The Peacemaker Pledge

By
Forrest (Woody) Mosten

February 4, 2025

I will think about peace, why peace is important and how it works.

I will help use my peacemaker efforts to help resolve and prevent conflict:

• In my own family

• In my office

• In my work with clients, their families, friends, and other professionals;

• In the family Mediation, Collaborative Practice, and Conflict Prevention and Wellness Profession; and

• In my local community, my country, and throughout the world.

This is a private and personal commitment to be a peacemaker for the next twelve months. If you are prepared to commit to and follow the Pledge, date and sign it and place it into a sealed envelope with the label: My Peacemaker Pledge and the date. Twelve months later, open the envelope, reread the Pledge, review your actions over the past 12 months, and make a purposeful decision whether you wish to renew the Pledge for another 12 months.

Purpose of the Peacemaker Pledge

This voluntary confidential personal commitment is a tool to encourage reflection and action toward individual, interpersonal society, and international prevention and resolution of conflict. The Pledge suggests positive proactive action to not just help people who are engaged in conflict but to work toward creating peace within and between individuals and in the world generally.

History of the Peacemaker Pledge

Professor Louis M. Brown (1909-1996), known as the Father of Preventive Law, was honored in 1991 by Manhattan College with an honorary LL.D. degree in 1977 and, for his conflict-resolution work, with the Pacem in Terris medal. Months before his death, due to his failing health, Professor Brown requested me to deliver an address to the Peace Studies students at Manhattan College.

In order to provide the students with a practical guide to follow up on my talk, I created the Peacemaker Pledge. In preparing the Pledge, I consulted with Rabbi Jeffrey Marx who is a scholar in apology, forgiveness, and conflict resolution. Rabbi Marx suggested that the Pledge stress proactive professional outreach modeled on the Jewish concept of Rodef Shalom. This concept proscribes that during the period between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, each person has the obligation to proactively seek out those whom they have hurt (or might have hurt) in the past year and seek forgiveness for any harm caused. The deadline for this action is sundown on Yom Kippur when the “gates close” and the Book of Life is “sealed” for the next year. For the first several years, I used the following title: Peacemaker Pledge: Be a Rodef Shalom: A Lover and Pursuer of Peace.

Rabbi Marx and I agreed that future peacemakers should attempt to emulate this proactive approach in working toward peace in the world, from the people in their lives to those living across national boundaries. Since my talk in 1996, I have provided and discussed the Peacemaker Pledge to every graduate of my Basic Mediation and Collaborative Practice Trainings. The Peacemaker Pledge is part of a “Quaker Circle” that ends the training which serves as a metaphor of closing a mediation. The Pledge is a living document and has gone through many iterations. It has been used for students from pre-school through professional degrees, members of law enforcement, and with clients attempting to capture and improve on the resolution achieved around my mediation table.

Features of the Peacemaker Pledge

Think About Peace: Encourages the Peace Pledger to take time and reflection, what peace is (and what it isn’t: “The Absence of War is Not Peace,” Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 1670). Is settlement the same as peace between former opponents or enemies? This commitment to think about peace may include casual reading or serious study about peace in one’s profession of origin or as discussed in other disciplines.

Why Peace is Important: Once having a basic understanding of the meaning of peace, the next step is to look at the alternatives and try to ascertain why working toward peace should be a priority. What is the harm of conflict and the benefits of peace on both an inner level and with those in our lives?

How Does Peace Work? Putting away rose-colored glasses, if peace can be achieved, how does it function? Is President Reagan’s cautionary words, “Trust, but Verify” sufficient to maintain peace and provide benefits to those who practice it (or are they “transactional, based on a cynical view of the human condition?). Or, does real peace require deeper trust, acknowledgment and empathy?

Transition from Peace In the Abstract to Concrete Action: What are the efforts that the Peace Pledger will make to both lessen conflict and to prevent future conflict? Does this encourage/require journaling our past peace efforts in addition to planning out future peace efforts?

To Whom and Where Do We Practice Peace? Clearly, inner peace, mindfulness, and other value and emotional settings are a foundation for peaceful actions with others. Meaningful dialogue with others interested in deeper resolution is an excellent start.

Our Own Family: Few of us in the conflict resolution field have had totally smooth journeys within our own families. Yet, whether we live alone or among extended family members, our respect, acknowledgment and efforts within our own families may be key to our outside peace efforts.
Our Office Colleagues: Whether we work out of a physical office or exclusively online, most of us depend and collaborate with others to deliver services to our clients. These relationships deserve value and attention and give us the foundation to help those who seek our assistance.
Our Client Work: As David Hoffman and Daniel Bowling discuss in their groundbreaking book, Bringing Peace Into the Room, we learn so much from our clients: their conflicts, even with us. As conflict resolution professionals, we often are often triangulated into the conflicts of those we are trying to help. Our use of caring boundaries are helpful but do not guarantee positive outcomes with our clients. Our willingness and abilities to seek solutions to calm stormy waters may be the key to our professional success.
Our Professional Colleagues: Whether in helping teams or as co-members and committee colleagues, these relationships can provide generous support and friendship throughout our careers. Most of us work alone much of the time so that the long-term connections with colleagues become even more crucial to our career satisfaction.
In Our Roles as Neutral Mediators: Neutrality does not require distance. Stephen Goldberg and Margaret Shaw, in their study, Why Mediators are Successful, found that warm empathy with the parties was a quality appreciated by both parties and their attorneys. In helping parties build their agreements, as mediators, we can encourage parties include both symptomatic and asymptomatic prevention. Symptomatic preventive provisions include dispute resolution protocols and helping parties come up with objective criteria to solve issues that may come up in the future. Using this, parties can be guided to establish parenting meetings or other communication to anticipate and deal with problems rather than wait until they ripen into actual conflict, raging disputes, or litigation.
In Our Roles as Collaborative Professionals: Whether as an interdisciplinary team member or interest-based negotiator, we can guide our individual clients and bond with the other spouse in the quest for family harmony (or reduce disharmony) through a consensual restructuring of the family. While presented as a dispute, we have an opportunity to create new and positive behavior with both parents and children that can impact every member of the family and those who interact with all family members.

We Can Create Prevention of Future Conflict and Maximize Individual and Family Wellness

As change agents, looking beyond settlement, we can explore each party’s vision of wellness during and after initial separation and divorce. Building on the common values of the parties and providing protocols for them to live with their differences without judgment, we can provide legal and conflict wellness guidance. One lens is to view the life cycle of a client’s future and help plan to prevent trouble for future marriages, financial security, retirement, and of course, estate planning.

Target Populations to Pursue Peace

The pledge provides direction for our efforts starting with our neighborhood and geographical community and expanding to our nation and beyond. Our actions can be focused on one or more of these targets depending on conflict needs and reception to our efforts as we may determine.

Protocol for Pledge

While our work for peace can inspire others to follow that example, our personal pledge for Peacemaking is an inner private commitment both as to the Existence of the Pledge and any fulfillment thereof. Just as aspirational clauses in contracts are to help inspire and remind the parties of compliance, the Peacemaker Pledge can be a reminder throughout the pledged year to take proactive steps toward making peace. Following the teachings of Maimonides that anonymous giving is a good deed performed for its own sake, our peace pledge remains an inner commitment upon which the praise or recognition from others is neither sought nor expected.

For Further Study:

Daniel Bowling and David Hoffman, Bringing Peace Into The Room (2001)

Joseph Fahey and Richard Armstrong, A Peace Reader (1992) David Hoffman, Lawyers as Peacemakers. Really!? Yes, Really (in Mosten &Cordover, Building a Successful Collaborative Practice, 2018) James E Leckman, Catherine Panter-Brick, and Rima Salah (2014)

Forrest S. Mosten, Lawyer as Peacemaker: Ethical and Innovative Practice Roles, 43(3) Family Law Quarterly 489 (2009).

Forrest S. Mosten, Hon. Elizabeth Potter Scully, and Lara Traum, Be a Peacemaker (2023)(in Mosten, Scully and Traum, Effectively Representing Clients in Family Mediation, 2023

Marshall B. Rosenberg, NonViolent Communication (2005) J. Kim Wright, Lawyers as Peacemakers (2010) Forrest (Woody) Mosten’s next book (with Judge Elizabeth Potter Scully and Lara Traum) is Family Lawyer as Peacemaker and will be published by the ABA later this year.

Forrest (Woody) Mosten

Forrest (Woody) Mosten Forrest (Woody) Mosten has been in private practice as a mediator since 1979 and currently is practicing mediation and collaborative law 100% online serving clients throughout the world. Woody is a founding partner of the Mosten-Guthrie Online Training Academy for Mediators and Collaborative Professionals. He is Adjunct Professor… MORE