Nonviolence and Justice:

A reflection given at the Towson Unitarian Universalist Church, July 25, 2004
Susan Crane

The other day I saw a movie, “A Dry White Season,” which was about resistance in South Africa during the time Mandela was in prison. Marlon Brando, who was playing a lawyer defending an African family, commented, “Justice and the law are distant cousins, and in South Africa , they haven't spoken for years.” And it seems to me that speaks for the situation here in the states.

God, the great spirit, the spirit of truth, is a god of justice and love. Yet the justice of God has little to do with the justice of us humans: the justice of the domination system.

The legal system in the US is built on revenge. It's built on the idea that violence, and the many forms of violence the legal system metes out: killing, revenge, punishment, incarceration, degradation, creates order. Walter Wink calls this the myth of redemptive violence. The myth of redemptive violence is the idea that violence saves, that violence brings order to a situation (be it a family quarrel, or a misunderstanding, or a conflict between countries). Order is restored through violence. Justice is found through violence. And this is what we have learned from childhood stories, from cartoons, from school, from history books. Violence, perhaps only used as a last resort, brings order. Yet our faith teaches something quite different. Our faith teaches us to love our enemies, to love one another. Our faith teaches us that nonviolence, rather that violence, is what restores order and brings real justice.

Steven Oken was recently executed here in Baltimore . There were about 70 people out on the street that night to say no to violence, to killing of any kind. Also, out on the streets, were the families of the victims and a few supporters of the death penalty. They cheered and celebrated when they heard that Steven had been killed . They hoped for healing and for the end of their sorrow. They thought that executing Steven would bring them healing, yet we know that the healing they hope for only comes with forgiveness. It doesn't come through violence.

Psalm 85 reminds us that justice and peace come together;

Love and truth will meet,
Justice and peace will kiss.

There won't be any peace without justice. And, in this country, we have to remember that we, the 5 or 6 percent of the world 's population, use 40-60 percent of the world's resources. That isn't justice, and we can't arrive at peace until it's changed.

We can have the cessation of conflict (with the US domination empire on top) suppressing all conflict and discussion, but that isn't peace.

A just world would be where we share resources, and where all children have food, health care, education and hope. A just world would be where all of us have a say in what is important to us. A just world would be where we see created gifts as belonging to God, and use them with respect, where use value is more important than exchange value. Where the gift is what's important. Where relationships are mutual, not hierarchical.

I suspect you all don't disagree with most of what I'm saying. The point is, how do we get there?

We at Jonah House say that we get there through community, through nonviolence, through resistance to the domination system.

We live in community , trying not to replicate the ways of the system we want to change. It's an attempt to live without exchange, or class relationships by working together, having a one purse, being autonomous people, making decisions mutually.

It's an attempt to not replicate the practice of some people being thinkers, others doers. We all do manual labor. And in fact, this time of labor is precious and is often used for prayer.

We live and share together, trying to live simply, leaving less of a footprint on the earth.

Like many of you, we work at practicing nonviolence . We are on a journey to nonviolence...guess we'll never get there, but we're on the way. I think that all the main religions of the world teach love and compassion. As someone trying to be a Christian, I focus on the teachings of Jesus: love our enemies, love each other as brother and sister. All people, here in this country, or in Iraq are my brothers and sisters, my sons and daughters, my mother and father.

I think that daily meditation and prayer is a component of the practice of nonviolence.

Resistance. If we were living in WW II Germany, we'd probably say that to act justly meant to oppose the Third Reich, we'd say that it meant to help those headed to the concentration camps, to release those bound unjustly, to untie every yoke.

And what of today? Many would argue, and I agree, that the crimes and actions of this empire that we are living in are just as bad, or worse than the crimes of the Third Reich. So where does that leave us? Do we obey this government, and compliantly pay our taxes, let people be tortured and killed, send our brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren off to war?

There are options. For those of us who are living in community, our incomes can be below taxable level. Of course, I know many good people in professional careers who are doing good things, who pay federal tax so that they can continue to do the good they are doing. And we all benefit from their goodness. But I think it's a question that each of us might benefit from wrestling with. Do I want to pay for war? Do I want to pay for torture? (fifty percent of every federal tax dollar goes for warmaking).

If this group here today...all of us right here in this church, decided to not pay war tax, imagine what would happen!!! Yes, our lives would be impacted, but it would be an historical event. Maybe it would inspire others.

But there are other things we can do. We can speak out against the government policies. We can join marches, inform ourselves, listen to Amy Goodman 's Democracy Now (89.3). We can risk our good name, our security, our standing in the community, our credit, and risk arrest. We could go to the Pentagon and block the doors, say to the folks working there that their work has to change so that they are using their many skills and talents to help people, not plan to murder them. We could begin to disarm the weapons that we use to murder and threaten our brothers and sisters around the world.

At this point, I want to tell you about two of our community members who are in federal prison right now. Remember back before this last war against Iraq , when our country was looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? The US/UN had weapons inspectors there looking for weapons. At that time, Sr. Carol Gilbert , Sr. Ardeth Platte, who are both from our community, and Sr. Jackie Hudson went to Colorado to a Minuteman III missile silo that was in a farmer's field. They carefully cut through the chain to get through the first fence, and the cut a link to get through the second gate to go into the silo area. There was a big slab of concrete-110 tons of concrete—that was the missile hatch. The Sisters had small hammers, and they symbolically hammered on the concrete…. They were thinking about the prophet Isaiah who said, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they train for war anymore.” They were thinking of the teachings of their faith, “Love your enemies”, “love one another as brother and sister”…. And they were thinking about the nuclear weapon that was under the silo hatch, and that it is a weapon of mass destruction, and that it is illegal under international law, and immoral under God's laws.

The sisters were arrested, charged, and are in federal prison. They are ordinary people, like you and me but hey took a risk for peace; they stood up for what they believe.

The week after next, we are organizing a retreat in DC. It's a Faith and Resistance retreat, and I want to invite each of you to it. The flyers are on the front table…

I want to end with a section from “The Price of Peacemaking” by Daniel Berrigan :

We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwillingly to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues. War, by its nature, is total-but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial. So a whole will and a whole heart and a whole national life bent toward war prevail over the verities of peace.

In every national war since the founding of the republic we have taken for granted that war shall exact the most rigorous cost, and that the cost shall be paid with cheerful hearts. We take it for granted that in wartime, families will be separated for long periods, that people will be imprisoned, wounded, driven insane, killed on foreign shores. In favor of such wars, we declare a moratorium on normal human hope-for marriage, for community, for friendship, for moral conduct toward strangers and the innocent. We are instructed that deprivation and discipline, private grief and public obedience are to be our lot. And we obey. And we bear with it-because bear we must-because war is war, and good war or bad, we are stuck with it and its cost.

But what of the price of peace? I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their loved ones, in the direction of their comforts, their homes, their security, their incomes, their futures, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise.)"Of course, let us have the peace," we cry, "but at the same time let us have our normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of lives." And because we must encompass this and

protect that, and because at all costs-at all costs- our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men and women should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost-because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war--at least as exigent, as least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.