Gerald W. SCHLABACH. A Pilgrim People: Becoming a Catholic Peace Church. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2019, pp. 416 + xvi. $39.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-4454-6. Reviewed by Stephen S. WILBRICHT, Stonehill College, Easton, MA 02357.

I finished reading this book in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the breakout of protests for racial equality set off by the brutal death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, 2020, the day when we honor the sacrifice of millions of women and men who gave their lives in war.  The training of a nation to quarantine in order to avoid contact with a deadly virus was overturned abruptly by crowds flooding our city streets to demonstrate for justice.  Protests designed for peace often ended in violence and looting, with divisions between people becoming even more pronounced.  The clash of these two crises—the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement—reveals something very human:  peace in the home and peace in our streets is fragile indeed, demanding witnesses to show us the way to resolve conflict and restore right relationship.

 It is for this reason the Gerald W. Schlabach has put together a timely and important book that discloses a lifetime spent pursuing the dilemma of how to build a prophetic church with peace as its mission.  Schlabach, a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, before becoming a member of the Roman Catholic Church in 2004, was part of the Mennonite Church, where he learned the tradition’s principles of non-violence and pacifism.  Fittingly, Schlabach has devoted much of his academic career organizing Mennonite-Catholic dialogue, promoting a path by which the two might learn from each other and unite in the work of modeling a peaceful relationship in our globalized society.

A Pilgrim People is separated into three parts.  Part One is entitled “Becoming Catholic Again for the First Time.”  In these first three chapters, Schlabach labors to validate Christianity’s pilgrim status, meaning that the Church is best when it sees itself as a people uprooted and “living in the diaspora.”  The author writes:  “To embrace life in diaspora, therefore, is to loosen the grip of that force that has most often turned Christians away from the call to be a peaceable, peace-making people—the tribalistic and nationalistic identities that come to trump our baptismal citizenship in the transnational people called church and to override our primary loyalty to its Lord, the Suffering Servant of all peoples” (26).

 Part Two, “Tent Stakes for a Pilgrim People,” is comprised of two chapters that probe how the message of the Gospel contains a strategy, or what the author calls a “grammar,” for the construction of peace.  First, Schlabach contends that just like its Jewish relatives, Christianity has the vocation to be a people that serves as a “blessing” for all nations around the world.  The author employs Pope Francis and his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) to demonstrate that peace-building consists in the building of peoples.  For Francis, as for Schlabach, it does no good for the Church community to be inwardly focused on preservation if it does not look outward, giving itself away for others.  Again, to quote the author:  “[A]s long as Christians saw themselves as resident aliens who properly embrace life in diaspora, their fixed-yet-fluid identity could indeed prove invitational—not only by welcoming others in hospitality but by requiring reconciliation of themselves across national, ethnic, and tribal divisions” (177).

The third part of the book, entitled “Maps for Peacebuilding by a Pilgrim People,” provides constructive theories on how the Church must be a people of peace before it tries to do peace for the world.  Thus, the author advocates a hospitality founded upon learning what it means to be “guest,” meaning how to be at home in the diaspora.  In chapter eight, Schlabach turns to the Gospel, specifically Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, to reexamine the “just-war theory,” and argues convincingly that we must re-learn relationship with our adversaries.  The virtues outlined in the Sermon of the Mount are powerful peace-building tools.  The book’s final chapter serves as a call for ecclesial unity within the “transnational nation called the church” (275).  The author’s concluding sentence:  “Let us recognize the work of nurturing greater church unity, and with it a common witness in the world, as essential to the peacemaking ministry of reconciliation that none other than God has given us (2 Cor 5:18)” (294).

 As stated near the outset of this review, A Pilgrim People:  Becoming a Catholic Peace Church is a timely and important book.  Over the past several months, Christians have been prevented from gathering for worship due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.  Perhaps being removed from the comfortable and familiar setting of the parish church has unmasked the reality of life in the diaspora, of making a pilgrim journey throughout life with many unforeseen obstacles to encounter.  This book will aid in helping Christians feel more at home in the “bigger” world that is not so safe and secure.  We need peace more than ever, and Gerald Schlabach charts a path for how Christians might together become a prophetic people, a pilgrim people.