Uncategorized
Justice Littered with Injustice: Viewing Just Mercy in a Charged Moment
Editor’s note: to see this movie free in the month of June, 2020, go to Just Mercy – Watch for Free by Julia Smucker The film Just Mercy (Warner Brothers, 2019) follows attorney Bryan Stevenson’s early career as founding director of the Equal Justice Initiative, providing legal counsel to inmates on Alabama’s death row. In…
Specialization or Generalization? The Many Ways of Following the Consistent Life Ethic
by John Whitehead The Consistent Life Ethic (CLE) movement is very diverse. It includes people of different philosophical or partisan backgrounds, with different understandings of the CLE and different preferred activist strategies. One aspect of this diversity is varying approaches to specialization, that is, focusing on a particular life issue of the CLE. Some CLE…
On Praying for the Military
The following is a letter CLN board member Julia Smucker addressed to her church at the request of one of her pastors after raising these concerns in person. As a nonsectarian organization, we welcome perspectives from various faiths, as well as secular ones, that affirm consistent-life principles. Since attending my current church, I…
Rehumanize International – 6th Annual Conference
The 6th annual conference of our member group, Rehumanize International, happened October 18-20, 2019, in New Orleans. Consistent Life Network was a co-sponsor, and several of us attended. Sessions offered from CLN officers included: “Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress, Moral Injury, & the CLE” (Rachel MacNair) and “Apocalypse Never: Why We Must Reject Nuclear Weapons” (John Whitehead)….
Win-Lose is a Mirage
by Bill Samuel, Consistent Life Network Board member As I was taking a morning nature walk, I was thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s insight in Braiding Sweetgrass of people loving the land and the land loving us back. The reciprocity is vital regardless of whether you are comfortable with using the emotional term “love” to…
Misogyny vs. Patriarchy
by Rachel MacNair Before I get into why I think it’s important to understand the difference between misogyny and patriarchy, I want to explain how they fit into the Consistent Life Network’s set of issues. We identified six issues of violence involving socially-tolerated killing of human beings, as listed on this banner: Each of the…
Book Review: “Resisting Throwaway Culture”
by Mary Lou Bennett Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can United a Fractured People, by Charles C. Camosy. Anyone living in the United States today is acutely aware of the pain and decay that permeate society as a result of contemporary moral issues. With such awareness, feelings of sadness, despair, and disbelief…
When Women Lead: The Pro-life Women’s Conference
by C.J. Williams This year’s Pro-Life Women’s Conference had a theme: WHEN WOMEN LEAD. But what might just as well have been the unspoken theme was unity, and underlying all unity is consistency. As the Consistent Life Network (CLN) set up to table in the enormous Pontchartrain Conference Center in New Orleans, we were surrounded…
Dorothy Day and the Consistent Life Ethic: Rejecting Conventional Political Paradigms
by Rob Arner As anyone who has embraced the consistent life ethic (CLE) will tell you, the sense of isolation, of not fitting in can be paralyzing. This is all the more true when it comes to the traditional American political spectrum, with its the left-right/conservative-progressive dichotomy. CLE political positions, linked as they are by…
A Friendly Approach
by Richard Stith I think we should be careful to be positive and praise all the folks who support one of our key issues, while still gently encouraging them to broaden their opposition to violence. Here’s an example of how I’ve been trying to apply this approach locally. A theater here in town is putting…