Forest, Jim, 1941-2022

James H. "Jim" Forest was born on November 2, 1941. His parents were both atheist communists, and Forest converted to Catholicism as an adult. He discovered the work of Dorothy Day while serving in the Navy, and it inspired him to leave the Navy in 1961 as a conscientious objector, and become involved with Day's Catholic Worker community, working as managing editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper. It was also during this time that he became acquainted with Thomas Merton. Dorothy Day encouraged Forest to write to Merton, and the correspondence established a friendship. In the mid-1960s, Forest visited Merton in Kentucky, thinking of moving on from the Catholic Worker to become a monastic, though he ultimately did not follow that path. Merton dedicated his book Faith and Violence (1968) to Forest.

In the mid-1960s Forest founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship alongside Daniel Berrigan, SJ. Later he worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. It was through this work that Forest became acquainted with Vietnamese Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh. From 1969-1970 he served a short prison sentence as a consequence of his involvement in the "Milwaukee Fourteen," a group of Catholic priests and lay people who burned draft cards stolen from the Brumder Building in Milwaukee. In 1977, Forest moved with his family to the Netherlands, where he served as General Secretary for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and continued his involvement in the peace movement, focusing on the Cold War and nuclear disarmament. In 1988, he joined the Russian Orthodox Church, and eventually founded the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.

Throughout his career, Forest wrote about pacifism and important figures in the peace movement. His published work includes Living with Wisdom: A Biography of Thomas Merton; Love is the Measure: A Biography of Dorothy Day; Praying with Icons; and The Ladder of the Beatitudes.

Jim Forest died on January 13, 2022 in Alkmaar, the Netherlands.