Fall
Ministries Network helps parents build peace and justice at home
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff
When it comes to suggesting how people can be peacemakers at home
and in the larger world, James and Kathleen McGinnis are under few
illusions.
As the parents of three teenagers, they wrote a few
years ago in a new introduction to their re-issued book, Parenting for Peace
and Justice -- Ten Years Later (Orbis, 1995), we have wrestled with
the challenge of integrating our family life and social ministry for almost 20
years.
The McGinnises faced a quandary many families recognize: We
have wanted from the beginning to be able to act for justice without
sacrificing our children, and to build family community without isolating
ourselves from the world.
That balancing act has been the content of and provides the
context for their lives in peacemaking that began, as often happens, with
protest.
In the 1960s, Jim McGinnis, who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from
St. Louis University (his dissertation was on Gandhis understanding of
freedom and nonviolence), was on the university faculty. In 1970, with the war
in Southeast Asia escalating, the university decided to continue its Reserve
Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program.
Jim McGinnis organized a group of faculty members to start the
Institute for the Study of Peace; 40 students enrolled in the first course. A
year later, with Kathy (who holds an MA in history from St. Louis University)
and who was also a staffer at the peace institute, the institute held its first
course for teachers. That year, too, the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi
invited the McGinnises to advise them on a college-based peace studies
program.
The institute marked its fifth anniversary by leaving St. Louis
University and establishing itself as the independent and ecumenical Institute
for Peace and Justice.
In 1981 churches representing seven Christian denominations joined
the McGinnises to form the Parenting for Peace and Justice Network, and two
years later three families from the network were featured on the Phil Donahue
television show.
Top priorities for the institute include the Families
against Violence programs; an internship program for the institute, and
Fostering Family Vision and Values workshops, aimed especially at
the needs of families of color.
And families of color are again something the McGinnises know
something about.
Their daughter Theresas Black and Native American
heritage called and continues to call us to move more deeply into her
worlds. The three McGinnis children, Tom, 28, David, 26, and Theresa, 24,
are adopted.
Contacts: E-mail: PPJN@aol.com Web site:
members.aol.com/ppjn
National Catholic Reporter, September 3,
1999
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