“Make Mothers’ Day Great Again”

 Sr. Martha Ann Kirk and Rev. Julie Brenton Rowe invite you sign and to spread the peace petition from their Palestinian and Israeli friends, “The Mother’s Call”  https://www.womenwagepeace.org.il.   Learn about Mother’s Day Home - juliebrentonrowe.   In May 2025, they were on a peace-building trip in the Holy Land which you can read about “Hopeful Pilgrim” and see Sr. Martha Ann with Yael Deckelbaum who wrote the song. 

“Make Mothers’ Day Great Again”
Rev. Dr. Julie Brenton Rowe

In 1870, decades before Woodrow Wilson instituted the current Mothers’ Day holiday in 1914, peace advocate Julie Ward Howe issued a proclamation calling for a day to be set aside for women to gather to strategize about seeking peace and ending war:    

“Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!..

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs…

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel with one another whereby  the great human family can live in peace….I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held ..to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” Paraphrased from Julia Ward Howe’s Mothers Peace Day Proclamation

Few women are at the table when men let slip the dogs of war. But they are often the ones to pick up the pieces of the lives shattered by it.

An Israeli woman peace advocate Gila Sviersky used to say: 

“Why do they give the peace process to generals? All they know how to do is fight.  They should give it to mothers. They know how to negotiate.”

What if we did? What if we placed more women at the seats of power in the peace processes instead of endlessly funding the generals who never miss an opportunity to turn plowshares into spears?

Studies show that women’s participation in peace processes increases the probability of peace agreements lasting 2  years by 20% and lasting 15 years by 35%. Just ask Leymah Gbowee of Liberia or the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition party in Northern Ireland.  They were instrumental in stopping the worst of the violence in their countries.  

In 2014, in response to yet another bloodbath in Gaza, Israeli women formed a group called Women Wage Peace, calling for an end to the violence and return to negotiations, this time with the novel idea of involving more women. They grew, and in 2022, partnered with the Palestinian peace group Women of the Sun to issue the Mothers’ Call, which basically said let’s stop killing one another’s children and work instead for peace and equality for both Israelis and Palestinians. In 2023, they celebrated their work in a festive day in Jerusalem and at the Dead Sea. Unfortunately, it was October 4, 2023. 

Three days later, one of their founders, long-time Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, was killed in her home near Gaza by Hamas. Over the next 2 years, almost thirty Women of the Sun peace activists were killed in Gaza. Despite the complexities, they remain committed to working together, but it is a tough go. 

Leaders from the partnership have been honored for their work by the BBC and Time Magazine and have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The partnership was awarded a grant in 2023 before October 7 for its program Women Building Bridges. Unfortunately, it was partially funded by USAID. So much for US support for peace programs. 

More than 50,000 people have signed the Mothers’ Call. Add your signature and join the movement at https://www.womenwagepeace.org.il. 

It’s not that all women see peacemaking the same way or that they have magic answers. But their peace work has tended to emphasize non-violence, reaching across divides, and upholding equal human dignity. Much of their work improves conditions on the ground: healing trauma; building cooperative networks; and improving schools, social programs, and health care. These are not just feminine values. They are human values. 

Some say non-violence is naïve. But how much more naïve is it to believe that bombing children and devastating cities – again - will do anything other than create traumatized children who will go on to perpetuate the cycle? How much more naïve to believe that people living under a brutal military occupation will somehow stop struggling for freedom with whatever they have? Freeing people from occupation and oppression and insisting on justice and equal human dignity are the only ways to long-term peace. 

In the year 2000, the United Nations passed Resolution 1325, which called for, among other things, the inclusion of more women in formal peace processes. Twenty-five years later and still you won’t find many women in pictures of the executive Board of Peace or any of the leadership teams of the current warring nations. 

Leaders like US Secretary of the “Department of War” Pete “raining down death and destruction” Hegseth have made sure of that. He “proudly” ended the US Women, Security, and Peace Initiative, saying that it “overburdens our commanders and troops – distracting from our core task – war-fighting.”  

If “war-fighting” is our core task as humanity, it’s news to Hegseth’s hero Jesus.

It’s time for regime change at the peace tables.    

Rev. Dr. Julie Brenton Rowe just finished her Doctor of Ministry degree in Public Theology at Austin Presbyterian Seminary with a focus on women and peacemaking in Israel and Palestine. She is the author of “Why Peace and Prayers are Not Enough: A Primer on Justice and Peace in Palestine and Israel.”

Julie Ward Howe’s Mothers’ Peace Day Proclamation of 1870:

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.