My Tribute to Glen H. Stassen (1936-2014)

Early yesterday morning (26 April 2014), at his home in Pasadena, CA, Dr. Glen Harold Stassen died quietly in his sleep. He had been battling cancer for months.  He was not only my Doktorvater and beloved teacher, but like another father to me. Glen Harold Stassen, son of Harold E. Stassen (youngest governor of Minnesota, major author of the United Nations Charter, “Secretary of Peace” in the Eisenhower Administration (creating the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency), and perpetual candidate for the U.S. presidency as one of the last progressive Republicans), was a Christian ethicist. Educated at the University of Virginia (B.S. in Nuclear Physics), The Southern Baptist Theology Seminary, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (B.D.), and Duke University (Ph.D.), he taught at Duke University, Kentucky Southern College (now merged into the University of Louisville), Berea College, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary(1976-1996), and Fuller Theological Seminary (1996-2013). He also taught regularly at The International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague (moving to Amsterdam) and had guest lectured the Baptist seminary in Seoul, South Korea and numerous other institutions.

As his former student and co-author, Dave Gushee has pointed out, he will probably be best known for developing “Just Peacemaking,” as a distinct, proactive approach to the ethics of war and peace, alongside pacifism and Just War Theory.  The debate between Just War Theory and pacifism over if and when to go to war was one Stassen took seriously (he began as a Just War Theorist but eventually, about the year 2000, became a convinced pacifist), but he thought that concentrating solely on that question missed the question, “What Practices Should We Adopt to Work for Peace?” This is where he believed the major focus of the biblical witness lies and where he focused his efforts. Both pacifists and Just War Theorists can participate in the practices of Just Peacemaking, for pacifists it fleshes out a commitment to active peacemaking (not just a no to war) and it helps Just War Theorists know what “resorts” to try before reaching the JWT criterion of “last resort.”

Glen will also be known for his “triadic” interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and for a focus on “transforming initiatives” out of cycles of bondage.These are significant contributions to Christian ethics. But Stassen also leaves behind numerous organizations he either founded or gave strong help to in his life as an activist: the Kentucky Human Rights Commission, Interfaith Paths to Peace, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, the Texas Christian Life Commission, the Baptist World Alliance Human Rights Commission, Peace Action, the National Religious Coalition Against Torture, the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and so much more.

Stassen’s legacy is also in his many students:  Pastors, missionaries, activists, and scholars–both in his own Baptist tradition and in many others.  Those of us who had the privilege of being his students know that we can never repay the debts he has given us.  He was an encourager who brought out the gifts of others. He challenged us on many levels. His scholarship was exacting, his activism fueled by tremendous energy–and a simple desire to follow Jesus faithfully.

He is survived by his wife, Dot Lively Stassen, and his sons, Bill, Michael, and David, and his sister, Kathleen Esther Stassen Berger, head of the Sociology Department at Bronx Community College (City University of New York).

He will be missed terribly.

Update:

Services for Glen Harold Stassen: Viewing at First Baptist Church, Chapel, 75 N Marengo Ave, Pasadena, California on Friday, May 2, 2014 from 5 to 8 pm. Funeral will be at the same church in the sanctuary on Saturday, May 3, 2014 starting at 4:00 pm. In lieu of flowers, gifts may be given to either the Just Peacemaking Initiative at Fuller Theological Seminary, 135 North Oakland Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91182 or to the Special Needs Trust for David Stassen, 2030 Casa Grande Street, Pasadena, CA 91104. Post or forward as appropriate.

There will also be a later memorial service in Louisville, KY, where the Stassens lived for so long. No details about this, yet, but it will probably take place at Crescent Hill Baptist Church, where the Stassens where members for 20 years.

Update II: Tributes to Stassen’s life and work have begun to pour in around the web. Here’s the round up:

1) This is the initial obituary by Bob Allen at Associated Baptist Press.

2) David P. Gushee’s tribute.

3) Here’s the story at Christianity Today.

4) This is the story in the Los Angeles Times.

5) Jana Reiss, Glen’s editor for his last book, gives a tribute on her blog at the Religion News Service.

6) This Associated Baptist Press story discusses Stassen in the context of the state of Baptist peace activism.  I think Stassen was more successful than Robert Parham does.

7) Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Professor of Theology at Chicago Theological Seminary, and a colleague of Glen’s in developing and spreading Just Peacemaking for 30 plus years, gives an excellent reflection at Huffington Post.

8) Fred Clark has a reflection at Patheos.

9) Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, who was friends with Stassen for decades, offers this tribute. (Note: For a very long time Stassen served on the board of Sojourners as well as the board of Christianity and Crisis.)

10) Rev. Jeff Hood, a Southern Baptist ethicist and PFLAG activist, gives a brief tribute that reflects the pastoral heart and sensitivity of Glen Stassen.

11) Leaders of the European Baptist Federation and the International Baptist Theological Seminary reflect on Stassen’s contributions here.

12) Dan Buttry, American Baptist minister and peace activist, reflects on Stassen here.

13) Alan Bean gives a tribute here.

14) The New York Times MOSTLY get it right, here.

15) The Louisville Courier-Journal finally weighs in with a fair write-up and notification of the Louisville memorial service.

I’ll add more links as I find them. I expect more reflections after Saturday’s funeral.

 

Update: The funeral last Saturday was very healing. A 2nd memorial service will be held in Louisville, KY at Crescent Hill Baptist Church on 21 June 2014. No times or other details, yet, but people are asked to send tributes if they cannot come themselves. The Stassen family were members of Crescent Hill BC for 20 years.

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Jeremiah the War Resister: A Sermon

Nota Bene: A version of this sermon was published as an article in The Baptist Peacemaker in 2004.

Jeremiah:
The War Resister
Barbara Brown Taylor, one of Rev. Cindy’s major theological dialogue partners, says that it is time to put the “protest” back in “Protestant.” Specifically, she wants us to reclaim the prophetic traditions of the church—not absent from Catholic or Orthodox history by any means—that were nonetheless highlighted and emphasized by the Protestant Reformers. The renewed focus on close biblical study promoted, in different ways, by the likes of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrich Zwingli, and the Anabaptists of the Radical Reformation like Conrad Grebel, Michael Sattler, Pilgram Marpeck, Hans Hut, Pieter Ridemann, and Menno Simons, led to a recovery of the prophets of ancient Israel for the life of the church.
It has always fascinated me that Israel’s prophets flourished most with the institution of the monarchy. When Israel, and later the divided kingdom of Israel and Judah, desires to have kings “like the other nations,” God must continually give them prophets to remind them to be different from the nations, the empires. We need that, too. The church too often forgets to be different from the particular nations in which it lives. Especially in the United States, we are tempted to be “good Americans” first and “good Christians” only insofar as that doesn’t conflict with the other gods of this nation, especially the great gods “Free Market” and “War Machine.” “I knew just how much trouble we were in,” says the Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas, “in the days following Sept. 11, 2001, when politicians and pundits began to tell us that nothing after 9/11 could ever be the same as before.” They were saying that 9/11 was the decisive event in history, but, for Christians, the decisive event in history was the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And if we viewed the 9/11 attacks, and our vengeful response, through Jesus, things look very different.
We, like our spiritual forebears in ancient Israel and Judah, are too often tempted to understand our world and our lives in terms dictated by the empire. The biblical prophets can help us recover our own alternative readings of history. Today, in a time of greed, violence, war, and corruption, I especially want to highlight the life and message of the prophet Jeremiah, who, in the name of God, spoke out against greed, violence, war, and corruption in the Southern Kingdom of Judah 7 centuries before Jesus and did so for 40 long years.
Was the prophet Jeremiah a pacifist? If we mean to ask if Jeremiah was absolutely opposed to all uses of violence, then I don’t think the Scripture gives us enough information to settle the debate. Jeremiah makes no sweeping statements against all war and violence. His writings contain nothing similar to the Sermon on the Mount, nor does he ever suggest a disbanding of Judah’s army. What we can know for certain is that Jeremiah was a war resister. He resisted all the wars of his day and he inspires us to resist the wars of our day.
Consider Jeremiah’s resounding denunciation of Judah’s war plans in chapter 21. Zedekiah, God’s anointed King of Judah, wanted Jeremiah’s counsel in order to make sure that God was on the king’s side in the coming war against Babylon. Did Jeremiah give such assurance? NO! In fact, Jeremiah sounded positively treasonous to Judah’s pro-war party. The prophet claimed that their proposed war was an offense to God and that, if they went to war, God would fight against them and punish them!

Behold,[God says] I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands with which you fight against the King of Babylon. . . . And I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger and in fury and in great wrath! (21:3-5)

This language is all the more startling when we realize that King Zedekiah’s war aims were so much more justifiable than those of contemporary imperial USA. Zedekiah had no doctrine of “preemptive war,” nor “preventive war,” nor any ambitions for “regime change” in Babylonia. He only wanted the prophet to assure him of God’s approval of Judah’s military resistance to the Babylonian Empire’s plans to annex Judah. King Zedekiah’s war aims were purely defensive and would probably have met the criteria of the later “Just War” tradition—something the “preventive war” doctrine formulated by Bush (and partially continued by Obama) definitely does not.

Yet, even if Zedekiah’s war aims would have passed muster with the Just War criteria of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas (and Luther, Calvin, and many contemporary Protestant theologians), they could not pass Jeremiah’s criteria for divine approval. Using terms as harsh as those Jesus used against the disciples’ attempted defensive violence in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26), Jeremiah thundered against Zedekiah’s plans to resist Babylon with military might.

Why was Jeremiah so sure that God was against the planned violent defense of Judah (including defense of the Holy City of Jerusalem and the Temple of YHWH)? Why was Jeremiah so sure that God wanted no military resistance to the cruel invasion of the Babylonians? Jeremiah understood that foreigners and people of other religions could still be the agents of the very will of God. Like other pre-exilic prophets, Jeremiah saw the coming loss of Judean national sovereignty as the instrument of God’s corrective discipline for an unfaithful people.

Therefore, Jeremiah accepted the Babylonian king as a new overlord, under whom Judah would be safe from other would-be invaders and able to learn a better way to be God’s covenant people. Violent resistance would not succeed in saving Judah’s national sovereignty, Jeremiah knew, but it would result in a much harsher invasion, occupation, and deportation into a long exile. And thus it came to pass.

Jeremiah’s attitude was light-years away from that of contemporary nationalism or patriotism. By the standards of contemporary U.S. Christians, Jeremiah would be a traitor who shamelessly cooperates with the enemy. People of other religions justified in conquering the would-be People of God while God’s prophet consorts with those pagans? Strong stuff. Any Christian wishing to justify a current crusade against Muslims had better leave Jeremiah off the reading list.

Jeremiah insists in chapters 12 and 18 that God is free to make or unmake any nation of people as God’s own—with no exceptions for Judah—or for the U.S. or the modern state of Israel for that matter. To Jeremiah, God is universal and the moral rules of Torah are universal in application. The Way of God cannot be made the exclusive claim of any single nationality, culture, or ethnic group. A people can only demonstrate that they are God’s people by abiding in God’s will.

Jeremiah declares that God’s covenant with Israel/Judah is broken and nullified. He looks for a new covenant that God will write on the hearts of God’s people (31:31-33). Jeremiah anticipates and informs Jesus’ own revolutionary extension of the divine covenant to the Gentiles.

Jeremiah’s call for the men of Judah to “circumcise their hearts” instead of their foreskins will inform the Apostle Paul’s judgment that Gentile Christians do not need physical circumcision to be part of God’s covenant people. (See especially the argument Paul makes to the Galatians.) Women and eunuchs cannot be physically circumcised, but they can “circumcise their hearts” through baptism. Here is a universal invitation to be included in the People of God, but also a universal challenge to faithfulness.

So what is God’s will for any people that would call themselves the People of God? According to Jeremiah, God’s people make justice and not war. In chapter 5, Jeremiah denounces the way the rich people of Judah exploit their poor neighbors. Jeremiah describes the rich of his day as “setting traps” for their fellow human beings and accuses them of having no respect for the rights of other people. He accuses the religious leaders of his day of exploiting their positions and then he declares that the majority of the people enjoy this abominable situation.

All this sounds horrifyingly contemporary and applicable to U.S. Christians. The rich steal from the poor with the help of government. Government tax giveaways to the rich hurt the poor and the common good. The rich convinced the government in 1981 to repeal usury laws that once limited how much interest credit card companies could charge. In the late 1990s, the rich convinced the government to abolish the wall between investment banks and regular banks that had been in place since 1937—allowing huge “too big to fail” financial institutions to gamble with ordinary people’s money—and wreck the global economy. (By the way, that wall between ordinary banks and investment firms was not restored in the recent financial reform law.) Then the rich convinced the government to make it harder for the poor to declare bankruptcy but easier for wealthy corporations to do the same. In the name of “tort reform,” the rich convince the government to limit the amount of damages that courts can award people who have been harmed by corporations. The U.S. Supreme Court rules that government can use “eminent domain” to take private homes and businesses NOT for highways, parks and other public use, but to sell them to big corporations to “develop.” And, in the ultimate insult, that same Supreme Court declares that “corporations are persons” and “money is speech,” and, therefore, corporations may spend unlimited amounts of money electing tame politicians who help them continue to rob the poor.

Meanwhile far too many church leaders support all this “reverse Robin Hood” action. A nationwide study conducted by Baylor University found that frequent church attenders oppose government assistance to the unemployed because they identify the “invisible hand” of the so-called “free market” with the Providence of God! In this messed up theology, if some are rich it is not because they have exploited others, but because God has made them rich and, if others are unemployed or underemployed or even homeless, it is because they have sinned in some way. Nationally famous church leaders glorify violence, promote war, call for assassination of some foreign leaders while defending other dictators with whom they are in big business. Other famous clergy engage in the sexual exploitation of children and then scapegoat vulnerable populations such as minority ethnic groups, minority religions, single mothers, sexual minorities and other vulnerable groups. In 2009, A Pew Study was released that still has me in shock: It showed that the more frequently one attended church in the U.S., the more likely one was to think that “some torture is justified!” It is not hard to guess what Jeremiah would say to us.

Jeremiah also had much to say about exploited laborers and the unfair treatment of resident aliens. In chapters 7 and 22, Jeremiah rails against the exploitation of poor workers and resident aliens. What Jeremiah would say about the current demonization of immigrants and refugees in this country is not hard to guess. One of King Zedekiah’s predecessors, King Jehoiakim, is denounced for exploitation of the poor by building large palaces and employing the poor at low wages to build them. No doubt Jehoiakim defended his “jobs program” by explaining that living wages would hurt competition and small businesses.

Ever since 1981, U.S. labor law has become increasingly weaker and workers’ rights ignored or undermined, along with the ability to engage in collective bargaining through labor unions. Global trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, and the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, subordinate national labor laws to these treaties, along with using these treaties to override local environmental and workplace safety rules. Now, the government is free to give rich no-bid contracts for rebuilding to corporate cronies and exploit the workers they hire for this necessary work! Further, millions of resident aliens in the U.S. labor in slave-like conditions in U.S. fields and sweatshops (intimidated by the lack of “green cards” into keeping quiet about their abuse). Led by the state of Arizona, state after state in this country is rushing to pass ever harsher laws against undocumented workers and immigrants, culminating in Alabama’s new law that would cut off water to anyone who couldn’t PROVE citizenship!

Like all true prophets, Jeremiah constantly announced that economic exploitation and war were fundamental offenses to God and no amount of “prosperity doctrine” or “health and wealth” gospel by the false prophets of his day or ours can efface that reality.

A prophetic war resister like Jeremiah will not only be unpopular with the rich and powerful, but often with the common folk as well. Throughout the Book of Jeremiah we see him hounded as a traitor and a troublemaker. He was accused of destroying the people’s morale during wartime.

Early in his career as a prophet, the people of his hometown threw Jeremiah into the stocks. Later, he was thrown in prison. Still later, he was thrown into a partially dry cistern where he sank into the mud and experienced continual physical pain.

God wasn’t easy on Jeremiah, either. God forced Jeremiah to prophesy doom and destruction on the people he loved and when Jeremiah tried to be silent, the Word of God burned in his bones like fire! God refused to let Jeremiah marry or have children—a huge curse in his culture. Jeremiah was a priest who was forbidden to serve at Temple!

Having been forced to watch most of the people of Judah taken into Exile by the Babylonians, near the end of Jeremiah’s life, he was abducted and forced to go to Egypt by a group of Judah’s “freedom fighters” who had assassinated the Babylonian governor of their region. The group which kidnapped Jeremiah pressured him into prophesying things that would favor their actions, but he steadfastly refused. He died in Egypt.
Violent, terrorist “patriots” holding war resisters captive sounds very contemporary, doesn’t it?
In the passage we read for today, 29:1-14, Jeremiah writes to the people of Judah taken into exile in the Babylonian empire. He outlines a “mission strategy” if you will, that I think will serve a global church, scattered in exile in the various nations around the world.
“Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage. That they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there and do not decrease. But seek the Shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its’ shalom you will find your shalom. ”
It’s a risky strategy. One is not to disappear into the greater culture. One must remain a distinct people—and this will mean resisting many of the customs of the surrounding empire. One has to continue to have children—a sign of hope in a world bent on destruction. But then one seeks the welfare, the shalom, the peace, of the city where one is in exile. Seek BABYLON’s peace and well- being? Babylon who has just destroyed the nation and the temple of God? Yes—and we have to seek the peace of Louisville of the U.S., of whatever city and country God sends us—and pray to God on its behalf. But the empires of our exile may not recognize that we seek their shalom: Our resistance to the values of violence and greed and corruption—our refusal to cheer military victories or delight in the downfall of those named as enemies—our continued welcome to those named by others as “illegal” or “deviant” or “unclean,” all this may make the empire’s inhabitants nervous about us, to say the least. The WAY we are to seek the well-being, the “shalom” of our places of exile may not look very “shalom-seeking” to our unbelieving and other-believing neighbors.
We are likely to be misunderstood, as Jeremiah, was misunderstood—for 40 years of painful witness. Yet, if we too will become “circumcised of the heart” (ch. 4), Jeremiah is an excellent example for us of how to be faithful to God, resist injustice, war, and violence in our day as he did in his.

The Practices of Just Peacemaking

In preparing for an extended defense of gospel nonviolence, I first reminded readers of basic principles of Just War Theory, the major ethic of Western civilization on war and peace issues for the last 16 centuries. I then pointed to internal weaknesses of JWT as noticed by proponents of the tradition themselves. Those weaknesses were noticed by several church groups during the 1980s and 1990s who called for a “positive ethic of peace.” We need an ethic, many voices said, that not only tells when it is permissable to go to war and under what conditions wars may be fought justly, but tells us how to make peace without appeasement, how to pursue peace justly. Pacifists agreed. So, with my mentor, Glen Stassen, taking the lead, a group of theologians, biblical scholars, international relations experts, and people with much experience in peacemaking, developed a new ethic, “just peacemaking,” whose practices are catching on because they combine moral seriousness with pragmatic realism. The new tradition is spreading despite the setbacks of global terrorism and preemptive war doctrines in the 21st C.

One note: Although Just Peacemaking has been uniting pacifists and those in the just war tradition in active work for peace, it cannot replace either of those older ethics. The best efforts of peacemakers sometimes fail and wars break out. When that happens, the pacifist will refuse to fight or support the war and the just war theorist will evaluate the particular war before deciding to support or not. Both can, of course, continue to work on peacemaking efforts during the war. Just Peacemaking, then, should be seen as a complimentary ethic, rather than a replacement for either pacifism or Just War Theory.

The 10 Practices of Just Peacemaking:

1. Support nonviolent direct action. First coming to global attention in the campaigns of Gandhi and King, this practice has spread globally in many contexts. Nonviolent direct action is a strategy that lances the festering boil of violence and injustifce and often produces healing without the resort to war. Boycotts, strikes, citizen embargoes, marches, mass civil disobedience, shunnings or (by contrast), actively fraternizing with enemy soldiers, accompaniment, are just some of the nearly 200 methods so far catalogued in the menu of interventions and defensive strategies being developed by nonviolent direct action campaigns. Support for such campaigns, studying when they work and when they fail and finding ways to make them stronger naturally reduces the numbers of wars and violent revolutions.
2. Take independent initiatives to reduce threats. In situations of conflict, an arms buildup or any form of escalation can lead to or expand a war. But so can unilateral disarmaments or appeasements. What is needed is a series of surprising, independent initiatives that reduce threat levels and act as “confidence building measures” that often open up new possibilities of peacemaking. It is important that such actions are public, visible, happen at the times announced, and invite reciprocation.
3. Talk with the adversary using proven methods of cooperative conflict resolution. Some politicians have refused to negotiate, claiming that speaking with party x should be a reward for good behavior. This is ridiculous. Strong leaders are not afraid to talk. One has to talk to make peace. Conflict resolution methods have developed which enable smart negotiators to be tough on the problem, rather than tough on the people involved. In every field, from business to foreign policy, principled negotiation techniques are making proven headway. Ignoring these practices for ultimatums or, by contrast, appeasements, is foolish.
4. Acknowledge responsibility for conflict and injustice and seek repentance and forgiveness. Seldom is all the blame for a war or conflict only on one side. Acknowledge the wrongs your side has done and repent and seek forgiveness. This invites reciprocation and healing. It used to be believed that only individuals can repent or forgive; groups and nations could not, nor ever acknowledge any wrongdoing without appearing weak. To the contrary, such repentance has often led to healing and failure to do so has led to resentments and future wars. The experience of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee greatly strengthened this practice and many nations are using it as a model.
5. Advance Democracy, Human Rights, and Religious Liberty. It should go without saying, but recent years have proven otherwise: One cannot and should not try to “advance democracy” by means of military invasion or coercion. Democratic movements must arise indigenously. Established democracies seldom go to war with other democracies and, not needing to fear uprisings from repressed peoples, can spend much less on military budgets. (The U.S. is a glaring exception here, but is thereby becoming less democratic; more a plutocratic oligarchy.) As Roger Williams, Richard Overton and others knew long ago, the lack of human rights and religious liberty is a major cause of war. Protecting and spreading these norms works for just and lasting peace.
6. Foster Just and Sustainable Economic Development. Patterns of economic hardship and exploitation can lead to “resource wars,” and poor people become desperate and are thus vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist fanatics (or power-mad government demagogues) offering cheap and easy solutions through violence. Fair trade, development that works with rather than against healthy eco-systems, these things are not only just in themselves, but win “hearts and minds” that can otherwise be seduced into violence.
7. Work with emerging cooperative forces in the international system. Everything which works to connect nations makes wars more difficult. Actions which weaken international institutions and cooperative forces make wars more frequent and more likely.
8. Strengthen the United Nations and International Efforts for Cooperation and Human Rights. Goes with # 7. The UN is far from perfect. It needs internal reform. But its efforts to promote global health, end poverty, spread human rights norms, and make peace have, despite all this often proven successful in its 50 year existence. Those efforts, and similar developments such as the International Criminal Court, need to be strengthened. “Lone wolf” foreign policies which undermine the UN and the international system are perceived by others as imperial and sow the seeds for future wars.
9. Reduce offensive weapons and the weapons trade. Okay, to a pacifist like myself, all weapons are “offensive,” but this refers to weapons whose nature makes them more useful for attack than defense. Work to eliminate “weapons of mass destruction,” (chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons) are vital–and no nation can simultaneously work to prevent the spread of these weapons, and insist on its own right to possess them and develop more. Further, some “conventional” weapons are, by nature, more offensive, such as cluster bombs which do much more damage to civilians than combat troops and landmines which, long after wars are over, continue to kill and maim civilian populations. Efforts to ban these weapons, often supported by prominent military figures, must be supported. The same goes for the weapons trade. The more people one sells weapons to, the more likely one is fomenting war. The U.S. is the largest dealer of arms–leading to its troops often facing weapons “made in the U.S.A.”
10. Encourage Grassroots Peacemaking Groups and Voluntary Associations. Many of the above practices must become common among diplomats and policy elites, but some, such as nonviolent direct action, can be done by anyone. Also, peacemaking cannot be left to elites and experts. Grassroots groups can often take independent actions for peace before governments and they can and must pressure governments to make their own efforts for peace.

People often ask me as a pacifist, “If you are against war, what are you for?” It’s a fair question and the above practices are a large part of my answer. They also help Just War folk. After all, if war is to be a “last resort,” then one needs concrete ideas of what “resorts” can and must be tried first. One can explore these practices specifically regarding struggles against terrorism here.

Connecticut Votes (Again!) to Repeal the Death Penalty!

Last night, Wednesday 11 April 2012, the lower chamber of the Connecticut legislature followed its senate in voting to repeal that state’s death penalty.  Again. CT voted to repeal the death penalty in 2009, but then-Gov. Jodi Rell (R-CT) vetoed the legislation.  This time Gov. Daniel Malloy (D) has vowed to sign the bill. This makes CT the 17th state in the U.S. to either abolish the death penalty or to forbid it from the time of statehood onward. It is also the 5th state in the last 5 years to abolish the death penalty.  We may get two abolitions this year since CA, with the nation’s largest death row, is attempting to repeal its death penalty by ballot measure this November.

Meanwhile, congratulations to CT!

Nobel Peace Prize 2011: Shared by 3 Women Peace & Human Rights Activists

The Norwegian Nobel Committee (appointed, as mandated by Alfred Nobel’s will, by the Storting, or Norwegian Parliament) has announced that for 2011, the Nobel Peace Prize will be shared equally by three (3) women, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman, “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”  The Nobel Peace Prize has often been shared by two individuals (or an individual and an organization), rarely by three individuals, and never by more than three individuals.

Each of these women has long been involved in nonviolent human rights struggle, especially for the rights, safety, and well-being of women and children.  They have also pushed for women to be treated by nations and international organizations as equal participants in peacebuilding efforts, especially post-conflict peacebuilding. This goes against the long history of women and their concerns being ignored in the normal negotiating process that leads to peace treaties.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (1938-) is the current President of Liberia, the first woman to be democratically elected head of state of any African nation. A Harvard-educated economist, Sirleaf had served as Assistant Finance Minister in the administration of William Tolbert from 1972-1973. Later she was Finance Minister from 1979 to 1980, when the democratic government was overthrown in a coup d’etat by the dictator Samuel Doe. Sirleaf fled the country, one of only 4 members of Tolbert’s cabinet to escape execution, and took jobs with international agencies. She returned to Liberia and was placed under house arrest and had to flee again. At the outbreak of the first Liberian civil war in 1997, she initially supported insurgent leader Charles Taylor’s fight against the dictator Samuel Doe, but later repudiated and denounced him as his war crimes became public knowledge.   A second Liberian war raged from 1999-2003.  At the end of this, Sirleaf returned to Liberia, supported the transitional government’s de-armament process, the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Committee and efforts to heal returned child soldiers (who had been both victims and victimizers). She ran for President under the new constitution in 2005 and won. Two decades of civil war had left Liberia with no infrastructure, nearly universal unemployment, raging ethnic and tribal animosities, and mountains of debt. Sirleaf managed to get the international community to cancel almost all of Liberia’s debt and has encouraged international investment. Using Liberia mineral wealth, she has restored some of the infrastructure (most of the capital of Monrovia now has electricity and running water, again) and has helped to re-build schools and hospitals throughout the country. She signed into law a Freedom of Information Act, the first of its kind in Africa.  But, Liberians, like Americans, think presidents can achieve miracles overnight so Sirleaf is nowhere near as popular at home as she is admired abroad. After all, unemployment remains about 80%!  Also, though Sirleaf has waged battle against corruption, it has proven to be difficult to stamp out and several of her cabinet members have been fired for scandals.  Further, many believe she should have worked more on reconciliation between ethnic groups and less on rebuilding the institutions of government and the nation’s infrastructure.  So, Sirleaf is far from being assured of reelection next month (and she broke a 2005 campaign promise to serve only 1 term if elected). But whether or not she is reelected, the 72 year old Sirleaf is well-deserving of being a Nobel Peace Laureate.

  Leymah Roberta Gbowee (b. 1972-) is known as “Liberia’s Peace Warrior.” A mother of six (6) children, Gbowee is a human rights and women’s rights campaigner. Born in central Liberia, she moved to the capital, Monrovia, at 17–just as the first Liberian Civil War broke out! She trained as trauma counselor and worked with the child soldiers of Charles Taylor’s rebel army.  Surrounded by death and destruction, Gbowee realized that if the country were to ever have peace, it would have to be mothers who brought it–mothers tired of seeing their dreams for their children shattered by the horrors of war.  Gbowee formed the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace in 2002. She organized the Christian and Muslim women of Liberia to pray together for peace and to engage in nonviolent demonstrations for an end to the civil war.  Gbowee, a Lutheran Christian, spread her movement to the churches and mosques and they forced a meeting with then-president Charles Taylor, getting him to attend a peace conference held in Ghana in 2002. Together with fellow Lutheran woman Comfort Freeman, Gbowee founded Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), whose nonviolent actions finally brought an end to the Second Liberian War in 2003, the abdication and exile of Charles Taylor, and a transitional government that paved the way for democratic elections in 2005. Wearing white t-shirts (to symbolize peace), Gbowee and the women of WIPNET marched by the thousands throughout Liberia. They formed the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which has been used to spread the women’s peace movement to other African nations such as Sudan (now South Sudan) and Zimbabwe where the women are also using prayer and nonviolent tactics to petition for peace and human rights.

  Tarwakkol Karmen (1979-), a Muslim feminist and human rights activist in Yemen, represents the Nobel Committee’s acknowledgement of the “Arab Spring.” She is a journalist by profession and has chafed for years under press restrictions in Yemen’s dictatorship.  She is a senior member of al-Islah , the main opposition party in Yemen. In 2005 she founded Women Journalists Without Chains, an organization dedicated to democracy and freedom of the press.  As soon as Tunisia’s nonviolent movement toppled its dictator, Karmen pushed for a similar movement in Yemen. Photos of her heroes (Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela) adorn her home. In a country wear most women are forced to wear all-black niqueb,  or full head covering, Karmen wears an open-faced head scarf, usually white with flowers, as a symbol of women’s dignity and defiance to the dictator Salleh and the oppressive culture.  She insists that Islam itself does not demand the niqeb, but that it is a sign of outmoded patriarchal culture, instead.  She has pushed for laws against the wedding of women younger than 17 and against violence against women and children.  Since the outbreak of the Arab Spring, Karmen has led in march after march in Yemen’s capital, been arrested and beaten. Her life and the lives of her children have been threatened by the government, but she presses onward. To the nonviolent pro-democracy movement, Karmen is known as “The Mother of the Revolution,”–a revolution that is, at present, incomplete since Salleh clings to power by the use of massive violence against his own people–as he done for 33 years, now.  Karmen and her fellow Yemeni nonviolent revolutionaries are undeterred.  She has dedicated her Nobel Prize to the entire movement. (Many within the movement have proposed her for president in a post-Salleh Yemen, which would make her the first democratically-elected female leader in any Muslim-majority nation, if it happens.)

Largely because of its longevity and the large monetary awards accompanying it, the Nobel Peace Prize is the most widely recognized and prestigious peace prize –despite ambiguities in Alfred Nobel’s will and oddities in the Norwegian Nobel Committee that have led to some bizarre recipients (e.g., Teddy Roosevelt, Nicholas Murray Butler, Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, & Yitzhak Rabin) and even stranger omissions (e.g., Mohandas K. Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dom Helder Camara, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J.).  The committee has too often neglected women. Prior to this year, only 12 women have won the Nobel Peace Prize in its over 100 year history.  But this year’s prizes are to be celebrated by all who believe in nonviolence, human rights, democracy, and the full equality of women.  I look forward to watching the ceremonies in Oslo this December and reading their speeches and lectures. I pray continued success to these brave women and the movements they lead.

 

A Brief History of Christian Peacemaker Teams

One of the most dynamic and creative organizations working for peace in the world is Christian Peacemaker Teams which works out of deep commitment to gospel nonviolence.  CPT works for peace by “getting in the way” of those who would make war.  They train teams of volunteers in the techniques of nonviolent direct action and the methods of conflict resolution (or conflict transformation) and send these teams into situations of conflict–wars, civil wars, armed buildups, undeclared wars, violent oppressions of workers, etc. The teams then attempt various ways of disrupting the conflict and working toward a just peace: sometimes physically imposing their bodies between armed belligerants, sometimes documenting violence and/or human rights abuses and publicizing them to the world, sometime trying to create space for dialogue, sometime accompanying indigenous human rights workers as “nonviolent bodyguards.”

Although it has become a broader, ecumenical Christian movement, CPT is rooted in the witness of the Historic Peace Churches (Mennonites, Friends/Quakers, Church of the Brethren). In 1984, at a meeting of the Mennonite World Conference, Mennonite theologian Ronald J. Sider challenged participants to give new life to the historic peace witness of Mennonites by being as committed to nonviolent peacemaking as members of the world’s militaries are to the violent defense of their respective countries.  Sider’s challenge fell on receptive ears. A series of conversations started among Mennonites (especially in North America) about ways in which “nonviolent armies” and “nonviolent reservists” could be employed.  By 1986, a retreat of 100 persons put out a call among Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren for the creation of Christian Peacemaker Teams–volunteers supported by churches, trained in nonviolent forms of conflict intervention, who would go to areas of conflict at bold risk of their lives. In 1988, Gene Stolzfus was hired as the first staff person.  By 1992, CPT had sent teams into Iraq, the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Haiti.  Later delegations went to the Chiapas region of Mexico, Bosnia, Winnipeg, MB (negotiating between First Nations and the Canadian government), Colombia and elsewhere.

In the middle of the second U.S.-led war with Iraq, CPT gained far more visibility when a delegation was captured by Iraqi insurgents and held for several weeks. One member was executed. The rest were freed by U.S. military action.  While peacemakers saw this action by CPT as heroic and many were attracted to such serious peacemaking, the rightwing media in both the U.S. and U.K. denounced CPT as naive tools of terrorists whose presence did more harm than good.  There were even calls for the U.S. govt. to investigate CPT for possible terrorist links and to put members’ names on “no fly lists.” CPT was not intimidated and continued its nonviolent peacemaking efforts in Iraq.  (Note: The Bush admin. was particularly hostile to CPT because of two things–first, Bush’s own claims to being a “Christian president” who was supposedly invading Iraq on God’s orders. Second, CPT had earlier been the first to document and publish the U.S. torture of prisoners at the notorious Abu-Ghraib prison.  The passing of the Bush era, however, has hardly led to an embrace of CPT’s convictions or methods by the Obama administration. Far from it.)

Initially, CPT was sponsored only by the 2 largest Mennonite denominations in the U.S. (now both merged into Mennonite Church, USA) and the Church of the Brethren. But CPT sponsors now include (to date): The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, The Congregation of St. Basil (Basilians, a Roman Catholic priestly order), Friends United Meeting (Quakers), On Earth Peace (the major peacemaking program of the Church of the Brethren), The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, Every Church a Peace Church, Mennonite Church, Canada, The Peace and Justice Support Network (of Mennonite Church, USA), and Peace and Justice Ministries (of Mennonite Church, Canada).  CPT, which is expanding its regional offices in Mexico, Canada, and the UK, invites other Christian groups to sponsor this growing ecumenical peace witness.

Current CPT delegations include nonviolent peacemaking efforts in Iraq, Palestine, Coluombia, the U.S.-Mexico border, the African Great Lakes region (based in Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, but also including work in Uganda), and support for aboriginal justice in the U.S. (groups working for Native American rights) and Canada (groups supporting the rights of First Nations).  Additional sponsors, funding, and volunteers could allow for other delegations.  (Among the places which have asked for CPT type nonviolent intervention are Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Costa Rica, South Sudan.)

The specific Christian identity of CPT (even in its name) has both strengths and weaknesses: On the plus side, it operates out of a clear Christological center and supported by a specific spirituality. This gives its peacemaking efforts depth and its members unity. However, in areas where “Christianity” is identified with either Western (especially U.S.) military imperialism or with coercive missionary efforts or both, such preconceptions can get in the way of CPT’s peace efforts–as seen in its capture by Iraqi military dissidents in 2005.

The challenge remains:  What would happen if Christians developed the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking as armies devote to war?

A Brief History of the War Resisters’ League (WRL)

In this series on the histories of peace movement organizations, we have been so far been examining those whose roots were in opposition to the First World War: The Fellowship of Reconciliation (1914 in UK, 1915 in U.S., FOR International in 1917, French and German branches in 1919), The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (1915 U.S., 1917 International), The American Friends’ Service Committee (1917).  The War Resisters’ League, the oldest pacifist organization in the U.S. without a religious foundation, also grew out of the experience of World War I.  (I have phrased this very carefully.  It would be accurate to call the WRL a “secular” organization, but to many people this suggests a hostility to religion or religious persons that is not a part of the WRL. As we will see, the major founder of the WRL, Jesse Wallace Hughes, was a profoundly religious person and people of faith have always been involved and are still, including in the leadership.  But neither any particular religion, nor religious faith in general, is a predicate for membership.)

Jessie Wallace Hughan (1875-1955) was one of the founders of the U. S. chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1915, but, from the beginning, she thought the name of the groups was too wimpy, and, though a devout Unitarian, she chafed against the leadership of the F.O.R. by ministers who focused on forgiveness.  She wanted an organization that pushed forcefully for an end to war and militarism  and which boldly confronted the causes of war (which she saw rooted in the injustices of capitalism). Hughan was an American educator, a socialist activist, radical pacifist and a perpetual Socialist Party candidate for various public offices in New York city and state.  In 1915 she helped to found the Anti-Enlistment League to discourage enlistment in the armed services as part of efforts to keep the U.S. out of World War I.

Many U.S. pacifists were imprisoned for resistance to the war. After the U.S. entered WWI, the Bill of Rights was practically suspended. Any verbal or written opposition to the war was prosecuted as “subversion,” including of clergy who refused to promote the sale of war bonds to parishioners.  Members of the historic peace churches (Mennonites, Brethren, Quakers) were sometimes given better treatment, but other conscientious objectors, especially Jews, African-Americans, socialists (especially after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia), union leaders, and anarchists were given very harsh sentences and many were also treated harshly by other prisoners without intervention by authorities.

Out of these experiences, Hughan and others founded the War Resisters League in 1923 as a pacifist organization for those who, for one reason or another, did not feel at home in faith-based peace organizations such as the Fellowship of  Reconciliation (although the F.O.R. supported the formation of the WRL  and many were members of both organizations–which traded leaders, too).   At that time, the F.O.R. was an ecumenical Christian organization, not interfaith, and the Jewish Peace Fellowship did not exist until 1941.  The U.S. was not so pluralistic religiously in those days that any felt the need for such later organizations as the Muslim Peace Fellowship (Ansar as-Salaam), or the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, but the WRL was a haven for secular and non-Christian pacifists, along with those who felt that the Christian peace groups of the day were not radical enough in their opposition to war.

The WRL’s basis for membership has remained the same since its founding in 1923, “The War Resisters’ League affirms that war is a crime against humanity. We, therefore, are determined not to support any kind of war, international or civil, and to strive nonviolently for the removal of all causes of war.”  When Gandhi began his “experiments in truth” in South Africa and India, the WRL was even faster than the F.O.R. to take notice.  Along with socialist economic philosophy, most members of the WRL strongly adhere to Gandhian nonviolence.  For some, the philosophy and tactics of Gandhian nonviolence form a de facto substitute for a religious faith.

The WRL has been deeply involved in most of the anti-war movements of the 20th and 21st C., but it has also been involved deeply in most of the nonviolent domestic struggles for justice, including the Civil Rights movement, the feminist movement, labor struggles, the environmental movement, and struggles for fair trade against globalized top-down free trade.  The WRL publishes a journal, WIN, an annual peace and justice calendar, and has become famous for its yearly tax pie charts that show the actual amount of the U.S. budget that goes to support past and present wars (the official budget hides part of the military budget under Veterans Affairs and Social Security) which is over50%.  The WRL pie chart has been used by numerous peace groups to promote war tax resistance and protests against the bloated nature of the U.S. military budget. (Even using the official figures, the U.S. spends more on its military than the next 25 nations COMBINED!)

The WRL’s current projects include an anti-recruitment effort called Not Your Soldier (which I think is not as effective as the AFSC’s counter-recruitment efforts), and a major effort to target war-profiteers called the Bite the Bullet Network.  The latter targets the military industrial complex which Bob Dylan rightly called the “masters of war.”

The WRL is a major component organization of United for Peace with Justice, the umbrella peace organization working to end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The WRL is also a national chapter of the London-based War Resisters’ International which grew out of a Dutch organization in 1921.  In 1931, the WRI and its chapters adopted the broken rifle as its symbol. (This has major significance for me.  I have only ever held nominal membership in the WRL, unlike my greater involvement in the F.O.R., the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, Witness for Peace, Every Church a Peace Church, and Pentecostals and Charismatics for Peace with Justice.  Mostly, I just subscribe to the WRL newsletter and buy the occasional calendar and T-shirt.  But because I became a pacifist as a military conscientious objector, the broken rifle has always been a deeply-loved peace symbol for me,–a modern equivalent to beating swords into plowshares and a symbol of my deliberate break with my military past.)

Famous members of the War Resisters League, other than Jessie Wallace Hughan, include Dave Dellinger (1915-2004), Ralph DiGia (1915-2008), Grace Paley (1922-2007), Igal Roodenko (1917-1991), Barbara Deming (1917-1984), A. J. Muste (1885-1967) (after Muste’s retirement as head of the Fellowship of Reconciliation), and the architect of the 1963 March on Washington, Bayard Rustin (1912-1987).  The WRL continues to be a major force for peace and justice.

Update:  Although I deeply appreciate the work of the WRL, I have not been involved with them except, as I said, on the edges.  The major reason for this is that I believe ultimately nonviolence depends on a spiritual commitment. As a Christian (i.e., one who believes Christianity is actually TRUE ), I think Christian faith provides the best spirituality for pacifism and nonviolence, but it is not the only one.  Most, if not all, major religions have a nonviolent strand and resources for equipping believers to respond to injustice, oppression, and violence with nonviolent direct action and peacemaking rather than with reactive violence.  Secular commitment to nonviolence must rely either on a strictly moral commitment without any spiritual underpinnings or a pragmatic belief that nonviolence usually ‘works.’  But it doesn’t always work  and such a pragmatic or rational view is not enough to keep one nonviolent in the face of oppressive violence: If you see your family murdered before your eyes, for instance, can a purely rational or secular commitment to nonviolence hold?

So, while I agree with the WRL that war is a crime against humanity and am grateful for their work, I distrust their lack of a spiritual foundation.  It is significant to me that the current leadership of the WRL includes Frida Berrigan, daughter of the radical Catholic pacifists Elizabeth McAlister and the late Philip Berrigan, and Fr. G. Siman Harak (a friend of mine), who is a Jesuit priest.

Scott H. Bennett, Radical Pacifism:  The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963 (Syracuse University Press, 2004).

Peace Sunday: 1,000 Candles, 1,000 Cranes

The following song by the folk group, Small Potatoes, was sung by my friends Donna and Dan Trabue at church today.  It says more than I can and it always makes me–the grandchild of a World War II veteran who fought in the Pacific and the friend of several Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals–cry my eyes out.

 1000 Candles, 1000 Cranes

by Small Potatoes

Rich Prezioso, ©1999 Tatertunes Music, BMI

My grandmother had three sons
She dreamed about her children’s children
Then came 1941
Only one son would see the war end

Joseph died marching in Bataan
Frank on the sands of Iwo Jima
The day the bomb destroyed Japan
She thanked God and Harry Truman

She blamed the “godless Japanese”
For having crushed her sweetest dreams
One thousand candles for my sons
Every day I will remember

In Illinois, far from her past
Miss Nakamura still remembers
She was six when she saw the flash
That turned the world to smoke and ashes

Mother taught her daughter well
Run from the fire to the river
There she found a living hell
But not a mother or a father

Though she survived with just a scrape
Her family vanished into space
One thousand suns, a thousand cranes
Everyday I will remember

My grandmother had three sons
She never dreamed she’d have a daughter
But at the age of eighty-one
She met a nurse named Nakamura

It was a question only meant
To make some talk and pass the hours
About a picture by the bed
A photograph of two young soldiers

Hatred and anger stored for years
Slowly melted into tears
One thousand candles, a thousand cranes
Everyday I will remember

I’ve a picture in my mind
Of two women slowly walking
August 6th, 1985
Walking to church to light a candle

And they once asked me to explain
Why grown men play such foolish games
One thousand candles, a thousand cranes
Everyday I will remember

The Dangers of the Military Industrial Complex

Today, 17 January 2011, is the 50th Anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the American people.  In it, he warned of the dangers of a foreign policy dominated by the military industrial complex.  He was not heeded and today we are more dominated by it than ever. Manufacturers of weapons and military-related hardware build pieces of items in every Congressional district in the nation so that it is almost impossible to vote to cancel even weapons the military doesn’t want.  “When all you have are hammers, every problem looks like a nail.”

Ike also warned that the military industrial complex sucked up money that could be used to solve poverty; he boldly called it theft from the poor and the hungry.  The biblical prophets had the same outlook which is why they dreamed of the conversion of instruments of war into farming tools.

We drastically need a national conversation, today, about Eisenhower’s warnings.  After all, the man who led the Allies to victory in World War II is owed a hearing on the dangers of overmilitarism, don’t you think?

“Your Daughters and Your Sons”

This New Years’ Day many who struggle for justice and peace and the health of the planet are frustrated and discouraged.  The eight years of the Bush administration seemed to many to be one long assault on every moral value they held dear.  It was assumed that things would change with the election and inauguration of Barack Obama–and much has. But expecting bold change and getting baby steps and half-measures is frustrating, especially in light of the full-throated attack by the Right which has painted mild reforms as a radical Communist takeover (or Fascist–they can’t seem to decide or tell the difference)! And Obama has not only compromised and waffled, but in some cases actually betrayed the values he campaigned for:  Escalating the war and occupation of Afghanistan against all reason; continuing the gulag at Guantanemo Bay, Cuba; continuing the Bush civil liberties violations of warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detentions without trial (or rigged military tribunals) and threats of continued detention even if not found guilty; announcing a previously undiscovered presidential “right” to target U.S. citizens for assassination(!–even if not yet acted on this is horrible!) and more.  For this we elected a professor of Constitutional law?  The capture of the House of Representatives by Tea Party Republicans puts even the mild reforms we achieved in danger–plus threatends all-out assaults on Social Security, Medicare, minimum wage laws, immigrants, racial and sexual minorities, religious minorities, women, the poor, labor, and the environment.  And around the world there are other set-backs that are equally discouraging or even more so.  So, the New Year has not seemed to many to be a time for celebration. Many of my Facebook friends have posted videos or lyrics of U-2’s bleak song, “New Year’s Day.”

I understand. I share these frustrations, worries, and discouragements. But the inability of peace and justice folk (in this country, at least) to celebrate small victories and live out of hope and gratitude is a real impediment to success: It leads to both burnout and to repelling possible allies and recruits because of our reputation as always grim and somber.  It’s not so around the world: The oppressed sing in prisons and on picket lines and dance before the armed might of their oppressors.  That is also the biblical heritage.  We must be people of hope and gratitude and celebration to have strength for the long haul–for being faithful “in season and out of season.” 

To that end, I post the lyrics of  Tommy Sands’ 1985 struggle song, “Your Daughters and Your Sons.” 

Your Daughters And Your Sons

A song by Tommy Sands©1985 Tommy Sands

They wouldn’t hear your music
And they pulled your paintings down
They wouldn’t hear your writing
And they banned you from the town
But they couldn’t stop you dreaming
And a victory you have won
For you sowed the seeds of freedom
In your daughters and your sons

Chorus
In your daughters and your sons
Your daughters and your sons
You sowed the seeds of freedom
In your daughters and your sons

Your weary smile it proudly hides
The chainmarks on your hands
As you bravely strive to realise
The rights of everyman
And though your body’s bent and low
A victory you have won
For you sowed the seeds of justice
In your daughters and your sons

Chorus

I don’t know your religion
But one day I heard you pray
For a world where everyone can work
And children they can play
And though you never got your share
Of the victories you have won
You sowed the seeds of equality
In your daughters and your sons

Chorus

They taunted you in Belfast
And they tortured you in Spain
And in that Warsaw ghetto
Where they tied you up in chains
In Vietnam and in Chile
Where they came with tanks and guns
It’s there you sowed the seeds of peace
In your daughters and your sons

Chorus

And now your music’s playing
And the writing’s on the wall
And all the dreams you painted
Can be seen by one and all
Now you’ve got them thinking
And the future’s just begun
For you sowed the seeds of freedom
In your daughters and your sons

Chorus twice.

Happy New Year everyone.