Last weekend, at the Church of the Savior's Dayspring Conference Center in Germantown, Maryland, many of us involved in Every Church a Peace Church had a community-building event (facilitated by ECAPC co-coordinator Ruby Sales, veteran of the post-WWII Southern Black Freedom Movement and currently directly of SpiritHouse: The Jonathan Daniels and Samuel Younge Forum for Social Justice in Washington, D.C. See www.spirithousedc.org). One of the decisions made at the conclusion of that event was that too few "voices" contribute to these daily commentaries. Far too many of the commentaries have had to be written by ECAPC's coordinator, John Stoner. John does an excellent job, but it takes much of his time which should be devoted coordinating this organization and movement. Most of the "guest commentaries" have either been written or found by Rick Stamm, our webmaster, with a few other contributions by Gary Kohls, M.D., myself, or a handful of others. The major exception has been my column (usually bi-weekly) with installments on the history of nonviolent struggles and peace movements and peacemakers.

Therefore, we agreed that, in addition to my bi-weekly columns, I would actively recruit others to produce written contributions for the daily commentary. I have begun this and now appeal directly to readers of this column. If you have poems, sermons, homilies, liturgies or worship resources, Bible studies, meditations, commentary on current events from a perspective of Christian nonviolence, news of peace actions in your area (the Southerner in me almost said, "your neck of the woods!"), photographs of events, etc., send them to me at: mlw-w@insightbb.com. If I do not use them immediately for a commentary, I might at a later time. Or they might, with contributor's permission, appear elsewhere on the website as a resource. DO NOT send contributions to John Stoner, since we are trying to give him time to focus on other tasks. All contributions will be considered, but we are making a special effort to diversify perspectives represented, so please send your contribution with a brief self-description including such externals of identity as your denominational affiliation/church membership, race and/or ethnic identity, country of origin, mother-tongue, and, if relevant, sexual orientation. None of this will be shared with others without the contributor's permission and then only if relevant to the contribution, but this helps me fulfill my pledge to actively seek to diversify these daily commentaries without needing to have met every contributor personally ahead of time. Thanks ahead of time for all contributions.

In the last installment of this column, I took a break from profiling individual peacemakers and nonviolent activists to begin a series on the history of grassroots peace and justice organizations with a profile of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and, especially, its U.S. branch. I continue this series now by outlining the history of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the oldest women's peace organization in continuous existence. WILPF grew out of the late 19th and early 20th C female-led reform movements. These movements for social reform overlapped with "first wave" feminism, especially the struggle for women's suffrage, but the reform movements also drew on the Victorian era's romantic belief in the innate moral superiority of women. If women were going to be active outside of the circles of hearth and home, it was more respectable for them to be leading movements for social reform, including movements to end war and promote peace, than for them succeed in business or law. (Of the many analyses of the contradictory expectations for Victorian era women even in "progressive" circles, I find the following especially helpful: Barbara Hilkert Andolsen et al., eds., Women's Consciousness, Women's Conscience: A Reader in Feminist Ethics (Seabury, CT: Winston-Salem, 1985); Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 1981). There were, of course, racial and class biases in such attitudes since only middle and upper class women could choose whether or not to venture out from the "private sphere" romanticized by Victorians as "women's place." Poor women had to work and since the majority of women of color in this era were poor, they usually had to work in whatever capacities the system allowed them. Inevitably such unspoken biases invaded the female-led reform movements themselves, including the feminist/suffrage movement and the women's peace movement. (See, e.g., Barbara Hilkert Andolsen, "Daughters of Jefferson, Daughters of Bootblacks": Racism and American Feminism (Mercer University Press, 1986); Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York: Random House, 1981); bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981) and hooks' subsequent works. The lower case spelling is deliberate since Ms. hooks always deliberately spells her name that way for reasons I have yet to discover.)

At least since the end of the U.S. Civil War and the Crimean War, women were taking leadership roles in peace movements in the Victorian era -- especially the movements for treaties of binding arbitration between nations and movements to restrict armaments and military budgets. As the 20th C. passed its first decade and tensions seemed to be leading inevitably to the Great War (1914-1918), suffragists and other women reformers in many nations began to speak out against it. After the war began, Dr. Aletta Jacobs, M.D., a leading Dutch suffragist, called for an International Women's Conference on Peace to be convened at The Hague and it was held in 1915. Women from nearly every country of Europe and the U.S. attended, over 1,000 in all, despite the protests of their governments. (Even though the Netherlands were still neutral, few Western governments wanted to allow many of their leading women to cross war zones to reach the conference.) The assembled delegates demanded an end to the war. They drew up petitions for neutrality for those governments not yet a part of the war and proposed terms for a cease fire and negotiated peace for the belligerent governments. They proposed that one or more of the neutral nations act as mediators for the belligerents. Moreover, not content with speeches and documents, the women did not disband until small delegations of 2-5 women were sent to the capitals of the belligerent and neutral nations with these proposals. The organization that grew out of this conference would soon be called the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Obviously, WILPF did not succeed in stopping the war, or even preventing American entrance into it, but Jane Addams, first president of the U.S. chapter, did draw up most of the proposals that were "borrowed" by President Woodrow Wilson as his famous "14 Points" peace proposal. At their 2nd international conference in 1919, WILPF denounced the Treaty of Versailles and (correctly) predicted that its terms would lead to another war. In 1922, they succeeded in getting the Hague to sponsor a Conference for a New Peace, calling for a World Congress (more democratically structured than the League of Nations) and a renegotiated peace treaty that un-did the vengeful conditions of the Versailles Treaty.

Since that time, WILPF has worked to oppose not only wars, but the root causes of war in racism and economic injustice and to promote peace, social justice, and the empowerment of women. When the success of suffrage did not lead most women to vote war out of existence, WILPF lost its feminist orientation for a time, but found it again in the Second Wave of feminism that arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s. International from the beginning, at first WILPF was strictly North Atlantic in character, but is now found on 6 continents and in 37 different countries. WILPF's understanding of racial and class issues among women has also grown over the years so that today it is a far more multicultural organization than it once was. In defense of the ideals of its founding foremothers, I should note that the U.S. branch of WILPF insisted on crossing racial boundaries from the beginning (at a time when some suffragists were using racist arguments to get white males to support giving white women the franchise) -- even though they had to struggle to have more than token representation from women of color in those early years. That they made the effort is far more than many "progressive movements" would undertake for decades.

Over the years, WILPF has produced some outstanding peace leaders. The first U.S. president and honorary international president was Jane Addams, already famous as a social reformer, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. (That same year, the FBI dubbed Addams "the most dangerous woman in America," a title previously reserved for feminist, anarchist, and pacifist Emma Goldman.) In 1946, Emily Green Balch, a sociologist and economist, and WILPF's first International Secretary, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Only 10 women have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in its 100 year history (an average of only 1 per decade, despite the huge leadership of women in peacemaking -- the Nobel Committee's sexism is only too evident). Of that handful of women, three have been active WILPF members. (The 3rd was the Swedish diplomat and disarmament expert, Alva Myrdal.) Two other Nobel Peace Laureates, Linus Pauling (1962) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964), were spouses of active WILPF members. It is notable that in both cases the more famous husbands followed their wives, Ava Helen Pauling and Coretta Scott King, in active work for international peace.

Other achievements that WILPF can boast include the removal of U.S. Marines from the occupation of the Philippines (1926), the first campaign to mobilize scientists to refuse to engage in war research (1924), refugee settlement during WWII (including difficult work to get Jews free from Nazi hands), a founding NGO at the United Nations (1945), organizing women from North and South Vietnam to sign the Women's Peace Treaty, while leading WILPF officers travel with indigenous Vietnamese women throughout both countries to promote healing and an end to the war (1971), mass rallying across Europe demanding that NATO cancel the deployment of Cruise and Pershing nuclear missiles in Western Europe (1984), worldwide Women vs. Violence campaign that confronts interpersonal, structural, civil and international violence from the perspective of its effects on women's lives (1990), being one of the official observer NGOs at South Africa's first free, post-apartheid elections (1994). Among their current efforts are empowering more women peacemakers in Third World nations and enforcing the UN Treaty increasing the role of women in peace treaties and settlements.

With women's leadership increasingly recognized in peace organizations that include both genders (e.g., the current head of the U.S. branch of the FOR, profiled last column, is Pat Clark who previously was in the leadership of the American Friends Service Committee. The founding and current coordinator of the Muslim Peace Fellowship is Rabia Terri Harris, who is also Associate Editor of Fellowship, the journal of the FOR.), some wonder if WILPF is still necessary. As a male, it is not for me to make that decision, but I suspect that it is. After all, patriarchy and militarism are intimately connected and we need peace organizations that highlight the connections and the way that violence, war, and militarism disproportionately affect women. WILPF has the experience and the presence internationally. They have not only earned their laurels, but they have earned the right to refuse to rest on them.

What does WILPF have to teach Every Church a Peace Church? Well, most of its early leaders came from liberal church circles (especially Unitarians, Congregationalists, and Quakers), but WILPF came about because the churches were not leading in the movement for peace. Unlike the churches, then, ECAPC needs to listen respectfully to the wisdom of the women who make up more than 50% of our churches. Strong women are prominent in the leadership of our fledgling organization, but their perspectives have not shown up often enough on these pages. As I said in my introduction, we are working to change that. ECAPC can also learn from WILPF's struggle to reach across lines of race, class, ethnicity, and nationality. (They also reached across religious lines and, while our own interfaith connections will need to work differently since we are an explicitly Christian organization, we will still need to cooperate actively with those of other faiths and no faiths on specific projects.) Finally, I think that the history of WILPF teaches Every Church a Peace Church to dream big without fear. Few people believed one could have an international women's conference on peace in 1914. Maybe even fewer now believe that we can reclaim gospel nonviolence and Christian peacemaking as central to the lives of all churches -- that we have a prayer of getting every church to live and teach as Jesus lived and taught, and thereby to turn the world toward peace. We should dream that big anyway and follow through on such bold dreams no matter the setbacks. This glance at the history of WILPF shows that big dreams, if worked on diligently, can be at least partly achieved -- realized at least enough to inspire another generation to take up the nonviolent struggle for a just and peaceful world.

For more information, see www.wilpf.org and www.wilpf.org/int.ch. The current international president is Krishna Ahooja Patelinda, an educator from India now living in Geneva. She can be contacted at wilpf@iprolink.ch. The current Executive Director of the U.S. branch is Mary Kay Dent, who can be contacted at wilpf@wilpf.org.

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