RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 4: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WOMEN'S PEACE MOVEMENT
BY BY REV. COLIN BOSSEN AND REV. JULIA HAMILTON
© Copyright 2011 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 11:15:36 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Oppression and war will be heard of no more
Nor the blood of a slave leave his print on our shore,
Conventions will then be a useless expense,
For we'll all go free suffrage, a hundred years hence. — Frances Dana Barker Gage, in her 1875 hymn "A Hundred Years Hence"
This workshop explores Unitarian and Universalist contributions to the American peace movement, and in particular, the work of generations of Unitarian and Universalist women who worked for peace through the 19th and into the 20th century. Many women who were ardent abolitionists were also horrified by the carnage of the United States Civil War. After the war, women who had honed their skills organizing for equal rights in the mid-1800s turned their eye toward peace and became leaders in a multigenerational effort that sought to make peace an international focus.
As the quote at the beginning of this workshop demonstrates, concern about the violence of war overlapped with the abolition and woman suffrage movements. Although many women in these movements are familiar to us and others are not, all belonged to a large, organic network of activists, free religionists, theological thinkers, and prophetic speakers who influenced one another over time and across eras. The origins of this movement can be traced back to the late 1700s, and its influence was felt well into the 20th century.
This workshop will investigate the organic emergence movements from other movements, and examine how the overlap of ideas, theologies, and conversations can empower one generation to fulfill the dreams of their forebears. Participants explore the nature of peace work and consider how a position of resistance might be taken and a goal of transformation realized in a contemporary context.
To ensure you can help adults of all ages, stages, and learning styles participate fully in this workshop, review these sections of the program Introduction: "Accessibility Guidelines for Workshop Presenters" in the Integrating All Participants section, and "Strategies for Effective Group Facilitation" and "Strategies for Brainstorming" in the Leader Guidelines section.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: On the Frontlines | 15 |
Activity 2: Personal Experience and Justicemaking | 10 |
Activity 3: Generations of Action | 25 |
Activity 4: Web of Influence | 20 |
Faith in Action: Generation to Generation | |
Closing | 10 |
Alternate Activity 1: The Battle Hymn of the Republic | 20 |
Alternate Activity 2: In Barton's Footsteps | 20 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Think about where you received your inspiration to lead this workshop. Who or what influenced you to facilitate this program? Why have you undertaken this work now?
If you have a connection to someone who is serving, or has served, in the military, or if you yourself have served, consider how this might influence the way you approach issues of peacemaking. If you do not have direct experience with the military, try to speak with someone who does. Ask them how their experiences have changed their understanding of war and peace.
Before you lead the workshop, take time to complete this sentence: "At the end of this workshop, I hope the participants leave feeling... "
WORKSHOP PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
As participants enter, invite them to sign in, put on name tags, and pick up handouts. Direct their attention to the agenda for this workshop.
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite a participant to light the chalice while you lead a unison reading of Reading 449 from Singing the Living Tradition: "We hallow this time together by kindling the lamp of our heritage."
Lead the group in singing the hymn you have chosen.
After the song, share the Mother's Day Peace Proclamation written in 1870 by Unitarian Julia Ward Howe, which appears as Reading 573 in Singing the Living Tradition:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Explain that this workshop focuses on the development of the peace movement during and after the Civil War, a movement that was grounded in the organizing work of women who also worked for abolition and women's rights. This workshop also invites participants to look at the connections in our own lives and imagine how this web of relationships shapes our work for justice.
ACTIVITY 1: ON THE FRONTLINES (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Project or pass around the portrait of Clara Barton. Read aloud the biographical information about Barton and her letter, or invite volunteers to do so. Ask participants to try to imagine Barton's emotions as she wrote the letter to Gage. Ask them to consider how Barton linked issues of war and peace with women's suffrage. Point out that the start of her opposition to war was the suffering she had witnessed on the battlefield. Ask:
ACTIVITY 2: PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND JUSTICEMAKING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to consider the ways our personal experiences influence our justicemaking actions. Ask: What experiences have led you to take action on behalf of peace and justice?
Invite participants to quietly recall those who have influenced them in justicemaking work or who have shared justicemaking activities with them. Explain that after two minutes of silence, they will be invited to say aloud the names of those influential people. Ring the chime.
After two minutes, name a person who has influenced you, to model for others to follow. Hold the space until all names are spoken aloud, and then ring the chime again.
ACTIVITY 3: GENERATIONS OF ACTION (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute or project Handout 1, Transformative Relationships — A Map. Distribute Handout 2, Women in the Peace Movement.
Point out that the women listed here are only some of the many women—Unitarian, Universalist and others—who were active reformers in the 19th century. Allow participants a few minutes to examine the map and read the handouts.
Distribute the prepared index cards (some with quotes attached), so each participant has a card with a name. If the group is small, give more than one card to each person. Say:
We're going to move around a bit in order to better understand the connections between the many women listed on these handouts.
Explain the activity:
As you go through the names on the cards, invite participants to refer to the relationship map (projected or handed out) to illustrate friendships and working relationships.
Conclude by inviting participants into conversation, using these questions:
Including All Participants
If the group includes participants who cannot move easily from one cluster to another, invite other participants to cluster around them during the activity. Or, gather the group at a large work table for this activity and invite participants to move the index cards into clusters in response to the cues.
ACTIVITY 4: WEB OF INFLUENCE (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to create their own relationship map. Explain that they will create a diagram that includes all the people and events they think have influenced their own understanding of peacemaking and justicemaking.
Distribute large sheets of paper, and markers to share. Invite participants to write their name in the middle of a page and to list the connections in their own lives, with a few words about each person or event they add to their page. For example, a participant might draw a line to the name of their father, who worked for a union and passed on his strong values about social justice. They might write down the name of their Unitarian Universalist congregation, and then draw a line to all the people in the congregation who have influenced their perspectives on justice. Perhaps they attended a conference that influenced them, or heard a speaker that they admired. Things like books read, classes taken, the work of great-great grandparents, or the work of children and grandchildren may all be considered influences in the relationship web. Move around and help participants brainstorm if they get stuck. Ask questions about the relationships that are already on the paper, to see if they lead to other relationships.
After ten minutes, invite people to finish their work on the map. Invite them to move into groups of three and share their maps with one another.
Allow ten minutes for sharing. Then, re-gather the group and lead a conversation about the activity: What did participants learn about themselves through this activity? What surprising connections surfaced in these maps? Were there elements in common among the maps?
CLOSING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to respond in their journals, to these questions:
Are there people whom you have influenced due to your actions on behalf of peace and justice? What would you like your own justicemaking legacy to be?
Allow five minutes for writing.
Read this quote from Mary Livermore:
We are approaching the era when war shall be no more. The world is ready for it. Unconsciously, and unintentionally, the powers that be have been preparing for it. For they have increased the destructive power of the enginery of war so marvelously, that the nations employing it against each other will both suffer almost irreparable injury. When a handful of men can blow up a navy, and another handful can annihilate an army, war ceases to be war, and become assassination. If we should wake tomorrow to find that all civilized armies were to be disbanded, all fortifications to be dismantled, and the giant battleships transformed into vessels for peaceful uses, how much the world would gain by the change!... The prophecy of two thousand years ago that there should be "peace on earth and good-will to [all]" would begin to be verified. Between two and three billions of dollars, now wrung annually from the people for military purposes, would not then be called for, and would increase the resources of the masses, and add to their material comforts. How the certainty that war had ceased forever would loosen the brakes now held down on the wheels of the world's progress!
Distribute Taking It Home and encourage participants to continue to write in their journals between workshops.
Invite a participant to come forward and extinguish the chalice as you say the following words: "As we extinguish this chalice, may we let the light of our tradition kindle our hope for a better world."
FAITH IN ACTION: GENERATION TO GENERATION
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather as a group with youth from your congregation for a conversation to share hopes and dreams for the future as well as experiences in justicemaking work. The program participants may wish to join with the youth group or Coming of Age group to work on a project that is important to them.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Take a few moments right after the workshop to ask each other:
Review the materials for the next workshop. Are there any questions, or things that need to be researched between workshops? Make a list of who is responsible for preparation tasks for the workshop.
TAKING IT HOME
Oppression and war will be heard of no more
Nor the blood of a slave leave his print on our shore,
Conventions will then be a useless expense,
For we'll all go free suffrage, a hundred years hence. — Frances Dana Barker Gage, in her 1875 hymn "A Hundred Years Hence"
Few of the early women's suffrage activists lived to see women achieve the right to vote. Julia Ward Howe said of her vision for an international Peace Conference, "The time for this was at hand, but had not yet arrived." What dreams of justice do you harbor that may not come to fruition in your lifetime? Jot some ideas in your journal about what you would like to see. Then think of the next generation, of young people you know who might take up the cause. Write down their names in your journal. Sometime in the next week, make it a point to talk to at least one younger person about your hopes for the future. It can be as simple as asking your ten-year-old niece if she thinks there will ever be a woman president of the United States, or taking time to talk with a college student about their feelings about war and the role of the military in our nation. Next time you are at a conference, or a rally, or a worship service, notice and engage with the next generation of social justice leaders.
The PBS documentary Not For Ourselves Alone (at www.pbs.org/stantonanthony), directed by Ken Burns, chronicles the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Watch it with friends and family.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Share this background about the origin of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," from the online Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (at www25-temp.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/juliawardhowe.html):
On a trip to Washington in 1861, (Julia and Samuel Howe) went to watch a Union army review which was suddenly dispersed by a Confederate attack. On the way back to the city in their carriage surrounded by retreating troops, the Howe party began to sing patriotic songs, including the popular "John Brown's Body." James Freeman Clarke, one of the party, suggested to Julia that she write new and better lyrics for the tune. At the hotel late that night, the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" began forming in her mind. Careful not to wake the children, she groped in the dark for pencil and paper and wrote the poem. In the morning she made only one or two changes. In February, 1862, The Atlantic published "The Battle Hymn," paying its author 5 dollars. Gradually the song caught on until it swept the North.
Pass out Handout 3, The Battle Hymn of the Republic and sing (with accompaniment, if possible) all of the verses. Discuss the lyrics by asking:
Distribute Singing the Living Tradition and invite everyone to turn to Reading 573, "Mother's Day Proclamation." Have the group read it in unison, or invite a volunteer to read.
Follow with this quote from Howe about the creation of the poem:
I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed... The little document, which I drew up in the heat of my enthusiasm, implored women, all the world over, to awake to the knowledge of the sacred right vested in them as mothers to protect the human life, which costs them so many pangs.
Discuss the difference between the Mother's Day poem and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic:"
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: IN BARTON'S FOOTSTEPS (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce the activity with these or similar words:
Clara Barton and others from the 19th-century peace movement saw no contradiction between opposing war on moral grounds and supporting the soldiers who fought in wars by providing them with nursing care, clothing, blankets, and other humanitarian assistance. They did not view it as a moral failing for men to go to war; rather they saw war itself as the moral failure that claimed soldiers as victims. Many contemporary Unitarian Universalists try to hold the same stance as Clara Barton and other members of the 19th-century women's peace movement—that is, supporting soldiers while opposing a particular armed conflict in which soldiers must fight.
Ask:
Are we following the example of the peace activists of the 19th century?
Ask for a show of hands for all those who know someone currently serving in the military. Ask for a second show of hands for all those who know a Unitarian Universalist who is serving or has served in the military now or in the past.
Distribute Handout 4 and allow participants five minutes to read it through. Then, invite participants to move into groups of three or four to share responses to Handout 4 and discuss the questions you have posted on newsprint.
After ten minutes, re-gather the large group. Invite comments and observations. Ask: Did your conversations point to anything our congregation might want to do differently in regard to supporting military personnel and their families? In the ways we speak out for peace?
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 4:
STORY: CLARA BARTON
Clara Barton was born on Christmas Day, 1821, in Oxford, MA, into a Universalist family.
She was living in Washington, D.C. when the U.S. Civil War landed at her doorstep. She began nursing wounded soldiers in her sister's home, visiting the army camps, and was soon orchestrating the delivery of supplies from numerous Ladies Aid societies. After a short time, she began working on the front lines, delivering supplies and tending to wounded soldiers. Despite occasional bouts of illness, she continued her efforts, working alongside a host of women volunteers that included Dorothea Dix, Frances Dana Barker Gage, and Mary Livermore. Frances Gage became a close friend, and when Barton expressed frustration at the barriers women faced in her line of work, Gage introduced Barton to the women's rights movement. Barton and Gage also discussed their shared Universalist faith, which they both credited with influencing their work.
After the Civil War ended, Barton visited Europe and learned of the International Red Cross, an organization which had been established by the Geneva Convention. She returned home determined to start an American chapter, struggling against the prevailing political mood to advocate for the organization. In 1881 the American Red Cross was founded, but the first few years of the organization's existence were difficult. Barton's own health was often compromised by overwork, and although she was a passionate advocate for the agency's relief work, her lack of administrative skills often caused problems. She persevered, however, and served as the President of the Red Cross until 1904, when she retired at the age of 83. She died eight years later in 1912.
Here is an excerpt of a letter to her friend Frances Gage, written in 1870:
My Dear Fannie,
I can never see a poor mutilated wreck, blown to pieces with powder and lead without wondering if visions of such an end ever flitted before his mother's mind when she washed and dressed her fair skinned baby. Woman should certainly have some voice in the matter of war, either affirmative or negative and the fact that she has not this should not be made the ground on which to deprive her of other privileges. She shan't say there shall be no war—and she shan't take any part in it when there is one, and because she don't take part in war, she must not vote, and because she can't vote, she has no voice in her government, and because she has no voice in her government, she isn't a citizen, and because she isn't a citizen, she has no rights, and because she has no rights, she must submit to wrongs, and because she submits to wrongs, she isn't anybody, and "what does she know about war—" and because she don't know anything about it, she mustn't say or do anything about it."
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 4:
HANDOUT 1: TRANSFORMATIVE RELATIONSHIPS — A MAP
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 4:
HANDOUT 2: WOMEN IN THE PEACE MOVEMENT
Frances Dana Barker Gage (1808-1884) was a Universalist, a lecturer, activist, novelist and journalist who was passionate about rights for women and for the abolition of slavery. Gage's account of Sojourner Truth's famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the second Women's Rights Convention has become the authoritative text of the event. Gage exchanged views about Universalism with Clara Barton during the Civil War, while they both served on the Sanitation Commission at Paris Island and at Hilton Head.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902). Although strictly neither a Unitarian nor a Universalist, Stanton worked with many notable Unitarians and Universalists of her time. She was one of the organizers of the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls. She organized and co-edited a book of liberal women's biblical commentary, "The Women's Bible," with three Universalist ministers: Phebe Hanaford, Augusta Chapin, and Olympia Brown.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was a noted Unitarian feminist and abolitionist, known as the first woman to keep her own name after marriage (to Henry Blackwell).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) was a Unitarian author, poet, abolitionist, women's rights and peace activist. Most famous for writing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the Mother's Day Proclamation, she was unsuccessful in her attempts to promote an international Women's Peace Congress.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mary Livermore (1820-1905) was a Universalist with considerable talent at organizing. She was a highly sought lecturer, known as "The Queen of the Platform."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was born to British Unitarian parents and credited with the foundation of modern nursing following her experiences with the Crimean War. She had many connections to American Unitarians.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) was born a Quaker and later became a Unitarian. She was the most famous public voice of the early women's rights movement, and was arrested for casting a vote in the 1872 presidential election.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) and Emily Blackwell (1826-1910) were Unitarian (raised Episcopalian). These sisters were the first two women to graduate from medical school in 1849. They were sisters-in-law to Lucy Stone and Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Louisa May Alcott (1823-1888) was a Unitarian best known as a writer of Little Women. She was associated with the Transcendentalists and served as a nurse during the Civil War.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) attended both AME and Unitarian churches in Philadelphia. She was a writer, lecturer and activist, a free-born African American woman who worked for abolition and women's rights.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rev. Olympia Brown (1835-1926) was a Universalist minister, and in 1863 became the first woman ordained within an organized denomination in the United States. Toward the end of her career, she preached for peace during World War I.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May Wright Sewall (1844-1920) was a Unitarian women's rights activist and reformer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1931) was a Free Religionist associated with the Unitarians. She was the first woman to give the Berry Street lecture in 1929. She was married to a Unitarian minister, and was herself a minister (non-affiliated).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lucia Ames Mead (1856-1936), although not a Unitarian, had friendships and working relationships with many Unitarian peace activists. She was a leading pacifist and social reformer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harriet Stanton Blatch (1856-1940) was born in Seneca Falls, became a Unitarian, and was a key player in the push to ratify women's right to vote in 1920. After her first-hand experiences in Europe following WWI, she wrote "A Woman's Point of View — Some Roads to Peace."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950). A Unitarian, and daughter of Lucy Stone, she was instrumental in the reconciliation between the National Women's Suffrage Association and the American Women's Suffrage Association, who had split because of differing views on issues and tactics, primarily around race, following the Civil War. She was the editor of the Women's Journal for thirty-five years.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), a Unitarian, was a reformer, women's rights activist, pacifist, and organizer of the League of Women Voters.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane Addams (1860-1935) was born a Quaker, but attended Unitarian services in Chicago. She was the founder of Hull House, one of the first "settlement houses" providing services for working class women and men. She was a founding member of the ACLU, and she was also the first U.S. woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for her international peacemaking efforts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emily Greene Balch (1867-1961) was a Unitarian who became a Quaker after the AUA refused to support pacifist ministers. She was a delegate in 1915 at the International Congress of Women at The Hague. An ardent pacifist, she met with Woodrow Wilson, promoting the concept of mediation between nations. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for her work.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 4:
HANDOUT 3: THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
(Chorus)
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."
(Chorus)
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
(Chorus)
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 4:
HANDOUT 4: EMBATTLED FAITH
Excerpted from the article "Embattled Faith," by Neil Shister, which appeared in the July/August 2003 issue of UU World. Used with the author's permission.
The Naval Surface Warfare Center, three thousand acres of expansive wetland and scrub bordering the Potomac at Indian Head, Maryland, is where smokeless gunpowder was invented a century ago, a landmark event that transformed "fog of war" from the literal description of a battlefield to a strategic metaphor. These days propellants and pyrotechnics are manufactured at Indian Head, explosives for rockets and missiles, "things that go fast and boom." But on the morning after the war in Iraq began in March, it was worship that brought together some hundred members of the base community. And it was a Unitarian Universalist Navy chaplain, the Rev. Cynthia Kane, leading them.
The occasion was the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual armed forces event that traces its origins to the Continental Congress's call for a day of "public humiliation, fasting, and prayer" in the early days of the American Revolution. For Kane, presiding in the dress uniform of a Navy lieutenant, the setting was replete with special symbolism. The guest of honor was the Rev. William G. Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, invited at her behest. The presence of the UUA's "top brass" impressed the rank-conscious audience, especially when Sinkford announced that besides being a minister he was also the father of an Army Ranger in the elite 82nd Airborne Division recently returned from Afghanistan.
Rising to speak after pancakes and scrambled eggs, Sinkford embodied the dual and, for many, contradictory strains that characterize the relationship between Unitarian Universalists and, if not the military itself, then the exercise of military power. "I come here with a great sense of gratitude," he began. "Thanks for the work you do, the protection you afford us, the democracy that you help us preserve." But, he continued, he was also "one who stood the peace vigil," one whose fervent position was that "the United States should operate only with the blessing of the international community," which at that moment it clearly did not have.
Sinkford celebrated the United States as "a work in progress" built around the dream of a community of equality. For the sake of promoting such a dream, he concluded, many Unitarian Universalists, himself included, were willing to go to war. He qualified his stance with a somber proviso, given the events that were just beginning to unfold: "War is not our first choice and, in some sense, it always represents a failure."
Most Unitarian Universalists would likely resonate with Sinkford's words, as well as the emotionally charged paradox he finds himself living: troubled by his government's actions and fearful for his son, yet supportive of the troops. In the first weeks after the Iraq campaign began, the dominant sentiments I heard in my conversations with other Unitarian Universalists were variations on a theme of resigned ambivalence. There were, to be sure, voices of unqualified dissent, like that of the Rev. Robert Hardies. "I will not allow myself to be counted among the coalition of the willing," he told his congregation at Washington's All Souls Church, Unitarian, on the first Sunday of the war. "I will not allow myself to be counted among those in whose name innocent lives are taken. I will not allow myself to be counted among those who call the loss of innocent life 'collateral damage.' ... I will not allow myself to be counted among those who fall in line just because hostilities have begun." But even Hardies, like so many others opposed to the politics of the war, said he respected the men and women charged to wage it and prayed for their safe return.
"Am I in favor of this war?" said the Rev. David Hubner, director of ministry and professional leadership for the UUA and a Naval officer before entering the ministry. "Hell no! Do I want to support the people who are fighting it? Yes. We don't want to demonize them and render harm like we did to the people who fought in Vietnam by turning them into outcasts."
What I began to experience, as I kept hearing responses like Hubner's on my reporter's journey, was a gnawing sense of a disconnect. What does it mean to say that the war was bad, but our soldiers good? Can a war be unjustified but its actors blameless? How bad does a war have to be before the soldiers themselves are wrong to fight it? In my conversations I was looking for the foundations that helped other Unitarian Universalists decide whether to support the war and support the troops, but I felt precariously balanced on a moral tightrope with no margin for misstep. Wasn't there, I kept wondering, a Unitarian Universalist point of view that provided more solid footing, one that could ground the choice between war and peace in something other than a provisional answer? I presumed that other religious traditions offer authoritative doctrinal guidance, but how do Unitarian Universalists find their way out of this dilemma?
Unitarian Universalism is not often identified as a martial tradition. At the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Virginia, which sits almost in the shadow of the Pentagon, church leaders were hard-pressed to name any members who were active military personnel. But, of course, there are Unitarian Universalist soldiers. According to Lt. j.g. Eric Johnson, a Navy Reserve chaplain candidate and founder of Unitarian Universalist Military Ministries (at www.uumm.org/), there are approximately 550 Unitarian Universalists serving in the U.S. armed forces around the world.
Johnson, a student at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, asked military personnel on the "UUMil" email list: "Is it enough that most UUs 'support the troops' but do not support the mission?" He reported that many servicemen and women appreciated the gesture—"the older ones say that's such a change from Vietnam"—but did not always feel supported. One soldier left his church, Johnson said, after a fellow congregant told him, "You are an instrument of murder."
In Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters to the Atlantic fleet and seat of the largest operating base in the United States, the Rev. Danny R. Reed of the Unitarian Church reckons that about 10 percent of his 230 members are military personnel. Shortly before war began, Reed convened a gathering of military families who wanted to talk. "They kept mentioning the tension they feel in church," he said. "Nobody said they weren't welcome, but there was discomfort in being in a church where there is so much opposition to what they do. One soldier said he seeks church as a refuge: He takes the notion of sanctuary seriously to be fortified for the week ahead. But as he walks through the door somebody flips him a leaflet about the peace march that afternoon."
Ironically, Unitarian Universalist soldiers can be made to feel like outsiders among their military colleagues because of their religion. "The common assumption service guys share is that everybody is more or less the same when it comes to religion," Reed explained. "So when they ask you about your faith—and bear in mind that common misunderstanding that 'In our churches you can believe anything you want, there are no rules'—the fear is that your patriotism will be called into question, that 'Somehow you're not American.'"
Reed added, "It's taxing on the spirit to always be on the defensive and have to explain oneself."
Indeed, when Cynthia Kane decided to join the military two years ago, she took grief from fellow UUs. "Now I know what it must feel like to be a Republican in the UUA," she said. Base commander Captain Marc Siedband had never even heard of Unitarian Universalists when she arrived. (There are two other ordained Unitarian Universalist ministers serving as military chaplains: Col. Vernon Chandler, senior rear chaplain for the Army's Fifth Corps in Heidelberg, Germany, and Col. William Grace, an Air Force chaplain at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.)
Among Kane's charge of some 500 military personnel and 200 dependents, there is but a single Unitarian Universalist family. When asked what kind of a chaplain she is—Catholic? Protestant? Jewish?—her stock response is, "A really good one!" Now, a year after Kane arrived, Captain Siedband has become an enthusiastic fan. "Unitarianism turned out to be a great match," he says. "Chaplain Kane's message is, 'Reach out to everybody; inclusion; touch people's hearts.' I'm surprised there aren't more UU chaplains in the military." (Eric Johnson and 2nd Lt. Rosemary Frances, an Air Force reservist also studying for the Unitarian Universalist ministry, hope to join her.)
Kane sees no inconsistency between her faith and her duty. "A lot of my work as a Navy chaplain is no different than when I was in civilian ministry," she says. "People come to me for support and I provide companionship. My job is to affirm and to promote the integrity of the individual and then counsel them to conscience." Indeed, the spiritual truth that led her to Unitarian Universalism, that "God is too big to be limited to one concept of divinity," plays well in adhering to the motto of the Chaplains Corps: "Provide for your own, facilitate for others, care for all."
Kane's journey into the military required fourteen years of what she calls "a circuitous discernment process." Despite being a pacifist, she has long felt a calling to be a Navy chaplain. The logic of her choice still remains unclear. ("It was an argument I ultimately lost with God!" she laughs. "As if I really thought I had a chance!") Her internal conflict seethed over last year when she was a student at the Navy War College studying the military strategist Karl von Clausewitz, famous for his dictum that "war is merely a continuation of politics by other means" and must thus be accepted as an eternal fact of life. Leaving a lecture one evening, she caught sight of the rows of soldiers' graves in Arlington National Cemetery glimmering in the amber light of the setting sun—human testimony to Clausewitz—and began crying. "I threw my hands up to a seemingly impassive heaven and asked, 'What am I doing?'" The answer that soothed her was the acknowledgement that if military conflict is, indeed, etched into the social fabric, then "to do the work of peace, I must understand the making of war."
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 4:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: CLARA BARTON, PORTRAIT
From the Library of Congress.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 4:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: TRANSFORMATIVE RELATIONSHIPS
Frances Dana Barker Gage (1808-1884)
There came a time when Universalists refused to go with me as an abolitionist, an advocate for the rights of women, for earnest temperance pleaders... Then it came to me that Christ's death as an atonement for sinners was not truth, but he had died for what he believed to be truth. Then came the war, then trouble, then paralysis, and for 14 years I have not listened to a sermon because I am too great a cripple. I have read much, thought much, and feel that life is too precious to be given to doctrines.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)
Lucy Stone (1818-1893)
Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
I did not doubt but that my appeal would find a ready response in the hearts of great numbers of women through the limits of civilization. I invited these imagined helpers to assist me in calling and holding a congress of women in London ... My first act was to have my appeal translated into various languages, to wit: French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, and to distribute copies of it as widely as possible. I devoted the next two years almost entirely to correspondence with leading women in various countries... . I was very sorry to give up this special work, but in my prosecution of it I could not help seeing that many steps were to be taken before one could hope to effect any efficient combination among women. The time for this was at hand, but had not yet arrived.
Mary Livermore (1820-1905)
During the war, and as a result of my own observations, I became aware that a large portion of the nation's work was badly done, or not done at all, because woman was not recognized as a factor in the political world.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) and Emily Blackwell (1826-1910)
Louisa May Alcott (1823-1888)
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)
Rev. Olympia Brown (1835-1926)
From her sermon "Permanent Peace:"
War is not possible where [people] recognize that all are alike God's Children Can we teach this great lesson to the people of the warring world? True it will require time, it will be a matter of education to prepare the way for such a civilization, but can we not begin today? We have sacrificed 50,000 men to make the world safe for Democracy, can we not send 1,000 consecrated preachers who shall teach the foundations of Democracy? Now is the time to begin, when men are tired of war, when women are heart-sick, when the nations are impoverished and overburdened, when all the people everywhere are wishing for something better. ... What a glorious opportunity for any denomination to be the exponent of a new civilization which should express itself in love for (humanity)! To make a new world in which [people] can dwell together in peace.
May Wright Sewall (1844-1920)
Since 1899... the International Council of Women has stood ready to be used for the noble purposes of the promotion of social Peace, the reduction of Armaments, the substitution of an International Tribunal of Justice for warfare, and the establishment of a permanent International Parliament which shall legislate for the world, as the congress or parliament of each of its constituent parts legislates for a single nation... Our... ultimate object is the cessation of all warfare by the extinction of all competitions, by the supplanting of competition by co-operation, by the displacement of hate, all international hate and international envy, by international affection.
Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1931)
Lucia Ames Mead (1856-1936)
Harriet Stanton Blatch (1856-1940)
My opposition to war was not because of the horrors of war, not because war demands that the race offer up its very best in their full vigor, not because war means economic bankruptcy, domination of races by famine and disease, but because war is so completely ineffective, so stupid. It settles nothing.
Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950)
Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947)
Jane Addams (1860-1935)
Emily Greene Balch (1867-1961)
FIND OUT MORE
Clara Barton
Read "Unitarian and Universalist Roots of the American Red Cross (at www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/2178.shtml)" in the January/February 2002 issue of UU World.
Women in the Peace Movement
The Swarthmore College Peace Collection (at www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/) is a fantastic resource with many original documents and photographs.
Women in Unitarianism and Universalism
See the online resource "Unitarian and Universalist Women: Writing Liberal Religious Women Back into History (at womenshistory.about.com/library/lists/bl_uu_women_list.htm)."
"Let Us Now Praise Universalist Women (at www.uuwhs.org/letusnow.php)" is the text of a worship service created by the Unitarian Universalist Women's Heritage Society and presented at General Assembly, 1993.
Unitarian Universalists in the Military
Read about the Unitarian Universalist Association's Process for Endorsement and Support of Military Chaplains and Chaplain Candidates (at www.uua.org/leaders/leadership/ministerialcredentialing/militarychaplaincy/index.shtml).
Explore the Church of the Larger Fellowship Military Ministry (at clf.uua.org/military/).