Guns at Peace Church Schools?

by Audrey deCoursey - cross-posted at the blog of the Womaen’s Caucus of the Church of the Brethren

School shootings have horrified pacifists along with all other citizens of our fair nation. We all want to prevent such violence. We all want our campuses to be safe places for higher learning, not danger zones that put students’ lives at risk. We all know that this is a terrible challenge to discern how to keep our schools safe, and that there is no one perfect answer. But shouldn’t peace church members use different means of keeping our campuses safe than our less-pacifist brethren?

Apparently not, at some Brethren schools, that is. An embarrassing Washington Post article explores how different colleges affiliated with the three historic peace churches - the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites, and the Friends/Quakers - have equipped their campuses in response to the tragedies at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. What’s embarrassing about it to a Brethren like me is that it’s only Brethren colleges (two of our seven schools), not Mennonite or Quaker schools, that have resorted to the tools of empire to (supposedly) protect students, by hiring armed guards.

Sure, even at these schools there were voices of dissent. And sure, many of the other schools rely on armed local police, but it’s only Brethren schools that have taken the initiative to bring weapons onto their campuses. Somehow, most of these schools remember their identities as peace churches, while it’s Brethren college representatives who forget and think adopting the violent means of our state will end violence. How does this make Brethren look to others, that we’re so confused about what it means to be a “living peace church” that we bring guns onto our campuses?

If any of us needed evidence of the phenomenon Carl Bowman and others are propounding, that Brethren have lost much of their peculiar identity, they need look no further than this article. Why is Brethren heritage not a “huge part” of the “culture and identity” at some Brethren colleges? Or, why is pacifist renunciation of the tools of warfare not a huge part of our Brethren heritage? Where are the Brethren pioneering “another way of living” and another way of responding to tragic violence? Do the Juniata College trustees really think guns will make the campus safer? Are none of the peace church voices loud enough to drown out the national cacophony meeting violence with more weapons - are there no recognized alternatives?

The closing line of the article, a quote by Donald B. Kraybill of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, pretty well sums up my feelings on the matter:

“I would hope that colleges in the peace church tradition have the brainpower to come up with creative nonviolent alternatives.”

Indeed.