JPT Practice # 10: Encourage Grassroots Peacemaking Groups and Voluntary Associations

Some of the practices of Just Peacemaking require involvement by policy elites, but the job of peacemaking can never be left to elites alone. In modern warfare, civilians bear the brunt of casualties. Civilian groups or ordinary people must often take the lead in work for justice and peace. They work in different ways: Some, like Doctors Without Borders (Medecins sans Frontieres), provide emergency aid in crisis situations, including conflict situations, without regard to whose “side” a person is on. Some groups work on longterm peacebuilding conditions, such as encouraging and modeling the practice of sustainable development (e.g., the Grameen Bank). Some, like Christian Peacemaker Teams, Witness for Peace, Peace Brigades International, or the new Nonviolent Peaceforce, concentrate on being nonviolent “bodyguards” for indigenous peace or human rights workers and/or on other forms of third-party nonviolent intervention in conflicts–an alternative to military interventions. Other groups are citizen lobbies to pressure policy elites to do more peacemaking. Still others work on counter-recruitment of young people or on securing the rights of conscientious objectors. Had the good folks at what was then called the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors (now re-named the Center for Conscience and War) not provided me an attorney, it would have been much more difficult for me to get a C.O. discharge from the U.S. Army all those years ago.
Some groups work on specific peacemaking campaigns, such as the elimination of nuclear weapons (e.g., Faithful Security, or, in the U.K., the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, or the various branches of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War), or ending specific wars, etc.
Some groups are organized on a faith basis, such as Christian Peacemaker Teams, Muslim Peace Fellowship, Jewish Peace Fellowship, Pax Christi International, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, etc. Others are organized by profession such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Historians Against War, Human Rights First (formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), etc. Some groups have special requirements for membership based on tragic life experiences or on shared first-hand knowledge of organized violence: e.g., Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, or Peaceful Tomorrows, the latter group composed of family members of 9/11 victims and/or family members of other victims of terrorist acts. Since just before World War I, several women’s organizations combined the struggle for women’s rights with the struggle for international justice and peace for all persons, e.g., the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, or the more recently founded Code Pink.

No one can do everything or join everything. The wide variety of grassroots groups (and my examples barely touch the surface) gives people many choices to “plug-in” where they most find the group philosophy and approach fitting them, or where their talents can best be used. I do believe that persons of faith, especially Christians for whom the call to be peacemakers is near the heart of our faith, need to be present both in faith-based organizations and, as a witness, in groups organized on other bases.

I also believe that individual congregations should organize lay-led peacemaker groups (connected to denominational peace groups if your denomination has one) who lead the congregation in greater peacemaking. I was part of one such group several years ago that was opposed by the head deacon–until it was pointed out to him that several of the most recent baptisms or transfers of membership had come from people who joined the peacemaker group long before they would have even considered visiting the church!

This is the last of my series on the practices of Just Peacemaking. I will, in the near future, establish a link to the whole series.