‘Peace Discernment’ study points toward pacifism

Tags

Alan F.H. Wisdom, Alan Wisdom, Non-Violence, pacifism, PCUSA, peace discernment, Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Second Helvetic Confession, war

By Alan Wisdom (@AFHWisdom)

A study process under way in the Presbyterian Church (USA) asks church members to “[s]eek clarity as to God’s call to the church to embrace nonviolence as its fundamental response to the challenges of violence, terror, and war.” The process, initiated by the 2010 PCUSA General Assembly, is expected to yield policy changes proposed by the 2014 assembly and approved by the 2016 assembly. Study materials released so far suggest that the intended result is to move the denomination in the direction of pacifism.

Historically, Presbyterians have not been pacifists. The Westminster Confession of Faith, the doctrinal standard until 1967, states that “[i]t is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate,” and in that office “they may lawfully, now under the New Testament, wage war upon just and necessary occasions” (6.128).

The Second Helvetic Confession, incorporated into the PCUSA Book of Confessions since 1967,  advises that “if it is necessary to preserve the safety of the people by war, let him [the magistrate] wage war in the name of God; provided he has first sought peace by all means possible, and  cannot save his people in any other way except by war” (5.256). The confession explicitly condemns the pacifist “Anabaptists, who, when they deny that a Christian may hold the office of a magistrate, deny also that a man may be justly put to death by the magistrate, or that the magistrate may wage war” (5.257). Both Westminster and the Second Helvetic base this teaching on Biblical passages such as the Apostle Paul’s affirmation that “the authority does not bear the sword in vain” because it is “the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4).

Presbyterians were notable for their willingness to fight in the American Revolution and subsequent U.S. wars. A November 2012 survey conducted by the PCUSA Research Office shows 90 percent of today’s Presbyterians believe war is justified “to protect our country after attack by another country.” Large majorities also support taking up arms to “protect one of our allies,” to “live up to treaties we’ve ratified,” or to “punish known backers of terrorism.” Nevertheless, the denominational structures are now weighing whether to join the Quakers, Mennonites and others who refuse to fight under any circumstances.

Leading questions

The Presbyterian Peacemaking Program has published a “Facilitator’s Guide” for congregations undertaking the new “Peace Discernment Process.” The guide asserts, “[I]f discernment is to be genuine, it cannot have predetermined outcomes; it must be truly open-ended.” Yet that same guide poses leading questions that point study participants toward particular outcomes. For example:

• “Should the PCUSA continue to rely on the ‘just war’ tradition as its basis for restraining war, or have the conditions of modern warfare and the politics and economics of war rendered our historic stance obsolete? Are there new emphases and different Biblical alternatives to consider?” The implications are: that the main purpose of the just war tradition is to “restrain war” (rather than to seek both peace and justice), that modern conditions have rendered it “obsolete,” and that the Bible puts forward a different approach.

• “In what ways does the church today practice (or fail to practice) Jesus’ message of nonviolence?” The implication is that Jesus preached a “message of nonviolence.”

• “How do we respond to the example of Jesus and the nonviolent church of the first three centuries after 17 centuries of trying to restrain violence through just war categories?” The implications are that Jesus and the early Christians were all pacifists, and that acceptance of “just war categories” came only after 300 A.D.

• “Do you, in your own life, see signs of a ‘military-industrial-congressional’ complex supporting our tendency to use force or threat of force?” The implication is that the United States uses force as a result of pressure from a venal “military-industrial-congressional complex”—not because it faces genuine security threats.

• “Is the PCUSA now being called to become a ‘peace church,’ not simply opposing particular wars but affirming nonviolence as a basic orientation toward conflict in our daily lives, in our communities, and in our world?” The implication is that the PCUSA is indeed being called to ascend the putatively higher moral ground of pacifism.

• “How can the PCUSA hasten the day when war and violence are no longer considered acceptable or inevitable means for resolving conflicts?” The implication is that the day to beat all swords into plowshares is fast upon us, and the church has the means to “hasten that day.”

Slanted reflections and prayers

The “Facilitator’s Guide” offers 16 “peace reflections” and nine prayers to direct participants’ thoughts. The authors of these selections — Union Seminary (New York) theologians James Cone and Walter Wink, Yale chaplain and Riverside Church pastor William Sloane Coffin, union leader Cesar Chavez, radical feminist author Mary E. Hunt, “urban monastic” Shane Claiborne — are almost uniformly heroes of the pacifist left. Hunt, for instance, is cited as saying that peace “means thinking the unthinkable, that we might just call a halt, yesterday, to war.”

To balance all the pacifists, there is one “peace reflection” from a presumed supporter of just wars, General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. But Eisenhower is not quoted explaining why it was necessary to resist Hitler in World War II or Stalin during the Cold War. Instead this is the selection drawn from the supreme allied commander: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” One is left with the (false) impression that the general regretted D-Day.

The guide would have study participants recite a “Litany for Peace” that asks God to deliver them from “national vanity that poses as patriotism,” “trusting in the weapons of war and mistrusting the councils of peace,” and “groundless suspicions and fear that stand in the way of reconciliation.” There are no prayers of thanksgiving or intercession for soldiers, sailors and airmen who risk their lives to defend their country.

The recommended “Resources for Further Study” tilt in the same direction. Several dozen champion nonviolence in theory or practice; only one comes from a scholar (James Turner Johnson of Rutgers University) who forthrightly maintains that today’s America can fight and has fought just wars.

Some recalcitrant Presbyterians might still be tempted to answer “no” to the question about whether the PCUSA is “now being called to become a ‘peace church.’” But they would find little information to undergird their position. The just war passages from the Westminster and Second Helvetic Confessions, for example, are not mentioned anywhere in the study materials.

‘Nonviolence’ as ‘central theme of Jesus’ ministry’

The main resource provided to help study participants answer the questions is a “Peace Discernment Interim Report” received by the 2012 General Assembly. “Matters of social and economic justice hold a central place in the Bible,” the report asserts (p. 19). It portrays the abstract, negative concept of “nonviolence” — a 20^th century term that Jesus never used — as “a central theme of Jesus’ public ministry” (19). Jesus lived “a prophetic and nonviolent life that threatened both the Roman and temple authorities,” according to the report (10). Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God with power to forgive sins and grant eternal life go unmentioned.

The “Peace Discernment” report reduces Christ to an exponent of a “third way strategy that—rather than fight evil or flee it—resists evil through nonviolent means, an approach that outflanks and reverses aggression, sometimes by choosing to suffer” (16). It downplays the “violent imagery” in Jesus’ parables and other New Testament passages that show God’s anger and determination to destroy sin. The report excuses Jesus’ attack on the moneychangers in the temple, remarking that “he stopped short of violence against persons” (10). Old Testament instances in which God commanded Israel to wage war are products of a superficial and primitive mentality, it suggests. The report rejects “the myth of redemptive violence” (23). It notably refrains from characterizing Jesus’ death as an atonement for sin.

“The first Christians lived according to a nonviolent code,” the interim report claims. “Indeed, there is no affirmation of killing or war anywhere in the writings of the early church” (11). The document challenges “Christians today who interpret the apostle Paul as giving divine sanction to violence and war” (12) in Romans 13. In the report’s version of history, it was only after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine that “Christians began to take up arms on behalf of the Roman Empire, sometimes with inducements of money, property and power” (12).

This simplistic portrait of early Christians as Gandhian pacifists ignores the work of scholars such as Peter Leithart. In his book Defending Constantine (InterVarsity Press, 2010), Leithart explores the complexity of early Christian attitudes toward war. Long before Constantine, going back to the centurion Cornelius in Acts 10, there were Christians who served in the Roman army and were accepted in the Church. Leithart concludes, “The church was never united in an absolute opposition to Christian participation in war; the opposition that existed was in some measure circumstantial, based on the fact that the Roman army demanded sharing in religious liturgies that Christians refused; and once [after Constantine] military service could be pursued without participating in idolatry, many Christians found military service a legitimate life for a Christian disciple” [emphasis in original].

A key to early Christian attitudes was the distinction between authorized and unauthorized uses of force. Individual Christians were to renounce the right of self-defense, in obedience to Jesus’ instructions in the Sermon on the Mount. Rulers, by contrast, were ordained by God to wield the sword to protect their subjects. But the PCUSA’s “Peace Discernment” study takes no notice of any such distinctions between individual and ruler, Church and State. It lumps all “violence” together. This conflation of categories becomes evident when the interim report asks rhetorically: “As a church and as a society, should we learn to move from violence to nonviolence, from war-making to peacemaking, from a permanent war economy to a sustainable peace economy, from being citizens of an empire to members of God’s peaceable kingdom?” (23) It does not contemplate the possibility that U.S. Presbyterians might simultaneously be devoted members of God’s kingdom and good citizens of the nation in which God placed them.

America as ‘violent and unjust,’ driven by fear of imagined enemies

The report casts doubt upon whether there might be legitimate reasons for war. It refers to “those we call our enemies” (2) — as if the hostility were merely a figment of our imagination. (When Jesus commanded us to “love your enemies,” by contrast, he was assuming that we would have real enemies who mean us ill — as he had real enemies who plotted his death.) The report puts “war on terror” in quotes (15), as if to question the threat from terrorist movements. It speaks of “the fear that drives our [U.S.] military policy.”

The interim report portrays U.S. defense efforts as a base conspiracy of the “congressional-military-industrial complex” (14) bent on preserving profits and power. America’s wealth comes out of the barrel of a gun, in this dark vision: “We maintain our privileged economic position in the world through U.S. military might, as well as through military aid and weapons sales to governments around the world…. Militarization makes corporate-led globalization possible.” (18) The report describes the U.S. as “a national security state” in “an almost permanent state of war” (15). “Without credible threats to the United States itself,” it asks insinuatingly, “have we come to value military power for its own sake?” (14)

This jaundiced view of U.S. military policy fits into a larger leftist critique of America. The authors of the interim report insist, “We thus believe there is an urgent need today for U.S. Presbyterians to question the extent to which violence and injustice pervade our society and dominate our relations with one another and with other nations” (4). They offer a half-dozen anecdotal bits of evidence to prove that “[v]iolence pervades American culture” (17).

There is also the “structural violence” that includes “the patterns of inequality and exclusion called the ‘isms’ of racism, sexism, classism, ethnocentrism, and nationalism, as well as homophobia” (18). The report complains that a “myopic focus” on individual prejudice “stymies people’s understanding of the more insidious institutional and cultural forms of the isms that crush the human spirit and deny people access to adequate food, water, shelter, education, health care and self-determination” (18). It warns: “We are also doing violence to the earth and its creatures, depleting precious natural resources, and causing a massive extinction of species.” (19)

The report fails to note any evidence to that might contradict its grim image. There is no acknowledgment that U.S. violent crime rates have plummeted over the last 20 years, that race relations and environmental conditions have improved markedly over the past half-century, that the U.S. military is shrinking as a proportion of the federal budget and the nation’s economy, or that women and gays have made tremendous gains.

Military force ‘impotent,’ nonviolence ‘successful’ against worst dictatorships

The “Peace Discernment” report affirms “an increasing sense of the impotence of military might” (3). “At the same time,” it boasts, “there is growing recognition that nonviolent direct action can be a powerful, alternative means of responding to conflict, as it has proven successful in struggles for justice, human rights, and self-determination around the world — even overthrowing some of the most brutal dictatorships the world has seen” (3). The report cites several examples to show that “[n]onviolent  people power movements have shown themselves capable of overthrowing dictators, thwarting coups d’etat, defending against invasions and occupations, challenging unjust systems, promoting human rights, and resisting genocide” (22). In this telling, “nonviolent action” is all upside — it’s “Jesus’ third way” (22), it’s the moral high ground, and it’s supposedly the most successful approach — and there is no downside.

The report pays no attention to counter-examples: that nonviolence was not successful in Tienanmen Square in 1989, that it was not successful in Iran in 2009, that it has not been successful against dictatorships such as the Castros in Cuba and the generals in Burma. It was military force that defeated the Axis powers in World War II, that ended genocide in Rwanda and the Balkans, that toppled tyrants in places like Iraq and Libya. In general, nonviolence does not work against “the most brutal dictatorships the world has seen.” It works better against more moderate regimes that have a conscience that restrains them from shedding too much innocent blood.

The interim report presents the current “peace discernment process” as a follow-up to earlier General Assembly statements on war-peace issues. “Peacemaking: The Believer’s Calling” and other statements from the 1980s were sharply critical of the U.S. stance in the Cold War. Resolutions in the last decade condemned the Iraq war as “unwise, illegal, and immoral” and urged withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Summarizing this record of opposition to almost every U.S. military involvement since Vietnam, the report states, “The current position of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), then, tilts strongly toward peace” (9). The new study process appears designed to tilt that position all the way over into pacifism. It remains to be seen whether Presbyterians are willing to take that last step away from the mainstream Christian “just war” tradition that has been their historic heritage.

Originally published at Layman.org.

Liberty University, Sojourners and Drones

Tags

Drones, Liberty University, pacifism, Sojourners, terrorism

By Mark Tooley @markdtooley

Jim Wallis’ Sojourners magazine has a cover story on “Drones for Christ:  How the world’s largest Christian university became an evangelist for drone warfare.” It targets Liberty University in Virginia, founded by Jerry Falwell, so it offers Sojo’s liberal readers lots of opportunity to relish how Christian “fundamentalists” are stereotypically militarizing the Gospel.  Liberty’s School of Aeronautics has 600 students, training “Christ-centered aviators,” including future drone pilots, for which a concentration was added in 2011.

Incredibly, Liberty has 12,000 on campus students and another 60,000 online, making it the fourth largest online university anywhere.  More than 23,000 online students are in the military, Sojo reports.

The article mentions the “vast percentage” of drone pilots are training for war.  But there is also increasing law enforcement use of drones, as well as use by farmers, private businesses, and even environmentalist groups, including animal rights advocates wanting to monitor abuse.

Liberty’s dean of aviation, himself a retired U.S. Air Force general, told Sojo that there is no moral distinction between manned and unmanned aircraft.  Drone students told Sojo that government is instituted by God and sometimes ordained to kill when justice demands.  The quotes are not very theologically precise and no doubt disturbing to many Sojo readers inclined towards Sojo’s pacifism.  But the quotes are still largely articulating what is historic Christian teaching.

The article’s author is a former “Occupy” organizer, ACORN employee, and press secretary for liberal Congressman Dennis Kucinich who has written several anti-war books, the latest of which touts the 1928 international treaty that aspired to abolish war.  As events a few years later evinced, that treaty was not successful.  Clearly the author is pretty hard left and disapproves of any military force, drone or not.

Accompanying the Liberty article is a column by a “senior policy adviser” for Sojo, who explains:  “What’s Wrong with Drones?”  Acknowledging both pacifism and Just War, the article insists drones are immoral because they are “targeted assassinations outside of legally declared wars,” violate national sovereignty, offer little transparency, set a “dangerous precedent,” “foster a perpetual state of war, “kill innocents,” “promote the concept of a global battlefield,” and “undermine U.S. security” by creating enemies.

These arguments fail to admit that drones are deployed in areas typically outside the control of legitimate governments, often with the tacit consent of the local regime.  Drones for all their errors are also more precise and less likely to harm innocents than most alternatives.    Their very precision also contains rather than limits the spread of warfare, in contrast with conventional bombing for example, or an armed incursion of ground troops.

Jim Wallis and nearly all Sojo writers and activists are pacifists who disapprove any lethal military force in any situation. So the ostensible arguments targeting drones as immoral are really just more of the same arguments against all force and advocating instead for “peaceful” alternatives.  It’s almost never specified what the “peaceful” means are for neutralizing murderous terrorists hiding with impunity beyond the reach of legitimate authority.  And even if a sheriff could deliver a subpoena in the kind of legal process that pacifists advocate, they would still disapprove the sheriff relying on any weapon, instead insisting on reliance upon moral persuasion only, presumably.

These sorts of legalistic arguments by religious pacifists who aren’t fully showing their hand are disingenuous.  They advocate as public policy a vision of utopian lalaland that has no roots in historic Christian teaching, which is always profoundly interested in the real world.   There may be thoughtful Christian-based arguments against some aspects of drone warfare, but they are not found in Sojo.

Press Release: Religious Left Charges U.S. Drone Policy on Autopilot

Tags

Brethren, Catholic, Drones, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Just War Theory, Mark Tooley, Nuns on a Bus, Nuns on the Bus, pacifism, Quakers, Religious Left, UCC, United Methodist, war, war & peace

(photo credit: washingtonpost.com)

May 31, 2013
Contact: Jeff Walton 202-682-4131

“The pacifist Religious Left is again denouncing drone strikes against terrorists without offering plausible alternatives.”
-IRD President Mark Tooley

Washington, DC—A letter to President Obama from United Methodist, United Church of Christ, Quaker, Brethren, and Christian Reformed officials, plus the head of “Nuns on the Bus,” is expressing “great concern” about drone “targeted killings” of “alleged” al Qaeda militants.

The groups want to repeal the post 9-11 “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” and instead pursue “police actions” that “extend protections consistent with principles of human and civil rights pertaining to the pursuit and apprehension of a criminal suspect, including fair trial in a court of law.”

A full version of the letter can be viewed by clicking here.

IRD President Mark Tooley commented:

“The pacifist Religious Left is again denouncing drone strikes against terrorists without offering plausible alternatives.

“These activists bemoan ‘remote, technical warfare,’ without admitting they, as literal or functional pacifists, oppose all warfare and force. Their appeal illustrates how some church officials, ignoring their own religious teachings about fallen humanity, want desperately to pretend that the world is intrinsically benign and just.

“These religious activists are interested in the ‘root causes of conflicts,’ which they surmise can be addressed by ‘restorative justice practices, and effective economic development programs.’ Their suggestion has merit if Islamist terrorists have legitimate grievances that can be redressed by rational recompense. But what if their mollification entails accommodation to Islamist rule and practice, including the suppression of civil liberties, which the activists profess to champion, and the suppression of non Islamists?

“The liberal Protestants’ letter seems to expect a level of perfection and power that not even the U.S. at its very best can possibly attain.

“Technology and modern scruples have made war and law enforcement more precise than ever before. But churches attuned to the limits of human capacity must understand that states, when defending the innocent from the murderous, must act boldly, stealthily, dangerously, and without guarantee of absolute success. Winston Churchill reputedly said: ‘The maxim ‘Nothing but perfection’ may be spelled ‘Paralysis.’’ High minded theorists may demand moral precision, but no government this side of heaven can guarantee it.”

www.TheIRD.org

###

Wheaton Theology Conference Showcases Appeal, Limits of Hauerwasianism

Tags

Institute on Religion and Democracy, John Lomperis, just war, Karl Barth, pacifism, Reinhold Neibuhr, Stanley Hauerwas, Wheaton College, Wheaton Theology Conference 2013: Christian Political Witness

Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School. (Photo Credit: Mennonite Mission Network)

By John Lomperis (@JohnLomperis)

Duke Divinity School theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas promoted his somewhat distinctive, Anabaptistic worldview at Wheaton’s annual theology conference earlier this month. This year’s conference theme was “Christian Political Witness.”

The passionate pacifist stressed that Christians must live radically different lives from those around them, in a way that would be “unintelligible if the God we say we believe in does not exist.”  In the face of the reality that people never get the children they want and always “marry the wrong person,” Christians are to follow ethics of welcoming children and of maintaining lifelong, monogamous marriage. This contrasts sharply with American culture’s solutions of abortion along with divorce and remarriage. (On the latter point, the United-Methodist-turned-Episcopalian self-deprecatingly made fun of his own divorce and remarriage.) The church “must resist the domestication of our faith” which is promoted “in the interest of social peace.” He traced social pressures to tame Christianity to Rousseau, “who realized the modern state could not risk having religion that challenges its authority.”

But unfortunately, “[w]e have failed to develop a church culture for developing people as Christians.” Hauerwas mocked liberal Protestantism for its efforts to construct “bland theological statements” seeking “to show how what Christians believe is not that different than what non-Christians believe.” For the sake of our identity as citizens of our nation who are civil to our neighbors, “we have lost the ability to articulate what we believe.” “The politics of modernity has been so successful in defining Christianity as just another one of many lifestyle options” in the cafeteria of secular culture, “rather than the Truth,” that it has become difficult to understand why first-century Christians thought the faith was worth dying for or why the militant “new atheists” are threatened by it. Hauerwas noted that today much more care and moral concern is invested in medical education than in divinity school, because “[n]o one believes an inadequately trained priest can hurt their salvation.”

For Hauerwas, Christians are people who “believe in history,” recognizing that “[t]ime has a narrative logic.” And it appears that at this point in history, “Christendom is coming to an end,” setting the church free “to embrace its body politic.” Once Christians realize that they are no longer in charge of their surrounding society, Hauerwas advised that they can enjoy the same social freedom to talk about Jesus that Jews have to talk about the Torah and Muslims have to talk about the Koran.

In admitted departure from most of evangelicalism, Hauerwas said that he “avoid[s] using language of belief to define what makes Christians Christians.” For the Duke professor, the “greatest challenge to Christianity is not in belief, but in politics.” Particularly, he framed Christians’ loyalty to God as being in opposition to embracing the identity of loyal citizens of a modern nation-state. He extensively cited Karl Barth, under whom Hauerwas’s own mentor, John Howard Yoder, studied. Hauerwas shared that he “often enjoy[s] making liberal friends, especially American liberal friends, nervous by saying that I am a theocrat.”

After declaring the fact, not mere “personal opinion,” that Jesus is Lord, Hauerwas was quick to add that “the way this works is not through any sort of coercion or violence” as in the 1600 years of “Constantinian dominance of world.” Rather, “[i]t is a politics of persuasion all the way down” in which “God gives us all the time we need.”

For Hauerwas, this means not only absolutist opposition to war (especially the U.S. military), but also rather broad denunciation of violence and coercion. He argued that “Christians are not called to non-violence because we think that that will rid the world of war, but it means that in a world of war, we cannot imagine ourselves being anything else.” In an apparent attempt to be provocative, he asserted that Reinhold Niebuhr was “the secret theologian for evangelicals” (of whom he repeatedly spoke in the third person), since “when it comes to foreign affairs, they just can’t wait to kill someone!” (He glossed over the major departures of Niebuhr’s theology from evangelicalism and of his ethics of Christian Realism from the Just War tradition.) According to Hauerwas, “[w]ar is the great liturgical alternative to the Eucharist,” and soldiers’ main sacrifice “is not their sacrifice of life, but of their normal unwillingness to kill.” On the world wars, he asked why they were not called “World Slaughter I” and “World Slaughter II.”

In light of the great evil forcefully advanced by the Axis powers, a questioner asked “[w]hat should we have done in World War II” and if just passively “watch[ing] that happen” would have been the best response.

After challenging his questioner by asking, “Who is the ‘we’?” Hauerwas replied, “I want to be as responsive as I can.” But he admitted that Christian non-violence “may mean we will have to watch the innocents suffer for our convictions.” He then immediately claimed that this was “no less true for Just War,” but did not offer any argument for this strong assertion beyond, somewhat bizarrely, referring to the atomic bombings of Japan (whose satisfaction of Just-War criteria is hardly uncontested).

Also during the question-and-answer time, I questioned his absolutist repudiation of “coercion,” asking about such cases as parents coercively preventing children from running across the street or the sort of church discipline seen in 1 Corinthians 5.

Hauerwas agreed that Christians are to be “people who live out Matthew 18,” which “feels like a very coercive interaction,” but serves “to save us from the violence that’s in us.”  He continued that “of course you are going to use methods that seem coercive at the time, but they are always under negotiation.”

Stanley Hauerwas is certainly right to stress the urgent need for culturally accommodated Christians to re-awaken to their divine calling to live radically different lives than what the surrounding culture expects of us. And it is worth noting that, in principle, his call for the church to challenge “imperial ambitions of the state” could be applied not only to foreign military actions, but also to government’s playing an increasingly important role in a growing number of aspects of citizens’ lives.

But agreeing that Christians need to be different than non-Christians hardly necessitates accepting the whole package of Hauerwasianism. Any social ethic falls short of the basic Christian test of neighbor-love if it makes a choice to abandon millions to suffer such unchecked evils as naked aggression or genocide. And the apparent idolization of opposing coercion easily leads to a lack of full intellectual honesty (about good actions that actually are coercive, rather than just seemingly coercive) and also, potentially, a rather distorted, unbiblical view of God that leaves little room for what the Old and New Testaments teach us about His wrath, judgment, and, yes, coercion in His relationship with us subservient creatures.

Hauerwas’s Wheaton address, along with the question-and-answer session, thus highlighted much of why many Christians find his ethics appealing, as well as some of its biggest shortcomings.

Putting a Civilian Face to the Iraq War

Tags

@GagliaAC, Aaron Gaglia, Greg Barrett, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Iraq War, IRD Blog, pacifism, Preemptive Love Coalition, Shane Claiborne, The Gospel of Rutba

(Photo credit: Wesley-Luther)

By Aaron Gaglia (@GagliaAC)

On Tuesday night, hundreds gathered at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the Iraq War.

Shane Claiborne, Greg Barrett, author of The Gospel of Rutba, and Jeremy Courtney, CEO of Preemptive Love Coalition, discussed the beautiful possibility of wartime friendships in an event entitled, “Subversive Interfaith Friendships in a World at War.”

Towards the beginning of the event, these statistics appeared on the screen: “Estimates on the number of war-related deaths during the invasion range between 600,000 to one million. It also is estimated that over 7,000 of those were civilians killed in the initial ‘shock and awe’ bombing that happened on this day in 2003.” This event sought to put a civilian face to these statistics and tell a hopeful story despite these tragedies.

The conversation focused on an Iraqi-American’s retelling of the Good Samaritan story, which Greg Barrett chronicles in his book, The Gospel of Rutba. Shane Claiborne and others were in Bagdhad befriending and living life among ordinary Iraqi’s as the war was starting. After a few months, Shane and a few others were leaving the country, driving through the desert to Amman, Jordan. This normally treacherous journey was intensified by the bombings, as bridges were down and cars were on fire. Along the way, the taxi hit something on the road that popped a tire, causing the car to flip into a ditch. Everyone in the taxi was hurt, with two of them sustaining bad head injuries.

Everyone climbed out of the car and made their way to the side of the road, not knowing what they were going to do since very few people were on the roads due to the bombings. Yet eventually an Iraqi in a small car drove by and stopped. He saw their situation and took them into his car and drove them to the closest town, Rutba. The people of Rutba were very helpful and connected them with the town doctor right away. Sadly, they could not take them to the town hospital because it was hit by a bomb (a secondary explosion from another building hit the children’s ward). Instead they took them to a shanty ward they set up. Everyone was treated and ended up being okay. They all received incredible hospitality in the rural town of Rutba.

After everyone was treated and cared for, Claiborne gathered money and tried to pay the manager of the hospital. He would not accept. Instead he told Shane, “All that we want you to know is that we love you. And if you tell people what we did for you in Rutba, it’s all we would ever want you to do to repay us.”

Greg Barrett, a newspaper correspondent at the time, also told a story about his first visit to Iraq in 2003. He went to investigate the “nuts for Christ” who were trying to make peace amidst the war. He was expecting to receive great hostility from the Iraqis. Instead, his first encounter with an Iraqi, was a man alerting him that his bag was unzipped and his money was exposed. This was not the enemy he was expecting to meet. Instead of hostility, he was greeted with hospitality. A normal citizen of Iraq is not a hateful monster but a normal human just like me and you.

Though the event focused almost exclusively on civilian friendships and did not explore terrorism, Jeremy Courtney conceded that the situation in Iraq is “complex.” He admitted that some of the Iraqis showed hospitality because they were grateful to America for removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Courtney spoke about the work he is doing in Iraq with his non-profit, Preemptive Love Coalition, “a five-year old international charity that has provided more than 300 heart surgeries to a backlog of Iraqi children suffering from birth defects, problems that come from the munitions that are used in the war” (from event handout). Through these acts of love, Courtney is seeking to bring a better peace than what war is bringing.

Hearing about the work of Courtney, Claiborne, and Barrett was truly inspiring. This event was a good reminder to get past the heated war/pacifism debate and remember that terrorists are not the only ones that are affected by war: innocent civilians are affected as well. 7,000 dead civilians in one day is something that is tragic and unacceptable whether you think war is necessary or not. As Christians who believe war is necessary, we must be careful to make sure our views are not consequentialist by nature.

We must be mindful in our belief and practice of war. The killing of innocent civilians in a bombing is not justified, and we must do everything in our power to stop it. We must protect the innocent both in our country and in the countries we are in conflict with even if it makes the war more difficult. It must be acknowledged, though, that are military is continually developing and using new technology to lower civilian casualties, such as guided missiles. Though one may disagree with certain actions of the U.S. military, these more accurate technologies, coupled with policies to protect the rights of enemies, show that they are making attempts to wage a more humane war.

As Christians, we need to engage in honest dialogue with those with whom we disagree. We cannot intensify our view or discredit valid points simply because of the volatility of party relations. We cannot simply dismiss pacifist pleas to not kill innocent civilians as naïve distractions. Instead, we must have the personal integrity to engage in meaningful conversation that is willing to find common ground and correct wrong thinking.

Though we disagree about the necessity of war in this fallen world, we can stand united in our valuing of human life and our longing for a world without war.

As this is a very complex and heated issue, please be kind and respectful in your comments.

Did you like this article? Visit IRD’s website to learn more about our programs and how you can support our work!