Pace e Bene

A peace and justice worker, teacher, workshop facilitator, and writer for two decades, Ken Butigan is currently serving as Pace e Bene’s executive director.

Since the early 1980s, Ken has worked with numerous social movements, including movements for a nuclear-free future, an end to homelessness, and freedom for East Timor.  From 1987 to 1990, he was the national coordinator of the Pledge of Resistance, a network of 100,000 people in 400 local groups that organized coordinated nonviolent action for peace in Central America.

In January 2006, he initiated the Declaration of Peace and has been one of its national organizers. The Declaration of Peace is a nationwide, grassroots nonviolent action campaign to support a comprehensive plan for peace in Iraq.

Ken joined the Pace e Bene staff in 1990. He developed and for several years directed Pace e Bene’s From Violence To Wholeness program, and was actively involved in creating Pace e Bene’s Engage: Exploring Nonviolent Living program.

Ken earned his Ph.D. in the Historical and Cultural Studies of Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in 2000. He is a lecturer in the spirituality and practice of nonviolence at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley.  He directed the Spiritual Life Institute at Saint Martin’s College for three years and has recently taught at DePaul University and Loyola University in Chicago.

Ken has published five books, including Pilgrimage through a Burning World: Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003).

Ken lives in Chicago with his spouse Cynthia Okayama Dopke.

For more Background:

• An Interview with Ken Butigan

Some of Ken Butigan’s Writings:

• The Practice of Peace
• Transforming Our Scripts
• Christian Nonviolence Resistance
• The Pledge of Resistance
• The Sacred Ground: The United Farm Workers
• We Traveled to Seattle for Global Change