foreign policy and adoption of liberation theology outraged conservative U.S. Keeley also, of course, focuses on intra-Catholic conflict, making clear that the “Maryknoller’s reassessment of U.S. foreign relations history, Keeley’s book joins many recent (and forthcoming) works that are reappraising the Reagan administration and its foreign policy, particularly with regard to U.S.-Latin American relations and international human rights. Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns makes fruitful interventions into and connections between a number of fields of historical inquiry. The reviewers in this roundtable offer Keeley well-deserved praise for her book, which skillfully explores the complex mix of gender, politics, and intrareligious conflict that shaped the Maryknoll Sisters’ opposition to Reagan’s foreign policy and his negative characterizations of the churchwomen. As Theresa Keeley’s exciting book, Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America, reveals, the Maryknoll Sisters became a bête noire and political target of Reagan administration and its conservative Catholic supporters. Throughout Reagan’s time in office, the Maryknoll Sisters offered vocal opposition to his policies in Central America and support for repressive regimes. investment.” Just over two weeks earlier, members of El Salvador’s military had kidnapped, raped, and murdered two Maryknoll Sisters and two other Catholic churchwomen in retaliation for their work with the poor and their association with Liberation Theology. They also noted that “many rightist figures in these countries believe that administration will condone terror, torture, and murder as the price of a favorable climate for U.S. The letter decried the gross human rights abuses occurring under authoritarian, anti-Communist countries that were allied with the United States, such as El Salvador, abuses the Maryknollers had witnessed firsthand through their missionary work. In December 1980, Maryknoll Sisters President Sister Melinda Roper signed an open letter published in the New York Times from the interfaith organization Clergy and Laity Concerned to President-elect Ronald Reagan. They especially concerned themselves with justice, care for the poor, and the protection of human rights. government and espoused strong anti-Communist views, but over time-and especially after Vatican II in 1962-1965 and the subsequent emergence of Liberation Theology among their Latin American co-religionists-they grew much more critical of U.S. By 1920, the Maryknoll Sisters had received official recognition of their order from the Vatican, becoming “the first order of Catholic nuns in the United States dedicated to foreign mission.” During the early decades of the Cold War, the Maryknollers cooperated with the U.S. They operated independently from but alongside the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, founded in 1911. Dominic, a community of Roman Catholic women headquartered in Ossining, New York. In 1912, Mother Mary Joseph Rogers founded the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Introduction by Lauren Turek, Trinity University
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