Consistent Life - About Us


			This revolution is desperately needed. Our society is filled with overwhelming violence -- increases in the death penalty and imprisonments; abortion rates of over a million per year; violence by our military in many countries; support of brutal regimes by our government; and structural violence with the deliberate increase of unemployment, poverty and homelessness. Can we succeed? Yes. Our resources are small, and we need much help. But our message is compelling, hopeful and powerful. Whenever we publish one of our ads, we hear from dozens of people who are overjoyed to hear of a movement that opposes violence in all contexts, who say they thought they were the only ones who thought that way.

	"Our society is filled with overwhelming violence"		We are eager to do more. We want to run more ads, support more speaking dates, perhaps have a national conference and find new ways to make our vision present and available to the mind of the community. We have produced one video, and are working on a second.

			You can help! We need financial support, more peace, justice and life organizations to join us, more members. Please be with us!

	"You can help!"		Consistent Life now allows for individual memberships. In addition, you are encouraged to join one of the many consistent ethic groups who are organizational members of the network. We encourage you to look at the list of our member groups.

	"We also hope that you will sign the Mission Statement"		We also hope that you will sign the Mission Statement, so that your name may be used in advertising to support the consistent ethic position. (Space limitations prevent our using every endorser's name every time our ad is published.) The complete list was published in Harmony magazine in April 1995, and Harmony plans to re-publish it on a regular basis.

			Please inform any peace, justice, human rights, or reverence for life groups that you belong to about CL, and encourage them to become organizational members.

			A useful source of information about Consistent Life is Harmony, a consistent ethic magazine. Harmony is published by Sea Fog Press, Inc. Sea Fog Press is a separate organization from CL, but is a member group and reports regularly on the network's activities.

			A little bit of history...
			Consistent Life was founded in 1987 under the name The Seamless Garment Network, at a conference of peace, justice and life groups. The conference was organized by people from Prolifers for Survival, a consistent ethic group whose original focus was opposition to nuclear arms.

			The women and men at the conference drew up the Seamless Garment Mission Statement and formed a new network. The Seamless Garment Network was a coalition of member organizations joined together by their support of the SGN Mission Statement.

			Organizations such as Feminists for Life of America, Evangelicals for Social Action, Pax Christi USA, and many more became member groups. Consistent Life is non-denominational. Member groups include religious organizations of a wide variety of faiths and non-religious organizations.

			The network has grown ever since, in both member organizations and endorsers of the Mission Statement. It now has almost 200 member organizations.

			The women, men and groups who have affirmed our Mission Statement and who support us include a very large proportion of the people who have spoken out, worked, and in many cases served prison time for the defense of human life and human rights.

			Our first ad was published in 1988 in The Progressive. Ads have since been published many times in a great variety of national and local publications, including The Nation, Mother Jones, Friends Journal, The Turning Wheel (the journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship), Commonweal and Christianity Today.

			In 2002, the Board of Directors decided at its November meeting to change our name to simply Consistent Life, with the accompanying tagline, "an international network for peace, justice and life."

			We hope our new moniker will be more easily understood, and better identify us as interfaith, rather than an exclusively Christian organization. Although the majority of our membership is Christian, not everyone who supports the consistent life ethic is Christian, and we have heard from folks who felt somewhat excluded by the Seamless Garment Network name.

			Consistent Life board members and supporters have been involved in organizing consistent life ethic conferences. Speakers supporting the consistent ethic position have addressed many gatherings, large and small. Our video has been shown to hundreds of gatherings, and we are working on a second video.

	Resources to Download We encourage you to reproduce and distribute our brochure, fliers, etc.		Our organization does its work with very slender resources. Help and support flow to us from many directions; people of many faiths (and no faith), from many ethnic backgrounds and nations, are drawn to support this movement which affirms the simple truth that every human life is valuable, and that no violence against human beings is acceptable. Board Rob Arner, Holland, Pennsylvania Carol Crossed, Rochester, New York Rose Evans, Secretary, San Francisco, California Michael Garcher, Chair, Outreach and Membership Committee, Valparaiso, Indiana Rachel MacNair, Vice President, Kansas City, Missouri Tony Masalonis, Chair, Educational Resources Committee, Washington, D.C. Rachel Muha, Columbus, Ohio Linda Naranjo-Huebl, Grand Rapids, Michigan & Aurora, Colorado Mary Rider, Treasurer, Garner, North Carolina Bill Samuel, President, Silver Spring, Maryland Richard Stith, Valparaiso, Indiana To receive e-mail alerts about actions you can take to promote the consistent life ethic, send e-mail to action-request@consistent-life.org with “subscribe” in Subject line.

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