Both Swords And Ploughshares

This collection of essays examines interactions of war, peace and religion in the United States, a country where religious faith was, and still is, often deeply felt and widely held, where faith has provided a set of values to uphold with fervor or to transgress in protest, and where religion has been used to legitimize both armed violence and passive resistance. These essays analyze the mythos of America as a place of religious freedom, yet one imbued with a socially-imposed civil religion and underpinned by a heavy presumption of Protestant dominance. With subjects ranging from the War of Independence to the early 21st century, the contributions to this volume focus on a variety of historical and chronological circumstances in order to consider what concrete, tangible outcomes, what artifacts, were produced by the interface of war, peace and religion – the swords and ploughshares of the title. This volume thus presents a variety of often multifaceted responses that reflect its interdisciplinary scope. Some contributions refer to fine art pieces, including statues, paintings, and murals, and others to works of literature, theology, or public speaking. Some of these interfaces were performed on stage or in film, while yet others were heard on the radio or read in newspapers or journals. Some of the essays gathered here concern individuals working through the meaning of armed conflict in terms of their own, personal faith, while others examine the impact of such conflicts on a larger scale, as with whole faith communities or in the shaping of national or foreign policy. The first part, Communities, looks at interfaces that served to structure a whole community. The second, Margins, examines instances where the relationship between religion and war and peace has occupied a more marginal space within a faith community. The final section turns this interface Outward, situating it away from American soil or noting how foreign war shaped the spirituality of those returning.

This collection of essays examines interactions of war, peace and religion in the United States, a country where religious faith was, and still is, often deeply felt and widely held, where faith has provided a set of values to uphold with fervor or to transgress in protest, and where religion has been used to legitimize both armed violence and passive resistance. These essays analyze the mythos of America as a place of religious freedom, yet one imbued with a socially-imposed civil religion and underpinned by a heavy presumption of Protestant dominance. With subjects ranging from the War of Independence to the early 21st century, the contributions to this volume focus on a variety of historical and chronological circumstances in order to consider what concrete, tangible outcomes, what artifacts, were produced by the interface of war, peace and religion â " the swords and ploughshares of the title. This volume thus presents a variety of often multifaceted responses that reflect its interdisciplinary scope. Some contributions refer to fine art pieces, including statues, paintings, and murals, and others to works of literature, theology, or public speaking. Some of these interfaces were performed on stage or in film, while yet others were heard on the radio or read in newspapers or journals. Some of the essays gathered here concern individuals working through the meaning of armed conflict in terms of their own, personal faith, while others examine the impact of such conflicts on a larger scale, as with whole faith communities or in the shaping of national or foreign policy. The first part, Communities, looks at interfaces that served to structure a whole community. The second, Margins, examines instances where the relationship between religion and war and peace has occupied a more marginal space within a faith community. The final section turns this interface Outward, situating it away from American soil or noting how foreign war shaped the spirituality of those returning.

An in-depth look at how the ideas formulated by the interwar League of Nations shaped American thinking on the modern global order. In Plowshares into Swords, David Ekbladh recaptures the power of knowledge and information developed between World War I and World War II by an international society of institutions and individuals committed to liberal international order and given focus by the League of Nations in Geneva. That information and analysis revolutionized critical debates in a world in crisis. In doing so, Ekbladh transforms conventional understandings of the United States’ postwar hegemony, showing that important elements of it were profoundly influenced by ideas that emerged from international exchanges. The League’s work was one part of a larger transnational movement that included the United States and which saw the emergence of concepts like national income, gross domestic product, and other attempts to define and improve the standards of living, as well as new approaches to old questions about the role of government. Forged as tools for peace these ideas were beaten into weapons as World War II threatened. Ekbladh recounts how, though the US had never been a member of the organization, vital parts of the League were rescued after the fall of France in 1940 and given asylum at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. However, this presence in the US is just one reason its already well-regarded economic analyses and example were readily mobilized by influential American and international figures for an Allied “war of ideas,” plans for a postwar world, and even blueprints for the new United Nations. How did this body of information become so valuable? As Ekbladh makes clear, the answer is that information and analysis themselves became crucial currencies in global affairs: to sustain a modern, liberal global order, a steady stream of information about economics, politics, and society was, and remains, indispensable.

“The terrible bow was drawn taut. Men had let their powers be taken captive and had become the stooges of governments, they had become drinkers of the blood that fuelled their rage, they had become angels of evil, devils who spilled blood like water. A raven with shreds of corpses still stuck to its claws was perched on their shoulder and yet they saw nothing and understood nothing. The orders of platoon commanders were their reasoning and a ghastly rough and tumble was their home, each such home perishing piecemeal as bayonets made mincemeat of arms rising to take aim. Death was a day that had no dusk and horrors became the wont of armies.” Ploughshares into Swords is an expressionist anti-war novel in which Vančura tells the story of the denizens of the Ouhrov estate in language as baroque as the manor that ties them all together. The fragmented narrative introduces the reader to such characters as the Baron Danowitz, his sons, his French concubine, the farmhand František Horá, and the half-wit murderer Řeka in the autumn of 1913, before revealing their fates during the First World War. Spanning an area that stretches from the peaceful farmlands of Bohemia to the battlefields of Galicia, taking in the pubs of Budapest and the hospitals of Cracow, the novel constitutes an unsentimental and naturalistic approach to the war that created Czechoslovakia through a conscious subversion of the prophet Isaiah’s injunction that nations should beat their swords into ploughshares. Ploughshares into Swords is a stunning novel by one of Czech literature’s most important writers. This modernist masterpiece, akin to the work of Isaac Babel and William Faulkner, is now available in English for the very first time.

On September 9, 1980, the Plowshares Eight entered a General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and enacted the biblical command to "beat swords into plowshares" by hammering on the nose cones of two nuclear warheads and pouring blood on documents. Since that time, other small groups and individuals have entered manufacturing plants and military bases throughout the U.S., as well as in Australia, Germany, England, Ireland, Sweden, and Holland, to disarm components of nuclear and conventional weapons systems. As of Spring 2003 there have been over 150 people who, using hammers and other symbols, have carried out over 75 plowshares and related disarmament actions. This book recounts each of the actions that have occurred over the last twenty-three years and includes information about the trials and sentences plowshares activists have received. Photos of some of the actions and participants are also included in this chronology as well as other resources for peace and justice.

How to convert military victory into lasting peace, not endless guerrilla war.

A critical history of Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict Eminent historian Arno J. Mayer traces the thinkers, leaders, and shifting geopolitical contexts that shaped the founding and development of the Israeli state. He recovers for posterity internal critics such as the philosopher Martin Buber, who argued for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian Arabs. “A sense of limits is the better part of valour,” Mayer insists. Plowshares into Swords explores Israel’s indefinite deferral of the “Arab Question,” the strategic thinking behind the building of settlements and border walls, and the endurance of Palestinian resistance.