BEFORE THE U.S. NAVY CAME to town, St. Mary's, Georgia, was a quiet little coastal community. Like many towns along the southeastern coast, the major industries were fishing and the paper mill on the edge of town. It served as the home port only for some shrimping boats and the ferry to Cumberland Island, a beautiful oasis for wildlife and campers located across from Kings Bay.
But soon after Spain decided in 1975 that it would no longer allow U.S. nuclear submarines to be homeported on its coast, Kings Bay emerged as a centerpiece in the U.S. strategic "triad" of nuclear weapons. In 1979, Kings Bay--the site of cotton and sugar cane plantations in the early 19th century--was selected as the East Coast home for a fleet of Trident nuclear submarines. Ten Tridents, which have been called "the ultimate first-strike weapon" by former Trident designer Robert Aldridge because of the deadly range and accuracy of the Trident D-5 missiles, were expected to be deployed at Kings Bay.
It was anything but quiet in the decade after that. The influx of base workers and their families into the county caused a dramatic rise in population--from about 13,000 people in 1980 to more than 22,000 in 1988--and the population was expected to climb to 40,000 by 1999.
The result was an economic boon for the county, with housing and services springing up to meet the growing needs of the community. The federal government has given $38 million in "community impact funds" to the area since 1984 to help pay for additional schools and municipal services, but the funds may be drying up. The federal Office on Economic Adjustment has suggested $3.7 million for fiscal year 1990, a figure local leaders say is too low to pay for needed construction of an additional high school in the area.
The decision to homeport Tridents at Kings Bay also impacted the environment. Starting in 1980, the Navy began dredging a 22-mile-long trench through Cumberland Sound to create enough space for the mammoth, four-story-high Trident submarines to maneuver in and out of port. Concerned about accelerated erosion on Cumberland Island and other negative effects of the dredging, environmentalists pushed for a five-year environmental impact study of the area. The Navy commissioned such a study only in 1988, after a group of state representatives including Sen. Sam Nunn threatened to withhold funding for the base.
But even with the squabbling over federal assistance and the possible threat to the environment, the community of St. Mary's opened its arms to the Navy--and the enormous economic growth it brought. "For the most part, they're well received here," said David Harris, a local real estate agent.
Trident soon become a disturbing symbol of community pride in St. Mary's. Photographs of the submarine lined the halls of the local schools, and glass etchings of a Trident shooting a nuclear missile were found in the local Hardees fast food restaurant. A number of local businesses had names like Trident Equipment and Trident Janitorial and Management Services. A local radio station, KBAY, had a sign in front that depicts a sunrise with a Trident sub in the foreground and the phrase "A New Day Dawning."
Martina, John, and Peacemaking in Community
On December 28, 1983, Edwin Steiner and Joe Cohen--a resident and a volunteer at Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia--walked across the line at the main gate of Kings Bay Naval Base while 60 people conducted a vigil in support. It was the first act of resistance against what had become the largest peacetime construction project in U.S. military history. It also inspired others around the Southeast to continue the peace witness every year on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, to make the connection between the infanticide ordered by Herod after the birth of Jesus and the threat of global genocide posed by Trident.
Beginning in 1986, in addition to the vigils and civil disobedience, the annual peace witness included a "listening project" in which participants walked door-to-door to talk to local residents about the presence of the base. Not only was the project a significant step toward building relationships with those in the local community, but for those who continued to gather in St. Mary's on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the need for a permanent peace presence near the base was becoming increasingly clear. "We used to just come in once a year and take off," said Joe Cohen, a volunteer with Jubilee Partners in Comer, Georgia.
Martina and John Linnehan's journey from "the house by the beach to the house by the tracks," as they have described it, began soon after they married in 1973. They found themselves living comfortably in Sarasota, Florida, working in the real estate business and taking ski trips to Vail--a big change from their earlier years as a woman religious and priest in the Catholic Church. But "living the American Dream," they would decide, was not for them.
In 1979 they put their business on hold and spent a year in Jacksonville, Florida, as volunteers with the United Farm Workers, where they were trained as community organizers and exposed to the nonviolence philosophy of Cesar Chavez. "The UFW experience made it clear to us that we needed to deepen our spiritual lives if we were to continue in the peace and justice struggle over the long haul," they later wrote in Ground Zero, published by the Ground Zero Community in Poulsbo, Washington.
Their ability to continue over "the long haul" was tested in the spring of 1981, when they embarked on a 2,100-mile hike along the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine. During that trek they became "a community of two," as they prayed and reflected together on a series of Sojourners articles by Henri Nouwen on the need for simple living when trying to live out the gospel in a radical way. When they returned home that October, they continued to pray and reflect together on where God was calling them to be.
They read about Immanuel House, a new resistance community in St. Petersburg, Florida, that was coming together to focus on a General Electric-operated nuclear weapons plant in nearby Largo. Soon after they became active with Immanuel House in the spring of 1982--commuting from Sarasota to participate in a prayer group and the weekly vigils at the GE weapons plant--they were moved by a visit from longtime nuclear resister Philip Berrigan to consider a nonviolent act of resistance at the plant. "We are all complicit in the bomb," Berrigan told them. "As individuals we have to take personal responsibility for it."
On October 14, 1982, the Linnehans joined Berrigan in blocking the main entrance to the GE plant with a banner that read "In God's Name, No Bombs Today." For Martina and John, it was their first act of civil disobedience, described at the time by Martina as "a sacrament of confirmation." They were sentenced to one year in the county jail and ended up serving five months.
"The GE action radically changed our lives," the Linnehans recently reflected. "Once you step over that line, there is no going back."
Not going back, for the Linnehans, meant selling the one thing that prevented them from full-time peacemaking and a life in community--the house by the beach. They sold the house in May 1984 and moved to Immanuel House, an experience Martina describes as "part of the process" of clarifying their call to resistance in community.
But their journey would continue, this time to the Open Door Community in Atlanta, where they began a five-month internship in December 1985. They learned more about living in community at the Open Door, says Martina, and about "how to incorporate the poor into our lives."
Even before leaving the Open Door in May 1986, the Linnehans had been working with others involved in the Kings Bay resistance on acquiring some land near Kings Bay, but they had not yet decided whether they would actually move to St. Mary's to be part of a permanent community there. They had also been talking with people in Jacksonville about the possibility of starting a Catholic Worker house there, an idea that strongly appealed to them. But the Linnehans decided that St. Mary's was the place they were called to be.
AFTER MONTHS OF WORK by volunteers--from those who helped clear the land to the retired electrician from Florida who did all the wiring--the "house by the tracks" became a reality. On August 9, 1987 (the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki), more than 100 peacemakers came from around the Southeast for a "wall-raising" and to celebrate the birth of Metanoia Community.
Metanoia means to have a change of heart, or to repent or be transformed. It comes from the gospel of Matthew (3:1), where John the Baptist--"our patron saint," says John Linnehan--preached in the wilderness for all to repent and change their lives. Hearing that John the Baptist was arrested (Matthew 4:12), Jesus began preaching the same message of repentance, using the word metanoia.
Within a relatively short time, the Linnehans began building relationships with others in the local St. Mary's community. They joined the local Catholic parish, where Martina sang in the choir, and they even had a float, albeit a nontraditional one, in the Fourth of July parade. John dressed as Uncle Sam and fed toy planes and tanks into a "peace conversion machine," out of which Martina, dressed as a nurse, took food, books, and medicine. Martina remembers that soon after their house was built, a young man who worked at the building supply store where they purchased most of their construction materials remarked that he was struck by all the people who had helped them with the house.
"He called me aside one day and said, 'Ms. Linnehan, I'm getting ready to build a beauty shop for my wife. And how did you get your friends to come and help?' I just told him, 'Oh, what you have to do is make out a little flyer, like an invitation, and tell your friends that you're going to build on this one day, and have on there that you're going to have fun and food and cold drinks. And then your friends will come.'
"So he did that, and he ran into me one day and I asked him how it went, and he said, 'It was great.' He was thrilled because they had done it in just one day. He's now our postman."
The friends who helped to build the house at Metanoia were described by the Linnehans as part of an "extended community" of people throughout the Southeast, many of whom were a part of the vision of a resistance community in St. Mary's from the beginning. "This extended family is just as much a part of Metanoia as if they were physically living here," said Donna Harden, who lives at Metanoia. "Spiritually they are with us at all times."
Karol Schulkin, a longtime member of the Ground Zero resistance community in Washington state, which is a sister community to Metanoia, spent two months there to offer support. "The community there is much, much larger than the small number of people living there," said Schulkin. She described it as "living at the center of a source of hope. It's a community without boundaries."
THE LINNEHANS AND OTHERS who were part of Metanoia believed that relationships are the means by which change is possible. And those relationships--with neighbors, local editors, and law enforcement officials--grow because of a mutual trust and respect for each other.
Jane Perkins, the editor of the Camden County Tribune, was clearly bothered from the beginning by the demonstrations at the base and the presence of Metanoia in the community. And she often expressed her feelings in the newspaper. But members of Metanoia believed one particular column she wrote seemed especially unfair. Janet Horman, a Methodist minister from Jacksonville who was living at Metanoia at the time, decided to invite Perkins to lunch to talk about it.
"We had a chance to get to know each other on a personal level," said Horman, who learned that Perkins' husband worked on the base and that they had lived there for a while. "She took the demonstrations very personally because in a sense we were going to her home. When we went to the front gate to demonstrate, we were at her front door."
Horman was later asked by Perkins to write a weekly column for the paper as well as to sit on the board of directors for a battered women's shelter that was being constructed in response to the dramatic rise in the reporting of violence against women in the St. Mary's area. The weekly column and the support by Horman of the women's shelter gave the community a chance to see the pastoral side of Metanoia. "It was a way of saying we're concerned about what's happening here locally as well as the global community," said Horman.
A real breakthrough came after Metanoia sponsored a "decommissioning" service on December 17, 1988, the day the first Trident to be stationed at Kings Bay was commissioned in Groton, Connecticut, where the Tridents are made by the Electric Boat corporation. The week following the "decommissioning," Jane Perkins wrote a column in which she openly discussed her conversations with Horman and her own struggles around "the peace issue." She wrote honestly that she felt "angry and uncomfortable when these demonstrations take place" but that she "never took the time to examine the reasons for the feelings" until meeting Horman.
That same week, Fred Hill, editor of The Southeast Georgian, wrote a column in which he talked about the questions Metanoia had raised at the "decommissioning." Another sign of metanoia.
WHEN JOHN AND MARTINA joined Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church, they joined a Renew small group in the parish. John remembers the time when a man who worked on the base and was part of the small group suddenly realized that Martina and John were part of Metanoia and the demonstrations at the base.
"He was just amazed that he was sitting around a table with us, discussing the gospel," remembers John. "It was really a challenge for him not to just get up and leave the room. And yet a few months later, he came out here and stayed in our trailer after he lost his job."
"We told him that having us as his address could interfere with his getting another position on the base," said Martina. "But he thought it over and decided to come over anyway. He said that he would rather live with friends than strangers."
For Tom and Janet Murray, who moved to St. Mary's almost three years earlier from Austin, Texas, getting to know the Linnehans through the Renew group gave them the opportunity to get beyond the stereotypes and labels that are often attached to peace activists.
"I expressed to Martina not too long ago that I was really glad that we were blessed with the opportunity to get to know them," said Janet, "because I've always been on the outside, looking at peace activists and saying, 'Oh, those people are at it again.' My question is, When did peace get a bad name? As Christians, we're called to be peacemakers, to try and live out the gospel. I think that's what John and Martina are trying to do.
"I've got my responsibilities with family and children, so I cannot get up and leave and be part of a community, even though some days I think, 'Hey, maybe I should do that!' But I need to encourage those people that are doing that and find out more about why they have chosen this detour in their lives, and pray that what they're doing is right, that the people who are doing some searching come into contact with the people who are supposed to touch their lives."
Even though he disagreed to a large extent with John and Martina's stand for total disarmament, Tom believed they should have more of a forum in the community so that a dialogue could take place.
"I don't think it makes sense to immediately tear down our nuclear weaponry," said Tom, a Vietnam combat veteran, "but I do think it makes sense to listen to people of good conscience like John and Martina, hear what they have to say without the shouting and the sword-rattling and the arrests. It's unfortunate that they have to utilize civil disobedience to get that forum.
"The churches are the appropriate place to begin that dialogue," believed Tom. But none of the churches in St. Mary's would allow space for Metanoia-sponsored events such as those related to the Feast of the Holy Innocents witness. The parish of which the Murrays and the Linnehans were a part decided, however, to participate in a worship service held at the base in May 1989, conducted by Catholic bishops during a national Pax Christi gathering. "I think if [the churches] offered John and Martina the opportunity to speak, they would find that they're willing to listen to others as well," added Tom.
One local pastor, who asked not to be identified, epitomized the tension felt by those in St. Mary's who seemed to want to question what's happening on the base, but felt paralyzed by the security the base offered them. He'd been personally supportive of the Linnehans and others who were a part of nonviolent demonstrations at the base, but the members of his church, many of whom work at the base, voted not to allow them to use the space at the church.
"I can preach all I want about the security of God, as long as I don't mention the base," he said. "That's their livelihood. Who am I to tell my people they shouldn't be working out there?"
"Anybody that's in St. Mary's is automatically connected in some way with the base," said Janet Murray. "Either they know somebody who works on the base, their family members work on the base, or they themselves work on the base. And their life. is centered around it. Once you realize that, how do you pull back? How do you get out of it?"
These are the kinds of questions gently raised by the Linnehans and others who are part of Metanoia.
FOR ST. MARY'S, THE ARRIVAL of the U.S.S. Tennessee on January 15, 1989, was a day for celebration. It was the day the rest of the country honored the life of Martin Luther King Jr., who warned that "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Close to 3,000 area residents gathered in nearby Fernandina Beach, Florida, with their lawn chairs and picnic baskets to watch the Tennessee arrive. "How can anyone celebrate a killing machine?" asked John Linnehan at the time.
But when the giant submarine finally made its way to Fernandina on its way to Kings Bay, there were no cheers, no celebrating; the crowd fell strangely silent and simply watched as it went by. For the Linnehans and many others, it was a day of mourning--and it was a day to resist the death represented by Trident.
A 55-car motorcade of protesters left Fernandina Beach that day in a funeral-style procession, escorted by the local police. When they arrived at the base, Martina was among those who had decided to deliver a word of warning to the dignitaries and others on the base who were celebrating the arrival of the Tennessee, even if it meant risking arrest.
During Metanoia's joint retreat last October with the Ground Zero community, Jim Douglass of Ground Zero said something that stayed with Martina. "He said that when we walk to the point of our greatest fear, that's when transformation begins," she remembers. "For me, to walk to the point of my greatest fear was to go to where they were celebrating the arrival of the Trident and speak the truth."
The cost of resistance was painfully clear as Martina and John talked about the possibility of being separated for a year while Martina was in jail. But just as clear are the courage and strength that come from being part of a community of faith.
"I think we realized when we came here that a good part of the rest of our lives will be spent in jail," said John. "We don't seek that; nobody wants to go to jail, but it's part of it. As much as it's going to be a difficult, sad situation if Martina goes to jail, that's what our vocation is here--not to go to jail, but to resist."
On Good Friday, the Linnehans were part of a small group of people who went to the base, not to resist or be arrested, but to commemorate the arrest and crucifixion of Christ. But their prayer service just outside the base entrance was interrupted by a base security guard who told them through a bullhorn that they had five minutes to leave the premises. Four were arrested as they left crosses at the gate, and another four were arrested as they were leaving the area.
Sherrie Alderman, a state coordinator for Pax Christi-Florida who was among those arrested that day, had been thinking throughout Holy Week about the need to become powerless in order to experience the power of God. "Then it happened--to me," she said. "I became powerless and I felt God's presence as I was being arrested."
The Linnehans knew that as they awaited the decision of the court on both the January and Good Friday arrests, and prepared for the possibility of going to jail, questions were also raised for those in St. Mary's they had come to know. But the Linnehans and others who are a part of Metanoia know that a change of heart is not always painless.
"Once we start loving these people," says Janet Horman, "it's a lot harder for us to get out and protest and to confront them on these issues. And it's harder when they love us. But I think that's how change will happen, and peace will come."
Brian Jaudon was editorial assistant at Sojourners when this article appeared.
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