Christian Peacemaker Teams

by

The Powers of Death and Life, Lies and Truth

KurdistanFrom Weldon Nisly, retired pastor and half-time Christian Peacemaker Teams member serving five months per year in Iraqi Kurdistan (photo right) serving. This is an excerpt from his Holy Week update on the ground in Kurdistan. 

On this Holy Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we live liturgically between the powers of death and the powers of life. All of us choose daily whether we worship death or life and are committed to lies or truth.

Recently CPT encountered someone who knows the cost of choosing life and truth confronting militarized political powers. Independent Kurdish journalist Mohammed (name changed to protect identity) told the CPT Iraqi Kurdistan team of his refusal to promise to stop seeking and speaking truth about the powers of death. “I am a journalist,” Mohammed simply and firmly declared to us. His commitment was not a theoretical stance. He had recently been arrested, imprisoned, and tortured for more than 40 days and his family was threatened by the powers of death who accused him of inciting opposition to the ruling political party leader. Continue reading →

by

Do your own work: Leadership on the Frontlines

thomson-sarah-3By Sarah Thompson, Christian Peacemakers Teams. Re-shared from her blog.

One of my favorite things about my dear friend MJ Sharp was how he did his work, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He gave his life for peace work there, but he was not simply a martyr.  He was someone giving his all to investigative work.  MJ was a complex character who pushed hard for justice, utilizing creative and courageous tactics that led to positive change in some key situations.  Speaking at his memorial service, the representative from the United Nations remarked, “the international community has lost one of its best investigators.”   Continue reading →

by

We don’t have to soldier on; grief is part of Christian peacemaking.

Sarah MJ and Jonathan Brenneman

MJ Sharp in the middle with Sarah Thompson and CPTer Jonathan Brenneman

By Sarah Thompson and Tim Nafziger, Written for Sojourners Magazine.

3 July 2017, CPT International Reflection

Michael J. Sharp was a close friend. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) he was a Mennonite witness, scholar and peacemaker. Over five years, first with Mennonite Central Committee and then with the United Nations (UN) group of experts, he cultivated relationships of trust and respect with people who were experiencing dreadful violence, exploitation because of government corruption, and the oppressive impact of generations of corporate-colonial resource extraction. His teamwork there included demobilizing armed groups, investigating human rights abuses, and reporting to the UN Security Council towards their goal of creating the conditions for peace in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Continue reading →

by

I Don’t Speak Dari Yet

sarah thompsonA report from Christian Peacemaker Teams executive director Sarah Thompson:

Our Christian Peacemaker Team is accompanying refugees in Mytilene, Lesbos, Greece. As Executive Director I have a chance to do a two week team visit. I sat across the table from a man from Afghanistan yesterday. Neither he nor I are from Greece or speak Greek. I don’t speak Dari yet, and he just began the English classes offered to refugees. We don’t know each other’s names and yet we are deeply and violently connected. My village paid for his village to be bombed (through the US led war in Afghanistan).

Continue reading →

by

Not Another Nickel

Black Youth Project 100 leader Charlene Carruthers (center, seated) reminds her comrades that they are there because the Chicago mayor wants to allocate an additional $200 million to Chicago police department.

Black Youth Project 100 leader Charlene Carruthers (center, seated) reminds her comrades that they are there because the Chicago mayor wants to allocate an additional $200 million to Chicago police department.

By Sarah Thompson, Executive Director of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT)

Local chapters of Black Lives Matter and Jewish Voice for Peace coordinated actions in Chicago, Illinois on the weekend of October 24-25, 2015. CPTers attended the events, employing our public witness, human rights documentation, and nonviolent direct action support skills. We’re in the middle of a month-long training of 10 new recruits; people from across the organization—administrative team, field team, and a trainee—participated.
Continue reading →

by

Canada Guilty of Cultural Genocide Against Indigenous Peoples

4By: Chris Sabas. Chris  identifies as a Follower of The Way, Anglican, but also Catholic Worker, mystic, former attorney (owned own law firm in U.S., with almost 10 years of living in a courtroom before the Gospel awakening). Now a reservist with Christian Peacemaker Teams (“CPT”) and an At-Large Member of CPT’s Steering Committee.

Today is truly a historic…but somber day in and for Canada.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (“TRC”) released its long anticipated report today, finding Canada guilty of cultural genocide against Indigenous Peoples by way of the state sponsored, and church run Indian Residential Schools. Continue reading →

by

Guest Ethics

CPTFrom John of Christian Peacemaker Teams

For the last year, I have lived as a guest. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

Since I graduated college last May, taking that so-called next step into “adulthood” (whatever that is), I have lived as a guest in other people’s spaces. Talking with other people who have also just finished college, there is something inevitable about this – whether you move to a new city, move back to your parent’s place, or stay in the place you went to school, you’re not really “at home.” To attend a residential college, as I did, is to already be living in someone else’s space – a college campus or a dorm can be “ours,” the student body’s, but because each of us spend so little time in it, it is never really “mine.”
Continue reading →