For 24 years Phil Berrigan and Liz McAlister have been coming to Rowe to share their vision of a better world and the actions they take to create that world. Their religious faith is deep and inspiring and we are honored to share their work with you. Phil and Liz come out of a tradition that values retreats as a place to quicken faith, to study what the scriptures can tell us, to share our stories, and to look for ways to act in the world with compassion, justice, and love.
We invite you to join us in creating a community for a weekend with these brave souls who have lived in a small community called Jonah House in Baltimore for 28 years. Moving to a new location in 1996, Jonah House has continued to express its vision with common worship, nonviolent resistance, gardening, and participation of children and young people. If you are a full-time activist, peace worker or servant of humanity, you're welcome for half price.
In 1967 Phil Berrigan became the first Catholic priest arrested for civil disobedience in this country. He and three friends, known as the Baltimore Four, poured their own blood on draft files. They chose to share the risks that our draft-age young men were facing during the American invasion of Southeast Asia. On the night before the Baltimore Four were sentenced, Phil napalmed more draft files with the Catonsville Nine. After years in prison for exercising his conscience in these acts of courage, he married Elizabeth McAlister, a woman who matched his commitment to active, nonviolent struggle. In 1973 they founded Jonah House, began raising three children, wrote The Times Discipline (Phil also wrote Of Beasts and Beastly Images and Fighting the Lamb's War), and continued their resistance to the war machine. In 1980, Phil and his brother Dan were members of the Plowshares Eight, a group who symbolically disarmed a Mark 12A warhead at the General Electric Plant in King-of-Prussia, Pennsylvania. It was the first actual act of nuclear disarmament in 37 years. In 1983, Liz was part of a group that turned a cruise missile attached to a B-52 into a plowshare at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, NY. That act resulted in a three-year prison term. Phil was just released after two years in prison for his most recent Plowshares action, he's spent 11 years in prison since the first Baltimore Four action, and it's hard to schedule him at Rowe because he is in jail so often. Phil and Dan have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire. There have been about 75 Plowshares actions, always in community, in this country, Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia. We are honored to welcome the return of these courageous leaders to explore their brave actions with those who join us.