TTT #22 Jesus Expects His Followers to be Peacemakers

The 22^nd chapter of Thirty True Things . . . (TTT) was not one of the chapters planned for that book. But in the process of writing the previous chapter, linked to in my Aug. 10 blog article, I became aware of how closely related are the ideas of simple living and peacemaking.

Simple Living and Peacemaking

In looking back at exemplary Christians through the centuries, most of those most interested in simple living were also interested in peacemaking, and many of those most interested in peacemaking were also interested in simple living.

In that connection, through the years I have also become increasingly cognizant of how there seems to be a significant economic factor behind most major historical events, including, and especially, wars. In spite of all the high-sounding rhetoric, wars are almost always fought for economic reasons, at least in part.

In his State of the Union message in January 2002, President George W. Bush referred to three countries as “the axis of evil.” Those three countries were Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The next year war was launched against Iraq, and there have been repeated rumblings about a future war against Iran.

While the government of North Korea has often been renounced, until briefly in 2017 there had been little talk of going to war against that country. What is the difference? It is hard to deny that the abundance of oil in the Middle East and the scarcity of oil in North Korea was likely the major reason Iran and Iraq were targeted and North Korea was not.

If population pressures, the need for natural resources, the desire for markets are all factors lying behind most wars (a generalization that, admittedly, some historians would disagree with), it is not hard to understand that an emphasis on simple living is closely related to peacemaking.  

Peacemaking as Love in Action

One of Martin Luther King’s notable books contains fifteen sermons published under the title Strength to Love (1963). Two sermons appearing early in the book are “Love in Action” and “Love Your Enemies,” and then the final sermon is “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence.”

Those sermons sum up well what everyone needs to realize about love, which is at the core of the Christian faith.

Christian pacifists, such as Francis of Assisi and the Anabaptists, do not base their peacemaking activities upon the optimistic belief that people are basically good and that peace can result from that goodness if people just tap into it and talk to each other in a rational manner.

No, Christian pacifism is primarily based on Jesus’ teachings about love.

Christian pacifism does not necessarily “work” in every case. You might say it didn’t “work” for Jesus. It didn’t work for numerous Christian martyrs through the centuries, people who out of obedience to Christ were willing to shed their own blood rather than to be engaged in killing other people.

And so to the present time, many of those who take Jesus’ teaching seriously refuse to support war, for they do not see how it would be possible to love their enemies if they were also seeking to kill them through warfare.

People like Dorothy Day, MLK, John Dear, and many others during my lifetime have made it quite clear that peacemaking is hard, dangerous work. And most of the people who want to be “good” Christians fall far short of the example that people like them have set.

But in a world where Christianity has often become entwined with war and warlike activities, people such as Day, King, and Dear challenge us to realize that Jesus expects his followers to be peacemakers.

[The entire chapter 22 of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (TTT) can be accessed here.]

From "Just War" to "Just Peace"

New Year’s Day has come and gone and it's already in the fifth day of 2017. But do you know that January 1 was not only New Year’s Day but was also the Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace (WDP)? In fact, this year was the 50^th anniversary of the WDP. 

The Pope promotes nonviolence 

For this year’s WDP observance, Pope Francis chose the theme “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace”.

John Dear, a Catholic priest and peace activist (whom I wrote about here in 2014), has pointed out (here) that the Pope’s message on New Year’s Day was the Catholic Church’s first statement on nonviolence ever made. 

The Pope emphasized, “To be true followers of Jesus today also includes embracing his teaching about nonviolence.” He goes on to state, “The name of God cannot be used to justify violence.” (Click here to see the Pope’s entire message.)

In his WDP message Pope Francis said, “I plead for disarmament and for the prohibition and abolition of nuclear weapons.”

Those important words by the Pope were made public last month about two weeks before the PEOTUS (foolishly? dangerously?) tweeted, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

The long “just war” position

The term “just war” was introduced by Augustine of Hippo in his early fifth century book The City of God. It was later articulated in depth by 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas. At present, it is outlined by four conditions in the formal Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

(See here for a brief statement of “the traditional elements” in what the Catechism calls the “‘just war’ doctrine.”)

A major problem, though, is this: the leaders of every country that is at least somewhat culturally Christian thinks that all wars they engage in are just wars. When have you ever heard the political leader of a Western country admit that their country’s war activities were not just?

When will you ever hear that? My guess is, Never.

In February 1991, then-President Bush sought to assure the American public that his proposed Gulf War conformed to the historic principles of Just War theory.

(It is perhaps noteworthy, however, that Bush II did not use that same language with regard to the Iraq War; although he would never admit it, perhaps he harbored doubts about his presumptive war being just.)

Death kneel for the “just war” doctrine?

There have always been opponents of the just war doctrine. Erasmus of Rotterdam, for example, wrote (in 1508), “The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.”

Now, however, key leaders in the Catholic Church have spoken against it. “Death Knell for Just War: The Vatican’s Historic Turn toward Nonviolence” is the title of John Dear’s article in the Autumn 2016 issue of Plough. (Click here to see that important article.)

(And if you are interested, see this link for an article I wrote last summer about Plough.)

Dear’s article was about the Vatican’s Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference held in April of last year. That seminal meeting issued a document titled “An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Recommit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence.” That appeal included a call for the Church to no longer use or teach “just war theory.”

The Pope seems to have followed that guideline in his World Peace Day message.

My prayer is that all Christians, and others, will heed the recent Catholic call for movement from “just war” to “just peace” and will seek to sanction only nonviolence as the style of politics for peace.

The Making of Saint Oscar

It was 35 years ago, on March 24, 1980, that Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador was assassinated, but he has been back in the news this year. After much hesitation, the Catholic Church is now moving toward making him a saint.

Even though masses of the common people of El Salvador had no question about it, Romero’s martyrdom was not officially recognized until Pope Francis did so last month. And then last week it was announced that Romero will be beatified on May 23. So before long there will most likely be a Saint Oscar.

Romero was born in 1917 in rural El Salvador. (I was interested to learn that I was born on his 21^st birthday.) He studied for the priesthood in Rome and was ordained there in 1942. After serving as a parish priest back in his home country, he was appointed bishop of a poor, rural diocese in 1974. Then just three years later he became Archbishop of San Salvador.

His appointment as archbishop came as a disappointment to the progressive priests of El Salvador, for at that time Romero was quite conservative and traditional. But things soon began to change.

Less than three weeks after becoming archbishop, Fr. Rutilio Grande, his good friend and a progressive Jesuit priest who was working with the poor, was assassinated. Grande’s death had a profound impact on Romero, who later stated, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, ‘If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.’”

Grande’s assassination triggered what some have called Romero’s “conversion” to liberation theology. As John Dear, the Jesuit peace activist I wrote about previously, said (in an excellent 2010 article in the National Catholic Review), “Romero was transformed into one of the world's great champions for the poor and oppressed.”

My longstanding admiration increased this month as I watched the documentary “Monsigñor” with a group that gathered at the Guardian Angels Catholic Church in Kansas City and listened to comments by Fr. Michael Gillgannon, who was a missionary in Latin America for over 30 years.

And then June and I watched the 1989 movie “Romero” for the second (or maybe third) time. It is a most engaging movie that I highly recommend. Its portrayal of the last few years of the Archbishop’s life is in harmony with Scott Wright’s excellent biography “Oscar Romero and the Communion of the Saints” (2009).

According to Fr. Dear (I’m very sad to note),

When President Jimmy Carter announced in February 1980 that he was going to increase U.S. military aid to El Salvador by millions of dollars a day, Romero was shocked. He wrote a long public letter to Carter, asking the United States to cancel all military aid. Carter ignored Romero’s plea, and sent the aid. (Between 1980 and 1992, the U.S. spent $6 billion to kill 75,000 poor Salvadorans.)

(Romero’s letter to Pres. Carter can be found here. Dear’s statement may be somewhat inflated; a more objective statement is found in a 1993 article, “US Policy in El Salvador.”)

The very next month, Romero was shot and killed while celebrating Mass. The assassin was part of the death squad formed and directed by Roberto D'Aubuisson, who was trained at the School of the Americas, moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1984.

U.S. policy may not have changed so much since 1980, but the Vatican has changed during the last two years under Pope Francis. So, thankfully, Romero is now in the process of being made Saint Oscar.

In Admiration of John Dear

Years ago when I first heard the name John Dear, being a farm boy I immediately thought of John Deere tractors. But as I quipped in my 4/5 blog article, John Dear is not a tractor but detractor of the nation’s weapons of war. 

For many years I have admired the man whose name really is John Dear, and I was very happy to meet him and hear him talk earlier this month. And what a talk it was! 

Dear’s newest book is “The Nonviolent Life” (2013), and his passionate talk was based upon it. He contends that the life of nonviolence requires three simultaneous attributes: being nonviolent toward ourselves; being nonviolent to all people, all creatures, and all creation; and joining the global grassroots movement of nonviolence.

Dear (b. 1959) is an American Catholic priest (a former Jesuit), a Christian pacifist, and an author & lecturer. He has been highly involved in nonviolent action for three decades, having been greatly influenced by Daniel Berrigan, whom he joined in the Plowshares movement.

Remarkably, Dear has been arrested over 75 times for his acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war, injustice and nuclear weapons. The first time he was arrested was at the Pentagon 30 years ago, on April 17, 1984.

In 1994 he spent eight months in jail for his Plowshares action of civil disobedience. That followed his arrest, along with three others, in December 1993 for hammering on an F-15 nuclear-capable fighter bomber at an Air Force base in North Carolina—symbolically beating swords into plowshares.

I have just purchased and begun to read Dear’s 2011 book “Lazarus, Come Forth!: How Jesus Confronts the Culture of Death and Invites Us into the New Life of Peace.”

Since this is Passion Week, I’ve just read “Washing Each Other’s Feet” in the book just mentioned. As one might expect from Dear, he says the biblical account of Jesus’ activity on the night before his crucifixion has generally been misunderstood.

“The episode is not meant to inspire us to service. It is not meant to urge us toward self-humiliation. Rather it is a ritual of preparing our feet to walk Jesus’ road of nonviolence” (p. 162).

Dear ends the chapter contending that Jesus “calls us out of our addiction to violence. He calls us into the freedom of resurrection, into the new life of peace and nonviolence” (p. 166).

In his 2007 book “Transformation” Dear declared: 

One day when the people of the United States finally wake up; dismantle their nuclear weapons; spend their billions of dollars to eradicate hunger, disease, homelessness, illiteracy, and unemployment; clean up the oceans and the earth; and renounce war forever, humanity itself will be transfigured and the light of Christ will shine brightly and lead us to an astonishing breakthrough of global hope and encouragement.

Not only because of what he has written, but especially because he has had the courage over the past 30 years to plead for peace by participating in non-violent protests, many resulting in his being arrested and jailed, I write this with deep admiration for John Dear. He continues to be an inspiring advocate for peace and justice.

In closing, from the very beginning of his 2011 book, here are Dear’s words for us to ponder—and to pray:

Lead me from death to life,
from falsehood to truth
from despair to hope,
from fear to trust,
from hate to love,
from war to peace.
Let peace fill my heart.
Let peace fill my world.
Let peace fill the universe.
Amen!

Giving Up Meat for Lent

Like most of you who grew up as Baptists or other “low church” Protestants, I heard almost nothing about Lent as a boy and for a long time I had no interest in observing Lent. And I am still not particularly fond of the “church year” with its annual emphasis on observing both Advent and Lent.

Nevertheless, for many years now I have made some conscious effort to observe Lent—and for many years now I have given up sweets for Lent. I have done this largely for health reasons, that is, as a way to lower my body weight, which always seems to be a little more than it should be.

But this year I am considering something that I have never thought of doing before: giving up eating meat for Lent. In fact, I am thinking about doing this as a test to see if I could become a vegetarian.

As a farm boy, raising and selling cattle and hogs was the major source of our family’s income, so eating beef and pork (as well as chicken) was a normal practice, one that was never questioned.

But recently I have become friends with a man who is an atheist—and a vegetarian, largely for ethical reasons it seems. I have also recently listened to “Honoring God’s Creation,” YouTube videos produced by the Christian Vegetarian Association.

I have been particularly impressed with the “arguments” of John Dear, a Jesuit priest whom I have long admired because of his advocacy for world peace. Dear (b. 1959) became a vegetarian in his early 20s, and he argues persuasively for such an eating lifestyle in Christianity and Vegetarianism (1990), which is summarized here.

People become vegetarians for different reasons. Some eschew (don’t chew!) meat for health reasons. I am not convinced, though, that a vegetarian diet is necessarily a healthier one (depending maybe on how much red meat is consumed), and I am not considering giving up meat because of health concerns.

Many seem to choose vegetarianism because of “animal rights.” When I hear what Dear says about that, I can’t dismiss that argument completely. But I am not yet convinced that there is intrinsically anything wrong with humans eating animals.

In the past some theologians (Kierkegaard, Barth) have emphasized the “infinite qualitative difference” between God and humans. Infinite or not, isn’t there a similar qualitative difference between humans and the animal world? Do some (or most?) of those who speak of “animal rights” do so because they have a Darwinian worldview that sees humans only as highly developed animals that are not qualitatively different from other animals?

The most important argument for me is the one related to world hunger. For some reason, that appeal for vegetarianism seemed to be more prevalent in the 1970s than now, but it was a central emphasis of Frances Moore Lappé’s influential book Diet for a Small Planet. (By the time the 20^th anniversary edition was published in 1991, it had already sold nearly 3,000,000 copies.)

The use of land and grain to produce meat, especially beef, is highly questionable in a world where many people don’t have enough to eat. According to the oft-quoted statistic, it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef.

Giving up meat (becoming a vegetarian) doesn’t automatically mean that grain used for producing meat will suddenly become available to those who don’t have enough to eat. But maybe giving up meat (for Lent, or altogether) is a symbolic step in the right direction.