Intervention: What a Red Rose Rescue Reminds Us About Civil Disobedience in the Consistent Life Movement
by Sonja Morin Susan B. Anthony being arrested for voting when female suffrage was not yet attained. Henry David Thoreau refusing to pay taxes to support unjust war. Abolitionists flaunting the attempts of slave catchers to arrest escaping Black families. The sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and marches of the civil rights movement of the last century….
People Standing against Tanks: The Civil Resistance of August 1991 and Its Ambiguous Legacy
by John Whitehead Nonviolent civil resistance helped change history 30 years ago this month. When a group of hardline communists within the Soviet Union attempted a coup in August 1991, they were met with significant resistance from other Soviet citizens, including both ordinary people and elites. The civil resisters ultimately prevailed over the coup plotters….
Hollywood Movie Insights II
by Rachel MacNair See our previous Hollywood Movie Insights post, offering comments on several movies. Never Look Away An Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of other awards, the story spans the life of an artist as a boy in Nazi Germany and a man in East Germany. He flees to…
No Combat Experience, No Opinion: Parallels in Pro-bombing and Pro-choice Rhetoric
by John Whitehead Paul Fussell, a literary critic and World War II veteran, wrote an essay in the 1980s with the arresting title “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” A passionate defense of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fussell’s essay is still sometimes invoked today by bombing supporters. However, Fussell’s argument is…
My Christian CLE Perspective: Absolute Nonviolence Across the Issues
by Julia Smucker Editor’s Note: There are of course a wide variety of Christian perspectives, and we had a different one last week. We also welcome perspectives from a variety of religions, as listed at the bottom, and invite people to share theirs with us. I am a baptized Mennonite and confirmed Catholic, and my…
The Consistent Life Ethic: My Christian Perspective
by Father Jim Hewes Editor’s Note: There are of course a wide variety of Christian perspectives, and we have a different one coming up for next week’s post. We also welcome perspectives from a variety of religions, as listed at the bottom, and invite people to share theirs with us. I understand the Consistent…
Wasting Money on Instruments of Death: Nuclear Weapons in the 2022 Budget
by John Whitehead The Biden administration’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2022 contains much to disturb peace activists. The budget continues the long-standing pattern of grotesquely large military spending, with $715 billion allocated to the Defense Department. Further, the budget specifically continues to fund lavishly the most extreme instruments of death, nuclear weapons. Peace activists…
A Daunting Disadvantage for the Pro-Life Side
by Acyutananda (see author’s blog) Of all the consistent pro-life policies or political positions, I have always chosen to focus my own efforts most on the anti-abortion position. This is partly because numerically legal abortion normally accounts for vastly more human-rights violations than say, capital punishment or unjust war. It is also because only anti-abortion…
Peas of the Same Pod
by Elena Muller Garcia, M.A. in Religious Studies About ten years ago one of my co-workers approached my desk and began to address me by saying: “Did you see those illegals — ” I stopped him abruptly midsentence. “Calling undocumented immigrants ‘illegals’ is the same as calling the unborn child a ‘fetus’. Both terms…
The Consistent Peace Ethic
by Rachel MacNair The Consistent Life Network names its e-newsletter Peace & Life Connections. We make a big point of covering peace issues as the same as life issues and life issues being the same as peace issues. We dislike the political red/blue divide that pits “peace” and “life” against each other in terms of…