Rev. Jennifer Brooks is Minister of the Unitarian Church on Nantucket Island. She came to Nantucket from Geneva, Switzerland, where she served as deputy director of the human rights organization International Bridges to Justice. Rev. Brooks entered the ministry after a 20-year career in law, specializing as a consultant to developing nations in Africa and emerging democracies in Eastern Europe. She holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School and an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School. She is the enthusiastic parent of two adopted children, Jamie (23) and Kevin (14). She enjoys bicycling, canoing, and wilderness camping.

Read Rev. Brooks's sermon The Lucifer Effect: A Sermon for Memorial Day: President Dwight David Eisenhower, who understood war as a participant and as a national leader, said in 1953: “No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.” Eisenhower was reflecting painfully on the disruption to peace that followed the end of World War II: the formation of opposing power blocs each armed with nuclear weapons...

Jesus and Lucifer on Social Justice
		March 31, 2010 10:22 am By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	I was intrigued by television personality Glenn Beck's advice that Christians "run as fast as you can" from a church that has "social justice" on its website. Beck apparently sees "social justice" as something new, springing from Marxism and not only irrelevant but harmful to Christianity. Thinking about Beck’s advice, I asked myself, WWJD, "What Would Jesus Do?" and immediately wondered WWLD, or "What Would Lucifer Do?" Which one, Jesus or Lucifer, would run away from a congregation that has "social justice" on its website? For those of us who want to do good, not evil, what does the Lucifer Effect tell us about Christianity and social justice? Read More...
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For Goodness Sake
		March 2, 2010 8:56 am By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	I can’t think about “goodness” without recalling the 1932 Mae West film, “Night after Night.” Mae West plays the role of gangster’s moll Maudie Tippett. As Maudie enters a nightclub draped in diamonds, the hat-check girl exclaims, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds!” Mae answers, famously, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.” The “goodness” flowing from the scriptwriter’s pen is cultural shorthand for God. The phrase “for goodness sake” is, more correctly, “for goodness’s sake,” or perhaps, “for Goodness’s sake.” In other words, “for God’s sake.” Linguistically and theologically, God and goodness are linked. “God” and “good” are one. Because people think of God as good, and “good” as a sort of counterweight to “evil,” it is easy to think of God and goodness on one side, with Satan and evil on the other, as if in some cosmic tug-of-war where the forces are evenly balanced and human beings are challenged to throw their lot in with one side or the other. The Lucifer Effect, with its allusion to Satan, tends to reinforce this image. There are many reasons why I think this is an incorrect picture of the universe, but I’ll deal with only one of them now and save the rest for future posts: good and evil are not evenly balanced. Let’s set “God” aside for a moment and start with “good.” It is possible to think theologically about “good” whether or not we start with God. (Consider the Dalai Lama.) And it’s helpful. Read More...
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Stone Soup: A Fable for Our Times
		November 1, 2009 6:19 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	We’re told that the story of Stone Soup is a medieval folk tale about soldiers on their long way home from war. But it’s really a story that is both older and more contemporary; it is a fable for our times, a lesson in the Lucifer Effect and how to reverse it. One day three comrades walked down a road in medieval France, weary and hungry. They came upon a village of frightened people. These people hide their limited supply of food and bar their doors against hungry soldiers who arrive at dusk. This is the Lucifer Effect at work; the villagers have infected each other with their fear of strangers and their fear of scarcity. If we think about the story of the Good Samaritan, the weary travelers could be seen as strangers bleeding by the side of the road, the “neighbors” who are to be loved and helped. And so they are. But almost as soon as they arrive, the three comrades perceive that this is not a village of Good Samaritans. Yes, the travelers may be tired and hungry and needy. Yet the villagers are even more in need. Their need is deep and subtle. They are trapped in the Lucifer Effect. It is a pattern the travelers have seen many times before. Read More...
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Tyger in Process: Evil in an Unfinished Universe
		October 11, 2009 7:08 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	Why is there evil? In William Blake's famous poem "The Tyger," the poet describes the tiger's ferocity and wonders about its Creator: "Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" A telling question. A heart-felt, serious question. The conventional understanding of God as all-powerful makes God responsible for both good and evil ("weal and woe"). People wrestle emotionally with the idea that good and evil could have their source in a single all-powerful being: Does God choose to do evil? One response is a dualistic view of God, a "good" God figure and a "bad" God figure: in conventional terms, "God" and "Satan." In religious discourse today, many traditions resort to the idea of a "bifurcated" Power: Good vs. Evil, God vs. Satan. People who think this way tend to classify other people as either on "God's side" or "Satan's side." It becomes a natural tendency to demonize anyone who disagrees. This bifurcated, "binary," right-wrong, good-evil way of thinking is a major source of violence, cruelty, and evil in the world. The moment we classify someone as "the spawn of Satan" is the moment we eliminate any need to understand, to feel compassion for, to love that person. The Lucifer Effect shows clearly that de-humanizing others is the first step toward evil actions. Read More...
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Memorial Day
		May 25, 2009 12:01 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	Today we remember those who died in the service of ideals we cherish. We remember the fallen. We mourn what is lost. And on this day I wonder what lessons we might draw from our new understanding of the Lucifer Effect. I will never forget my first walk through the Vietnam war memorial. The walkway slanted gently downward, inviting entry. As I descended, the wall rose around me, each step taking me deeper and deeper into the hall of the dead. Read More...
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Saving Eden
		February 6, 2009 8:22 am By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Original Sin
	In Adam on Mars, I imagined humans living in a domed city that protected them from the harsh wilderness of a partially terraformed alien planet. Cut off from the civilization that produced their domed city, the inhabitants gradually lose the ability to do the right thing. One of them—Adam—makes a decision that cracks the dome and dooms the city. The doctrine of “original sin” explains the suffering of humanity as the result of a taint that spreads from one man’s wrongful action. God tells Adam not to eat the fruit of the Tree; Lucifer whispers; Adam disobeys; humanity is cast out of Eden. Acknowledging the innate human capacity for both good and evil, the Lucifer Effect offers a broader perspective on evil acts. Phil Zimbardo’s psychological experiments show the extraordinary power of situations to override “the better angels of our nature.” What we’ve learned of Lucifer Effect challenges the idea of “original sin.” Free will means the capacity to choose good or evil. What would it have taken for Adam to make the right choice? What does it take to save Eden? Read More...
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Adam on Mars
		January 14, 2009 7:21 am By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Original Sin
	Imagine a place like Mars: barren, dry, lifeless. But in the far future humans have learned to terraform planets—to make them like Earth. As the planet changes, its thin atmosphere gradually increasing, the first tentative plants taking root, humans live in a domed city safe from the harsh external world. Inside the dome they have everything they need: air, beautiful gardens, food, wildlife, lakes and streams. But some catastrophe happens back on Earth, and the humans living in the domed city on the strange planet are cut off from humankind. Over time they lose the knowledge of how the domed city came to be. They carry out the tasks that support their environment without understanding what they do, simply following the rules that sustain their environment. As the years pass, the atmosphere outside the dome slowly grows supportive of human life—though it is still harsh and unwelcoming compared to the veritable Garden of Eden that is their city inside the dome. Then one day a man (let’s call him Adam) decides to break one of the rules he does not understand. Like the first bite of an apple, his decision ruptures the curving wall of the dome. Was Lucifer whispering in his ear? Read More...
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Standing Between
		April 28, 2008 11:05 am By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	Sometimes heroes are people who stand between. In 1859 a young Swiss entrepreneur named Henri Dunant witnessed the battle of Solfertino, where the French and Italians were fighting to drive Austrians out of Italy. Three years later he published a book about the experience, A Memory of Solfertino. Dunant's book tells about the bloody battle, but its focus is on the aftermath—the fruitless attempt to help the wounded and dying. The book concludes with a proposal that all nations form volunteer committees of non-combatants to help care for soldiers injured in battle. Two years after A Memory of Solfertino was published, twelve nations met in Geneva to sign a treaty, the first “Geneva Convention.” They agreed to form national committees of the “Red Cross” and to respect the battlefield neutrality of Red Cross volunteers. It was the first step to a new way for the global community to think about war. Today everyone knows about the International Red Cross. They go to places where terrible things have happened and they bring first aid, food, blankets. They stand between people and disaster; they hand out bottles of water and when they can they set up field kitchens so people can have a hot meal. In wartime they bring balm to the injured, make the wounded whole; and they visit prisoners held by opposing armies. Today there are many additional Geneva Conventions. In addition to battlefield neutrality for armband-wearing volunteers, the newer Conventions lay out a plan for humane treatment of non-combatants and prisoners of war. The Red Cross has expanded from 12 nations to 181, and its symbol from the red cross to (in Arabic countries) a red crescent, and (in countries that wish to adopt neither cross nor crescent) a red crystal. The current challenge for the International Red Cross is the detention of people who are not prisoners of war but persons named as unlawful enemy combatants. A 10-year-old Afghani boy named Esrarullah saw his father for the first time in 8 months—not in person, because families of detainees are not allowed to visit—but by an internet video conference arranged by the Red Cross. I cannot imagine how difficut it must have been for the Red Cross to arrange an internet video conferencing in Kabul, Afghanistan between a father detained at an American air base outside Kabul, when for months the authorities had allowed no contact. Read More...
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Taming the Lions
		December 13, 2007 11:24 am By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	The story of Daniel in the lion’s den is the perfect Sunday School thriller. There is the good guy, the hero, Daniel; the bad guy, the Evil King of Babylonia, Darius, who orders Daniel thrown among the lions simply for practicing his faith; and the lions, scary and dangerous, who mysteriously do no harm to Daniel. Children come away from this story, no doubt, impressed with the idea that if they, too, faithfully honor their religious teachings, they will be protected from danger. That lesson is actually not the real story, the truth of the story. The real story of Daniel is far more nuanced than the Sunday School moral lesson, and as a result it tells us much more about good and evil, and how we figure out which is which. The truth of Daniel's story involves the Lucifer Effect. Read More...
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Credibility
		September 14, 2007 4:44 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Domestic Violence
	“It’s all fabrication,” the social worker said when I relayed what the children had told me. And the judge refused to admit into evidence the psychologist’s report on the emotional harm they have suffered. “Hearsay!” How can we prevent domestic violence if our society refuses to listen to children? Allan G. Johnson’s fascinating study The Gender Knot tackles the complexity of male “privilege” embedded in our society’s culture. "Privilege" is any unearned advantage available to members of one social category but systemically denied to others. Because of this embedded privilege, Johnson explains, what a man says has greater credibility than what a woman says, even when they’re making the same point. If a man and woman disagree, embedded privilege causes the man’s position to seem more “reasonable,” especially to someone who doesn’t have all the facts. The idea of embedded privilege as a systemic influence on credibility ties into the Lucifer Effect: even good people may do bad things if the “system” supports and encourages the evil. So if greater credibility is an unearned advantage available to men but systemically denied to women and children, people tend to believe the man if there are no witnesses to his violence and emotional abuse (no witnesses, of course, except the victims of his violence). It was not until I encountered these children that I fully understood how male privilege affects credibility and perpetuates the evil of domestic violence in our society. Read More...
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Growing Heroes
		August 30, 2007 3:52 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	The names of individuals have been changed but the stories are true. When a group of six teenagers heads out into the wilderness for two weeks, their twenty-something trail guide has his or her hands full. YMCA Camp Menogyn, in northern Minnesota on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area, has an 86-year tradition of taking girls and boys out “on trail” for challenging experiences that test their characters and help them grow. The six boys have been out with trail guide Charlie for several days, long enough to know each other pretty well and to respect Charlie’s low-key guidance. Honesty is one of the basic character traits this program seeks to develop—not only because of the importance of honesty and authenticity in relationships, but also because the kids need to learn to be honest with themselves. “Hey, dude, tell the truth.” This is 14-year-old Zeb’s admonition to Roy, also 14, whose inclination to avoid his share of canoe-carrying over portages has begun to frustrate his group. Read More...
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Voice of the People
		August 17, 2007 10:46 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Heroes
	Kimmie Weeks, one of many children victimized by Liberia’s nearly 30 years of intermittent civil war, almost died at the age of nine from untreated diseases for which there are treatments and vaccines. The grave was ready; he was wrapped in a shroud; he opened his eyes just before they laid him in the ground. And that's when he decided to be a hero. I’m sure he didn’t think about it in those terms. But Kimmie did think, in the way young children do, that it “wasn’t right” that adults governing his country were so caught up in their power struggles that they allowed children to suffer and die from diseases that no longer need be fatal. It wasn't fair. Kimmie thought there must be something he could do to make things better. So at the age of 10 he began volunteering in a local health clinic. Sometimes he just held the babies, comforting them. One day an infant died in his arms, and he began to say out loud that what was happening was wrong. The downside of the Lucifer Effect is that people accept the morality prevalent around them. The upside of the Lucifer Effect is that determined people can challenge and change the moral climate. Anyone who sets out to make this kind of difference is a hero. Kimmie Weeks is a hero. By age 13 Kimmie had formed a national organization to advocate for Liberia’s children. At 16 he was so vocal an opponent of the practice of enlisting children as soldiers that the repressive and violent Taylor government put him on a deathlist. Thanks to UNICEF, Kimmie escaped and came to America to finish his education. His heroic stance brought international attention to the issue of child soldiers. And now Kimmie has returned to his native land. Read More...
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Suffer the Children
		July 19, 2007 8:51 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Sexual Abuse
	“I apologize to anyone who has been offended,” said Cardinal Roger Mahoney as he announced a $660 million settlement of claims by more than 500 victims of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests. It is hard to imagine that there is anyone not “offended” by the astonishing record of the repeated and long-tolerated abuse by parish priests in the American Catholic Church. This latest settlement brings the total—so far—to more than two billiondollars. Adults who as youngsters suffered the misery of sexual assault by trusted religious leaders have only recently found a social climate in which the truth of their experience is accepted. The most horrifying aspect of this sordid history is that some in the Church hierarchy who knew of this un-priestly conduct kept silent and simply transferred the problem priests to other churches, and so by their silence were complicit in the continuing devastation of children whose souls they were enjoined to save. Don’t get me wrong. Child sex-abusers are not limited to any denomination or to any profession. But there is now a well-documented record of sexual abuse in Catholic parishes: unholy acts that were all-too-common and all-too-actively concealed. Why? How could a priest do something like that? Hurt a child like that? A priest! Read More...
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Lucifer and Domestic Violence
		July 3, 2007 5:32 pm By Rev. Jennifer Brooks Category: Domestic Violence
	Nantucket, Massachusetts has just witnessed a 3-week murder trial. Thomas Toolan was found guilty of killing Beth Lochtefeld, the girlfriend who rejected him. Toolan was so “in love” with her that two days after she broke up with him he tracked her down and stabbed her repeatedly with a knife. My heart goes out to Beth’s family, whose wise and compassionate public statement at the trial’s end is an exemplar of lovingkindness. Sensational trials like Toolan’s shock the public, but it’s too easy to write Toolan off as a sick, unstable man. Using the analytical framework of The Lucifer Effect, domestic violence is not merely a problem of individuals with a “disposition” for control by violence. Extreme acts like Toolan’s, which receive wide media attention, mask the underlying social systems that support and sustain domestic violence. Especially hidden, and therefore especially insidious, are the theological systems that reinforce the abuser’s sense of righteousness. My phone rang late one evening and when I answered, a man’s angry voice shocked me to attention. He was the husband of a woman I’d been encouraging as she struggled to prepare for a court appearance in the divorce she’d sought, which had dragged on for three years. “Why are you helping her?” he demanded. “Don’t you know that it’s all her fault?” Read More...
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