Spirit in Action
Andy Murray Teaching Peace
Andy Murray was a founder of the Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies of Juniata College in Pennsylvania. He's also ordained in the Church of the Brethren and he’s a singer/songwriter. He'll likely change your conceptions of what Peace Studies is and what best supports such work.
- Broadcast on:
- 18 Apr 2010
- Audio Format:
- other
(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be visiting with Andy Murray of the Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies of Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In addition, Andy Murray is ordained in the church of the brethren, and he's a singer/songwriter whose music I've enjoyed for more than 25 years, especially because it so often touches on stories of people helping turn the world into a peaceful positive direction. So in addition to talking about Andy's work with peace studies, we'll include a couple of his songs. I think Andy Murray will surprise you in terms of preconceptions you may have about what peace studies involves. I think in any case, you'll enjoy getting to know about Andy Murray and his work. Andy, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. - It's a great pleasure. I've been aware of the show for a number of years, and I'm delighted to be a part of it. - And I'm delighted to have someone on my show who teaches, has been teaching Peace and Conflict Studies for quite some time. How long have you been at Juniata College? - I came to Juniata College in 1971 in the fall of '71, so I guess that works out to 38 or 39 years. - I think you told me that you're retired. - Yes, I'm officially retired. I'm still doing a little bit of teaching in what we call phased retirement. I'm doing a course in a totally unrelated area. I'm working with computer science and information technology, teaching a course on digital audio production, and this year I'm also doing a course for Peace and Conflict Studies on water. It's called water and conflict. - Water and conflict. I mean, water is something that's free, everybody in the universe has it. Why would there be conflict over water? - It's free and it's also the one resource other than air that we just have to have pretty much every day. It's in short supply. The way water is distributed and the way people have to get it means that a lot of people are working, are depending on the same sources of water. Very often, those sources cross over international boundaries, both in terms of rivers and in terms of aquifers. Aquifers often are under several international boundaries, and so there's tremendous potential for conflict with water. I've been working at this four or five years, and we've discovered that even though there's been a lot of conflict over water and we feel like there's potential conflict over water, humans also have a remarkably hopeful history in terms of finding creative ways to solve water conflicts. And so it's been a very exciting field of pursuit. - We should mention that your work with Juniata, I guess since 1971, has included something called the Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. Is that a school of, is that a separate organization connected with Juniata, what is it? - It's a separate organization. I actually founded the Institute in about 1985. Peace Studies was growing, and we were getting a lot of people who were interested in making contributions to setting up Peace Studies, and we needed a place where we could sort of develop an endowment and set aside certain monies that would support Peace Studies indefinitely. And so the Baker Institute became that organization. It does research in the field, it does curriculum development, but the most important thing it does is to coordinate and support the Peace and Conflict Studies academic program at the college. - And so it is associated with the college. Do students take classes with the Baker Institute or US staff or others as staff at Juniata? - Yes, all of the teaching staff in the Institute are also on the faculty of the college. And students take courses through the Institute just as they would a department. We are fairly intentional about not making a department because there's been very strong inter-departmental support and participation in Peace Studies at Juniata, and we wanted to preserve that and not have a department of Peace Studies. And so the Institute really serves the function of a department and it has some additional responsibilities as well. - I believe in the idea of Peace and Conflict Studies. I've known other teachers, I've seen other departments. I know about the work, of course, me as a Quaker and you as a member of the Church of the Brethren, Peace is very important to us. How do you do that in an academic way that's compelling? Can you give me some stories of what you've learned taught, what your students have experienced that can flesh out what Peace Studies really is about? - Sure. Essentially, we think of Peace Studies as applied liberal arts. What we mean by that is that Peace Studies really is organized around a human problem, much as education or health studies or environmental studies. Those are all programs within the academic community that use the resources and methodologies of various departments and programs to address a particular human problem. For example, we have a very strong education department at Gernietta. Education people use the resources of sociologists, of psychologists to try to understand how people learn and how people process information. And they do that in order to address the problem of ignorance of helping people to become knowledgeable about the world around them. Environmental studies uses the methodologies and the knowledge banks of chemistry, of biology, of geology, of geography. And they use those in a kind of an interdisciplinary way to address the problem of environmental degradation of the breakdown of environmental systems. We sort of fit into that mold. We think of ourselves as applied liberal arts because we believe that actually there's no department that cannot make an important contribution to helping us become more sophisticated, more knowledgeable about why humans organize to kill each other. And that's the problem we work with. We work with the problem of war and of trying to really address the questions that humans have about why humans do this activity, which seems so counterproductive and so counterintuitive. - Given that we're not only humans, but we're animals, are we unusual as an animal species in that we kill each other or that we organize to kill each other in the way that we do? - Pretty much so. There are a few other species that practice organized community violence sort of routinely, a couple of species of ants, maybe one or two species of rats. And there are some primates who have certainly exhibited some community violence organized violence, but for the most part, it's pretty rare in the rest of the animal kingdom to have the kind of investment and resources put into organized violence that you find in the human species. - You said that the big question is, why do humans organize to kill each other? Why do we do that? And given that you've been studying this and teaching it for a few decades, you must know the answer. So what's the answer? - Well, obviously we don't know the answer. I like to think that over the years we've gotten a little more sophisticated in the questions we ask and in some of the things that we know about it, but we clearly ultimately don't know the answer to that question. I'm not sure that we ever will, but I think that we can make progress in both understanding why we do it and in learning how better not to do it. That's a kind of tortured way of saying it, but that's actually what we're about is trying to learn how better not to do it. It's sort of like in health studies, we don't expect that the world will ever be totally free of disease, and yet we don't let that keep us from a kind of focused and intentional effort to keep learning what we can about disease and keep trying to develop a healthier world. And in some ways, that's the direction we think we're going. - I imagine that there's a lot of people who are feeling very discouraged now. Of course, we've been involved in wars. In the case of Afghanistan, it's been over eight years. Iraq, at least seven. And a lot of people voted for change when they voted for Barack Obama. And unfortunately, we haven't seen a major change on the war front. You've been teaching peace studies. What is the hope that we have? What can you show us as hope from your peace studies about what is the promise of a more peaceful future? What have you learned about what do you teach? That should be giving us hope. - That's a good question, and I remain hopeful, so I ought to have an answer for that. I'm not sure that I do. I can tell you that even though the world seems to be more violent than ever, it really isn't, we have since the end of the Vietnam War, there's been a kind of fluctuation in violence in international violence that's actually going down. I don't know that we can expect that that will continue. I certainly hope that it will, but there are a lot of things in place that would indicate that the 21st century is not going to be as violent and awful as the 20th century. I guess I would find what's happened to Europe to be a kind of very hopeful thing. A group of countries that were locked in brutal conflict for hundreds of years, it's pretty unlikely that anything of that nature is going to happen again, at least in the world as it is today. The European Union is a kind of miraculous thing. If you look at how it sort of evolved out of World War II and how it's managed to survive and become stronger, I think that's an extremely hopeful thing for us to keep focused on. - How do you help this movement in your studies? And I'm talking about you, of course, but also your students. What specifically are you doing that's helping move the world in this peaceful direction? - I don't think that I would be self-absorbed enough to actually imagine that I was helping to move it, but I do hope that my students will ask better questions, will examine the sort of perennial myths that we've developed around war, and that they'll be much more sophisticated in terms of their ability to think critically when politicians or demagogues want them to support or participate in future wars. - What do you mean by that? Understand myths around war. What are you talking about as kind of examples of myths? - The idea that war is good for the economy, the idea that war is a given in the human experience that we have no choice about it, the idea that war brings out the best in human nature, those would be some of the things that we question. - You know, Andy, when I asked you what you're doing to move the world in a good direction, I wasn't trying to put all of the weight of the world on your shoulders, but I am assuming that even if it's one person and one person and one person, we've got to move in that direction. And so you may be a snowflake amongst the avalanche of humanity, but you're throwing your weight in a good direction. And I think that's a very necessary thing to do. There's a sign outside the Unitarian Church here in Eau Claire that says, I'm gonna misquote this, but I'll do my best. Every snowflake in an avalanche says it's not their fault, something like that. So in terms of things going wrong, every snowflake is denying their responsibility. I hope we won't deny responsibility when we throw our weight in a good direction. I think you wrote a song that kind of addresses that need to start as an individual snowflake. Can you tell us about the song, somebody? Sure, it's a children song and it was written when I was thinking about how clever humans have been in terms of exploring the vast universe of knowledge in so many areas, especially scientific and technological areas, yet kind of how dense we've been and even how unwilling we've been to look critically and openly and without the filters of patriotism and religion and culture at the institution of war. That was what sort of pushed the song off. Kenneth Bolding, who was a very well-known economist. And we'll mention a Quaker. Yes, exactly, a Quaker. Once said war is the last great frontier of human ignorance. And I think hearing him say that also sort of put me on the idea if academic communities and if higher education is not willing to take this frontier seriously, who will? It's really a children's song but it has kind of a grown up message with it. I'm a little bit stunned that you refer to it as a children's song because it's always been one of my favorites and I guess maybe that tells you something about my maturity level. But the song is "Somebody" and it's by my guest for today's Spirit and Action, Andy Murray. ♪ Someone's got to start you seeing ♪ ♪ It might as well be you and me ♪ ♪ Some say the world's not a very safe place ♪ ♪ And I tend to think it's so ♪ ♪ When I ask the reason why no one seems to know ♪ ♪ The simple conclusion is kind of confusing ♪ ♪ And it's hard for me to see ♪ ♪ Why I gotta be ready to find somebody ♪ ♪ 'Cause somebody's always telling somebody ♪ ♪ That they gotta be ready for me ♪ ♪ And somebody's got to start to believe ♪ ♪ That everybody's not that bad ♪ ♪ And be enough afraid and learnin' to hate ♪ ♪ It's not the only way to be ♪ ♪ Somebody's got to start to believe in the ideas ♪ ♪ Jesus, hey, if it's got to be somebody ♪ ♪ And I certainly am somebody that might as well be me ♪ ♪ Fly to the moon, make the desert land plume ♪ ♪ Take a walk on the bottom of the sea ♪ ♪ It seems that we can take any job and do it easily ♪ ♪ It's just an illusion that there's no solution ♪ ♪ When it comes to getting along ♪ ♪ We can't figure it out if we take a bar ♪ ♪ It's just an illusion that we can take any job and do it easily ♪ ♪ And somebody's got to start to believe ♪ ♪ That everybody's not that bad ♪ ♪ And be enough afraid and learnin' to hate ♪ ♪ It's not the only way to be ♪ ♪ Somebody's got to start to believe in the ideas ♪ ♪ Jesus, hey, if it's got to be somebody ♪ ♪ And I certainly am somebody that might as well be me ♪ ♪ Somebody's got to start to believe ♪ ♪ That everybody's not that bad ♪ ♪ And be enough afraid and learnin' to hate ♪ ♪ It's not the only way to be ♪ ♪ Somebody's got to start to believe in the ideas ♪ ♪ Jesus had ♪ ♪ If it's got to be somebody ♪ ♪ And I certainly am somebody that might as well be me ♪ - That was Somebody by Andy Murray. Andy is my guest today for Spirit in Action. And I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet of Northern Spirit Radio. And not too surprisingly, our website is northernspiritradio.org. Go to the site to re-listen to this and other shows we've done. Find links to our guests and leave us a comment. Let us know what you've been thinking. Our home radio station is WHIS, L-P-O-Claire in Wisconsin's Chippewa Valley. But I am talking right now with Andy Murray, who's out in Pennsylvania. He has been teaching Peace and Conflict Studies at Juniata College, Pennsylvania, associated with the Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies for a few decades now. And I think that kind of teaching makes a big difference in the world, a hopeful difference for the world. Now, as everybody just heard, Andy, you're a musician as well. So are you a musician in your day job and teaching peace studies by night, the other way around? How does this work? How much is music central to your life and maybe to your work? My day job now is being retired. So I don't have a day job anymore. But when I was working full-time, I was a director of an institute. And that was probably half my job. And the other half was teaching. When I came to Juniata, I actually came as chaplain. So I began my work here in '71 as chaplain to the college. And teaching religion. Around that time, I was asked to take over a committee for peace and conflict studies because the wife of the chair of our board of directors was interested in having a peace studies program start at the college. And I think at that time, they were just looking around. And who has time to fool with this? Well, maybe the chaplain can do it. And so I became active in it almost immediately when I arrived. But music was always a hobby, sort of an avocation. My wife is a trained musician, a classical musician. And she is the real musician in the family. I don't read music. And I don't speak really of writing music. I speak of making up songs. So she helps me to write them down. But that's certainly just an avocation for me. You started as a chaplain. So I think that means that you're a minister in the church of the brethren. Talked about that origin and that transition into peace and conflict studies. Was it a relatively seamless transition? I assume the peace concern was very much part of your childhood, assuming you grew up in the church of the brethren, which I guess I haven't verified with you. So tell us. Yes, I grew up in the church of the brethren. I always had a strong sympathy for the church's belief that war is certainly not consistent with the Christian vision, and also that a Christian can't really participate in violence. So in that sense, I was sympathetic. I never really thought much about actually making a more peaceful world. So I always thought about trying to not participate in a violent world. And my interest in peace studies developed because I had always been interested in peace, but it was a kind of a new idea for me that actually one could use the resources of the academic community to investigate a certain area of human behavior that I came to believe was probably the biggest problem that humans have, that all other problems sort of pale in comparison when one looks at what we've done to ourselves through war and what we continue to do to ourselves through war. So the program developed out of my interest, but it's not a religious program at all. We have a couple of courses in the past that were taught in the religion department, but most of our courses have a very secular and very practical kind of approach. I guess I always assumed that having a religious background would increase the dedication, the fire, the motivation to peace work. I've been associated with Quakers now for a few decades myself, and of course, your work with the church's brother, and another one of the historic peace churches is behind what you do. The people coming into your program, are they religiously motivated? Are they just scientists saying, here's what we can do in the world? What is the kind of background motivation, the fire, that gets them going? I think in terms of the faculty, the people who get interested and work in the program probably have the same religious profile that the population in general has. I do not think that religious motivation has been a part of participation in the program. Any more so than it motivates people to get involved in education or in doing environmental work or in being a good chemist. We have a lot of extremely dedicated Christian people who are hard scientists. We have people in the humanities that aren't really that interested in religion. So I don't think that in terms of our own program, there has been religious motivation that would be any different from any other program in the college. And certainly, our students don't come necessarily from religious motivation. Very small number of our students actually are brethren, and that's true in the college itself. About 5% of our students in the college are brethren. And I would say probably about 5% of the students that do peace studies are brethren. They're good students, we wish we had more. But we don't necessarily see that connection in terms of motivation. - An interesting exercise just occurred to me. When I think of important peace witness people in the past, I guess I tend to think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I think of Gandhi, I think of religious people. Who would you list who are non-religious that are really important in terms of developing the structures of peace, working for peace, leading the world away from war? - I don't wanna make a judgment about people as being religious or non-religious. But certainly, there are people that we don't think of them as being motivated religiously. And I would start with some military people who've been, I think, very important in terms of helping us to think differently about war. And I would put Omar Bradley in that category. I would certainly put some of Eisenhower's speeches and work. It was a speech by Eisenhower that motivated the wife of our chair, the board, to wanna start peace studies at Juniata. In terms of academics, Kenneth Bolden was a Quaker, but he wasn't a, we don't think of him as being terribly religious. Certainly Johann Galpin is not a religious person, or at least that's not a primary mover for him. And he's been important in developing peace studies. I could go on with a list that would not be familiar because they're more connected to peace studies. But it's a little different group of people than you would normally think of in terms of inspirational people. - Yeah, I can imagine it might look differently, but of course it's the work that makes good things happen. You mentioned what's happening with the European community as they've grown closer together. And that incremental building of connections such that it goes from being them on the other side of the border to being us, the European Union, certainly has led to a decrease in mortality over the centuries as we've grown more centralized. - Yeah, and that, excuse me, but that reminds me of another incredibly important person who was not a religious person at all. And that's with Jean Monet, who basically had the vision for the European community who helped develop the plans for the European coal and steel community out of which European community grew. He was not only not a religious person, he would not have thought of himself as a peacemaker, or at least as a peace person. He participated in World War II in terms of trying to get the U.S. involved in World War II. He was a very strong anti-Nazi, and also fairly strong anti-communist, but a person who worked tirelessly to try to convert both the elements of war, which during his time were coal and steel, and the culture that he lived in, into a more peaceful and a more cooperative culture. And it's been nothing short of miraculous in terms of what his vision and what his work accomplished. - It is pretty hopeful. I think most people believe that the 1900s had to have been the highest per capita killing, because not only did we have two major World Wars and all the other skirmishes, and we had what happened in Rwanda. We had all this death happening across the world, and yet per capita death by this kind of organized violence still decreased from even the 1800s, 1700s, and so on, because our communities are larger. So there's fewer small groups killing 1% of each other. When you get it to a large group, and it's only half a percent of the population being killed, that's beneficial. One thing that I would note about war that I think has been a change over the last century or so. We see more and more killing of civilians in war, a higher percentage of civilians being killed. I think it used to be something like one ninth of the people being killed in the conflict with civilians, and now it's getting up to more where it's like eight ninth. Is that correct, is that what you've seen? Is that what the studies show in general? Yeah, it's a difficult number to pin down, but certainly I think most people who work with those numbers would agree that the civilian casualties of war are far greater now than the military casualties of war. It's even more true if you look at certain health issues and certain famine issues that happened because of warfare. It's a tough number to pin down because if someone doesn't get shot, but maybe their children die because in the circumstances they're in, they can't get food. Is that a war casualty? I tend to think it is, but I think everyone agrees that the civilian casualties of war now are far greater than the military casualties. Well, can you tell me a little bit about what peace studies concretely teaches and does to enable people to bring more peace? What do you teach people to make a difference? How do you actually get them to be able to apply their weight in the right direction? So give us some specifics so that we can get fired up and we can all sign up to be part of the course that you're no longer teaching, I guess, because you're retired. You're not going to like this answer maybe too much because I'd have to, first of all, say, I think we give our students some important skills. I'm not sure that we teach them to be peacemakers. I think they sort of come to that on their own. We do put them through conflict resolution training, through mediation courses. In water and conflict, we work a lot on understanding how to map out an analysis of a conflict and to understand the complexities of a conflict. But we teach them things like critical thinking and we try to give them information that can help them make more informed and sophisticated decisions. And we hope that by example, that'll go in the right direction and it certainly does. I mean, we have students who do very interesting work. But some of our students go into business and think that what they've learned in terms of managing conflict and of understanding conflict is an important thing for them even in the business world. Can you give me some examples of how your students are actually working in the world? I mean, you said, I'm going to business. How do these students actually work in the world? What kind of jobs do they get? We have a student who's working in the State Department at the moment, working in the European theater on analyzing and following up on the Bosnian conflict with students who works in the West, who goes into an area where there's a conflict going on over water and gets the parties together and helps them work through them and resolve them. One of our students works in the senator's office and helps do analysis of gun rights issues and things like that. It's a kind of varied list. And I guess that the things that you teach, the conflict resolution, the tools that you give them, help them work wherever they work in a more profitable way. And I think that's the underlying assumption and maybe just fact that when you can solve problems peaceably without force, that the outcomes are better overall. I think that's exactly right. I think that in general, the more peaceful a resolution is for a conflict, the more likely you are to have ultimately to have an outcome that's better for everyone. But of course, some people say, well, that's what we tried to do with Germany leading up to World War II. We did a piezement and we were trying to do the peaceful workout to deal between us and look where it got us. So what do you answer to those kind of people? Well, you really can't answer that because it's kind of a silly way to look at history. We're not interested in a piezement. We're not interested in sort of backing down for political reasons. People who make that argument, there really isn't anything that you can say that will change their mind about it because they've been taught what they believe is a lesson of history. I'd want them to go back and sort of reread the things that brought us to World War II and to realize that Chamberlain's visit was a very small part of it and had he acted differently, we probably still would have had-- well, we would have had a war. It just may have started sooner had Chamberlain acted in a different way. And of course, he was not a pacifist, nor was he someone who was trying to make peace in the world, but he was trying to be politically astute and hang on to his own job. Is there some hope in teaching our children? I mean, starting young enough, is there hope for the world by teaching our kids that war is not the answer? Does that help doing it at the very early level? I think it helps, but I think children need to know too that the world is a dangerous place and that learning about peace does not necessarily mean that you practice being weak or that you don't stand up for yourself. So I think that sometimes our teaching children about peace is a little misdirected because we don't take seriously what they have to adjust to in terms of the world around them. But overall, I think, yes, of course, it helps to begin learning at a very young age that violent solutions are rarely good solutions or maybe never good solutions. Speaking of teaching children, I think you've got a song that very interestingly talks about confronting the myths of war, the kind of heroism of war that is so often taught to our children in your song "Tony and I." Do you want to say where that song came from? That song came out of some work that people were doing with TV violence and thinking about how children very often aren't able to make the distinction between what's sort of myth and what sort of happens in the real world. You know, it came out of my memory of myself. I loved to play cowboys and to play war and to play bang, bang, shoot them up. It was a great game. But I wanted to do a song which sort of captured the pathos of growing up and realizing that what we thought is just a game actually is a symptom of a culture that's addicted to violence and that uncritically accepts violence as an efficient and proper way to deal with certain problems. The song is "Tony and I." It's by Andy Murray, who's with us today for "Spirit in Action." [MUSIC PLAYING] Tony and I used to play. We used to take our guns and run away to the wild west about a block away. And all the names make believe. Doing everything we could so we could leave. Law and order, they're out in the wild west. Bang, bang, shoot them up. No one wants to die. It won't hurt, but just TV good guys. Bang, bang, shoot them up. Go away from them. After the commercial, we'll be back again. [MUSIC PLAYING] Tony and I used to fly. We used to be a rocket blasting up in the sky to a galaxy about a block away. We were the finest in the flight. Alien power's never kept us from the fight. To save all our friends out in the galaxy. Bang, bang, shoot them up. No one wants to die. It won't hurt, but just TV good guys. Bang, bang, shoot them up. Go away from them. After the commercial, we'll be back again. Tony and I used to play. Bang was such a good way to be friends. It was just pretend about a block away. But now my friend's been hurt. I'd like on the TV with a pair of mints. And the good guy wins, it's just the way they play. Bang, bang, shoot them up. No one wants to die. It won't hurt, but just TV good guys. Bang, bang, shoot them up. Go away from them. After the commercial, we'll be back again. That was Tony and I by Andy Murray, who's here today. And Andy, when you talk about being raised yourself playing Cowboys and Indians, I wasn't raised Quaker, so I didn't have Quaker upbringing. But I knew of kids in the Quaker meeting that I used to belong to down in Milwaukee, where I had the kids tell me the way that they kind of pimped their mom, who would not let them have war toys in the house, wouldn't let them have guns and that kind of thing. So they would get the hose and they'd squirt each other and say, squirt, squirt, you're wet. And did you have teaching from your parents as a member of the church at the brothering? Did you have teaching that said you shouldn't be playing war games, you shouldn't be a grandizing war? Sure. My parents didn't always know what I was playing. And they never bought toy guns. Certainly never bought war guns. I think there was a birthday when I got a cowboy gun. I remember my mother making certain that I understood that the main reason cowboys needed a gun was for snakes and mountain lions and not to shoot bad guys. But we made our war weapons. We fashioned them out of wood and we had a shop and so forth. And my parents never really-- it never became an issue of what I was playing because I never went home and said, hey, guess what I did all afternoon, I played war over at my cousins. But certainly I grew up in a culture that discouraged that kind of play. Is it safe to say that still at the age of retirement that Christ is really behind your nonviolent direction or has it really morphed over the years that you've learned about it to being just a good rational decision? You know, I think my motivation for peace studies was always perhaps more rational than spiritual. But I think it's also safe to say that my religious commitments and my commitment to the church and to Christ-- you know, that's kind of the bedrock from which I begin my rational thinking. So it's always there. I don't think and I firmly reject the idea that if the whole world were just Christian, then we wouldn't have a problem with war. I reject the idea that war and original sin are somehow connected. And that the only way we can solve the problem of war or make progress on the problem of war is to get other people to be Christians. I think that issues of war are human issues that we can approach them rationally and with thought and that we can find ways that people of all religious persuasions and non-religious persuasions can exist together in the world without organizing to kill each other. And at the same time, I think there'll still be plenty of sin. You know, Virginia and Maryland haven't been at war for a long, long time. And yet I noticed that there's probably still some sin in both of those states. So the idea that we need to have people become Christian or accept Jesus and then that will take care of the issue of war, for me, is not a particular helpful approach. What would you say that you do have from both your time, I guess, being raised as brethren, but also having gone through seminary as brethren, what came out of that is part of what you do carry as peace and conflict study. Teacher, leader, a person is very important in that. I think a commitment to the idea of the family of humanity. I think the Christian idea of God is the parent and we're all part of the same family has been a very important piece of my faith journey. I've always been not cynical, but suspicious of people who believe that their own religious ideas and their own view of God is sort of the correct view and the way the world should be. And in a sense, that comes very strongly out of my brethren tradition. The brethren have very strong ideas, but at the same time, there's a kind of humility that we don't have all the answers or don't have the final knowledge that only God has that. And I think that that lack of chauvinism and the belief that final answers are what we strive toward, but not necessarily what we own. I think that's been an important piece of my wanting to struggle to understand a particular area of human behavior. You certainly have known inspirational and for you, role models in the Church of the Brothern is Ted from Ohio, one of those people. I assumed it was, or maybe this is just a fictitious person, but I've known that song from "Goodbye, Still Night" for quite some time. Is Ted a real person? - Yes, Ted is a real person. I did not know him. I only learned his story, but he certainly was a strong inspiration for me and someone whose life went in a direction that was a very powerful witness to me. So I was very touched by the story when I first learned it and maybe one of the more important things I've done is just to tell that story over and over. I've shared that story in concerts all over the world and people are always very moved by it. - So tell us first, who is Ted? What's his full name? And did he inspire you? For instance, I think you came of age probably during the Vietnam War. Did that affect how you approached that war? - I didn't know Ted's story until after the war was over. So it really did not affect how I approached the war. His name was Ted Studebaker. He was raised in the Dayton area of Ohio. His family is still there and I know some of his cousins and relatives very well. His folks were nursery people, they grew nursery stock, but distant relatives of the Studebakers who made the cars in the '40s and '50s, he was drafted and chose to do alternative service in Vietnam. He worked among the Montignard people. Those who remember the Vietnam War will remember the Montignard is very fierce but very independent folk who really did not support either the Communists nor the South Vietnamese government. And Ted basically did agricultural work and relief work among the Montignard people. And he learned the language of Vietnam and of the Montignard people. And he was a very powerful witness. He actually, his story, even before he was killed, got the attention of some major press and he had quite a number of people who knew of him even before his tragic death. And he did get married. He volunteered for a second term in Vietnam. He married between terms and about, I think, just weeks after he went back for his second term there. His house was broken into by a group of soldiers. I think it's not clear which side the soldiers were on. You know, one thing about peacemakers is that they tend to upset people on both sides. And it's not clear which side the soldiers were on but they broke into his house and killed him while he was asleep in bed. - I'm glad to know the rest of that story having known the song for more than two decades. I wanna listen to that song. But before we do, I wanna say thank you to you, Andy, for the work you've done, for the work you're still continuing to do as a retired person, the music you've done has been inspirational to me and I know that you must've changed the lives of so many students there through your work with junior out of college. All in all, in spite of the fact that I've only seen you face to face for maybe 10 minutes out of my life, you've been very important to me and I wanna thank you for that work and I wanna thank you for joining me today for Spirit in Action. - It's been an honor and thank you for asking me. I've enjoyed it. You asked some very hard questions but it's been fun to think through some of the things. - So thank you again, Andy. I wanna take you out from this visit with Andy Murray with a song of his about Ted Studebaker. It's called "Brave Man from Ohio." ♪ Ted was raised in Ohio ♪ ♪ Where brave men regularly grow ♪ ♪ He wasn't surprised to get a letter ♪ ♪ Calling him to the war ♪ ♪ He was most polite and he wanted to do right ♪ ♪ So he wrote right back and said ♪ ♪ I've learned from my people that I must not fight ♪ ♪ But I'd like to work instead ♪ ♪ Oh, I'm not afraid to go ♪ ♪ Folks, I'm not afraid to die ♪ ♪ Just got something else in my ♪ ♪ That I would like to try ♪ ♪ Give me a shovel instead of a gun ♪ ♪ I'll stay so long for now ♪ ♪ If I die, I'll die ♪ ♪ I'll make it something instead of tearing something down ♪ ♪ He said goodbye to those he loved ♪ ♪ Wiped his mother's tears ♪ ♪ Don't fret folks, I know what I'm doing ♪ ♪ I'll be back in a couple of years ♪ ♪ He picked a piece I can't even look back ♪ ♪ He bravely left for the war ♪ ♪ Took a Bible and a shovel and a lot of hope ♪ ♪ He knew what he was going for ♪ ♪ One, not afraid to go ♪ ♪ Mother, I'm not afraid to die ♪ ♪ Just don't want to be the one ♪ ♪ To make another son's mother cry ♪ ♪ Give me a shovel instead of a gun ♪ ♪ I'll stay so long for now ♪ ♪ If I die, I'll die ♪ ♪ I'll make it something instead of tearing something down ♪ ♪ He worked among the people of that far-off Asian land ♪ ♪ Many who would be the enemy ♪ ♪ Became the friend of the brave young man ♪ ♪ He helped in the crops and he worked in the shops ♪ ♪ He talked whenever he could ♪ ♪ Of how he dreamed of a peaceful world ♪ ♪ My life would be sweet and good ♪ ♪ But I'm not afraid to be here for it ♪ ♪ I'm not afraid to die ♪ ♪ I just can't shake this feeling inside ♪ ♪ We can live together if we try ♪ ♪ Give me a shovel instead of a gun ♪ ♪ And I'll lend me a hand for now ♪ ♪ If we die, I'll die ♪ ♪ I'll make it something instead of tearing something down ♪ ♪ He fell in love with the brave young woman ♪ ♪ Took her to be his bride ♪ ♪ She shared his dream of a world going awry ♪ ♪ Worked right by his side ♪ ♪ But the war got to the love so low ♪ ♪ I pulled it left the young grown dead ♪ ♪ And hurt his grief ♪ ♪ The bride heard a gentle voice that said ♪ ♪ Tell him I wasn't afraid to go my love ♪ ♪ I wasn't afraid to die ♪ ♪ I just didn't want to be the man ♪ ♪ To make another man's swollen cry ♪ ♪ Put my shove beside my grave ♪ ♪ Maybe someone else will find you ♪ ♪ To be brave enough to die ♪ ♪ Make it something instead of tearing something down ♪ ♪ Put my shove beside my grave ♪ ♪ I'll save so long for now ♪ ♪ Don't worry my love ♪ ♪ We're gonna make it ♪ ♪ I know we're gonna make it ♪ ♪ So my hallelujah ♪ That was Andy Murray of Juniatic Colleges, Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. Today's Spirit and Action Guest. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit and Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪