By Julie A. Miller
Catholic Herald

Workshop promotes concept of peace churches

DULUTH, Minn. -- About 125 people interested in working toward peace gathered at The College of St. Scholastica April 27 and 28 to hear speakers and participate in workshops, worship and song.

The conference, "Every Church a Peace Church," was jointly sponsored by Every Church a Peace Church (ECAPC), a national organization, and Duluth-Superior area sponsors: the campus ministry at The College of St. Scholastica, Peace United Church of Christ, Duluth Loaves & Fishes Catholic Worker Community, Pax Christ Duluth and the Duluth/Superior Fellowship of Reconciliation.

The keynote speaker for the Friday evening session was John K. Stoner, a theologian and author, who is national coordinator for ECAPC, a movement to organize the church's response to societal and global violence. Started by the historic peace churches -- the Brethren, the Friends and the Mennonites -- the group seeks to create a network of creative nonviolence by getting churches of all denominations involved.

Stoner talked about the challenge of making every church a peace church in the 21st century. He said, "As far as nonviolence goes, in church there is a lot of reason for hope because Christians haven't met the nonviolent Jesus and rejected him -- by and large they have never met him. They've never heard of a nonviolent Jesus. They don't know what his message is about, so maybe once we tell them, they'll like it."

"Every Church a Peace Church invites all Christians and churches to embrace a way of life that Jesus set forth in the Sermon on the Mount," said Stoner. "A peace church takes Jesus very seriously and believes that the way Jesus taught and lived is the way Christians need to teach and live. It takes Jesus seriously in how he lived in the world, how he dealt with women, strangers, the poor and with enemies."

He told the audience how they could get started toward a peace church. "Form a partnership with one other person as a first step. Form that partnership around the shared belief that the church must be in the world as Jesus was in the world -- that is nonviolently."

The keynote speech on Saturday was "The Spirit Descends: A Pre-Pentecostal Prayer for the Church," by Cindy Pile, a peace activist who has a Master of Divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. She is currently the education director for the Nevada Desert Experience, a faith-based group working for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and has served on the national council of Pax Christi, a national Catholic peace movement.

Pile began her comments with the story of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. She said the Holy Spirit hovers over everyone. "The Spirit pushes and pulls us and twirls us around. ... He is not only pushing and pulling us, but pushing and pulling us together."

Pile said all people are brothers and sisters, flesh of each other's flesh and bone of each other's bone. The gift of peace is irrevocably tied up with the gift of the Spirit. "How can we gaze into the eyes of our sisters and brothers and kill them? How can we make war against those who are truly part of our bodies, hearts and soul?" she asked.

Pile also discussed what "church" is. She asked, "In our communal life, can we hold the tension of the vision of church as a welcoming faith space and church as a dangerous prophetic community? I think the early church really struggled to do this. It all began in the Acts of the Apostles."

Pile said early Christians lived communally and took very seriously Jesus' command to go out and make disciples of all nations. "They were considered to be so threatening to the status quo that their leaders were thrown in jail and executed," Pile said.

The Holy Spirit is also at work today. Pile shared the story of a church in the early 1990s that she said truly became a peace church, a church that had been opened to that Pentecostal outpouring of the spirit.

In a parish in East Los Angeles, a group of women were looking for a solution to the heavy toll gang violence was taking on the neighborhood. They gathered together for Scripture-based prayer and were meditating on the story of Jesus walking on the water. When Jesus invited Peter to walk on the water, Peter became afraid and sank, but Jesus saved him and calmed the sea.

Pile said one of the women was suddenly electrified by what she saw in the passage. The storm was the violence on the streets. Frightened citizens hiding behind locked doors were like the disciples huddled on their boats. The woman said Jesus was ordering them out of their "boats," into the violent streets. He would calm the storm.

Based on that revelation, the women began making pilgrimages from one gang area to another, asking gang members to pray with them. (They also offered chips and salsa and songs.) The result was a dramatic drop in gang violence. Pile said the improvement came about because the women broke the rules of war and intervened nonviolently.

Seeing each other as human allowed the women to really listen to what the gang members had to say about their anger and lack of jobs. As a result the women created businesses to provide jobs, set up child care centers and held conflict resolution classes. They didn't solve all the problems, Pile said, but created a more human environment.

Editor's note: Further information about ECAPC is available on the Web at www.ecapc.org

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