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James W. Douglass

 

 

James W. "Jim" Douglass is an American author, activist, and Christian theologian born in the late 1930s. He is a graduate of Santa Clara University. He and his wife, Shelley Douglass, founded the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington, and Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1997 the Douglasses received the Pacem in Terris Award.

Douglass is a noted author on nonviolence and Catholic theology, with many books and essays to his credit. Four of his monographs, published from 1968 to 1991, were reprinted in 2006 by theology publisher Wipf & Stock.

Douglass's 2008 book, JFK and the Unspeakable, originally published by Orbis Books in Maryknoll, New York, and reprinted by Simon & Schuster, discusses the John F. Kennedy assassination as a conspiracy ordered by unknown parties and carried out by the CIA with help from the Mafia and elements in the FBI to put an end to Kennedy's effort to end the Cold War after the Cuban missile crisis.

Douglass was a professor of religion at the University of Hawaii who first engaged in civil disobedience to protest the Vietnam War.

In 1975 Jim and Shelley Douglass founded Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action to protest the construction of a Trident missile nuclear submarine base on the Kitsap Peninsula in the U.S. state of Washington. The Douglasses, joined by other activists seeking to prevent the installation of Trident missiles, formed a small intentional community, the Pacific Life Community, near the submarine base. Their goal was to "seek the truth of a nonviolent way of life," both personally and politically. Personally we tried to confront our racism, sexism, consumerism — all the isms that allowed us to violate others. Politically, we chose to experiment with nonviolent actions resisting Trident, a system that seemed to epitomize all the violence of our society.

This nonviolent protest later extended to protesting the White Train which carried nuclear missile parts to Bangor Trident Base.

The Douglasses later moved to the Ensley neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama, to establish Mary's House, a "house of hospitality" for homeless or indigent people in need of long-term health care.

Douglass has travelled to the Middle East on several peace missions. In 2003 joined a Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq and stayed with civilians during the U.S.-led invasion.

 

 

 

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