Recent

Ken Sehested

We must acknowledge the essential defect in the just war tradition, which is the assumption that violence can
somehow achieve justice. And we must with equal courage acknowledge the essential defect in pacifism,
which is the assumption that justice can somehow be achieved simply by opposing violence.
—Ivan J. Kauffman, “If War is Wrong, What is Right? The New Paradigm”[1]

            Ever since Pope Francis was selected to lead the Holy See three years ago, the Roman Catholic Curia watchers have had a field day with his many uncommon statements and actions. The most recent bustle had US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaking at a Vatican conference on economic inequality, just days after the issuance of Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”), a papal exhortation reframing the plight of divorced Catholics and “all those living in any ‘irregular situation.’”

            Almost lost in news coverage was the groundbreaking conference, “Nonviolence and Just Peace: Contributing to the Catholic Understanding of and Commitment to Nonviolence” (11-13 April), jointly co-sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Pax Christi International, the unofficial global Roman Catholic peace network. What’s at stake—with an unclear outcome—is the Church’s 1,700 year-old “just war” doctrine, traced back to St. Augustine in the 4th century and systematized by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. It outlines precise criteria as to when violence can be morally justified in opposing oppression.

            Opposition to just war thinking isn’t limited to the so-called “peace church” traditions, including the several bodies of Mennonite, Brethren and the Society of Friends (Quakers). There is a long, if thin, tradition of pacifism in Roman Catholic tradition (likewise within Protestantism), not all of which is limited to clerical exemption from military duty. What sets this particular conference apart was its urging the world’s largest unified-leadership religious body—within Vatican walls and with the assent of one Vatican agency—to “no longer use or teach ‘just war’ theory.”

            In his letter welcoming the 80 conferees from across the globe, Pope Francis expressed support for “revitalizing the tools of nonviolence,” particularly given the current global reality he aptly named “world war in installments.” However, he also referenced the church’s teaching of “the right to legitimate defence” should peaceful settlements fail.

Reactions in the Catholic press

It keeps the peace. In a dominating, intimidating sort of way.
—Boeing advertisement for its Apache Longbow attack helicopter

            Given the origins of just war theory in Catholic tradition, and its centrality to church social teaching, anxious reaction to the conference’s final document, “An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Re-Commit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence” (hereafter, Appeal), was immediate. “[A]t the end of the day, in this vale of tears, it is hard to imagine the Catholic moral tradition could ever dispense with just war theory,” wrote Michael Sean Winters in The National Catholic Reporter. As with other similar commentaries,[2] Winters concludes pacifism “has little to offer in the way of protecting the innocent.”[3]

            This likely will be the most searing question posed to any with doubts about the sufficiency of just war doctrine. What about Syria? What about slavery? And, as always, what about Hitler? Then there is the popular view of Jesus’ command to love enemies as moral prompt but not for replication; that it is for personal interactions but not for geopolitical relations. Reinhold Niebuhr’s classic book, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, covers well this common assumption about the nature of things, known as “Christian realism.”[4]

            Its premise is that “people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”[5] Is it any wonder that the growing body of literature attesting the effectiveness of nonviolent struggle still struggles to find a readership?[6]

            When the binary of pacifism versus just war is posed—the choice between suffering violence or afflicting it—the only thing that’s clear is that our language is impoverished, and we have a diminished vision of to Whom we belong as people of the Way of Jesus and to what we are called to do. The challenge before just war objectors is: Can we point to rival, realistic and spiritually-informed political strategies that are alternatives to policies that assume the need for political domination through superior fire-power?

Just peace

Praying for peace is a little like praying for a weedless garden.
—John Stoner

            The Appeal’s proposal “that the Catholic Church develop and consider shifting to a Just Peace approach based on Gospel nonviolence” is highly suggestive. It properly emphasizes the proactive over the reactive tense of peacemaking; understands that what Scripture speaks of as shalom is rooted in justice; and calls attention to concrete strategies to preempt war fever knowing that the origins of warfare must be addressed in their underlying and localized causes. And it calls to mind the evocative phrase by Glen Stassen on the need for “transforming initiatives”[7] in the work of reconciliation.

            The currency of “just peace” language in recent years is noteworthy, as is the phrase “building a culture of peace,” the latter suggested first by a group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, then adopted by both the United Nations and the World Council of Churches, who established a parallel “decade,” beginning in 2001, for “overcoming violence.”[8]

            The dilemma with just peace thinking is that its frame of reference is tilted toward addressing the final blossoming of enmity in open warfare by means of national and international action. For instance, the truly groundbreaking book Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War,[9] a rigorous, creative effort by twenty-three scholars and edited by Glen Stassen, locates the agencies for change primarily in national and international arenas, thus distancing the levers of influence from the majority of people who want to add the incremental weight of their convictions for a different future.[10] It reinforces the sense that this vital work is best left to elites. If we are to promote a holistic understanding of peacemaking to marshal communities at every level we need a comprehensive analysis of violence, beginning with the capacity for evil of the human tongue[11] all the way up the scale to international war.

            In addition, while the just peace analysis provides an impressive inventory of tactical options, it is less useful as a strategic document in the sense that it does not address (at least not to my satisfaction) the overarching purpose and underlying vision for why, as people of faith, we should expend energy and risk assets in the outrageously ambitious pursuit of an end to the entrenched habit of human malice.

            If we are to mobilize a sufficiently large movement to address the root causes of war, we need an animating vision powerful enough to inspire risky exposure to every arena of human injury, rooted in and attentive to local communities. And we need it said in such a way that nonviolence is understood as the distinguishing mark of the “new creation” (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17) into which our faith is immersing us.

Just war legacy

Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.
—the Witches in Shakespeare’s “MacBeth,” Act 1, Scene 1

            In preparation for this article I wrote fifty people—pacifists and just warriors alike, academics-to-activists, who know something about the use of just war theory—asking if they could cite evidence of a potential war averted (or significantly altered) due to the constraints of just war criteria. More than half responded, and not a single one could name a case. What’s more surprising is the number who considered my question a novel one. If the just war matrix is to be an honest broker of policy decisions, surely there must be verifiable metrics.

            Careful thinkers that they are, a number who responded added qualifications to their conclusion: a negative is hard to prove; given the secrecy of deliberations prior to war, there may be still-classified examples of averted war; several affirmed that just war theory has significantly shaped internationally recognized documents like the United Nation’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and the Geneva Conventions, war crime tribunals, not to mention military and police training protocols. And as recently as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Pope John Paul II (among numerous other communion heads) expressly employed just war theory in condemning the attack.

            The U.S. Administration, of course, argued for intervention using the same criteria. The latter fact only underscores what many see as the de facto use of just war theory as makeup hiding the blemishes on the face of war’s countenance.

            To say that war is against the will of God but is also, on occasion, a tragic necessity, is either hypocritical (at best) or deceitful (at worst). It creates a zone of legitimacy for brutal behavior masquerading as service to the common good. It assumes that creation is like a bucolic mansion which, nonetheless, has an unfinished basement where ugly, abominable things may be carried out to preserve the habitable space above. It accepts the notion that there is a space in which the stake of Heaven has no claim and the terms of God’s Reign do not apply. In our distorted imaginations we assume God’s tenure needs a little nudge by means of human enforcement.

Beatific vision

For the world has grown full of peril. And in all lands, love is now mingled with grief. . . . The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stay but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.
— Galadriel, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

            My argument is not that just war theory be publicly displaced by principled nonviolence. My contention is simultaneously more daring and more modest. Namely, that the Church relinquish its world-governing assumption on the one hand while, on the other, focus attention on its distinctive charism.

            Our sights should be set on the two separate but intersecting realms in which we participate: an understanding that we do engage, without privileged voice, in the province of public reasoning while also attending our ekklesial reckoning.

            No one disputes that not even the most compassionate, courageous and intelligent people, institutions or movements can make things right. Hurts seem to forever find a home in our midst. And our commonwealth duty is to join with all other people of conscience in picking up the pieces, tending wounds, embracing the shell-shocked, drying tears, burying the dead, and devising appropriate walls to segregate harm’s effects. This is the work of public reasoning, a form of discernment which impels and guides public action for the purpose of the reduction of violence. People of faith bear no distinctive markings in such decisions.

            Our distinction comes by way of ekklesial reckoning, from the Greek word ekklesia, which the Apostle Paul used to indicate the early churches’ anatomy; and reckoning, a discernment of identity and orientation. Ekklesial reckoning involves continually being formed and fashioned in the insights and habits of God’s intention in Creation and promise of a new heaven and a new earth, of Heaven’s transforming initiative (“while we were still sinners Christ died for us,” Romans 5:8), an initiative which the Community of the Beloved imitates and enacts in the world. We do so without hubris, as if our calling warrants special favor from the Beloved; but simply because this is who we are (becoming), and this is what we believe God is doing in the world. So doing is not credit to some celestial savings account. This is how we breathe, for we are being steeped in the Breath of the Spirit.

“Fools” for Christ

You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you odd.
—alternate rendering of John 8:23, attributed to Flannery O’Connor

            The challenge we face as heralds against assumed realism was keenly cited by Countess Crawly (played by Maggie Smith) on “Downton Abby.” “Hope,” she insisted, “is a tease to keep us from accepting reality.”

            We are not sectarian in the popular sense of the word, separated from “worldliness” in the self-sanctifying attempt at moral purity. We are sectarians—“foolishness” was how Paul often characterized the Gospel announcement (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:18-30)—in that we believe another world is not only possible but is in fact on its way—present already in those with open rather than grasping hands—as an era beyond scorched time. We believe the future is more than a projection of the present or replay of the past. We are adventus people, formed by the beatific vision of a future beyond all currently available calculations, one that does not obliterate creatureliness but grows from its compost.

            Years ago I was invited by a denominational leader to speak at a national conference on peacemaking. In her letter of invitation, my friend Carole wrote, “We want you to speak to the question of ‘why should we work for peace when folk just need to get saved?’”

            Knowing her sense of humor, I kept reading to get the real topic. But that was it. Dumbfounded at first, it suddenly occurred to me how insightful her request really was. Other than the few go-to texts on peace and justice in Scripture, our congregations are largely unaware of how saturated all of the Bible is with God’s passion for reconciliation, for the right-relatedness of every part of creation, for shalom in all its rich and varied meanings.

            The unfortunate thing is that our communities are largely unaware of the fact that God is more taken with the agony of the earth than the ecstasy of heaven. As a Christian, if you don’t get the Incarnation, you’re largely clueless about everything else. The fact that the text of John 8:32 is inscribed in marble in the Central Intelligence Agency lobby is indication we have significant recovery work to do.

            Until we effectively communicate that the failure to love enemies is to hedge our bets on Jesus, we will lack the necessary leverage to inspire self-forgetful engagement with the world’s pain. Unless our constituency learns to deprivatize teaching about forgiveness and repentance (spirituality is always personal but never merely private), repurposing them to social realities, these notions are largely mute in a world weary of boorish piety. Not until our catechisms point to joy—rather than moral heroism or gritty endurance—as the center, the substance and the circumference of our secret power, will our mobilizing lead to something other than exhaustion.

           It does not surprise me that a way out of our philosophical sinkhole (otherwise known as the just war versus pacifism debate) would be pioneered by those from the tradition arguing most vigorously for moral assessment of conflictive aims. As the child of pietist-revivalist rearing, it was a Catholic author, years ago, who in a single sentence first alerted me to the demanding work of prayer hitched to the imperative work of justice. It was a personal parting of the water. If you know any of those who had a hand in the Vatican conference on Gospel nonviolence, write them to say thanks. And stay tuned for further developments.

# # #

[1] In Just Policing, Not War: An Alternative Response to World Violence, edited by Gerald Schlabach (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2007), a collection of essays done by participants in a 5-year dialogue of Roman Catholic and Mennonite theologians seeking common ground.

[2] See Daniel Petri, “Replace Just War Theory with Nonviolence—What About Syria and Genocide?”, Millennial; Gretchen R. Crowe, interview of Gerald F. Powers, “Powers: Catholic social doctrine is ‘just peace,’” Our Sunday Visitor, 20 April 2016; Damon Linker, “Will Pope Francis dump the just war doctrine?”, The Week, 19 April 2016.

[3] 25 April 2016.

[4] We often forget that just war theory shares a moral presupposition with pacifism, namely, that violence in defense of myself is not justified, but such in the defense of innocent neighbors is.

[5] The sentence is variously attributed to George Orwell, Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipling and John Le Carré.

[6] See, for example, John Dear’s “The facts are in: Nonviolent resistance works,” a review of Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan’s Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, National Catholic Reporter, 16 October 2012 . Watch this 12-minute video, “The Stunning Success of Nonviolent Resistance,” by Erica Chenoweth.

[7] Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press), 1992.

[8] For more background, see: “International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World” ; the “Decade to Overcome Violence” of the World Council of Churches (WCC) ; the United Church of Christ “Just Peace” resolution of 1985, with its reaffirmation in the 2015 General Synod ; and the 2013 “Statement on the Way of Just Peace” by the WCC

[9] Pilgrim Press, 1998. Note: this work and the previously cited book by Stassen share the same title but have different subtitles.

[10] A notable exception is the book’s final recommendation, urging “grassroots” activists to support governmental and nongovernmental initiatives.

[11] Among the most blistering texts in Scripture is the Epistle of James’ warning (3:5-8) of the devastation that can be caused by human speech. The same book (4:1-2) also makes explicit the economic roots (“cravings” in the New Revised Standard Version) of war.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested
Circle of Mercy Congregation, 20 May 2007

        Ever since Easter the principal lectionary readings have been excerpts from the books of Acts which records the story of the birth of the church after Jesus’ resurrection and then the subsequent missionary journeys of Paul and other church leaders.

        Today’s story is actually two stories: a short one, which I just read—about Paul healing a “slave girl”—which sets up a longer one, which Nancy told to the children—when Paul and Silas are dragged into the marketplace of the city of Philippi, A city on the Aegean Sea coast of what is now the modern country of Bulgaria, in what was then a Roman colonial region. There they are accused by the slave girl’s owners of unlawful activity, and the city magistrates convict them toss them into prison.

        There aren’t many biblical stories that have fired the imagination of protestors (like those of the Civil Rights Movement) more than the memory of Paul and Silas . . . sitting in a squalid prison cell, no one to make their bail . . . and singing. The practice of singing in prison dates to this story from Acts.

        I didn’t catch many of the details, but a recent NPR program interviewed a man imprisoned in a small town in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement. The small group of activists were singing away, and it was driving the prison guards crazy. After much harassment, the guards finally unleashed water hoses on the group. People in jail cells aren’t supposed to act like they’re free!

        And the truth is, this entire narrative is a stunning commentary on who’s really free and who’s really a slave. The slave girl’s owners, the city magistrates and the jailer—these are apparently living in liberty. The slave herself, along with Paul and Silas—these are supposed the ones under bondage. But the Gospel message turns this around. The text is urging us to ask deeper questions about freedom and bondage. We think we know which is which. But do we?

        For today, though, I’m especially intrigued by the first part of this story, the one that sets the stage for Paul and Silas’ conviction.

        The text says that the “slave girl” had “a spirit of divination” and could tell people’s fortunes. And for days she would follow the missionaries around town, crying out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

        The woman’s words were probably more like a taunt than an introduction. And Paul finally got tired of it. So he performed an exorcism: “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And,” the text continues, “it came out that very hour.”

        That’s when the two traveling preachers were “dragged into the marketplace before the authorities” and soon thereafter stripped, beaten and tossed into the deepest recesses of the prison, feet bound in stocks so they couldn’t even move around. All because the slave girl’s owners “saw that their hope of making money was gone” after Paul healed her.

        Scripture scholars aren’t entirely clear exactly what it was that ailed the woman. Probably some kind of mental illness, and probably some ability as a ventriloquist. The closest analogy that comes to mind is to think of how, years ago, traveling circuses had their “freak shows”—bearded women, dwarfed people and the like—people who were exploited for their very unusual physical appearance.

        And when Paul and Silas disrupted this exploitation, they were dragged into the marketplace where they were sentenced to prison. The lesson is: You don’t go messin’ with people’s livelihood. That kind of freedom is strictly sanctioned.

        It reminds me of that 17th century legal statute in the State of New York: "It is hereby Enacted by the authority of the same, That the Baptizing of any Negro, Indian or Mulatto Slave shall not be the Cause or reason for setting them or any of that at Liberty."

        That law is one small example, among many, of the state’s consistent pattern of defining the legitimate authority of religious practice. It’s OK to baptize those slaves. You just can’t set them free. (And you thought our nation was founded on religious freedom?!)

        It’s interesting how an emphasis on economics—thinking about money—has emerged in our Circle this year. Neither the pastoral team nor the church council planned it this way. It just happened.

        Counter-cultural economic practice has always been a significant part of our vision, of course. Nearly four year ago we first began asking members to make financial pledges for the support of our common life (which is a small form of “holding things in common,” one of the defining characteristics of the first Christian community). Nearly three years ago we made the decision to create our own “contingency fund” for emergencies; but instead of putting it the money into Exxon stock, we chose to put it in microlending institutions and community development banks, at 0% interest, so that capital could be circulated in places which mainstream financial institutions won’t go.

        I’m not one to boast, but I confess it does please me to think that we were the first congregational supporter of Christians for a United Community, one of whose goals is addressing economic disparity. And more recently, we were among the first to make a congregational contribution to the Living Wage campaign here in Asheville.

        This past February, at our annual planning day, the agenda was given over to discussing ways to implement parts of our mission. You remember—we took a list of “Pentecost Power” questions first put on the table on Pentecost Sunday in 2006. Everyone present at the planning day got to vote on their top three priorities. One of those three was the topic of economics, and it evoked a great deal of discussion and ideas.

        The following month, Andy Loving happened to be coming through Asheville over a weekend and we invited him to lead the adult education hour on social responsible investing and then to preach in worship. His sermon title was, “The Common Purse and the God of Maximum Return.” He reinvigorated our thinking about alternative economic practices and really challenged the way we take for granted the values of our economic system. In fact, his presence was so stimulating that several people asked if we could get him back again. [details]

        (By the way, going back to the thing about religious freedom, one of the things Andy has taught me is that denominational pension funds are prohibited by law against investing in capital markets that do not produce the highest interest return. In other words, the United Church of Christ pension board can’t invest in Oikocredit, where part of our contingency fund is invested. The legal provision is called “fiduciary responsibility.” This is what Andy meant in his sermon title when he used the phrase “the God of maximum return.”)

        As the council began discussing possible resource leaders for our August family retreat, Dr. Michelle Tooley’s name came to the front. Michelle, a religion professor at Berea College in Kentucky, is a friend of several in this Circle, and one of her passions is the economic teaching in Scripture, particularly the legacy of what’s called the “jubilee” tradition, which first appears in the book of Leviticus, reappears elsewhere in the Torah, is picked up again by the Prophets and is put at the center of Jesus’ mission. The “jubilee” tradition for ancient Israel demanded that every 50th year that all land be returned to original owners, that slaves be freed and that debts be canceled. It is a stunning piece of social legislation which has no parallels in the ancient world.

        All of you are familiar with Jesus’ inaugural sermon, the one where he says “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed . . . AND TO PROCLAIM THE YEAR OF THE LORD’S FAVOR.” That last phrase—“the year of the Lord’s favor”—is a direct reference to the Jubilee Year in Hebrew Scripture.

        I’m pleased to tell you that Michelle has agreed to come do Bible study for us on the jubilee theme during our family retreat. And the church council has approved plans to follow up that event with some related Christian education themes. Mahan Siler has agreed to lead several sessions on a curriculum which used family systems theory to help individuals understand the values and habits they inherited from their parents in how decisions about money are made. And we’re making plans to study Ched Myers’ Sabbath Economics, the best concise summary of biblical teachings about wealth.

        Maybe this focus on economics might lead us to put the topic of tithing on the table for discussion. “Tithing” is one of those traditional religious words we don’t use around here, mostly, I think, because its use in mainstream churches is simply a form of financial development to support the congregational budget. What if we began thinking about tithing as one of the spiritual disciplines of membership in the Circle of Mercy—not as requirement that you give 10% of your earning to support our church budget, but as a commitment to directing financial support to places and people and movements that the dominant values of our economic institutions ignore?

        And what if, next year, we began talking more broadly about the purpose and values of common disciplines of various sorts? “Discipline” is another of those traditional religious words we don’t like to use. Mostly, I think, because the word “discipline” has come to imply punishment. All through my public school years, the vice principal of the schools I attended served as the “disciplinary” officers of the school. Which meant, that’s where you went to get scolded or paddled or even expelled—as part of your “discipline.”

        But the word “discipline” comes from the Latin word discere, which means “to learn.” A discipline is something you undertake because there’s something you want to learn. That doesn’t mean disciplines are easy to undertake; but it does mean that you are the one who decides, and the motivation for learning something important provides the stimulus for making such commitments. (“Discipline” is the root from which the word “disciple” is taken.)

        I happen to think that the struggle over economic values and practices and habits is the fundamental place where wheels of spirituality meet the road. We tend to forget that though Civil Rights leaders got into trouble for protesting segregation, it was when they began developing a sharp economic analysis of injustice that the threats became deadly. Dr. King was not assassinated for trying to integrate the sanitation department in Memphis. He was supporting the workers’ demand for economic justice, and he went to Memphis in the midst of planning a Poor People’s Campaign march on Washington—not a Black People’s Campaign. The people at Koinonia Farm in South Georgia got into trouble for letting white and black people eat at the same table. But it was their practice of paying everyone the same wage that brought provoked deadly threats against them.

        Like Paul and Silas, when we start exorcising the spirit of economic bondage, we will likely get dragged into the marketplace to face the authorities.

        Paul and Silas, bound in jail
        Had no money for to go their bail
        Keep your eyes on the prize, Hold on
        Paul and Silas thought they was lost
        Dungeon shook and the chains come off
        Keep your eyes on the prize, Hold on
        I got my hand on the gospel plow
        Won’t take nothing for my journey now
        Keep your eyes on the prize, Hold on

        Sisters and brothers, hold on, hold on, Keep your eyes on the prize, Hold on.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested

Texts: Isaiah 5:7-8; Luke 24:44-53; 1 Peter 3:13-22
Circle of Mercy Congregation, Sunday, 5 May 2002

        Before I begin, permit me one brief aside. It was on this day—5 May 1773—that Baptists in Boston agreed to refuse payment of taxes due to support the state-sponsored pilgrim-puritan church of the region. Such historical memories help us remember who we are and thus more able to account for the hope that is within us.

§  §  §

        As you know, I’ve recently returned from a trip to the Occupied Territories of the West Bank of Israel. The opportunity to go on this trip came up very quickly—barely a week before I actually left, which is why you probably didn’t know I was going until I actually was gone. The invitation to which I responded was from an organization called Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) whose goal is to organize and mobilize a nonviolent army, one that is as well-trained and disciplined and willing to go into harm’s way as any conventional army—the crucial difference being that this militant force goes unarmed, save for the power of the Gospel to disarm hearts as well as nations.

        “Getting in the way” is CPT’s motto: getting in the way of the powers of domination and oppression, in a self-risking way that does not require the injury or the death or even the humiliation of the enemy. This way of fighting, of combat, of waging peace, is the way heralded by people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi and a host of others, some whose names we know, most we do not. A poster on the wall of CPT’s office in Hebron, south of Jerusalem, speaks these familiar words of Dr. King:

        “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.”

        As e.e. cummings wrote, “Hatred bounces.” And every war, every act of violence and humiliation sows the seeds of the next antagonism, forming a perpetual motion machine of hatred and death, a downward spiral driven by its own internal logic of revenge. No one remembers who struck first; but only this: every provocation becomes justification for retaliation. And so it is in the modern land of Israel, between Jews and Palestinians, in the seemingly endless cycle where perceived security needs justify the violence of domination, which prompts revolutionary violence in response, which in turn provokes repressive violence. Both peoples have legitimate claims to the land and both of can muster historic collective memories of abuse to justify getting even against the other.

        Where does it end? Who can stop the bouncing, the ricocheting cycle of bloodletting? Does the human capacity to inflict death signify the final authority in creation? Or, as Chairman Mao once asserted (and US foreign policy confirms): Lasting power flows through the barrel of a gun?

        More than a decade ago, during the Persian Gulf War, a letter to the editor in the New York Times told this remarkable story by one living in a Middle Eastern city:

        “I watched as a man who was riding slowly through the crowd on a bicycle with a basket of oranges precariously balanced on the handlebars was bumped by a porter so bent by a heavy burden that he had not seen him. The burden was dropped, the oranges scattered and a bitter altercation broke out between the two men.

        “After an angry exchange of shouted insults, as the bicyclist moved toward the porter with a clenched fist, a tattered little man slipped from the crowd, took the raised fist in his hands and kissed it. A murmur of approval ran through the watchers, the antagonists relaxed, then the people began picking up the oranges and the little man drifted away.

        “Now that our American bicycle has been bumped and oil supplies are spilled, and angry, unseemly insults and threats have been exchanged, and war has broken out with the possibility of the loss of myriad lives while millions stand by in horror, when and where can we turn for someone to kiss the American fist?”

        Or, in our present focus, who will kiss the Palestinian fist, the Israeli fist? It requires more than being nice, more than counsel to patience (or even sermons denouncing violence). Sometimes it involves getting in the way, of stepping from the crowd and risking taking a fist to the face, or arrest and imprisonment, or even a bullet to the body. Or maybe a straightforward word of opposition to the bully in your office or your neighborhood or your family, or an unpopular and uncomfortable stand of dissent in your school or circle of friends.

        Our vocation as believers involves on occasion a certain militancy, even aggressiveness, in confronting evil, a willingness to get in the way of those whose blind security needs give birth to personal or public policies of domination and hoarding, of what the prophet Isaiah called “adding house to house, field to field.”

        The ministry of reconciliation, of seeking peace and pursuing justice, is not just about being nice. Sometimes it has a martial quality. Which reminds me of my favorite poem by my good friend, Walker Knight:

        Peace plans its strategy and encircles the enemy.
        Peace marshals its forces and storms the gates.
        Peace gathers its weapons and pierces the defense.
        Peace, like war, is waged.
        But Christ has turned it all around:
        the weapons of peace are love, joy, goodness, longsuffering;
        the arms of peace are justice, truth, patience, prayer;
        the strategy of peace brings safety, welfare, happiness;
        the forces of peace are the sons and daughters of God.

      These are the kinds of peace we waged while in the West Bank: we were among those who attempted to get food and medicines to those trapped in the besieged Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem; we accompanied Palestinian children to and from school in Hebron, to protect them from harassment from soldiers and stone-throwing Jewish settler children; we provided a human shield for a welding crew in Dura, sent to repair the water pipe leading into the city which had been damaged by Israeli bulldozers building a road block; we helped Palestinian farmers in Yatta harvest a barley crop, providing a protective presence against random shooting by soldiers and Jewish settlers; and we surveyed the damage in several cities caused not only by the fighting but also by deliberate acts of vandalism by Israeli soldiers, providing a vitally important listening ear and documenting presence to the groans and complaints of violated people who experience this loss of safety as an abandonment by God.

        If I could script the baptismal or confirmation policies of Christian communities, it would require every new believer to participate in such militancy as a prerequisite to their membership—simply as a matter of encouraging each to count the cost, to know what she or he is signing on to.

        Several years ago I spent a week lecturing at the Oriental Theological Seminary in northeast India, ancestral home to the Naga people who have been in a war of independence with the Indian government ever since the British left in 1947. Never in my life have I experienced such intense, intelligent and vital dialogue with theological students. I think it’s because, in that conflicted region, what you believe about the Bible can get you killed.

        But you don’t have to go to Nagaland, or the Occupied West Bank, to confront the rupture of life by hatred and animosity. We know it in our own neighborhoods, in our communities, even in our families. Violence doesn’t explode only through the barrel of a gun, or from the carriage of an Apache attack helicopter, or from a suicide bomber. It comes in far more ordinary ways, in the temptation to use language designed to pierce and humiliate, in aggressive driving habits, in choices involving career enhancement and making names for ourselves, in a myriad of ways when we choose to remain silent in the face of discrimination, in succumbing to the exaggerated security needs which our culture insists must be met in order to be safe.

        All acts of physical violence—however subtle or overt, whether wielding an assault rifle or merely an assaulting tongue—are the mirror reflection of spiritual corruption. In terms of formal theological categories, such acts are forms of idolatry, meaning: we lack confidence in Yahweh God to secure the future; we must turn to the gods made from our own hands—the gods of superior economic performance, of military strength, our own ingenuity and competence and intelligence. We come to believe in what Walter Wink calls the “myth of redemptive violence.” Since the Abba of Jesus cannot be trusted to insure justice and establish peace—whether for our personal lives or the lives of our race or political party or nation—we must take on the task ourselves. And we comfort ourselves with the self-serving, idolatrous pieties of justification: “It’s a nasty business, but somebody’s gotta’ do it,” or “That’s how the real world operates.”

        But, you may be asking yourself, who can do this? Who can live a consistent life of nonviolence? Where does the courage to “get in the way of oppression” come from? Where does one find the capacity to give without promise of return, to share without guarantee of profit, to abandon security without assurance of safety, to fight hatred with suffering love?

        Indeed, upon what certain basis do we actually confess with the substance of our very lives—and not just with our pious words or ritualized creeds—the power of the resurrection? For, indeed, the addiction to violence is the most damning contradiction to our professed belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

        Is the very heart of Jesus’ message, the command to love enemies, an unattainable standard, an unrealistic goal, a hard and even hideously cruel responsibility?

        Thomas Merton poses the question very clearly:

        “The beginning of the fight against hatred, the basic Christian answer to hatred, is not the commandment to love, but what must necessarily come before in order to make the commandment bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commandment, to believe.  The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved. The faith that one is loved by God although unworthy—or, rather, irrespective of one's worth!”

        It is the experience of grace, not the exertion of heroic willfullness, which unlocks the redemptive power of God’s love in our lives, Our capacity to forgive—to live disarmed lives—grows in proportion to our capacity to be forgiven, in relation to the depth to which we have experienced the disarming love of God.  “The one who is forgiven little loves little,” is the striking way Jesus says it.

        The call to faith is not the demand of heroic willfulness or moral worthiness; rather, the experience of grace is the acknowledgment of gift, which prepares us to be light in the darkness, yeast in the loaf—to be heralds of life in the midst of suffering and death; to engender the capacity to turn the other cheek rather than extend the cycle of vengeance.

        In the story of Jesus’ resurrection appearance to his disciples recorded in Luke 24, Jesus provides a rather surprising instruction. Instead of saying: “O.K., you guys get moving. There’s lots of work to be done. Get out there and get busy,” he cautioned them to wait, to stay in Jerusalem, to idle a bit before putting their mission in gear. “Stay here,” he cautioned, “Until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

        Liturgically, this is where we are: in the transition from Easter to Pentecost. The resurrection moment has occurred; now we wait for the resurrection movement to be founded.

        Before leaving for the Middle East I wrote a note to our board of directors with these thoughts:

        “A good friend recently reminded me of the quote from Shakespeare—"All is lost! To prayers, to prayers. All is lost!"—which sums up the too-commonplace notion of prayer as resignation, as retreat. Maybe it should be revised: "There is hope! To prayer, to prayer! There is hope!" That's why I'm going to Hebron: to pray. That is, to get clear again about the Promise (constantly obscured by violent headlines) by immediate contact with people who keep getting in the way of death's herald. I fully expect to have my comfortable cynicism and leisurely despair overturned yet again. To get saved one more time.

        “Oh, we'll be plenty busy, of course, and may face threats to physical safety. Surely our presence will provide a meager measure of protection to the bloodied and battered. Ah, but what we will be provided in return—the prospect of clarified vision—is surely the greater gift.

        “That is our evangelical calling, is it not? Whether far away or in our own neighborhoods, to see and to say: Look here, dry bones still walk!"

        There is a seamless thread which connects the work of prayer, like what we do here in this Circle of Mercy, and our work of getting in the way of hatred and violence, whether on Patton Avenue or in Manger Square at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where the Israeli Defense Force continues even now its deadly siege.

        Among the most consistent experiences of my life is this one: It is when I position myself in situations of despair that I discover people who know the most about hope. Such experiences erode my doubts that a different future is possible, sustain my impulse to resist the enveloping darkness, enliven my imagination with creative strategies to heal and to mend—all of this rooted in my most immediate context but also expanding out to far distances when larger relational webs make a way.

        Being able to tell stories about hopeful response to despair, however small or large the context, is one of my greatest joys, a joy which is compounded with every repetition, and with it the planting in listeners of new seeds suffused with fertile soil, creating new and renewed communities of hope.

        The hope that is within us is not self-generated, and we make no proprietary claims. But there is still much work, hard work, disciplined work, to be done: by cooperating with the Spirit in allowing our cluttered, anxious and self-possessed lives to be purged; and in locating ourselves in those places, and with those people—with as much intelligence and attention as we can muster—where hope is likely to break out.

        This is our calling—an often difficult and occasionally dangerous calling, but ultimately a life-giving and joyful one.

#  #  #

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org