Redeeming the Wounded: New Book Features New Vision for Victims’ Justice
(Reedeming the Wounded: A Prison Chaplain’s Journey into Crime Victims Advocacy by B. Bruce Cook is now available for sale from Xulon Press and on his website Crime Victim Advocacy Council (CVAConline.org) under Crime Victim Resources.)
In 2008 approximately 16,262 people were murdered in the U.S., leaving family and friends to grieve the loss. (Source: NCVRW Resource Guide) Many faith-based organizations want to help but do not know how. Due to budget cuts, funding for rehabilitation and educational, faith-based counseling programs for prisoners and crime victims has suffered in almost every locality.
A new way to handle these problems is discussed in Redeeming the Wounded by Rev. Dr. B. Bruce Cook (www.xulonpress.com and www.cvaconline.org under “crime victim resources”). Cook’s new vision of victim justice involves a concept of fair and equal treatment for crime victims and prisoners based on principles of restorative justice and restitution.
Cook is an ordained Methodist minister, a career correctional professional and a crime victims’ advocate, who worked “both sides of the street” in prison and in the community with crime victims. He was a county jail chaplain, federal prison chaplain and a chaplain for crime victims. He worked in four Department of Justice agencies for a total of 24 years: Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Office of Audit and Investigation, U.S. Parole Commission and Bureau of Prisons. He directed the Georgia Department of Correction’s Impact Therapeutic Program in two halfway Houses.
Cook’s call to action includes:
- A national cadre of 2,500 trained chaplains who could minister and respond to crime victims in their individual communities as well as to any national emergency involving mass terrorism.
- More emphasis on restitution and community service for all criminal offenses, which is the heart and cornerstone of restorative justice.
- Improvements to protocols for collecting restitution.
- The use of support groups in faith-based organizations for victims of stalking, domestic violence, homicide and DUI fatalities, rape and violent offenses.
- Crime victims’ rights in each state, including some form or remedy if the rights are violated by the state.
- Expanded use of diversion strategies for non-violent offender programs that include sentencing circles, victim-offender mediation and dialogue as an alternative to incarceration, allowing the use of scarce prison space for more violent predators.
“It is a tremendous inequity to minister to prisoners and their families and not to crime victims and their families,” Cook said. Readers can learn direct, effective ways to help crime victims and prisoners. While there are books on prison ministry, very few books focus on ministry to crime victims. Also included are nine riveting true stories from crime survivors.
Taking the War Out of Our Word: Speaking the Truth in Love
(This event is sponsored by the Wisconsin Council of Churches, the Colbums United Methodist Church, Faith Lutheran Church and Olivet United Church of Christ, Columbus, and the Wisconsin United Methodist Conflict Transformation Team.)
Taking the War Out of Our Words: Speaking the Truth in Love, a two-day workshop for clergy and lay leaders, will take place October 1st – 2nd at Columbus UMC. The keynote speaker will be Sharon Ellison, speaker, author, and creator of the Powerful Non-Defensive (PNDC) process. Cost, which includes lunch and materials, is $75 per person for Friday or $150 per person for Friday and Saturday. For more information, call 920-623-3625.
In our churches, despite best efforts, people can get locked into entrenched positions. Sharon Strand Ellison will show us how to break through defensiveness and/or anxiety so we can talk with each other openly, with both honestly and compassion.
You will learn:
- How to ask questions with less emotional intensity, so that people drop their defenses and speak freely;
- How to make statement with no hidden agendas, while responding honestly to the actions, attitude, and/or body language of thw other; and
- How to set practical limits that protect you and increase the chances that the other person will respond in a positive way.
Peacemaker Ministries Conference – Sept. 16-19, Washington, DC.
Peacemaker Ministries is hosting their annual Peacemaker Conference on Sept 16-19th in Washington, DC. The theme is forgiveness – as Colossians 3:13b says, “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
Keynote speakers include Joshua Harris, Chris Brauns, Thabiti Anyabwile, Bishop Efriam Tendero and Ken Sande, president of Peacemaker Ministries
Peacemaker Ministries is a Christian organization dedicated to equipping and assisting Christians and their churches to respond to conflict biblically by developing and delivering outstanding, life-changing resources, training, and services to a multitude of receptive churches throughout the world.
They prepare church leaders, adults, and children for peacemaking through educational resources, seminars, and training. They also provide conflict coaching, mediation, and arbitration services to resolve church and ministry disputes, lawsuits, family divisions, and business conflicts.
Visit the website about the Peacemaker Conference by clicking here.
Visit the Peacemaker Ministries website here.
47th Anniversary of MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech
Today, August 28th, 2010, marks the 47th anniversary of the historic “I Have a Dream” speech delivered from the steps of the Lincoln memorial in Washington, DC. by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The speech, which has been logged into the history books as quite possibly the greatest speech of modern times, was full of hope, determination and purpose and contained a message of racial equality, unity, democracy and unity for the nation.
It marked the climax of the March on Washington, in which a quarter million people from all over the country – of all races – peacefully demanded Civil Rights for all Americans. Immediately following the speech, the top ten speakers of the event met with President John F. Kennedy to press for a more aggressive civil rights bill and discussed strategies to garner political support.
August 28, 1963 was a great day for all Americans. The March and the speech helped pave the way for the passage of two pieces of legislation – the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – both of which dramatically improved the social and political landscape for African Americans and provided civil rights proponents legal recourse to fight institutionalized racism.
Below is the transcript and video of the entire speech.
I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH
(Martin Luther King, Jr.)
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. And this will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring — from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring — from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring — from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring — from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring — from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that.
Let freedom ring — from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring — from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring — from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
“Free at last, free at last.
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
John Swomley, United Methodist peacemaker, dies at 95
Earlier this week, the world lost an influential figure in the peacemaking movement. Rev. Dr. John M. Swomley, a United Methodist minister and pacifist Christian, died on August 16th, 2010 at the age of 95. Swomley was the Executive Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and president of the Methodist Peace Fellowship. He was perhaps best known has having helped influence Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “pilgrimage to nonviolence.” In addition to teaching Christian ethics for years at St. Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, MO and serving a period as head of the Society of Christian Ethics, Swomley released his memoir in 1998, Confronting Systems of Violence: Memoirs of a Peace Activist.
Please visit F.O.R.’s website to read a full tribute to his incredibly life here.
Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference to focus on Conflict Transformation
At the 2010 Annual Conference meeting of the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference in June, Bishop Gregory Palmer called on United Methodists to join him in a revival movement that would involve four key initiatives: Revival, Conflict Transformation, a conference dashboard, and participation in the Imagine No Malaria campaign.
In his 45 minute episcopal address, which was greeted by a standing ovation of nearly 2,000 in attendance, Bishop Palmer described the need for a focus on conflict transformation.
“Too much staff time,” he said, is spent addressing conflicted congregations “without the appropriate ongoing resource to truly transform conflict and embrace reconciliation as a Christian discipline and practice.” Too many congregations “are off-mission, off-script, off-point and off-focus because of unaddressed and unresolved conflict.”
Because of this, Palmer proposed to launch a “conference-wide ministry on conflict transformation and reconciliation” in which a cadre of lay and clergy volunteers will receive training to become conflict interventionists.
Bishop Palmer was quick to add that the approach to this ministry must be based in truth and mission, not shame and guilt.
September 21: International Day of Prayer for Peace
On 21 September, churches and communities throughout the world are committing to the International Day of Prayer for Peace (IDPP) through prayer, meditation and other forms of spiritual observance.
The International Day of Prayer for Peace offers an opportunity for church communities in all places to pray and act together to nurture lasting peace in the hearts of people, their families, communities and societies. The idea was proposed in 2004 during a meeting between WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (press release), and coincides with the UN International Day of Peace. The Day of Prayer is one of the initiatives of the WCC’s Decade to Overcome Violence.
There are many great organizations that are sponsoring activities and events around this date.
Some examples include:
- The General Board of Global Ministries produces resources to help churches celebrate the IDPP.
- The Church of The Brethren’s On Earth Peace is coordinating hundreds of congregations around the country to pray for peace as part of their A Future and a Hope campaign.
- The United Religions Initiative (URI)is partnering with Odyssey Networks in the “Million Minutes for Peace Campaign.” Together we’re working to collect one million pledges to pray for peace, for one minute, at noon on Sept 21. Watch the video below:
Is your congregation participating in International Day of Prayer for Peace? If so, send us an email and let us know: justpeace@justpeaceumc.org
Virginia nuns respond to tragedy with forgiveness
“We are also confident that responses of mercy and forgiveness, though not usually easy, are not optional for Christians” – Benedictine sisters in Virginia
The Washington Post has a series of articles detailing how nuns of the Benedictine order are responding to the horrible drunk driving accident that took the life of one and critically injured two other sisters in their order. The accident happened while the three sisters were driving to attend a 5-day religious retreat focusing on forgiveness and reconciliation at a Benedictine monastery.
While many in the news are focusing on the drunk driver’s immigration status, the sisters are focusing on forgiveness and a path through grief and mourning to a restored sense of community.
Lake Junaluska Peace Conference
September 18-21, 2010
“Peace for the World’s Children”
2010 Lake Junaluska Peace Conference
In our world of war, violence, and poverty, all are invited to join hands and work to bring “Peace for the World’s Children.” The plight and promise of children will be featured during the 2010 Lake Junaluska Peace Conference through keynote speaker presentations and workshops which will prepare us to be strong advocates for children in every arena of our lives.
None suffer more than children and youth, yet they are our greatest hope for the future, for peace, and for justice. For the sake of peace in the world, we come to this year’s Conference “…responding to God’s call for the world’s children and youth to come to the table of peace, looking for ways to heal their wounds and raise them up for the work of peace.”
For the first time, the Lake Junaluska Peace Conference includes a Saturday – Sunday session specifically for children, youth and their adult leaders. Everyone is welcome, and we hope that many of those coming for the Sunday-Tuesday conference will arrive in time for a ”bridging” of the two sessions on Sunday afternoon during the first annual Peace Walk around the lake and Festival of Peace, which will be led by youth and children.
NEW! Full listing of 2010 Peace Conference Workshops – Register today!
Read more about the different segments of the 2010 Peace Conference below.
Peace Celebration for Youth and Children: Mosaic of Hope
September 18-19
Led by children’s activist Jeni Stepanek, the Peace Celebration for Youth and Children will encourage and show youth and children how they can be peacemakers themselves. Celebration participants will engage in hands on learning experiences with various organizations that are working for peace and that are meeting the needs of youth and children throughout the world.
Lake Junaluska Peace Conference: Advocacy for the World’s Children
September 19-21
Coupled with Marian Wright Edelman’s emphasis on national issues, other speakers at the conference will help us take a hard look at global challenges. Over twenty workshops are planned, and participants can take part in three to become more effective advocates for children.
JustPeace is looking for stories of forgiveness, reconciliation and peacemaking
As JustPeace approaches its 10-Year Anniversary (Nov 2010), we’re making a concerted effort to gather as many stories as possible – stories of forgiveness, conflict transformation, reconciliation, and peacemaking. Do you have a story to tell? Submit your story and we’ll highlight it on our website.
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