Now after the first four years of Obama foreign policies, is it time for a report card from the perspective of just peacemaking practices? He has opened himself to such a report card by endorsing all ten practices of just peacemaking in his Nobel Peace Award Address.

Just Peacemaking: the New Paradigm for the Ethics of Peace and War was not directed for or against any particular U.S. administration. It was developed in response to the call in the 1980s for a positive theology of peacemaking in book-length official statements by Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, and United Church of Christ leaders.[1]

It responds to the need for a positive theology of peacemaking practices that actually work to make peace, and that respond to Jesus’ call for peacemaking practices. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they did not know the practices that make for peace (Luke 19:41-44). He prophesied that the result of not knowing the practices that make for peace would be the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, and we know that history.

Most people favor peace, but lack clarity about what practices actually do make for peace, what practices we should be urging our governments to be taking and supporting. We need an ethic that helps us assess a government’s policies on peacemaking, and helps us advocate more effective policies.

Now that president Obama cannot seek reelection, it should be a less partisan time to use the ten practices to assess the policies of his administration thus far, and to encourage just peacemaking practices for the next four years. We have long needed an ethical framework for assessing governments’ peacemaking practices. Now we have that framework in Just Peacemaking. This can help followers of the paradigm of just peacemaking envision how just peacemaking works to make specific assessments. We write as advocates of just peacemaking practices, and not as representatives of our own educational institutions.

Nobel Prize: President Barack Obama looks at the Nobel Peace Prize medal at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In his Nobel Peace Award Address, December 2009, president Obama began by apologizing for still being involved in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and therefore mentioned Just War Theory three times. That is what the press noticed.

But he mentioned “Just Peace” four times, and endorsed all ten practices of just peacemaking.

Susan Thistlethwaite and I both noticed that, and blogged about it. We were surprised and energized that just peacemaking practices had already reached to the White House. President Obama did not title his address, “Two Just Wars.” He titled it “A Just and Lasting Peace.”

The thirty interdenominational scholars who created Just Peacemaking were providing an ethic for churches, so we could have ethical criteria for assessing how governments do, and not be mesmerized by their rhetoric while we lacked criteria for assessing what they actually do. We also advocated just peacemaking as a public ethic that makes sense in our pluralistic culture. President Obama has now opened the door by endorsing the ten practices of Just Peacemaking. How have his policies respected or not respected the ten practices?

Peacemaking Initiatives

1. Support Nonviolent Direct Action.

The Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya worked to topple dictatorial governments by the practices of nonviolent direct action. This was surely one of the biggest developments in international relations during the first four years of the Obama administration. How did the administration do?

It supported the nonviolent action in all three countries.

In Egypt, the threat was that the military would quash the nonviolent movement and maintain control by a successor to the Mubarak administration. The U.S. military used its many connections with the Egyptian military to urge the Egyptian military to support the nonviolent people’s movement. It worked. The military allowed the movement of the people and the democratic elections to proceed. Of course it is now up to the Morsi government to govern wisely; the just peacemaking practice of supporting nonviolent direct action does not claim to guarantee wisdom in the resulting government. But now the people can take responsibility for their government, and not blame the U.S. for how it develops.

Nonviolent direct action works like this: any government needs the consent of the people. The people see the demonstrators are nonviolent, and pay attention to their moral case for human rights and democracy.

• Either the government responds with nonviolence so as not to turn the people against itself, and then the moral appeal has a chance to spread. In Iran in 1979, in the Revolution of the Candles in East Germany in 1989, in Tunisia and Egypt, the army did not shoot at the demonstrators, but supported them. Each revolution was peaceful.
• Or the government responds with violence, as did Sheriff Bull Connor in Selma, Alabama, during the U.S. civil rights movement, and Kadafi in Libya and Assad in Syria. Then the people turn against the government. The LA Times said early in the struggle in Syria: “No arms could be seen in the hands of these people. The use of live fire is a sign that the regime has lost control on the ground.” Quoting a witness: “This is a war. The regime has declared a war on the Syrian people.”  And: “Hundreds of people have been killed by Syrian security forces answering to Assad…. The people’s simple calls for reform have mushroomed into a roar demanding a government change…. The chasm of mistrust between the government and protesters has become so wide that activists now sit vigil outside hospital morgues to ensure that the authorities don’t snatch protesters’ corpses to prevent politically charged funeral marches Saturday.”

The U.S. needs to be clear: this is an Arab citizen movement; it is not a U.S. movement; the U.S. supports all nonviolent movements for human rights and democracy. Basically this is what the U.S. government did.

2. Take Independent Initiatives to Reduce Threat.

The way the Cold War ended illustrates the way independent initiatives can improve political relations, generate a pattern of positive reciprocity, and bring about sharp reductions and enhanced security.[2]

Israel needs to take the independent initiative to halt the expansion of settlements that are blocking negotiations with the Palestinians and are unjustly removing the human right to a home, to economic trade, to one’s own state, and to water for Palestinians. President Obama has pressed Israel to take this initiative. Increasing numbers of church groups have joined in pressing for a halt to the expansion of settlements, and the U.S. media are paying increased attention.

But this urging has been repeatedly rejected by Prime Minister Netanyahu. As The New York Times said on November 30^th, 2012, “In March 2010, Israel approved plans for new housing during a visit by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. That November, it announced 1,000 units of housing just as Mr. Obama was trying to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians. In April 2011, it approved housing on the eve of a meeting between Mr. Obama and President Shimon Peres. This time, Israel’s latest construction announcement came a day after the Palestinian victory in obtaining enhanced status from the United Nations General Assembly.”

The Palestinians in the West Bank, from the Palestinian Authority to grass-roots Palestinians, have

1. taken the independent initiative to halt suicide attacks and to recognize the right of Israel to exist—prior to Israel’s building the Separation Fence
2. adopted the strategy of nonviolent resistance
3. turned their energy to constructive economic building and education
4. taken initiative for a vote by the General Assembly to admit them to nonmember observer status.

On the last point, 138 countries voted for the resolution, nine voted against, and 41 countries abstained. The Obama administration was in the small minority that voted against, thinking it had a commitment from the Israeli government to avoid settlement expansion, but this expectation was immediately dashed.

Now, with president Obama not dependent on a further election, is the time for strong U.S. pressure for the initiative of halting settlement expansion and negotiating peace in a way that takes the interests of both sides seriously. Secretary of State John Kerry is applying that pressure.

3. Use Cooperative Conflict Resolution.

Western interest in negotiating with Iran about its nuclear program was sparked by the revelation in 2002 that Iran had been secretly building uranium enrichment plants. Iran rightly insisted that enriching uranium to non-weapon levels is guaranteed by the Nonproliferation Treaty, but the secrecy of their program raised concerns. In the ensuing years, Iran’s temporary cessation of uranium enrichment and temporary adoption of enhanced inspections did not change Western insistence on immediate and indefinite cessation of enrichment. Because of a long history of Western imperial and domineering behavior, Iranians strongly backed their government’s refusal to stop enrichment, despite the severe privations imposed by sanctions. More recently, President Obama has acknowledged that at some future time, Iran would have the right to enrich to the electricity-producing level (3.5%) but not to weapons-grade (85%).

On its side, Iran in the past has stated its willingness to accept enhanced nuclear inspections and transparency in return for substantial easing of sanctions and uninterrupted allowance of low-level uranium enrichment. Unfortunately, the American domestic pressures will not permit Obama to make this kind of major breakthrough in the direction of just peacemaking, even though both sides have much to gain. We observe that Ayatollah Khameni’s statements often emphasize the importance of recognizing Iran’s dignity, as opposed to insulting that dignity. We propose that that the United States explicitly state its recognition for Iran’s dignity, and explicitly speak of our wish for full and dignified relations between Iran and the United States, and welcome into international participation for Iran, if we can solve the nuclear question even though strong differences with respect to Israel will persist until Israel and Palestine reach a just peace.  However, the US and Iran could productively pursue other areas of mutual interest, such as stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, and interdicting drug traffic from Afghanistan. We sense that Iran can be significantly more flexible if it senses respect for its dignity and can envision not only a solution on nuclear enrichment, but also a more respectful and normal international relationship, in broad terms.

The Obama administration has also combined economic sanctions with initiating direct conflict resolution discussions with the authoritarian military (SLORC) government of Burma, and Burma has now adopted a constitution and a partly non-military, partly elected government, and has allowed the party of Aung San Suu Kyi to participate in elections to parliament. Though steps toward democracy and human rights are painfully slow, and the government is making war on the Kachins in the hill country of eastern Burma, this is a major breakthrough after the policy of engaging in cooperative conflict resolution negotiations.

4. Acknowledge responsibility for conflict and injustice; seek repentance and forgiveness.

President Obama’s Cairo address January 4, 2009, said:

The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars.  More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.  Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam. . . .

I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.  Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

His words and actions toward Muslim and Arab nations have indeed been more respectful, humble, more seeking mutual cooperation. He has been pulling out of war against Iraq and Afghanistan, though increasing controversial attacks by drones. He has urged Israel to stop expanding settlements, though not strongly enough to get results—if results are even possible. These changes at least begin to open the door to more peaceful relations, as he explicitly called for in his Cairo address.

Working for Justice

5. Advance Human Rights, Religious liberty, and Democracy.

Just Peacemaking shows that no democratic nation with human rights made war against another democracy with human rights in the whole twentieth century. Spreading human rights, and thus spreading democracy peacefully—not by war—significantly reduces war.

The Obama administration supported movements for human rights and democracy by the people of the Arab nations; the U. S. was not supporting the status-quo, dictatorial governments as it had too often in the past. Arab and Muslim people increasingly support the drive for the Arab Spring, and oppose the violence of Al Qaeda. As the U. S. Muslim Public Affairs Council has said, “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims” and a violator of human rights to life of women, children, and civilians.

Activists in Syria “demanded the Syrian state implement broad democratic reforms; stop torturing, killing, and arresting peaceful demonstrators. . . . People are asking for civil rights and freedom and they are peaceful,” according to one activist. In Homs, Syria, demonstrators chanted: “We’re not from the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafi. We want freedom!” But Assad turned it into a civil war, and what kind of Syria will emerge is unknown. It is important that the U.S. government work to encourage a future with human rights for minority groups, including Alawites, Shiites, Christians, and Druze.

The Arab spring is an uprising across the Mideast for democracy and human rights. It is a remarkable spread of the worldwide demand for democracy and human rights. The Obama administration has been wise to see it as clearly a movement of the people, to give it support, but not to try to make it an America-led movement.

By contrast, the previous administration began the War against Iraq in 2003, and this led to enormous anti-American anger and recruitment of terrorists. Many Muslims are angry about what extremist Muslims claim is an American war against Islam. The official report of the United States Department of State on international terrorism[3] shows the astounding increase in terrorist incidents since the Iraq War and the torture of prisoners:

• 208 terrorist attacks caused 625 deaths in 2003;
• 3,168 attacks caused 1,907 deaths in 2004.
• 11,111 attacks caused 14,602 deaths in 2005.
• 14,371 attacks caused 13,186 deaths in 2006.
• 14,414 attacks caused 22,719 deaths in 2007.
• 11,662 attacks caused 15,708 deaths in 2008.
• 10,969 attacks caused 15,310 deaths in 2009.
• 11,604 attacks caused 13,186 deaths in 2010.
• 10,283 attacks caused 12,533 deaths in 2011.

The agreed assessment by the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies in 2006 said U.S. actions against Arab Muslims were increasing anger and increasing terrorist incidents and training for terrorism. Torture works: it works to cause widespread anger and to create increasing numbers of terrorists.

Our challenge is to undermine the claims that recruit people to terrorism. We do that by standing for our true identity: human rights, and liberty and justice for all, under God. The Obama administration has moved somewhat in that direction, has not initiated war in the Middle East, and has not defended torture or the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation.” The National Religious Campaign Against Torture is now urging President Obama to sign the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) and similar actions, but is not claiming the administration is engaging in torture.[4]

The detention center for prisoners from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was located in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so prisoners would not be under the protection of the U.S. Constitution, and the administration claimed prisoners were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions. This made it a black hole in which prisoners had no human rights protections except what their guards gave them. The U.S. Supreme Court has since determined that the prisoners must be protected by the Geneva Convention against torture. Some have been imprisoned there for ten years, without the habeus corpus right to a trial.

“President Obama has not been able to overcome congressional opposition to his promise to close the Guantanamo prison, but his policy is not to bring new detainees there. Instead, when suspects are captured, the administration facilitates their detention by sympathetic governments and, when possible, charges them in U.S. criminal courts” (L. A. Times, March 26, 2013).

6. Economic development that is sustainable and just.

Ted Gurr’s Why Men Rebel received the award for best book of the year from the American Political Science Association. It demonstrates that when people expect that their economies will continue trends of making jobs available, but instead experience “relative deprivation”—by comparison with what they had expected—this is the most frequent cause of civil wars, rebellions, and, by extension, terrorism. The cause of such rebellions is not the poorest of the poor, but relative deprivation. Therefore economic development that is sustainable and just is crucial for just peacemaking.

Most Arab countries have large numbers of young adults who see concentration of oil wealth in the hands of the few, and very high unemployment rates. When Palestinian economies were blocked and unemployment rates increased to 30%, then the Palestinian intifadas broke forth.[5]

President Bush increased aid to Africa, and this has continued during the Obama administration. The United States is giving some support to the economy of Palestinians on the West Bank, and this has helped the consistent support for nonviolence by Palestinians on the West Bank, but Gaza is severely blocked from trade or jobs, and has not committed itself to nonviolence.

The economy of most all nations is threatened not only by the climate crisis, with its record droughts, record storms, record ice cap melting, and record temperatures, but also by the fact that the earth is running out of oil and natural gas. Wars from relative economic deprivation, and wars over increasingly scarce natural resources, may be in our future because we will have exhausted most nonrenewable energy sources. Thus actions for energy conservation and for switching to renewable energy resources are hugely important for just peacemaking. President Obama has taken decisive actions to make automobiles more efficient, and to increase reliance on renewable energy. Organizations like the Sierra Club are giving him comparably high marks.

Include Enemies in the Community of Neighbors

7. Work with networks in the international system. AND 8. Support the United Nations and international organizations.

Following Jesus requires seeing enemies as members of the community of neighbors to whom God gives sunshine and rain, and whom we are to love. Love does not need to mean “like”; it means realistically trying to understand their interests and loyalties, affirming those interests and loyalties that can be affirmed as part of our common security (our dependence on others’ security for our own security), and including them in mutually respectful relations in community.

“International relations research has produced solid empirical evidence that peace is most effectively promoted by a cluster of democratic practices, economic interdependence, and commitment to international norms and institutions.” Nations more engaged in UN and regional organizations more often avoid getting entangled in war.[6] Unilateral policies cause more wars.

Furthermore, sometimes governments err, or are motivated by narrow interests or passions, so like individuals, they need checking and balancing by others. Taking seriously the assessments by other nations, by regional organizations, and by the United Nations can provide needed checks and balances.

For example, president George W. Bush promised he would not initiate the War Against Iraq before getting support from the UN Security Council. But when he realized the vote there would be 9 to 3 against the war, he initiated the war against the advice of other nations and the UN. The UN inspectors had reported they could find no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though they had investigated all likely locations suggested by the U.S. government. Now most Americans have concluded that war was a serious error. He rationalized the war by saying he would not go to the UN for permission to make a war defending the United States. But the War on Iraq was not a war of defense; it was U.S.-initiated intervention. And UN Charter article 51 allows a war of defense without UN Security Council permission.

The Obama administration has been careful with international checks and balances. When Libyan dictator Kadafi turned the nonviolent struggle against his rulership into a military attack that was threatening to kill large numbers of Libyans in Benghazi and eastern Libya, the Arab League, NATO, and the United Nations encouraged the U.S. to defend Benghazi from the air. The U.S. did take that military action. (It actually extended or exceeded the mandate to bombing Kadafi troops beyond the Benghazi area.) But it did not introduce U.S. troops on the ground, and very clearly avoided turning what was a home-grown Libyan struggle against their dictator into a U.S. colonialist takeover. Libyans are now grateful, and Arabs do not blame the U.S. for unilateral intervention.

Many of Obama’s advisors have urged that the U.S arm the rebels in the Syrian civil war, as Russia and Iran have been helping arm the dictatorial Assad regime in this long and bloody civil war. But Russia and China would veto this in the UN Security Council, and the Arab League has not asked for U.S. intervention. Shiite Muslims tend to support Assad, and Sunnis tend to support the rebels. President Obama has avoided having the U.S. be seen as forcing a victory by one group of Muslims against other Muslims. The U.S. has successfully urged the rebels to form a coordinating council, hoping to encourage a future Syria that would be led by an administration that would show some respect for minority religious groups. But it cannot control this outcome, as we also see in Egypt. At this time of writing, the U. S. administration has decided to give $60 million in nonlethal aid to the rebels. And Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and others are helping arm the rebels. The hope is that whatever the outcome, it will be seen by Arabs and Muslims as their own struggle, and not as a U.S.-imposed semi-colonialist takeover. This plus care in the Libyan struggle can help decrease Muslim resentment against the United States that so escalated during the declaration of The War On Terror, the War on Afghanistan, and the War on Iraq.

Just Peacemaking supports humanitarian intervention or the Responsibility to Protect, as in Bangladesh, Uganda, Rwanda, and Libya. But the chapter of Just Peacemaking on the United Nations, as well as the chapter on human rights, clearly say that this must not be unilateralist, but rather supported by the United Nations or by international opinion. It must guard against unilateralist domination or colonialism.

9. Reduce offensive weapons and weapons trade.

During the previous administration, the U.S. military budget soared from approximately $350 billion to $550 billion, in constant dollars. This does not include the additional costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars (about $300 billion per year), or the cost of nuclear weapons. During this period, the accumulated national indebtedness more than doubled from about $5.5 trillion to about $11.5 trillion. President Obama is slightly reducing the base military budget to $530 billion, and under sequestration, to $450 billion. But far larger savings are being achieved by getting out of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

George Shultz, Sam Nunn, James Goodby, Henry Kissinger, and other conservative former National Security officials urge specific steps toward abolishing nuclear weapons. They are saying that the threat now is not the Cold War, but terrorists getting nuclear weapons. We are more secure if we reduce and then abolish nuclear weapons worldwide.[7]

They are proposing this be done in stages, each of which increases security for the United States and the world:

• By international treaty, halt all production of nuclear fissile materials.
• The Senate should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
• By negotiations, agree with Russia to cut numbers of nuclear weapons in half, and then with other nations to cut further.

Twenty-two nations have abandoned their programs to develop nuclear weapons. Not one of them did so because some other nation refused to negotiate with them, as the U.S. did with North Korea and Iran for extended periods of time. Rather, other nations practiced cooperative conflict resolution with them in the form of negotiations and diplomacy, and helped them feel secure from attack. “Security concerns are the primary factors explaining why states choose to acquire or relinquish nuclear weapons.” Therefore, the conflict resolution discussions must prioritize nations’ security concerns.[8] We need to promise an independent initiative strategy toward North Korea and Iran so they can see a way they would be free from the threat that the United States might attack them if they do not have nuclear weapons.

The question is whether the Obama administration is offering some respect for North Korea’s concerns for its own national security. We need a shift from not only coercive pressures to positive inducements, independent initiatives.[9] We need to promise an independent initiative strategy toward North Korea and Iran so they can see a way they would be free from the threat that the United States might attack them if they do not have nuclear weapons.

The Obama administration negotiated the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) agreement, which re-established mutual, on-the-ground verification of American and Russian nuclear arsenals, and cut the deployed strategic weapons on each side by about 1/3. The U.S. Senate voted in strong bipartisan fashion (71-26) to ratify the new START treaty. President Obama has supported eventual abolition of nuclear weapons orally, but has not implemented other steps. He may feel blocked by the partisan opposition in the Senate, but we urge that negotiating a worldwide halt of all production of nuclear fissile materials, with inspections, will make the world safer in itself, and will also offer a face-saving way for Iran to become more flexible on limiting its own nuclear enrichment with thorough IAEA inspections.

But the increasing use of offensive drone attacks against terrorists in several nations, over objections by those nations, illustrates what just peacemaking diagnoses as the temptation to make offensive war when a nation calculates the enemy lacks the capacity to counter-attack. This now merits serious debate, and such debate is increasing. Drone attacks are different because the American people do not become informed about who is being killed in these attacks. Nor do those who direct the drone attacks experience the pain and suffering of war the way ground troops do. This removes some of the checks and balances that just war theory requires. At this time, the administration’s case that these attacks obey the Constitution is not open to the people.

10. Grassroots peacemaking groups and voluntary associations.

This practice is the responsibility of the people, not the government. But it does require that the administration not mislead the people with untruths, such as the previous administration’s claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that the War Against Iraq was a war defending America. Thus far, the Obama administration has been fairly truthful in explaining its policies. The present controversy concerns its statements after the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, but this is not about falsehoods in advocating a war.

In sum:  is there a name for the Obama policy?

Pundits have noted that polls show very high approval ratings by Americans for Obama foreign policy thus far. But they have puzzled over what to name the Obama policy.

Could it be that president Obama actually did recognize much of what he wanted to guide U.S. policy in the ten practices of just peacemaking? Could he have truly meant what he declared in his Nobel Peace Award Address? Could his policies be named Semi-Just-Peacemaking?

In the final presidential debate, which focused on foreign policy, Mitt Romney shifted to supporting almost all Obama foreign policies. If this also means basically widespread support for Just Peacemaking practices, then the paradigm of Just Peacemaking is receiving more rapid support than we had expected. But we do not want to identify just peacemaking with any particular administration.

Whatever our answer, as with all foreign policy, it would have to pay significant attention to the influence of forces of realism on Obama policies, not only the ethic of just peacemaking. The wars of intervention in the previous administration caused increased hostility by Arab and Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East and Pakistan. President Obama had reasons of realism to seek to reset policy toward Muslim nations. Those wars also caused looming budget deficits and strong criticisms by the people, both in the United States and internationally. Not only the ethics of just peacemaking, which he probably does support to a considerable extent in his heart, but reasons of realism cause him to seek better relations with Muslim nations and to seek to avoid another war. This could also cause him to be more imaginative about showing respect to Iran’s need for face-saving during negotiations about Iran’s nuclear enrichment. It could help seek a peaceful breakthrough rather than a mutually destructive war with Iran.

There has already been something of a breakthrough with Burma. Secretary of State John Kerry is reported to be serious about seeking a breakthrough for justice for Palestinians and security for Israel, and peace for both. Could there also be a breakthrough in this almost impossible-seeming context? It would make a major difference for relations with Muslim nations, who are strongly critical of Israeli settlement expansions and other violations of human rights in Palestine.

Any of these breakthroughs would be a major victory for Just Peacemaking. Certainly for the world and its people, who suffer too much from the lack of just peacemaking practices.

When Dr. Matthew Sleeth’s wife asked him what he thought was the biggest problem in the world, his response was, “The world is dying.”

That statement, made years ago when he was still an emergency room physician, has changed his life, said Sleeth, now a preacher, writer, and founder of Blessed Earth, an educational nonprofit that inspires and equips people of faith to become better stewards of the Earth.

“I said ‘the world is dying,’” Sleeth explained to the crowd that had gathered on May 1 for All-Seminary Chapel. “But I said that not as a scientist, but simply as someone who had been alive for half a century. There are no elms on Elm Street; no chestnuts on Chestnut Street. There are no caribou in Caribou, Maine.”

Sleeth had noticed that the world was dying, species were becoming extinct on massive scales, and that things could not continue this way for long. But he was not moved into action until he became a follower of Jesus Christ, and saw the connection between creation and faith.

“I began to wake up to the problem of evil in the world, and I began to connect that with a world that’s dying,” Sleeth said of his time spent working as an ER doctor. “And I kind of went through a crisis, because I was a rational, humanist, scientific thinker, and that mindset has no way to deal with evil. There is no evil in the back of a physics book.”

Sleeth went on a spiritual quest, reading books from all religions, including the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and the Bhagavad Gita, to find the answer to a world that is dying of evil.

“I found many beautiful truths, but I didn’t find the truth,” he said.

It was only when he read the Bible and the gospels that Sleeth said he found the answer.

“What do we do about evil? What do we do about a world that’s dying? The answer, for me, was Jesus,” he told the audience.

His newly found faith caused him to assess his lifestyle, he recounted. He researched his family’s footprint, and decided they need to scale down in order to be good to the planet. Sleeth then quit his job at the hospital, sold his house, moved into a much smaller space, and began attending church with his family members, who also accepted Christ.

When challenged by a local church pastor about God’s imperative for people to be stewards of the Earth, Sleeth read through the entire Bible underlining everything where God revealed himself in creation and told people to care for creation.

He found that the Bible is fraught with references to nature.

“It’s interesting the Bible tells history differently,” Sleeth said. “I don’t know whether Abraham was tall or short, but I know the species of trees he was sitting under when the angels came by (Genesis 18). I don’t know whether Deborah French-braided her hair when she held court or not, but I know the species of tree that she sat under (Judges 4).”

Even the first Psalm in the Bible, Sleeth said, mentions a tree.

“A tree, a vine, a stick, a bush is mentioned more times in the Bible than any other living thing other than people,” he said, noting that Christ also died on cross, which became the new tree of Life saving humanity from sin and death.

Sleeth encouraged the audience to explore creation care, and how it is not only an important task given to people by God, but also can be used to bring people to Christ.

He noted that he has seen more and more people with scientific backgrounds coming to explore faith, because they are putting the gospel and nature together. Sleeth urged the community to be able to articulate how creation is mentioned in the Bible, so that they are able to invite people into salvation.

However, creation care is not about becoming scientists, he said.

“You are not meant to be environmental scientists, nor are you meant to make people in the pews into environmental scientists and distract them from their focus on Christ,” Sleeth said. “You’re meant to make them better Christians, and that means making them a better gardener where they are, whether they’re a teacher or a manufacturer.”

Editor’s Note: This is an open letter the editor received through the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. Since its initial distribution, it has been posted elsewhere.

Threefold Grief of Mine
(A letter to my American Friends)

Millions of people have been grieved by the bombing in Boston. I suppose I am one of them. No, I have never been to Boston. I do not have much connection with the city.  I don’t think I know many people there either. For various reasons I think my grief is threefold.

It grieves me to think of the innocent people who have been affected by the attack.  The feeling of loss is almost tangible. Those who died will never grow old, will never be able to materialize their hopes and dreams.  Those who loved them will never get over the pain of bereavement.  I too lost my son a few years ago, and I think I know what I am saying. The physical wounds of those who were wounded in the attack will be eventually healed but their emotional wounds might mime them mentally forever. In our (Eastern) liturgical calendar it is still a Lenten season. We fast and pray during this season. Every Friday we come to our church and observe the day of the crucifixion.  I wish it was only remembrance what happened on the Calvary two thousand years ago.  But the pain of the crucifixion is still so real in the world we belong to.  Sadly we hear every day that our fellow human beings are being ‘crucified’ as a result of  injustice, wars, military and terrorist attacks.  Bostonians have also been ‘crucified’ very much like other peoples in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. The difference is that we are sadly accustomed to hear about death tolls from less powerful and fortunate countries than America.  I need to offer my condolences and deep sympathy to all those who have been ‘crucified’ both in Boston and everywhere. Crucifixion is not the end of the story.  There is a hope beyond it, the hope of Easter.  Which will wipe the tears of the suffering and grieving not in the eschatological future but here and now.

It also grieves me when I think of the wasted lives two young people who were responsible for the bombing. I am deeply saddened that they are originally come from Chechnya. The Muslim country which has suffered incredible oppression and humiliation by ‘Christian’ Russia.  For last couple of decades one fifth of Chechen population have been eliminated by troops who had been blessed for the mission by the Orthodox Christian clergy. Political Christianity was confronted by political Islam in Chechnya. Chechnya is our neighbouring country.  Historically Chechens and Georgians have been enemies. Our enmity was heightened by their religious difference as Muslims and Orthodox Christians respectively and also by brutality committed by Chechens in recent wars in Georgia.  When the refugees fled Russia during the brutal cold winter we responded specifically in response to the teaching of Jesus to love our enemies.  We carried emergency supplies to the refugees and cared for them over a long period of time. We were engaged in all sorts of medical, educational, artistic and social projects in their refugee camps. Rather unexpectedly friendship and love grew between us and the Chechen refugees.  We could not help it.  In 1999 before the New Year we asked Chechen children to write down for us what their dreams for the New Year was.  We received hundreds of little stories written by the war children.  Some of them will stay with me for the rest of my life.

One twelve years old Muhammad wrote: “My dream is to die in fighting against Christians.” Then he realised that it was the Georgian Baptist Christians who looed after them and then he changed his mind. He crossed the word ‘Christian’ and wrote on the top of it ‘Russians.’ This little child managed to distinguish between political and religious Christianity.

It happened only because they had seen and experience Christian love and care.  The two boys who were responsible for Boston bombing have come from the same background.  They belong to the same Muslim nation which had been deeply offended by ‘Christian’ state, if one call Russia or any other countries Christian.  But unlike our little Muhammad they failed to tell the difference between political and religious Christianity. I am very sad about it but not at all surprised this is what Christians are also doing they can not tell the difference between political and religious Islam.

It grieves my heart when I think that what has happened in Boston will cause yet another wave of hatred towards our Muslim brothers and sisters both in the USA and beyond. We will never know how many innocent Muslims will be humiliated, hurt and abused as a result of the violence in Boston.  This will only help the representatives of political Islam to recruit more people. This should be stopped.

All the security services of the world, police a and military forces may try their best but I am afraid they can not stop hatred and fear.  Love, forgiveness and kindness can! In my country Muslims have been continuously humiliated. After one of recent incidents we went in a sizable delegation to Batumi region where majority of Georgian Muslims live. In this delegation we had some Georgian Baptists, American Baptists (ABC) let by Rev Roy Meddley and British Anglicans led by Bishop Stephen Platten.  We refused to stay in a hotel. We went to stay at Muslim families instead. We had dinner with our Muslim hosts, breakfast, next morning and by the lunch  time we found out the Muslim perspective on Christians and Christian perspective on Muslims had dramatically changed. We became friends. Encounters and hospitality must be one of the keys to break the walls of separation. A few days later I received a letter from the head of the Georgian Muslim community thanking me for the visit and also saying that ‘it was first time he experienced genuine respect and love from representatives non-Muslim clergy.’ At first I felt flattered by this message but then I realised that it should not be taken as a complement.  This man who must be in his fifties has spent most of his life, half a century, without ever experiencing respect from Christian clergy, office holders of the religion of love!  I think this is disastrous. The Berlin wall came down in 1991 but the wall of separation between Christians and Muslims is still very much up there. Unlike the Berlin wall it is not tangible it is solidly built with the mortar of fear suspicion and hatred. It is built in our hearts and minds.  Good news is that the walls ultimately will come down. Blessed are those who participate in its demolition.

Crises like the Boston bombing can possibly help us to transform the crises into creative process of peace building. I would particularly like to urge my fellow clergy men and women in the USA to make their best in channelling this crises into discovery of  true meaning of religion. It is ironic that in theory Christianity is religion of love and Islam is a religion of tolerance.  We need to rediscover these theoretical constructs from the treasury of our faith traditions.

In Georgian tradition there is a poem of a Tiger and a Young Man which was recorded in the highlands of my country.  In the poem a young and beardless hunter who bumped into a tiger in the rocky mountain range. In the fierce battle both the tiger and the young man fell.  The mother is of the young man is bitterly mourning the death of her son. She is tormented in her nightmares. She cannot find peace until a strange thought crosses her mind. She starts thinking of the tiger’s mother who has also lost her son and says:

“Perhaps the tiger’s mother grieves
And mourns her dead son with a louder lament;
Perhaps her heart is bursting now
With sobs that rend the  firmament.
So quickly will I go to her
And strive to soothe her sorrow deep.
She’ll proudly tell me of her child,
I will tell her of mine,
And we in common grief will weep.”

I wonder if this is the way we should find peace with ourselves and with others: looking at ourselves with the eyes of perceived strangers and enemies and ‘weeping in common grief.’  Perhaps we should also mourn together the needless deaths of those who were brutally killed and those who were responsible for their killing. I know this is not easy but who said that healing of the wounds of our crucified planet is going to be easy!?

Archbishop Malkhaz Songulashvili
Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia
Tbilisi, 5^th Sunday of Lent, 2013

Editor’s Note: This is the second post in a series of two on David Gushee’s comments during the final event of our “Public Theology and the Sacredness of Human Life” series at All Saints Church on April 21, 2013. Included below is a video recording of his talk that day. Find the first post here – it was not covered in the recorded talk.

The most important finding of this panel is that it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture. 

This conclusion is grounded in a thorough and detailed examination of what constitutes torture in many contexts, both historical and legal. The Task Force examined court cases in which torture was deemed to have occurred both inside and outside the country and in instances in which the United States has leveled the charge of torture against other governments.

We found that US torture occurred in many instances and across a wide range of theaters. This judgment is not restricted to the three famous cases in which detainees of the CIA were subjected to waterboarding which had been approved at the highest levels. The panel concluded without dissent that arguments that the nation did not engage in torture and that much of what occurred should be defined as something less than torture are not credible.

The second notable conclusion of the Task Force is that the nation’s highest officials bear some responsibility for the spread of torture. 

The most important element may have been to declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al Qaeda and Taliban captives in Afghanistan or Guantánamo.  The administration never specified what rules would apply instead.

The other major factor was President Bush’s authorization of brutal techniques by the CIA for selected detainees.

The CIA also created its own detention and interrogation facilities—at several locations in Afghanistan, and even more secretive “black sites” in Thailand, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania where high value captives were interrogated, often brutally.

The consequence of these official actions and statements are now clear: many lower-level troops said they believed that ‘the gloves were off’ regarding treatment of prisoners. By the end of 2002, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, interrogators began routinely depriving detainees of sleep by means of shackling them to the ceiling.  Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld later approved interrogation techniques in Guantánamo that included sleep deprivation, stress positions, nudity, sensory deprivation, and threatening detainees with dogs. Many of the same techniques were later used in Iraq. Often these were used in combination, enhancing their brutality.

Much of the torture that occurred in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq was never explicitly authorized.  But the authorization of the CIA’s techniques depended on explicitly setting aside the traditional legal rules that protected captives.

The architects of the detention and interrogation regimes sought and were given crucial support from people in the medical and legal fields. This implicated profound ethical questions for both professions and the report attempts to address those issues. Issues of professional ethics are important for those taking the detainee abuse issue seriously.

On the medical side, policymakers eagerly accepted a proposal presented by a small group of behavioral psychologists to use the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program (SERE) to fashion a harsh interrogation regime for people captured in the new war against terrorism.

The use of the SERE program was a signal example of flawed decisionmaking at many levels with serious consequences. The SERE program was developed to deal with the situation of downed U.S. airmen providing false statements or confessions to their captors in the Korean War after they were tortured.  Its promoters had no experience in interrogation, the ability to extract truthful and usable information from captives.

Lawyers in the Justice Department provided legal guidance in the aftermath of the attacks that seemed to go to great lengths to allow treatment that amounted to torture.  To deal with the regime of laws and treaties designed to prohibit and prevent torture, the lawyers provided novel, if not acrobatic interpretations to allow the mistreatment of prisoners.

Those early memoranda which defined torture narrowly would engender widespread and withering criticism once they became public.  The successors of those government lawyers would eventually move to overturn those legal memoranda. Even though the initial memoranda were disowned, the memorable language that briefly defined torture in this country as only acts that might implicate organ failure remain a stain on the image of the United States and are a potential aid to repressive regimes elsewhere when they seek approval or  justification for their own acts.

What the early  opinions from lawyers and the advice from psychologists about how to manipulate detainees during interrogation shared in common was that they both seemed to be aimed primarily at giving the client – in this case, administration officials — what they wanted to hear. Information or arguments that contravened the advice were ignored, minimized or suppressed. Our recommendations address ways to prevent this kind of problem from occurring in the future.

The detention policies of the Bush administration may be divided into two different periods. The aggressive “forward-leaning” approach in the early years changed, notably beginning in the period of 2005 to 2006. There were, no doubt, many reasons for this.

One factor was certainly the disclosure of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib in 2004 and the ensuing condemnation both at home and abroad accompanied by feelings of shame among many Americans, who rightly hold higher expectations of the men and women we send to war. It is difficult to overstate the effect of the Abu Ghraib disclosures on the direction of U.S. policies on detainee treatment.

We discovered that there may have been another opportunity to effect a shift in momentum that was lost. That involved an internal debate at the highest levels of the International Committee of the Red Cross as to how aggressive to be with U.S. policymakers. The ICRC, by tradition, does not speak publicly about what its people learn about detention situations. But some officials were so offended by their discoveries at Guantánamo they argued the group had to be more forceful in confronting the Defense Department.  In the end, the top leadership of the ICRC decided against confrontation and a valuable opportunity may have been missed.

Another observation is that President Obama came to quickly discover that his promised sweeping reform of the detention regime could not be so easily implemented. A major reason for this was that Congress, when finally engaged in the issue, resisted. The opposition to President Obama’s plans was sometimes bipartisan, notably to those proposals to close Guantánamo and bring some of the detainees onto U.S. soil for trial. Many believe Mr. Obama and his aides did not move swiftly enough, thus allowing opposition to build in Congress.

Today, the U.S. is still detaining people it regards as dangerous. But the treatment of supposed high-value foes has been transformed in significant ways. The U.S. military, learning from its experience, has vastly improved its procedures for screening captives and no longer engages in large-scale coercive interrogation techniques.  Just as importantly, the regime of capture and detention has been overtaken by technology and supplanted in large measure by the use of drones.  Drones, of course, raise other issues, which go beyond my agenda today.

Conclusions

My role on this panel primarily consisted of keeping the moral questions alive in our deliberations and helping the panel avoid succumbing to the mere utilitarianism so often dominant in public discussions of torture. Though we deal with “efficacy” in the report, “Does torture work” is not a question that can exhaust public reflection on detainee policy. In fact, it is a misleading question even in merely legal terms because our legal obligations include an absolute ban on torture, whether torture might “work” toward some goal or whether it doesn’t.

I hasten to add that everyone I encountered on the panel was also operating with a moral compass that mattered deeply to them, whatever might have been its deepest wellsprings. I admire the way that panel members were able to combine love of country with a higher love of the good and the right. Another way to say it is that they did not absolutize national security, as if concern for protecting America could justify anything and everything that one might conceivably undertake toward that end.

For me, concern about detainee abuse and torture was motivated by deeply held Christian convictions related to the sacred worth of each and every human being, without exception, in God’s sight. My work on the torture issue over many years deeply informs my new book on The Sacredness of Human Life (Eerdmans, 2013). It deepens my sense of the absolute necessity of this ethical framework to help us transcend the passions of the moment, especially during wartime. I was glad to discover patriotic, morally thoughtful ex-government leaders of the caliber of those on the panel. I was gladdened by their willingness to follow the truth where it led regardless of prior views or any kind of party loyalty or ideological affiliation. The report makes me proud to be an American. I am also proud to have been able to bear a quiet Christian witness in public life through my involvement in this taskforce.

There is a final lesson to be learned about the role of activists, Christian or otherwise. Most of what anti-torture activists reported, and argued, as far back as 2002, has been borne out by further research and analysis. This is not the first time that a committed minority, doggedly pursuing an issue based on moral convictions, has been proven right in its concerns even if at the inception of their work they were derided as foolish or misguided. The world, our nation, and the church always needs its cadres of morally serious activists who keep moral issues before the conscience of communities that very much would prefer not to address them. May we continue to produce and nurture such prophetic voices.

Editor’s Note: This is the first post in a series of two on David Gushee’s comments during the final event of our “Public Theology and the Sacredness of Human Life” series at All Saints Church on April 21, 2013. Find the second post here – including a video recording of his talk.

Introduction

In the Fall of 2005 I was just minding my own business, sitting at my desk at the Southern Baptist college in Tennessee where I used to teach, when I got an email from the main editor at Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism. He was wondering if I would be willing to write a moral analysis of the issue of torture for their magazine. He said that they were getting a number of inquiries from evangelical Christians in the armed forces and intelligence services (there are lots of them) who were troubled by the treatment of prisoners that they were seeing or being asked to participate in. This was also not that long after the release of the horrifying pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, so the issue of prisoner abuse was on people’s minds. They wanted me to address it in their pages. I didn’t have much time, I hadn’t written about this before, but I felt I had to say yes to this invitation.

I Enter the Torture Fight

On February 1, 2006, the article came out. The editors called it “Five Reasons Why Torture Is Always Wrong.” I said right from the beginning that the 9/11 attacks were heinous and that the US had every right to defend itself. After that I tried to confine the question to whether the repertoire of legitimate self-defense measures, from a Christian perspective, could include torture. I said “absolutely not.”

I offered five reasons. Listen for the way my Christian tradition and its way of reasoning functioned in what follows:

1) Torture violates the dignity of the human being, made in the image of God.

Here is my actual language in the article:

“Every inch of the human body and every aspect of the human spirit come from God and bear witness to his handiwork. We are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–28). Human dignity, value, and worth come as a permanent and ineradicable endowment of the Creator to every person…Christians, at least, should be trained to see in every person the imprint of God’s grandeur. This should create in us a sense of reverence. Here, we say—and we say it even of detainees in the war on terror—is a human being sacred in God’s sight, made in God’s image, someone for whom Christ died.”

2) Torture mistreats the vulnerable and violates the demands of justice.

I said: “In the Scriptures, God’s understanding of justice tilts toward the vulnerable. “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry” (Ex. 22:21–23). Primary forms of injustice include violent abuse and domination of the powerless… The 83,000 people who have been detained by our government and military in the last four years are, as prisoners, vulnerable to injustice. Those who have been tortured are victims of injustice.”

3) Authorizing torture trusts government too much.

I said: “Human beings are sinful through and through (Rom. 3:10–18). We are not to be trusted, and we are especially dangerous when in possession of unchecked power. This applies to all of us…Given human sinfulness, not only must people be told not to torture, we must also strengthen the structures of due process, accountability, and transparency that buttress those standards and make them less likely to be violated…It is not enough for U.S. government officials to say they can be trusted to act ‘in keeping with our values’—not without due process, accountability, and transparency. No government is so virtuous as to overcome the laws of human nature, or to be beyond the need for democratic checks and balances.”

4) Torture dehumanizes the torturer.

I said: “Loosening longstanding restrictions on physical and mental cruelty risks the dehumanization not just of the tortured, but also of the torturers. What may be intended as carefully calibrated interrogation techniques could easily tempt their implementers toward sadism—the infliction of pain for the sheer fun of it, especially in the heat of military conflict, in a climate of fear and loathing of the enemy, and in the context of an endless war on terror. How many of us could be trusted to draw the line consistently between the permitted “grabbing, poking, and pushing” and the banned “punching, slapping, and kicking”? How much self-control can we reasonably expect people to exercise?”

5) Torture erodes the character of the nation that tortures.

I said: “A nation is a collective moral entity with a character, an identity that carries across time. Causes come and go, threats come and go, but the enduring question for any social entity is who we are as a people. This is true of a family, a church, a school, a civic club, or a town. It is certainly true of a nation. Sen. John McCain, who has led the Republican charge against torture, recently said, “This isn’t about who they are. This is about who we are. These are the values that distinguish us from our enemies.”

Then, in conclusion, I said: “It is past time for evangelical Christians to remind our government and our society of perennial moral values, which also happen to be international and domestic laws. As Christians we care about moral values, and we seek to vote on the basis of such values. We care deeply about human rights violations around the world. Now it is time to raise our voices and say an unequivocal no to torture, a practice which has no place in our society and violates our most cherished moral convictions.”

And then all hell broke loose.

My daughter got in a life-threatening car accident just before the CT article came out. While I was in the hospital with her over the next few weeks I began getting the pile of commendations and mainly condemnations I ought to have expected all along. While she lay unconscious I was attacked for my shrill partisanship, my overly emotive moral analysis, my betrayal of Christian values, etc. And those were the emails from my friends.

But meanwhile a community of like-minded new friends came and found me. Over the next several years I got catapulted into an anti-torture/pro-rule of law, pro-human-rights community of Christians, Jews, Muslims, secularists, retired military, retired judges, and so on who deeply appreciated the article even where they did not share its religious premises. They asked me to work with them. A few asked me to do more in my own community to protest torture. I will be grateful always for the initiative taken towards me by Rich Killmer, leader of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, who has always been so supportive of my work on this issue.

I ended up leading an evangelical organization we called Evangelicals for Human Rights, founded in 2006. We quietly drafted a lengthy Evangelical Declaration against Torture that gained a 39-1 vote of the board of the National Association of Evangelicals in 2007. The NAE is kind of like the National Council of Churches of the evangelical world. This was big news because it was so very surprising given most evangelicals’ political proclivities. I was invited to submit testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I met Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and got to ask the future president on CNN what his stance on torture was. The stance he articulated in response to my question became official government policy in January 2009.

Still, today public opinion polls show that an absolute rejection of the morality of torture is the minority view in the US population and especially among my own community of southern white evangelicals.

Meanwhile, the lack of any publicly released government study of US detainee policy has left most Americans in the dark about what actually happened in our name, not just after 9/11 but as far back as the Clinton presidency, and what are the proper lessons to be learned from it.

The Report of the Task Force on Detainee Treatment

In the next several paragraphs I largely paraphrase language from the just-released Detainee Task Force report, which I fully support and have signed:

In the absence of such a governmental study, The Constitution Project, a nonpartisan public interest organization devoted to the rule of law, set out to address this situation. It gathered a Detainee Task Force composed of experienced former officials who had worked at the highest levels of the Judiciary, Congress, the diplomatic service, law enforcement, the military, and other parts of the executive branch. The co-chairs were former Ambassador James Jones (D) and former Congressman Asa Hutchinson (R). Recognized experts in law, medicine and ethical behavior were added to the group.

I was added as a Christian ethicist. It was a high honor and I took my responsibilities seriously.

We found that after 9/11, government officials were guided by a mandate from the President to do whatever was necessary to prevent another such attack. Those officials whose decisions and actions later contributed to charges of abuse undertook those measures as their best efforts to protect their fellow citizens.

But their intentions did not relieve them of their obligations to comply with existing treaties and laws. The need to respect legal and moral codes designed to maintain minimum standards of human rights is especially great in times of crisis, and especially fragile. Being able to hold onto one’s moral principles in times of crisis is a key mark of moral maturity both for persons and institutions.

Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on Tamisha’s blog (From a crazy city girl to a mad farmer: a Wendell Berry response) and is used here with permission.

Ok so I went to a Wendell Berry reading today and was very inspired to write a response. I realized that as I was writing that its been a while since I’ve written anything creative so please forgive my rusty skills. I know that I am nowhere close to writing at a level such as his but hopefully you will appreciate my humble attempt:

From a crazy city girl to a mad farmer:

I know nothing of trees.
Of tending the land
Or of the feel of soil between my fingers.
But if you teach me how to plant,
Maybe I too will learn to grow.
I know nothing of stillness.
Of taking unconditional breaths of unconditioned air,
Or the sounds of rivers rushing.
But if you teach me silence
Maybe I can make some sense of the noise.
I know too much of violence.
Am all too familiar with what it means to defend ones own.
But if you teach me what I am fighting for,
Maybe I can put down the sword.
If you remind me of the paths beneath these roads or the land beyond these buildings
Maybe I can re-imagine what abundance really looks like.
So never stop telling the stories of the land
Or inviting others into that beautiful silence
Because if you teach them life
Maybe they too can practice resurrection.

Tamisha Tyler is an MDiv student at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA.

Editor’s Note: This post in its present form first appeared on the IMES blog (The Medium is the Message) and is used here with permission.

This painting is about the deep unrest I feel about my government’s increasing use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s or drones) to assassinate people we assert are a threat to us and our interests. We assert that we have intelligence linking them to the Taliban or Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet my government takes these actions in secret and doesn’t publicly acknowledge that they are taking them.

There appears to be no check on our government’s executive power to kill anyone, anywhere in the world who we deem a threat.

Social Assassination

I completed this piece in response to a series of lectures hosted by the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology and the Arts at Fuller Seminary, Calif. The day after I completed it, Israel launched an offensive near Gaza. Not only did they make use of UAV missile strikes for targeted assassinations openly, but they used twitter to post links to video from the drone strikes and Photoshopped images of people they had killed listing the alleged crimes for which they have been judged and executed – their faces rendered in on a blood-red background.

During the Brehm lectures, Shane Hipps, Barry Taylor and Ryan Bolger discussed 20th century sociologist, Marshall Mcluhan’s assertion that all technology is an extension of one or more human senses. I see the drones as an extension of not just our senses but our agency to kill, much as the sword extends the killing reach of the hand. The fact of our being able to carry out these targeted killings is being mistaken for a value or moral imperative to do them. The minimized “collateral damage,” to nearby women, children and other unintended targets is used as a supporting argument.

My Objections

As a follower of Jesus, and a human being, I object to people killing people. When Jesus’ own friends resorted to defensive violence on his behalf he stopped Peter’s swordplay and healed the damage done. Jesus was on the receiving end of individual, political and religious violence mediated through the technology of the cross. On the cross Jesus showed us powerfully and eternally how cycles of violence can only end by refusal to participate.

As an American, I especially object to my government killing people. I object even more when they do it without any check on that power and without transparent oversight. Secret courts don’t count as a check precisely because they are secret.

I singled out Israel above, but my painting is a critique of all those who would turn their human brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons into “collateral damage,” “monsters” or any other mask that makes them easier to kill –to erase. To say that Israel has had to adopt the tactics of terrorists (assassination etc.) to fight terrorists or that America has had to do the same is to admit that we are becoming what we most fear and deride.

No matter how far we distance ourselves through drones, rockets or bullets, the use of violence transforms and deforms both the giver and the receiver. We have extended not only our senses, but our own violent selves out into the world, to our great moral, ethical, economic and human peril.

Matt Lumpkin is an MDiv graduate from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California where he now works at the intersection of theological education and technology. He is also the founder of read-together.com , an experiment in social reading designed to bring people in very different parts of the world into conversation around the bible to see how the people you read with change what you read. More at mattlumpkin.com

Editor’s Note: This column first appeared in The Washington Post (Obama’s new ‘Just War Peace’ policy) and is used here with permission. Though Susan published this piece several years ago, its relevance has not passed with time.

President Obama broke with traditional Just War thinking in his Nobel prize acceptance speech, and so far almost no one seems to have noticed. The President said that the “old architecture” of thinking about war and peace is “buckling.” What is required now, argued the President, is to “think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of just peace.”

If there is an emerging “Obama Doctrine” on war and peace, it is contained in these “new ways,” not in the older Just War theory alone. Just War theory, a doctrine first developed by St. Augustine in the early 5th century, has been around for a long time. Just War language was a significant part of Obama’s Oslo speech, and it was used specifically to describe the kinds of structural violence that endures in the world, especially “genocide in Darfur; systematic rape in Congo; or repression in Burma.”

The President is far from naive about the extraordinary challenge to ideas of both peace and war such conditions pose. But the President did not stop with his reflections on systematic evils. He went on to provide a specific introduction to a new concept for thinking about peace and war, a theory called “Just Peace.” Just Peace is an emerging fourth paradigm that goes beyond Just War, Pacifism or Crusade. Just Peace theory actually outlines how you get to “lasting peace.”

Most commentators on the President’s speech haven’t even noticed the Just Peace language. They zero right in on the Just War language. But the President is actually using Just Peace as a way to talk about how we cannot let the tragic nature of enduring violence in this world have the last word. We can act positively to create the conditions for peace. In contrast to President Bush’s dualistic thinking about war and peace, evil and good, Obama is a far more subtle thinker and he refuses to be drawn into simplistic categories.

In his Oslo speech, the President systematically moves through Just Peace theory in technically correct ways. Just Peace theory has 10 “practice norms” — actions that can be undertaken to increase the likelihood that peace will develop and be sustained. These include not only the proven methods of conflict resolution (nonviolent direct action and threat reduction), but also an emphasis on human rights and religious liberty, just and sustainable economic development, and support for the United Nations. The President touched on all of these Just Peace criteria in his speech, including support for human rights through “painstaking diplomacy,” and a recognition that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights means that “if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.”

The President moved on to other Just Peace criteria, noting that “a just peace includes not only civil and political rights — it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.”

Peace is the good we seek; war can never be a good. While individuals show courage, “war itself is never glorious.” Indeed, “War promises human tragedy.”

Complexity, realism and idealism together, a recognition that these times demand new thinking about peace and war, and a specific repudiation of the dualism of good versus evil: that’s the emerging Obama doctrine.

Susan Thistlethwaite is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the former president of Chicago Theological Seminary (1998-2008).

I have a confession to make: I was a member of the National Rifle Association when I was growing up in the Midwest. At summer camp I competed in their approved program of marksmanship. Somewhere in my attic are probably the graying targets and awards that show my growing ability, as I moved up through the ranks—toward the goal of sharpshooter (which I never reached). I read their magazine, and I think it was an ad in that magazine that I responded to when I sent off for my first B-B-Gun. I still remember the carving on the handle when it arrived and the long shiny black barrel—it occupied a special place in my bedroom. My friends and I would take our guns and ride our bikes out to the empty cornfields outside of town—shooting our feeble charges at rabbits and crows.

That was a long time ago and I am no longer a member of the NRA; in fact I cannot imagine being a member today. The events of the last month have made me think about all that has changed since those days. While many of us grew up in small towns; now we mostly live in sprawling metropolises; summer camps and their competitions have given way to gun clubs and sprawling gun shows. Indeed in some places today it is as easy to buy an automatic weapon as it was for me to buy my B-B-Gun.

But the events of this month have made me reflect on something else, more important than any of these developments, something that has not changed since I was growing up, something I want to speak about it in this article: Guns occupy a special place in the American imagination, one that is defined more by emotion than logic. Guns are nothing like the lawnmowers and tools that we keep in our garage—all the instruments we use to order and repair our homes. They occupy a special place, literally and figuratively, in our lives. For many people guns have a symbolic meaning that transcends any actual function they may have. In part, I understand this: I still remember the feelings I had when I opened the gun when it arrived in the mail and when I carried it around on my bike. It defined special places and times that still resonate in my imagination.

On the most basic level, for many, guns embody gee-whiz technology and spiffy materials, put together with highly skilled craftsmanship. Comments in the press since the Sandy Hook shooting have sometimes referred to this  fundamental, aesthetic response to the gun—I like the way it feels in my hand, one is quoted as saying. This attraction to the technology of weaponry is nothing new, it is characteristic of the human condition since Saul tried to persuade David to wear his armor when he took on Goliath. In the Aeneid Virgil  says Aeneas “couldn’t gaze enough” at the beautiful weapons that Venus had given him:

“The fearsome helmet with its flaming crest,
The deadly sword, the blood-red corselet rigid
With bronze: enormous like a cloud.” (VIII, 620-622).

Responses to owning and carrying guns of course go beyond their aesthetic appeal. They represent, for many people, a space in their lives that they treasure and share with their closest family and friends. For many the annual hunting trip is fixed in the schedule for years ahead, and for these, hunting—like  fishing or skiing or surfing—is such a central (and pleasurable) activity that they cannot imagine life without it. Even here, I can understand how people can come to “live for” their regular hunting trips, or their competitive shooting.  It is hard for me to see that there is anything intrinsically wrong with this—it can be seen as part of the fullness of life that God allows his children to live amidst the goodness and gifts of the created order.

But there is a further appeal of guns that surfaces frequently that I find troubling—where that special place the gun occupies takes on a more sinister character. For too many people, guns have come to represent protection from some perceived threat from their neighbor. These feel vulnerable, so they claim, when they do not have the “protection” that is represented by a gun. This fear is evidenced by the spike in gun sales any time some official even speaks about gun control. People respond to all such discussions as though the chief threat from the government is that it will deprive people of their right to protect themselves from some lurking assailant.

Though I find these fears difficult to fully comprehend, I recognize that they constitute one of the strongest attractions drawing people to guns. It is a further example of that unique place that guns occupy, one that is nurtured as much by imagined terrors as by remembered pleasures—that is by fear as much as desire. And this is what makes any rational discussion of restrictions on gun ownership so difficult. Somehow it doesn’t matter, for example, that the threat from an armed intruder is far less than a serious automobile accident; I still need the security represented by a gun in the drawer beside my bed.

What concerns me as a Christian is that the fears that correlate with gun ownership (of which Christians I’m sure make up their fair share), are not seen as a moral issue that call for careful biblical and theological reflection. I cannot do justice to the issues involved in this small space, but let me simply raise two of them here and suggest why they are important.

First, it seems particularly worrisome that a reflex response to an encounter with strangers, whether they live down the street or across the ocean, is to arm ourselves. One of the wisest responses that I read to the tragedy of the school shooting, was that of a psychologist who stressed that we insist to our children that while there are some bad people out there, most people are good and helpful. The obsession with arming ourselves—and if NRA had its way, arming officials at schools, suggests that the world is a hostile place and that many people are dangerous. Indeed such attitudes can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies. When we treat strangers as invariably dangerous we can easily create tensions that otherwise would not exist.  Contrariwise if we treat strangers as potential friends, we can diffuse whatever tensions might exist. Even enemies, Christ insisted, are to be loved; and persecutors prayed for.

Second, the impulse to arm oneself suggests that we must be responsible, by ourselves, for our own safety and security. One of the most astounding claims repeated in recent weeks is that, after all, guns represent the reason that we now live in a free country—guns won the West. This reflects a fundamental failure to understand that our lives are bound up with our neighbor, and our security is, finally, in God’s hands, not our own. This does not mean that police or military should not be armed, and may not use weapons to protect the populace. But it does mean, as Scriptures remind us, that even when the watchman is armed and patrols the city, unless God watches the city the watchman watches, but in vain.

Bill Dyrness is Professor of Theology and Culture and former Dean of the School of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA.