A sculpture created by Mennonite artists to convey a message of peace in the public square has returned to Washington, D.C., the place the artists considered its home.

“Guns Into Plowshares,” a 16-foot-tall, 4-ton steel sculpture, was created in the mid-1990s by mother-and-son duo Esther and Michael Augsburger. The artists welded into its surface more than 3,000 handguns collected in a buyback program at a District of Columbia church in 1994.

The artwork’s title was inspired by Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

The sculpture recently stood on the campus of Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va. On Oct. 21, it was loaded by a crane onto a flatbed truck, moved to D.C. and installed the following day at the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency/Office of Unified Communications.

From 1997 to 2008, “Guns Into Plowshares” stood in Judiciary Square, a Metro public transportation stop framed by massive city government buildings. Tens of thousands of people interacted with it or, at least, walked by it.

Once Esther Augsburger took her granddaughter to see the sculpture. She recalled in a 2019 interview: “I saw this young chap with his head in his hands.” She asked what he was thinking, and the boy answered, “I come here every day after school because it helps me.” She didn’t ask for any details but wondered if he might have been affected by gun violence.

Esther and her husband, Myron Augsburger, a Mennonite pastor who was previously a president of EMU, lived in D.C. in the 1990s. Esther Augsburger taught art classes to youth who shared with her stories about being impacted by guns, which touched her deeply. The Augsburgers and another couple founded a church on Capitol Hill, Washington Community Fellowship. The Augsburgers now live in Harrisonburg.

D.C. leaders’ interest in “Guns Into Plowshares” waxed and waned. Initially, Esther and Michael Augsburger gave the sculpture to the Metropolitan Police Department of D.C., which had its headquarters in Judiciary Square. The then chief of police was keen on the artwork.

But in 2008, the sculpture was removed from Judiciary Square. The artists didn’t know where it was for a while.

“It had been taken down and stowed at a facility on the outskirts of D.C. without permission,” said Barbara Gautcher, a board member of InterChurch Inc., an organization that manages the sculpture. Then, for several years the sculpture “sat rusting” in a vacant lot, according to a Jan. 17, 2011, article in The Washington Post.

“Guns Into Plowshares” was moved to Harrisonburg, and the artists refurbished it. In 2017, it was installed on EMU’s campus and dedicated to Michael Augsburger, who had died earlier that year.

When Michael Augsburger had learned that guns collected in the buyback program in D.C. would be melted into fence posts, he had proposed using the disarmed guns to create a sculpture of a plowshare as a message of peace, Esther Augsburger said in the 2019 interview.

The plaque for the Harrisonburg installation said the sculpture was “a gift to Washington, D.C., as a symbol of hope.”

The original agreement said the police department would loan the sculpture to EMU for three years and then return it to Judiciary Square, said J. Daryl Byler, director of development and com­munications for the D.C. Bar Foun­dation. He worked with the D.C. mayor’s office to facilitate the move in October.

By 2022, the D.C. police department had lost interest in the sculpture and didn’t want it back, Byler said. But in 2023 the mayor’s office expressed interest and agreed to manage it.

The sculpture received considerable attention during its seven years in Harrisonburg. Vi Dutcher, professor emerita of language and literature at EMU, assigned students to spend a 50-minute class period engaging with the sculpture.

She observed: “It overpowered their senses. There it was towering above them. If they stood in one spot, I urged them to walk around. Some of them started counting [the guns]. The sheer numbers made their mouths drop open.”

In another class, student Jordyn Thompson wrote, “Sadly, this art is relevant today,” and added that the sculpture draws attention to “the use of guns and gun violence, which is a pandemic in today’s society.”

On Facebook, members of Washington Community Fellowship expressed gratitude for the sculpture’s return. Congregants had supported the sculpture project in various ways.

Harrisonburg native David ­Driver remembers that he and his wife, Liz Chase Driver, transported disarmed guns from D.C. to Harrisonburg, where the artists made the sculpture.

Driver wrote in an email: “We took about 50 guns in a box that we picked up near WCF. I made sure to put them in the trunk of the car, out of view just to be careful.” The couple are now based in Poland and are overseeing Mennonite Central Committee’s humanitarian work in Ukraine.

Quite a few members of the church attended the dedication of “Guns Into Plowshares” in 1997 after it was installed at Judiciary Square, Byler said. A congregant, Harriet Lewis, now deceased, wrote a song for the occasion.

The mayor’s office is planning to dedicate the sculpture in its new location in early February.

Eager to see the sculpture in its new home, three members of Washington Community Fellowship — Martha E. Byers, Angie Chou and Philip Chou — and their pastor, Andrew Cheung, made what they called a pilgrimage to the site of the artwork on Election Day.

The sculpture conveys hope for the future, which applies both to the election and the prospect of peace, Byers said in a phone interview.

Byler said the mayor’s office chose an excellent home for the sculpture. He is excited that the site is close to Union Temple Baptist Church, where the gun buyback program that provided many of the handguns for the sculpture took place.

The new site is in the neighborhood of the home of abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass. The sculpture stands on the former campus of St. Elizabeth Hospital, an area being developed as a hub for city government agencies. The arena for the WNBA’s Washington Mystics is on the campus.

The legal document for the management of “Guns Into Plowshares” in its new location repeats the intent of the artists from the 1997 agreement with the city — that the sculpture “can be appreciated by passersby and visitors with dignity and honor, that it be a symbol of peace and a memorial to victims of gun violence as well as to those who lay down their guns, and that it be used by the District as an educational tool for the youth of the city.”

“This has been a long journey,” Byler said. “Esther has wanted the sculpture to be back in D.C. for a long time.”

Mary Ann Zehr is writing and communication program director at Eastern Mennonite University.