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Lederach was due in class at Notre Dame, where he teaches international peacebuilding. Lederach has worked with Colombians for more than ten years, addressing that nation's bloody conflict. While stranded, Lederach pulled out his laptop computer and began to write.

A Mennonite and a pacifist, he drafted a wide-ranging proposal to treat the terrorists as criminals and to erode their networks from within their own cultures.

By the time Lederach arrived home, his piece had been posted online (www.mediate.com) and had gained wide readership among pacifists.

Global terrorism has provided a new challenge to the commitments of Lederach and other members of historic peace churches (mainly Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites).

Lederach and others remain committed to pacifism. But many Christian pacifists have been shaken by the events of September 11.

Scott Simon, a National Public Radio reporter and a Quaker, said during a September 25 lecture that he had seen the "fatal flaw" of his former pacifism: "All the best people could be killed by all the worst ones."

In confronting terrorists, "the United States has no sane alternative but to wage war with. … unflinching resolution," he said. Simon repeated this declaration in a Wall Street Journal column.

Echoes of Simon's perspective rattled through many peace-church congregations. But in the weeks since, many activists have regained their footing. Largely drowned out by widespread support for the war on terrorism, they have begun carrying on an equally persistent alternative witness.

"Simon's conclusions are disappointing but not surprising," says Patrick Nugent, director of the Center for Quaker Thought and Practice at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. "Pacifists whose convictions are the fruit of secular strategic reasoning tend to collapse when confronted with the strategic weaknesses of pacifism. Quaker pacifism was originally, and at its best still is, a response

of discipleship, an attempt to be faithful to Jesus' clear instructions to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, be peacemakers, suffer for righteousness' sake, and not resist the evildoer."

Simon told Christianity Today that a key to his own change was reporting on the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo: "I could not figure out any effective pacifist response. I could figure out one that would be morally impeccable, but not one that would work."

Ruth Krall directs the Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies program at Goshen College, a Mennonite school in Indiana. "Yes, my initial reaction [on September 11] was complete shock," she says. "But I still affirm the Mennonite position that the call of Christ is to nonparticipation in violence and war."

Krall's pacifism is not only a matter of doctrine; her program sends students into war zones. While there, they work on long-term projects aimed at building peace. And she has been in war zones herself. Students at Goshen have gathered more than a thousand signatures on an antiwar statement. They have organized vigils and forums.

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December 3 2001, Vol. 45, No. 15