Peace Church Beta: What if we left Just War theory behind?

As the Pres­by­ter­ian Church (U.S.A.) begins a process of dis­cern­ment on whether to embrace non­vi­o­lence offi­cially, the Pres­by­ter­ian Peace Fel­low­ship con­venes peace­mak­ers from across the church.

by Matthew Black
 
stony point peace convocation 2011

Con­vo­ca­tion of Peace­mak­ers, 2011: Co-Moderator Rev. Libby Shannon

We Pres­by­te­ri­ans know all about mir­a­cles—
they hap­pen in committees.

This par­tic­u­lar mir­a­cle begins a few years ago, when some dream­ers in the Pres­by­ter­ian Peace Fel­low­ship (PPF) began imag­in­ing what it might be like for the Pres­by­ter­ian Church to really dis­cuss the issue of war the­o­log­i­cally. War­fare has dras­ti­cally changed in this cen­tury, and Just War theory—the con­cept that war can be jus­ti­fied if it meets the right criteria—seems less and less help­ful in deter­min­ing how Chris­tians should faith­fully respond to vio­lence in mod­ern times. “What if,” these dream­ers thought, “rather than yelling at each other every time our denom­i­na­tion wres­tles with tak­ing posi­tions on par­tic­u­lar wars, we instead took the time as a church to really think about this, talk about this with each other, and dis­cern God’s voice?”

Those dream­ers shot for the moon: an over­ture to the Gen­eral Assem­bly ask­ing all of us to con­sider mov­ing away from Just War The­ory and embrac­ing non­vi­o­lence. They thought it was just a dream. In a denom­i­na­tion that has for gen­er­a­tions oper­ated under Just War the­ory, pass­ing an over­ture con­sid­er­ing becom­ing a peace church prob­a­bly would take a mir­a­cle. “It will never pass, but at least the church might talk about it.”

But it did pass.

At the 219th Gen­eral Assem­bly in 2010, a mir­a­cle occurred. The over­ture was actu­ally strength­ened by its com­mit­tee, and the Gen­eral Assem­bly voted to under­take a six-year dis­cern­ment process to “seek clar­ity as to God’s call to the church to embrace non­vi­o­lence as its fun­da­men­tal response to the chal­lenges of vio­lence, ter­ror, and war.”

But there is a lot of work ahead. If the PC(USA) is going to step into the call of this action of the Gen­eral Assem­bly and the pos­si­bil­i­ties it presents, it is going to take a real grass­roots move­ment. That’s where the PPF comes in.

On April 26–29, we’re host­ing a gath­er­ing of peace­mak­ers from across the church to take up this task. What might the PC(USA) look like as a peace church? How can we help this con­ver­sa­tion hap­pen? This “Con­vo­ca­tion of Peace­mak­ers” is a work­ing meet­ing to pool our gifts, dream big together, and take real action for a more peace­ful world. Experts and sea­soned activists will work along­side rook­ies and peo­ple who aren’t sure they iden­tify as “peace­mak­ers” or “activists.” You’re invited to be part of this (and schol­ar­ships are available)—come ready to work.

This “peace church” con­ver­sa­tion is only part of the pack­age. The PPF—a small orga­ni­za­tion com­posed almost entirely of volunteers—actively works on some of the most crit­i­cal issues of our time, and we’ll be  con­tin­u­ing to plan next steps at this event on these issues:

  • accom­pa­ni­ment and advo­cacy with our part­ners in Colombia,
  • seek­ing a just peace in Israel/Palestine,
  • work­ing against racism, and
  • orga­niz­ing to pre­vent gun violence—particularly ille­gal gun trafficking—in the U.S.

It is an excit­ing time. For every heart­break­ing news story we hear, there are many small groups of com­mit­ted cit­i­zens, thought­ful activists, and peo­ple of faith work­ing together to be the bear­ers of small mir­a­cles. The most amaz­ing things hap­pen when the peo­ple of God gather to work together.

Hope to see you in April.

Learn more and reg­is­ter for the 2012 Con­vo­ca­tion of Peace­mak­ers here.

__________________________

Matthew Black
 
 
 
 
Matthew Black serves as Web­site Devel­op­ment Man­ager for the Pres­by­ter­ian Peace Fel­low­ship and the Coun­cil for a Par­lia­ment of the World’s Reli­gions. He is also a singer/songwriter, wor­ship leader, alum­nus of the PC(USA)‘s Young Adult Vol­un­teer Pro­gram, and grad­u­ate of McCormick The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. He lives in an inten­tional com­mu­nity in Chicago.

3 Responses to Peace Church Beta: What if we left Just War theory behind?

  1. L William Yolton says:
    April 9, 2012 at 6:17 pm

    The peo­ple of the State of Israel are genet­i­cally Euro­peans for the most part. Their Semitic begin­nings were long diluted by inter­mar­riage dur­ing the two mil­len­nia they have been wan­der­ing. In fact, as a dias­pora in the first cen­tury of the com­mon era, with colonies along the Mediter­ranean, the Mid­dle East, and into the upper NIle and South India, they were no longer eth­ni­cally Semi­tes. Their com­mon­al­ity is in a reli­gious culture.

    Their claim to the land is with­out merit. From the Bal­four dec­la­ra­tion the claim has wings due to anti­semitism, a prej­u­dice against Jews.

    The peo­ple who are Arab and Chris­t­ian in Pales­tine are the genetic descen­dants of the Jews who once lived in Pales­tine. Iron­i­cally, the repres­sion and oppres­sion of Pales­tini­ans is the only real anti-semitism.

    This con­founds the pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of

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  2. Avatar of Raymond RobertsRaymond Roberts says:
    April 11, 2012 at 9:33 am

    Much as I find things to admire in the wit­ness of Men­non­ites and other peace churches, I doubt that becom­ing a paci­fist denom­i­na­tion reflects who Pres­by­te­ri­ans are. Black admits as much when he calls the fact their pro­posal got through G.A. a “mir­a­cle.” But far worse is the way leav­ing Just War the­ory behind would mean los­ing touch with a rich tra­di­tion of the­o­log­i­cal and moral dis­cern­ment that should con­tinue to guide us in the face of vio­lence and injustice.

    Black asserts that the Just War Tra­di­tion is no longer help­ful. One can only won­der how or why he makes this claim. As I reflect on our recent wars, it seems to me that a firmer grip on the tra­di­tional cri­te­ria would be exceed­ingly help­ful. Per­haps we would have noticed that the idea of “pre­ven­ta­tive war” was a novel jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the War in Iraq, never part of the tra­di­tion and quite dif­fer­ent from the idea of “pre­emp­tive attack.” And wouldn’t tra­di­tional Jus in bel­lum cri­te­ria help us as we have a bet­ter con­ver­sa­tion about tor­ture and drones?

    This is what they want us to leave behind!

    Paci­fism, like all extreme posi­tions, pro­vides the com­fort of sim­plis­tic clar­ity. But at a cost. In a per­verse way, leav­ing behind the Just War Tra­di­tion would mean join­ing the “war is hell” crowd, for whom moral dis­tinc­tions con­cern­ing the use of force are otoise. In this way paci­fism cloaks the abdi­ca­tion of moral respon­si­bil­ity with false righteousness.

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  3. Christian says:
    April 14, 2012 at 9:30 pm

    Appre­ci­ated both Matt’s invi­ta­tion piece and Ray’s look at the Peace Fel­low­ship approach with crit­i­cal eye. This is the kind of exchange we hope for in many churches in the two years ahead. What I would add to Matt’s piece is that the other over­tures includ­ing a com­pre­hen­sive one from Pitts­burgh that iden­ti­fied the range of pol­icy and pro­gram that needed updat­ing, and the sug­ges­tion in a num­ber of over­tures that we seek “new think­ing” by involv­ing the PCUSA-related col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties more. That updat­ing work will involve look­ing at the use of the Just War cri­te­ria, includ­ing the analy­sis in Chris­t­ian Obe­di­ence in a Nuclear Age which sug­gested that some cri­te­ria rule out the use of nuclear weapons.

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