Creative Interruption: Transformative Testimony in Violent Times
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Creative Interruption is a one-day gathering for anyone ready to move beyond analysis. Hosted by Theology & Peace and designed for aspiring peacemakers who want to respond to violence without reproducing it. Creative Interruption brings together theological depth, historical nuance, lived practice, and ethical imagination in a setting designed for thoughtful engagement and community conversation.
Morning Presentation
Wolfgang Palaver: Active Nonviolence at the Center of Just Peace
Christian peace ethics shifted in recent decades from just war to just peace. The criteria of the just war tradition are still valid but the center of peace ethics now focusses on peace and not on war. At the center of the concept of just peace is active nonviolence. Christians have learned from Gandhi that the Sermon on the Mount focuses not on nonresistance but on active nonviolence. In a final part Palaver will address what just peace means for the relationship between church and state by referring to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of the katechon (restrainer).
Wolfgang Palaver is Professor emeritus of Catholic Social Thought at the University of Innsbruck, Austria where he taught from 2002 until 2023 and where he was also Dean of the Catholic Theological Faculty from 2013 until 2017. He is an expert on the relationship between violence and religion, and on Christian peace ethics. He is President of Pax Christi Austria since 2019 and became in March 2025 Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on Combating Racism, Xenophobia and Discrimination, also focusing on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians and Members of Other Religions.
Afternoon Workshop
Center for Story & Witness: The Role of the Witness in Breaking Cycles of Violence
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, will lead 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 will share what they’ve learned through their award-winning testimonial writing program and engage session participants in writing exercises modeled on the workshop. The session will reflect on the role testimony plays in educating the public on social, political, and interpersonal violences, and how testimony defines and defends the human rights of victims of violence. Encouraging participants to contemplate acts of bearing witness in their everyday lives, thus blending personal experience and ethical imagination, the session will explore novel ways of incorporating testimony and storytelling into teaching, advocacy, and other professional practices.
During the Q & A session, we will discuss the relationship of creative witness to mimetic violence, the ways testimony and witness disrupt the unanimity of the crowd and diffuse escalation, while also avoiding the negative contagions that solidarity may be prone to.
Wednesday Bonus Sessions on July 8th:
Peacemaking Amid Polarization with Vanessa Avery (9:00 am - 11:30 am)-additional fee
Mimetic Theory 101 with Grant Kaplan (11 am - 12 pm)-free for Creative Interruption registrants.
Additionally, we encourage T&P participants to register for COV&R's Annual Meeting, July 8-11, also being held at the DePaul Center and at other sites located in the Chicago Loop: https://violenceandreligion.com/annual-meeting-2026-chicago-illinois-u-s-a/
Click the ticket link for full details.
Morning Presentation
Wolfgang Palaver: Active Nonviolence at the Center of Just Peace
Christian peace ethics shifted in recent decades from just war to just peace. The criteria of the just war tradition are still valid but the center of peace ethics now focusses on peace and not on war. At the center of the concept of just peace is active nonviolence. Christians have learned from Gandhi that the Sermon on the Mount focuses not on nonresistance but on active nonviolence. In a final part Palaver will address what just peace means for the relationship between church and state by referring to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of the katechon (restrainer).
Wolfgang Palaver is Professor emeritus of Catholic Social Thought at the University of Innsbruck, Austria where he taught from 2002 until 2023 and where he was also Dean of the Catholic Theological Faculty from 2013 until 2017. He is an expert on the relationship between violence and religion, and on Christian peace ethics. He is President of Pax Christi Austria since 2019 and became in March 2025 Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on Combating Racism, Xenophobia and Discrimination, also focusing on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians and Members of Other Religions.
Afternoon Workshop
Center for Story & Witness: The Role of the Witness in Breaking Cycles of Violence
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, will lead 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 will share what they’ve learned through their award-winning testimonial writing program and engage session participants in writing exercises modeled on the workshop. The session will reflect on the role testimony plays in educating the public on social, political, and interpersonal violences, and how testimony defines and defends the human rights of victims of violence. Encouraging participants to contemplate acts of bearing witness in their everyday lives, thus blending personal experience and ethical imagination, the session will explore novel ways of incorporating testimony and storytelling into teaching, advocacy, and other professional practices.
During the Q & A session, we will discuss the relationship of creative witness to mimetic violence, the ways testimony and witness disrupt the unanimity of the crowd and diffuse escalation, while also avoiding the negative contagions that solidarity may be prone to.
Wednesday Bonus Sessions on July 8th:
Peacemaking Amid Polarization with Vanessa Avery (9:00 am - 11:30 am)-additional fee
Mimetic Theory 101 with Grant Kaplan (11 am - 12 pm)-free for Creative Interruption registrants.
Additionally, we encourage T&P participants to register for COV&R's Annual Meeting, July 8-11, also being held at the DePaul Center and at other sites located in the Chicago Loop: https://violenceandreligion.com/annual-meeting-2026-chicago-illinois-u-s-a/
Click the ticket link for full details.
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Where is it happening?
1 E Jackson Blvd, Chicago, IL 60604-2201, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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Host or PublisherTheology and Peace
