Carrie and John Schuchardt

                    Profile : John and Carrie Schuchardt

John (born 1939) and Carrie (born 1944) Schuchardt co-founded The House of Peace in 1990, a home which is a physical and spiritual refuge for victims of war, in community with adults with special needs. In the last 15 years over 400 refugees from approximately 30 countries have been received in the healing embrace of The House of Peace, giving supportive assistance in establishing themselves in the US.

In addition to the daily work of The House Peace, John and Carrie participate in many activities for the conversion of consciousness and policies from war to peace. Carrie has begun a network of women who witness publicly, Women Weeping, where women dress in mourning carrying symbolic lifeless children in order to help people feel what is rarely expressed in the media: the grief of hundreds of thousands of mothers in war zones around the world who lose their children to the terrible violence of war. John, who resigned from the Marines before being sent to Vietnam in l965, has been active in his local chapter of Veterans for Peace.

In l980 John participated with 7 other Christian friends in the first Plowshare action in the U.S. Committed to non-violence, and following the Biblical teaching to “beat our swords into plowshares... and nations shall learn war no more” John and the other peace workers hammered the nose-cones of nuclear weapons at a plant in Pennsylvania to render them unusable. The 8 people were willingly arrested and imprisoned in order to bring awareness of the true nature of nuclear weapons and the necessity of their complete abolition. John participated in his second Plowshare action in l983; a total of over 70 Plowshare actions have been undertaken in the United States.