Pilgrimage Through a Burning World: Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site

PILGRIMAGE THROUGH A BURNING WORLD

This page intentionally left blank.

PILGRIMAGE THROUGH A BURNING WORLD

Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site

Ken Butigan

State University of New York Press

Kind permission was received to use the following: Material from The Plutonium Files by Eileen Welsome, copyright © 1999 by Eileen Welsome. Used by permission of The Dial Press/ Dell Publishing, a division of Random House, Inc. This material is also reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc. Copyright © 1999 by Eileen Welsome.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2003 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Fran Keneston Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Butigan, Ken. Pilgrimage through a burning world : spiritual practice and nonviolent protest at the Nevada Test Site / Ken Butigan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5777-X (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5778-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Nuclear warfare—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Antinuclear movement—Nevada—Nevada Test Site. I. Nevada Desert Experience (Organization) II. Title. BR115.A85 B88 2003 261.8'732—dc21 2002030970

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Cynthia Toyomi Okayama Dopke, a gracious pilgrim through this burning world

This page intentionally left blank.

Contents

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction 1

1

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices of a Nuclearized World

21

2

The First Journey—Lenten Desert Experience 1982

45

3

Nevada Desert Experience

73

4

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross at the Nevada Test Site

99

5

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

129

6

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

157

Conclusion

177

Notes

189

Bibliography

219

Index

229

vii

This page intentionally left blank.

Preface

For over two decades the Nevada Desert Experience has organized nonviolent direct action at the Nevada Test Site as part of the global movement to end nuclear testing. Nevada Desert Experience (NDE), a Franciscan-based organization, consciously integrates religious ritual and political action at the gates of the United States government’s primary nuclear proving ground in a remote corner of the Great American desert. This book explores NDE’s activity as a contemporary form of desert spirituality grappling with the interwoven religious and political challenges of an institutionalized and internalized nuclearism. In the fourth century C.E., the father and mother founders of Christian desert spirituality fled to the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts to engage in transformation of the self and reconceptualization of Christian discipleship in the face of the challenges posed by Roman late antiquity. In the twentieth century, the Nevada Desert Experience developed a contemporary desert spirituality of peacemaking, politics, and prayer at the gates of the U.S. government’s nuclear test site in southern Nevada in response to the spiritual and political crisis posed by atomic weapons. This study examines this contemporary religious movement and a number of its key practices contributing to personal and social transformation, including antinuclear pilgrimage, faith-based civil disobedience, and the Stations of the Nuclear Cross. The design, testing, and deployment of nuclear arms have been fueled for half a century by their proponents’ presupposition that weapons of mass destruction safeguard peace and security by deterring aggression. In an age of unimaginably colossal threat, it is held, only counterthreat keeps the world from plunging into the abyss of extermination. To reason otherwise is to retreat into misguided and dangerous fantasies of wishful thinking and appeasement. Those opposed to the development of nuclear weapons, it is argued, do not understand power and evil and their lethal combination. Over these same five decades a growing worldwide nuclear disarmament movement has emerged. The persistence and ubiquity of this effort attest not only to its steadfastness but also to its fundamental outlook. This movement, which has flourished on every continent in many

ix

x

Preface

different forms for over fifty years, is not primarily animated by the stereotypical motives ascribed to it by pronuclear forces. Generally speaking, it has been neither isolationist nor fancifully pretending that a perfect world is just around the corner. It has been as much concerned with power and evil—and their deadly fusion—as have those who have built and maintained the world’s nuclear weapons systems. The difference between these two positions is not that one side is cognizant of reality and the other is unaware of it. The difference lies in orientation. While nuclear proponents have maintained that such weapons increase security, nuclear opponents hold that they threaten it. Fear lies at the heart of the interlocking social, political, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of the regime of nuclear weaponry which, following the work of Robert J. Lifton, has been designated “nuclearism.” This fear provokes vertical and horizontal arms races between states. This fear stimulates attempts by states to win a clear advantage in this competition by seeking to develop first-strike weaponry. This fear can catalyze miscalculation and nuclear accident. And this fear puts the world on a new footing—a debilitating sense that there is no way back from the precipice, and that the world will forever be mired in the politics and culture of nuclearism. Beginning in the early 1980s a worldwide movement emerged to complete the task begun by the antinuclear testing effort of the 1950s and 1960s that had ended most above-ground testing by achieving The Partial Test Ban Treaty. Now, the modern antitesting movement sought a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Many organizations, networks, and communities took nonviolent action at the Nevada Test Site—where over 900 nuclear bombs were detonated between 1951 and 1992—to dramatically call for a worldwide end to the testing of nuclear weapons. In addition to the Nevada Desert Experience, key grassroots anti-nuclear organizations included Greenpeace, the Nuclear Freeze Campaign, the American Peace Test, the Global Anti-Nuclear Alliance (GANA), the National Association of Radiation Survivors, the International Alliance of Atomic Veterans, and Abolition 2000. In addition, the preeminent inhabitants of the terrain on which the test site is situated—the Western Shoshone nation—have played an incalculably important role in resisting nuclear testing on the land it has never ceded to the U.S. government. Many organizations, networks, communities, and individuals have performed important service in resisting nuclear testing. This book is not, however, a history of the complicated antinuclear testing movement at the test site or a profile of the many organizations that worked to end nuclear testing there. Instead, this study—curious about the intersection of religion and politics for personal and social transformation in a con-

Preface

xi

temporary setting—focuses on the Nevada Desert Experience and its specific religious and political practices rooted in Franciscan spirituality, Gandhian nonviolence, elements of the vision of the Catholic Worker movement, and important aspects of the ancient tradition of Christian desert spirituality. Though NDE played a key role in originally drawing the attention of the organizations listed above to U.S. nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site, this book stresses what it names NDE’s contemporary antinuclear spirituality. The Nevada Desert Experience sought to articulate and embody an alternative to the worldwide regime and threat of nuclear weapons rooted in a religious conviction that human beings are not meant to inflict the unthinkable fear provoked by nuclearism on one another. The Nevada Desert Experience proposed an alternative to the tangled web of fear spun by nuclearism. Neither running away from nor seeking to wish away the geopolitical challenges of a nuclear world, NDE has undertaken an ongoing spiritual practice that has experimented with active nonviolence as a “third way” between being a passive victim of nuclearism on the one hand and a perpetrator of nuclear threat on the other. This book explores how NDE’s experiment has involved challenging the ways this nuclearism has become, consciously and unconsciously, an integral part of contemporary social structures and individual self-understanding. By so doing, NDE has contributed in its own way to illuminating the threat that the nuclear weapons regime poses and creating the momentum for change. For over twenty years, the Nevada Desert Experience has invited thousands of people on a pilgrimage into the Nevada desert that is physical and symbolic, exterior and interior, political and psychological. This journey to the heart of nuclear America is interpreted in this study as an ascetical practice seeking personal and social transformation. This antinuclear activity confronts the consequences of the Atomic Age through an ongoing experiment in active nonviolence and by utilizing traditional Christian rites and symbols—including the Catholic mass; the observance of Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and Easter; and the practice of spiritual retreat—recontextualized to address the existential and planetary crisis posed by a nuclear world. Drawing on the tools of religious studies, ritual theory, asceticism studies, and nonviolence theory, this study examines the Nevada Desert Experience’s practices at the Nevada Test Site from the following five perspectives. First, this book regards NDE’s faith-based nonviolent action not simply as a form of narrowly defined “political protest” or “religious witness” but a contemporary spiritual practice that has engendered a new type of desert spirituality.

xii

Preface

Second, it explores how this spiritual practice includes rituals and processes that constitute a form of what theologian Margaret Miles names a “new asceticism,” whose goal is not the disparagement of the body but the transformation of self and society. Third, this text moreover suggests that NDE’s antinuclear asceticism stands in contrast to an institutionalized and internalized “nuclear asceticism” that has been imposed society-wide since the dawn of the Atomic Age. Asceticism, as its etymological roots suggest, is the training and reorientation of the self. As we shall see, asceticism can describe a systematic process of decentering and recentering of whole societies as well as individuals. By applying the framework of corporate asceticism to a post-Hiroshima world, this book proposes that a nuclear asceticism has been designed and promulgated to produce nuclear selves and nuclear societies through a set of policies that functionally echo what Miles characterizes as the old asceticism of the hatred of the body and the earth. Fourth, this book investigates how, just as the nuclearism has relied on forms of national ritualization—including civil defense drills and many other forms of nuclear training—a key dimension of NDE’s antinuclear asceticism is a ritualization of the dynamics of active nonviolence. This ritualization of nonviolent practice at the gates of a nuclear test site has included respect for the opponent (while engaged in steadfast resistance to her or his actions) and a willingness to see, as Gandhi held, that all parties to a struggle possess pieces of the truth. Finally, this study holds that NDE’s antinuclear desert spirituality can be fruitfully thematized as a contemporary adaptation of the ancient ascetical practice of the pilgrimage. Antinuclear pilgrims journeying to the Nevada Test Site have engaged in a pilgrimage of personal and social transformation that has often been characterized by at least four simultaneous journeys: the journey to the physical terrain of the top-secret U.S. nuclear proving ground; the journey to a symbolic center of nuclear America; the journey to, and encounter with, the people managing and protecting the test site; and the journey to a renewed personal and communal vision, commitment, faith, and engagement. Each of these key dimensions sheds light on a central preoccupation of this study: how the almost ineffable challenge of confronting the nuclear crisis has drawn certain aspects of the antinuclear movement to retrieve, but also transform and inculturate in new and relatively unfamiliar settings, a set of traditional religious and political symbols, rituals, and paths. In developing this book’s thesis—that NDE has constructed an antinuclear asceticism offering contemporary pilgrims (and, by exten-

Preface

xiii

sion, the larger society) a way of decentering and recentering a pervasive “national security state asceticism” of embodied nuclear indoctrination through acts of embodied nonviolence—I do not claim that engaging in ritual practice at the test site is enough, by itself, to “take off the old self and put on the new” in the sense meant by St. Paul. Like traditional pilgrimage, the Nevada Desert Experience pilgrimage is a way of paying attention bodily and mindfully to the dilemmas of the woundedness and sacredness of existence. It is a ritual that points the direction toward integrating this awareness and action in the rest of our lives. Nevertheless, the particular dynamics of NDE’s contemporary ascetical practice—including the ascesis of loving one’s enemies and grasping the humanness of The Other—concretely dramatizes potential solutions to the nuclear bind in which we find ourselves. This symbolic form of postmodern pilgrimage—the journey to the so-called opponent as well as to this symbolic and concrete heart of Nuclear America—eventually bore political, as well as religious and psychological, fruit. This study is not a history of the Nevada Desert Experience. Instead, it explores contemporary rituals of personal and social transformation, highlighting elements of NDE’s history when necessary to contextualize and illuminate these practices. This book first concentrates on the 47–day 1982 Lenten Desert Experience conducted at the gates of the test site, a witness originally conceived of as a discrete, one-time event. As time passed, this event and others held at the edge of the U.S. nuclear proving ground inspired the emergence in 1984 of the Nevada Desert Experience as an ongoing organization that hosted activities at the test site. Many of the basic elements of NDE echoed those of the first Lenten Desert Experience. After describing and analyzing the 1982 Lenten Desert Experience, I offer a brief profile of NDE’s twenty-year journey. Then I focus on three practices of what I name the Nevada Desert Experience’s contemporary desert spirituality: nonviolent civil disobedience, the stations of the nuclear cross, and antinuclear pilgrimage. A significant dimension of the approach I use in this study is the consistent use of first-person accounts and narratives to set the historical context of these practices and to interpret their spiritual and political meanings. Narrative here is used in the sense defined by psychologist Randle Mixon: “Narrative is the telling of one’s story. It is a recounting of one’s experience of living in such a way as to give meaning to, or to make sense of, those experiences in terms of internal processing and social and cultural contextualization.”1 As an ongoing debate within the discipline of anthropology stresses, there are immeasurable benefits and pitfalls to ethnographic

xiv

Preface

work. Nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship of the researcher to her or his subject. In the context of this debate, I offer this study as the work of a “participant-observer.” My social location includes having been a faith-based peace and justice advocate for the past twenty years. This work has stimulated a personal desire to apply academic tools to religiously based nonviolent action and movements, a desire that I bring to this research project. Though I did not visit the test site or participate in any of NDE’s activities before 1991, I did serve as a member of its board from 1992 to 1995. In keeping with the ambiguities of ethnography, I believe that my past experience with NDE offers both a benefit and a challenge. The challenge is to hew to the scholarly norms of balance, fairness, and rigorous weighing of evidence. The benefit is that this affords me a clear sense of organizing and enacting these practices. An additional potential benefit, which finally convinced me take up this project, is that it may suggest new ways that activist-scholars—or scholar-activists—can critically reflect on, interpret, and make available their “field work,” whether it is conducted at City Hall, outside the White House, or at a nuclear weapons facility.

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge those associated with the Lenten Desert Experience and the Nevada Desert Experience who have been helpful with this project, including Anne Symens-Bucher, Michael Affleck, Louie Vitale, O.F.M., Duncan MacMurdy, Rosemary Lynch, O.S.F., Terry Symens, Ed Dunn, Julia Occhiogrosso, Daniel Ellsberg, David Buer, O.F.M., Bill O’Donnell, Peg Bean, Leslie Klusmire, Art Casey, and Peter Ediger. I want to thank all those who shared written reflections on the experience with NDE at the test site, including Jean McElhaney, Marie Molloy, Rev. James Conn, Mary Pat White, Patricia McCarthy, S.N.D., Ann Schmidt, Douglas Hamill, Erik Thompson, Chris Nauman, Patricia Roberts, Joan Monastero, Catherine Bucher, Vip Short, Karen Berry, O.S.F., Robert DelleValle Rauth, and Mary Ann Cejka. I especially want to thank Jane Hughes Gignoux and Janet Weil for permission to print in these pages their accounts of their pilgrimage to the test site: Gignoux’s “A Journey to Nevada” and Weil’s “Inextricably Bound to One Another.” I am also grateful to two people associated with the Nevada Test Site for the interviews I was able to conduct with them: Bob Nelson, who served as Assistant Manager, Deputy Manager, and finally Manager of the Nevada Test Site (holding these positions at various times between 1982 and 1995), and Nye County Deputy Sheriff Jim Merlino, who was responsible for test site security during many NDE activities there and oversaw the arrest of thousands of NDE participants (1982–1994). I also want to thank the many NDE participants who completed a questionnaire designed for this study and to offer my gratitude to the Nevada Desert Experience organization for unrestricted access to its archives. I am thankful, as well, for the support I have received from the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, where I have been teaching for the last decade, and from Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service, where I have been experimenting with active nonviolence with a dear community of collaborators and friends since 1990. I am grateful to many teachers, including my professors at the Graduate Theological Union and the University of California, Berkeley: Clare B. Fischer, Starr King School for the Ministry/GTU; Arthur

xv

xvi

Acknowledgments

Holder, Church Divinity School of the Pacific/GTU; and Michael Nagler, Professor Emeritus of the Classics Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of UCB’s Peace and Conflict Studies Program. I am grateful for the guidance of Naomi Seidman, David Biale, William Short, O.F.M., Hilary Martin, O.P., Mike Lunine, Doug Adams, Bill Herzog, Bob Egan, S.J., Mary Ann Donovan, Don Gelpi, Jake Empereur, Sandra Schneiders, William Ruddy, Edward Hobbs, Kathleen Dugan, Irving Parker, Timothy Lamm, O.S.B., Leonard Feeney, O.S.B., and Verle Miller. Likewise, I am grateful for all those who have illuminated the path of justice and peace for me, including Terry Messman, Anna Graves, Thomas Merton, Darla Rucker, Dave Raymond, Ron Stief, Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Jim Douglass, John Dear, Robert Roth, Cindy Pile, Jonathan Relucio, Ezster Freeman, Brian Willson, Ed Feldman, Nancy Hale, Adrienne Fong, Pamela Meidell, Doug Fong, Joi Morton-Wiley, David Hartsough, Lee Williamson, Mary Cassell, Judy Rohrer, Jacqueline Cabasso, John Chamberlin, Sherry Larsen-Beville, Francisco Herrera, Jan Hartsough, Marylia Kelley, Martine Sauvageau, Henry Beck, Moira Finley, Barbara Graves, Andy Lichterman, Janet Chisholm, Celia Jackson, Judith Kelly, Kenny King, Oonagh Ryan, Jean Martensen, Leila Salazar, Megan McKellogg, Bryan Neuberg, Herb Norman, Nina Serrano, Marlene Denardo, Dorsey Blake, Eileen Purcell, Ken Preston, Earl Johnson, Mary Litell, Bill Moyer, Aisha Mohammed, Karin Morris, Laura Slattery, Joan McIntyre, Ched Myers, Shelley Douglass, Olga Islas, Pat Livingston, Elizabeth Okayama, Patricia Bruno, Michael James, Bill Dopke, Verona Fonte, Jennie Peace, Wendy Kaufmyn, Denise Torres, Maureen Connelly, Ana Perez-Chisti, Steve Slade, Frank Beville, Karen Smith, Tom Rudderow, Veronica Pelicaric, Genevieve Hicks, Michael Banks, Christina Leaño, Paul Saenger, Mark Greenhagen, Mike Yarrow, Lee Miller, Leonardo Vilchis, Brooke Fancher, Pamela Osgood, Steve Leeds, Keith Heltsley, and those who remain in spirit: Steve Sears, Skip Walsh, Dale Gilson, Vic Pasche, Terry Mead, Mev Puleo, Leo Sack, Pat Lehan, Abraham Zwickel, Dorothy Brownell, Cind Tresor, George Cockshott, Marie Pastrick, Maylie Scott, Bob Heifetz, and Robert McAfee Brown. I thank those who have been there the longest—Bernard Ciernick, Rick Sand, Tony Lukas, Susan Yoes, Cynthia Brancato, Sheila Dixon Lukas, Heather Skinner, and Jim Burnett. And longer still: Beverly, Leo, Larry, Bill, Therese, Jim, Anne, Clare, John, and Cynthia. Finally, I thank Nancy Ellegate, Diane Ganeles, and Fran Keneston of State University of New York Press for all of their superb guidance and care in publishing this book.

Introduction

On the last night of the twentieth century, the Nevada desert sky is large and clear and rich with countless stars. Our passenger van rumbles northward along Interstate 95, the razor-thin ribbon of highway that traverses the seemingly endless desert of the Great Basin. Behind us, the frenetic magenta glare of Las Vegas slowly fades, while here we are swallowed by the darkness of the desert as we fly toward the southern gate of the Nevada Test Site. Forty miles north of the city, where hundreds of thousands of contemporary pilgrims have descended to cheer on the new millennium at Caesar’s Palace, the Luxor, New York New York, and the MGM Grand, we pull off the highway. The test site is still twenty minutes away, but we have decided to look in briefly on the Goddess Temple before resuming our journey to Peace Camp, where we will meet five hundred others for another kind of millennial celebration. The temple is located at Cactus Springs, a handful of ramshackle buildings that decades ago grew up around a rare desert wetland that is a water source for a stand of willows, a few human beings, and packs of itinerant coyotes. In the early 1990s Texan philanthropist Genevieve Vaughan purchased twenty acres of the land here and donated most of it to the Western Shoshone nation. Hers was a modest gesture of restoration and reparation in the wake of the relentless confiscation of Western Shoshone land that, before the arrival of the Spanish and then the Americans, had encompassed most of present-day Nevada and parts of California, Utah, and Idaho. She asked only that she be allowed to keep a few acres on which to dedicate a sacred space to the Mother Goddess. The nation’s spiritual leadership readily approved her request, and in 1992 Vaughan commissioned the Chaos Affinity Group—a small community of women from Texas and elsewhere—to build a round, ceilingless structure made of hay bale and finished with a creamy adobe glaze. The temple’s denizens include statues representing goddesses from many cultures and the large figure of La Madre del Mundo—the Mother of the World. Over the years I have spent many hours alone sitting in the late afternoon silence of this contemporary sacred site.

1

2

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Tonight, as we park by the incongruously large willow near the spring, we see that there is firelight dancing through the rounded openings of the shrine. Three of the women in our group go on ahead to see what is happening and to find out if it’s okay for us to visit. They return with word that a group of women and men is engaging in a millennium ritual at midnight and that we are welcome to join them. I am touched by how warmly we are received by the temple group, even though we have wandered in from off the highway unexpectedly and without warning. They invite us inside, where we stand with them around the shallow fire pit at the center of the temple. We tell them that we have been part of a gathering held for the last few days in Las Vegas by the Nevada Desert Experience. “Millennium 2000” is a three-day event featuring prayer, reflection, and action for a nuclear-free future. In the shadow of the casinos, we have ruminated on the ongoing development and production of nuclear arms, participated in rituals for justice and peace from a range of religious traditions, shared stories of compassionate action from the past, and expressed hopes for the future. Now, as part of this gathering, we are headed to the edge of the test site to take nonviolent action at midnight. After a few minutes, we get ready to leave so that we can arrive on time for the test site festivities. The temple people offer a New Year’s Eve prayer for us in our ad hoc circle ringing the fire that flickers in the desert night: May your action tonight contribute to a new era of peace and transformation . . . Back on the highway, we pass the Western Shoshone offices on the left and, further north, a five-mile unpaved road that goes up to property overlooking the test site that the Atomic Veterans own. Former members of the U.S. military, who number among the 40,000 soldiers and sailors who took part in above-ground nuclear testing exercises in the 1950s and 1960s, the Atomic Vets have acquired this property as a memorial and as a place of healing. We finally arrive at Peace Camp after 11 P.M. Pulling into a makeshift parking area, we are directed up a gradual rise to an area where hundreds of people stand before a large ceremonial fire as a Western Shoshone leader prays. Eventually the crowd begins to move slowly past the fire, where candles are lit. Two and three abreast, we now snake our way down to the two-lane asphalt road that leads, about a mile away, to the test site entrance. There is occasional, spontaneous singing—hymns and gentle Taize chanting float through the line—but mostly we move in a silence that echoes the silence of the desert itself. Winter nights in the Nevada desert can be bone-chilling, but tonight the weather is mild. The sky remains clear and very large, while

Introduction

3

stretched out before us under its limitless dark canopy is a mesmerizing river of candlelight as the procession stretches down to the gate. At midnight the lead group (religious leaders and others, including Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Daniel Berrigan, S.J., and actor Martin Sheen) crosses onto official test-site property at a cattle guard—where test-site vehicles dart through an opening in the barbed wire fence that stretches in both directions for miles—and is arrested. They are clutching permits issued earlier in the evening by the Western Shoshone. The Western Shoshone nation has never ceded its right to this land; under the terms of the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, it considers the U.S. government and its nuclear testing facility to be illegally occupying their ancestral lands. While the federal government is arresting members of our procession for trespass tonight, the native peoples maintain that the reverse is true: it is the U.S. Department of Energy that is trespassing. They have given NDE participants permission to be here tonight, and the arrestees now offer their permits to the Nye County sheriffs who are detaining them. It will take us another twenty minutes to reach the cattle guard. As we slowly shuffle forward, unbidden cyphers from the passing century float through my head. Thomas Merton called it “the beastly century with the unclipped fingernails,” but no description can do justice to its painful contradictions. The century that is now dissolving has been a deluge of blood and loss, with one relentless tidal wave of suffering succeeding the next. If, as Andre Gide thought, the artist carries death in her heart the way the priest carries the breviary, then we have all become artists consciously or unconsciously bearing in our hearts to the breaking point the stark legacy of twentieth-century death that is only hinted at in the cursory labels that have been attached: Armenia, Verdun, Guernica, Leningrad, Hiroshima, Pusan, Algiers, My Lai, Prague, San Salvador, Baghdad, Sarejevo, Pristina, Belgrade, Dili. And, of course, many others. But there are the other places, too, the places of hope, where violence did not have the final word. Places where possibility shimmered, if for only a moment. Sites where movements for dignity and respect flourished, whose lessons are placed in our trembling hands as we prepare to cross into the next millennium. Places in South Africa and India. Moments in Delano, California, and Selma, Alabama. Glimmers of momentary transformation in Manila, the West Bank, Moscow, Santiago. Many other places known and unknown, including this one in the southern Nevada desert. For eighteen years, thousands of people of faith and conscience have flown, driven, and walked to get here: to pray, to engage in religiously based protest, to sit alone or together at the cusp of a terrain where 928 nuclear bombs have been detonated.

4

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

We are finally at the cattle guard. Jesse Manibusan, a musician from the San Francisco Bay Area who has been coming out to the test site activities for the past decade, sings as we dance, arm in arm, across the line: “We are walking in the light of peace/We are walking in the light of peace. . . .” We cross into the restricted space of a nuclear proving ground while also crossing into a new time where, all the evidence to the contrary, our hopefulness longs for a time and place saturated with peace and right relationship. Divided by the sheriffs into groups of women and men, we are taken to our respective holding pens, two large open-air rectangles made of concrete and fencing first erected by test-site officials in the late 1980s, when the number of people risking arrest at any one time began to climb into the thousands. Some 341 of us have been arrested on this first morning of the new century, and I mill about in the men’s section catching up with friends, comparing notes, and staring off into the quiet desert terrain. The silence of the desert offers a gentle counterpoint to the menacing, unnatural thunder of atomic detonation that rumbled through this region for decades, when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a furious and lethal stranglehold. Tonight the desert hush seems a contemplative summons to brooding prayer and—dare we imagine it?—hope against hope. The United States continues to test weapons here—conducting experiments in what it labels tests of the “sub-critical” components of nuclear weapons—but, since 1992, there has been a U.S. moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that, though not wholly ratified, is adhered to in spirit by almost all the nations of the earth. We are here to lend our voices, and bodies, to the planetary effort to forecast and realize a nuclear-free future. For a moment in this airy darkness there is a profound stillness, as if the threat that nuclear weapons represent were suspended, or even banished. As the world had recently prepared for the passing of one millennium and the arrival of another, there had been a concern in some quarters that the “Y2K bug” (the Year Two Thousand hypothesis that the planet’s computers would read the beginning of the new era as 1900, not 2000, and thus unpredictably malfunction) would disastrously impact nuclear weapons systems worldwide, perhaps even launching one or more nuclear warheads. There had been a campaign to take all nuclear weapons off-line for at least the first 24 hours of the new millennium. This has gone unheeded, and, in spite of some breakdown here and there, the world’s computer systems remain intact and nuclear weapons endure undetonated. But “undetonated” does not mean “unthreatening,” and even tonight warheads are poised for use.

Introduction

5

This moment of calm belies the burning: the burning that was first ignited at Alamogordo in the New Mexican desert in July 1945, then charred through Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that has been burning, in one form or another, every moment since. The burning lit by hydrogen bomb tests in the South Pacific in the 1940s—blazing away whole islands—and the burning, in all of its covert and ostentatiously overt forbidding power, here, in this Great Basin desert since the early 1950s. The concentric circles of this conflagration flaring out from the first atomic ignition at Alamogordo and burning through the world, with its threats and counterthreats, with its invisibility—its virtuality of computer simulation and the unseen half-life of radioactive particles strewn about the world—and its daunting physicality in the network of missile silos, submarines, bombers, laboratories, uranium mines, processing factories. And test sites. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki confronted the world with an unforeseen and incalculably portentous crisis.1 Although the United States briefly considered dismantling its existing atomic stockpile and surrendering its new technology to international control, this idea was soon superseded by the decision to expand its initially tiny arsenal and in turn to develop the hydrogen bomb, a weapon vastly more destructive than either one used against the two Japanese cities at the end of the Second World War.2 With this decision the United States embarked on a vigorous nuclear weapons testing program that began with “Operations Crossroads,” a set of atomic tests conducted in 1946 at the Bikini atoll that involved 42,000 U.S. military personnel, 156 airplanes, and 242 ships.3 While nuclear exercises were conducted in the South Pacific for several years, policy-makers sought to establish a site in the continental United States for security and logistical reasons. On December 18, 1950, President Harry Truman approved the opening of the Nevada Test Site, a 1,350 square mile facility in southern Nevada. Operation Ranger, the first series of atmospheric tests at the new facility began on January 27, 1951, at an area called Frenchman’s Flat.4 Eileen Welsome crystallizes the experience of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers who would participate in above-ground nuclear tests over the next decade by recounting the story of three young men in the Air Force—Jerry Schultz, Jack Richards, and Lewis Woods—who had been assigned to gather weather data during this initial series: In the last days of January and the first days of February of 1951, the three young men witnessed the fiery glory of Ranger’s first four detonations. With yields ranging from one to eight kilotons, the bombs

6

Pilgrimage through a Burning World were firecrackers compared to the weapon an aircraft was hauling toward them at that very moment. This fifth and final bomb, codenamed Shot-Fox, would have a yield of twenty-two kilotons, one kiloton bigger than the bomb that devastated Nagasaki. Although Schultz’s recollection differs in some details from the official account of the shot, the following is what he remembers: At 0540 the three men spotted a blinking light coming in from the east. All commercial airliners within a hundred-mile radius had been banned from the air space. They were certain that this was their bomber. Schultz harbored the irrational hope that the aircraft was making a dry run, but the sudden high-pitched whine of the engines and the plane’s bank to the right meant to him the bomber had dropped its payload. The men had no radiation badges, no Geiger counters. Schultz made a quick act of contrition and then looked at the fading stars, the burst of gold along the eastern horizon, and the scared eyes of his two companions. It was February 6, 1951. The bomb split open the soft cantaloupe of darkness with a searing light and an unearthly roar that was capable of rupturing human eardrums within six-tenths of a mile of Ground Zero. “The entire landscape around us was lit up in an eerie unrealistic light from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could see. The light was so intense that THERE WERE NO SHADOWS,” Schultz later wrote. He dropped to one knee. As he did so, the first shock wave struck him. It felt like a hundred-pound bag of sand hitting him in the chest. He staggered backward and his fur cap was blown from his head. His buddy, Jack Edwards, began running back toward the wooden shack. The shock wave from the blast slammed Richards into the door, shoving his hand through one of the windows. The black floor of the desert pitched and rolled. Two lightning bolts appeared in the rising mushroom cloud. The wintry air, sharp as cut glass only seconds earlier, grew thick with dust. As the cloud rose into the sky, its billowy mushroom shape turned the color of lava and then faded to a muddy brown. When they regained their senses, the three young men returned to their duties. They bandaged Richard’s hand. They filled out reports. And they began picking up debris . . . Shultz later estimated that if the pilot had missed his target by a tenth of a degree, the bomb could have landed on them—or near enough to kill them. “When I close my eyes, I can still see it,” he said of the atomic explosion. “I will never forget it.”5

In The Big Picture—a film produced in the 1950s by the Pentagon to prepare soldiers to endure what Schultz, Richards, and Woods had experienced—a military chaplain calms anxious troops who are about to be exposed to an atomic bomb (often brought as close as two miles from ground zero) by telling them that they need not worry since the

Introduction

7

army had taken all necessary safety precautions.6 Numerous studies have since taken exception to this facile conclusion, documenting the radiological injuries inflicted on self-described “atomic veterans” and on those downwind from nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site.7 From January 1951 through October 1992, when a moratorium on nuclear testing went into effect, the U.S. and Britain conducted 928 below- and above-ground atomic detonations—one explosion on average every eighteen days. These tests generally were conducted and supervised by personnel from Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, or Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. As sociologist Valerie L. Kuletz emphasizes in her study of the environmental and social consequences of a half-century of atomic development, the American West is traversed by a nuclear landscape veiled largely from public view because of its often remote settings and because of the cloak of national security in which it has been shrouded.8 The Nevada Test Site has been a preeminent part of this nuclear landscape. While the test site has been used for waste storage, testing conventional explosives, the development of nuclear propulsion systems, and antiterrorist training, it has functioned primarily to test, and perfect, radiological weapons of mass destruction.9 These tests have taken place in six off-limits vicinities, including the Mercury Vicinity, The Frenchman Flat Vicinity, Rainer Mesa Vicinity, The Pahute Mesa and Buckboard Mesa Vicinity, Jackass Flat Vicinity, and The Yucca Flat Vicinity, which, as Matthew Coolidge writes in an extensive profile of the topography of the Nevada Test Site, “easily qualifies as the most bombed place on Earth.” The valley floor is pocked with hundreds of subsidence craters (depressions that form after atomic tests) including the Sedan Crater measuring 1,280 feet wide and 320 feet deep, which was created by an explosion that moved 12 million tons of earth, and has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The 1957 “Smoky” atmospheric detonation rendered part of Yucca Flat so contaminated that it is called by Nevada Test Site archaeologists a “pristine site” because it has hardly been disturbed since then.10 On this first morning of the new millennium, hundreds of people have traveled to this place in the middle of winter to heal this separation. For me, this mending seems to come, ironically, by contact with the nuclear burning that has been unleashed on this land for half a century. After a couple of hours we are booked, issued citations, released. In ones and twos, we drift back toward the cattle guard, shaking hands with the sheriffs and wishing them a good New Year’s, and then crossing into “legal” space, where we are met by throngs of arrested and

8

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

nonarrested alike. We wander back to the parking lot, where a few of us tarry for a moment at a crowded New Year’s party in a rented RV that two friends had driven down from San Francisco, then head back toward Las Vegas, disappearing in the swarming crystalline darkness of the Nevada desert.

The Global Antinuclear Movement This millennial gathering marked an important milestone in the worldwide antinuclear movement. However urgently vigilant participants felt about the continuing development and deployment of nuclear weapons—and they had every right to be vexed about emerging new weapons technologies, including those capable of testing nuclear arms in the laboratory—they also had reason to honor the fact that the world had managed to enter the twenty-first century without destroying itself in a lethal spasm of nuclear fire. It was a moment for thanksgiving and for quiet acknowledgment of the important gains made by a far-flung movement for peace. In the introduction to the second volume of his history of the antinuclear movement, historian Lawrence S. Wittner questions the conventional explanation for the fact that humanity, since 1945, has avoided nuclear war. While “deterrence” and “peace through strength” seem plausible on the surface, by themselves they do not sufficiently explain why nuclear nations were willing to suffer military defeat rather than resorting to nuclear war (the United States in Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan) or why superpowers were willing to limit their advantage or power by signing an impressive array of arms control agreements. In his book, Wittner argues that the missing ingredient in any explanation of this reality is the world nuclear disarmament movement that has mobilized millions of people around the world.11 Wittner confesses that he hadn’t expected to reach this conclusion. He assumed that the antinuclear movement had failed because nuclear weapons had not been definitively abolished. Yet as he pursued his research, he came to understand that this “people power” movement had played an important role in curbing the nuclear arms race and preventing nuclear war.12 Underscoring this relentless international challenge to the nuclear arms race, Wittner pointedly suggests that “the history of nuclear arms controls without the nuclear disarmament movement is like the history of U.S. Civil Rights legislation without the Civil Rights movement.”13 This study does not present a comprehensive analysis of the geopolitical impact of the antinuclear testing efforts at the Nevada Test Site,

Introduction

9

let alone a thoroughgoing examination of the political consequences of the fifty-year history of the antinuclear testing movement. The aim of this book is different: to examine NDE’s activity at the test site as a spiritual practice that functions to challenge personal and social nuclear identities. Nevertheless, the record does suggest that this religiopolitical activity at the test site did, in fact, contribute to the worldwide antinuclear testing movement by drawing citizen attention to this site and nurturing religious and political opposition to a nuclear buildup in the 1980s and 1990s. This movement in turn created the conditions for nuclear arms reductions and the emergence of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). This study shares with Wittner the conviction that, although social movements are often ignored in assessing strategic policy, they are crucially important in transforming those policies, and that this is true of the modern antinuclear movement and NDE’s role in it. Many political, military, social, and economic factors beyond the efforts of the antinuclear movement have, of course, shaped worldwide nuclear policies. The promulgation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is not sufficiently explained, for example, without taking into account the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the impact its demise had on creating the political conditions for the emergence of a serious worldwide antitesting treaty. But to impute the momentum for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty entirely to this is to distort the historical record by ignoring or minimizing the role played by nonviolent social movements as forces for historical change in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Historians, political scientists, and sociologists are beginning to publish data that suggest that the global antinuclear movement created the precondition for the series of arms control agreements that were struck throughout the Atomic Age. For example, sociologist Jeffrey W. Knopf in his study, Domestic Society and International Cooperation: The Impact of Protest on U.S. Arms Control Policy14 analyzes the effect “people power” movements have had on nuclear arms policy in the U.S. Knopf writes that while most academic specialists in international relations regard the activity of peace movements as marginal, a statistical and case-study analysis of the policies of four U.S. administrations, including the first term of the Reagan administration (1981–1985), showed that citizen activity challenging nuclear weaponry had made a statistically significant contribution to impacting nuclear policies.15 Analyzing the effect of the grassroots Nuclear Freeze campaign in the early 1980s, for example, Knopf shows qualitatively and quantitatively that this effort “interacted with divisions among political elites . . . in a way that also promoted congressional efforts to get Reagan to give

10

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

less emphasis to increasing US strength and more to achieving mutual restraint.”16 Because of the pressure and “elite coalition shifts” effected by the grassroots Freeze movement “the administration accelerated the pace of policy formulation in this area, moving more quickly to enter strategic arms talks and to signal willingness to compromise in the search for an accord.”17 Knopf notes that other recent studies have argued that, because of this dynamic, the U.S. peace movement played a key role in ending the Cold War. By creating a political climate where the Reagan administration was prodded to pursue a series of arms control initiatives—in spite of its hard-line rhetoric—the U.S. helped open the political space for Mikhail Gorbachev to engage in arms negotiations and to set forth his agenda of domestic change dubbed Perestroika.18

Nevada Desert Experience In the late 1980s a mass movement in Kazakhstan clamored for the closure of the USSR’s nuclear test site located at Semipaltinsk. Led by poet Olzhas Suleimenov and motivated by a growing awareness of the medical and environmental consequences of nuclear testing—including a virtual epidemic of birth defects in the immediate region—this effort mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to take nonviolent action. Within a year, the Kremlin had shuttered this facility. This movement to end Soviet nuclear testing on Kazakh soil itself had been inspired by the effort to end nuclear testing at the United States test site in Nevada. During a Nevada Desert Experience planning meeting in 1989, NDE organizers received a telegram from Suleimenov announcing that the nationwide Kazakh antitesting campaign had been launched and had been dubbed the “Nevada-Semipaltinsk movement” as a way to honor, and demonstrate solidarity with, the struggle in the United States. This book focuses on one part of global antinuclear movement of the past two decades, the Nevada Desert Experience. Just as NDE inspired the Kazakhs to protest nuclear testing in their homeland, it encouraged others in the U.S. and around the world to travel to an obscure desert site to pray and to engage in nonviolent action. Since 1945 humankind has been confronted with the physical, psychological, cultural, economic, political, environmental, and spiritual fact of nuclear weapons and the threat of inconceivable war and suffering they pose. Its strategies for responding to this reality have generally fallen into three categories: construction of pronuclear and official gov-

Introduction

11

ernment narratives and practices; antinuclear narratives and practices; and outright and systemic denial, or what psychologist Robert Jay Lifton has famously called “psychic numbing.”19 This study explores the antinuclear practices and religious activism of the Nevada Desert Experience at the Nevada Test Site.20 NDE is a Roman Catholic and Franciscan-based organization working to end nuclear testing and ultimately to abolish nuclear weapons. Since 1982, it has organized numerous liturgical and para-liturgical nonviolent activities at the U.S. nuclear proving ground in Nevada during the Christian season of Lent, in August to mark the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and at other times of the year. These events have been attended by thousands of people from across the United States and around the world and contributed to the creation of the moral and political conditions for the emergence of the worldwide Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. For twenty years people have made their way to the Nevada desert to pray and act for an end to nuclear testing by engaging in a set of practices that are typically regarded as categorically discrete: 1. Christian liturgical and para-liturgical rites and practices (such as the Roman Catholic mass, the Stations of the Cross, fasting, Johannine feet washing, religious processions, prayer vigils, Christian liturgical dance, contemplative and shared prayer) and 2. Nonviolent civil disobedience, marches, lobbying, political speech, and a variety of other forms of political protest. These practices constitute a form of political and moral protest in the face of the global thermonuclear threat. But it is not sufficient to simply characterize this activity as a particular type of dissent. While it is true that NDE’s program bears an important political dimension, its politics are embedded in symbols, rituals, and meanings that exceed the traditional goals and consequences of the strategies and tactics of social change. NDE’s practices function as a form of contemporary personal and social religious experience that integrates political, cultural, performative, and spiritual elements. Regarding NDE’s project in this way can help us to interpret the potential meaning, for example, of acts of medieval piety performed at the edge of a facility concretely signifying modernity’s most fearsome technological reality. Instead of dismissing this contrast as trivial or anachronistic or simply incongruous—Roman Catholic liturgy celebrated in the shadow of the Cray supercomputers of the test site’s highly protected control and command center; the Way of the Cross performed at the edge of ground zero—the present study takes

12

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

as its starting point how this contrast lies at the very heart of NDE’s ongoing experiment at the Nevada Test Site. This contrast has been motivated not by a neotraditional nostalgia nor a reactionary medievalism of the type aggressively advocated by the Catholic Anti-Modernist movement of the early twentieth century that condemned modernity per se. Nor is it a narrow form of popular religiosity bereft of precise political connotations. It is not an ironic postmodern response to modernism, nor a cynical use of religiosity in the service of a basically political agenda. It is not a political wolf in a religious sheep’s clothing. Instead, NDE’s intersection between devotional religion and anti-nuclear politics reflects a desire to engage explicitly in the “public work” (leiturgia) of religion in a world framed by the assumptions and practices of nuclear national security states, including the fifty-year Cold War, which continues to maintain its world-historical influence a decade after the demise of the Soviet Union. The Nevada Desert Experience’s activity functions as religious experience not only because it appropriates and contextualizes religious symbolism and ritual, but because it engages in the crucial contemporary religiosity of struggling with and contesting a pervasive nuclearist civil religion. The Nuclear Age has thus been an inescapably religious one, especially—though not exclusively—if we take “religion” in its unmarked sense to be concerned with processes of meaning-seeking, social formation and reconstruction, and the challenges of and opportunities for spiritual transformation within the context of specific histories and cultures. More concretely still, societal and subjective responses to nuclear arms have often reflected—and taken the form of—the fundamental features of religious experience, including: narrative and myth; spiritual practices and ritual; doctrine, beliefs, and philosophy; ethics and law; social relations and institutional structures; and approaches to the body and materiality.21 For half a century, humankind has both promoted and opposed nuclear weapons by constructing a wide range of stories, practices, rites, dogmas, codes of conduct, institutional arrangements, and attitudes toward bodiliness and the earth. These activities and perspectives have functioned, in effect, as religious or quasi-religious means of addressing the unique and harrowing challenges of a nuclearized world.

Antinuclear Activism and Spirituality But the religious character of the journey to the test site is first indicated by the experience people report having there. People arrive in

Introduction

13

the Nevada desert with specific “reasons” for being there—to protest the arms race, to confront policies that threaten the world and its inhabitants—and often “something else” has happened, “something else” at times mysterious, startling, horrifying, soothing, and even healing, as Michael Affleck (one of the founders of NDE) suggests: If you hadn’t been there before, it was just overwhelming. It was beautiful and inspiring and it worked every single time. It was absolutely, unbelievably transforming to everybody who did it. There are a lot of things about it that I don’t understand. It’s beyond my understanding. It happened beyond our ability to organize it. It almost instantly became greater than its organizers and its participants. There was something else going on.22

This setting could catalyze what were perceived by some as vivid, personal illuminations. Vip Short, a long time activist based in Oregon, reported in his response to the questionnaire circulated for this study: In September 1986, at a joint NDE, American Peace Test, and American Public Health Association event which drew world changin’ types from all over the world—I lost count at six Nobel Laureates—I experienced a full-blown spiritual vision during the early morning hours. I was blessed to gaze upon the face of the Creator God. Four hours later, participating in a liturgy . . . I had a perfect and personal understanding with every mention of “Jehovah.” This event was a spiritual pinnacle for my life. I credit NDE’s dogged insistence on setting the spiritual context, insisting on the inextricability of the prayerful and the political.23

Catherine Bucher (whose sister, Anne, was one of the cofounders of NDE) also writes of an experience of the sacred, but in a different key: I engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience [at the Nevada Test Site] in August of 1986. I spent six days in “jail” which was actually a condominium because there were over 200 of us arrested at once, I think. The experience was life altering. I learned so much about the power and strength of women from spending six days with my group. All of us were so radically different but we all drew strength from one another. It was a very healing experience. The whole “activity” was a spiritual one. God’s love, mercy and compassion were present in everyone right down to the women guards who stayed with us. Attending NDE events have clearly changed my life. For one thing, I have a record which I had to explain to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing before I could receive my credential. Even if I had been denied my credential, my action would have been worth it.

14

Pilgrimage through a Burning World . . . At the Easter vigil in 1986, I had a spiritual experience that greatly deepened my faith. Meditation in the desert is quite an awesome experience. In twelve years of Catholic school and nineteen years of going to church I never felt God’s presence so greatly as I did alone in the desert during a vigil there.24

Jean McElhaney took part in NDE’s solemn commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1995. She recalls the experience in this way: On August 6, there was a sunrise service, a Shoshone ritual. Then we went to the Test Site for a really beautiful interfaith service. Then I, along with many others, crossed the line. In the desert I felt very peaceful. Everything was really reduced to the basics: earth, air, fire, and water. The heat felt purifying. Totally big, blue sky, mountain, vast expanse. I thought a lot about the message that comes through much spiritual writing, that there is one boundless reality, and at the same time, we are grounded in our individual separate bodies. The desert was a good place to reflect on boundaries, because it did seem so limitless and simultaneously I was very aware of being one person, breathing my breath and feeling my own body on the ground. [I wrote in my journal at the time:] “Crossing the line is an act of liberation, of declaring this is a false line that is not true. The line of the government is a false line because it pretends we are not all affected by the test site: it pretends such divisions are even possible. (And yet, my heart beats in my own body, and I breathe the air.”)25

Joan Monastero traveled to the test site in 1988 during Holy Week and has returned every year since then. She explains that My first NDE activity in Nevada was very rich and diverse. . . . My path as a faith-based activist was set down for me at that first visit. . . . Each year I return [from my home in New York] and although things change, the witness is still there and alive, welcoming us to what I consider to be a very special community that nourishes us throughout the year. What I began to grasp in terms of the nonviolent participation was the concept that nonviolence is not just the ability to be so during an action, but the need for a deepening of non-violence in one’s life everyday and in all things. I’ve been arrested many times in Nevada. . . . The actions always seemed like an opportunity for reflection and the focus on being respectful toward the “opposition” was a refreshing experience. I was never comfortable with the angry activism of the secular movement that I have been involved with since the ’60s, so this was a new and fresh approach to this work which really helped me in many ways to grow.

Introduction

15

The Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday witnesses have been inspiring each year and ever-changing. Mass on the desert, crossing the line in prayer, stations of the cross, singing, circle reflections and sharing have all been part of the lasting experience of my visits. The strength of these experiences has led me to continue this work on this level and in this spirit back home, sharing it with others. My involvement with NDE and the community in Nevada has been a great blessing in my life and has certainly deepened my relationship with God. A beloved community can only come from God and be sustained by Him through us.26

Another NDE participant, Patricia Roberts, reflects tenderly on her time in the desert in March 1988 and the ineffable and inexplicable power of its continuing presence in her life: Our group prepared here in New Jersey for the event yet there is no doubt that crossing the line was rather scary. The spiritual high point— and I’ll never forget it—was when a long and intimidating line of guards came towards us, demanded that we kneel and handcuffed us. I’d never been to the desert and to kneel there in its vastness, among blooming desert places—as one by one we sang peace songs—is a moment in my life for which words are not adequate. A feeling that all will be well. A freedom. In December 1988—nine months after I’d been to the desert— my husband of 33 years died, quite unexpectedly. For some strange reason, as devastating as this was, I feel that what I’d been part of at the desert softened his death. I wrote about this to Father Vitale; he replied saying, “Go with the mystery.” I am tearful thinking about this, but it is powerful and comforting to contemplate.27

For many, it was the desert itself that offered this experience of “something else,” including the inexplicable mystery of healing in the midst of destruction. The desert rocked and violated by nearly a thousand nuclear detonations offered, nonetheless, a formidable presence and an ineffable recuperation for many who made their way there. In this way, and others, NDE’s activity evinces a form of contemporary spirituality as defined by contemporary theologians. For theologian Oliver Davies, spirituality is “a complex of theological ideas, sacramental experience, religious forms of life and interior piety that construct Christian experience at a particular time and place.”28 Theologian Kees Waaijman suggests that spirituality is “the ongoing transformation which occurs in involving relationality with the Unconditioned.”29 Sandra Schneiders, a theologian, scripture scholar, and specialist in the academic study of spirituality, understands spirituality in

16

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

its broadest sense as “the lived experience of the faith.”30 More technically, she defines it as “the experience of conscious involvement in the project of life-integration through self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives.”31 Each of these descriptions yields key dimensions of spirituality. Spirituality is a journey of transformation. It is self-integration through embodied, self-transcending love. It is marked by prayer, ritual, and action. It is life lived moment to moment within the horizon of one’s ultimate value. It is experiential. These aspects of the meaning of spirituality will help illuminate the Nevada Desert Experience’s journey to Nuclear America. But our understanding of the spirituality of nonviolent transformation of systems that threaten the earth and its inhabitants is even more clearly sharpened and deepened by drawing on an understanding of spirituality emerging from a context ever cognizant of social-structural devastation. For this I turn to the theological reflection of Jon Sobrino, S.J. Just as NDE calls for a world free from the terror of nuclear destruction, Sobrino labors for a world liberated from the economic, political, and military cruelty that crucifies millions of human beings. In an essay on the spirituality of his friend and coworker, Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980 in El Salvador for his relentless pursuit of justice and authentic peace, Sobrino confesses his ambivalence about the word “spirituality”: “Spirituality comes from Spirit, and the Spirit is something that is not visible and is often contrasted with what is material and historical. For this reason, to speak of spirituality can and often does carry us, one way or another, off to an invisible world, or even an unreal one.”32 Romero, on the contrary, did not live in an unreal world. He did not insulate himself from the reality of his society. He did not succumb to the temptation of unreality and did not “confuse the world of spirituality with the world of the invisible.” Rather he immersed himself in the Spirit of God amid “the special place from which he prayed and meditated”: the reality of El Salvador and its poor women and men.33 This book explores the ways in which these formulations of spirituality and the spiritual life illuminate NDE’s witness and practice at the gates of a nuclear weapons facility. We reflect on the ways its antinuclear pilgrims are seeking to address the reality of a world faced with the terror of nuclear devastation, and doing so at a special place that discloses that reality: the Nevada Test Site. We will explore to what extent faith-based activists experience an orientation toward life and its source that involves the self-transcendence implied in a willingness to gives oneself to the mysterious and sometimes dangerous work of justice and

Introduction

17

peace. At the same time, we will explore how this is not a process by which one gives oneself over to an abstract ideology or strictly political goal or process but affirms, as Romero did, the ultimate value and source and goal of one’s life and opens oneself to what Sobrino calls the power and energy of the Spirit of God.

Nonviolent Action as Emerging Form of Spirituality throughout the World Nevada Desert Experience is not alone in undertaking and experimenting with the spirituality of nonviolent action for peace and justice. We cannot understand its truth without seeing how it is rooted in a global effort for personal and social-structural transformation, or what I name as an emerging form of spirituality throughout the world. Over the past one hundred years innumerable nonviolent social movements dedicated to challenging injustice and structural violence have been inspired, promoted, and mobilized by persons and groups self-consciously and self-reflexively standing in a range of religious traditions. While doctrines and stories abound in virtually every tradition that can be cited as “proof texts” asserting a commitment to peace and justice—often found in anthologies that survey the ideological and spiritual bases for such convictions in many traditions34—a growing number of practitioners have chosen to enact, rather than simply recite, these ideals publicly and visibly in response to the crises of violence and injustice of this age. Rooted in many different spiritual lineages, people have drawn on the rituals, symbols, visions, and teachings of their traditions to fashion religiously based forms of public, nonviolent action to dramatically encourage social, political, or cultural transformation. Mohandas Gandhi’s initiatives in this regard set an important example for all who have come after him. For Gandhi, religion and politics were inextricably interwoven. As Thomas Merton observed, to separate religion and politics was, for Gandhi, madness because he understood politics to be rooted in service and worship in the ancient sense of leitourgia (liturgy, public work.)35 Or, as Merton writes elsewhere, “Gandhi’s public life was one of maximum exposure. . . . For him, the public realm was not secular, it was sacred. To be involved in it was . . . to be involved in the sacred dharma of the Indian people.”36 Gandhi’s political acts were conceived of as disciplined acts of prayer that often instilled in the orthopraxis of the Hindu tradition new meaning and power, as scholar Joan Bondurant explains. She cites three examples: the appropriation of the hartal (a traditional Hindu day of rest used to

18

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

demonstrate extreme dissatisfaction with the Prince or King that served, under Gandhi’s guidance as a prayerful nationwide boycott or what elsewhere might be called a one day “general strike”), the fast, and dharna, the practice of sitting at the door of an opponent resolved to die unless the conflict is addressed justly. In each case, Gandhi sought to purify these traditional cultural and religious forms of an implicit coerciveness and invest them with key elements of satyagraha, including the wellbeing of the opponent and what he called “mutual triumph.”37 Gandhi has not been alone in fusing the religious and political in selfconsciously public witness. Practitioners of Judaism have organized a Hanukkah service on city streets calling for low income housing;38 a peace pilgrimage drawing on Jewish symbols and prayers;39 and other dramatizations of Jewish nonviolent resistance in public, contested space.40 Muslims in the twentieth century have constructed nonviolent actions and campaigns that have retrieved and deployed traditional Islamic symbolism, including Khan Abdul Ghaffer Khan, the Pathan follower of Gandhi, who founded in the Northwest Frontier Province of British India the Khudai Khidmatgars (“Servants of God”), the world’s first nonviolent “army.”41 Faith-based nonviolent action was used in the Iranian revolution and the Palestinian Intifada.42 At the same time, indigenous people around the world have framed their struggle for survival and self-determination within the horizon of their spirituality and its symbols and rituals, including the Western Shoshone nation, which has, for example, organized “Healing Global Wounds” (multiday gatherings featuring nonviolent action, sweat ceremonies, prayer, and education) at the Nevada Test Site since 1992. Perhaps the most dramatic example of the emergence of religiously based action in our times has been that of “engaged Buddhism.” Christopher S. Queen has recently argued cogently that this phenomenon is not simply a continuation of traditional Buddhist practice but a new chapter in the way of being Buddhist. As he writes, “For Buddhists and practitioners of the other world faiths, it is no longer possible to measure the quality of human life primarily in terms of an individual’s observance of traditional rites, such as meditation, prayer, or temple ritual; or belief in dogmas such as ‘the law of karma,’ ‘buddha nature,’ ‘the will of God,’ or ‘the Tao.’ . . . Socially Engaged Buddhism—the application of the Dharma, or Buddhist teachings, to the resolution of social problems—has emerged in the context of a global conversation on human rights, distributive justice, and social progress.”43 Queen contends that, given the challenges of modernity and postmodernity and the novel ways an increasing number of Buddhists have addressed those hazards, “engaged Buddhism” represents an unprecedented formulation of the tradition. In traditional language, Queen (following the Indian

Introduction

19

Civil Rights leader, B. R. Ambedkar) nominates “engaged Buddhism” as a fourth yana or vehicle of Dharma practice.44 Drawing on the thought and practice of such engaged Buddhists as Thich Nhat Hanh, Robert Aiken Roshi, Roshi Bernard Glassman, and Sandra Jishu Holmes, this evolutionary development has catalyzed a vast number of creative and public nonviolent actions that have drawn on, appropriated, and reinvented traditional Buddhist forms in South Asia and much of the rest of the world. While at times distinguished as either mindfulness-based or service-based, engaged Buddhism has been manifest in the praxis of Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnam), the Dalai Lama (Tibet and India), and Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma), peace pilgrimages across the United States, zazen sitting retreats on the streets of Harlem and the grounds of Auschwitz, environmental activism, blocking of trains carrying “plutonium pits” for nuclear warheads at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado in 1979, and protesting the U.S. Ohio, the first U.S. Trident submarine, on the waters of Puget Sound in 1982.45 Throughout the twentieth century, a similar religious activism has developed within the Christian tradition. It is true that, in many ways, there has always been “Engaged Christianity.” Christianity has perennially conceived of itself as a form of “communicative action,” beginning with the notion springing from the primitive community that “you will know they are Christians by their love,” that is, by their acts on behalf of the well-being of others and the promotion of what Jesus called the “Reign of God,” and what has been named the “Beloved Community” in our own time. The tradition is marked by individuals and communities acting on behalf of justice and peace.46 Nevertheless, in the past century, Christian action for peace has been reinvigorated by the same challenges facing the world that Queen enumerates, especially with the acute consciousness that Christianity has often legitimated dominant cultures that, today, are creating and exacerbating these challenges. Christian social witness has been influenced by the emergence of creative and powerful forms of Gandhian nonviolence, by the conscious participation of Christians in numerous secular social movements for peace and justice that have emerged during this period, and by a vast number of “experiments with truth” carried out publicly and nonviolently by specific Christian practitioners over the decades of the twentieth century, including, among many others, Dorothy Day, A. J. Muste, André Trocmé, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Daniel Berrigan, Shelley Douglass, James W. Douglass, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, and Desmond Tutu. Just as “engaged Buddhism” represents the fourth turn of the Dharma wheel, the activity of the Nevada Desert Experience signals this

20

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

renewed, but also uniquely emerging, form of Christian spirituality. More specifically, NDE’s activity represents an embodiment of the “turning wheel” within both worldwide and American Roman Catholicism. In fifty years the Catholic Church has taken dramatic, if still unfinished, steps in the direction of becoming a “peace church.” In 1945 only two Catholic professors of theology are known to have raised moral or theological objections at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima. Yet by 1983 the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops had published The Challenge of Peace, a pastoral letter, which, though it continued to justify the doctrine of nuclear deterrence (but only, as it held, “conditionally and in the interim while efforts are made toward full disarmament”), nevertheless called emphatically for an end to nuclear weapons. This letter from the Catholic hierarchy represented one signal example of an ongoing effort to thoroughly redefine the Church’s theology on war and peace. This effort was rooted in the tireless call for nonviolence by Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, in the mounting theological and ecclesial criticism of an often far too facile and permissive (and thus misunderstood) reading of the Church’s “just war” theory, in the revulsion against the experience of total war in the First and Second World Wars, and in the clear call for global peace and justice in Pope John XXIII’s groundbreaking 1963 encyclical, Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth). Grounded in these developments, the American bishops wrote that “we need a ‘moral about face.’ The whole world must summon the moral courage and technical means to say ‘no’ to weapons of mass destruction; ‘no’ to an arms race which robs the poor and the vulnerable; and ‘no’ to the moral danger of a nuclear age which places before humankind indefensible choices of constant terror or surrender. Peacemaking is not an optional commitment. It is a requirement of our faith.”47 The theological warrants for peace as constitutive of the Christian’s identity have slowly been spelled out within the Roman Catholic Church. But how one puts this “requirement of faith” into practice was continuing to evolve. A year before the bishops finalized their pastoral letter, a band of Catholic priests, sisters, and laypersons—part of a growing movement that had helped underscore the urgency of peacemaking in a nuclear world for the bishops and the larger society—journeyed to the Nevada desert to experiment with faith-based peacemaking at the gates of a vast secret terrain, where other kinds of experiments—in the technology of the nuclear threat—were daily and routinely conducted.

CHAPTER

1

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices of a Nuclearized World

The Nevada Test Site is a devastatingly holy place. —Anne Symens-Bucher1

“So this is how it feels,” Mary Ann Cejka thought, as she stared down at the handcuffs loosely fastened about her wrists. Writing about the act of nonviolent civil disobedience she took part in at the Nevada Test Site the first week of January, 1986, Ms. Cejka mused how, strangely, “I felt perfectly calm as I waited my turn to be frisked by a female official from the U.S. Department of Energy.”2 A campus minister at California State University Long Beach at the time, Cejka had been drawn by a compelling sense of urgency to take nonviolent action at the United States’ nuclear proving ground sixty-five miles north of Las Vegas. Concerned about what she perceived as the increasing threat of nuclear war, Cejka decided to take part in the Nevada Desert Experience “New Year’s” ritual of prayer and nonviolent witness. Driving east from Southern California across the Mojave Desert and then skirting Death Valley, Cejka had arrived at St. James Catholic Church in Las Vegas the day before the activities at the test site began. She joined nearly two hundred people in preparation for their journey to a site where the United States and Britain had detonated hundreds of nuclear bombs. They participated in a nonviolence training that set the tone for the peace witness and prepared some of them to risk arrest. They also listened to a series of speakers, including Shelley Douglass of the Ground Zero Community, Jim Driscoll of the National Nuclear Freeze Campaign, and Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton from Detroit.3 For Cejka, Bishop Gumbleton captured the heart of the matter: He spoke of a ten-year-old American girl who had been gunned down by terrorists in an airport in Geneva last week—a beautiful, bright, happy child. Yet, he said, if the weapons such as those we are testing

21

22

Pilgrimage through a Burning World at the Nevada Test Site were ever to be used, millions of innocent children like her all over the world would be killed indiscriminately. Thus, any use of nuclear weapons would be an act of terrorism on a massive scale, and our testing of them is preparation for such an act—an act which no cause could justify. The bishop concluded that when Christians find their government engaged in this kind of evil, they are obliged to resist it. He expressed his concern that most people do not understand the urgency of the situation, or at least haven’t grasped it in their heart—that unless more and more people are willing to risk themselves and put something of their own life’s agendas aside to reverse the arms race, it will be too late to stop the holocaust which is being perfected at the Nevada Test Site. Yes, it is terribly urgent. That is why we went to Nevada. That is why we had to do this action.

The next morning she traveled north from Las Vegas to the southern gate of the test site near the town of Mercury. The participants fanned out along the edge of the road to greet many of the 7,500 workers who were rolling in to work on buses from Las Vegas. “We spread out . . . and greeted them with signs, smiles, and waves,” she wrote. “Many returned our friendly greetings.” Bishop Gumbleton then led the group in the celebration of the Eucharist. “A few hundred yards away, the police were assembling with their security vehicles and flashing lights. . . . They watched from a distance as we shared together the bread and cup, the body and blood of Christ.” Then she felt the spiritual enormity of what she was doing: I was suddenly tempted to self-pity . . . I felt very alone, in a strange place and in a risky situation with people I did not know very well. But God is merciful and a breeze, cold and cleansing, seemed to sweep through my mind like the breeze that was sweeping across the desert floor at that moment. It startled me like a slap in the face. I realized that my self-pity was a last-ditch effort of the Evil One, the Liar, the Hater of Life, to discourage me from doing action in defense of life. . . . A greater dependence upon God alone! I had been praying for this grace for several days and now it was being granted to me only a few minutes before my arrest.

After the open-air mass, those planning to risk arrest were prayerfully encircled by the others who would continue the legal vigil. They walked to the white line that Nevada Test Site (NTS) officials had painted across the road for just such occasions. After exchanging greetings with the sheriff in charge, Cejka joined thirty-four others by crossing the line and being arrested. Later she would write:

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

23

Me? Arrested? I had always gotten along well with the authority figures in my life. I was always the well-behaved child in my family, the apple of my teachers’ eyes. . . . So something in me was convinced that when I, Mary Ann Cejka, stepped over the white property line at the Nevada Test Site where nuclear weapons are routinely tested, surely the mountains would fall, the desert ground would shake, the sky would darken, and the world would end. But none of these things happened. The mountains watched my act of trespass as calmly as for the past forty years they have watched the scarring of the desert floor—where weapons capable of wiping out life on this planet are tested. They watched it as calmly as, for the past ten years, they have watched the brown-robed priests and brothers, followers of Saint Francis, do just such acts as mine in protest of the testing. . . . More such actions will take place at the Nevada Test Site during Lent. I want to encourage many of you to attend . . . I promise that you will not be unmoved by your experience in the desert; its awesome, silent beauty, the prayerful and loving spirit of those present, and the opportunity to say “Yes!” to life. You will come away with a sense of having spent yourself a little for that which is essential.

After being charged and booked, Ms. Cejka was released. A few months later she was convicted of trespass and served four days of a sixday sentence in a county jail in Tonopah, a small town two hundred miles north of Las Vegas in a remote part of the windswept Nevada desert. Mary Ann Cejka is one of thousands of women and men who, over the last two decades, has journeyed to the Nevada desert to pray and to act for an end to nuclear testing. She followed in the footsteps of Franciscan friars, sisters, and Catholic laity who, beginning in 1982, organized increasingly frequent and faith-based nonviolent action at the Nevada Test Site to urge an end to nuclear testing and the abolition of all nuclear weapons. In doing so, they traveled to a part of the United States that, in part because of its obscurity, had, since the early 1950s, become a significant and central terrain of nuclear America. Early Motivations: Responding to the Nuclear Arms Race The Franciscan Friars of California, the Sisters of St. Francis of Redwood City, California, and the Las Vegas Franciscan Center made the decision to mark the 800th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis in 1982 with a forty-day vigil at the gates of the Nevada Test Site during the Christian season of Lent. This decision coincided with a growing worldwide concern that the nuclear arms race was spiraling out of control.

24

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

The Reagan administration, which took power in 1981, rapidly stoked the bellicose nuclear rhetoric of what one historian calls “the second cold war.”4 Ratifying the Carter government’s 1979 decision to station a fleet of Tomahawk cruise missiles and Pershing II ballistic missiles in Europe beginning in 1983 as a means of countering the Soviet Union’s deployment of the SS-20 (a solid fuel, two-stage theater-based ballistic missile), the White House announced a dramatic buildup in nuclear arms production and deployment, including its intention to build the MX missile (dubbed by Reagan “The Peacekeeper”), to stockpile the neutron bomb, and to build thirty Trident submarines, with each ship carrying atomic ordnance capable of destroying hundreds of cities. At the same time, the U.S. refused to rule out a “first use” of nuclear weapons, and Secretary of State Alexander Haig unnerved citizens and policy-makers the world over by speaking on the record about detonating “demonstration bombs” in the event of imminent conflict with the Soviet Union. Framed as a remedy to the “Vietnam Syndrome”—characterized as a malaise of defeatism and weakness in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Indochina in the mid-1970s—Reagan’s nuclear and conventional buildup would cost over $1.5 trillion and dramatically accelerate the spiraling nuclear arms race. The Reagan administration’s initiatives not only sparked a quantitative increase in nuclear weapons—by mid-decade the nuclear powers would possess between them over 50,000 strategic and tactical nuclear arms—but also a qualitative shift. Whereas the presiding nuclear theory of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) promised a “balance of terror” that served to deter nuclear war, the efforts of U.S. nuclear policy-makers and weaponeers were aimed at deploying strategies of nuclear flexible use and nuclear first strike. The U.S. government touted the possibility of “limited use” of theater nuclear weapons in battlefield conditions, thus seeking to legitimize the possibility of crossing a firebreak that, since 1945, had been “unthinkable.” Hence its deployment of thousands of tactical nuclear weapons, some of which fit in the backpacks of U.S. infantry scattered across the frontiers of Europe and elsewhere. At the same time, capitalizing on a series of technological breakthroughs since the late 1950s, the U.S. began deploying weapons capable of “striking first,” including Pershing II missiles, the Trident II warhead and missile, and the proposed MX missile. First-strike weaponry is supported by missile guidance systems and command-and-control capabilities that permit the U.S. to deliver nuclear weapons with destabilizing accuracy. Coupled with advanced submarine technology (which makes it virtually impossible for the adversary to take out one of the three prongs of the U.S. strategic

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

25

forces), this precision had begun to take the United States well beyond the traditional rudiments of the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).

The Bomb: Seen and Unseen Social Reality This Reagan-era nuclear buildup was rooted in forty years of the design, testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons. In addition to the vast impact the presence of nuclear arms has had on the earth’s environment and all of its inhabitants, they have played over these four decades an incalculably determinative role in the political, military, economic, and ecological life of human beings and human societies. Intimately linked to these material, geopolitical consequences has been the dramatic impact of “The Bomb” on the social psychologies, worldviews, inner lives, self-understandings, and cultural and symbolic forms of these societies and their members. The ground zero of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while inflicting unimaginably catastrophic suffering on the citizens of these two Japanese cities, also instantly became ground zero in world-historical consciousness, whose blast flashed infinitely across space and time, whose fallout fell into every part of life, and whose fire burned—and continues to burn—relentlessly into psyches and cultures alike. As Robert Manoff puts it when reflecting on the impact of atomic arms on U.S. society, “Nuclear weapons have not and never will be an inert presence in American life. Merely by existing they have already set off chain reactions throughout American society and with every one of its institutions.”5 And beyond institutions. The Bomb’s corrosive impact has been incalculably felt, cultural historian Paul Boyer holds, “on the interior realm of consciousness and memory.”6 It is as if, Boyer continues, “the Bomb has become one of those categories of Being, like Space and Time, that, according to Kant, are built into the very structures of our minds, giving shape and meaning to all our perceptions.”7 This preeminence of the Bomb’s overt and covert presence in the consciousness and behavior of persons and societies in the postwar world was, however, not inevitable. It was not necessary that nuclear arms would culturally come to approximate a Kantian category of Being. Such primacy did not naturally follow from the development and use of atomic weapons. There are many paths that could have been followed in the wake of the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including a profound horror energizing a comprehensive and genuine worldwide political commitment to disarmament. The monumental

26

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

presence, proliferation, and legitimation of atomic weaponry in the post-World War Two environment was not a given. It was, instead, a construction flowing from an evolving ideology of power buttressed, embodied, and carried out by means of social practices in the emerging nuclear states. Within days of the first atomic bombing, this process of social transformation—aligning whole populations to the sudden advent of the nuclear age—began through the construction and propagation of what Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell in their book, Hiroshima in America, name the “Hiroshima narrative.”8 In their study, they trace the historical steps in which an “Official Story” about the decision to use the atomic bombs against civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fashioned and propagated. Lifton and Mitchell document how this narrative “expanded and evolved by the hour”9 as policy-makers sought to justify the first use of atomic weapons even at the expense of accuracy. They wove a story that ignored the heterogeneity of events leading to the decision to use this weapon and fashioned, instead, a plot-line that sought to appear consistent, rational, and moral, even if it did so selectively.10 Lifton and Mitchell show that the “Official Story,” though inconsistent with the historical record, has functioned as a master narrative through which the creation of the nuclear national security state has been mobilized and legitimated. Spencer R. Weart, in his magisterial Nuclear Fear: A History of Images, and Paul Boyer, in By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, profile the construction of this ideology by tracing the evolution of a range of cultural and political interpretations of the nuclear weapons regime in the United States, including those of the media and of the government and its newly created national security apparatus.11 The managers of the nuclear national security state understood that ideological education alone would not be enough to muster the Cold War “army.” Ideas and even relentless propaganda in support of the new “Atomic Age” by themselves would be inadequate. This was not simply because the advent of The Bomb could provoke incalculable terror and anxiety that words alone would be incapable of quelling. It was also because the creation of nuclear weapons had, in one stroke, abolished the preatomic world forever. The challenge for nuclear state managers was to construct a new one. This society-wide training was not therefore simply conceptual or imaginal; it was embodied. Ideological statements provided the theology of the nuclear order and modern public relations techniques were used to evangelize it, but this doctrine was in turn inculcated and realized through public practices. It was not enough to declare the Cold War—

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

27

the practices that made such a war real had to follow. In fact, those practices became an important part of this unique form of war because they demonstrated resolve to the adversary and to one another, and because they were a significant element of incorporation of—and in—the nuclear state. These practices included, among others, society-wide participation in civil defense preparations, weekly drills in thousands of local communities across the U.S. signaled by the shrill blast of air raid sirens, the national construction of public and private fallout shelters, compulsory government loyalty oaths, television broadcasts of government films on nuclear war, scrambling under desks at school, learning to “duck and cover,” encouraging the public to watch and approve of nuclear tests, and subjecting the population to invisible radioactive fallout from above and below-ground nuclear detonations and from leakage from nuclear waste storage areas.

Asceticism: Old, New, and Nuclear The emergence and maintenance of the nuclear age ultimately hinged on the socialization of the citizenry rooted in a regimen of society-wide exercises. Rather than a set of discrete activities, these nationally sanctioned and organized practices reinforced one another in orchestrating the public consent that was necessary to the growing nuclear weapons system and its institutionalized regime of terror in the United States and around the world. What are we to make of this phenomenon, and what tools can we use to clarify its meanings? This “social construction of nuclear reality” has had deep political, economic, cultural, and sociological dimensions. It has also unleashed a thorough reconstruction of the social self. In seeking to understand the dynamics and meaning of this interlocking societal and self-transformation—but in a way that at the same time also respects its political, economic, cultural, and sociological dimensions—I turn to recent scholarship at the intersection of religious studies, cultural studies, and the social and personality sciences: the study of asceticism. Current asceticism scholarship offers us suggestive ways of interpreting the nuclear weapons system in a way that sheds new light on its pervasive presence and the way it inculcates, and ultimately relies on, consent and allegiance rooted in processes of socialization. The proliferating academic study of asceticism has yielded numerous, and sometimes contradictory, definitions of the subject.12 As Elizabeth Clark reports with light-hearted exasperation, the greater the scholarly attention asceticism has received, the greater the confusion and lack

28

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

of consensus there is about what it means.13 Clark reports how scholars define asceticism variously in terms of deprivation, liberation, plenitude, deconstruction of the transhistorical self, a technology of the body, a contextualized signifier of the larger society, an arena for the localization of social conflict, a structure of compensation, a source of power, or a gendered critique of hegemony.14 The original meanings of askesis, from which asceticism derives, were, according to scholar John Pinsent: 1) the practice of an art, craft or profession; and 2) a process by which this is acquired and improved. Askesis did not originally have a religious connotation.15 Nevertheless, the word askesis eventually came to mean “practice” in the sense of the rigorous training of the athlete and gladiator, which was appropriated by early Christian ascetics who regarded themselves as “athletes for Christ.” In taking these sometimes conflicting meanings into account, Dianne M. Bazell offers a general definition of asceticism as “askesis, training; a discipline or set of disciplines often (but not always) involving one’s body, and generally doing without things or pleasures otherwise permitted, or engaging in strenuousness not otherwise obligatory.”16 Theologian Margaret Miles, a specialist in asceticism studies, defines asceticism as a set of practices designed to achieve “a consciously chosen self” by decentering the social self created by socialization. In Christianity, ascetical practices—celibacy, fasting, withdrawal to the desert—was a means of disengaging from the social arrangements and expectations of Roman society that were in sharp contrast with the values articulated and embodied by Jesus. As Miles puts it, “The real point of ascetic practices . . . was not to ‘give up’ objects but to reconstruct the self.”17 Asceticism functions to deconstruct the conditioning inscribed on and in the body by the social world in order to produce what Miles calls a new organizing center or “self.”18 Asceticism, however, has often posed a dilemma for Christians. As Miles points out, embodied ascetical practices could often subvert the tradition’s position—enunciated in Christianity’s doctrines of creation, incarnation, and the resurrection of the body—that the body is good. Christians have been perennially tempted to collapse the tension between constructive asceticism and the goodness of the body into a reductive dualism that distinguishes between spirit (that is good) and matter (that is evil).19 When Christians have constructed practices and attitudes that have succumbed to this dualism, they have often functionally embodied and propagated hatred of the body and the earth, and have often lost sight of the original impulse of Christian asceticism: the transformation of the self capable of living according to a “way” more in keeping with Jesus’ vision of the Reign of God.

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

29

Miles calls this form of dualistic ascetical practice the “old asceticism” in contrast to a “new asceticism” that recovers the original impulse of a “consciously chosen self” but does so in light of the particular challenges of modernity and postmodernity, including urbanization, sexism, racism, and ecological devastation. A “new asceticism” takes on novel forms for the decentering and recentering of the self given the particular social, cultural, political, and economic contexts of the current age. While, for example, the “old asceticism” involved traditional ascetical practices that reinforce traditional female social roles, a contemporary feminist asceticism would, according to Miles, undertake in the midst of patriarchal social structures the difficult but crucial work of dismantling submission and creating practices of assertiveness and self-definition.20 Conversely, Miles proposes that a contemporary male asceticism may involve the spiritual practice of letting go of the “privileged voice” and transforming patriarchy’s “male role belief system,” which assumes that men are the final authorities in social and interpersonal settings and relationships.21 The “old asceticism,” according to Miles, lives on unseen under the guise of contemporary urban life and the self-indulgence of alcoholism, promiscuity, drug dependence, and workaholicism. These are, for Miles, contemporary examples of a masochistic “old asceticism”—abusive practices that form and reinforce a self that ultimately inculcates a dualistic hatred of the body.22 A “new asceticism” in such cases is a deconditioning process by which we are weaned from addiction.23 Miles offers us a starting point for broadly framing our understanding of lives lived in a nuclear world and the steps people have taken since 1945 to resist nuclearism, including those who have journeyed to the Nevada Test Site. Nuclearism depends on a double Faustian bargain with its subjects: the willingness to face catastrophic destruction of the earth and its inhabitants at some undetermined moment in the future and the willingness to live with this terror from moment to moment unendingly. In return for this socially enforced dualism and implicit hatred of the body (and all bodies), it has promised security for the very bodies it puts at deliberate risk. This has meant attuning the psyche to this contradictory state (security dependent on radical insecurity) and a willingness to offer one’s body. Both of these payments—body and soul—have been symbolized in a set of social practices that have signified social and personal consent, from the commission of rituals and role plays (for example, civil defense drills) to the omission of silence.

30

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

To see more clearly how this notion of asceticism can be understood in social and cultural terms—as taken up by whole societies, and not only by individuals—let us turn next to the thought of Richard Valantasis, another contemporary theorist of asceticism.

The Social Function of Asceticism Like Miles, theologian Richard Valantasis also understands asceticism broadly and creatively. For Valantasis, asceticism is a cultural system marked by specific and particular religious or cultural practices.24 His methodology for understanding this cultural system reconciles two trends in asceticism studies (on the one hand, that of sociology, social history, and hermeneutics; on the other, that of more traditional historical studies) reflected in the work of Max Weber, Michel Foucault, and Geoffrey Harpham. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber explains the emergence of capitalism as a function of an “innerworldly asceticism” defined as “methodically controlled and supervised” conduct.25 For Protestants, innerworldly behavior linked three elements of asceticism: the path of salvation; specific human conduct; and methods for training in that conduct.26 Weber’s approach proved significant because it illuminated how asceticism can have wide economic and political implications. For Foucault, asceticism is “self-forming activity,” that is, the changes one makes to become an ethical subject.27 Valantasis writes that “Foucault’s system . . . proposes a system of formation that involves a goal of life encapsulated in a system of behavior, which requires formation through processes of subjectivation and ascetic practices.”28 Finally, Geoffrey Harpham, in The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism,29 views asceticism as “the fundamental operating ground on which the particular culture is overlaid.”30 Cultural integration and functioning require regulation, which in turn demands an ascetical resistance to appetites and desires. Culture, according to Harpham, obligates its members to practice an inherent level of selfdenial.31 Valantasis builds on the work of these three thinkers to fashion his own theory of asceticism. “At the center of ascetical activity,” writes Valantasis, “is a self who, through behavioral changes, seeks to become a different person, a new self; to become a different person in new relationships; and to become a different person in a new society that forms a new culture.”32 Asceticism functions to form selves, but also functions to form culture.33 Valantasis defines asceticism as “performances designed to inau-

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

31

gurate an alternative culture, to enable different social relations, and to create a new identity.”34 Following performance studies theorist Richard Schechner, Valantasis compares the ascetic to an actor who undergoes a rigorous and systematic repatterning of behavior so that it can be reconstructed into a new system, known as a “performance.” Asceticism operates in a similar fashion. By the systematic training and retraining, the ascetic becomes a different person molded to live in a different culture, trained to relate to people in a different manner, psychologically motivated to live a different life. Through these performances, the ascetic, like the performer who becomes able to “experience as actual” anything imaginable, can experience the goal of ascetic life as the transformed life.35

For Valantasis, these performances can, in turn, help shift the center of the culture.36 Valantasis enumerates three social functions asceticism serves. First, it teaches the ascetic to live in a new world.37 Second, it provides a way for the new culture’s forms of narrative and theoretical concepts to be transposed into patterns of behavior. Finally, ascetical performance provides the ascetic with a form of retraining that allows her or him to perceive the world differently. Nuclear Physiques The perspectives of Margaret Miles and the theory proposed by Richard Valentasis—asceticism as a process by which a cultural system that creates and maintains itself by initiating and socializing its members through sets of embodied, social practices—help illuminate the nuclear weapons regime as a contemporary form of “old asceticism.” Since the dawning of the nuclear age, the U.S. nuclear weapons system ultimately depended on implicit and explicit political consent.38 Valentasis’s notion of asceticism—linking embodied self-formation with culture-formation—clarifies how this consent was manufactured not primarily through “thought control” or “brainwashing” but by organizing a series of societywide practices that inculcated a nuclear ideology and sought to recruit and conscript the nation’s population in the Cold War. Ritual theorist Catherine Bell sharpens Valantasis’s insights by highlighting the role of the body in this process. Feminist scholarship and recent gender studies, Bell argues, suggest “both the primacy of the body over the abstraction ‘society’ and the irreducibility of the social body.”39 In this vein Bell asserts that

32

Pilgrimage through a Burning World the act of kneeling does not so much communicate a message about subordination as it generates a body identified with subordination . . . what we see in ritualization is not the mere display of subjective states or corporate values. Rather, we see an act of production—the production of a ritualized agent able to wield physically a scheme of subordination or insubordination.40

For Bell, ritualization creates an environment “through a series of physical movements . . . thereby producing an arena which, by its molding of the actors, both validates and extends the schemes they are internalizing.”41 Or as she puts it more piquantly, “Nothing less than a whole cosmology is instilled with the words, ‘Stand up straight!’”42 The crucial step for the creation of a nuclear society was the effort to link “nuclear physics” with “nuclear physiques.” It was important for the citizenry to inscribe the “Official Story”—a narrative legitimating unceasing Cold War with the probability of stunningly Hot and Final War at any moment—into their bodies. In that way, the creation of a “nuclear body politic” would be possible, as Mary Douglas, in a different context, suggests when she writes that the physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society . . . the stages it should go through, the pains it can stand, its span of life, all the cultural categories in which it is perceived, must correlate closely with the categories in which society is seen in so far as these also draw upon the same culturally possessed idea of the body.43

The emergence of the Atomic Age depended on the emergence of “nuclear bodies” that reflected, and reinforced, this new view of society. How, though, have these “nuclear bodies” been created? In his book Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and Atomic Age,44 Alan Nadel delineates the “culture of containment” that flourished in the American postwar years. This national security state culture set up “a mythic nuclear family as the universal container of democratic values,” where personal behavior became part of a global strategy.45 “Behind containment culture and in front of it lay nuclear power, with all its heft and threat,” Nadel writes.46 As part of this newly emerging culture, the U.S. government conducted a series of public practices as part of its Cold War ascesis, including the “duck and cover” exercise that was promoted on television to prepare people for a nuclear attack that could happen at any moment.47 Survival Under Atomic Attack, an official U.S. government publication, counseled citizens on things they could do in the event of a nuclear

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

33

bombing, including the “duck and cover” maneuver, which largely amounted to jumping “in any handy ditch or gutter.”48 If caught without warning in the open, people were advised to “fall flat and face down, ideally picking a spot protected from shattering glass and flying projectiles. The best move was to drop alongside the foundation of a ‘good substantial building,’ taking care to eschew poorly built wooden structures that would probably collapse.”49 “Duck and cover” was an exercise practiced extensively in the schools in the 1950s. Children were instructed, upon seeing the flash created by a nuclear detonation, to scramble under their desks and to shield their eyes. Critics frequently doubted that this practice would improve one’s chances of surviving a nuclear attack and ridiculed it for increasing fear more than dispelling it. Nevertheless, if viewed as an ascetical practice aimed at “nuclear incorporation,” it likely was deemed a success. The ultimate goal of such exercise was to normalize nuclear war, not to exorcise fear. Fear was a central part of a smoothly efficient nuclear war machine; citizenry fear would deepen citizen commitment to financing and consenting to the nuclear regime. Second, no matter the ostensible impact—including the range of emotions such an exercise may or may not have provoked—it was a practice in which the body was mobilized and trained. Each movement of the limbs, the torso, the knees was an act of filiation and affiliation, no matter one’s intellectual or emotional response. This was only one of many nuclear social practices of the Cold War. Others included government employees taking loyalty oaths during the McCarthy era in an atmosphere of blacklists and the ritual of “naming names”; building and stocking personal fallout shelters; requiring tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel to participate in exercises at the site of nuclear tests in the South Pacific and at the Nevada Test Site; encouraging residents of southern Nevada to watch above-ground detonations at NTS; conducting medical experiments on patients unaware that they were injected with plutonium and uranium;50 subjecting millions of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals to the streams of radioactive fallout from the nuclear bombardment of above-ground tests and, after 1962 (with the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty), from accidental ventings of fallout from below-ground explosions. Grasping these practices as forms of asceticism bolsters the claim by some that the nuclear weapons regime is the civil religion par excellence. The most well-known proponent of this view is psychologist and cultural critic Robert Jay Lifton, who designates this contemporary atomic belief system “nuclearism.” Lifton, with Richard Falk, expressed nuclearism as a secular religion promising the mastery of death and evil,

34

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

but also unlimited creation. Like other religions, it involves a “conversion experience,” through which the follower undergoes “an immersion in death anxiety followed by rebirth into the new world view,” often marked by an overwhelming sense of awe.51 It is, as theologian Michael Morrissey puts it, “the psychological, political, and military dependence on, and faith in, nuclear arsenals as a solution to the problem of national security.”52 Nuclearism is a comprehensive political and psychological worldview instigated by the presence of nuclear weapons. Nuclearism dramatically constitutes a contemporary version of Miles’ “old asceticism”: a dualistic, self-hating sacrifice of “the body” in which the practitioner presumptively consents to “her or his own judgment and punishment.” This is less a matter of controlling this punishment, as Miles might suggest, and more about surrendering one’s self—flesh, soul, spirit—and one’s entire world to an overarching system that promises security but at the price of the greatest institutionalized insecurity the world has ever known. The social practices of nuclearism become gestures of allegiance and ultimate loyalty.

Civil Defense and Nuclear Asceticism The practice of gestural allegiance and ultimate loyalty to nuclearism found its way into civilian society in the civil defense drills of the 1950s and early 1960s. These societywide role plays simulated what members of the armed services experienced directly, though these civil society “dress rehearsals” for nuclear war envisioned a nuclear attack, not in the desert expanse of the American Southwest but in the neighborhoods of U.S. cities. By participating in this most publicly visible “sacrament” of nuclear civil religion, U.S. citizens were socialized to expect the frontlines of the next war to be in the streets of their hometown. It was this government-sponsored regimented practice that, in turn, catalyzed the first systematically organized rituals of nonviolent resistance, acts that, as we shall see, directly laid the groundwork for nonviolent action at the Nevada Test Site three decades later. The U.S. civil defense program featured the weekly sounding of shrill and vaguely ominous sirens that wailed across localities (often at noon), a procedure that aurally reinforced the nuclear threat and presence. More dramatic still was the series of national compulsory air raid shelter drills in which, beginning in 1955, citizens were required to participate in large-scale role-plays of nuclear war. As Guy Oakes shows in The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture, public support for the civil defense regime

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

35

was based on the assumption that it could protect Americans in the event of a nuclear war.53 Yet national security officials knew that it would be impossible to offer such security. The real purpose was not protection but to inculcate in U.S. citizens the resolve needed to wage the Cold War. As Oakes states, In the early years of the Cold War, American national security planners arrived at an interpretation of the probable reaction of the American people to a nuclear attack on the United States. They argued that the public would respond to the prospect of nuclear war with expressions of panic or terror. Such a response, however, was inconsistent with the role that the planners had reserved for the American people in the contest with the Soviet Union.54

Oakes’s historical research shows that the U.S. civil defense program sought to win public consent for the nuclear arms race through a program of emotion management that would substitute “credible fear” for “irrational terror.” This program, though, was plagued by an internal contradiction. In addition to the misleading illusion that millions of people would survive a nuclear war as they huddled in shelters that very likely would become lethal ovens under these circumstances, postattack civil defense policies depended on infrastructure remaining intact and human survivors being psychologically and morally prepared to “maintain their everyday roles and fulfill their pre-attack responsibilities.”55 However, “These conditions were not secured by civil defense; rather, they formed the unsecured basis on which civil defense rested. . . . Paradoxically, if civil defense was necessary, then it was impossible. If it was possible, then it was not necessary.”56

“We Live in the Shelter of Each Other”: The New Asceticism of Nonviolent Resistance to Civil Defense In June 1955 the United States government conducted a national civil defense test in which U.S. citizens were required to cluster in community air raid shelters. Millions took part. In Washington, D.C., according to theologian Eileen Egan, President Eisenhower and thousands of members of the executive branch rushed to shelters three hundred miles outside of Washington as part of “Operation Alert.” In New York City the drill included the explosion of a hypothetical hydrogen bomb (equivalent to five million tons of TNT). In the mock attack, 2,991,280 New Yorkers were said be killed, and 1,776,899 injured.57

36

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Twenty-eight people were arrested for not going down into the fallout shelter in New York’s City Hall Park.58 In a statement issued at the time, the noncooperators explained that the kind of public and highly publicized drills held on June 15 are essentially a part of war preparation. They accustom people to the idea of war, to acceptance of war as probably inevitable and as somehow right if waged in “defense” and “retaliation.” . . . They create the illusion that the nation can devote its major resources to preparation for nuclear war and at the same time shield people from its catastrophic effects.59

This demonstration was led by Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy, other members of the New York Catholic Worker, and long-time organizer and Unitarian minister, A. J. Muste. During their arraignment, a contentious Magistrate Louis Kaplan called the protesters “murderers” who “by their conduct and behavior contributed to the utter destruction of these three million theoretically killed in our City.”60 The court’s logic (that those millions who complied with the government’s orders, though killed in make-believe, had been annihilated in reality by the handful of people who refused to play willing victims), though tortuous, is richly suggestive. In trying to make sense of the magistrate’s statement, one first wonders if he is accusing the defendants proleptically of a future crime: the deaths of New Yorkers perhaps as yet unborn who may otherwise have been saved during a future nuclear war if such protests had not done away with fallout shelters. But the text itself is firmly anchored in the immediate past and the present: the protesters’ unwillingness to join in this drill somehow sealed the fates of those who did. This vignette highlights the centrality of ritual and performance in constructing, upholding, and contesting cultural attitudes and behavior, as suggested by Bell. Here two public rituals are in conflict: one officially sanctioned, with the aim of instilling consent and participation in the “public work” of consolidating a nuclear state; the other embodying refusal and resistance, and an insistent allegiance to contrary values. Though taking divergent approaches, both implicitly share Michel Foucault’s intuition that the body is “the place where the most minute and local social practices are linked up with the large-scale organization of power.”61 Second, it underlines the importance of social dramas for telescoping the fundamental dilemmas of a culture and inviting the members of that culture to consciously make choices about resolving those dilemmas. This demonstration, for example, was repeated for several years

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

37

during the late 1950s and early 1960s, leading to a 1961 event at City Hall Park where nearly two thousand people refused to take shelter, an act that directly resulted in a definitive end to compulsory participation.62 The internal contradictions of the policy were now irretrievably exposed, and the political and social costs came to outweigh its presumed benefits. Third, although this explicit regimen of socialization was ultimately discredited, its initial tenacity tells us something about the system for which it serves as a metaphor. The nuclear weapons regime—and the national security state that it buttresses—is itself buttressed by a series of what Catherine Bell calls “techniques and discursive practices that comprise the micropolitics of everyday life.”63 To construct and maintain a regime of everlasting terror—where potentiality may become the actuality of an overbearing and undeniable power at any moment, perhaps before reaching the end of this page, or this sentence—requires of its citizenry a combination of passive and active compliance. This mandates our repressing an awareness of that terror but, at the same time, cultivating an acute consciousness of its power. This double vision inculcates itself through a set of highly nuanced socialization practices: embodied ritualizations of ratification and, in turn, incorporation in contemporary society’s nuclearized body. Finally, this drama suggests religious themes. This is not only because the organizers of the 1955 demonstration were explicit members and leaders of religious communities, but because their actions threw in sharp relief the fundamentally religious issues at stake in the civil religion of Nuclear America. At the heart of the matter, these protesters claimed to rely on a God who longed for life and goodness in abundance for all living things, and nuclear arms did not square with this foundational theological orientation. Standing amid an excruciatingly violent century, the question of the mystery of evil—and the mystery of good in the face of the mystery of evil—remained ultimately and properly a religious question. Since the beginning of the Nuclear Age, many religious antinuclear activists have understood the fragmentation and radical insecurity implicit in the nuclear threat (to social, environmental, and bodily integrity) to be symbolic of the more fundamental threat that a nuclear regime poses of spiritual, ethical, or existential disintegration. The existence of nuclear weapons has raised crucial religious questions that challenged their Christian identity and praxis and often provoked a fundamental clash between their faith and the civil religion of the dominant political, economic, and militarist culture in which they lived. Typically this dilemma has been articulated in terms of the classic biblical theme

38

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

of idolatry. Barbara Eggleston, then the national coordinator of Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in Britain, wrote in 1986 that “unquestioning and exceptionless obedience to authority has never been the Church’s teaching, and we are particularly bound to make clear our dissent—or to disobey—if the State is leading people into idolatry. To worship other gods, to place trust in them for salvation, both personal and corporate, is idolatry. . . . Idolatry relates to where we put our trust. . . . What is the image of power on which the modern state depends? . . . Clearly, security is seen to be achieved by the possession of nuclear weapons.”64 Characterized by some Christian antinuclear activists as “gods of metal,” nuclear weapons have been seen to be symptomatic of a systemic arrogation of transcendent power by the dominant political, economic, and technological national security states. Such states have refashioned the more traditional social contract thusly: “In return for nuclear security, you must render your entire loyalty to the nuclear regime.” Antinuclear Christians identified and challenged the political contradiction of this arrangement—from their point of view, unquestioning fidelity to either Mutual Assured Destruction or more recent policies of First-Strike probably bred more insecurity than security—but they were even more leery of the religious dimensions of this Faustian bargain. The contemporary faith-based, antinuclear appropriation of this ancient Judeo-Christian motif was often formulated succinctly in the pressing theological query, “On whom or on what do we ultimately rely?” There was, however, no unanimity in the religious community in general or the Christian community in particular that nuclear weapons were to be condemned or abolished. Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s, a growing number of Christian theologians and ethicists, including Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey, articulated what came to be called “Christian realism” or “ethical realism.”65 While deploring the evil that nuclear weapons were capable of visiting on the earth and its inhabitants, these thinkers believed that they deterred nuclear war and restrained aggression and thus were morally justifiable. In some cases rooted in the prescriptions of the “just war” theological tradition, this approach held that nonviolence or pacifism had “no way of avoiding wickedness or setting limits to it,” and therefore justice counseled marshalling a deterrent force. Civil defense resisters Day, Muste, Hennacy, and others deliberately challenged such theology as morally suspect, physically dangerous, and ultimately at odds with the Christian vision of love and reconciliation. The nuclear arms race institutionalized on a global scale a regime of retaliatory violence that, in the view of its managers, must be main-

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

39

tained in perpetuity. Not only does such an arrangement functionally prevent unity, it also posed an incalculable threat of destruction through political miscalculation or technological failure. The premise on which “Christian realism” was based—that deterrence would prevent the use of nuclear weapons—would prove absurdly faulty in the event that they were, in fact, used. Moreover, they understood that such weapons are deployed not as a means of deterring attack but also as a means of exercising power and contributing to economic, political, and military control throughout the world. Rather than accommodate nuclear weapons, they sought to resist them in the spirit of the very power the realists rejected: creative and self-transcending love. Day, Muste, and Hennacy embodied and conveyed the challenges of the Nuclear Age and indicated the direction that those who refused to accede to “nuclear terror” and “nuclear fear” could take in contesting the official nuclear narrative and practices by articulating and enacting a counternarrative and practice. This would be summarized in the argot of a later antinuclear movement, when it pithily held that “civil disobedience is civil defense.”

From New York to Nevada This improvised nonviolent campaign on the streets of Manhattan proved to be the paradigmatic event for virtually all rituals of nonviolent direct action against nuclearism since the 1950s. In their action, Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy, A. J. Muste—the quintessential outsiders—symbolized their freedom and noncompliance by resolutely remaining outside New York City’s warren of fallout shelters. The revelatory power of this act lay in how it dramatized the ways in which nuclear weapons had subverted ordinary life. Modern ordinary life was a life meant to be lived out on the streets, not one where millions crouched together fearfully in a sprawling, subterranean maze. In one stroke, Day, Hennacy, Muste, and their coconspirators clarified that, in the Nuclear Age, the ordinary is subversive. Yet ordinary does not mean “natural” or “essentialized.” The “ordinary” world these resisters celebrated was an “ordinary” experience they had to construct, enact, and—over the next seven years—reenact again and again. (After all, how many “ordinary” experiences are accompanied by press releases?) Theirs was a carefully organized drama that functioned as a “recognition scene” (a term Daniel Berrigan, S.J., would later use to describe any successful nonviolent action) able to dissolve an opaque screen of illusions and reveal with a certain clarity the

40

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

situation at hand. In addition to emboldening many others to join them over the years, this activity led to a demythologization of the civil defense program that promised safety but in fact was designed to meet entirely different goals. There are three other significant connections to the later movement against nuclear testing. First, A. J. Muste, the dean of twentiethcentury pacifists, would play an important part in the antitesting movement that successfully clamored for the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. Second, Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement would play an important role in developing a theology of nonviolent resistance to the Bomb by stressing the richness, sacredness, and interconnection of each person, echoed in Eileen Egan’s use of an Irish saying as a twist on Day’s resistance to compulsory air raid shelter drills: “We live in the shelter of each other.”66 Daniel Berrigan stresses the importance of this theology and its theologian on those who have come after her: “Without Dorothy, without that exemplary patience, moral modesty, without this woman pounding at the locked doors behind which the powerful mock the powerless with games of triage, the resistance we offered would have been simply unthinkable.”67 Finally, the iconoclastic Ammon Hennacy was one of the first activists to make an antinuclear pilgrimage to the Nevada Test Site, a journey made just after taking part in this civil defense drill action with Day and Muste. Hennacy was a longtime peace and labor organizer. During World War One he had served two years in the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia for refusing to register for military service. In 1931 he had organized a social workers union in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1952 and beginning in 1953 served as associate editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper in New York. From June 17 through June 28, 1957 Hennacy picketed the Atomic Energy Commission office in Las Vegas.68 In his autobiography, Hennacy describes his activity in Nevada, which was prompted in part by the growing scientific evidence of the harmful effects of nuclear fallout engendered by the above-ground tests. “I belonged to a committee of pacifists who had planned to enter the atomic test grounds and if necessary be atomized as a protest against the biggest bomb which would be dropped in August of 1957,” Hennacy’s account begins. He explains that he already had plans for August—picketing at the IRS office in New York and an air raid drill protest, that would eventually net him thirty days in jail—so in anticipation of others descending on the test site at the end of the summer, he traveled to Nevada to vigil at the Atomic Energy Commission office, to engage in a twelve-day fast,

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

41

and to watch two nuclear detonations. Hennacy writes that “when I began to picket Lt. Col. Hunter greeted me kindly and said he would do anything to help me except to cease dropping bombs. And he had Don the guard bring out a chair each morning in order that I might rest in the shade at times.”69 Hennacy describes watching an atomic explosion with its flash, thunderous sound, and mushroom cloud. Then he reports that toward the end of his visit, the bomb that had been scheduled for detonation failed to go off. “About 10:30 A.M.,” he writes, “Col. Hunter came back from the field saying ‘Hennacy, you stopped this one, you had better go back to N.Y. and let us get to work.’ They had pressed the button and the bomb didn’t go off. My son-in-law later showed me the Pasadena Sunday paper with the headline ‘Atomic Test Foe Scores ‘Victory’’ saying that I had an accidental moral victory inasmuch as the bomb was a dud.”70 For Hennacy, nonviolent action is a form of communication with one’s opponent (including one’s society) deploying the most powerful symbol at one’s disposal: the vulnerable, creaky, resilient human body message. Hennacy’s account serves as a parable for peaceful change that will consciously and unconsciously reverberate through many other efforts for nonviolent metamorphosis, including those undertaken in this same place three decades later. Years after Ammon Hennacy traveled to the Nevada Test Site, the antinuclear weapons movement began to emerge again in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere, as concern grew about the latest stage of the nuclear arms race sparked by the policies of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Daniel Ellsberg—the U.S. government analyst who in 1971 had leaked the Pentagon Papers in an effort to contribute to an end to the Vietnam War and since then had been heavily involved in the antinuclear weapons movement—wrote a perceptive essay about the growing danger of the new arms race. The doctrine of first strike and limited nuclear war would be ratified and legitimated to the extent that publics throughout the world, especially in the U.S. and Europe, passively consented to these new policies and the weapon systems that made them possible. Ellsberg writes that what [President Jimmy] Carter sought with his draft registration, what [President Ronald] Reagan now seeks with his trillion-dollar-plus arms build-up, what some NATO leaders have intended by pressing the “token” deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles to Europe, are active expressions of consent and commitments from their publics, the nuclear hostages in Europe and America.71

42

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Ellsberg then makes a provocative analogy. Citizen passivity in the face of the deployment of a new generation of destabilizing, first-strike weapons is not unlike the cult mass suicide of 900 men, women, and children that took place in Guyana in November, 1979. For Ellsberg, acceptance of hair-trigger nuclear weaponry parallels “what the Reverend Jim Jones wanted with his suicide drills in Guyana.” Jones, Ellsberg writes, called the practice sessions “White Nights,” rehearsing his followers in the gestures of sacrificing their children and themselves, training them to react passively to his message (in the recurrent tones of every American president and every other leader of a nuclear weapons state since 1945): “Trust me. This time it’s only a drill. I will decide . . . when the time has come for us to meet together on the other side; the time for the cyanide.72

Here Ellsberg thematized what Margaret Miles names the “old asceticism” in its contemporary camouflage. By the 1980s many of the original nuclear socialization practices had disappeared (due, in part, to previous antinuclear movements), including compulsory civil defense drills. Ellsberg—himself a former Cold Warrior who, prior to working on the Pentagon Papers, played a key role in the Kennedy administration in developing the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), the U.S. government’s roster of nuclear weapons targets—draws our attention to the fundamental dynamics of the social ritual of consent and allegiance that had remained the same. From his experienced perspective, citizen active acceptance or passive neutrality in the face of this modernization of nuclear arsenals might lead—in an analogy to the events at Jonestown but at an almost infinite magnification—to whole populations undergoing the greatest ritualized “old ascetical” punishment: nuclear extermination. Asceticism often implies sacrifice. The sacrifice dictated by the post-World War Two nuclear asceticism was the sacrifice of the “prenuclear self”—the self not subject to the threat of omnicide. The “preHiroshima” self had to be abandoned and reconstructed to “love the bomb” (as the subtitle to Stanley Kubrick’s movie Doctor Strangelove suggested) or, failing that, to passively accept its existence. One sacrificed security for the promise of security. One was prepared to sacrifice oneself, one’s family, and one’s world to maintain oneself, one’s family, and one’s world. Nevada Desert Experience, as we shall see, gradually evolved a response to this “old asceticism” with a different kind of “self-forming” ascetical spirituality. Traditional Christian spirituality has been characterized for over 1,500 years by many forms of asceticism, often through

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices

43

forms of self-denial, regulation, and resistance to appetites and desires. The desert fathers and mothers, who abandoned the urban centers in the fourth century C.E., engaged in strenuous practices to loosen the grip of the socialized imperial self and to reframe Christian discipleship in the midst of the challenges of the dominant Roman vision of self and society. Analogously, the Nevada Desert Experience in the twentieth century gradually developed an asceticism in response to the social dilemmas of its time. Key aspects of the Nevada Desert Experience’s activity— fasting, personal and corporate prayer, silence and solitude in the desert, and the willingness of many to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and thus to risk days, weeks, and months in jail—can fruitfully be interpreted as contemporary forms of ascetical practice. This is true enough in a narrow understanding of asceticism as acts of self-denial or self-sacrifice. But this is especially the case where asceticism is seen less as an end in itself (and thus given to forms of extreme eccentric behavior or even masochism) and more as a decentering and recentering “self-forming activity.” The Nevada Desert Experience eventually invited participants to take part in a set of practices that, situated at a tangible node of the nuclear weapons system, ritualistically encounter the fact of an all-pervasive nuclearism and create space for challenging, decentering and reconstituting the socially constructed “nuclear self.” But this would slowly evolve. In the beginning such a process was not particularly evident. There was, rather, a very basic impulse: to travel to the test site to pray for peace as a “Lenten desert experience.”

This page intentionally left blank.

CHAPTER

2

The First Journey— Lenten Desert Experience 1982

In 1981 Louis Vitale received a letter from the Minister-General in Rome calling on Franciscans throughout the world to sponsor creative projects to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis in 1982.1 Vitale—a friar who had a long history of peace and justice activism and at the time was the provincial of the Franciscan Friars’ St. Barbara province, a jurisdiction that included much of the western United States—thought that a project highlighting Franciscan peacemaking would be appropriate, especially at a moment when the newly elected Reagan administration was vowing to modernize the U.S. military, including the three legs of its nuclear weapons system: sea-based submarines and ships, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and its fleet of jet bombers. Not only did this renewed build-up seem to Vitale, a former U.S. Air Force pilot, likely to increase the danger of nuclear war, it would also lavish economic resources on weapons systems at a time when social programs would be slashed across the U.S. At the time that he was mulling various possibilities, Vitale was approached by a recent graduate of the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley about the possibility of working for the St. Barbara province on peace issues. A former professor in Health Education at the State University of New York at Cortland who had decided to study theology in California, Michael Affleck had been actively organizing peace-related events in the San Francisco Bay Area since Daniel Berrigan had taught a course on nonviolence during the 1980–81 academic year at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Vitale was delighted with Affleck’s proposal, and discussed his organizing a series of peace-oriented events for the province to mark St. Francis’s birthday the following year. “I said I would support this,” Vitale later recalled, “but only if one of the events took place at the Nevada Test Site.” Vitale, who had lived and ministered in Las Vegas for many years, had long been concerned about the U.S. government’s testing program at the test site. This was brought into sharp focus by a conversation that he had once had in the early 1970s with the editor of Commonweal, a

45

46

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

progressive Catholic weekly magazine. At the time the activist community was still largely focused on ending the U.S. war in Vietnam, but something the editor said caught Vitale’s attention. Even if they stopped the bloodshed in Indochina, Vitale remembers the editor saying at the time, there are still tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at the world’s children. This comment proved pivotal for this Franciscan priest who was motivated by his faith to work for a better world and who, at one time, had played a part in the nation’s strategic nuclear force structure. He had became curious about what the government was doing at the Nevada Test Site and was told by a friend with contacts within the U.S. Department of Energy that the test site was situated in a remote location, in part, to discourage protest. Vitale took this as a personal challenge. For Vitale, drawing the nation’s attention to the fact that the government continued to explode nuclear bombs at least once every three weeks in the Nevada desert, especially at a time when the nuclear arms race was accelerating, would make an important contribution to peace. Vitale arranged for an $8,000 grant to fund Instruments of Peace, a project that Affleck created as a vehicle for this organizing effort.2 Michael Affleck would later remember Louis Vitale’s ideas about taking action at the Nevada Test Site not as an absolute precondition for support for his project but as a suggestion for him to consider. He put it on his list of various sites to visit as he traveled about the province gathering ideas to mark St. Francis’s birthday. Nevertheless, when he visited the Nevada Test Site for the first time in 1981, he was impressed with the importance of focusing faith-based activity there. He envisioned an ongoing peacemaking presence at the test site. Eighteen years later, Affleck recalled this moment: I remember hearing at Berkeley the notion—or the dream—that perhaps by the end of the year, or perhaps by the end of two years, every single military and nuclear facility in the United States should have a Christian witness outside of it. And I got to the test site and I thought of that. And I thought, “Nobody’s out here. This one’s still available!” And so I went back and I kept that trip very much in my heart and I began to think, Maybe we could have a vigil out there. Maybe this is what needs to happen. Maybe our response to the year of St. Francis would be to have a time in the desert where we are witnessing about this evil but we are going out in the real desert experience, not knowing what questions to ask, not knowing what direction we’re going to take, waiting, really, for the word of God to come to us, to give us some understanding of what has to happen next. . . . The whole thing began with the idea that we could pray and wait for some guid-

The First Journey

47

ance on what to do, and that maybe out of this experience, out of the collective group understanding of those of us who went out there every day, we’d figure out what to do. But we didn’t know when we started.3

People of faith and others had initiated ongoing vigils at the Pentagon; the Trident submarine base in Bangor, Washington; Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, just outside Denver, Colorado; and the Pantex nuclear weapons facility in Amarillo, Texas. Numerous other sites were the focus of regular, periodic prayer, witness, and nonviolent civil disobedience, including the Strategic Air Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska; Griffiss Air Force Base near Syracuse, New York; King’s Bay Trident submarine base in King’s Bay, Georgia; and Concord Naval Weapons Station in Concord, California. Standing for the first time at the edge of the Nevada Test Site, Affleck now imagined a permanently stationed presence here that would be part of this growing network of sites of prayerful but relentless resistance. The initial stage of Affleck’s project involved canvassing Franciscans throughout the West to explore what they could do to take steps for peacemaking during “the year of St. Francis.” This involved traveling to all the Franciscan households, parishes, and projects in the five states of the province—Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and Nevada—to mull over ways they could do something for peace over the course of the next year. Affleck was joined in this effort by Sr. Rosemary Lynch, O.S.F. A decision had been made by the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity, a congregation based in Redwood City, California, to cosponsor the Franciscan celebration with the Franciscan Friars of the St. Barbara Province.4 Lynch was a member of this women’s congregation and on the staff of the Las Vegas Franciscan Center. After working for her community for many years in Rome, she and Franciscan Sr. Klaryta Antoszewska had settled in 1977 in Las Vegas, where Lynch joined the staff of the center.5 That summer, President Carter announced that he was seeking funding from Congress to develop the “enhanced radiation” or “neutron” bomb. News then leaked that the neutron bomb had already been developed and tested at the Nevada Test Site. Lynch decided to do some research on this program and the test site in general. In the course of her exploration, she discovered that a group of Quakers had held the last demonstration at the test site on August 6, 1957. Spurred by this, she and a group of friends in Las Vegas organized an event at the gates of NTS to mark the twentieth anniversary of this activity, to protest the impending production of the enhanced radiation weapon developed

48

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

there, and to remember the bombing of Hiroshima thirty-two years earlier. They dubbed themselves “Citizens Concerned about the Neutron Bomb.” As it was later reported: Nineteen people met at the main gate of the NTS before dawn to hold a prayer vigil and conduct a teach in about Hiroshima. The vigilers held signs along the road that led into the Test Site and they were very careful to make signs that supported the workers but objected to testing. One sign read: “NTS Workers Yes, Nuclear Bombs No.” The vigil was highlighted by the visit of Japanese Hibakusha [survivors of the atomic bombings] who wanted to present a book of drawings of the bombs dropped on Japan to the Test Site officials. The vigilers went directly to the guard house at Mercury Station. The Japanese approached the gate house but the guards refused to accept their book. An older Japanese lady, a Hibakusha, extended her hand to the guard and he refused to shake her hand. The small group began a chant, “Take her hand. Take her hand.” Finally the guard gave in and shook her hand.6

For the next several years, Lynch visited the test site.7 At times, she would arrive with a group of friends to mark certain days—the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9), the feast of St. Francis (October 4), or the anniversary of the first test at NTS (January 30). More often she would simply go with a friend to the site. They would wander off together or alone into the desert. She would often find a place to sit and pray for hours. She recalls how she “felt for sure some of God’s mysteries of love and forgiveness were opening out to me there.” At the same time, she came to the conviction that “the Bomb was the common enemy of all humankind,” and that working together we could undo this enemy, though she knew that this was ultimately not a question of strictly political change but a deep and profound change of heart. In the autumn of 1981, the Las Vegas Franciscan Center held a meeting to discuss the call to honor the 800th anniversary of Francis’s birth. Louie Vitale, Mike Affleck, and Rosemary Lynch attended the meeting, along with other Franciscan Center staff, including Sr. Klaryta Antoszewska and then-Franciscan Sr. Julieanne Graf, O.S.F. Various options were floated, but in the end the decision was made to mark “the year of St. Francis” with a forty-day period of prayer and witness at the Nevada Test Site during Lent, 1982 beginning on February 24, Ash Wednesday. The name “Lenten Desert Experience” was chosen. Organizing tasks were divided between the participants, including advertising this event, securing endorsements, organizing the logistics of the project

The First Journey

49

(housing, food, transportation), and fundraising. Michael Affleck’s Berkeley-based “Instruments of Peace” project would coordinate the overall organizing effort from the San Francisco Bay Area, while thenFranciscan seminarian, Dick Clark, was hired as the Las Vegas project coordinator. Clark worked with Lynch, Antoszewska, Graf, Mary Litell, O.S.F., Rhea Miller, and Charla Wistos at the Franciscan Center to organize locally in the greater Las Vegas area. Moving Toward Lent As the outreach built for the forty-day vigil, organizers invited people to participate for as many days as they could spare. This, though, raised a spate of organizing challenges. Given the logistical difficulties people would face in getting to the Nevada Test Site—first traveling to Las Vegas and then to the test site sixty-five miles north of the city, where there was no regularly scheduled bus service—car pools would have to be arranged. Then there was the matter of all the other logistics, including lodging and food. In the end, the decision was made to treat the Lenten Desert Experience participants as much as possible as guests rather than faceless protesters. This meant arranging housing. A house in Las Vegas was rented and maintained for the duration of the vigil, while sleeping arrangements were made for others with supporters in the city. In preparation for the impending Lenten vigil, Rosemary Lynch made an appointment to meet with General Mahlon Gates, then director of the test site. As Affleck later reported: She expected the meeting to be five minutes and brought him information about the upcoming Lenten vigil. She found him nervous but he relaxed and they spent one and a half hours together. During the visit Gates explained that he was in World War II and had been promoted through the years and he has simply taken one assignment after another and now found himself the director at the Test Site. Sister Rose asked Gates to join the vigil at the Test Site to pray. He said that he cannot but would pray in the office with Sister Rose. They prayed together. . . . Gates . . . promised to supply water and port-a-potties for the protesters who would be at the Test Site and in the desert every day during Lent.8

Also prior to the launch of the first Lenten Desert Experience, organizers met with other Test Site officials and security personnel to discuss protest plans: “Despite some anxiety on the part of the organizers to

50

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

discuss their plans with the officials, the meeting relaxed tensions and set a tone of openness and trust. . . . Test Site officials were appreciative of the conversations, expressed their views and seemed committed to an ongoing dialogue.”9 In the San Francisco Bay Area, Louis Vitale, Anne Bucher, Duncan MacMurdy, Mary Litell, O.S.F., Alain Richard, O.F.M., and Gregory Sandritter among others were meeting periodically to reflect and prepare for their participation in LDE during Holy Week, the concluding days of the forty-day vigil of Lent in the Nevada desert. Lenten Desert Experience organizers staged a “warm up” demonstration on January 27, 1982 at the Federal Building in Las Vegas to mark the thirty-first anniversary of the test site’s first nuclear detonation. This “birthday protest” focused on cancer rates in the region, with fifteen people wearing placards resembling tombstones that symbolized residents of Utah and Nevada “downwinders” who had died from offsite radiation releases.10 The article looked ahead to the Lenten vigil by printing in their entirety the goals for the forty-day witness, including: a freeze on underground nuclear weapons testing; economic conversion of the test site, including the development of new jobs for the workers there; cuts in the military budget; a U.S. government pledge not to initiate the use of nuclear weapons;11 a ban on the MX missile and B-1 bomber; and suspension of deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles. The article ended with information on how to reach the organizers for those “interested in participating in the Lenten protest.”12

The Lenten Desert Experience Begins Ash Wednesday morning, 1982. Although the sun had just risen, the road was already jammed with workers commuting from Las Vegas to the Nevada Test Site. Slowing long enough to be waved through the main gate, cars and buses crowded with electricians, carpenters, and the occasional nuclear physicist rattled off toward Plutonium Valley or Control Point or Sedan Crater. They also may have been headed to Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Site, the Sand Spring Test Range, or Japan Town, where Japanese-style homes were once constructed to simulate and rehearse the probable radiation effects experienced by the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.13 Perhaps they were only going as far as nearby Mercury, a government-issue village situated just inside the southern perimeter of the test site with a six-lane bowling alley, liquor store, a steak house, and hundreds of Quonset huts. From this vantage point, one could

The First Journey

51

only imagine the dented and surreal topography of the arms race that lay within this 1,350 square mile facility. Like the thousands of workers rumbling off to work this morning, the Lenten Desert Experience organizers and participants were drawn here because of the decades-long project to fashion and experiment with weapons of mass destruction across this place of aching beauty, though their motivation diverged sharply from those being waved through the gate just after sunrise on this February morning. A steady stream of cars pull off to the side of the road. Some of the arrivals grabbed signs out of their trunks. Others downed the last drops of coffee they had brought with them. Most were well bundled in layers of sweaters and jackets. Within a few minutes fifty people had materialized and formed a ragged circle at the edge of Camp Desert Rock, an area where as many as 6,000 soldiers at a time had stayed when they took part in atmospheric tests during the 1950s.14 As the modest Ash Wednesday prayer service began, the things that had been done here in the name of freedom and security were pondered. In the obscure and evanescent shadow of history and under the unrelenting gaze of the mute sere mountains that embrace the desert at the southern tip of the Nevada Test Site, the Lenten Desert Experience was modestly launched on a bright, cold winter morning.

How Should We Do What We Should Do? In the weeks and months leading up to this February morning, there had been many unknowns. It was unclear, for example, what the legal consequences of this activity might entail, or even if people would actually trek out to the test site to take part in this ongoing witness. But one of the most gnawing mysteries was: how does one challenge a nuclear test site? At least this was a mystery for Michael Affleck. What form should a “prayerful protest” take at the edge of a nuclear weapons proving ground? How are things organized and carried out both faithfully and effectively? How could this witness make a meaningful contribution to ending nuclear testing? What difference would it make? When Mohandas Gandhi faced analogous questions, he turned to the Bhagavad Gita, which counseled that one must not be attached to the action one performs. For Gandhi, this nonattachment required deep nonviolence.15 Affleck did not, however, turn to the Gita. Instead, the action model on which he relied was rooted in the witnesses carried out by his mentor, Daniel Berrigan. From Affleck’s point of view, this comprised a

52

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

spirited approach that sought to shock one’s opponent and wider society into viscerally grasping the horror of the violence or injustice of the situation. Years later he reflected on this orientation: I remember the stories of [labor organizer] Mother Jones. . . . She would take [children working in the factories] in front of the corporate headquarters and homes of the mill owners. And she would have the kids, whose fingers had been cut off by the machines, hold their hands up. She was showing what horror there was—as a way of trying to talk about what needs to be done. Part of the Berrigan methodology was to dramatize what was hidden as a way to show what needs to be done. Where peoples’ eyes are closed, the revelation is needed.16

This approach, whether involving the burning of draft cards with homemade napalm (as the Catonsville 9 did in 1968)17 or hammering on nuclear weapons components (as the first Plowshares group did in 1980), was dramatic and confrontational. It was perceived as effectively increasing the visibility of the relevant issue (the war in Indochina; the nuclear arms race); communicating that there was growing public repugnance, especially in the religious community, to these forms of violence; and demonstrating that individuals need not wait for reluctant and inactive politicians to resolve these crises but can and must take action directly according to the dictates both of one’s conscience and of the Nuremberg principles that obligate ordinary citizens to resist actively their government’s “crimes against humanity.” Affleck’s orientation stressed social change as confrontation rather than mending a web of relationships. From this perspective, social transformation is a kind of “football game” between “us” and “them,” but one waged by narrowly defined nonviolent means.18 In seeking to create a strong, powerful nonviolent witness at the Nevada Test Site, Affleck believed that it would be necessary, if the situation was not sufficiently “charged,” to create a confrontation. This confrontation would, he hoped, provoke a counterreaction from the county sheriffs and DOE security personnel. Their violence would symbolize to the press, participants, and onlookers the larger violence that they were defending; it would also emphasize who were the “good” people and who were the “bad”: Part of what our script required to get our point across was to have a confrontation. . . . [Our original script included] inflammatory rhetoric, very physical presence at the line which we weren’t supposed to cross—not that we were looking for arrest on that first Ash Wednesday, but we wanted people to see we were the “peace people” and they were the “war people.”19

The First Journey

53

Given the various demonstrations he had witnessed and read about, Affleck imagined that such a scene would not actually have to be provoked by the LDE organizers. After all, the Nevada Test Site was one of the greatest purveyors of violence on the planet, and security personnel were mandated to use whatever level of force necessary to defend its facility and the larger canopy of secrecy in which it was cloaked. But just in case the situation needed some assistance, he decided to take precautions. Almost twenty years later, Affleck described how he prepared to create a confrontation if required: I’ll tell you a story I’ve never told anybody else. Here we go: True Confessions. On Ash Wednesday [1982] we went out with a plan, our press packet, our prayer, our rhetoric, hoping for a confrontation. I had secretly, the night before, taken a mayonnaise jar and put wine in it and then pricked my own finger. I put my blood in the wine. . . . It wasn’t much blood, but it was enough that I could say there was blood in there. I put that in the pocket of my jacket and went out to the test site with that in my pocket. I was prepared to animate the situation, to pour blood on the ground of the test site, on a police car, or something.20

Splashing containers of blood—what was known then in nonviolent resistance parlance as a “blood pouring”—had become a convention in a variety of nonviolent actions since the 1960s, including those of the Berrigans.21 They had accurately gauged the archetypal power that blood, utilized ritually in a social drama, could convey in denouncing the immoral and illegal spilling of blood by the state. It was a shocking, deeply personal symbol that could communicate with the nonrational, visceral part of onlookers and perhaps of the larger society in a way that few other signifiers could. The power of this symbol was often measured by the lengths to which the press and policy-makers alike would go in questioning its authenticity. It was often referred to as a “blood-like” substance, “paint meant to suggest blood,” or an “impression of blood.” Given its power, blood drizzled over draft cards or splattered across the sign of a nuclear weapons facility often dramatically escalated the response of the police or other opponents. This may be, in part, because the sight of spattered blood can often trigger a swarm of feelings about and memories of one’s own past experiences of blood spilt, of injury, of unexpected and sickening violence. Moreover, as anthropologist Mary Douglas might put it, blood “out of place” provokes a sense of a violation of certain social and cultural purity codes. Blood is supposed to course through veins and arteries, not be spilled

54

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

or splashed dramatically outside the body.22 But more importantly still, blood is a sacred fluid, a sign of life, life itself. To spill it as a symbol of another’s spilling of blood communicates a vast and elemental reproach. The “reaction-formation” by which the accused recoils—by denial, or by the physical and emotional response of anger or even fury—indicates the depth at which the accused registers this symbol of accusation and censure.

Unforeseen Encounter After the fifty participants had assembled at Camp Desert Rock on Ash Wednesday morning, Louis Vitale and Carl Spatz, an Episcopal priest from Las Vegas, led an ecumenical service in which Lenten ashes were distributed. Some people continued to pray singly after the communal ritual. Others gathered near the white line that the Department of Energy had painted across the road to demarcate “legal” and “illegal” space. As the minutes dragged by, nothing happened. Finally, frustrated by the lack of action and noticeably aware of the local and national press that had gathered nearby and now seemed to be fidgeting at the lack of “news,” Affleck decided that he had to take matters into his own hands. He headed back to his car to get the jar of blooded wine so that NDE’s initial activity at the test site could be escalated into meaningful “action”: I went to the car to get the blood—and then for some reason the jar had opened and spilled in the car on my jacket. And it wasn’t there for me to do. And I went back to the circle and I just let things unfold. And then by the end of our circle, when people were looking for something else to do, I was so glad that I didn’t have that, and what they did instead was go by the side of the road and make an overture to the workers.23

Instead of trying to force or provoke a dramatic scene, Affleck joined the others in standing by the side of the narrow strip of asphalt and waved to test site employees as they drove onto the grounds of the facility. This lack of high drama was reinforced by what happened next: the encounter with the presiding security officer, Lieutenant Sheriff Jim Merlino of the Nye County Sheriff’s Department, who sauntered over to the edge of the road where people were greeting the Test Site workers. The Department of Energy had negotiated with Nye County to take pri-

The First Journey

55

mary responsibility for policing NDE’s vigil. When Affleck met Merlino, he was surprised and frankly baffled by a police officer who seemed more like Mister Rogers than Bull Connor. If Affleck continued to harbor any thoughts of fomenting a “confrontation,” they melted away in that disorienting first meeting with Merlino. As Affleck remembered the situation years later: We had to [change our script]. Because the script relies on the opponent acting out his part—and Merlino didn’t act the part. He wasn’t a good enemy. He certainly had authority and he was going to use that authority if he had to, but he was not interested in harming us. He was actually interested in making it possible for us to get our point across as well as we could. Part of what our script required to get our point across was to have a confrontation—and he wasn’t giving us that. So in order to get our point across, we had to do something else. . . . We wanted to set up that [“us” and “them”] dynamic, and he wouldn’t do it. He was the “peace person.” He played that role throughout the entire time. He wasn’t playing a role—he was a peaceful person. And we had to come to terms with him. Because that was the only person he could be. So we had to change the way we had to approach our whole attitude. We had to think about why we were out there. If we weren’t going to confront the police, what were we doing out there, 65 miles from Las Vegas, out on the side of the road? Well, who else is there? The press, but they’re going to go home the next day. So, the next time we go out, we can pray ourselves, or we can try to contact the workers, by waving to them, by standing alongside the road, by doing something else . . . We began to understand that if testing was going to end, it would end on that day that the workers joined our side. We came to a new understanding that we didn’t know at the time and the workers didn’t know, but the two groups would come to a new understanding of what had to happen.24

Affleck had expected to unleash a “recognition scene” that morning on the edge of the test site. It was instead the presumed “enemy,” Lieutenant Merlino, who created a revelatory crisis for Affleck. As he would report later, his encounter with Merlino helped him see, that while the confrontational model does open eyes and change hearts, “it’s not the only thing that changes hearts. . . . It is appropriate in some cases, and in other cases, other ways, other spiritualities are appropriate. There is also a spirituality that tries to befriend your opponents. And that is the spirituality that Jim Merlino drove us to. And that we weren’t prepared for when we first started.”25

56

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Affleck recalls how Merlino provided water and portable toilets for the NDE participants, took precautions to keep people from being hit by test site traffic, and helped create a space where they were able to pray and witness. Affleck says: They weren’t there to confront us at all. We later got to know them, and many of the sheriffs agreed with us. But the first step had to be ours. The first step toward a new understanding had to come from us, because we came out there with an idea of who they were and they weren’t that person, they weren’t the enemy we wanted them to be. . . . I can remember well one of the first times standing along the side of the road early in the morning, and one of the test site workers stopped even, giving us donuts. And another worker stopped, bringing us juice. And another—the workers recognized how cold it was out there, how much it looked like we were suffering. They didn’t want that to happen. They worked at the test site, their jobs were on the line. Slowly, things began to move in the direction of building a movement where we could no longer call anyone else an enemy because we knew that we stood on the same ground with them—that there was no line drawn in the sand we could cross because we were the same—we had the same problems, we were the same kind of human beings, we were on the same side of the line . . .26

Sheriff Jim Merlino At the height of the Depression Jim Merlino’s family moved from Idaho to Tonopah, Nevada, where his father had landed a job in the nearby mines.27 The young Merlino was reared a Catholic and, although he did not attend church after his mother’s death in 1939, he has always thought of himself a part of the Catholic faith. “I’ve enjoyed the Catholic Church, and as a youngster I became an altar boy for a little while,” Merlino recalls. “We were raised to be courteous and to respect people, and my mother [while she was alive] enforced that.”28 Merlino married in 1949. He and his wife, who worked for the same trucking company, had two children. They divorced in the mid1950s, patched things up two years later and re-married, but then divorced again after that. Intriguingly, they continued to work out of the same office, live in the same small town, and raise their children through all of this. After high school Merlino drove a truck for a freight company, where he hauled fuel throughout Nevada and beyond. When the com-

The First Journey

57

pany went out of business in 1972, he heard about an opening at the Nevada Test Site as a deputy sheriff. After just three weeks of training, Merlino made the shift in his mid-forties from the largely solitary life of hauling freight to being a police officer charged with defending the United States’ nuclear weapons proving ground. Before 1982 Merlino had had no experience with protest. Nevertheless, he believed that there are two sides to every issue and that the people participating in the Lenten Desert Experience had every right to express theirs. “I always tried to treat the protesters as if they were my sons or daughters,” he said by way of expressing his attitude about the growing number of people who came to the desert to demonstrate their concern about nuclear weapons. Over time, he became increasingly impressed with the tenacity and relentless persistence of the NDE people. “You felt some respect” for people who would return day after day to witness, for forty days or longer, he said. Over the years, as the initial Lenten Desert Experience gave way later to regularly organized events at the test site and the development of the Nevada Desert Experience as an organization, Merlino would demonstrate that respect repeatedly. One time, for example, during an event organized by a group other than Nevada Desert Experience, one of his deputies maced a detainee who had been put in the open-air holding pen just inside the perimeter of the test site. The protester had been shaking the chain-link fence and, to get him to stop, the officer had pulled out a can of mace and sprayed it in his eyes. “I got him aside,” Merlino recalled, “and explained that we don’t do that at all here.” He did not tolerate such misbehavior on his watch. This attitude kept Merlino in good stead over the next twelve years (he retired in 1994), as a larger and larger number of protesters made their way to the Nevada desert. When asked if his peaceful approach was a clever tactic to stymie the protests, Merlino laughed. This had, he said, never occurred to him. Was Merlino’s attitude due to his mother’s emphasis on respect and courtesy? Was it because he had learned about peacemaking from the strains and challenges of being in regular contact with his ex-wife as they raised two children in a small, isolated town in central Nevada? Was it because he had became a cop later in life, after twenty years of hauling fuel all over the West—a job that had given him a lot of time in solitude, not unlike a Buddhist doing decades of one-point meditation in her zendo? Was it because he hadn’t had years of law enforcement training and FBI courses in “riot control” and “antiterrorism” at an impressionable and “hormonally heightened age”? Or was it perhaps because his subterranean Catholic faith, though long in congregational disuse, was

58

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

revived in some mysterious way by seeing Franciscan friars and sisters in their brown habits leading a growing flock of antinuclear faithful into the Nevada desert? Was it because he really did see the protesters as his own children? Or was it no more complicated than the fact that, as Merlino said of himself, he was a “people person” who had “always liked people”? This is as speculative as the cynical supposition that Merlino’s approach was actually part of a sophisticated plan to contain and neutralize the protests not by force but by “changing the script,” by not playing along with the conventional “us and them” protest scenario.29 However true any of this might be, the point is that the script did change, and what ensued over the next two decades was a delicate social drama that reflected those changes. Merlino was one of the important actors in this drama. Another key protagonist was Bob Nelson, who at the time of the 1982 Lenten Desert Experience was Assistant Manager for Operations of the Las Vegas U.S. Department of Energy office, which primarily included test site management. (In 1987 he became the Deputy Manager of the Nevada Test Site and in 1994 became the manager—director— before retiring in 1995.) In addition to managing weapons programs at the test site, in the 1980s he became an Episcopal priest.30 Nelson often met with the Lenten Desert Experience organizers in Las Vegas or at his office at the test site, and later appeared on numerous panels with NDE speakers at churches, synagogues, and conferences in Nevada. When Nevada Desert Experience was formed in 1984, the founders developed a set of guidelines to help maintain a nonviolent tone during protests, which they named a “nonviolence covenant.” Nelson used this covenant as a guide to training the DOE’s security personnel who worked with Merlino’s detail in policing the demonstrations at the test site. Nelson’s attitude was that if the protesters were going to be nonviolent, his employees should be equally nonviolent. He picked and trained people for these jobs with this in mind.31 In the midst of the ongoing exchange between Nevada Test Site officials and Lenten Desert Experience participants, the script of the selfrighteous activist slowly began to give way. As Affleck makes abundantly clear, it was he who changed that first Ash Wednesday. The very first hours of a campaign and presence that would perdure for the next two decades—and continues up to the moment of this writing—were marked by an encounter that undermined what he perceived to be a traditional approach to social change. Psychologist Erik H. Erikson named Gandhi’s experiment with satyagraha in a labor dispute in 1918 in Ahmedabad, India as “The Event.”32 By this Erikson meant that this incident proved to be a monu-

The First Journey

59

mentally pivotal experience by which Gandhi negotiated his midlife passage from two decades of work in South Africa to new and pressing challenges in India. At this crucial moment in both his own life and the life of his native land, Gandhi devoted his energies to resolving a littlenoticed conflict between mill workers and mill owners. Erikson’s booklength treatment of this episode contends that this exercise not only lit the way for Gandhi’s years of spiritual and political leadership, it also clarified for him the power and dynamics of nonviolence itself. The encounter on the morning of Ash Wednesday, 1982 functioned, I contend, as “The Event” that has shaped all that followed. Michael Affleck’s initial impulse was to duplicate a common social change script. Circumstances challenged that model, and rather than fighting this, Affleck and the others were led into unknown territory. Reflecting years later on the fact that he had no blood to splash that day, Affleck declares, “It was taken away from me by some incredible fluke . . . and . . . our direction went another way that day. I think it’s divine—I don’t know how else to explain why that happened. Because I had checked it before I left the car. Then, the jar was empty. On that first day things could have really changed.”33 It takes little imagination to conjure up what might have happened if Affleck had followed through on his initial plan. Merlino and NTS security would likely have responded swiftly and with heightened tension. Affleck, and perhaps others, would have been arrested, probably in a rough manner. The press would likely have lavished considerable attention on this act—for now a simple prayer service had become a “story” with interest and drama: a “crime” or an act of “civil disorder,” with perhaps police “overreaction.” While it may have garnered more press attention, it would have likely stiffened security in future demonstrations, frayed relations between the LDE organizers and Nelson and Merlino, and created a more tense atmosphere. No doubt, test site employees would learn of this altercation and be less amenable and open to these “outside agitators.” Most of all, it would probably have set this activity in a conventional bipolar narrative (us/them; authority/fringe protesters; good/evil) that may never have been transformed.

Daily Lenten Practice, 1982 Beginning on Ash Wednesday, the activities of the first Lenten Desert Experience generally conformed to the same daily pattern.34 This schedule consisted of:

60

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

1. Rising at 5:00 A.M. in Las Vegas and preparing to leave for the vigil. 2. Driving 65 miles north along Highway 95 to Gate 100, the main gate of the Nevada Test Site, beginning at 5:30 A.M.35 3. Arriving at the site by 7:00 A.M. and standing by the side of the road with signs, banners, and placards as thousands of test site workers arrived for the morning shift. Many Lenten Desert Experience participants would wave to and smile at the workers as they drove into the facility. Workers would often, though not always, respond in a similar spirit. 4. Gathering at 8:30 A.M. in a circle for prayer, singing, and silence. Sometimes a formal religious service took place. At others, prayer was informal and improvised. The organizers typically took a lead in devising this form of worship, though many other participants would volunteer to craft this period of public prayer and reflection. Sometimes these periods were entirely improvised. People often found the improvised sessions as compelling as the planned ones. 5. Going off about 9:30 A.M. singly or in small groups into the desert to reflect or pray in contemplative silence. 6. About 10:15 A.M., regrouping and sharing reflections, feelings, and insights about being in the desert, about the nuclear arms race, and about other matters that spontaneously arose. 7. At 10:30 A.M., concluding this process and then returning to Las Vegas. 8. After having lunch at the LDE gathering place in Las Vegas, there would be free time. Often presentations about the Nevada Test Site and nonviolent resistance were offered during this period. Signmaking often took place then. 9. Proceeding to the U.S. Federal Building in Las Vegas for an afternoon vigil at 3 P.M. 10. Eating dinner together at 6:00 P.M., followed by cleaning up and community time.36 11. Some people went to bed early, while others visited the Las Vegas sights, including the downtown casinos and the Las Vegas Strip. This schedule was followed throughout Lent. Although 40 people gathered for the initial event on Ash Wednesday, and 150 persons participated in the Good Friday service and witness, generally there were no more than 4 or 5 people at the daily vigil, excluding the organizers. These were often a combination of Las Vegas residents and people from

The First Journey

61

out of state. They were joined periodically during the forty-day event by a variety of religious leaders, peace activists, and resource persons. This daily regimen served as the framework for the six-week Franciscan presence during Lent at the edge of the Nevada Test Site. The daily repetition of this schedule—rising, travel, encounter, prayer, silence, the return, communal meals, fasting for some, sleep, and new rising—fostered a ritualistic turn from the busyness of one’s predictable and familiar life toward the desert, a place of emptiness and plenitude, a terrain wounded and sacred. This was a turn from garbled speech to silence, but a silence capable of engendering action for political change and for the change of hearts. This was a turn to the corporal works of mercy, including the corporeality of embodied and loving resistance. This was a turn toward the other who becomes friend and intimate. Though Affleck initially viewed this six-week vigil as an organizing vehicle, he slowly grasped the power that it was having on people. Later he would be told by many test site workers that they had been touched by the tenacity of the Lenten Desert Experience. They told him that they were very moved by our witness—that we would stand in that cold weather every morning. . . . It affected them quite a lot. And much more than lots of people coming in for a weekend. The same people out day after day was very important to them. That was also part of the spirituality of this. That there was the continuity of people, returning day after day. Not confronting but just being there, day after day.37

Affleck, in turn, found himself experiencing the power of this witness, even though he had not expected to: One of the dynamics is that we started by going out to the test site and had a transforming experience ourselves early on. . . . Our first LDE was not a lobby effort. That’s not what we were doing. We were out there as a Christian witness. We were going along those lines. But the experience transformed us, much to our surprise. . . . We too were changed by what we did, so when we [eventually] undertook a lobbying effort, when we undertook a serious effort to get to everyone we needed to get to, we were coming at that from having the experience of trying to connect with our opponents rather than trying to hurt them, or trying to “win,” or trying to “defeat” them or trying to “save the world,” or do anything like that. All we were trying to do was trying to say, to the senator or the president or the pope, “Do you understand what is at stake? Neither you nor I want our family names associated with this. Let’s see what we can do together. What steps can we take to back away from this situation?” And it was a much different

62

Pilgrimage through a Burning World way to approach people than might have been otherwise. . . . And it clicked with people. It worked. We got a reputation for this approach and it stuck.38

At the same time, Affleck came to experience personally the power of what people were feeling in their encounter with the desert: We didn’t have to do anything. Christians have been listening to the scriptures their whole lives, and so much of it has to do with the desert. The desert imagery is the backdrop, the location of the bible stories. And you get out there and you can see exactly what they were talking about. . . . There was something else going on. I have religious language to talk about it. I can’t explain it as an organizer. But I think that’s what organizers talk about—if they can get “that” to happen, this other dynamic, then that’s it, you’ve got it. And it happened.39

Over the course of this forty-seven-day vigil, Affleck and others came to respect the mysterious power of the journey to this space opened for prayer and silence at the edge of a nuclear weapons testing facility.

Lenten Desert Experience’s “Way of the Cross” On Good Friday, April 9, 1982, 150 people marked the culmination of the Christian season of Lent, not inside a church but outside the gates of a nuclear test site. Forty days in prayer and silence, in bad weather and good, in company and solitude, had passed, and now the vigil was coming to a close. After a brief service, they marked this occasion with a two-mile procession from the freeway exit ramp to Camp Desert Rock, near the entrance of the test site, where a large cross was erected. This procession echoed in a contemporary manner the “Way of the Cross” or the “Stations of the Cross,” a Christian ritual journey that memorializes Jesus’ last hours before his execution in Jerusalem. As Rosemary Lynch put it in a letter to General Gates a few days later, This cross, erected on Good Friday, has been the object of our reverence during these last holy days concluding the lenten observance. Rev. Louie Vitale, OFM has blessed it with a particular benediction reserved for a cross to be used in the ceremony known as the WAY OF THE CROSS. This WAY, a centuries-old Christian devotion closely associ-

The First Journey

63

ated with Francis of Assisi and his followers, commemorates, not only the sufferings of Jesus, but also those of all of our sisters and brothers everywhere, today, of all human pain and agony.40

This Lenten Desert Experience “Way of the Cross,” while analogous to those that were being staged on every continent on Good Friday, was distinguishable from them in at least two clear ways. First, the context. Holding this ceremony on the edge of the U.S. nuclear test site symbolically recontextualized both this facility and this ritual. While in the United States such rituals typically were held inside or just outside churches, in other countries—including Spain and many Latin American nations—the via crucis is often a procession between two significant, and sometimes politically and culturally charged sites. To hold this ceremony at a nuclear weapons facility identified nuclearism with the murder of the holy one. At the same time, it reconfigured this ancient rite. To lead this ritual at the gates of a nuclear proving ground was expanding its theological and cultural reach, and the reach of the tradition to which it belonged. It conveyed that even here—especially here—such rituals must be held. Implicit in this enactment is both reproach and the possibility of liberation for both the church and society. Policies threatening mass destruction are repudiated; but so is the silence of religious communities that stand by and do not act, whether that is when the fires of the Holocaust are burning or the fires of a future, even more terrible conflagration are being imagined, planned, tested. But there is more than castigation implied in this seemingly simple ritual. There is also hope for redemption that a culture of death can give way to a culture of peace, and that religious communities can reclaim their fundamental values and vision by acting for peace with justice. In this way the Lenten Desert Experience recontextualized and reconstructed an ancient Christian symbol and medieval rite. The second difference between the more traditional “Way of the Cross” and that enacted at the end of the Lenten Desert Experience was its form. The procession was led by Julianne Graf carrying a seven-foothigh wooden cross, followed by participants carrying a length of rope a quarter of a mile long to which 750 pieces of black cloth (symbolic of the 750 nuclear tests known at that time to have taken place) had been attached. The Good Friday 1982 “Stations of the Cross” at the Nevada Test Site featured “stations” that were not manifest through the canonically determined scenes of the traditional ceremony (“Jesus takes up his cross”; “Jesus falls for the first time”; etc.) but symbolic expression of the ongoing crucifixion of Christ and the world through the design, production, testing, deployment, and threatened use of nuclear weapons.

64

Pilgrimage through a Burning World Lenten Desert Experience’s Nonviolent Civil Disobedience

Anne Bucher—who two years later would participate in the founding of Nevada Desert Experience as an organization and campaign— wrote to her parents in Oakland on Holy Thursday, April 8, 1982, the night before the Good Friday witness, to share with them the fact that she was planning to take part in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Nevada Test Site the following day: Holy Thursday Dear Mom and Dad, I’m writing this letter at the Nevada Test Site, on the same spot where a group of soldiers camped back in 1955. At that time, just a few weeks before I was born, those same soldiers were used as guinea pigs in the Army’s experimentation with nuclear weapons. They wanted to know how a soldier would respond after having been exposed at close range, and unprotected, to a nuclear detonation. Now, almost 25 years later, in their early 40’s, these same men have died or are dying of cancer. I’m fully aware as I sit here, that this area is radioactive, thus I’m exposing myself to it. But I’m also fully aware that from the beginning of my life, I have been exposed to radiation. I was born into the nuclear age; I have never not known it. Yesterday I was reading some material Jackie [Anne’s uncle, Raymond “Jackie” Bucher, a Franciscan priest] sent me from D.C. On April 1 some people testified in front of Congress about the arms race. One of the testimonies contains the first estimate ever given in regard to radiation exposure. It said that because of the use of the 2 atomic weapons in Japan, the testing that has been done here in Las Vegas and the handful of other places in the world, some 20 million people have died before their time. In a statement from a physician who specializes in nuclear medicine, I yesterday also learned that the American Cancer Society now admits that 1 out of every 3 people will get cancer. This physician, Rosalie Bertell, estimates it’s now like 1 out of 2, because the ACS doesn’t include in their statistics those who are cured. I have never felt so uncertain about bringing children into this world. And that makes me incredibly sad, because all my life I’ve wanted children—maybe more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Yesterday, in the New York Times, [U.S. Secretary of State] Alexander Haig, being the first in the history of nuclear weapons, throughout every administration since [that of President Harry S.] Truman, made the statement that the U.S. was willing to use first strike against the Soviet Union, or even in a conventional war. This has in fact, been our policy for some time. But it has been kept a

The First Journey

65

secret, most likely because as a people we’ve always been led to believe our weapons were for deterrence only—that we would never use them. The U.S. Bishops, as well as many other religious denominations and even the Vatican itself has unequivocally condemned first strike use of nuclear weapons. Yet we are only a few years away from having that capability—the testing for it has been going on right here for years, and continues. Many people feel that right now is the crucial moment. The outcry in this country, where we still have the ability to protest, must be strong. If not; if in fact we, as a nation, go along with this too, it will be virtually unstoppable by the time our first strike capability is complete. To remain silent in the face of this is to give our stamp of approval. If you get this letter from me, it means that in all likelihood, I have participated in an act of “loving disobedience” at the Nevada Test Site. Therefore, in all likelihood, I will not be home for Easter. I want you to know that for a few months now, I have been seriously considering this. I had fully intended to sit down and talk with both of you about it. I don’t like that I have to explain in a letter, and I especially don’t like that this will be sprung on you when you’re expecting me home. For those things I am truly sorry. When I left Oakland, I had pretty much decided against participating in a disobedience mostly because of the local situation down here. There had been much controversy within the Franciscan Center and those involved in the Lenten Desert Experience as to whether it was appropriate here, and now. I had also decided that school [Holy Names College, Oakland] meant too much to risk not being able to graduate, that I needed to be free for Grandma, that I had too many responsibilities. There are always several good reasons not to do it. Therefore I didn’t talk to either of you about it because I didn’t want to upset you. I’m sorry for that. As long as there was still a possibility that I’d participate, I should have been up-front with you about it. But I’m not sorry that I’m open to participating. I know that neither of you believes in breaking the law. But I ask you to believe in me— to believe me when I say that in my conscience, in my heart, in the place in which God speaks to me, I can do nothing less. When I participated in a civil disobedience at Lockheed [Missile and Space Corporation], it was only the next step for me of a long and endless process. I knew clearly then, and have known since, that I’d be in jail again—and again. I don’t relish the thought of jail—I can think of nothing I want less. But I have to follow my conscience. The law of God, the law of the Church, and International Law all compel me to this decision. At Nuremberg, Japanese and German war criminals were condemned to death precisely because they didn’t break the law. At those same trials, it was written into International Law that it was a crime against humanity to use, produce, and possess nuclear weapons.41 The documents of Vatican II state that if obeying a law violates one’s conscience he/she is bound to break

66

Pilgrimage through a Burning World that law. Thus we could never have another situation, as in Nazi Germany, where people said: “We were just obeying orders.” I really have a high respect for the law, and that is why I break it. I want laws to be just, and there are far too many unjust laws in this world. Unjust laws are not to be obeyed. God’s law calls us beyond to justice, to love, to peace. If you could both accept and understand these deepest of my feelings, I would be incredibly happy. But I don’t expect that of you. I would ask that you at least try to accept it, and if you can’t do that, please do believe in me. Thurs. eve Once again, I apologize for the phone call. I love you both very dearly and deeply, and ultimately have you to thank for shaping my conscience and my faith. With all my love, Anne Dad, for your info—our action involves a religious procession (a continuation of stations of the cross) past the point where we are allowed to vigil, and toward the gates of the Test Site—approx. 2–3 miles for the purpose of dialoguing with the workers. We don’t expect to get too far.42

In this letter home, Bucher interweaves political analysis and principled resolve with anxiety about the impact her decision to break the law may have on her mother and father.43 She declares that she has settled the matter in her own mind—she plans to go ahead with her act of civil disobedience—but this does not preclude her from anticipating and appreciating the emotional and political fallout her parents may experience in its wake. In this way, Bucher’s letter captures the dimensions of public social witness, and especially extralegal activity, that are often held in tension: political stance, conscientious moral principle, and emotional, social, and political consequences. There had been some talk ahead of time that even the “Way of the Cross” procession might result in arrests.44 Instead, the sheriffs and security personnel merely followed the walk. Then: At the end of the prayer ceremony, 19, who were prepared to break the law by trespassing across a white line painted on the road at an arbitrary place and who had the expectation that the penalties for this act of civil disobedience could be very severe, walked arm in arm toward the line and at the last moment veered off the road into the desert. The police were surprised and Sheriff Merlino called out “Get ’em.” All 19 were arrested without a struggle.45

The First Journey

67

After being handcuffed, the nineteen—including Vitale, Bucher, Daniel Ellsberg, Dick Clark, and others—were bussed sixty miles north to Beatty, where they were jailed briefly and then presented before Nye County Justice Court Judge William Sullivan. The arrestees refused to pay the required $100 bail he imposed. The group desired to continue its vigil in jail through Easter. As Affleck recalls, “The judge ordered the protesters released but Louie Vitale, OFM . . . suggested that they would not leave. The judge said that if they did not leave they would be held in contempt of court and physically removed from jail. The judge voiced sympathy for ending nuclear testing.”46 After they left the jail, some of them shared their thoughts about the event with the local media. Dick Clark declared that “When we got on the bus, handcuffed, I said, ‘I haven’t felt as much peace in months’— and that was the last thing I expected.”47 Ellsberg commended the professionalism and sophistication of the sheriffs. Louis Vitale said, “For 15 years I wanted to see this happen. . . . The heart of the beast is nuclear war and that huge whale of a test site out there is the belly of the beast. The next step is banning nuclear war.”48 Two days later, on Easter Sunday, the Lenten vigil was concluded with a prayer service and the launch of 1,000 white balloons. “The white balloons signify life and symbolize Jesus Christ’s resurrection,” Sr. Julieanne Graf told the Las Vegas Sun.49 On Wednesday, April 14, the arrested LDE participants gathered in Beatty Justice Court, where their charges were dropped. Nye County District Attorney Peter Knight told the Las Vegas Sun, “There was no harm done to people or property, and based on the nature of the protest and the conduct of the demonstrators, I decided not to prosecute. . . . We have a lot better avenues to spend our money on, and I don’t have anything for or against those protesters.”50

Reflecting on Lenten Desert Experience, 1982 We did this as a deliberate idea of associating [with] the Lenten season of repentance. . . . Again, this is one of those things that got turned around on us, because we always knew that it was, “We needed to repent . . . and they needed to repent, too.” Our opponents did. But it was much more, as time went on, much more, “We need to repent—and let the opponents worry about themselves. We’ll take care of our own spirituality.” —Michael Affleck51

68

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

The 1982 Lenten Desert Experience consciously or unconsciously contextualized in a nuclear setting the meaning of the ancient Christian practice of Lent. Lent is a time set aside by the church in which Christians attempt to follow Christ into the desert by fasting and prayer.52 In so doing they are immersed in a season marked not simply by a few half understood practices of penance but a time of conversion and turning toward God. Historically, this “turning” was underscored by the fact that the forty days of Lent in the early church comprised a period of final preparation and instruction for baptism or initiation on Easter.53 Rooted in the teaching and practice of Christ and in the historical witness of the martyrs, Christians are called during Lent to participate in what the tradition names the “Paschal mystery,” the death and resurrection of Jesus. The practice of Lenten self-denial emerged, Thomas Merton writes, as a symbolic appropriation of participating in this mystery of dying and rising with Jesus.54 But not simply symbolic. Merton stresses that Lenten practices are not simply a matter of “good intentions” and “interiority.” Fasting was chosen as a concrete way to echo, however faintly the “self-denial” of Christ.55 Meant to be neither forms of exclusively interior piety nor types of rote exterior ritual, Lenten practices are, at best, embodied acts performed in the service of metanoia or deep transformation. Lent originated, according to theologian Hermann Franke, not as a form of individualist piety but as the “exertions” of the church as a whole that were analogous to the same intensity and coordination of the training “exercises” or “maneuvers” or “drills” of an army. The faithful participated annually in the “holy exercises,” a word that had been borrowed from the Roman army. In the early liturgies and in the sermons of the Fathers we frequently find the word exercitatio, exercise or drill. Exercere, in the military context, means to keep something active and in motion by corporeal movement. The church applied this meaning to the Lenten period of spiritual renewal.56 Moreover, this “drill” was not a finite activity confined to one period of the year but both a practice and a metaphor that came to characterized the Christian journey as a whole. Lent eventually comes to be seen as Christian life in miniature. Christian existence is seen as never-ending “drill.”57 The first Lenten Desert Experience was a vigil of prayer and witness through the forty-seven days of Lent. It was a kind of communal spiritual retreat, but a retreat not undertaken as in removed from the world but in the heart of a terrain that symbolized one of the greatest spiritual crises facing the world. It was a pilgrimage, but a nontraditional one. It was a time for religious rituals—including the distribution of ashes on Ash Wednesday and the observance of Good Friday per-

The First Journey

69

formed by bearing the nuclear cross and by recontextualizing for a nuclear world the crucifixion by “dying and rising with Jesus” in a symbolic way by engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience. This reinvented the Lenten “exercise” or “drill” was a step in the direction of challenging forty years of “nuclear drills.” How did the Lenten Desert Experience organizers see their recently concluded “drill”? Less than two weeks after that first vigil ended, the Las Vegasbased organizers gathered to evaluate it.58 After assessing the logistics and outreach, the group reflected on the event’s spirituality. Rosemary Lynch shared the thought that the Lenten Desert Experience’s “religious character . . . reinforced the ethical standpoint.” An unnamed participant in the evaluation meeting felt that the vigil had set up good rapport with Nye county sheriffs and NTS security. Awakened DOE [Department of Energy] to conversion possibility and necessity. Exposed ourselves very openly to the NTS workers. Won the hearts of many on the other side, as well as made people truly face the issue and decide either one way or the other. . . . This place is finally in the national eye . . .

Michael Affleck’s comments are noted: “An exhausting success. Jim Douglass’ book: spiritual energy and physical energy.59 Transformation of this energy through non-violence. Awareness of what’s happening here in Nev. Belief in the eventual stopping of testing; long range goal . . .”60 James W. Douglass, in his 1972 book Resistance and Contemplation, makes an analogy between nonviolence and atomic power. With the proper preparation, it can reach critical mass and release incalculable energy and power. The difference is that nonviolence is spiritual, integrative power, not the destructive power of nuclear weapons. By referring to Douglass’ work, Affleck suggests that this spiritual “chain reaction” is possible at the Nevada Test Site, and that the Lenten Desert Experience may have played a role in setting it off. In spite of the enormous time, energy, and commitment—in spite of the exhaustion of maintaining this 47–day witness—Affleck declared it a success. He found that the vigil in the desert had strengthened his conviction that, one day, nuclear testing would end. Faith-based nonviolent action is a journey into the unknown. If it is authentic, one can never predetermine or predict its outcome or consequences. Two events that took place not long after the first Lenten Desert Experience intimate this sense and experience of mystery.

70

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

First, General Mahlon Gates resigned his position as the director of the Nevada Test Site. This took place in the wake of the vigil, and shortly after he appeared with Sister Rosemary Lynch and a University of Nevada at Las Vegas professor on a television talk show.61 Second, the Department of Energy published on February 13, 1983, a set of “Rules Governing the Activities of Demonstrations at the Nevada Test Site.” This document listed the death sentence for treason among the penalties for violating the rules at the test site.62 Both of these events suggest the subtle momentum that nonviolent action can set in motion. It is unclear why General Gates resigned. While NDE personnel read this in the most dramatic and, from their position, positive light— “there seemed to be no doubt that his resignation was related to the invitation of the vigilers, and particularly from Sister Rose, to end testing”63—no definitive statement from Gates was made. From Rosemary Lynch’s account of their meeting before Lent, however, one discerns in the general a kind of bafflement at how one promotion after another had propelled him, almost without his cooperation, into the test site directorship. While this assessment of his lofty position (where he was directly in charge of one of the most crucial elements in the entire U.S. strategic force structure) was perhaps disingenuous, it could well have indicated his state of mind that, in the midst of Lynch’s disarming presence, he felt free enough to share. Gates had taken time to listen to the Franciscan sister—extending their appointment from a few minutes to an hour and a half—and, though he demurred when she invited him to vigil with the Lenten Desert Experience, he spent time in prayer with her in his office. During Lent Gates arranged for a tour of the test site for Lynch and Affleck (during which they received Distinguished Visitor citations) and provided logistical support for the vigil in the form of portable toilets and drinking water. He also likely smoothed the way for a series of meetings LDE organizers held with test site officials and security prior to the launch of the vigil, which in turn contributed to creating an atmosphere of cooperation rather than hostility. While still speculative, it is not inconceivable that the relentless persistence and nonviolent spirit of LDE’s forty-seven day presence—as well as the willingness of some among its number, including Affleck, to risk prison sentences to make clear their opposition to nuclear testing— prompted General Gates to reevaluate the program at the test site and his role in it. Nonviolent action is designed to open psychological, cultural, and spiritual “space,” in which all parties are offered an opportunity to reflect on the meaning and consequences of the policy or condi-

The First Journey

71

tion in question, an opportunity that may never have presented itself so tangibly before in the ongoing process of socialization and deployment of the “nuclear self” and its interests. Perhaps Lenten Desert Experience—and the set of relationships it fostered, a set of relationships that likely would not have been engendered in any other way—created a “spaciousness” that afforded Mahlon Gates the opportunity to consider anew the consequences of the design, testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. This witness may have sparked a form of cognitive dissonance that encouraged him to engage, in his own way, in a nonviolent protest toward a system whose mission included the perfection of weapons of mass destruction. We do not know if this is true. It remains conjectural. We do know, however, that at least one person discontinued his employment at the test site that spring in response to the vigil. Affleck reports that “a Las Vegas woman, Mary Laman, joined vigil. Her husband, Dave, worked at test site. He resigned from NTS work as electrician during Lent because of his opposition to testing.”64 Dave Laman was directly impacted by his wife’s activity; it was Mary’s presence by the side of the road, where she held signs and waved to the workers as they arrived for work in the morning, that moved him to quit his job at the Nevada Desert Experience. “I took that job out there the last time because I didn’t have a job to go to and so I can appreciate that circumstance,” he told Greg Friedman. “But . . . sooner or later you’ve got to come to the accountability, that—Hey! I’m a part of this!”65 Conversion and open-heartedness, however, are not the only choices in response to nonviolent action. The history of nonviolent social movements is checkered with examples of defensive reaction and a hardening of the personal and systemic heart that seeks to smother or extinguish such activity. The disclosure that the national security state would consider defending itself at the Nevada Test Site by potentially labeling nonviolent action as “treasonable”—and thus possibly imposing a sentence of death on peace activists—was designed, undoubtedly, to deter people from taking part in such witnesses in the desert. While never considered by most NDE personnel as a serious physical possibility, this declaration was nonetheless a starkly symbolic statement of the dynamic at hand. By interfering with, contesting, and demythologizing the “sacrality” of the nuclear weapons system (dramatically framed by a physical and psychological circle of magical immunity), nonviolent activists violated a preeminent taboo of the nuclear age. In turn, the nuclear regime was perceived as defending and reasserting its sacrality in the only way it could: by projecting its power to inflict death.

72

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Both of these developments—Gates’s departure and talk of the ultimate sanction—broadly signaled the systole and diastole of the events that would unfold over the coming years. Over the next two decades, there would be unexpected and mysterious incidents that would dramatize cracks in the fissures of nuclearism, as well as defensive moves to keep those cracks from forming and widening.

CHAPTER

3

Nevada Desert Experience

The six-week Lenten Desert Experience held in 1982 was conceived of as a one-time event. The power of those forty-seven days in the Nevada desert, however, moved some of the participants to begin considering a more consistent witness. In 1983 a shorter vigil was organized during the last two weeks of Lent. The following year, Lenten Desert Experience III was held from April 1 through April 30, 1984.1 No nuclear tests were conducted during the month-long vigil; they resumed three days after the Lenten Desert Experience concluded. Unlike the first two Lenten vigils, civil disobedience occurred on many different days in addition to arrests on Good Friday and for a variety of nonviolent offenses. Toward the end of LDE III a sobering and ultimately mysterious event occurred. An exorcism was held at the test site on April 26, during which a plane crashed into nearby Little Skull Mountain. The pilot, who was killed in the crash, was a U.S. Air Force general based in Virginia who directed the development of new technologies for the military, including the plane he was flying at the time, the then-still secret Stealth fighter jet. At the end of the third Lenten Desert Experience, a number of the key organizers decided that the momentum existed for the development of an ongoing campaign at the test site. Only days after completing LDE III, the Nevada Desert Experience was officially formed by Louis Vitale, Anne Bucher, Michael Affleck, Duncan MacMurdy, and two Franciscan friars, Ed Dunn and Terry Symens, in a meeting in May in Oakland, California. In October 1984 the Nevada Desert Experience sponsored its inaugural event, the “Franciscan Peacemakers” weekend. This was the first test-site-related witness that featured a conference. This would become an integral part of the NDE practice: to begin with a conference in Las Vegas (offering analysis, information-sharing, storytelling, and nonviolent action training) followed by liturgy, legal witness, and nonviolent civil disobedience at the gates of the test site. Twenty-four people were arrested. For the first time, the Nye County district attorney filed charges against those arrested. Convicted, they received sentences requiring them to perform twenty-four hours of community service.

73

74

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

In 1985 MacMurdy, Bucher, and Affleck were joined on NDE staff by Peg Bean and Terry Symens. Lenten Desert Experience IV saw 400 people participate in the forty-seven day vigil. Twenty-eight were arrested and, for the first time, they received jail sentences. First time offenders were given two-and-a-half days in the county jail; repeat offenders, five days. Later in the year, NDE organized the first August Desert Witness to commemorate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9). A number of major national religious organizations cosponsored this event. Five hundred people participated, with 121 arrested. On August 6, the Soviet Union announced a unilateral moratorium on testing, which would last for eighteen months. From August 1985 through August 1986, NDE stationed an RV (recreational vehicle) at the edge of the test site and maintained a yearlong vigil in which various people participated, including Terry Symens. The national Bilateral Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign sponsored the “American Peace Test,” October 18 through November 18 at the test site. Jail sentences and fines increased for the 113 people arrested. In 1986 NDE hosted the January 2–3 “Challenge of Peace” witness and Lenten Desert Experience V. The American Peace Test (APT) split from the Freeze Campaign and began organizing a series of large and small protests at the test site. In April Greenpeace and APT organized back country actions to attempt to directly interfere with a test named “Mighty Oak.” Daniel Ellsberg and five others went deep into the site. As Affleck writes, “This back country action received extensive coverage. A congressional aid who Ellsberg knew said that the presence of protesters on the test site did sway at least one vote in Congress in favor of cutting funding for testing.”2 The U.S. House of Representatives voted to end funding for nuclear tests in August, influenced by these and other actions. The Senate refused to follow suit. In March 1986 Anne Bucher and Terry Symens were engaged to be married. Terry proposed to Anne in the desert at the edge of the test site. They were married later that year on October 4, St. Francis of Assisi’s feast day. They invited Sheriff Jim Merlino to the wedding. Though he did not attend, he sent a gift and wished them well. From May 31 to June 2, 1986, 1,200 people rallied against testing in an APT action. The Western Shoshone nation began issuing permits for protesters to be on their land. NDE organized August Desert Witness II later that summer. In September Art Casey and others began Peace Camp west of Highway 95 across from the test site, with the intention of maintaining a permanent presence at the proving ground. At the end of September, 139 people were arrested at a protest sponsored by APT and the American Public Health Association; they were arrested just after a nuclear detonation.

Nevada Desert Experience

75

Gathering Momentum Now, the number of nonviolent protests began to increase: actions took place on October 4, 1986; October 15–16; October 27; November 15; November 17; January 27, 1987; February 5; and February 3–11. LDE VI was held March 4–April 19, 1987. On April 11, the Jewish Fellowship Shalom Seder was held, the first national Jewish peace gathering at the test site. On May 5, two Catholic bishops, Bishops Buswell and Gumbleton, joined 96 others in being arrested at the test site; this was the first time Catholic bishops had been arrested resisting nuclear weapons. On May 10, APT, NDE, and other groups cosponsored Mother’s Day Action where 3,000 gathered, and 759 people were arrested. This demonstration garnered extensive national press attention. For the next several years there were great waves of nonviolent, creative activity at the test site, including NDE’s LDE and August Desert Witness events. One of the high points of this period was the March 8–16, 1988 “Reclaim the Test Site” activity, where 8,000 people participated in this APT-sponsored event, with 2,065 arrests. There was a vast encampment at Peace Camp. For the first time, chain-link cages were erected by NTS officials to hold arrestees. During the 1989 “LDE VIII: A Time to Be Silent, A Time to Speak,” Affleck writes, “each day’s events were creatively planned by the participants. For example, there was a dance on the test site side of the fence, foot washing through the fence, sharing bread and wine across the fence while getting arrested.”3 On April 8–15, 1989, APT’s “Reclaim the Test Site II” saw 1,800 people arrested. In May authorities bulldozed the Peace Camp and evicted its inhabitants. May, June, July, August, and September saw a wide variety of prayer and protest at the test site organized by NDE (including staff-members Peter Ediger and Mary Lehman) and other organizations.

The Nineties In the 1990s this overall pattern of activity continued. Nevada Desert Experience vigils, conferences, and acts of civil disobedience; large American Peace Test and Greenpeace actions; gatherings by a wide variety of faiths and denominations. Numerous activities and developments during the decade stand out. The first was the “Lenten Desert Experience” tenth anniversary commemoration in spring 1991, which saw a large turnout. The second was “Corpus Christi (Body of Christ) Desert Experience,” a large gathering organized by Catholic women’s congregations in June 1991. Over 400 women and men, representing 131

76

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

religious communities from 31 states, the District of Columbia, and 7 nations gathered in the Nevada desert. The third was “Countdown ’93,” a coalition led by NDE and other organizations to establish a permanent end to nuclear testing in the wake of President George Bush’s signing a moratorium on testing in Nevada in October 1992. The fourth was NDE’s inauguration in 1990 of an annual sixty-five-mile Holy Week Peace Walk from Las Vegas to the test site during the last week of Lent. Fifth, the Nevada Desert Experience sponsored “Millennium 2000,” a three-day event that featured prayer, presentations, a march on the Las Vegas Strip, and a candlelight procession onto the test site grounds at midnight on December 31, 1999. One of the most important developments during this period was the growing relationship between the Nevada Desert Experience and the Western Shoshone nation. Twice a year, the Western Shoshone— supported by NDE and other organizations—has held “Healing Global Wounds,” a multiday ceremony at the Nevada Test Site. This event was first established in October 1992 to remember and reflect on the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Europeans on this continent—with a strong emphasis on five centuries of resistance and survival—and has been observed in April and October every year since then. “Healing Global Wounds” includes healing ceremonies, sweat lodge purification rituals, circle dances, personal testimony, sunrise prayers, and nonviolent civil disobedience at the test site gate blessed and sanctioned by the Indian leadership. During the first “Healing Global Wounds” event, Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney conducted a Sun Rise ceremony at Peace Camp near the entrance to the Nevada Test Site on Sunday, October 11, 1992. For an hour Corbin Harney prayed in a deep, gravelly voice at the center of a circle of women and men in the desert morning darkness. The sky was achingly clear, with pinpoints of starlight flung across it. In rhythmic chains of ancient speech, Harney marveled at the tender beauty of the world and its intricately interwoven beings. Carefully dropping bits of herb and small pieces of cedar into the fire, he encouraged the sun to rise. Finally, as the beige disk of the moon dipped behind Skull Mountain to the northwest, threads of sunlight delicately spread along the nearby Spotted Range. Almost immediately the warmth of the sun began to dispel the October chill, and piercing light floods across the sprawling Nevada desert floor. Another day could now begin. Harney wrote in his 1995 book The Way It Is: One Water . . . One Air . . . One Mother Earth that “The Creator has said, ‘Anything that gets done in a circle . . . can never be broken.’”4 For this Western

Nevada Desert Experience

77

Shoshone elder, this sunrise circle signifies many things. It denotes the profound roundness and unbroken continuity of the biomorphic world. It exemplifies the circularity of the mountainous horizon that embraces us in this place. It stands for the great circuit of spiritual power—called by the Western Shoshone puha—that flows in and through the earth. And its circumference symbolizes the orbit of the annual, elliptical journey that the hunting-and-gathering indigenous peoples undertook on this land to harvest and store pine nuts and other foodstuffs for thousands of years in this area. But this circle also indicates a growing international community of women and men who support the Western Shoshone nation in its tireless efforts to retain its cultural identity and way of life, which includes regaining the millions of acres of land that it claims the United States government has unjustly confiscated and that it has never ceded or relinquished. The people gathered here are from around the world. They have traveled to the desert to join the Western Shoshone in prayer, ritual, and nonviolent action in the twice-yearly “Healing Global Wounds” ceremony. “Healing Global Wounds” grew out of a collaboration between the Western Shoshone and the Nevada Desert Experience and other organizations working to end nuclear testing and to take action for a nuclear-free future. Though at the beginning there was no relationship between the two communities, by the mid-1980s the Western Shoshone would participate in activities at the test site. By the late 1980s, NDE was working closely with the Western Shoshone nation, which began issuing permits to NDE participants and others to authorize their presence on the land. This collaboration deepened through the 1980s and 1990s, and led to further collaboration on “Healing Global Wounds” and other events. NDE and the Western Shoshone function reciprocally as predecessors and partners in a complex and rich relationship. While NDE established the first antinuclear witnesses at the test site, the Western Shoshone had been ritualizing on the land for thousands of years before the first nuclear test on this land. The Western Shoshone elders and the NDE organizers and participants have come to respect and support each other’s work to honor and protect the earth and its many beings.

A Moratorium on Nuclear Testing In October 1992 U.S. President George Bush announced a moratorium on nuclear testing in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relentless persistence of a worldwide movement for an end to

78

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

nuclear testing. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has been signed by over 150 countries around the world. At this writing, the U.S. has yet to ratify the treaty. Russia’s Parliament overwhelmingly ratified the CTBT in 2000.5 Aside from tests by Pakistan and India in 1998, no below or above-ground nuclear weapons test featuring “full criticality” (a nuclear chain reaction) has taken place anywhere on earth since France ended a series of detonations in the South Pacific in 1995. The United States, nonetheless, is developing the capacity within its national laboratories to design and test nuclear weapons by means of the National Ignition Facility, currently being built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California. It is also conducting what it terms “subcritical” explosives tests on a regular basis at the Nevada Test Site. The mission of the national laboratories continues to be to design and produce new generations of nuclear arms and delivery systems well into the twenty-first century. In response, the worldwide Abolition 2000 movement is seeking to delegitimate and abolish all nuclear weapons. The Nevada Desert Experience is presently a partner in this global coalition, even as it continues to organize faith-based nonviolent action at the test site and mobilize education and lobby efforts throughout the United States.

The Evolving Vision of the Nevada Desert Experience When the first band of antinuclear pilgrims arrived to take part in the initial Lenten Desert Experience in 1982, they felt as if they were entering unknown territory. They simply did not know what to expect. They did not know if they would be harmed by test site police or irate workers. They wondered if their acts of civil disobedience would earn them years in jail. They did not know if they could survive in the extremes of heat or cold that often characterized the Nevada desert. Yet, over time, they created an environment where thousands of people came to pray, protest, and take steps toward peacemaking. They did so by fashioning a ritual journey that held two crucially important elements in tension: significance and relative safety. Nevada Desert Experience: A Significant Sojourn Making the journey to the Nevada Test Site came to be regarded as a significant spiritual and political act. It was a way to register in a public and embodied way one’s disapproval of nuclear weapons by traveling to the location where those weapons were physically perfected.

Nevada Desert Experience

79

The fact that such a facility operated at all was thought to be a symptom of spiritual crisis; to actively protest the armaments it engendered in situ was considered a direct somatic referendum against the threat they posed to the world. The spiritual richness of this conscientious action was reinforced by one’s having to embark on a journey from one’s familiar location to an often strikingly different setting. In the case of those standing in the Judeo-Christian tradition, this was intensified by the “desert hermeneutic” that they brought to this place. Sinai, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and the legacy of the fourth century C.E. desert mothers and fathers layered this journey with metaphors of liberation, threat, kenotic nothingness, and divine solace. Part of this was related to the tender power of the terrain itself, as Michael Affleck suggests: People use a lot of language related to how evil the testing was, how much evil had been committed at the . . . test site. But what people were really coming away with . . . was that this is really sacred, and that they were having a very holy experience being at the test site. The test site wasn’t evil, it was good. [He laughs.] It was kind of an odd thing. . . . There was a dynamic, I think, of feeling how vulnerable you were. That being out in the desert there’s no shelter—there’s the sun and the wind and the cold. You felt everything. And somehow in our vulnerability there was something happening. . . . Like Moses and his gang must have felt when they headed out into the desert and wandered around for forty years. Or the stories of Jesus when he went out to pray and being tempted in the desert. There was just this feeling that you’re right up against the very elemental parts of life: nature and good and evil. It was all there and it was just you and you just had to face it yourself.6

Nevada Desert Experience: Doable and Relatively Safe Not only was this pilgrimage powerful, it was also relatively safe. Although those who participated in the very first 47–day vigil at the test site in 1982 did not know what to expect—they fully anticipated the possibility of long jail terms and perhaps even physical harm from NTS officials or workers—they contributed, as highlighted in the last chapter, to the mutual construction of a “zone of nonviolence” at the gates of the Nevada proving ground. This initial accomplishment helped create the possibility for the activities over the past two decades briefly profiled above. Had the original Lenten Desert Experience been more militant and confrontational, it may have negatively impacted everything afterward, for many reasons. As Michael Affleck later explained, it would have likely kept church leadership, women religious, priests, and ministers away, a group

80

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

that became an important NDE constituency. This constituency would play a crucial role years later, creating the conditions for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This growing circle of identifiable church leadership that traveled to and from the test site in turn encouraged thousands of “people in the pews” (Catholic and non-Catholic alike) to also make this journey. As each year passed, and as more people felt emboldened to take part in the Nevada Desert Experience, the test site became an increasingly bona fide center for antinuclear prayer and action under NDE’s tutelage. Within a few years, a range of denominations and communities began organizing specific weekends at the test site during Lent: a Methodist Weekend, a Presbyterian Weekend, a Lutheran Weekend, an Episcopal Weekend. Eventually, there were Mormon Weekends, Buddhist Weekends, and Jewish Weekends. Where no such site existed before 1982, it become a destination for meaningful silent meditation, self-examination, prophetic declaration, and social reconstruction. It is in this way that it served as an increasingly important and quietly dramatic religio-politico-cultural site of contemporary pilgrimage. And it meant recontextualizing traditional forms. Affleck believed something powerful would take place: “If you did the most traditional prayer in the world, but you did it at the test site. . . . How do you invite those nuns out? They were the only people we knew, so we invited them out. But you had to invite them to something they knew. . . . You could say, ‘Let’s go out to the desert to pray.’ . . . And then they would go back and tell others.”7 Affleck’s intuition was confirmed many times over, as suggested in this statement made in 1999 by Sr. Karen Berry, O.S.F., from Tucson, Arizona: “The nonviolence of the whole event [of February 1989] was what drew me to participate. I am a quiet, reflective person who shuns crowds and who would never be part of a loud, violent protest of any kind. This experience deeply moved me.”8 NDE and the Nevada Test Site officials intuitively worked out a relationship that, in the end, encouraged the creation, deepening, and broadening of a modern antinuclear testing movement that played a central role in creating the political and moral conditions for the 1992 moratorium on nuclear testing and the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. By co-creating an atmosphere where the threat of violence on both sides was minimized, the Nevada Desert Experience offered its attendees an opportunity to participate in a social drama that focused acutely on the issue of nuclear weapons and that ritualized the dynamic of nuclear disarmament. As Affleck later shared, “It was my decided approach that we were going to have a movement that was strong

Nevada Desert Experience

81

enough to be taken seriously, urgent enough to catch people’s attention, but available enough to people that they could join and be a part of it.”9 This orientation emerged out of an encounter with the Mystery of the place, the historical times, and the inviolable sacredness of all beings, whatever side of the line they happened to be standing on. But this journey to Mystery was, itself, conditioned and contextualized by the traditions in which people stood. For those making a “Nevada desert experience,” those traditions included Gandhian nonviolence, Franciscan spirituality, the Catholic Worker movement, and desert spirituality.

NDE’s Four Interwoven Traditions and Themes: Active Nonviolence, Franciscan Spirituality, The Catholic Worker Movement, and Desert Spirituality NDE and the Vision and Practice of Active Nonviolence Whatever its practical political consequences, the journey that the Nevada Desert Experience collaboratively improvised with Sheriff Jim Merlino and other officials at the Nevada Test Site has been an ongoing experiment in active nonviolence in which thousands of people have symbolically and concretely experimented with the ascetical practice of dissolving the us-and-them dynamic at the heart of violence, including the violence of the nuclear threat. At the heart of the NDE journey over the past two decades has been a contemporary experimentation in active nonviolence. The twentieth century was the bloodiest in human history. At the same time, however, many movements for nonviolent transformation emerged and offered the world tools for challenging personal and systemic injustice and other forms of violence. This rich history is marked by innumerable instances of powerful nonviolent action, including Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March to the Sea; the U.S. Civil Rights movement’s 1963 Birmingham Campaign’s “Children’s Crusade” or its 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery; the United Farm Workers’ peregrinacion from Delano to the California State Capitol in 1966; the 1967 march on the Pentagon protesting the U.S. war in Vietnam; the nonviolent confrontation between unarmed demonstrators and Ferdinand Marcos’s troops in Manila in 1986; the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, and the “Velvet Revolution” in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. Nevada Desert Experience stands in this lineage of broadly defined traditions of nonviolent action over the past century.

82

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Nonviolent action has been defined as “a range of methods for actively waging conflict without directly threatening or inflicting harm to human beings.”10 While this definition conveys two important aspects of nonviolence—eschewing violence and doing so without passivity—it fails to evoke the heart of nonviolent action, as it has been practiced in many settings around the world and aspired to by Nevada Desert Experience organizers and practitioners. This failure is highlighted in the distinction nonviolence theorist Michael Nagler makes between the terms “non-violence” and “nonviolence.”11 For Nagler, “non-violence” simply denotes the absence of violence. While this is salutary, it falls short of seeing and unleashing nonviolence in its fullness as a positive, integrative power. According to Nagler, nonviolence is the desire for the wellbeing of all, including one’s adversary. It is the “third way” between passivity on the one hand and counterviolence on the other.12 It is behavior that actively resists injustice but does not demonize the opponent. It seeks an outcome where all—including one’s foes—have a place, in part because a long-lasting and just resolution will depend on it being accomplished together. This goes well beyond “non-violence” or a strictly and narrowly defined “strategic non-violence.”13 Rather, it is what Nagler terms principled nonviolence that in Gandhian terms expresses satyagraha (Soul-Force, Truth-Force) and in a Christian sense dramatizes Jesus’ proclamation of the love of enemies. This love, according to writer Angie O’Gorman, is a powerful force “by which [Jesus] meant wanting wholeness and well-being and life for those who may be broken and sick and deadly. It was meant to be the cornerstone of an entirely new process of disarming evil; one which would decrease evil instead of feeding it as violence does.”14 Nonviolence conveys this longing for “the well-being of all” in part through symbolic and concrete expressions that speak to and seek to make contact with the affective, somatic, cognitive, and spiritual dimensions of the human person. Like many movements for humane social change in the twentieth century, NDE and the larger antinuclear movement drew their vision and tactics in great part from the “experiments with truth” conducted by Mohandas K. Gandhi in the struggle for Indian independence. Gandhi’s nonviolence influenced the founders of NDE especially through the examples of those he had inspired, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. Gandhi’s active nonviolence, while contributing significantly to India’s independence, has had enormous impact far beyond the struggle for a “free India,” especially because he fused spiritual groundedness with political strategy. This influenced numerous struggles for peace, justice, civil rights, and environmental intergrity around the globe. The founders of NDE were deeply influenced by those

Nevada Desert Experience

83

whose spirituality and orientation were dramatically colored by what we might call the “Gandhian shift,”15 including King, Chavez, Merton, Berrigan, and Douglass. Inspired by Gandhian nonviolence, these key activist-theologians in turn fashioned a biblical-prophetic praxis. Their activism and theological reflections opened “spiritual, psychological and political” space for the creation of an active, nonviolent campaign for an end to nuclear experimentation. Satyagraha was the neologism Gandhi used to describe his creative and relentlessly persistent technique of nonviolent resistance. It combines two Sanskrit words: “sat” (meaning “truth,” “soul,” or “that which is”) and “agraha” (meaning “firm,” “steadfast,” “force,” “holding onto” or “gripping”). It can thus mean “soul-force” or “truthforce,” but it can also mean “holding firmly to truth,” “clinging to that which is,” or “firmly holding onto reality.” Satyagraha is Gandhi’s term for the process of waging a struggle for justice in which we seek not to exterminate the opponent but, through agapeic love and a willingness to suffer if necessary, to create with the opponent a just resolution of conflict. As Gandhi scholar Mark Juergensmeyer explains, Gandhi held that this love takes the form of struggle because “the deeper clarity comes only as each side challenges the other and one’s position undergoes the scrutiny that only an adversary relationship can produce.”16 Gandhi holds that while there is only one Truth, each of us only has a piece of that truth, and that this truth can be discerned through conflict. Gandhian satyagraha is based on a set of spiritual principles. First, all life is one. Those who live in harmony with this law can become powerful personal and social forces for goodness. To bring this force into our lives, we had to “shed all fear,” even the fear of death. Second, the divine is in all beings. Third, being human means actively loving our adversaries and to identify our own blind spots. Fourth, human beings cannot be reduced to the evil they perpetuate. Fifth, being human means being prepared to suffer rather than inflict suffering on others. Gandhi’s satyagraha is a process by which our interiority—our inner decision for truth, our sacredness, the presence of God deep within us, and these other spiritual principles—comes ultimately to be expressed in the language of our body. In other words, true satyagraha matches our body language with our truest selves. Satyagraha is not simply a mechanism for change. Rather, it is a visible and public expression of an inner unity by which our inner strength, our radiant love, our compassion, our longing for the wholeness of all beings comes to be expressed in our gestures, our words, our movements, especially in our encounter with those who oppose us and those whom we oppose.17

84

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

While the original antinuclear pilgrims to the test site were either directly or indirectly conversant with Gandhian nonviolence, in many ways their nonviolence was discovered through the process of entering the unknown, letting go of assumptions about how change happens, and being open to one’s own woundedness and sacredness, a spiritual process of chastening and revelation that would open one to another’s woundedness and sacredness, including those with whom one was struggling. Anne Bucher, writing only a year after the launch of Nevada Desert Experience as an organization, put it this way: I have become wholly convinced that something is happening at the Test Site which is difficult—if not impossible—to articulate. It is, however, experienced. I have witnessed time and again, people participating in the vigil and going home changed. Something is happening at the Test Site, and it is happening not because we are organizationally efficient, but in spite of the fact that we are not. People of faith and goodwill are being drawn together in the Nevada desert and together they are bringing life and goodness and re-creation to a place of evil, death, and destruction. The location is perfect: the vastness of the desert, the desert in all its stark beauty. It is a beauty which is appreciated slowly, over a period of time. . . . It is conducive to prayer, meditation, soulsearching, purification. It is as if people are able, in the setting of the desert, to reach down into their depths and discover what is good and what is a gift in themselves and in each other. This goodness, this gift, this power, this life-force collectively brought-forth, becomes tangible. Bonds are formed. Community happens. Love is made real. And out of this love, we are able to confront the evil in the desert. Out of this love we are able to heal ourselves, each other and the earth upon which we stand. Because of this love, nuclear weapons testing will end. We do not expect it to end quickly. We believe it will end when the people who make the policies that fuel the arms race make the decision to stop testing. They will do so because they will no longer believe that arms buildup is the way to peace. We are there at the Test Site holding our signs as the workers and policy makers drive by, in an attempt to offer a new way to peace. We are not there to make them stop or to convert them. We are there to convert our own hearts and face the tangible evil with tangible love.18

The nonviolent journey to the test site was an encounter with those who managed and policed this facility and with one’s own internalized violence. At the same time, it was a journey of nonviolence marked by many influences, including the deep call to peacemaking embedded in the Franciscan tradition.

Nevada Desert Experience

85

NDE and Franciscan Spirituality Just as the Nevada Desert Experience was influenced by the way of nonviolence envisioned by Jesus, Gandhi, King, and a growing number of experimenters around the world, so too was it deeply shaped by the tradition of Franciscan spirituality. Louis Vitale, Ed Dunn, and Terry Symens had been deeply imbued with the values and vision of Francis of Assisi in their formation as Franciscans. While not a vowed Franciscan, Anne Bucher had been part of the Franciscan family her entire life. For several generations, many of the men of her family went to Franciscan seminary and became Franciscan friars. “We were always being taken to the Franciscan missions in California,” she remembers.19 “Somebody was always being ordained, or celebrating his first mass or jubilee. I have all these archetypal memories of being in the missions with incense, songs, and processions of the friars.” A self-described “really pious kid,” Bucher grew to love the mystery and ritual of Catholicism and the Franciscan tradition, which was the context in which her Catholic faith flourished, a context that would consciously and unconsciously shape many dimensions of the Nevada Desert Experience. This tradition was rooted in the spiritual journey of Francis of Assisi (c.1182–1226). The son of a wealthy merchant in the Italian city of Assisi, Francis grew up steeped in the vision of chivalric honor and romantic love. After a carefree youth, he saw combat in a war between Assisi and a neighboring city. During one of the battles, he was captured and spent a year as a prisoner of war. After being ransomed by his father, he underwent a profound conversion experience, prompted by an encounter with a leper who became, for Francis, Christ in his midst. In 1208 Francis took radically to heart the thoroughgoing demand of Matthew 19:21 in which Jesus calls the “rich young man” to give everything away and follow him. Francis, burning with the desire to imitate the poor and crucified Jesus, renounced his claims to his family’s wealth and espoused “Holy Poverty” as his lifelong companion. In 1212 Clare of Assisi joined him in his work. If Francis was born into a family that represented one center of power of Assisi life (the emerging mercantile class), Clare was born into a clan that represented the other (the long-established nobility). In tandem, their renunciation of the typical life of the times served as a complementary and virtually complete rejection of the world of getting, spending, and dominating. Their vow of voluntary poverty was an intuitive critique of the growing economic and social disparities in thirteenth-century Europe, as it witnessed the shift from rural to urban life, the rise of the merchant class,

86

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

the coming end to feudalism, and the emergent monarchies and nationstates. These historical realities were creating an increasingly stratified society that exacerbated involuntary poverty. Francis was convinced that God was the “Most High” who was Transcendent Goodness, a Goodness that was lavished especially on the poor. To become voluntarily poor is to share the plight of the poor but also to share in the life of God who gives everything. This Trinitarian God—known in the magnificence of life, in the crucified Jesus and in the Holy Spirit who is actively vivifying all that exists—was, for Francis, worthy of praise and endless gratitude. Gradually, others were attracted by this vision. First thinking of becoming a monk, Francis set off in a new direction: an itinerant, largely urban, mendicant, apostolic existence of preaching and witnessing to the life of God in Christ while remaining at the margins of society. Francis drew up a rule for his new order (Order of Friars Minor), which was approved by Pope Innocent III. In addition to his stress on God as the Most High, his high christocentricism, his devotion to poverty and thanksgiving, his embrace of both contemplation and outward mission, Francis’s vision also embraces a Pauline spirituality, in which the Holy Spirit is present in the “spirit of Jesus” in our lives and in the spirit of the life of evangelical poverty. The Holy Spirit (whom Francis declared the ultimate Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor) is present in the spirit of peace. Francis vigorously counseled peace between warring city-states and between Christians and Muslims. His devotion to embodied peacemaking and nonviolent intervention is captured paradigmatically in the story of the Wolf of Gubbio where Francis brokered a resolution between an Italian village and a wolf by meeting the needs of both sides. This is even more compellingly demonstrated in his sojourn to visit with Malik-al-Kamil, the sultan of Egypt, during the Fifth Crusade in 1219 when he “in the midst of wartime, went to the enemy unarmed and loved the enemy as a brother.”20 However imperfectly realized over the succeeding eight centuries, peacemaking has persisted as a central dimension of Franciscan spirituality. Louis Vitale—like the other founders of the Nevada Desert Experience, Bucher, Dunn, and Symens, as well as the Franciscans who had helped create the first Lenten Desert Experience, including Rosemary Lynch, Mary Litell, Julianne Graf, and Dick Clark—had been steeped in both the lore and the dynamics of Franciscan peacemaking. Like Francis centuries before, Vitale had been the son of a merchant (his father owned a large seafood processing company in Los Angeles) and had observed the implements and dynamics of war at close range. While he

Nevada Desert Experience

87

did not serve in a hot war, he was a U.S. Air Force pilot actively enlisted in the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s. Although he felt the allure of Air Force fighter jets— “Those things still excite me, even after all these years in the peace movement,” he has said since then21—Vitale nevertheless began to question the projection of U.S. power they represented. He also worried about the threat they posed. Once as he and his crew were flying a routine mission along the U.S.–Canadian border, they received orders to shoot down an approaching aircraft determined by headquarters to be a Russian military jet crossing into U.S. airspace. Vitale radioed his base three times for confirmation, and each time the order was reiterated. Finally, the crew decided to make a visual inspection. When they did, they saw an elderly, smiling woman waving to them. At the last moment they averted shooting down a commercial airliner.22 This incident contributed to growing qualms about remaining in the military. In contrast to the life of a jet pilot, he felt increasingly drawn to religious life. When he entered the Franciscan order, Vitale was exposed to the vision and praxis of peacemaking through the life and work of provincial Fr. Alan McCoy, O.F.M. McCoy was a nationally known advocate for peace and justice who, beginning in the 1940s, had articulated a theology that called Franciscans and all Christians to “go inward, go outward, and go forward.”23 According to McCoy, interior prayer and contemplation invite one to be drawn to God’s love; here one makes contact with the spirit of a God who longs for right relationship, healing, dignity, and peace and justice for all. It is crucial that one’s activism be rooted in this ground of God’s love and not simply the frantic preoccupations of the ego. This interiority empowers one to see the world in its brokenness and to take action for its healing. This activity, however, is not a one-time event. It must become an enduring process in which one goes forward together with others to participate in the ongoing creation of what Jesus called the Reign of God. McCoy’s theology stressed a set of core values, including solidarity, relationship, and being willing to take risks to relieve interpersonal and social suffering. A key component of McCoy’s approach was the practice and discipline of social analysis— the effort to obtain a fuller picture of a social reality by exploring its historical and structural relationships.24 Over the course of his life as a Franciscan, McCoy put this theology and its cluster of values into practice in Stockton, California, where he developed a thriving ministry advocating for the rights of farm workers and in a variety of peace and justice movements. Vitale saw in McCoy—and in Robert Pfisterer, O.F.M., a friar also actively involved with social justice ministries in the province—an acutely clear grasp of evangelical peace and justice. These

88

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

models influenced Vitale’s work in the 1960s in support of the United Farm Workers and the movement to end the U.S. war in Vietnam. It would also influence his approach to the efforts to end nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. NDE and the Catholic Worker Movement Modern Christian spirituality—the “lived experience of the faith” since the mid-seventeenth century—has struggled with two interrelated issues: the problems of the modern self and the modern society. The intersection of these two “problems” has shaped the horizon in which people of faith experience, articulate, and live their relationship to the presence of God. That religious experience itself has been problematized should come as no surprise given the problematic status of both self and social context in the modern period. In the twentieth century, one of the responses to this problematic has been the resurgence of the practice of pacifism or nonviolence by members of the Christian community. Although nonviolence has been practiced in one form or another by parts of the community throughout the history of the tradition, it has often been a subterranean theme, especially after Constantine’s “peace of the church.” With the twentieth century’s sea of blood from the First World War to the recent carnage of contemporary wars, a growing number of Christians have rediscovered nonviolence as a central Gospel value. One of the key visionaries and practitioners of twentieth-century nonviolence was Dorothy Day. Day converted to the Catholic Church in 1932. Committed to progressive politics and the struggle for a better world before she became a Catholic, she now saw issues of war, peace, and justice as “Catholic issues.” Although she recognized that the Church was often conservative and generally supported the structures of power, she also saw that it was the community of the poor and the dispossessed. Her move to Catholicism was not motivated by politics, though she believed her faith had a political dimension. More fundamentally, it was an expression of her living in the presence of God, the God who she believed has passed through this world and entered our suffering flesh. Her spirituality was deeply incarnational; each person was worthy of dignity and honor as actual or potential members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Rooted in the philosophy of personalism espoused by Emmanuel Mounier, Day believed that Christians are called to inculcate respect and the deepest values of the human spirit in an increasingly spirit-bereft industrialized, technologized, and depersonalized culture.

Nevada Desert Experience

89

Hence the importance of community. As the cofounder, with Peter Maurin, of the Catholic Worker, Day helped establish dozens of “hospitality houses” from which voluntarily poor coworkers performed the corporal works of mercy for the poor and marginalized. This spirituality of compassion, incarnated love, voluntary poverty, and guarding of the dignity of all human beings was the basis of Day’s nonviolence. As theologian David Tracy puts it, “The mystical character of her profoundly personalist Christian spirituality was rendered into prophetic action for justice.”26 She espoused nonviolence during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s. She took part in countless nonviolent campaigns and demonstrations. Her nonviolence was an integral part of a comprehensive spirituality seeking to restore the “image and likeness of God” to the human person in the midst of the enormous changes that both self and society have undergone in this century. In addition to her roots in Franciscan spirituality, Anne Bucher brought to the Nevada Desert Experience her grounding in the Catholic Worker movement. She had worked at two different times at the New York Catholic Worker on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Bucher had been drawn to the Catholic Worker movement, she explains, “because of the works of mercy. I wanted to give my coat to the poor. And I was drawn there because I wanted to be a Franciscan priest but I couldn’t be, so to me the Catholic Worker movement was a way that, as a layperson, I could take my faith seriously.”27 Bucher learned a great deal at the New York Catholic Worker, including the importance of nonviolent action. It was there that she was first exposed to nonviolent protest and civil disobedience at Shorham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island and in front of the White House, when President Carter entertained a group of Latin American dictators. During her second stint she met Duncan MacMurdy. Duncan MacMurdy had been eager to join the New York Catholic Worker. The fact that he was still in high school did not cool his ardor for the Worker life. In fact, he was so zealous that he sought and received permission from the authorities at his school in Darien, Connecticut, to spend his last semester there for school credit.28 In the end, he returned home after a week, when he realized that the frenetic intensity of the Catholic Worker lifestyle would seriously interfere with his ability to complete the class work that had been assigned by his teachers. He returned to Darien but then, undaunted by the franticness of his brief experience six months before, headed back to Manhattan five days after graduation. MacMurdy’s ardent move was rooted in a consciousness of poverty that had been stimulated by being exposed to the realities of

90

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

inner city life in nearby Bridgeport. Darien is a wealthy suburb of New York City, while adjacent Bridgeport is wracked by unemployment and government neglect. During high school, the youth group in his local church had a relationship with the Thomas Merton House of Hospitality in Bridgeport. Students participated in retreats there and would also volunteer in its soup kitchen. Though it was not formally a Catholic Worker, Thomas Merton House was run in the same spirit, and it was there that MacMurdy became familiar with the Catholic Worker vision by reading Peter Maurin’s Easy Essays, Dorothy Day’s writings, including The Long Loneliness, and an account of the history of the Catholic Worker movement.29 MacMurdy was motivated to get involved with this group because of his growing awareness at the time of the suffering many people face and one’s religious responsibility to address it: “Certainly in the context of Christianity and Catholicism, there’s a pretty heavy emphasis on treating people’s suffering seriously and compassionately, and trying to figure out what to do about it, and to involve yourself in some way. So that’s how I became involved.”30 MacMurdy had also been part of a Catholic charismatic group as a teen. The “charismatic renewal” was, at that time, an increasingly popular form of religious experience among some segments of Catholic youth and adults. The charismatic renewal was the preferred term for the ongoing effects of the Pentecostal experience (an acute experimental awareness of the presence of God, often expressed in glossalalia and/or baptism in the Spirit) that began to occur in Catholicism in 1967 and in mainline Protestant Churches a decade earlier. . . . It is credited with helping to restore the importance of experience to the often formalistic worship of Catholicism.31

This emphasis on religious experience—especially as an emotional and even ecstatic phenomenon—was, for MacMurdy, complemented by the vision and praxis of the Catholic Worker and its proponents. MacMurdy’s neo-Pentecostalism—that, for some, has formed the basis of a privatized and largely affective religiosity—was tempered by a Catholic Worker engagement with the “nuts and bolts of reality” that included the fundamental tenet that “you ought to be involved in doing something for people.” Both aspects—experiential religiosity and social justice—would later prove to be important dimensions of the Nevada Desert Experience. His experience at the Thomas Merton House had primed him to engage in the basic aspects of the Catholic Worker: maintaining the soup line, providing housing for people, performing what the Catholic Church

Nevada Desert Experience

91

called “the works of mercy.” Also, his life as a Catholic had familiarized him with religious ritual, which was followed assiduously at the Catholic Worker and which was a form, as he put it, of “archaic Catholicism,” including the recitation of Vespers every night and daily mass. MacMurdy was unprepared, however, for what he termed the stress, high turnover, the alcoholism he saw there, and institutionalized paralysis he experienced there at the time. Nevertheless, the time he spent there proved valuable in two ways. It reinforced the connection between human suffering and institutional arrangements. His participation, for example, in antinuclear demonstrations was colored more by the awareness of the economic injustice nuclear energy and weapons represented—enormous sums were being poured into these technologies that could be going to solve social problems—than the fact that they could lead to physical destruction of the Earth and its inhabitants. The Catholic Worker movement stressed an analysis of the structural aspects of “social sin” and not a simplistic form of handwringing that laid poverty at the doorstep of personal failure or personal responsibility only. Secondly, his time at the Catholic Worker led to meeting, and growing close to, Anne Bucher. In 1980 MacMurdy and Bucher headed West after a year at the Catholic Worker. Bucher took the lead in establishing the Oakland Catholic Worker. After his experience in New York, MacMurdy was less enthusiastic about this project, but contributed to establishing and running it. Eventually he took a job working for the St. Anthony Foundation, a Franciscan organization serving the poor in San Francisco’s low-income Tenderloin District. Like Bucher, MacMurdy that winter and spring joined with the informal group of Franciscan women and men who were studying the theory and methods of nonviolence and were preparing to participate in the first Franciscan witness at the Nevada proving ground. They soon became involved in the witness at the test site and helped found NDE in 1984. Steeped in the vision and practice of the Catholic Worker movement, Bucher and MacMurdy brought to the Nevada Desert Experience Day’s vision of personalism, high regard for the “corporal works of mercy” (including, in a twentieth-century expansion on this Catholic formulation, the “corporal work” of nonviolent civil disobedience) and a commitment to nonviolence to NDE’s mysterious process of fashioning faith-based action for peace in the Nevada desert. Through Bucher, MacMurdy, and others, Dorothy Day’s theology of love and nonviolent resistance would directly influence the Nevada Desert Experience. (A later NDE staffer, Julia Occhiogrosso, had first cut her political teeth at

92

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

the Los Angeles Catholic Worker before relocating to Las Vegas to open a Catholic Worker house there.) Many Catholic Workers journeyed to the Nevada desert to join in NDE activities over the years, especially those marking Day’s 90th and 100th birthdays (1987 and 1997) that were celebrated with workshops, liturgy, and nonviolent civil disobedience at the gates of the test site. The experiments in nonviolence that Dorothy Day had pioneered—including the rituals of civil defense resistance—were part of the lore and tradition that shaped the identity and praxis of succeeding generations of Catholic Workers. This transmission of a culture and spirituality of a particular construction of nonviolent action directly influenced those who organized faith-based resistance at the U.S. nuclear proving ground in Nevada. NDE and Desert Spirituality If we are to be pilgrims for justice and peace, we must expect the desert. —Dom Helder Camara32

From the beginning, the desert played an unavoidably central role in the conceptualization and dramatization of NDE’s contemporary pilgrimage to the test site. In the growing NDE vision, the desert was not regarded as “backdrop” or even primarily as “victim” of a relentless and merciless bombing campaign. It became a spiritually vibrant terrain that nurtured, taught, and transformed. The themes of the desert as place of spiritual temptation and personal testing, of apophatic kenosis or emptying but also inexplicable richness and satiation, of being a “devastatingly holy place,” recur in people’s accounts of their experience of NDE. While it is true that the desert can evoke intimations of dread and fascination in many human beings simply because of its extremity—and a nuclearized desert can magnify this awareness of awesome power, horror, and in its broadest sense the sublime—it is nonetheless true that such extremity is ultimately not a “given” but an interpretation informed by one’s store of metaphors or interpretive lenses. As Lakoff and Johnson have shown, our conceptual system and its range of metaphors define our reality.33 This view of the Nevada terrain was not a “given.” It was seen through certain lenses constructed through a long meditation on “desert” beginning in the Hebrew scriptures, highlighted in the Second Testament with Jesus’ forays into the wilderness, embodied in the lived experience of the first Christian hermits in the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts of the fourth century C.E., enunciated recursively throughout the history of Eastern and Western Christian monasticism, and even reframed by European settlers in North Amer-

Nevada Desert Experience

93

ica, whose settlements were regarded as edenic outposts surrounded by the formless chaos of the “desert” of its wilderness, even though this distorted and discounted the view of this same terrain by the indigenous people already living there.34 As Boniface Ramsey suggests, the desert in Christian symbolism is inhospitable and represents the place of spiritual testing. The desert stands for the arena in which one, while submitting to the test, meets either one’s spiritual salvation or one’s spiritual doom. It is life itself in its starkest form. Those who go to the desert for religious reasons do so precisely with the intention of entering this arena and facing the starkness that presents itself there.35 These Christian interpretations of the desert are rooted in the First and Second Testaments. The paradigmatic “desert experience” for the Hebrews was the exodus from Egypt and their forty-year trek through the desert that brings them finally to the Promised Land. The desert in this Jewish “founding narrative” of liberation plays a key role in forming and testing the identity of the community. The desert also figures in the psalms and the Elijah cycle (1 Kings 17ff). Ramsey points out that Origen later conceives of “the journey across the desert of Sinai, with its various stops, a symbol of the individual Christian journey through trials to the height of virtue, while in other ancient writings Elijah appears as a model for monks.”36 In the Second Testament, John the Baptist lives in the desert, and Jesus faces temptation and testing there before beginning his ministry (Matthew 4:1–11). In Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton views nuclear testing as a symptom of spiritual danger. “Look at the deserts today,” he writes. “What are they? The birthplace of a new and terrible creation, the testing-ground of the power by which [the human being] seeks to un-create what God has blessed.”37 This analysis flows from Christian monasticism’s spirituality and theology of the desert. As Merton shows here and elsewhere, Western monasticism traditionally views the desert archetypally as the great school, where the human being passes from delusion and unreality to a life involving “a total commitment to reality,” because it is there that one must rely entirely on God alone.38 The desert is a topography that, by Christian monastic definition, does not typically support life; therefore, whatever life endures there is necessarily sustained by God. It is in this physical, spiritual, and existential terrain that humans come face to face with the Creator, because such a life is spent with God only. Merton writes that, for the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the great spiritual significance of the desert derived from its inversion of the hierarchy of the values of the dominant culture. They believed that “the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of

94

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

God precisely because it had no value to [human beings]. There was nothing to attract. There was nothing to exploit.39 For the Christian monks of the fourth century, the desert functions as the symbolic province of nothingness not because it is utterly devoid of sensible realities, but because it exists outside the framework of established social arrangements, including the economic valuation prescribed by prevailing society. The social construction of this view of “nothingness” has perdured throughout the history of Christian spirituality as a dynamic and potent element of the disciple’s spiritual journey. Just as Jesus’ mission is framed in terms of kenosis and emptying—dramatized most starkly and vividly in the crucifixion—Christian practitioners, including many considered saints, mystics, and contemplatives have experienced Christianity as the via negativa, the absence of God, or the apprehension of nothingness. At the same time, because it is not a locus or bearer of those social values, the desert threatens the person who clings to them. For this reason, in the Christian monastic vision this place of God is also the place of demons that signify the insanity and death, which a site located outside the penumbra of social structures threatens to inflict. The desert is a terrain of madness and devils. The first hermits who withdrew to the deserts of Egypt and Palestine searched for God but knew that the way to this “great unknown” was by way of an ongoing battle with The Adversary.40 In this symbology of Christian spirituality, the desert is thus a rich symbolic site where one is freed of all that blocks intimacy with the mysterious and hidden—but sustaining and nurturing—Source. At the same time, it is a setting where one contests the forces within and without that seek to interfere with this intimacy and relationship with that Source. It is not by accident that commentators refer to the desert as an arena where this contest is fought: just as the “sandy arena” in Rome was a place of grisly, imperial spectacle, where early Christians were tested, so too the early monks self-consciously were engaged in another struggle in another, sandy setting. The desert has become the new stage or theater of a dramatic, if more hidden and subtle, agon where Christianity is performed in a new way. The desert—and the quest it contextualized—was a forbidding environment. As scholar Douglas Burton-Christie puts it, desert monasticism was a “hand-to-mouth” spirituality. It began as a lay movement; it had no literature at the beginning except the Bible; and it could be fairly free-form and somewhat disconnected from the larger Christian community. Primitive Christian desert spirituality was marked, BurtonChristie shows, by several key elements: eschatology (an awareness of the coming judgment); the struggle with the forces of evil; freedom

Nevada Desert Experience

95

from care; recovery of paradise; penthos or compunction; purity of heart, and the cultivation of obedience, simplicity, poverty, nonjudgment, and love. Key to all of these dimensions of desert spirituality was humility, interpreted in this context as the process of decentering the self and recentering it in the life of God. Pride and ego-attachment block spiritual advancement.41 Echoing this, theologian Belden C. Lane summarizes the fundamental elements of the Christian desert tradition as God-as-desert (the God beyond all words and knowing), self-as-desert (emptied so as to see God and God’s love at its center), and the role of ascetical and liturgical practices in revealing this hidden source of love and transformation.42 The metaphor and experience of “the desert,” as formulated in the Christian tradition, suggestively illuminate NDE’s ongoing experiment at the gates of the Nevada Test Site. The exodus from nuclearism by entering a place dedicated for decades to its propagation. Spiritual testing countering nuclear testing, a testing that challenges one’s own internalized nuclearism. Engaging with the place perceived as wasteland and discovering its plenitude. Struggling with apocalyptic evil but doing it with humility and, in the doing of it, beginning to glimpse the spiritual values the desert teaches: compunction and nonjudgement and freedom from care. Entering the desert of God and of self, and doing so through ascetical and liturgical performances contextualized to respond to the dilemmas of a nuclearized world. These and other themes have been repeatedly sounded by NDE pilgrims. In March 1988 Patricia McCarthy wrote about her NDE participation in this way: On the surface a call to the desert could be a comforting embrace of solitude among the raw beauty of untrod sand and pebble. In every creature, color and texture carefully blend, designed for survival. But this is a new day, we go to a new desert, a desert being destroyed by radiation and shock, a desert being bound from producing and sold for greed. Jesus went into the desert, he was the first to cross the line, to dare to look evil in its faceless reality and say, “Away with you, Satan . . . God alone shall you adore.” He went ahead of us to show us how to worship, how to be the people of God we were created to be. He knew we could never be human with each other as long as we had gods of metal and iron. And he knew that we could not disarm our hearts from them without the truth of God. “Idols tremble at the access of the truth of God.” The desert is the place in us where we affirm the truth of God and admit that it doesn’t fit with the reality of destruction and violence.

96

Pilgrimage through a Burning World Going into this place doesn’t require heroism, it demands surrender to the awesome person of God and abandonment to his heart. From there his will and desire consume us, transforming hearts of stone to hearts of flesh. Jesus returned from the desert to minister to his people, confident that he was of God and with God; and because of him, we do the same.43

In the same year, the Nevada Desert Experience published a booklet entitled Notes on Nonviolence.44 This short work, deploying a contemplatively sparse and lyrical prose, summarizes NDE’s vision of the desert: An hour drive from Las Vegas, Cold mornings then hot sun. Flowers. Cactus. Snakes, mice, songbirds. Silence. Wind. Mountains. Expanse. Silence. Another Test Site vigil. People from near and far gather in the early hours of the morning . . . In every direction is desert, the Great Basin. Vigilers retreat into the desert for the inner work of nonviolence. Those who know the desert and those who do not Are quieted to their core. In the desert there is a natural order, An instinctive putting of first things first. With ease, simplicity and grace. This is sacred ground. The Paiutes named it, “Ground Afire.” In the desert, inner peacemaking is easier because luxury, position and status account for nothing. Solitude strips away the need to maintain false appearance. Here we can face ourselves without illusion or pretense. A desert experience is seeing ourselves for who we are within the solitude of God. Silence. Hours of silence. We have not come to the desert to hide from ourselves or the world. We intend to look long and hard, and act. Our experience of soul searching is by design and location an experience in soul force. The desert prayer deepens. The vigil becomes embodied prayer.45

Vast political, cultural, sociological, economic, and environmental factors were incalculably important in catalyzing the historical matrix from which the Nevada Desert Experience and other antinuclear organizations emerged. At the same time, NDE’s vision, character, and practice were shaped as well by particular persons who, rooted in specific religious and political traditions, gradually synthesized a vision and a set of practices as a response to the challenges of that historical and existential moment. The people who created the Nevada Desert Experience discov-

Nevada Desert Experience

97

ered that they were engendering a different kind of pilgrimage to which they would invite thousands of people, even as they arrived, like unwitting pilgrims, at the edge of a terrain of poignant beauty in the bounded physicality of the American West and in the unbounded fear and possibility in the postwar imagination. Drawing on traditions of active nonviolence, Franciscan spirituality, the Catholic Worker Movement, and a perduring lineage of desert religiosity, the founders of, and participants in, Nevada Desert Experience created a contemporary spiritual discipline that sought, consciously or unconsciously, to decenter and recenter the self consenting to and reinforcing nuclearism and its spiritual, psychological, political, military, cultural, and economic burden. Over the following two decades, this spiritual discipline would work itself out in many different ways. In the following chapters, we examine in more detail what I call three spiritual practices of the Nevada Desert Experience’s antinuclear asceticism: nonviolent civil disobedience; the Stations of the Nuclear Cross; and antinuclear pilgrimage.

This page intentionally left blank.

CHAPTER

4

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross at the Nevada Test Site

For two decades, the Nevada Desert Experience has woven together religious symbols, spiritual rituals, and political action to create practices appropriate to the context: a nuclear test site preparing for nuclear war. In the following chapters, we explore three of these practices—the stations of the nuclear cross, faith-based nonviolent civil disobedience, and antinuclear pilgrimage—first by offering accounts of participants who have reflected on their experience of the Nevada Desert “Experience.” The first-person accounts presented here and in the next two chapters convey the subjective experience of the journey to the Nevada Test Site and highlight the structure and dynamics of NDE’s practices of an inextricably linked personal and social transformation. The first story is an extensive narrative by Jane Hughes Gignoux that recounts the Stations of the Nuclear Cross and much else that enlightens many of the key dimensions of the NDE journey to the gates of the Nevada Test Site.

A Journey to Nevada by Jane Hughes Gignoux1 Two white converted school buses pulled up in front of the community center in the tiny desert town of Beatty, Nevada. We were led, handcuffed, into a large, empty room and told to wait. It was then I saw Louie, still wearing his brown Franciscan habit. He came in through the door smiling easily and almost at once spotted a young man he apparently knew. Without hesitation he walked over to the young man and, in one huge sweeping gesture, lifted his arms, bound at the wrist, up and over the fellow’s head and then down, holding him in a warm embrace. It was such an easy, natural gesture, accompanied by words of welcome and comfort. “Wow!” I thought to myself, “That’s how I want to be—light-hearted, loving, compassionate.” It was true, of course, that Louie had been arrested many times over the

99

100

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

years. Nevertheless, as I contrasted his performance with mine, I was aware of how much I had to learn about letting go and surrendering. When I saw how Louie radiated faith, hope, love from the center of his being, I resolved to keep at it until I could do the same. Presently one of the marshals came and cut away our plastic handcuffs. Then I saw Louie in a corner of the room remove his brown robe, fold it reverently and, with this gesture, return to his chosen disguise as an ordinary man. In his plain black tee-shirt, cotton trousers, and sandals he could have been a truck driver, a salesman, a farmer, anyone at all. In fact, Louie Vitale is no ordinary man. He is the head of the Western Province of the Franciscan Friars with extensive responsibilities, and very much the spirit behind the protest and vigil movement at the Nevada Test Site. Except for brief moments, he prefers to remain in the background, allow others to coordinate the many complicated preparations that go into these protests. How exhilarating to be in the presence of a person who had no need to prove his power by attempting to control others. Here was someone who understood the source of his power and who obviously knew that no one could rob him of it. That, combined with his utter honesty and compassion, marked Louie as an example of a true leader. If such people were in government and business, how different a world it would be. So many impressions and insights had been piling in on me during the previous few days. I didn’t know how to make sense of it all. I felt battered and torn asunder as recent events picked me up, caught me off-balance, turned me around, then pulled me forward at dizzying speed, forcing me to look ever more deeply into, “Who am I?” and “What is the meaning of all this?” I thought I had come here to be a Peace Maker. Now, through Louie’s example, I saw I had much to learn before I could claim that title. I was beginning to realize this was a personal journey of surrender. Surrender in the sense of allowing, letting go of having to control, ceasing to resist. Only then would I be able to enter the world of non-violence. In April of 1987 I went, along with nine other women from New York City, to Nevada to participate in a civil disobedience action at the nuclear test site in the desert, 65 miles Northwest of Las Vegas. When I made the decision to go, I had no idea what lay ahead. It was as though an internal force was urging me to take my ideas and methods for resolving personal conflict (Making Peace) into a larger arena and put them to a new kind of test. I teach interpersonal communication skills and help people live more balanced lives through understanding their internal experience and connecting it to their external relationships. Here was an opportunity to practice what I preach on a broader scale. What influenced me to go?

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

101

Certainly a key factor in this internal nudging process had been the Public Television Series, “Eyes on the Prize.” Aired in New York during January and February, it is the retelling of the Civil Rights Movement in the South during the 1950s and early 1960s through newsreels of the period, a dignified narration and current commentary by a number of participants. As I watched it week after week I was profoundly moved. Here were people, many of them still children, who had been willing to put their lives on the line for what they believed. What was I doing? In addition, as I read accounts of others who had participated in nonviolent protests in Nevada and elsewhere, I would ask myself, “Is this for me to do?” Finally one day, as I finished reading a newsletter describing the February 1987 action at the test site, I heard myself saying out loud, “Yes!” The Friday before we left for Nevada, the Ecumenical Coalition for Peace and Justice held a commissioning service for the people from New York who were going to be part of the Good Friday witness in the desert. It was in the course of this service that the reality of what it means to become part of a powerful movement dawned on me. I shifted from a “head” knowing of this commitment to a blood and bones knowing. There’s a big difference, I discovered. About twenty-five people gathered outside the Riverside Research Institute on West 42nd Street. The Riverside Research Institute is a Pentagon think tank engaged in nuclear weapons research. We handed out leaflets describing the hazards of nuclear testing to passersby. After an hour or so we moved into the lobby of the building and arranged ourselves into an oval against one wall. The Presbyterian pastor, who up until that moment I had experienced as a gentle, patient, amiable soul, opened the ceremonies by stating our purpose in a booming, powerful voice. As though speaking from a mountaintop, he let it be known that this was a religious service of worship held outside the Riverside Research Institute (decibels up), to commission certain persons to go on a mission to Nevada to protest the testing of nuclear weapons. I had been brought up in a family of preachers and my father was nothing if not outspoken, but this public display propelled me into an involvement with the world that I had not anticipated. My body became a pillar of stony aloofness clothed only in embarrassment. There we were, a little band of rag-tag people, in a public place with strangers hurrying to-and-fro intent on their business. I felt their eyes piercing me with skepticism, indifference and disdain. “How tacky!” My stone-cold aloof self muttered. “I want no part of this. Why does he have to speak so loudly? What if some of the people I know in the building come by and see me?” My private decision to make a stand for Peace and Justice

102

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

had suddenly taken a most unexpected and alarming turn! So this is what it means to be a witness of faith. You have to actually do it out loud in public! My resistance to being there was enormous. Led by a guitar, we then sang several verses of “Down By the Riverside.” “I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside . . . I ain’t gonna study war no more.” I had been singing that song at summer picnics under the stars since childhood and had often thought about its meaning. Now it took on a new dimension and immediacy. Part of me was struggling to disengage myself from this scene, while another part, tentative and fragile, was experiencing something quite different. As I stood there, a reluctant player in a carefully staged drama, cracks appeared in my stony pillar of aloofness. Deep feelings were welling up inside me, feelings of release and then relief. The service continued. Each person going to Nevada stepped forward in order to receive an enameled dove of peace from the artist who had made the beautiful pendants and which we then wore around our necks as a symbol of our commitment to Peace and Justice. As this was happening we recited the commissioning words together. “Jane, go in God’s Peace.” Now the last vestiges of stony aloofness vanished and my heart filled with joy and longing. I accepted my place in this new family. This was but one in a long series of acts of surrender. A few days later in Nevada, I found myself going through similar barriers. Again and again, as had been the case in our commissioning service, I was affected by the carefully planned and skillfully executed process. The staff and volunteers of the Nevada Desert Experience (NDE) constantly invited us to come to our own conclusions or decisions. Options and possibilities were presented but it was up to us to figure out the how, when, and why of our participation. A good example of how this philosophy is played out occurred during the day of training before the Good Friday action in the desert. A hundred people had gathered in a community hall on the outskirts of Las Vegas for a whole day of non-violence training and preparation. One item on the agenda was THE HISTORY OF NON-VIOLENCE AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Instead of the usual talk one might have expected, a young man stood up and in a few short minutes related how he had come to be active in the movement, how people and events, public and private, had influenced his life. He invited us to do the same in groups of eight. In our group we spoke of private memories throughout our lives that had contributed to our being present. Since we had no time to prepare, we simply shared whatever came to mind. Then a designated person from each group summa-

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

103

rized what had been said for all to hear. Ours was the last group to report and our reporter, Nancy, read from notes she had taken: “How did I end up on my path? I’ve always felt there was a purpose in my life . . . My Mom, persecuted throughout her life . . . I was brought up non-violently . . . BEYOND WAR, the basic premise being, war is obsolete . . . My two sons I brought up non-violently, no guns . . . My family listened to Mozart . . . My father was gentle and lived a simple life, he really believed in Christ, to do the best he could in life and for his family . . . Priests and nuns, live your values was a strong message through them . . . My younger brother, Ray, his innocence has so much to teach me . . . Since I was little I had an abhorrence of violence . . . My father was violent in many ways . . . The way I went through the appallingly violent experience of my marriage separation. It taught me a lot . . . There’s Quaker in my background . . . My parents were simpleliving people, no credit cards. After an initial resentment, I came to appreciate that . . . Mother Teresa, I was drawn to her bravery. She woke up one day and realized there was a Hitler inside her. Realize the darker side [sic] and do something with it . . . I’m still struggling . . . Animals and loving them are there . . . Carol Chessman [executed] in the 1950s, active vigils around the death penalty . . . I am very upset with God’s wrath, vengeance. What do I do with that in my Jewish background?” I was stunned, along with others, with the way we had created in a few short minutes a powerful personal history of non-violence and civil disobedience. This was our collective history. For us it was real. There were, quite naturally, a number of rituals connected with our Good Friday demonstration, beginning with an ecumenical Holy Thursday service after our day of training, culminating in an Easter morning Eucharist in the desert. Each contained a lesson for me that was so powerful I was not prepared for it. It was as though the planners of these rituals knew in advance my innermost thoughts and feelings. I was delighted with the creativity of people—mimes, dancers, musicians, speakers. Though there were many clergy (more than I realized at the time) they in no way dominated the service. How different this experience was from the Maundy Thursday service at my church in New York City where I would be watching a Bishop, representing Jesus, washing the feet (actually one foot) of twelve persons chosen from the parish family. Yet here in Nevada I would be missing the intense drama of that other service that culminates, after the altar has been stripped of all ornamentation and scrubbed with vinegar, in the priest and choir suddenly running from the church as the lights are extinguished. This dramatic act symbolizing the people’s abandonment of Jesus before his crucifixion, never fails to send stabs of pain into my heart and gut. None of that would happen here, I was certain.

104

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Here in Nevada, several bowls of water were placed around the room and at one point we were invited to take turns washing and drying one another’s hands. When it came my turn to have my hand washed, the man who performed the rite gazed at me with gentle, compassionate eyes conveying much wisdom. The next day I discovered he was a bishop! In the past, in New York I had wondered if I would ever be chosen to have this ceremonial washing by a bishop. “Not likely,” speculated my stony self. Yet it had happened. I had come to Nevada and without knowing it, been chosen. Once again the stony aloofness dissolved, this time by feelings of gratitude. When the service was over, a spaghetti dinner appeared, served by volunteers. As I sat with people I didn’t know I listened to them tell what had brought them to this place. Then suddenly the coordinator of our New York group appeared, saying, “I’m leaving now and the rest have already gone.” I was caught completely by surprise. So busy had I been meeting new people, I failed to notice that my buddies were no longer present. I felt abandoned, not because they had left, rather because they had left without telling me. I’m familiar with that feeling and understand its source. Because my mother died quite suddenly when I was four years old, I panic when people go away without telling me where they’re going (as I had experienced her leaving). I have now learned how to process this feeling and comfort myself so that it is quickly released. But it wasn’t until much later that I connected that feeling of abandonment of Jesus by his friends before his trial and crucifixion. There in Nevada I was no longer a spectator of the Passion, albeit an involved one, I had become one of the players. Repeatedly in the next three days I had the disconcerting experience of being one of the original disciples of Jesus during the events that led up to his death and resurrection. Each time I was unprepared for the intensity of my response. On Good Friday we arose at 4:30 in the morning to be at the entrance to the test site by 6:30. When we arrived we stood in silence for an hour and a half along both sides of a road just off a main highway, watching people in cars, busses and trucks stream past on their way to work at the test site. Majestic gray mountains loomed up in the distance to our left and right. Between these natural boundaries lay desert, dotted by cactus, laced by barbed wire fence. I thought, “Nothing I do or say will change any of this.” The message from my surroundings mirrored that of the Department of Energy and Defense. They were all saying, “Your thoughts, feelings and actions are truly insignificant and futile.” More recently I made a second trip to the same Nevada Test Site to commemorate Hiroshima Day and get arrested again. My

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

105

feelings of personal helplessness and hopelessness in the face of overwhelming forces were, if anything, stronger. Yet in no way is this to suggest discouragement or a lessening of my involvement. Rather I realized my need to summon up further resources to increase my commitment to making peace. I don’t know yet what form this will take but clearly I must make a greater personal effort and sacrifice if I am to help bring about a shift from a consciousness which believes that security, individual as well as group, lies in manufacturing the tools of violence and destruction rather than building a strong network of interdependence and diversity with the tools of cooperation and trust. This newer awakening was not yet apparent on that Good Friday morning, when I was still innocent, caught up in my initial part in a powerful event. Our silent vigil by the side of the road ended as we gathered in the nearby desert for the commemoration of the Way of the Cross. This liturgy, familiar in various forms to Christians throughout the world, reenacts Jesus’ journey with the cross from Jerusalem to Calvary. In the past I had avoided this service, considering it too gloomy for my tastes. This Way of the Cross would be different, I sensed, though I had no way of knowing what lay in store. As the sun rose higher above the mountains to the East, and began to warm us, we gathered in a circle, about three hundred strong. A six-foot rough wooden cross stood in the center, held in place by a young man. Mimes dressed in white and made up in whiteface handed each of us a small piece of paper on which was written: Your hope for resurrection of a personal nature. _____________ Your hope for resurrection of a global nature. _______________ We were instructed to fill in our answers and hold onto our paper. We were also asked to pick out a rock along the way and carry it with us. A reader began, “To crucify: to execute, to despair of, to get out of the way, to put in solitary, to leave an electric light on day and night, to sentence for life, to order special treatment.” A second reader said, “It is an official place, this pavement of judgment, even with the crowd milling around shouting for blood. It is all done according to the book, the legal niceties (such as they are) observed.” Reader #1: “Pilate went out to them and said, ‘What accusation do you bring against this man?’ They answered and said unto him, ‘If this man were not an evildoer we would not have delivered him up to you.’ They cried out, ‘Away with him, crucify him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests said, ‘We have no king but Caesar.’ So he then delivered him to them to be crucified.”

106

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Reader #2: “But the terrible fact is, the powers that be have just pronounced a death sentence on the Life of the world. It seems a popular decision. And afterward Pilate washes his hands.” The words I had just heard were ringing in my ears: “to despair of . . . to sentence for life. . . .” They were speaking to me! Then one of the mimes stepped into the circle and nailed a gavel to the cross. The person holding the cross picked it up and carried it out of the circle as people parted to allow him to pass. We followed in silence to the next station about fifty feet away. When I arrived there and found a spot where I could see into the newly re-formed circle, I noticed that a new person was holding up the cross. A third reader began, “To crucify: to do away with, to destroy, to liquidate, to wipe out, to purge, to expel, to straighten out, to streamline, to urban renew, to evict, to threaten eviction, to do someone in.” From a fourth reader we heard: “The train is crowded and noisy and rides for days. We have no food. Where are we going? No one knows for certain but all are afraid.” The piece went on and on and ended with, “Come please be with me—Sarah and Rachel, Rebecca and Ruth, Deborah and Esther, Mothers of Israel. They cannot slaughter us all.” The mimes stepped forward and nailed a Star of David to the cross. Was I the driver of the train? I felt accused. A new person took up the cross and we moved to station three. Reader #5 continued: “To crucify: to send to a state welfare home, to turn into a criminal, to encourage dependency, to addict, to foster neurosis, to intimidate, to stupefy, to pull the rug from under, to cow, to brutalize.” Then came a description of the trip to Calvary, of Simon pulled out of the crowd to carry the cross. Mixed in with the retelling of the events of the first Good Friday was comment on our present dilemma. Time seemed to fall away and there was no separation between “then” and “now.” “. . . pulling splinters from his palms, Simon will not imagine the service he has done, the place he has made for himself in history. However unwillingly, he helped . . . when there was no help left. For this new cross there is no help, no unwilling stranger to take the load, even for a few last moments before the inevitable end. It belongs to us and to our children and we must carry it alone, all of us. Carry it . . . or somehow put an end to it, before it brings the end crashing down on all of us. “Jesus went out to the place called ‘The place of the skull’ which is called, in Hebrew, Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus in between.”

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

107

The mimes hammered three nails into the cross where the hands and feet would have been. They placed a crown of desert thorns over the top of the cross and then a new person picked it up and carried it to the next station. As we moved from spot to spot in the desert, I noticed that in addition to the drama of the cross’s journey, there was a whole other level of activity being enacted. A public address system had been set up so that everyone could hear this liturgy. Each time we changed location, a crew of people silently and skillfully picked up microphones, speakers and whatever other paraphernalia was necessary and repositioned them quickly before fading into the crowd. Secretly I embraced these sweaty stagehands. At Station Four, Reader #7 continued, “To crucify: to forget, to conceal, to not want to make a fuss about, to repress, to not have known about it, to consider it an isolated case, to call it inevitable, to let it happen.” Now I surely felt a great weight pressing on me. This was my burden, I could no longer slough it off on others. Reader #8: “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of vinegar stood there, so putting a sponge soaked in the vinegar on a hyssop stick they held it up to his mouth.” Very much as Bach and Handel did in their great narrative works, the composer of this liturgy paused to deliver comment on the action. And so Reader #7 recited: My God, I thirst in the cross and from the cross And as one upon the cross. My body aches in weakness. I thirst and uranium fire bakes dry the earth Where shadows stick. Cool, O God, my burns. I thirst and they offer a victory Of ashes in our mouths. I thirst and they toast the launching Of a Trident submarine with champagne. I thirst and the military cup runneth over. I thirst for you, O God, And prayer goes dry in the throat. Thirst for an end to crosses, Thirst in my heart for truth

108

Pilgrimage through a Burning World Plain and simple. Thirst for the cup passed hand to hand Among the ones I love (and even at the table with mine enemies). Thirst after righteousness, That the cup of blessing be poured out upon the earth. Thirst for the rolling down of everflowing streams. Thirst for the deep still waters of peace in the end. I thirst in faith That thirst of bitter agony For the dew of morning. Amen.

My throat was dry and throbbing, my whole body ached. “So this is what it means to thirst,” I thought. One of the mimes threw a cup of vinegar over the cross, the crowd parted once again allowing a new bearer to pass on to Station Five. We followed carrying the rocks we had picked up along the way. When we reached the Fifth Station each of us placed our rock at the base of the cross, securing it in place so that it could stand alone. In this new space the cross was at the rim of a circle delineated by two or three rows of wooden planks on cinder blocks, making low benches. I found a place in the front row. Those who had no seats stood around and behind us. In the center of the circle was a large black box, the size and shape of a coffin. The cover was off. As I took in this scene, I was gripped with foreboding. “What next?” I wondered. Reader # 9 said, “To crucify: to bump off, to silence for good, to bind and gag, to deprive of language, to make deaf and dumb, to plug the ears, to put off with false hopes, to blindfold, to gouge the eyes, to turn into consumers, to blind, to stifle.” Reader # 10: “When the sixth hour came there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of those who stood by heard this, they said, ‘Listen, he is calling for Elijah.’ Someone said, ‘Wait and see if Elijah will come to take him down.’ But Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the veil of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” Reader # 9 introduced yet another haunting aria with: If I were a bird, and able to fly afar, I would like to be a white dove To guide the people to freedom.

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

109

If I were the cloud in the sky I would shelter and bring rains to the rice field. If I were a grain of sand, I would throw myself down To make a path for the people. I will sacrifice my life for the suffering people. I would sacrifice myself, no matter how many times I would have to die.

Two mimes appeared with a piece of black cloth which they ripped and placed over the cross. They moved around the circle and through the crowd, collecting our papers containing our individual hopes for personal and global resurrection. These they then placed in the coffin. With great care a lid was placed on top, nails and a hammer were produced and in continuing silence we watched the mimes seal the coffin shut. Until that moment I had been involved in this liturgy, increasingly moved by the readings, the drama, the symbols. When, however, I saw my very own most deeply cherished hopes being taken away and literally sealed up in a coffin, I felt utterly devastated and forlorn. Sharp claws were ripping at my insides, I felt gutted, raw. The outside shell of me was still there, sitting in the desert with the sun in its eyes. If I had been standing, I believe I might have fallen from weakness in that moment. Was I the only one feeling betrayed and abandoned? While a part of me was able to listen to the testimonies of several bishops, another part was caught up in turmoil and intense grieving. I wanted to cry out, “Stop!” The speakers continued, unaware of my pain. Representatives of the Western Shoshone nation spoke and welcomed us to their land. They told us that the entire test site area (100 square miles larger than the state of Rhode Island) had been part of their sacred hunting grounds never formally deeded to the U.S. government; only the right of passage had been granted. To us they gave permission to go on their land and later distributed signed copies of that statement. They prayed in the Shoshone language. Other people spoke and prayed. We sang the Negro spiritual, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Just as I was beginning to bring my feelings under some semblance of control we launched into a history of nuclear weapons since 1945, done in a litany. Readers recited event after event beginning with the first atomic test in New Mexico. In between each statement, we responded in unison with, “Forgive us, Oh Lord, and help us!” It was all I could do to say those words, so large was the lump in my throat. Asking for forgiveness wasn’t as hard as asking for help. Help was what

110

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

I needed more than anything else in the world and, like Hamlet, the word stuck in my throat. More singing, more prayers and responses. I stumbled on with the others, tears streaming down my face, to the last station of the cross. I remember seeing Louie in his Franciscan brown habit, a magnificent, tall figure carrying the cross high, toward the place where we were to commit our acts of civil disobedience—the place where a line of uniformed sheriff’s deputies were waiting. The sun was hot now. Those who were planning to be arrested were asked to kneel on the rough dry ground while the others, the support team, placed their hands on our heads and shoulders and recited together a prayer of commission. As I knelt, sharp stones pressed into my knees. In a strange ways this physical discomfort was almost welcoming. At the same time, I felt the comforting presence of strangers’ hands on my head and shoulder. We then reversed roles and commissioned the support team. As we had moved from station to station, we had sung over and over: We are a gentle, loving people Singing, singing for our lives.

Now the service was over but we continued singing that song. We moved into the road, took up our banner which read, “Stop Testing,” the outline of a huge dove of peace in the middle, and started down toward the cattle guard. During our training we had heard a great deal about this cattle guard which is the spot on the road beyond which the Department of Energy people have decided unauthorized persons may not come. In the past, protesters had been allowed to march two miles further down the road before they were stopped, but the rules of this game keep changing, we were told. Hundreds of people lined the sides of the road. And as each group went over the cattle guard and was arrested by waiting officers, the crowd cheered and clapped. Our group of seven women (the three others were our support team) had elected to block the road with our banner instead of trespassing, thereby creating a “public nuisance,” an offense making us subject to arrest. As we moved down the road it happened that I was on the end of the line toward the center of the road. As long as we stayed on one side of the yellow divider, the deputies would not approach us. It became my task, therefore, to step out to the left, cross the yellow line, and help stretch our group across the entire road. As soon as I did that, it was like magic. The deputies approached us with a warning and then,

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

111

when we did not move, they simply took each of us by the arm, led us away and placed plastic handcuffs on our wrists. I was so involved in the emotions of the preceding service I was unable to deal with this new event with any detachment. I felt utterly miserable, not at being arrested, but at the state of the world. I felt responsible for all the terrible events we had been reviewing. The reality of the crucifixion, plus all the endless acts of violence and destruction that humans have been committing ever since was more than I could bear. It was as though the mountains in the distance had come tumbling down, suffocating me with their massive weight. No wonder the actual arrest seemed unreal and trivial compared to this catastrophic dilemma! I did notice that the deputies were quite nervous and anxious performing their duties. They took Polaroid pictures of each of us with our arresting officer for identification purposes when we were issued our citations later. When it came time for my photo, I was still buried under my mountain, consumed by heaviness and doom. Later, when we were being processed in Beatty, I had a chance to see that picture and I overheard one deputy say to another, “Here’s a really grim one!” How right he was! I hardly recognized myself in the photo, so severe and black was my expression. I thought how difficult it must be for the deputies to have to deal with someone so hostile. By the time I reached that point in my thinking I had regained much of my balance and was able to bring some lightness to the situation. After the “photo opportunity,” we climbed into waiting buses, rather like children going on a school outing. As we pulled out onto the highway for the 45–mile trip to Beatty, the remaining crowd cheered and waved. My heaviness receded as I reconnected with friends and heard their stories. In spite of being handcuffed, we managed to share water from our canteens. On the surface I appeared relaxed but deep inside I was working to repair the damage incurred during the past hour. I was still engaged in sorting out and healing my emotional self left raw and vulnerable by the events of the morning when we rolled into the onehorse-town of Beatty and I saw Louie again. His gentle, radiating energy acted as a soothing ointment to my open wounds. I had further opportunity to meditate on all this the following day when a small group of us returned to the vigil site in the desert. A fierce wind was blowing. Someone said that the government had tested another weapon earlier that morning. We huddled together in a circle against the wind and Louie, this time without his habit, suggested we go off into the desert by ourselves and spend time in silence. I moved toward the mountains to the west, climbing awkwardly up and down shallow gullies, observing the different kinds of cactus that thrive in this arid land.

112

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

I sat down on an embankment trying to get out of the relentless wind. What was the meaning of this powerful blast? Its very magnitude insured my attention, but what was the message? I waited, hoping an answer would come. Presently I stood up and started back. A jackrabbit with huge ears jumped in front of me and darted off to my right. He stopped about ten yards away and sat absolutely still, observing me out of the corner of his eye. I did the same. Silently I thanked him for allowing me to share his territory and wished him no harm. He made no move. Perhaps he, too, was waiting, waiting for something to happen. In that brief encounter, he taught me so much about waiting. It requires absolute stillness and concentration. Back at the vigil site we gathered again in a circle and shared our thoughts and feelings. We had to shout to be heard above the wind. I strained to listen as people spoke of sadness, waiting, anger. I told of my confusion and despair the previous day and how powerfully I had felt carried back in time. We spoke of the discomfort of not knowing what lay ahead. We were frightened and unsure. To know that others had similar feelings was itself comforting. I went away with the picture of that jackrabbit etched in my mind. Ears up, nose to the wind, eyes unblinking, alert and waiting, totally present. On Easter morning I again arose very early to catch a ride back to our now familiar gathering spot. The low wooden planks were there forming a circle and in the center was the black coffin. Louie was once again wearing his simple brown Franciscan habit. Mimes gave us each a balloon tied with a ribbon. They danced high in the air, a cheerful display. The wind, calmer now, had lost its angry fierceness but not its spirit. I sensed within myself and around me a new mood of quiet expectancy. Several people read biblical passages as well as contemporary stories of Central American origin. Once again I found time melting away, it was all happening here and now. The mimes moved about the circle clearly in search of something. They even investigated under Louie’s robe while he looked on with an amused smile. Eventually a crow bar was discovered and, with exaggerated motions, reminiscent of the comedia del arte, the mimes pried off the cover of the coffin. Out floated a great bunch of brightly colored balloons, all tied together. Attached at the end were the bits of paper from Good Friday containing all our many hopes for resurrection. Just as I had been devastated by the symbolic death of my hopes on Good Friday, now my heart all but exploded with joy as I watched the balloons carry their precious cargo aloft. They grew smaller and smaller in the immense expanse of blue sky until we could see them no longer. I saw my surprise and delight mirrored in the faces of others. I

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

113

kept looking in the direction they had taken, knowing they were safely launched on their journey. Now the coffin was transformed into an altar and draped with a white cloth. The wild flowers we had stopped to pick on our way appeared. Someone had baked a round loaf of bread. A cross and a large goblet of wine were there. Then very simply Louie reenacted the celebration of the Last Supper. We joined in with prayers and singing. The bread and wine were passed around the circle. Toward the end, Louie suggested that we release our individual balloons to the sky, along with a few words, as an offering of thanksgiving. As I let go of my balloon, I thanked all the people who had helped and supported me in coming on my journey. I felt their presence around me as I acknowledged their contribution. At that moment, I knew that the journey had only just begun. *** Jane Hughes Gignoux’s luminous account of her first journey to the Nevada Test Site richly crystallizes many of the dimensions of the transformative spirituality of the Nevada Desert Experience. The “stony self” comes face-to-face with its own skepticism and fear amid the almost limitless expanses of a terrain scarred by nuclear fire yet inhabited by beings, consciously or not, on a quest for the wisdom that comes by making contact with the woundedness and sacredness of our lives and life of the world. Gignoux bears within the gift of her text many insights into the dynamic of decentering and recentering of the self that seem to mark the NDE process. I will touch on many of them in the following chapters, including the conclusion, where I will seek to draw the threads of NDE’s antinuclear asceticism more clearly together. For now, I want to focus on a practice to which she dramatically draws our attention: the inculturated Stations of the Nuclear Cross.

The Way of the Cross Over the past two decades, the Nevada Desert Experience organized numerous Good Friday liturgies in which the fourteen stations of the “stations of the cross” have explicitly raised the dilemmas of a nuclearized and dominated world.2 For example, in 1996 an NDE participant, Robert DellaValle-Rauth, recounts that On March 3, the second Sunday of Lent and the third day of the NDE retreat, about 60 of us rode to the Test Site Entrance in eighteen cars.

114

Pilgrimage through a Burning World The fourteen stations were set up along the road—cardboard crosses on poles with a large photograph at the foot of each cross. Photos included the electric chair, man in wheelchair, wounded soldier, nuked mother with child at breast, aged Hibakusha woman, crying Palestinian woman and man, burned Hiroshima woman and child, naked, napalmed Vietnam girl, Protest at Nuclear Test Site, soldier with dead body, destroyed village after bomb attack, and the Mushroom Cloud. . . . Each station reading was the New Testament of our day. It was the reality of our generation today and the generations living since August 6, 1945. It was our Jesus story. . . . We truly were at the foot of the Nuclear Cross.3

To understand what this ritual means when it is enacted at a nuclear test site, it is first necessary to clarify its origins and the various meanings it has gathered through time. In the standardized version of the Stations of the Cross—formally institutionalized by the papacy in the eighteenth century—the participant takes part bodily in mimetically reproducing the stages of Jesus’ suffering and death: his trial and sentencing; his being forced to carry his cross or crossbar through the streets of Jerusalem; his stopping at several significant points along the way; his execution; and his burial. The canonized form of the ritual includes the following “stations”: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Christ is condemned to death Christ receives his cross His first fall He meets his mother Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross Christ’s face is wiped by Veronica His second fall He meets the women of Jerusalem His third fall He is stripped of his garments He is nailed to the cross Christ dies on the cross His body is taken down from the cross His body is laid in the tomb.4

“The way of the cross” is the root metaphor of the Christian tradition.5 The medieval ritual that emerged to thematize this core Chris-

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

115

tian metaphor and dynamic dramatizes initiation into a process of deep transformation. The proliferation of this ritual in European churches during the High Middle Ages enabled the faithful, who could not make a pilgrimage to Palestine, to unite more closely with the suffering Christ by following in the imagination Jesus’ journey from judgment to death and burial and thus to undergo a similar kind of spiritual transformation. To understand the meaning of the Nevada Desert Experience’s appropriation and adaptation of this ritual to the contemporary context, it is important to underscore the devotional aspect of this rite. As a paraliturgical ritual, the Stations of the Cross played an increasingly important role in popular religiosity and spirituality beginning in the fifteenth century throughout much of Western Europe and, after the Conquest, in Central and South America. It was an important element of devotionalism, a movement that developed in late medieval Christianity and lay conceptually between liturgical and contemplative practice.6 At the same time, it is also important to probe the ways in which it functioned culturally, politically, and sociologically. Like other religious rituals, this devotional practice developed over many centuries and was historically conditioned by a series of theological, ecclesiastical, political, and economic developments. In the spirit of a Foucauldian archaeology and genealogy of knowledge, I seek to understand the ways this ritual was constructed and, in turn, what NDE’s use of this ritual at a nuclear weapons site may mean religiously and politically today. Reconstructing the Historical Evolution of “The Stations of the Cross” The original Christian Gospel accounts, while laying stress on Jesus’ trial, torture, execution, and burial, pause only briefly at the details of the actual “way” of the cross. John barely mentions this passage. Mark and Matthew draw our attention only to Jesus’ being aided by Simon the Cyrene, who was pressed into service to help Jesus carry his cross. Luke mentions Simon and Jesus’ stopping to converse with a group of women who are mourning his impending execution. Before the fourth century C.E. there is little evidence of a public ritual reenactment of Jesus’ last journey. The proscribed Christian community understandably demonstrated both theological and practical reticence about focusing centrally on the cross itself. With Constantine’s legalization of Christianity in the fourth century, however, this situation changed dramatically. As historian Julien Ries reports,

116

Pilgrimage through a Burning World The emperor had images in his own likeness made with the cross in his hand. From the year 314, the scaffold for execution was no longer designated by the word crux, but by patibulum. Constantine finally abolished crucifixion as a sentence. The cross was placed at the pinnacle of basilicas, on the emperor’s diadem and scepter, on coins, and on the doorsteps of Jewish dwellings.7

Under Constantine the church experienced a profound change in its attitude toward reproductions of the cross, a transformation that was reinforced by the purported discovery in Jerusalem of the “true cross” by his mother, Helena, and the cult that grew up around its dissemination. These developments were located within the context of Constantine’s massive building project in Jerusalem through which the emperor sought to establish strategic, hegemonic power in the Near East by monumentalizing and Christianizing the city, as Jonathan Z. Smith and others have documented.8 In this period we see the beginning of systematic pilgrimages and in turn the emerging rudiments of the rite of the via crucis. The cross is allegorized, which begins the process of symbolic exegesis that continues down to the present day. In his research on the cross, Mircea Eliade, for example, groups it with spiritual symbols found in different cultures and religious systems, including the ladder, the column, the mountain, the “center of the world,” and the “cosmic tree,” which connects heaven and earth and functions as a metaphor for “perpetual renovation and cosmic regeneration, of universal fecundity and of sanctity, of absolute reality and, in the final reckoning, of immortality.”9 How are we to interpret this transformation of a mysterious and problematic symbol into a sign of power and empire-building and an apolitical archetype? A clue lies in the function of the original cross. The crucifixion of the historical Jesus was a rite of Roman power, or as biblical scholar Ched Myers suggests a form of imperial liturgy. As Myers emphasizes, When the Roman security forces have completed the deeds of the torture room, Jesus is marched out of the city to the place of crucifixion (MK 15:20). The drama of the via dolorosa, like so many aspects of the gospel narrative, has become in churchly tradition a pious exercise in personal anguish, replete with flagellation. Gone is the true signification: the political theater of imperial triumph. The Roman practice of putting its defeated military foes on parade is well documented [in Josephus].10

Studies of Roman statescraft and religion underscore how Jesus’ crucifixion was a performance of imperial might designed to deter rebel-

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

117

lion, maintain authority, and to assert the totalizing discourse of Roman hegemony. “The cross,” Martin Hengel writes, “was not just a matter of indifference, just like any kind of death. It was an utterly offensive affair, ‘obscene’ in the original sense of the word. . . . Death on the cross was the penalty for slaves, as everyone knew; as such it symbolized extreme humiliation, shame and torture.”11 While crucifixion was originally a punishment for slaves, it became a penalty the Romans imposed on those who resisted the authority of the Roman occupation.12 In the fourth century, however, Constantine transforms this key assertion and enforcement of Roman power—crucifixion as a mechanism for deterrence deployed to curb political and social unrest using torture, humiliation, and brutal lethality—into a form of politico-religious iconography. By changing its name, doing away with the practice as a form of legal execution, and encouraging a vigorous piety, Constantine reinvented the symbolism of the cross as a central and visible vehicle of divine salvation. While continuing to be an image of violence—the cross was resilient enough to resist its thorough neutralization—it was no longer seen as a sign of imperial violence. The meaning of the cross was transposed soteriologically and, while no longer primarily associated with a method of executing imperial power, it now, ironically, legitimated that power by being implicated with it. This religious and political construction was ultimately less the responsibility of one emperor and more the consequence of the logic of a transformation of power relations that took place in the fourth century. This shift in the center of symbolic gravity had far-reaching consequences, including a growing emphasis on atonement theologies, ecclesial penitential systems, and civil subordination in Christianized Roman society. This construction of the cross was to dominate church thought, practice, and structure throughout the Middle Ages.

The Constantinian Church and Spatial Conquest The situation in which the church found itself in the fourth century after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity contributed directly to the development of stational liturgy, which centuries later would ground the development of the “Stations of the Cross.” In his book entitled The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy, John F. Baldovin charts the evolution of stational liturgy in Jerusalem, Rome, and Constantinople, once Christians were no longer proscribed and therefore could openly conduct their faith lives, including cultic worship, in public.13 In Jerusalem the

118

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Romans had constructed a military colony named Aelia Capitolina after the Jewish revolt of 135 C.E. After his conversion, Constantine undertook a thoroughgoing urban reconstruction of the city. “Edifices for worship and shrines at sites traditionally associated with the life of Christ could now be constructed,” writes Baldovin. The new Jerusalem became, through this imperial building program, simultaneously a place of Christian pilgrimage and a tribute to the power of Rome.14 Liturgy became “stational”—moving between a series of sacred sites—for a variety of practical and ideological reasons. The bishop of the city was the chief presider at Eucharist; it was customary for him to move from church to church to serve this sacramental function. In addition, there was a desire to mark the sites sacred to Christians throughout Jerusalem. Although the original sites associated with Jesus’ last days were no longer extant, traditions were maintained over the first several centuries about this “sacred topography” that were canonized with Constantine’s reconstruction of Jerusalem. More important than historicity were ecclesial needs and imperial ambitions. Stational processions became an effective means of organizing public worship and a form of catechesis and initiation (mystagogy), and these factors apparently outweighed that of historicization (i.e., a historical reproduction of Jesus’ actual journey to Golgotha).15 In addition, such public displays played an important role in overpowering nonChristian forms of worship and replacing the pagan civil religious establishment.16 As Baldovin shows, the stational, processional form was also an adaptation of Greek and Roman political and religious processions. Consequently, “the supplications of Christians, even as they attempted to transform the previous culture, were in continuity with it.”17 Stational liturgy functioned to connect the myriad of shrines in Jerusalem18 which, says Baldovin, led to a form of topographical conquest, a social victory over competing religious and political systems. It was, Baldovin argues, the liturgy that made this conquest “both visible and viable by covering the city with liturgical action that had the bishop as its main participant.”19 At the same time, this religious activity paid political dividends. As Jonathan Z. Smith emphasizes, “The issue of the site [Jerusalem] . . . appears in a setting quite distant from pious memorials or pilgrimages. It appears in the political context of a church council called into being by imperial patronage—the Council of Nicaea. It was raised in the idiom of power, prestige and sanctity.”20 Smith details how Constantine created a Christian “Holy Land,” “having as its central foci a series of imperialdynastic churches.”21 Constantine’s project led to the irrevocable transformation of the church. One of the aspects of this metamorphosis was

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

119

stational liturgy that both nurtured the church and its spirituality, but also further reinforced the almost indissoluble link between the church and the political power of the age. Centuries later, strands of the Constantinian legacy took new form during the Crusades, a series of military expeditions conducted from Western Europe between 1096 and 1270, which aimed to recover the Holy Land from Muslim control, and which promised its participants a variety of temporal and spiritual rewards, including the remission of sins. After the defeat of the Western Europeans, a series of Christian communities—most notably the Franciscans—continued to maintain a presence in Jerusalem and were instrumental in developing the rite of the “Stations of the Cross” by which pilgrims were able to visit and pray at sites thought to be associated with Jesus’ last hours. This ritual reflected and reinforced a tendency that began in the twelfth century, namely, the devotion to the humanity of Jesus. In general, this trend restored the cross’s original violence—as thematized in the innumerable Ecce Homo images of a suffering Christ that proliferated during the High Middle Ages22—but not its political significance. This was true, as well, of the ritual of the Stations of the Cross. Given the accounts left by pilgrims of the period concerning the tensions between Christians and Muslims experienced during pilgrimage,23 it is possible to imagine that the ritual of the Stations—in which the travelers moved in bands from contested site to contested site throughout the city—was interpreted by the indigenous population as a kind of ongoing invasion and symbolic occupation by foreigners. And perhaps it was thought of in the same way by the Western Europeans, as well.24 In any case, pilgrims elaborated and enacted this ritual in Jerusalem, and in turn church authorities established and practiced it in churches throughout Europe, especially disseminated by the Franciscan order.25 Drawing on Herbert Thurston’s still-magisterial The Stations of the Cross: An Account of Their History and Devotional Purpose, Michael Walsh summarizes this devotional rite’s curious evolution. The format that was institutionalized by the papacy in the eighteenth century was not based on either historical records, carefully preserved legends, or the routes maintained by the Franciscans in Jerusalem who had been the guardian of the Christian sites in the Middle East for centuries, but on a book by Jan van Paessechen, Prior of the Carmelites at Malines, in Louvain that was published in 1563. As Walsh explains, the book “took as its structure a year-long pilgrimage to the Holy Land and back, assigning meditations for each day and describing the scene observed on the day. While the reader is (mentally) in Jerusalem, van Paessechen takes him or her along the way of the cross, listing the stations in the order they have come down to us.”26

120

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Intriguingly, the canonical form of Stations of the Cross was a construction that prevailed over other versions thought by those actually in Jerusalem to be more faithful to traditional formulations. This form not only triumphed in Jerusalem itself, it was reproduced and disseminated throughout Europe. Just as participation in the Crusades and pilgrimages to Jerusalem was linked to the church’s penitential system, so too did participation in the Stations of the Cross in one’s local church (as the Stations of the Cross was miniaturized and made portable) eventually gain for the practitioner, with Pope Clement XII’s 1731 decree, indulgences, which granted remission from the consequences of sin as if she or he had made the arduous journey to Palestine itself.27 The Stations became indissoluably linked with what Francis Oakley terms an “arithmetical piety” that gave “almost a magical value to mere repetition of formulae.”28 To individual participants, participation in the Stations—either in Jerusalem or elsewhere—was generally experienced as a deeply moving devotional practice. It was a powerful, often communal way to identify with Christ and his sacred journey. At the same time, however, it became a practice that also reproduced and kept intact the fantasy of Christian occupation of the Near East. Consciously or not, it could be utilized both as a reminder that Western Christians had been excluded from the place of salvation and as a way of imaginatively reclaiming it. It was a ritual that could be used to reinforce a socially constructed and enforced barrier between Christians—depicted as the rightful owners of the Holy Land because Jesus had lived and died there—and Muslims, who were seen as interlopers. Of course, the ritual’s narrative reinforced this barrier between Christians and the other inhabitants of the region, the Jews, who are portrayed as ultimately being responsible for the death of Jesus. The performance of this ritual in Western Europe, therefore, could ultimately be used to serve a double function: embodying and reinforcing attitudes of exclusion toward those in far away lands and toward those closer to home, principally Jews, heretics, and dissenters. As R. N. Swanson writes, “Medieval Latin Christianity was in many respects an insecure religion,” hence the existence of religious minorities was a constant reproach and perceived threat.29 In such a situation, “The persistent and unavoidable fear that Catholicism might be undermined could reach hysterical proportions.”30 Scholars drawing on the theories of René Girard (including his thesis that social solidarity is created through sacrificial violence) have pointed out that Good Friday processions held in the Middle Ages often functioned to demarcate minorities from the majority of Christians and were a time of increased violence toward those minorities, especially

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

121

Jews, who continued to be accused of responsibility for the death of Christ.31 Holy Week was especially prone to such violence because during that time period “the sacred was physically experienced, relations of power were criticized, the past became present, and urban space was transformed.”32 Seen by the majority as “popular justice” sanctioned by God, such acts of violence (from attacks by a mob on a single Muslim during Holy Week to the cases of mass slaughter of Jews in the mid-fifteenth century) are interpreted by Girard as a mechanism fostered to manage and channel social violence so that it would not careen out of control. In fact, the “mimetic desire” that such scapegoating is meant to quench is, at most, briefly allayed. The cycle of its violence continues to turn. The irony is that, according to Girard’s theory, the death of Christ—the killing of the “perfect victim”—has ultimately exposed and undermined this mechanism of victimization. Yet here it now legitimates that traditional scapegoat mechanism. As Timothy Mitchell suggests, Jesus’ passion has provoked many different “readings, including Girard’s which sees it as the ultimate unmasking of the victimage mechanism.” Ironically, he points out, “sacrificial Christianity ‘fetishized’ the Passion and thereby fell back into the same state of mythological paganism that Christ had come to subvert.”33 Mitchell’s research focuses on such displays in medieval Spain. Here he analyzes how the via crucis became an annual “re-murdering” of Christ, a homicide that is “not merely unjustified but is also a criminal transgression that cries out for vengeance.”34 The dominant community identifies with Christ and thus takes his death very personally, seeking expiation from the ones who are “responsible.” Though David Nirnberg argues for the stabilizing effect of such rituals—which, for him, both reasserted the place of minorities in such societies as well as always threatened their destruction,35 it can be argued that such sociodramas increased the general hostility overall toward such communities, especially the Jewish communities, as historians have amply demonstrated.36 This variegated history of the symbolism and ritual of the Way of the Cross, reflecting the political and religious contexts in which it evolved, came therefore to enact two contradictory meanings. On the one hand, crucifixion thematizes a public ministry of love and of love’s resistance to a system of domination as in the face of an act of imperial power. This is a liberative construction of this symbolism, which clusters such qualities as prophetic denunciation, enunciation, and loving reliance on a God of nonviolence. On the other hand, this historically constructed ritual was often appropriated throughout the Middle

122

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Ages in ways that buttressed systems of political and ecclesial power and sacralized military intervention, including the Crusades and Spain’s Reconquista (of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors) and its Conquista in the Americas. This is the symbol’s dominative construction, which clusters such qualities as imperial might, submission, victimization, and expiation. The dominative dimension of this symbolism played a role in constructing the medieval Christian identity, which, in turn, implied defining and excluding the “other.” One wonders if the symbolism of the cross could have been deployed in these ways if the political dimensions of the original crucifixion had not been transformed. The Stations of the Cross ritual therefore thematized differing spiritualities through contradictory orientations toward the same symbol. This ritual can either brace systems of domination or contest them.

NDE’s Appropriation of the Symbolism of “The Stations of the Cross” When we have the stations of the cross out there, and we have these contemporary photographs that coincide with the suffering of Jesus as he walked the road to Calvary, and that whole story-line, and you’re doing that ritual—and then on the other side of the line you’re aware of these folks, the Department of Energy folks, the . . . security in uniforms with guns on their side and ready stance prepared for us, gloves on their hands to make arrest, and you’re aware of these really diverse rituals, these really distinct rituals clashing and one highlighting the other. —Julia Occhiogrosso37

The Nevada Desert Experience’s “Way of the Nuclear Cross” ritual at the Nevada Test Site has served to recover this symbol’s potential for contesting hegemonic power by remembering and reconstructing one of its original meanings. The Nevada Desert Experience, by utilizing this medieval rite, was making a connection that has since been made even more clearly by theologian James W. Douglass, who writes: The cross was a key to the security system of the Roman Empire. From the standpoint of Roman security, the choice was either to torture and crucify rebels one by one as a deterrent, or to carry out the ultimate threat by annihilating a whole population center, as Rome did in fact

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

123

do at Jerusalem in 70 C.E. . . . To preserve the Roman way of life, Rome tried to deter its colonized peoples from rebellion, first with the threat of crucifixion, then with the annihilation of cities.38

Douglass, drawing on U.S. government documents, demonstrates the parallel between Roman strategy and contemporary strategies of deterrence, low-intensity conflict, and first-strike. Referring to U.S. government strategic policy, Douglass emphasizes that increasingly-precise weaponry has given policy-makers new options in the “discriminate use of nuclear weapons.” Douglass’s argument is that the fundamental strategy on which the Roman Empire was built and maintained—discriminate deterrence, with the option of annihilation of adversaries if the first course fails—is essentially the one on which U.S. power is also based. In the first century, it was carried out with crucifixion and then, if necessary, unnumbered legions. In the twentieth century, it takes the form first of the Rapid Deployment Force and so-called Low Intensity Conflict and, should that falter, the threat of nuclear weapons.39 Hundreds of nuclear bombs had been detonated at the Nevada Test Site, tests designed in part to perfect key weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. By drawing on the traditional devotion of the Way of the Cross, The Nevada Desert Experience sought to recapitulate the clash of worldviews present in the historical crucifixion that has been reinvented in the twentieth century. For half a century, nuclear weapons have taxed the human imagination’s ability to conceive and comprehend the magnitude of their power. Because of their world-shattering force, nuclear arms are unique in their ability to relativize, subvert, and even undo our worldview. Their fury, vast reach, and global consequences have the power to reveal irretrievably that the world which we take to be reality itself is in fact a social construction, as the residents of Hiroshima bewilderingly reported in their own words in the aftermath of the world’s first atomic bombing.40 As human beings have struggled to come to terms with this condition, they have often turned to religious language and categories to articulate their grasp of, and response to, the nuclear era. “The Age of Apocalypse,” “A Limitless Power,” “The End of the World,” “Gods of Metal”—these are a few of the symbolic constructions that thematize the unimaginable power of nuclear weapons and our relationship to it. These metaphors suggest mythic themes of chaos and order, damnation and salvation, hell and heaven. Ira Chernus, Edward Linenthal, and other historians of religions have used the tools of their discipline to engage in a reading of nuclear symbology and structures that evoke religious themes,

124

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

experiences, and paradigms (e.g., esoteric and exoteric knowledge; priesthood; regimes of secrecy and taboos; and legitimating mythologies).41 The Bomb for some evokes archetypes and archetypal thinking. In this study, however, we are exploring the human relationship to the production and deployment of nuclear weapons less in terms of a timeless, cosmic struggle and more in terms of a historically constructed conflict. The Nevada Desert Experience appropriated a para-liturgical rite of the Catholic Christian tradition which, as we have seen, is freighted with rich and contradictory meanings. As we begin to view the “archaeology” of the ritual of the Stations of the Cross, we see intriguing layers: piety, memory of a political execution, a metamorphosis that serves empire, a marker between insiders and outsiders, communitas, and privatized spirituality. NDE was not conscious of all of these layers. Yet by retranscribing this rite on the topography of a nuclear weapons facility, it sought to draw a clear distinction between the gospel values of justice and discipleship and a government policy—and the worldview that was the underpinning of that policy—that clashed with those values. In this section, we have explored the ways in which this nonviolent action recapitulated the clash of worldviews implicit in the original crucifixion. We have also considered how the very symbol NDE chose to use to dramatize this—the Stations of the Cross—has, at times, been implicated in these antigospel values. With hindsight, we can now see that part of the work of The Nevada Desert Experience on that day was retrieving and reconstructing this ritual itself. In so doing, NDE contributed to the contemporary process by Christian faith-based nonviolent practitioners updating and virtually reinventing a tool of spiritual transformation that was, in its own way, a path of, and resource for, social and personal change. James J. Preston writes that pilgrimage sites exert a “spiritual magnetism” on the pilgrim.42 The people who have gathered at the gates of the Nevada Test Site have been drawn here for religious purposes. They have momentarily sloughed off the conventional pattern of their lives to journey to a holy place, if by holy we mean what Rudolf Otto meant by the term: the experience of overwhelming fascination, dread, and the “tremendum.” The Nevada Test Site, one of the key matrices that generate weapons of unimaginable fury and destruction, generates in turn an experience of overpowering fear, despair, awfulness, nothingness, and mystery.43 Those who have gathered here at this site of inconceivable death do so not to worship this power but to confront it. But this impulse to travel to this place of death is not simply rooted in the dynamics of the “mysterium tremendum.” We human beings have crafted innumerable defense mechanisms against such power, shielding

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

125

ourselves from its intolerable truths through denial and repression. What draws NDE participants to the test site is not fascination and dread per se but a culturally constructed narrative that organizes their faith tradition’s response to such horror. In the liminal phase, it is as if the participants—shorn of the conventional roles of daily life and the identities they have spent a lifetime constructing and defending—enter vigorously into this narrative, which anthropologist Victor Turner calls Christianity’s root metaphor and what could also be named its “master script”: the Way of the Cross. NDE conducts the “miniature pilgrimage” of the Stations of the Cross at the test site in an interrogative spirit. It questions “the piety” of the national security state that makes pilgrimage to the desert of the Great Basin to create weapons meant to impose and enforce the harshest “purity codes” ever devised: social divisions between “us” and “them” writ large—Americans and non-Americans; the global rich and poor; and the living and the dead. At the same time, it implicitly challenges the “piety” of religious communities that are not doing more to support the means of life, not death. The desert becomes church; the street contested space. This Good Friday ritual is held where it doesn’t belong. Shunning the ordinary patterns of human and ecclesial life, the ritual of the Stations of the Cross at NTS evokes and mobilizes the root paradigm of the via crucis. This is a drama that draws each participant out of the typical “structure” of contemporary life (a structure which, this ritual intimates, buttresses and is buttressed by an apparatus of ecocide and ineffable terror) into the “antistructure” of this newly opened space and realigned relationships. The actors are momentarily relieved of the identities that have been more or less soldered onto us and personally (if unconsciously) ratified as the fee for living within what Turner would label the “structure” of modern life. In Turner’s explanation of the “root paradigm,” he used as his example the titanic conflict between Becket and the king of England. Turner argues that, at bottom, this conflict was steeped in the fundamental Christian paradigm of the via crucis, which he interpreted generally as the symbolic formulation of the mystery of death and rebirth for Christians, or, more particularly, the model of the martyr, whose loyalty to the God of Jesus extends even into death, including death at the hands of a political or social structure that would presume to crown itself as the Holy, the Absolute, the Unconditioned. Turner’s interpretation of the Christian Way of the Cross is correct but, so far as its enactment on this spring day in the Nevada desert goes, incomplete. As this master script is dramatized—interpreted both

126

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

kinesthetically and theologically—by The Nevada Desert Experience, martyrdom is not a motive, but a possible consequence, of the public love urged by Jesus. To love in the way he counseled—disrespecting the carefully constructed rules and norms that maintain injustice, violence, and lethal disparities between individuals and communities—will likely result in sanctions from the power structure.44 NDE’s Way of the Cross recapitulates this myth and propels into being a social drama in which women and men of bodies and spirit momentarily leave behind one socially constructed identity and, in doing so, experience something of the freedom, the connection, the communitas Turner posits, as the following reflection by Chris Nauman suggests: At the beginning of mass this past Christmas Eve, at my parish here in New England, the procession was led by an altar girl carrying the crucifix high and mighty, reverent and radiant. The image immediately brought me back to the Nevada desert on Good Friday twelve years before. There, the Way of the Cross was led by Louis Vitale, holding the cross so high and holy, his face shrouded in the radiance of the Holy Spirit. Christ was certainly among us that day in the desert and now through that memory and through this young girl’s piety, I felt the Spirit lift me again into a holy and sacred space. I wept. The feeling of God’s love was so intense. The Nevada Desert Experience is one of many experiences that has nurtured my soul. It is a source of continued hope as I know that God’s reign draws closer bringing a world without violence, a world without bombs, a world full of peace. The living memories of NDE, of those committed to confronting violence with body and soul, imbue me with meaning in my life today. You see, I am not as much an activist now as I was then. Or perhaps I’m a different kind of activist now. My heart is there but I am not physically there. I’ve become a doctor since I last saw Louie Vitale and spend my days in a hospital. But as I make rounds and care for my patients each day, I believe I bring Louis and the Cross with me and, in some way, share the Spirit with everyone I encounter, infusing the lives of those I touch with the Spirit of the Nonviolent Christ that has touched me.45

Following the way of the cross—indeed, somehow bearing the cross—meant for those in this community the process of relentlessly resisting the cross of nuclear weapons that threatens to crucify the entire world and was already crucifying the poor because of its economic and political “fallout.” For NDE organizers and participants, the cross is not an object of sentimental piety but a catastrophe—but a catastrophe that,

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross

127

if seen for what it is, can be demythologized and voluntarily embraced for the sake of the world. Like all profound religious symbols, the Way of the Cross possesses a surplus of meaning that allows for both dominative and liberative readings. NDE, for two decades, has helped reveal the Way of the Cross’s liberative meaning by interpreting it as an act of public, bold love, dramatically resisting the injustice and violence of state power that asserts its claim to be Absolute Reality demanding absolute loyalty, belief, and support. The Nevada Desert Experience, drawing on an ancient form of religious piety, rejected this claim.

This page intentionally left blank.

CHAPTER

5

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

Back in my high school days I was trained by the Benedictine nuns at St. Scholastica’s High School for girls to be active in social justice issues. We went to the Chicago Inter-Student Catholic Action meetings weekly, so resistance to evil or moral wrong-doing in government action in order to change wrongs was put into my blood. It is still there. So, when I heard of these protests against nuclear bombs, I felt obligated to join in wholeheartedly. By 1988 I was a retired proofreader from Better Homes and Gardens and felt free to do as I pleased, meaning commit civil disobedience. . . . One of three times I crossed the line at the Nevada Test Site I was arm in arm with Robert Blake (the movie star) and sat at the same table with movie star Terry Garr to have our plastic handcuffs removed—after a 125 mile bus ride to the county seat where we were dumped without food, money or cars. My husband kids that, little did he know, he was marrying a law-breaker! Actually he is proud of it. And I feel I acted sincerely on my religious convictions. —Marie Molloy1

Contemporary practices of nonviolent action have been shaped within the context of a recent thoroughgoing rereading of Christian sources and history. From understanding the parables of Jesus as forms of “subversive speech,”2 to disclosing the radical inclusivity of the primitive community,3 to rediscovering the Second Testament’s preferential option for the poor,4 to interpreting the events in the life of archetypal biblical figures as acts of nonviolent resistance,5 theologians and prophetic church leadership have engaged in a searching exegesis of Christianity’s founding texts and tradition viewed from the “underside of history.” Contemporary faith-based nonviolent action, including civil disobedience, is often understood by its practitioners as a practice located within the horizon of this rereading of scripture and tradition as

129

130

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

prophetic witness resisting domination and announcing in its acts the Reign of God. Faith-based nonviolent action has not only, however, been shaped by this rereading. It also itself has stimulated and propelled this revisioning.6 For example, the Civil Rights movement’s sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters throughout the U.S. South in the early 1960s functioned (for those, as the Gospel puts it, “with eyes to see”) to retrieve and reframe Christian table fellowship and Eucharist. Nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House and the Pentagon has reframed an understanding of Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem and his cleansing of the Temple, just as the Berrigan-inspired Plowshares movement has renewed the exegesis of Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares” by hammering on nuclear weapons and implements. These acts have led to insights into this text that innumerable literal analyses are likely to miss: the barriers (physical, psychological, cultural, spiritual) one must cross to actually tap on a nuclear nosecone with a household hammer; the experience of coming “face to face” with such a “sword”; and the consequences (personal, social, cultural, political, and religious) that such an act may have. Such practices—and their potential plethora of meanings for contemporary ecclesial communities and for the larger society—contribute to rereading the tradition’s vision and experience. The nonviolent praxis of the twentieth century, as theologian John Dear writes, functions as a hermeneutical lens for glimpsing what has either not been seen or has been seen “as in a mirror darkly”: the claim that persistent, loving, dramatic, stubborn nonviolence and nonviolent action, including civil disobedience, exists at the heart of the Christian tradition.7 The Nevada Desert Experience has been shaped by this contemporary rereading of the biblical-prophetic tradition and has also at the same time contributed, in a distinctive way through its praxis, to this rereading. In this chapter, we focus on a key “spiritual practice” of the Nevada Desert Experience: nonviolent civil disobedience. We do so, first, by reflecting on two accounts of civil disobedience written by Erik Thompson and Douglas Hamill. Thompson describes a series of nonviolent journeys to the Nevada Test Sites, while Hamill focuses largely on the “spirit retreat” of six days spent in the Nye County jail as a consequence of nonviolent civil disobedience at the test site.

Erik Thompson’s Journey to the Test Site Chapel Erik Thompson made the decision to risk arrest as an act of faith and witness at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—the U.S.

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

131

national laboratory in Northern California that has designed nearly 50 percent of the U.S. nuclear arsenal—on Good Friday, 1984.8 In preparation, he decided to spend a few days with the Franciscans in the Nevada desert. He became aware of NDE and its activities at the test site when he had attended a World Peace Day event in San Francisco in 1983, where Louis Vitale had spoken about the Lenten Desert Experience. On his first trip to Nevada he witnessed a sheriff assist a civilly disobedient woman cross into the restricted space of a top-secret government facility, who then situated this deliberately political act within the context of prayer and spirituality by asking those assembled to join her in reciting The Lord’s Prayer. He wept at this sight and began to attend Nevada Desert Experience events on a regular basis. On Holy Saturday, 1988, Erik Thompson joined Louis Vitale and nine others in crossing the barbed wire fence onto the test site property with the intention of walking across the desert to the little military town of Mercury a couple of miles inside the southern entrance to the Nevada Test Site. Their planned destination was the building located on Trinity Avenue (named after the code word used for the first atomic test in 1945) that had formerly been a chapel but now was used as office space. They wanted to reconsecrate this little church. In a scriptural tone, Thompson describes their journey that day: And it came to pass that on Holy Saturday, eleven of us went to the desert, one woman carrying spices, all “looking for the Lord’s body,” with an Easter lily plant. We snuck to the edge of Mercury, were able to identify the former chapel building, and discovered, to our amazement, that the building was open, the stone had been rolled away from the tomb! We all went inside. Louie led us in a service of reconsecration as we purified the former chapel which was being used as an office for Los Alamos Labs. The building was located on Trinity Avenue . . . we reconsecrated it as Holy Trinity Chapel. We then called Peter Ediger [director of NDE at the time] and told him we were inside Holy Trinity Chapel in Mercury and that he could spread the word that it was available for Easter Services. We began our own Easter service and read that the women at the tomb “reported to Peter!”

Here Thompson draws our attention to what is for him an uncanny parallel to the account found in the Gospel of Mark: When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint [the body of Jesus]. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one

132

Pilgrimage through a Burning World another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”9

When the county sheriff deputies arrived, they allowed the group to finish its service. When they were done, they were arrested and transported to the Nye County jail in Beatty, where they were held through the weekend. The next day, on Easter, two others visited the Holy Trinity chapel where they were arrested and charged with federal trespass. Although the Saturday arrestees were expecting six-month prison terms, the county inexplicably dropped the initial charges after the federal U.S. attorney decided to prosecute those who had trespassed on Sunday morning. Thompson and the rest of the first group were freed. Thus began Thompson’s continuing pilgrimage to Trinity. Later that year, on August 9, the commemoration of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki: Louie Vitale, O.F.M., Gary Sponholz, O.F.M. and I went back to the chapel where we were able to conduct a five minute memorial service in the presence of the workers until we were arrested. I refused a citation [release] at the Test Site, so I was taken into custody and spent a number of hours with my captor, a self-professed fundamentalist Christian. I asked him to compare the situation of Louie, Gary, and I with the story in early Acts [of the Apostles]. We, too, had been arrested by the authorities, been told not to continue with our activities, been released without punishment, and returned to “the scene of our crime” because we chose to obey God rather than [human beings]. He replied, “I try to avoid those moral dilemmas.”10

Appearing before a federal magistrate, Judge Lloyd George (reportedly a Mormon Bishop who was also a former pilot with the Strategic Air Command), Thompson was quickly convicted. He remained free pending appeal until Vitale and Sponholz were sentenced the following Lent: The two Franciscans were sentenced by the same Lloyd George on Good Friday, appearing in the courtroom in their brown robes. The large crowd in town for the annual NDE action packed the courtroom. At sentencing we were all able to rise and express our co-con-

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

133

spiracy with Louie and Gary. After a delightfully empowering experience we all went out to the Test Site for another action! The next Monday I reported for prison and was transferred from the Federal Courthouse to Clark County jail. On Wednesday, I was accidentally released at 6:00 A.M. so I wandered to the park where Louie and Gary were doing their work release by serving coffee to the poor. When they saw me in line there were many comments about angels opening prison doors. Although during my ten hours of freedom I talked to the media about secular issues (“The same government responsible for the security of 30,000 nuclear warheads just lost me”), neither I nor my friends were unaware of the religious significance of my being released—and on the third day! I re-surrendered and had a wonderful three month prison experience, visiting six federal facilities and ending up in Oxford, Wisconsin where Fr. Jerry Zawada had recently served time [for an act of nonviolent civilly disobedient peacemaking]. Fr. Jerry had made such a wonderful impression on the inmates that they did all they could to help me out, in honor of Jerry.11

When Thompson was finally released, he used the modest travel money provided by the Bureau of Prisons to drive to Las Vegas in time for the action marking Hiroshima Day on August 6, 1989. “I closed this circle,” he wrote, “by being arrested at the cattle guard.” Thompson revels in what seems to him to be the religious importance of these events: The chronology certainly seems guided: uninterrupted eight arrests on Hiroshima Day for our commitment, the successful Holy Saturday stone rolling (by eleven, with spices, on Trinity Avenue), the attention of federal authorities, the dropping of county charges, the successful reentry on Nagasaki Day, the detention by a fundamentalist Christian, the statement at my sentencing, the Good Friday sentencing of the Franciscans, the release from jail on the third day, the federal prison experience with the Zawada connection, the return to the Test Site with Federal money. . . . It certainly makes it very hard to claim that some spirit was not guiding the whole thing. And it seems clear which spirit that might have been.

Douglas Hamill’s New Kind of Spiritual Retreat Douglas Hamill was a Franciscan brother and medical doctor who, in January 1986, took part in an NDE-sponsored civil disobedience action at the test site.12 On February 3 he returned from Southern

134

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

California to Beatty, Nevada, for his trial, where he was found guilty of trespass and sentenced to six days in the nearby Nye County jail. In his statement before Judge Sullivan, Hamill said: Your honor, I was brought out to the desert by two sacred oaths. As you can see, I stand here before you as a humble son of St. Francis. As such, I am trying to live out the demands of that way of life: to try to be poor, be chaste, and to be obedient to the challenge of the Gospel. Now, Francis always encouraged his brothers to try to see life, the world, and history from the perspective of the poor, the little ones, the minores. I have started to try to do just that. The Church is beginning to become aware of an intimate link between the arms race and the poverty of third world peoples. From the perspective of the poor, this is already quite evident: . . . each day 40,000 children and 60,000 adults die of starvation or the complications of malnutrition and each day our world (not just our nation, but our entire world bears this responsibility) spends $1.4 billion on arms. Now, in my work as a friar, I try to help Central American refugees who are flooding, poor and persecuted, into the downtown area of Los Angeles. Reflect a moment, and you will see that my presence in this magnificent desert where the seeds of catastrophic destruction are being sown and my humble work among the refugees of Los Angeles are warp and woof of the same cloth. And that cloth is my vow of Franciscan poverty. Yet a second solemn oath brings me to this place, your honor. I also stand before you as a physician, a pediatrician. As a physician I have been given, and I have accepted, the sacred trust of protecting life, preserving it, nurturing it . . . One final note. I am a responsible citizen—perhaps too responsible! I love our society and its laws. I am not a “kook” or a “crazy” or a “radical demonstrator” who enjoys spending weekends or vacation in jail. But that is just the point: this problem has outgrown us; it has outgrown the narrow interests of “radicals.” This problem has begun to permeate the lives of ordinary people, of responsible people— of people like you and people like me. The problem now challenges us, you and me, to take dramatic and responsible action. These two oaths brought me out to the desert to pray. Whether there is a crime in that is for you to decide.

Hamill, in explaining to the court his motivation for traveling to the Nevada Test Site, where he crossed illegally onto property deemed offlimits to nonauthorized personnel, defines his behavior as an unambiguously religious act. His nonviolent action flows from two pledges he has taken as a Franciscan brother and a health practitioner. For Hamill, these commitments demand a very specific spiritual practice: seeing life, the world, and history from the perspective of the poor. By itself, this prac-

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

135

tice does not necessarily mean breaking the law. For Hamill, however, it takes him into the terrain of the political, requiring political analysis (connecting poverty and the nuclear arms race) and political action. At the conclusion of Hamill’s statement, the judge found him guilty and fined him $150.00. When he refused to pay this fine, he and another Franciscan friar, Tom, received a six-day jail sentence. After being fingerprinted and photographed, most of his personal effects were confiscated (money, comb, handkerchief, the cord from his Franciscan habit). They were put in a jail cell: Each cell has a bunk with two plastic mattresses, two plastic pillows and two army issue blankets; a combination metal sink-toilet with no movable parts and a metal mirror on the wall. The whole construction is cinder block, painted yellow, save for the barred door of each cell and the slit-like plastic windows to the outside. Karl [another inmate] joined Tom and me in evening and night prayer from the breviary. I have never felt quite so profoundly the solidarity with Franciscan brothers that comes from the universal prayer of the church as I have tonight. It’s a beautiful prayer.

The next day he writes: “Tom said it was helpful to him to think of this cell as his ‘cave,’ and indeed Francis often referred to his special caves on Mt. Subasio as his ‘prison.’ . . . Morning prayer is a real joy—the psalms speak to our hearts. But the day itself was long, real long.” Hamill’s diary reports the rhythm of the jail experience, including long stretches of boredom, moments of prayer, work detail, and the sometimes strained relationship between captor and captive. The night before they are released, he writes: “I can sure sympathize with the graffiti scratched on the underside of the upper bed in the last cell: ‘You know how/slow time can go/sitting in jail/without bail.’” His last jail entry reads: The two after-lunch hours crept by at a snail’s pace. Tom and I were sure they’d forgotten us, that it would be five o’clock when they let us out and we would miss the only bus to Las Vegas at 3:30 P.M. But they came for us at two o’clock on the nose, to the very minute. They signed over our goods and the two young deputies wished us well. . . . Tom went to make a phone call and I wandered up the highway a bit. I was drunk with it all: the bright afternoon sun, the cold wind on my face, the colorful desert mountains . . .

Hamill consciously views his experience with the lens of traditional patterns of Christian spirituality. His cell in Central Nevada is

136

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

likened to Francis of Assisi’s eremetical cave in Alverno, Italy, where Francis is said to have received the stigmata, a divinely enfleshed confirmation of the consummation of the saint’s deepest desire to be in a modest way an imitatio Christi.13 His jail experience functions as a contextualized form of the traditional Catholic spiritual retreat, with space and time for prayer and meditation; mindful attentiveness to the rhythm of the day, when it is not filled to the brim with the countless demands of one’s everyday life; even the opportunity to experience the desolation and acedia (listlessness) of boredom.14 Hamill’s retreat differs from those often offered in modern Christian retreat centers where “the desert” has often been spiritualized and dematerialized. For a few days, Hamill experiences restraint and a limit on his “object choices,” as theologian Louis Monden puts it.15 Monden contrasts “object choice” (the ability to make decisions about specific and concrete aspects of one’s life) with one’s “fundamental option” (the ultimate existential orientation and commitment that one’s life will and does take). In a somewhat choreographed, yet nonetheless real way, Hamill’s momentary imprisonment sharpens his ability to contemplate, make, and reaffirm his fundamental option for his Franciscan values and the actions that flow from it, even at the temporary expense of his “object choices.”16 The NDE “retreat” parallels not only modern forms of retreat but the paradigmatic retreats on which this form of Christian spirituality is based: Jesus’ incarceration and execution, the jailing and martyrdom of Christians during the first three centuries of the Christian era, and the periodic detention and “disappearance” of Christians down to the present day, including the compatriots of those with whom Hamill worked in Los Angeles from El Salvador. This echoes Louis Vitale’s conception of voluntarily chosen incarceration, where one experiences in a new form the three vows of Christian religious life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Voluntarily chosen imprisonment can become spiritual space, and spirituality can bring one face to face with the mechanisms of domination. Like Jesus and Paul, if one deliberately challenges injustice, one will likely face jail or even death.17 But, as if he had read Margaret Miles’s scholarship, Hamill seeks to define this retreat as a form of “new asceticism” as he reflected on Leonardo Boff’s book, Saint Francis, which he read while he was imprisoned.18 Hamill writes: Boff’s first chapter about eros/pathos and logos defining the modern crisis is tremendous. How he sees the role of eros (in the broad, archaic sense) as the driving force of life (“in the beginning was not ‘logos’ but

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

137

eros”) which must be channeled by logos in order to result in gentleness and care, is brilliant. And how we are dominated by logos is readily apparent, using his analysis. Francis, a man saturated in eros tamed by harsh asceticism, becomes the hope, the way out for our modern world. There seems to me to be one sense, however, in which he is not a model for me, or our modern civilization. We are dominated by logos to our very core; we lack eros. Thus, we cannot begin by emulating Francis’ poverty and harsh asceticism—that would be indulging the logos which already overwhelms our lives, sending us hurtling toward the brink of ecologic and nuclear disaster. Rather, we must discover and free the eros in our soul, to let it pour out and stretch the confines of our logos prison (it should be clear in this regard that the casual and superficial “sexism” of our culture bears precious little resemblance to this ancient understanding of eros as liberated life force). How I shall go about freeing eros is what this Franciscan life is all about.

Hamill not only seeks to articulate a new asceticism, he, like Miles, is implicitly struggling to defy the old asceticism of the hatred of the body and the world that has crept into contemporary existence. But whereas Miles counts the dominant culture’s masochistic practices of self-indulgence—including alcoholism, promiscuity, drug use, overeating—as ironic examples of the newly packaged “old asceticism,” Hamill sees this old asceticism playing itself out in a guise of an even potentially greater magnitude: nuclear and ecological catastrophe. Hamill intuitively correlates ancient attitudes and practices that devolved and congealed into the approaches that despised the body with a more recent system that began in 1945 in Hiroshima with the evaporation of tens of thousands of bodies.

Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site Since the time Henry David Thoreau’s famous essay introduced the term “civil disobedience” into the political and cultural lexicon, a variegated tradition has flourished seeking to interpret its meaning and dynamics. James W. Douglass has written extensively on this subject. From his perspective, Civil disobedience needs to be more than civil. By its nature civil disobedience is a disruptive force. It therefore needs within it the unitive force of love. Civil disobedience done with love, rather than the

138

Pilgrimage through a Burning World intention of acting against someone, is a deeply liberating force. The more loving an act of civil disobedience is, the more powerful it will be. The more caring it is of others, the more forceful it will be.19

From Douglass’s point of view, civil disobedience challenges a system of domination directly and dramatically, but with an attitude that respects the inviolable subjectivity of the human beings with whom the practitioner struggles. If done in a compassionate manner, civil disobedience is a way to honor and open space for the love to engender justice and undermine enmity. Barbara Deming, feminist activist and theorist, sharpens this conception of nonviolence by weaving “disruption” and “compassion” together. She contends that we can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern. We put upon [the opponent] two pressures—the pressure of our defiance of him [sic] and the pressure of our respect for his life— and it happens that in combination these two pressures are uniquely effective. . . . Because the human rights of the adversary are respected, though his actions, his official policies are not, the focus of attention becomes those actions, those policies, and their true nature. The issue cannot be avoided.20

Deming calls this the “two hands” of nonviolence: the one hand extended in a gesture of “stopping” and “noncooperation” with injustice and violence; the other, open to the opponent as a wounded and sacred human being. Gandhi’s approach to civil disobedience, while also marked by non-cooperation with evil and respect for the humanness of the opponent, sought to purify satyagraha of a form of pressure that coerces the opponent, that is, which does not respect her or his freedom. He attempted to pursue social struggle in such a way as to create the conditions under which his opponent would change her position of her own accord. He sought a change of spirit and mind, and ultimately an experience of heart-unity that would symbolize and actualize his fundamental belief that “all are one.” Given this spirituality and politics, Gandhi saw that four conditions had to be met to engage in civil disobedience:21 1. The law that one breaks must be unjust. Gandhi, trained as a lawyer, maintained that civil disobedience would be neither politically effective nor morally coherent without respecting the larger framework of society’s laws from which the unjust law deviates. Civil disobedience, from Gandhi’s perspective, is not license for

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

139

anarchy or antinomian behavior. On the contrary, it is a defense of the system of law because it seeks to eliminate from the fabric of that system unjust statutes unworthy of it. John Dear, while upholding the value of many laws (from social conventions like traffic regulations to international laws like the Nuremberg Principles that outlaw crimes against humanity) nevertheless broadens Gandhi’s conception from unjust laws to “anti-human” laws: laws which may or may not be unjust in themselves but which can buttress systems of domination. Dear writes, “When the law is used to defend systemic injustice . . . then the law is misused and becomes ‘anti-human.’”22 Nonviolent civil disobedience is a practice used to break unjust laws but also to compassionately interfere with systems of domination by breaking laws that, while not necessarily overtly “unjust” in themselves (e.g., laws prohibiting trespassing), nevertheless are deployed to protect and reinforce those domination systems. 2. One must be prepared to break the law openly and accept the consequence for doing so. This principle is rooted again, in part, in the notion that one’s quarrel is with the particular law or condition in question and not the system of law per se. One’s act is a deliberate and active repudiation of this law or condition. By voluntarily accepting the penalty that follows, one dramatizes and makes visible the consequences and impact of this injustice or condition through the medium and symbolics of one’s own body. This may mean incarceration or even death, which is why Gandhi counsels the satyagrahi to cultivate a spirituality by which one confronts and overcomes one’s fear of death. 3. One’s action must be civil. Thoreau and Gandhi propose a term that features a play on words: civil action is an act that displays respect for others, including one’s adversary; and civil action is an act that upholds and seeks to reform (or make wholly anew) civil society. Both meanings connote a regard for a set of implicit and explicit social arrangements and constructions that, while not absolute, support survival and the flourishing of the beings inhabiting this world. As Deming suggests, and as Gandhi phrased in his own terminology, such a respect introduces a new dynamic in these arrangements, a disequilibrium and an asymmetry that can engender cognitive dissonance and open psychological, cultural, and spiritual space for alternatives to personal and social “well-grooved neural pathways” that do not by themselves generally admit of creative and novel options.

140

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

4. One’s action, while addressing a concrete manifestation of injustice, must be focused on changing the originating condition that creates this symptom. One’s eyes must be trained on the larger, overarching goal—justice, truth, participatory democracy, the Beloved Community, the desire for the well-being of all—and especially on that which is larger than one’s own particularized self-interest. As part of this, the aim is mutual metanoia, change of heart, and heart-unity. To this end, as Nagler puts it, “disobedience to be civil must be sincere, respectful, restrained, never defiant, based upon well understood principles, not be capricious, and, above all, must never have ill-will or hatred behind it.”23

Civil Disobedience as Ritual Antidote to Nuclearism As the Nevada Desert Experience evolved as an organization and as a nonviolent campaign, it would organize nonviolent civil disobedience at various times during the Lenten season and then at other moments throughout the calendar year: May (Mothers Day), August (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), October (St. Francis’s Feast Day), January (the anniversary of the first test). During the first and second Lenten Desert Experiences, however, participants refrained from civil disobedience until Good Friday. Apparently this act was initially viewed as a culmination of the event and analogous, in an obviously attenuated way, to Jesus’ crucifixion. The daily journey for forty days to the test site was a Lenten pilgrimage retracing the existential arc that led Jesus to Jerusalem. By synchronizing civil disobedience with the church’s memorialization of the paschal mystery, NDE organizers reinserted this journey in its politicoreligious context, as Julia Occhiogrosso suggests when she points out how the ritual of the stations of the cross staged at the test site unavoidably highlights imperial power when “on the other side of the line you’re aware of . . . the security in uniforms with guns on their side and ready stance prepared for us, gloves on their hands to make arrest, and you’re aware of these diverse rituals, these really distinct rituals clashing and one highlighting the other.”24 Such a vivid contrast cannot be fully conveyed in a strictly intellectual way. Rather, it is most clearly and emphatically somatic. As Jean McElhaney puts it in reflecting on her time in August 1995 with the Nevada Desert Experience marking the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Throughout the weekend, I was invited to notice and nurture body, mind, emotions, and spirit. I was able to be aware of my physical body

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

141

during the meditations, during the march, in the desert. I was invited to pay attention to the basics of being embodied: Did I have enough water? I was able to feel joy, fear, anger, peace. I felt like it was a place where I could mourn nuclear weapons without fear of being misunderstood or thought odd. The way the civil disobedience itself affected me was that it was a direct experience of my actions and my beliefs being aligned. It was a chance to express my beliefs about peace and nonviolence in a physical, concrete way. (This is especially important for someone like me, with tendencies toward the intellectual!) It’s important to embody Spirit, to make physical belief, to manifest Spirit on this earth plane, to connect to all.25

As Julia Occhiogrosso understands it, this bodiliness engenders a mysterious but palpable power: About a year ago [1997] when we had the forty days of Lent and we had the hermitage out there and I had time to just spend out there, I would just walk around and I would see these little altars all over the place. I would see these stones piled upon and these things where I became aware of how many people had been out here [over the years] hoping, desiring, praying for an alternative. I believe deeply that it is that presence, that witness out there that has curtailed a major nuclear incident. I mean, you talk about the policy of deterrence being the reason why nuclear weapons [haven’t been used]. I feel like people all over have gone to these places of nuclear violence and have put their bodies and their hearts and prayers. I think putting your body and your heart and your desire for peace at these places is certainly prayer. I feel that there’s a power, an energy that comes out of just our bodies being out there—there’s an energy that comes out of just hoping for something different there. There’s an energy that comes out of being protected and held there. There’s a real energy—just like the energy that comes out of touch, healing touch, that’s been demonstrated, there’s an energy that comes out of our bodies when we put ourselves in places. . . . When you are arrested, you make yourself vulnerable, there’s a certain energy that comes out of that. That’s prayer. And it has a healing impact on the whole cosmos.26

Here Occhiogrosso invests McElhaney’s insight (civil disobedience as alignment of body and spirit) with the conviction that the power of this integration lies in the inspirited body’s profoundly vulnerable lack of defendedness, unfathomable longing and passion for peace, and a relentlessly persistent and creative bodily expression of this desire. Occhiogrosso is suggesting that civil disobedience carries the potential to draw these deeply powerful dimensions together and to unleash

142

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

prayerfully an energy that has in her opinion mysteriously kept nuclear catastrophe at bay thus far. This is what Gandhi named soul force. In Christian theological terms, as John Dear puts it in The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience, this indicates that “When nonviolent civil disobedience is enacted in the Spirit of God’s love, it can be a force for the transformation of the world. When it touches the spiritual streams of God’s nonviolent love, when it is an act of obedience to the God of nonviolent love, it becomes sacramental.”27

Civil Disobedience as Sacrament For Dear, as the title of his book suggests, faith-based civil disobedience is sacramental. Years before Dear’s volume was published Ann Schmidt described a virtually identical vision of faith-based nonviolent action in her essay, “Nevada Desert Experience: Arrest as Sacrament.”28 In this piece, Schmidt reflects on an October 27, 1986 event at the test site. She and her husband arrived the day before as people gathered to undergo nonviolence training in preparation for civil disobedience; she was struck by NDE’s nonviolence guidelines (rooted in the code Gandhi had fashioned for the Indian independence movement) and their regard for the opponent. But even more, she was moved by the others with whom she shared dinner: a young woman from Nicaragua; a middleaged couple, a Franciscan friar, a man with ten grandchildren. She also was inspired by four people who had traveled from Omaha, Nebraska, “including an elderly, almost angelic looking white-haired woman who said she viewed this witness as her ‘last hurrah.’ Concerned family members had taken her aside and cautioned her against her planned witness, reminding her that she should ‘set a good example for the young.’ She told them that was what she hoped to do.”29 After the meal, there was an ecumenical worship service—with Christians, Jews, and Buddhists— that included a time of sharing. Before dawn the next morning, the participants drove through the desert to the test site sixty-five miles north of Las Vegas. An interfaith worship service began at 6:30 at the edge of the facility, featuring Christian prayers and Buddhist chanting. Then people began to walk to the entrance two miles away, accompanied by the beat of the Buddhists’ drums. They had been asked to pick something up along the way—a twig, a leaf, a stone—that spoke to them in some way. As the police looked on, the group arrived at the test site entrance and formed another large circle. After cantor Greg Yarloslow led the group in a series of Jewish peace liturgical songs, a rabbi explained the

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

143

meaning of the Sukkah, a three-sided hut standing at one end of the circle. Participants were invited to place the objects they had found there. This proved to be an emotional time of sharing, as people reflected on what these desert objects symbolized for them, including hope, memory, and a longing for healing and peace. A simple meal of cheese, fruit, and loaves of homemade bread followed. After saying prayers in the languages of the participants—including Spanish, Italian, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Polish—they formed two lines on either side of the road. Schmidt recalls: As we moved into place, several police and security guards hurried to their places behind the thick white line. Even though during quiet moments in the worship service, I had repeated to myself, “Thine is the kingdom and the power,” I felt my throat tighten as the guards rushed into place. For a few minutes we stood, about 80 people quietly, prayerfully, some of us fearfully, lining the road as guards and police blocked the entrance . . . A small, older woman stepped quietly to the line. She had evidently been arrested there before. The arresting officer called her by name. He asked that she not cross the line and warned her that if she did, she would be arrested. She nodded in understanding, then stepped across the line. To my amazement, the arresting officer gently put his arm around her as he led her to the officer who handcuffed her! A flurry of activity by the guards and the words “arrest them!” caused us to look to the far end of our line. Three of our number, including the young woman from Nicaragua and the man with 10 grandchildren, were kneeling in the road. Stretched between them was a large banner depicting Christ crucified on a missile. They were quickly arrested for blocking the road. Then began a series of what I can only describe as sacramental or ritual arrests. Starting at the far end of the line, people individually, or in small groups walked slowly up the road toward the entrance. Friends or family members who did not plan to be arrested often accompanied those who did. The middle-aged couple we had talked to at dinner walked together. They stopped at the line. The warning was issued. The wife nodded, then paused for a kiss from her husband before stepping alone across the line. We watched with growing emotion as our other dinner companion, the Franciscan, now wearing the long brown robe of his order, crossed the line, was handcuffed and led away. The four people from Nebraska each carried a long stemmed red rose. One of the women laid the rose across the line before stepping across herself, and another, before they handcuffed her, handed the rose to the arresting officer. Tears came to my eyes as the lovely, gentle, white-haired woman who had come to the test site as part of her “last hurrah” was arrested

144

Pilgrimage through a Burning World and led away. To me she represented those aspects of the human spirit that often seem most vulnerable, but somehow are invincible. As people continued to come slowly toward the line I was reminded of waves, or perhaps in this case of gentle ripples, washing against a shore, gently, but persistently.30

Schmidt found herself deeply moved by this event. She later wrote: I was so profoundly affected by the experience, in fact, that the words “arrest as sacrament” came persistently to mind. I was hesitant to think the word “arrest” with “sacrament,” but when the words simply would not leave my mind, I looked up sacrament in Webster’s New World Dictionary. Three of the meanings—something regarded as having a sacred character; a symbol or token; a solemn oath or pledge, as one ratified by a rite—seem particularly appropriate for the arrests we witnessed that day.31

Schmidt’s response to the events at the edge of the test site is remarkably consistent with that of many of those I have interviewed or of those who have completed questionnaires for this study. Civil disobedience, under these circumstances, has struck participants and bystanders as a holy act, a participation in and reverencing of a sacred power. This interpretation of the power of nonviolent civil disobedience at the Nevada Desert Experience—suggested by Schmidt, but also by Thompson, Hamill, and, in the previous chapter, Gignoux—was nourished by several key dimensions of NDE’s practices that we will now explore in more depth: • An intensification and dramatization of the spiritual dilemmas of nuclearism; • “Crossing the line” as symbolic act signifying “crossing over” to the opponent, to the violated land, to the wounded and sacred parts of oneself, and to an increasing inclusivity; • The role of the vulnerable body in this dramatization; • A ritualistic simplicity; and • The willingness to face and accept the unknown consequences. An Intensification And Dramatization Of The Spiritual Dilemmas Of Nuclearism At the crossing of the cattle guard there was hugging and crying. It represented a crossing of a line spiritually, soul-wise, saying a more clear “yes” and “no.” It represents a “going forward.” —Peter Ediger32

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

145

Few places afford one the opportunity to signal unambiguously her or his resistance to a nuclear regime that is “everywhere and nowhere.” NDE constructed such a place at the boundary of the Nevada Test Site. This “site for decision” did not exist, per se, prior to Ash Wednesday, 1982, just as in the future it may no longer be there. NDE’s conscious choice to create this religious, political, cultural, and performative theater opened space for others to travel to—from nearby Las Vegas or from halfway round the world—in order to make contact with a mysterious intersection of the interior and the exterior; the horrors of nuclear war being prepared at that moment behind the nearby barbed wire fence and the breathtaking peace of the desert; the sources of nuclearism (fear, hatred, greed) and the sources of the sacredness that is even greater than systems of domination (love, compassion, courage, soul force), and the fact that both exist inside us as well as in the larger world; and the nightmares of nuclear holocaust engendered by forty years of the accelerating arms race and the dreams of a world that desires the well-being of all. As anthropologist Victor Turner writes, the many layers of contemporary existence force us “to go into the subjunctive world of monsters, demons and clowns, of cruelty and poetry, in order to make sense of our daily lives.”33 At the test site NDE has given people an opportunity to enact and choose between nightmare and dream. As in other places of social contestation, NDE has fashioned a sociodrama that telescopes one of the most profound dilemmas facing humanity and offered people the freedom to enact and convey a choice about this dilemma. “Crossing the Line” as “Crossing Over” But this process is not dualistic. NDE’s ritualization—and the atmosphere in which it has been cultivated—is an ascesis that decenters the socially constructed conviction that “we” are the people of truth and peace, and “they” are people (if people at all) of evil and violence. In other words, NDE pilgrims participate in, and play roles in, both the dream and the nightmare, the woundedness and sacredness. As Occhiogrosso puts it: There is a definition of approach and style. NDE has its . . . Code of Nonviolence. There is a way of seeing ourselves in the world, a way of seeing ourselves in relation to the opponent. And that way of seeing ourselves has not changed very much. Even though we digress into criticizing the workers, the Department of Energy . . . I think the bottom line is the deeper sense of understanding who we are when we recognize that

146

Pilgrimage through a Burning World we have a lot in common. I really think that that’s the most important part of our system. That’s a truth that’s not going to disappear. And once you embrace that truth . . . then that affects what you do out there. But if you have some kind of wavering—“Well, that’s a little true, maybe it’s true sometimes,” or you don’t have that conviction about that, that’s also going to be manifested out there. I mean, you can give lip-service to that, but if it’s not in your blood, that conviction [disappears].34

This attitude was eventually codified in what Occhiogrosso refers to as the Code of Nonviolence and that the organization designated as its Nonviolent Covenant, by which all participants were asked to abide: We commit ourselves to a nonviolent covenant in all our action and dissent. We will try to practice that which we advocate: truth, gentleness, love of God, love of one another, love of the earth. The following Nonviolent Discipline is the covenant for all NDE sponsored events. It is designed to assist in communicating our message and intent to our opponents* to develop the trust of our opponents and, by reflection on it and practice of it, to help convert ourselves. (*The term “opponent” is borrowed from Gandhi and is meant to indicate one with whom we are in opposition but whom we do not consider to be the enemy.) Nonviolent Covenant As a participant, I agree to abide by the following nonviolent discipline, and as part of the preparation for this witness, I will reflect on these commitments: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

We will harbor no anger but suffer the anger of the opponent. We will refuse to return the assaults of the opponent. We will refrain from insults and swearing. We will protect opponents from insults or attack. If arrested, we will not resist. If arrested, we will behave in an exemplary manner. We will not evade the legal consequences of our actions. As members of the nonviolent demonstration, we will follow the directions of the designated coordinators. In the event of a serious disagreement, one should remove oneself from the action. Our attitude as conveyed through words, symbols, and actions, will be one of openness, friendliness, and respect toward all people we encounter, including police officers and Nevada Test Site workers. We will not damage any property. We will not bring or use any drugs or alcohol. We will not run or use threatening motions.

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

147

12. We will carry no weapons. 13. We will not engage in symbolic blood pouring. 14. Plans for our activities are shared with the authorities.35

Occhiogrosso attributes the persistence of this nonviolent commitment (to breaking the spell of enmity between witness participant and NTS personnel) to the Catholic Christian conception of the “mystical Body of Christ” which implies that “God is everywhere, and that we are all somehow interconnected. . . . We all were somehow mysteriously one.”36 She sees this as an underlying presupposition. But it is also true that the implications of this substrate were drawn out and realized only through interaction. As Michael Affleck emphasizes, NDE people had as much to learn about “the desire for the well-being of all” from Jim Merlino and Bob Nelson as they had to learn from the NDE participants. And this learning took place in a kind of delicate ballet between the contending parties on the grounds of the Nevada Test Site. Occhiogrosso, was deeply moved by an example of this “crossing over”: There was a time at the Nevada Test Site where there was a group of . . . organized test site workers. They would protest against us. They were very vocal, and they were very abusive, and violent in the sense of screaming at people. One person had a bullhorn and was screaming in the Buddhist monk’s ear. Spitting at people, that sort of thing. And it was this one year we had the action where people were lying on the road, like a ‘die-in’ on the road, going in to the test site. It was extremely hot out there—so they were lying on the hot pavement. You had the test site workers with placards, screaming and yelling on one side of the road, and then you had the folks who were part of our Nevada Desert Experience action on the other side, looking down at these people lying on the street as if they were dead—and I remember one of the police officers, security, came up and started to spray the demonstrators, laying on the street, with water to cool them—and the people on the other side are screaming, “Don’t help them!” I could just feel this in this person’s energy this conflict, this sense of, “Who am I allied with?” Oh, it was extremely powerful—and it was so clear, that there was this sense of, who were the police protecting who from . . . ? When the test workers were putting the bullhorn in the Buddhist monk’s face and blowing, Jim Merlino came up to that person and said, “You do that one more time you’ll be arrested.” The consistency of NDE’s rituals and approach, that consistency over time built this kind of [atmosphere].37

“Crossing over” thematizes a fundamental dynamic that must be nourished and replicated many times over: respecting the opponent even

148

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

as one struggles with her or him. But it also means “crossing over” to an encounter with, and reverence for, the desert that is both wounded and sacred. Virtually every account of an NDE participant speaks almost mystically about the unutterably beautiful and graceful desert terrain where the test site is situated. It is as if this unexpected beauty reframes their orientation from focusing on the horrors of nuclear war to the tenderness of the world and its beings. It is not that the anger and horror disappears, but it is recontextualized within the horizon of compassion, a sense of care and respect that the desert itself seems to counsel. Many participants found that being in such a setting even gave them permission to allow that spirit of compassion to be extended even to themselves. The desert became a place for gently contemplating their own woundedness and sacredness—for “crossing over” to see both the roots of nuclearism within and the roots of its healing within as well. Finally, the Franciscan-based NDE itself gradually came to “cross over” to many other communities, including many other Christian denominations and other religious traditions (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Native American), as well as other political groups that did not share its spirituality, politics, or strict approach to nonviolence. The Vulnerable Body The Nevada Desert Experience activities, echoing those of Gandhi and many other nonviolent movements, are marked by the dynamic unleashed by the proximity and contrast between threat power and integrative power. This dynamic is often clarified and revealed when one disrupts the symmetry of violence (in which “threat power” confronts “threat power”) by mobilizing the most powerful symbol human beings have at their disposal: their own achy, creaky, resilient, luminous, unarmed bodies. Occhiogrosso draws on Dorothy Day’s theological vision to nuance this. Day maintained that “when you expose your vulnerability, others become receptive. Voluntary vulnerability and suffering bring us closer to God. Our precarity brings us to God.”38 She hastily adds, however, that the key is voluntary, rather than involuntary, vulnerability. “You want to be precarious,” Occhiogrosso, following Day, explains, “but not romanticize the ‘poverty not chosen.’”39 Involuntary suffering—imposed routinely by systems of domination the world over—is evil and must be strenuously delegitimized and resisted. Such resistance, however, requires the vulnerability of active nonviolence if one is to avoid simply mimetically mirroring and reproducing the violence one seeks to abolish. Bodies mobilized in active nonviolence magnify the contrast between nonviolence and systems of threat power that deploy “any

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

149

means necessary” to defend themselves. “Something” can happen in the interiority of those touched by such a witness. The actors directly involved, the onlookers, and at times one’s entire society (as happened during the Civil Rights movement campaigns in Birmingham [1963] and Selma [1965]) can experience cognitive dissonance when the contrast between violence and nonviolence is placed starkly before them. I would interpret this as a psychological and spiritual challenge to deeply ingrained social and personal “scripts.” To see school children shot with fire hoses and attacked by German shepherds, as happened in Birmingham, can catalyze a crisis that reveals realities too painful to ignore. Seeing a precarious, elderly woman being arrested and handcuffed can inspire such a spiritual and existential response as well. Though this is not a uniform response, it can function for some, for example, as a paradigmatic image of the internal contradictions of a nuclear state that must resort to arresting its elders to maintain its dominance. At the very least, it sharpens the contrasting forms of power that are contesting at the edge of a nuclear weapons facility. Occhiogrosso continues: There’s this whole emphasis on crossing the line—and there’s this whole sense of putting your body somewhere—where you were making a statement with your body. You’re crossing the line. A lot of people say, “This is a symbolic arrest,” and it’s true, it is symbolic, but I don’t want to de-emphasize symbol today. Let’s not diminish the power of symbol. Yeah, it’s true it’s somewhat ritualized: you are crossing a line, you’re escorted, that’s what happens today with arrests. But I just don’t want to underestimate the power of symbol—I don’t want to underestimate what happens to people, who are on either side of the line—who witness that symbolic gesture. It symbolizes what we can actually do with our bodies—the value of our bodies, that we can say “yes” or “no.” And it symbolizes the resistance to the work of building, exploding and developing weapons. In the way that we interact with the opponent, in the way that we are together, the way we have rituals, the way that we relate to each as community out there.40

The Nevada Desert Experience actions have often been marked by this sheer bodiliness in many ways. Bodies active and up much too early. Bodies huddling during the service, drawn in to circles. Eating together. Singing. Then, on cue, floating away from the temporary, ephemeral and roofless “church” down to the test site entrance. Bodies floating across nonordinary space—occupying the roadway, gradually opening, possessing, and momentarily transforming that space, using the only means available, their own bodies. Bodies deployed: some in

150

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

clusters, some haphazardly. A field, a climate, a net of invisible threads linking bodies together. A striking range of gestures. A glimpse of the grammar and syntax of the body’s language. Bodies irreducibly present. Individual bodies, but also the social body. A glimpse of the saving body of the world. But also bodies slowly disappearing, as bodies do. Escorted from the area. Being taken. Being handled. Plucked, like poppies. Led away. Bodies melt into air. The center, for one long moment, remains empty. Finally cleared of bodies, the cars—and life as we know it—return. Catherine Bell counsels us to focus on the bodily character of ritual.41 Her advice helps us to see that the language of the ritual of social change is the language of bodies. Nonviolent social movements seek to provoke conversation with the larger culture. The language they use in these intermittent, rushed, troubled yet sometimes lyrical dialogues is the language of bodies. This is the most powerful symbol we have at our disposal: our own bodies. Bodies at risk; vulnerable bodies; bodies willing even in a small way to sacrifice their freedom; relentlessly persistent bodies. The symbol of the living human body speaks in its ineffable richness and complexity to the right brain—the heart and soul of other people and, at times, an entire culture—in a way that no other can. The 1982 Good Friday ritual at the test site saw bodies create a charged field of concern, resistance, and communitas’s sense of solidarity. Maintaining a nuclear weapons regime—or any structure of domination—requires active or passive consent from the citizenry. It relies on intellectual consent and bodily consent. Power-holders relish intellectual consent from the members of their society but know that, even under the best of circumstances, this will not be monolithic. What they cannot afford is a lack of bodily consent. Or to put it another way: while intellectual dissent in certain societies is permissible, bodily dissent is rarely tolerated anywhere. Here there must be conformity of two types. The first is that of positive bodily rituals of consent. These include such rituals as paying taxes and actively avoiding interfering in any meaningful way with the nuclear regime. The second is that of avoiding negative bodily rituals that denote dissent. These include directly interfering with the mechanisms of domination, including the nuclear weapons regime. Gignoux, Schmidt, Thompson, Hamill, and Occhiogrosso—by journeying to a place deemed “off-limits” and engaging in loving disobedience there—take part in the exercise of unlearning the rituals of consent for the nuclear arms race. They undertake, at the same time, an exercise in learning or deepening rituals of dissent and beginning the process of living a more positive public ritualization.

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

151

Moreover, they did this by carrying a symbol of this weapons regime into view of test site workers, the press, the Nye County sheriffs, and the Department of Energy security personnel and reenacting the crucifixion of Jesus. It could be legitimately asked if this dramatization simply reinforced the dynamic of domination implied in the original execution of Christ by the Romans and analogously implied in the potential crucifixion of the world by nuclear fire. Therein lies the paradoxical power of this symbol. The Way of the Cross is a ritual construction that seeks to transform the weapons of destruction—and the systems of which they are the merest symptom—by facing those weapons with loving nonviolence. Simplicity “More and more I think about ritual: the simpler it is, the more powerful it is,” Julia Occhiogrosso says with firmness. “I’ve seen a lot of choreography and symbolism. It’s almost as if we’re trying to outdo what’s already there. You’re competing with something you can’t compete with.”42 The Nevada Desert Experience’s rituals, while occasionally elaborate, have in general been marked by ritualistic simplicity: a circle for prayer and reflection; greeting the workers; going off into the desert alone or with a couple of people; returning for a closing circle. Even the civil disobedience actions have been largely unadorned: crossing the cattle guard, slipping through the barbed wire and wandering out into the desert, sitting in the roadway. Part of this is the result of the contemplative and traditional proclivities of the founders. The first forty-day vigil reflected the lack of flamboyant ornament that can at times find its way into either, on the one hand, religiosity (high church liturgy) or, on the other, political activism (spirited guerrilla theater). This was reinforced by the Catholic Christian roots that place a premium on the power of reiteration. Religious form, in such a tradition, is not drained of its power by repetition; on the contrary, it accumulates it. The Catholic Mass, while admitting of the occasional variation in accidentals (as the pre-Vatican II Thomist would call them), unflinchingly maintains its liturgical spine. So, too, does NDE in its performative structure. But even more than denominational lineage is the tremendum of the desert itself. This Great Basin terrain is sublime, oceanic, august, the stillpoint of a hushed silence, yet also suffused with a tender and intimate modesty. It seems eternally present, not in the sense of timeless (it is of course transforming itself in small ways and large with every passing moment), but as tirelessly vigilant witness. It is. And it is this isness,

152

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

stripped of every other distraction, that unassumingly commands attention. As Occhiogrosso puts it, “It is already there, and thus there is no need to elaborate.” This “isness” and “thereness” is further deepened and inflected by what is also there: holes, tunnels, craters, some places seemingly pristine and untroubled, but only because they are so lethally radioactive that no human being has entered them for forty years. It is one of the reasons, Occhiogrosso says, that this space conjures the sacred: “We’re talking about the symbol of the bomb, that is the incredible symbol of death, next to the desert landscape and the enduring hills. You’re in awe of the extreme possibilities—the mystery of the potential mortality, and you’re in awe of the enduring hills.”43 NDE’s journey to the Nevada Test Site is not a sojourn to a pilgrimage complex with richly byzantine ceremony. None is required. The desert discloses itself in its woundedness and sacredness if the rites conducted there simply give their participants enough form and permission to receive this gift of time and place. So, too, with NDE’s acts of civil disobedience. Part of their power is the repetition of their simple recipe that, over time, reduces the story to its most austere and elemental plotline. In its contemplative mien, the story proceeds with a methodical tempo, to show its scenes in slow motion so that nothing will be missed, as it may be in a more boisterous and energetic effort.44 Stripped to its essentials, this practice conveys to those “on the other side of the line” the heart of the matter, which, though mysterious and ultimately ineffable, nevertheless can be grasped by the heart, if there is enough time and intention. The message is transmitted through the atmosphere fashioned by all parties and by means of its being told again and again and again. It is this relentless persistence that convinced Jim Merlino and many test site workers that there was a basic honesty and commitment “on the other side of the line,” so that even NTS employees began to lighten their response to the NDE participants by the side of the road: gradually replacing scowling glares with smiles, starting to wave back, and even occasionally bringing donuts and coffee to them on chilly, wintry mornings. However simple it was, the consistency of this action was, in itself, disarming.45 Facing the Unknown I was remembering the mandala at a Tibetan Buddhist center in Wisconsin. The monks made a beautiful sand mandala over many weeks and then washed it into the Wisconsin River as a reminder to detach from form, grasping. When we participate in actions like crossing the line into the Test Site, we cannot measure their importance by

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

153

how quickly legislation is passed. We must detach from that kind of grasping and look with eyes of faith toward the bigger picture, knowing that the process itself is important. Only that way is there a feeling of love and peace and joy rather than anger and despair and fear. . . . I wrote [in my journal], “I was able in a small way to understand some of the paradoxes. E.g., it’s all about doing and it has nothing to do with doing. All about being, all about doing, nothing about either. It’s about ending nuclear weapons—that is the actual goal on one level—and on another level it has nothing to do with that. Civil disobedience is not going to make that happen today; no concrete change toward that goal will be observable today. Instead it is more of a ritual about opening the heart.” —Jean McElhaney46

Simple or not, there are no guarantees when one engages in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Nevada Test Site. This is true, first, of the possible legal consequences. It has remained, after all, a top-secret facility determined to maintain its security and efficiency. During the first Lenten Desert Experience, for example, those weighing whether or not to risk arrest had no idea what lay ahead for them. One of the most powerful elements of the nonviolent practice of civil disobedience is that it is fraught with the unknown. In every act of nonviolent civil disobedience, one never knows the entire script ahead of time. Unlike the case of many other rituals, only one half of the script is available with certitude beforehand to the civilly disobedient—her own—and even this preplanned scenario may be radically modified or even jettisoned in the actual context of action. However choreographed, each act of nonviolent civil disobedience is a surrendering of self to a reality greater than oneself. This is true in many contexts, including one that grapples with the dangers and opportunities of the nuclear age. As Julia Occhiogrosso puts it: I would call this a religious event in the sense that it was definitely connecting people to the divine, the sacred in themselves and the potential to manifest an expression of this in interactions. In its deepest form, you are addressing the development of nuclear weapons, choosing to continue to destroy or not in such weapons of mass destruction, and you’re confronting these grave issues of life and death, it always for me connects us to the deepest sense of who we are, our true self.47

The mysterious power of even the most choreographed examples of nonviolent civil disobedience is illuminated by anthropologist Victor Turner’s notion of liminality, which is one way to shed light on the

154

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

unknown at the heart of this act. Interpreted from a Turnerian viewpoint, civil disobedience forcefully animates the social drama at hand by embodying liminality and its anti-structure. It declares a momentary end to “business as usual”—a dissolution of the conventional structures of society that claim to be rational, self-evident, and “known”—and can catalyze, at least for the participants, a rearrangement of patterns, identities, and relationships. Traditional social obligations are suspended, paradoxically opening the way for a new and more profound freedom to act with greater social responsibility. In Christian terms, this sense of the unknown is indicated in the experience of initiation that civil disobedience, however scripted, can provoke. Louis Vitale, for example, says that “stepping across the line I let go and let God take over.”48 He reports an elation that accompanies an experience that strikes him as analogous to baptism and a “sense of being embraced by God.” He shares how he was impressed the very first time he engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience—at the University of California’s chancellor’s office in 1980, protesting the school’s management of the national nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore—with “how profoundly religious an experience it is.” In this sense, civil disobedience can, under certain circumstances, function as a form of mystagogy, the term used in the early church to designate the process and rite of initiation into the Christian mysteries and life journey. This sense of the unknown extended the encounter with the socalled adversary discussed above; the response from NTS management and security personnel was ultimately beyond the control of the NDE participants. And, perhaps most important of all, it also lay at the heart of the overall NDE project: to end nuclear testing. Aside from a conviction that one day nuclear weapons testing would end, most NDE organizers and participants felt this was beyond their calculation and ken. It was truly in God’s hands. What was in their hands was the opportunity to remain faithful to a God who had called them to “love their enemies,” and to bear witness in a place where there was both violation and the possibility of healing. Like Gandhi, the Nevada Desert Experience set out on a demanding journey that would make unmistakable its opposition to the structural violence and threat of nuclearism but, at the same time, do this in such a way that would minimize enmity with the human beings who, over almost two decades, would come to represent the “face” of the Nevada Test Site, including Bob Nelson, Jim Merlino, and the other sheriffs and security personnel who worked there. In doing so, they struck a delicate balance between opposition and openness, what I term

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

155

compassionate contestation, which is most vividly symbolized in the act of nonviolent civil disobedience. This form of public action, while not welcomed by NTS management, nevertheless was designed by NDE to deepen, rather than scuttle, the relationship with these so-called opponents. As Julia Occhiogrosso suggests, the contrast between “threat force” and “integrative force” made a deep and consequential impact on all witnesses, including those “on the other side of the line.” The symbolic language of civil disobedience—the inspirited body—helped extend a conversation to NTS personnel, but also to the wider society. Civil disobedience at the Nevada Test Site is structured as a journey: the culmination, first, of the sojourn to the vicinity, then a two-mile procession to the gate. It is a journey of “crossing over” onto restricted and taboo space, and so “crossing over” to the desert as well as to the government officials who occupy it. Civil disobedience is, as well, an ascetical practice in which the participants are challenged to cultivate a nonviolent discipline and code of conduct and so abjure the “code of nuclearism” that has been inscribed in their flesh for decades. It is a call to participate in the sacramental praxis of antinuclear nonviolence, and so make contact with a life-giving energy that binds us together, no matter on which side of the line we stand.

The Ritual of Civil Disobedience While there is no consensus on the definition of ritual, on what its fundamental components or dynamics are, or what it means,49 NDE’s practices sharpen our awareness that its rituals, including civil disobedience, function to open spaces in which the fundamental dilemmas of human existence are revealed—and experienced—in slow motion. This space is the space of seeing the realities at hand, remembering and witnessing, and doing so by inviting its “parties”—the immediate participants but also onlookers and members of the multiple concentric circles of bystanders and constituents spreading out across the larger society— to experiencing a rhythm of bodies in intentional motion. “At some point in human history,” performance theorist Richard Schechner writes, “people began performing their dreams and elaborating on them. These were not facts nor were they imaginary. They were performances of events between fact and imagination. . . . Human creativity still works this play field betwixt and between the ethnological, the neurological, and the social.”50 Performance is a delicate interweaving of fantasy and the stubborn facts of the world. It is a subjunctive

156

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

realm, where planes of reality collide. Schechner notes that “sometimes . . . it is necessary to live as if ‘as if ’ = ‘is.’”51 For Schechner, “the present moment is a negotiation between a wished-for future and a rehearsable, therefore changeable past.”52 The Nevada Desert Experience participants arrive at the edge of a nuclear test site and, consciously or not, find themselves honoring the complexity of life by taking part in practices that sound a few elemental themes. Life is an often confusing and chaotic journey, but here in the desert this journey is simplified enough so that it—and thus the fundamental elements of one’s existence—can be seen, especially as it is symptomatized as a journey from nuclearism to new life. But this is not all. This pilgrimage ritualistically dramatizes the great struggle of life and death, but does so not by thematizing it in oppositional terms. Instead, it opens space for a kind of ballet in which all the dancers—lay and clergy, women and men, test site workers and peace activists—ritualize an alternative to the “script” of violence and counterviolence. By itself, such ritualization does not create a new world. Much else must happen. But without such dramatization, the imagination, the body, and the spirit is not schooled in a new path. NDE’s rituals—underscored by the ascesis of nonviolent resistance and compassionate contestation, and prophetic contemplation—create an opportunity for its participants to join with others, including one’s so-called opponents, to imagine, momentarily practice, and perhaps fashion for the long haul an alternative to the script of retaliatory violence.

CHAPTER

6

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

The “Nevada desert experience” does not take place for most participants in familiar territory. Leaving home, NDE participants journey by various routes to the Great Basin, keep vigil, engage in personal and corporate prayer and ritual, possibly serve time in jail, and then make their way home. For many, this process weaves together four journeys: the journey to the physical terrain of the test site; the journey to a symbolic center of Nuclear America; the journey to, and encounter with, the people managing and protecting the test site; and the journey to a renewed personal and communal vision, commitment, faith, and engagement. In this chapter we explore how naming these reinforcing journeys as a contemporary pilgrimage of personal and social transformation deepens our understanding of NDE’s process and, in turn, broadens our conceptualization of pilgrimage itself. As with the previous two chapters, we begin our exploration of pilgrimage with lived-experience. Throughout this book is a series of accounts of pilgrimages to the test site. Here we listen to the story of Janet Weil, whose Judaism and commitment to human rights brought her to the desert in 1995 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If, as Richard R. Niebuhr writes, “Written records of pilgrimage and pilgrimage stories . . . constitute significant forms of the repetition, preservation and expansion of pilgrimage acts and pilgrimage consciousness,”1 this narrative may be an example of the way that the pilgrimage to the test site continues to deepen long after the original journey has finished. On the fiftieth memorial of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Nevada Desert Experience hosted a five-day interfaith gathering in Las Vegas and at the Nevada Test Site. From August 4 to August 9, 1995, NDE’s “August Desert Witness” was a powerful, transcultural event attended by six hundred people and led by Rabbi Margaret Holub, Corbin Harney, Arun Gandhi, Sunanda Gandhi, Jack Dairiki, Ian Zabarte, Jerry Sears, June Stark Casey, Alan Senauke,

157

158

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Arthur Waskow, Dolores Huerta, Miguel d’Escoto, Methodist Bishop Dale C. White, Rabbi Leonard Beerman, Terry Tempest Williams, Carla de Sola, Anne Symens-Bucher, Louis Vitale, Chris Brown, Art Casey, Alain Richard, Ched Myers, Linda Hirschhorn, Methodist Bishop Leontine Kelly, Jesse Manibusan, Richard Rohr, Rosemary Lynch, Peg Bean, and Sabine Henrie. The following “pilgrim account” from that event by Janet Weil bears quoting in full.

Inextricably Bound to One Another by Janet Weil I am no longer interested in spiritual practice that does not include, centrally, political and social action.2 Going to Nevada, touring the Test Site, standing at the edge of craters blasted by nuclear bombs, seeing the dust fly through fake “houses” that reminded me of film sets for cowboy movies, watching the birds and the military jets, thinking about Las Vegas—all of this made the nuclear madness come literally to earth for me. Learning directly from the people of that area, both Indian and white, what has happened to their land, water, and bodies as a result of decades of nuclear “testing” (“bombings” would be more accurate) gave the horrors a concrete, localized reality. In my mind, I’m going back to the morning of August 9, 1995, to the cattle guard on the Test Site. This story comes to me in the present tense—because that morning exists for me in the present, as a continuing presence in my consciousness. It’s about 9:30, very hot, already about 90 degrees. A group of us have gathered in a circle for a religious service. It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. We are here to cross symbolically onto the land of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, to witness and to remember. Now people are walking in pairs or small groups to the cattle guard, where they will be arrested and taken briefly to fenced areas, or pens. One for the men and one for the women. Father Louis Vitale and a few other men, who came here before dawn, are already in the pen. A large poster of a Japanese child is fixed to the barbed wire fence marking the border of the Test Site. I walk over to the poster and kneel on the hard desert ground. Sage, fragrant and gray-green, grows on this baked land. I see many small sharp rocks, a tiny lizard. I look into the eyes of the child on the poster. Her image is from a famous photograph, taken after the atomic bombs fell. I’ve seen it many times in books. I feel somewhat angry that only her face is reproduced. To have the face of only the little girl there

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

159

seems sentimental. The original photo is of the girl and a woman, both in traditional Japanese dress, in either Nagasaki or Hiroshima, their clothes and faces spattered with mud or ashes or blood. They seem to be intact physically but in shock. I don’t know the facts of the photo, not even the city where it was taken. I have thought of this photo as the Madonna and Child image of the nuclear age. But the woman in the photo is not cradling or touching or even looking at the child, who is perhaps 3. She is staring away from her, straight into the camera. Other photos of the atom bombings are more grisly, more horrifying, more monumental. This one has an unbearable bleakness. One day these people woke up, and this was the day they had to live through. Fifty years ago, this was their present moment. I whisper, “Forgive us, forgive us, forgive us.” As if the child could hear me, could understand my English, could forgive. In part of my mind, I think that what I am doing is senseless. But somehow I need to do it. I bring the mental image of the entire photo, and particularly of the woman, into my mind. I feel anger and grief and a sharp desire to summon up that image in all its details. To summon them. The ground is very sharp beneath my knees. Jackie, another Jewish woman, joins me as I stand up. She has the prayer book from my synagogue in her hands, open to the Kaddish, the prayer said in remembrance of the dead. Together we cross the invisible borderline of the Test Site. Two hundred yards of barbed wire have been cut and rolled back, before dawn, by Father Louis and a few other men. I feel a great lifting of my spirit as we walk “illegally” across the space, crossing an invisible barrier, opening an invisible constriction within myself. The enormous desert basin that contains the Test Site stretches before our eyes. We pray standing in the traditional Jewish way, often lifting our eyes from the text and looking forward, looking upward. “Magnified and sanctified, be the Great Name . . .” begins this prayer (in its English translation). “Yitgadal ve’yitkadash, shemey rabba. . . .” Never has this prayer meant so much to me. It’s a paradox on several levels, I realize. The prayer for the remembrance of the dead is a prayer full of life, never mentioning the word death, never lamenting. The beginning might be translated, informally, as “Let’s praise the Great Name!” and later says, “above all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations which we utter in the world.” The Kaddish includes acknowledgment of its own insufficiency, of the inadequacy of human language, no matter how eloquent, to encompass the Divine. When we arrive at the last paragraph of the Kaddish, the one that begins, “Oseh shalom,” (“He [God] makes peace”), Jackie closes the little photocopied prayer book and begins to sing it. These words are also

160

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

the lyrics to a variety of beautiful melodies, but usually the final words are said first, and then sung. I am surprised, but follow her lead. My voice breaks slightly; I feel myself near tears. Jackie looks at me caringly. We finish singing, and she turns to leave. We’ve shared several conversations, a swim, and now this moment of—to me, at least—transcendent beauty and poignancy. We embrace and say that we will see each other in the Bay Area. (We did see each other again, at the close of Yom Kippur, a few months later.) I go over to witness while people cross the cattle guard and are arrested. Before she goes there, Sister Rosemary turns to Corbin [Harney] and William Rossi and says, pleadingly, in her gentle, almost whimsical way, “Forgive us.” Meaning, as I understand her, “Forgive us white people, us intruders, despoiling your beautiful land.” Corbin makes a gesture as if to say, “I know you’re not the problem. . . .” Half-laughing (but also wanting to cry), I say, “It’s a little late, Rosemary.” Rosemary holds in her hand a “permission slip” from the Shoshone Tribe, allowing her passage onto their [stolen] land. I watch as Rosemary, wearing a huge blue sun hat, is taken by the arm by one of the county deputies. She seems small and vulnerable and almost unbearably gallant, walking with her head slightly tilted, to her temporary imprisonment. Tears come into my eyes but do not fall. I sit cross-legged literally in the shade at Corbin’s feet. He offers me water—an ancient gesture, sacred to both his tradition and mine—but I refuse with thanks, showing him the bottle of water I’ve brought. I want only to be near him, to be sheltered by him. I feel myself in my daughter aspect. William Rossi comments, “We’ve done that [been arrested] but it didn’t make no sense. We’ve [meaning Indians] been penned up enough.” He says the words with an almost imperceptible shudder. We look over at the fenced areas. I feel his abhorrence and share it. To be vulnerable in that way, to be unable to move freely to seek shelter from the unrelenting sun, seems terrifying, even if I “know” rationally that the confinement will be for only a short time. The ceremony of arrest at the cattle guard is deeply moving. The sheriff greets people as they step forward in their small groups. Looking into their eyes, he asks them if they really want to do this, that they will be arrested. He makes the inquiry with calm dignity, and they answer with equal dignity. I see him not at all as the “enemy” but as an integral part of the ritual action. When a man and woman come together to be arrested, their standing together and answering almost seem a wedding—a commitment to each other, to the land, and to their beliefs. I feel that the sheriff respects what we are doing,

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

161

and may even have protective and tender feelings toward us. The “arrests” seem an acceptance, a crucial recognition of the seriousness of our witness. The deputies, however, strike me as more callow, bored, indifferent, even mildly hostile to us. When the hat of a young Franciscan priest falls and drifts across the “line,” one of the deputies hands it back and says tauntingly, “Do that again and I’ll arrest you.” I imagine the young priest and the even younger deputy locked together, wrestling, struggling with each other like Jacob and Esau. And then my imagination throws up another image: that of a nuclear bomb, exploding right where we are. And I know, I feel in every cell of my body, that all of us, from dear Sister Rosemary to the bored young deputies, are precious beyond belief, that I love all of us, that we exist inextricably bound to one another. That even or especially our conflicts make us human. That just to stand here, just to live, is sacred. *** Pilgrimage to the Nevada Test Site Each of the stories presented in these three chapters are narratives of a journey to, and encounter with, significant terrain. Erik Thompson finds himself part of events that, to him, eerily reflect the actions of the early church. This pattern is played out through a series of journeys to the test site motivated by a desire to reclaim and reconsecrate sacred space. Doug Hamill’s journey is motivated by his religious covenant to promote true justice and how that brings him into a spiritual center that limits his object choices but helps clarify and deepen his fundamental options, including a new longing for an asceticism that is life affirming. Ann Schmidt stresses nonviolent action as religious experience: a holy journey where the threads of one’s life can come together and where, even briefly, one experiences wholeness. Janet Weil journeys to an intersection of time and space, the historical trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki palpably present in this remote corner of the Great American desert, propelled by the vision and enduring commitments of her Jewish faith. In making contact with deep and inexplicable woundedness, she is unexpectedly ushered into a deep awareness that all beings are inextricably connected and stunningly beautiful beyond belief. The rudiments of pilgrimage are suggested here, as they are in many of the other accounts in this book. Others have named this activity in the Nevada desert as a form of pilgrimage, as underscored in an introduction to a book of photographs

162

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

on nonviolent action at NTS that states: “The pilgrimage of civil resistance into the Nevada Test Site has taken citizens from around the world into a labyrinth of unimaginable and unprecedented destruction to reclaim broken treaties, broken soil, broken families, and broken spirits.”3 Beginning in 1990, the Nevada Desert Experience concretely underscored its spiritual, psychological, and physical pilgrimage toward a nuclear-free future by inaugurating an annual sixty-five-mile Peace Walk during Holy Week from Las Vegas to the entrance of the test site. Beginning on Palm Sunday and arriving on Good Friday, the participants walk along Highway 95 and camp each night in the nearby desert, where they pray and reflect together. The terrain, which seems to go by in a monotone blur when seen from a car, slowly reveals itself on foot: the vast stretches of desert, the mountains to the east and west, the Joshua trees. The walkers pass through Indian Springs, a village with a small casino and a nearby air force base, and Cactus Springs with its Goddess Temple. The weather can be extremely cold. The journey to the test site is a time for contemplative reflection and a process in which this nuclear proving ground comes into physical and spiritual view. Perennial participants have included Br. David Buer O.F.M., a Franciscan friar based in Las Vegas who has played an important role in organizing these sojourns; Allan Sawyer, a longtime worker for justice and peace; and Nancy Lynch, whose husband was a member of the U.S. armed forces subjected to radiation from above-ground nuclear tests and who died of cancer.

Dimensions of Pilgrimage To understand NDE and its relationship to pilgrimage more clearly, let us examine in more detail what pilgrimage is and the ways an “antinuclear” pilgrimage may be said to function in addressing the challenges of a nuclearized world. Pilgrimage is variously described as “a round-trip journey undertaken by a person who considers their destination sacred,”4 a religiously motivated journey to a shrine conceptualized as an especially holy place,5 or simply a “sacred journey.”6 In their survey of pilgrimage practices, Jean and Wallace Clift report that people go on pilgrimage in many different religious and cultural contexts for a wide variety of reasons. People become pilgrims to draw near to something sacred; to hope and ask for a miracle; to give thanks; to seek pardon; to answer an inner call; to experience a place of

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

163

power; to express love of God; to see why others go there; to admire something beautiful; to honor a vow made in response to an extreme situation; to experience a sense of presence; to reclaim lost or forgotten parts of oneself; to prepare for death; or to temporarily leave behind the normal routine of life so something new can happen.7 Richard R. Niebuhr writes, Pilgrims are persons in motion—passing through territories not their own—seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps . . . clarity. . . . These physical passings through apertures can print themselves deeply into us, not in our physical sense alone but in our spiritual sense as well, so that what we apprehend outwardly becomes part of the lasting geography of our souls.8

It is not clear how many people journeyed to an NDE event at the gates of the Nevada Test Site with such lucid motivations. As a nontraditional pilgrimage destination, the traditional reasons for journeying to such a locale may not have been so clearly present in people’s minds. Often the explicitly political motivation was most evident—for example, to protest the arms race, to withdraw their consent from an impending nuclear test—as well as often a general concern for the desert that had been violated by over one thousand nuclear explosions. But when people arrived at the site, many of the dimensions identified by the Clifts dramatically revealed themselves. It was as if people were drawn unconsciously or inchoately by what James Preston names spiritual magnetism to this terrain and, once there, understood that it was far more important and rich than first thought. People acted their way into thinking and feeling there. Political action became, sometimes quite surprisingly, religious experience. It took on one or many of the aspects of pilgrimage. For many it became a sacred place where life contested death but in powerfully nonviolent ways. It became a place to yearn for the miracle of a nuclear-free world. It became a place of confession and contrition and gratitude. It became a place where people clarified their own call to peacemaking. It became a place where people went because others—their friends, their family members, and eventually total strangers—had gone before them. It became a place to make and honor vows, to experience presence, to honor the beauty of the land and its inhabitants, and to express love for the liberating God who calls all to live in right relationship. It became a place to reclaim lost or forgotten parts of oneself and one’s culture, to bear witness to death and to life. It became a place to go to—temporarily leaving behind the normal routine of life—and to return from.

164

Pilgrimage through a Burning World A Broader Theoretical Framework

This set of motives and reactions illuminates a number of the ways people came to experience the Nevada Desert Experience pilgrimage. But what are some of the dynamics that may have provoked such experience? To clarify this, we now turn to a set of insights about pilgrimage that have emerged over the past two decades, beginning with those of a pioneer in modern pilgrimage theory, anthropologist Victor Turner. Drawing on the sociological concept of “center” and “periphery” and Arnold van Gennep’s notions of rites of passage, Turner has proposed that pilgrimage has three phases: pre-liminality (separation from one’s conventional surroundings); liminality (an intensified experience of the sacred and of communitas, in which there is a temporary release from conventional social relationships and disparities); and postliminality (reaggregation or homecoming).9 Turner suggests that the simple act of leaving one’s habitual surroundings—relaxing the grip of the personal and social ego—and encountering others who are also momentarily structureless can provoke this egalitarian, statusless communitas, and that this can release profoundly new ways of thinking and being. In Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, Turner quotes a long passage from Malcolm X in his Autobiography about his pilgrimage to Mecca and its “dissolution or destructuring of many of his stereotypes after his experience of what he called the ‘love, humility, and true brotherhood that was almost a physical feeling wherever I turned” as he encountered and engaged with Muslims of many cultures and races.10 For Turner, this anecdotal passage indicates the transformative potential of pilgrimage: de-familiarizing the familiar, deconstructing and reconstructing social patterns and relationships, and offering the pilgrim an experience of egalitarianism not typically found in conventional social arrangements. Turner’s proposals, however, have been critiqued from many quarters. B. Morris thinks Turner has too sunny a view of religion and religious experience, and faults him for a lack of appreciation of power imbalances in society.11 D. J. Austin demonstrates how the communitas generated by Jamaican Pentecostal ritual, contrary to leading to social transformation, reinforces their members’ subordinate social status.12 Juan Eduardo Campo makes a similar point. His analysis of the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca demonstrates that the Hajj, rather than catalyzing egalitarian communitas, in fact is organized “to embody and validate configurations of power, of dominance and submission.”13 In Mecca, the traditional pilgrimage involves “the appropriation of pilgrimage rites by rulers as an instrument of control, and the performance of pilgrimage rites as an instrument of submission.”14 In other words, it is

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

165

insufficient to apply a disinterested set of categories to this phenomenon; the political matrix from which it flows must be factored into the meaning of the rite. This point is echoed by John Eade and Michael Sallnow in their book, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. Drawing on pilgrimage field studies by numerous researchers, they find that there is little actual evidence for Turner’s theory of liminality and communitas. “In many cases,” they write, “there is the reinforcement of social boundaries and distinctions in the pilgrimage context, rather than their attenuation or dissolution.”15 They caution against what they perceive as Turner’s “spurious homogeneity” that sees all pilgrimages falling into his tripartite system and argue that we must be free of an approach that sees a “simple dichotomy between either supporting or subverting the established social order.”16 Pilgrimage, for Eade and Sallnow, is a social field characterized by contestation between competing discourses. Eade and Sallnow’s approach opens up the pilgrimage field to include actors not normally acknowledged by pilgrims or by their analysts. By addressing, for example, the members of the local population, one includes in the field of vision potential contestants where worldviews, geographical and metaphysical orientations, and political, economic, and cultural interests and allegiances may clash. Here the emphasis is not on a narrow notion of communitas—experienced by the specific group of pilgrims—but on the implicit or explicit conflict between “foreigner” and “indigenous” populations. Ritual specialist Karen Pechilis deepens this critique of an unqualified notion of communitas by arguing that pilgrimage is not, as Turner suggests, “a special locus of non-confrontational interaction.”17 Pilgrimage is not a process of “getting away from it all”—meaning leaving behind the conflicts and differences experienced in one’s home community or everyday life—but a process by which pilgrims bring it “all” with them. Pilgrimage is a ritual negotiation between the familiar and the unfamiliar, rather than a “letting go” of the familiar. In the last two decades a growing number of scholars have broadened their notions of what constitutes a pilgrimage. Specialists have demonstrated a growing interest in secular centers and even traditional tourist locations as pilgrimage sites.18 One groundbreaking effort in this regard undertaken by G. Rinschede and S. M. Bhardwaj designates four types of pilgrimage within the United States: 1) nationalistic shrines (national monuments and battlefield memorials); 2) environmental sites (national parks such as Yosemite; Yellowstone; and the Grand Canyon); 3) popular culture sites (Graceland, Memphis, TN; Las Vegas, NV); and

166

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

4) explicitly religious sites (The Shrine of St. Jude, Chicago, IL; The Mormon Temple, Salt Lake City, UT).19 Here we see scholarly receptivity to sites that, while not overtly or traditionally “religious,” exercise James Preston’s notion of spiritual magnetism, especially sites that pertain to U.S. civil religion, leisure, and pop culture.20 Though not explicitly or institutionally religious, these sites may be deemed broadly religious or spiritual if we mean by that term, as historian of religions Charles H. Long suggests, “orientation.”21 They can be deemed meaningfully “religious” in the unmarked sense because they orient and reorient their pilgrims to frames of meaning that often elude them in other dimensions of contemporary life, including traditional forms of religion or spirituality. Seeking to illuminate the sociological and political meanings of pilgrimage, Glenn Bowman suggests that pilgrimage is a function of a “social language which enables persons to link distant places with significant religious events or miraculous theophanies.”22 “Particular pilgrimages now closely integrated with the social practices of their cultural environments,” Bowman writes, “were not spontaneously generated out of those milieus but were imposed upon local populations through the agency of universal religions.”23 From this point of view, pilgrimage is an ideological device of religious, but also political, empirebuilding that extends “spiritual jurisdiction” by incorporating local sites into a larger cultic or political formation. Bowman’s thesis invests Preston’s notion of spiritual magnetism with political and ideological meaning. By applying this lens to the Nevada Test Site, we see that the establishment of the Nevada Test Site as one of the significant sites of Nuclear America involved the colonization of its 1,350 square-mile terrain by the reigning political and military culture whose center was thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C. Claimed for the national security state, this terrain became a type of “pilgrimage site” for NTS managers, scientists, and military personnel drawn by the magnetism of the incalculable ferocity of nuclear power. At the same time, this site draws those seeking a nuclear-free future—not to worship this power but to contest and demythologize it. In that sense, the Nevada Test Site functions as contested space where a “clash of cults”—nuclear and antinuclear—takes place.24 These ways of assessing the complexity of pilgrimage illuminate important aspects of the Nevada Desert Experience pilgrimage. While leaving behind their familiar surroundings can momentarily release pilgrims to experience transformation of relations with those whom they encounter, in fact this is only possible by negotiating the differences and histories that they bring with them. Pilgrimage involves a set of compet-

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

167

ing discourses and practices with one’s fellow pilgrims and with all with whom they come into contact on this journey. Though pilgrims may be drawn to pilgrimage sites by spiritual magnetism, this power can in some cases be said to be created by at least two poles of competing worldviews, especially when the pilgrimage site in question is a construction and function of religious or political empire-building. The pilgrim journeys to the center, but that center is not the locus of unmediated essence. It is, instead, the place of deep encounter. For the Nevada Desert Experience, this involves encountering the desert and its inhabitants, including those that conventionally are regarded as Other: those that create, test, manage, and protect nuclear weapons. It is a place of competing discourses and contestation. But, grounded in a confluence of traditions—those of Jesus, Francis and Clare, Gandhi, Day, King, and many others—what evolves at this center is an ongoing experimentation in compassionate contestation. At the same time the NDE journey involves actively encountering and engaging with all the actors in this great drama. Such a process requires relying on the unknown, including the unknown steps that will be required to move beyond the us/them logic of domination and its contemporary symptom, the nuclear threat. Communitas is possible, but by means of authentic engagement, not by a presumed release of one’s history and social location.

Social Change and Pilgrimage Nonviolent action and movements have often been understood by their participants as “pilgrimages.” Nonviolent action as a form of pilgrimage comes, in part, from the general tradition of peace and protest marches.25 These have their antecedents, in the European West, in civic parades of the Italian city-states. And these, in turn, share a lineage with Christian “stational liturgy,” which had itself been patterned on ideologically-driven Roman state processions and imperial pageantry.26 In part, it comes from traditions of the quest and the labyrinth. And, in part, it derives from contemporary practices and metaphors deployed by those standing in the lineage of nonviolent action of the twentieth century. Martin Luther King Jr., for example, entitles his first published autobiographical sketch, “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence.”27 Here he draws on a well-established tradition in the West of deploying the metaphor of pilgrimage to thematize the succession of stages of one’s life and to cast it as moving toward a meaningful destination.28 Here King chooses an especially appropriate symbol to articulate not only his own story but,

168

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

by implication, the story of the “movement” he is helping to spur forward. The modern struggle for civil rights for African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s is literally a “move-ment,” ritualized by literally taking to the streets and walking rather than using public transportation during the Montgomery bus boycott (1955–1956); the “freedom rides” that desegregated bus routes throughout the U.S. South (1947, 1961); processing into contested public space in Birmingham (1963); the landmark “March on Washington” (1963); and the highly conflictual 31mile voting rights march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery.29 When King would declare during speeches that “We’re on the move now!” he meant this literally as well as figuratively.30 As King stresses in “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” it was the satyagraha (“soul force”) of Mohandas Gandhi that played a crucial role in shaping a Kingian nonviolence that blended the Judeo-Christian prophetic tradition, the Social Gospel theology of the nineteenth century, American democratic and constitutional principles, and the Mahatma’s “experiments with truth.” Gandhi, like King, at times developed nonviolent pilgrimages for social transformation. He explicitly refers to the “Salt Satyagraha”—the march from Ahmedabad to Dandi on the sea coast that was part of the year-long Civil Disobedience movement in 1930–3131—as a pilgrimage in several texts before and during this event.32 By this term Gandhi does not mean a contemplative commemoration or iteration of past deeds, as pilgrims sometimes do on pilgrimage. This “sacred pilgrimage,” as he calls it, is also a “fight” and a “life and death struggle.”33 To those who have any doubts about the seriousness of this venture, Gandhi declares: “If it is only curiosity that moves you to walk this long distance, you had better not waste your time and mine.”34 Gandhi makes unmistakably clear that he and his satyagrahis are about to enter a deadly serious social conflict, one that will not only entail personal struggle but will touch off a national campaign of “sedition” and civil disobedience in the form of breaking the British monopoly on the production and distribution of salt.35 Yet what would be seen by most organizers as a political maneuver, Gandhi persists in calling “sacred” and “religious.” Although he peppers the documents written during this event with the term “holy war,” he means by this another kind of religiosity: “Here in this righteous war, truth, nonviolence and forgiveness are the weapons.”36 And there is a method for undertaking this different kind of “holy war,” which is also a different kind of pilgrimage, a “sacred pilgrimage, and self-examination and self-purification are essentials which we cannot do without. . . . That rigorous self-discipline will generate in us a force which will enable us to retain what we have won . . . and should stand

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

169

us in good stead after swaraj [self-rule; independence].”37 Gandhi’s march to the sea is not only a sacred pilgrimage because it is analogous to Hindu pilgrimage in exterior form but because it shares the interiority of the best that such an ascesis has to offer: purification, inner transformation. But Gandhi notes that this is “pilgrimagistic” in another way: this self-purification will unleash a power that will steady and guide India once the accomplishment of independence is achieved. Gandhi, in his mind, has already envisioned self-rule. Now, pilgrim India will need satyagraha to motivate and direct its much longer pilgrimage as a nation. This modern pilgrimage was paradigmatically defined by Gandhi’s 1930 march to the sea. This stalwart procession challenged the British monopoly on salt and, more importantly, defied imperial rule once and for all. Here was a bold public ritual in which spirituality and politics were dramatically and unmistakably interwoven. This 261–mile politicoreligious pilgrimage was a sojourn from bondage to freedom palpably symbolized in practical, corporeal, kinesthetic actuality. These were real, live human beings mobilizing the most powerful symbol at their disposal—their inspirited bodies—in loving and relentless resistance. Theirs was literally a movement: a restless journey to the ocean and, eventually, to liberation. Gandhi deployed pilgrimage in other settings as well. For example, he specifically referred to an action in 1937 as the “Travancore Pilgrimage,” in which he traveled from temple to temple imploring that the officials in charge of these sacred sites end their exclusion of Untouchables (to whom Gandhi referred as harijans, or “children of God”). In many cases he proved successful. At one stop he declared: The scene at this meeting is a visible demonstration of the fact that what I am just now doing is nothing but a pilgrimage. There is the river Pampa, there is the temple and here are thousands of people gathered together to rejoice over the Proclamation [declaring temple-entry for Untouchables]. . . . But then, if pilgrimages are undoubtedly matters that furnish joy for the soul, they must at the same time continue to remind us that we should purify ourselves continually to satisfy our Maker. . . . I know that here we are all Harijans and non-Harijans united without the slightest distinction.38

Like Reformation polemics leveled against Roman Catholic pilgrimage practice, Gandhi subtly critiques ritual without interior transformation. For him, pilgrimage is a journey that frees the pilgrim from all that prevents heart-unity with others. The most authentic pilgrimage is a process that melts away the religious, cultural, or political barriers.

170

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Others have since followed in the Mahatma’s pilgrim footsteps. In addition to the “pilgrimages” of the African American Civil Rights movement, Cesar Chavez led hundreds of people on a several week peregrinacion from Delano to Sacramento in 1966 to call for economic justice and dignity for California’s migrant poor, as well as many other religiopolitical marches and processions. At the same time, other events qualify as contemporary “sacred journeys”: pilgrimages of remembrance, of reckoning, and occasionally of healing. The survivors of the Holocaust who journey to Auschwitz39; African American pilgrims who cross the ocean to see with their own eyes the embarcation points on the West Coast of Africa where slaves were dispatched to America; Nisei and Sensei who travel to the Manzanar and Tule Lake concentration camps where Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War Two40; and the U.S. veterans who stand brooding before the Vietnam Wall in Washington.

The Nevada Desert Experience’s Antinuclear Pilgrimage The journey undertaken by the participants of the Nevada Desert Experience evokes a traditional pilgrimage, where participants must forsake for a matter of days or longer their “everyday” setting and travel to an environment distinctly different from what they “normally” experience. The flat and severe-seeming desert, the extremes of hot and cold weather, and the perplexing consternation at the occupation pursued in this hidden part of the world all contribute to fashioning what appears at first to be an alien environment. But NDE does not construct a “pilgrimage center” that stresses “alienness” or sharp “alterity.” Perhaps, as Affleck points out, this is because a very basic binary opposition—“inside” and “outside”—does not, in a certain environmental sense, exist at the gates of the test site. There is no shelter. One is vulnerable to the elemental whims of the cosmos. In this sense, all—the prayerful protesters, the police, the press— are outsiders, exposed to the chafing cold and the wilting heat of the sun. There is thus the sensation of being part of—not apart from—this terrain and its vagaries. This is in contrast to pilgrimage centers that erect buildings—both lavish and simple—to cast in plastered enclosure a symbolic universe that divides chaos from order and often reifies a center signifying in spatial terms the pilgrim’s destination or even, at times, her or his “heart’s desire.” At the Nevada Test Site gates, no visible center exists. There is, however, another “inside”/“outside” demarcation that alludes by impli-

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

171

cation to an all but invisible center. The perimeter (that fences in the transmogrifying rationality of nuclear science and fences out all else) is an artificial, but legally actionable, circle of magical immunity ranged round this site. Somewhere “in there” (in one of the hidden vicinities bearing the scars of forty years of above- and below-ground testing) is “ground zero.” Since the bombing of Hiroshima, this two word phrase has narrowly signified the epicenter of nuclear detonation. In traditional pilgrimage terminology, “home” and “everyday life”—conventionally regarded as one’s habitual center—trade places (both in the imagination and in the course of the long miles of the journey) with the great pilgrimage site that functions as cultural, political, religious, or spiritual “core point.” Home is temporarily transformed into periphery, while the pilgrimage site becomes center. A nuclear culture is radically decentering when ground zero is not a single place but an infinite number of places. When every point on the globe lies vulnerably in the crosshairs of the nuclear scope—since every inch of the earth can be reached within minutes or hours by atomic payload-delivering intercontinental missiles and bombers—the center is everywhere and nowhere. Perhaps this is one of the reasons nuclearism has accumulated divine qualities in certain official and popular interpretations, in that it strangely mimics (even while distorting) an ancient image of God in the Christian mystical tradition as the center that is everywhere and a circumference that is nowhere. Here NDE participants most sharply contradict Turner’s conceptualization of pilgrimage as “getting away from it all” and “loosening the bonds of the social order.” To travel to a nuclear test site is an asymptotical journey41 to an invisible (both “at hand” and “not at hand”) center but also a ratification of the fact that, wherever these “pilgrims” come from, they have traveled from a “nuclear center.” Nuclearism’s reach has been topographically and ecologically democratized and radically decentered, in the way that Jackson Pollock’s sprawling painting “Autumn Mist” has no center (in contrast, for example, to the Byzantine mosaic depicting Justinian in Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, where there is a hieratically obvious center: the emperor42), or, more to the point of this discussion, the way that the design, testing, production, and storage of nuclear arms has been distributed in every congressional district of the United States, so that nuclearism can be borne evenly and thus so that there are in-built incentives and disincentives to maintain this system. Even more symptomatic of this decentering process has been the regular releases of atomic radiation from detonations and, increasingly, from leaking nuclear waste that has spread more and more evenly below, on, and above the earth.

172

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Such a journey—to a center that is center and no center, to a site signifying a condition that literally exists everywhere and no one place, given the vagaries of the Heisenberg Principle and the bedeviling uncertainty of the play of electrons and neutrons—perhaps qualifies the NDE participant as one of the first “postmodern pilgrims.” This decentering experience becomes symbolic of the NDE participant’s need to decenter from a self constructed to support and benefit from nuclearism and to be recentered in a new, more life-giving path. Moreover, it calls for decentering the test site and other such “centers” from their focus on weapons development. Ultimately, this symbolic sense of vertigo can prod participants to commit themselves to work to see that culture itself becomes “decentered” and “recentered” in this way. In short, that the dominant culture’s “old asceticism” may give way to a new and more nonviolent one. At the same time, as Affleck and others report, the NDE participants tend to experience this sojourn as one that, while sharpening one’s awareness of the weight of the nuclear burden, deepened one’s sense of relationship with the earth and with other human beings, including those with whom one disagrees, as in the case of the management and security personnel of the Nevada Test Site. Michael Affleck’s journey to the test site was a journey to the “other” that required a nonviolent transformation of his mindset about the so-called opponent and a nonviolent transformation of his limited notions of nonviolence itself. This became the ascetical impulse underlying the raft of ascetical practices— long hours, days, weeks, months in the desert; the willingness to go to jail; stints of silence; common prayer; detachment from the comfort and stability of one’s home—taken up at the edge of the NTS. The more basic ascesis was a patient process of surfacing, questioning, and consciously transforming one’s assumption and prejudices that prevented a deep nonviolence to take root. As Eade and Sallnow point out, pilgrimage is a site constructed by, and “charged” with, contestation. This is often an unreported conflict between pilgrims and the indigenous population; in pilgrimage narratives the “locals” are largely suppressed or assigned the role of “extras” and necessary “backdrop” for the “real drama” unfolding at the Temple Mount or Compostela or Canterbury Cathedral. There are few pilgrimages where the “focus” and “action” is a ritualized conflict that communicates both respect and determined opposition. As NDE discovered (beginning from its very first moments of constructing and occupying what in this light can justly be designated a contemporary pilgrimage site), its work became to ritualize in both a simple and rich way the dynamics of a world in which adversaries

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

173

assist one another in drawing back from a precipice they were both stumbling blindly towards. It is in this sense that Virgil Elizondo characterizes pilgrimage: “Pilgrimage sites are privileged earth-places where one can recall and thus make present in one’s own life the great interventions of God on earth and within human history.”43 The Nevada Desert Experience appears to have created opportunities for people of faith and conscience to not simply memorialize sacredness but to participate in its richness, even as the nonviolent struggle for creating a more peaceful world unfolds in and through and around them. Pilgrimage is often characterized as a process of personal transformation. In the medieval Christian West, this was reinforced structurally when pilgrimage became a juridical mechanism for the penitent to make amends for political and ecclesial transgressions. This approach to pilgrimage paralleled and underscored European narratives of the heroic quest, which, though framed as bringing salvific benefit to the community from which the hero departed and to which the hero returned (for example, retrieving the boon of the Golden Fleece or the Holy Grail), often succeeded to the extent that she or he underwent personal, existential transformation. The terrain through which the pilgrim passed, in such a framework, became a stage set for the heroic drama being performed, rather than being meaningful in its own right. Similarly, the inhabitants of this terrain became ancillary to the heroic production’s climax and denouement. Echoing and extending Margaret Miles’s caution about the potential trivialization of the natural world when life is conceived of as a pilgrimage, such an orientation rendered the land and its beings either objectivized obstacles or incidental ephemera. In the end, the world and its people under such a scheme became a void on which the pilgrim projected and inscribed her or his own meanings, allegories, and internal struggles. Novelist Toni Morrison, for example, makes this point sharply about centuries of travel to, and writing about, Africa.44 She stresses how for European and American writers Africa was regarded as a blank page that could be used to meet a variety of artistic or ideological objectives.45 While the case of European colonization of Africa and other parts of the world represents acute examples of this phenomenon, hasn’t the temptation to project one’s own meaning always been one of the dangers of travel, especially the “sacred travel” of pilgrimage? The pilgrim crosses into a land that is foreign and exotic to her, a terrain on which she projects a narrative interweaving symbols and plotlines. While these symbols may hold a certain relevant valence—

174

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Jerusalem was the site of Jesus’ final days; Thomas à Becket was murdered at Canterbury—the pilgrim often does not transcend, as Eade and Sallnow emphasize, the circumscribed world of the prescribed path or the often hermetically sealed symbols and rites associated with the pilgrimage site itself. Nor is she required to attend in any significant way to those not ritually included, especially local inhabitants who may or may not belong to her religious, ethnic, or political community (whose land the pilgrim has entered and even, from one point of view, transgressively invaded). NDE organizers also came to see that, unlike traditional conceptions of pilgrimage, this ritual was one of negotiation with the other inhabitants of this land. This was evident in their acknowledgment of the first inhabitants of this land—the Western Shoshone people—with whom they crafted a respectful and collaborative relationship. This was also true of the negotiation that took place over time with the nuclear test site managers and their law enforcement units, a negotiation that gradually was carried out in a spirit of openness and even respect. NDE’s nonviolent resistance meant, in the end, not simply projecting one’s own assumptions about “the other” onto test site employees and police officers, but creating space for new perceptions, including those that would upset one’s fixed views. NDE’s pilgrimage drew its power not simply from the transformation that might take place interiorly but in transgression and struggling with its consequences. NDE took part in the acknowledgment of the transgression of this native land by Europeans and Americans for centuries. And NDE literally transgressed the perimeter of the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear test facility. To understand NDE’s pilgrimage in this way may indicate new ways of understanding pilgrimage in general. First, it suggests that pilgrimage is always transgressive in some way, if only because the pilgrim is entering another community’s space and cultural field, often without any more than titular permission based on financial, political, or military agreements. Second, it accentuates in another context Eade and Sallnow’s assertion that pilgrimage sites are sites of contestation, though this contestation is destructive only when it is not acknowledged. Third, it implies that such contestation can be a form of complicated communitas if it creates an environment where true differences are negotiated. This perspective helps understanding traditional pilgrimages in a new way. At the same time, it suggests the possibility of acknowledging and interpreting a host of contemporary journeys as pilgrimages, includ-

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

175

ing “journeys of memory and healing” to concentration camps, to “nonviolent battlefields” for liberation, to war memorials for the purpose of reflection and insight and not simply legitimate armed conflict, as well as journeys to the Nevada Test Site and other nuclear test sites around the world.

This page intentionally left blank.

Conclusion

We share the circle with friends and opponents alike . . . We cannot separate ourselves from those with whom we disagree. The violence to which we object is found within us. . . . In a circle, the vigilers are story tellers. The stories are the work of peace, the labor of service, the lives of our children, the struggles for liberation, the doubts, the fear. Tears are shed. Laughter. Silence returns. —Michael Affleck1

The Nevada Desert Experience has not been without its critics. Some have felt that its activity at the test site has been overly routinized and predictable. Others have argued that NDE has been content to organize “faithful witness” rather than to devise a serious political strategy. For example, one of the organization’s founders, Duncan MacMurdy, faults NDE for what he perceived as its unwillingness to develop a full-fledged plan for national organizing.2 Still others have complained that a demonstrably nonviolent and compassionate relationship with Nevada Test Site officials and security has undermined the political seriousness of the antinuclear movement and has choreographed—and thus trivialized—civil disobedience and other forms of resistance to nuclear weapons. Each of these concerns, raised at different times over the past two decades, highlights the challenges, but also the key dimensions, of Nevada Desert Experience’s struggle to advocate for peace in the Great American desert and in the larger world.

Too Routine and Predictable? Nevada Desert Experience activity has often hewed to a basic pattern. This structure has included: a gathering in Las Vegas for prayer,

177

178

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

reflection, analysis, and nonviolent action training; greeting test site employees as they arrive for work; a liturgical or paraliturgical ritual at the edge of the gates of the test site; a procession to the “white line” at the NTS gate, where some stand in prayerful protest, while others risk arrest by crossing into the off-limit test site grounds. Those who have been arrested have been detained in two open-air pens near the gate (one for women, one for men) and granted citations and then released, or they have been bussed to Beatty or Tonopah, Nevada for booking, arraignment, setting of a court appearance, and possible trial, sentencing, or jail time. Jail sentences—first for days, then weeks, and sometime months—were a regular feature of the NDE pilgrimage until the late 1980s, when Nye County decided to forego prosecution for test site civil disobedience as the number of arrestees at a given time began to climb into the hundreds. The federal government continued to prosecute some forms of trespassing and other violations. This pattern has generally offered the opportunity to modify the content and ritual of prayer, witness, and civil disobedience and often included noticeably dramatic variations on Catholic liturgical practice, as some of the first-person accounts presented in this book—including Jane Hughes Gignoux’s vivid 1987 Holy Week chronicle in Chapter Four—suggest. Yet the Nevada Desert Experience has maintained its basic structure over the years and has done so for a variety of reasons beyond simply clinging to habit. NDE has maintained its basic pattern in part because of the power of the desert setting. There was no need for unnecessarily flamboyant or spectacularly novel ceremony when the dazzling richness of the natural world was summoning participants to make contact with beauty within and without. The religious matrix from which the Nevada Desert Experience springs, however, has been even more decisive. Grounded in Roman Catholicism, NDE’s practices echo this tradition’s rituals and their ceaseless iteration: the Eucharist of the Mass that is celebrated daily; the rosary’s set of prayers recited over and over; the liturgical year (of weekly Sunday mass, feast days commemorating the church’s saints, “holy days of obligation,” and the seasons of Lent and Advent) followed year in and year out. Traditionally speaking, Catholic spirituality’s liturgical conventions—including their endless repetition—are experienced not as deadening or meaningless but as opportunities for spiritual deepening by returning communally over and over again to the tradition’s great events, symbols, and wisdom. NDE’s repetition of these contextualized rites was an experiment in bringing the contemplative power of ritual to the political work of deepening a movement to end nuclear testing.

Conclusion

179

But NDE’s perennial use of this basic structure also was a way of sharpening the Catholic Church’s commitment to a nuclear-free world. The Nevada Desert Experience deliberately situated its activity within the context of the great feasts of the Christian tradition—Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter—and set the rituals of the Roman Catholic Mass, the Stations of the Cross, religious song, and circles of prayer within the context of the woundedness and sacredness of the Nevada desert and the nuclear test site. By inflecting traditional Catholic practices with an explicit concern about nuclear weapons, NDE has not only created a faith-based way to call for a nuclear-free future, it has at the same time carried on in its own way the reform within the Catholic Church unleashed by the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. Vatican II, a gathering in Rome of ecclesial leadership from 1962 through 1965, produced epochal change in the Roman Catholic Church. In keeping with Pope John XXIII’s watchword for this historic gathering—“aggiornamento,” an Italian word for “sweeping change” and “turning point”—this ecumenical council brought the church squarely into the twentieth century and dramatically transformed its own self-understanding.3 Vatican II realigned the church’s relationship with the world, including legitimating and catalyzing innumerable efforts for social justice. At the same time, this historic gathering transformed Catholicism’s approach to the liturgy and ritual. Rooted in the modern liturgy movement, Vatican II ordered that the liturgy of the Mass be celebrated in the vernacular, that the liturgical calendar be dramatically reformed, and that the church’s attitude toward piety, devotional practices and other forms of “popular religiosity” be dramatically reoriented. Many traditional rituals and forms that emerged originally as types of “popular religiosity”—including the Stations of the Cross—were now viewed by many as outdated and meaningless vestiges of a medieval worldview. Thomas Merton sardonically critiques this trend in the mid-1960s, when he describes a story printed in the Catholic press about a priest bent on dissuading people from continuing to pray the rosary. The priest, Merton writes, holds a service where his parishioners light candles and process outside to a place where they bury their rosaries.4 Merton was a progressive Roman Catholic who longed for and relished the possibility of genuine renewal in the church. He was, nonetheless, wary of a tendency that surfaced in the wake of the council that called for sweeping away Catholic ritual, liturgical and paraliturgical forms, Gregorian chant, and Latin in the liturgy. Though Merton was likely amused by the irony of the event he notes in his diary (the unnamed cleric seeks to suppress the rosary by creating a very Catholic-type ritual

180

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

in which a priest leads a candlelight procession that culminated in burying sacred implements on holy ground), he was seriously concerned that this antiritual bias would undermine a holistic spirituality that engages and integrates body, affect, and spirit. He feared that this could give way to a form of superficial rationality and an uncritical embrace of secularity. Kieran Flanagan, a sociologist of religion, has pointed out the irony that, at the very moment in the mid-1960s that the Roman Catholic Church was questioning the validity of many of its liturgical and paraliturgical forms, the academic discipline of anthropology was, on the contrary, beginning to discover the cultural significance of ritual.5 The Catholic Church did not, in fact, relinquish its passion for meaningful forms of ritual and liturgy in the wake of Vatican II, and almost forty years of liturgical experimentation since, the council has borne much meaningful fruit. Nevertheless, polarized tendencies did emerge in the church over these decades between “social relevance” and “liturgical richness,” likely reflecting sociologist Daniel Bell’s supposition that if efforts are made to minimize the importance of ritual in the life of a community—what he calls “disenchantment” and others name “dehierophanization”—a compensatory need emerges to recover that enchantment.6 In responding to the spiritual crisis provoked by a worldwide regime of weapons of mass destruction, the Nevada Desert Experience reconciled a key Vatican II reform—a new emphasis on relationship with the larger world, including the work of social justice—with a deep respect for the power of ritual and the importance of traditional liturgical forms. It did so by developing a uniquely contemporary devotional religiosity. “Devotional piety,” according to religious historian Richard Kieckhefer, exists in a conceptual zone between public, official liturgy on the one hand and private, unstructured, contemplative practices on the other. NDE’s activity at the test site stands at the intersection of the exterior and interior, of the public and unofficial, of the structured and the unstructured and therefore can be properly seen as a contemporary and inculturated form of devotional piety.7 NDE has adapted practices designed for circumscribed sacred space—the constructed indoor environment of churches, convents, rectories, and retreat houses and certain prescribed outdoor spaces such as the grounds of a monastery, retreat center, or cemetery—to the unbounded terrain of the Nevada desert at the edge of a nuclear weapons proving ground. In the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, NDE has contributed to the church’s repertoire of liturgical and paraliturgical rites attuned to the spiritual and political dilemmas of the modern world while simultaneously honoring both post-Vatican II impulses:

Conclusion

181

the progressive impulse toward social justice and the conservative impulse toward maintaining ritual as a central dimension of the life of the church.

“Witness” versus “Strategy”? What of NDE’s approach to strategy? NDE participants have at times expressed frustration that this organization never developed and organized a systematic strategy for disarmament. Although NDE built a national and international mailing list, produced organizing materials, did considerable outreach, and periodically carried out lobbying efforts, it was felt by some that a highly developed strategic road map to a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty—and the objectives and tactics to translate this map into reality—was lacking. MacMurdy and others felt this lack especially in contrast to national organizations that eventually began to organize events at the test site, including the Nuclear Freeze Campaign and the American Peace Test.8 Although NDE mobilized people in progressive Catholic circles and in other denominations and faiths across the United States and around the world to travel to the test site and to increase the visibility of nuclear testing in their local contexts after returning home, some felt that NDE did not actively and strategically take steps to translate its “witness” into “people power” that would contribute to momentum for the establishment of the CTBT. It was thought by some, for example, that NDE should have created regional, national, and international infrastructure to execute a sweeping strategy to end nuclear testing. In his study of the history of NDE, Michael Affleck wrote, “Obviously, as a founding member, I write as an insider. I write with a bias. I love the work of NDE. . . . But it has become clear to me that a more systematic approach to the great evil of testing could have yielded, and still could yield, far greater results than we have seen.”9 Affleck acknowledged that MacMurdy and NDE staff person Peg Bean tried, in 1986, to spur more critical and strategic thinking in the organization, but he intimates that NDE fell short, for example, by not viewing its work as a campaign, by not prioritizing dialogue with those in favor of nuclear testing, and by not initiating a study of the economic conversion of the test site.10 Affleck published his study in early 1991. There was no indication at the time that within eighteen months President George Bush would declare a moratorium on U.S. nuclear testing that would lend important momentum to the international CTBT process and end most nuclear testing around the world. While many factors within and without the

182

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

antinuclear movement contributed to this development—including the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991—it is fair to say that NDE contributed to this development. Hence the need to evaluate the issue of “strategy” carefully. Both faith-based and secular activists sometimes make an artificial distinction between actions that are “strategic” and others that are types of “witness,” in which the former seeks effectiveness and the latter is an act of faithfulness regardless of the results that might flow from it. In fact, NDE’s “witness” has, whether specifically planned that way or not, fulfilled numerous important strategic objectives. In 1982 many people even in progressive circles had little awareness of a nuclear weapons testing program that was detonating nuclear bombs on U.S. soil on average every eighteen days. By organizing its activity in the desert and, in turn, publicizing it in religious and political media, NDE raised the visibility of this issue among progressive organizations, mainline religious communities, and over time the larger society. It created a zone of organizing activity that drew thousands of people to this remote site, and then sent them home to leaven the movement to end nuclear testing. “We got to everyone,” Affleck has recently said, meaning that every key policy-maker in the United States and abroad eventually heard from someone who had been to the test site.11 More importantly, NDE’s commitment to persistent action contributed to a larger political groundswell, as other organizations became allies. From this perspective, the repetitive but relentless focus NDE brought to the test site was its contribution to the worldwide antinuclear movement. The 1992 moratorium on nuclear testing was the result of many approaches, including NDE’s contemplative and prophetic one. This is underscored when we examine the Nevada Desert Experience’s activity in light of recent social movement theory. Social movement theorist Bill Moyer defines a social movement as “collective actions in which the populace is alerted, educated, and mobilized, sometimes over years and decades, to challenge the powerholders and the whole society to redress social problems or grievances and restore critical social values.”12 From this perspective, “The central task of social movements is to win the hearts, minds, and support of the majority of the populace.”13 Moyer argues that social movements, in order to win this support and to activate the population, must attract, not repel, the majority. Hence the need for action, attitudes, and approaches that are nonviolent and that uphold society’s fundamental values and ideals. Nevada Desert Experience adhered to nonviolent guidelines and created an opportunity for thousands of people to experience a pro-

Conclusion

183

found encounter with their deepest values that was, at the same time, doable and relatively safe. In so doing, NDE contributed to a growing national and international “majority movement” that withdraw its consent from nuclearism and created the political space for the emergence of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Nevada Desert Experience’s “witness,” with its strategic implications, was therefore intimately linked to the third controversy: Nevada Desert Experience’s relationship with Nevada Test Site officials. Criticized by some for being too nice, most NDE organizers saw their nonviolent orientation toward the Nevada Test Site management as a serious experiment with truth, as Anne Bucher put it.14 Bucher and others felt that this complex relationship struck the proper balance between openness and resistance, as demonstrated in a firm commitment both to nonviolent civil disobedience and to a policy of ongoing, relentless persistence. Whatever criticisms they faced, NDE organizers believed that this approach was key both to creating the conditions for changing the dynamics of the arms race and in engendering an environment where thousands of nonactivists would be willing to travel to in order to pray and protest.

NDE’s Spiritual Practice in the Desert While NDE’s witness has had political consequences, it was not politically calculated. The irony is that NDE’s effectiveness has flowed less from a preoccupation with engineering a movement and more from the willingness to go, without a clear road map, to the heart of the existential crisis facing the world and its beings. With hindsight, we can see that this process has had certain implications for society and for the church, but it was not rooted in machination but in a journey into mystery, including the mysterious nuclearism within. From their very earliest arrival at the test site, faith-based antinuclear pilgrims discovered that working to create a nuclear-free world was not possible without their own transformation. It meant abandoning a form of social change that depended on self-righteously and confidently drawing a thick line between “us” and “them.” It meant recognizing that fear and anger and self-righteousness would undermine change. It meant seeing both woundedness and sacredness inside oneself as well as within the opponent. As the stories shared by such antinuclear pilgrims suggest, this ongoing witness has offered participants an opportunity to confront their own nuclearism—their own “nuclear selves” and how they reinforce a “nuclear society”—and to glimpse an alternative way of being.

184

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

This spiritual process was no accident. It was shaped by a Gandhian “desire for the well-being of all,” a Franciscan conviction that God is merciful to all and that all things and beings share in that goodness, a Catholic Worker belief in the sacredness of all life and the deep importance of community and solidarity, and the legacy of an ancient desert spirituality that held that the desert is the place where the dominating self—the self shaped and reinforced by a dominating society—can be “decentered” and “recentered” in the love of God. Each of these lineages shaped the NDE pilgrimage to God, to the self, to the community, to the earth, and to the so-called adversary, and each influenced an antinuclear asceticism inviting personal and social change. NDE’s Pilgrimage of Personal and Social Transformation The desert vigil is a public witness. As is all peacemaking, the vigil is costly. A worker leaves his job at the test site and joins the vigil. A church minister loses her job because she has vigiled in Lent. A school teacher in Las Vegas risks his job and tells his students he will vigil. A priest celebrates his anniversary in the desert and is arrested. Parish members and his bishop look on. Larry Scott is the first person arrested at the Test Site in 1957. He returns to the desert and to jail in August 1986 and he dies on his way home. A nun takes a vow of nonviolence and commits civil disobedience. A woman from New York takes her vacation time at the vigil. She is arrested. An 80+ year old sister from Denver drives two days to join the vigil. An atomic veteran limps back to Camp Desert Rock. Jailed. A homemaker arranges babysitting to journey to the Test Site. Youth from Europe and Las Vegas plan a vigil. Two Catholic bishops step over the line, May 1987. It is a desert litany, a litany of thousands. —Michael Affleck15

For thousands of years, native peoples have inscribed the land of the Great Basin with pictographs, cairns, and burial sites. The United

Conclusion

185

States government, since 1951, has incised its topography with hundreds of subsidence craters, tunnels, military buildings, and roads. Since 1982 the Nevada Desert Experience and other organizations have reinscribed this land spiritually, politically, culturally, and dramatically with liturgical and paraliturgical practices urging a new way of being. NDE’s “litany,” as Affleck names it, acknowledges the great communion of saints that are invoked verbally, somatically, and in embroidered memory when action for peace occurs at the edge of the Nevada Test Site.16 It is a variegated “cloud of witnesses,” living and dead, including the indigenous Western Shoshone women and men, Jesus, Antony of the desert, Clare and Francis of Assisi, Mohandas Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, the Buddha, and millions of women and men in every time and place whose names we will never know but who have experimented in their own lives with “the desire for the well-being of all.” This land is invested with the spirit and resonating action of all who have engaged in practices for peace with justice on both sides of the gates of the Nevada Test Site over the past eighteen years. Aside from the occasional “altars” one comes across in the desert, only the lingering, faint echo, and attenuated memory of these presences remains, apprehended almost only by intuition by the visitor walking among the flat, serrated places at the edge of the Nevada Test Site. The invention of atomic weapons set the world on a journey it had never expected and for which it had never asked. Once this expedition was launched, the citizens of the world were expected to fall into step. It mattered little that there was no clear goal except the ever-receding goal of security through dominance. What counted was that the citizenry of the superpowers and all other nations join in what was increasingly framed as a sacred duty to finance, ratify, and consent to the creation of tens of thousands of weapons of mass destruction. They were told to stay the course, even when this might mean a most dubious destination. Thus began an unending regime of terror and institutionalized threat to the earth. Nuclearism was constructed through social rituals and policies that sought to win public consent. In this book I have named this a form of “nuclear asceticism” that sought to create “nuclear selves” willing to sacrifice the prenuclear world, to sacrifice the earth, and to sacrifice oneself and millions of others. For over half a century, this nuclearism—and the nuclear selves and nuclear societies it has spawned and sustained—has been challenged by an antinuclear movement on every inhabited continent. The contribution of the Nevada Desert Experience to this movement has been its slow and patient experimentation with a nonviolent

186

Pilgrimage through a Burning World

method, which recognized that the undoing of the nuclear self means shifting from baldly oppositional politics to a spiritual transformation of one’s own “nuclear self” and one’s relationship to the opponent. This “new asceticism” has involved the use of a series of embodied practices, including the adaptation of traditional religious rites—the stations of the cross; the pilgrimage—and a deeply grounded approach to the political rite of civil disobedience. As Anne Symens-Bucher has pointed out, because NDE’s activity at the test site became both profound and relatively safe, it became a kind of “school,” where many people learned various forms of civil disobedience and what became known as “divine obedience.” Nonviolent action at the test site has functioned as a kind of spiritual formation process that teaches the initiate a nonviolence practice that can be deployed to change society and as an aid to bringing the discipline of nonviolence into everyday life. The organizers and participants in the Nevada Desert Experience gradually came to see that the key to solving the nuclear conundrum was in undergoing a spiritual formation process that saw such divisions as dangerous and expensive delusions. As former defense worker Art Casey—who spent nearly two years in the mid-80s camped at the edge of the test site keeping vigil—put it: There was the basic necessity for spiritual preparation, meaning to eliminate the boundary line between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ To internalize the unity of humans and the cosmos. To get that into your heart and head—where it actually influences your behavior . . . I was astonished when I witnessed people like Louie and Rosemary and Anne Bucher . . . and Jim Merlino . . . just being whole human beings.17

In The Religion of the Earliest Churches: Creating a Symbolic World, scripture scholar Gerd Theissen stresses that many of the public practices of Jesus—including the entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple, the formation of the group of Twelve, exorcisms, and table fellowship with marginalized people—were highly charged symbolic acts countering the religious and political order and indicative of an inauguration of a new order of love and justice.18 In its own way, Nevada Desert Experience has for two decades created and performed public symbolic acts at the edge of the Nevada Test Site to withdraw consent from a contemporary order rooted in fear and coercive power and to announce a more loving and just alternative. Those who have responded to NDE’s invitation to journey into the Nevada desert overtly or inchoately have sought another way: a way of nonviolent grappling, a way that resists the enormity of violence that nuclear weapons represent but doing so in a way that respects the

Conclusion

187

inviolable sanctity of themselves and those who craft, test, and deploy such weapons. This journey has meant “crossing over” to one’s opponent, to the violated land, and to the wounded and sacred parts of oneself. At the Nevada Test Site, the Nevada Desert Experience has experimented with a contemporary desert spirituality, where vulnerable bodies dramatize the spiritual dilemmas all beings face in a nuclear world and modestly explore, in the face of immense challenges, the possibilities of love in action.

This page intentionally left blank.

Notes

Preface 1. Randle Richard Mixon, Learning the Language of Lament: On Suffering and Human Wholeness. Ph.D. diss. Graduate Theological Union, 1994: 7.

Introduction 1. Much has been written about the world’s first atomic bombings, including the following first-person accounts. Kenzaburo Oe, Hiroshima Notes (New York: Grove Press, 1981); Oe won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Knopf, 1946). Wilfred Burchett, Shadows of Hiroshima (London: Verso, 1983). Gunther Andres and Claude Eatherly, Burning Conscience: The Guilt of Hiroshima (New York: Paragon House, 1989). Eatherly was a pilot on the Enola Gay—the U.S. Air Force plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima—who later repented of his actions and faced recriminations in the United States for doing so. 2. The so-called Baruch Plan was a U.S. proposal to the United Nations that required the USSR to halt its atomic program and, after an international system of safeguards as put in place, the U.S. would dismantle its nuclear arsenal. The Soviet Union wanted this sequence reversed. With this impasse the proposal came to nothing. Cf. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1995), 84. 3. Eileen Welsome, The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War (New York: The Dial Press, 1999), 171. 4. David Loomis, Combat Zoning: Military Land-Use Planning in Nevada (Reno/Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1994), 9–10. Cited in Valerie L. Kuletz, The Tainted Desert: Environmental Ruin in the American West (New York & London: Routledge, 1998), 66–67. 5. Welsome, The Plutonium Files, 249–250. 6. Carole Gallagher, American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), xii.

189

190

Notes to Introduction

7. A spate of medical and epidemiological studies are available on the impact of fallout on soldiers who participated in these tests and on those exposed to them. The most recent and comprehensive list of U.S. government and nongovernment studies is in Welsome’s The Plutonium Files, published in 1999. Other sources include Harvey Wasserman et al., Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation (New York: Dellacorte Press, 1982); Barton C. Hacker, Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing 1947–1974 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Philip L. Fradkin, Fallout: An American Tragedy (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1989); Arjun Makhijani, et al, Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its Health and Environmental Effects (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995); and Carole Gallagher, American Ground Zero. 8. Valerie L. Kuletz, The Tainted Desert: Environmental Ruin in the American West (New York & London: Routledge, 1998), 63. 9. Matthew Coolidge, The Nevada Test Site: A Guide to America’s Nuclear Proving Ground (Culver City, CA: The Center for Land Use Interpretation, 1996), 9. 10. Coolidge, 18–27. 11. Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: 1954–1970. Vol. II, The Struggle Against the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), ix. 12. Ibid., x. 13. Ibid., ix. 14. Jeffrey W. Knopf, Domestic Society and International Cooperation: The Impact of Protest on U.S. Arms Control Policy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 15. Knopf, 247. 16. Ibid., 244–245. 17. Ibid., 245. 18. Ibid., 246. Knopf cites: David S. Cortright, Peace Works: The Citizen’s Role in Ending the Cold War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993); S. Meyer and Sam Marullo, “Grassroots Mobilization and International Politics: Peace Protest and the End of the Cold War,” in Louis Kriesberg and David R. Segal, eds., Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change, vol. XIV (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1992), pp. 99–140. It is useful to highlight the role nonviolence movements played in the collapse of the USSR. Such movements—and not simply economic and military competition with the U.S.—played a key part in creating the conditions for an end to the Soviet Union. The Solidarity movement in Poland throughout the

Notes to Introduction

191

1980s, the Velvet Revolution in then-Czechoslovakia and much of Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, and the 40,000 people who nonviolently prevented a military coup in the USSR in August 1991 are memorable—and measurable— milestones of a broadly-based and primarily nonviolent social movement for human rights and self-determination. 19. Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk. Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case Against Nuclearism (New York: Basic Books, 1982). 20. “Nevada Desert Experience” was formed as an organization and campaign to end nuclear testing in 1984 after the original Lenten Desert Experience was held in 1982 and was organized again during the Christian season of Lent at the Nevada Test Site in 1983 and 1984. 21. Ninian Smart, The World’s Religions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 1997), 10–21. 22. Michael Affleck, interview by author, tape recording, Camillus, New York, July 21, 1999. 23. Vip Short, in answer to author’s questionnaire, 1999. 24. Catherine Bucher, in answer to author’s questionnaire, 1999. 25. Jean McElhaney, in answer to author’s questionnaire, 1999. 26. Joan Monastero, in answer to author’s questionnaire, 1999. 27. Patricia Roberts, in answer to author’s questionnaire, 1999. 28. Oliver Davies, Celtic Spirituality in Early Medieval Wales: The Origins of the Welsh Spiritual Tradition (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), 2. I am grateful to Arthur Holder for drawing my attention to Davies’ definition. 29. Kees Waaijman, “Toward a Phenomenological Definition of Spirituality,” Studies in Spirituality (Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Titus Brandsma Intituut, 1993): 57. 30. Sandra M. Schneiders, “The Study of Christian Spirituality: Contours and Dynamics of a Discipline,” Christian Spirituality Bulletin 6 (1), Spring 1998. 31. Ibid. 32. Jon Sobrino, S.J., “Monsenor Romero, A Salvadoran and a Christian,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, vol. 2:2 (Fall 2001), 143. 33. Ibid., 144. 34. John Ferguson, War and Peace in the World’s Religions (London: Sheldon Press, 1977); David Little, Perspectives on Pacifism: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Views on Nonviolence and International Conflict (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995); J. Patout Burns, War and Its Dis-

192

Notes to Introduction

contents: Pacifiism and Quietism in the Abrahamic Traditions (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1996); Glenn D. Paige and Sarah Gilliatt, eds., Nonviolence in Hawaii’s Spiritual Traditions (Honolulu, HI: Center for Global Nonviolence Planning Project, Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace). Also see, by contrast, James A. Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War: Comparative Religious Symbolism of Military Violence (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981). 35. Thomas Merton, “Gandhi: The Gentle Revolutionary,” in William H. Shannon, ed., Passion for Peace: The Social Essays (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 205. (Originally published in Ramparts, December 1964). 36. Thomas Merton, “Gandhi and the One-Eyed Giant,” Gandhi on NonViolence (New York: New Directions, 1965), 8. Gandhi made this point in a much more vigorous way during the Salt March when he declared, “I have made sedition my dharma.” Mohandas Gandhi, “Speech at Borsad,” March 18, 1930, no. 99, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 43 (March-June 1930), 100. 37. Joan V. Bondurant, “Hindu Tradition and Satyagraha: The Significance of Gandhian Innovations,” Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958), 105–145; 118–120. Also see Margaret Chatterjee, “Gandhi’s Religious Thought and Indian Traditions,” Gandhi’s Religious Thought (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1983), 14–40. 38. Zari Weiss and Alan Lew, “Make This a Season of Light and Hope for the Homeless,” Jewish Bulletin (December 1997), 1. 39. Sheila Pelz Weinberg, “Campus Pilgrimage to Reverse the Nuclear Arms Race,” in Ellen M. Umansky and Diane Ashton, eds., Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality: A Sourcebook (Boston: Beacon, 1992), 228–229. 40. Murray Polner and Naomi Goodman, eds., The Challenge of Shalom: The Jewish Tradition of Peace and Justice (Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1994) and Maxine Kaufman Nunn, ed., Creative Resistance: Anecdotes of Nonviolent Action by Israeli-based Groups (Jerusalem: Alternative Information Center, 1993). 41. Eknath Easwaran, A Man to Match His Mountains: Badshah Khan, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam (Petaluma, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1984). 42. On the Iranian revolution, see Lynne Shivers, “Iranian Revolution, 1963–1979,” in Roger S. Powers and William B. Vogele, eds., Protest, Power and Change: An Encyclopedia of Nonviolent Action from ACT-UP to Women’s Suffrage (New York and London: Garland, 1997), 263–266; M. M. Salehi, “Radical Islamic Insurgency in the Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979,” in Christian Smith, ed., Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movement Activism (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 47–63. On the Palestinian Intifada, see Andrew Rigby and Nafaz Asily, “The Intifada,” in Nonviolent

Notes to Chapter 1

193

Struggle and Social Defence (London: Myrtle Solomon Memorial Fund and War Resisters’ International, 1991), 30–35; Souad R. Dajani, Eyes without Country: Searching for a Palestinian Strategy of Liberation (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1994). 43. Christopher S. Queen, “Introduction: A New Buddhism,” in Christopher S. Queen, ed., Engaged Buddhism in the West (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), 1. See also Arnold Kotler, ed., Engaged Buddhist Reader (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1996). 44. This fourth vehicle follows that of early Buddhism (later called Hinayana, or “narrow vehicle”), reform Buddhism (Mahayana or “great vehicle”), and syncretic Buddhism (Vjrayyana or “diamond vehicle”). Ambedkar, in 1956, called the emergent fourth vehicle Navayana or “neo-Buddhism.” Queen, 1, 23. 45. Numerous essays in Queen. See also Joseph Daniel, A Year of Disobedience (Boulder, CO: Daniels Production, 1979), 90–93. 46. See, for example, Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960) and John H. Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution: A Companion to Bainton (Elkhart, IN: Goshen Biblical Seminary, 1983). 47. The Challenge of Peace—God’s Promise and Our Response: A Pastoral Letter on War and Peace by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, Inc., May 3, 1983), 136.

Chapter One 1. Anne Symens-Bucher, interview by author, tape recording, May 27, 1998. 2. Mary Ann Cejka. “Crossing the Line,” 1. Letter to friends and students, 1986. Used with permission of the author. Subsequent quotations from Ms. Cejka derive from this letter. 3. Shelley Douglass and James W. Douglass founded the Ground Zero Community, a center in Washington State focused on nonviolent resistance to the Navy’s Trident submarine base near Bangor, Washington. 4. Fred Inglis, Cruel Peace: Everyday Life and the Cold War (San Francisco: Basic Books/HarperCollins, 1991), 321 ff. 5. Robert Karl Manoff, “The Media: Nuclear Security vs. Democracy,” Bulletin of the American Scientists (January 1984): 29. Quoted in Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), xv.

194

Notes to Chapter One

6. Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), xvi. 7. Ibid., xvii-xviii. 8. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York: Putnam, 1995). Also see Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). 9. Lifton and Mitchell, 8. 10. Lifton and Mitchell document the inconsistency between assessments by U.S. government officials before and after the use of the bomb in Japan, the misrepresentation of the position of the government of Japan, and the way the U.S. government’s estimate of projected U.S. casualties in the event of an allied invasion of the Japanese mainland demonstrate the development of a narrative not based on analysis but seized on and inflated after the fact. 11. Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1988). 12. Recent scholarship includes Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); Elizabeth Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Sarah Coakley, ed., Religion and the Body (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Lutz Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in Medieval Religious Communities (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998); Karmen MacKendrick, Counterpleasures (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999); and Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 13. Elizabeth A. Clark, “The Ascetic Impulse in Religious Life: A General Response,” in Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 505. 14. Ibid., 505–506. 15. John Pinsent, “Ascetic Moods in Greek and Latin Literature,” in Wimbush and Valantasis, 211. 16. Dianne M. Bazell, “The Politics of Piety: Response to the Three Preceding Papers,” Wimbush and Valantasis, 493. 17. Margaret R. Miles, Practicing Christianity: Critical Perspectives for an Embodied Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 97. 18. Ibid., 95.

Notes to Chapter One

195

19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., 102. 21. Ibid., 103. 22. Miles, Fullness of Life: Historical Foundations for a New Asceticism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981), 157. 23. Ibid., 157–158. 24. Valantasis, “A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism,” in Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 544–552. 25. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans., Talcott Parsons (London: Unwyn Hyman, 1930). 26. Valantasis, “A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism,” 545. 27. Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress,” in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 340–372. Summarized in Valantasis, “A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism,” 545–546. 28. Valantasis, “A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism,” 546. 29. Geoffrey Harpham, The Ascetic Impulse in Culture and Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 30. Ibid., 546. 31. Valantasis, “A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism,” 546–547. 32. Ibid., 547. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 548. 35. Richard Schechner, “Magnitudes of Performance,” in Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 345. Cited in Valantasis, “A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism,” 548. 36. Valantasis, “A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism,” 548. 37. Ibid., 549. 38. Although the focus in this study is on the United States, this was equally true of other nuclear states, especially the Soviet Union. 39. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 96.

196

Notes to Chapter One 40. Ibid., 99–100. 41. Ibid., 109–10. 42. Ibid., 99.

43. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 65, quoted in Patrick Olivelle, “Deconstruction of the Body in Indian Asceticism,” in Wimbush and Valantasis, eds., Asceticism, 189. 44. Alan Nadel, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and Atomic Age (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1995). 45. Ibid., xi. “Containment” was the shorthand term that described the thrust of U.S. policy during the Cold War, which was envisioned as geographically, militarily, and politically “containing” the Soviet Union. The policy and label were first advocated by George Kennan in his essay, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Foreign Affairs 25 (1947), 566–82. 46. Ibid. 47. Alan Nadel, Containment Culture, ix–x. 48. Federal Civil Defense Administration, Survival Under Atomic Attack (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1950), 7. Quoted in Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 53. 49. Ibid., 53. 50. For a comprehensive history of this forty year practice, see Eileen Welsome, The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War (New York: The Dial Press/Random House, 1999). 51. Robert Lifton and Richard Falk, Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case Against Nuclearism (New York: Basic Books, 1982). 52. Michael Morrissey, “Nuclear Age, Impact on Spirituality,” in Michael Downey, ed., The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 706. 53. Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 54. Ibid., 33. 55. Ibid., 164. 56. Ibid.

Notes to Chapter One

197

57. Eileen Egan, Peace Be With You: Justified Warfare or the Way of Nonviolence (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 281. Egan’s source: Arthur Brown, “War Resisters League,” in What Happened on June 15? (pamphlet) (New York: Provisional Defense Committee, 1955), 1. 58. Robert Cooney and Helen Michalowski, eds., The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States (Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1987), 124. 59. Leaflet from the Civil Defense Protest Committee, 1961. Institute for the Study of Nonviolence. In Robert Cooney and Helen Michalowski, 125. 60. Cooney and Michalowski, 125. 61. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 111. 62. Cooney and Michalowski, 126, 128. 63. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, 199. 64. Barbara Eggleston, “In God We Trust—A Question of Idolatry,” in Bruce Kent, ed. In God We Trust: Christian Reflections on the Arms Race (London: CND Publications, 1986), 44, 46. 65. Cf. Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Atomic Bomb,” “The Hydrogen Bomb,” and “Is There Another Way,” Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1976), 232, 235, 301; Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967); Ramsey, War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern War Be Conducted Justly? (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1961); Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977). 66. Eagan, Peace Be With You: Justified Warfare or the Way of Nonviolence (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 284. 67. Daniel Berrigan, cited by Egan, Peace Be With You, 284. 68. Ammon Hennacy, The Book of Ammon: The Autobiography of a Unique American Rebel (self-published, 1965). 69. Hennacy, 299–300. 70. Ibid. 71. Daniel Ellsberg, “Introduction,” in E. P. Thompson and Dan Smith, eds., Protest and Survive (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1981), xvii. 72. Ellsberg, xvii.

198

Notes to Chapter Two Chapter Two

1. Louis Vitale, interview by author, tape recording, Oakland, California, May 31, 1998. 2. Echoing the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, “Make me a channel of Your peace.” 3. Michael Affleck, interview. 4. Rosemary Lynch contacted her congregation at Mt. Alverno, its headquarters in Redwood City, California. The congregation agreed to cosponsor the event and allocated $5,000 of the initial $10,000 budget. 5. Rosemary Lynch, O.S.F., interview by author, by telephone, Las Vegas, Nevada, August 26, 1999. 6. Michael Affleck, The History and Strategy, 41. 7. Rosemary Lynch, interview. 8. Michael Affleck, The History and Strategy, 43. 9. Ibid. 10. Ed Vogel, “Demonstrators Mark Nuclear Anniversary,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 28, 1982, 2–B. 11. As of this writing (February 2002), the U.S. government continues to refuse to take a “no first use” pledge. 12. Ed Vogel, “Demonstrators Mark Nuclear Anniversary,” 2–B. 13. Matthew Coolidge, The Nevada Test Site, 24. 14. Ibid., 12. 15. Mahadev Desai, ed., The Gospel of Selfless Action: The Gita According to Gandhi (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1946), 130. 16. Michael Affleck, interview by author, tape recording, July 21, 1999. 17. Daniel and Phillip Berrigan and seven collaborators removed draft cards and files from a Selective Service office in Catonsville, Maryland (a suburb of Baltimore) in 1968 and ritually burned them in a nearby parking lot where they waited to be arrested. They were sentenced to relatively long jail sentences for an action that both conveyed symbolically the realities of the war in Vietnam and directly interfered with the process of conscription, including of the young men listed in the destroyed paperwork. For an account of this witness and its background, see Charles A. Meconis, With Clumsy Grace: The American Catholic Left 1961–1975 (New York: Seabury Press, 1979). 18. This is not to imply that the approach of the Berrigans, the Atlantic Life Community, or the Pacific Life Community in fact held to these approaches

Notes to Chapter Two

199

exactly as stated here. Rather, this seeks to convey the impression their actions registered on Affleck and Bucher and the impact that these interpretations would eventually have on the formation of NDE’s vision, goals, and practices. Nor is this to imply that, even if this faithfully represents their approaches, this is not nonviolent or inappropriate. As Affleck later pointed out, the Berrigan method is one of several spiritualities for faith-based social change. Confrontation and the dramatic “recognition scene” can serve as enormously useful tactics in playing a part in changing consciousness and social structures. Affleck characterized these other approaches in this way as a means of distinguishing it from the “spirituality” that NDE in the end chose to fashion and follow. Michael Affleck, interview. 19. Michael Affleck, interview by author, tape recording, July 21, 1999. 20. Ibid. 21. Often this blood was drawn by a nurse or doctor friendly to these activists. Sometimes it was kept (with anticoagulant) in baby bottles to deliberately complicate the symbolism by inferring that systems of violence spill blood rather than nurture and feed children (i.e., the future). 22. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London and New York: Routledge, 1966 [1994]), 4. 23. Michael Affleck, interview by author, tape recording, July 21, 1999. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. This incident proved to be so transformative for Affleck that when NDE eventually developed a set of nonviolence guidelines for their activities, he insisted that it include a prohibition on blood pourings. 27. Jim Merlino, interview by author, tape recording, Tonopah, Nevada, July 28, 1999. Used with permission. 28. Discussing his religious orientation prompted Merlino to reflect in passing on the Trinity chapel at the town of Mercury on the grounds of the test site. “When I got there [at Mercury] there was a chapel but no services. The chapel is still there. But toward the end we had the sales down there. We would sell cars and vehicles and surplus stuff out of the chapel. That is a strange feeling if you knew it was formerly a church and now we’re having these sales in it.” Jim Merlino, interview. 29. In 1986 former defense worker Art Casey, commissioned by his Catholic parish in San Diego, began living full-time in the Nevada desert just outside the perimeter of the test site. His ongoing protest became the basis for the establishment of Peace Camp, where a shifting number of people came to create a more or less permanent encampment, until it was bulldozed by the government in 1988. Though removed as an ongoing camp, this site hosted many

200

Notes to Chapter Two

large multiday gatherings throughout the 1990s. Casey talks lovingly of Jim Merlino as a “guardian angel” who made sure that he stayed alive, especially during the sometimes brutal winter months. Author’s interview with Art Casey in San Diego, California, on November 13, 1998. 30. Bob Nelson, interview with author, tape recording, Las Vegas, Nevada, July 27, 1999. 31. Ibid. 32. Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1969), 9–10. 33. Michael Affleck, interview. 34. This was the weekday schedule. Saturday and Sunday were slightly altered. Source: Lenten Desert Experience letter, February 8, 1982, “Lenten Desert Experience I” file, Nevada Desert Experience archives, and interviews with Anne Symens-Bucher and Michael Affleck. 35. In 1982 vigilers were allowed to gather approximately two miles from the highway near the site of Camp Desert Rock, where thousands of U.S. soldiers had bivouacked during above ground nuclear explosions. In subsequent years, as the protests grew, vigilers were restricted to an area much closer to the interstate. 36. Though this study focuses on the antinuclear rituals staged at the Nevada Test Site more than the logistics of organizing them, it is worthwhile to note in passing the enormous weight these practicalities often placed on the shoulders of organizers. A small number of people were responsible for housing, transportation, and meals, as well as the myriad other tasks, including outreach and fundraising. One of the letters sent in advance of the first LDE to interested parties explains that, although people were to be “on their own” for lunch, “coffee, tea and toast” would be provided for breakfast, and the dinner “will be coordinated by the staff. Food and money donations are expected . . . and suggested at $2.00 per day, per person. We will be asking for help with the cooking.” (Source: Lenten Desert Experience letter, February 8, 1982 [“Lenten Desert Experience I” file, Nevada Desert Experience archives].) People were asked in the letter to bring the following items: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Warm clothes (“it was 25 degrees in the desert this morning!”) Your own transportation, if at all possible. Leaflets describing why your group is here (200 for each day). Other materials you would like to share. Prayer material, signs, and banners. Your sense of humor.

37. Michael Affleck, interview by author, tape recording, July 21, 1999. 38. Ibid.

Notes to Chapter Two

201

39. Ibid. 40. Sr. Rosemary Lynch, O.S.F,, letter to Gen. Mahlon Gates, Easter Sunday, April 10, 1982. 41. More precisely, The Nuremberg Principles included prohibitions against the threatened use of weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations. 42. Anne Bucher, private correspondence. Used with permission. 43. Her concern may have been sharpened by the fact that her father was an Alameda County, California, district attorney. 44. Michael Affleck, The History and Strategy of the Campaign to End Nuclear Weapons Testing, 44. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 45. 47. Mary Manning, “Arrested Protesters Laud Cop Courtesy,” Las Vegas Sun, April 9, 1982: 1. 48. Ibid., 5. 49. Ibid., 1. 50. Mary Manning, “Anti-Nuclear Protesters’ Charges Dropped,” Las Vegas Sun, April 14, 1982: 9. 51. Michael Affleck, interview. 52. Thomas Merton, “Ash Wednesday,” Seasons of Celebration (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965), 114. 53. Michael Walsh, Dictionary of Catholic Devotions (HarperSanFrancisco: San Francisco, CA, 1993), 157. 54. Thomas Merton, “Ash Wednesday,” 122. 55. Ibid. 56. Hermann Franke, Lent and Easter: The Church’s Spring (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1955 [Originally published: 1937]), 16. 57. Ibid., 72. 58. Evaluation notes, Lenten Desert Experience, 1982, Nevada Desert Experience History Notebook #1 (1981–1985), no page. 59. James W. Douglass, Resistance and Contemplation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972). 60. Evaluation notes, no page.

202

Notes to Chapter Three 61. Michael Affleck, The History and Strategy, 43. 62. Ibid., 46. 63. Ibid., 43. 64. Ibid., 45.

65. Greg Friedman, “Witnessing in the Desert for Peace,” St. Anthony Messenger 93, 3 [August 1985]: 20.

Chapter Three 1. This chapter presents an overview of the two-decade history of the Nevada Desert Experience. This summary draws largely on Michael Affleck, The History and Strategy of the Campaign to End Nuclear Weapons Testing, 46–86. 2. Michael Affleck, The History and Strategy, 59. 3. Ibid., 76. 4. Corbin Harney, The Way It Is: One Water . . . One Air . . . One Mother Earth (Nevada City, Calif.: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1995), 130. 5. By a vote of 298 to 74 Russia’s lower house of Parliament ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in April 2000. The United States Senate had rejected it in October 1999. Patrick E. Tyler, “Russia is Putting Pressure on U.S. over Arms Pacts: Ratifies Test Ban Treaty,” New York Times (Saturday, April 22, 2000), 1. 6. Michael Affleck, interview. 7. Ibid. 8. Sr. Karen Berry, O.S.F., in response to author’s questionnaire. Used with permission. 9. Michael Affleck, interview. 10. Roger S. Powers, William B. Vogele, Christopher Kruegler, Ronald M. McCarthy, eds. “Introduction.” Protest, Power, and Change: An Encyclopedia of Nonviolent Action from ACT-UP to Women’s Suffrage (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997), ix. 11. Michael Nagler, Is There No Other Way? The Search for a Nonviolent Future (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Hills Books, 2001), 59 ff. 12. See Walter Wink, “Jesus’ Third Way: Nonviolent Engagement,” in Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 175–193.

Notes to Chapter Three

203

13. For an important example of this approach, see Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 1994). 14. Angie O’Gorman, “Defense through Disarmament: Nonviolence and Personal Assault,” in Angie O’Gorman, ed. The Universe Bends toward Justice: A Reader on Christian Nonviolence in the U.S. (Philadelphia, PA, and Santa Cruz, CA: New Society Publishers, 1990), 242. 15. Peace and Conflict Studies Professor Michael Nagler describes Gandhian nonviolence as an alternative paradigm to the reigning, dominant paradigm. The latter is a paradigm of scarcity and thus fear, threat, power, and the zero-sum game; the former is a paradigm of sufficiency, integrative power, and the “desire for the well-being of all.” Dr. Michael Nagler, lecture in “Nonviolence,” course taught at University of California, Berkeley, spring 1999. 16. Mark Juergensmeyer, Fighting Fair: A Non-Violent Strategy for Resolving Everyday Conflicts (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986). 17. Alain Richard, O.F.M., cited in Ken Butigan, From Violence to Wholeness (Berkeley, CA: Pace e Bene, 1996), 82. 18. Anne Bucher, “Transformed by the Desert,” Disarmament Campaigns, April 1985, 13. 19. Anne Bucher, interview by author, tape recording, Oakland, California, May 27, 1998. 20. Marie Dennis, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Joseph Nangle, O.F.M., and Stuart Taylor, St. Francis and the Foolishness of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 86. 21. Quoted in Emery Tang, ed., “Decade in the Desert,” Franciscan Life: Celebrating Seventy-Five Years (Oakland, CA: Franciscan Friars, 1991), 88. 22. Louis Vitale, interview by author, tape recording, Oakland, California, May 31, 1998. 23. Talk by Fr. Alan McCoy, O.F.M., at the Franciscan Renewal Center, Portland, Oregon, April 30, 1999. 24. Cf. Joe Holland and Peter Henriot, S.J., Social Analysis: Linking Faith and Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983). Louis Vitale, interview by author, tape recording, Oakland, California, May 31, 1998. 25. Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness (New York: Harper and Row, 1952). 26. David Tracy, “Recent Catholic Spirituality: Unity amid Diversity,” Louis Dupre and Don Saliers, eds., Christian Spirituality III (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 162.

204

Notes to Chapter Three

27. Anne Bucher, interview by author, tape recording, Oakland, California, May 27, 1998. 28. Duncan MacMurdy, interview by author, tape recording, San Francisco, California, September 29, 1998. 29. This was probably William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (New York: Liveright, 1973). 30. Duncan MacMurdy, interview by author, tape recording, San Francisco, California, September 30, 1998. 31. Mary Barbara Agnew, “Charismatic Renewal,” Michael Downey, ed., The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 143–146. 32. Quoted in Michael Affleck, Notes on Nonviolence, 14. Dom Helder Camara was the archbishop of Recife, Brazil, who protested nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site on several occasions. 33. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 3. 34. Boniface Ramsey, “Desert,” Michael Downey, ed., The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 260–265. 35. Ibid., 260. 36. Ibid., 261. 37. Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (Boston: Shambhala, 1993), 6–7. 38. Ibid., 3. 39. Ibid., 5. 40. Ibid., 6. 41. Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 42. Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 11. 43. Patricia McCarthy, S.N.D., 1999, in response to the author’s questionnaire. Used with permission. 44. Michael Affleck, Notes on Nonviolence: The Nevada Desert Experience Campaign to End Nuclear Testing (Las Vegas, NV: Nevada Desert Experience, 1988). 45. Ibid., 8–16.

Notes to Chapter Four

205

Chapter Four 1. Jane Hughes Gignoux, “A Journey to Nevada,” private mss. Used by permission of the author. 2. For example, an undated NDE order of worship from one such Good Friday service found in the organization’s files reads concerning the Third Station: “Jesus falls under his cross. . . . And today the poor, the hungry, the sick, the forgotten ones are crushed under the weight of billions and billions of dollars lavished on an arms race that they support by their hunger and deprivation . . .” 3. Robert DellaValle-Rauth, response to author’s questionnaire. Used with permission. 4. Herbert Thurston, The Stations of the Cross: An Account of Their History and Devotional Purpose (London: Burns and Oates, 1906), 159–171. 5. Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 69. 6. Richard Kieckhefer, “Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion,” in Jill Raitt, ed., Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 76. 7. Julien Ries, The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 4 (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987), 161–62. 8. Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 96–117. Also see Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (New York: Knopf, 1996). 9. Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969 [1952]), 163. 10. Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 384. 11. Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977). 12. John T. Carroll and Joel B. Green et al., The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 169. 13. John F. Baldovin, S.J., The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy (Rome: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1987). 14. Ibid., 45–46. 15. Ibid., 88: “[A] non-historicized aspect of the Great Week services [in the fifth century] is the procession down the Mt. of Olives during the early

206

Notes to Chapter Four

morning hours of Good Friday. This procession did not attempt an historical mimesis of the Passion, with detours to Caiphas’ or Pilate’s, but rather came straight down the East-West road to Golgotha.” 16. Ibid., 257. 17. Ibid., 235. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 257. 20. Smith, To Take Place, 77. Smith continues: “This is not unexpected. Within systems of status, grave sites (no matter how special) will always give rise to corpse pollution. Thus, the uneasiness with which religious traditions with a clear notion of status, with a developed idiom of pure/impure (such as Judaism and Islam), have approached the issue of veneration of tombs and relics. By contrast, within systems of power and force, possession of the sancta of the mighty and illustrious dead conferred prestige.” 21. Smith, To Take Place, 79. 22. See Emile Male, Religious Art: From the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982 [1949]), 112ff. 23. Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (New York: Knopf, 1996), 313–20. Armstrong draws on contemporaneous accounts to document the pattern of tension and retaliatory conflict among the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish enclaves existing side by side in Jerusalem during the High Middle Ages. The German Dominican Felix Fabri, who visited Jerusalem in about 1480, left an account that made it clear that, as Armstrong writes, “the tension was now such that the authorities could no longer guarantee the goodwill of the local population.” 24. John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, eds., Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London and New York: Routledge 1991), 5. 25. Michael Walsh, Dictionary of Catholic Devotions (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 251–52. “St. Leonard of Port Maurice promoted the devotion so enthusiastically and successfully that he became known as the ‘preacher of the way of the Cross.’ He is said to have erected more than 572 stations between 1731 and 1751.” 26. Walsh, 251–52. Summarized from: Herbert Thurston, S.J., The Stations of the Cross: An Account of Their History and Devotional Purpose (London: Burns & Oates, 1906). This textual basis confirms Eade and Sallnow’s point that “Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem . . . has always been . . . a journey through a particular written text, the authorized, biblical accounts of Christ’s life and death. . . . Indeed, pilgrimage sites around Jerusalem can be moved and

Notes to Chapter Four

207

reestablished with no loss of sacred or pedagogical significance for the same text is merely mapped on to the new locations.” (Eade and Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred, 8–9.) 27. Ibid., 252. As Mathis and Bonner report, according to current Canon Law Catholics receive a plenary indulgence by making the Way of the Cross, if done in the presence of lawfully erected stations of the cross lawfully erected, if done with devout meditation on the suffering of Jesus, and if done by moving from station to station. Marcian J. Mathis and Dismas W. Bonner, The Pastoral Companion: A Handbook of Canon Law (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1976), 367. 28. Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1979), 118. 29. R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe c. 1215–c. 1515 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 267. 30. Ibid., 269. 31. Rene Girard with Jean-Michel Ourgoulian and Guy Lefort. On Things Hidden From the Foundation of the World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987); Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Paris: Grosset, 1972); Timothy Mitchell, Violence and Piety in Spanish Folklore (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988); David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). 32. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 200. 33. Timothy Mitchell, Violence and Piety, 109. Rene Girard, On Things Hidden, 266–373. 34. Ibid., 119. 35. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 200. 36. See, for example, Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1982). 37. Julia Occhiogrosso, interview by author, Las Vegas, Nevada, May 13, 1998. 38. James W. Douglass, The Nonviolent Coming of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 7–8. Douglass quotes Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 3. 39. To buttress his argument, Douglass summarizes in Discriminate Deterrence, a 1988 government-sponsored study, coauthored by a commission

208

Notes to Chapter Five

that included both Brezezinski and Henry Kissinger. Of the report, Douglass writes: “Whereas the American public has been led to believe that deterrence is designed to prevent nuclear war, ‘discriminating deterrence’ allows for a wider, more aggressive policy of enforcing our new world order, carried out by a Rapid Deployment Force backed up with nuclear weapons.” Discriminate Deterrence, Report of the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, Fred C. Ikle and Albert Wohlstetter, cochairpersons (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). 40. See Robert J. Lifton and Richard Falk, Indefensible Weapons (New York: Basic Books, 1982). 41. Key texts include Ira Chernus, Dr. Strangegod: On the Symbolic Meaning of Nuclear Weapons (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press), 1986; Chernus, Nuclear Madness: Religion and the Psychology of the Nuclear Age (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991); and Chernus and Edward Tabor Linenthal, eds., A Shuddering Dawn: Religious Studies and the Nuclear Age (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 42. James J. Preston, “Spiritual Magnetism: An Organizing Principle for the Study of Pilgrimage,” in Alan Morinis, ed., Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1992), 31–45. 43. Rudolf Otto, “Mysterium Tremendum,” The Idea of the Holy, trans., John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1978 [1923]), 12–30. 44. This religious sentiment is reflected in the political slogan, “Martyrs don’t make movements. Movements, however, often make martyrs.” 45. Chris Nauman, in answer to author’s questionnaire, 1999. 46. Preston, “Spiritual Magnetism,” 44.

Chapter Five 1. Marie Molloy, in response to author’s questionnaire, 1999. 2. William Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994). 3. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1985). 4. This is one of the central projects of the worldwide liberation theology movement. 5. Also see Domingos Barbe, The Theology of Conflict and Other Writings on Nonviolence (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989). In this text, Barbe

Notes to Chapter Five

209

interprets key figures in the First and Second Testaments as practitioners of nonviolence. 6. Ched Myers, in conversation with the author April 14, 2000, in San Francisco, California. 7. John Dear, The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of Nonviolence (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 3. 8. Erik Thompson, in answer to author’s questionnaire, 1999. All quotations in this section are derived from this source. 9. Gospel of Mark, The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 55. 10. Cf. Acts 4: 1–26. 11. Cf. Acts 5: 17–33. 12. Douglas Hamill, journal entry (February 3, 1986). No page number. Used with permission of the author. All quotations in this section are derived from this source. 13. The stigmata is “the impression upon an individual of the Five Wounds of Christ—in the hands, in the feet, and in the side—though some stigmatists have displayed marks of the crown of thorns upon their heads.” Walsh, Dictionary of Catholic Devotions, 253. 14. For an introduction to the contemporary practice of Catholic Christian retreat-making in the United States, see “The Value of Making a Retreat: Comments from Leading Retreat Directors,” in Patricia Christian-Meyer, Catholic America: Self-Renewal Centers and Retreats (Santa Fe, NM: John Muir Publications, 1989), 10–15. 15. Louis Monden, Sin, Liberty, and Law, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965), 1 ff. 16. Monden quotes Sartre to make his point: “We were never so free as when we were under the Nazis.” Hamill’s experience in the Beatty, Nevada jail, of course, in no way parallels the horror that revealed and acutely clarified this distinction for Monden: the terrors of the Third Reich. However, Monden’s key point is still well taken: under circumstances where one’s object choices are reduced virtually to zero, one is almost “compelled” to decide for or against one’s existential freedom. 17. Louie Vitale, interview with author, tape recording, Oakland, California, May 31, 1998. 18. Leonardo Boff, Saint Francis: A Model for Human Liberation, trans. John W. Diercksmeier (New York: Crossroad, 1982).

210

Notes to Chapter Five

19. James Douglass, “A Leaven in the Leaven,” Sojourners (May, 1983): 23–24; and “Loving Disobedience,” Ground Zero (May-June 1982): 6. Cited in Dear, The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience, 15. 20. Barbara Deming, On Revolution and Equilibrium (New York: A. J. Muste Memorial Institute Essay Series, n.d.), 15. 21. From summary by Michael Nagler in lecture on Gandhi notion of civil disobedience in “Nonviolence” course offered through the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, University of California at Berkeley, March, 1999. 22. John Dear, The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience (Baltimore, MD: Fortkamp Publishing Co., 1994), 9. 23. From summary by Michael Nagler in lecture on Gandhi notion of civil disobedience in “Nonviolence” course, Peace and Conflict Studies Program, University of California at Berkeley, March, 1999. 24. Julia Occhiogrosso, interview with author, Las Vegas, Nevada, May 13, 1998. Occhiogrosso first traveled to the test site in 1984 from Los Angeles, where she was on staff at the Los Angeles Catholic Worker. After this experience, she decided to move to Las Vegas to found a Catholic Worker house there and to begin an ongoing relationship with the test site. For several years she served on the NDE staff. 25. Jean McElhaney, response to questionnaire. 26. Julia Occhiogrosso, interview by author, tape recording, Las Vegas, Nevada, May 13, 1998. 27. Dear, The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience, xvii. 28. Ann Schmidt, “Nevada Desert Experience: Arrest as Sacrament,” Peace Action (Redlands, California, Peace Group newsletter), December 1986: 4–6. Used with permission. 29. Ibid., 4. 30. Ibid., 5–6. 31. Ibid., 4–5. In the completed questionnaire Ms. Schmidt returned to the author (to which she attached the 1986 article that is excerpted above), she wrote, “The experience was so meaningful that even now, more than 12 years later, just re-reading the account of my experience then, can bring tears to my eyes.” 32. Peter Ediger, interview with author, Las Vegas, Nevada, September 3, 1998. Ediger was NDE director and codirector, 1987–1992. 33. Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982), 122.

Notes to Chapter Five

211

34. Interview, Julia Occhiogrosso. 35. Cited in Michael Affleck, Notes on Nonviolence: The Nevada Desert Experience Campaign to End Nuclear Testing (Las Vegas, NV: NDE, 1988), 19–20. 36. Julia Occhiogrosso, interview. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, 94 ff. 42. Interview, Julia Occhiogrosso. 43. Ibid. 44. One of the virtues of this simplicity was that, according to Anne Symens-Bucher, it fostered NDE’s becoming a kind of school or training ground for faith-based civil disobedience. The peaceful atmosphere that NDE fostered became a place where many people risked arrest for the first time. Anne SymensBucher, interview. 45. Anne Symens-Bucher, interview. 46. Jean McElhaney, in response to the author’s questionnaire, 1999. 47. Julia Occhiogrosso, interview. 48. Louie Vitale, interview. 49. The Turners define ritual as “formal behavior prescribed for occasions not given over to technological routine that have reference to beliefs in mystical beings or powers.” (Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives [New York: Columbia University Press, 1978], 243.) Ronald Grimes finds this definition strangely out of keeping with the central thrust of Turner’s theories, which admit deformalized experience, can include “technological routine” (for example, magical rites), and can address the practices of traditions or religions that do not attest mystical beings or powers (for example, Zen Buddhism). (Ronald Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies [Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982, nonpaginated preface].) Aune and DeMarinis, in their introduction to a collection of essays on religious and social ritual, are only the most recent ritualists who stress the difficulty of pinning ritual down taxonomically. In summarizing the variety of points of view of their essayists, they point out that while some proffer very specific definitions, others favor a shift from formal rule-making to an approach that

212

Notes to Chapter Six

marshals “qualities of rituals.” He quotes a scholar in the field who contends that most definitions of ritual “really tell us almost nothing, apart from some vague sort of instruction, perhaps akin to: PAY ATTENTION—SOMETHING SPECIAL GOING ON HERE AND NOW.” (“Introduction,” Michael B. Aune and Valerie DeMarinis, eds. Religious and Social Ritual: Interdisciplinary Explorations [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996], 1–22). This is in keeping with Grimes’s notion that the current terminology is makeshift and improvisational. 50. Richard Schechner, The Future of Ritual (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 263. 51. Schechner, Performance Theory (New York: Routledge, 1988), xv. 52. Schechner, The Future of Ritual, 259.

Chapter Six 1. Richard R. Niebuhr, “Pilgrimage as a Thematic Introduction to the Comparative Study of Religion,” in John B. Carman and Stephen P. Hopkins, eds. Tracing Common Themes: Comparative Courses in the Study of Religion (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1991), 53. 2. Janet Weil’s response to the author’s questionnaire, January 26, 1999. 3. Linda Putman, Stop the Madness! America Tests Peace at the Nevada Test Site (Las Vegas, NV: Global Anti-Nuclear Alliance, 1991), no page number. 4. “Pilgrimage,” Jonathan Z. Smith, ed., The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 841. 5. Mary Lee Nolan and Sidney Nolan, Christian Pilgrimage in Modern Western Europe (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 11. 6. Alan Morinis, ed., Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 2–3. 7. Jean Dalby Clift and Wallace B. Clift, The Archetype of Pilgrimage: Outer Action with Inner Meaning (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1996), 42–62. 8. Richard R. Niebuhr, Parabola, 1984. Cited in Jean Dalby Clift and Wallace B. Clift, The Archetype of Pilgrimage: Outer Action with Inner Meaning (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1996), 1–2. 9. This summary is drawn in part from Dale F. Eickelman, “Pilgrimage,” in Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, eds., Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 423.

Notes to Chapter Six

213

10. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove, 1966), 325. Quoted in Victor Turner, Drama, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 168. 11. B. Morris, Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 258–59. 12. D. J. Austin, “Born Again . . . and Again and Again: Communitas and Social Change Among Jamaican Pentecostals,” Journal of Anthropological Research 37(3): 226–46. 13. Juan Eduardo Campo, “Authority, Ritual, and Spatial Order in Islam: The Pilgrimage to Mecca,” Journal of Ritual Studies 5/1 (Winter 1991): 65–91, 77. 14. Ibid. 15. John Eade and Michael Sallnow, eds., Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 5. 16. Ibid., 5. 17. Karen Pechilis, “To Pilgrimage It,” Journal of Ritual Studies 6(2) (Summer 1992): 63. 18. For a treatment of tourism as a contemporary form of secular pilgrimage, and also an extensive bibliography on the growing body of literature on this subject, see Lucy Lippard, On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place (New York: The New Press, 1999). 19. G. Rinschede and S. M. Bhardwaj, eds., Pilgrimage in the United States (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1990). In this book, James Preston delineates eight types of religious shrines in America, including shrines devoted to American saints; historical shrines; ethnic shrines; Marian shrines; shrines associated with miraculous cures; imitative shrines (recreations of Lourdes, etc,); conglomerate shrines (incorporating different shrine types); and synthetic shrines (combining different arrays of sanctuaries, grottos, and statuary in celebrating Americanism). James J. Preston, “The Rediscovery of America: Pilgrimage in the Promised Land,” in Rinschede and Bhardwaj, 17–19. Juan Eduardo Campo has a similar typology of American pilgrimages: 1) pilgrimage sites explicitly connected with organized religions in the United States; 2) pilgrimage sites connected with the values, symbols, practices of American civil religion; and 3) pilgrimage sites connected with cultural religion (following Catherine L. Albanese, America, Religious and Religion (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1992), 463–99. Juan Eduardo Campo, “American Pilgrimage Landscapes,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, July 1998: 40–56. 20. James J. Preston, “Spiritual Magnetism: An Organizing Principle for the Study of Pilgrimage,” in Alan Morinis, ed., Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1992), 31–45.

214

Notes to Chapter Six

21. Long writes: “The discipline of the history of religions seeks to understand, from a description and analysis of all of humankind’s religious expressions, the nature of religious experience and expression. . . . For my purposes, religion will mean orientation—orientation in the ultimate sense, that is, how one comes to terms with the ultimate significance of one’s place in the world.” Charles H. Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 45. 22. Glenn Bowman, “Anthropology of Pilgrimage,” in Makhan Jha, ed., Dimensions of Pilgrimage: An Anthropological Appraisal (New Delhi, India: Inter-India Publications, 1985), 3. 23. Ibid., 6–7. 24. Cf. Bill Wylie-Kellerman, Seasons of Conscience and Faith: Kairos, Confession, Liturgy (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991). In this text, WylieKellerman analyzes Christian-based nonviolent action as a form of religiopolitical liturgy. He identifies and analyzes a contemporary annual liturgical cycle of Christian nonviolent action taking place at the “sacred sites” of the dominant U.S. military-industrial complex. 25. This historical development illuminates the delicate relationship between public action and both constructing and deconstructing social order. Rebecca Solnit suggests this delicate balance when she writes that “public marches mingle the language of the pilgrimage, in which one walks to demonstrate one’s commitment, with the strike’s picket line, in which one demonstrates the strength of one’s group and one’s persistence by pacing back and forth, and the festival, in which the boundary between strangers recede. Walking becomes testifying. . . . Most parades and processions are commemorative, and this moving through space of the city to commemorate other times knits together time and place, memory and possibility, city and citizen, into a vital whole, a ceremonial space in which history can be made.” Rebecca Solnit, “Citizens of the Street: Parties, Processions, and Revolutions,” Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Viking, 2000), 216. 26. Cf. John F. Baldovin, S.J., The Urban Character of Christian Worship. 27. Martin Luther King Jr., “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” Stride Toward Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1958). 28. See again Margaret R. Miles, “Pilgrimage as Metaphor in a Nuclear Age,” Theology Today 45 (July 1988): 166–179. In addition to the points referenced above, Dr. Miles traces the shift from pilgrimage to physical journey to life metaphor, especially under the influence of Protestantism. On this theme, see also Donald R. Howard, Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 29. For a profile of this history, see Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Viking, 1987). This

Notes to Chapter Six

215

“journey” motif is captured in the Exodus imagery of Taylor Branch’s first two volumes of a projected trilogy, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988) and Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). 30. As with other pilgrimage centers, great Ur-events—great, founding journeys—in turn can spawn iteration and reiteration where new pilgrims come to make contact with such places of “great deeds.” This has begun to happen with regard to the sites of the U.S. Civil Rights movement. For a moving account of a “Civil Rights” pilgrimage, see Keith Woods, “Trail of Tears: A Father and His Children Retrace the Road to Freedom,” San Francisco Examiner, Sunday, March 16, 1997, T-7. 31. Bondurant describes and analyzes this action in its series of stages. See Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988 [1958]), 88–102. 32. Mohandas Gandhi, “We Are All One,” on or before March 15, 1930, no. 79, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 43 (March-June 1930), 82. 33. “This fight is no public show; it is the final struggle—a life and death struggle.” Mohandas Gandhi, “Speech at Prayer Meeting,” Sabarmati Ashram, March 12, 1930, no. 54, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 43 (MarchJune 1930), 60. 34. Mohandas Gandhi, “Speech at Prayer Meeting,” Sabarmati Ashram, March 10, 1930, no. 36, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 43 (MarchJune 1930), 37. 35. Mohandas Gandhi, “Speech at Prayer Meeting,” Sabarmati Ashram, March 11, 1930, no. 43, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 43 (MarchJune 1930), 46–47. 36. Mohandas Gandhi, “Speech at Borsad,” March 18, 1930, no. 99, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 43 (March-June 1930), 100. He explicitly uses “holy war” a number of times in this context, including in his “Talk to Press Representatives,” March 14, 1930, no. 69, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 43 (March-June 1930), 73. 37. Mohandas Gandhi, “Talk to Volunteers,” March 17, 1930, no. 95, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 43 (March-June 1930), 97. 38. Mohandas Gandhi, “Speech at Aranmula,” January 20, 1937, no. 352, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 70. 39. See Bernie Glassman, “Bearing Witness at Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Making Peace (New York: Bell Tower, 1998), 1–37. 40. See Joanne Doi, “Tule Lake Pilgrimage: Sacred Journey, Sacred Lives,” private mss., Spring 1998.

216

Notes to Conclusion

41. An asymptote is “a line which approaches nearer and nearer to a given curve, but does not meet it within a finite distance.” From: The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), vol. I, 132. 42. Peter Selz, art historian and professor at the University of California at Berkeley, made this comparison in a class on modern art in 1979 at UC Berkeley. 43. Virgil Elizondo, “Introduction—Pilgrimage: An Enduring Ritual of Humanity,” in Virgil Elizondo and Sean Freyne, eds., Pilgrimage (London: SCM Press/Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press. 1996), viii. 44. Toni Morrison, “On ‘The Radiance of the King,’” The New York Review of Books, vol. XLVIII, no. 13 (August 9, 2001), 18–20. 45. Morrison, 18.

Conclusion 1. Michael Affleck, Notes on Nonviolence, no page number. 2. Duncan MacMurdy, interview by author, tape recording, September 29, 1998, San Francisco, California. 3. See Austin Flannery, Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1984). 4. Thomas Merton, journal entry, March 16, 1966, in Christine M. Bochen, ed., Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom. The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. 6 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 30. On Merton’s concern about wholesale change within the church, see Lawrence S. Cunningham, Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 125–126. 5. Kieran Flanagan, Sociology and Liturgy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 37. 6. Daniel Bell, “The Return of the Sacred?”, cited in Flanagan, 27. In the Catholic Church, this was seen in the movement to roll back reforms of the Vatican Council, including the effort by some to reinstate Latin as the lingua franca of the Catholic Mass and the life of the church. 7. Richard Kieckhefer, “Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion,” in Jill Raitt, ed., Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 76. 8. Duncan MacMurdy, interview by author, tape recording, San Francisco, California, September 30, 1998. 9. Michael Affleck, The History and Strategy, 34. 10. Ibid., 32–34.

Notes to Conclusion

217

11. Michael Affleck, interview. 12. Bill Moyer, Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2001), 2. 13. Ibid. 14. Anne Bucher, interview. 15. Michael Affleck, Notes on Nonviolence, no page number. 16. Elizabeth Johnson writes: “[The symbol of the communion of saints] signifies the relationship among an intergenerational company of persons profoundly touched by the sacred, sharing the cosmic community of life which is also sacred. Ultimately it points to the Creator Spirit who vivifies creation, weaves interconnections, and makes holy the world.” Elizabeth A. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints (Ottawa: Novalis; New York: Continuum, 1998), 2. This theological reconstruction of a symbol reflects nicely this gathering of the “saints” at the test site. 17. Art Casey, interview by author, tape recording, San Diego, California, November 13, 1998. 18. Gerd Theissen, The Religion of the Earliest Churches: Creating a Symbolic World, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999), 37.

This page intentionally left blank.

Bibliography

Ackerman, Peter, and Kruegler, Christopher. Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century. Westport, CT and London: Praeger Publishers, 1994. Affleck, Michael. The History and Strategy of the Campaign to End Nuclear Weapons Testing at the Nevada Test Site, 1977–1990. Las Vegas, NV: Pace e Bene, 1991. Affleck, Michael. Notes on Nonviolence: The Nevada Desert Experience Campaign to End Nuclear Testing. Las Vegas, NV: Nevada Desert Experience, 1988. Agnew, Mary Barbara. “Charismatic Renewal.” In Michael Downey, ed. The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993. Armstrong, Karen. Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. New York: Knopf, 1996. Aune, Michael, and Valerie DeMarinis, eds. Religious and Social Ritual: Interdisciplinary Explorations. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Austin, D.J. “Born Again . . . and Again and Again: Communitas and Social Change Among Jamaican Pentecostals.” Journal of Anthropological Research 37 (3): 226–46. Baldovin, S.J., John F. The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy. Rome: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1987. Bazell, Dianne M. “The Politics of Piety: Responses to the Three Preceding Papers.” In Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds. Asceticism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995: 493–510. Bell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Boff, Leonardo. Saint Francis: A Model for Human Liberation. Trans. John W. Diercksmeier. New York: Crossroad, 1982. Bondurant, Joan V. Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988 (1958).

219

220

Bibliography

Boudewijnse, H. Barbara. “The Ritual Studies of Victor Turner: An Anthropological Approach and Its Psychological Impact.” Hans-Gunter Heimbrock and H. Barbara Boudewijnse, eds. Current Studies on Rituals: Perspectives for the Psychology of Religion. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1990. Brown, Judith M. Gandhi and Civil Disobedience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Burton-Christie, Douglas. The Word in the Desert, Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Women’s Stories, Women’s Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner’s Theory of Liminality.” In R. L. Moore and F. E. Reynolds, eds. Anthropology and the Study of Religion. Chicago: The Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, 1984: 105–25. Campo, Juan Eduardo. “Authority, Ritual, and Spatial Order in Islam: The Pilgrimage to Mecca.” Journal of Ritual Studies 5/1 (Winter 1991): 65–91. Chatterjee, Margaret. Gandhi’s Religious Thought. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. Chernus, Ira. Dr. Strangegod: On the Symbolic Meaning of Nuclear Weapons. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1986. Christian-Meyer, Patricia. “The Value of Making a Retreat: Comments from Leading Retreat Directors.” In Catholic America: Self-Renewal Centers and Retreats. Santa Fe, NM: John Muir Publications, 1989. Clark, Elizabeth A. “The Ascetic Impulse in Religious Life: A General Response.” In Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds. Asceticism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995: 505–510. Clift, Jean Dalby, and Wallace B. Clift. The Archetype of Pilgrimage: Outer Action with Inner Meaning. New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1996. Cohen, Jeremy. The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval AntiJudaism. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1982. Coolidge, Matthew. The Nevada Test Site: A Guide to America’s Nuclear Proving Ground. Culver City, CA: The Center for Land Use Interpretation, 1996. Cooney, Robert, and Helen Michalowski, eds. The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1987. Cortright, David. Peace Works: The Citizen’s Role in Ending the Cold War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.

Bibliography

221

Dahl, Arthur. “Michael Affleck.” In Making Peace: Photographs and Interviews with Peacemakers in the United States. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1990. Day, Dorothy. By Little and By Little. Robert Ellsberg, ed. New York: Knopf, 1983. Dear, John. The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of Nonviolence. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994. ——— . The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience. Baltimore, MD: Fortkamp, 1994. Dennis, Marie, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Joseph Nangle, O.F.M., and Stuart Taylor. St. Francis and the Foolishness of God. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999. Doi, Joanne. “Tule Lake Pilgrimage: Sacred Journey, Sacred Lives.” Private mss. Spring 1998. Douglas, Mary. Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. Douglass, James W. “Pilgrimage to Ground Zero.” Sojourners March 1980: 20–23. ——— . The Nonviolent Coming of God. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991. Eade, John, and Michael J. Sallnow, eds. Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Egan, Eileen. Peace Be With You: Justified Warfare or The Way of Nonviolence (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999). Eickelman, Dale F. “Pilgrimage.” In Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, eds. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London and New York: Routledge, 1996: 423. Eliade, Mircea. A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 2. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982. ——— . Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969 (1952). Elizondo, Virgil, and Sean Freyne, eds. Pilgrimage. London: SCM Press/Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1996. Erikson, Erik H. Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1969. Flanagan, Kieran. Sociology and Liturgy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1978.

222

Bibliography

——— . In Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi. Francis and Clare: The Complete Works. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1982. Gallagher, Carole. American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1993. Gandhi, Mohandas K. Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Trans. Mahadev Desai. New York: Dover Publications, 1983 (1948). Girard, Rene. Violence and the Sacred. Paris: Grosset, 1972. Girard, Rene, with Jean-Michel Ourgoulian and Guy Lefort. On Things Hidden From the Foundation of the World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987. Grimes, Ronald L. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982. ——— . Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990. ——— . “Ritual Criticism.” In Mircea Eliade, ed. The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 12. New York: Macmillan, 1987. Harney, Corbin. The Way It Is: One Water . . . One Air . . . One Mother Earth. Nevada City, Calif.: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1995. Harpham, Geoffrey. The Ascetic Impulse in Culture and Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Hengel, Martin. Crucifixion: In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977. Hennacy, Ammon. The Book of Ammon: The Autobiography of a Unique American Rebel. Self-published, 1965. Hollyday, Joyce. “Tested in the Desert: Transforming Energy at the Nevada Test Site.” Sojourners (June 1991). Hunt, E. D. Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire, A.D. 312–460. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Johnson, Elizabeth A. Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints. Ottawa: Novalis; New York: Continuum, 1998. Juergensmeyer, Mark. Fighting Fair: A Non-Violent Strategy for Resolving Everyday Conflicts. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986.

Bibliography

223

Kennan, George. “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” Foreign Affairs 25 (1947), 566–82. Knopf, Jeffery W. Domestic Society and International Cooperation: The Impact of Protest on U.S. Arms Control Policy. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kuletz, Valerie L. The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West. New York and London: Routledge, 1998. Lane, Belden C. The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Lifton, Robert Jay, and Greg Mitchell. Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1995. Lifton, Robert Jay, and Richard Falk. Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case Against Nuclearism. New York: Basic Books, 1982. Mathis, Marcian J., and Dismas W. Bonner. The Pastoral Companion: A Handbook of Canon Law. Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1976. McNeal, Patricia. Harder than War: Roman Catholic Peacemaking in Twentieth-Century America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992. Meconis, Charles A. With Clumsy Grace: The American Catholic Left, 1961–1975. New York: Seabury Press, 1979. Merton, Thomas. “From Pilgrimage To Crusade.” In Mystics and Zen Masters. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967, 91–112. ——— . “Introduction: Gandhi and the One-Eyed Giant.” In Thomas Merton, ed., Gandhi on Nonviolence. New York: New Directions, 1965. ——— . Thoughts in Solitude. Boston: Shambhala, 1993. ——— . In Christine M. Bochen, ed. Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom. Vol. 6, The Journals of Thomas Merton. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Miles, Margaret R. Augustine on the Body. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979. ——— . Fullness of Life : Historical Foundations for a New Asceticism. Philadelphia : Westminster Press, 1981. ——— . “Pilgrimage as Metaphor in a Nuclear Age.” Theology Today 45 (July 1988): 166–179. ——— . Practicing Christianity: Critical Perspectives for an Embodied Spirituality. New York: Crossroad, 1990. Mitchell, Timothy. Violence and Piety in Spanish Folklore. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.

224

Bibliography

Monden, Louis. Sin Liberty and Law. Trans. Joseph Donceel. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965. Morinis, Alan, ed. Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1992. Morris, B. Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Morrissey, Michael. “Nuclear Age, Impact on Spirituality.” In Michael Downey, ed. The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993. Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988. ——— . “Storming the Gates of Hell: Reflections on Christian Witness in Nuclear Security Areas.” In Kenneth Aman, ed. Border Regions of Faith: An Anthropology of Religion and Social Change. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988. Nadel, Alan. Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1995. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1976. Niebuhr, Richard R. “Pilgrimage as a Thematic Introduction to the Comparative Study of Religion.” In John B. Carman and Steven P. Hopkins, eds., Tracing Common Themes: Comparative Courses in the Study of Religion. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1991. Nirenberg, David. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Oakes, Guy. The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. O’Gorman, Angie, ed. The Universe Bends toward Justice: A Reader on Christian Nonviolence in the U.S. Philadelphia, PA, and Santa Cruz, CA: New Society Publishers, 1990. Ondaatje, Elizabeth Heneghan. Trends in Anti-Nuclear Protests in the United States, 1984–1987. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation Publication Series, 1989. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Trans. by John W. Harvey. 1923. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Ousterhout, Robert, ed. The Blessings of Pilgrimage. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Bibliography

225

Pechilis, Karen. “To Pilgrimage It.” Journal of Ritual Studies: 6 (2) (Summer 1992). Peters, F. E. Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Preston, James J. “Spiritual Magnetism: An Organizing Principle for the Study of Pilgrimage.” In Alan Morinis, ed., Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage. Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1992. Price, S. R. F. Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Ramsey, Boniface. “Desert.” In Michael Downey, ed. The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993. Ramsey, Paul. The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967. ——— . War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern War Be Conducted Justly? Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1961. Ries, Julien. The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 4. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987. Rinschede, G., and S. M. Bhardwaj, eds. Pilgrimage in the United States. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1990. Rivkin, Ellis. What Crucified Jesus? Nashville: Abingdon, 1984. Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. New York: Routledge, 1988. ——— . The Future of Ritual. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Schneiders, Sandra. “Scripture and Spirituality.” In McGinn, Bernard, et al., eds. Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century. New York: Crossroad, 1989: 1–20. ——— . “The Study of Christian Spirituality: Contours and Dynamics of a Discipline.” Christian Spirituality Bulletin 6: 1 (Spring 1998): 1–12. Sloyan, Gerald S. The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. Smart, Ninian. The World’s Religions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 (1989). Smith, Jonathan Z. To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. New York: Viking, 2000. Sumption, Jonathan. Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion. London: Faber & Faber, 1975.

226

Bibliography

Tang, Emery, ed. “Decade in the Desert.” Franciscan Life: Celebrating SeventyFive Years. Oakland, CA: Franciscan Friars, 1991. Thurston, Herbert. The Stations of the Cross: An Account of Their History and Devotional Purpose. London: Burns & Oates, 1906. Tracy, David. “Recent Catholic Spirituality: Unity amid Diversity.” In Louis Dupre and Don Saliers, eds. Christian Spirituality III. New York: Crossroad, 1989. Turner, Victor. “Bewixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites if Passage.” In Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society for 1964. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 4–20. ——— . “Death and the Dead in the Pilgrimage Process.” In Frank E. Reynolds and Earle H. Waugh, eds. Religious Encounters with Death: Insights from the History and Anthropology of Religions. University Park, PA, and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977. ——— . Drama, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974. ——— . The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967. ——— . The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine, 1969. Turner, Victor, and Turner, Edith. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. Unsigned. “Pilgrimage.” Jonathan Z. Smith, ed., The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion. New York: HarperCollins, 1995: 841. Valantasis, Richard. “A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism.” In Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995: 544–552. Vogel, Ed. “Demonstrators Mark Nuclear Anniversary.” Las Vegas ReviewJournal. January 28, 1982, 2–B. Waaijman, Kees. “Toward a Phenomenological Definition of Spirituality.” Studies in Spirituality. Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Titus Brandsma Intituut, 1993. Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. New York: Basic Books, 1977. Wasserman, Harvey et al. Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation. New York: Dellacorte Press, 1982.

Bibliography

227

Weart, Spencer R. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1988. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. Talcott Parsons. London: Unwyn Hyman, 1930. Welsome, Eileen. The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. New York: The Dial Press, 1999. Wasserman, Harvey, and Norman Solomon. Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation. New York: Dellacorte Press, 1982. Wimbush, Vincent L., and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Wittner, Lawrence S. One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement through 1953. Volume One of The Struggle Against the Bomb. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. ——— . Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970. Volume Two of The Struggle Against the Bomb. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Wylie-Kellerman, Bill. Seasons of Conscience and Faith: Kairos, Confession, Liturgy Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991.

This page intentionally left blank.

Index

Abolition 2000, x Affleck, Michael, 13, 45, 46, 49, 51–52, 55–56, 59, 61–62, 67, 69–70, 73–75, 80, 170, 172, 177, 181–182, 184 Aiken Roshi, Robert, 19 American Cancer Society, 64 American Peace Test (APT), x, 13, 74–75, 181 American Public Health Association, 13, 74 Antinuclear activism, 12; movement, xii, 186 Antoszewska, O.S.F., Sr. Klaryta, 47–49 Asceticism, 27–31, 42; antinuclear, xiii, 97; new asceticism, 29, 35, 186; nuclear asceticism, 34–35; old asceticism, 29, 42; studies, xi Ash Wednesday, 50, 59, 60 Atomic Energy Commission, Las Vegas office, 40 August Desert Witness, 74–75 Aung San Suu Kyi, 19 Austin, D.J., 164 Baldovin, S.J., John F., 117–118 Baruch Plan, 189 n Bazell, Dianne M., 28 Bean, Peg, 74, 158, 181 Beerman, Rabbi Leonard, 158 Bell, Catherine, 31–32, 37, 150 Berrigan, S.J., Daniel, 2, 20, 39, 45, 51, 83, 185; methodology, 52 Berrigan brothers (Daniel and Phillip), 53; 198–199 n

Berry, O.S.F., Sr. Karen, 80 Bhardwaj, S.M., 165 Boff, Leonardo, 136–137 Bondurant, Joan, 18, 215 n Bowman, Glenn, 166 Boyer, Paul, 25 Brown, Chris, 158 Bucher, Catherine, 13–14 Bucher, O.F.M., Fr. Raymond “Jackie,” 64 Buddha, 185 Buddhism, 18–19, 193 n Buer, O.F.M., Br. David, 162 Burton-Christie, Douglas, 94 Bush, President George, 76–77, 181 Buswell, Bishop, 75 Camara, Archbishop Dom Helder, 92 Camp Desert Rock, 51, 54, 62, 200 n Campo, James Eduardo, 164–165, 213–214 n Carter, President Jimmy, 41, 47 Casey, Art, 74, 158, 186, 199–200 n Casey, June Stark, 157 Catholic Worker, movement, xi, 81, 88–92, 97, 184; newspaper, 40 Cejka, Mary Ann, 21–23 Chaos Affinity Group, 1 Chavez, Cesar, 19–20, 82–83, 170 Chernus, Ira, 124 Christian realism, 38–39 Christian spirituality, 88 Citizens Concerned about the Neutron Bomb, 47–48 Civil defense, drills, xii, 27, 34–39, 42

229

230

Index

Civil disobedience, ix, 11, 39, 64, 97, 129–156; Gandhian, 138–140; “loving disobedience,” 65, 78 Civil Rights movement, 130, 168–169 Clark, Dick, 49, 67, 86 Clift, Jean and Wallace, 162–163 Cold War, 32–33, 35, 87 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, x, 4, 9, 181, 183, 202 n Constantine, Roman Emperor, 116–118 Constantinian Church, 117–119 Containment, 32, 196 n Coolidge, Matthew, 7 Corpus Christi (Body of Christ) Desert Experience, 76 D’Escoto, Miguel, 158 Dairiki, Jack, 157 Dalai Lama, (Tenzin Gyatso) The, 19 Davies, Oliver, 15 Day, Dorothy, 19–20, 36, 38–40, 88–90, 92, 148, 167, 185 De Sola, Carla, 158 Dear, S.J., Fr. John, 139, 142 Deming, Barbara, 138 Desert spirituality, ix, xi, 81, 92–97 Douglas, Mary, 32, 53 Douglass, James W., 20, 69, 83, 122–123, 137–138, 208 n Douglass, Shelley, 20–21 Driscoll, Jim, 21 Dunn, Ed, 73, 85–86 Eade, John, 165, 172, 174 Easter Sunday, 67 Ediger, Peter, 131, 144 Egan, Eileen, 35–36, 40 Eggleston, Barbara, 38 Einstein, Albert, 185 El Salvador, 16 Elizondo, Virgil, 173 Ellsberg, Daniel, 41–42, 67, 74 Engaged Buddhism, 18–19 Erikson, Erik H., 58–59

Falk, Richard, 33 Fallout studies, 190 n Flanagan, Kieran, 180 Foucault, Michel, 30, 36 Franciscans, 45–46 Franciscan Friars of California, St. Barbara Province, 23, 47 Franciscan Peacemakers weekend, 73 Franciscan spirituality, 81, 85–88, 97 Gandhi, Arun, 157 Gandhi, Mohandas K., xii, 17, 51, 58–59, 81–83, 138–139, 154, 167–169, 185, 215 n Gandhi, Sunanda, 157 Gates, Gen. Mahlon, 49, 70–72 George, Judge Lloyd, 132 Ghaffer Khan, Khan Abdul, 18 Gide, Andre, 3 Gignoux, Jane Hughes, 99–113, 144, 150, 178 Girard, Rene, 120 Glassman, Roshi Bernard, 19 Global Anti-Nuclear Alliance (GANA), x Goddess Temple, 1 Good Friday, 15, 60, 62, 64, 68, 101–103, 112, 121, 131, 205 n, 206 n Graduate Theological Union, 45 Graf, Julienne, 48–49, 63, 86 Greenpeace, x, 75 Grimes, Ronald Gumbleton, Bishop Thomas, 3, 21–22, 75 Haig, Alexander, 64 Hamill, Douglas, 130, 133–137, 144, 150, 161, 209 n Harney, Corbin, 76–77, 157, 160 Harpham, Geoffrey, 30 Healing Global Wounds, 18, 76 Heisenberg Principle, 172 Hennacy, Ammon, 36, 38–41 Henrie, Sabine, 158

Index Hibakusha (Japanese atomic survivors), 114 Hiroshima, 5, 20, 48, 140, 159, 161; bombing of, 50, 171, 194 n; Day, 104, 133, 140; woman and child, 114 Hirschhorn, Linda, 158 Holmes, Sandra Jishu, 19 Holub, Rabbi Margaret, 157 Holy Thursday, 64 Holy Week Peace Walk, 76 Huerta, Dolores, 158 Hunter, Lt. Col., 41 Instruments of Peace, 49 International Alliance of Atomic Veterans, x Islam, 18 Jerusalem, conflict between Christians and Muslims, 206 n Jesus, 28, 63, 79, 167, 174, 185 John XXIII, Pope, 20, 179 Johnson, Elizabeth, 217 n Jones, Jim, 42 Judaism, 18 Juergensmeyer, Mark, 83 Kaplan, Louis, 36 Kazakhstan, 10 Kelly, Bishop Leontine, 158 Khudai Khidmatgars (“Servants of God”), 18 Kieckhefer, Richard, 180 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 19, 82–83, 167 Knight, Peter, 67 Knopf, Jeffrey W., 9–10 Kuletz, Valerie L., 7 Laman, Dave, 71 Laman, Mary, 71 Lane, Belden C., 95 Las Vegas (Nevada),1, 45, 60, 73, 76, 96

231

Las Vegas (Nevada) Franciscan Center, 23, 49 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7, 78, 130, 154 Lent, 11, 23, 60, 68, 178 Lenten Desert Experience (LDE), 43, 48–51, 57, 60, 61, 63–64, 67–68, 70–71, 73, 75–76, 78, 80, 140, 191 n, 200 n; Lenten Desert Experience II, 73; Lenten Desert Experience III, 73; Lenten Desert Experience IV, 74; Lenten Desert Experience V, 74 Lifton, Robert J., x, 11, 26, 33 Linenthal, Edward, 124 Litell, O.S.F., Mary, 49–50, 86 Long, Charles S., 166, 214 n Los Alamos National Laboratory, 7, 131, 154 Lynch, O.S.F., Sr. Rosemary, 47–50, 69–70, 86, 158 Malcolm X, 164–165 MacMurdy, Duncan, 50, 73–74, 89–91, 177, 181 Malik-al-Kamil, 86 Manibusan, Jesse, 4, 158 Manoff, Robert, 25 Maurin, Peter, 89–90 McCarthy, S.N.D., Patricia, 95–96 McCoy, O.F.M., Fr. Alan, 87–88 McElhaney, Jean, 14, 140–141, 152–153 Merlino, Lt. Sheriff Jim, 54–59, 66, 74, 81, 147, 152–154 Merton, Thomas, 3, 17–18, 20, 68, 83, 93–94, 179, 185 “Mighty Oak” nuclear test, 74 Miles, Margaret, xii, 28–30, 34, 42, 137, 173 Millennium 2000, 2, 76 Miller, Rhea, 49 Mitchell, Greg, 26 Mitchell, Timothy, 121 Mixon, Randle, xiii Molloy, Marie, 129

232

Index

Monastero, Joan, 14 Monasticism, Eastern and Western Christian, 92 Morrison, Toni, 173–174 Morrissey, Michael, 34 Mounier, Emmanuel, 88 Moyer, Bill, 182 Muste, A.J., 36, 38–40 Mutual Assured Destruction, 24, 38 Myers, Ched, 116–117, 158 Nadel, Alan, 32 Nagasaki, 5, 48, 140, 159, 161; bombing of, 50, 194 n; Day, 133, 140, 158 Nagler, Michael, 82 National Association of Radiation Survivors, x National Ignition Facility, 78 Nelson, Bob, 58, 147, 154 Nevada Desert Experience (NDE), ix, x, xi, xiv, 2, 9, 10, 17, 42–43, 64–65, 70–71, 73–76, 78, 80, 88, 96–97, 99, 102, 124, 130–131, 140, 148, 150, 154–157, 166, 170, 177, 182–187, 191 n Nevada-Semipalitinsk movement, 10 Nevada Test Site, ix, x, xi, xii, 8, 21–23, 29, 33, 40–41, 46–49, 60, 64–65, 69, 76, 78–80, 84, 88, 104, 113, 133, 137, 152, 154–155, 165, 171, 175, 178, 185, 187 Nhat Hanh, Thich, 19 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 38 Niebuhr, Richard R., 157, 163 Nonviolence, active, 81–85, 97, 103; Gandhian, xi, 17–19, 81, 84, 184, 203 n; principled, 82; theory, xi Nonviolent action, definition, 82 Nonviolent resistance, 35 Nuclear America, 36, 157 Nuclear Cross, 114 Nuclear disarmament movement, ix Nuclear first strike, 24

Nuclear Freeze Campaign (Bilateral Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign), 21, 74, 181 Nuclearism, x, 33–34, 185 Nye County (Nevada), 3 Occhiogrosso, Julia, 91, 122, 140–141, 145–153, 155, 210 n O’Gorman, Angie, 82 Oakes, Guy, 34–35 Operation Ranger, 5 Operations Crossroads, 5 Origen, 93 Partial Test Ban Treaty, x, 33 Peace Camp, 2, 74–75 Pechilis, Karen, 165 Perez Esquivel, Adolpho Pfisterer, O.F.M., Fr. Robert, 87 Pilgrimage, xii, 124, 157, 161–175, 184, 206 n, 207 n, 213–214 n, 215 n; antinuclear, ix, xiii, 97, 157–175 Pinsent, John, 28 Plowshares movement, Berrigan inspired, 130 Pollack, Jackson, 171 Preston, James J., 124, 163, 166 Protest, political, xi Quaker (Society of Friends), 47 Queen, Christopher S., 18–19 Ramsey, Boniface, 93 Ramsey, Paul, 38 Reagan administration, 9–10, 24 Reagan, President Ronald, 41 Religion, 12, 214 n Richard, O.F.M., Fr. Alain, 50, 158 Richards, Jack, 5–6 Ries, Julien, 115–116 Rinschede, G., 165 Ritual theory, xi, 211–212 n Ritualization, xii Riverside Research Institute, 101–102 Roberts, Patricia, 15 Rohr, Richard, 158

Index Roman Catholic Church, 178–180, 216 n Roman Empire, 123 Romero, Bishop Oscar, 16–17 Rossi, William, 160 Sallnow, Michael, 165, 172, 174 Sandritter, Gregory, 50 Satyagraha (Soul-Force), 58, 82–84 Schechner, Richard, 31, 155 Schneiders, Sandra, 16 Schmidt, Ann, 142–144, 150, 210 n Schneiders, Sandra Schultz, Jerry, 5–6 Sears, Jerry, 157 Senauke, Alan, 157 Sheen, Martin, 3 Short, Vip, 13 Sisters of St, Francis of Penance and Christian Charity of Redwood City, California, 23, 47 Smith, Jonathan Z., 116, 118 Sobrino, S.J, Jon, 16 Solnit, Rebecca, 214 n Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR), 4, 9, 12, 24, 74, 182, 190–191 n Spatz, Carl, 54 Spirituality, 12–17 Sponholz, O.F.M., Gary, 132–133 Stations of the Cross, xiii, 11–12, 15, 62, 114–127, 206 n; Stations of the Nuclear Cross, 97, 99–127 St. Antony, 185 St. Clare of Assisi, 85–86, 167, 185 St. Francis of Assisi, 23, 45–46, 85–86, 134, 136–137; feast of, 48, 140, 167, 185 Stational liturgy, 117–120 Stigmata, The, 209 n Suleimenov, Olzhas, 10 Sullivan, Judge William, 67, 134 Swanson, R.N., 120 Symens-Bucher, Anne (Bucher, Anne), 13, 21, 50, 64–67, 73–74, 84–85, 91–92, 183

233

Symens-Bucher, Terry (Symens, Terry), 73–74, 85–86 Theissen, Gerd, 186 Thompson, Erik, 130–133, 144, 150, 161 Thoreau, Henry David, 139 Thurston, Herbert, 119 Tracy, David, 89 Treaty of Ruby Valley, 3 Truman, President Harry S., 5 Turner, Victor, 125–126, 145, 153–154, 158, 164–165, 186, 211 n Tutu, Archbishop Desmond, 20 United Farm Workers, 88 U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, 20 U.S. Civil Defense program, xii, 27, 30, 34–39, 42 U.S. Department of Energy, 2, 69–70, 104, 174 Valantasis, Richard, 30–31 Valle-Rauth, Robert Della, 113–114 Van Gennep, Arnold, 164 Vatican II (Second Vatican Council), 179–181 Vaughan, Genevieve, 1 Vitale, O.F.M., Fr. Louis, 15, 45–46, 48, 50, 54, 62, 67, 73, 85–88, 99–100, 110–113, 126, 131–133, 136, 154, 158–159 Waajiman, Kee, 15–16 Walsh, Michael, 119–120 Walzer, Michael, 38 Waskow, Arthur, 158 Way of the Cross, 62–63, 105–109, 114; via crucis (Latin: “way of the cross”), 115, 207 n Weart, Spencer R., 26 Weber, Max, 30 Weil, Janet, 157–161 Welsome, Eileen, 5

234

Index

Western Shoshone nation, x, 1, 2, 3, 14, 18, 74, 76–77, 109, 174, 185 White, Bishop Dale C., 158 Williams, Terry Tempest, 158 Wistos, Charla, 49 Wittner, Lawrence S., 8 Woods, Keith, 215 n

Woods, Lewis, 5–6 Wylie-Kellerman, Bill, 214 n Yarloslow, Cantor Greg, 142 Zabarte, Ian, 157 Zawada, Fr. Jerry, 133

FIGURE 1. The church is crossing the line. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: c. 1988.

FIGURE 2. Sheriff Jim Merlino. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: c. 1992.

FIGURE 3. Mark Schroeder and Cathy Bucher, Easter 1987. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: 1987.

4. Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J. and Martin Sheen preparing to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience by crossing into the Nevada test site together. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: February 8, 1989.

FIGURE

5. Franciscan Friars at mass at the Nevada test site. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: February 19, 1989.

FIGURE

FIGURE 6. Fr. Louis Vitale, O.F.M. celebrating mass at the Nevada test site. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: Easter 1987.

FIGURE 7. August desert witness, March 1986. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: August 1986.

FIGURE 8. ADW I, August 6–9, 1985, the “White Line.” Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: August 6–9, 1985.

9. Anne Bucher and Terry Symens, August desert witness, 1986. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: August 1986.

FIGURE

10. Pauline Esteves and Anne Symens-Bucher at the NTS entrance. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: c. 1992.

FIGURE

11. Arrestees being bussed to jail. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: c. 1988.

FIGURE

FIGURE 12. Mass near the NTS entrance in the mid-1980s. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: c. 1985.

13. Phil Runkel, Holy Thursday, 1996, at NTS gate. Photographer: unknown. Owner of the work: Nevada Desert Experience. Date: April 1996.

FIGURE

FIGURE 14. Corbin Harney, spiritual leader of the Western Shoshone Nation, leading a prayer circle near the entrance to the Nevada Test Site. Photographer: Allan Sawyer. Owner of the work: Allan Sawyer. Date: 1997.

15. Adopt a Highway: NDE’s 1998 Holy Week Peace Walk (from Las Vegas to the Nevada Test Site). Photographer: Allan Sawyer. Owner of the work: Allan Sawyer. Date: 1998.

FIGURE