Disciples and Dissidents: The Prison Writings of the Prince of Peace Plowshares

by Steven Baggarly, Philip Berrigan, Mark Colville, Susan Crane, Mary Donnelly, Steven Kelly, S. J., Tom Lewis-Borbely; compiled and edited with an introduction by Fred Wilcox; Forward, Howard Zinn; Illustrations, Tom Lewis-Borbely; Haley's of Athol, MA, $17.95

"Civil disobedience has always been the recourse of people of conscience, of people facing overwhelming power and needing to awaken their fellow citizens to action."

--Howard Zinn

Members of the Plowshares movement act while most of us sleepwalk through our days. As in a trance, we offer little opposition as our leaders choose the countries we'll target for incineration by our nuclear missiles and use our taxes to pay for more weapons of mass destruction. Plowshares have issued wake-up calls since 1980. Back then the Plowshares Eight, their name and action inspired by the biblical injunction to beat swords into plowshares, symbolically and nonviolently disarmed the Mark 12-A missile with hammers and their own blood.

Using the same method in 1997, the Prince of Peace Plowshares symbolically disarmed the Aegis destroyer--the USS The Sullivans--in Bath, Maine. International law experts invited by the defendants were not allowed to testify at the federal trial. Nor could nuclear weapons, US first strike policy, or religious motivation be mentioned. Phil Berrigan called it "A total farce. Judge Carter denied us any opportunity to mount a defense. So in the end, we turned our backs on him. We read aloud from John's Gospel and the Sermon on the Mount, and then the marshals took us out in handcuffs." Steven Baggarly, Philip Berrigan, Mark Colville, Susan Crane, Steven Kelly, S. J., and Tom Lewis-Borbely began writing in prison what would become Disciples & Dissidents: Prison Writings of the Prince of Peace Plowshares. It's the rationale of their lives, the moral and legal justification of their actions, and an unmistakable wake-up call for the rest of us to join them.

Tucked into it is a report by Maine activist Mary Donnelly about the support team that formed and what it did to make life bearable for the resisters, their families, and their extended community. Tom Lewis-Borbely's woodcuts, created in 1971 while he was imprisoned for civil resistance during the Vietnam War, appear in his chapter, "Art as Timeless as War."

The powerful message, stifled in federal court and penned in prison, is now available for all to read. Its wake-up call is accomplished by strong, challenging words that are inspired by and anchored in scripture.

Religion is indicted. Steve Kelly, S. J. cites the New Testament passage about the disciples hiding in fear inside a locked room following Jesus' execution. Jesus appears offering his peace. "Shalom aleichem. As God has sent me, so I send you." "Shalom aleichem," Fr. Kelly explains, "quells the fear of losing our lives." And he notes that today "Religion in the United States sits in a locked room located in the heart of the superpower, afraid to confront the death process and idolatry outside the locked doors. The United States spends seventy-five million dollars a day on nuclear weapons as the centerpiece of a four hundred billion dollar Pentagon budget. Where is the Gospel today? Most believers, if not actually co-opted, are complicit in denying the theft from the world's poor....Why have believers who dwell in the heart of the empire remained paralyzed in the locked room? Are we clinging to methods and benefits of the empire's powers?"

Ordinary Christians are indicted: "I can no longer fathom how people in this country can think they are living a Christian life if it does not include resistance that risks real, substantive persecution" (Mark Colville).

No one is excused: "Each of us is individually responsible for what we as a nation are doing. Our first priority is warmaking." (Susan Crane)

"Psychological studies reveal that Americans live in less than forty percent awareness," Phil Berrigan points out, "as though our minds and spirits cringe before the banality and ugliness of national life."

With fifty-three brief yet powerful reflections, the two hundred-page paperback can be read in small doses, a way I recommend. Although it is a convenient take-along book, it could be a troubling one.

As I read, a parable kept coming to my mind, the one of the young man who asked Jesus what he must do to be saved. The answer caused the young man to turn and walk away. I envisioned myself, not just turning and walking away from the call of these disciples and dissidents but running at full tilt. It was very disturbing. The call to awaken, take responsibility and act in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed is not the Plowshares' call but the call of the Gospel. Ouch!

Where would one begin if awakened? Susan Crane, a former teacher, shares her experience, how she simplified her life, winnowing her possessions so as to be unencumbered by material things, and how she attempted to shed those things which were holding her back spiritually.

In "Sleeping and Watching," Phil Berrigan offers a way--watching. He ponders Jesus' admonition in the garden of Gethsemane "...what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!'" Then he lists things to watch for: "the holy spirit of God who will teach you everything and remind you of all I told you." Watch "the world through nonviolence and become a student of systemic evil, of nuclearism, and of the blind, venal paranoia of the nuclear club. Watch tens upon tens of wars going on worldwide and the arms sales of the United States, Russia, and Britain feeding those wars." "Watch the biggest and the best [corporations]--General Motors, Lockheed/Martin, Boeing/McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Hughes Aircraft--combine military and economic oppression."

Berrigan concludes: "Watch, learn, act--the formula for a faithful and sane life." Mine? Don't miss Disciples and Dissidents.

--Peace advocate/activist Jane Cadarette is a board member of the Merrimack Valley (MA) People for Peace, an associate editor of its monthly newsletter, and a member of Pax Christi.  

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