We are deeply concerned. Attempts are being made to link Héctor Mondragón to the FARC guerilla movement in Colombia's paper of record, El Tiempo, which has reported on alleged e-mails to Héctor found on the computer of assassinated FARC leader Raul Reyes. Héctor, a Mennonite economist dedicated to the cause of the poor, is a good personal friend.  He works closely with Colombia's indigenous and small-scale farmers (campesinos).  He speaks passionately and writes prolifically on connecting the dots between the social political violence suffered and multi-national economic interests underlying the current armed conflict. In Colombia, good work does not go unnoticed. He is a survivor; he was being tortured around the time I entered the world. 

Colombian Mennonite Church President Alix Lozano writes:

Héctor H. Mondragón has been a member of our church since 1994, that is, 14 years. We have known him as a Christian not only committed to the cause of Jesus Christ, but also to Jesus' teaching and example of nonviolent love. ... His positions towards the government as well as toward the insurgent groups have been clear. ... The Colombian Mennonite Church rejects any attempt to link one of its members -- and in this particular case Héctor H. Mondragón -- to any armed group or any violent practice or to slander his/her name, which as we all know, is also extremely dangerous for the life and security of any person in this context. (Click here for the full statement; aquí para español.)

You can also read Héctor's response in his own powerful words in an essay called "My choice for civil resistance" (aquí para español):

Those who know me know very clearly that I am not part of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), because I disagree with their strategy, their political line, and their methods.

For 18 years, I have publicly and privately differed from the FARC's strategy. That strategy is centered on the role of the guerrilla converted into a revolutionary army, through which the people can seize power and transform society. ... It has become a tragedy for popular struggles. It has permitted the strengthening of the extreme right, which today is running the country. Not only has it failed to stop the displacement of hundreds of thousands of peasants and Afro-Colombians, but it has actually exacerbated that process, and even provoked the forced displacement of indigenous peoples in various parts of the country. ...

Since 1994 I have opted for a personal commitment to nonviolence as the way to contribute to radical social change. I renounced the use of arms in self defense under any circumstance. I got rid of two revolvers that I had legally carried since I had been threatened with assassination ... I stopped working with bodyguards because I did not want to save my life at the expense of another. I ended up abandoning all routines, and thus the possibility of a stable job, in order to avoid being assassinated. I believe in the struggle for radical social change, but I believe it must be accompanied with a radical change of method, the abandonment of armed struggle and the abandonment of the notion that the end justifies the means. The radical means of nonviolence can help us reach the objective of truly radical social change. ...

It is not about replacing one corrupt, right wing government with another. It is not about exchanging one set of gangsters for another, so that our friends can rule instead of our enemies. It is not about demonstrating "governability" without meeting the basic needs of the 80% of Colombians who live in poverty. Colombia needs deep changes, especially on the land and in its relationship to the transnationals. And the only way to win these changes is to deploy the widest civil resistance, to construct alternatives from the base, and to have massive and committed civil mobilization. Absolutely everything I have done in these years, every single day, has been to work towards this with all my strength and all my experience.

Today, I still carry wounds from the torture that I suffered in 1977 and also from 20 years of being threatened with death, pursued by the paramilitaries. Sometimes I lose hope, especially when I know that some of my friends have been killed. I ask myself why continue in this struggle with indigenous people and peasants, why not give up. But then I am struck again with the passion for the people I love and the certainty that they deserve lives with dignity, and solidarity. They failed to kill my body but today they are threatening to kill my words, and I feel it like a re-opening of my old wounds. But the word is a seed and it grows, whatever happens, in the peasant on the land, in an indigenous person in her territory, in Afro-Colombians returning to their communities, in those who live in the popular neighborhoods of the cities who will eat better after the land reform that we will win, in every working family that will get a just wage for work, there the word will live. They won't be able to kill it.

A call to action may be forthcoming.  For the time being we invite you to share this concerning turn of events and pray.  Héctor writes, "I remain firm in prayer and many have prayed for me as well.  They sustain me.  (Me he aferrado a la oracin y muchos han orado por m. Me llegan muchos apoyos y me sostienen. )"

Janna Hunter-Bowman works for Mennonite Central Committee in Bogotá, Colombia, as the coordinator of the Documentation and Advocacy Program for Justapaz.

I arrived in the West Bank the afternoon of Saturday, June 7, and hit the ground running. The next morning we starting filming for a film on Palestinian nonviolent resistance I am working on this summer. That Sunday, we did a long interview with Daoud Nassar, whose family owns a plot of land in the Palestinian village of Nahalin, just a few kilometers south of Bethlehem. The legal documents to the land date back to 1916, yet the family has been battling in Israeli courts for more than 15 years to have their ownership recognized by the Israeli state. The land lies on a hill surrounded on all sides by Israeli settlements. The neighboring settlement of Neve Daniel already has a master plan to expand across the land of the Nassars and their neighbors.

Parallel to the legal battles, the Nassars have done everything to prevent the confiscation of their land. In the summers they host children's summer camps and nonviolent resistance training camps. They also continue to come up with creative ways of resisting Israel's intention of removing them from their property by gathering winter rains when they are not permitted to connect to the water system of the nearby village, and digging out old caves because they cannot legally build above ground. Israeli land annexation is occurring all over Israel, yet the Nassar's case reveals a rare example of perseverance and creativity, and they have achieved international support to persist in fighting for their land.

On Thursday, June 19, after months of back-and-forth movements, a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas finally came into effect. With this rare time of calm between Israel and Gaza, many Palestinian farmers with land on the border areas are taking the chance to begin clearing their fields of the damage from recent Israeli incursions. The Egyptian-brokered agreement entails a gradual prisoner exchange and an immediate loosening of the siege that was intensified after Hamas' takeover of power in the Gaza Strip one year ago. Gazans who over the past year have experienced a severe shortage of all sorts of building materials, such as cement, wood, and glass, are hopeful that the agreement will actually be carried through in order to revive some local businesses. In recent months, the most vital commodity to be cut from the Gazan market is petrol. With insufficient supplies, life has been slowed to an excruciatingly slow pace. In such dire days, there is hope that the cease-fire will improve life, yet four days after its start the agreement has allowed for little change to be felt on the ground.

The day prior to the onset of the cease-fire, I had the longest day of filming in my life, from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. In the village of Ghwein, the last Palestinian community before the border between the West Bank and Israel, lies a small community whose inhabitants live in caves as their ancestors have for hundreds of years. In 1948, such farming communities all over the country were forcefully displaced by Israeli troops, the inhabitants of Ghwein also were pushed out of half of their village in the valley. Since that time more and more land has been confiscated, dividing the village from access to much of their farmland and even more vital wells. In these forgotten village lands, Israel will destroy any home that is built, so life in the caves remains frozen in time. Having experienced a dry rainy season, they have barely sufficient water to make it. Life is becoming increasingly unsustainable. If the families leave, tempted by the luxuries of city life, Israel is certain to annex their land for the construction of another settlement, like it has in so many other locations around them. So the families of Ghwein are remaining steadfast in resisting the occupation.

In Ghwein, Abu Mohammed told us of the realities of growing up as a farmer under occupation. Life is suddenly whittled down to the very basics: land and water. This Palestinian Life takes an oral history approach to the Palestinian experience by featuring farmers such as Abu Mohammed, rather than the "expert" opinions of journalists, historians, and political analysts.

Together with a Palestinian film crew from Bethlehem, producer Julie Norman and I have just a week left to capture stories of resistance in the West Bank. Next week I will travel to Gaza to film a final sequence connecting these stories to those of a Gaza under severe siege.

Philip Rizk is an Egyptian-German Christian who lived and worked in Gaza from 2005-2007. The film project is still underfunded -- check out the film site and make a contribution at thispalestinianlife.blogspot.com.

This past weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the historic action of the Catonsville 9. On May 17, 1968, nine men and women entered the Selective Service Offices in Catonsville, Maryland, removed several hundred draft records, and burned them with homemade napalm in protest against the war in Vietnam. The nine were arrested and, in a highly publicized trial, sentenced to jail. Listen to the words spoken by Father Daniel Berrigan on that day:

Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.

It is acts of courage like this that the prophets were known for. And jailed for. They are an invitation to interrupt injustice with grace. They are an invitation to live with prophetic imagination. These are the kind of prophets who don't just try to predict the future - they try to change it.

One of those contemporaries of the Catonsville action is here with us in Philadelphia -- Sister Margaret (we tell her story in our new book Jesus for President). Sister Margaret is one of our wisest -- and wildest -- elders. Some years back, she and some other Christians felt moved by the Spirit to enact some of the prophecies in the Bible. They drew their own blood, which they planned to pour on the war machines as a symbolic lament of the bloodshed they create. And they had a bag full of hammers and other tools with which to begin the conversion of the things of death into the things of life. Then they showed up for a tour of a navy ship. Sister Margaret was designated to carry the tools, since she was the older nun, the least suspicious. It's hysterical to hear her so innocently tell the story of how she just went through the strict security with metal detectors and bag checkers, praying and trusting God. As she went through the checkpoint, her bulky bag got stuck on the gate, and a guard came to her aid. He took the bag from her and lifted it through the security check, and then he helped Sister Margaret, who just thanked him over and over like an innocent granny. They went onto the boat and began climbing up the ladders, up to the top of the ship. There they poured their blood onto the side of a Tomahawk missile launcher. She said it looked like a giant star. Then they prayerfully began beating on the hollow metal of the launcher. The sound of each hit of the hammer seemed to echo across the entire creation. It was sacramental. It was as if time stopped. They continued to hammer together, thud after thud reverberating. Sailors began to surround them -- confused, paralyzed. Officers told the nuns to lay face down with their hands above them on the deck. And they gladly obeyed. It reminded Sister Margaret of the times the sisters would lie prostrate, face down, with outstretched hands in prayer before God. As they lay there, it began to rain, and Sister Margaret says it was like God was crying.

One thing that's clear in the scriptures is that the nations do not lead people to peace; rather, people lead the nations to peace. There's a beautiful text in both Micah and Isaiah where the prophets say that the people will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And it ends by saying that nations will not rise up against other nations, and they will not study war anymore. Peace begins not with nations but with the people of God. It is people who humanize the nations, people who follow the Human One that Daniel spoke of rising from the beasts -- the Son of Man, the gospels proclaim. The end of war begins with people who believe that another world is possible and that another empire has already interrupted time and space and is taking over this earth with the dreams of God. Those dreams begin with people of faith and hope who are audacious enough to be certain of what they do not see. We believe so much that we cannot help but start enacting the prophecies. As our brother Jim Wallis says, "We believe despite the evidence, and we watch the evidence change."

What if we got our best scientists to figure out a plan for converting all our B-52s into tractors?

What if people began to prayerfully take household tools onto military bases and beat the war machines into farm tools?

It has been done. And it will be done again.

We are people who believe in conversion. We believe things can be transformed into new creations.

Shane Claiborne is the author of Jesus for President, a Red Letter Christian, and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Christine Haider, 25, is preparing for her confirmation to the Roman Catholic Church. When asked about her confirmation name, she smiles broadly and says, "Dorothy." Seventy-five years since the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin continue to call a new generation of the faithful to a radical gospel of nonviolent resistance to evil and hospitality to the poor.

Started in New York City with a one-penny paper called The Catholic Worker, and eventually two houses of hospitality for homeless women and men, the Catholic Worker Movement has bloomed to at least one house of hospitality and war resistance in most states, along with houses in Canada, Mexico, England, Sweden, Germany, and New Zealand. Working both against the institutional evil of the state -- named once by Martin Luther King Jr. as the triple evils of racism, militarism, and materialism -- and for the victims of the state, the houses spring up in an organic meeting between the unique charism of the Catholic Workers involved and the needs of the community. There are Catholic Worker farms as well, according to Maurin's determination to give the poor an opportunity to work and live in dignity and find their sustenance in community and in communion with the land. There are no requirements for calling a project a Catholic Worker, no board or standards committee, and no fees. The Catholic Worker is not a franchise but always a labor of faith and love, a home built without walls.

Somehow in making room for the marginal in society, those at times marginalized in the church also found a home. When Haider, who struggled with a call to priesthood as a teenager, is asked what Dorothy's example is to women today, she says, "The way I identify myself as a woman and the way Dorothy identified herself as a woman is very different, but, nonetheless, for me as a woman in a very patriarchal religion Dorothy is a role model of both a strong female character in the church and a way to live out the Catholic faith outside of the institution in a way that is freeing to women but also a whole host of other people." And so in its 75 years, those who found no place to minister within the church as it stood -- women, married people, persons of different races and sexualities, and those who longed to build the simple communal apostolic church recorded in the Acts of the apostles -- have often been able to contribute their gifts to the Catholic Worker. In fact, there are even Catholic Workers who are not Roman Catholic.

Perhaps the requirement to being a Catholic Worker begins with a call to prophetic presence with the poor on the breadlines and those under the hail of fire brought down by military power. In the heart of this call is God's dangerous command to love one another, a call made dangerous by a world with casual and rampant individual and institutional violence against both neighbor and enemy. Dorothy reflected on the lack of this love present in the world when she said, "We have not yet loved our neighbor with the kind of love that is a precept to the extent of laying down our life for him. And our life very often means our money ... it means our daily bread, our daily living, our rent, our clothes ...." In such a world, loving one anther can have some uncomfortable consequences, both in loss of privilege and in loss of freedom. Dorothy said herself that, "Love is indeed a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, of each of us, but it is the only answer."

Eda Uca-Dorn is a member of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House in Washington, D.C., which is a house of war resistance and hospitality to five formerly homeless families. She and her husband, Mike, are currently organizing around the issues of peak oil, climate change, and the impending resource wars. She may be reached at eda.uca.dorn@gmail.com. If you would like to learn more about the Catholic Worker Movement, check out www.catholicworker.org.

Here is a brilliant video from an action around the 5th anniversary of the war ... Yes Lord, more holy mischief! Watch it:

Shane Claiborne is the author of Jesus for President, a Red Letter Christian, and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

In our little circles, we've been talking a lot about the need to create new holidays and rituals of remembrance as a Church–this peculiar, set-apart people of God. The early Christians talked a lot about how they no longer celebrated the "festivals of the Caesars" or the holidays of the empire, but had new eyes through which they looked at the world (this is a major theme of our new book Jesus for President). They had a new calendar. They had new heroes and sheroes (not just kings and presidents and fallen warriors). And they had new liturgies and songs. That's what Holy Week is all about, a new holiday–Easter is our President's Day. And our Holy Week here in Philly was magnificent, a stunning celebration of the Commander-in-Chief who loved His enemies so much He died for them.

One of the highlights was Good Friday at Lockheed Martin.

My mom and pop came into town. On Good Friday my mother and I went to a worshipful vigil–walking the stations of the cross, remembering the sufferings of Jesus–held on the property of Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin is one of the world's largest weapons contractors and profiteers from war, headquartered right outside Philly. So it was there that we took the cross of Jesus.

Being the 5 year anniversary of the bombing of Baghdad, I was asked to reflect on my Easter in Baghdad in 2003. So I did. With mom looking on, I shared how she had supported my trip. I recalled how she had learned to ache with Abraham, Mary, and the parents of children in Iraq, all of whom have had to watch their own kids face grave danger. At one point, mom said to me, "The children in Iraq are just as precious to God as you are. How can I tell you not to get too close to their suffering?" And every night she prayed–weeping, hurting, groaning with God for an end to that suffering. As I spoke, I looked out and saw her eyes filled with tears. (NOTE: It was my mom's first "protest," so even though she had tears in her eyes, she also had a mischievous smirk as she stood next to a clever banner that read: "Lockheed Martin…. Making a Killing!")

After some speakers, scripture, and music, we walked through the stations of the passion narrative which led us onto the base of Lockheed Martin. There a dozen folks stood, holding crosses, in prayerful vigil.... And then, one by one, they were arrested for trespassing. It was an incredible embodiment of gentle dissent and vigilant hope – that holy mischief we see in Jesus as he triumphs over the empire's cross. Not the Fourth of July or Veteran's Day or Columbus Day – but Good Friday. Passover. Easter. Pentecost. These are our most beautiful holidays. So during this season of death and resurrection, we remember the contemporary sufferings of Christ, the other baby refugees being born amid the wars and genocides of our Herods. And we remember the Gospel promise that in the end life conquers death. It may be Friday, but Sunday is coming.

Shane Claiborne is the author of Jesus for President, a Red Letter Christian, and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Mary Nelson just posted on MLK's Riverside speech, but I have some reflections to add. I'll admit that I took a "day off" yesterday instead of a "day on," making a four-day weekend backpacking trip in the Adirondacks with some buddies. But I did participate in some popular education on the van ride home yesterday, observing the occasion by playing two of the three MLK speeches I've been able to find for free online. I skipped ubiquitous and well-known "I Have a Dream" speech. We did listen to his "Mountaintop" speech, given the night before he was assassinated. Though it's more popularly known for the haunting forshadowings of this death—"I may not get there with you ..."—we were struck by its connection of economic to racial justice.

But "Beyond Vietnam" is worth a listen as a history lesson, as a challenge to the more domesticated gloss that gets applied to MLK's legacy every January, and perhaps most importantly as a continuing challenge to society and the church to take seriously the imperative of nonviolence: "We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation." A few passages are familiar to me by now since they're the kind of things that we at Sojourners frequently quote. There's the painfully relevant assertion that:

America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.

And this warning:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

But those passages are primarily political. Listening yesterday, another passage jumped out that I was less familiar with—one that rooted King's nonviolence in his faith, and an important reminder to Christians that allegiances to political movements and divisions must fall beneath our allegiance to Christ:

This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all [people]—for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the Web editor for Sojourners.

This year, Nov. 11 will be a particularly joyous day for this veteran. Though I will not be attending any events, I can still reasonably expect a few pats on the back or some kind words in recognition of my six years in service to our country. Thankfully, I am past the awkwardness that used to greet me as supporters approached me with their gratitude in airports or shopping malls - seeking hugs and handshakes to express their appreciation for my sacrifice. I have overcome the demons that accompanied me back from Iraq, who insisted the strangers' thanks were idolatrous and superficial. However, I do continue to pray that well-wishers offer "welcome home" in place of "thank you" - the latter often being misunderstood, as many service members do not consider the acts they have committed to be commendable. Beside merely a celebration of patriotism, Nov. 11 is also a day to remember and rejoice in peace. Armistice Day holds a place in history as the day the Allies and Germany signed a treaty in Compiègne, France, ending hostilities on the Western Front. To this day, many people still reserve a moment of silence at 11:00 a.m. to respect the 8 million who perished in WWI.

Though for Christians, the day does not end there. This Sunday the Catholic Church celebrates the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, one of the first saints not to be martyred. In fact, St. Martin was one of many to be beatified who, by today's standards, would be identified as a conscientious objector - an individual verifiably opposed to "war in any form." At one time a Roman centurion, Martin came to a "crystallization" of conscience, laying down his sword and declaring, "I am a soldier of Christ, it is not permissible for me to fight." It has been speculated that in 1918, Nov. 11 was chosen as Armistice Day in part due to St. Martin, who is especially the patron of soldiers and chaplains. It is curious to consider that this Christian soldier in fact thought it more Christlike to return to the front lines unarmed than with the sword the empire placed in his hands. David Thoreau, an inspiration to another saintly Martin, believed that a creative, nonviolent minority could serve the state by resisting it with the intention of improving it. Could this in fact be the embodiment of service to the state Paul speaks of in Romans 13? After all, he and St. Martin both were imprisoned for their beliefs…

Finally, I come to the most celebratory story behind Nov. 11 for this war-wearied veteran. Not long after my own road to Damascus conversion experience, I miraculously found a beautiful woman as crazy about Jesus as I was (and still am). An abbreviated courtship ensued, and within seven months, I had proposed. As our relationship developed, we found that our distinct beliefs matured as well. Faced with a similar crossroads regarding her own service to God and country, she too followed the path Martin helped forge so many centuries ago. Not long ago she filed for discharge as a conscientious objector, declaring herself a soldier in Christ's nonviolent army of peace.

Left to decide our date of wedded bliss, my 'better half,' my muse, settled on an otherwise nondescript day in November. This Sunday, we will share in the sacrament of matrimony - the threefold meaning of Nov. 11 is sure to be a fitting celebration of our combined attempts at patriotism, pacifism, and piety. We have high hopes and big dreams of continuing our service to fellow centurions, and with God's grace his gift to us can continue to bless others.

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and currently resides in Camden, New Jersey, in an intentional Christian community called Camden House, where he continues to seek ways to wage peace wherever he goes. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

I received an e-mail today from a progressive Jewish organization titled “Let Desmond Tutu Speak at a Minnesota University.” It referred to my alma mater, the University of St. Thomas, where administrators recently snubbed the archbishop by refusing to allow him to speak at a PeaceJam International conference on campus. Based on the opinions of a select group of local Jewish leaders who claim Tutu made anti-Semitic remarks in a 2002 speech, the university decided to pass on the opportunity so as not to potentially offend members of the Jewish community. Officially, Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations at St. Thomas, had this to say to the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages:

We had heard some things he said that some people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy.... We're not saying he's anti-Semitic. But he's compared the state of Israel to Hitler and our feeling was that making moral equivalencies like that are hurtful to some members of the Jewish community.

Hennes stops short of calling Tutu anti-Semitic, but the speech he cites caused the Zionist Organization of America to target college campuses and lobby them to ban Tutu from speaking engagements. A Jewish member of our own St. Thomas community, instructor Marv Davidov, told City Pages:

As a Jew who experienced real anti-Semitism as a child, I’m deeply disturbed that a man like Tutu could be labeled anti-Semitic and silenced like this.... I deeply resent the Israeli lobby trying to silence any criticism of its policy. It does a great disservice to Israel and to all Jews.

It became even more personal for me when I read that my former advisor, Cris Toffolo, was removed from her post as department chair by the administration over a letter she sent to Tutu expressing her dissent over the decision. This kind of secrecy and censorship on my university’s campus is upsetting and discourages freedom of expression in academia. I am embarrassed that my role model for social justice is being smeared by my own school, and that a professor was demoted in the process.

Most schools would bend over backward to host the moral voice of the anti-apartheid movement. St. Thomas is missing the opportunity to have Tutu inspire its students to “act wisely, think critically, and work skillfully for the common good,” as its mission so boldly states.

It is true that Tutu has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians and has used language on occasion that is less than sensitive. What University of St. Thomas leaders seem to overlook is that he uplifts, inspires, and motivates people of all faiths to end poverty and oppression through nonviolence. Tutu stated in the infamous 2002 speech, “God waits for you, for you to act.” As an alumna who takes the mission statement of St. Thomas seriously and as a Christian working for peace and justice, how can I not?

Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

Suddenly the media was reporting that thousands of protesters were marching in Rangoon, Burma (or Yangon, Myanmar, as it is officially called since the governing military junta renamed it in 1990). And the front ranks were led by Buddhist monks in brown robes holding banners that said, "Love and kindness must win over everything." Nuns in their pink robes were also present in growing numbers.

The protests were sparked by a 500 percent price rise in fuel costs put in place on Aug. 19 (without announcement or explanation, not thought necessary by the dictatorial rulers). For a country mired in poverty and harsh repression, the resulting rise in prices of necessities caused mounting anger. Despite the fear of speaking out against the government, protests began to spread across the country. In the town of Bago, about 50 persons marched, though without signs or chants. They were arrested and jailed. As word spread, 2000 people turned out, linked arms around the jail, and refused to leave until the 50 persons were released. In another town, Cheuk, about 100 marched four abreast and keeping several meters apart (to circumvent the law of no gatherings of more than five). After a brutal Sept. 5 crackdown on monks demonstrating in central Burma, the armed forces refused to apologize as demanded by the monks.

Protests grew, and by the third week of September, thousands, then tens of thousands of monks marched, most dramatically in the two major cities of Yangon and Mandalay, with up to 100,000 monks and increasing numbers of civilians. The military even allowed hundreds of monks to march to the home of Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years. A revered leader in the tradition of Gandhian nonviolence, she has long called for a "revolution of the Spirit." Her phone lines cut, her writings banned, photos and even the speaking of her name forbidden, she nonetheless has a mystical hold on the people. When she came out of her house, the monks chanted the Metta Sutta, the Buddha's words on loving kindness, and others called out, "be free very soon."

To date, the government has responded with increasing brute force, even invading monasteries and dragging monks off to prison. Worldwide condemnation has come to the country except from its chief economic partners—mainly China, but also India and Russia.

I was in Yangon just before the largest marches began, having been invited there by Burmese activists to do a workshop on Gandhian nonviolence. We met in homes and out-of-the-way restaurants, hoping to be faithful to Suu Kyi's admonition "to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear."

Richard Deats, is editor emeritus of Fellowship magazine, the International FOR governing committee, and author of Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Liberator. You can sign an emergency petition to China's president Hu Jintao and the UN Security Council at Avaaz.org. Follow this story at Irrawaddy News, covering Burma and Southeast Asia.

The news this afternoon from Myanmar/Burma is not good. A recent AP story said that

Soldiers clubbed and dragged away activists while firing tear gas and warning shots to break up demonstrations Friday before they could grow, and the government cut Internet access, raising fears that a deadly crackdown was set to intensify.

The government said 10 people have been killed since the violence began earlier this week, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he believed the loss of life in Myanmar was "far greater" than is being reported. Dissident groups have put the number as high as 200, although that number could not be verified.

The world is reacting with outrage. President Bush has toughened sanctions to focus on specific individuals for the first time, including a ban on travel visas. A U.N. special envoy is en route. Many other world leaders have spoken out.

Gene Stoltzfus is a friend who worked in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 70s, and then became director of Christian Peacemaker Teams, a program of Brethren, Mennonite and Friends churches and other affiliated organizations that places teams in high conflict zones to emphasize human rights protection, nonviolent action, and peacemaking campaigns. On his blog, he comments on the religious roots of nonviolence for the Buddhist monks leading the demonstrations against the military junta.

Two groups with countrywide power and influence in modern Burma are now facing each other across potholes in the streets. The military with Chinese-supplied weapons, is determined to retain the grip it has had on the nation since 1962. The Buddhist movement, with an institutional life going back more than 1000 years, is led by monks armed with spiritual disciplines and a commitment to an ethical system that combines practical living with a deep sensitivity to all of creation. The Buddhist way is nonviolence empowered by love, honed by teaching and meditation. However, this does not mean that monks are not tough, persistent, and even militant.

He ends:

In response to the world wide call of Free Burma groups we have a sign in our window, THE WORLD IS WATCHING, FREE BURMA, with a candle below the sign.

Before it began, many evangelicals were strong supporters of a war with Iraq. As the death and destruction have continued, some are rethinking that view and coming to oppose the war. David Gushee, professor at Mercer University, has an important piece – Our Teachable Moment - on Christianity Today online. Gushee writes:

Such deep public distress about the war makes this a teachable moment for all of us, as Christians and as Americans. It's not enough to find a way out of this war honorably and soon. We have an opportunity to learn some deeper lessons so that we won't repeat our mistakes.

For evangelicals, one of the groups that strongly supported the war initially, one lesson is clear: We must become more discerning when our nation's leaders advocate a military solution. We have biblical resources for doing so, if we will draw upon them.

He concludes:

For me, the next time I am asked to support a war, my default setting will be no rather than yes. As a follower of Christ, I will have to be persuaded that the particular confluence of circumstances is so grave as to require a military solution. Before Christians sign off on another war, we must do our best to figure out whether the government has done everything possible to make peace.

A few weeks ago we looked at the calendar and saw that Sept. 11 is now officially titled "Patriot Day." We started thinking of what would be an appropriate way to celebrate and remember this day, especially for those of us who have caught a little of the ex-patriot spirit of a new kingdom… you know, an "in the world but not of it" sort of thing. Then we heard that the film The Camden 28 was going to debut nationally on PBS, and with suspiciously brilliant timing -- on Patriot Day.

My Sept. 11 was surreal, heart wrenching, and with a little mystical dazzle. We'll get to the film in a minute.

I had originally hoped to post this yesterday morning (Sept. 11), partly to give a little shout-out about the film, yada yada, but then came the drama. As I was writing my original little ditty, "Reflections of an Ex-patriot," from my room here in north Philly, a fight broke out among some of the kids on our block. Then their parents came out and the fight grew louder and louder, until our whole block was a chaotic brawl. It's actually been a while since we've had a fight like this one. It just kept building and building, consuming our neighborhood, reminding me of the inferno a few weeks back. Ugliness. Ugliness I can hear out my window and see in Iraq.

I thought of how quickly revenge escalates from a couple of kids to a block filled with rage. I thought of Sept. 11, of Iraq. Obviously, I couldn't just keep writing about peace while a war raged on my street. So, out I went (hence the tardiness and change of the title on this piece).

I remember hearing a definition of idolatry as "something you would sacrifice your children for." There is nothing we fight more passionately for than flag and countries, biology, and nation. And so the fire rages on. But I am thankful for days where we pause to mourn, to honor life, and to cry together. I cried with a few neighbors yesterday about how people hurt each other, and I cried with a church last night over a world that can't stop hitting back. Before the showing of The Camden 28, we celebrated Mass in Camden. We prayed that God would heal the brokenness of our world, our cities, and our hearts. The scripture for Mass was Romans 8, which describes all of creation as groaning as in the pains of childbirth. Today is a day for groaning. And yet we were reminded that these are the pains of birth -- not death -- but birth. There is still hope, even on a day marked by death, and death after death. In the end the world is pregnant with hope, the hope of a kingdom other than Rome or America. And we were reminded that we are the midwives of that kingdom. We are to help give birth to the new world.

After Mass we viewed the film. It is an award-winning documentary about a group of 28 of our friends here in Philly/Camden who entered a federal building during the Vietnam War and destroyed the draft cards. I'm going to do my best not to give away all the best moments in the film in case you didn't get a chance to see it (if you don't want to hear any more skip this paragraph), but there is one moment in the film that is unbelievably redemptive. One of the 28 had become an informant to the FBI, but during the course of things his son was in a tragic accident and died. Our priest here in Camden, Michael Doyle (also one of the 28), was asked to do the funeral. I thought to myself, scandalous, but what is even more scandalous is that brother Michael DID IT! He tells the story of how the funeral was filled with FBI agents and peace activists, and how the little group of activists surrounded their Judas with love and friendship. At the funeral Michael's message was reconciliation and grace.

In the end, the informant ended up testifying on the side of the defense, offering instrumental testimony before a very attentive jury. But beyond the drama of the courtroom is the story of forgiveness and grace. That is what the world is hungry for, pregnant for -- especially on Sept. 11.

The evening ended last night as the filmmaker joined us in Camden. Members of the Camden 28 presented him with the clock from the courtroom here in Camden where the trial took place. It is now permanently set for 2:30 p.m., the time where these prophets heard those beautiful two words: "not guilty."

The only thing that could have made the day more perfect would have been another little trip to the federal building ... maybe next year.

Shane Claiborne is a Red Letter Christian, author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Check local listings for future broadcasts of The Camden 28.

On Thursday, Sept. 6, 2007, six of us were found guilty in federal court in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by a federal judge for trying to visit the office of our senator. We will be sentenced in a few weeks.

It all started one year ago on Sept. 26, 2006. That day nine of us entered the Federal Building in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and tried to take the elevator to the third floor to the office of Sen. Pete Domenici to present him with a copy of the "Declaration of Peace," a national petition campaign aimed at stopping the U.S. war on Iraq, bringing our troops home, and pursuing nonviolent alternatives and reparations. More than 375 similar actions took place across the nation that week.

The senator's office manager came downstairs and said she would only allow three of us upstairs. After 45 minutes of waiting and negotiations all nine of us decided to go upstairs, figuring we had a right as a group of constituents to deliver our petition to the senator's office.

As we stepped onto the elevator a policeman put his foot in the door, and the next thing we knew, the power was turned off.

Read the full entry »

While vacationing in northern Minnesota, we take an early morning walk down a country road. We note changing weather, the sound of birds, an eagle flying high, the beauty of a leaping dear across the field. After just about a mile, we turn around at a well-cared-for cemetery, a reminder to make the most of each day. We've been reading Herbert Brokering's book, I Will to You: Leaving a Legacy for Those You Love, a whimsical calling forth of the words, memories, and traits that we want to pass on to our loved ones.

We reflect after breakfast of homemade whole wheat bread and Swedish coffee on what's going on in the world, what's important, the family. This summer spot is also the final resting place of our parents, reminding us of their legacy of care for others and God's creation shared in words and lives.

Mom, so concerned about nuclear proliferation and America's violent responses, at the age of 78 stepped into a boat with my brother in the chilly Puget Sound, protesting against the Trident nuclear submarine. "It's because I love my country that I want to correct her," she said to a journalist. When they arrested her on those waters and brought her to court, reporters asked, "Why did you, an American Mother of the Year, commit civil disobedience?" Without a moment's hesitation, mom said, "I did it for the children of the world."

Several years later, a doctor informed her of a fast-growing malignant tumor. She was just finishing her last book, A Grandma's Letter to God. She shared this response:

Now I want to witness to what it means to trust you (God) in such a time, with such a problem. I want to tell the world what freedom there is in being able to say, "Whether I live or die, I am the Lord's." I love life, Lord, and if you should give me more time, I want to be about your business. I want to challenge my beloved country to put its trust in you, not in nuclear bombs. I want to challenge people everywhere to be stewards of what you've given them—and for those of us who have been given so much to share our skills and resources and love with those who have so little. What a world that would be—the kind you meant it to be! But, God, if this is the time you tap me on the shoulder, what anticipations are mine!

What a legacy. Each of us will leave some kind of legacy. Makes me want to use the time and opportunities I have left to be about God's work of justice and community.

Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

In August, 1945, Fr. George Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Army Air Forces, was stationed on Tinian Island in the South Pacific. He served as priest and pastor for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was discharged in l946. During the next 20 years he gradually began to realize that what he had done and believed during the war was wrong, and that the only way he could be a Christian was to be a pacifist. He was deeply influenced in this process by the civil rights movement and the works of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1972 he met Charles C. McCarthy, a theologian, lawyer, and father of 10. McCarthy, who founded the Center for the Study of Nonviolence at the University of Notre Dame, was leading a workshop on nonviolence at Zabelka's church. The two men fell into the first of several conversations about the issues raised by the workshop. Some time later, Zabelka reached the conclusion that the use of violence under any circumstances was incompatible with his understanding of the gospel of Christ. When this article appeared in Sojourners in August 1980, Fr. Zabelka was retired, gave workshops on nonviolence and assisted in diocesan work in Lansing, Michigan.—The Editors of Sojourners

Charles McCarthy: Father Zabelka, what is your relationship to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945?

Fr. Zabelka: During the summer of 1945, July, August, and September, I was assigned as Catholic chaplain to the 509th Composite Group on Tinian Island. The 509th was the atomic bomb group.

McCarthy: What were your duties in relationship to these men? Zabelka: The usual. I said mass on Sunday and during the week. Heard confessions. Talked with the boys, etc. Nothing significantly different from what any other chaplain did during the war.

McCarthy: Did you know that the 509th was preparing to drop an atomic bomb?

Zabelka: No. We knew that they were preparing to drop a bomb substantially different from and more powerful than even the "blockbusters" used over Europe, but we never called it an atomic bomb and never really knew what it was before August 6, 1945. Before that time we just referred to it as the "gimmick" bomb.

McCarthy: So since you did not know that an atomic bomb was going to be dropped you had no reason to counsel the men in private or preach in public about the morality of such a bombing?

Zabelka: Well, that is true enough; I never did speak against it, nor could I have spoken against it since I, like practically everyone else on Tinian, was ignorant of what was being prepared. And I guess I will go to my God with that as my defense. But on Judgment Day I think I am going to need to seek more mercy than justice in this matter.

Click here to read the rest of the Sojourners interview with Fr. George Zabelka.

To speak out against the nuclear weapons build-up and sign on to a "Statement from Religious Americans Opposing the Complex 2030 Plan," click here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about "beloved community" lately, rereading the stories of Martin Luther King, John Lewis, and the civil rights movement (where the phrase gained prominence) and reflecting on my own experience in building community over the last 40 years on the west side of Chicago.

King became convinced that love, transformative love, was the key to moving toward that beloved community. In the face of the hatred and violence, he said, “We’ve got to love people no matter what …love the unlovable. Love the hell out of them.” The Montgomery bus boycott was the catalytic experience, a chairos moment that crystallized his thinking. “We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization,” he said in calling for a boycott of the buses. He went on explaining that the boycott was but a means to an end. “But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.”

This rings true with my experience in community. The times we were fueled by our faith, stretched to think bigger and bolder than our prune-like minds could fathom, and yes, the times when there was a threat, an external challenge to be overcome, were indeed the times when we had little experiences of the beloved community.

What a world it would be, if we could take this as our new/old motto and approach the so-called enemies and bad guys in the world with the energy to "Love the hell out of them" ... it would take a boldness and confidence to try. But what do we have to lose? The path we are currently on as a nation is deadly, dead-ended, creates more enemies every day, and makes us an unloved nation. Anyone want to join the new offensive?

Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

In the few weeks of the defense authorization debate in the Senate, Republican senators began falling like dominoes—Chuck Hagel (NE), Susan Collins (ME), Richard Lugar (IN), George Voinovich (OH), Pete Domenici (NM), Olympia Snowe (ME), and even John Warner (VA) are looking for a way out, although not all are willing to vote for a withdrawal timetable. The Republican defections are bolstered by public opinion. Columnist Robert Novak wrote about Sen. Hagel: "As the first in a succession of Republican senators to be critical of Bush's Iraq policy, Hagel feared the worst when he returned home to conservative Nebraska for Fourth of July parades. Instead, he was pleasantly surprised by cheers and calls for the troops to be brought home." And the Democrats seem to be getting stronger in their willingness to follow the public mandate against this war that gave them a congressional majority in 2006.

The most recent USA Today/Gallup Poll showed that change in public opinion. Sixty-two percent now say the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, the first time that number has topped 60 percent.

U.S. casualties now exceed 3,600, with the number of those wounded or emotionally and mentally scarred almost as countless now as the stories about returning veterans not receiving the help and attention they need. The human cost of this war has been as enormous as it has been discriminatory and unjust, with almost all the burden borne by working-class families whose sons and daughters chose military service, and not by the families and children of the elites who fabricated the case for it, grossly mismanaged its prosecution, and politically force its continuance.

The financial cost is staggering—a new Congressional Research Service study reported that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now cost $12 billion per month. When that monthly price tag is compared to the $10 billion per year it would cost to educate the world's 800 million children under six years old, the contrast opens up a real debate on what truly makes for national and global security.

While the troop "surge" has failed to bring the stability and security it promised, the progress report on Iraqi political benchmarks remains completely unsatisfactory. Nobody even pretends any longer that American young men and women are not dying daily in the cross-hairs of a civil war. Meanwhile Iraq has become an unlivable country, bleeding itself to death in a tribal sectarian conflict that is modeled by its so-called political leaders and not just by its violent insurgents.

And while the president continues to talk about the threat of al Qaeda, the Los Angeles Times reported the following on the author of a new "National Intelligence Estimate on the Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," released this week: "During a briefing with reporters, the principal author of the estimate, Edward Gistaro, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, said flatly that Al Qaeda in Iraq did not exist before the U.S. invasion. He also said that the group's 'overwhelming focus' remains confined to the conflict in Iraq."

As the legislative battle continues into the fall, our message must be clear. Bring all U.S. troops home safely on a timetable that begins now. They are caught in the middle of a civil war where the U.S. occupation is the problem. The solution to Iraq is political, not military. The war was wrong and it's time to do our best to right the wrong.

This brutal, ugly, and wholly unnecessary war may finally be coming to an end. And the role of the church could and should be decisive in making it so. I hear no more voices who still say this is a "just war." Many of us don't believe it ever was and that the nonviolent path of Jesus has again been vindicated. But regardless of past positions, we should all now agree that unjust wars must be ended as an obligation of faith.

This story in today's Washington Post made my day. As a pacifist Mennonite, I can't count the number of times someone has posed "The Question": If someone had a gun to your loved one's head, and you could use lethal violence to save them, what would you do? This scenario that unfolded in a D.C. backyard doesn't fit that exact hypothetical scene in every detail, but it does help point out the absurdity of it—what are the chances that reacting violently in such a situation is guaranteed to save your loved one and only hurt or kill the "bad guy"?

At the very least, true stories like this one remind us that violence is never our only option:

A grand feast of marinated steaks and jumbo shrimp was winding down, and a group of friends was sitting on the back patio of a Capitol Hill home, sipping red wine. Suddenly, a hooded man slid in through an open gate and put the barrel of a handgun to the head of a 14-year-old guest.

"Give me your money, or I'll start shooting," he demanded, according to D.C. police and witness accounts.

The five other guests, including the girls' parents, froze—and then one spoke.

"We were just finishing dinner," Cristina "Cha Cha" Rowan, 43, blurted out. "Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?"

The intruder took a sip of their Chateau Malescot St-Exupéry and said, "Damn, that's good wine."

The girl's father, Michael Rabdau, 51, who described the harrowing evening in an interview, told the intruder, described as being in his 20s, to take the whole glass. Rowan offered him the bottle. The would-be robber, his hood now down, took another sip and had a bite of Camembert cheese that was on the table.

Then he tucked the gun into the pocket of his nylon sweatpants. ...

"I'm sorry," he told the group. "Can I get a hug?"

Of course, this story (and please, read the whole thing) is ripe with indirect biblical allusions—though the article makes no mention of any spiritual or philosophical motivations for anyone's actions. And of course, there's every possibility that in spite of a nonviolent response, it or similar situations might not have ended as happily—but Jesus never promised as much when he taught us to love our enemies and bless them. In fact, he promised the opposite. Still, it's beautiful when turning the other cheek, giving your shirt, and going the extra mile have the intended effect: confronting our enemies with our humanity—and their own.

Though theological arguments aside, I suppose another moral of the story could be, quite simply: In case of armed robbers, always have a bottle of good wine handy.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

We don’t need another election. We need an exorcism. It is this that leads me from vigil to vigil and I burned with it on the evening of March 16, when I participated in nonviolent civil resistance and was arrested with more than 200 others as part of the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq. I shook from it in court some three months later when I pleaded “no contest” to failing to obey a lawful order.

There were 13 disciples in court that day, each with a unique mission. Many spoke beautifully to issues of amendments, traditions, permits, and codes. I ask you, sisters and brothers, what is our message? I wonder: Should we defend ourselves in finite opportunities to testify, or ought we defend the lowliest victims of war?

I stood at the podium that day, my throat dry and my hands cold, testifying to the message of the nonviolent Jesus. I stood and prayed there—as I had in front of the White House on that bitter cold night so many of us remember—strictly to relieve the ringing in my ears: speak for the dead or join them. I could not discuss the First Amendment or the parameters of the permit. Rather, I felt commissioned by God to speak to one truth alone: The frontline in Iraq is everywhere and the children have no place to hide. When I sat down I felt, but for a moment, clean.

Eda R. Uca is a member of Jonah House, an intentional faith-based resistance community in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of Ana's Girls: The Essential Guide to the Underground Eating Disorder Community Online.

Years ago my friend Gerry Straub underwent a spectacular modern-day conversion, from successful Hollywood TV producer and practicing atheist to downwardly mobile disciple of Jesus, following his hero, St. Francis of Assisi. Soon, he founded a Franciscan-based non-profit, the San Damiano Foundation, where he now makes groundbreaking films documenting the poorest of the world’s poor.

This week, his latest film premieres, touching upon a slightly different topic - of all things, me. It's about my life in the New Mexico desert, my efforts to teach gospel nonviolence, and my tales from 25 years in the Christian peace movement.

Church groups and universities everywhere have shown his films, with titles such as: Endless Exodus, Embracing the Leper, Rescue Me, When Did I See You Hungry?, The Patients of a Saint, and Where Love Is. “I fervently believe film can touch hearts and minds,” Gerry told the Los Angeles Times. To The New York Times, he said, “My message is for Christians who show an utter lack of concern or compassion for people who have nothing.”

Gerry’s new film about gospel nonviolence, The Narrow Path, developed over the course of some years. Gerry and I talk frequently (St. Francis is passion for both of us). During one conversation, when Gerry grew animated over the saint’s voluntary poverty and his great love for the poor and marginalized, I suggested that Francis embodied radical nonviolence, as well.

From there Gerry spun out his idea. “Let’s do a film about you in the New Mexico desert,” he said. “We’ll film you walking through the high desert, talking about the nonviolence of Jesus, and we’ll culminate with the annual Christian gathering at Los Alamos.” That’s where hundreds of us go each Hiroshima Day to sit in sackcloth and ashes to repent of the sin of war and nuclear weapons, just like the people of Nineveh did long ago.

Thus, a movie is born. The Narrow Path, some 90 minutes long on DVD - with cameos from Daniel Berrigan, Martin Sheen, Cindy Sheehan, Kathy Kelly, Ron Kovic and music by Jackson Browne, “Lives in the Balance,” and Joan Baez, “Let it Be” - is a movie set in the austere beauty of the desert where I live, atop a mesa some 7,000 feet in the air, overlooking miles of spectacular scenery, the land teeming with jackrabbits, ravens, horses, coyotes, scorpions, tarantulas, and rattlers (plus my cat) ... And in the distance - the nuclear hellhole of Los Alamos.

It’s awkward undertaking such a project, but the risks notwithstanding, I hope it will spur people, especially young people, toward a life of peace work and active nonviolence; to take up the gospel journey and walk forward on that "narrow path" of gospel nonviolence toward a new world without war, poverty, or nuclear weapons.

Watch the trailer:



John Dear is a Jesuit priest, peace activist, and the author of more than 20 books. He has also just released his latest book, Transfiguration (from Doubleday), and writes a weekly column for the National Catholic Reporter, at www.ncrcafe.org. The Narrow Path DVD can be shown in short chapter segments, and is an excellent resource for church groups, classes, or family viewing. Learn more at www.sandamianofoundation.org. For further information about John, or for discount bulk orders, contact: http://www.johndear.org/.

On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the most important speeches in American history at Riverside Church in New York City. In it he decisively and prophetically extended his public ministry beyond narrowly defined civil rights by calling for an end to the U.S. war in Vietnam. "'A time comes when silence is betrayal,'" preached King. "That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam."

The Riverside speech (variously called "Beyond Vietnam" or "Breaking the Silence") names the sickness eating the American soul as "the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism." It was a watershed moment in American history. A year later – to the day – Dr. King was assassinated.

King's address was drafted for him by his friend, and historian, Dr. Vincent G. Harding. King made minor changes, but essentially he delivered Harding's original text. "I think it's important to know that for about as long as the war was going on Martin was raising questions about it," Harding, a retired professor at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, said in a recent interview. Harding and his wife Rosemarie often attended Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta when King was preaching. "It was clear that Martin was opposing the war," Harding explained, "and that he was opposing it from a deeply Christian perspective."

In smaller venues King linked the issues of civil rights, economic justice, and peace, but he had never united the three is such a powerful and public way. He had never dissected the history of U.S. military imperialism with such thoroughness. But most strikingly, King launched a prophetic attack on the " royal consciousness" (as theologian Walter Brueggemann calls it in The Prophetic Imagination) of America. "Prophecy," writes Brueggemann, "is born precisely in that moment when the emergence of social political reality is so radical and inexplicable that it has nothing less than a theological cause." No longer was King only holding America accountable to the ideals of her founding documents. Now King was addressing the mechanisms of empire – not just its strange fruits – and holding America accountable to God.

In his reflection "Breaking the Silence of Despair" theologian Bill Wylie-Kellermann writes: "In Christian theology it is often asked, 'Why did Jesus die?' but seldom wondered, 'Why was Jesus killed?' If we ask that of Dr. King, the answer would have to pass through his public opposition to the war in Vietnam. It would need to be traced in part to his speech at Riverside Church, forty year ago this holy week, exactly one year before his death."

Dr. Harding recalled that in deciding to make the "Beyond Vietnam" speech, King in a sense "caught up with some of the more radical folks within the freedom movement, like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]. Because SNCC had been coming out openly opposed to the war especially out of the context of their gallant work in the grassroots southern rural communities and their coming into touch early with the boys who were coming back dead from their being drafted into that war. SNCC was encouraging others to raise real questions about what it meant for these young men to be sent to supposedly fight to protect democracy in Southeast Asia when there was no democracy for them in Southwest Georgia. Stokely [Carmichael] was very, very glad when he understood that Martin was going to lift this up to another level."

The prescient thing about King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech is that you can replace the word "Vietnam" with "Iraq" and hear an indictment that still shakes us as Americans to the core of our soul. At the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq at the Washington National Cathedral in D.C. two weeks ago, I heard Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, the "spiritual home" of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preach a sermon that sent shivers down my spine.

"[President Bush] is pushing forward with his surge of troops, deepening our involvement in the morass of an unnecessary war. Ignoring public sentiment clearly expressed in this past November's elections, ignoring the advice of his much trumpeted bi-partisan Iraq Study Group, and ignoring the counsel of his own generals, he insists that this is the way to go. And, the Congress, by its actions or lack of action this week, has proven thus far to be too morally inept to intervene, too politically compromised to act with real courage and conviction … On both sides of the aisle, the controlling concern is that America may lose the war, and so the question being asked is, 'What are we going to do to keep from losing the war.' I submit that as people of faith, we must re-frame the question and help others to understand that the danger confronting America is not that we may lose the war. The real danger is that America may well lose its soul. We must re-frame the question."

"We must tap into the best of our respective faith traditions in order to redeem the soul of America. I remember my own crucified people who endured the cross of slavery and segregation. They identified with Jesus because existentially they knew what crucifixion was all about. In the spiritual, they asked, 'Were you there when they crucified my Lord?' And, during the era of Jim Crow segregation, they identified with this Jesus hung on a tree because they knew what lynching was all about. Billy Holiday used to sing about it. 'Southern trees bear strange fruit. Blood on the leaves, blood at the root. Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.' His own ruthless brutality notwithstanding, I could not help but hear that haunting song as I watched Saddam Hussein hang at our behest. I thought to myself, 'Surely, we're better than that!' And before that the violent carnival and absurd human cruelty of Abu Ghraib (photos). Surely, we're better than that! And then to witness the neglect of our own soldiers at Walter Reed! Surely, we're better than that! We need a surge of troops in the nonviolent army of the Lord. We need to lift high the cross as 'an eternal symbol of the extent to which God is willing to go to restore broken communities.' We need a surge in conscience. A surge in truth telling and activism. We need a surge in the nonviolent army of the Lord."

"'A time comes when silence is betrayal,'" preached King. That time has come for us in relation to Iraq. How will you lift high the cross this Holy Week? How will you follow the Lord through the streets of American cities and the streets of Baghdad and Basra? Will you help carry the cross? Will you let your hearts be broken and converted? Will you shout that death has no dominion in the cross and resurrection of Christ? Will you proclaim that we are "better than this"? We, "the whole multitude of Jesus' disciples" must "praise God aloud with joy for all the mighty deeds" we have seen (Luke 19:37). We must shout out that the Prince of Peace is sovereign: "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest" (Luke 19:38). If we don't do this—or if we are prevented from doing this—Jesus says: "I tell you, if they keep silent, the stones will cry out!" (Luke 19:40).

Rose Marie Berger, an Associate Editor of Sojourners, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.