January 2006

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Interfaith Center for Peace and Justics: Memoirs of Beginnings
by Elaine Jones

The early eighties were an exciting time for peace activists. Ronald Reagan had been elected at a time when the nation was furious about the Iranian hostage crisis, and seemed willing to go along with the call for a vast military buildup including the new MX missile. Reagan opposed nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties, and talked glibly about fighting and winning a nuclear war while the US and its NATO allies deployed 600 nuclear missiles across Europe.

Fears of nuclear war spawned the Nuclear Freeze Movement, and many Adams Countians joined nearly a million people in June 1982 for a rally in Central Park in New York City, calling for an end to the nuclear arms race. It was a defining moment in my life, and I quit my college teaching position and vowed to work full time to catch the moment in history when we could turn our backs on nuclear weapons once and for all.

I got a job at the Pennsylvania Council of Churches as Associate Director of the PA Nuclear Freeze Campaign. One of our first actions was to get the Pennsylvania legislature to pass a nuclear freeze resolution. The movement swept the country and was supported by 70 percent or more of the population and endorsed by 275 city governments and twelve state legislatures. We worked throughout Pennsylvania to motivate citizens to join the movement and press for a nuclear freeze. Many Adams Countians joined the nuclear freeze movement, and engaged in demonstrations, debates, and educational forums.

According to historian Lawrence Wittner, the Administration largely lost the battle to develop its favorite nuclear weapon, the MX missile, due to popular pressure, and opened negotiations on eliminating strategic nuclear weapons. Moreover, reports Wittner, the President began to proclaim that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”

In 1984, while the nuclear freeze movement was ebbing, I wanted to make sure that voices for peace would not cease, and began meeting with other activists to establish a permanent peace center. We reached out to the churches to cultivate broad support in the county, and created the Interfaith Center for Peace and Justice. Kathy Redding (then Kathy Wilson) created the logo that we still use today–a ploughshare (from the biblical admonition to turn our swords into ploughshares). Lots of people joined in the effort and did the hard work of organizing: recruiting local leaders, finding an office (with space donated by George Olinger in the Codori building next to the Red Cross), writing by-laws, and raising money to hire an executive director. (The first director was Sister Sally Tolles, a member of the Daughters of the Holy Spirit.) Our goal was to make certain that peace concerns remained front and center in our county no matter what the political climate was.

While having paid staff seemed essential to me, it has been the work of dedicated volunteers that has proved to be the lifeblood of the many lasting contributions to peace that have flowed from the Interfaith Center since our early efforts in 1985.

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