The Message of “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”: Abortion Gets Sexual Predators Off the Hook
by Rachel MacNair With the initial theater release interrupted by the Covid-19 closing of theaters, this movie was offered online April 3, 2020. The title of the movie, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” is based on an intense scene in which the protagonist, Autumn, is being counseled at an abortion facility before her abortion. Those…
A Healing Metaphor: Pandemic as War
by Julia Smucker The language is everywhere: we’re at war against an invisible enemy, adjusting to new realities of wartime living and expressing gratitude to the brave men and women fighting on the front lines to keep us safe. Except that the front in this war is in hospitals and labs, and the front-line fighters…
Why the Interfaith Approach is Important
by Rachel MacNair This February in 2020 I went on a trip to Israel and Palestine with a group called In the Steps of Our Ancestors: an Interfaith Peace Pilgrimage. In addition to seeing the holy sites of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha’i, we spoke with several groups promoting peace in different ways. (I went…
Is Abortion Different from Other Violence?
by Julia Smucker Four Ways of Isolating One Issue Any advocate of the consistent life ethic (CLE) can expect to encounter people who share their pro-nonviolence position on certain issues but depart from it on others. And among those working on various peace and life issues, including those of us who adhere to the CLE,…
Ireland’s Votes for Violence: Sinn Féin and Abortion
by Maria Horan Not Surprising It may surprise those outside the Republic of Ireland that Sinn Féin (SF) came in second in the recent Irish elections. However, people voting for a political party with a strong connection to the IRA and many of the murders in the North during the Troubles and which still refuses…
“Remember Pearl Harbor—Keep ‘Em Dying”: War and Racism in the Pacific
by John Whitehead American planes dropped firebombs on Tokyo 75 years ago, on the night of March 9-10, 1945, killing an estimated 80,000-100,000 people. The firebombing began a six-month-long American bombing campaign against 66 Japanese cities that culminated in the two atomic bombings and killed roughly 400,000 people in total. This killing campaign was the…
A Consistent Day in the Neighborhood
by Andrew Hocking While Tom Hanks plays Mister Rogers in the 2019 movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the plot centers on a journalist named Lloyd Vogel. When assigned to write a short piece depicting Fred Rogers as a hero, he would much rather uncover moral failure and write an exposé. His cynical approach…
Racism and the Death Penalty
by David Cruz-Uribe, OFS The death penalty, the state-sanctioned killing of criminals, continues to be a part of the American justice system. While 140 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, including every other industrialized democracy (except Japan and Taiwan), executions are still regularly carried out in the United States. Its…
In Defense of “Yes, But” Rhetoric: The Case of the Suleimani Assassination
by John Whitehead The U.S. government’s assassination of Iranian General Qasem Suleimani began the year 2020 with violence, and the possibility of more violence. The assassination, in retaliation for Suleimani’s alleged involvement in attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq (and supposedly to prevent further attacks), threatened to escalate into open war between the United States…
Fifty Years of Protesting for Peace
by Lisa Stiller Fifty years ago I was running from tear gas on the university campus in Madison, Wisconsin. Massive protests had erupted opposing the Vietnam War. Classes were often canceled as students clashed with police and the National Guard during the two years I attended school there. I was right out front, making protest…