Some Theological Questions about War and Peace

I've been asked to comment on a few things I said - about truth, war and peace, and taxes, in a class at Fuller Seminary a few weeks ago, and am happy to do so here. Let's start with war and peace.

In short, my questioner asked if my opposition to the use of violence is complete, and if events like the Second World War do not themselves justify violent response. I'm quoting my email response to my questioner with his permission:

I'm grateful for the question, for the Second World War is of course a key example used in the discussion of non- and less-violent means of addressing conflict. I would never want to demean or trivialize the sacrifices made to prevent the evil intent of Hitler from achieving its ends; indeed, as is the case for so many of this generation, my grandparents directly participated in that sacrifice. But the question arises as to whether or not the cause of ending Hitler’s war justified the means used to end it; and whether there were other potential means that could have been used.

The answer is, of course, complex. I will mention only a few of the relevant factors.

1. The war occurred for many reasons; chief among them was the rise of Hitler. This itself occurred for many reasons, chief among them being the humiliation of the German people, and the bankrupting of the German economy by the reparations imposed under the auspices of the League of Nations in the period following the First World War. Another reason for the rise of Hitler was that there was not a substantial enough internal resistance movement within Germany to prevent this.

2. I mention this in the service of one conclusion: that if we wait until the day after Hitler invades Poland to ask ourselves what we are going to do about his aggression, we prove a simple fact: that human beings usually prefer to think in terms of reaction rather than prevention; and in terms of quick fix ‘easy’ solutions rather than long term ‘difficult’ ones. I don’t know what I would have done had I been in Neville Chamberlain’s shoes, or in those of the Chancellor of Germany deposed by Hitler in 1933. I can’t speak for them. But I am part of a historic church; and I consider that to mean that there are moral demands of church membership that, had I been a German Christian, would have been very difficult to meet. For instance, I think the German Catholic Church could have moved to excommunicate any church member who joined the Nazi party. At a time when church membership was considered with much greater seriousness than it usually is today, this might just have had the effect of helping inhibit the rise of Hitler, and therefore helped avoid the war. Such things have happened before and since, when cultural and social organizations have made participation in aggression or prejudice to be anathema, or at the very least, a social embarrassment. In Northern Ireland, many mothers inhibited their sons from joining paramilitary organizations because of the 'healthy shame' they instilled in their children; Christian youth work provided a profoundly important outlet for young people which in its absence might have led to their participation in violence.

Now of course, just excommunicating a lot of German Catholics (or threatening to do so) would not have been enough on its own to prevent the rise of Hitler. But it would have been a start, and would also have allowed the German Catholic Church to have a clean conscience.

3. Flash forward to 2003, when President Bush refused the request of US Methodist Bishops to meet with them on the eve of the Iraq war. Perhaps they should have excommunicated him. I'm serious. Not to punish. But to exercise the discipline of a church whose canons and by-laws presumably President Bush had signed up to; to tell him how far he was straying from the church’s understanding of the will of God; to attempt to compel him to consider his conscience. Again, this probably would not have been enough to change his mind. But the US Methodist church would have been behaving prophetically; and would have a clean conscience about doing everything it could to avert war.

4. In exploring whether or not the use of violence by the Allies was justified, it's helpful to ask when the Second World War ended. Did it end with Nazi surrender and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Did it? Or did it end when Germany formed the European Community along with other neighbouring nations; and when Japanese efforts at reconciliation eventually included former US POWs embracing the people who had abused them, and when US Presidents shook the hands of Japanese emperors? If that’s when it ended, then the case that violence conflict only ever ends through non-violent means has been bolstered.

5. These, of course, are simple, and potentially simplistic headlines. They do not tell the whole story. So let me say a few more things:

I do not advocate allowing tanks to roll over the vulnerable without the rest of us doing something about it.

I merely believe that war is never simple; it never 'just begins' when it 'begins', nor does it 'end' when it 'ends'. There are thousands of examples of violent conflicts that could have been avoided by non-violent means. Here's a few:

The Kosovo war in the late 1990s which might not have occurred had non-violent reconciliation movements been properly resourced in the 1980s.

The Northern Ireland Troubles, which might not have occurred if the Protestant church leaders had taken seriously their call to serve the poor, and defended Catholics against discrimination, by joining the civil rights movement and helping ensure it engaged in strategic and comprehensive non-violent action.

And there are thousands of examples of how fewer people suffered because the means employed to bring about change were non-violent. If memory serves, up to 7000 Indians died in Gandhi’s independence civil disobedience struggle. A huge, and horrifying number. These people died in the non-violent service of justice, peace, and freedom. But just imagine the number that would have been killed had Gandhi chosen the ‘quick fix’ violence option. I have heard it estimated that the death toll would be close to a million Indians. So let me be clear: I do not think that non-violence is easy, nor is it safe. Of course people suffer when they use non-violent means. There is a cost to every courageous act. But I believe the total suffering in the world is reduced when we use non-violence rather than violence. And I am not an ideological pacifist. We live in a broken and fallen world, and often are faced with a series of flawed options. I just think that the recourse to violence is far too often reached without serious thought, or the exhaustion of other, non- or less-violent means.

6. The Iraq war could have been avoided, and Saddam could have been removed from power without a war. The will did not exist to do such things as ending the sanctions against Iraq and therefore allowing the Iraqi people to become strong enough to overthrow their leader in the kind of non-violent revolution that occurred in both what is now the Czech Republic and Ukraine; nor asking the UN to establish a tribunal to try Saddam for crimes against humanity and having him arrested (and let’s face it, if Milosevic can be basically kidnapped and brought to the Hague, why could a team of Navy SEALS not have been sent into one of his palaces with the same ends in mind? Not that I advocate kidnapping, but as I said, we are faced with flawed options, and kidnapping one man is a far better option than killing tens of thousands of innocent people); and affirming what was then called the Roadmap to Peace in the Middle East, with rhetoric and resources, to show that the US was bona fide in its desire to see that long-standing conflict transformed into a non-violent one.

These are some scattered thoughts for now. Let me say this: I believe that we spend far too much time talking about violence, and not enough about reducing it. We invest far too much in what we call the defence industry, and not the peace industry. We do not understand that prevention is better than cure. And so while I understand the appeal of violence, I do not believe it fixes anything. At best, it can arrest a process that would lead to harming the vulnerable – but it cannot transform it into peace. The overwhelmingly pressing need in our generation is to give as much time and attention to thinking about non- and less-violent means of addressing conflict as we do to making killing look sexy.

But that is not the final word – let’s keep talking.

Why Not Obama?

In talking with good friends who plan to vote for McCain, I am still confused as to what people think is so dangerous about Obama. It's a sincere question, rooted in the fact that many of the concerns raised by Obama's opponents seem either to be factually misleading, or their outcomes would actually be closer to what conservatives want (fewer abortions, stronger families, a healthy economy, less dead soldiers) than the rhetoric allows.

So can someone please explain to me why anyone who wants to see poor people taken care of,

a health care system that isn't based on hospital owners and insurance companies getting rich off the back of other people's suffering,

a foreign policy implemented that learns the lesson of every other successful conflict resolution process in history and decides to pursue diplomacy rather than revenge or belligerence because a) it often works and b) it's the morally right thing to do (and will mean, beyond a shadow of doubt, that fewer people will have been killed at the end of his Presidency than if his opponent is elected),

a sexual education and health promotion strategy that reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore abortions rather than the absurd abstinence programmes heralded by the Bush adminstration which all evidence suggests actually lead to higher instances of STIs,

a tax regime that favours the less well off rather than those who could live in luxurious indulgence for the rest of their lives even if 90% of their income was used by the government to build houses for homeless people,

a morally just policy adopted regarding the consensual partnerships in which people choose to live - allowing same sex couples to more easily own property together, to visit each other when they're dying, and to walk the streets safely in public (without negatively affecting 'the American family' - UK civil partnership legislation for same sex couples has had no discernible effect on the straight divorce rate; indeed, the state formalising same sex relationships may actually contribute to the stable family unit),

a redemption of the office of President, which for the past eight years has been occupied by a man utterly unqualified in temperament, intelligence, judgement or moral discernment to lead, and for the previous eight by a more intelligent man who couldn't keep his erotic urges under control and lied to the country about it (as well as employing the high altitude bomb on at least one occasion that cannot be justified under any circumstances),

and a restoration of the moral and cultural and philosophical and frankly spiritual standing of the US in the eyes of the rest of the world through having a guy in the White House that not only by the obvious contrast shown by the colour of his skin, but the content of his character has revealed himself to be capable of both uniting the country and inspiring the respect of the world,

can anyone explain to me why voting for Obama is not one of the most vital, life-affirming, prophetic, and simply good things you could ever do?

PS: And I know he's not perfect. But he knows it too. And that's probably part of the point of why he represents something amazing.

PPS: And I also know that this could look like a jibe at sincerely skeptical people - I don't mean it that way at all - but I do mean the questions with sincerity.

Some Thoughts on 'Religulous'


Bill Maher is that rare thing: a media figure unafraid to say what he really thinks. When he intervened in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, suggesting that it’s better to deal intelligently with terrorism than to indulge in absurdist name-calling, many people, including me, supported him. We were dismayed by the cancellation of ‘Politically Incorrect’ – which had provided one of the few opportunities for serious sustained political discussion on television. In recent years he returned to the small screen with ‘Real Time’ on HBO, and the lack of censorship on cable channels has allowed him the run of himself, which is a blessing, because there’s no unreasonable restriction on what can be said. Maher’s concern for calling politicians to account, and allowing oxygen to maverick points of view is a public service; the fact that he does it with such brilliant humor makes the show uniquely entertaining. His new film ‘Religulous’ is a paradox, however – it is both an amusing deflation of religious pomposity, and an infuriating attack on faith that sadly lacks intellectual rigor.

We follow Maher on a sporadic trip around the US, the Middle East, and the UK, visiting sincere spiritual advocates ranging from the working class members of a truck-stop church in North Carolina, a violence-endorsing Muslim rapper in London, and the actor who plays Jesus at a Holy Land theme park. He asks academic theology questions and mocks the respondents for offering only platitudes; these scenes are intercut with footage of him making more fun of the unsuspecting target in a post-interview wrap-up chuckle with his director Larry Charles. The effect is rather like watching the string section of an orchestra standing in a circle and pointing with disdain at a homeless guy playing a three-stringed fiddle. It’s not pleasant; and it doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know: that there are some crazy people in the world. By the same token, of course, there are plenty of intelligent spiritual believers; just as there are plenty of unpleasant atheists. Maher’s film unfortunately does not engage with people whose faith has advanced obvious good in the world, nor those who approach God on the basis that God is at least as smart as we are and that we can talk about the Divine in terms that would not shame an evolutionary biologist.

Maher himself appears to be an intelligent guy – but his film risks being intellectually dishonest. If he is, as is claimed, genuinely interested in finding out why people believe what they believe, then why didn’t he interview any of the hundreds of well known spiritual leaders who bring intelligence, wit, and grace to their conversation; nor any whose faith has propelled them into acts of mercy and kindness? It’s not as if they’re hard to find: Let’s start with Archbishop Tutu, Dr Rowan Williams, and other Christian leaders in international peace processes to name only the most obvious; add to these the invisibility of perhaps more culturally relevant figures such as Andrew Sullivan, Anne Lamott, even Maher’s own friend Arianna Huffington, or any number of the folk who blog about progressive faith, and the failings of ‘Religulous’ become even more obvious. The fact that he ignores these people, combines with the overheated monologue that closes the film, with Maher’s polemic about religion edited against footage of bombs, angry preachers, and end-of-the-world scenarios (including some from my own home of Belfast, in which an IRA funeral is misappropriated to illustrate his point; while the conflict in and about Northern Ireland has some historic religious elements, IRA members would certainly disavow any suggestion that their fight was faith-based). It feels like Maher wrote this monologue before he went out on his journey; in which case the documentary is not an intelligent exploration of a vital issue, but a polemic based on cynical preconceptions.

Bill Maher has important questions to ask: why do some religious people do such bad things?; what is the relationship between faith and reason?; what should be the role of spirituality in politics?; is religion inherently dangerous? The problem with ‘Religulous’ is that he doesn’t ask these questions of people who can answer intelligently, nor does he allow for the possibility that one does not have to be an expert in something to be a fan.

I’d add a few questions of my own: why do the levels of theological literacy in public articulations of Christianity seem so pathetically low?; why do so many religious believers seem unable to articulate why they believe what they believe?; And how is it possible for a film that deals in part ostensibly with the role of Christianity in public life in the US not to even mention the greatest public advocate of a role for faith in the history of this country, Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr?

However…I have to pause here, for as I re-read this article before submitting it for publication I realize that I may have fallen into an ancient trap, and in the process perhaps have simply reinforced Maher’s legitimate concerns. ‘First take the plank out of your own eye before figuring out what to do with the speck in someone else’s’ were the paraphrased words of another well known mystic, who doesn’t get as much attention in ‘Religulous’ as one might expect. There may well be a pretty big plank in my eye – for the truth is that one of the reasons Maher may feel emboldened to make his angry case is that people of faith have so often failed to make theirs. To make ours. To articulate a spirituality that is earthed in an appreciation of beauty, love of neighbor, and a humble, wide-eyed (but not empty-headed) wonder at the notion that Someone far greater than any of us may just be more present than we realize. If Christians can be made so easily to look boring, it is partly because we have not articulated a better story. If Christians are held in low regard because we are seen to be primarily concerned with issues of private morality and Puritanical codes, it is partly because we have not paid enough attention to reason and human experience as guides to interpreting our faith. If, in short, it is easy to portray Christians as stupid, spineless and dangerous, it is partly because we have failed to be loving, peaceable and brave.

A Call + Response to end Modern Slavery


Last week two films were released that present propagandized visions of the United States. Bill Maher’s Religulous suggests that religion is poison and its adherents are crazy; the spoof An American Carol wants to say that questioning President Bush is itself an act of treason and critiques of the war in Iraq deserve no attention because they are inherently spineless. Both films are intellectually disingenuous and add little positivity to the current national debate. So it’s something of a relief to say that another piece of cinematic propaganda goes on a national tour of movie theatres this weekend, one whose moral compass is something of an antidote to the arrogance and victim mentality of An American Carol and Religulous in the form of a shocking expose of the horror of modern slavery: human trafficking. In Justin Dillon’s film Call and Response, the stories of the 27 million people currently in labor bondage are illustrated with graphic hidden camera footage and intercut with interviews and musical performances by the likes of Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, and Emmanuel Jal.

It’s a powerful film, in which interactions with the victims of trafficking speak for themselves. Talking heads such as Nicholas Kristof, former U.N. Ambassador John Miller, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and actor Ashley Judd make the case that there are more people in slavery today than at the time of the abolition movement and outline the relationship between the arms and drug trade and the buying and selling of people. Human trafficking, bonding labor, and sexual slavery are vastly profitable businesses, and so the question of supply and demand is obvious. And you don’t need to look far for this horror, for even people who serve in your favorite restaurants may be subject to the oppression of not being able to make their own choices.

Everyone who sees this film will have their own most striking moment –- for me, when a former child prostitute says she was forced to service 1,000 men a year for six years, but can’t add up the total as she has never been to school, I had to pause watching for a while to absorb the extraordinary sadness of that statement. I was also shocked by the statistics. For example, the film claims that 1 million people are trafficked through the United States every year, but there have been only 50 related criminal convictions in the past decade.

These stories are so beyond our worst imaginings that this film provides nothing less than a prophetic community service: It exposes an unpalatable truth and cries out against injustice.

Important questions are alluded to, and hopefully the film will inspire people to find their own answers:

What are the economic roots of violence?

What is the relationship between recreational drug use and human trafficking?

What does it mean when we value products that may have been produced under oppressive conditions solely on the basis of their price?

How do we restore human decency in a world where even the Christian church is sometimes complicit in nurturing identities of shame and humiliation (which themselves contribute to the context where human trafficking can occur)?

How can the mid-level officials (police officers, hotel and restaurant managers, and others) who serve as intermediaries with those who use sex slaves be held accountable?

And, as Dr. Cornel West asks, “How do you convince a folk that are prone toward paralysis to keep on moving?”

The film does not prescribe particular forms of action, instead inviting the audience to ‘open source’ activism through dialoguing with others on its Web site and supporting organizations that are working to free slaves and end human trafficking. Perhaps the most important philosophical statement in the film is the suggestion that nostalgia for freedom movements of the past will get us nowhere. Only when people of passion and action get more committed to ending modern slavery than the slave owners are to perpetuating it will there be hope that a new abolition movement can succeed.

Dr. West also says that the only thing that slaves have is their voice and their bodies. Call and Response is a powerful attempt at representing the power and dignity in the words and faces of the oppressed. It deserves attention.

Call and Response will be released this Friday, with screenings organized across the U.S. For a list of screenings, see www.callandresponse.com.