Disciples Peace Fellowship

Ten ways to cultivate a lifestyle of peace

FACES OF FAITH Chapman University Founders' Day March 15, 2003

Dear Friends, there are many things that we could and should talk about—as Disciples, as Christians, as people of faith—but there is one thing that today we must talk about, and that is peace. Whatever we may think about the war against Iraq, war always represents a failure of the human community and a failure of the Church to bear witness, fervent witness, to our reconciling God. And we need to talk about it.

With that in mind, and in line with our theme for Founders' Day, "Faces of Faith," I will begin by telling you about two faces that have been very much on my mind this past week. I'm sure that you have such faces as well, perhaps of loved ones or acquaintances in the military. I do not mean to overlook them in the least; but the faces in my head remind us of the even-wider community of which we are a part.

When Katherine and I first moved to Geneva in order for me to serve on the staff of the World Council of Churches, we took an intensive French course. And in the class with us was a young Muslim woman, not yet in university, from a well-to-do family in Baghdad. I will admit that I've forgotten her name, but not her face which I seldom, if ever, saw without a smile. This was striking to me since the effort to conjugate French verbs left my face in a perpetual grimace! This was 1980, and the face I remember must now be that of a 40 year old woman, probably with children; and it's hard today to picture that face as anything but desperately fearful.

The second face is of a man I met at the World Council's Canberra Assembly. Some of you may recall that the assembly took place in February of 1991, during the first Gulf War. The face, bearded, is that of Gewargis Sliwa, bishop of the Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East—one of the 600,000 brothers and sisters in Christ who live in Iraq. During the assembly, Bishop Sliwa gave me a profound lesson in what it means to belong to the body of Christ when he said to me, "These American bombs are falling on you."

"Faces of Faith."

I appreciate this Founders' Day theme because it reminds us that religions are not just abstract systems of doctrine and liturgy, but communities of persons—with faces we can recognize because, fundamentally, they resemble our own. I will admit that not all faces are of equal aesthetic value, but they show our common humanness. Behind this are two essential claims of the Christian faith:

1. that each person, every person, as a child of God, is of infinite worth, and
2. that all persons are related in their humanity and vulnerability.

When looking into the face of another, we see ourselves and, in some mysterious way, the God who has given life to us all.

How do we give expression to this basic unity? Well, one way our churches have tried to do so is through the ecumenical movement. Living ecumenically is very difficult because it means that we must acknowledge our oneness as Christians with some people we otherwise would avoid like the plague! Those who are more "hawkish" must recognize that they are related by blood to Bishop Sliwa. But those who are more "doveish" must recognize that they are related to those who are more hawkish.

The ecumenical movement, however, is not simply about agreeing to disagree. It is about seeking God's will together. And over the past 60 years, Christians involved in ecumenical dialogue—Disciples, UCC, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Baptists—have said several things together about war and peace that it would be good for us to remember today. I'm going to name three points on which there has been broad ecumenical agreement, points that might provide a good basis for discussion in church school classes. (And in case the Disciples don't get them written down today, they will reappear in my DisciplesWorld column for next month.)

1) In the words of the WCC's Amsterdam Assembly (1948), "War is contrary to the will of God" Ñ because it destroys that which is of infinite worth. Yes, it may be that war, is at times, a necessary evil, but it is still, in the words of the assembly, "inherently evil" Ñ which means that Christians should never identify violence against others with the will of God, or countenance such rhetoric when used by their governments. To put it another way, "crusade" is no longer seen as a legitimate Christian position. God's purpose is shalom. We do not go to war ever in the name of God.

I stress this for obvious reasons. In our era, God has been blasphemously, repeatedly invoked to justify violence in such places as Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan—and, of course, the United States. Which makes it all the more important for us to bear witness to a "more excellent way."

Let me add a parenthesis. Hand in hand with this tendency to see God on our side of violent conflict is the tendency to demonize the other—which, in effect, is to deny our essential relatedness as humans. I think the wisest theologian I have ever known is the late Joseph Sittler. Listen carefully to two sentences from one of his books: "To postulate a dichotomy [a split] that sees evil as primarily the character of the other is the sly and fateful way our self-deception operates. Evil is never more quietly powerful than in the assumption that it resides elsewhere."

Of course, Dr. Sittler's words cut both ways. It is easy to point a finger at the President for the way he divides the world into opposing camps, urging us to recognize satanic enemies that can only be destroyed as part of a divinely-ordained struggle between good and evil. But pointing at him alone also repeats the problem. Many of us want peace and decry this war, but we also want things that make for conflict—including a standard of living that contributes to the poverty of billions of global neighbors and access to minerals and fuels no matter where they're located. No, the world must not be divided into us and them, because (as all the great religions have taught) what we behold in the other is also in ourselves.

2) Along with emphasizing that war is always contrary to the will of God, the ecumenical movement has also stressed that peace is fundamentally inseparable from justice. The World Council's Nairobi Assembly (1975) spoke of how peace is foundational to justice since militarization "distorts social and economic priorities," taking the greatest toll, always, on those who are poor. Conversely, the Vancouver Assembly in 1983 insisted that "without justice for all everywhere, we shall never have peace anywhere." What is emerging through these ecumenical conversations is a new paradigm beyond the old alternatives of just war and pacifism—a new paradigm that the United Church of Christ has called "just peacemaking." It is not enough, said Martin Luther King, Jr., to hate war; we must also "love peace and sacrifice for it." It is not enough to react to the threat of war; we must be proactive in our efforts to change those conditions that contribute to conflict.

The UCC theologian, Susan Thistlethwaite, offers a concrete example in a recent essay of what this might mean for public policy. Afghanistan, she points out, needed a "Marshall Plan" after the period of Soviet occupation. But the U. S. and other wealthy countries did not act because Afghanistan didn't then seem important to our "national interest." "We let poverty and oppression rule," she writes, "and now we are reaping the results." To put it another way, working for peace in Iraq in 2003 has been too late. Our most effective peacemaking will come if we envision what will make for peace in 2010 Ñ and work for it now. Seen in this light, the decision to use armed force, while perhaps necessary, always represents a failure of governments to work for justice—as well as a failure of the church.

I add another parenthesis: A major theme of U. S. public life since 9-11 is "security." The ecumenical movement reminds us, however, that true security is never won through unilateral "defense" but through active recognition of our global interdependence, through recognizing ourselves in the face of the neighbor. Attentiveness to the inequities and injustices that afflict God's other children is in our national self-interest—as well as faithful to the God of all creation.

3) I come now to the third broad area of ecumenical agreement, one that is at the very center of the movement: namely, that the unity of the church is (or, at least, should be) a crucial witness to peace. God's gift of reconciliation is for the world; but the church is entrusted with this message—and we deliver it not just by what we say or do, but by what we are, by the way we live with one another. The philosopher Nietzsche once said that he might believe in their Redeemer if only Christ's followers looked more redeemed! And, of course, the same is true for our witness to God's shalom. We can proclaim the unity of the church and the human family until we are blue in the face, but until we stop treating each other with neglect and indifference, until we stop refusing to break bread together at one table, until our churches stop reinforcing the class and racial lines of wider society, until we stop ignoring our connection to! Christians in other parts of the world, the credibility of our message will continue to be undercut by the non-credibility of the messengers.

I repeat: the message of peace is for all God's children. It is no more acceptable in scriptural perspective to kill Muslims or atheists than it is to kill other Christians. But the way Christians live together could be—should be—a demonstration of what God intends for the world.

There are times when this has happened, at least to some extent, through the ecumenical movement. During World War II, the churches that were preparing to become the WCC declared to one another that "the fellowship of prayer must at all costs remain unbroken though the nations wherein we are planted fight each other." During the Cold War, churches in the WCC refused to be divided by the Iron Curtain; and some of you may have participated in the church-to-church visits to what was then the Soviet Union sponsored by the National Council of Churches. One of my most memorable moments at a WCC assembly came in 1991 when leaders of the China Christian Council and the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan publicly embraced.

There are times when Christians must take sides against sisters and brothers in the church. But even in such moments, our understanding of church must be shaped more by theology than politics. Even in such moments, we must recognize that the "them" are, in some fundamental way, "us." Nothing else can testify so powerfully that our trust is in God, and not in the communities of our own devising.

---

I hope this brief look at three areas of ecumenical agreement has been useful. Together, the representatives of our churches have affirmed 1) that war is contrary to the will of God, 2) that peacemaking is inseparable from a proactive concern for justice, and 3) that the way we live as church is a crucial dimension of our witness to peace. And beneath each of these affirmations are those two essential, scripturally-based convictions: that each person is of infinite worth and that all persons are related as children of the living God. I must admit that Mother Teresa said all of this far more simply: "If there is not peace in the world, it is because we don't realize that we belong to one another."

It is this sense of universal belonging that I try to foster in seminary students and which I hope for in you who are students here today. In the closing minutes of my remarks, I want to speak directly to the students. The rest of you can listen in, but I'm going to suggest ten things that you who are students might do, starting now, to cultivate a lifestyle of peace. I'm sure there are things you can teach me, but these are my suggestions—and I ask you to take them to heart.

1. Pray—on a regular, intentional basis—for those regarded as enemies by our nation. I'm glad, Dr. King once said, that Jesus didn't tell us to like our enemies! There will be people we don't much like; but we love them because God loves them. Praying for so-called enemies is a powerful sign and instrument of this human unity that is at the heart of the gospel.
2. Commit yourselves to dialogue with people you can't stand right in your own congregations. It is important to pray for enemies in other places; but, to paraphrase I John, how can we speak of relationship to people we can't see if we can't demonstrate relationship with people we see every week? Peacemaking begins at home.
3. Study the lives of persons for whom peacemaking has been a way of life. The faces of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dorothy Day come quickly to mind, but also look for more immediate models. It will embarrass them, but T. J. Liggett and Rhodes Thompson (who are here today) have been such models for me. Let the witness of such persons help shape who you are.
4. Dare to imagine the world other than it now is. Part of the reason the church fails in its mission of peacemaking is that our imaginations are so impoverished, because we simply accept what is as "the way things are." Study, for example, the vision of Isaiah 65 ("No more shall there be an infant who lives but a few days"). This isn't wishful thinking. It's imagining the world as our gracious God would have it. Let that set your agenda. This past week we had the communications officer at the Israeli embassy speak at Eden Seminary in order to understand better the situation in the Middle East. We have no choice, he said, but to respond to violence with greater violence—and all I could think is "what a failure of the imagination!" What a failure to put a face on Palestinian neighbors and to imagine the world other than it now is.
5. Take every opportunity to travel in other cultures (preferably not in five star hotels!), and
6. Sixth, if you can't travel to various countries, then read works of fiction that come from those places. The study of history and government are great, but serious literature puts a face on people from parts of the world you may never see.
7. Practice hospitality to strangers—which is, after all, one of the most persistent injunctions in all of scripture. Welcoming strangers (migrant workers, people of other faiths ...) is based on a recognition of fundamental relatedness prior to any specific knowledge of who they are.
8. Remember that lifestyle (the amount of the earth's resources we consume) is also an act of peacemaking.
9. Be willing to look critically at the groups you are part of—whether that be your nation or your church or your university. Always be suspicious of proposals that work to your advantage but not to the advantage of your neighbors.
10. Live ecumenically. Churches often act like competing corporations, but you don't have to buy into it. Wherever you are located, work for the common witness of the church in that place. It will be a profound act of peacemaking.

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (a graduate of Eden Seminary!) once wrote that "attitudes of repentance which recognize that the evil in the foe is also in oneself, and attitudes of love which claim kinship with all people in spite of social conflict, are the peculiar gifts of religion to the human spirit. Secular imagination," Niebuhr continued, "is not capable of producing such attitudes, because they require a sublime madness which disregards immediate appearances and emphasizes profound and ultimate unities."

In a world as divided as ours, in an age as bloody as ours, in a country as seemingly bent on hostility as ours, perhaps it is a sign of madness (counter-cultural madness) to imagine and work for peace. But isn't this our calling as followers of Christ? "Do not," wrote Paul, "be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God." And act accordingly.

—Rev. Michael Kinnamon
Eden Theological Seminary