Patriarch Calls for World Peace in 2013

In his recent Christmas Encyclical, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has declared 2013 to be a "Year of Global Solidarity" in which he hopes that the powers that be in the world will make strides toward global peace and the eradication of hunger. While I lack the optimism of the Ecumenical Patriarch with regard to wold governments, I cannot help but applaud his sentiments and, more importantly, his audacity. Ours is, after all, a radical hope for a true ideal, one which we must pursue even in the certainty that our efforts will fail.

Let us rejoice in gladness for the ineffable condescension of God.The angels precede us singing: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will among all people.”

Yet, on earth we behold and experience wars and threats of wars. Still, the joyful announcement is in no way annulled. Peace has truly come to earth through reconciliation between God and people in the person of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, however, we human beings have not been reconciled, despite God’s sacred will. We retain a hateful disposition for one another. We discriminate against one another by means of fanaticism with regard to religious and political convictions, by means of greed in the acquisition of material goods, and through expansionism in the exercise of political power. These are the reasons why we come into conflict with one another...

This is why, from this sacred See and Center of Orthodoxy, we proclaim the impending new year as the Year of Global Solidarity.

It is our hope that in this way we may be able to sensitize sufficient hearts among humankind regarding the immense and extensive problem of poverty and the need to assume the necessary measures to comfort the hungry and misfortunate.

As your spiritual father and church leader, we ask for the support of all persons and governments of good will in order that we may realize the Lord’s peace on earth – the peace announced by the angels and granted by the infant Jesus. If we truly desire this peace, which transcends all understanding, we are obliged to pursue it palpably instead of being indifferent to the spiritual and material vulnerability of our brothers and sisters, for whom Christ was born...

We hope earnestly and pray fervently that the dawning 2013 will be for everyone a year of global solidarity, freedom, reconciliation, good will, peace and joy. May the pre-eternal Word of the Father, who was born in a manger, who united angels and human beings into one order, establishing peace on earth, grant to all people patience, hope and strength, while blessing the world with the divine gifts of His love. Amen.

#500

When I began this project, it took me more than a year to reach one hundred entries. My rate of posting has increased dramatically, not because I have more to say but because I have had the opportunity to allow others to speak with greater frequency. The commemoration of the numerous quotes shared here has become something of a personal tradition, and so, on this my five hundredth post, I offer you once again my favorite ten quotes from the numerous insights shared in previous ninety-nine posts.

10) The absurdity of the news is a recurrent theme here, and the past six months has offered no respite from the onslaught of ridiculous news stories. The election stands out as a year long tribute to this insanity, from which numerous quotes might be drawn. Yet, it was this understated, now forgotten story of a couple suing over a baseball injury:

A New Jersey woman who was struck in the face with a baseball at a Little League game is suing the young catcher who threw it.

Elizabeth Lloyd is seeking more than $150,000 in damages to cover medical costs...Catcher Matthew Migliaccio was 11 years old at the time and was warming up a pitcher.

9) Not all sports news was so amusing or so obscure. Since the last top ten, the drama at Penn State has continued to unfold in ways that I continue to find indefensible. The NCAA handed down what were supposed to be program destroying sanctions (never mind that the Nittany Lions have marched proudly on to have a respectable season), but the Paterno family continues in the level-headed tradition of its now deceased patriarch:

The point of due process is to protect against this sort of reflexive action. Joe Paterno was never interviewed by the University or the Freeh Group. His counsel has not been able to interview key witnesses as they are represented by counsel related to ongoing litigation. We have had no access to the records reviewed by the Freeh group. The NCAA never contacted our family or our legal counsel. And the fact that several parties have pending trials that could produce evidence and testimony relevant to this matter has been totally discounted.

Unfortunately all of these facts have been ignored by the NCAA, the Freeh Group and the University.

8) Many of the quotes shared here relate to issues of war and peace, indicating my distinct preference for the latter. To an already extensive catalog, I was able to recently add the collective wisdom of several Nobel laureates protesting, of all things, a reality show that trained celebrities in the art of war:

Real war is down in the dirt deadly...Trying to somehow sanitize war by likening it to an athletic competition further calls into question the morality and ethics of linking the military anywhere with the entertainment industry in barely veiled efforts to make war and its multitudinous costs more palatable to the public.

7) Historians, as a rule, affect me less profoundly than do theologians, philosophers, and ethicists. Eugene Genovese is an astounding exception to this rule. Much to my dismay, he died not so long ago, but he has left us with a tremendous body of work that will continue to live on and continue to stimulate. This quote was offered as a sample as we said goodbye to Gene Genovese:

Southern conservatism has always traced the evils of the modern world to the ascendency of the profit motive and material acquisitiveness...to an idolatrous cult of economic growth and scientific and technological progress; and to the destructive exploitation of nature. Thus, down to our day, southern conservatives have opposed finance capitalism and have regarded socialism as the logical outcome of the capitalist centralization of economic and state power...

What goes largely unnoticed is that, on much of the American Right, the conservative critique of modernity has largely given way to a free-market liberalism the ideal of which shares much with the radical Left’s version of egalitarianism.

6) Germany, it was discovered recently, could benefit from a greater sensitivity to history. Ignoring the obvious perception it would create, a German judge effectively outlawed religious circumcision. As an advocate for the responsibility of parents to make medical (and religious) decisions on behalf of children, I was delighted when the American Academy of Pediatrics weighed in on the issue:

"It's not a verdict from on high," said policy co-author Dr. Andrew Freedman. "There's not a one-size-fits-all-answer." But from a medical standpoint, circumcision's benefits in reducing risk of disease outweigh its small risks, said Freedman, a pediatric urologist in Los Angeles..."The benefits of newborn male circumcision justify access to this procedure for those families who choose it."

5) Meanwhile, there was real religious strife going on in the world:

We will not encourage our people to carry arms against anybody whatsoever the situation may be. For those that are behind Boko Haram, you come to us with AK47, bombs, charms and other dangerous weapons, but we come to you in the name of God.

I want to assure Christians in Nigeria that Christ has always been with his people. He will never give victory to those persecuting Christians and the Church. Whoever is trying to exterminate Christians and Christianity from Nigeria is neither pleasing God nor his people.

4) Having prophetically (and oh so modestly) argued that the solution to the education crisis in America was to pay teachers less, the atavistic Chicago teachers went on strike and proved themselves better fear-mongers than educators, tragically unaware of their own disastrous behavior:

"The mayor and his hedge fund allies are going to replace our democratically controlled public schools with privately run charter schools. This will have disastrous results," union president Karen Lewis wrote in an opinion column in the Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday.

3) In the run up to the election, we explored the nature of the news and freedom of the press, including this insight from a letter sent to George Washington:

Judicious and well-timed publications have great efficacy in ripening the judgment of men in this quarter of the Continent.

2) Even as my academic focus, and consequently my focus here, shifts from the Orthodox Church to indigenous American Christianity, I can never forget my first academic love. Here is a teaser for a particularly amusing bit of satire that I was directed to:

Hipster Christians, I'm going to help you out. I see you are grasping at something, trying to find the ironic Church of your dreams, where men can grow beards of foolish proportions and women can dress like their grannies' grannies, a place where scarves are worn in every unfashionable fashion imaginable, a place where people do shots and eat hummus at community gatherings, enjoy rooms filled with a fog of incense and prefer to read books that pre-date industrialisation.

I would like to direct your attention to "The Orthodox Church."

1) But, of course, the best news recently...the best news always...was cow news:

Would protection against the deadly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) make you willing to give up your vegan lifestyle? New research from Australia’s Melbourne University suggests that a type of treated cow’s milk could provide the world’s first HIV vaccine.

And now, let us rush headlong together into many more hours wasted merrily in reflection and sardonic commentary.

The Wisdom of Everett Colby

If you haven't heard of Everett Colby, you shouldn't feel bad. He's not important. Unless you happened to stumble across his comically brief Wikipedia entry or, as I did, a stray piece of folksy wisdom in the New York Times, there is no reason to remember the late New Jersey state senator. Nevertheless, I invite you to consider the simple profundity of the following from 1927:

Everett Colby sums up the weary lesson the world has been studying since 1914. Says he, "No one wins wars, so why not have peace?"

That is all the article had to say about war or about Everett Colby, but in many respects that seems like all that needs to be said.

The Wisdom of Nobel Peace Laureates

Ten Nobel Peace Laureates are up in arms (pardon the expression) about a new show on NBC called "Stars Earn Stripes." In theory, at least, there is no such thing as bad press, but if there are any people you do not want publicly repudiating your work, it is Desmond Tutu and company. They have written an Open Letter to Mr. Robert Greenblatt, Chairman of NBC Entertainment, General Wesley Clark (ret.), Producer Mark Burnett and others involved in “Stars Earn Stripes”, which unfortunately only snippets of are being quoted by most press. Here is a longer quote about the way our culture, so distantly removed from its actual horrors, allows the enormity of war to be trivialized:

It is our belief that this program pays homage to no one anywhere and continues and expands on an inglorious tradition of glorifying war and armed violence. Military training is not to be compared, subtly or otherwise, with athletic competition by showing commercials throughout the Olympics. Preparing for war is neither amusing nor entertaining.

Real war is down in the dirt deadly. People—military and civilians—die in ways that are anything but entertaining. Communities and societies are ripped apart in armed conflict and the aftermath can be as deadly as the war itself as simmering animosities are unleashed in horrific spirals of violence. War, whether relatively short-lived or going on for decades as in too many parts of the world, leaves deep scars that can take generations to overcome – if ever.

Trying to somehow sanitize war by likening it to an athletic competition further calls into question the morality and ethics of linking the military anywhere with the entertainment industry in barely veiled efforts to make war and its multitudinous costs more palatable to the public.

The letter can be found, in its entirety, at the above link.

John Lathrop on Peace and War

Here are some thoughts from John Lathrop's sermon "Peace and War," which, all in all, was intriguing from a historical standpoint and dreadful from a moral one. It starts out promising (provided you ignore the full title):

The principal happiness which we are made capable of enjoying, will be found in a state of peace with God, and peace with all mankind. It ought therefore to be the principal business of our life, to cultivate peace; that peace which Jesus preached, which his disciples preached, and which is inseparable from the religion we profess. Blessed, said he, who is in a peculiar sense, the author of peace--"Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called the children of God."

It should be the business of the ministers of religion, in all possible ways, to promote peace. The Holy Bible is full of exhortations to this purpose. "If it be possible," saith the apostle Paul, "as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men!"

If only he didn't go on to reduce peace to a political objective, confusing it with the mere state of mutual non-aggression between the militarizes of respective bodies politic.

Our particular attention is called to the blessings which are to be found in a state of peace in the nation to which we belong; and peace with the other nations of the earth. Nothing is more to be deprecated than civil dissension.

As a side note, he spent a curious amount of time in 1811 decrying civil wars and ensuring his listeners that such a spectacle is unlikely to ever happen in the United States. "We hope...that the opposite parties [in our country] will not wantonly provoke and irritate each other." Oops.

Romans 13: Love, Vengeance, and Anarchy

The following is part of the Anarchy in May series which examines Christian anarchism and quotes prominent Christian anarchist thinkers. For a more detailed introduction and a table of contents, please see Anarchy in May: Brief Introduction and Contents.
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There are times when we all ought to lament the versification of Scripture. An innovation of the Middle Ages, biblical versification allows and even encourages readers to artificially divide what were originally single units of texts. At the level of single verses, Scripture often splits single sentences (and therefore single thoughts) right down the middle. More pernicious, perhaps, are the chapter divisions that allow us to consider fuller units of text as if they existed independently of those that came before. When you add to this the translators subheadings which appear in almost every English edition of the Bible, the reader is left with an almost overwhelming compulsion to read scripture in segments which may or may not reflect any genuine divisions on the part of the original author (and which may even ignore divisions that the authors did intend).

While there are numerous nuances which are glazed over by the versification of Scripture (and numerous pragmatic benefits to weigh against my admittedly one-sided criticisms), one text in which the chapter divisions have dramatically narrowed interpretations is Romans 13. This text has been marshaled for centuries, and especially since the rise of the Anabaptists, to legitimate civil authority and encourage lawful participation of Christians therein. Unfortunately, when it is offered as proof of the moral permissibility of civil participation, the message is normally begun at Romans 13:1, as if Paul has suddenly left off on his themes being a living sacrifice, existing in peace with everyone, and manifesting an ethos of love introduced beginning in 12:1--and indicated not by the new chapter but by the transitional term "therefore" and the shift to the hortatory tone--in order to talk about the unrelated theme of ruling authorities. In erasing the verse and chapter divisions, new themes and parallels begin to emerge which help to give a fuller picture of the meaning of Romans 13 and admit interpretations which are consonant with Christian anarchism (and alleviate what would otherwise be an irresolvable tension between Romans 12 and 13):

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written,

"Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

It should strike you as ironic, as it struck me only very recently, how closely the quintessential text used to legitimate civil authority and its bearing of the sword is to perhaps the greatest Pauline exhortation to pacifism that invalidates participation in government. The interplay extends beyond the text quoted above and there are numerous points of contact that could be examined. There are two essential features of the above text, however, which I contend are the cornerstone for a right interpretation of Romans 13, one that affirms Paul's command to submit to government without concluding simply (and uncritically) that Christians should therefore kill American Indians, Tories, Confederates, Nazis, communists, and Muslims in the name of God and Washington (if Christians still bother to make that distinction).

The first theme which unites the two passages is love, particularly a love which strives to live at peace with everyone. This is undoubtedly the focus of the beginning of Paul's discussion as he encourages Christians to live in a community of love. Initially this community seems to be primarily the Christian community, as Paul speaks of brotherly affection, but Paul quickly extends this exhortation to love to all men, whose common moral judgment Christians are to conform to and who Christians are to live at peace with. Paul extends the bounds of love even further to include even those who are outright evil, who persecute and curse Christians. Echoing the prescriptions of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Paul advises a radical love for one's enemies, a love that is not merely non-aggression but positive affection. It involves blessing those who hate us the most and providing for them even as they try to deprive Christians of their lives and property. The ultimate aim is clearly that of a self-sacrificial love, but Paul stresses peace in the community as an intermediate goal. Ultimately evil will be overcome by good--God's righteous judgement--but in the meantime Christians are to confront evil with their own divinely mandated goodness in an effort to be peacemakers in a world that refuses peace

One may question my inclusion of that final sentence in the above quote, because verse eight is typically shifted into the next paragraph (another modern feature of the text absent in the originals) away from the section on civil government, but it seems to fit very neatly in with the issue of what one owes and to whom it is owed: "Render to all what is due them...Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another." (The words are the same in Greek, "due" and "owe.") It also comes full circle back to the dominant theme of the outset of the quoted passage, a theme which Paul clearly never intended to leave. It is clear, when reading this text as a unit, that Paul never abandons his themes of love, goodness, and living at peace. Paul's first command is to be subject to the government, which he immediately repeats as a negative prohibition not to agitate against the government. Suddenly, this command becomes not a legitimation of civil authority as ultimately good but a repetition of the exhortation for Christians to live at peace so far as it is depends on them. Paul continues to explain that as long as Christians continue to live good lives, the government will leave them in peace. The picture Paul is painting then becomes clear: do not be the agent of agitation against governments, live such good lives that the government will not be agitators against you, and the peace which has been enjoined on you will prevail. Ultimately, this peaceful coexistence is an expression of the love which Paul reminds is the true and final duty of all Christians. You may owe the government taxes and the king honor, but your first and foremost owe everyone love, the kind of love that bless, feeds, and offer succor to our enemies--even inimical nation states.

It does seem clear, however, that in some sense Paul does recognize the right, even the divine duty, of civil government to bear the sword and punish evil as servants of God, which would seem to undermine the position of Christian anarchism. Here the second observation comes into play. I am not contesting that coercive force is the necessary function of civil government. In fact, the whole of Christian anarchism is predicated on the belief that all civil authorities exist only and inevitably by the use of such violence. Let's even say, for the sake of argument, that the use of such force is the result of divine approbation rather than exigency (which I don't believe it is, but that point is not necessary to my argument). When Paul's message is taken as a unit, it is clear that God's elect purpose for civil government and government's ordained means for achieving that purpose are incompatible with God's elect plan for the Christian community.

Consider the linguistic parallel. "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God...for [the government] does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil." Within the span of a few short sentences--placed on opposite sides of a theological chasm by a big, bold number thirteen separating them--Paul says to Christians, do not take revenge but leave room for God's wrath, which, by the way, He is executing through the police power of the state. It is hard to be more clear that Paul sets up the moral duties of the church and the state in contradistinction to one another. The church is the place in which participants are governed by a law of love which forgives sins, blesses foes, promotes peace, and gives aid and comfort to the enemy (to borrow military language). Meanwhile, the state is the organ by which God chooses to punish sins, suppress foes, declare war, and destroy the enemy--though not always in ways which are just.

This, meanwhile, has always been the Christian anarchists understanding of civil government: that it is a sinful institution using a sinful means to punish sinful people in an effort to order a sinful world. When Paul declares that God uses civil government to punish evil through violent suppression, he is by no means legitimizing that behavior (the behavior that will be turned on him and his Christian community in a short time), much less commending it to Christians whom he has just instructed to never punish evil through violent suppression but to confront it with blessings, peace, and charity. Quite the contrary, he is building on a tradition of looking at civil authority entirely distinct from our own laudatory praise of the enlightened modern means of governance. For him, to say that Rome is the servant of God is not like Rick Santorum saying America was a Christian nation; he draws instead on the rich Old Testament tradition of God using evil authorities to work providential ends through violent means and then punishing them for their sinfulness. Consider Isaiah 10:

Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger
And the staff in whose hands is My indignation,
I send it against a godless nation
And commission it against the people of My fury
To capture booty and to seize plunder,
And to trample them down like mud in the streets.
Yet it does not so intend,
Nor does it plan so in its heart,
But rather it is its purpose to destroy
And to cut off many nations.
For it says, “Are not my princes all kings?
“Is not Calno like Carchemish,
Or Hamath like Arpad,
Or Samaria like Damascus?
“As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols,
Whose graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
Shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images
Just as I have done to Samaria and her idols?”

So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness.”

Like Babylon countless nations before it and like countless nations after it--including Rome, of which Paul is speaking, and America, of which I am typically speaking--Assyria does in fact act in service of God and is therefore God's servant. This does not mean that Assyria acts consciously in an effort to conform to the will of God; it was not a Jewish nation or even a righteous nation. It is merely a nation who unwittingly and unrighteously was employed by God for His righteous ends. This does not exculpate Assyria nor would it have exculpated the Jews if they had allied themselves to Assyria in her dastardly but ordained purpose. It merely recognizes, as Paul does, that no one can even pretend authority unless God permits it to happen and that God uses (though by no means necessarily approves of) the sinful means by which sinful man has attempted to order a sinful world in order to accomplish His righteous purposes. (One need only look at the cross as the ultimate testimony to the divine modus operandi.)

The conclusion then is a reevaluation of the meaning of Romans 13 when the context is brought to bear on its meaning. No longer can Christian blithely cite this verse and declare that government is good, its use of the sword is good, and Christian participation in either or both is therefore equally good. Instead, we see the flow of Paul's argument that stresses the Christian commitment to love and peace not only in the community of believers and with enemies who may arise but with society as a whole. Christians can hope for the ultimate accomplishment of divine justice through wrath poured out on evil, and in the meantime take heart that God is working through the mechanism of the state to curb the influence of evil in ways which are not available to Christians who are called to be holier than the world of violence and exigency they inhabit.

Disciple of Peace: A Qaulified Endorsement

Craig M. Watts' Disciple of Peace: Alexander Campbell on Pacifism, Violence and the State is not an academic text. Watts, a pastor and a doctor of ministry, is not a historian. It is important to keep these facts in mind when approaching the book. It is filled with great, accurate information, but it suffers from myriad deficiencies when evaluated against the standards of scholarly history. Particularly disturbing would be the unqualified use of Stone-Campbell history books written during the dark days of Restoration historiography when authors were more hagiographer than historian. This is mirrored by the almost completely absence of citations from relevant periodical literature. The limited and superficial engagement with antecedent and contemporary thinkers outside of a very narrow sphere is also suspect. Moreover, Watts breaks essentially no new ground and offers no new avenues for research. All this needs to be specified because the below recommendation of the book is based on what it is, a brief and interesting primer to the pacifist thought of one of the premiere thinkers of the early Restoration Movement. For a more in-depth, critical engagement of Campbell's thought on this or any other point, you would need to look elsewhere (and then be disappointed by the dearth of quality material on the subject).

For what it is, Disciple of Peace is a delightful read. While lacking in any overarching organizational pattern, each chapter makes for a concise, targeted treatment of some aspect of Campbell's pacifism. These range from the more predictable (and shallower) overviews of the relationship between pacifism and Campbell's postmillennial eschatology to the more interesting and insightful examination of the apparent hypocrisy involved in opposing war and promoting capital punishment. The truth which makes all of this possible is the trenchant observation--which ought to be obvious, but all to often is not--that "pacifism is not an ethical oddity unconnected with the main themes of Alexander Campbell's thought." The assumption that any feature of Christian ethics can somehow be isolated either from the ethical system as a whole or the heart of Christian theology is ultimately naive. This holds true nowhere more strongly than the ethic of peace. How a Christian thinks about peace and violence must be influenced by and influence how a Christian thinks about the nature of God, His purpose in creation, His method of salvation, and the telos of the material world. It is fitting, therefore, that Watts' work does more than simply establish that Campbell was a pacifist. Instead, Watts draws lines of connection between this pacifism and Campbell's understanding of the state, the Bible, the eschaton, and the other pertinent ethical issues of his time (e.g. slavery).

Even making allowances for the non-academic nature of the work, the great weakness of Watts' work is its historical naïveté, particularly as it manifests in relation to the way the Bible functions in Campbell's thought. Watts is unapologetically a member of the Stone-Campbell tradition and is writing for a press based out of a Stone-Campbell church. This bias bleeds fairly obviously into his reconstruction of history. When addressing the influences on Campbell's pacifism, Watts notes a wide range of social, historical, and hermeneutical forces which came to bear on Campbell's thought: church unity movements, dispensationalism, Seeder Presbyterianism, and ongoing American and British peace movements. Yet, again and again, Watts returns to the naive conclusion that all of these influences are ancillary. It is the Bible, plain and simple, that motivated Campbell to believe what he did. This conclusion makes for a nice historical sermon on the merits of pacifism, but it does not stand up to even lay scrutiny as history. The same assertion could be made of any Christian advocate of any ethical position on war. The most hawkish clergyman in the States would display a primarily Scriptural motivation for his ethical stance. It borders on the tautological to say that any religious thinker would ground any religious thought primarily in the religious text of his religion. Watts seems to be endorsing the Restorationist fallacy that there is a Bible--objective and unencumbered by our socio-historical baggage--to which Campbell can finally and authoritatively appeal. Watts would have done better to simply explain how Campbell used Scripture to justify his pacifism rather than contending, indefensibly, that the Bible independently motivated Campbell toward pacifism. (And this, coming from someone who clearly believes that the Bible endorses clearly and without qualification a pacifist ethic for Christians.)

Disciple of Peace is wanting in one other notable way. Watts, as already noted, spends very little time analyzing the connections between Campbell and those of his contemporaries who engaged the same subject, with a few token exceptions. Some of this oversight can certainly be attributed to the limits of space and scope. A comprehensive examination of pacifist thought during Campbell's life would have radically lengthened Watts' project and distorted its scope. Nevertheless, there is a certain sense in which the books lacks substance because it lacks critical comparisons between Campbell and his contemporaries, especially his contemporaries in the Restoration Movement. When Watts does bring in outside thinkers, it is primarily from other religious streams of thought. He seems willfully ignorant that there were other prominent proponents of pacifism within the movement who Campbell might have interacted with intellectually. Barton Stone springs immediately to mind as a comparably prominent thinker swimming in the same intellectual stream as Campbell. This is to say nothing of "lesser" figures like Tolbert Fanning, Raccoon John Smith, J. W. McGarvey, Benjamin Franklin, and Moses Lard who, among others, are rattled off in an introductory list of pacifist Restorationists and then quickly forgotten. In introducing Campbell's pacifism to the reader, Watts declares, "Pacifism takes a variety of forms...[Different forms] can differ in rationale, limitations and goals, among other things. Pacifism is not a single position." Given that he recognizes this fact, Watts would have done his readers a great service if he could have included a short chapter introducing how Campbell's pacifism fit into the broader Restoration vision of peace ethics.

Wherever it is lacking, however, Watts compensates in his closing chapter which reveals the true nature of his book. In his conclusion, Watts unashamedly sets out to demonstrate why Campbell is right in his construction of Christian ethics, except where Watts thinks he is wrong. This may sound like a brazen apology for Watts' own pacifism, and it is. Even so, his analysis of the shortcomings of Campbell's thought and his proposed correctives are sufficiently insightful to make the argument worth considering. He makes four crucial points in his conclusion which bear further thought. The first, as a critique of Campbell, is that pacifism must be cruciform; it must center on and take as its archetype the supreme act of Christ on the cross. Watts observes that in all of Campbell's thought on pacifism in the Gospels, the cross is notable absent, giving pride of place to the Sermon on the Mount instead. Watts pinpoints this shortcoming--with some accuracy, I believe--as the fault which makes possible the contrary stances on war and capital punishment. Taking his cue from Campbell, Watts then takes up the theme of church unity and its relation to Christian pacifism. By incorporating this concern into the pacifist ethic, Watts believes that we can heighten our sense of community and sharpen our critique of competing loyalties such as the self and the state. He then continues his adaptation of Campbell's thinking to criticize modern perceptions of pacifism as a strategy rather than a core belief. The perception that a commitment to pacifism can be evaluated in pragmatic terms is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be committed to peace as Christ endorsed it. (Whether or not Campbell can really be said to understand this critique is debatable, given his optimistic belief about the potential of human peace efforts, but as an ongoing criticism Watts' point still stands.) Finally, Watts concludes on the familiar terms of peace and Christian eschatology. This is not merely limited to arguing that peace is the eschatological ideal but that the church is the eschatological community proleptically living out the ideals of the eschaton in the present.

In the final evaluation, Disciple of Peace must be seen as a mixed bag. Certainly its value rises as academic expectations are lowered. In view of this, it may unqualifiedly recommended to the average reader who is interested in the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement generally or any Restorationist ready to critically engage questions of war, peace, and the state in view of the great thinkers of the tradition. Certainly, I believe that members of the Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and Disciples of Christ would all profit from taking the small amount of time necessary to breeze through this work. The number of adherents in these churches I encounter on a regular basis who have no concept of the rich pacifist history of their traditions is astonishing. Beyond its function for these demographics, however, Watts' work has serious shortcomings which hamper its critical value for the well-educated reader.

Christ, Jain, and the Ethic of Non-violence

It would be blatantly dishonest to suggest that my attraction to Jain was not closely tied to Jain's most conspicuous ethical feature: ahimsa (the symbol for which is pictured on the left). Ahimsa, as a principle, corresponds closely to Western ideas like pacifism, non-violence, or non-harm, though--as with all peculiarly foreign concepts--it would be wrong to simply equate it with any of these. It is, in some respects, a richer and more comprehensive understanding of nonviolence than is found in many Western streams of pacifist thought. At other times, however, it lends itself to a shallower and more thoroughly material understanding of non-violence that Christianity may, at times, legitimately critique. The primary text to be examined on the question of ahimsa is the Sutrakrtanga written by Sudharma, a sixth century B.C. Jain monk.

The serious, even extreme, nature of Jain non-violence is immediately apparent both to the casual observer of Jain monks and to the casual reader of Jain texts. Sudharma specifies that the principle of "non-killing" should extend to all "living beings whether they move or not, on high, below and on earth." He criticizes Buddhist monks for not following this principle: "Eating seeds and drinking cold water and what has been prepared for them, they enter upon meditation, but are ignorant of of the truth and do not possess carefulness." The true practitioner of Jain strives not to destroy even the microscopic life that exists in water or to unthinkingly consume life simply because it has been offered as alms. Even admitting that some inadvertent killing is inevitable in life, the Jain monk takes extreme measures to avoid it and is penitent when he falls short. This is reflected in the First of the Mahavrata, or Five Great Vows, of Jain: "I renounce all killing of living beings, whether subtle or gross, whether movable or immovable. Nor shall I myself kill living beings (nor cause others to do it, nor consent to it). As long as I live, I confess and blame, repent and exempt myself of these sins, in the thrice threefold way, in mind, speech, and body."

One of the most interesting common focuses of ahimsa and Christian non-violence is the way each faith explicitly extends the definition of violence beyond mere action. Both in the Mahavrata and the Sutrakirtanga, Jain teachers emphasize that it is not enough merely to avoid killing. One must vow to neither cause it nor consent to others doing it; "Master of his senses and avoiding wrong, he should do no harm to anybody, neither by thoughts, nor words, nor acts." This translation of active sin into the heart of the sinner was the ethical revolution which Jesus brought to Judaism in the Sermon on the Mount. In his initial volley with the Pharisees and their legalistic application of the Law, Jesus takes up the question of murder: "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire." In the strongest possible terms, Jesus insists that it is not enough to merely not act in violence, which may be avoided simply for fear of the consequences or cowardice or lack of opportunity. As he will explain in the next passage with regard to lust, the very inclination to violence is a spiritual act of violence. In both Christianity and Jain we find a more comprehensive form of non-violence than contemporary political forms of pacifism offer. To commit to non-violence requires a total transformation not only of what one does but also how one thinks and how one experiences the world.

The most most substantial practical difference between Jain and Christianity should be obvious: Christians, overwhelmingly, don't have a problem killing, cooking, and eating animals. Jain, in contrast, takes its version of the golden rule and applies it indiscriminately to all life: "...a man should wander about treating all creatures in the world so as he himself would be treated.” It is here where the Jain tradition offers its most pertinent critique of Christianity. Let me immediate clarify that I am by no means commending the wearing of protective masks, the methodical sweeping of the ground wherever one walks, or even thoroughgoing vegetarianism. Jesus was almost certainly not a vegetarian, and he certainly didn't insist that his followers practice it. Quite the opposite. There is, however, an extent to which Christians have historically taken too great a license with the teaching that humanity has "dominion over" creation. It is critical that Christians remember that humans were not created distinct from creation but distinct within creation, and that our dominion is intended to be as regents of God. There is no reason that Christians should adopt the Jain version of the golden rule and follow it down the path toward ethical vegetarianism (among other applications of ahimsa), but we may appropriate reformulate it as to heighten our own sense of duty within creation: rather than "treat all living things as you would want to be treated," perhaps, "govern creation as you would expect God to govern it."

The reason Christianity does not accept the Jain understanding of the at least apparent scope of non-violence is because Jain has, in some sense, a more superficial understanding of what violence is and at what it may directed. Jain seems to understand ahimsa as applying to primarily acts of physical violence against biological life. Ahimsa is not as stridently applied to issues, for example, of economic, social, environmental (in a non-biological sense), and institutional violence which Christianity has stressed with varying degrees throughout its history. Peace is, for both Christianity and Jain, among the highest if not the very highest ideal, but in Christianity, the idea of peace is much more than merely non-harm toward life. It is an image of physical and metaphysical harmony where all creation is finally it accord with the Creator. Peace is the narrative of Micah 4, where in addition to the cessation of war all people flock to the mountain of God to receive instruction there and obedience to God becomes the hallmark of human existence. In this vision, as in so many other images of eschatological peace, the earth still gives up its fruit for the sustenance of all life as God had always intended it to, and in the eating of it there is no hint of violence. Thus, even while the Jain emphasis on peace as the ultimate goal appeals to Christians and teachings such as "the enlightened ones that were, and the enlightened ones that will be, they have Peace as their foundation, even as all things have the earth for their foundation" resonate, it must always be remembered that the peace of God is something more than non-violence. It is a peace which surpasses understanding, one which is better summed up in the parallelism of the psalm "Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it" than in the teaching of Sudharma, "He should cease to injure living beings...for this has been called the Nirvana, which consists in peace."

2011 Patriarchal Christmas Encyclical

The Ecumenical Patriarch has issued his 2011 encyclical for the Feast of the Nativity. While the whole letter merits reading, here is a brief segment to whet the appetite:

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among all."
(Luke 2.14-15)

Beloved brothers and sisters, children in the Lord,

The angels chant these three majestic proclamations and yet the great majority of human beings, although celebrating the feast of Christmas, cannot perceive the significance of the angelic song, instead asking themselves whether God is truly glorified today or why God should even be glorified; where can one discern on earth the peace that is announced, and why should contemporary humanity live with good will?

...How can we speak of peace on earth when almost half of the planet finds itself either in the act of or in preparation for war? The sweet tone of the angelic proclamation regarding “peace on earth” is of course primarily a divine pledge that, if people adhere to the way indicated by the new-born Child, they will acquire internal peace and peaceful coexistence. But, alas, most people are moved and drawn by the cymbals of war, ignoring the sound of the pledge for peace on earth. We are not referring here to those who passionately support the use of weapons, but especially to those who transform gentle competition to unequal conflict, seeking the annihilation of any opposition. In this respect, war is experienced as reality among members of rival social groups and parties of all kinds – whether racial, political, partisan, financial, ideological, religious, athletic or any other kind, where the intense mindset of members is converted into militant rather than peaceful. However, this does not refute the truth proclaimed by the Angels, that – through the Nativity of Christ and the acceptance of His teachings – peace will indeed prevail on earth. Christ came bearing peace; and if His peace does not prevail in the world, then responsibility lies with those who fail to accept and embrace this peace, not with the God who grants it.

Pope Shocks World by Doing the Right Thing

The Catholic Church is making positive strides, at least as far as I'm concerned. Reuters reports:

Pope Benedict, leading a global inter-religious meeting, acknowledged Thursday "with great shame" that Christianity had used force in its long history as he joined other religious leaders in condemning violence and terrorism in God's name.

Benedict spoke as he hosted some 300 religious leaders from around the world - including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Taoists, Shintoists and Buddhists - in an inter-faith prayer gathering for peace in the city of St Francis, a universally recognized symbol of peace.

The highlight of the article was this section, where it appears that the pope is taking the appropriate stance toward Christian violence in history. Rather than trying to deny it or to justify it, apparently "the pope asked forgiveness for his own church's use of violence in the past."

"As a Christian I want to say at this point: yes, it is true, in the course of history, force has also been used in the name of the Christian faith," he said in his address to the delegations in an Assisi basilica.

"We acknowledge it with great shame. But it is utterly clear that this was an abuse of the Christian faith, one that evidently contradicts its true nature."

The emphasis is mine but appropriate. There is no truer way to approach the shameful Christian history of violence than to admit that its very exercise is contrary to the heart of the Gospel: peace, love, humility, and waiting on God. The actions of the pope emphaize another central feature of Christianity: repentance. For his leadership on this matter, we should all be grateful.

War and Peace (A Short Post)

While it must be remembered that Harry S. Stout's stance in Upon the Altar of a Nation is outspokenly not pacifist and that he uses the following quote as a launching point for a discussion of jus in bello, I was struck by the truth of the following quote and its at least superficial harmony with the transformative ethics espoused by, among others, St. John of Sinai:

There are no ideal wars. Peace is the only ideal, and every war is at some level a perversion of it.

A War Weary People

In my recent readings, a quote from General Philip Sheridan in his memoirs has struck me as both appalling and relevant. Sheridan is describing the autumn campaigns of 1864 in which he, under the orders of President Lincoln and General Grant, was pursuing an extreme scorched earth policy in the Shenandoah Valley. In retrospect, he offered this as his justification:

Reduction to poverty brings prayers for peace more surely and more quickly than does the destruction of human life.

It nauseates me--and I use that term only because I cannot think of any stronger or more visceral image--just how true this continues to be. For nearly a decade, America has been at war, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. For ten years, a substantial amount of the population cried eagerly for more, even as the combined multinational body count (civilian and military) is estimated to have exceeded 200,000. In the past two years, the political rhetoric and the popular mood has undergone a profound shift toward withdrawal. The motive, as Sheridan's prescient quote indicates, is not disgust with the carnage, the wanton loss of human life. Our blood lust, God help us, has not been satisfied. No, instead the calls to finally end the mindless violence spring from the dire state of the American economy.

If poverty really is the herald of peace, I hope this recession never ends.

Tentative Description of a Dinner Given to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower

After it became obvious that the strange rain would never stop

And after it became obvious that the President’s general was doing everything in his power

And after it became obvious that the President’s general staff was still in contact with the President deep in the heart of Georgia while deep in the heart of South America the President’s left-hand man was proving that all the world loves an American

And after it became obvious that the strange rain would never stop and that Old Soldiers never drown and that roses in the rain had forgotten the word for bloom and that perverted pollen blown on sunless seas was eaten by irradiated fish who spawned up cloudleaf streams and fell on our dinnerplates

And after it became obvious that the President was doing everything in his power to make the world safe for nationalism his brilliant military mind never realized that nationalism itself was the idiotic superstition which would blow up the world

And after it became obvious that the President nevertheless still carried no matter where he went in the strange rain the little telegraph key which like a canopener could be used instantly to open but not to close the hot box of final war if not to waylay any stray asinine second lieutenant pressing any strange button anywhere far away over an arctic ocean thus illuminating the world once and for all

And after it became obvious that the law of gravity was still in effect and that what blows up must come down on everyone including white citizens

And after it became obvious that the Voice of America was really the Deaf Ear of America and that the President was unable to hear the underprivileged natives of the world shouting No Contamination Without Representation in the strange rain from which there was no escape – except Peace

And after it became obvious that the word Truth had only a comic significance to the Atomic Energy Commission while the President danced madly to mad Admiral Straus waltzes wearing special atomic earplugs which prevented him from hearing Albert Schweitzer and nine thousand two hundred and thirty-five other scientists telling him about spastic generations and blind boneless babies in the strange rain from which there was no escape – except Peace

And after it became obvious that the President was doing everything in his power to get through the next four years without eating any of the crates of irradiated vegetables wellwishers had sent him from all over and which were filling in the corridors and antechambers and bedchambers and chamberpots in the not-so-White House not to mention all the other various Golf Houses scattered thruout the land of prosperity

And after it became obvious that the Great Soldier had become the Great Conciliator who had become the Great Compromiser who had become the Great Fence Sitter who actually had heard of the Supreme Court's decision to desegregate the land of the free and had not only heard of it but had actually
read it

And after it became obvious that the President had gone to Gettysburg fourscore and seven years ago and had given his Gettysburg Address to the postman and so dedicated himself to the unfinished task

Then it was that the natives of the Republic began assembling in the driving rain from which there was no escape – except Peace

And then it was that no invitations had to be sent out for the great testimonial dinner except to politicians whose respected names would lend weight to the project but who did not come anyway suspecting the whole thing was a plot to save the world from the clean bomb from which there was no escape - except Peace

And women who still needed despair to look truly tragic came looking very beautiful and very tragic indeed since there was despair to spare

And some men also despaired and sat down in Bohemia and were too busy to come

But other men came whose only political action during the past twenty years had been to flush a protesting toilet and run

And babies came in their carriages carrying irradiated dolls and holding onto crazy strings of illuminated weather balloons filled with Nagasaki air

And those who had not left their TV sets long enough to notice the weather in seven years now came swimming through the rain holding their testimonials

And those came who had never marched in sports car protest parades and those who had never been arrested for sailing a protesting Golden Rule in unpacific oceans

And Noah came in his own Ark looking surprisingly like an outraged Jesus Christ and cruised about flying his pinion and picking up two of each beast that wanted to be preserved in the strange rain which was raining real cats and dogs and from which there was no escape – except Peace

And peddlers came in lead jockstraps selling hotdogs and rubber American flags and waving petitions proclaiming it Unamerican to play golf on the same holy days that clean bombs were set off on time

And finally after everyone who was anyone and after everyone who was no one had arrived and after every soul was seated and waiting for the symbolic mushroom soup to be served and for the keynote speeches to begin

The President himself came in

Took one look around and said

We Resign


(Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

In Other News

The pope is calling for a quick suspension of the use of arms by all sides in the Libyan conflict. I cannot help but hope that this plea is an extension of his previously expressed beliefs about war.

The Lion in Winter

Katharine Hepburn says this in the 1968 film The Lion in Winter. (I don't know if the same line is in the play on which it was based.)

How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war. Not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it, like syphilis, inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little? That's how peace begins.

CO Follows Conscience

Stories like this are always nice to read:

A junior officer at a Connecticut submarine base has received an honorable discharge after suing the U.S. Navy, saying his religious beliefs prevent him from participating in the military.

Michael Izbicki, an ensign formerly stationed at the Naval Submarine School in Groton, was discharged Feb. 16 as a conscientious objector...

"I believe that Jesus Christ calls all men to love each other, under all circumstances. I believe his teaching forbids the use of violence. I take the Sermon on the Mount literally," Izbicki wrote in his application for conscientious objector status.

Izbicki, 25, a native of San Clemente, Calif., has said he was following his family tradition by enlisting in the military and entered the Naval Academy in 2004 with plans of becoming an officer. He began to question his goals after graduating from the academy and beginning submarine training.

A Day with Ben Witherington: Bad Arguments

After spending three consecutive days critiquing Witherington's concept of theosis and attempting to demonstrate ways in which a proper understanding of theosis would correct the deficiencies in his thought, I think it is appropriate to turn away for a moment from critiquing Witherington. Instead, I would like to use him as a vehicle to critique the way people interact with bad arguments.

I was surprised and excited (read "giddy like a little school girl") when Witherington "confessed" that he is a pacifist. I am always delighted to find scholars outside the historic peace churches who have come to an honest conviction about the necessity of non-violence as part of Jesus' ethos. In the deep South and at the new Harding--the one totally inimical to the ethical stances of both its namesake and its founder and totally ignorant of its history--pacifism is the kind of sin you can still be lynched for, if only intellectually in a coffee house by an irate undergraduate.

After the shocking revelation took the time to sink in, a student interjected with what he expected, I am sure, to be a damning argument: "That's all good in theory, but let's talk about practice. I mean, Tolstoy died penniless at a train station!"

I'll let the force of that impressive argument sink in for a moment.

Just think on it.

Has it sunk in?

No?

I imagine not. In fact, the argument is bad on so many levels that I'm sure I could spend the better part of a day dissecting all the ways in which it is obviously wrong. Witherington, for his part, responded with a certain grace that Tolstoy was by no means the typical pacifist and that even utopian style pacifism was not typical pacifism. Witherington is, of course, right to point out that Tolstoy cannot be said in any sense to be a representative of all Christian pacifists. Judging the majority by the radical minority is the same way we came up with the rhetoric about homosexuals molesting little boys. It doesn't fly.

Of course, there are other angles that can be taken. For example, what is so bad about the fact that Tolstoy died penniless at a train station? Tolstoy elected to give up his wealth and to live an itinerant life. He expected to die penniless, and had you told him in advance that he would die this way, it would likely not have bothered him. The mention of the train station is particularly odd. Is there virtue to dying on a hospital bed? Death is inglorious regardless of its locale.

You might just have readily argued that thousands upon thousands of pacifists have died quite "respectable" deaths (whatever that is), at home in their beds surrounded by family and with their modest financial means in tact. Examples like Lipscomb, Harding, and Armstrong spring immediately to mind. None of them were rich men, by any means, but they lived full lives and died peacefully by all accounts. The thousands of nameless, faceless members of the historic peace churches who die all the time without consequence probably deserve to be counted as well. If we are really measuring the value of a person by the circumstance of his death, then we should say that pacifism is a delightful system. After all, a pacifist is less likely to die in the field of battle. And wars happen more often than Tolstoys.

I was tempted to blurt out, "Your savior had died penniless on a cross."

All of this, however, is actually my problem. Arguments such as these are so simple to refute that we do it automatically. There was no reason for Witherington to hesitate in distancing himself from Tolstoy. The comparison was made, and his immediate thought was, "I am not Tolstoy or even a disciple of Tolstoy." Yet, when you take time to refute the content of an argument whose very nature is corrupt, you legitimize the argument. If Witherington was a follower of Tolstoy, would the critique have then been applicable? If most pacifists died poor and ingloriously, would pacifism be undone? If Jesus had died rich, if utopian pacifism was typical, if some of the facts were changed, would the reasoning of the argument be valid?

The real problem with the appeal to Tolstoy is that it doesn't speak to the value of pacifism at all. It doesn't deal with the question of whether or not violence is ethical. How Tolstoy died is not directly related to ethics, or if it is, then that connection is not self-evident. Yet, every time we chase down an opponent's red herring, no matter how simple it is to prove wrong, we reinforce the practice of flawed argumentation. When that argument (so well crafted that it just had to come from the website of a right wing militia) finds its rhetorical niche among people who already agree with its unrelated conclusion, they will have no reason not to embrace and repeat it. We ought to be developing a culture of intellectual honesty, and the first step is to start calling bad arguments what they are. Stop refuting them as if they warranted our attention. The correct response to "Tolstoy died penniless at a train station" is "So what?