A call to courage

The Atwood Institute’s stand against gun violence

by Dartinia Hull, Presbyterian Outlook

Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center was the home of last month’s inaugural Atwood Institute for Congregational Courage. (Photo by Dartinia Hull)

Editor’s note: This article first appeared here in the Presbyterian Outlook. It appears here with permission from the Presbyterian Outlook.

The inaugural Atwood Institute for Congregational Courage met in New Mexico last [month], creating a well-resourced community for Christians wishing to end gun violence.

As participants, facilitators and staff of the James Atwood Institute for Congregation Courage gathered at Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center in New Mexico on Thursday evening, a news alert from CBS News Chicago flashed:

“A man was shot multiple times while leaving South Loop Diner with DNC attendees inside.”

Chicago, Illinois, and Ghost Ranch are approximately 1,283 miles apart. The institute’s conference at Ghost Ranch, however, is part of an effort to rid the world of such news alerts reporting on gun violence and its victims. Instead, the institute and its attendees wish to create a world safe for all, reflecting the radical nonviolence of Jesus.

The Rev. Jim Atwood is shown alongside his wife, Roxanna. (Photo by Della Orr-Harter)

The Rev. James Atwood, for whom the institute is named, was a beloved Presbyterian pastor and strong advocate for the church’s involvement in gun violence prevention. In 2000, he organized the Million Moms March and carried a sign at the march that read, “Where is the church?”

Atwood, who died in 2020, believed that using our moral authority as people of God could lead to a change and commitment to actively witness for the end of what has become a social epidemic.

Twenty-four years after the march, the James Atwood Institute for Congregational Courage is leading and walking alongside those who want to answer the question, “Where is the church?” The goal of the institute’s inaugural conference, which included speakers, panels, workshops and prayer over three days, was to provide support to ministries and congregations wishing to end gun violence and provide tools for change.

The Atwood Institute is a ministry of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, but the 72 attendees and participants who attended last month were an ecumenical mix: Episcopalians, Lutherans, Catholics, Quakers, Universalists, Mennonites as well as Presbyterians.

On Thursday evening, against a backdrop of misting rain and a desert mountain landscape made famous by artist Georgia O’Keeffe, Father John Dear, an internationally known Catholic priest who has been arrested more than 80 times for his anti-violence advocacy work, explained to attendees that their work toward preventing and ending gun violence feeds into the larger work of ending all violence.

Because, he said, violence isn’t simply “violence.” It’s a complex amalgam of multiple, existentialist threats — nuclear weapons, war, famine, climate change, racism, to name only a few — that surround us all and work together, damaging the world’s collective psyche.

He gestured to the soft rain and the darkening hills, reminding those gathered the beautiful backdrop of New Mexico was the site of nuclear bomb testing and holds an arsenal of armed nuclear missiles embedded into the landscape. It’s all connected, he says.

“When you say no to gun violence, you’re saying no to the whole world of violence,” he said.

Dear says a friend sees “death as a social methodology.”

“We’re addicted to death, and we don’t even know it,” Dear said. “In this insanity … we think there is some kind of god who blesses wars … and we’re bombarded with false theology of a false god of violence. I call it the anti-gospel. The anti-sermon-on-the-mount. The anti-beatitudes.”

The statistics of violence are sobering enough, but Dear believes one of the unnamed casualties of violence is “the loss of imagination.”

Father John Dear (Contributed photo)

“We’re blinded by our own violence and cannot imagine a world without it,” he said. “Right now, every day, more than 327 people are shot in the United States. On an average, 117 people will die every day. And in this mix are millions and millions of Christians — owning guns, shooting guns, getting shot. We’re told guns make us safer, but if that were true, we’d be the safest place on the planet …

“We have more than 500 million guns on the planet. In the last decade, more than one million people (were) shot to death. 1.5 million since 1968, more than all Americans killed in all the wars. The suicide rate (in the U.S.) is 10 times higher than most countries; our shooting deaths: 25 times higher than most countries,” he said.

“We’re grieving. And that’s how the peacemaking work to end gun violence begins. With grief. We’re grieving everything: Sandy Hook. Parkland. Virginia Tech. Charleston’s [Emanuel] A.M.E. An Aurora movie theater. An Orlando dance club. A Las Vegas concert. The Pittsburgh synagogue. I could go on and on.”

“One thing I hope for this weekend is for you all to become really good friends, so you are not alone in this work.”

The genesis of the Atwood Institute

“Jan Orr-Harter (of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Gun Violence Prevention Working Group) and I conceived this idea in 2018, and we have dreamed of holding this convening since,” said Margery Rossi, coordinator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Gun Violence Prevention Ministry.

“The fact that it is happening and there are 75 people who have traveled to a not-easy-to-get-to place so they could come together and learn how they can do gun violence prevention ministry, is, for me, a dream come true.”

“We are learning together how to make this work so that we can plan for the next one, and then the next one, and then the next one.”

The next one, in fact, will be held in 2025 at Massanetta Springs Conference Center in Virginia, “Jim (Atwood)’s stomping grounds,” Rossi said.

“We are in this for the long haul, because there is a lot of work to do,” Rossi said. “It can begin with the tiniest step. Whatever step you can take,” she said, “take that step. And then — don’t stop.”

The Atwood Institute’s weekend provided multiple opportunities to build community as gun violence prevention advocates. Each of the three days included a series of workshops, panels, small group discussions, theological discussions, and advice on ways to become involved with advocacy at a national and state level.

Mike Martin, who founded the blacksmith network RAWTools, offered workshops with colleagues on dismantling weapons and turning them into gardening tools. Martin, who is a Mennonite pastor, began to forge unwanted guns into garden tools after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and as theologian Shane Claiborne and the group New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence joined him in the work, the Guns to Gardens project grew.

The Guns to Gardens panel discussion. (Photo by Dartinia Hull)

“I couldn’t write another letter to a legislator,” he said in a Friday morning panel.

Also on Friday, small group options included discussions with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, classes that focused on action-focused congregational education, an intricate look at the theology of gun violence prevention, and panels on young adult and youth involvement with gun violence protection training, as well as alternative, nonviolent approaches to church security.

Saturday’s focus, “Looking Deeper,” offered panels with pastors who have taught and preached about gun violence prevention, a discussion on the intersectionality of gun violence prevention and racism, advice on dealing with opposition, and stories about bearing witness from filmmakers and journalists who have covered gun violence prevention in various forms of media. Also on Saturday, small-group leaders walked participants through designing a congregational advocacy campaign, options for advocacy at the U.S. Supreme Court level, and clarity on gun violence prevention engagement in one’s own congregation.

On Sunday, the Atwood Institute facilitators sent participants off with a morning worship prayer written after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting and excerpted from the Gun Violence Prevention Congregational Toolkit.

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship desires the Atwood Institute to be a space of support and training for those who advocate for gun violence prevention, a community for the oftentimes isolating work of gun violence prevention, and a community honoring Jim Atwood’s legacy and Jesus’ radical life of total nonviolence.

“The more we can deepen into Jesus’ way of nonviolence, the more we are getting ready for resurrection,” Dear said. “When we reject the sermon on the mount, we lost our way. That’s why I define nonviolence as remembering who we are. I define violence as forgetting who we are.

But hope, he said, is the refusal to give up. “The cross is permanent nonviolent resistance. It’s plain hard work.

“Resurrection is about total nonviolence. The more we can deepen into the way of Jesus — the way of nonviolence — the more we are getting ready for resurrection.”

Want to get involved? Visit Presbyterian Peace Fellowship and the James Atwood Institute.