LANCASTER, Pa. (Mennonite Mission Network) – Leo Hartshorn revels in making terrific rackets and joyful noises in his coast-to-coast travels as Mennonite Mission Network’s minister of peace and justice. He instigates window-rattling rhythms across the nation, similar to those that resounded through the halls of the Georgia World Conference Center at last year’s Mennonite Church USA convention as youth beat on over-turned plastic buckets with sticks.

Hartshorn leads worship in Mennonite churches, performs in public schools, teaches in seminaries, marches against injustice and, occasionally, plays in Unitarian cabaret shows – all for the glory of God. Hartshorn seeks to transmit peacemaking principles – cooperation, mutual respect, personal discipline – and encourages holistic development through rhythm. “I want to redeem the drum and rhythm as creative media for Christian worship and mission,” Hartshorn said. “Drumming is a sacred art.”

As Hartshorn approached Atlanta last summer in a van loaded with drums and peace materials for the Mennonite Church USA convention, he was taken back 33 years to the days when he played percussion in the Third U. S. Army Soldier Show. “This time I came to Atlanta, as a pacifist and as a Mennonite minister of peace and justice,” Hartshorn said. “I had come full circle. This time, I was not touring the South playing drums in the army and bolstering the morale of troops, but part of a circle of youth beating out rhythms of peace.

“I was drumming with all my might before thousands of young people who were close to my age when I was drafted into the army. I was not marching in a formation to the beat of a military drum, but marching to the Drummer of Peace while playing a Native American drum and leading chants in a peace march in downtown Atlanta against the injustices of the Coca Cola company toward workers seeking to unionize in Columbia. After all those years, I was still drumming, but doing it in service to Christ and the peace he offers to all people. By the end of the Atlanta convention, my body was exhausted, but my heart was full and pounding with a sacred beat,” Hartshorn said.

Before he was drafted during the Vietnam War, Hartshorn lived in Los Angeles with a rock-and-roll group and recorded an album with Bob Keane, a big-name producer in Hollywood. The idea of killing another human being repulsed Hartshorn, so he applied for and received a 1-A-O military classification that exempted him from carrying a weapon. 
Hartshorn was sent to work as an army medic in a pharmacy in Augusta, Georgia. “Was it God’s grace that sent Terry Moretti, a trumpet player in the Soldier Show, to the pharmacy to get some cough syrup?  I’m not sure,” Hartshorn said. “All I knew was that when he talked about being in a big band and playing Top 40 music and Broadway show tunes while touring the South, I thought, ‘This is the job for me!’”

Within a month, Hartshorn was re-stationed at the headquarters of the Third Army in Atlanta. “Even though I had it easy, I felt uncomfortable in the army,” Hartshorn said. “I cringed when we played Yankee Doodle Dandy and You’re a Grand Ole Flag dressed in red, white and blue in front of a neon American flag with a room full of officers in full uniform saluting ‘old glory.’ I was still part of the military machine and its wartime propaganda. Though I didn’t see a drop of blood [while in the army], though I got to play drums in a show led by civilians, though I got to grow my hair and mustache a little longer than regulation, though I got extra pay while on tour and though I received an honorable discharge – I was never happy with being in the army.”

When Hartshorn returned to his California home in 1971, he began to play drums in his Southern Baptist congregation’s youth musicals. There, he met his wife of 30 years, Iris de Leon. De Leon-Hartshorn currently directs Mennonite Central Committee’s peace and justice ministries.

Hartshorn attended a Southern Baptist college and seminary, then, served as pastor in California congregations. In 1987, he joined the Mennonite Church and ministered in congregations in California, Texas and Pennsylvania.  Mennonite Mission Network appointed him to his current position as Minister of Peace and Justice in 2001. He represents the Mission Network in the Peace and Justice Support Network.  This partnership of Mennonite Mission Network, Mennonite Church USA Executive Board and interested volunteers from across the church seeks to equip Mennonite congregations for proclaiming and promoting God’s desire for justice, Christ’s call to peacemaking and the Spirit’s reconciling work in a fractured world.

Hartshorn works from a base in Lancaster, Pa. He also co-directs the Drumming for Peace project with Heidi Beth Wert, social worker and movement therapist. Drumming for Peace consists of seven programs:

• Found Sounds uses kinesthetic learning methods and household items to teach grade school children cooperation, mutual respect and personal discipline as alternatives to violence.
• Commit No Violence, a drumming ensemble, promotes peace and community service through performances. The group played for Nobel Peace prize recipient, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, during a chapel service at Lancaster Theological Seminary in April 2002.
• Peace K.I.D.S. (Kicking It Drum Sounds), geared to pre-school children and their caregivers, integrates physical, cognitive and social development through rhythm.
• The Healing Drum unblocks body/mind/emotional expression for people with special challenges and connects with a variety of therapies.
• A Joyful Noise offers a Christian-based interactive form of teaching peacemaking principles through rhythm, drumming, and story.
• Sacred Drumming presents a workshop or an extended course of study to introduce drumming as a spiritual practice.
• Drum Circle gathers people of different skill levels to build community and express themselves through drumming.

More information about these programs may be obtained from