On the wall of my college dorm room in 1969 was a bright—orange, red, and yellow—silkscreen poster for the Chicago 15 draft board raiders. It may have been the art of Sister Corita Kent, notorious for many such. Pentecost flames were depicted (they had burned the files on the morning of that Christian feast) and Acts 2 quoted: “These men are not drunk as you imagine, for it is only the third hour of the day.” They were not only men. But fire was their accomplice in this action, under the influence of Spirit.

These were not the first to employ fire in destroying draft records in protest of the Vietnam War; that was Daniel and Philip Berrigan and others at the Catonsville Customs House a year prior. The Catonsville Nine’s statement read, in part:

There we shall, of purpose and forethought, remove the 1-A files, sprinkle them in the public street with homemade napalm, and set them afire. For which act we shall, beyond doubt, be placed behind bars for some portion of our natural lives, in consequence of our inability to live and die content in the plagued city, to say "peace peace" when there is no peace… Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise. For we are sick at heart, our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children. 

Daniel’s testimony at their federal trial recounted how he came, step by step, in conversion of conscience to Catonsville. One event was most excruciating and immediate: the anti-war self-immolation of a young man in Syracuse, with whom he sat in the hospital room before his death. The scent of burned flesh hung in the air. A similar influence was a young Catholic Worker friend Roger LaPorte who burned himself outside the U.N. in 1965. Dan’s homily at the Worker Mass urged this not be considered a suicide. He did not see it proceeding from despair but a spirit more akin to gift and self-sacrifice, even hope. For this breech of official church position, he was promptly exiled for a period to Latin America. From the frying pan into the fire.

There were other U.S. immolations against the war—Alice Hertz in Detroit and Norman Morrison outside the Pentagon window of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. 

This year we had Aaron Bushnell, 25-year-old active-duty airman self-immolating in front of the Washington Israeli Embassy last February, in protest of the genocidal war in Gaza. He livestreamed his last words with the action.

I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. I will no longer be complicit in genocide.

Then as he burned, he shouted repeatedly, “Free Palestine!”

When I posted his video, at once moving and disturbing, a friend who is politically astute responded.  Are you supporting this? If a young person came to you considering it, would you encourage them as a pastor? The question is vexing and urgent. My unmediated answer is, no, I would not encourage. But I would want to listen, to hear the voice of conscience, and the struggle with history. Is even listening encouragement? Though, if I heard anything of despair and its assorted temptations, I would indeed treat it as suicidal and take steps to intervene. It is certain the tactic can attract the desperate and unwell. But Alice Hertz, Roger LaPorte, Norman Morrison, Aaron Bushnell? Yes, I receive their offerings, deeply challenged.

The progenitors of this form of protest were Vietnamese monks and nuns—first on behalf of the Buddhist Church, but then against the war as members of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing— engaged Buddhism. When Daniel Berrigan got out of prison, he sat down with Nhat Hanh for recorded conversations that became The Raft is Not the Shore. Among the topics they confronted was self-immolation. 

The Zen master told the story of Nhat Chi Mai, a Buddhist nun who underwent the discipline of fire in 1967, to expose the war and cry for peace. She kept the plan strictly to herself. Mai had taken a month away from the community prior, returning garbed in a beautiful new dress. She wrote letters to friends, baked banana bread as gifts, and made visits to loved ones. She was so full of joy, her friends suspected she was preparing to marry. On May 16, kneeling before a statue of the Virgin Mary and the woman Bodhisattva, Quan Am, saint of compassion, she burned in silence bowing before them. A pen and ink drawing of her by the artist Vo Dinh hangs on the wall beside me as I write.

Berrigan and Nhat Hanh were holding this conversation on Good Friday in 1974. Both recognized a connection to the death of Jesus. He knew what was coming and stayed to face it. “No one takes my life from me, but I give it freely.” In fact, he lived those days, free to die. Free to be consumed for the life of the world.

In a deep connection, Nhat Hanh observed,

I see in the act of self-immolation the willingness to take suffering on yourself, to make yourself suffer for the sake of purification, for the sake of communication. And in that respect, I think self-immolation by fire is not that different from fasting. Fasting is also to purify, to establish communication, to take suffering on yourself. And if you fast too long, you also die.

The impact of Aaron Bushnell’s extreme protest goes far and wide, yet is still not fully known. One consequence fell upon Larry Hebert, 26, another Air Force member based in Spain where he saw U.S. planes loaded with weapons en route to Israel. Inspired by Bushnell, he began a hunger strike outside the White House, holding a sign: “Active-duty airman refuses to eat while Gaza starves.” His intention? To continue fasting until he “physically cannot or until we obtain a permanent ceasefire and enough food to feed all of Gaza.”

On April 9 (the Feast of Bonhoeffer), he joined us for prayer on the Capitol lawn. A communion service concluded with a commissioning for some 75 of us then entering the Senate Office Building and proceeding to shut down the cafeteria. Woe to those who turn bread from sacrament to weapon of genocide. As part of Christians for a Free Palestine, over 50 of us were arrested that day.

When Thich Nhat Hanh asked a fellow monk to write an article about Nhat Chi Mai, he responded, as if speaking directly to her, “Your uncle is also burning himself, in a slower way. I am burning myself with austerity, with active resistance against the war. I am doing exactly what you have done, but in a different way.”

St. Paul says it like this: do not be conformed to this world but be transformed…Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God. Burn, he says. Burn holy and freely.

Reprinted from geez, Issue 73, Summer 2024