Blessed Peacemakers

365 Extraordinary People Who Changed the World

Kerry Walters, Robin Jarrell

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781608992485
  9781498212441
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621895350
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

All of us yearn for a peaceable and just world, but some roll up their sleeves and set to work to make the dream real. Blessed Peacemakers celebrates 365 of them, one for each day of the year. Their stories are richly diverse. They share a commitment to peace and justice, but the various contexts in which they work make each of their stories uniquely instructive. The peacemakers include women, men, and children from across the globe, spanning some twenty-five hundred years. Many are persons of faith, but some are totally secular. Some are well known, while others will be excitingly new. They are human rights and antiwar activists, scientists and artists, educators and scholars, songwriters and poets, film directors and authors, diplomats and economists, environmentalists and mystics, prophets and policymakers. Some are unlettered, but all are wise. A few died in the service of the dream. All sacrificed for it. The world is a better place for the presence of blessed peacemakers. Their inspiring stories embolden readers to join them in nonviolent resistance to injustice and the creative pursuit of peace.

1 January

Telemachus

Died 1 January 404

Opponent of Gladiatorial Games

The church father Theodoretus reports that in the waning years of the Roman Empire, an ascetic monk “from the east” ventured into a gladiatorial stadium in Rome and tried to put a stop to the bloodthirsty contest that was a staple of Roman culture.

The gladiatorial game originated as a funeral gift for the dead. The first of these funeral rituals occurred in 264 BCE, when Decimus Junius Brutus ordered three pairs of slaves to fight in memory of his father. Over the next few centuries, gladiatorial combat became one of the symbols of Roman culture and authority easily recognized throughout the entire empire. It was also an integral part of the oddly named Pax Romana.

The Pax Romana kept the “peace” in three ways: the military, which used brutal and ruthless violence to keep the Roman “peace”; crucifixion, which served as a public method of execution to suppress any rebellion from conquered lands; and the stadium, the venue of violence for the common people that celebrated the military ideal of conquest through bloodshed.

In the latter part of the fourth century, Roman military might was fraying, stretched too thin by the hopeless task of policing the empire’s borders. Crucifixion had been abolished in 337 by Constantine when he converted to Christianity. The stadium’s gladiatorial combat, still as popular as ever, was the only aspect of the Pax Romana that remained relatively unscathed.

In Greek, Telemachus means “faraway fighter.” It’s an ironic name for a Christian who tried to put a stop to the gladiatorial games. He is said to have descended into the stadium “entreating the combatants” to cease fighting, but was beaten to the ground and killed.

The symbolism of Telemachus’ name wasn’t lost on the faithful in the fifth century. He “fights” (nonviolently) for Christ against the Roman Empire. From the “faraway” east, a place unsullied by the values of the violent Roman culture, he steps into a gladiatorial fight for the sake of the peace of Christ and is martyred.

The historical details about Telemachus’ death are obscure. Some records claim he was killed by the gladiators he confronted, others that he was stoned to death by the spectators, who were furious that their sport had been interrupted. Regardless of how he met his end, Telemachus’ fifth-century biographer Theodoretus clearly saw the death of the ascetic monk from the east as a symbol of Christianity’s repudiation of violence. And whether killed by sword or stone, Telemachus’ death was the catalyst that prompted the Emperor Honorius to end the practice of gladiatorial games in Rome. According to tradition, the final gladiator game in the empire took place on 1 January 404, which is also accepted as the day Telemachus met his end.

2 January

Willi Graf

1 January 1918—12 October 1943

Silence Is Complicity

Born in the final year of World War I to Anna and Gerhard Graf, Willi Graf was one of four children. His family was devoutly Roman Catholic. By the time he was fifteen, the same year that Hitler came to power in Germany, he was a leader in a Catholic youth organization with distinctly anti-Nazi sentiments. When the Nazis outlawed all young peoples’ groups except the Hitler Youth, Graf distanced himself from friends who joined it, even refusing to associate with them. In 1934, disgusted with Nazi policies, he joined the illegal Grauer Orden, another Catholic youth group. His membership led to his arrest four years later. Luckily for him, authorities dismissed the charges as part of the national celebration of the German annexation of Austria.

Graf’s first two years of medical studies in Munich were interrupted in 1940 by his conscription into the German army. His military service took him to the Polish ghettoes in Warsaw and Lodz, whose scenes of horror he never forgot, and finally to Russia. In 1942 he returned from the eastern front convinced that his Christian faith obliged him to resist the Nazis. To his dismay, he discovered that most of his Catholic friends were unwilling to join him. Although they were as opposed to Hitler as Graf himself was, they rejected any kind of action against the Nazis as hopeless. Graf found such inaction in the face of evil unconscionable. For him, silence was complicity.

Eventually Graf discovered and joined the White Rose, an underground organization dedicated to nonviolent resistance of the Nazi regime. Launched in the summer of 1942 with the publication of four anti-Nazi pamphlets distributed from Munich throughout Germany, the White Rose grew to a sizable student movement that outwitted the Gestapo for two years. During a time when buying paper or stamps in large quantities was a risky business, the White Rose printed and disseminated flyers that declared, “We will not be silent! We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace.” Night after night, Germans awoke to find subversive slogans like “Freedom!” and “Down with Hitler!” scrawled on walls.

Graf’s main job in the White Rose was to recruit new members. But his work ended in February 1943 when the Gestapo arrested him and the organization’s leaders. Two months later he was convicted of high treason and aiding the enemy, and sentenced to death. All appeals were denied, and Graf was beheaded on 12 October. Just before his execution, he wrote a final note to his family. “On this day I’m leaving this life and entering eternity. God’s blessings on us. In Him we are and we live.”

3 January

Takashi Nagai

3 January 1908—1 May 1951

The Saint of Urakami

When the atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki, Takashi Nagai, a radiologist, was on duty at the city’s medical college hospital. Although badly injured in the blast, he pitched in with the rest of the medical staff to treat the hundreds of wounded that began trickling into the hospital. It was only a day later that he was able to make his way to the suburb of Urakami where he lived with his wife, Midori, and their children.

The children had been sent to the mountains for safekeeping two days before the explosion. But Midori, and the house she and Nagai shared, were gone. He was able to recognize the carbonized remains of his wife only by the rosary clutched in the powdered bones of her right hand. Stricken with grief, Nagai prayed: “Jesus, you carried the heavy Cross until you were crucified upon it. Now You come to shed a light of peace on the mystery of suffering and death, Midori’s and mine.”

Nagai had come to Christianity as an adult. The son and grandson of physicians who practiced Shinto, Nagai went through a period of atheism during his medical training. He converted in his mid-twenties when his future wife, Midori, a devout Roman Catholic, slipped a catechism into a care package that she sent to him during his mandatory period of military service.

A month after the destruction of Nagasaki, Nagai was stricken by radiation sickness. Already diagnosed in the spring of that year with leukemia caused by his medical work with X-rays, Nagai remained near death for a month. But to the surprise of everyone he recovered. During his convalescence, he built a small hut from the rubble of his Urakami house where he lived for two years with his children, mother-in-law, and two other relatives. Eventually he built a smaller one for himself as a hermitage in which he spent hours in prayer and contemplation. He named the hut Nyoko do, “As Yourself House,” from Jesus’ command to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

It was in Nyoko do that Nagai began writing poems and books that commemorated the victims of Nagasaki, connected their suffering to the suffering of Christ, and praised the spirit of loving forgiveness. With chilling poetic finality he describes the incineration of young Christian schoolgirls “like lilies white” who died “burning red” chanting psalms. One of his poems, inspired by the death of Christian schoolgirls as they participated in morning prayer, is a stark reminder of the more than eight thousand Japanese Christians who perished in the blast. It was written as he lay dying of leukemia.

4 January

Albert Camus

7 November 1913—4 January 1960

Resisting Murder

Philosopher, novelist, and activist Albert Camus was no stranger to violence. During the Nazi occupation of France, he was a member of the French Resistance and edited the illegal newspaper Combat under the nom de guerre “Beauchard.” But by war’s end, he was sick of the killing and destruction he’d witnessed. He knew there had to be a better way to resolve differences. He voiced his conviction in 1946 in a remarkable series of essays titled Neither Victims nor Executioners.

Camus argued that people today live in a constant state of fear and that this fear “implies and rejects the same fact: a world where murder is legitimate and where human life is considered trifling.” The fear is often translated into patriotic zeal that encourages killing for one’s country. But for his part, declared Camus, he can no longer “hold to any truth which might oblige me, directly or indirectly, to demand a man’s life.” He will not be a murderer, and will resist those who advocate murder. Camus admitted that he wasn’t naïve enough to wish for a world in which violence is eliminated, “but rather one in which murder is not legitimated” by the state.

A first step toward resisting murder is defending the right of “universal intercommunication,” or “le dialogue,” between humans. At the very least, this means refusing to see natives of other countries, cultures, beliefs, and tongues as strangers to be feared and resisted. It’s difficult to wage war when the “enemy” wears a human face.

Camus lived by these principles for the rest of his life. He was an outspoken champion of pacifism and opponent of capital punishment. He became an advocate for human rights, working with UNESCO until resigning to protest the United Nations’ recognition of Generalissimo Franco as Spain’s ruler. He tried to arbitrate a peaceful settlement in the Algerian War, a conflict that especially disturbed him since he was born in Algeria to a pied-noir or French settler family. He spoke out against Soviet aggression at a time when it was unfashionable for intellectuals to do so. And in his writings—novels, plays, political essays, and philosophical monographs—he tirelessly urged his readers to join him in resisting murder. “All I ask,” he wrote, “is that in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a c...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction: Becoming Instruments of Peace
• 1 January
• 2 January
• 3 January
• 4 January
• 5 January
• 6 January
• 7 January
• 8 January
• 9 January
• 10 January
• 11 January
• 12 January
• 13 January
• 14 January
• 15 January
• 16 January
• 17 January
• 18 January
• 19 January
• 20 January
• 21 January
• 22 January
• 23 January
• 24 January
• 25 January
• 26 January
• 27 January
• 28 January
• 29 January
• 30 January
• 31 January
• 1 February
• 2 February
• 3 February
• 4 February
• 5 February
• 6 February
• 7 February
• 8 February
• 9 February
• 10 February
• 11 February
• 12 February
• 13 February
• 14 February
• 15 February
• 16 February
• 17 February
• 18 February
• 19 February
• 20 February
• 21 February
• 22 February
• 23 February
• 24 February
• 25 February
• 26 February
• 27 February
• 28 February
• 1 March
• 2 March
• 3 March
• 4 March
• 5 March
• 6 March
• 7 March
• 8 March
• 9 March
• 10 March
• 11 March
• 12 March
• 13 March
• 14 March
• 15 March
• 16 March
• 17 March
• 18 March
• 19 March
• 20 March
• 21 March
• 22 March
• 23 March
• 24 March
• 25 March
• 26 March
• 27 March
• 28 March
• 29 March
• 30 March
• 31 March
• 1 April
• 2 April
• 3 April
• 4 April
• 5 April
• 6 April
• 7 April
• 8 April
• 9 April
• 10 April
• 11 April
• 12 April
• 13 April
• 14 April
• 15 April
• 16 April
• 17 April
• 18 April
• 19 April
• 20 April
• 21 April
• 22 April
• 23 April
• 24 April
• 25 April
• 26 April
• 27 April
• 28 April
• 29 April
• 30 April
• 1 May
• 2 May
• 3 May
• 4 May
• 5 May
• 6 May
• 7 May
• 8 May
• 9 May
• 10 May
• 11 May
• 12 May
• 13 May
• 14 May
• 15 May
• 16 May
• 17 May
• 18 May
• 19 May
• 20 May
• 21 May
• 22 May
• 23 May
• 24 May
• 25 May
• 26 May
• 27 May
• 28 May
• 29 May
• 30 May
• 31 May
• 1 June
• 2 June
• 3 June
• 4 June
• 5 June
• 6 June
• 7 June
• 8 June
• 9 June
• 10 June
• 11 June
• 12 June
• 13 June
• 14 June
• 15 June
• 16 June
• 17 June
• 18 June
• 19 June
• 20 June
• 21 June
• 22 June
• 23 June
• 24 June
• 25 June
• 26 June
• 27 June
• 28 June
• 29 June
• 30 June
• 1 July
• 2 July
• 3 July
• 4 July
• 5 July
• 6 July
• 7 July
• 8 July
• 9 July
• 10 July
• 11 July
• 12 July
• 13 July
• 14 July
• 15 July
• 16 July
• 17 July
• 18 July
• 19 July
• 20 July
• 21 July
• 22 July
• 23 July
• 24 July
• 25 July
• 26 July
• 27 July
• 28 July
• 29 July
• 30 July
• 31 July
• 1 August
• 2 August
• 3 August
• 4 August
• 5 August
• 6 August
• 7 August
• 8 August
• 9 August
• 10 August
• 11 August
• 12 August
• 13 August
• 14 August
• 15 August
• 16 August
• 17 August
• 18 August
• 19 August
• 20 August
• 21 August
• 22 August
• 23 August
• 24 August
• 25 August
• 26 August
• 27 August
• 28 August
• 29 August
• 30 August
• 31 August
• 1 September
• 2 September
• 3 September
• 4 September
• 5 September
• 6 September
• 7 September
• 8 September
• 9 September
• 10 September
• 11 September
• 12 September
• 13 September
• 14 September
• 15 September
• 16 September
• 17 September
• 18 September
• 19 September
• 20 September
• 21 September
• 22 September
• 23 September
• 24 September
• 25 September
• 26 September
• 27 September
• 28 September
• 29 September
• 30 September
• 1 October
• 2 October
• 3 October
• 4 October
• 5 October
• 6 October
• 7 October
• 8 October
• 9 October
• 10 October
• 11 October
• 12 October
• 13 October
• 14 October
• 15 October
• 16 October
• 17 October
• 18 October
• 19 October
• 20 October
• 21 October
• 22 October
• 23 October
• 24 October
• 25 October
• 26 October
• 27 October
• 28 October
• 29 October
• 30 October
• 31 October
• 1 November
• 2 November
• 3 November
• 4 November
• 5 November
• 6 November
• 7 November
• 8 November
• 9 November
• 10 November
• 11 November
• 12 November
• 13 November
• 14 November
• 15 November
• 16 November
• 17 November
• 18 November
• 19 November
• 20 November
• 21 November
• 22 November
• 23 November
• 24 November
• 25 November
• 26 November
• 27 November
• 28 November
• 29 November
• 30 November
• 1 December
• 2 December
• 3 December
• 4 December
• 5 December
• 6 December
• 7 December
• 8 December
• 9 December
• 10 December
• 11 December
• 12 December
• 13 December
• 14 December
• 15 December
• 16 December
• 17 December
• 18 December
• 19 December
• 20 December
• 21 December
• 22 December
• 23 December
• 24 December
• 25 December
• 26 December
• 27 December
• 28 December
• 29 December
• 30 December
• 31 December
• For Further Reading
• Alphabetical Index