‘Peace House Community Journal’ Archives
The Quiet Time for Friendship
from the series Peace House Community Journal... By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby I recently attended the 2026 Nonprofit Leadership Conference, hosted by the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. During the opening keynote address, Ryan Vasquez (Executive Director of the Minneapolis Highrise Representative Council) commented on how important it is to develop friendships when you don’t need them. The middle of a crisis, he said, is a lousy time to find out who you can count on. His comment reminded me of a related statement by Robert Lilligren (CEO of NACDI and then-Chair of the Metro Urban Indian Directors). During Operation Metro Surge, the Native American community collected and distributed literally tons of groceries and other supplies to families who were too threatened to leave their homes. Robert said something along the lines of, “A lot of people see how many supplies we are sending out and think, ‘You guys are really well funded.’ We aren’t. The Native community [...]
Grace in the Face of Destruction
from the series Peace House Community Journal... By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby Last month I wrote about the need to use power wisely, and the temptations that everyone faces when they get power over others. Power can be used for our own prestige and comfort, or for the good of others. We have plenty of examples every day of each of those options playing out in front of our eyes. Since I wrote that article, I have been reading Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide by George E. Tinker. It is a wonderful example of using power well, along with being a great book on many other levels. Tinker looks at four missionaries who are revered for their work among Native peoples in North America, but he shows how they all contributed to the destruction of Native societies, and the results that still haunt us today. One of the missionaries he writes about is Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple, an Episcopal clergyman who worked in Minnesota and after whom the [...]
Ensuring That Our Own Power is Used Wisely and Humanely
from the series Peace House Community Journal... By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby I recently reread James H. Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree, which looks at the parallels between Jesus’ crucifixion and the lynchings that occurred during the Jim Crow era (1880-1940). Cone expressed his astonishment that no American theologian, white or black, saw the similarities between an innocent man being tortured and executed with the consent of the political and religious leaders, and the lynchings that took place in this country. Cone’s book covers many aspects of Christianity and lynching in a brief time (166 pages), but one of the most telling is the observation that crucifixion and lynching each played the same role in their respective societies. While they both inflicted tremendous suffering on the victim, the true target was the victim’s community. Those with the power to lynch others made sure the “others” knew they had the power, knew that what happened to one [...]
