#340 Next Year, Books, Carrie Buck - December 9, 2016
Next Year in August: Our 30th Anniversary Conference We’ve reserved the space for August 4-6, 2017, at Eastern University near Philadelphia. More details on the program to come, but mark your calendars now! Tentatively our theme is "Cultivating Shalom: A Culture of Life and Peace." Any input on the program can be sent to weekly@consistent-life.org.
Next Year in January: Annual March for Life Activities We find the huge annual events that occur in the United States on the anniversary of our infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision are a prime time to spread the word about the consistent life ethic to a lot of potential sympathizers – in addition to simply participating in the protests. We now have a web page set up for details on all the events. So far, it’s only East Coast and West Coast, but there will be observances all over the country, so we’d love to hear about local actions happening as well (send to weekly@consistent-life.org).
Recommended Books We’ve long had a Recommended Books page with an admirably large array of different topics to suit different interests. We’ve just added five recent books. All the new ones have been covered in previous editions of Peace & Life Connections, but it’s nice to have them all listed in one place. Do you have book-lovers on your Christmas gift list that might enjoy one of them? Might you be looking for a book to read in your leisure time during the holidays? Do you want to make a New Years Resolution to see that your local public libraries and libraries for your local houses of worship are stocked with at least some of these books?
The Trauma of Killing – U.N. Book on the Death Penalty
The United Nations has published a book, available in paperback and pdf, called “Death Penalty and the Victims.” The concept of Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress is mentioned, and quotations from CL vice-president Rachel MacNair on that topic are on pages 305 and 316 (she having written a consistent-life-oriented book on the topic). This is one of the underlying points to remember about all the issues involving violence: the human mind is traumatized by acts of killing.
Latest CL Blog “The Tragedy of Carrie Buck” is a book review of one of the recently-released books mentioned above as a recommended book. The book is Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. Written by New York Times reporter Adam Cohen, the book gives a thorough run-down of the personalities involved in the infamous Buck v. Bell US Supreme Court decision of 1927, in which powerful men were vying to establish a precedent that led directly to tens of thousands of Americans (and indirectly to far more Germans and other Europeans) being involuntarily sterilized for eugenic reasons.
Quotation of the Week Al Tizon “Cultivating Shalom in a Violent World” Evangelicals for Social Action, April 8, 2015 I realize that issues such as abortion and war—the issues most people associate with life and peace respectively—are extremely sensitive; as such, to make a case for the relationship between life and peace can potentially offend just about everyone! But it is my hope that the life-peace connection can serve as a bridge across the conservative-progressive divide, for I am convinced that the gospel of life and the gospel of peace are the same gospel. We are called to be both “pro-life” and “pro-peace” in the most authentic sense of these terms.
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