Pilgrimage through a Burning World

Ken Butigan

Description

For two decades the Nevada Desert Experience has organized nonviolent action at the Nevada Test Site as part of the global movement to end nuclear testing. Pilgrimage through a Burning World illuminates how the Franciscan-based group has crafted a contemporary desert spirituality that integrates religious ritual and political action to grapple with the challenges of an institutionalized and internalized nuclear world. Ken Butigan shows how the annual pilgrimage to the test site has contributed to the personal transformation of people "on both sides of the fence" at the test site and to the worldwide emergence of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices of a Nuclearized World

2. The First Journey—Lenten Desert Experience 1982

3. Nevada Desert Experience

4. The Stations of the Nuclear Cross at the Nevada Test Site

5. Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

6. Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Catholic Church

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791486504
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

P I L G R I M A G E T H R O U G H

A B U R N I N G W O R L D

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P I L G R I M A G E T H R O U G H

A B U R N I N G W O R L D

Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site

Ken Butigan

State University of New York Press

Kind permission was received to use the following: Material fromThe Plutonium Filesby Eileen Welsome, copyright © 1999 by Eileen Welsome. Used by permission of The Dial Press/ Dell Publishing, a divi- sion of Random House, Inc. This material is also reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc. Copyright © 1999 by Eileen Welsome.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2003 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Butigan, Ken. Pilgrimage through a burning world : spiritual practice and nonviolent protest at the Nevada Test Site / Ken Butigan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5777-X (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5778-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Nuclear warfare—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Antinuclear movement—Nevada—Nevada Test Site. I. Nevada Desert Experience (Organization) II. Title.

BR115.A85 B88 2003 261.8'732—dc21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2002030970

For Cynthia Toyomi Okayama Dopke, a gracious pilgrim through this burning world

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Notes

Contents

i

Conclusion

1

1

Acknowledgments

Introduction

9

9

7

3

Index

129

The First Journey—Lenten Desert Experience 1982

4

The Stations of the Nuclear Cross at the Nevada Test Site

Nevada Desert Experience

4

5

2

The Nevada Test Site and the Socializing Practices of a Nuclearized World

Preface

v

x

x

1

2

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the Nevada Test Site

5

3

vii

6

Bibliography

229

219

189

177

Antinuclear Pilgrimage at the Nevada Test Site

157

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Preface

For over two decades the Nevada Desert Experience has organized nonviolent direct action at the Nevada Test Site as part of the global movement to end nuclear testing. Nevada Desert Experience (NDE), a Franciscan-based organization, consciously integrates religious ritual and political action at the gates of the United States government’s pri- mary nuclear proving ground in a remote corner of the Great American desert. This book explores NDE’s activity as a contemporary form of desert spirituality grappling with the interwoven religious and political challenges of an institutionalized and internalized nuclearism. In the fourth century C . E ., the father and mother founders of Chris- tian desert spirituality fled to the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts to engage in transformation of the self and reconceptualization of Christ- ian discipleship in the face of the challenges posed by Roman late antiq- uity. In the twentieth century, the Nevada Desert Experience developed a contemporary desert spirituality of peacemaking, politics, and prayer at the gates of the U.S. government’s nuclear test site in southern Nevada in response to the spiritual and political crisis posed by atomic weapons. This study examines this contemporary religious movement and a num- ber of its key practices contributing to personal and social transforma- tion, including antinuclear pilgrimage, faith-based civil disobedience, and the Stations of the Nuclear Cross. The design, testing, and deployment of nuclear arms have been fueled for half a century by their proponents’ presupposition that weapons of mass destruction safeguard peace and security by deterring aggression. In an age of unimaginably colossal threat, it is held, only counterthreat keeps the world from plunging into the abyss of extermi- nation. To reason otherwise is to retreat into misguided and dangerous fantasies of wishful thinking and appeasement. Those opposed to the development of nuclear weapons, it is argued, do not understand power and evil and their lethal combination. Over these same five decades a growing worldwide nuclear disar- mament movement has emerged. The persistence and ubiquity of this effort attest not only to its steadfastness but also to its fundamental out- look. This movement, which has flourished on every continent in many

ix