John Swomley, FOR leader, dies at 95
The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) has just been notified of the death of John M. Swomley, a national leader in the 20th century in the struggles for ending war and supporting liberation movements. Swomley, a theologian and activist whose peacemaking legacy is generally under-recognized, died on August 16, 2010, in Kansas City, Missouri at age 95 after living with Alzheimer’s for several years.
Swomley served as FOR’s executive secretary (now titled executive director) from 1953 to 1960, and was a passionate advocate for pacifism and civil rights through religiously-based principles. He was among the community of FOR leaders and colleagues who helped shape the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s understandings of active nonviolence. In an October 2008 interview, Swomley said, “I sat outside the door of Martin’s office and when someone came to talk to him, I talked to that person about nonviolence.” An ordained United Methodist minister, Swomley had done graduate religious studies at the Boston School of Theology, which Rev. King then also attended years later.
After World War II, Swomley formed the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Training and Service to bring about the desegregation of the Armed Forces. During the same period, there was a major effort to establish a year of permanent military training for all young U.S. males, to be followed by seven years of reserve service. Under Swomley’s leadership, FOR worked with a large coalition to form the National Council Against Conscription, which waged a successful campaign to defeat the proposal for Universal Military Training; Swomley served as its director from 1944 to 1952.
In 1956, he organized the first South-wide strategy meeting of militant black leaders with Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy, which was the spiritual forerunner of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. From 1960-1964, Swomley served on the Methodist Church’s General Conference Commission to Study the Relation of Nuclear War to the Christian Faith. He helped organize the National Council to Repeal the Draft in 1969. At Wounded Knee in 1973, at the request of the American Indian Movement, he negotiated (unsuccessfully) with the Department of Justice for a nonviolent settlement. He participated in research, speaking, and debate for labor organizations in their 1978 campaign against the “Right to Work” amendment to Missouri Constitution.
Swomley was a constant writer, and contributed regularly to FOR’s national magazine, Fellowship. Following his departure from FOR, Swomley worked with various other progressive religiously-based publications, including the National Catholic Reporter and The Human Quest (formerly The Churchman), the latter of which he edited for many years. He also taught social ethics at St. Paul’s Theological Seminary in Kansas City, helping to develop multiple generations of progressive theologians and congregational leaders.
Earlier than most, Swomley articulated the intersecting nature of oppressions and the need to address issues of war, poverty, racism, and other injustices comprehensively. His “understanding of pacifism involves a total commitment to peacemaking,” according to a profile written by Tom Fox, published in a 2009 issue of Fellowship. Such a pacifism, said Swomley, “rejects not only the violence of war and armed revolution, but also the systematic violence of imperialism, racism, economic exploitations, poverty, and the denial of equal rights to women, labor, political and religions minorities.” He published Confronting Systems of Violence: Memoirs of a Peace Activist in 1998 (available from FOR’s Bookstore) to outline more deeply his perspective on these intersections.
Swomley’s numerous other leadership roles in the peace movement included tenures as the chairperson of the Church-State Committee, president of the Methodist Peace Fellowship, president of the board of directors of the American Society of Christian Ethics (1964-1970), and president of Americans for Religious Liberty. In 1976, he helped organize and served as executive director pro-tem of the Committee on Militarism in Education, and in 1993, he founded the American Committee on Korea and served as its executive secretary. In 1975, Swomley received the Patrick Murphy Malin award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas & Western Missouri for outstanding service to the cause of civil liberties in Missouri; the ACLU chapter later named one of their annual awards the John and Marjie Swomley Issue Activist Award. In 1976, he was selected by the United Nations Day Committee to receive the award of Kansas City’s World Citizen of the Year.
Swomley is survived by his wife Marjorie and a large network of friends and family. Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced; those and other details may be obtained from FOR via e-mail in the coming days.
