Gene Stoltzfus was the director of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) since its founding in 1988 until September 2004. CPT trains and places violence reduction teams in high conflict situations like Iraq, the West Bank, Columbia and various native communities in the United States and Canada. Teams and peacemaker delegations have worked in Chiapas, Vieques, Puerto Rico, and Washington D.C. and investigative teams have visited Chechnya and Afghanistan. Christian Peacemaker Teams, originally an initiative of the Mennonite, Brethren and Quakers, has expanded to include a wide variety of Roman Catholic and Protestant participation, with 38 full time and 125 part-time peacemakers.

Stoltzfus traveled to Iraq immediately before the first Gulf War in 1991 and spent extensive time in Iraq again in 2003, consulting with Muslim and Christian clerics, Iraqi human rights leaders, families of Iraqi detainees and talking with American administrators and soldiers.

Gene's commitment to peacemaking is rooted in his experience in Vietnam as a conscientious objector with International Voluntary Service during the US military escalation there from 1963-68. He recalls that watching the helicopter personnel unloading their cargo of bloodied bodies in Saigon set him "on the search to make sense of life and death where the terms of survival, meaning and culture don't forbid killing. I had to ask myself," he said, "whether I was as willing to die for my conviction as the Vietnamese and American soldiers all around me were being asked to do. "

In the early 1970's Stoltzfus directed a domestic Mennonite Voluntary Service program with a view toward engaging with the social justice and peace issues of the day in order to awaken church and society. In the late 1970's he co-directed the Mennonite Central Committee program in the Philippines during the Marcos' martial law era focusing it on human rights and economic justice, and then went on to help establish a grass roots international peace and justice organization in Chicago to connect U.S. and Third World people.

Gene Stoltzfus graduated from Eastern Mennonite High School in Harrisonburg Virginia and from Goshen College in Indiana. He holds an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from American University and a Master of Divinity from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in Elkhart Indiana. He is married to Dorothy Friesen of Winnipeg Canada.

Further Description of The Story of World Wide Nonviolent Peacemaking Presentation

Since the beginning of Christian Peacemaker Teams in 1988 Gene Stoltzfus has been involved in developing strategies and organization for peacemaking in crisis situations in Haiti, Colombia, Palestine, Iraq, Puerto Rico, selected sites in urban North America and Native communities. The presentations will combine stories from direct experience and present an overview of what will be needed to significantly multiply the movement of unarmed peacemaking now growing around the world. The stories and their analysis will invite students and professors to consider career options and challenge participants to active nonviolent citizenship. The faith and political implications of this story will be addressed.

Gene Stoltzfus blog: Peace Talk