The Rural We: Bishop Jim Curry
The retired bishop co-founded Swords to Plowshares, which works to transform guns into garden tools.
Anyone who despairs about the incidents of gun violence in our country should take note: there are groups transforming guns into garden tools. On Saturday, June 10, Bishop Jim Curry, retired bishop of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, will be bringing his portable forge to the Hewat Community Garden at 30 Salmon Kill Road in Salisbury from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. As a founding member of Bishops United Against Gun Violence and co-founder of Swords to Plowshares, he will invite community members to take a few swings at dismantled gun parts that will be reformed into to garden tools and other useful items. The idea of turning “swords into plowshares” for community gardens captures the imagination, Curry says. “You have to try new ideas, because the old ideas don’t work.”
I was an elementary school teacher in Huntington, Massachusetts, then went to Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and joined the ministry in Connecticut. I became a bishop in 2000 and retired in 2013.
In 2016, we were introduced to a group, Raw Tools, which started this concept. It was developed by a Mennonite father and son. After Sandy Hook, they started inviting people to disarm their weapons, then make them into different gardening tools using blacksmithing techniques. We started talking with police departments around Connecticut, and invited leaders in this movement to New Haven. I learned as much as I could about blacksmithing, and began raising money to get the equipment and co-created Swords to Plowshares.
Before the pandemic, we were working with inmates at the New Haven Correctional Center, teaching blacksmithing. They made a lot of our tools at the beginning, which we gave away to community gardens.
We work with police departments in Connecticut to get the guns. We have to follow good dismantling procedures. The way it works is I destroy the weapon under their eyes to make sure it can never be put together again. Once they’ve certified that, the police give us the material we use for all these projects. It’s such a win-win. The gun buyback is an opportunity to turn in a gun and receive renumeration. Lots of people actually want to get rid of their guns.
The Rev. Heidi Truax at Trinity Lime Rock in Lakeville is behind Saturday’s event. The Episcopal Church has a camp in Morris and we’ve done workshops there. This year they’re setting up a permanent forge, so it’ll be a center for doing the Swords to Plowshares work in Northwest Connecticut.
Join us at the forge and anvil! People will be making tools and jewelry. We will present the garden tools to the leadership of the Hewat Community Garden. There will also be garden tools and jewelry available for sale. This is an invitation to face the reality of guns and do something.
Bishop Curry shapes a mattock from a rifle barrel.
