Imagine the following: A nurse draws your blood, puts it into a baby bottle, and hands it back to you. You arm yourself with a hammer, and together with seven comrades you take off for a power plant that produces powerful nuclear warheads. To your surprise, you easily gain access to the plant and immediately locate the weapons. You damage the war equipment by hammering upon it. You pour your blood on some security documents. You then kneel, hold hands with your accomplices, pray, and wait to be arrested. After your arrest, a press statement is released that explains your act and summarizes all of the main features of the Plowshares movement that you have just started: “[W]e choose to obey God's law of life, rather than a corporate summons to death. Our beating of swords into plowshares is a way to enflesh this biblical call. In our action, we draw on a deep-rooted faith in Christ, who changed the course of history through his willingness to suffer rather than to kill. We are filled with hope for our world and for our children as we join in this act of resistance” (cited on p. 32).

“Nations shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again” (Isaiah 2:4, cited on p. 1). This is the biblical message that the Plowshares activists took as their calling and did so literally ever since their first antiwar action at the General Electric Plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, on September 9, 1980. Almost 50 similar actions followed between 1980 and 2006, the period covered in Sharon Nepstad's highly readable and important study of the Plowshares movement.

There are three remarkable facts about this movement. First, this is a faith-based, predominantly Catholic, pacifist organization that attacked the war machine of the state because of its “immoral” and “un-Christian” stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction and acts of war. It also condemned the Roman Catholic Church for endorsing the “just war” doctrine that legitimized mass killings. Second, the movement was utterly unsuccessful in that it did not accomplish any of its major goals (abolishment of war and weapons of mass destruction, the rejection by the church of the just war doctrine, and its embrace of the nonviolent Gospel message). Third, Plowshares activists took extraordinary risks and faced extremely high costs. Legal retribution was harsh: Activists typically received prison sentences of one to two years, and some were even sentenced to 18 years in prison. Yet approximately 200 people participated in high-risk and high-cost actions.

These high risks and costs for the activists, in combination with the absence of any real accomplishment, make the emergence, growth, and especially the long-term survival of the Plowshares movement puzzling. Why did the Plowshares movement continue for so long against all odds? Nepstad, who interviewed about a third of the movement's activists in the United States, proposes that the answer is to be found in whether and how decisive issues at the micro level were solved. In the (less convincing) second part of her study, she argues that elsewhere (Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), the movement failed to endure because it could not solve the micro issues.

The first issue was how to move from the “lunatic fringe” to convincing people that pouring blood and destroying property are legitimate means for achieving pacifist goals. Nepstad's study of the Catholic Left's influence elucidates how the movement gradually went beyond protest and civil disobedience and came to adhere to a theology of resistance: Breaking the law is legitimate if the law violates one's moral consciousness. The movement then placed itself in the prophetic tradition that emphasizes the Christian duty to proclaim God's word even if nobody listens. This, one might say, “solved” the legitimacy issue in two ways: It explains why it does not matter that most other people think you are a lunatic, and it establishes the principle that following God's will is the real measure of success (p. 65).

The second problem was which organizational and leadership structure to adopt. In May 1968, nine people raided the draft office in Catonsville, Maryland, seizing 600 files, dousing them with home-fabricated napalm, and destroying them. This action gained much media attention and featured two of the activists, namely, the brothers Philip and Daniel Berrigan, both priests, as the movement's leaders. Philip emerged as the charismatic guide and tactical organizer. Nepstad describes, but does not clarify, the origin and character of Philip Berrigan's charisma. As a result, we do not know how he managed to convince others to adopt the Catholic Worker's organizational model of highly demanding, faith-based communities, where people pool their resources, live together, and commit to poverty.

The third issue of the retention of members was a particularly difficult one because the movement asked activists to become recidivist offenders and happily accept imprisonment. The solution was found in community life and community practices (rituals, retreats, etc.), which reinforced the kind of radical normative beliefs, relationships, affection, material assistance, and emotional support needed for long-term commitment and high-risk activism.

The community model is arguably apt for the movement, but Nepstad's otherwise enlightening analysis ultimately does not explain why people agreed to the kind of radical break with normal life that community life and high-risk activism demand. She does not address the religious-psychological motivation of the activists, but focuses exclusively on the microdecisions of the movement. Given the contribution that she wishes to make (and does make) to the social movement literature, this is understandable. But it is also somewhat unfortunate, because it is likely that both the success of the organizational model and the solution to the problem of member retention have something to do with the deep religious conviction and motivation of the activists.

Yet we learn little about the activists' religious psychology, even though the study reports several observations that clearly hint at its importance. For instance, many of the Catholic activists seem to have longed for a monastic life even before they became involved. In fact, quite a few were members of religious orders before they joined. Their training seemed to have prepared them well for community life and for accepting the consequences of their radical activism. In addition, many of the activists clearly expressed feelings of deep religious satisfaction as a result of having lived a life that closely followed Christ's example of resistance and suffering. Through this religious-psychological motivation, the jail could even become the ultimate monastery, or as one activist said: “Jail takes from us the illusion that our lives are our own rather than God's…. I believe that going to jail for peace can deepen a life of prayer in a way few monasteries can” (as cited on p. xiv). In other words, religious devotion may have mattered more for the movement's survival than the authors seems willing to admit (p. 89).

Still, Nepstad has written an admirable study that convincingly shows that for a radical and high-risk movement to persist over the long run, it must establish the legitimacy of its means, organize in an appropriate manner, have strong and charismatic leadership, and develop convincing ways of retaining activists. It remains a puzzle, however, why some people were sensitive to the leadership's appeal to ignore the extreme costs and happily accepted the harsh consequences of their actions, even if they fully realized that they would never accomplish any of the movement's goals.