On the face of it, Deuteronomy seems to be a book filled with triumph -- the pronouncement of the commandments, the end of the Israelites' long exile, the coming of the Promised Land.

But Daniel Berrigan here turns a searching eye toward this text and finds its darker side. Moses, the people's leader for forty years, is denied entrance to the land he dreamt about. The people desperately create a golden calf to worship even as God is giving Moses the two tablets. The Promised Land, full of milk and honey, is also full of inhabitants -- gaining entrance means destroying or driving...

On September 9, 1980, the Plowshares Eight entered a General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and enacted the biblical command to ""beat swords into plowshares"" by hammering on the nose cones of two nuclear warheads and pouring blood on documents. Since that time, other small groups and individuals have entered manufacturing plants and military bases throughout the U.S., as well as in Australia, Germany, England, Ireland, Sweden, and Holland, to disarm components of nuclear and conventional weapons systems. As of Spring 2003 there have been over 150 people who, using hammers...

In The Time's Discipline. Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister offer us a chronicle of their community in Baltimore. They show us that for their nonviolent community, resistance to the nuclear arms race is not merely a political endeavor, but most profoundly a spiritual endeavor, rooted in fidelity to the Gospel. Thus the reporting of Jonah House's first fifteen years is formed around the Beatitudes, eight points of blessing at the outset of Matthew's presentation of the Sermon on the Mount. Invariably for Phil & Liz and those who have been part of their work at Jonah house and related...