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Article in Journal for Peace and Justice Studies · January 2009

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 THE JOURNAL FOR
PEACE AND JUSTICE
STUDIES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Volume 19, Number 2

RICHARD W. MILLER, CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY

Pro-life Moral Principles and Pro-life Strategies: Expanding
the Catholic Imagination and Response to Abortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

DANIELLE POE, UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

Mothers’ Civil Disobedience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

ANDREW FITZ-GIBBON, PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT, SUNY CORTLAND

The Praxis of Nonviolence and the Care of Children
Who Have Been Victims of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46

DANIEL R. GILBERT, JR., ETHICS AND MANAGEMENT, GETTYSBURG COLLEGE

Setting Our Sights On Sites: Putting Competition
To Work For Liberal Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49

BOOK REVIEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103

 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES AND PRO-LIFE STRATEGIES:
EXPANDING THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION AND RESPONSE
TO ABORTION
Richard W. Miller
Abstract
There has been a conflation by many Catholics of the Church’s pro-life
teaching with the strategy of overturning Roe v. Wade. In this paper, I argue that
there are other ways for Catholics to think about and respond to the tragedy of
abortion. First, I argue that there are serious limitations to the present legal
strategy of overturning Roe. Second, I turn to social scientific data to describe
the conditions that lead to abortions. Third, I argue that the Catholic strategy
should be mindful of the limits of the present legal strategy and should be
developed in accord with what the social scientific data reveals. Finally, since
the multiple factors that lead to abortions demand a complex multi-faceted
response, I suggest some ways Catholics should respond to the abortion problem
within the Church and the wider political sphere.
In April 2008 a well known pro-life Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec
was denied communion because he had recently endorsed Barack Obama for
president. According to Kmiec, at a Mass prior to a dinner speech to Catholic
business leaders “a very angry college chaplain excoriated my Obama-heresy
from the pulpit at length and then denied my receipt of communion.”1 The
Kmiec affair is troubling on many levels. It signals that the tactics of a few
bishops in the 2004 presidential campaign have extended beyond the purview of
the bishops to priests. The episode with Douglas Kmiec could set the stage for
further actions by priests across the country, which would mean that any
Catholic who makes it known that he or she is democrat or are supporting
Obama could be subject to a confrontation at the altar concerning reception of
communion. The Kmiec incident also reveals how there has been a conflation of
the Church’s pro-life teaching with the strategy of overturning Roe v. Wade.
Kmiec has for years been outspoken in his criticism of the Roe decision and
backs up his words with impeccable pro-life credentials—he is Chair and
Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University and was former St.
REVISIONING JUSTICE: THE JUSTICE CONTEXT
FOR UNDERSTANDING AND OPERATIONALIZING
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
Joyce Zavarich
Abstract
What is Justice? Society depends on justice for its stability and the well-being
of its members. Justice is usually carried out in accordance with the established
law. Justice can be grounded in societal norms, human and religious values,
and/or established civil law. Generally, justice seeks to ensure fair treatment for
all of humanity. This article sets forth the justice context for understanding and
operationalzing restorative justice by first explaining a variety of types of justice
to lay a foundation for understanding the complexity of the concept of justice.
Following the typology, a review of the concept of restorative justice, addressing
its beginnings, practitioners, key concepts, principles, values, practices, and
description is given. Finally, examples from my teaching experience at a
maximum security prison enhance my understanding of restorative justice as
restoring the humanity of us all.
Restorative Justice involves a reorientation of how we think about crime and justice.
--Howard Zehr, 1997
What is Justice? Society depends on justice for its stability and the well-being
of its members. Justice is usually carried out in accordance with the established
law. Justice can be grounded in societal norms, human and religious values,
and/or established civil law. Generally, justice seeks to ensure fair treatment for
all of humanity. In this essay, I explain a variety of types of justice to lay a
foundation for understanding the concept of restorative justice. I offer a
description and address the history, practitioners, key concepts, principles,
practices of restorative justice.
Although there are numerous types of justice, I will focus on procedural,
social, economic, distributive, retributive, and restorative justice. These
competing notions of justice depend on different views concerning the
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 3 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES
Thomas More Professor of Law and Dean of the Catholic University of America
Law School, former Director of the White Center on Law and Government at the
University of Notre Dame, and Former Constitutional Legal Counsel to
Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush. While Kmiec has never changed his
most basic pro-life convictions and thus has upheld Catholic teaching, he was
not only denied communion but he has been “declared ‘self-excommunicated’”2
on the Catholic blogs. The Kmiec event shows that many pro-life Catholics
confuse moral principles with strategies. Many Catholics have so fixated on
overturning Roe that this strategy is seen as the only possible Catholic response
to the tragedy of abortion so that if you do not focus on this strategy you are no
longer considered pro-life and thus you are no longer considered to be Catholic;
you have apostatized.3
In this article, I will show that there are other ways for Catholics to think
about and respond to the tragedy of abortion. First, I will argue that there are
serious limitations to the present legal strategy of overturning Roe. Second, I
will turn to social scientific data to help in describing the conditions that lead to
abortions. Third, I will argue that any Catholic strategy should be mindful of the
limits of the present legal strategy and should be developed in accord with what
the social scientific data reveals. Finally, since the multiple factors that lead to
abortions demand a complex multi-faceted response, I will suggest some ways
Catholics should respond to the abortion problem within the Church and the
wider political sphere.
The Limits of the Present Legal Strategy
What does it mean to overturn Roe v. Wade? If overturning Roe is the primary
strategy of many Catholics, it is crucial that we are fully cognizant of what this
entails. My conversations with ardent pro-life Catholics who are committed to
the strategy of electing Republican presidents in the hopes that they will appoint
justices to the Supreme Court who are thought to be willing to overturn Roe
reveal that many have very little sense of the legal process and what it means to
overturn Roe. They have very little sense of how unlikely it is that this strategy
will result in making abortion illegal in the United States. Their strategy relies
on the president knowing, in his or her choice of a Supreme Court justice, what
is unknowable; namely, how a particular justice “would rule in a case not yet
filed, briefed, or argued.”4 Take for instance the Supreme Court decision
Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). The plurality opinion reaffirming Roe was
written by three Reagan-Bush appointees: Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter,
and Anthony Kennedy. Justice Kennedy is a serious Catholic who accepts the
3
relationship between individuals and society, how society should be structured,
and what constitutes the appropriate goals of a just society.
Typology of Justice
A review of five types of justice (procedural, social, distributive, retributive,
and restorative) affirms the diversity and intricacy of justice. Procedural justice
deals with establishing fairness in treatment. With procedural justice, procedures
must be developed and implemented within the realm of neutrality, impartiality,
fairness, and participation and/or representation by those affected. Included in
this form of justice are adjudication, mediation, arbitration, and negotiation. The
United States legal system itself is a form of procedural justice.
The second type of justice, social justice, refers to justice that is applied to a
society and its institutions, based on the concept of a socially just and equitable
world. In such a society, all persons receive fair treatment and a just share of
resources and assets. Social justice ensures the basic human rights of all, as well
as the right to equal opportunity and benefits of society. The United Nations
Declaration of Human Rights is a prime example of the principles of social justice.
Flowing from social justice is distributive or economic justice, which deals
with providing for the fair distribution of resources and benefits to persons in a
given society. The foundation of distributive justice involves creating a society
that seeks to establish fair and just wages, prices of products and just profits for
companies without exploiting workers or consumers. For example, social justice
would be concerned with how the government or society establishes laws and
regulations regarding the rights of workers to unionize. While distributive
justice’s concern would be on the fair wages and benefits of the works once they
are able to join a union.
The fourth type, retributive justice, is concerned with justifying punishment
for past injustices, crimes, or harms done. The Biblical quote “an eye for an eye”
is an apt description of this form of justice. The foundational notion of
retributive justice is that some form of punishment will compensate for the
injustice so that balance is established. Retributive is the form of justice that is
most recognizable in legal proceedings and courts that respond to violation of
human rights, war crimes, and international law.
The final type of justice considered and the focus of this paper is restorative
justice. Foundational to restorative justice is the concept that injustice, crime,
violence, and harm are violations against individuals and communities, not
against nation or state, as implied in retributive justice. Restorative justice can
best be described as a system of justice that attempts restore situations as best
4 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
Church’s teaching on abortion and before he joined the court “called Roe the
‘Dread Scott of our time,’ a reference to the infamous 1857 ruling that
sanctioned slavery and helped spark the Civil War.”5 Yet, Kennedy co-authored
the plurality opinion of Casey that reaffirmed Roe based on the justices’
understanding of individual liberty and the principle of stare decisis (Latin, “to
stand by that which is decided”) or precedent:
While we appreciate the weight of the arguments made on behalf of the State in the
cases before us, arguments which in their ultimate formulation conclude that Roe should
be overruled, the reservations any of us may have in reaffirming the central holding of
Roe are outweighed by the explication of individual liberty we have given, combined
with the force of stare decisis. We turn now to that doctrine.
The obligation to follow precedent begins with necessity, and a contrary necessity marks
its outer limit. With Cardozo, we recognize that no judicial system could do society’s
work if it eyed each issue afresh in every case that raised it. See B. Cardozo, The Nature
of the Judicial Process 149 (1921). Indeed, the very concept of the rule of law underly-
ing our own Constitution requires such continuity over time that a respect for precedent
is, by definition, indispensable. See Powell, Stare Decisis and Judicial Restraint, 1991
Journal of Supreme Court History 13, 16.6
Stare decisis is a fundamental principle of our legal system. Stare decisis or the
reliance on precedent “is based on the assumption that certainty, predictability
and stability in the law are the major objectives of the legal system; i.e., that
parties should be able to regulate their conduct and enter into relationships with
reasonable assurance of the governing rules of law.”7 Since stare decisis is
foundational in our legal system, a party seeking to overrule a precedent faces a
formidable task. The difficulty in overturning a precedent depends on how long
the particular decision has been in effect, the extent of public and private
reliance on the decision, and the degree of consistency the decision has with
other related rules of law. The further we get away from the Roe decision the less
likely it is that Roe will be overturned. Indeed, sixteen years ago the plurality
opinion in Casey viewed Roe as settled law.
While the principle of stare decisis makes it unlikely that the court will
overturn Roe, there is an even more basic understanding of the legal process that
Catholics need to be aware of as they act upon their pro-life commitments in the
public sphere. If Roe were overturned, this would not magically end all
abortions in this country. It would not even make abortion illegal. If all the
energy and effort put into this strategy of the pro-life cause are realized, all that
happens is the issue is returned to the states and Congress who could make
abortion legal or illegal or regulate it as they see fit.
4 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
as possible and to restore broken relationships between victims, offenders, and
the wider community. Its emphasis is on healing victims’ wounds, rehabili-
tation of perpetrators to community life, and repairing the harm to relationships
and community. Therefore, the goal of restorative justice is to prevent future
harm or injustice.1
Restorative justice is usually applied within the criminal justice system
through sentencing circles and victim-offender mediation, but it is also utilized
with families, communities, workplaces, and schools as a means to deal with
conflict. For example, sentencing circles are a process which involves the
offender/s and their support group, the victim(s) and their support group,
community members and representatives from social services and the legal
system. Discussion focuses on what happened, what impact it had on the victim
and community, and what punishment is warranted. Another restorative justice
process which brings together victims and offenders on a voluntary basis with a
trained community-based mediator is known as VOM or victim-offender
mediation. During face-to-face meetings in a safe, structured setting, victims tell
the offender about the effects of the crime, and may ask questions about the
offense. The offender and victim come together in an attempt to develop options
for making matters as right as possible. Also, the offender is given the
opportunity to be held accountable and to make an apology.
In addition, it has recently been used on the international and national levels,
including the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the
aftermath of apartheid and in the United States the Greensboro (North Carolina)
Truth and Reconciliation Commission following the racial unrest and violence
of 1979.
Justice has many forms. Each form seeks to meet a particular goal or need in
society. Society needs justice in order to work effectively. For justice in all its
manifestations to be successful there will continue to be new developments in
its implementation, design, and understanding. The restorative justice movement
offers a relatively new paradigm for the practice of dispute resolution and
criminal offences with a focus on healing rather than on punishment of crimes.
Adherents to this movement believe that it has the power to transform human
relationships and help build community potential and capacities in a peaceful,
responsible manner. Restorative justice principles and practices are used to deal
with a wide spectrum of crimes, ranging from minor criminal offences to
communal violence and injustices such as that of apartheid South Africa. Before
I explain the purpose and practices of restorative justice, a basic understanding
of its historical roots will be helpful.
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 5 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES
The recent events in South Dakota show quite clearly that if Roe is
overturned, making abortion illegal in all fifty states would be nearly
impossible. Indeed, the experience of South Dakota suggests that it is not very
likely that abortion would become illegal in any of the States. In March 2006,
South Dakota became the first state since the Roe decision to pass a law banning
all abortions except when the woman’s life is at risk. This law allowed for no
further exceptions. It did not have an exception for rape, incest, or fetal defects.
As a result, the law was swiftly rejected by 56% to 44% in a voter referendum
in the November 2006 election. Even though South Dakota is a politically
conservative state, national polls taken when the South Dakota law was passed
showed that voters by 59% to 36% opposed a South Dakota-style ban in their
state.8 In addition, according to a Fox News poll, 62% “supported the right to
choose if the pregnancy ‘risks the mother’s mental health.’”9 The distinguished
legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen, in his article The Day after Roe, cites Clyde Wilcox,
the Georgetown University professor who has extensively studied public
opinion on abortion. According to Wilcox, “If you look at the polls, you’ll never
get more than 15 or 20 percent that would ban all abortions. Across the board,
around 75 percent are in favor of exceptions for rape, incest, and fetal defect, as
well as the life and health of the mother. Even in the most conservative states,
that will be over 50 percent.”10 According to Rosen’s research, national Gallup
Polls over the last thirty years consistently show that two-thirds of Americans
think abortion should be legal in the first-trimester of pregnancy, 25% think it
should be legal in the second-trimester, and only 10% think it should be legal in
the third-trimester.11 In addition, polls conducted by the National Opinion
Research Center indicate that between 80 and 90 percent of Americans support
abortion if the woman’s health is seriously at risk, the fetus has a defect, or the
woman is pregnant as a result of rape or incest.12 In light of recent events in
South Dakota and national public opinion, if Roe were overturned even the
dozen or so states that are most likely to make abortion illegal will probably end
up going the way of South Dakota.
State laws and laws passed by Congress will most likely in the end (though
this could take many years or decades) reflect the will of the people, which
means that abortion would be legal in the first trimester when there is a fetal
defect, when the woman became pregnant from rape or incest, or when the life
or health of the mother is at risk. In addition, the “health of the mother”
exception that Americans favor is open to a wide array of interpretations.
Indeed, “the health of the mother” exception is not popular among the pro-life
movement because “these exceptions have been broadly interpreted by doctors
5
Roots of Restorative Justice
Indigenous teachings about the value of community, peace, and right
relationship are powerful sources for the social, cultural and legal origins of
restorative justice. According to John Braithwaite, we can find evidence in most
cultures of both restorative and retributive traditions. However, the articulated
paradigm of restorative justice is a relatively new phenomenon.2 When speaking
of restorative justice, one way to understand it more clearly is to view it first as
a social movement. In its contemporary form, restorative justice has its origins
in the mid-1970s and evolved from of a variety of other movements. In their
book, Restoring Justice, Daniel Van Ness and Karen Heetderks Strong identify
five foundational movements that have contributed to the development of the
current restorative justice movement and thought. The first development was the
restitution movement of the 1960s which focused on the needs of victims. This
movement maintained that meeting the needs of victims would better serve the
interests of society. In 1965, the first crime victim compensation program was
established in California. Second, during the 1970s, the justice movement
emphasized informal procedures with a view to increasing access to and partic-
ipation in the legal system. This movement was significant because, at the time,
many citizens lacked confidence in the American justice system.
Third, the victims’ rights movement focused on the right of victims to
participate in the legal process. In 1972, the first victim assistance programs
were created, including Aid for Victims of Crime in St. Louis, Missouri, the Bay
Area Women Against Rape in San Francisco, California, and the Rape Crisis
Center in Washington, DC. In 1975, Philadelphia’s District Attorney Lynn
Abraham organized the first Victim’s Rights Week. That same year the National
Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) was created.
Fourth was the reconciliation/conferencing movement. This movement had
two key components. One was the victim/offender mediation movement
established by the Mennonite Central Committee that brought victim and
offender together. With the assistance of a mediator, the goal was to discuss
criminal activity and develop a practical plan to manage the crime and its
consequences. The other key component of reconciliation/conferencing
movement was the family group conferencing movement that arose from the
indigenous Maori traditions of New Zealand. Family group conferencing
brought together persons of the community most affected by the crime, such as
the victim and the offender, and the family, friends, and supporters of both.
Together they decided the resolution of the specific incident or crime. The
difference between the two components of the reconciliation/conferencing
6 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
and courts in the past to include psychological as well as physical health,”13
which inevitably watered-down the bans and thus allowed access to abortions
throughout a pregnancy “for those who were willing to negotiate the procedural
hurdles involved in proving a threat to their mental or physical health.”14
Ultimately, what we are likely to end up with after the overturning of Roe is a
shift from abortion being an unrestricted right of a woman before the fetus is
viable, which is roughly the first trimester, to the inclusion of some restrictions
on its practice before the fetus is viable. In addition, we are likely to end up with
abortion being illegal after the fetus is viable, which currently is considered to
be around twenty to twenty-two weeks, with an exception allowing for an
abortion if the life or health of the woman is endangered.
If we overturn Roe, we might not advance far from where we are now. The
Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) upheld Roe’s
protection of a woman’s right to have an abortion before the fetus is viable while
it allowed states to regulate abortions after the fetus is viable as long as the states
did not impose “substantial obstacles to the woman’s effective right to elect the
procedure.”15 The Supreme Court sustained most of the restrictions established
by the Pennsylvania law; namely, minors were required to have the consent of
one parent and after a doctor provided the woman with specific information
about the abortion procedure, the state of development of the fetus, and possible
alternatives to abortion the woman had to wait twenty-four hours before she
could have the abortion. The only part of the Pennsylvania law that the court
declared unconstitutional was the requirement that a married woman had to
inform her husband that she was having an abortion. In addition, Planned
Parenthood v. Casey (1992) allows the states to restrict abortions after the
viability of the fetus as long as these more restrictive laws have an exception for
the life and health of the woman.
‘A Better Understanding of the Truth’ about Abortion
Legality and Abortion Incidence
Pope John Paul II taught that “the Church values sociological and statistical
research when it proves helpful in understanding the historical context in which
pastoral action has to be developed and when it leads to a better understanding
of the truth.”16 The sociological data on abortion incidence suggests that the
limits of the strategy to overturn Roe are not only evident on legal, social, and
political grounds, but also because the legality of abortion is not even a very
good determiner of the number of actual abortions. As of 2006, Belgium,
Germany, and the Netherlands have the lowest abortion rates in the world.
6 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
movement is one brought together only the perpetrator and victim, while the
other included additional community and family participation.
Fifth, the social justice movement (1955-1975) which refers to a variety of
programs and projects that had different focuses ranging from struggling for
freedom for low-income people and minorities across the United States to the
Peace Movement in reaction to the Vietnam War.3
The modern Restorative Justice Movement did not have a single event to which
its history can be traced. Rather what can be seen is the development of numerous
programs and approaches based on restorative justice principles and practices
that can often be traces to indigenous practices. For example, Mennonite criminal
justice practitioners in Canada and victim-offender programs (VOP) in the
United States of America (Indiana) were among the first such programs. Also, in
1989, New Zealand first used restorative justice based on Maori traditions as the
center of its juvenile justice system. The current restorative justice movement is
indebted to the wisdom gained from each early program.
The restorative justice movement shifts the focus from punishment to repairing
and restoring what has been harmed, particularly relationships. This may also
include reparations. Restorative justice can be characterized as relational and
social because the goal is to repair relationships that have been broken or
damaged due to crime or injustice. These relationships can be interpersonal or
societal and communal. Therefore, restorative justice requires building bridges
and transformational action between persons and communities that seek to
address the effects of crime, violence, oppression, and injustice. For example:
Victim-Offender Mediation Programs (VOMP), also known as Victim-Offender
Reconciliation Programs (VORP) is a restorative justice approach that brings offenders
face-to-face with the victims of their crimes with the assistance of a trained mediator,
usually a community volunteer. Crime is personalized as offenders learn the human con-
sequences of their actions and victims (who may be ignored by the criminal justice sys-
tem) have the opportunity to speak their minds and their feelings to the one who most
ought to hear them, contributing to the healing process of the victim.4
Restorative justice fundamentally asks who and what needs to be restored and
reconciled. The concept and practice of restorative justice not only challenges
one to confront her/his notions of justice, accountability, and consequences, it
can also revolutionize the criminal justice system and introduce a new and
innovative paradigm for peace and justice education.
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 7 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES
Abortion is not only legal and widely available in these Western European
countries, but it is also generally paid for by their national health care systems.
Contrast that with the South American countries Peru, Chile, and Brazil, which
have some of the highest abortion rates in the world despite the fact that abortion
is illegal in these countries.17 The Netherlands, which has consistently had the
lowest or one of the lowest abortion rates in the world since 1975, has an
abortion rate that is 7.5 times less than Peru, 6.5 times less than Chile, and five
times less than Brazil. The Netherlands also has a maternal death rate that is 26
times less than Brazil. It should not go unnoticed that Peru, Chile, and Brazil are
overwhelmingly Catholic countries. In fact, Brazil has the largest Catholic
population in the world.
The conclusion that the legality of abortion is not a good indicator of the
incidence of abortion is clear from worldwide social scientific data, but is also
suggested by data from the United States. According to an article in the
Guttmacher Report in Public Policy, “estimates of the number of illegal abortions
in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. One
analysis, extrapolating from data from North Carolina, concluded that an
estimated 829,000 illegal or self-induced abortions occurred in 1967.”18 Based on
this estimate of 829,000 abortions in 1967, the rate of abortions was slightly
higher in 1967 (prior to the Roe decision), than in 1997. If there were an
estimated 829,000 illegal abortions in the United States in 1967, then the abortion
rate was 21 abortions for every 1,000 women ages 15-44. There were 1,186,039
abortions in the United States in 1997 and the abortion rate was 20 abortions for
every 1,000 women ages 15-44.19 Even though there were more abortions in 1997
than in 1967, because there were around 20 million more women ages 15-44 in
1997, the abortion rate in 1997 was slightly lower than in 1967.20 The data from
the United States is certainly not demonstrative because we are working off an
estimate from 1967, but it is suggestive and it clearly shows that even when
abortion is illegal you still have a high number of abortions.
Unintended Pregnancies
While the legality of abortion is not the primary indicator in determining the
number of abortions performed, the central determining factor is unintended
pregnancies. Every year there are an estimated 46 million unintended
pregnancies throughout the world and 40% of these unintended pregnancies end
in induced abortion.21 In the United States there are roughly 6.3 million
pregnancies a year and 50% of these are unintended pregnancies. Tragically
42% of all of these unintended pregnancies are aborted leading to nearly 1.3
7
Pioneers and Practitioners of Restorative Justice
The term restorative justice was first used by Randy E. Barnett (1977) and
Albert Eglash (1977). In the 1977 article “Beyond Restitution: Creative
Restitution,” Eglash used “restorative justice” as one of the three types of
criminal justice. The other two types he described were retributive and
distributive justice. According to Eglash, restorative justice does not focus on
punishment (retributive justice) or treatment of offenders (distributive justice),
but rather on the process of rehabilitation, reparation, and repair.5
Leaders in the field of restorative justice from the United States of America
include Howard Zehr, Harry Mika, Ted Wachtel, Paul McCloud, Carolyn Boys-
Watson, Kay Pranis, Janine Geske, Gordon Bazemore, Terry O’Connell, and
Mark Umbreit, among others. Perhaps the most formidable and leading
restorative justice advocate, scholar, and practioner is Howard Zehr, Professor of
Sociology and Restorative Justice in Eastern Mennonite University’s graduate
Conflict Transformation Program and former director of the Mennonite Central
Committee United States Office of Criminal Justice. Widely recognized as a key
figure in the restorative justice movement, he is often referred to as the
grandfather of restorative justice.
Zehr uses the term restorative justice in a slightly different manner than
Eglash. In particular, looking through the restorative justice lens, Zehr believes
“Crime is a violation of people and interpersonal relationships. Violations create
obligations. The central obligation is to put right the wrongs.”6 Justice is seen as
the process that leads all involved to seek reparations, reconciliation and
successful solutions that make things as right as possible. Therefore, he suggests
that we must change our justice lens when looking at crime and violence, and I
would add oppression and injustice. Victims are central to his view, which offers
a hopeful new vision that focuses on the harms of wrongdoing more than on the
rules that have been broken. According to Zehr, justice for victims will not be
served if one maintains a primary focus on the current questions that drive the
present justice system, such as: “Who did it?” “What law was broken?” or
“What kind of punishment is deserved?” The questions do not serve the victim,
Zehr maintains. Rather, real justice requires being with the victims and asking,
“Who has been hurt?” “What do they need?” “Whose obligations and responsi-
bilities are these?” These questions establish what Zehr calls the “three pillars
of restorative justice: harms and need, obligations, and engagement.”7
As it currently exists, the restorative justice movement utilizes the insights,
successes and failures of the five foundational movements, noted above.
Restorative justice programs have developed in various communities in Canada,
8 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
million abortions a year in the United States.22 Teenagers and older married
women who do not use birth control or do not use it consistently, which
represent only 10% of women in their reproductive years of 15-44, are
responsible for half of these unintended pregnancies.23
The high rate of abortions in the United States is directly proportional to the
high number of unintended pregnancies. While the United States had an
abortion rate of 22 abortions for every 1,000 women ages 15-44 in 1996,24 the
Netherlands’ abortion rate was 6 abortions for every 1,000 women ages 15-44.25
The Netherlands has consistently had the lowest or one of the lowest abortion
rates in the world because it has consistently had the lowest or one of the lowest
rates of unintended pregnancies.26 Some researchers attribute the Netherlands’
low abortion rate to its family planning program which “shows the following
characteristics: a strong wish to reduce reliance on abortion, ongoing sexual and
contraceptive education related to the actual experiences of the target groups,
and low barrier family planning services.”27 Furthermore, “acceptance of contra-
ception preceded liberalization of abortion”28 and the “society accepts abortion
only as a last resort.”29
Recent data from former Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe also shows
that reducing the number of unintended pregnancies sharply reduces the number
of abortions. The greatest drop in abortion rates from 1995 to 2003 happened in
the former Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe (the Russian Federation,
Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia). Prior to the 1990’s, abortion in these countries was
the only really reliable method of birth control. With the fall of the Soviet Union
in the 1990s these countries started to obtain dependable forms of contraception
from the West. As effective forms of contraception increased, the abortion rate
was cut in half. It dropped dramatically from 90 abortions for every 1,000
women ages 15-44 in 1995 to 44 abortions for every 1,000 women ages 15-44
in 2003.30 While this is still the highest abortion rate in the world, this is a
remarkable decline in a relatively short period of time.
Data from the United States also shows the significance of family planning
services for reducing the number of abortions. The Guttmacher Institute in its
research for the federal government reports that “publicly supported family
planning services prevent some 1.3 million unintended pregnancies each year.”31
It is projected that “if these unplanned pregnancies had occurred, they would
have resulted in some 632,000 abortions, increasing the U.S. abortion rate by
40%.”32 In addition, “University of California researchers estimated that in 2002
alone, their state’s effort to extend eligibility for Medicaid-subsidized family
planning services to more lower-income women prevented 213,000 unintended
8 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
Great Britain, Australia, Norway, Japan, and the United States (Hughes and
Mossman, 2001). Criminological thinking demonstrated in the works of
Braithwaite (1989), Marshal (1985), Umbreit (1994), and Zehr ([1990] 2005)
provided for the integration of restorative justice thought and practice into the
criminal justice field. The majority of early programs focused on juvenile
offenders. A 2001 report by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, indicated that early intervention with youth
reduces the risks of them becoming more serious offenders, thereby reducing the
number of youth in state prisons and institutions.
Today many higher education institutions are establishing restorative justice
programs. For example, Eastern Mennonite University offers a graduate
program in Conflict Transformation through the Center for Justice and
Peacebuilding which includes applied education in conflict transportation,
restorative justice, trauma healing, mediation, and other related fields.
A similar graduate Restorative Justice Project (RJP) at Fresno Pacific
University’s Center for Peacemaking and Conflict Studies includes criminal
justice, community-wide implementation of restorative justice principles, and
national, international, and society-wide reconciliation. The University of
Wisconsin Law School offers the Family Law Project-Restorative Justice
Program. It focuses on victim-initiated communication involving felony
offenders and their victims. Marquette University’s Restorative Justice Initiative
(RJI) serves as a resource for victims, communities, and restorative justice
organizations. This Law School initiative has created projects such as working
with the Alma Center and the Task Force on Family Violence to add restorative
justice to their curriculum. RJI also established Restorative Justice Programs
and Peace Circles in Chicago public schools.
The International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, opened in 2006 the world’s first graduate school focusing
primarily on restorative practices (see symposium, this issue). The IIRP has
developed a comprehensive framework of practice and thought that expands the
restorative paradigm beyond its origins in criminal justice to family and school
settings. They are currently the leading provider of restorative practices
consulting and materials throughout the world.
In addition to graduate programs, many universities have developed
undergraduate programs which incorporate restorative justice. There are several
outstanding programs. First, in Boston, Massachusetts, Suffolk University’s
Center for Restorative Justice provides many resources, such as materials on
restorative practices, programs, and principles. The center provides educational
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 9 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 9

pregnancies, averting 82,000 abortions.”33 According to an article in the events, such as training, workshops and lectures on the theory, practice, and
American Journal of Public Health, 86% of the recent decline in the teenage implementation of restorative principles. Second, the School of Social Work and
pregnancy rate in the United States is a result of improved contraceptive use, the College of Education and Human Services at the University of Minnesota
while 14% of the decline is attributed to abstinence.34 Indeed, data shows “that offers an undergraduate program that includes restorative justice. The
U.S. women using a method of contraception are only 15% as likely as sexually Restorative Justice Center at the university provides training seminars, technical
active women using no method to have an abortion. Put another way, contra- assistance, and lectures locally and around the world. It initiated the Community
ception reduces the probability of having an abortion by 85%.”35 Peacemaking Project and promotes sustained dialogue among diverse
communities in response to hate crimes, intolerance, and political violence.
Why do women have abortions? Finally, the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin provides
While the social scientific data demonstrates that the rate of abortions is an undergraduate program called victim/offender mediation.
relative to the rate of unintended pregnancies, a further question remains: why
do those 42% of women in the United States who have unintended pregnancies Key Concepts of Restorative Justice
choose to have an abortion? In the most extensive and most cited 1987 study of This brief exploration of the roots and pioneers of restorative justice allows
the reasons women have abortions women did not identify one reason.36 The for a clearer understanding of the movement’s development. Because of the
average number of reasons given was nearly four. variety of influences on the origins of the restorative justice movement and the
The most cited reason (76%) was “concern about how having a baby would development of diverse perspectives on restorative justice, several central and
change her life.”37 The change that was the biggest concern for these women was common concepts evolved. Three key concepts identified from current discourse
that a child “would interfere with job, employment or career” (67%), followed and literature on restorative justice will be presented.
by concern that a baby would “interfere with school attendance” (49%).38 While First, looking through a restorative justice lens, is the concept of seeing crime
job and school attendance, which are directly related to future prospects for as a violation of relationships and of people and not merely a violation of
employment, weighed heavily on these women, a considerable percentage external regulations.8 Figure 1 illustrates the differences in understanding
(28%) identified the fact that others (“children or other people”) depended on between viewing harm through a traditional retributive lens and that of a
them for care. restorative justice lens, as described by Howard Zehr.9
The second most cited reason was that the woman could not afford a baby at
this time (68%). Three-fourths of the women who gave this as a reason further
specified why they thought they could not afford a baby now. A majority were Two Different Views
students or were planning on continuing their education (41%), 22% were Criminal Justice Restorative Justice
unmarried, and the remaining seven reasons directly centered around having a
low income: the woman is unemployed (19%), she has a low-paying job (14%), • Crime is a violation of the law • Crime is a violation of people
and the state. and relationships.
she cannot leave her job (9%), she is on welfare (7%), her husband or partner is • Violations create guilt. • Violations create obligations.
unemployed (6%), she cannot afford basic needs (5%), she receives no support • Justice requires the state • Justice involves victims,
from her husband or partner (4%).39 Other studies confirm that low income to determine blame (guilt) and offenders, and community
impose pain (punishment). members in an effort to put
women are much more likely to have an abortion. It is four times more likely for
things right.
a single woman with no children living below the Federal poverty line (making • Central focus : offenders getting • Central focus: victim needs
around $10,000 a year) to have an abortion than a single woman making around what they deserve. and offenders responsibility for
$30,000 a year.40 Data from other countries also confirms this conclusion. Those repairing harm.

countries in the world with the lowest abortion rates not only have the lowest
rate of unintended pregnancies, but they also have a robust social safety net. If Figure 1. Variation between viewing crime from a criminal justice lens and a restorative lens.
10 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
a woman does have an unintended pregnancy and having the child presents
serious financial difficulties for her she knows that she can get the financial help
she needs to have the baby because the social services network is so strong.
The third most common reason for women having an abortion is that the
woman has a problem with her relationship or she wants to avoid being a single
parent (51%). The remaining reasons and the percentage of women who
identified them as factors in their having an abortion are as follows: she is
unready for the responsibility of having a child (31%), she does not want others
to know that she has had sex or is pregnant (31%), she feels she is not mature
enough, or is too young to have a child (30%), she has all the children she wants
or she has all grown-up children (26%), her husband or partner wants her to have
an abortion (23%), the fetus might have a health problem (13%), she has a health
problem (7%), her parents want her to have an abortion (7%), she was a victim
of rape or incest (1%). It is important to note that only 1% of women identified
rape or incest as a reason for having an abortion and only 7% identified their
health as a factor in their decision. While rape, incest, and the health of the
mother are often cited by pro-choice activists as the reasons abortion should be
legal, only a small percentage of women indicate that they have abortions for
these reasons. This data also points to a rather shocking fact; namely, that 31%
of women cited fear of people finding out they were sexually active or pregnant
as a reason for getting an abortion. This is particularly troubling for Catholics
because compared to those with other religious beliefs, Catholics were 8% more
likely to have an abortion because they did not want others to know that they
were sexually active and pregnant.41 A more positive sign for Catholics is that
they were 3% less likely to choose an abortion because of parental pressure to
have an abortion.42
A follow up study was done in 2004.43 It confirmed the results of the 1987
study with little changes in the proportion of women citing each major reason
they had an abortion. The biggest shift was that 38% of women in the 2004 study
compared to 28% in the 1987 study said that one of the reasons they ended their
pregnancy was because they had as many children as they wanted. This indicates
that there was “both a rise in the proportion of abortion patients who were
already mothers and an increased tendency of mothers to give this reason.”44 In
addition, although the percentage of women who thought having a baby would
interfere with their job or career remained high, the proportion of women who
gave this reason dropped from 50% in 1987 to 38% in 2004. Finally, the
percentage of women whose reasoning for having an abortion included not
wanting people to know they had sex or were pregnant dropped from 31% to
10 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
Looking through a retributive justice lens, crime is a violation of the state, an
act of law breaking, and a pronouncement of guilt. Retributive Justice is guided
by policies and procedures intended to limit and determine the appropriate
amount of punishment.
Restorative justice views crime as a violation of people and relationships. It
creates obligations to make things right (as right as they can be). “However, the
basic concerns about needs and roles of victims, offenders, and community
members…continue to provide the focus for both the theory and practice of
restorative justice.”10 Restorative justice includes recognizing the conflict or
harm, repairing the damage (physical and relational) as much as possible, and
creating future accountability plans and/or agreements that will prevent the
conflict from happening again.
If justice determines blame and demands punishment in a legal contest
between offender and the state, a restorative lens allows us to see that the
concern is with injuries caused and consequences of an act. Therefore, the first
key concept of restorative justice is to view crime as a fundamental violation of
people and interpersonal relationships. Victims and the community have been
harmed and are in need of restoration. Victims, offenders, and the affected
communities are the key stakeholders in justice.
Second, the restorative justice lens highlights the obligation to make things
right and to restore broken relationships. Justice viewed through this lens
involves the victim, the offender, and the community in a search for solutions
that promote repair and reconciliation. To view crime from the restorative justice
perspective is to see crime as a break in the bonds of the community. An
illustration of this is the case of the burning of the historical Moods Bridge, a
130- year old covered bridge in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The community
was outraged and devastated by the event. Six young college age men who had
grown up in the small community set fire to the bridge as a prank. The
community dealt with the destructive crime through a restorative conference
conducted by the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP).
Representative community members, the six young men, and their families
participated in a three hour conference. Following the conference, the judge
watched an unedited version of the video before imposing the sentence on the
six perpetrators. The offenders were all equally sentenced to eighteen days to
twenty-three months in county prison, $66,666 restitution, 1,000 hours
community service, and five years probation. The judge said that he saw “how
the community had been affected by the crime and observed the young men who
committed the arson apologize and try to make things right.”11
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 11
25%. The 2004 study did not further specify how this reason related to the
women’s religious background. The study concludes that “women’s reported
reasons for ending pregnancies have been consistent over time.”45
Adoption
Where does adoption fit into the decision making process of a woman with an
unintended pregnancy? Statistical data suggests that women who choose not to
parent their child are exponentially more likely to have an abortion than to put
their child up for adoption. From 1989 to 1995 less than 1% of children born to
never-married women were placed for adoption.46 In 2003 only 14,000 children
were put up for adoption, while there were more than 848,000 legally induced
abortions.47 The important question for our purposes is: why do women who
have abortions choose abortion over relinquishing their child for adoption?
Unfortunately, this question was not part of the 1987 or 2004 comprehensive
studies on why women have abortions. Indeed, to my knowledge, there is no
comparable comprehensive study that has asked this question. Most of the
studies that have been conducted focused on teenagers who did voluntarily
relinquish their children for adoption. These studies do not, however, really shed
light on whether these women seriously considered having an abortion. One
cannot get an accurate picture because abortion may never have been an option
for them. Even these studies of women who do place their children for adoption
are hampered because the relatively small number who relinquish “makes
generalization based on samples difficult.”48
At the moment the best information we have comes from various surveys like
the one conducted by Frederica Mathewes-Green.49 She expanded the categories
from the 1987 study “Why do women have abortions?” from thirteen categories
to twenty-seven categories that included barriers to adoption. Her survey was
not sent to women who had abortions, but to directors of pregnancy centers that
offer pro-life counseling and offer free housing and clothing to pregnant
women.50 She asked these directors to rank how often these various categories or
issues appeared and which were the most difficult to solve.51 Adoption was the
issue most frequently encountered and most problematic to resolve when a
woman was having difficulty continuing her pregnancy. For these women
adoption appeared too difficult practically or emotionally.52 Mathewes-Green
notes, “While it is unlikely that a pregnant woman would cite this as the reason
she has to have an abortion, pregnancy care centers apparently feel that the
difficulty of presenting adoption as an attractive option is a major handicap in
their work of persuading women to choose life.”53 In addition to this survey,
PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 11
Third, to the greatest degree possible, restorative justice seeks to repair harm
or injustice. As the example of the Moods Bridge restorative conference
demonstrates, the focus is placed on those involved in the dispute, and on the
accountability, responsibility and negotiations appropriate to make amends.
Looking through the restorative lens, crime and conflict inflict harm.
Individuals must accept responsibility for repairing that harm. Violations create
obligations and liabilities. Because restorative justice understands crime, first
and foremost, as a violation of people and interpersonal relationships, certain
critical obligations and burdens exist that vary according to the nature of the
offence and preferences of persons affected. Additionally, because perpetrators
of crime, injustice, and harm are themselves members of a community and their
actions have caused injury to that community or to another one, the offenders
have obligation and burden to try to make things as right as possible. This can
be accomplished through some form of reparations, such as financial or
community service. The community’s obligations are to victims, offenders, or
part of the general welfare of all its members.
Finally, conflict viewed through the restorative justice lens is an opportunity
for a community to learn, grow, and for those involved, to have, their concerns
addressed. Therefore, in the process of restorative justice, acknowledging the
needs of all those affected by the harm are vital. Zehr emphasizes the signif-
icance of placing key stakeholders at the forefront of the process and shaping of
the resolution. Referring to the prevalent criminal justice system, Zehr says:
It would seem logical…that victims would be at the center of the justice process with
their needs as a major focus…. In many cases, however little or none of this happens….
Our failure to take victims seriously leaves a terrible legacy of fear, suspicion, anger and
guilt. It leads to persistent demands for vengeance. It encourages building of stereo-
types…and these stereotypes lead to further distrust.12
The needs of victims for information, validation, vindication, restitution,
testimony, safety, and support are the starting points of justice. This process of
justice maximizes opportunities for exchange of information, participation,
dialogue, and mutual consent between victim and offender. According to Zehr,
“justice is mindful of the outcomes, intended and unintended, of its responses to
crime and victimization.”13
Understanding injustice, violence, and crime as violations of people,
community, and relationships is at the heart of the restorative justice paradigm.
Restorative justice is best practiced when guided by restorative values and
principles and when those most affected are both the focus and the directors of
the process.
12 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 12 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Mathewes-Green conducted listening sessions in major U.S. cities. She called What is Restorative Justice?
upon post-abortion grief counselors in each city to select five to ten women from Restorative justice requires a paradigm shift in thinking about crime,
their clientele for group conversations on their choice to abort their child. violence, and injustice. This is most apparent when restorative justice is
According to Mathewes-Green most of these women are now pro-life. She also compared to the predominant understanding of justice, which emphasizes
reviewed 566 first hand case studies from the Abortion Case Study Project, punishment and retribution (See Figure 1). But the question still remains:
which was started by David Reardon for his work on post-abortion grief.54 Based Exactly what is meant by restorative justice?
on her research Matthewes-Green maintains that the most common reason given A singular ridge definition of restorative justice is not imperative. However,
for why a woman aborted the baby instead of relinquishing it for adoption is what is imperative is a clear understanding of the principles, values, and
“visceral: ‘I could never give my baby away!’.”55 The focus here is obviously, as practices of restorative justice. Therefore, I break down restorative justice into
Matthewes-Green notes, not the good of the baby, but the immediate emotional specific categories as described in Figures 2 and 3. In addition, I offer what I
needs of the birth mother. Matthewes-Green, who is a compassionate guide to consider to be a comprehensive description of restorative justice. This
difficulties a woman faces with unwanted pregnancies, describes the woman’s description includes one element that I believe is tangentially present in the
reasoning this way: discourse on restorative justice.
The current literature regarding restorative justice can present some confusion
When she looks into her quailing heart, adoption just seems too hard….By the frustrat- about its description. Because of the wide variety of meanings given to
ing illogic of that heart, abortion may appear more appealing. The woman seems to face
two impossible alternatives: I can’t raise this child and I can’t stand letting it go—so I’ll restorative justice, it is most helpful to look at restorative justice in three ways.
just erase it. Denial is an attractive response to many difficult situations in life, and abor- Figure 2 assists in sorting out exactly what is restorative justice. Restorative
tion serves denial better than adoption or child-rearing would. “I couldn’t stand not justice can be simultaneously categorized as a theory or philosophy, a social
knowing where my baby is,” is the way this rationale is sometimes expressed.56 movement, and a process or practice. (These terms are often used
interchangeably within the restorative justice movement.), Figure 2 illustrates
While the 2004 study on why women have abortions did not raise the question this point in a more graphic manner.
of adoption, more than one-third of abortion patients in the interview portion of
the study, which included 38 women, said “they had considered adoption and Figure 2. Three ways to categorize restorative justice.
concluded that it was a morally unconscionable option because giving one’s
child away is wrong.”57
Madelyn Fruendlich tries to illuminate why birth mothers facing an unwanted Restorative Justice
pregnancy are so resistant to relinquishing their infant for adoption by
comparing these birth mothers to infertile women. She maintains, “just as the
general view that biological parenting is preferable to adoption leads the vast Category 2
Category 1 Category 3
majority of infertile individuals to pursue infertility treatment rather than
adoption, the biological preference sends the message that it is ‘unnatural’ for
birth mothers to give their children away.”58 The attitude of the general public Theory or Philosophy Social Movement Process or Practice
toward adoption also betrays a certain degree of ambivalence. When asked
whether they approve of a birth mother’s decision to place the child for adoption addresses the
if she cannot provide for it, 70% say they approve of the mother;59 yet over 50% views harm and crime seeks to institutionalize repercussions and
as a violation of people peaceful approaches to obligations created by
of respondents said they would not make the same decision.60 In short, it is harm, problem solving harm and methods with
and relationships
laudable for someone else to make such a decision, but I could not make that and violations of legal a view to putting things
and human rights as right as possible
choice. In another public opinion poll, 38% percent of Americans thought the
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 13
hardest thing for a single parent with an unintended pregnancy to do is to give
the child up for adoption compared to 25% who thought abortion would be the
hardest course of action and 24% who thought raising the child as a single parent
would be the hardest.61 Freundlich concludes, “To the extent that adoption
continues to be overlooked, seen in a conflicted light, or viewed as a last and
extremely poor alternative, it is likely to play a diminishing role in the context
of unmarried child bearing.”62
What should U.S. Catholics do?
The first thing that needs to be done is that Catholic pamphlets and discussion
groups in dioceses and parishes around the country should contribute to a “better
understanding of the truth”63 about abortion and the context in which legal,
social, political, and pastoral action has to be developed. Catholics must be well
informed about the complex situation of abortion so that their response to the
situation can match the reality on the ground.
Refocusing the Legal Strategy of Overturning Roe
I have suggested that overturning Roe v. Wade in the end might not advance
us much beyond where we presently are based on the presumption that
ultimately elected officials and the courts are going to reflect the will of the
people. The polling data shows that the will of the people could be summarized
in the phrase, “Legal, but rare.”64 While I have indicated that there might be
modest advancements in a post Roe world, there are considerable risks in
overturning Roe.
National polls suggest that the pro-choice movement has overreached in its
insistence on abortion on demand; for, as I have suggested, most Americans
want sensible restrictions on abortion like the ones sustained by the Supreme
Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: minors must have parental consent, the
mother must be fully informed of other possibilities and the state of
development of the fetus, she must wait twenty-four hours following being
informed of other possibilities before she has the abortion. Other restrictions,
like offering the woman a chance to view a sonogram prior to having an abortion
are also becoming increasingly popular with the public. Indeed, sixteen states
now have laws ranging from Mississippi’s law that the abortion clinic must
perform an ultrasound and must inform the woman of her right to see the
ultrasound to Michigan’s law that if the abortion clinic performs an ultrasound
they must inform the mother that she has a right to see it. All of these laws have
been enacted since 1996.65
PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 13
It is apparent that a description of restorative justice depends on which point
within the diagram one enters in a discussion and which view one holds. Each
of the following descriptions of restorative justice are examples of the range of
approaches to this type of justice. While no specific advantage or disadvantage
is present in the various descriptions, the focus of each varies according to the
emphasis of the writer. Figure 2 demonstrates the fullness of what is meant by
restorative justice as it is used in a variety of settings.
For example, Susan Sharpe understands restorative justice as:
justice that puts energy into the future, not into what is past. It focuses on what needs to
be healed, what needs to be repaid, what needs to be learned in the wake of crime. It
looks at what needs to be strengthened if such things are not to happen again.14
Sharpe’s description validates the premise that restorative justice is a theory as
demonstrated in Category 1 in Figure 2. Her view is philosophically based and
lays the foundations for the spectrum of restorative practices.
Carolyn Boys-Watson, Director of the Center for Restorative Justice, Suffolk
University, describes the term restorative justice as:
a broad term that encompasses a growing social movement to institutionalize peaceful
resolutions to criminal and human rights violations. These range from international
peacemaking tribunals such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South
Africa to innovations within our courts, jails, and prisons, such as victim-offender dia-
logue, community justice committees and victim impact panels. Rather than privileging
the law and the state, restorative justice engages the victim, offender and the affected
community in search of solutions that promote repair and re-conciliation. Restorative
justice seeks to build partnerships to re-establish mutual responsibility for constructive
responses to crime and wrongdoing within our communities.15
Boys-Watson enters the discourse from the point of view of Category 2 in Figure
2 and understands social movement to be the descriptive character of restorative
justice. The movement encompasses a range of restorative processes and
practices with the intent of establishing restorative justice theory in the
mainstream of current systems of domestic and international justice.
An additional explanation set forth by Tony F. Marshall (1996) characterizes
restorative justice in the vein of the Category 3 in Figure 2 when he says it “is a
process whereby all parties with a stake in a particular offence come together to
resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its
implications for the future.”16 Marshall’s view expresses the narrowest of the
examples cited here. While it serves to focus on the actual implementation of
14 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 14 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

I have outlined what I consider a moderately optimistic outcome of restorative justice, it lacks a broader base indicated by previous definitions
overturning Roe. It is possible, however, that if the pro-life movement indicated and explicates restorative justice in terms of limited practices without
overreaches in the mind of the public and overturns Roe there will be a backlash giving a clear understanding of the fullness and richness of restorative justice.
and the pendulum will swing the other way making states and Congress less It is critical to understand that the commonality among various descriptions
likely to put into place restrictions that the public presently supports. of restorative justice suggests that crime and injustice are far more than the
Furthermore, overturning Roe would most certainly inflame, to put it mildly, the breaking of laws. In addition to a violation of local, national or international law,
conflict between the pro-choice and pro-life movements.66 If the pro-choice they are seen as causing multiple injuries to all involved. Therefore, as the
position is really pro-choice and not pro-abortion, then it must address the examples illustrate restorative justice is a process that needs to include victims,
conditions that lead a woman facing an unintended pregnancy to feel like she community members, and perpetuators to assist in repairing the injuries brought
has no other option but abortion. Mary Cunningham Agee, who is pro-life, has about by violence and injustice. Because it can be described in a myriad of ways
focused upon this point of commonality. Her organization The Nurturing depending on one’s emphasis, defining restorative justice is a bit tricky. In
Network, which I profile later in the next section, has both pro-life and pro- essence, there is no all-encompassing description of restorative justice.
choice members on its board who are united by the conviction of helping women However, a commonly accepted understanding of restorative justice used
have a real choice. Planned Parenthood even lists the network as a resource for internationally is: “a process whereby all the parties with a stake in a particular
women when it counsels them.67 By addressing some of the conditions that lead offence come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of
women to have abortions The Nurturing Network has prevented thousands of the offence and its implications for the future.”17 Regardless of how restorative
abortions. The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice is another organi- justice is labeled, it is grounded in and guided by specific principles, values, and
zation in which those who are pro-life and pro-choice have entered into practices. The following diagram in Figure 3 illustrates this concept.
dialogue. This dialogue has led to projects to support women facing unintended
Figure 3: Restorative Justice Guiding Principles, Values, and Practices
pregnancies and has given them a real choice. It is important to recognize that
neither The Nurturing Network nor the Common Ground Network for Life and
Choice suggest that one compromise one’s fundamental beliefs. They do not Restorative Justice is guided by…
involve seeking some middle ground concerning the morality of abortion; rather,
they involve identifying points of commonality concerning practical ways to Restorative Principles Restorative Practices
Restorative Values
address the social context that contributes to women having abortions. Similar
to these organizations, the Catholic community will need to find points of • Victim-Offender
commonality with those who are pro-choice regarding effective ways to address 1. Justice requires working to Respect Dialogue
the social and economic factors that contribute to women choosing abortion.68 restore those who have been Encounter • Family Group
harmed Amends/Reparations Conferencing
For abortion, as Todd Whitmore has suggested, is too large a problem for any
2. An opportunity for full Responsibility • Community/School
one group to address by itself.69 While these organizations represent models that participation by those directly Healing Conferencing
the Catholic community could learn from and possibly build upon to more involved and affected by the Safety • Peacemaking Circles
harm
effectively prevent abortions, building upon such models would be severely Inclusion • Reparative Boards
3. Government’s role is to Reintegration • Victim Impact Panels
compromised if Roe were overturned. If Roe were overturned the pro-choice and protect a just public order Democracy • Restorative Community
pro-life conflict would be further exacerbated making it much more difficult for Service
4. Community’s role is to
those who are pro-choice and pro-life to find common ground on ways to build and maintain a just • Restitution
prevent abortions. peace • Victim Support/Services
• Reintegration Services
It is true that government should provide full legal protection for the life of
• Truth/ Reconciliation
the unborn, but having this as the primary goal of Catholic action in the U.S. Commissions
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 15
political context could ultimately undermine Catholic efforts to protect the life
of the unborn. This author would suggest that Catholic action on the legal front
focus not on overturning Roe; rather, the Catholic community should seize the
opportunity to work to get the state houses across the country to adopt laws that
more adequately reflect the public’s desire for more restrictions on abortions. In
addition, any Catholic proposals to legally restrict abortions should be based on
sound data as to what really works to reduce abortions because we do not want
to use precious political capital on restrictions that are not effective.
Contraception as a Lesser Evil than Abortion: Raising the Question
While the legal strategy has real limits, it is not the only option available for
a Catholic response to the problem of abortion in our society; rather, the effort
to legally restrict abortions must be a part of a multi-faceted effort to reduce
abortions that is based on the best data available. Unfortunately, based on
sociological data, the most effective way to prevent abortions in the United
States is the way that is most difficult for the Catholic Church. Since 42% of
unintended pregnancies in the United States end in abortion and in the United
States “contraception reduces the probability of having an abortion by 85%,”70
the most effective way to limit abortions is sex education with a focus on contra-
ception. As we have seen, once a woman has an unintended pregnancy there are
a host of other factors that come into play. Responding to these factors is much
more difficult and much less effective. While The Nurturing Network is an
exemplary institution that has helped more than 19,000 mothers have their
children over the past twenty years and is a model for the Catholic community
in responding to women who have unintended pregnancies, it has not drastically
reduced the incidence of abortion in the United States. There is no doubt that if
this institute, and other institutes were known and supported by a majority of
Catholics in every diocese in the country, we could help tens of thousands more
mothers and save tens of thousands more children. This should be a central part
of the Catholic strategy. With around 1.3 million abortions a year (over 3,500 a
day) in the United States, however, we have to recognize that this strategy will
not contribute to a radical reduction of abortions in the United States.
If the United States could cut its abortion rate from 22 for every 1,000 women
ages 15-44 to 6 for every 1,000 women ages 15-44, which is the abortion rate of
the Netherlands in 1996, then there would be nearly 1 million fewer abortions
every year in the United States. Even if we could only cut our abortion rate in
half, the way the eastern bloc countries of the former Soviet Union have done
over the past decade through the use of western methods of contraception, that
PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 15
I offer a description which is more comprehensive than any previously
suggested in that it encompasses all three categories necessary in understanding
restorative justice in its fullest sense.
Restorative justice is a social movement based on a theory or philosophy
which understands harm, crime, violence, injustice and oppression as a violation
of persons and relationships; more than merely a legal violation. As such, it
seeks to institutionalize peaceful and respectful processes and practices which
address the obligation, accountability, responsibility, reparation, and amends
created by any form of harm including, crime, violence, injustice, oppression,
and human rights violations toward the goal of restoring the humanity of all
involved and setting things right as best as possible.
One significant and dramatic demonstration of restorative justice that had a
global impact was The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC). It was set up by the South African Government of National Unity to deal
with the atrocities that occurred during the apartheid era. The TRC was an
attempt to restore a society broken by the violence and human rights violations
from all sides of the political spectrum. The TRC included all members of the
society in its hearings and was a vital process that assisted South Africans in
acknowledging its past and moving beyond it through reconciliation.
Summary
Justice can be described and identified in a variety of ways. It can be
concerned with human rights, economic rights, and maintenance of order within
a society. Justice can be based on retribution, distribution, or restoration.
Restorative justice is a relatively new justice movement beginning in the late
1970s and early 1980s. The fundamental concept that distinguishes it from
retributive justice and other forms of justice is that it understands crime as a
violation of persons and relationships. Given this basis, restorative justice can be
understood as a social movement, a philosophical theory and a group of
practices seeking to collectively resolve harm. In doing so, restorative justice
applies restorative values of healing, respect, reparation, and inclusion.
Describing restorative justice can appear problematic because descriptions
vary depending on one of three categories as illustrated in Figure 2. Thus, by
understanding restorative justice as a theory, then the focus is placed on repair,
healing, and the future. On the other hand, by understanding this form of justice
as a set of practices, focus is on the variety of processes that address the harm
and put things as right as possible. However, with these differences there is the
still the commonality of crime, and injustice must be viewed from an alternative
point of view than that of the dominant retributive model of justice.
16 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
would be a reduction of around 650,000 abortions a year in the United States.
Such radical reductions in abortion rates are going to come through sex
education that includes contraception education.
While sex outside of marriage and dividing the unitive and procreative aspects
of a conjugal act of love through contraception within marriage are evils
according to Church teaching,71 it seems fairly obvious that abortion is a greater
evil than either of these two evils. While the Church must forcefully promote
chastity outside of marriage and abstinence when necessary within marriage,
can the Church teach that if one does not choose abstinence and is not ready to
receive life into the world, they should choose the lesser evil of using contra-
ception? The question then is: is there a way to coherently uphold Church
teaching while aiding in reducing the number of abortions by articulating
(through enlisting the classical argument of counseling to the lesser evil) that
contraception is a lesser evil than abortion? I do not have the answer to this
question.72 I would suggest, however, that this avenue needs to be explored and
is analogous to moral theologian’s and church leader’s wrestling with the
problem of contraception and the pandemic of HIV/AIDS. While 22 million
people have died from AIDS and 42 million are living with HIV/AIDS, there
were 42 million abortions worldwide in 2003.73 In the HIV/AIDS discussion
there is strong consensus among moral theologians concerning permitting
condom distribution and needle exchange for the prevention of the spread of
HIV/AIDS.74 The Vatican has allowed theologians to reach a “theological
consensus on the legitimacy of various H.I.V. preventive efforts.”75 This
consensus advances the idea that church leaders, without undermining church
teaching, may support programs that distribute prophylactics in the context of an
educational program that first emphasizes church teaching on sexuality.76 In
addition, two prominent cardinals—Cardinal Martini and Cardinal Daneels—
publicly expressed agreement with the consensus among moral theologians.
Although Benedict XVI said in 2005 that “the traditional teaching of the Church
has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS,”77 the
Vatican and church leaders do seem to be wrestling with this problem.
In the U.S. context, in the dialogue following the U.S. Catholic Conference’s
pastoral letter The Many Faces of Aids: A Gospel Response (1987), which
addressed the prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS, some bishops were
concerned that advising a person whose conduct was not going to change to use
condoms to prevent the spread of disease “could be construed as approving or
promoting illicit sexual activity and therefore could compromise Catholic teaching
and confuse the faithful.”78 This concern about confusing the faithful would
16 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
Restorative justice has been marginally successful within the currently
structured criminal justice system in the United States. (I say ‘marginally’ to
indicate that it has not as yet become fully mainstream.) This is particularly true
in the area of non-violent offenses and juvenile crime. However, a fundamental
question remains: is restorative justice merely a criminal justice theory and
practice or is it further reaching? Braithwaite offers a holistic response to this
question and one that challenges each of us to alter our view of self, other, and
community, as well as move beyond hate, revenge, and violence to a new society
that values the restorative principles of community, dignity, respect, responsi-
bility and collaboration. As he writes, “Restorative justice is about struggling
against injustice in the most restorative way we can manage…it targets injustice
reduction…It aspires to offer practical guidance on how we can lead the good
life as democratic citizens by struggling against injustice. It says we must
conduct that struggle while seeking to dissuade hasty resort to punitive rectifi-
cation or other forms of stigmatizing response.”18 Braithwaite’s holistic approach
challenges each of us to move beyond hate, revenge, and vengeance to build a
new society that values the restorative principles of community, dignity, respect,
responsibility, and collaboration.
References
Braithwaite, John. Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge, UK.: University
Press. 1989.
-----. Restorative Justice and Responsible Regulation. New York: Oxford University
Press. 2002
Eglash, Albert. “Beyond Restitution: Creative Restitution,” in Joe Hudson and Burt
Galaway, eds., Restitution in Criminal Justice, pp. 91-92. Lexington, MA: D.C.
Heath and Company, 1977.
Ericson, Maria. Reconciliation and the Moral Landscape: An Exploration Based Upon
a Study of Northern Ireland and South Africa. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang,
2001.
Hughes, P., and Mossman, M.J. “Re-thinking Access to Criminal Justice in Canada: A
Critical Review of Needs and Responses.” Department of Justice – Canada.
http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/ps/rs/rep/rr03-2.pdf, 2001.
Maiese, Michelle. “Types of Justice.” July 2003. Beyond Intractability. eds. Guy
Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado,
Boulder; accessed September, 13, 2006.from
www.beyondintractability.org/essay/types_of_justice/
Marshall, Tony F. “Restorative Justice: An Overview,”[on-line] accessed August 2006.
Sharpe, Susan. Restorative Justice: A Vision for Healing and Change, Edmonton
Victim Offender Mediation Society. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 1998.
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 17 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 17

certainly be a prominent concern in any attempt to apply similar principles to the Umbreit, Mark. Victim Meets Offender: The Impact of Restorative Justice and
abortion problem. For some Catholics, however, there is already moral confusion Mediation. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 1994.
that is leading to abortions. Catholics in the 1987 study “Why Do Women Have Van Ness, Daniel and Karen Heetderks Strong. Restoring Justice. Cincinnati, Ohio:
Abortions?” were 8% more likely than people of other religious beliefs to have an Anderson Publishing Co., 1997.
Zehr, Howard. Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice. Scottsdale, PA:
abortion because they did not want others to know that they were sexually active
Herald Press, [1990] 2005.
and pregnant.79 For a Catholic woman to have an abortion because she is so afraid -----. The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2002.
of the consequences of revealing that she has had sex indicates that there is serious
moral confusion among some Catholics. To address this confusion one would
inevitably have to speak of the lesser of two evils; namely, engaging in pre-marital END NOTES
intercourse is a lesser evil than having an abortion.
1
Helping Women Keep their Children Michelle Maiese, “Types of Justice.” July 2003. Beyond Intractability. eds. Guy
While we want to prevent unintended pregnancies, we also want to provide Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado,
Boulder; accessed September, 13, 2006.from www.beyondintractability.org/essay/
conditions that will help a woman who has an unintended pregnancy bring the
types_of_justice/
baby to term and either care for the child herself or place the child for adoption. 2
John Braithwaite, Crime, Shame and Reintegration (Cambridge, UK.: University
Because placing a child for adoption is seen as such a hurdle for women, the Press), 1989.
bulk of Catholic efforts should concentrate on providing conditions for her to 3
Daniel Van Ness and Karen Heetderks Strong, Restoring Justice (Cincinnati, Ohio:
keep her child. Mary Cunningham Agee founded The Nurturing Network in Anderson Publishing Co., 1997), Chapter 2.
1985 to ensure that a woman does not choose abortion because she does not feel 4
http://www.vorp.com/ accessed Feb 20, 2007.
5
that she has no other choice. The Nurturing Network helps women with Albert Eglash, “Beyond Restitution: Creative Restitution,” in Joe Hudson and Burt
unintended pregnancies by providing solutions that are tailored to the needs of Galaway, eds., Restitution in Criminal Justice (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and
each woman. Agee began this network by conducting a survey of 100 women Company, 1977), 91, 92.
6
who had abortions. This survey was prior to the comprehensive 1987 study Howard Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice (Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
2002), 19.
“Why do women have abortions?”; yet, they share consistent features. Her 7
Ibid., 22.
survey revealed that 91 of the 100 women would not have aborted their baby if 8
Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (Scottsdale,
they had been presented a positive alternative to abortion. A positive alternative PA: Herald Press, 2005),181.
consisted of work and educational opportunities in communities other than the 9
Zehr. 2002. 21.
ones in which they were presently living. Many women felt the stigma of having 10
Ibid., 18.
an out of wedlock pregnancy and many also felt tremendous peer pressure to 11
Information from the IIRP.
12
have an abortion. Thus they desired to have opportunities in a different location. Practices EFORUM Directing Burning Bridges, a Documentary about a Restorative
In response to women’s needs in this survey, Agee developed The Nurturing Conference. Laura Mirsky August, 2005. wwwiirp.org. Accessed September 24, 2007.
13
Network. The Network is a nationwide charitable organization with 48,000 Howard Zehr, Changing Lens: A New Focus For Crime and Justice (Scottsdale:
volunteers in all 50 states and 30 countries. It has helped 19,000 women have Herald Press. 2005). 30-32
14
Susan Sharpe, Restorative Justice: A Vision for Healing and Change, Edmonton
their children. It offers medical services, legal assistance, counseling, parent
Victim Offender Mediation Society(Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 1998), 7.
training classes, and financial, educational, and employment opportunities. A 15
http://www.suffolk.edu/cas/crj/r_justice.html
referral service allows women “to move to another location, bring the pregnancy 16
Tony F. Marshall. “Restorative Justice: An Overview,” http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/
to term and then take on new job responsibilities with a member company. Thus rds/pdfs/occ-resjus.pdf -accessed August 13, 2006.
the traditional stigma attached to pregnancy and childbirth—a stigma that still 17
Ibid.
18
John Braithwaite, Restorative Justice and Responsible Regulation (Oxford
University Press. 2002), 37.
18 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 18 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

exists today—need not jeopardize the woman’s workplace vocation.”80 A similar

program was established for college students so that they could temporarily
transfer to other colleges. To date 1,000 colleges and universities have chosen to
collaborate with The Nurturing Network. Its volunteers have opened their homes
to its clients so that if a woman chooses to move to another location she can stay
with a Network-member family. The Network also offers adoption counseling in
an environment free of coercion and vested interests. If the mother decides to
give the child up for adoption, the network provides post-adoption counseling to
help the mother cope with the grief that this may bring. Relying heavily on the
generosity of its 48,000 volunteers, the average cost for helping each person is
$400. The Nurturing Network and other programs like should have a visible
presence in dioceses and should form the basis of the Catholic response to
abortion.
Catholics in their engagement in the public sphere should support programs that
will address the underlying factors that condition a woman’s choice of abortion.
As we have seen, poverty and economic concerns are major factors in a woman
choosing abortion. It should become part of Catholic consciousness that many of
the other teachings of Catholic social teaching affect the number of abortions.
Catholics must be aware that the number of abortions is directly affected by
Catholic social teaching’s myriad responses to poverty: its insistence upon
economic justice; jobs for all who can work; a living wage that allows workers to
support their families; welfare reform as a way to reduce poverty; child tax credits
to help bring people out of poverty; affordable and accessible health care as a
fundamental human right; reform of the nation’s health care system; and safe and
affordable housing.81 Welfare programs in the United States nearly directly target
groups at high risk of having abortions; for 95% of welfare recipients in the United
States are women and children. Indeed, “Federal Welfare assistance was originally
created in the 1930’s to enable single mothers to care for their children at home,
instead of losing them to foster homes or orphanages.”82 In addition, 17% of
children and 10% of families live in poverty in this country.83 While Federal
spending on the welfare program is less than 1% of the total federal budget,84 36%
of federal expenditures go to military spending.85

Making Adoption a Real Option

Catholics need to support programs that help make adoption a live option.
Although less than 1% of children born to never-married women were placed for
adoption from 1989 to 199586 and relinquishing their child remains a nearly
unbearable burden for many women, the Catholic community should invest
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 19 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 19

itself in making this a more viable option for women. The first thing that must
be done is to commission a comprehensive study on why women choose
abortion over adoption. If we are going to have an effective response we need to
have good information. In the meantime we can work off of present data to make
this a more welcome option for women. Mathewes-Green, in her research, refers
to the National Council for Adoption Factsheet that “cites a 1991 study which
showed that programs that included discussion of adoption with every client,
compared to programs that did not, were seven times more likely to have teens
make an adoption plan. When the teen’s parents were involved, they were six
times more likely to choose adoption.”87
One central way women can learn about what adoption entails so that
adoption can become a real possibility for them is through counseling provided
by the Federal Family Planning Program (Title X), which was created by the
Family Planning and Population Research Act of 1970. This program both tries
to prevent unintended pregnancies through contraception education and to
provide counseling for those who have unintended pregnancies. It does not fund
abortions. In this counseling setting a woman is informed about what is involved
in her three options: prenatal care and delivery, foster care or adoption, and
abortion. This counseling setting presents abortion as an option; nevertheless,
this counseling setting increases the likelihood that the mother will choose to put
the child up for adoption rather than aborting the child. In the absence of such
counseling, the mother is less likely to fully understand the adoption process and
thus less likely to recognize adoption as a real possibility. The Family Planning
Program is only partially funded. Since the 1980’s Congress has not funded the
program to keep up with inflation. In 1980 the program was allocated $162
million in funds. To match this funding level adjusting for inflation, Congress
would have had to provide $590 million as of 2002. Congress, however, in 2003,
allocated $275 million for the program, which is less than half of what it should
be funded.88 The underfunding of this program means that an estimated 39% of
those who could be served by such counseling are not being reached.89

Conclusion
The Catholic community in dioceses across the United States must continue to
call upon the Church and the wider society to uphold the dignity of human life
especially those who are most vulnerable including the unborn. It must continue
to insist upon the grave moral seriousness of abortion. These consciousness
raising activities should be vastly expanded to include the latest sociological data
to inform Catholics and the wider culture of the multiple conditions that lead to
20 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 20 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

abortions and the legal, social, and political context in which Catholics in the
United States must act. A “better understanding of the truth”90 about abortion is
the first step in formulating an effective response. The multiple conditions that
lead to abortions require a complex multi-faceted response that will make much
greater demands on the energy, talents, and finances of Catholics; for as Douglas
Kmiec rightly suggests, “To think you have done a generous thing for your
neighbor or that you have built up a culture of life just because you voted for a
candidate who says in his brochure that he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade is far
too thin an understanding of the Catholic faith.”91

END NOTES

1
Douglas W. Kmiec, “Doug Kmiec on ‘The Politics of Apostasy’” Catholic Online May
15, 2008, http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=27956 (accessed July 2, 2008).
2
Ibid.
3
It is important to note that Obama had maintained throughout the campaign, well in
advance of the Kmiec incident, that although he wanted abortion to be legal he wanted
to reduce the number of abortions. He wanted to bring the pro-choice and pro-life camps
together to agree that they should reduce the number of abortions by making sure adop-
tion is an option and by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. Thus those who
hold that a Catholic could not possibly support Obama because of his position on abor-
tion assume that a Catholic pro-life strategy must involve trying to overturn Roe in an
effort to make abortion illegal. For a selection of Obama’s campaign comments on abor-
tion see Jeff Zeleny, “Obama Explores Abortion Issue,” New York Times, Oct. 6, 2007.
See also Obama’s speech on June 28, 2006, “Politics and Faith: A Call to Renewal,” in
Barack Obama: Speeches 2002-2006, edit. Maureen Harrison & Steve Gilbert
(Carlsbad, CA: Excellent Books, 2007). See also Douglas W. Kmiec, Can a Catholic
Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama (Woodstock, NY:
Overlook Press, 2008), p. 46.
4
Douglas W. Kmiec, Can a Catholic Support Him? p. 36.
5
Jeffrey Toobin, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (New York:
Doubleday, 2007), p. 53.
6
Supreme Court of the United States, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833,
853-854 (1992).
7
Moradi-Shalal v. Fireman’s Ins. Companies, 46 Cal.3d 287, 296 (1988).
8
See Jeffrey Rosen, “The Day after Roe,” The Atlantic Monthly Online, June 2006,
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200606/roe, p. 5.
9
Ibid., p. 5.
10
Ibid., p. 4.
11
Ibid., p. 4.
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 21 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 21

12
See ibid, p. 4.
13
Ibid, p. 6.
14
Ibid, p. 6.
15
Supreme Court of the United States, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833,
834 (1992).
16
Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, par. 5. See also Vatican II, Gaudium et
spes, #62.
17
This data comes from the extensive worldwide study done by the Guttmacher
Institute in 1999: Guttmacher Institute, “Sharing Responsibility: Women, Society, and
Abortion Worldwide,” (New York: Guttmacher Institute, 1999). Here I have used the
shorter summary of this study: Cynthia Dailard, “Abortion in Context: United States and
Worldwide,” (Guttmacher Institute, May 1999), http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/
ib_0599.html. The Guttmacher Institute was founded in 1968 to provide non-partisan
social scientifically based evidence to aid the government in forming policies and the
public in assessing the sensitive issues of reproductive health and reproductive rights.
Although the Guttmacher institute was originally constituted as a semiautonomous divi-
sion of Planned Parenthood, its data is considered to be the most accurate data on abor-
tion numbers. Its data is accepted by many pro-life organizations like the National Right
to Life (http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/aboramt.html) and the Center for Bioethical
Reform (http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html). According to the
Guttmacher Institute, “Articles in the Institute’s domestic and international journals
undergo blinded peer review. The Guttmacher Institute neither accepts direct project
support from profit-making organizations that might benefit from its findings nor allows
specific funding agencies to influence its agenda” (http://www.guttmacher.org/
about/faq.html). If one objects that these statistics must be biased because they come
from the research arm of Planned Parenthood, then the only proper response is to estab-
lish a similar institute under pro-life auspices with data subjected to blinded peer review.
The Guttmacher Institute’s $11 million annual operating budget supports a staff of 61
and many of them are distinguished professionals in their field.
18
Rachel Benson Gold, “Lessons before Roe: Will Past be Prologue?” Guttmacher
Report on Public Policy, March 2003, vol. 6, no. 1.
19
Laurie D. Elam-Evans, Lilo T. Strauss, Joy Herndon, Wilda Y. Parker, Sonya V.
Bowens, Suzanne Zane, Cynthia J. Berg, “Abortion Surveillance—United States 2000”
(Atlanta, GA: Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, Nov. 28, 2003/52SS12; 1-32) table 2, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pre-
view/mmwrhtml/ss5212a1.htm.
20
Census data shows that in 1967 there were 40,387,000 women ages 15-44 and in
1997 there were 59,688,000 women ages 15-44. See Stephanie J. Ventura, Christine A.
Bachrach, “Nonmarital childbearing in the United States, 1940-1999,” Hyattsville,
Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics, 2000), 32, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
data/nvsr/nvsr48/nvs48_16.pdf.
21
Cynthia Dailard, “Abortion in Context: United States and Worldwide.”
22 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 22 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

22
Guttmacher Institute, “Get ‘In the Know’: 20 Questions about Pregnancy,
Contraception, and Abortion,” http://www.guttmacher.org/in-the-know/index.html
(accessed May 30, 2007).
23
Ibid.
24
See Stanley K. Henshaw, Susheela Singh and Taylor Haas, “Recent Trends in
Abortion Rates Worldwide,” International Family Planning Perspectives, vol. 25, no. 1
(March 1999), table 1.
25
Ibid., table 1.
26
Aida Torres, Elise F. Jones, “The Delivery of Family Planning Services in the
Netherlands,” Family Planning Perspectives, vol. 20, no. 2 (Mar.-Apr., 1988), pp. 75-79.
Since it has had the lowest or one of the lowest abortion rates in the world since 1975, the
Netherlands’ policies have been the subject of a great deal of study. See also Stanley K.
Henshaw, Susheela Singh and Taylor Haas, “Recent Trends in Abortion Rates Worldwide.”
27
Evert Ketting, Adriaan P. Visser, “Contraception in the Netherlands: the low abor-
tion rate explained,” Patient Education and Counseling, vol. 23 no. 3 (July 1994), p. 161.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
Susan A. Cohen, “New Data on Abortion Incidence, Safety Illuminate Key Aspects
of Worldwide Abortion Debate,” Guttmacher Policy Review, Fall 2007, vol. 10, no. 4.
31
Susan A. Cohen, “Toward Making Abortion ‘Rare’.”
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
John S. Santelli, Laura Duberstein Lindberg, Lawrence B. Finer, Susheela Singh
“Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: The
Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use,” American Journal of
Public Health, vol. 97, no. 1, January 2007, pp. 150-156.
35
Susan A. Cohen, “A Message to the President: Abortion Can be Safe, Legal and
Still Rare,” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy, Feb. 2001, vol. 4, no. 1.
36
Aida Torres and Jacqueline Darroch Forrest, “Why Do Women Have Abortions?”
Family Planning Perspectives, vol. 20, no. 4 (July–Aug., 1988), pp. 169-176. The study
included 1,900 women from 30 abortion facilities.
37
Ibid., Table 1, p. 170.
38
Ibid., Table 2, p. 172.
39
Ibid., Table 2, p. 172.
40
Guttmacher Institute, “Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States,” July 2008,
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html (accessed July 25, 2008).
See also the study by Joseph Wright & Michael Bailey, “Reducing Abortion in America:
The Effect of Economic and Social Supports” (Catholics in Alliance for the Common
Good, August 2008), http://www.catholicsinalliance.org/files/CACG_Final.pdf.
41
Aida Torres and Jacqueline Darroch Forrest, “Why Do Women Have Abortions?”
p. 174
42
Ibid., p. 174
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 23 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 23

43
Lawrence B. Finer, Lori F. Frohwirth, Lindsay A. Dauphinee, Susheela Singh, Ann
M. Moore, “Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative
Perspectives,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 37(3), 2005, pp. 110-118.
44
Ibid., p. 113.
45
Ibid., p. 117.
46
Child Welfare Information Gateway, “Voluntary Relinquishment for Adoption:
Numbers and Trends,” March 2005, http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/s_place.pdf. The
data comes from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth (HSFG), which is the only
national source of data concerning voluntary relinquishment for adoption. Data from the
2002 survey has not yet been analyzed.
47
Lilo T. Strauss, Sonya B. Gamble, Wilda Y. Parker, Douglas A. Cook, Suzanne B.
Zane, Saeed Hamdan, “Abortion Surveillance—United States 2003,” (Atlanta, GA:
Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
November 24, 2006/55(SS11); pp. 1-32, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/
mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm. Since California, along with several other states, stopped
reporting their abortion data after 1997, this figure is significantly lower than the actual
total number of abortions in the United States.
48
Child Welfare Information Gateway, “Voluntary Relinquishment for Adoption:
Numbers and Trends,” p. 4 of pdf.
49
See Frederica Mathewes-Green, Real Choices: Listening to Women; Looking for
Alternatives to Abortion (Ben Lomond, California: Conciliar Press, 1997).
50
She sent the survey to 1,980 centers and around 10% of these centers completed
and returned the surveys.
51
Real Choices, p. 12.
52
Real Choices, p. 100.
53
Real Choices, p. 12.
54
See David C. Reardon, Aborted Women, Silent No More (Chicago: Loyola
University Press, 1987).
55
Real Choices, p. 103.
56
Real Choices, p. 104.
57
Lawrence B. Finer, Lori F. Frohwirth, Lindsay A. Dauphinee, Susheela Singh, Ann
M. Moore, “Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative
Perspectives,” p. 117.
58
Madelyn Freundlich, “Supply and Demand: The Forces Shaping the Future of
Infant Adoption,” Adoption Quarterly, vol. 2(1), 1998, pp. 13-46 at 32. Here Freundlich
is referring to the work of Elizabeth Bartholet, Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics
of Parenting (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993).
59
The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Benchmark Adoption Survey: Executive
Summary, 1997, http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/survey/baexec.html#three (accessed
on July 23, 2008).
60
Ibid.
61
Freundlich here is citing a Los Angeles Time survey from March 3-10, 1989.
24 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 24 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

62
Freundlich, “Supply and Demand: The Forces Shaping the Future of Infant
Adoption,” p. 32.
63
John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, par. 5.
64
This is the phrase that was used by Bill Clinton, but Clinton’s actions fell far short
of this goal as he vetoed the partial birth abortion ban.
65
See National Right to Life Committee, Inc., “Woman’s Right to Know: States that
Offer Ultrasound Option, May 16, 2008,” http://www.nrlc.org/WRTK/UltrasoundLaws/
StateUltrasoundLaws.pdf (accessed July 28, 2008).
66
See Todd David Whitmore, “Arms Unfolded,” Notre Dame Magazine Online,
Summer 2005; Frederica Mathewes-Green, “Pro-life, pro-choice: Can we talk?”
Christian Century, Jan. 3-10, 1996, pp. 12-15.
67
Todd David Whitmore, “Arms Unfolded.”
68
It is important to recognize that the examples I have given of cooperating with those
who are pro-choice are neither instances of immoral cooperation nor scandal. In these
examples, the person who is pro-life does not compromise her pro-life convictions. She
rejects abortion and actively opposes abortion. Thus she does not cooperate with those
who are pro-choice in an actual abortion or to promote abortion. She cooperates with
those who are pro-choice in order to reduce the incidence of abortion through activities
that address some of the social conditions that contribute to women having abortions.
This type of cooperation with those who are pro-choice is also not an instance of scan-
dal. Scandal is an attitude or behavior that directly or indirectly leads others to do wrong
(see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, par. 2284-2287). The pro-life person
does not compromise her beliefs and continues to publicly oppose abortion, so such
cooperation does not lead to tacit approval of abortion or a permissiveness concerning
abortion that leads to a decline in morals. Indeed, participating with those who are pro-
choice to address the social and economic factors that lead to abortion is an expression
of her public opposition to abortion and it addresses another form of scandal that is “in
open contradiction of the Gospel” (ibid; par. 1938); namely, the indifference to the poor
that permeates a society with excessive economic and social inequality. According to the
Catechism, “excessive economic and social disparity between individuals and peoples of
the one human race is a source of scandal and militates against social justice, equity,
human dignity, as well as social and international peace” (ibid.). Such economic dispar-
ity is increasing in the United States where “80 percent of net income gains since 1980
went to people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, boosting their share of
total income to levels unseen since before the Great Depression.” Larry M. Bartels,
“Inequalities,” The New York Times, April 27, 2008.
69
Todd David Whitmore, “Arms Unfolded.”
70
Susan A. Cohen, “A Message to the President: Abortion Can be Safe, Legal and
Still Rare.”
71
The Church teaching on contraception in Humanae Vitae concerns marital love. In
order to preserve the fullness of mutual self-giving in conjugal love, the couple must not
 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 25 PRO-LIFE MORAL PRINCIPLES 25

render procreation impossible and thus divide the unitive and procreative meaning of the
conjugal act. Humanae Vitae, par. 12-15.
72
It is important to reiterate that I am not here advocating contraception or even
responding to this question. I am simply suggesting that the social scientific data raises
an important question that the Catholic community should consider. In addition, I am
suggesting that an important resource for reflection on this question is the work done by
moral theologians on the question of contraception in the face of the pandemic of
HIV/AIDS. Though it is beyond the scope of this essay, the question that I am raising in
this article will require further reflection on the principle of legitimate cooperation. The
application of this principle to the question of providing information about contracep-
tion use to reduce abortions is analogous to the question of providing information about
contraception use to people with HIV/AIDS to avoid the spread of the disease. There is
extensive literature on the HIV/AIDS issue, including the question of cooperation, scan-
dal, and proportionality. See James F. Keenan S.J., “Prophylactics, Toleration and
Cooperation: Contemporary problems and traditional principles,” International
Philosophical Quarterly 29(2), June 1989, pp. 205-20; James F. Keenan S.J., “Living
with HIV/AIDS.” The Tablet 249, 3 Jun 1995, p. 701; James F. Keenan S.J.,
“Institutional cooperation and the Ethical and Religious Directives,” Linacre Quarterly
64, Aug. 1997, pp. 53-76; James F. Keenan S.J., “Applying the seventeenth-century
casuistry of accommodation to HIV prevention,” Theological Studies 60, 1999, pp. 492-
512; James F. Keenan, S.J., Jon D. Fuller, S.J., M.D., Lisa Sowle Cahill, Kevin Kelly,
eds. Catholic Ethicists on HIV/AIDS Prevention (New York: Continuum, 2000). James
F. Keenan S.J., “Collaboration and cooperation in Catholic health care,” Australasian
Catholic Record 77, Apr 2000, pp. 163-74. James F. Keenan, S.J. and Jon D. Fuller, S.J.,
M.D., “The Vatican’s New Insights on Condoms for H.I.V. Prevention: Tolerant
Signals,” America Sept. 23, 2000; James F. Keenan, S.J. and Jon D. Fuller, S.J., M.D.,
“Condoms, Catholics and HIV/AIDS prevention,” The Furrow 52(9), Sept. 2001, pp.
459-67; James F. Keenan, S.J. and Jon D. Fuller, S.J., M.D., “Church Politics and HIV
prevention: Why is the condom question so significant and so neuralgic?” in Between
Poetry and Politics: Essays in Honour of Enda McDonagh, edit. Linda Hogan and
Barbara FitzGerald (Dublin: Columba Press, 2003) pp.158-81; Kevin Kelly, New
Directions in Sexual Ethics: Moral Theology and the Challenge of AIDS (London:
Chapman, 2000); Enda McDonagh, “Theology in a time of AIDS,” Irish Theological
Quarterly 60(2), 1994, pp. 81-99; Ann Smith and Enda McDonagh, The Reality of
HIV/AIDS (Dublin: Veritas, 2003).
73
Guttmacher Institute, Facts on Induced Abortion Worldwide, October 2007.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html
74
See James F. Keenan, S.J., Jon D. Fuller, S.J., M.D., Lisa Sowle Cahill, Kevin
Kelly, eds. Catholic Ethicists on HIV/AIDS Prevention (New York: Continuum, 2000).
75
Jon D. Fuller, S.J., M.D. and James F. Keenan, S.J., “The Vatican’s New Insights
on Condoms for H.I.V. Prevention: Tolerant Signals,” America Sept. 23, 2000.
76
Ibid.
26 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 26 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

77
Pope Benedict XVI, “Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Bishops of
South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and Lesotho, on their ‘Ad Lima
Apostolorum’ Visit,” June 10, 2005, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/
speeches/2005/june/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050610_ad-limina-south-
africa_en.html.
78
Jon D. Fuller, S.J., and James F. Keenan, S.J., “Introduction: At the End of the First
Generation of HIV Prevention,” in Catholic Ethicists on HIV/AIDS Prevention, p. 22.
79
See Aida Torres and Jacqueline Darroch Forrest, “Why Do Women Have
Abortions?” p. 174.
80
Todd David Whitmore, “Arms Unfolded.”
81
See Part II of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Forming Consciences for
Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibilty from the Catholic Bishops of the
United States (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2007).
82
National Priorities Project, “National Priorities Quick Report: Poverty in
Nebraska” http://nationalpriorities.org (accessed July 28, 2008)
83
Ibid.
84
Ibid.
85
Present military spending accounts for 28% of military spending and payment on
the debt for military spending accounts for 9%. See National Priorities Project, “Where
Do Your Tax Dollars Go?” http://www.nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com
_content&task=view&id=286&Itemid=28 (accessed May 29, 2007).
86
Child Welfare Information Gateway, “Voluntary Relinquishment for Adoption:
Numbers and Trends.”
87
Real Choices, p. 112.
88
The Center for Reproductive Rights, “Title X: Family Planning,” Jan. 2004,
http://www.reproductiverights.org/pub_fac_titlex2.html (accessed July 4, 2008)
89
Frank Bonati, “Pro-Choice Family Planning and Adoption: A Case to Strengthen
Mutual Support” in Adoption Fact Book III, ed. Connaught Marshner, William L. Pierce
(Waite Park, MN: National Council for Adoption, 1999), pp. 287-288, http://www.ncfa-
usa.org/documents/AdoptionFactbook.pdf.
90
John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, par. 5.
91
E.J. Dionne, Jr. “For an ‘Obamacon,’ Communion Denied,” Washington Post, June
3, 2008.
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Danielle Poe
Abstract: “Mothers’ Civil Disobedience”
In this paper, I consider how the nonviolent civil disobedience of Molly Rush
and Cindy Sheehan reflect the inherent ambiguity of mothering in a militaristic
society. First, if a mother says nothing and does nothing about the pervasive
militarism in society the very lives of her children (as well as other children) are
at risk. But, if a mother speaks out against militarism or commits an act of civil
disobedience, she risks scorn and imprisonment that can interfere with, or make
impossible much of the work of mothering. Second, part of mothering involves
raising children to be socially acceptable, but in a militaristic society that which
is socially acceptable is morally unacceptable. Rush and Sheehan use their
particular context to successfully challenge U.S. militarism through non-violent
civil disobedience.
Abstract
In the summer of 2005, Cindy Sheehan began trying to meet with President
George W. Bush to ask him why the United States is waging a war in Iraq, a war
that caused the death of her son, Casey. Because Bush resolutely refused to meet
with Sheehan, she engaged in protesting outside of his ranch in Texas, following
him as he travelled around the country, and engaging in a hunger strike in
Washington D.C. For months, the media was captivated by Sheehan’s
persistence. Some observers were moved by the plight of a mother searching for
meaning in her son’s death. Other observers seemed to be outraged by a mother
who would demand accountability from the president of the United States.
Central to many of the responses are certain beliefs about what mothers ought
to do when moved to act politically as mothers.
Sheehan’s quest to ask questions about and find meaning in her son’s death
reflects many of the virtues of maternal work that are recognized by American
society and highlighted in Sara Ruddick’s book, Maternal Thinking: Toward a
Politics of Peace (Ruddick 1995). In her persistent questioning and protests,
Sheehan reveals the ambiguity inherent in mothering in the United States. First,
THE INTERSECTION OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
WITH TRAUMA HEALING, CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION
AND PEACEBUILDING
Howard Zehr
Abstract
Although it originated in criminal justice, restorative justice is essentially a
peacebuilding or conflict transformation approach to justice. The cross-
disciplinary experience at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding has
suggested some important lessons for restorative justice, peacebuilding and
related fields. These include the role of trauma and victimization in justice and
peacebuilding; the significance of justice questions in trauma and conflict
resolution; the importance of addressing responsibilities as well as needs; the
role of shame, storytelling and empathy; the commonality of underlying values;
the need for our fields to address underlying issues of bias and structure; and the
susceptibility of our fields to unintended consequences. Restorative justice
suggests some questions and issues that may be of use to peacebuilding practi-
tioners in general. Above all, it is important for all of us to see ourselves within
a larger umbrella of peacebuilding; this will require that we move from
competition to collaboration and adopt a common vision of “justpeace.”
What Is Restorative Justice?
Restorative justice seeks to reframe the way we conventionally think about
wrongdoing and justice: away from our preoccupation with lawbreaking, guilt
and punishment toward a focus on harms, needs and obligations. This approach
especially emphasizes the importance of the engagement and empowerment of
those most affected by wrongdoing and the use of problem-solving approaches.
Some have termed it a needs-based understanding of justice, in contrast the
deserts-based approach of the western legal model (Sullivan and Tift).
The basic elements or outlines of restorative justice are better understood and
more agreed upon than a specific definition or list of principles. Nevertheless, I
suggest the following definition as a general introduction:
Restorative justice is an approach to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a
28 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
if a mother says nothing and does nothing about the pervasive militarism in
society, then the very lives of her children and the children of others are at risk.
But, if a mother speaks out against militarism or commits an act of civil disobe-
dience, then she risks scorn and imprisonment that can interfere with, or make
impossible, much of the work of mothering. Second, part of mothering involves
raising children to be socially acceptable, but in a militaristic society that which
is socially acceptable is morally unacceptable. Mothers who understand the
danger that a militaristic society poses to their children must decide between
raising their children in ways that are acceptable and will help them to be
successful in this society and raising them to reject society’s militarism, which
may cause their children to be excluded from many of the comforts that those
who conform can expect.
Molly Rush is another mother whose nonviolent civil disobedience
demonstrates the pressing ethical dilemmas that many mothers experience in the
militaristic society of the U.S. She acted to disrupt the day-to-day militarism of
American society on September 9, 1980, when she participated in a nonviolent
action to make the nose-cone of a nuclear weapon useless. Her act, which I will
describe shortly, was inspired by her children and other children, but in carrying
out her act, she risked leaving her family and being unable to fulfill some of the
maternal work that led her to act.
While it may seem unusual to compare Rush’s actions from the 1980’s to
Sheehan’s actions in 2005, and the cold war to the “war on terror,” the common-
alities in their struggles illustrate the on-going militarism that pacifist mothers
are actively trying to oppose and their ambiguous situation wrought by a conflict
between what is socially valued and what is morally imperative. In both cases,
most Americans kept silent about U.S. militarism out of fear. In 1980, people
lived in fear of a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Americans
believed that having more and bigger weapons than the Soviets would keep
nuclear exchange from happening. Twenty-five years later, Americans live in
fear that if we are not fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq then terrorists will attack
the U.S. These fears caused most Americans to avert their gaze from the realities
of their eras: the threat of nuclear weapons during the Cold War and the reality
of violence in the War against Terror. Rush and Sheehan courageously spoke out
and focused Americans’ attention on the reality of militarism.
The connection between the Cold War and the War against Terror also has to
do with the way in which an enemy is produced in order to unite Americans in a
common fear. In Abolition Democracy, Angela Y. Davis explains this connection,
“I would like to suggest that the terrain for the production of the terrorist as a
28 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms, needs and obli-
gations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible.
Elsewhere I have argued that restorative justice reflects three basic
assumptions: (1) Crime is a violation of people and relationships; (2) violations
create obligations; and (3) the central obligation is to put right the wrongs (Zehr
64-69). Translated into a set of principles, restorative justice calls one to:
1. focus on the harms and consequent needs of the victims, as well as the com-
munities and the offenders;
2. address the obligations that result from those harms (the obligations of
offenders as well as the communities’ and society’s);
3. use inclusive, collaborative processes to the extent possible;
4. involve those with a legitimate stake in the situation, including victims,
offenders, community members and society;
5. seek to put right the wrongs.
In the past three decades, the conceptual framework of restorative justice as
well as its models of practice have received wide international attention and
application. Restorative justice was used to help provide a conceptual
framework for the mission of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South
Africa, for example, and is being advocated or implemented in many countries
in a variety of arenas including schools as well as justice systems. The United
Nations Economic and Social Council in 2002 endorsed a set of restorative
justice principles, encouraging them to be applied to criminal cases.
Governments in Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil and elsewhere
are actively promoting restorative measures; in New Zealand, in fact, the youth
justice system has been designed around restorative principles. A survey
published in 2000 found that 23 U.S. states had implemented restorative justice
programs and that the majority of states have used restorative justice language
in law or policy documents (O’Brien).
Models of Practice
The contemporary restorative justice movement is usually traced to a case in
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 29
figure in the American imaginary reflects vestiges of previous moral panics as
well, including those instigated by the mass fear of the criminal and the
communist” (Davis 45). Davis emphasizes that Americans’ fears about terrorists,
criminals, and communists stem from imagined figures and dangers rather than
from actual knowledge and people. The effect of the unifying fear is that
Americans create an enemy both inside and outside the nation (Davis 46). The
external enemy justifies military force and military build up to protect Americans.
During the Cold War, the U.S. built up nuclear weapons to protect Americans
from the Soviets and their supposed military power. During the War against
Terror, the U.S. justifies military engagement and occupation, torture, mass
imprisonment abroad, and reduced civil liberties at home by claiming to protect
Americans from terrorists. Because of their experience as mothers, Sheehan and
Rush have an empathy for other mothers and for children that allows them to
confront U.S. militarism and to reveal that much of what American society fears
is an illusion. The conflict between militarism and the experience of mothering
guides Sheehan and Rush into acts of civil disobedience.
The Virtues of Maternal Work
In order to understand the conflict between militarism and mothering, I will
begin with an analysis of maternal practices as described by Sara Ruddick.
Ruddick and I both recognize that men and women can carry out the practices
that she describes. Nevertheless, she describes them as maternal because of the
socio-historical context. That is, these practices are carried out by women more
often than men, and even when men carry them out U.S. society treats the
practices as maternal practices. In Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of
Peace, Ruddick observes women’s maternal practices to put forward a political
theory that highlights the ways in which mothering can help guide action aimed
at peace (291). According to Ruddick, “To be a ‘mother’ is to take upon oneself
the responsibility for child care, making its work a regular and substantial part
of one’s working life” (17). In particular the demands of maternal practice
include preservation of a child’s life, growth of the child physically and
mentally, and social acceptability (Ruddick 17). Each demand that Ruddick
identifies builds on the previous demand. If the life of one’s child is in danger,
then it makes little sense for a mother to focus her energy on social acceptability.
Thus, the urgency of creating a social environment in which children can be
preserved and grow takes precedence to demands of social acceptability.
Ruddick does not claim that all mothers realize certain virtues, nor that only
mothers realize these virtues; rather she claims that mothering aims at certain
MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 29
1974 in Elmira, Ontario, in which young men who executed 22 property
offenses were taken to the doorsteps of their victims. This first case of what was
then called the Victim Offender Reconciliation Project, or VORP, did not grow
out of the conflict resolution movement directly. In fact, Dave Worth, one of the
two Mennonite men who facilitated that first case, once told me that as they took
these offenders to meet their victims, their role as facilitators was to say, “You
knock on the door and say you are the offenders. We’ll be right behind you.” In
spite of the crude approach, this first case was so successful that the movement
was born—serving, perhaps, as a testimony to the power of encounter in itself.
Shortly after this, the other facilitator, Mark Yantzi, wrote a master’s thesis on
the role of the third-party in the victim offender conflict, and the fields of
conflict resolution and victim offender reconciliation began to connect. The first
such program in the United States, on the other hand, seems to have been more
directly influenced by the mediation field. In the mid-1970s Ron Kraybill, then
a Mennonite seminary student in Elkhart, Indiana, wrote a paper suggesting the
use of mediation in the justice arena and this may have helped to shape the first
program in the United States. From early on, then, the fields of conflict
resolution and restorative justice have intersected.
Victim offender mediation or “conferencing” (VOC) programs that developed
from the above experience are the most widely known form of restorative justice
programs in the U.S. These provide a facilitated encounter between victims and
offenders. Such dialogues allow victims to express their feelings and tell their
stories, to get answers to questions, to put a face to the one who wronged them,
and often to receive restitution for damages. They provide ways for those who
have offended to understand and take responsibility for what they have done and,
hopefully, to put their offending experience behind them. Although many such
programs focus on “less serious” crimes, over 20 states now have victim offender
conferencing or dialogue programs for the most severe cases such as homicide.
It is important to note, however, that victim offender conferencing or
dialogue is only one of a number of encounter models that are being utilized in
the restorative justice field today. Family Group Conferences (FGCs)
originated in New Zealand in 1989, responding in part to the concerns and
values of the indigenous Maori tradition. Like victim offender mediation or
conferencing, these are facilitated encounters but with a significantly larger
circle of participants including not only victims and offenders but family
members, police and others. In New Zealand, FGCs form the hub of the entire
juvenile justice system, with courts serving as a backup instead of the norm
(MacRae and Zehr). Various forms of FGCs have been implemented in many
30 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
virtues. One virtue she identifies is “respect for the independent, uncontrollable
will of the other” (73). Using Aristotle’s approach to virtue in Nichomachean
Ethics, Ruddick identifies the ways in which this virtue can fail through excess
(domination) and defect (passivity) (73). In seeking children’s preservation and
growth, a mother must learn to appreciate her children as different from herself
even as she tries to guide them to flourishing. But, discerning what flourishing
will mean for a particular child requires a difficult balancing act. A mother must
reign in any tendency to dominate and to exploit her power over her children.
Children cannot flourish if they are simply conforming to roles that their mother
enforces. Yet, a mother cannot simply let her children guide themselves by being
absolutely passive. Children with a mother who takes no interest in their
development are unlikely to flourish. Flourishing will entail a process of helping
a child cultivate his or her unique qualities. As part of this process, the child’s
flourishing should be supported in his or her community and in turn the child’s
flourishing should benefit the community. The flourishing of the child and the
community should be such that there is reciprocity between what the child takes
from the community and what the child gives to his or her community.
The link between children and their community is an important theme for
Ruddick. She tells us that to provide for children’s flourishing, “maternal care
may extend as widely as the community on which growing children depend for
their projects and affections” (81). In her account of protecting and nurturing
children, Ruddick stresses the ways in which maternal thinking is necessarily
concrete (93). Children cannot be raised in abstractly ideal conditions; rather,
they encounter real circumstances of challenge and difficulty, just as their
mothers encounter challenges and difficulty. Hence, effective mothering
requires actions suitable to particular children in particular circumstances.
In many instances, a mother’s particular burden is facing her community’s
judgments: “Beset by the difficulties of her work, the recalcitrance of her
children, much inappropriate praise and blame, and the real limitations of her
power, a mother is apt to become fearfully susceptible to the gaze of others”
(Ruddick 111). In this passage, Ruddick chooses “gaze” to describe women’s
relationship to the society that praises and blames her. The gaze is an idea
developed by Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness when he tries to
account for a subject’s relationship to others. Sartre focuses on the experience of
shame, especially with his powerful example of the subject who is caught
peeking through the keyhole (340-400). In this example, a man is staring
through a keyhole and something within a room when he suddenly hears a noise
and is flooded with shame at the possibility of being discovered spying. Whether
30 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
communities in North America, England, South Africa, Australia and elsewhere
though no country outside of New Zealand has attempted to organize the entire
justice system around conferences.
An even larger circle of participants is included in peacemaking circles. Of the
various encounter models, circles most consciously include community members.
Circles are usually facilitated by a “circle keeper” who uses a talking piece and a
circular process to guide the interchange. Unlike most mediation processes, circles
often explicitly name and draw upon core values of the participants. Initially
entering the restorative justice field from Canadian First Nation indigenous roots,
circles have been widely adapted not only in cases involving crime but also within
schools, religious institutions and the workplace and for facilitating community
dialogues or problem-solving (Pranis; Pranis, Stuart and Wedge).
While programs are often designed around one of these approaches,
increasingly these models are being blended, blurring the lines between them.
Also, programs often see these models as options to be employed depending on
the nature of the specific case. And although victim offender conferencing
approaches originated in the criminal justice arena, today they are being widely
used in other settings such as schools and the workplace.
Restorative Justice as a Peacebuilding or Conflict Transformative
Approach to Justice
With its focus on interpersonal relationships, on human need and on collabo-
rative, problem-solving processes, restorative justice might be viewed as a
peacemaking or conflict-resolution approach to justice. Indeed, after working
outside of academia in the restorative justice field for many years, I now teach
in an international program at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) that confers
masters degrees and certificates in conflict transformation. Most of my
colleagues have come from complementary fields—conflict-resolution and
analysis, organizational leadership, counseling, development, etc. This has
encouraged all of us to explore the links and overlaps among our fields.
Moreover, our work in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City and Nairobi embassy
bombings, as well as the events of September 11, drew us into trauma work. We
have found that the fields of conflict transformation, trauma healing and
restorative justice are highly interrelated and have much to learn from one
another. The following sketches some of the lessons that we have learned:
1. An experience of victimization and even trauma is involved in most situa-
tions of conflict and wrongdoing. Both restorative justice and conflict
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 31
another person is there or not, the man is aware of himself as he would be
viewed by another, and the relationship to this other person is marked by shame.
Sartre’s emphasis on shame in a person’s relationships with others gives us an
important insight as to why mothers can become “fearfully susceptible to the
‘gaze’ of others.” First, a mother may fear that her actions will not measure up
to the actions and expectations of others. Her children may seem more unruly,
less intelligent, or less strong than other children. Because maternal work
includes making children acceptable in society, any judgment against a mother’s
children is a judgment against a mother. In order to achieve judgments that will
ease a mother’s shame, she may become too willing to remain quiet and
obedient even when she feels that her community’s actions and values are
harming her children.
Ruddick continues her use of Sartrean terms when she says that women are
“inauthentic” when they replace conscience with submission (112). For these
women, societal acceptance takes priority over their own concerns. Presumably,
mothers are authentic when they recognize their situation in society and their
responsibility for their own and their children’s well being. A mother’s situation
in society can be determined by many factors including sex, race, class, religion,
marital status, and the number of children she has. In turn, her situation
determines what actions are possible for her. Ruddick’s argument would benefit
by turning to the work of Beauvoir rather than relying on Sartre. Beauvoir’s
book, The Ethics of Ambiguity, is more helpful than Sartre since the situation of
a mother is replete with ambiguity and Beauvoir develops an ethics in which this
ambiguity is sustained rather than clarified. The ambiguity under consideration
in this case is the conflict that mothers face when deciding whether they ought
to confront the militaristism that pervades society or to focus more locally on
preparing their children to be part of this society, which is not likely to change.
For Beauvoir, existentialism condemns oppression not from an abstract law that
the subject follows, but because the subject who establishes the law can only
find justification for her existence through the existence others (72). While some
might charge existentialists with egoism, Beauvoir argues, “But there is no
ethics against which this charge, which immediately destroys itself, cannot be
leveled; for how can I worry about what does not concern me? I concern others
and they concern me. There we have an irreducible truth. The me-others
relationship is as indissoluble as the subject-object relationship” (Beauvoir 72).
Beauvoir’s ethics is distinct even in existentialist philosophy. She maintains
Sartre’s insistence that the authentic person must act for her own freedom and
take up her own projects, but for her the subject is always, already entwined with
MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 31
transformation must acknowledge and address this sense of victimization
and the resulting needs—often for everyone involved, including those who
have offended. (Indeed, it can be argued that much offending—perhaps
most or all violence—grows out of a sense of victimization and/or an expe-
rience of trauma.)
2. Most, if not all, situations of conflict and harm involve questions of justice
and injustice, and situations of injustice frequently involve trauma. James
Gilligan has argued that violence represents an attempt to do justice, or
undo an injustice (Gilligan). Both conflict and justice processes, therefore,
must find ways to address these issues of justice and injustice. The conflict
resolution/transformation field has not often acknowledged or provided a
language to do this, but restorative justice does provide such a framework,
consistent with the values and principles of conflict transformation. Indeed,
restorative justice might be viewed as a peacebuilding or conflict transfor-
mation approach to justice.
3. Any process intended to resolve harm or conflict must find ways to explic-
itly address both needs and responsibilities. Too often resolution processes
focus on the former and downplay the latter.
4. Personal and communal narratives—story and “re-storying”—play critical
roles in conflict resolution, trauma recovery and restorative justice; oppor-
tunities for storytelling must be incorporated into our processes.
5. Successful resolution and transformation often turns on the creation of
empathy for one another by the participants. The dynamics that impede or
encourage empathy need conscious attention by practitioners. They also
merit further research.
6. Humiliation or shame plays a role in most conflicts, traumas and harms.
Conflict resolution and justice processes need to acknowledge and address
this dynamic in some way. At minimum these processes require sensitivity
to the way shame and humiliation affect participants. To be successful they
often require proactive steps to remove or transform shame (Harris and
Maruna 452-462).
7. Both restorative justice and conflict transformation reflect a common set
32 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
others. While Sartre’s description of the subject’s relationship to other subjects
is most convincing when he describes shame, Beauvoir insists that the me-others
relationship is indissoluble. People do not experience themselves and their
projects as isolated from others’ projects. She explicates the way in which the
subject’s ethical project always concerns the well-being of others. Because the
self is always in relationship to others, Beauvoir avoids the difficulty of having
to explain why the authentic person would be concerned with others’
oppression. Every action has the potential that someone else will see what the
mother does. When another sees the mother’s action, that other can judge who
the mother is and what she does. For Beauvoir, freedom consists in projecting
oneself toward one’s projects, and the freedom of the mother is never in conflict
with working against the oppression of others. The authentic mother recognizes
the obstacles in her society and works to overcome those obstacles, and every
action carries the risk that someone else will see what she does. Thus, the
authentic act takes the judgment of others into account.
When a mother is trying to determine what ethical acts she should take up, she
will find herself faced with difficult decisions. As I discussed above, the
authentic person does not rely on abstract laws for her ethical position, instead
ethics is determined by concrete action. The ethics of ambiguity requires
concrete action both for one’s own freedom and against others’ oppression, “But
the others are separate, even opposed, and the man of good will sees concrete
and difficult problems arising in his relations with them” (Beauvoir 73).
Frequently, ethical engagement demands sacrifice. A mother may have to
choose to sacrifice time with her own children in pursuit of creating a more
ethical society for all children, or she may have to sacrifice actions that are
aimed at the good of society for the sake of her children. Which sacrifice she
should make cannot be predetermined in existentialist ethics; the choice is
ambiguous and determined by particular mothers in concrete circumstances.
Ethical choices are ambiguous for Beauvoir, but they are not absurd. Ethics
would be absurd if it were simply impossible to find meaning in our actions.
Ethical choice is ambiguous because the meaning of an action is not
predetermined; meaning is determined through action. Moreover, meaning is
never definitively established; it must be reestablished constantly (Beauvoir
129.). Thus, a mother could authentically choose to sacrifice her activity on
behalf of her own children or to sacrifice her efforts on behalf of her cause. The
choice is authentic in as much as she is clear on why she is sacrificing one for
the other and in as much as she is working for her own freedom and against the
oppression of others.
32 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
of underlying values, and both need to make these more explicit. If these
are not made explicit, practices are highly susceptible to misuse. These
values include respect, humility, empowerment and engagement. These
values can be seen as reflecting an underlying worldview based on a sense
of interconnectedness.
8. Structural injustices and problems play a role in many crimes, conflicts and
traumas. Both fields are in danger of overlooking or even perpetuating such
injustices by individualizing conflicts and harms. Both fields need to apply
their perspectives and approaches to addressing root causes.
9. Both fields are susceptible to unconscious biases of gender, culture, race
and class. Both need to more consciously incorporate the voices of women,
people of color and indigenous people.
10. Like all social interventions, both conflict transformation and restorative
justice have unintended consequences of which we must be aware. Both
fields are susceptible to forces of co-optation and diversion that can side-
track them from their intent. Indeed, these processes are inevitable and
require conscious vigilance on the part of practitioners and advocates.
The Impact of Trauma
As noted earlier, the role of trauma in conflict transformation, restorative
justice and peacebuilding has emerged as an especially important focus of our
work at EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. After September 11, our
program was funded by Church World Service to conduct an ongoing series of
trainings for religious and community leaders and care-givers from around the
world. Termed STAR, Seminars on Trauma Awareness and Recovery (later
changed to Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience), these trainings
brought those of us working in various related fields into the same teaching and
practice arenas. We felt mandated to explore the intersection of trauma, conflict
and justice. We came to understand that trauma is pervasive and multidimen-
sional. It affects individuals, not only emotionally/psychologically, but
spiritually and physically as well; indeed, the cognitive processing of the brain
is often altered (Levine and Frederick). However, trauma also profoundly
impacts communities and societies. Trauma shapes overall behavior, including
patterns of wrongdoing and conflict, as well as processes of recovery, resolution
or transformation. The social as well as the individual dimensions of trauma
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 33
In answer to the question, “Is existentialist ethics individualistic?” Beauvoir
answers, “Yes” and “No.” This ethics is individualistic because every individual
has a particular, unique value; no one can be replaced by anyone else. It is also
individualistic because each person lays the foundation for her own existence.
But, this ethics is not individualistic in terms of considering the individual
isolated from others. The subject’s freedom is in relation to others and to the
world; she assumes her freedom by rejecting oppression in any form and taking
action in accordance with her own finitude, or her own limits and possibilities
(Beauvoir 156-159). That is, a mother recognizes her own situation and that she
must work within that situation. Her options might be numerous; for example,
she can choose many kinds of civil disobedience or many kinds of social
activism. However, she cannot choose any action; for example, she cannot
simply choose to eliminate all nuclear weapons. This kind of individualism is
especially the case for mothers as described by Ruddick. According to Ruddick,
a mother is concerned with her own place in society, and her place cannot be
separated from her children’s place. Since society impacts how she raises her
children and how she is judged as a mother, she must constantly assess whether
her children are acceptable to others, whether society’s values are ones she
wants for her children, and how she will confront oppression when she finds it.
Militarism and Mothering
Women and mothers face many kinds of oppression depending on their
personal circumstances and the country in which they live. The mothers who are
most disadvantaged are mothers in developing nations who face disease, war,
famine, and poverty. By comparison, women in the U.S. have many advantages,
yet the most disadvantaged women in the U.S. still face poverty, insufficient
healthcare, insufficient educational opportunities, and violence. In this section,
I will examine the ways in which U.S. militarism exploits the vulnerable and
argue that, while some mothers face more challenges than others, all mothers are
affected by militarism.
The links between militarism and mothering are both a mainstay of many
societies and a threat to the very actions that comprise mothering. In most
societies, mothers are responsible for the care and upbringing of children.
Mothers are responsible for their children’s health, education, and assimilation
into society, but support for militarism—which is a threat to their children—is
expected. Moreover, many societies have gross discrepancies in the opportu-
nities available for mothers and their children depending on race, class, and
sexual orientation. The disadvantages of raising children when one is not white
and wealthy are especially prevalent in the U.S.
MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 33
must be addressed as part of peacebuilding and restorative justice processes.
Through STAR our faculty and staff began to explore how trauma impacts both
victim and offender and especially the ways that victimization and trauma, if not
adequately addressed, can cause people to get stuck in a victim identity and also
can lead to offending behavior. More recently, we have become aware of
“perpetrator-induced trauma” and its role in perpetuating the cycle of victim-
ization and offending; severe offending can itself cause trauma in offenders
(MacNair). This is an arena that deserves much more research: how trauma
arises, how it affects social as well as individual well-being, how it plays into
victimization and into offending behavior, and what approaches and strategies
can be used to address trauma not just on the individual level but with
communities and even larger societies. Within that larger research agenda are
important questions about the role of shame and humiliation in trauma, in victim-
ization and offending behavior, and in processes of recovery or transformation.1
The following diagram, part of a larger analysis used in the STAR seminars,
suggests some of the ways trauma plays itself out in victim and offender
experiences and thus impacts the search for peace and justice (Yoder).
Questions All Types of Practitioners Might Ask
One distinctive characteristic of restorative justice is that it is usually applied
in situations where there is a legitimate structure such as a legal or disciplinary
system to name wrongdoing. Thus, even where there may be some shared
blame, restorative processes often begin with a clearly-identified wrong and
“offender.” This is one reason for discomfort with the term “mediation” in the
restorative justice field. Unlike civil mediations, in criminal cases there is often
a clear sense of wrongdoing and victims are often uncomfortable with the moral
neutrality implied by “mediation.” As distinct from restorative justice, conflict
resolution processes often do not address the perception of wrong-doing and
harm, even though a sense of injustice is usually part of the conflict.
If restorative justice is thought of as a set of “guiding questions,” it may help
to address such issues in conflict transformation processes. What if we found
ways to address the following questions not only in restorative processes but in
conflict transformation processes as well?
• Who has been hurt in this situation?
• What are their needs?
• What obligations result from these hurts and needs?
• Whose obligations are they?
34 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
While wealthy mothers are able to shield their children from the military and
are able to provide a college education without the help of scholarship programs
offered by the military, low income and lower middle class mothers are much
more likely to have their children targeted by military recruiters. As the
Washington Post reported in November, 2005,
Many of today’s recruits are financially strapped, with nearly half coming from lower-
middle-class to poor households, according to new Pentagon data based on Zip codes
and census estimates of mean household income. Nearly two-thirds of Army recruits in
2004 came from counties in which median household income is below the U.S. medi-
an. (Tyler 1)
Further study from The National Priorities Project analyzes recruitment data for
the military and shows that the military is increasingly recruiting in low to
middle income zip codes, while wealthy neighborhoods are under-represented
(National Priorities Project). Most recently, the Associated Press has analyzed
who has died in the war and “found that nearly three quarters of those killed in
Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national
average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living
in poverty topped the national average” (Hefling). Each of these sources points
to the disturbing reality that the U.S. military targets the working class and poor
for their recruiting efforts.
Another disturbing reality of the military is the manner of recruiting that it
does in minority communities. In “The Poverty Draft” Jorge Mariscal notes that
the army has used the “Hispanic H2 Tour” and the “Takin’ It to the Streets Tour”
to promote positive images of the army in Hispanic and African-American
communities in order to increase recruitment efforts (Mariscal 33). Once in the
military, African-Americans and Hispanics in the U.S. military are most likely
to be in the lowest ranks despite increasing representation in the military in
general (Segal and Segal 22-23)
The prevalence of low and middle class people in the military, and the dispro-
portionate levels of minorities in the lowest ranks should signal a problem in the
U.S. military. Even though poor and minority women’s children are heavily
recruited by the military, these women are expected to support American
militarism. Those with cultural influence promote the idea that having a child in
the military should be a source of pride for mothers. On Mother’s Day, 2007,
U.S. President George W. Bush praised mothers for their role in supporting their
children who are serving in the military,
34 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
• What are the causes of these hurts and needs?
• What can be done to address the causes?
• Who has a “stake” in this situation?
• What is the appropriate process to involve these stakeholders in an effort to
put things right and resolve the conflicts?
I once watched a role play in the United Kingdom by high school students and
their principal. In the first role play they showed the way a fight between two
girls had been handled in the past: the principal behind his desk interrogating
participants and meting out judgment. In the second, they illustrated a
conference or circle process led by a facilitator in which the principal took part
as one of the participants, without dominating the process. Each party told their
story and expressed their sense of harm and wrongdoing, then began to
acknowledge their responsibilities. A consensus was achieved that
acknowledged some mutual harm as well as shared blame and allowed the
disputants to leave as friends.
“Why,” I asked myself, “is this called restorative justice rather than
mediation? Why did it specifically emerge from the restorative justice field
rather than the mediation field?” After all, the process itself looked much like a
form of mediation. Perhaps the reason it emerged from the restorative justice
field is that restorative justice, unlike mediation, provided a context and
language for specifically naming and dealing with wrongdoing and injustice. It
specifically allowed space for concepts of right and wrong, of justice and
injustice, to be named and explored, and provided a conflict-resolving concept
of justice to facilitate that process. Restorative justice, then, provides a conflict
transformation approach that allows wrongdoing to be named and addressed,
and provides a concept of justice appropriate for this interaction.
The Future of Restorative Justice
The following questions, directed at restorative justice as a field, are also
relevant to the larger field of peacebuilding:
1. Can we move beyond the individualization of wrongdoing to address social
causes?
2. Can restorative justice become a way to truly empower communities,
encouraging not only involvement but also responsibility? Can we do this
without side-tracking victims and while forging new partnerships between
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Mothers of military personnel provide support and encouragement while their sons and
daughters defend our freedom in places far from home, and many mothers bring honor
to the uniform of the United States while working to lay the foundations of peace for
generations to come (Bush 590).
Bush’s words to mothers reflect a common national belief that mothers ought to
raise children who are willing to defend their country. The years that mothers
invest in their children preserving their lives and helping them to thrive are
risked for an abstract militarism.
People are further manipulated when we are told that war will help to improve
the lives of women in other countries. When the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan
in November, 2001, Americans were told that women’s lives would improve
there, but instead women face increased violence, “While women are now
allowed to go to school and leave the house unaccompanied by a close male
relative—rights denied to them under the Taliban—most women in large parts of
Afghanistan are afraid to do so out of fear of kidnapping and rape” (Zunes 14).
Prior to the Iraq war, many people believed that overthrowing Saddam Hussein
would improve the lives of women in Iraq, but Human Rights Watch reports,
Many of the problems in addressing sexual violence and abduction against women and
girls derive from the U.S.-led coalition forces and civilian administration’s failure to
provide public security in Baghdad. The public security vacuum in Baghdad has height-
ened the vulnerability of women and girls to sexual violence and abduction. The police
force is considerably smaller and more poorly managed when compared to prior to the
war. (Bjorken 1)
In spite of the insistence of people in power, mothers and their children are
particularly vulnerable during war. These dangers include the threat of violence,
lack of access to healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth, as well as a general
lack of access to healthcare for their children (Kitzinger 232-233). A. Okasha,
Professor and Director of World Health Organization Collaborating Center for
Research and Training in Mental Health Institute of Psychiatry and the
Immediate Past President of the World Psychiatric Association, details the
effects of war on people living in a war zone. Among his conclusions,
Especially vulnerable groups include women, children, the disabled and the elderly.
Loss and destruction of homes, loss of male heads of households to death or captivity,
displacement and exposure to the dangers of sexual abuse and rape, almost always asso-
ciated with war crimes leaves women, especially mothers at high risk of hopelessness
and depression. The level of depressive symptomatology in the mother was found to be
the best predictor of her child's reported morbidity. (Okasha 193-200)
35 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 35
government and community?
3. Can we move beyond the focus on offender accountability and address their
needs more holistically? Can we better understand and incorporate the
dynamics of transformation, including the role of honor and humiliation
and of “re-storying” in offenders’ journeys? When we talk about shame in
these processes, can we avoid the wrong lesson being learned? Already
there are examples of practitioners seeking to impose shame rather than
emphasizing the removal or transformation of shame.
4. Can we learn from our mistakes by truly opening ourselves to self-reflec-
tion and evaluation and openly sharing the bad as well as the good?
5. Can we learn to genuinely listen to and incorporate the perspectives of
indigenous communities and people of color without expropriating their
traditions or re-colonizing them?
Strategic Peacebuilding Through Collaboration
Lisa Schirch, my colleague at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, has
argued that there is a larger umbrella field that she calls “strategic
peacebuilding” (Schirch). Many fields that we often see as somewhat separate
or even competing—justice work, conflict resolution, human rights advocacy,
trauma healing and so on—might actually be conceived as part of, and
contributing to, the overall work of building a peaceful and just world. That,
perhaps, is the most important agenda ahead for those of us in the peacebuilding
and restorative justice fields.
To pursue that agenda, we will have to surmount some substantial personal,
institutional and cultural barriers. A major obstacle is the tendency to divide up
the world into separate fields of study and practice, each with its own traditions,
definitions of professionalism and language. The latter is especially significant:
the interrelated fields of conflict “resolution” and conflict “transformation”
themselves use somewhat different terminology and frameworks, and the
differences are even more significant between them and the fields of restorative
justice or trauma healing. To learn from each other, we will have to develop a
common language or at least find ways to understand one another’s.
The competitive nature of our disciplines and indeed our culture provide
another challenge. To learn from each other, we will have to begin to ask first of
all, “What can I learn from the other?” rather than “How can I critique the
36 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
All of these reports on war’s effects on women emphasize the ways in which war
disrupts traditional roles that women play in many societies. These roles make
them dependent on men and responsible for the care of children, the disabled,
and the elderly. War, though, destabilizes the structures that make women’s care
of others possible, which in turn destabilizes the society itself.
The challenge, then, is for mothers to resist the ideology of people in power.
Many mothers are skilled at finding ways to preserve their children and to
nurture their children even in the most difficult of situations. Some mothers are
subjected to sexual and racial discrimination, poverty, or discrimination based
on sexual orientation. These mothers may not have the reserves necessary to
protest against militarism. Other U.S mothers are among a privileged class of
people, they are financially stable, white, and their children are healthy. These
women have an opportunity to empathize with mothers who suffer from poverty,
racism, and the effects of war. Moreover, these women are in a special position
from which they can act on behalf of other mothers. Instead of staying quietly
under the radar, Rush and Sheehan use their social position to call attention to
the costs of war.
Confronting Militarism
In order to understand how mothers can call attention to the costs of war, we
can turn to Chantal Mouffe’s explanation of the way in which a nation’s identity
is tied to a distinction between friend and enemy. Once a group is labeled
“enemy,” then fear is created in the friend group, which allows people in the
friend group to justify actions against the enemy that would not be tolerated in
one’s own group. In the current context the enemy is the “terrorist” against
which the U.S. and its allies must mobilize. In Rush’s context the enemy is the
“communist” against which the U.S. must mobilize. The challenge for mothers
who engage in civil disobedience is to challenge the distinction between friend
and enemy and to show that the costs of war are born by people on both sides of
a conflict.
As Mouffe explains in The Return of the Political, Western society has
undergone a profound change in identity between the 1980s and today. Mouffe
traces this identity shift “to the collapse of Communism and the disappearance
of the democracy/totalitarianism opposition, that since the Second World War,
had provided the main political frontier enabling discrimination between friend
and enemy” (3). From 1945-1991, American identity depended on being
democratic, which meant not being communist. Other democracies were viewed
as friends, communists were viewed as the enemy, and countries associated with
36 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
other?” Competition for resources and attention is also an issue. For example, as
the “new kid on the block,” restorative justice is sometimes seen as threatening
the hard-won gains of other fields such as victim services.
To overcome these obstacles, then, we will need to see each other as co-
workers instead of rivals. We will need to come together to learn from each other
and to develop joint, coordinated strategies for study and practice. Most
important, perhaps, we must together explore our common values and
understandings. “Building a just and sustainable peace requires that the various
actors and actions are coordinated into an overarching framework,” Schirch
argues, and calls for us to develop a common vision of “justpeace” (Schirch 6).
REFERENCES
Gilligan, J. Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. New York, NY: Random
House, 1996.
Harris, N. and Maruna, S. “Shame, Sharing and Restorative Justice: A Critical
Appraisal,” 452-462. Sullivan, D and Tift, L (eds). Handbook of Restorative Justice.
London, UK: Routledge, 2006.
Levine, P. and Frederick. A. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity
to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books,
1997.
MacNair, R. Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences
of Killing. Westport, CN: Praeger, 2002.
MacRae, A and Zehr, H. The Little Book of Family Group Conferencing, New Zealand
Style. Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2004.
O’Brien, S.P. Restorative Justice in the States: A National Assessment of Policy
Development and Implementation. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Florida Atlantic University,
Balanced and Restorative Justice Project, October, 2000.
Pranis, K. The Little Book of Circle Processes. Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2005.
Pranis, K; Stuart, B.; and Wedge, M. Peacemaking Circles: From Crime to
Community. St Paul, MN: Living Justice Press, 2003.
Schirch, L. The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding. Intercourse, PA: Good Books,
2004.
Sullivan, D. and Tift, L. Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our Everyday
Lives. Monsey, NY: Willow Tree Press, 2001.
Yoder, Carolyn. The Little Book of Trauma Healing. Intercourse, PA: Good Books,
2005.
Zehr, H. The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2002.
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 37 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 37

neither were the battleground. During this time, the U.S. and the Soviet Union
engaged in amassing weapons as a method of deterrence. END NOTE
According to Mouffe’s analysis, the U.S. faced an identity vacuum when the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. U.S. identity needs more than being a 1
For more on this topic, see the work of Evelin Linder and her colleagues at
democracy to understand itself. U.S. identity requires understanding itself as not www.humiliationstudies.org. For a discussion of the role of shame in victim and offend-
something else; the U.S. is not communist in 1980. September 11, 2001 er experiences, see Howard Zehr, “Journey to Belonging,” in Restorative Justice:
provided an opportunity for the U.S. to find a new enemy: terrorism. The U.S. International Foundations, Elmar Weitekamp and Hans-Jurgen Kerner, eds. (UK: Willan
is democratic, not terrorist; and American military power has since been used to Publishing, 2002).
uphold and defend this distinction. Thus, a mother who wants to speak out
against militarism can work to undermine the notion that identity is determined
by what we are not and instead focus on the ways in which people and nations
are necessarily connected. Two powerful examples of mothers who work to
undermine the friend/enemy distinction are Cindy Sheehan and Molly Rush.
Here, I will consider Rush’s protest against the U.S. nuclear weapons program
in 1980. In her book, Hammer of Justice: Molly Rush and the Plowshares Eight,
Liane Ellison Norma examines Rush’s motivations, her act of civil disobe-
dience, and the act’s effects on others and allows us to understand Rush as a
precursor to Sheehan in 2005 when the U.S. uses a new enemy to justify its
military program.
Rush would seem to be the ideal woman to whom U.S. political leaders can
sell militarism. She is the mother of six children, part of a white, heterosexual,
working-class family. From Pentagon statistics that have been analyzed by the
National Priorities Project, her children are the most likely to be recruited for the
military. Today, Rush would be part of the target audience for rhetoric that
insists that women in Iraq and Afghanistan will be safer and have more freedom
if U.S. led forces occupy their countries. Yet, Rush recognized that the rhetoric
of security during the Cold War was false. As cited by Norman, Rush recognized
that, “Her children’s lives were linked to the lives of the enemies’ children. Hers
could not survive unless theirs could too. To love one’s enemy, the New
Testament elucidation of the Old Testament absolute was newly the condition of
survival” (Norman 44). In this passage, Rush affirms the indissolubility of the
me-others relationship that Beauvoir discusses. Loving one’s enemy is not
distinct from loving oneself and one’s children. Rush successfully uses her
social position—her race, class, and heterosexuality—to disturb assumptions
about what mothers can do to protect children from the dangers of war by
refusing to act in accordance with those assumptions as if they were imperatives.
Rush’s insight into the connection between her children’s lives and the lives
of the enemies’ children takes on an urgency to act to preserve all children’s
38 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 38 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

lives, and she—along with seven others—decided to engage in nonviolent civil

disobedience to draw attention to the destructiveness of nuclear weapons, to
expose the vulnerability of power, and to call others to responsibility. On
September 9, 1980, the Plowshares Eight, a group of non-violent practitioners
of civil disobedience, entered General Electric Nuclear Missiles Re-entry
Division in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. That day two of the Plowshares Eight
entered Building Number Nine, gave literature to Robert Cox, the guard on duty,
about Plowshares, and told the man that they were there peacefully and nonvio-
lently. As Cox tried to call his boss to report the protestors, the two prevented
him from calling: Cox claims he was forcefully prevented from calling. The
activists described a less violent scuffle. Meanwhile, the other six members
entered Building 9, and all eight proceeded into the building (Norman 24-25).
There, they hammered the nose cones of two Mark 12A warheads, poured blood
on documents and prayed for peace (Norman 26-28). The nosepiece that they
were targeting would eventually end up as part of a warhead with a
thermonuclear bomb of at least 350 kilotons, twenty-eight times more powerful
than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Norman 36-39).
When Rush planned her action, she expected her act to be largely symbolic.
She expected that their hammers would be symbols of beating swords into
plows, the Biblical verse upon which the group had been founded, but she did
not believe that she would be able to actually damage the nose cone. Much to
her surprise, she was able to damage the weapon: “That a small woman, only
five feet two inches tall, hammering with an ordinary household hammer, could
render these two war heads forever useless, ‘exploded so many myths in my
mind!’” (Norman 38). The weapons were not indestructible; they are made by
human hands and are vulnerable to human tools.
Not only are the weapons themselves vulnerable, the powers that allow these
weapons to be made are also vulnerable. Rush and the Plowshares Eight seemed
to be a relatively harmless group: a mother, two priests, one former priest, a
peace community member, a musician and retired college teacher, a nun, and a
lawyer. But, Rush and her co-defendants quickly discovered the seriousness of
their actions when they were charged with crimes that carried a possible total
sentence of sixty-four years in jail, which would have made her 108 at the end
of her prison term (Norman 32-33). In fact, authorities take civil disobedience
by ordinary citizens very seriously because of its capacity to disrupt a society’s
balance of power:
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 39 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 39

For many, Molly’s action illuminated both the intransigence of institutions addicted to
warfare and their fragility. The arms race could go forward only with massive coopera-
tion and consent. The Plowshares Eight provided an instance in which citizens withdrew
their consent. That instance was fraught with possibilities. (Norman 220)

U.S. society depends on cooperation from people in order to function. Our

police forces and National Guard are there to identify isolated instances of non-
cooperation and non-compliance. If everyone refuses to cooperate with a law or
way of acting, then the authorities are powerless to enforce every law. When the
Plowshares Eight walked into the G.E. plant in King of Prussia, they exposed
that the security for this nuclear warhead making facility relies on people not
walking in; no one prevented them from entering the facility, hammering the
nosecones, or spilling their blood.
The Plowshares Eight also exposed the voluntary cooperation of those who
work in the facility to produce these nosecones. Instead of being able to go to
work in a pristine environment in which vitamins are as likely to be made as
pieces of nuclear warheads, that day the workers had to confront the fact that
they help make weapons that can destroy millions of “soft targets” (civilians
who are the unintended victims) and the infrastructure (roads, bridges, schools,
hospitals, libraries, museums) of an entire society (Norman 37). Prior to that
September morning, the workers seemed to know very little about what they
were manufacturing, preferring to think only of their work as a job that could
provide for their families rather than a job that produced nuclear weapons
(Norman 34-35). But, on that day the workers of Building Number 9 faced the
reality of what they produced.
When Ruddick discusses the impact of society’s gaze on a mother, she
emphasizes the vulnerability and coercive force that the gaze can have on a
mother (111). The Plowshares Eight, though, reveals that the gaze can also
emphasize people’s ethical responsibility. Until the Plowshares Eight entered
Building Number 9, the people working there were able to maintain their
position and image of themselves as isolated workers doing a job that affected
no one but themselves and their co-workers. They could maintain a perception
of themselves as good, caring people because their reference was self-defined.
Each person did her job well, so that the next person could do his job well
(Norman). When the Plowshares Eight acted, they exposed the workers of
Building Number 9 to an external gaze, a gaze that calls each worker into
question. The work at G.E. was exposed in its connection to making nuclear
weapons, an activity that is neither good nor caring. The people subjected to the
40 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 40 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

gaze of Plowshares Eight then had an opportunity to explain their actions to

those who gazed at them.
While Rush was successful in exposing the vulnerability of weapons and
power and subjecting those who participate in manufacturing nuclear weapons
to an external gaze, she also had to sacrifice some of what led her to her action
in the first place: her own children and her role as their mother. At the time of
the action, Rush’s six children were between the ages of twenty-five and twelve
(Norman 40). Some of her children were already married and living on their
own, but the youngest children still relied on their mother. Rush agonized over
the possibility that she would be gone while they grew up, “‘Today I feel my
death to all that in its fullest, sledgehammer reality,’ says her notebook. ‘I saw
the boys grow tall, begin to shave, remembering me with fondness, occasional
visits or notes, and, perhaps, resentment’” (Norman 45-46). Rush spent a total
of seventy-eight days in jail; far fewer than the sixty-four years she could have
spent if convicted of every charge and sentenced to the maximum penalty (46).
But, when examining the cost of civil disobedience, we cannot skip to the end
result to reassure ourselves that no one was harmed. We must instead consider
the agony of deciding between two wretched alternatives: standing by and
saying nothing against a government whose nuclear pursuits risk the lives of her
own children and children everywhere or engaging in civil disobedience to
protect her own children and children everywhere such that she will “be left out
of their everyday reality” (Norman 46).
If we could be absolutely dispassionate and assess the dangers of nuclear
weapons and the dangers that they pose to children, then we can easily justify
Rush’s actions. Rush should act because she could save millions of lives;
whereas mothering her particular children only directly benefits six people. The
weapons being made in the King of Prussia could destroy 293 square miles, as
compared to three square miles destroyed by the Hiroshima bomb (Norman 37).
Even if the MX Mark 12A hits its target with flawless precision, 293 miles will
be destroyed along with the target, miles that almost certainly contain schools,
libraries, hospitals, homes, and civilians. Thus, Rush’s action had the potential
to destroy a bomb that could kill hundreds of thousands of people, as well as
injuring and sickening many, many more. Her action also had the potential to
stop people from being unknowingly complicit in potential destruction. In this
case, we might stand back and say that Rush’s action is perfectly rational
because depriving six children of their mother (even if it would have been
permanently) is worth saving untold numbers of other adults and children. One
woman wrote in support of Rush’s commitment to her own and others’ children,
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 41 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 41

“Molly Rush is trying to protect her children and everybody’s children and
grandchildren, from such a horrendous possibility [nuclear destruction]”
(Norman 50).
This simple calculus, though, overlooks the responsibility that women have
for their particular children, a claim that seems to be accurate for many women
who have invested time in raising their children. As Rush raised her children, she
took particular care for their well being; she did not care for all children as she
did her own. Ellison’s interviews with Rush’s children reveal a mother
committed to social justice work, but also a woman who took care of the house,
the kids, the meals, and her husband. Rush was a woman devoted to her family
and their well being. She was not disconnected from their well being in the way
that other activists’ children have described their parents (Gandhi, for example,
who was famously estranged from his oldest son). Rush had been preparing her
children for her absence by explaining that she was acting for them and for every
child, “The children were torn between admiration for her intervention, which
they understood to have been on their behalf, and their wish that their mother
could continue as she had been, working, cooking, spending time with them”
(Norman 103).
Of course, Rush did decide that as a mother she needed to act and would do so
through civil disobedience: hammering nuclear warheads and spilling her blood
on the plans for the warhead. Her participation came directly from her love for
her children and their trust in her: “What does it mean to trust a parent?’ Molly
wondered. ‘How does one love one’s children?’” (Norman 107). She determined
that one of her primary duties as a mother is to protect her children’s lives and to
take the steps that she can to prevent unnecessary death: “When someone accepts
nuclear war, she breaks a trust, because it is accepting passively a death that can
be prevented—accepting death for oneself and also for those one loves” (Norman
107). Rush’s words emphasize the importance of preserving a child’s life, part of
the primary work of mother identified by Ruddick.
The key to understanding Rush’s decision to participate in civil disobedience
is that her deep love for her children and their well-being allowed her to
empathize with all mothers and parents who try to protect their children
everyday. She saw pictures of the damage done by the atomic bomb at
Hiroshima and read accounts from survivors about how mothers fruitlessly tried
to save children. As she read the accounts and saw the pictures, Rush made the
connection between those victims and her own family. She could have been the
mother searching for a missing child, her daughter could be the mother clutching
the charred remains of her newborn baby, and her sons could be the children left
without a mother (Norman 106-107).
42 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 42 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Not only did she see the connection between her family and their survival and
the survival of enemies’ families, Rush also saw the connection between those
who would use nuclear weapons, those who produce nuclear weapons, and those
who remain silent about the production and use of nuclear weapons. All of these
people are complicit in building a culture of death rather than a culture of life.
“‘Everyday, many people go to work, building these weapons that are going to
kill their children and my kids’, she said, wonder in her voice” (Norman 38).
During the trial, it became clear that the workers at the G.E. plant maintained a
disconnection from their work and most claimed that they did not know what
they were manufacturing. Instead of focusing on what they were producing, the
workers focused on the complexity and challenge of their jobs and the
paychecks and health insurance that the jobs provided for their families. As a
result of the Plowshares Eight’s action, at least one engineer resigned his
position, since he could no longer disconnect from what he was manufacturing
(Norman 170-209).
Many of the rest of us remain silent about nuclear weapons because we
believe “the myth of security” and “the myth of powerlessness.” The myth of
security tells us that stockpiling nuclear weapons will discourage others from
using any sort of weapons against the U.S. if only we have the most weapons
and the most powerful weapons. The myth of powerlessness cultivates the belief
that we are powerless against the decisions of our government; that if they
decide to build-up our nuclear stockpile, then we can only hope that they will
never use it. Thus, the value of civil disobedience is not measured by the act’s
success, but by refusing to accept the myths of ideology. For Rush, one of her
commitments is a commitment to mothering, and in order to do that effectively
she finds a way to do everything that she could do to protect her children and to
protect other children:

“I could have closed my eyes and hoped for the best,” she wrote, and many would have
been far happier had she done that. “But that hope would have been a blind hope based
on refusal to see and refusal to act responsibly.” On September 9, 1980, “I felt very clear
that I had brought my concerns for my kids’ lives and my hope in the future and my love
of being a peace-maker all together. When we walked into that G.E. plant, I felt no fear.
I felt tremendous peace. [That act] freed me from the myth of my own powerlessness. I
didn’t end the arms race, but I certainly acted on behalf of life. And I certainly acted in
a way that connected with a lot of people.” (Norman 229-230)

Civil disobedience is about acting on behalf of principles that are higher than
the available laws. It disrupts the standard order and day-to-day activities of a
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 43 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 43

society. Sometimes, it wakes up a society to a new reality, as we witnessed

through Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi. Sometimes, society
persists in believing its myths of security and powerlessness. The authentic
person to whom Ruddick and Beauvoir appeal reveals the many ways in which
American mothers support U.S. militarism, as well as revealing the possibility
that each of us can withdraw our support.

Successful Protests
Ultimately, Rush is successful in her protest because she uses the privileges
of her race, class, and heterosexuality to challenge the militarism of U.S. society.
We might expect a working class mother to encourage her children to join the
military in order to have career opportunities and education opportunities that
her income cannot provide. As a product of American society, Rush is expected
at the very least to support the country’s insistence that she and her children are
safer if they are shielded by nuclear weapons.
In our own era, mothers are expected to believe that the U.S. led war and
occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan are for the benefit of the women and children
of those countries. But, Rush’s example of shattering myths can open a window
through which others can see that the well-being of American children is linked
to the well-being of all children, and every person’s safety is threatened by the
production of violence in Afghanistan and Iraq. The opening of this perspective
is work that Sheehan has pursued in her quest to raise questions about her son,
Casey Sheehan’s death.
Whereas Rush’s protest focused on the increasing possibility of a nuclear
exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., she and the other members of the
Plowshares Eight focused American attention on our vulnerability and the myth
of protection.
Sheehan’s protest focuses on the very concrete reality of the harm that comes
from the “war on terror.” The harms that she brings to light are actual; they are
realized possibilities. The advantage of considering Rush’s protest is that we
have an in-depth analysis of how her actions affected her family, fellow citizens,
and workers at the G.E. Plant. Sheehan’s protest has not been the focus of a
sustained study. Yet, we do know that she is protesting as part of her mothering
work and in response to her son’s death. As Elaine Scarry reminds us in The
Body in Pain, the soldier goes to war both to die for her or his country and to kill
for his or her country (Scarry 1985, 121-124). When Casey Sheehan died, his
mother began to question U.S. militarism and why U.S. leaders use the military
to settle abstract political disputes. Through her protests, others have the
44 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 44 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

opportunity to question the idea that the very concrete reality of killing and
dying can produce abstract ideas about freedom and democracy in other
countries. Most of the time, white, middle-class people can sit back and declare
that something must be done about terrorism without thinking about the people
who are killing and being killed in order to supposedly do something. Sheehan’s
grief for her son takes away the luxury of ignoring the concrete realities of
militarism. The abstract idea of dying for one’s country is replaced by the
concrete reality of a woman mourning her son.
Both Sheehan and Rush successfully resist U.S. society’s pressure to stay
silent. Although their actions may jeopardize the privileges that they enjoy as
white American women, they reject mainstream approval in order to speak out,
act, and make actual and potential suffering visible. They focus attention on the
possibility of withdrawing consent and acting non-violently against a seemingly
impenetrable system. Their actions reveal that anyone could act and show
silence to be complicity.

REFERENCES

National Priorities Project. “Military Recruiting 2006.” In National Priorities Project.

[http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Publications/Military-Recruiting-2006-2.html].
(July 09, 2007).
Bjorken, Johanna. Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence and Abduction of Women and
Girls in Baghdad. Vol. 15. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003.
Bush, George W. Proclamation 8140--Mother's Day, 2007.
Davis, Angela Y. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture. New
York: Seven Stories Press, 2005.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Bernard Frechtman, trans. Secaucus,
N.J.: Citadel Press, 1976.
---. The Second Sex. H. M. Parshley, trans. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
Hefling, Kimberly. “Small towns bear the emotional scars from Iraq.” The Associated
Press State & Local Wire, February 20, 2007.
Kitzinger, Sheila. “Sheila Kitzinger's Letter from Europe: Birth, Military Occupation,
and Patriarchy.” Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care 32/3 (2005).
Mariscal, Jorge. “The Poverty Draft.” Sojourners Magazine 36/6 (June 2007): 32-35.
Norman, Liane Ellison. Hammer of Justice: Molly Rush and the Plowshares Eight.
Pittsburgh, Pa.: Pittsburgh Peace Institute, 1989.
Okasha, A. “Mental Health and Violence: WPA Cairo Declaration -- International
Perspectives for Intervention.” International Review of Psychiatry 19/3 (2007): 193-
200.
 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 45 MOTHERS’ CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 45

Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press,
1995.
Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness; an Essay on Phenomenological Ontology.
Hazel E. Barnes, trans. 1966. New York: Washington Square Press, 1956.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1985.
Segal, David R. and Mady Wechsler Segal. America's Military Population Vol. 59
Population Reference Bureau, 2005.
Tyler, Ann Scott. “Youths in Rural U.S. Are Drawn to Military.” Washington Post
(Friday, November 4, 2004): sec A.
Zunes, Stephen. “Afghanistan Five Years Later.” National Catholic Reporter 43/6
(2006): 14-18.
THE PRAXIS OF NONVIOLENCE AND THE CARE OF CHILDREN WHO
HAVE BEEN VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE

Andrew Fitz-Gibbon

Abstract
This paper is a reflection on a personal journey toward nonviolence, and looks
particularly at the nonviolent care of children who have been victims of
emotional, sexual and physical violence. It analyzes the philosophical threads of
praxis, nonviolence and how moral sense is shaped through a triad of affective,
reflective and elective experience. It concludes with a MacIntyrean perspective
relating to the conjoining of theory and practice in the formation of a robust
nonviolent praxis.

…nonviolence became more than a method to which to give intellectual

assent; it became a commitment to a way of life.

Martin Luther King, Jr. in “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence”1

I have been a pacifist for over a quarter of a century, though I am more likely
now to refer to myself as a nonviolentist—a phrase coined by Bob Holmes of
the University of Rochester in his Nonviolence in Theory and Practice.2 In this
paper I reflect on my personal journey toward nonviolence, looking particularly
at the nonviolent care of children who have been victims of emotional, sexual,
and physical violence, and by analyzing the philosophical threads that make for
a praxis of nonviolence.
What do I mean by nonviolence? I do not mean merely refraining from
physically violent actions. That’s a good start but, nonviolence means that and
far more. Nonviolence is a way of looking at life and living life with
assumptions and convictions about what life together ought to be like. (There is
something like a Kantian categorical imperative in the “ought.”)
 THE PRAXIS OF NONVIOLENCE 47 THE PRAXIS OF NONVIOLENCE 47

The tradition of nonviolence can be found in eastern ahimsa (no harm) and
western wisdom and love. It is found in religious traditions and secular reason.
It is rooted in great stories of sacrifice and love. It is about seeing every person,
not merely as an object, but as a subject in his or her own right. Nonviolence
becomes shorthand for a way of living that respects deeply not only human life,
but all sentient life, and all that is, as intrinsically valued. It is an agglomeration
of traditions, ideas, understandings, practices and virtues. These form a transcat-
egorical matrix to give birth to, what Martin Luther King, Jr. calls, the “beloved
community.” Nonviolence is like a golden thread woven into the fabric of
history, at times hidden, at times quite prominent, at times only glimpsed, but
always there. Nonviolence is love.
It is a truism to say that we live in a violent world. The logic of violence is
pervasive. Daily we observe “the myth of redemptive violence.”3 The myth says
that violence brings order out of chaos. It is repeated constantly in literature,
movies, video games, and real life. Ultimately, it asserts that violence will solve
our problems. We may try diplomacy, we may seek conciliation, we may ask for
mediation, but we are assured that to get results violence is needed. This
relentless insistence can be so overwhelming as to paralyze one’s moral sense.
M. K. Gandhi believed something different about the cosmos. His assumption
was that the world is a world of peace. Violence is the interloper. He said,
“History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force
of love or of the soul.”4 Love prevails, violence interrupts, but love prevails
again. Gandhi’s was a more hopeful story to tell. He spent his life in seeking to
form people shaped by nonviolence and so build communities of peace. In part,
he was successful. Only in part, for in a cruel irony of history, as has often been
the case, the one seeking peace was killed by the violence rejected. Gandhi
helped end British colonial rule—quite an achievement. Yet, India was plunged
into a violent civil war. The world lives still with the consequences as India and
Pakistan, enduring belligerents, now point nuclear weapons at each other and do
their part to foster the myth of redemptive violence.
I am not sure what to make of Gandhi’s optimism about the world. Certainly, I
cannot share it in any sentimental way. I find it impossible to fantasize away the
very real suffering that so many face as a result of actual human violence.
Nonetheless, I do believe Gandhi’s was an important voice in seeking a nonviolent
future. Michael Nagler has said, “Anything we do to reduce violence anywhere
will do something toward reducing violence everywhere.”5 What follows in this
paper is a reflective narrative about a modest attempt to reduce violence.
48 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 48 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

END NOTES

This paper, in its original form, was read in an annual series of lectures on “The
Culture of Violence” at the Roseanne Brooks Museum, State University of New York,
College at Cortland, in February 2009.

1
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1990. “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence (1960).” In James M.
Washington, Ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin
Luther King, Jr. New York: HarperOne, 31-34.
2
Robert L. Holmes and Barry L. Gan. 2005. Nonviolence in Theory and Practice.
Longrove IL: Waveland.
3
W. Wink. 1999. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. New York:
Doubleday. Chapter 2.
4
M.K. Gandhi. 2001. Non-Violent Resistance (Satyagraha). [1961]. Mineola, NY:
Dover, 16.
5
Michael Nagler. 2004. The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for
Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World. Maui, HI: Inner Ocean Publishing, 11.
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES:
PUTTING COMPETITION TO WORK FOR LIBERAL EDUCATION

Daniel R. Gilbert, Jr.

Abstract
Competition, an experience that human beings construct, is also a challenging
concept to teach in a liberal education curriculum. Liberal education is, among
other things, a celebration of what imaginative human beings can accomplish
together with their differences and their common ground in sight. It is not self-
evident, however, that such an ethic of connection, tolerance, and civility can
encompass competition. Competition often unfolds as a divisive human
experience. Divisiveness among certain human interests is a bedrock premise in
the disciplines of economics and strategic management. Frequently, one or both
of these disciplines can be found in an undergraduate curriculum alongside
liberal education initiatives. The ethical aspirations that we hold for liberal
education could be undermined by two disciplines in our very midst.
This paper contains a defense of a curricular remedy for this threat to liberal
education. With a focus on places, or sites, I create a framework with which we
liberal educators can reinterpret competition as the routine practice of an ethic
of connection, tolerance, and civility. This focus on sites is augmented when we
set our sights photographically on places where competitors necessarily get
along with one another. By re-conceiving competition in terms of the places and
the sites of human togetherness, I render avoidable the intellectual disconnection
between an ethics of liberal education and the divisive concept of competition.
We liberal educators can claim competition—intensity, wins and losses, and
all—for our educational enterprise.

Putting Competition to Work for the Liberal Education Curriculum

Competition, an experience that human beings construct, is also a difficult
concept to teach in the liberal education curriculum. Liberal education is, among
other things, a celebration of what imaginative human beings can accomplish
together with their differences on full display and their common ground in
sight.1 This celebration of connected (“accomplish together”), tolerant
(“differences on full display”), and civil action (“imaginative human beings”
50 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 50 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

sharing “common ground”) spans the study of history, government, language,

civil society, anthropology, literature, feminism, the scientific method, and the
arts in the liberal education curriculum. Across this span of disciplines, we can
celebrate an ethic of connection, tolerance, and civility.
At the same time, it is not self-evident that this ethic of connection, tolerance,
and civility can encompass the concept of competition. Competition, the
experience that human beings construct, often unfolds as a divisive human
experience. Someone wins and someone loses in business, courtroom, political,
and athletic competitions. College students are familiar with winning in
competitions for college admission. The reflective undergraduate student who
has engaged in study groups, political activism, and campus social organizations
likely has pondered the divisiveness of competition among human beings.
This divisiveness is reinforced in the disciplines of economics and strategic
management. Economics and strategic management are the undergraduate
disciplines where the concept of competition is typically housed. In these
disciplines, competitors are strangers to one another. Such alienation is
necessary to the logic of both disciplines. In economics and in strategic
management, it is axiomatic that a rational agent takes care of himself in a world
where others’ interests threaten his interests.
Given the enormous popularity of both economics and business adminis-
tration (formally, the major field that houses strategic management), we liberal
education teachers should be wary about the concept of competition. The
frequent presence of economics and/or business administration in the
undergraduate curriculum alongside liberal education initiatives is further cause
for concern.2 When this concept becomes entrenched in what Pauline
Vaillancourt Rosenau calls “America’s romance” with competitive conflict, we
must search for ways to respond.3
An ethic of connection, tolerance, and civility is a hallmark of liberal
education. It is one of our contributions to civil society. A concept of
competition that undermines this distinctive ethic is not a welcomed presence.
There is a plausible remedy to this challenge to liberal education. I offer a
sketch of it here. Along the way, I also photograph the remedy.

An Ironic Strategy
My strategy in this paper is one part appropriation and one part imagination.
I argue that the concept of competition, divisive to its very core, can become a
contributor to the liberal education curriculum. I do not propose evicting the
concept of competition from the undergraduate curriculum. Instead, I propose
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 51 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 51

remaking the concept. Indeed, I acknowledge two bedrock premises about

competition: competition is intense human striving; and competition is a
process that results in wins for some and losses for others. Then I reinterpret
competition as an endeavor that is thoroughly infused with connection,
tolerance, and, yes, civility.
This intellectual strategy is an act that Charles Taylor calls the “retrieval” of
an idea.4 Retrieval of the concept of competition for the purposes of liberal
education will take some doing. We should expect that our students enter any
discussion about competition with a certain amount of empirical conviction.
Some know full well that they have prospered in competitions. Others know
competition all too well as the antithesis of human civility. Hence, a project to
retrieve competition necessitates our creating a common setting in which we can
spark student curiosity about competition.

Places of Competition
The key ingredient in my retrieval project is a site, or place, where
competitors meet in the intense interactions that we call competition. I employ
three connected senses of place in this argument. One is a physical setting. A
second is a relational setting. The third is a relational-ethical setting.
In terms of a physical place, competitors meet on actual playing fields all the
time. In terms of a relational place, competitors interact throughout a period of
engagement that we call a game or a contest. Competitors often renew their
acquaintances, building relationships that are commonly called rivalries. A
third place occupied by competitors is a shared ethical search. In this third
sense of place, every competition unfolds as a joint search by the competitors
for answers to the ethical question, “How should we, here and now, conduct
this competition together?”
Interweaving these places, I create a framework that we liberal education
faculty can use to connect competition—still intense and still producing winners
and losers, but now not necessarily divisive—with liberal education. By this
retrieved conception of competition, competitors are partners who routinely
enact an ethic of connection, tolerance, and civility. With this retrieval project,
we can free the concept of competition from the disciplinary grip of economics
and strategic management, respectively.

Sights on Sites
The remainder of the paper contains a teaching plan for locating a retrieved
conception of competition in a world that our undergraduate students can
52 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 52 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

imagine, see, occupy, and traverse. This plan is structured with seven learning
destinations. The centerpiece of this plan is a photographic tour across the three
senses of place with which I will retrieve competition.5

The Teaching Plan Begins in Familiar Territory

In the ironic spirit of my strategy for adapting competition to liberal
education, the teaching plan begins magnanimously. At the outset, we should
give the concept of competition its due on its “home turf.” This established
meaning of competition is the touchstone from which we then proceed to
retrieve competition for an entirely different educational purpose.
Thus, the first destination in this teaching plan is this premise: competitors are
strangers. In both economics inquiry and strategic management inquiry, there is
a place where competitors inevitably meet. This place is the marketplace. In this
place, the reasoning continues, contact among competitors does not bode well
for any one competitor. Resources are inevitably insufficient for the needs of
each and every competitor. For this reason, competitors are inevitably alienated
from one another.
Those who tell the stories of economics and strategic management might not
advertise this premise.6 With Photograph 1 and the accompanying caption, I do
just that. I want to give logical credit where credit is due.

This photograph serves the purpose of

Photograph 1: There are good guys,
and then there are those bad guys.
introducing the premise that competitors are
strangers. In Photograph 1, the reference to
“The Good Guys,” in the very center of the
photograph, is crucial for this teaching
objective. Photograph 1 serves this lesson
once someone, preferably a student, draws
inspiration from “The Good Guys” to say:
“If there are ‘The Good Guys’ in the
towing business, then there must be ‘bad
guys’ operating somewhere in the vicinity.”
“What does it mean to act as a ‘good guy’
in the towing business?”
“What nasty things do the ‘bad guys’ do
with towed vehicles?”
The lesson is underway about competitors
as strangers.
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 53 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 53

Locating the Lesson in Two Disciplines

With Photograph 1 in sight, we can direct the discussion to the logical
necessity of the “competitors as strangers” premise in economics and in
strategic management. Seven examples of this necessity are handy. Six are
located on the “home turf” of economics and strategic management. The seventh
resides in an iconic literary companion.
First, in the disciplined tradition of economic inquiry, the competitive
marketplace operates smoothly when individual participants mind their own
business, each striving feverishly to maximize their own welfare. This private
striving, unconcerned with others per se, sums into a properly working social
order in which collective welfare is maximized by the operation of the well-
known invisible hand. The “Good Guy” in this narrative is the economic agent
who diligently practices an efficient use of resources at his or her private disposal.
There is no togetherness in this story. Competitors must be strangers here.
Second, in the disciplined tradition of economic inquiry, United States
antitrust law serves a necessary function. Antitrust law is a body of proscriptions
on collaborative actions in which competitors might engage. Antitrust law
reinforces the economist’s premise that, if society is to be well-served by
marketplaces, then competitors must stay out of each other’s way. No wonder
antitrust law is an ally of economics. With antitrust law, a strict line is drawn on
togetherness. Competitors must be strangers here.
Third, in the disciplined tradition of strategic management inquiry, the
guiding research question is this: “Why do some firms outperform others in a
given marketplace?” In the American business school, a companion question is
well-known: “By what means can the management of a firm sustain better
performance in relation to other firms in a given marketplace?”7 These are
questions that draw sharp distinctions among competitors. There is no togeth-
erness in this story. Competitors must be strangers here.
Fourth, in the disciplined tradition of strategic management inquiry, “The
Competition” is a set of parameters about conditions that exist outside the
particular firm that is being managed. Among these parameters, market share,
market growth, and market concentration serve as proxies for the actions and
capabilities of competitors. Amidst these parameters, firms strive concurrently
in pursuit of a lasting yet elusive foothold.8 There is no togetherness in this story.
Competitors must be strangers here.
Fifth, in the disciplined tradition of strategic management inquiry, Michael
Porter pioneered the premise that the management of a given firm can cultivate
the tacit support of “good competitors.”9 In this story line, each “good
54 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 54 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

competitor” is provisionally a “good guy.” The provisional “good guys” could

assist “The Good Guys” by, for example, imitating the latter’s price increase. In
so doing, the provisional “good guy” assists “The Good Guy” gain bargaining
power over key customers.10
Still, Porter advises managers to tolerate “good competitors” only as long as
the latter know their places and stay out of the way of “The Good Guy” firm.
Using this conditional meaning of tolerance, Porter depicts the marketplace as a
place where, at best, suspecting and suspicious competitors maintain truces.
There is, at most, a fleeting togetherness in this story.11 Competitors must
eventually be strangers here.
Sixth, in the disciplined tradition of game theory inquiry, a methodological
tool used by economists, two competitors (called strategists) face off in a
situation where each party’s decisions to act are based in part on expectations
about what the other party decides to do. The payoffs are measured and ranked
in terms of the gains that accrue to each party. Game theory is a story of “The
Good Guy” engaging a shrewd decision maker who could always become a “bad
guy” if the latter reaps the lion’s share of gains available in their interaction.
Game theory emerged in the era of nuclear arms proliferation. Game theorists
honor this heritage of the “Good Guy” versus “bad guy.”
There are jointly-produced payoffs in game theory analysis, but there are no
jointly experienced payoffs. In standard game theory format, none of the boxes
in a payoff matrix contains an entry such as “The relationship between strategist
A and strategist B is reinforced.”12 Despite often making an appeal to
“collective” stakes of the strategists, the game theorist does not spin a narrative
about human togetherness.13 Once again, competitors must be strangers here.

“Good Guys” and the Horatio Alger Novel

To these six depictions of competitors as strangers we can add one more
supporting example. This is the Horatio Alger novel. It is not uncommon for
those who teach about competition to invoke Alger’s name.
In Alger’s early work and later work, competition is an experience of mutual
distrust and treachery. In Ragged Dick, published in 1868, Alger’s “Ragged” Dick
Hunter competes in the market for shoeshine services.14 Dick’s chief competitor
is Micky Maguire. For Dick, Maguire’s presence is a continuing headache. In
Struggling Upward, published in 1890, Alger’s Luke Larkin competes for a prize
watch in an ice skating race. Luke’s archrival is the loathsome Randolph Duncan.
In the race and in their everyday schoolboy interactions, Randolph Duncan’s
presence is a continuing headache for Luke Larkin.15
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 55 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 55

Neither Alger story is about togetherness among competitors. Neither story

depicts human beings growing smarter and growing closer through the
experience of competition. Dick and Luke do make headway in the world. But,
this happens only once each leaves behind him the nastiness of competition and
comes under the tutelage of sympathetic adults.

Segue
Photograph 1 serves as a visual touchstone for a first component of this
teaching plan about competition and liberal education. From here, the teaching
plan proceeds in a completely different direction. Once we begin to locate
competition in places, physical and relational and ethical, there will be no reason
to conclude, “There is no togetherness in this story. Competitors must be
strangers here.” From now on, the story line about alienated competitors is
optional and unhelpful for the purposes of liberal education.

Retrieving the Concept of Competition

The second destination in this teaching plan is this premise: competitors share
particular physical places where they meet. These places are the playing fields
of competition. This lesson marks a transition point in the teaching plan. It is a
bridge between the established premise that competitors are strangers and a
substitute premise that competitors are intimately and routinely joined as collab-
orators.16 From this second destination, I will move to the lesson that
competitors, already sharing a physical space, share a connected, tolerant, and
civil existence.
There are many kinds of playing fields. Each beckons competitors with a
sense of place. This abundance and variety of places becomes clear when a
photographer turns the camera toward a playing field, as I do here.

Photograph 2: Here are the

basics: a field, a place to sit,
and a destination.
56 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 56 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Photograph 3: Many caring Photograph 4: Sometimes Photograph 5: The field is

hands make this place there are wrinkles in the at rest in June, verdant and
ready for the game. place we groom for play. uncluttered.

These four photographs serve the purpose of introducing this premise about
competitors sharing an intimate connection to the specific physical places in
which they experience competition.
In Photograph 2, the two benches, the boundary line, and the cage are crucial
images for this teaching objective. Competitors sit on the benches next to the
field. Competitors play the game within the boundary lines. The cage is the
destination in the flow of play for this sport: women’s field hockey. The physical
place is vivid here.
The lesson is underway once a student offers a remark such as, “This place
reminds me of an empty campus dining hall just before the dinner hour. We
know that action will begin soon in this place. In the minutes beforehand,
everything is placed ‘just so,’ and there is a moment of quiet before the doors
open and students rush in.”
In Photograph 3, the juxtaposition of a manicured field and the bustle of
human activity is critical for this teaching objective. The photograph depicts an
activity underway in the minutes before the actual competition begins that day
on the baseball field. These human beings are performing the work of a baseball
grounds crew. Their actual tasks are ordinary: raking dirt and marking a line. But
all around the crew is a work of art: the place that is a groomed playing field.
This lesson is underway when an alert student comments, “Look at the uniforms
they are wearing: identical, white, and clean. They look so much like people
who specialize in caretaking.”
In Photograph 4, a particular contrast is the key image. We can see the orderly
pattern in the lawn mowing, on one hand, and both the leaning boundary flag
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 57 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 57

and the wavy boundary line, on the other hand. The lesson is underway when a
student cannot conceal a chuckle, “What was that person thinking when she
made that wavy line! Was she daydreaming? Did she turn her head to watch a
bird in flight? Was she singing in harmony with that song on her CD player?”
In Photograph 5, the expanse of thick grass and the distant football goal post are
crucial for this teaching objective. This is a football field “at rest” in early summer.
It will be several months before the members of a football grounds crew will paint
straight and perpendicular lines to mark the territory that football competitors
know well as the look of a “gridiron.” Until then, the place is at rest. The lesson is
underway when a student says, “The goalpost is off in the distance, a suggestion
that competitors will eventually enter the field, just not any time soon.”
These expressions are signs that this set of photographs has served the
purpose of launching a lesson about a basic connection among competitors: they
meet on fields that are recognizable as distinctive physical places where they
play their games. This lesson is a prelude to linking competitors in relationships
that blossom on these fields.

Next Destinations
The third destination in this teaching plan is this premise: once competitors
step onto a playing field, they enter a relationship to one another. This relational
place complements the sense of physical place that competitors share. The
abundance and variety of relational places become clear when a photographer
turns the camera toward relationships among competitors who jointly occupy a
playing field, as I do here.

Photograph 6: Your attention, please:

two competitors meet here.
Photograph 7: On this day,
someone travels, and
someone hosts the traveler.
58 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 58 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Photograph 8: Players converse, with

words, postures, and football fashions.

Photograph 9: Players know Photograph 10: There is room

the game; some lines you for spectators to sit, critique,
touch, and some you do not. beam, and daydream.

These five photographs serve the purpose of introducing the premise about
competitors residing together in a relationship.
In Photograph 6, “Home” and “Guest” on the scoreboard comprise the key
image for this teaching objective. Someone has carefully painted “Home” and
“Guest” on the scoreboard. The two nouns are permanent features of the
scoreboard. Side by side, these two nouns signal the permanence of a
relationship among competitors. There can be no game here without the joint
presence of competitors. A student might mimic a public address announcer,
“Your attention please. Home and Guest meet here.”
In Photograph 7, the printed sign that is taped to the locker room door is the
crucial image for this teaching objective. The sign is not fancy, and the tape
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 59 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 59

hardly suggests permanence. Still, someone went to the trouble of printing and
posting this sign. That person knew that the members of one of the competing
teams had left their home surroundings to venture to this place to meet with their
hosts. In this visit, there is a relationship among the competitors. A reflective
student might comment, “The single word ‘Welcome’ signals a simple yet
elegant act of civility.”
Photograph 8 contains two different kinds of imagery that are central to this
lesson about competitors’ relationships. One is the physical posture of the
football players. Even though the technique of playing football involves high-
speed contact between members of the competing teams, there are times of
pause in the game such as this discussion with the game official, who wears a
striped shirt. A student might remark, “They look so at ease, like several friends
chatting on a street corner, standing in comfortable proximity.” The relationship
is depicted here in the conversation.
A second important image in the photograph is the football uniform. By the
conventions of football fashion, the members of one team walk onto the playing
field at the game clad in a white (or light-colored) jersey and the members of the
other team wear a dark-colored jersey. By further conventions of football
fashion, certain uniform design features are acceptable. These include solid-
colored football helmets, white football socks, stripes on the jersey sleeve, and
numerals on front and back of the jersey. A fashion-conscious student could be
moved to say, “Once you get past the helmets, they look like any other group on
campus: students making statements to one another through what they wear.
With those numerals, none of them wears exactly the same thing.” The
competitors converse here, figuratively, as they display their outfits.
The object in Photograph 9 is the intersection of two perpendicular white lines
that meet at the pylon. Near this junction, the “G” (for goal line) marker is an
indication that there is significance to this intersection. The competitors who meet
on this field share a relationship through the conventions of football competition.
Among these conventions, a player carrying the football strives to move forward
across the white line that is closely-paralleled by the dark line. Among other
conventions through which the competitors are connected on this field, the white
line (“sideline”) that spans the middle of the photograph is a boundary between an
area where play continues (in the photograph, “above” the sideline) and an area
where play is halted (“out of bounds”). The lesson is underway on this point about
competitors’ convention-centered relationships when a perceptive student
observes, “I wonder why a ball that touches a boundary line in baseball is
considered in play, while the opposite is true in football.”
60 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 60 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

In Photograph 10, the image of the lone Adirondack chair is the active
ingredient for this lesson. The chair is located along the sideline of a field
hockey field, outside the formal boundaries of play. The chair is reserved for
spectators, the third parties who are welcomed into a relationship with the
competitors, invited to sit in close proximity to what the competitors do together.
At the college where this photograph was taken, many of the spectators are
parents of the competitors. They can connect with their daughters and others’
daughters, beaming with satisfaction. This lesson about an expandable concept
of competitors-in-relationship is underway when a student imagines, “I can hear
the parents, making sounds of encouragement or disappointment, imagining that
they are moving up and down the field with their daughters.”
These expressions are signs that this set of photographs has served the
purpose of launching a lesson about competitors as human beings living
connected lives, tolerating one another’s presence on the field of play.17 Already
in the teaching plan, with the cumulative weight of ten photographs, we have
moved well past the premise that competitors are strangers. That intellectual
movement now accelerates.

Competitive Relationships Evolve and Endure

The fourth destination in this teaching plan is this premise: competitors stand
side by side, joined in their alertness to one another’s activities. Once we begin
accumulating evidence that competitors recognize their relationship with one
another on multiple levels simultaneously i.e., the prior two learning
destinations, we can turn our sights to the evolution of that relationship. Where
those competitors stand side by side, day after day, in close physical proximity,
we acquire an opportunity to set our photographic sights on patterns of
interaction among competitors, as I now do.

Photograph 11: Two vendors create a Photograph 12: Side by

marketplace on a street corner. side, competitors beckon
the weary traveler.
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 61 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 61

In Photograph 11, the crucial images are the gasoline prices listed on the two
signs. It does not take a pair of binoculars for the operator of one of these
business establishments to discern what his neighbor’s prices are at any given
moment. This lesson is underway when a student draws on her acquaintance
with rudimentary economic theory to comment, “So much for economic theory
about prices being driven to equilibrium in a market.” These two competitors
have created their own equilibrium. The equilibrium of unequal prices is a
hallmark of their particular relationship. The difference in gasoline prices is
where, for the moment, their relationship has stabilized.
Another active ingredient for this lesson is the juxtaposition of business signs
in Photograph 12. Feeling a bit mischievous, a student might deadpan, “These
competitors love company.” The operators of the two competing hotel
establishments beckon weary travelers together.
Every day, the participants in this marketplace have a front-row seat to their
competitive relationship. Every time an employee at one of the hotels steps
outside to mow the lawn, pick up litter, or clean a window, she can cast a glance
at what her counterparts are doing next door. The competitor relationship
evolves daily in these mundane ways.

Competitive Relationships Shaped by Others

The fifth destination in this teaching plan is this premise: competitors do not
always control the terms of their relationships. True, intercollegiate and profes-
sional athletic competition is highly organized. Games are scheduled. Officials
are assigned to govern each game.18 Competitors literally choose sides. Team
rosters are filled according to rules to which all the competitors agree.
Business competition often lacks central direction. Instead, third parties often
make decisions that bring competitors together in a relationship that the
competitors might not have intended or expected.19 When we turn our
photographic sights to such places, as I do here, we can expand the reach of our
evolving lesson about competitors sharing enduring relationships.
62 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 62 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Photograph 13: Far from the assembly

line, ordinary citizens mark this field.
Photograph 14: Someone
brings these daily competitors
together every weekday.

In Photograph 13, the variety of automobile makes and models is the

important image for this teaching objective.20 These individual drivers, simply
by virtue of their respective selections of parking locations, have created for this
day a relationship among the makers of these automobiles (and among the auto
dealers who sold or leased these vehicles). Coincidentally, the painted lines
highlight the lineup in this marketplace. An observant student will exclaim, “The
competition is between the hybrid car in the foreground and the non-hybrid
technology used in the dark-colored cars.” The car afficianado in the class might
add, “The competition is also between two makers of hybrid cars. The car in the
foreground and the white car are hybrids from different auto makers.” The
lesson is underway.
This learning destination is affirmed with Photograph 14. The key image here
is the variety of daily newspapers on sale. This display rack is located on a
college campus. A student who shops for newspapers will help by noting, “Two
blocks from here, at a convenience store, the lineup of newspapers is quite
different. Moving two blocks closer to the state line, someone has decided that
a different marketplace exists.”

Competitors Joined in Uncertainty

The sixth destination in this teaching plan is this premise: competitors are
joined in their shared uncertainty about the result of their competition. In any
competition, the players walk onto the field in a shared experience of the
unknown. At the start of any athletic competition, the score is 0-0. Support for
this lesson is found in Photograph 15.
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 63 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 63

On this morning, hours before the game

begins, all the scoreboard lights are dark.
A student might marvel, “Look at all the
categories of information that will be
illuminated once the game begins.”
Contributing a point about the
timelessness of this journey into
uncertainty, another student might say,
“This battered scoreboard has been turned
Photograph 15: Soon, the players will
on and off for many games. Look at all journey together toward an unknown result.
those the dents.” The lesson is underway.

Segue
We have moved through five teaching destinations regarding connections
among competitors. At each destination, we learn a little more about competitors
routinely living by an ethics of connection, tolerance, and civility. One more
destination lies ahead. That is where another layer of ethical questions is added
to this evolving narrative about competitors living together peaceably in one
another’s company.

Ethical Inquiry about Competitors Joined in Relationships

The seventh destination in this teaching plan is this premise: competitors are
joined in ethical questions about the conduct of their meeting on the field of play.
This joint search for answers to ethical questions is one more place where
competitors are joined. The common denominator in these questions is a meta-
question, “How should we conduct this competition in order for the experience to
serve our joined purposes?” Once they walk onto the playing field, the competitors
belong to the search for answers to their shared versions of this large question.
With a photographic perspective, I now sketch five such ethical questions.
64 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 64 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Photograph 16: How will the players

remember the closing moments of
the game?

Photograph 17: By what

standards of precision will
they play this game?

Photograph 18: Shadows lengthen on the

season; which of these men will reunite?

Photograph 19: What kind Photograph 20: Will they lose

of reception beyond this touch with grass and mud, in
door awaits the guests? the name of easy care?
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 65 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 65

These five photographs serve the purpose of introducing this premise about
competitors residing together in a joint search for answers to ethical questions
that routinely attend their relationships.
Many competitions have definite beginnings and endings. This is certainly the
case in athletic competitions. In Photograph 16, the bus parked alongside the
playing field is a vivid reminder of an impending conclusion. One group of
competitors, the ones who traveled to this site, will eventually board the bus and
depart, en route to their home campus. A perceptive student might remark, “The
crumpled leaves on the ground and the fading sunlight suggest that the activity
is winding down on this day.”
In this shared place, the impending conclusion of a competition, the coaches
and players often must join in answering the question, “How much of a margin
of victory is sufficient?” In some athletic competitions, long before the actual
conclusion of the game, the outcome is not in doubt. “The winner routs the
loser,” in athletic jargon. Other game outcomes are more uncertain. In these
situations, an ethical question looms behind the athletic question about margin
of victory. This ethical question is, “How should we competitors conclude this
engagement in the interest of enhancing our connection?”
Every now and then, the competitors stumble at this stage of their
relationship. Allegations fly that one competitor took steps to “run up the score.”
Running up the score is a serious charge. It is an allegation that one competitor
took steps, such as keeping a star performer in the lineup, in an attempt to win
by a margin that is larger than necessary to secure a victory. “Running up the
score,” at a minimum, signals the fraying of a competitive relationship.
Sometimes, competitors part company over the issue, deciding to sever their
relationship as competitors. The image of the team bus in Photograph 16 is a
reminder that the competitors might need to attend to this ethical matter before
they depart this place.
The wavy boundary line in Photograph 17 is the focal point for another lesson
about competition, competitor relationships, and ethics. In organized athletic
competition, the authority of game officials is accepted by all participants. Game
officials make their decisions, in part, with the assistance of markings on the
field of play, such as this particular sideline on a field hockey field. With that in
mind, a student might muse after viewing the photograph, “I wonder if that
wavy line will make a difference in a referee’s decision? What happens if the
ball crosses the bowed section of the line that was imperfectly painted?” The
imperfection in the field marking serves as a reminder for the participants that
their interaction is inseparable from the decisions made by others. “How tolerant
66 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 66 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

of others’ decisions will they be, competitors joined as participants?” is an

ethical issue ever present on the field of play.
Photograph 18 complements Photograph 16 in serving the purpose of
connecting competition with the experience of departure from a competitive
relationship. Photograph 18 is useful as a way to call attention to the experience
that extends beyond the conclusion of any one competition. In intercollegiate
athletics in the United States, students are generally eligible to participate for
four academic years. At the same time, many intercollegiate competitions are
renewed year after year. The game in Photograph 18 happens to be the forty-
eighth consecutive year in which a football game was scheduled for the players
and the coaches representing these two colleges.21
As one consequence, some of these players and coaches have met on the field
of play several times. Due to the four-year eligibility rule, those reunions will
end for some of these human beings. Seeing the lengthening November shadows
in the photograph, a student might reflect, “I wonder what is going through the
minds of the seniors standing on the two sidelines? Will someone take an action
to acknowledge the finality for them?”
The opportunity here is to teach a lesson about an ethics of departures from
relationships. We can translate this student’s comment into an ethical question,
“What proper actions should we take together, knowing that we will not cross
paths again soon, if ever, in order to grow in our relationships generally?” This
is an opportunity anchored in connection, tolerance, and civility. It is a lesson
repeated throughout adulthood.22
In Photograph 19, the active ingredient is the juxtaposition of the personalized
“Welcome, Chapman Football” sign taped to the door and the impersonal
designation of a “Visitor Team Room A.” A competitive relationship is an
evolving experience. Each party, with multiple opportunities to do the “little
things” of human interaction, adds to the strength of a relationship, or weakens
it.23 An ethical question played out behind that locker room door is anchored in
tolerance and civility, “What acts of kindness should we prepare to extend to
these others whose interests are different than our own?”
In athletic competition, such reciprocity extends beyond playing the game.
Any student who, in the course of playing an organized sport, has visited another
school has likely accumulated evidence with which to draw a sharp distinction:
“That locker room at X was a sty. It had wet floors and stale air and skimpy
towels. But, at Y, they treated us like we were family visitors.” Here is one more
level at which competitors are joined in a relationship centered on an ethical
question about human connections.
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 67 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 67

With Photograph 20, we have an opportunity to incorporate an ecological

theme into this teaching plan about competition and ethics. The key feature of
Photograph 20 for this teaching objective is the uniformity of this artificial
football playing surface. Plastic artificial turf swept across the landscape of
American sports, particularly for football, in the 1970s. In the ensuing decades,
the popularity of the surface waned. One reason was a growing suspicion that
the surface contributed to an increasing incidence of leg injuries among partic-
ipants. In the past decade, refined versions of artificial playing surfaces have
gained popularity. Ease of maintenance is one reason. Given the choice between
mowing lush grass (as in Photograph 5) and sweeping the carpet, some cost-
conscious college administrators might understandably opt for the carpet.
Here is one more situation in which competitors are joined in a relationship
with ethical significance. The artificial surface separates athletes from their
formative experiences, learning to play many outdoor sports on the grass and
dirt of backyards and neighborhood parks. Losing touch with the natural world
runs counter to the expansive vistas that liberal education promotes generally.
Viewing Photograph 20, a student might bemoan, “There is something about the
smell of a wet leather ball and the sight of muddy knees. That was fun.”
The ethical onus here sits squarely on the shoulders of the adults who decide
such matters as athletic playing surfaces. Photograph 20 is a cue for adults to
work together through the ethical question, “What experiences in the natural
world should we enable student-players to experience together as they play the
game?” This ethical question is all the more important as a vehicle for us liberal
education teachers to engage our students in a world where more and more
human “contact” is anchored in digitized 0s and 1s.

An Expandable Teaching Plan

This teaching plan about competition, competitor relationships, and liberal
education is designed with versatility in mind. At the very least, this lesson plan
could be tailored to a single class discussion. In a philosophy course, the plan
could serve as a one-class primer about the power of language, particularly the
entrenched language of competition. In an ethics course, the plan could serve as
a one-day introduction to the territory of ethics. In a first-year seminar, the
lesson plan could be used to introduce students to the aims of liberal education
and to the difference between social science and the humanities.
The lesson plan, at the same time, could be expanded into an entire semester
course. Each of the photographs and an accompanying point about place could
be joined with companion works of fiction and nonfiction, as we liberal
68 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 68 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

educators and our students delve deeply into the many dimensions of place. In
this section, I provide three brief examples of such companion literatures that
contribute to expanded teaching plans.

Literary Retrievals of Competition

In one of these literatures, human beings know who they are through their close
connection to the physical place in which they reside. In Wendell Berry’s The Wild
Birds, attorney Wheeler Catlett and client (a well as cousin) Burley Coulter create
room for the interests of a farm as they work out a property transfer.24
In Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, R. G. Quoyle, his daughters, and his
aunt move to coastal Newfoundland in search of a fresh start in their ancestral
land. There they begin to redefine their lives in a place where “fog against the
window like milk” obscures the land and “always in earshot [is] screech of
raftering ice.”25 Proulx’s characters know that they are dwarfed by the
magnificent rock that is Newfoundland: “Nothing but rock and sea, the tiny
figures of humans and animals against them for a brief time.”26
In All Good Women, Valerie Miner locates this sense of place in a rented house
in San Francisco.27 There, while the United States is drawn into World War II,
four young adult women search for coherence and stability in their respective
lives. Later, as Teddy, Moira, Wanda, and Anna reunite after the war, they realize
that the house has been the touchstone in their joint search for acceptance as
“good women.”
These characters are not competitors per se. But, they know who they are by
knowing where they live. This literature is thus useful as an introduction to the sense
of physical place, before the connection is made between place and competition.
In the second of these companion literatures, the connection between
competitor and physical place is explicit. In their respective reflections on
basketball competition, John Edgar Wideman and Pat Conroy demonstrate that
competitors are keenly aware of the physical places where they meet. In
Wideman’s Hoop Roots, the settings are the Pittsburgh playgrounds where
Wideman learned the game from older players.28 Wideman locates the
playground in physical relation to home, school, and familiar streets. The reader
can imagine the heat of the asphalt playing surface on a sultry summer
afternoon. In My Losing Season, Conroy narrates a tour of the basketball arenas
where he and his Citadel teammates endured a miserable season.29 In
descriptions of places that are reminiscent of another era, when some basketball
courts were literally wire cages that separated players and spectators, Conroy
recalls how he and his teammates were booed, jostled by spectators, and hoisted
on the shoulders of admirers.
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 69 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 69

The playing fields where Wideman and Conroy grew wiser as competitors are
places that are distinctly recognizable. These places are sometimes open and
sometimes claustrophobic, sometimes bright and sometimes dim, filled with
sounds from spectators and silent except for the squeak of shoes, sometimes
sweltering and sometimes drafty. In each and every instance, it is a powerful
sense of place that helps unite the competitors in their venture.
In Learning to Win, historian Pamela Grundy argues that a key ingredient in
the modernization of twentieth-century North Carolina society was amateur
athletic competition.30 Grundy describes such physical places as the
gymnasiums in factory towns and competitions sponsored by North Carolina
textile companies. To this sense of place, she adds two intangible places in
which these competitions evolved. One was the Jim Crow South. The other was
the social ambiguity about opportunities for young women.
Outside the world of sport, Denise Giardina’s The Unquiet Earth is an
important component of this second literature.31 In Giardina’s novel, Dillon
Freeman, Rachel Honaker, and Arthur Lee Sizemore are children of the
Appalachian coalfields. As adults, Dillon and Arthur Lee compete for Rachel’s
affections; Arthur Lee manages the coal company. All three compete with
sharply divergent visions of how the land and the coal towns will be shaped by
human hands.
These characters in this second literature are competitors keenly aware of the
places where they play. As competitors, they are inevitably citizens of a place.
As they grow, they learn how a particular venue for competition sets boundaries
on what is possible, and what is not. With Photographs 2, 3, 4, and 5 as the
starting point, and with this literature alongside, we can further foresee the
possibility that a place for competition can be created in liberal education.
The third companion literature is about athletic competitors sustaining
complex and lasting relationships as a direct result of their joint pursuit of
victories. Simply the best text in this literature is John Feinstein’s interpretation
of the football rivalry that joins players and coaches and alumni from the United
States Military Academy (“Army”) and the United States Naval Academy
(“Navy”). A Civil War is the ironic title of Feinstein’s book.32 Feinstein tells a
story about as intense an athletic competition as exists anywhere. Throughout, it
is an account about human beings jointly accomplishing connection, tolerance,
and civility.33

Why Not!
There is still another level to which these teaching objectives and texts could
be elevated. I have in mind an entire undergraduate major field of study about
70 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 70 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

competition and ethics. Call it “Places and Sights of Competition.” Take these
seven learning destinations, and add courses in the orthodoxy of economic
theory and strategic management theory, respectively. A nine-course
undergraduate major comes into view. Unique to this major is the opportunity,
at every course destination, for students and teachers alike to develop their skills
and their identities as photographers. Why not locate this particular
interweaving of traditions of inquiry—humanities, social science, and the arts—
into a major in a liberal education curriculum?

Conclusion
This paper is intended to stimulate conversation about the work that the
concept of competition can do for the liberal education curriculum. What could
we accomplish if we were to put aside the privileges of academic disciplines
long enough to ask ourselves, “Where can the concept of competition usefully
intersect the aims of liberal education and the lives of our undergraduate
students?” What I have done here is suspend the disciplinary privilege (i.e.,
“Competition is the domain of X. End of discussion.”) long enough for us to take
a new look at the concept of competition. I argue that competition belongs in the
liberal education curriculum because the concept can be transformed into a
means for connecting an ethics of liberal education with our students’ growing
intellectual lives. This argument is different from the claim that competition
belongs in the liberal education curriculum because its disciplinary guardians—
chiefly, economics and corporate strategy or strategic management—say it
belongs there.
Using photography of the playing fields of competition, I make visible what
was invisible: namely, a logical connection between certain ethical anchors in
the liberal education curriculum and the experience of competition. By defining
competition, the experience that humans create, as a specific place, I show how
we liberal education teachers can encourage students to see competitors as
human beings doing things together. This is one more way to encourage our
students to imagine themselves leading connected, tolerant, and civil lives. They
are and will be competitors for life.
In the course of retrieving competition for these purposes and in this way, I
have another destination in sight. This next journey is no less unconventional
than the one sketched in this paper. With competition so retrieved, I now pose
the question, “What role can members of the intercollegiate athletic enterprise
play in putting the concept of competition to work for the liberal education
curriculum?” In one respect, this question is improbable. College coaches have
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 71 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 71

been institutionally separated from the undergraduate teaching faculty. At the

same time, the question is plausible. College coaches do their life work in a web
of relationships with competitors, principally their fellow coaches.34
This question about coaches (and athletic directors, too) has been missed
completely in the recent, highly-publicized campaign to reform intercollegiate
athletics at those colleges where liberal education is firmly entrenched. Two
manifestations of this campaign are books published by Princeton University
Press. One is The Game of Life.35 The other is Reclaiming the Game.36
The authors of these two books, James Shulman and William Bowen, and
Bowen and Sarah Levin, respectively, document what they see as the corrosive
effect that intercollegiate athletics has had on the operations of numerous “elite”
private colleges and universities. The questions that they pose and the methods
that they employ are admirable, clever, and long overdue. But, their remedies
lack imagination: Implement more regulatory control of intercollegiate athletics,
they assert.
It does not appear that Bowen, Levin, and Shulman ever consider the
possibility that there is a curricular connection between liberal education and
intercollegiate athletics. I have sketched how we can do better than this. With
some imagination, and with a camera, we can move to claim competition, full
of intensity and wins and losses and all, for our educational enterprise as a
concept that does the work of liberal education.

INDEX OF PHOTOGRAPHS—ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY AUTHOR

Photograph 1: There are good guys, and then there are those bad guys. The place is the
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Photograph 2: Here are the basics: a field, a place to sit, and a destination. The place is
Wells College in Aurora, New York.
Photograph 3: Many caring hands make this place ready for the game. The place is
Kauffmann Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.
Photograph 4: Sometimes there are wrinkles in the place we groom for play. The place
is Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Photograph 5: The field is at rest in June, verdant and uncluttered. The place is Beloit
College in Beloit, Wisconsin.
Photograph 6: Your attention, please: two competitors meet here. The place is a com-
munity park in Friday Harbor, Washington.
Photograph 7: On this day, someone travels, and someone hosts the traveler. The place
is Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.
Photograph 8: Players converse, with words, postures, and football fashions. The place
is Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.
72 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 72 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Photograph 9: Players know the game; some lines you touch, and some you do not.
The place is Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Photograph 10: There is room for spectators to sit, critique, beam, and daydream. The
place is Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Photograph 11: Two vendors create a marketplace on a street corner. The place is
Foothill Boulevard, Historic Route 66, in Pomona, California.
Photograph 12: Side by side, competitors beckon the weary traveler. The place is
along Interstate Highway 39 in Rockford, Illinois.
Photograph 13: Far from the assembly line, ordinary citizens mark this field. The place
is Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Photograph 14: Someone brings these daily competitors together every weekday. The
place is Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Photograph 15: Soon, the players will journey together toward an unknown result. The
place is Nauset Regional High School in Orleans, Massachusetts.
Photograph 16: How will the players remember the closing moments of the game? The
place is Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Photograph 17: By what standards of precision will they play this game? The place is
Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Photograph 18: Shadows lengthen on the season; which of these men will reunite? The
place is Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Photograph 19: What kind of reception beyond this door awaits the guests? The place
is Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.
Photograph 20: Will they lose touch with grass and mud, in the name of easy care?
The place is Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

NOTES

This work has received generous support from Gettysburg College resources. In
addition, I have benefited from conversations with (listed alphabetically): Michael
Birkner; Dan Butin; Kathleen Cain; Daniel DeNicola; R. Edward Freeman; Christopher
Gilbert; Steven Gimbel; Edwin Hartman; Rick Hartzell; Peter Johnson; Alice Martinson;
Jeffrey Martinson; Gordon Meyer; George Petrie; Lisa Portmess; Rajmohan
Ramanathapillai; GailAnn Rickert; Kathryn Rogers; William Rosenbach; James
Rutkowski; Paul Seybold; Julienne Simpson; Michael Simpson; Gail Sweezey; and
David Wright. I offer this paper as a tribute to the forty-one Gettysburg College students
who completed the first three versions of my senior seminar course, “Ethics and the
Playing Fields of Competition.”

1
This conception is inspired and informed by M. C. Nussbaum, Cultivating
Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1997).
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 73 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 73

2
My use of the term “initiatives” signals that I do not equate liberal education with
the liberal arts and the liberal arts college. “Liberal arts college” has become in practice
such an elastic term that it frequently houses disciplines such as business administration.
I use “liberal education” here to refer to a particular educational philosophy for touch-
ing students’ intellectual lives. In making this distinction between liberal education and
liberal arts college, I keep in view the Phi Beta Kappa Society practice of granting new
charters to aspiring chapters at certain universities that (a) demonstrate a commitment to
liberal education even though (b) those institutions need not bear resemblance to liber-
al arts colleges.
3
P. V. Rosenau, The Competition Paradigm: America’s Romance with Conflict,
Contest, and Commerce (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). For all the effort
that Rosenau expends in detailing the applications of “the competition paradigm,” she
goes no further than reaffirming the familiar remedy: more regulation of competition.
4
C. Taylor, An Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1991), 23. Taylor demonstrates that retrieval involves both the retention of certain core
ideas and the transformation of the larger concept.
5
The connection that I make between sights and sites, using photography, is different
from the reference to “the sites and the sights” in a Washington Post news report about
development encroaching on historical sites in Maryland. M. Otto and N. Hernandez,
“‘We’re Getting It From All Sides,’” Washington Post Montgomery Extra, 20 April,
2006: 3-4.
6
See Donald McCloskey’s attempt to nudge his economist colleagues into taking a
self-critical stance toward their discipline. D. McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics
(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
7
For an accessible development of both questions, see S. Oster, Modern Competitive
Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
8
See, for example, the effort by Shelby Hunt to develop a “general theory of compe-
tition.” S. D. Hunt, A General Theory of Competition: Resources, Competencies,
Productivity, Economic Growth (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000). Bound to the con-
cept of individual struggle to outperform others, Hunt’s conflates competition and strate-
gic management.
9
M. E. Porter, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior
Performance (New York: Free Press, 1985), 212-228.
10
Porter writes: “A good competitor is one that can perform the beneficial func-
tions…without representing too severe a long-term threat” Ibid., 212.
11
Porter provides an elegant expression of this ambiguity about competitors. He
writes: “Competitors are both a blessing and a curse.” Ibid., 228.
12
There is precedent for this kind of narrative about human association. Douglas
Muzzio and Steven Brams interpret game payoffs in terms other than quantifiable pay-
offs. See D. Muzzio, Watergate Games: Strategies, Choices, Outcomes (New York: New
York University Press, 1982), 17, 38; and S. Brams, Biblical Games: A Strategic
Analysis of Stories in the Old Testament (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), 71.
74 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 74 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

13
Daniel Arce deserves credit for demonstrating, inadvertently, that relational payoffs
do not fit into game theory methodology. Arce compares two different ways for competi-
tors to engage one another. He concludes that there is a Pareto improvement available to
the strategists together. But, he reaches this conclusion in the only way a game theorist
can. Arce adds the two players’ individual payoffs in the one game, compares that sum
to the sum of individual payoffs in an alternative game, and then declares, based on the
higher sum, that the two players have accomplished an ethical act together. But, there is
nothing “togetherly” in either game beyond their mutual presence in the market. Arce
deserves some credit, but, his claim to say something new about the ethics of competi-
tion is exaggerated. He incorporates rational self-restraint into his analysis. That clearly
is action of the ethical kind. But, there are numerous kinds of self-restrained action with
other parties in view. My argument relies on the practice of mutual self-restraint. D. G.
Arce M., “Subgame Perfection and the Ethics of Competition,” Managerial and
Decision Economics (2005) 26: 397-405.
14
H. Alger, Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward (New York: Penguin, 1986), 61-70.
15
Ibid., 135-158.
16
This sentence pays homage to Richard Rorty’s pragmatist characterization of
“interesting philosophy”: Usually it is, implicitly or explicitly, a contest between an
entrenched vocabulary which has become a nuisance and a half-formed new vocabulary
which vaguely promises great things.” R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 9.
17
One indication of this tolerance is the admission by a competitor that he and other
competitors have reason to celebrate something about their relationship. On the twenty-
fifth anniversary of the longest professional baseball game ever (33 innings of play),
then-participant Cal Ripken was quoted making this recollection: “All the guys who
played in that game—it’s something that we share. We were all in the same boat, trying
to make it to the big leagues…” “Sharing in the same boat,” a competition that resulted
in a win and a loss is a model expression about competitors, relationships, and tolerance.
D. Sheinin, “Long Memories from a Baseball Classic,” Washington Post (18 April
2006): E1, E10.
18
The inclusion of game officials in the competitive relationship is a consequence of
the conception of competition that I have retrieved thus far. This widened relationship
among competitors is masterfully portrayed in J. Hough, Jr., The Conduct of the Game
(San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986). Lee Malcolm, Hough’s protagonist,
is a baseball umpire.
19
College admissions officers know well this phenomenon. They can embark on the
student recruitment process with certain hypotheses about their principal competitors. In
practice, it is students who define the competitive landscape, through their individual
decisions to make application for admission to a college. The sum of these individual
decisions can look wholly at odds with the prior assumptions made by admissions offi-
cers. For this reason, the latter regularly collect data about application “overlaps.” For
 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 75 SETTING OUR SIGHTS ON SITES 75

this reason, too, I have found it immensely helpful to invite a Director of Admissions to
the course to join in a discussion about this teaching destination.
20
The inspiration for this example, and for my photographic search for the image,
comes from Alfred Sloan’s classic explanation of the longstanding competition between
the Ford Motor Company and the General Motors Corporation that Sloan managed for
many years. In his autobiography, first published in 1963, Sloan wrote this about Henry
Ford, the competitor: “We had a different concept of the business, which we put into
competition with his.” A. P. Sloan, Jr., My Years With General Motors (New York:
Anchor, 1972), 515.
21
The modern football playing relationship between Muhlenberg College (in the
white jerseys here) and Moravian College (in the dark jerseys here) dates to November
22, 1958. Players and coaches representing Muhlenberg and Moravian have met every
year since then, with one exception. The game scheduled for November 23, 1963 was
cancelled, due to the assassination of President Kennedy the day before in Dallas, Texas.
22
One of the very best texts for teaching this particular ethical lesson is S. Gordon, Life
Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1998). Suzanne
Gordon follows three nurses whose life work involves repeated episodes of departure.
23
John Cowan uses terms such as “small decencies” and “telltales” to highlight this
point about welcoming others into one’s territory. J. Cowan, Small Decencies: Reflections
and Meditations on Being Human at Work (New York: HarperBusiness, 1993).
24
W. Berry, The Wild Birds (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1986), 113-146. If I
could choose but one title for purposes of teaching this lesson about humans and place,
it would be Berry’s Jayber Crow. W. Berry, Jayber Crow (Washington, DC:
Counterpoint, 2001). I will say no more here about that book, honoring Berry’s expres-
sion of disdain for those who try to interpret Jayber Crow. See “Notice.” Ibid.
25
E. A. Proulx, The Shipping News (New York: Touchstone, 1994).
26
Ibid., 196.
27
V. Miner, All Good Women (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1987).
28
J. E. Wideman, Hoop Roots: Playground, Love, and Race (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 2001).
29
P. Conroy, My Losing Season (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2003).
30
P. Grundy, Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in Twentieth-
Century North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
31
D. Giardina, The Unquiet Earth (New York: Ivy, 1994).
32
J. Feinstein, A Civil War: Army vs. Navy (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1997).
33
Feinstein has pioneered a genre about competitors and their relationships. See also
J. Feinstein, A March to Madness (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998).
34
The improbability of this question is also a moot point. I have invited numerous
coaches to join in undergraduate class discussions about competition as a pattern of rela-
tionships rich with ethical significance. These coaches have no difficulty talking with stu-
dents in the framework that I have developed here. Indeed, they talk this way eagerly.
76 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 76 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

35
J. L. Shulman and W. G. Bowen, The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational
Values (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
36
W. G. Bowen and S. A. Levin, Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and
Educational Values (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
 BOOK REVIEWS
Nicholas Sagovsky, Christian Tradition and the Practice of Justice. London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2008. 266 pages. $22.76. ISBN:
978-0-281-06016-0.
Nicholas Sagovsky is Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey. For several
reasons to be treated below, this book is a “must read” for anyone interested in
contemporary Christian approaches to social justice. The book is very clearly
written, hence it should be accessible to a wide audience, as well as concep-
tually rich, hence it will keep the interest even of serious scholars in the
Christian tradition.
Sagovsky analyzes social justice in terms of four major strands, each of which
is necessary in the effort to bring about a just society: (1) the maximization of
liberty; (2) the existence of a system of law to which people can give assent
when liberties collide; (3) the meeting of basic needs so that the aforementioned
liberty is not merely formal; and (4) a personal commitment to do justice in
concrete situations in light of the above three abstract strands.
Although these four strands are, in a way, non-historical in that they are the
requirements for a just society in any historical period, Sagovsky deftly traces
the concept of justice historically. He does so through several stages so as to
alert the reader to both: (a) the positive influence of these historical approxi-
mations to justice on contemporary societies; and (b) the degree to which all
previous societies (along with our own) have fallen short of justice.
The first historical chapter deals with ancient Greek and Roman concepts of
justice. Here Sagovsky convincingly shows the contemporary relevance of the
plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Indeed, he shows that the transition from the
view of justice as blood vengeance to justice as the rule of law is as important
now as it was in the fifth century B.C.E. Further, the ideas that justice requires
practical wisdom (phronesis) in its application and that justice is analogous to
musical concepts like harmony and proportionality are by no means outdated.
The next two historical chapters deal with biblical justice as it is found in the
Hebrew scriptures and in the New Testament, respectively. Here we learn that
for the theist justice is ultimately God’s justice. That is, our sense of justice or
injustice in the world is due to the fact that an omnibenevolent God acts justly.
Throughout the book Sagovsky avoids a rigid split between ancient Hebrew and
Christian conceptions of justice. The latter is meant to fulfill, rather than to
BOOK REVIEWS
Ahmad S. Moussalli, U.S. Foreign Policy and Islamist Politics. Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2008. 224 pages. $59.95. ISBN 978-0-8130-3149-1
At once demystifying and exploratory, U.S. Foreign Policy and Islamist
Politics simplifies and sterilizes the historical, economic, social, religious, and
ideological tenets of the struggle between Islam and the West.
The first chapter of Moussalli’s text, entitled “The West, U. S. Foreign Policy,
and the Making of the Islamic Threat,” divides the history between these
factions into four recognizable and distinct eras which shaped, and continue to
shape, relations between the United States and Islam. His first chronological
consideration is that of the Crusades, indicative of the West’s perceived imperial
attitude, and the Muslim struggle against religious persecution. He argues that
this remains an important facet to relations between Islam and the West, as the
United States media has utilized similar vocabulary and motives in their modern
wartime apologetics. The work continues by offering a reconsideration of
American foreign policy up to and during the Cold War era, policy which
included the buying of Muslim allies with arms and the promise of access to an
international media platform.
When those in power in the Middle East ceased to serve Western economic
interests, such as domination of oil reserves, that media platform, as well as
academia, policy makers, and other powerful Western socialization factors,
turned against Muslims on the whole. Moussalli continually refutes the
American ideology that ‘Muslim’ is synonymous with ‘terrorist,’ stating that
certain vocal conservatives “view Islam as a unitary, timeless, and monolithic
threat (19).” In this context, Moussalli argues that the American media, through
the deliberate framing of information and misinformation, has made Islamism
the new absolute danger in the eyes of the voting majority, a popular war-
mongering which brings difficulty to those individuals seeking the Muslim
perspective on current events.
Fortunately, Moussalli provides a view of the Muslim perspective throughout
his text. First, he supports the claim that only fundamentalist sects of Islam hold
world powers, specific countries, or groups in disdain, and, of those, only the most
radical move towards violent action. Moderate and reform Muslim sects may hold
little or no contempt for the West, and have shown fiscal and ideological patterns
of support for globalization and technological advances. Therefore, in the book’s
third chapter, entitled “The Context and Ideologies of Islamist Politics,” he offers
78 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
abolish, the law. And the law is established, in part, to meet the basic needs of
human beings.
Sagovsky is also intent to avoid a monolithic view of scripture. There are
different voices in both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament, hence
different emphases regarding justice. For example, Thucydides’ treatment of the
“might makes right” hypothesis in the Melian dialogue is close to the conception
of justice that is found at the end of the Book of Job. A quite different emphasis
is found in Jeremiah, however. Sagovsky incorporates the legitimate concerns of
feminist scholars regarding biblical (in)justice and he also rescues us from
heavy-handed interpretations of justice that result from the Abraham-Isaac story.
Clearly the deemphasis of coercive power in the gospels has implications for
how one thinks of justice. In this regard it is unfortunate that many translators of
the New Testament render dike or its cognates as “righteousness” rather than as
“justice.” That is, the topic of justice dominates the Christian scriptures.
The two remaining historical chapters deal with Saints Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas, respectively. Sagovsky reads the former as concentrating on the
theodicy problem in his understanding of justice, whereas he interprets Thomas
Aquinas as concentrating on justice as a virtue possessed by those who
participate in divine rationality. It is common today to hear people ask, “Whose
justice?” given the muscular versions of relativism that populate our lifeworld.
On Sagovsky’s insightful metaphor, justice for Thomas Aquinas, by way of
contrast, consists in the practice of a virtue found in those who have “tuned in”
to the divine wavelength.
Once the historical chapters are completed, Sagovsky turns his attention to the
thought of the most influential political philosopher of the past century and a
half: John Rawls. In fact, the entire second half of the book can be seen as an
extended dialogue with Rawls. In my mind, this is the glory of the book.
I admit my bias here. Although I have never met Sagovsky (hence I am not
biased in a personal sense), I am very much influenced by Rawls’ political
liberalism and as a result I am favorably impressed with Sagovsky’s achievement.
As is well known, many versions of contemporary political theology are either
conservative or characterized by lines of research popular on the far left.
Sagovsky makes clear the contributions that could be made by politically liberal
theologians and philosophers of religion. For this he is to be thanked.
Although this is not exactly the language he uses, I think that Sagovsky’s
overall point could be put in the following terms: the comprehensive liberalism
of the Enlightenment is often intended as a secular replacement for Christianity,
hence comprehensive liberals often speak of a post-Christian age. But the
78 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
“a typology of radical and moderate Islamic fundamentalist movements
that…must be contextualized internationally, regionally, and locally (62).” This
speaks to the sense of urgency in fundamentalist Islam towards alleged imperial
regimes that the West would respond preemptively and forcefully to threats
originating in remote localities and regions.
Moussalli says that another source of tension between Islam and the West is
the influence of the diverse American religious community on political decisions
concerning Israel, and consequently, the whole of the Middle East. He states,
“religion has reinforced a pro-Israeli stance in U. S. policy, whether because of
the identification of American Jews with Israel’s welfare or because of some
evangelical groups’ belief that events in the region may set the stage for the end
of the world (20).” However, he adamantly stresses that Islam is not categor-
ically anti-Semitic, but more specifically, opposes Zionism, and criticizes
authors and policy makers who fail to recognize this distinction (39).
One distinction that Muslims choose to disregard is the distinction between
religion and politics. Islam is a religion, but it is also a nation, and a heritage. By
implementing democracy in Middle Eastern countries, the West ignores this
cultural difference, and proceeds to gawk in amazement at the long and laborious
transitions which the affected countries undergo. The separation of church and
state is inherent in American governance, and therefore assumed to be included
in governments taking on democracy, no matter how accustomed to other
ideologies. However, when this cultural assimilation causes American troops to
remain deployed, the rift between the cultures continues to widen due to the
implied pressure of the use of force in the Middle East, and the fear of loss of
citizens and ‘heroes’ in the West. Moussalli offers case studies of regions, sects,
and instances to illustrate not only the potential for increased tension, but also the
opportunities for peace through creative solutions and inter-cultural dialogue. To
eradicate these misunderstandings which escalate into violence, the work offers
simple, clearly phrased policy recommendations to the United States which
include the removal of a desire for absolute dominion over or control of the
Middle East, an end to the creation of and preemptive action based upon
hypothetical threats, especially from foreign and domestic Muslim communities,
and consistency in the implementation of American human rights policies.
While informative, Moussalli gives primary representation to extremist
groups from both polities; radical fundamentalist Islam, and neo- conservative
or evangelical America are prime examples. His text presents facts in the form
of forgotten headlines and sound bites, but maintains objectivity. To the
uninformed, however, this attention to absolutism may further propel distrust
 BOOK REVIEWS 79 BOOK REVIEWS 79

political liberalism of Rawls (and Sagovsky) has no such aim. Both religious and misunderstanding, rather than leading to resolution or reassessment.
belief and agnosticism seem to be here to stay, such that it makes as much sense Moussalli does not attempt to simplify this complex group of issues, nor does he
to say that we live in a post-secular age as that we live in a post-Christian one. write in favor of particular Muslim groups. As he writes on behalf of a diverse
Rawls provides a framework within which we can more closely Islam, he offers policy suggestions to a world superpower capable of
approximate a just society and a just international order than was possible improvement. Therefore, this text provides an ample foundation of research to
within previous frameworks. In other words, Rawls helps us to understand fuel adequate working knowledge of historical events, and the challenge of
better all three: the priority of liberty, the nature of law in a democratic society, rooting out the contexts and implications of more current news, such as the
and the crucial role to be played by meeting the basic needs of citizens in a assassination of Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. Students will find
just society and in a just world. U.S. Foreign Policy and Islamist Politics, and the subsequent references
One thing that philosophical theories of justice, in general, do not do well essential to objective discussion of the modern Middle East and the formation of
concerns the fourth strand of justice: personal commitment to do justice in just foreign policy. Laypersons will take note of a long history of cultural and
concrete situations. Here Christianity can play a crucial role, on Sagovsky’s religious animosity between the West and Islam, a history which texts of this
account. The last chapter of the book functions as a coda that brings together the nature are only beginning to reveal and combat. Teachers will find in this work
entire work. Here Sagovsky explores the relationship between the eucharist and a myriad of primer discussions focusing on peace, human rights, justice, and
justice, specifically the way the eucharist fosters an understanding of, and a fairness, subjectivism, socialization, and historically rooted attitudes and
desire to put into practice, the above-mentioned strands of justice. language framework. Ahmad Moussalli’s U.S. Foreign Policy and Islamist
It should not escape notice that one of the reasons why Sagovsky is attracted Politics is a tool designed to reveal both sides of a long and costly argument, an
to the sort of political philosophy done by Rawls is that both see the key argument which has required resolution for generations.
question in political thought to be the following one: how can reasonable people
live together in a just society when they are divided, sometimes uncompro- Emily Barone
misingly so, by the different comprehensive doctrines that they affirm? In Michigan Coalition for Human Rights
simpler language, how can we get along in a fair way considering the amazing Marygrove College
plurality of worldviews of citizens in contemporary democracies?
Although both Sagovsky and Rawls affirm the priority of liberty and the sorts
of freedoms that are made possible by politically liberal societies, they are also
committed to meeting the material and other needs that have to be met in order
for these liberties to mean something. This is in contrast both to libertarians or
laissez faireists (who are strong on the priority of liberty, but weak on the
meeting of basic needs for all citizens), on the one hand, and Marxists (who are
strong on the meeting of basic material needs for all citizens, but weak on liberty
for all citizens), on the other.
The burdens of judgment are heavy in political theology in that reasonable
people can disagree about how the major issues are to be assessed, even about
what the major issues are. These burdens are a bit lighter as a result of Rawls
and Sagovsky. Throughout the book Sagovsky strives for the phronesis that he
admires in Aristotle. So should we all.

Daniel Dombrowski
Seattle University
80 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
Sally J. Scholz, Political Solidarity. The Pennsylvania University Press, 2008.
286 Pages. $55.00. ISBN 0-2710-3400-9
One may wonder why justice, in comparison with solidarity, has received
such an overwhelming proportion of the philosophical attention devoted to
social and political issues. One reason may be that justice has been thought to
fit comfortably within the individualistic assumptions prevalent in liberal
political thought. Solidarity, in contrast, demands that one take groups seriously.
Sally Scholz’s book demonstrates why solidarity merits greater philosophical
honor. She addresses only superficially the difficult metaphysical questions of
how to make sense of social groups, but she allows for their importance and
capacities. Groups, in her view, can act, they affect the identities of individuals,
they can be responsible, and they change social and political realities. Groups
and their members can have solidarity and can be guided by its moral norms.
“Solidarity, regardless of its form, mediates between the individual and the
community,” she writes (41). “The group or community described by solidarity
is somehow more than an aggregate of its parts. The solidarity collective is
constituted by individuals but simultaneously enriches the lives and identities of
those individuals through their communal engagement” (18). In the case of
solidarity, “we speak neither solely of the individual and his or her interests, nor
solely of an abstract or idealistic notion of a community or the state. Instead,
solidarity describes both through a focus on the relation between the individual
and the community or group… [E]very form of solidarity shares the general
characteristics of being a form of unity… and entails positive duties” (18-20).
Scholz argues that there are three forms of solidarity: social, civic, and
political. It is the third form with which the book is primarily concerned. Social
solidarity is largely descriptive and refers to the interdependence among
members of a group, characterizing their cohesiveness. Members of an ethnic
group, for instance, with considerable group consciousness, a shared history,
and substantial common interests, could be said to have social solidarity. Civic
solidarity “refers to the relationship between citizens within a political state,”
specifying the obligations the state as a collectivity has to its citizens. “By virtue
of their membership in a political state, each citizen is obliged to all other
citizens, and vice versa.” The state is to use social policy “to decrease the vulner-
abilities of all individuals….The justification for civic solidarity is based both
on the rights of individuals and on the good of society” (27). Civic solidarity
provides the basis for a social obligation to ensure that the basic needs of all are
met. It is a moral ideal embodied in the welfare state (29).
80 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
Miguel A. De La Torre, Liberating Jonah: Forming an Ethics of
Reconciliation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007. 178 Pages. $20.00.
ISBN: 978-1-57075-743-3.
In his Autobiography Malcolm X recounts an exchange he had, after
completing a speaking tour of New England colleges, with a “blonde co-ed”
who had flown to Harlem to speak with him. She asked him directly “What can
I do?” to help oppressed black Americans, and he responded simply, “nothing.”
This encounter, however brief, made an impression on Malcolm because he
returns to it later, after his perspective was broadened by his experiences during
the Hajj. “I regret that I told her that,” he confesses. Although Malcolm never
transcended the conviction, as James H. Cone put it, that “the goal of loving
your enemy is insane,” he did acknowledge that “well-meaning white people”
can do something to help oppressed black Americans: they could “combat,
actively and directly, the racism in other white people.”1
I was reminded of Malcolm’s encounter with the white college student after I
completed Miguel De La Torre’s accessible, clearly and forcibly written,
thought-provoking book Liberating Jonah: Forming an Ethics of Reconciliation.
Writing from the perspective of “the people who suffer in the shadows of the
U.S. Empire,” De La Torre seeks to identify a model of “discourse and action
that can lead to reconciliation between different races and socioeconomic
classes within the United States” (xii, x; De La Torre’s emphasis). A professor
of social ethics at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, De La Torre
seeks a specifically biblically based model for this work of reconciliation. His
wager is that such a model can be found in the Book of Jonah (a book that
contains much more than the story of a man swallowed by a whale). Jonah’s
story is appropriate because he was called from an oppressed community to
appeal to a dominant (Assyrian) empire (unlike, for example, the prophet in the
Book of Amos), and as such he can serve as a model for those today called to
“bring a message of salvation to the center of power and privilege” (xii). The
story is challenging because Jonah is an example of how not to seek reconcil-
iation. Jonah wanted nothing more than for the Ninevites, those who oppressed
his community, to be punished for their crimes. It made him angry that God
showed them mercy after they repented.
The subtitle of the book is “forming an ethics of reconciliation.” These terms
are points of contention for De La Torre. As he notes, the general concept of
reconciliation is not difficult to define: it refers to reestablishing congruency or
harmony. The problem with this understanding of reconciliation when applied to
 BOOK REVIEWS 81
In contrast with these, political solidarity as Scholz understands it “arises in
response to a situation of injustice or oppression. Individuals make a conscious
commitment to join with others in struggle to challenge a perceived
injustice….The unity is based on shared commitment to a cause” (34). In
Scholz’s view, “political solidarity entails a number of individuals collectively
making personal commitments to a cause….A commitment to solidarity sets up
a collective—a group that acts together…” (72-73). Social movements such as
the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the labor rights
movement offer examples of how political solidarity can characterize and
normatively guide adherents, uniting component groups and individuals (36).
Those participating in such movements take on moral obligations to each other
and to the group based on their voluntary, shared commitment to a goal (Chapter
3). Members have obligations to cooperate, and to engage in the social criticism
that combats injustice and that, when applied to the movement itself, works to
improve its activities.
Groups having political solidarity are different from those having social
solidarity because the members’ voluntary commitment to a goal gives rise to
the solidarity rather than the solidarity existing because of a prior group
membership with which they grew up or which is ascribed to them. And political
solidarity may unite persons previously unrelated; for example, in the case of a
local effort to combat domestic violence by establishing a women’s shelter,
activists and victims may unite to accomplish this goal. Once the goal is
achieved, political solidarity may or may not continue.
The book is not simply conceptual analysis. In keeping with the recognition
that political concepts are contested, Scholz tries to capture the concept of
political solidarity for causes that are just and liberatory, and to deny it to those
who would oppress others. To Scholz it is inherent to the correct understanding
of the concept that political solidarity seeks a morally admirable goal. Whether
usage or a more impartial view would support such an interpretation is not
convincingly considered. To some readers, it may not seem conceptually
incorrect to think of conservative ideologues or neo-Nazi agitators, when they
pursue political goals, as potentially having political solidarity. But Scholz’s
interpretation would not concede the applicability of the concept to them. Her
account thus seems partly stipulative. As an account of the solidarity that can
bind together those seeking to right injustices and overcome oppression, it is
illuminating and persuasive. Her perceptive delineation of the many nuances of
solidarity contributes to its usability and potential force in political discourse
and social change. Social movements often look spontaneous, as when
BOOK REVIEWS 81
the situation of the oppressed is that it makes no sense to seek to “re-establish”
a harmony that has perhaps never existed. Further, and most significantly, when
the terms of reconciliation are defined by those privileged by the present power
structure, the pursuit of reconciliation becomes mere ideology, an attempt to
ameliorate but perpetuate the status quo. Consequently, “any hope for reconcil-
iation must rest with those living on the underside of society” (7). For the
marginalized, genuine reconciliation must be a transformative praxis by which
the material and spiritual structures and sources of oppression within society are
dismantled and “a new state of being” is created (3). According to De La Torre,
the transformative work of reconciliation is exemplary of a genuinely Christian
ethics. As he argued in Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins (Orbis Books,
2004), most Eurocentric ethicists, he reiterates here, focus on ethical theory and
fail to attend to or to advocate “praxis that can lead toward the liberation of the
disenfranchised” (x; 148-9).
In the first chapter, “Reading the Story of Jonah,” De La Torre offers a
reading of the Book of Jonah that seeks to emphasize those aspects elided by
standard readings that affirm the power and privilege of the dominant culture.
According to the standard reading, the story is a call for “believers” to
evangelize “pagans.” What De La Torre highlights is both the unequal power
relations that exit between Jonah, the oppressed, and the Ninevites, the
oppressors; and, Jonah’s anger at YHWH’s confounding mercy, His concern for
the salvation of the imperialists.
The focus of chapter two, “Who Was Jonah? What was Nineveh?” is to
illuminate how structures of oppression operate, and how they are justified by
the privileged few. In the chapter De La Torre attempts to establish the plausi-
bility of the claim that the United States is like the Assyrian empire of the book
of Jonah. He offers a fragmentary history of the United States from the era of
colonization (including the effort to exterminate Native Americans) through the
era of Manifest Destiny (the land-grab war with Mexico and the Spanish-
American war) ending in today’s neo-liberal economic order. “There are clear
sociopolitical parallels that line the United States with the empire of Assyria,”
he explains, “and Jonah and Israel represent those who exist at the margins of
empire and are subject to its mercy or domination.” “The Jonah story,” he
concludes, “becomes a story of the oppressed called upon to approach their
oppressors with a message from the Lord” (27).
In chapter three, “Reflecting on Jonah,” De La Torre analyzes the difficulties
that the marginalized may encounter as they seek reconciliation. It may be
difficult to accept a God who offers redemption for both the oppressed and the
82 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
situations become intolerable and indignation erupts. As Scholz reminds us,
however, successful social movements are usually long in the making and
require determined and planned activity to sustain themselves. Solidarity is what
makes them possible.
Less satisfactory is her assertion that political solidarity necessarily renounces
violence. According to one of her arguments, since some members of a social
movement will not agree that violence is needed or justifiable, solidarity
requires others to forego it for the sake of unity (109). Another appeals to
consistency: since political solidarity seeks liberation from an oppressive system
that uses violence, “then in opposing violence, solidarity cannot in principle
utilize violent means” (108). Both arguments can be disputed. Consider the
reasoning of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo seeking to end the clear
injustice of apartheid in South Africa (see Johns and Davis). After decades of
peaceful protest by the organized opponents of apartheid had produced little
more than ever greater repression, they feared that a continuation of no more
than peaceful protest would lead to an explosion of the vast majority of black
South Africans into civil war, an outcome to be avoided above almost all others.
So they proceeded to the stage of violence against property—sabotage—and
were prepared to press toward greater though still limited violence. What led to
the achievement of the new South Africa was the ending of the ban on the
African National Congress by the government of F.W. deKlerk and the open
participation of Mandela and other blacks in the political process. Whether a
group seeking justifiable political change through the political solidarity of its
members should maintain a total renunciation of violence seems to depend
much more than Scholz acknowledges on the regime in power. It is the regime
in power that has the ability to make non-violence successful. If the regime
simply increases its repression and is completely closed to justified change,
political solidarity might lead a group to justifiably move beyond persuasion,
boycott, and peaceful protest, though it should certainly be mindful of how, as
Scholz points out, violence is often counterproductive (108). It seems arbitrary
to assert with Scholz that if a group moves beyond non-violence it is no longer
a movement of political solidarity but is something else such as rebellion (68).
Also less than satisfactory is Scholz’s underappreciation of the ethics of care
as a source of moral support for the solidarity she seeks to promote. Contrary to
her account, the ethics of care has enormous potential for advocating political
change of the kind she favors. Its focus on the values of caring relations, of
responsiveness to need, sensitivity, empathy, and trust have implications far
beyond the contexts of family and friendship in which they are most easily
82 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
oppressor. Far from being disheartened, the point that De La Torre insists upon
is that “yes, God loves the oppressor, but God’s love is strong enough to demand
the oppressor’s repentance and rejection of oppressive structures” (67). He then
turns to the example of Jesus’ ministry for models of transformative praxis and
of forgiveness that liberates the oppressed without exonerating the oppressors.
He concludes the chapter by noting that,
Jonah, unfortunately, provides us with a poor example. Not only did he end up sitting
on a hill desiring God’s wrath to descend on the wicked city of Nineveh; more impor-
tantly, he never bothered to seek the liberation of the oppressors by demanding that they
practice justice. (83)
In the wake of Jonah’s failure to reconcile with the Ninevites, De La Torre
attempts in chapter four, “Praying through Jonah”—the richest and most
significant chapter in the book—to articulate a positive concept of reconcil-
iation. He warns against seeking a quick and cheap reconciliation that rests on
the desire to “forgive and forget.” Reconciliation should not be confused with
peace; “reconciliation needs to become a verb that describes the act of moving
from injustice toward justice” (140). The history and reality of oppression must
not be forgotten; the marginalized are called to be “witnesses to the truth so that
the perpetrators of the sin of oppression can come to repentance and salvation,”
and the oppressors are called to both acknowledge their accountability “for
complicity with the present-day social structures that continue to
deprive…racial or ethnic groups of privileges and benefits” and to repent
(101,108). Sincere repentance, he explains, is “a praxis, an action, something
done to reestablish a moral order to personal relationships and responsibilities”
(113). The end of the work of reconciliation would be a “new creation,” a just
community in which—and here De La Torre quotes James H. Cone—“all forms
of slavery and oppressions in white American [are destroyed] so that the people
of color can affirm the authenticity of their political freedom” (116).
In chapter five, “Pitfalls Jonah Should Avoid,” De La Torre assesses various
risks to which the new ethical perspective might succumb. Aware that many
churches preach personal salvation and not communal reconciliation, he
cautions against forsaking the work of the transformation of oppressive social
structures. He warns against underestimating the forces of power, and he notes
that, “those with privilege are rarely willing to admit that they have benefited
from past and present injustices” (130). Interestingly, De La Torre ends the
chapter by noting what he labels the “oppression of optimism” (142-147). “Can
it be that hope is an ingredient of class privilege,” he asks? The pitfall of hope is
 BOOK REVIEWS 83
understood. All persons have experienced the caring labor without which they
would not have survived. Acknowledging the values involved can make clear the
need for fundamental social transformation. Based not on religious teachings
that are inherently divisive, but on experience and values that really are
universal, the ethics of care would provide strong support for the global political
solidarity against injustice, oppression, vulnerability, and tyranny for which
Scholz hopes.
Virginia Held
City University of New York
REFERENCE
Johns, Sheridan, and R. Hunt Davis, Jr., eds. Mandela, Tambo, and the African
National Congress: The Struggle Against Apartheid 1948-1990. A Documentary
Survey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
BOOK REVIEWS 83
that it threatens to “become an antidote for the guilt of the privileged, eliciting
mea culpas and profound apologies.” “[I]t carries with it,” he continues, “a
refusal to tamper with self-perpetuating structures that create and reinforce
injustice for all humanity” (145).
In the final chapter, “Case Studies: What Would Jonah Do?” De La Torre
invites his readers to consider several case studies, such as the protests against
the City of Denver’s Columbus Day Parade and the Greensboro Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, which are “unapologetically anchored in the
experience of society’s disenfranchised communities” (148). The goal of the
exercise is to help the readers “understand the reality in which marginalized
groups are forced to exist and what actions should be contemplated that might
move communities closer to a justice-based society” (149).
Liberating Jonah should engage both those included in and those beyond its
presumed intended audience of Christians in marginalized communities. Along
with biblical texts, De La Torre avails himself of the insights of a remarkable
number of contemporary political, cultural, and philosophical figures, including:
Bhabha, Chomsky, Fanon, Foucault, Girard, Gramsci, Hardt and Negri, Lacan,
Nietzsche, Edward Said, Cornel West, and Howard Zinn. Finally, although it is
more likely that those members of the “dominant Eurocentric U.S. culture” who
read the book will be compelled to act by, as Albert Camus put it, “the mere
spectacle of oppression of which someone else is the victim,” reading and
working-through the book can aid in their effort to genuinely work in solidarity
with the oppressed towards reconciliation.2
Gregory Hoskins
Villanova University
END NOTES
1
Malcolm X and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex
Haley, introduction by M.A. Handler, foreword by Attallah Shabazz (New York:
Ballantine Publishing Company, 1999), 292, 383, 384. James H. Cone. Martin &
Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991),
107.
2
Albert Camus. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, translated by Anthony
Bower, foreword by Herbert Read (New York: Vintage Books, 1956), 16.
84 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable—Why He Died & Why It
Matters. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008. 510 pages. $30.00.
ISBN 978-1-57075-755-6
“It is more satisfying to believe that Kennedy died as a victim of a cause
rather than at the hands of a deranged gunman.”
—Thomas Reed Turner, Abraham Lincoln scholar
“[I]t’s not silliness to speculate that somebody was behind Oswald.”
—Nicholas Katzenbach, former Attorney General of the United States
In his book JKF and the Unspeakable, James W. Douglass, a longtime peace
activist and Catholic theologian, describes the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy as a tragic martyrdom for the cause of peace. According to Douglass,
President Kennedy may have begun his presidency as a committed “Cold
Warrior” (67), but after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, he began
“turning toward peace” (321). His embrace of peace, Douglass says, was
manifested in his burgeoning partnership with Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev (as evidenced by their successful negotiation of the October 1963
Limited Test Ban Treaty); his exploration of rapprochement with Cuban leader
Fidel Castro; and his decision to pull the United States out of Vietnam.
But Douglass believes this change in policy was anathema to America’s
“military-industrial complex,” which “did not receive his swords-into-
plowshares vision as good news” (44) and thus the “signs of his turning [toward
peace] are the seeds of his assassination” (321). JFK’s assassination, Douglass
suggests, was at the hands of the CIA working for the interests of the military-
industrial complex that demanded a continuation of the Cold War. Acts of
violence, including the assassination, committed by agents of the military-
industrial complex, the CIA and other components of the “national security
state” (370), Douglass refers to as the eponymous “unspeakable.”
One discerns, therefore, two separate thematic strands in the book that
Douglass attempts to weave together throughout: JFK’s pacifist transformation
84 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
Joseph Nangle, O.F.M., Engaged Spirituality: Faith Life in the Heart of the
Empire. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008. 170 pages. $16.00. ISBN 978-1-
57075-763-1)
Engaged Spirituality is Father Joseph Nangle’s reflections on applying the
principles of liberation theology to American Catholicism. It is based on his four
years in Bolivia and his eleven years in Peru as a Franciscan missionary. Since
returning to the United States, Nangle has been giving retreats and witnessing at
the Assisi Community in the inner city of Washington, D.C. He has dedicated
this book to Gustavo Gutierrez, one of the founding fathers of Latin American
liberation theology, and to Marie Dennis, the co-president of the Catholic peace
organization Pax Christi International. Throughout the text, Nangle mentions
and quotes other leaders of liberation theology (Jon Sobrino, S.J., and Leonardo
Boff) and leaders for peace and justice (Archbishop-martyr Oscar Romero of El
Salvador, Dorothy Day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi).
After returning from South America, Nangle has been reacting to spirituality
in the United States which, like U.S. culture itself, is individualistic, highly
psychologized, and very narcissistic. Because of his experience with the
“dependent, oppressed, and impoverished”(xvi) in Latin America, Nangle
argues that any authentic spirituality must not be self-centered, focusing on
one’s personal relationship with God but must be other-centered, focusing
especially on our brothers and sisters around the world who are hurting and in
need. For Jesus came to call people of all nations to the peace of God’s reign.
Unlike many Latin American bishops, clergy, and laypeople who have
emphasized a preferential option for the poor, many American Catholics lack the
training and the inclination to critique the affluent, superpowerful, pleasure-
seeking American Empire, which Nangle believes is largely responsible for so
much of the hunger, poverty, and despair around the world. Because of the
wealth, power, and arrogance of the American Empire in economics and foreign
policy, Nangle urges his fellow American Catholics to develop “an engaged,
outward-oriented spirituality lived in the heart of the empire.”(12).
For Nangle, the cornerstone of Christian faith is a proper understanding of the
Incarnation. During his many years working with poor people in Latin
American, he encountered what the poor have been discovering, “a living,
breathing, loving, passionate, and compassionate God who joined with
humanity and shared all of our brokenness.”(3) Those living in a world of
impoverishment as well as those living in a world of overabundance must realize
that Jesus in his life shared “our joys and sorrows, our hopes and failures, our
 BOOK REVIEWS 85
and the assassination plotting and execution. Douglass is confident that the
former resulted in the latter. Unfortunately, this is the book’s major flaw.
Douglass does not purport to offer anything new with respect to JFK assassi-
nation research. Rather, he cites existing investigative materials (supplemented
by conversations he had with some witnesses) in support of his argument that
Lee Harvey Oswald, an FBI informant, was set up to be the CIA plot’s patsy (the
fatal shots, he explains, came not from the Texas Book Depository, as concluded
in the Warren Report, but from Dealey Plaza’s grassy knoll).
A large portion of the book sets out the evidence and arguments in support of
this theory and it is beyond the scope of this review to analyze all of that in great
detail. The scenario does involve a mirror assassination plot in Chicago
(involving another “patsy”—a right-wing extremist named Thomas Arthur
Vallee) that was foiled when an FBI informant named “Lee” warned officials of
the cabal. (Douglass believes that “Lee” was Lee Harvey Oswald.)
Douglass also believes there was an Oswald double involved in the plot—a
dead ringer for Oswald who was spotted around the Dallas area in the weeks
leading up to the assassination saying and doing various incriminating things
(such as buying rifle ammunition in a conspicuous way). After the assassination,
we are told, the Oswald clone was involved in the murder of Dallas Police
Officer J.D. Tippit, found his way into the Texas Theater (where the real Oswald
was captured by police), and was eventually spirited away in a CIA airplane on
the outskirts of Dallas.
Regardless of whether this evidence stands up to scrutiny, there is one gaping
hole in Douglass’ argument that calls everything else into question. Douglass
alleges that Oswald was set up by his CIA handler to take the job at the Texas
School Book Depository (TSBD), where incriminating evidence would be
planted, including the infamous Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, so Oswald could take
the fall for the assassination.
His alleged CIA handler involved in the plot to murder the President? Ruth
Paine, a lifelong Quaker peace activist1 (Douglass acknowledges that she was a
Quaker belonging to the ACLU) (169), who had befriended Oswald’s wife
Marina and was putting up the Oswald family in her Irving home while they
struggled through a difficult financial period.2 In the middle of October 1963,
while Oswald was looking for a job, Paine claims that she and Marina had coffee
with a neighbor, Linnie Mae Randle, who informed them that her brother had
recently gotten a job with the TSBD, which was still hiring.3 Paine then made a
call to Roy Truly, who managed the TSBD warehouse, to get Oswald an
interview. Oswald subsequently interviewed and got the job.4
BOOK REVIEWS 85
agonies and triumphs, our dreams and frustrations”(6). He responded to and
criticized the social, political, and economic conditions of his time and his
occupied country. He was therefore captured, tortured, and killed because he
was seen by the powerful of his day as a threat to the established order.
Nangle holds that American Catholicism can also learn from liberation
theology “the habit of social analysis and theological reflection when breaking
open biblical texts.”(19) Such political reading of the gospels, for example, is
not concerned with partisan politics but rather with “the cycle of praxis” which
sees how biblical texts focus on, illuminate, and question the structures of
societies and their impact on the lives of human beings.”(21) For example, in his
reflections on the parable of the talents in Luke 19 and the story of the Last
Judgment in Matthew 25, Nangle argues that the hungry, uneducated,
impoverished masses around the world are not that way because of laziness but
because of an unbalanced socio-economic international system that allows the
rich to rise on the backs of the poor. Poor countries are being strangled by debts
owed to rich countries and international lending institutions. Racial and gender
inequalities as well as other injustices are also part of the problem of poverty.
Nangle believes that “there’s plenty of this world’s goods for everyone, if the
people and societies on the top stop taking much, much more than a fair
share”(24). He also believes that prophetic condemnations found in Isaiah and
Jeremiah also apply in a world “where war-making is often called ‘the right to
sovereignty,’ in our country which justifies an obscene nuclear-weapons
stockpile as ‘safeguards of national security,’ and at a time when even the scarce
treasure of countless societies bleeds away in the production and purchase of
arms”(29). Besides reading the Bible politically, American Catholics must also
become acquainted with the many church documents which emphasize peace,
justice, human rights, solidarity, the common good, and respect for human life
and dignity. Using the language of liberation theologians, there must be a shift
in emphasis from orthodoxy or right belief to orthopraxis or right action (50).
Father Nangle believes that an engaged spirituality must reinterpret sin and
grace in social terms. Traditionally, sin has been thought of as a private matter
between an individual and God. Following the lead of the 1968 Latin American
Bishops’ Medellin Conference document “Justice and Peace,” Nangle
emphasizes social sins such as institutional violence, malnutrition, illiteracy,
unemployment, racism, classism, sexism, the death penalty, abortion, ecological
destruction, militarism, consumerism, and anything else that cuts off human
beings from a full life. He also believes that the “lethal meddling” of different
United States governments in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, and
86 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
What is Douglass’ evidence that Paine lied about this and had actually gotten
Oswald placed at the TSBD as part of the assassination conspiracy? First, he
points to the fact that Paine’s then mother-in-law was friends with a woman who
was once the mistress of former CIA Director Allen Dulles (who was on the
Warren Commission) (169). Then, he notes that Paine’s step father-in-law at the
time was the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, which thus tied Paine and her
husband to the “military-industrial complex.”
Moreover, in October 1964 (nearly a year after the assassination), Paine’s
father, an insurance executive, received a three-year government contract to
provide low-cost insurance in Latin American countries with the Agency for
International Development, whose field offices “were infiltrated from top to
bottom with CIA people” (170). Paine’s sister was a CIA employee (Ibid.). And
after Oswald accepted a job at the TSBD, Paine supposedly failed to relay to him
a telephone message from the Texas Employment Commission about the
prospect of a potentially higher paying job (171-72).
Finally, when New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison, in connection with his
failed prosecution of businessman Clay Shaw, asked Marina Oswald in 1968
why she was no longer in touch with Ruth Paine, Marina replied that the Secret
Service had told her that Paine “had friends” at the CIA and it would be bad if
people found out about that “connection” (173). That is awfully flimsy evidence
of a Quaker pacifist’s critical involvement in a right-wing military-industrial
coup involving the murder of a liberal president because he was “turning toward
peace.” Even if she had been involved in the conspiracy, who was Ruth Paine’s
contact at the CIA? Who ordered the assassination and who were the
triggermen? We are never told. And so, unfortunately, in Douglass’ book, the
“unspeakable” is also the “unnamable” and the “unbelievable.”
But even if Douglass fails to link the assassination to JFK’s irenic metamor-
phosis, it is fascinating to read Douglass’ account of that transformation and how
it put the President at odds with firmly entrenched Cold War interests inside the
government-military infrastructure. Douglass vividly captures the President’s
post-Cuban Missile Crisis epiphany that we must avert nuclear war to protect the
children of the world who “have no lobby in…Washington” (279). This feeling
was heightened by the death of his infant son, Patrick, in August 1963. And in
one of the book’s more poignant passages, JFK’s science adviser informs him
that radioactive fallout from U.S.-Soviet nuclear testing could be contaminating
the earth through rain (278-79). JFK then sat in depressed silence for several
minutes watching the rain fall outside the White House windows (279).
86 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES
Afghanistan are further examples of institutionalized evil (56-59). Both
individual and social sins require repentance and the sacrament of reconciliation.
Nangle also emphasizes “institutionalized grace,” the many examples of good
laws, policies, and efforts that make human life better and promote God’s reign
on earth. An example of such grace working on the global level is the worldwide
peace movement which has emphasized that war is not inevitable but “futile and
never really solves conflicts among peoples”(65). Another example is the work
of the United Nations Organization. Catholic social teaching on peace and
justice is a third example of “a new grace of the Holy Spirit for our times”(85).
Christians are called to be “preemptive peacemakers” in order to challenge the
current U.S. government’s claim to have the right to start a preemptive war (86-
87). Nangle’s book also includes two chapters on the vows of voluntary poverty,
chastity, and obedience which he believes are other ways for all Christians to
counter the consumerism and sexual exploitation which are so prevalent in our
modern world.
Nangle is very critical of the effect of globalization on the poor and modern
war. He questions the wisdom of the just war tradition by which it is so easy to
rationalize the goodness of one’s own country and the evil of other countries. He
is especially critical of “the disastrous war against Iraq”(15) and the “insane
global arrangement”(61) where the rich get richer and the poor get left behind.
While Nangle is very good at analyzing the current problems of our world, he
has only a few comments on workable solutions for restructuring the interna-
tional system. He does call for international cooperation on solving global
problems, “the need for world government, (and) the need to curb transnational
corporations”(87). But I think that he should have given more of an explanation
for the Second Vatican Council’s call to work for a time when all war can be
completely outlawed by international consent. This goal requires the eventual
creation of a democratic world federation of nations involving a world
parliament that would create enforceable world laws as well as a world court,
world police force, and world prison system that would adjudicate and enforce
world laws against individuals who violate them. Before such a democratic
world federal government can be created in addition to the existing national,
state, and local governments, the following intermediary steps are also
important: the promotion of world citizenship; much more international support
for the permanent International Criminal Court; a verifiable plan for
disarmament; and reform of the current United Nations confederacy of national
governments in which the General Assembly is not democratic and the Security
Council is often unable to prevent war because of the veto power of its five
permanent members.
 BOOK REVIEWS 87 BOOK REVIEWS 87

At the same time, Douglass traces the growth of an American ecosystem of Nangle is not only critical of the American Empire. He is also critical of the
JFK hatred. Beginning with JFK’s decision not to provide air support at the Bay hierarchical leadership of the Roman Catholic Church which has often been
of Pigs and then his refusal to attack Cuba during the Missile Crisis, CIA more concerned with power, privilege, and protecting its institutions and
operatives, anti-Castro Cuban exiles (not to mention the criminal underworld, traditions than with being a prophetic witness against war and social injustices.
not even dealt with by Douglass), and members of the military establishment He also looks forward to a time when priestly ministry in the Catholic Church
deeply resented the President’s policies. That resentment seemingly festered will be available to women and to married men (163).
into hatred and fear as JFK appeared to open back-channel communications Father Nangle concludes this important book by saying that the choice for
with Khrushchev and Castro and make efforts to withdraw American military everyone is stark: “serve the reign of God or serve the empire” (160).
personnel from Vietnam. This was followed in quick succession by the I would recommend this book to Catholic laypeople, priests, and religious who
President’s epochal June 1963 American University “Peace Speech,” which are looking for alternative approaches to spirituality. It would be a good resource
called for an end to the Cold War and then the Test Ban Treaty in October 1963. for parish study groups and for people on retreat. I also think that it would be an
Certainly there were powerful bellicose factions in this country that felt the excellent supplementary theology text for students at Catholic universities.
President’s peace odyssey had gone too far.
Most Americans think of their government as a monolithic entity, tightly David C. Oughton
controlled and speaking with a united voice. In reality, government decisions are St. Louis, Missouri
often the chaotic product of agency turf wars and inter-branch skirmishes. In the
movie Thirteen Days, which chronicles the Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the
most powerful scenes shows President Kennedy in a tête-à-tête with his military
advisers about using air strikes to take out the missiles in Cuba. The President’s
advisers protectively flank him as he fends off the generals’ verbal barrages. The
President of the United States seems vulnerable and alone. And he was. JFK and
the Unspeakable beautifully encapsulates that ironic sense of the young
commander-in-chief’s relative isolation and marginalization within his own
government as he pursued peace.
That the President’s doomed crusade may not have been the direct cause of
his murder does not detract from the book’s larger message. There was
something radically wrong with America in 1963. But most Americans were not
aware of it until November 22nd and all that followed (including the Vietnam
War, race riots, the assassinations of RFK and MLK, and Watergate). By and
large, politics was dirty and lacked transparency. There were too many guns and
too much organized crime. A large portion of our country lived under a system
of racial Apartheid. We were poisoning our air and water. And we were
murdering foreign leaders (such as Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem). This
undercurrent of corruption and violence, this ugly American underbelly, was in
fact “the unspeakable.” Lee Harvey Oswald, a violent Southern malcontent who
seemed to straddle all the dysfunctional fault lines on America’s psychic
topography, whether he acted alone or not, was a product of “the unspeakable.”
88 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 88 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

JFK, with his youth and idealism and his policies designed to remedy so much
of what was wrong with America, helped stem (and might have reversed had he
lived) the tide of social unrest that was unleashed after his life was snuffed out.
Perhaps only now, with the recent election of Barack Obama, have we come full
circle since that dark day in 1963. Are the deep wounds sufficiently healed? Are
we ready to move again toward peace with a young, idealistic president?
JFK and the Unspeakable helps put all of this in perspective, regardless of
who was specifically responsible for the President’s assassination. While the
book can be repetitious and heavy-handed (it never considers that there might be
even the slightest ambiguity in the evidence), it is an important contribution to
peace studies and American history. And it just may allow us to see the historic
election of 2008 in a new and valuable light.

Gregory S. Gordon
University of North Dakota

END NOTES

1
See Aaron Sharockman, Protesting War, a Few Dollars at a Time, St. Petersberg
Times, April 15, 2004, available at http://www.sptimes.com/2004/04/15/Floridian/
Protesting_war__a_few.shtml.
2
See Thomas Mallon, Marina and Ruth, The New Yorker, Dec. 3, 2001, p. 72.
3
Id.
4
Id.
 BOOK REVIEWS 89 BOOK REVIEWS 89

Emmanuel Katongale, with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. Mirror to the

Church: Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda. Grand rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2009. 176 pages. $10.87. ISBN 0-3102-8489-9.

It seems that all too often many of us in the Global North see Africans as exotic,
violent others. We not only miss seeing the good things being done by many
Africans, but we see the terrible things that are done as uniquely terrible and
uniquely African. It seems that it is all too easy for many of us in the Global North
to look at events like the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, shake our heads, and ask
ourselves, “What is wrong with those people? Thank God we are not like them!”
But of course we are like them, and the constant challenge for many of us has
been to understand that truth in its many dimensions, good and bad. As the well-
known Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe once wrote, commenting on what he
saw as Joseph Conrad’s racism in Heart of Darkness, all Africans really want is
for us in the Global North to think of them as human beings. Not only does that
save us from having a patronizing, arrogant mindset or a dehumanizing,
objectifying view of them—often the same mindset—it also does something
more radical: it makes us reflect upon what we might have in common with all
those people who have done those terrible things. We are reminded that we all
have sinned and fallen short in the sight of God, and that there are no pure
Children of Light or Children of Darkness anywhere.
In this book, Fr. Emmanuel Katongole, an associate research professor of
theology and world Christianity at Duke University Divinity School, and co-
director of the Duke Center for Reconciliation, helps us to reflect on what we
have in common with those not-so-exotic others by exploring the Rwandan
genocide and noting its significance for us in the Global North. Indeed Rwanda
is a mirror to the global church. For Katongole, the child of Rwandan exiles
living in Uganda, the fact that the “most Christianized country in Africa [85%
Christian] became the site of its worst genocide” (19) marks a true moment of
crisis for the global church:
Rwanda has pushed global Christianity to a breaking point….Rwanda has
exposed the hidden lies of Christendom. But it has also revealed our shared need
for a new way to live as Christians in the world. It is not enough to be pious, to
be safe and obedient, or to be compassionate and kind. The church in Rwanda
did not lack any of these. Much more is at stake if we are to reclaim the lordship
of Christ and live as ambassadors of God’s new creation in the world. (110)
For Katongole, the genocide in Rwanda is one example of “how the blood of
tribalism comes to run deeper than the waters of baptism” (68). I heard this very
90 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 90 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

phrase used by Kenyan Christians as they discussed the violence by Christians

that followed the December 2007 elections in Kenya. But for Katongole, this
phrase does not only apply to Rwanda or Kenya, but to the United States and
Europe as well:
Westerners do not immediately think of their national allegiances as
“tribalism.” But that is why the Rwanda genocide serves as a mirror…If
Christian identity has any chance of subverting or at least resisting the tribal
loyalties of our time, Christians will have to recognize the ways in which politics
shapes not only our view of the world and ourselves, but also the tribal patterns
we so often overlook. (47-48)
The stories we tell ourselves and that are told to us, and that become
embodied in our social, political and economic institutions and practices shape
our identities and activities. Katongale ably chronicles the history of the “Hutu
versus Tutsi” story that became the dominant story in Rwanda, with the help of
Christian missionaries “who knew far too much about Africa before they set foot
in Rwanda. They already had in their minds all those categories of race and tribe,
primitive and advanced. As a result, they could not allow for a new Christian
social reality that would not follow the logic of race, modernity and so-called
Western civilization” (71-72).
But, Katongale contends, like those European missionaries many of us in the
Global North still have stories that lead to distorted views of Africa. Katongale
calls us to “repent…by looking at Africa with a certain naiveté. We must ask how
to see Africa in a fresh way” (72). To see Africa in a fresh way, a way that
transcends our own tribalisms and ethnocentric stories, we must be shaped by the
Gospel story, which serves “not to make Americans more Christian, but to make
American Christians less American and Rwandan Christians less Rwandan”
(156). The Gospel story should help us to move beyond the idols of the tribe to a
love inclusive of all God’s children and to the social ties of global solidarity.
If we are shaped by the Gospel story we will be led to become a community
of “resident aliens” that adopts a prophetic posture that challenges the prevailing
idolatrous stories of our time. Katongale does find resident aliens in Rwanda
who engaged in prophetic witness, reflecting the new story for humanity that we
see in Christ’s resurrection, and he tells their stories. One of those stories is
about the Muslim community of Nyamirambo on the outskirts of Kigali. Not
only did they maintain solidarity between Hutus and Tutsis within their
community, they also protected the Tutsis from the genocidaires. As Katongale
observed, while some Christians did not divide along ethnic lines and participate
in the genocide, many Christians were “left alone with their own
 BOOK REVIEWS 91 BOOK REVIEWS 91

conscience[s]….The Muslims at Nyamirambo stuck together. They, and not the

Christian churches, embodied the hope of Christ's resurrection” (122).
Katongale argues that such a prophetic posture has been all too rare in Rwanda
and the global church. Other postures adopted by the Rwandan church and the
global church may have some good aspects and some biblical warrant, but they
are inadequate. The pious posture, which focuses on the salvation and transfor-
mation of the individual, has some value, but it does not adequately challenge the
social processes and structures that embody injustice and that lead to violence.
Claiming that Jesus was their personal Lord and Savior did not stop a number of
Rwandans from killing each other. The political posture, which argues that faith
must be politically engaged, and that we must be willing to be pragmatic and to
make compromises to achieve the most good possible, also has some merit, but
it forsakes a Christian vision and does not imagine possibilities beyond the
existing political and economic structures of power and authority. Ultimately
boldness was needed in Rwanda, not pragmatism. And the pastoral posture,
which tends to the needs of the afflicted, is necessary, yet it does not adequately
address the issue of why these people were afflicted in the first place. Christians
in Rwanda had taken all three of these postures, and none of them was able to
change, or even seriously interrupt, the genocidal story. For Katongale, Rwanda
has shown that these are three postures of a Christianity without consequences.
There are many more insightful observations in this book; it is a very good
book that should be widely read. It will inspire, challenge and provoke valuable
discussion and self-reflection. Katongale has done us in the Global North a
great service by helping us to see ourselves in the story of this not-so-distant
African country called Rwanda. This can only help us to develop an authentic
global solidarity.

Ron Pagnucco
College of St. Benedict
Co--coordinator of the Pax Christi USA Task Force on Africa
92 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 92 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Mark J. Allman, Who Would Jesus Kill? War, Peace and the Christian
Tradition. Winona, MN: St. Mary’s Press, 2008. 225 pages. $24.95.
ISBN 978-0-88489-984-6.

As a military officer and philosopher, and as one raised in a Catholic family,

I was both put off and intrigued by the title of Allman’s book, Who Would Jesus
Kill? I admit that I was concerned that either the book would be dogmatic
commentary on war and peace, or it might be a simplistic overview of what I
have discovered—through study and practice—is rather complex. The book is
neither. Those readers who naively assume that one could simply turn to a page
and find a table answering the title’s question will be sorely disappointed.
Mark J. Allman teaches Christian ethics, and he recognized a gap in the
available instructional material. While there is plenty written on war and peace
and there is a corpus of Christian thought, there are few books that combine the
two in a form suitable for classroom reading and discussion. Thus, in his book
Who Would Jesus Kill?, Allman writes a student text investigating and
explaining three main approaches to war and peace, namely pacifism, holy war
and just war theory, from the Christian tradition. He is concerned about the
nature of war and investigating different theories of whether war and ethics can
coincide. Who Would Jesus Kill? is not an attempt to answer its title’s question;
nor does Allman seek to argue that Christian thought exposes only pacifism, just
war, or holy war at the other end of the spectrum. Rather he attempts to present
each view fairly, identifying issues with each, and seeks to facilitate student
reflection on where they might stand. To this end, Who Would Jesus Kill is
highly effective.
Allman’s book begins with the question of “what is war?” and offers some
helpful insights to guide the student through the text. Then he summarizes the
major ethical theories and provides a “crash course” on Christian ethics. Next he
moves through explorations of what he notes are the three major Christian
attitudes towards war. He begins this lucid discussion with the varying views of
pacifism, demonstrating that, though rooted in the New Testament and other
scripture, pacifism is a complex category of views that espouse peace (e.g.,
absolute pacifism and strategic pacifism). After discussing some perceived
difficulties with the pacifist view, such as its naiveté, he moves to explain the
historical background and view of war as holy war. While many might
immediately think of the Crusades as typifying holy war, Allman alternately
points to other examples of holy war, including the French revolution and the
Thirty Years War to highlight that holy wars may not merely be a relic of the
 BOOK REVIEWS 93 BOOK REVIEWS 93

past. Following Johnson, Allman also offers ten types of holy war conditions,
some of which Allman’s students might recognize in contemporary extremist
rhetoric (153-54).
Allman uses the extreme nature of how holy war has been manifested to lead
into his explanation of the just war tradition and the development of Just War
Theory (JWT). In this chapter, Allman uses historical reference as well as
Christian theory to walk the reader through the development of JWT. Relying
heavily on Orend’s model of JWT, Allman clearly discusses each of the tenets
of jus ad bellum and jus in bello and briefly highlights their weaknesses.
In this chapter and throughout, Allman strives to interject other ethical and
political theory, in addition to the historical examples and Christian literature, in
order to draw comparison. While the shifts are confusing at times, Allman’s
attempt to contrast pacifism and political realism, for example, is useful for the
student to grasp that there are both religious and secular underpinnings for
attitudes concerning morality in war. These discussions become even more
relevant when Allman discusses weapons of mass destruction and the emerging
theory of jus post bellum later in the book.
In the subsequent chapter, Allman addresses what he determines are the
“challenges and adaptation” of JWT; more specifically one might ask, “Does the
JWT remain relevant?” Unfortunately, this seems the weakest chapter in his
otherwise excellent student text; perhaps one chapter is insufficient to cover this
set of challenges and the immerging theories. I think Allman does provide good
introductions to the problems of guerrilla warfare and terrorism, and his
discussion of the challenges of pre-emptive and preventative war capture the
differences necessary for good classroom discussion. However, I think that these
challenges require expanded research and exploration.
In his chapter on the just war theory, Allman unnecessarily divides jus in bello
from the traditional two tenets into five, á la Brian Orend (201-204).
Traditionally, just war scholars point to discrimination and proportionality
(micro-proportionality in Allman’s account) as the two criteria for jus in bello.1
Recently Orend and others have expanded jus in bello to include Discrimination,
Legitimate Targets, No Means Mala in se (e.g., Weapons of Mass Destruction),
Surrender and Prisoners of War, and (micro-)Proportionality. If one holds that
jus in bello reflects conduct in war in terms of who can be targeted and by what
means one can be attacked, then the traditional two tenets of discrimination and
proportionality seem sufficient to capture these concepts, and the other tenets
are incorporated by them. Prisoners of war and WMD are worthy topics, but I
do not feel it necessary for them to form additional, separate jus in bello tenets.
94 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 94 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Allman should also include the current debates on the relevance of the JWT
today and for the future. Issues surrounding the moral equality of combatants,
for example, call into question of the traditional separation of jus ad bellum and
jus in bello2 and whether a combatant fighting for an unjust side can ever be a
just combatant. Other challenges to JWT are captured in Brough, Lango, and
Van der Linden’s Rethinking the Just War Tradition.3 In addition, the author’s
discussion of just post bellum is insufficient, focusing on Weapons of Long-
Term Destruction and an introduction to Winright’s jus post bellum criteria. In
the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the problems of the post-combat phase, I
think that the jus post bellum discussion deserves greater attention. In all
fairness to the author, he has and is working on this important area, but in Who
Would Jesus Kill?, it is not developed enough. The author is also obviously a
supporter of the just peacemaking perspective (JPP) (250), but the theory is not
sufficiently discussed, and it seems to be wedged into the final chapter of the
book. These points I raise are not damning to Allman’s project; overall, he has
done the yeoman’s work of combining and clearly presenting this complex topic
in one accessible work. Nevertheless, the worries of contemporary JWT, jus post
bellum, and JPP deserve expansion, even in this introductory book.
Two themes in Who Would Jesus Kill? limit the scope of the audience. First,
Allman’s text is unapologetically religious, specifically, Christian, which
considering the author’s intended student audience may be sufficient. However,
others may not appreciate the value of having both the religious and secular
ethical discussion of war and peace in such a text. Allman has done the research
of historical and contemporary Catholic and Christian works that could also
prove valuable in a more secularized discussion of war and peace, but I would
anticipate some resistance for incorporating the text outside of a religious
institution or in a religious studies program. Second, Allman interjects his own
views throughout the text. (113, 154 or 250) Again, while it may be helpful to
stipulate the author’s beliefs and commentary, having such a personal touch may
further limit the scope the book could have.
Overall, Allman is successful in packaging Christian literature and thought
with the questions surrounding war and peace. As I mentioned, I thought the
inclusion of a discussion of pre-emptive and preventative war was appropriate,
and I also enjoyed the introduction to Jewish and Islamic ethics of war in the
Appendix. Who Would Jesus Kill? asks the students thoughtful questions, and is
a good way to introduce students to the complexities of morality in war. Allman
might expand and include recommended readings by chapters or topic, as well
as expand his discussions of the challenges and adaptations of JWT.
 BOOK REVIEWS 95 BOOK REVIEWS 95

Nevertheless, Who Would Jesus Kill? is an approachable text. Allman has

invested considerable time on historical research and investigating and incorpo-
rating Christian thought, and his concise discussions of pacifism, holy war, and
JWT provide a concise introduction to the ethics of war and peace.

David M. Barnes
University of Colorado, Boulder

END NOTES

1
Cf. Paul Christopher, The Ethics of War and Peace: an Introduction to Legal and
Moral Issues (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1994), Robert L. Holmes, On War and
Morality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), Richard J. Regan, Just War:
Principles and Cases (Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1996), and Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
2
Cf. Jeff McMahan, “The Ethics of Killing in War,” Ethics 114 (2004), pp. 693-733.
3
Rethinking the Just War Tradition (Suny Series, Ethics and the Military Profession),
Edited by Michael W. Brough, John W. Lango, Harry Van Der Linden. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2007.
96 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 96 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods, Jr, editors. We Who Dared to Say No
to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now. Philadelphia: Basic
Books, 2008. xv + 352 pages. $16.95. ISBN 978-1-568-58385-3.

This is an anthology valuable both to the pacifist and the just war theorist. It
is unusual in that its 70 selections, distributed over 10 chapters, include
impassioned statements not only from the liberal, progressive left (Polner’s
choices), but also from the libertarian, traditionalist right (Woods’s choices).
The simplistic equivalence of liberals with peace and conservatives with war is
thus undermined. Also, sometimes the emphasis is on no war at all permitted
ever, and sometimes on only a few wars indispensible for the defense of our
borders, after existing attacks, permitted rarely.
The structure of the book is historical, with the brave, usual minority
dissenters calmly opposing the feverish pro-war majority in response to those
events which have begun or sustained pro-war sentiment. The first nine chapters
are titled: “1 The War of 1812,” “2 The Mexican War,” “3 The Civil War,” “4 The
Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars,” “5 World War I,” “6 World
War II,” “7 The Cold War,” “8 The Vietnam War,” and “9 Iraq and the War on
Terror.” The final chapter, “10 Americans Confront War,” includes nine essays
from the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, that tend to be this book’s strongest
condemnations of any and all war.
There is, as an appendix, a six-page list of “Great Antiwar Films.” Then
follows an eight-page bibliography and a ten-page index.
The authors of the 70 selections range from the great, famous, and often
politically powerful (e.g. Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Eugene
Debs, Robert A. Taft, George McGovern, Robert Byrd) to the unknown,
unimportant, obscure, but very articulate (e.g. the editor of a Baltimore
newspaper whose offices were destroyed by a mob in retaliation for his 1812
editorial; the abolitionist William Goodell; a Church of Christ minister; the
treasurer of the longshoreman’s union; “a mother”; divinity students refusing to
register for the draft; a Marine veteran who served 13 months in Vietnam; and a
career diplomat resigning in protest in 2003).
This book is a valuable repository for several enormously-important historical
documents. These include Jane Addams’s condemnation of war; Randolph
Bourne’s essay making famous the phrase, “War is the health of the State”;
Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin’s explanation of her 1917 and 1941 votes
against war; Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy’s denunciation of American
use of the atomic bomb; President Eisenhower’s farewell address warning about
 BOOK REVIEWS 97 BOOK REVIEWS 97

the military-industrial complex; Marine Corps Commandant General David

Shoup’s 1966 denunciation of U.S. interventionism; and Representative Barbara
Lee’s explanation of her 2001 vote against the U.S. use of military force in
Afghanistan, the only no vote in the whole Congress.
Which are the essays in the book making the best, most novel, most
compelling, most surprising assertions and arguments? My preferences are
these. First is my list of the most striking and memorable one or two or three-
line assertions from the articles.
1) Congressman Samuel Taggart against the War of 1812: “…We are about to
draw the sword against a Christian nation. Perhaps in no other part of the world
of equal extent is there so much real Christianity as in Great Britain and the
United States. The voice of that heaven-born religion is peace and good will to
men. Its author and founder came from heaven to preach and publish
peace….How inconsistent then is it with the characters of Christian nations and
Christian rulers to deluge their country with blood….” (17-18).
2) Abolitionist Theodore Parker against the Mexican War: “It is a mean and
infamous war we are fighting. It is a great boy fighting a little one, and that little
one feeble and sick. What makes it worse is, the little boy is in the right, and the
big boy is in the wrong, and tells solemn lies to make his side seem right” ( 28).
3) Abolitionist Ezra Heywood against the Civil War: “A resort to war to put
down slavery is a resort to lying to put down falsehood, a resort to stealing to
put down theft. Indeed, slavery is an advance on war, since its victims, first
prisoners of war, were formerly killed at once, afterwards held to service as an
act of humanity” (58-59).
4) Longshoreman’s Union official Bolton Hall against the Spanish American
War: “We have given up the duel in private life; why should we have recourse
to it as a nation? It is only a way of saying that might is right, that the biggest
must prevail, and that the feeble have no rights which strength is obliged to
respect” (91).
5) Socialist Eugene Debs against World War I: “And that is war in a nutshell.
The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought
the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the
subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives.” (153)
6) Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin on why the Japanese attacked the U.S. at
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, in response to which the U.S. entered World
War II: “On December 2, 1941, the New York Times reported that Japan had been
‘cut off from about 75% of her normal trade by the Allied blockade’” (168).
98 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 98 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

7) Libertarian Murray Rothbard against the Cold War: “The root myth that
enables the State to wax fat off war is the canard that war is a defense by the
State of its subjects. The facts, of course, are precisely the reverse. For…the
State frantically mobilizes the people to fight for it against another State, under
the pretext that it is fighting for them” (225).
8) Senator Wayne Morse against the Vietnamese War: “There is no freedom in
South Vietnam….To say we are defending freedom in South Vietnam is a travesty
upon that word….We are defending a clique of military generals and their
merchant friends who live well in Saigon, and who need a constantly increasing
American military force to protect their privileged position ….” (234).
9) Senator Robert Byrd opposing attacking Iraq: “On what is possibly the eve
of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of
Iraq—a population, I might add, of which over 50% is under age 15, this
chamber is silent” (267).
Lastly, some of the chapters criticizing our wars were more significant to me
than others. This is because of facts about the situation contained in the
selections, many new to me, and because of well crafted arguments. I find two
Senate speeches against the war to be veritable gems of argumentation. The first
is by George Norris (118-123). Norris explains that, before the U.S. entered the
war, both England and Germany were violating the rights of neutral nations and
neutral vessels on the high seas. That is, the neutral U.S. had the right to
continue pre-war trade patterns with both nations. But England was the first to
declare a war zone, the North Sea, and to prohibit neutral ships from using it to
trade with Germany. The Germans retaliated three months later by declaring a
war zone the English Channel and the waters around the British Isles.
Britain was the first to violate international law. But both war zones were
contrary to international law. Nevertheless, the U.S. protested the German one
while submitting to the British one. Why did we not insist on our neutral rights
against both nations? It is not because Britain was clearly Germany’s moral
superior. For “many instances of cruelty and inhumanity can be found on both
sides.” Norris believed that the reason was the prosperity that war could bring to
Wall Street if our loans and munitions favored the British side. “We are going
into war on the command of gold” he said.
Robert LaFollette (123-132) nicely expands on this emphasis on our rights to
neutrality being violated and why the U.S. reaction was biased. It was often
only food which U.S. ships would have carried to Germany had not Britain
prevented it. When we would protest the violation of our neutral rights,
Germany often yielded to our protests but, to LaFollette’s knowledge, Britain
 BOOK REVIEWS 99 BOOK REVIEWS 99

never yielded. The consequence was that the U.S. actively aided Britain in
starving the civilian population of Germany. Instead of vindicating our right to
neutrality against both nations, because Germany was denying us this right, we
waged war against Germany. For the same reason, we might just as well have
waged war against Britain.

Joseph Betz
Villanova University
100 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 100 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Mary Lou Kownacki, A Monk in the Inner City: The ABCs of a Spiritual
Journey. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008. 155 pages. $16.00.
ISBN 978-1-57075-760-0

Readers of the Journal of Peace and Justice Studies are more than likely
familiar with the author of this book, Benedictine Mary Lou Kownacki, a long
time religious activist and former National Coordinator of Pax Christi, USA.
Mary Lou Kownacki’s slim volume contains seventy-nine brief meditation
pieces beginning with its first entry entitled “Abandoned places” and concluding
with “Zen wisdom.” Kownacki employs a Polish literary genre called the ABC
book to frame this work. The form itself is a loose composition style which
allows the author to write and include just about everything as long as the entries
are arranged alphabetically according to title. In many respects, the format of the
volume is reminiscent of the miscellaneous collection of the “Sayings of the
Desert Mothers and Fathers.” The format allows the reader to easily pick up the
book, select and read a short entry without reading the book cover to cover. The
fragmentary narrations stand by themselves and provoke thoughtful reflection
on the part of the reader.
The author writes in a conversational style evoking an immediacy that sharply
describes and penetrates the ordinary world around us. Kownacki treats a variety
of topics many of which are autobiographical in nature while others ponder
subjects such as books the author is reading or events that have occurred in her
neighborhood. Take for instance the entry entitled “Forgiveness.” Kownacki
narrates an incident involving the disappearance and subsequent murder of a five
year old neighborhood girl named Lila. One of her fellow sisters, Sister Mary
who runs the Emmaus food pantry, is outraged by the circumstance and states,
“I’m afraid if I met the murderer, I’d want to tear his heart out” (51). A day after
the young girl’s body was found Sr. Mary received a phone call from George, a
single father who lived across the street from Lila and who volunteered at Sr.
Mary’s pantry. George asked Sr. Mary to accompany him to the jail where his
seventeen year old son was being held on the murder charges. “Less than
twenty-four hours after she had threatened to rip his heart out, Sr. Mary sat
facing seventeen-year-old Scott. The accused murderer was not a faceless
stranger but a boy she knew” (52). In the concluding two paragraphs, Kownacki
tells of the poignant meeting and concludes with Sr. Mary’s own reflection: “I
don’t believe cheap forgiveness is a solution. Anger in this case is a justifiable
emotion and people like Lila’s family and myself have to work through it. If we
lie about the anger and mouth words of easy forgiveness, it only means we will
 BOOK REVIEWS 101 BOOK REVIEWS 101

act out of the pain in other ways. Anyway it was the best I could do. I certainly
believe in a God of unlimited forgiveness and compassion, but it was a stark
reminder of how far I am from the scripture-‘Be compassionate as your God is
compassionate’” (52).
In the entry “Death” Kownacki is much more autobiographical, narrating the
final days of her ninety year old father. Anyone who has journeyed with the
elderly during their waning years will find this piece particularly heartrending.
In a series of short vignettes, we walk with Kownacki as she moves from the
monastery to her father’s home to care for him, wrestles with her guilt when she
takes a “day off,” accounts the various ups and downs that hospital stays bring
and which mark her father’s final months. She narrates the very last conver-
sations that she had with her father and which reveal to her his deep and abiding
faith. These last encounters make a lasting impression upon the reader as well.
Entries, such as the “Iraq War,” “Haiti,” “DC Jail,” “Enemies No More,”
“Gandhi,” “Hope” and the “Vow of Nonviolence,” bear the hallmark of the
author’s life long commitment to peace and justice work. In these reflections, we
are confronted not with political commentary but with the spiritual struggles that
are intrinsic to political activism. Like her monastic ancestors of the desert,
Kownacki wrestles with inner demons that can deter and challenge the just
person who is seeking right action in the world. Kownacki possesses a spiritual
gift to see deeply and humanly into events and to name what she sees with
contemplative clarity. In the passage “Hope,” she writes,

Prior to the trip I would have placed myself in the top 5 percent of any test on hope. My
personal assessment: faith is adequate, charity needs lots of work, hope is excellent.
Then I went to Honduras and found out that I failed the ultimate criterion for hope. I dis-
covered I was afraid to die.…For two nights I tossed and turned in bed, trying to calm
myself, putting my fate in God’s hands by repeating my favorite prayers. But it was no
use. I felt nothing but deep, deep, fear. Whether the cause of my fear was real or imag-
inary or exaggerated does not matter. What counts is that at a new level I recognized the
cost of discipleship and recoiled from the cross. (67, 68)

If we think of spirituality as our embodied relationship with Mystery, the

pages of this volume reveal the contours of the author’s own spirituality. We are
provided with snapshots of how she experiences, interprets and responds to the
Mystery she encounters in her living. Her everyday life as a Benedictine monk
in an inner city neighborhood of Erie, Pennsylvania is the ground upon which
she walks. Relationships comprise her reality. Prayer, beauty and meditation
sustain her quest for peace and justice. The author’s passion for literature frames
her contemplative hermeneutic. She is comfortable quoting Alexander
102 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES 102 PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES

Solzhenitsyn, Thomas Merton, Ryokan, D.H. Lawrence, Langston Hughes, John

Lennon, Tukaran, Czeslaw Milosz, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Etty Hillesum
alongside Hasidic tales, Christian scriptures and the desert fathers and mothers.
This mélange of literary talent weaves through her reflections as she introduces
the readers to neighborhood characters such as Joey, a childhood friend;
Norman, the judge; Rose, the toilet paper lady; Jim, a frequent Emmaus Soup
Kitchen client; and Berrigan, her dog. In each of the meditations, Kownacki
makes visible the challenge of the Gospels in ordinary circumstances. Her
reflections unmask the injustices which guide our systems and subtly effect our
ways of thinking and acting. Her ruminations uncover the hope to which we are
called, as the final sentences of the book express, “To build the reign of God on
earth as it is in heaven requires a faithful response to two questions. Are the poor
our first priority? Are we being responsible stewards of God’s treasures—the
land, the water, the trees—that will create a kinder future for the generation yet
to come?” (155).
If there is one drawback to the book, this reviewer thinks it rests in the fact
that none of the entries are given dates. Recounting the year the entry was
written would have provided the reader the chronological and situational context
for the piece. Likewise, dating the selections would have drawn the reader’s
attention to the prophetic quality to certain passages that otherwise remain
hidden. That said if you are seeking a contemporary equivalent to the “Sayings
of the Desert Fathers and Mothers,” you can do no better than “A Monk in the
Inner City.”

Valerie Lesniak
Seattle University
 CONTRIBUTORS
Andrew Fitz-Gibbon is associate professor of philosophy and director of the
Center for Ethics, Peace and Social Justice, at the State University of New York
College at Cortland. His is an Associate Editor, VIBS, Editions Rodopi, B.V.,
where he edits the Social Philosophy Series. He is a fellow of the American
Philosophical Practitioners Association certified in client counseling and abbot
of the Lindisfarne Community,, Ithaca NY. His academic interests are in the
areas of nonviolence, love, mysticism and community. He has an earned PhD
from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK and is the author or co-author
of five books and a number of articles.
Daniel R. Gilbert, Jr., has served as the LeVan Professor of Ethics and
Management at Gettysburg College since 1999. He was a member of the
Bucknell University faculty from 1987-1999. Gilbert earned the Bachelor of
Arts degree from Dickinson College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa
and where he earned three varsity letters playing for the men’s basketball team.
Gilbert earned the Master of Business Administration degree from Lehigh
University and the Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1987. His books
include The Twilight of Corporate Strategy (1992) and Ethics Through Strategy
(1996), both published by Oxford University Press, and Wins, Losses, and
Human Ties (2008).
Richard W. Miller is an assistant professor of systematic theology at
Creighton University. He began his academic career at the University of Notre
Dame with a B.A. in theology and philosophy and then received an M.A. and
Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston College. He is a contributor to and
editor of Women and the Shaping of Catholicism: Women Through the Ages
(2009), We Hold These Truths: Catholicism and American Political Life (2008),
Prayer in the Catholic Tradition (2007), Spirituality for the 21st Century:
Experiencing God in the Catholic Tradition (2006), Lay Ministry in the Catholic
Church: Visioning Church Ministry Through the Wisdom of the Past (2005). He
has articles forthcoming in The Heythrop Journal and in Believing in
Community: Ecumenical Reflections on the Church (Leuven: Peeters Press).
Danielle Poe is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of
Dayton. Her research interests are in contemporary issues of peace and the work
of Luce Irigary. Her recent work includes, “Replacing Just War Theory with an
CONTRIBUTORS
Gordon Bazemore is Professor and Chair in the Department of Criminology
and Criminal Justice, and Director of the Community Justice Institute, at Florida
Atlantic University. His research on juvenile justice and youth policy, restorative
justice, crime victims, corrections, and community policing has resulted in over
100 articles and 25 monographs or technical reports He is a former member and
co-chair of the Florida Juvenile Justice Standards and Training Commission, and
a founding member of the Florida Supreme Court work group on Community
and Restorative Justice (initiated by Justice Barbara Pariente). Since 1993,
Bazemore has been the Director of the Balanced and Restorative Justice Project
funded by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. He
has advised, trained, and technical assistance to more than 30 states and several
federal agencies on juvenile justice, offender reentry, restorative justice, and
victim services reform.
Tom Cavanagh has recently returned to the United States after working as a
Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Waikato
in Hamilton, New Zealand. Cavanagh is a social scientist whose research is
focused in the areas of restorative justice and restorative practices in schools.
His research is grounded in ethnography as the holistic study of organizations
and schools as systems. He is currently focusing on how schools can use
restorative practices to respond to student wrongdoing and conflict in
conjunction with a culturally appropriate pedagogy of relations in classrooms
under the umbrella of a culture of care to create safe schools.
Laura Mirsky is assistant director of communications and technology for the
International Institute for Restorative Practices, where she edits and sometimes
writes the Restorative Practices eForum and produces other print and video
resources. She co-edited the IIRP book, Safer Saner Schools: Restorative
Practices in Education and directed the IIRP videos Burning Bridges and
Family Voices. She has been a newspaper reporter and columnist and has worked
in book publishing, film and television.
ethics of Sexual Difference” Hypatia, April-June 2008 and “On U.S. Lynching:
Remembrance, Apology, and Reconciliation” Philosophy in the Contemporary
World, Spring 2007. She and Eddy Souffrant from University of North Carolina
at Charlotte co-edited, Parceling the Globe: Philosophical Explorations in
Globalization, Global Behavior, and Peace, 2008, Rodopi Press.
Terry O’Connell, a pioneer of restorative justice, is responsible for the
creation of the Real Justice conference script. Director of Real Justice Australia,
a program of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP),
O’Connell is a 30-year police veteran and has been instrumental in bringing
restorative practices to police agency complaint and discipline systems, in
addition to schools, corrections and businesses. His work has been featured in
several television documentaries, including the award-winning “Facing the
Demons” and in several editions of “Australian Story.”
Abbey J. Porter is a Philadelphia-based writer with a background in
journalism and academic and nonprofit communications. She has worked as a
freelancer for the International Institute for Restorative Practices and for regional
Pennsylvania magazines. She also works in the public relations office of The
Wistar Institute.
Joyce Zavarich is a Campus Minister and adjunct professor in Theology and
Peace and Justice Studies at Villanova University. She also, teaches restorative
courses at Graterford Prison. Her ministry focuses on developing student
awareness and activism in a variety of peace and justice issues. In particular, her
work seeks to understand restorative justice and the role of forgiveness within
the search for peace. Dr. Zavarich received her M.A. in Theology from Villanova
University, a M.S. in Pastoral Counseling from Neumann College, and a Doctor
of Ministry with an emphasis on restorative justice from Episcopal Divinity
School, Cambridge, MA.
Howard Zehr is Professor of Restorative Justice at the Center for Justice &
Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University. Before joining EMU in 1996,
Zehr served for 19 years as director of the Office on Crime and Justice for
Mennonite Central Committee U.S. His book, Changing Lenses: A New Focus
for Crime and Justice has been a foundational work in the growing restorative
justice movement and he is widely considered the grandfather of restorative
justice. He is author of numerous other books and articles. Zehr lectures and
consults internationally on topics related to restorative justice including victim
offender conferencing, which he helped pioneer. He has also worked profes-
sionally as a photographer and photojournalist; a current involvement, with
Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, is a photo/interview project, When a parent is in
prison. In May, 2008, he was appointed to the Victims Advisory Group of the
U.S. Sentencing Commission.
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