Posts in the ‘Restorative Justice’ Category

The Lyndon United Methodist Women hosted a mission study about restorative justice on Oct. 29. The guest speaker was Stan Basler, J.D., and director of Criminal Justice and Mercy Ministries for the Oklahoma Annual Conference.

It is about allowing healing to take place in our lives, and refusing to be sucked into the perpetual cycle of violence and toxicity. Grace is indeed hard, but even taking a few small faltering steps in its direction can open the doors for healing to start and violence to stop.

Faith & Leadership: When violence happens, CeaseFire workers, participants and volunteers respond by organizing rallies and vigils and providing support for the families and loved ones of violence victims, both to ensure that there is no violent retaliation and to change the group attitude so that people can begin to believe their neighborhood can change.

“And I am impressed with our church members who, on the day after the break-in, were already talking about forgiving and moving on and how God could bring something good out of this.”

I believe that restorative justice holds promise in that it helps us think about harm from a wholistic perspective. Along with that promise comes the challenge of knowing how to implement restorative practices in systems that have become entrenched in a vision of justice that is more about rules and laws than about relationships and needs.

Dr. Howard Zehr, professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University’s graduate Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, outlines 10 ways to live restoratively.

Article by Yvette Moore originally published in Response Magazine in 2003.

This article, by Harmon Wray, appeared in the July-August edition of New World Outlook in 1999. Harmon Wray is executive director of Restorative Justice Ministries for The United Methodist Church.