People and Policing: Compassion for OUR Violence

Our 2016 gathering aimed to explore practical models for transforming relations between people on all sides of the crisis of violence as it plays out on the front lines of our broken criminal justice system. Reconciling and healing these relationships becomes a basis for rebuilding a society in which all people, regardless of race, color, or creed, are able to live together with compassion and mutual respect.

Major Neill Franklin

Major Franklin (Ret.) is a 34-year veteran of both the Maryland State Police and the Baltimore Police Department who oversaw 17 separate drug task forces and is now Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) — now called the Law Enforcement Action Partnership — an organization of police, prosecutors, judges and other law enforcement officials who want to end the war on drugs.

Preston Shipp

“When Prosecutor Meets Defendant:
Moving from Retribution to Reconciliation”

For several years, Preston Shipp served as an appellate prosecutor in the Tennessee Attorney General’s office. While serving as a religious volunteer and teaching college classes in Tennessee prisons, he became good friends with many people who were incarcerated, one of whom — Cyntoia Brown — he learned he had personally prosecuted.

These relationships caused Preston to wake up to the many injustices that are present in the American system of mass incarceration. Preston felt increasing conflict between his faith in Jesus, who was executed as a criminal, and his role as a prosecutor, which required him to argue for the punishment of people he did not know. Unable to serve two masters, Preston left his career as an appellate prosecutor in 2008.

Since then, he has taught in universities and churches, lectured at conferences, and written about the urgent needs for criminal justice reform, a shift in how we regard imprisoned people, and a new vision of justice that seeks healing, transformation, and reconciliation, not merely the infliction of suffering. Preston’s conversion from prosecutor to criminal justice reform advocate has left him convinced that his salvation is bound up with that of his friends behind bars.

“I don’t know of any other book like it, which provides insight from people who have been directly affected by the arcane criminal justice policies of the last four decades. These are the scapegoats, and it’s so important that we hear their stories.”

Preston Shipp

Vern Neufeld Redekop

“Protesters, Police, and Mimetic Structures: The Implications of ‘Control’ and ‘Respect’ for Policies, Processes, and Behavior”

Dissident voices are a necessary part of democratic society; likewise, non-repressive police also play an essential role in providing security and and a context for public communicative actions. When there is a mimetic rivalry for control of social spaces this can escalate to outright violence. The rhetoric of animosity and resentment can resemble violent conflict; in fact each side is often deemed an “enemy” by the other. Stereotypes mimetically shape the respective realities. However, profound mutual respect and recognition of each other’s roles can lead to the emergence of new and creative ways to address societal challenges.Within mimetic structures of blessing the energy of conflict is harnessed for change and transformation.

Discover more of Redekop's work

Vern Neufeld Redekop is a Full Professor in the School of Conflict Studies at Saint Paul University, Ottawa. His involvement in training and program development has taken him to Indigenous communities in Canada as well as to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sudan, Taiwan and other countries.

His theoretical and practical insights found expression in his book, From Violence to Blessing: How an Understanding of Deep-Rooted Conflict Can Open Paths to Reconciliation, which included two chapters devoted to mimetic theory and scapegoating respectively and was organized around the concepts of mimetic structures of violence and mimetic structures of blessing. Subsequent research has focused on protest crowds and police, resulting in (with Shirley Paré) Beyond Control: A Mutual Respect Approach to Protest Crowd – Police Relations.

Oxford University Press has published Introduction to Conflict Studies: Empirical, Theoretical, and Ethical Dimensions, which he co-authored with Jean-Francois Rioux. He edited (with Thomas Ryba) René Girard and Creative Mimesis and René Girard and Creative Reconciliation. Current research focuses on Spirituality, Emergent Creativity, and Reconciliation and Community Dialogue processes on Social Reconciliation and Economic Development.

Discussion Panelists

Sereta Richardson

Former Police Officer

Elder Clyde W. Harris

Newborn Holistic Community
(now Intersection of Change)

Patty Prasada-Rao

Community Development Consultant

Bible Study

with Anthony Bartlett

Scandal is a central category in the gospel. It offers a vital study for the meaning of present-day culture and society. Scandal happens when mimetic rivalry is the core dynamic of a relationship and it pulls everyone around into its orbit. Violence takes over as the character of relationship. Jesus warned about scandal in several ways, firstly because the gospel itself provokes it when it strips the sacred covering from society, leaving violence unveiled. What is the answer? Do we blame those whom it still feels safe to blame, the perpetrators? Or, do we find an entirely new way of being, one based in an overflowing of peace and carrying the cross of violence/nonviolence? We will look at the relevant scriptural texts to develop our understanding of these questions.

Anthony W. Bartlett, PhD, was born in 1946 in Epping, U.K. He attended seminary in a Roman Catholic religious order and studied philosophy and theology at Heythrop College in the U.K. and Lateran University in Rome from 1965 to 1974. Bartlett resigned from the Roman Catholic priesthood in 1984 and later worked as the director of a homeless shelter in London.

In 1994, he relocated with his wife and children to Syracuse, New York, where he earned his PhD from the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. He has taught at Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary in Rochester and General Theological Seminary in New York. He is the founder, with his wife, of the local prayer and study community Wood Hath Hope, as well as the recently established teaching and healing center Bethany House.

Bartlett is the author of a number of books and articles, including Virtually Christian, How Christ Changes Human Meaning and Makes Creation New and Signs of Change: The Bible’s Evolution of Divine Nonviolence. He is a charter member of Theology & Peace, an organization dedicated to the theological and pastoral development of mimetic theory. He served as a board member and contributing theologian until 2013.

Mimetic Theory 101

For those new to the thought of René Girard, on Tuesday morning, James Warren will offer an overview of Mimetic Theory, the anthropological understanding at the heart of Theology & Peace. Warren is the author of Compassion Or Apocalypse?: A Comprehensible Guide to the Thought of Rene Girard.

Advanced Mimetic Theory

For those versed in Mimetic Theory who want to explore its deeper implications, Theology & Peace Contributing Theologian Rev. Paul Nuechterlein will outline the ways in which Girard’s thought reveals the structural nature of racism as systemic scapegoating.

Paul Nuechterlein is a noted expert in interpreting the Bible through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory, with an eye to both theology and anthropology. A student of Girard’s work for over 20 years, Paul built and maintains Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, which receives visits each day from people across denominations and around the world. Recently retired after 30 years of parish ministry in ELCA congregations, he is now able to devote his full time to his passion for spreading the Gospel of peace and justice, which he believes is at the heart of Jesus’ faith. He is the Contributing Theologian for Theology & Peace, and has also served on the Board of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R).

People and Policing: Compassion for OUR Violence

Major Neill Franklin

Preston Shipp

“When Prosecutor Meets Defendant:
Moving from Retribution to Reconciliation”

“I don’t know of any other book like it, which provides insight from people who have been directly affected by the arcane criminal justice policies of the last four decades. These are the scapegoats, and it’s so important that we hear their stories.”

Vern Neufeld Redekop

“Protesters, Police, and Mimetic Structures: The Implications of ‘Control’ and ‘Respect’ for Policies, Processes, and Behavior”