2026 Pre-COV&R Gathering
July 7, 2026 | DePaul Center | Chicago, IL
Creative Interruption
Transformative Testimony in Violent Times
Held ahead of the 2026 Colloquium on Violence & Religion, this special one-day Theology & Peace gathering brought together world-renowned experts to share theological perspectives and practical exercises for interrupting the escalation of violence. The morning session focused on the Sermon on the Mount and the power of active nonviolence, and our afternoon session showed us that telling the truth about harm can help change violent systems by making the cost of violence unavoidably visible.
“Active Nonviolence at the Center of Just Peace” with Wolfgang Palaver
In recent decades, Christian peace ethics has shifted its center of gravity from just war toward just peace. While the criteria of the just war tradition remain important, the focus has moved decisively toward peace itself. At the heart of just peace is active nonviolence. Drawing on Christian theology and the witness of figures like Gandhi, this session explores how the Sermon on the Mount calls not for passivity or withdrawal, but for courageous, creative, and disciplined nonviolent action.
Wolfgang Palaver is Professor Emeritus of Catholic Social Thought at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, where he taught from 2002–2023 and served as Dean of the Catholic Theological Faculty from 2013–2017. An internationally recognized expert on violence, religion, and Christian peace ethics, he currently serves as President of Pax Christi Austria and, as of March 2025, as Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Discrimination, including intolerance toward religious communities.
“The Theology of Peace and the Power of Story” with Center for Story & Witness
The nonprofit Center for Story & Witness is dedicated to cultivating and sharing stories that bear witness to gender-based violence and other injustices. The Center’s co-founders, R. Clifton Spargo and Anne K. Ream, led an interactive seminar detailing best practices in generating, collecting, and sharing testimony. In recent years, witness writing and oral testimony have come to be recognized as essential elements in social justice movements. Testimony challenges and rewrites our idea of ourselves and our society. Spargo and Ream shared what they’ve learned through their award-winning testimonial writing program and engaged session participants in a writing exercise modeled on the workshop. Encouraging participants to contemplate acts of bearing witness in their everyday lives, thus blending personal experience and ethical imagination, Spargo and Ream shared novel ways of incorporating testimony and storytelling into teaching, advocacy, and other professional practices.
Anne K. Ream is a writer, music critic, and longtime activist on gender justice issues. Her memoir Lived Through This is a global journey spent listening to the testimonies of gender-based violence survivors. Her writing has appeared in The New Republic, Los Angeles Times, The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, Newcity, and The Washington Post. An advisory board member of RAINN, the country’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, she is also founding co-chair at World Without Exploitation, the national coalition to end human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Anne co-founded Center for Story & Witness, where she is the Chief Vision Officer.
R. Clifton Spargo is a novelist, short story writer, music critic, activist, and scholar. His novel Beautiful Fools tells the missing final chapter in the tragic romance of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. His fiction and other writing have appeared in The Atlantic, Glimmer Train Stories, Huffington Post, Kenyon Review, Newcity, Raritan, and The Wall Street Journal. An expert on testimony, ethics, and the Holocaust, he is the author of The Ethics of Mourning and Vigilant Memory: Emmanuel Levinas, the Holocaust, and the Unjust Death. He co-founded Center for Story & Witness, an award-winning global nonprofit organization, and he teaches creative writing at Yale University.
“Given how grave our current circumstances are, what stays with me is the remarkable, tireless and intelligently compassionate commitment to peace by many unexpected people from all around the world. I loved being with such an amazing gathering of human beings. I feel renewed and fortified a bit more to face the challenges knowing there is this community of Theology & Peace for such a time as this. Thank you SO much for coordinating this opportunity. Having been there, I was truly blessed.”
—Creative Interruption participant Catherine Inserra