Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 10 The Future of Christian Nonviolence Should Every Church Be a Peace Church? F ifteen thousand US soldiers had already died in Vietnam when, on October 27, 1967, Father Philip Berrigan and three accomplices entered the Baltimore Selective Service headquarters carrying a pitcher of blood. Locating the cabinets containing the records of men eligible for the military draft, they poured the blood over the open files. The Baltimore Four, as they came to be known, were convicted six months later on felony charges. Days before they were to stand for sentencing, Philip Berrigan, together with his brother (and fellow Catholic priest) Daniel and seven others, entered the Selective Service offices in Catons- ville, Maryland, hauled hundreds of draft files out onto an adjacent parking lot, and inciner- ated them using ­ homemade napalm. On hearing of the Berrigans’ action, we at the Catholic Worker house in New York City were astounded by their escalation of tactics. Philip was a dear friend – he had baptized my daughter the year before – and now I admired his daring, wanting to believe that he had enlarged the boundaries of nonviolent action. Not everyone was so enthusiastic. Dorothy Day, the radical pacifist founder of the Catholic Worker, while not condemning the Berrigans, remarked pointedly: “These acts are not ours.” Property damage, in her view, was not part of the nonviolent arsenal. Burning one’s own draft card was one thing – Dorothy herself had pub- licly urged young American men to do just that. But destroying other people’s documents crossed a line. Tom Cornell, a veteran peace activist and Catholic Worker, lives with his wife, Monica, at the Peter Maurin Farm in Marlboro, New York. TO M C O R N E L L Above, detail from We Rise! Children, Trauma, and Resilience. This street mural from the City of Philadelphia ­Mural Arts Program was completed in 2013 with the participation of at-risk youth. Photo by Steve Weinik www.muralarts.org