other local pastors. His ministry is a good example of how the church can play a positive role in addressing some of Nassau's chronic social problems.

Click here to read more about Carlos Reid's ministry.