Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Brian McLaren visits Princeton

Brian McLaren was in town last night speaking about his new book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope. It was an excellent presentation, one of those "big idea" kinds of presentations that just build and build. I thought he did a great job of packing all of these concepts into a 1 1/2 hour presentation. While I felt like I was keeping up with him, tracking with where he was going, I still left with my head spinning. There was just so much that he covered and the implications are innumerable.

Later in the evening Brian joined us at the Princeton Emergent Cohort and we were also joined by the North Jersey Emergent Cohort. We packed 20+ people into a small corner of the Yankee Doodle Tap Room. It was a great time of informal conversation and we picked Brian's brain about Narrative Theology, Stanley Hauerwas, Radical Orthodoxy, global economies and local economic practices, Wendell Barry, Plato, eschatology, N.T. Wright, Andrew Perriman, terrorism, the presidential election, pastoral care, dealing with conflict in the local church and the writing process. It was a great conversation with a great thinker.

I've loved all of Brian's books that I've read so far but I had Everything Must Change on the backburner. No more. After last night I want to dig deeper into what Brian's getting at in this book because I think it's going to be incredibly important for the church as we quit playing "intramural games" as he put it, and start addressing how the Gospel frames and narrates our lives in such a way that we are sent into the world in a posture of serving, reconciling, compassion and healing.

If this stuff excites you like it does me, be sure to check out the Deep Shift tour. Brian will be in the Bronx May 2-3rd. If you can't make it to the tour be sure to check out everythingmustchange.org where people are contributing and dreaming of ways to change the world one act at a time.

Labels: Discipleship, Emerging Church, Life, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Jesus for President: Post 2

A few days ago I finished Jesus for President and I've already lent it out to the first person on the growing waiting list. What a magnificent book! If you went to seminary and constantly had your nose stuck in a Hauerwas or Yoder book but wished you could lend a more accessible version to someone... this is that book. It isn't dumbed down, let me be clear about that, it's just that this book was really written for the church. This isn't the kind of conversation that takes place in the ethereal upper layers of academia, this is the best Kingdom-of-God theology taken to the streets. And what would we expect? Shane & Co aren't professors, they're subversive prophets living in the abandoned places of the empire. Making their own clothes, living with the poor, dumpster diving for food... always pointing to Jesus. They are living at the margins pointing us to Jesus. They are shouting with their lives (and this book) that the America we live in is a pitiful and fallen Kingdom not worth our allegiance.

The Eagle is fake, the Eagle is dead.

Follow the Lamb!

Labels: Books, Discipleship, Emerging Church, Military, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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Thursday, April 03, 2008

Jesus for President

Last week I picked up a book that I've been looking forward to reading for several months now. I didn't even know that it had been released until I was wondering the isles of my local Barnes & Noble and bumped into the display for Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw's new book Jesus For President. I'm about a third of the way through it now and it's everything I was hoping it would be. Claiborne & Co have taken theologians and biblical scholars close to my own heart and made them scandalously accessible to an general audience. The book (so far) is tackling our own ideas about empire by taking a look at God and the people of God and their relationship to empire. The book is a creative mish-mash of art and prose and Kingdom Propaganda. This book provokes us towards a Christian imagination of politics and calls us to seriously rethink where our hope and allegiance really lay. Go pick it up now!

Labels: Books, Discipleship, Emerging Church, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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Friday, November 02, 2007

Holocaust Museum

Kara and other PTS students were invited to visit the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. a while back and she signed us up. Earlier this month we got on a bus with other PTS students and took the trip down to D.C.

The Holocaust museum experience was very different than what I was expecting. On the first hand I thought that it would be a lot more macabre than it actually was, but either way I thought that being faced with the horror of it all that I wouldn't be able to make it out without breaking down and crying. This was not the case, indeed I didn't see a tear shed by anyone there. Instead the overwhelming brutality and evil you see in the museum for hours and hours on end just seemed to cause us all to shut down. I for one went into a kind of emotional turtle-shell, being so shocked by an all-day exposure to the Holocaust. The museum takes you through the rise of the Nazi party on the top floor, down into the persecution of Jews and removal to ghettos on the next floor down and finally to the "final solution" on the lower floor. You literally spiral downward as you follow the time line of the Holocaust. The transition from the middle floor to the last floor is a transition of "How could people be so racist and oppressive" to "How could human beings do these unspeakable things to other human beings." It is silent. It is intensely horrifying. Kara and I sat in a room listening to audio recordings of survivors telling about their experiences during the Holocaust. Part way through one of our guides came in to sit and listen as well. He was a Holocaust survivor. I can only describe that moment as being a mix of the most reverent sacredness and the a gut-wrenching disgust.

The second (and I think regrettable) thing I wasn't expecting were the several instances in which I overheard conversations about the current violence in Israel between Israelis and Palestinians, conversation that was itself tinted with racism. In one conversation in particular a woman even shamed "the liberal media" for ever taking pictures of Israeli soldiers shooting at kids with rocks. All the while I'm thinking, "those journalists are being a witness to the lopsided violence happening in Israel, how can you honor people who had the courage to be a witnesses and tell the world of the Holocaust but demean the people who would be witnesses against your own tribe." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. As I looked around at this museum full of the testimony of some of the worst racism and suppression ever directed at one people and saw the consequences of that I was saddened to learn that not everyone there had apparently learned the same lesson.

Labels: Life, Non-Violence, Politics

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

300

Having heard some high praise for the recent Frank Miller adaptation, 300, I trekked off to the theatre a few weekends ago to catch it myself. What followed was an interesting mix of emotions for me. I am usually easily able to suspend disbelief and enter into the world of a film, and it is indeed almost always my goal to do so when watching a film. But some films make that really really hard to do. Or maybe to put it more accurately; sometimes John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas make that really hard to do.

300 lacks nothing in stylistic cinematography or art direction. Every single frame lives in a creative land somewhere between Miller's original comic book and modern day Photoshop art. The texture and style of the film exude a larger-than-life mythical quality that enhance the tale of 300 Spartans fighting off Xerxes' vast armies. It is a story that can only be told in paintings and campfire tales, and in that regard 300 does exceedingly well.

Some have called 300 one-part Art Film one-part Action-Adventure war movie. I would agree, and the first part is done masterfully. But it's that nagging issue of content that kept irking me about the second part of 300. While I was continually drawn into this Spartan world by the artistic beauty I was constantly ejected from it as I heard Yoder, Hauerwas and especially Jesus ringing in my ears.

The overtones of what Walter Wink calls "redemptive violence" are nowhere more pronounced than in 300. The Spartan culture while shown as a somewhat barbaric solider society is nonetheless glorified in perhaps every barbaric trait other than their systematic killing of "less than ideal" babies. While this is shown in a horrific light, the rest of their violent ways are glorified as essential parts of a "rational" and "democratic" society. The overtones connecting American culture and military (especially American Marines) to the Spartan warriors are obvious. King Leonidas' wife, Gorgo lectures the politicians about the necessity for violence using today's popular phrase "freedom isn't free." All these themes kept me from truly entering the movie. Instead I held it at arms length, thinking to myself, this is exactly what Jesus subverts in the Roman empire. This society built on violence, the culture that disciples its people in warfare no matter the personal cost to children and wives. The Roman empire Jesus lived under and was crucified by was heavily influenced by the Spartan legends and ethos. This is the same warrior-culture that the Gospel has a harsh judgment for, and while we have tended to privatize our war-making, we Americans buy into many of the same illusions that the Spartans did.

I kept trying to see where Christians would fit into this whole story (had they been around back then). I think that the Jesus people wouldn't be caught dead on the side of Xerxes, the Persian emperor who called himself a God. The followers of Jesus wouldn't march with the Persian army in it's goal to conquer the world. But neither would the Jesus people devote their lives to being discipled as killing machines in the city of Sparta. The Spartan story of redemptive violence would be in direct conflict with the followers of Jesus who practiced redemptive suffering.

Labels: Film, Military, Non-Violence, Theology

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Friday, February 23, 2007

Letters From Iwo Jima

Last weekend I convinced some friends to join me watching Clint Eastwood's latest film, Letters from Iwo Jima. Letters is a companion film to Eastwood's earlier film from this year, Flags of Our Fathers, which I've yet to see. Each film takes a look at the same battle over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima from a different side, Flags from the American perspective and Letters from the Japanese.

Letters may indeed be a compelling war movie, a Japanese tear-jerker in the genre of Saving Private Ryan but I think most would agree that this film has a much more profound message. What Letters does such an excellent job of doing is showing just how much we Americans have in common with the Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima. Their fears and dreams are the same as ours, their pride is as honorable and as blinding as our own. Letters gives almost no real face time to any Americans in the film with the exception of one kid from Oklahoma who is captured by the Japanese. We completely empathize with the Japanese. We root for them, even against our "own" army. In Letters the Americans are a scary invading force and its the Japanese who's story we've entered into. A few characters in the film are also able to enter into the stories of their enemies and it gives them profound compassion in the midst of blind hatred and violence. The three Japanese soldiers and one American soldier who step out of their own national story which narrates the enemy as nothing more than a savage, subhuman creature to be destroyed are able to see that their enemies are indeed their brothers. It is this connection that paints the entire film and its violence as foolish, ignorant and unnecessary.

Having seen all the other best picture noms (with the exception of The Queen) I don't see any way this film doesn't grab picture of the year... unless Scorsese gets the nod as a recognition of his life's work. But put Departed up against Letters and I think Letters is hands down a better film.

Labels: Film, Military, Non-Violence

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Monday, January 15, 2007

(The Forgotten) MLK Jr.

It wasn't until college that I met the forgotten Martin Luther King Jr. Like everyone else I had met the civil rights leader in grade school, learning about him in history texts and on MLK Jr. day. This man was so monumentally popular in US history, held up as a saint who helped make racial equality part of what it means to be an American. But I didn't meet the other MLK until years later and I've come to find out that most people never meet this other MLK. It was in his last years here on earth that Martin Luther King Jr. turned his attention towards the growing poverty in the United States and towards the systems that help cause and maintain such poverty. He turned his attention towards the growing militarism of the United States and towards the wars being fought. Indeed MLK had the courage to say that the United States was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." It was this MLK that our country has forgotten. This MLK was assassinated. The words of this MLK still have a prophetic word for us today.

Thanks to Mark Bilby for this article about the forgotten MLK.

Labels: Life, Military, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Why I Didn't Buy a Diamond.

        After reading two disturbing articles today in reaction to Blood Diamond I’ve decided to elaborate a bit on my own knowledge of blood diamonds as well as tell my own story and why I refuse to buy diamonds. But first the articles. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly wrote a review of Blood Diamond whose main point of contention was that the film was a “term paper disguised as entertainment.” I know she works at Entertainment Weekly, but COME ON! I for one appreciate it when the films I go to see have a point, or speak to a larger issue in our world, or move me to change the way I live. If all we want out of movies is entertainment then we’re living in a self-imprisoned tyranny of shallow consumerism. And it’s those people that need to see movies like Blood Diamond the most!

        Article two is from Parija B. Kavilanz of CNN Money.com. Parija points out that jewelers are sweating Blood Diamond because it’s the holiday season and this is when they do most of their business. The movie is “a concern” for Diamond cartels like DeBeers, etc. What makes me sick about this is it’s the movie that is the concern, not the conflict diamonds! If DeBeers had even a shred of integrity they would be pushing hard for strengthening the Kimberly process, or sending some of their billions to victims of DeBeers business partners. That and not this movie, should be thier PR concern.

        Okay, so here the story of why I didn’t buy a diamond.

        Reason One: Violence
My sophomore year of college a girl name Jenn Tracy sent out an email to a list I was on about blood diamonds. I was listening. I quickly found out that people in Sierra Leone were being mutilated by soldiers from a militia called the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). These militant revolutionaries were waging a war against the government of Sierra Leone as well as the civilians. They funded their violence by capturing diamond mines and enslaving locals to work in them. As a way of instilling fear in the slaves the RUF would randomly amputate the limbs of the people they captured, leaving behind tens of thousands of amputees. De Beers among other companies knew that this was happening and didn’t do anything to stop it. (Guardian Article)

        Reason Two: The Deceptive and Manipulative Diamond Business
The diamond business itself became increasingly sickening to me as I began to study it more and more. Diamonds as jewelry and as an engagement ring is a relatively new thing. Diamonds are useful for ONE thing, as blades in industrial machines. In the late 1800’s when the first diamond “mines” were discovered in Africa the diamond a once rare stone was now about to boom, and diamond business was in big trouble. Prices of diamonds used as blades would drop and diamonds used as jewelry depended on the notion that they are rare (and since the 1900’s they’ve been anything but). Enter DeBeers. They invented the myth that diamonds symbolize love and launched a huge advertising blitz to move these diamonds they were raking in. A little less than a century later and Americans have bought the myth that diamonds are forever, are rare, symbolize love, are expensive, and that every engaged woman is entitled to such a stone.

It is the diamond business itself that sickens me to the point of never wanting to buy a diamond even if it was proved the diamond was clean. Even after assuring me that a child had not lost a limb for the diamond I’m looking at there would still be the incredibly evil system of the diamond industry itself that has relentlessly deceived and manipulated its customers.
(The full text of Jay Epstein’s book The Diamond Invention is avaliable online)

So when I asked Kara to marry me, I was ready with an Emerald.

More resources...

Also check out this interview with screenplay writer Charles Leavitt.

Amnesty International - Did Someone Die for That Diamond?

Amnesty International - Conflict Diamond

Labels: Diamonds, Film, Non-Violence

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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Faith in the Military?

My roomate Jake made me aware of this article published on the website of his alma matter, Olivet Nazarene University. The title of the article is "Faith in the Military," which is meant to mean "A Christian's faith in the midst of the military," but I found it to be an ironic double-entendre about having faith in the military itself.

Steve Foster ’89 often works 18-hour days. He sleeps in common barracks, hundreds of miles away from his wife and two young children. Soon, he will ship out to Iraq as a chaplain, a dramatic change from the life he left behind, living in the suburbs of St. Louis and pastoring a middle-class church. Like other Olivet alumni serving in the military, Foster sees his current position as one of ministry.

“My service to country is a direct result of service to Christ,” he says in the quiet, strong tone of an enlisted man. “The Heavenly Father has broken my heart repeatedly for soldiers and their families. That brokenness is why I serve both God and country.”

Navigating Foster's comments is an exercise requiring nuance. It is entirely possible to minister to those in the military and be called by God to do so. The military is indeed a place of many broken hearts and families and Jesus Christ must be in the midst of that suffering. We would do well to meet Him and those hurting soliders there. That being said, I am left wondering what Foster means by "service to country." If by this he means that he is Christ's ambassador humbling serving those who are in the military by bringing them the gospel, then that is the kind of service "our country" needs. If however he means (and I'm afraid this is the case) that by being a chaplain he is somehow serving the goals of "our country" then I must protest!

Serving the goals of the military is nothing short of pursing an anti-gospel, of giving aid to the enemy of the Kingdom of God. The military does not have a chaplain program so that soliders may grow in discipleship. It exists instead so they might learn to kill more efficently without the crushing weight of the guilt which comes from taking the life of one of God's beloved children. Chaplains are meant by the military to be "supernatural morale boosters," whose job it is to soothe the fractured psyche of children of God who have been (re)created as agents of destruction ready to obey the State.

The article continues...

Dr. Stan Tuttle, an Olivet professor of education, had a similar motivation when he gave up 11 weeks of his summer to train soldiers in Kuwait. Unlike Foster, Tuttle’s “official” job wasn’t to minister. But living side by side with the soldiers, his faith often came into play.

What stood out to Tuttle was the selflessness of the men and women who faced imminent danger on a daily basis. “Instead of asking for prayers for themselves or their units, they’d ask for prayers for family members and neighbors. It was the attitude of service — the attitude of other — that was very present in these men and women who were soon to be in harm’s way.”

I find it interesting that there is no mention of these soliders being encouraged to pray for the people they are preparing to kill (although this does happen more often that we might think, it seems rarely to be at the encouragement of chaplains, but rather springs naturally from soliders who recognize the humanity of their enemies). I am not saying Christians cannot serve God in the midst of the military but it seems to me that the options are very very few.

A medic embodies the life and spirit of Christ in that regardless of what "side" someone is on the battlefield medic exisits within the battle simply to rescue, to heal to bring life where there is only death. This job strikes me as one of the most Christlike professions one could pursue.

The chaplain is also a role the Christian can take in the military, bringing counsel and gospel into the midst of violence and destruction and the systematic conversion of children of God into objects trained to kill. The chaplain can bring the gospel, and by this I mean the FULL gospel, not simply a private one that never conflitcs with the solider's job.

Unfortuneately I think that the Christian serving during wartime as a Chaplain will find they are quickly dismissed if they preach a full gospel. The chaplain who edits the gospel so that children of God may find a smooth fit between discipleship and killing other children of God will probably be very "sucessful" and left alone by the military as they are fulfilling their duty to the State.
[UPDATE: Through our discussion the above paragraph has come into light as pretty much false. Chaplains are aparently very hard to get rid of and preaching peace and nonviolence would not be enough to get you fired.]

The rest of the article continues much as the first, being a Christian in the military mostly means that God helps you get through Ranger training as well as remembering to do the "right thing," but from the tone of the article it seems that refusing to kill other children of God is not one of those decisions we Christians have to worry about, because we have faith in the military.

Labels: Military, Non-Violence, Politics

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Monday, April 24, 2006

Christian Peacemakers

Harry Huebner, professor at Canadian Mennonite University has a great article about the "ungratefulness" of the recently rescued Christian Peacemaker Team members.

Read the article here.

Labels: Non-Violence

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Saturday, March 18, 2006

V for Vendetta and Christian Discipleship

Just got back from V for Vendetta... What a GREAT MOVIE! The Wachowski brothers are back in a huge way with this film. I really don't want to get into anything that might spoil this, because unlike most of the obscure movies I've posted about so far, you're actually very likely to go see this film. That being said you probably already know that this is a "political action movie" about a distopian future in England that draws considerably from current events.

Okay, I can't help it, I need to talk specifics (spoiler alert - do not read further until you've seen the film). The scene in the film where the Evey overcomes fear, even the fear of death is the moment at which she truly gains her freedom. Freedom is not something "given" or "protected" by governments, but simply IS. It is in our misunderstanding of freedom as a commodity or as "security" that we enslave ourselves to those who say they can protect us. This shows up several times in the film in the phrase "for your protection" plastered all over government vehicles and buildings. The public in the film, do not see themselves as living in the midst of tyranny. They are a technologically savvy and wealthy people who are living in a dictatorship but are blind to their situation because they are afraid of terrorists, disease, etc. and think the government is doing everything it can to protect them. Sound familiar?

One of the best books I've read, Torture and Eucharist (as well as Media Control), deals with the use of torture and kidnapping (in the Case of 1970's Chile) or fearmongering and propaganda (in the United States as seen in Media Control) as a means of making people submit to the will of a government. These tactics are very effective at splitting up groups of resistance. In Chile any groups that would stand to oppose the dictator, Pinochet, would be the target of kidnappings and torture. These groups of resistance quickly dried up. But as T&E author, Bill Cavanaugh shows, the Church would not simply go away in the face of such atrocities. The Church is comprised of a group of people, who when they really think about it gather together because of one who has defeated death, Jesus Christ. The Church is the body of people attached to Jesus, and who do not fear death. Noam Chomsky observes that, "there are institutions which it has as yet been impossible to destroy. The churches, for example, still exist. A large part of the dissident activity in the United States comes out of the churches. (p. 32)" So why don't more Christians approach life like

the Evey that emerges from the false cell? Why are we just as scared and afraid as the average American? Why do Christians think they need "protection" from terrorism and disease and care deeply about "national security?" I wish we could take some steps towards "letting go" of our fears and indeed our lives. Perhaps the world is still a sick place because we Christians are too afraid to die to get involved in opposing those who oppress.

Thank God for Christian Peacemaker Teams, who show us what this fearless Christian life could really be like.

"People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people."

Labels: Film, Non-Violence

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Tuesday, January 31, 2006

State of the Union

The first part of Bush's speech tonight was centered around "national security." National security as an idea and most of the points contained within this portion of the speech depend on making we the people feel afraid of "them." "They" are no longer just al Queda but "terrorists" in general. This general and undefined threat works better when it is vague, because the threats are everywhere and so the primary (if not only) goal of the government is to "protect" your "security." That's about as specific as Bush wants to get. The problems start when we ask questions, when we demand specifics for his generalities. Who is a terrorist or dangerous threat? Well Quakers are a threat for starters. Cindy Sheehan was arrested for wearing a "Stop war" t-shirt while attending the State of the Union speech. See, "national security" is really a big job! National security is all about protecting "freedom." Freedom from seeing anti-war t-shirts included!

"Freedom," as Bush uses the word might as well be a filler word. When used so often and for God only knows how many purposes it completely looses its meaning. What does "freedom on the march" really refer to? An agressive unilateral neoconservative foriegn policy? That doesn't roll off the tounge like "freedum's on the march." What does "enemies of freedum" mean? Anyone who voted against Bush's social security policy? Al Queda? Unions? Ang Lee? The only thing we are supposed to know is that freedom=good and enemies of freedom=bad. It's really that simple, so please don't go asking any pesky questions that might force him to admit what he's really talking about.

Do you disagree with Bush's policy in Iraq? Then there is a new word that they have for you, Isolationist. Awesome! New talking-points. Bush's use of isolationism was perhaps one of best examples of a straw-man fallacy I've seen. If you find 28,000+ Iraqi and 2,000+ American dead in Iraq morally indefensible you must be for "cutting and running" and "isolationism." Using the language of isolationism Bush made it clear that there is only one way to deal with the Middle East: his way. To do it any other way is "without honor."

And of course there was the constant stream of nationalism and civil religion that I usually object to in these things. As a Christian I found the whole thing to be sad and lacking any of the comitment to truth, the passion for loving others and the pursuit of justice and reconciliation that constitutes the Kingdom of God.

Labels: Civil Religion, Non-Violence, Politics

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Tuesday, December 13, 2005

The Death Penalty & Advent

Tonight as I settled into bed the tv was on... Rita Cosby was on MSNBC interviewing what seemed like everyone who had an opinion about the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Those who supported Tookie's execution invoked in me a saddness. If you've ever seen or read Dead Man Walking, you have an idea of the kind of hurt that leads people to choose revenge over redemption. The families that choose vengance over forgiveness feel as if they cannot rest until the murderer is also dead, but more death never brings closure or justice. Besides my opinion that a family's need for closure is not a good enough reason to kill a human being, I am convinced that Christ teaches his followers that only forgiveness will bring healing for these families, not death.

If Tookie did commit those murders, the hurt and pain and loss that he unleashed not only on the family & friends of the victims, but moreso on our creator God are real. And our God is a God of justice, but unlike California our God's idea of justice is absorbing just such violence and hate, not returning it.

In this season of Advent we should be quick to remember that our God saw fit to "stretch Mary's womb" as my friend Lucas sings. And why did the God of Abraham decide to become God with us? Did God just need physical hands to "smack us upside our head with a 2x4" as so many people are wont to say? No, Jesus was born into this world to save it, not to condemn it (Jn. 3:17). Our God became a human being, so that through the body of Jesus all our bodies might also be redeemed. Jesus absorbed the hate and violence that this world hurled at him, and returned none. By returning only grace and love, even to his very executors, Christ gives the practice reconciliation to those who would live in his way and become his disciples. Revenge and returning evil for evil is not the way of the lamb that was slaughtered or the WORD who was born of the virgin Mary to save the world. That baby didn't save the world with atomic bombs or execution chambers, he did through his own death.

Jessie Jackson brought up something that I think is very worthy to note. Jackson reminded Christians who have allowed their hearts to deny redemption that our history is full of redeemed people. Moses, King David and St. Paul were all murderers but were also redeemed and used by God. I think that we like to hear that our saints were ex-murderers or rapists because it gives an edge to our story, makes the love of Christ seem radical. But while we quickly tell the scandalous stories of our own reformed heroes we are far less speedy to apply that radical love to our enemies. How can we marvel at Saul's transformation into Paul the Apostle but burn with hate for Tookie Williams? Oh that we would not find ourselves above our saviour and Lord, thinking that we're worthy to rescind the grace we as followers of Christ must show to others. If we who have been saved from our sin and forgiven by a gracious God cannot in humility also learn to forgive others, what faith have we?

Peace of Christ to the victims and those who loved them.
Peace of Christ to Tookie. Tonight may you be met with grace in the arms of our Saviour.

Labels: Film, Life, Non-Violence, Politics

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Sunday, November 20, 2005

Abuses of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Public Discourse

Saturday afternoon I attended a session put on by the Bonhoeffer Theology and Social Analysis Group at AAR here in Philadelphia titled: War as Responsible Action? The Uses and Abuses of Bonhoeffer's Ethics. Susan Ford Wiltshire, Robert O. Smith and Robert Vosloo were the three who gave papers during our session. Susan focused on Bonhoeffer and "telling the truth" as not being a constant thing, but something new and alive for every situation. Robert O. Smith took a look at the plethora of misappropriations of Bonhoeffer in popular discourse from presidential speeches (is anything not misappropriated in these) to blogs and Robert Vosloo drew some comparisons of Bonhoeffer to Beyers Naudé of South Africa (where Robert hails from).

In Susan's presentation she asked why Bonhoeffer was being used to support the war, she answered her own question by saying that she couldn't come up with any good reason for using Bonhoeffer in this way. She had mentioned that her friend Jean Bethke Elshtain was one of the latest to throw Bonhoeffer into the mix, in this case in support of the "war on terror" and the "war on Iraq." This sparked something in my own mind, a memory from when I had seen Elshtain speak at William Jewell College in the city I pastor in. After speaking for over an hour about "Christian Just War Theory" (but never mentioning Christ) Elshtain fielded some questions. My question to her was, "If this JWT is Christian, please demonstrate how it is essentially centered in Jesus Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount or in the gospels." Her reply was this, "We'll I'm certainly not a theologian, but... Dietrich Bonhoeffer."

After listening to Susan's question of why use Bonhoeffer, and then Robert O. Smith's several examples (hawkish and dove) of the misuse of Bonhoeffer I made a link to that Elshtain lecture back in March. Bonhoeffer, I think, is so often used (by the hawks) because Jesus is obviously out of the question in being used as a justification for war (especially wars of aggression, like Iraq). The deficiency of Christ as a justification for war poses a problem for those who are called Christians, but the legend of Bonhoeffer serves this role. I say legend, because it is the "pop culture" or "soundbyte" Bonhoeffer that is useful in justifying war. The Bonhoeffer that most Christians know about was three things, a martyr; a protestant saint; and a failed assassin. It is the innocence that martyrdom implies and the righteousness that sainthood also implies that casts assassin (and therefore warfare) in a justified light when Bonhoeffer is misused in this way.

The problem of course is that Bonhoeffer was a pacifist, and didn't feel "justified" in the Abwehr plot on Hitler's life, but bore the full responsibility and what he saw as a grave sin. As Robert O. Smith also pointed out, Bonhoeffer was taking action as a participant within his own country, Smith pointed out that Bonhoeffer wasn't used as a justification for Iraqis to rise up and kill Hussein but rather for the US to invade. The entire witness of Bonhoeffer's life calls into question the kind of violence that his name is so oft used to justifiy. Lastly and most importantly Bonhoeffer was a dedicated follower of Jesus Christ and wouldn't have approved of using himself as a measure for ethical action in substitute of Jesus Christ.

Labels: Non-Violence

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Monday, October 10, 2005

Just Say "NO" To Saying No To Torture!

I read an article today via Icthus. Apparently the senate voted 90-9 today in favor of banning the use of torture as a part of the new military budget. The administration is saying that Bush will veto this, and they're saying congress is trying to tie their hands in the war on terror. It looks like for once congress is trying to keep us from being terrorists! What good is it to fight terrorism if you become a terrorist? Geez Dub, whatever happened to being a Christian?! For the sake of the God who faced torture for the whole world (even you), either ban torture or reconsider calling yourself a Christian. The church has enough trouble on it's own without this billboard of heresy visilbe for the whole world to see.

Labels: Non-Violence, Politics

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Friday, July 29, 2005

Acceptable losses?

As I sit here reading, a thought comes to mind: how many people would be satisfied with a justice system where 9 out of 10 people excecuted were not guilty? And yet in modern warfare 90% of casualties are civilian.

Labels: Non-Violence, Politics

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Thursday, July 28, 2005

Loyalty Oath

Eric just told me that, D. Brent Laytham, the author of my most recent read, God is Not, wrote an article for the Christian Century titled "Loyalty Oath: a matter of ultimate allegiance" that I thought was really good. Check it out here or read the whole article below.

Loyalty Oath
A matter of ultimate allegiance
by D. Brent Laytham
Two years ago one of my students wrote a master's thesis defending just war, then joined the U.S. Air Force to train as a fighter pilot. I suppose you could look at this as pedagogical success: I'm a teacher who helped one of my students turn the corner from theory to practice. But as a pacifist, I took it pretty hard.

Time doesn't heal all wounds, but it's a pretty good salve for injured pedagogical pride. So I hadn't given Aaron much thought until I was asked to come down to the college president's office to meet with an officer of the Department of Defense. She showed me her badge and a pile of papers, all of which asserted that she was authorized to interview me about the character of my former student. Apparently, before you can get behind the controls of a multimillion-dollar fighter plane, the U.S. runs a high-level security check.

There were a number of mundane questions about how long and how well I had known Aaron. The questions became more interesting as they turned to relationships and to character. "Did Aaron associate with disreputable people?" she asked. "Yes," I said, "he hung out with Jesus." I was thinking, of course, about Jesus' habit of associating with radicals like Simon the Zealot, cheats like Zacchaeus and riff-raff like the woman at the well. Worse, as Christopher Marshall has pointed out in Beyond Retribution, Jesus populated his parables with criminals and was finally condemned as one himself. But what would my interviewer think? "I know what you mean," she confided. "I sometimes serve meals at my church's soup kitchen." Apparently Jesus is not disreputable enough to disqualify you from being trusted with high-tech weaponry.

"Does Aaron belong to any organization that puts him in contact with foreign nationals?" she asked. "Yes, he's a member of the church." I wasn't trying to be coy, but catholic. In Christ we find ourselves placed in a body politic without territorial borders—the holy catholic church. The Letter to Diognetus puts it this way: for us "every foreign country is [our] fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign." Thus, we have no foreign nationals in the church, or we are all foreigners; either way, we cannot imagine that some of us are "us," while others are "them." At least we shouldn't be able to imagine this.

"But did he associate with foreigners?" "Well," I replied, "we have a number of international students here at the seminary. I'm sure that Aaron had classes with them." I could have added that we intentionally seek to foster an awareness of global issues, hoping students from California will get to know students from Chile, wanting students from Korea to learn with students from Kansas, expecting that Mexicans and Minnesotans will pray together in every chapel.

She pursued the question, "How closely did he associate with them? Was it more than a normal amount?" How could I answer such a question, given the church's calling to show the world that its version of "normal" simply isn't? All I said was no. But I should have added, "The church is a 'sign, herald and foretaste' of the coming kingdom; we refuse to allow national borders to be mapped onto the body of Christ."

There were many other questions, the hardest of which was, "Is he a loyal American?" I had little doubt that for Aaron the answer is yes. But what could that attestation mean coming from me, who relishes Dorothy Day's retort "Of course we're un-American; we're Catholic"? I thought of Patrick Miller's recent pamphlet on the first commandment. In The God You Have he differentiates between loyalty to others and obedience to God. Loyalty, he says, may appropriately be given to spouse, family, neighbor or country. It roots in and expands on the fifth commandment. Obedience, on the other hand, belongs to God and God alone. It is rooted in the absolutely fundamental claim of the first commandment. First commandment first; obedience before, beneath and beyond every loyalty.

The problem with Miller's categories is that, in Caesar's hands, they can too easily become a distinction without a difference. In the U.S. there is assumed to be a smooth fit between discipleship and killing. That assumption, held so easily and unreflectively, trespasses against our obedience to God alone. I wonder whether my questioner understands that for descendants of Jeremiah and followers of Jesus, obedience to God may require us to refuse the state's claim to our loyalty. Does the Department of Defense grant that my fundamental obligation is not loyalty to country but obedience to God? I doubt it. In such circumstances, where Caesar cannot distinguish between our proper subjection and our ultimate allegiance, it may be best to say bluntly, "A loyal American? Of course not. I'm a Christian!"

But Aaron is a Christian too, and there's the rub. My testimony now contributes to the testing of his discipleship. Will he manage to live by the moral restraint of just war, to embody its refusal of easy congruence between killing and Christ, to always remember that obedience to God trumps loyalty to country or comrade? I can only pray that he will.
D. Brent Laytham teaches at North Park University in Chicago. He recently edited God is Not Religious, Nice, One of Us, an American, a Capitalist (Brazos).

Labels: Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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