Sometimes it’s hard to look at the news. What’s happening in the world, in places like Lebanon and Israel and Iraq and the Sudan, is often so painful.
And Presbyterians who are serious about wanting peace in the world sometimes don’t know what to do.
But as complicated as world politics can be, many Presbyterians do feel an obligation, sometimes a calling, to work for peace and for a more loving and just world. In times of turmoil, what does that look like? What can “ordinary” Presbyterians and congregations do to be peacemakers?
The answer, to some extent, depends on the person. Some are comfortable with quieter involvement, with prayer and reading and discussion, trying to understand. Others feel pulled to action and advocacy. For some Presbyterians, the pain of the world is so strong that it demands that they do something to try to make a difference.
“We’re trying to go with a very open mind and a very balanced attitude,” said Jan Everett, a member of Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville in New Jersey, who’s part of a group of about 15 Presbyterians who plan to travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories in October and November. “There’s great compassion for the situation there. It’s just so complex and involved.”
Everett said she hesitated to get involved in the beginning, thinking: “We’re this little group. What can we do?” But she feels called to read, to learn, to go see for herself. “One person can make a difference,” Everett said. “Maybe we can help to bring about in some small way some kind of change.”
So what can peacemakers do?
Here’s what some Presbyterians say.
Pray. It’s simple. It’s not controversial. It’s what many believers in times of trouble instinctively do.
And many Presbyterians believe heart-and-soul in the power of prayer. They pray in their cars, on early-morning walks, gathering in quiet churches, or in prayer vigils in public places. “We don’t understand the mechanism of prayer,” but it is good both for the person who prays and for those for whom that person prays, said Len Bjorkman, a retired Presbyterian minister from Owego, N.Y., who’s been active in peace work for decades. Bjorkman said one friend, a secular Jew from Israel, does not himself pray – but appreciates knowing that Christians in the United States are praying for him.
Even if the people involved are from different faiths and different countries, “we know that the person who is praying is praying out of love and concern,” Bjorkman said.
“I really believe that prayer is a very powerful and very important thing,” said John Wimberly Jr., who is pastor of Western Church in Washington D.C. and has been involved in the Presbyterian debate over divestment in Israel.
“When you get enough people praying about something, I think it creates a climate,” Wimberly said. “We were all praying that apartheid would fall. Did it fall because we were praying for it? No, but did the prayer create a climate and moral power or force or whatever you want to call it, I think yes, somehow or another. Nobody knows how prayer works, but we believe it does.”
In 2005, Debbie Blane, a Presbyterian pastor, worked in the Middle East as an accompanier for the World Council of Churches – showing Christian solidarity for the people living there. In a recent e-mail from Northern Ireland, she wrote: “The biggest thing that individual Christians can do from my point of view is get hold of e-mail addresses for churches and individual people in Palestine and Lebanon and write to those people with encouragement. Pray for them and let them know that you are praying. The friends I made there last summer always express great appreciation when I let them know I am still praying for them.”
Get connected. As a younger man, Bjorkman taught school in Lebanon, and while there learned from Lebanese students and Palestinian refugees their views on the region’s history. Over time, he got to know Israelis too, and discovered there were people on all sides of the political disputes “who disavow violence, who disavow any kind of forceful action, and seek other ways.” He has concluded, over time, that working together — forging alliances nationally and internationally with others who have a heart for peacemaking is part of how people of faith can stay energized and focused on such difficult work.
So Bjorkman has been active in both the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program (www.pcusa.org/peacemaking/ ), a program of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and with The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, (www.presbypeacefellowship.org/ ), an independent group. He supports some tried-and-true lobbying tactics for peacemakers: sending letters and making phone calls to lawmakers, visiting elected representatives, participating in ecumenical advocacy days in Washington, doing all that, he says, without “any sense of skepticism or despair.”
Blane, the Middle East accompanier, wrote that she sees peacemaking as encompassing a broad range of things. “Buy Fair Trade, conserve energy, check investments for retirement to be sure they aren’t supporting war,” she wrote. “Individually, we can get our minds wrapped around the truths of American arrogance and begin to live our lives with the purpose of not being a part of what is hurting the world. America is capable of great good. We can as individuals live our lives out of that capability and God can use us to create a movement.”
Some Presbyterians challenge their congregations to pay attention to the hard issues – even if it makes some uncomfortable.
Trout Lake Church, a small congregation near Mount Adams in Washington state, for example, developed a program this year to encourage discussions on peace, war, and violence. Trout Lake’s peace committee organized silent peace vigils and invited speakers from four faith traditions — Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity — to talk about how peace and violence are viewed in those traditions. They made up reading lists and organized Tuesday-night potluck dinners where speakers come to talk about living out one’s faith in the world. One night, a Quaker described his experience working as a peacekeeper in Kosovo. A Jewish lawyer discussed the separation of church and state. In September, a mediator is scheduled to discuss working through contentious issues peacefully – anything from settling family estates to business disputes.
“Trout Lake is a small town,” said church member Bonnie Reynolds, one of two members of the peacemaking committee. Some people there had never met a Muslim, but “we would hear in church people referring to the evil Muslims,” she said. They also heard the question asked: “How can we talk about things on which we differ?”
The conversations haven’t always been easy or comfortable — and not everyone thinks this is a good idea; “absolutely not,” Reynolds said. Some are concerned that the gatherings aren’t focused enough on Scripture, although in the presentations “we chose people who had lived their lives based on Scripture,” like Martin Luther King Jr. or Dwight Eisenhower. Only a few people came to the silent peace vigils, but for those who did, “they were incredibly important,” Reynolds said.
And 55 people came to the 20-member church to hear the discussion involving representatives of other traditions (some admittedly “because they had a job to do, they had to bring cookies or something,” Reynolds said.)
She hopes the discussions will lead to new ways of thinking — or at least challenge people to consider what they do believe. When confronted with the world’s difficulties, some people “are just overwhelmed,” Reynolds said.
“They listen to the news and they’re depressed and they’re sad.”
Some don’t want to talk about it.
But Reynolds – a retired mental health professional – believes in action.
Peacemaking “is like concentric circles,” she said. Do one thing, and it spreads.
Stand beside. One technique peacemakers are using, in the Middle East, in Colombia, in other troubled parts of the world, is accompaniment — sending Christians who oppose violence to stand with the citizens in places where violence is commonplace.
So far, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship has trained 35 people to work as accompaniers in Colombia and 24 have actually served there. The program (www.presbypeacefellowship.org/colombia/concerned.php ) was initiated at the request of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, whose leaders face personal danger because of their work helping impoverished Colombians who have been displaced from their land and are living in slums outside the main cities.
“We went there entirely at their request and under their direction,” said Anne Barstow, a retired professor from New York state who helps recruit and train the volunteer accompaniers.
Of the two dozen accompaniers who have served so far, 13 have asked to return to Colombia, Barstow said. The volunteers range in age from 23 to 73; they are told, before they go, that they are walking into danger. “It is dangerous and we never say otherwise,” Barstow said. “On the other hand, the Presbyterian church down there is so glad to have these international observers there to offer them even a little modicum of protection from the armed people, that the Presbyterian church takes the very best care of them. … It is dangerous but no unnecessary risks are being taken.”
Some Presbyterians committed to peacemaking are willing to take those risks — in part as a way to put their faith into action. Barstow has seen for herself the work Presbyterians in Colombia are doing on behalf of 3.5 million displaced people living in refugee camps, “absolutely wretched places,” she said, filled with rural people driven off their land by armed violence. The presence of American accompaniers offers Colombian Presbyterians protection, Barstow said.
“The presence of persons with U.S. passports is amazing,” she said. “Because the U.S. government is giving the Colombian government $700 million a year mostly in military aid,” Colombian officials “don’t want any U.S. people to be harmed. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
Barstow has done peacemaking work for more than 20 years — often leading trips of Americans to Latin America for a group called Witness for Peace (www.witnessforpeace.org/ .)
Why are some Christians willing to push for peace – while others are uncomfortable with that kind of advocacy?
“I’ve asked that question many times,” Barstow said. “So many of my family and friends have watched me and my husband for 20 years and wouldn’t touch this with a 10-foot pole. … On the other hand, there are others who understand the effectiveness of this work.”
For her, “there comes a time when you can no longer stay silent. … We have been looking for something concrete to do that can reduce the violence somewhere in the world.”
