Christianity and American Militarism:
Comments on President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Speech
Last night President Obama gave his State of the Union Speech. At least some of my friends are enthusiastic about that speech. I’m not, for a variety of reasons. One is Obama’s totally uncritical and completely wholehearted endorsement of American exceptionalism, the notion that the United States is somehow radically different from other nations, that we embody principles of liberty and equality in a way that no other country does. That simply isn’t true. We are not a shining light on a hill as Obama and American exceptionalism insist that we are. We are simply the latest in history's succession of world empires, better (sometimes much better) in some ways than some others, no worse than most, typical of empire in most respects. America is not the light to the nations; for us Christians at least Jesus is. Obama’s speech last night was nothing but the latest in a long line of imperialist speeches from the head of an imperialist government. It was better than some, although the ways in which it was better don’t rise much above the level of vague policy outlines with no specifics. Some of its proposals were simply appalling. Before the massive shift of the American political spectrum to the right that began with the disastrous presidency of Ronald Reagan in the nineteen eighties we never thought we’d hear a Democratic president call for a five year freeze on spending for government programs that actually benefit people while giving only a meaningless nod in the direction of reducing military spending and restoring a semblance of fairness to our tax structure by making sure the wealthy pay their fair share. On the whole there was little to like about the speech other than Obama's polished and appealing way of speaking. There was however much that causes concern.
Here’s the thing that happened last night that causes me the most concern and that says the most about the nature of America today. Only one thing in Obama’s speech produced unanimous, loud, and protracted applause. That thing came late in the speech when Obama said "we must always remember that the Americans who have borne the greatest burden in this struggle are the men and women who serve our country." He meant those who are in the armed forces. The House chamber erupted in enthusiastic applause that went on seemingly forever. I nearly cried. I nearly cried first of all because our country has decided that only those people who join the military “serve America.” Obama didn't have to say those in the armed forces. He eventually did, but the applause erupted before he made that clarification. The President had only to say those who serve the country, and everyone in that chamber and every American hearing his speech immediately knew he was talking about the military. And I thought: That means that teachers, nurses and other medical professionals, fire fighters, police officers, sanitation workers, hard working public employees at every level of government, workers building public infrastructure, indeed anyone else doing essential and constructive work in our country isn't serving the country. Only those in the military serve our country. Service equals military service. That’s where we've come in this land of ours. I feel like weeping for my country.
I feel like weeping because service has come to mean solely participating in a massive war machine whose raison d’être is death and destruction. Service means enlisting in a military apparatus the primary purpose of which is to kill and to die. Even those in the military who themselves are unlikely to kill or to die in combat support the institutional structure whose purpose is killing and dying. They work to make the killing and the dying possible. Our culture has become so militaristic, so addicted to violence as a solution to problems, that all the President has to say is “the men and women who serve our country,” and we immediately understand those who serve in the war machine; and we immediately jump to our feet with cheers and ovations.
I want to weep too because I know that my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ taught nonviolence not violence. About that there simply is no doubt. Jesus taught and lived an alternative way of life to the always violent way of empire. About that there is simply no doubt either. America is the current world empire, and our way is violence, our way is militarism. All empires are of course militaristic. Empires are created through military conquest, and they are maintained through the application of military force as needed. Our empire was created through wars against Mexico, Spain, England, and virtually every nation of the American Indians. The United States of America is today's Roman Empire. John Dominic Crossan , one of today’s leading prophets of nonviolence, points out that Rome’s innovation in the way of empire was to station its armies on the periphery of the empire, thereby protecting the homeland from foreign invaders. That, of course, is why the Roman legions were in Judea in Jesus’ time. The United States today mimics Rome in this regard. We station our military forces around the world. We apply military force as we think necessary to protect the homeland and to protect our imperial economic as well as political interests, never mind that our wars are always immoral and, as in the case of Iraq, are often illegal even under the very worldly standards of international law. Today we have military forces on the periphery of our empire from western Europe to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan. Rome is our teacher, and we have learned well.
Rome glorified its legions. It held victory parades in the capital and built monuments to victorious emperors and commanders. Victorious commanders on occasion became emperors. Today perhaps more than ever we follow Rome’s example here as well. Glorification of the American military has saturated our popular culture today. We hold Memorial Day parades cheering the troops. We build war monuments, and sometimes our military heroes become President, Eisenhower being the most recent example. (How many of us remember his warning against the growing power of the military-industrial complex, a term he coined? Yet in Eisenhower's day that part of the war machine was far smaller than it is today.) Virtually everyone with a public voice today must—and does—laud the service of everyone in the American armed forces, which service of course is always said to be given in defense of freedom. President Obama last night was just the most recent and visible example. We have begun referring to every single person who serves in any branch of our military as a hero, regardless of whether or not the person has done anything heroic even by the standards of the world.
We have, in short, done nothing less than create a myth of the American military. Much of what we say about our military is not factually true, but that isn’t what makes what we say a myth. What we say is a myth because it is a story that is told to connect the people with an ultimate concern. It is a story that is told to justify the military and to procure public support for the military. It is told to procure public approval of the use of the military for the purposes of empire by those in power. American militarism is an idolatrous myth. The American military and the empire it serves function as an ultimate concern, but that concern is of course not truly ultimate. The myth of the American military, however, cannot be questioned. Anyone who raises questions about it is immediately accused of being un-American, un-patriotic, always with the clear implication that being un-American, un-patriotic, is a mortal sin that no decent person would ever commit. I am quite confident that this essay will produce the same accusations against me, at least it will if it is read at all widely. Rejecting the American enthusiasm for the military is a sin within our national mythic system because that stance toward the military serves to separate people from the military, and a good definition of sin is anything that works to separate a person from the ultimate concern of any mythic system, whether that concern is truly ultimate or not.
The myth of the American military is utterly incompatible with the Christian myth, with the Christian story that serves to connect us with the truly ultimate, with God. It is nothing less than a competing mythic system, a faith that serves a different god than does the Christian faith. In the mythic system of Christianity the ultimate concern is God as we know God in and through Jesus Christ; and God is of course the truly ultimate. Christianity which truly makes God its ultimate concern, and not some idolatrous concern such as belief in the Bible or in the church, is true non-idolatrous faith. In our country it co-exists with other non-idolatrous faiths, other religions that make the truly ultimate their ultimate concern; but it also competes with numerous idolatrous faiths that make something conditional and preliminary their ultimate concern, including the myth of the American military. True Christianity is entirely incompatible with those idolatrous faiths, including the one we are concerned with here.
True Christianity is incompatible with any idolatrous faith because Christianity’s ultimate concern is the truly ultimate while idolatrous faith’s ultimate concern is something that is not ultimate; but Christianity is entirely incompatible with the myth of the American military for another reason, one that is less fundamental but one that may be easier to grasp. This consideration brings us back to a point we began with. Christianity is inconsistent and incompatible with the myth of the American military precisely because Jesus Christ taught nonviolence. The job of the military is, however, precisely violence. We try to pretty up the military. We show film of the Navy bringing relief supplies to Indonesia after the tsunami as a recruiting tool, but a soldier I once heard interviewed on television spoke the truth when he said “My job is to kill people and blow up their stuff.” The job of the military is violence. The military’s raison d’être is violence. A nonviolent military is an oxymoron. The military is there to be violent, and Jesus Christ taught nonviolence. For a Christian the matter really should be no more complicated than that.
God of course cares for every soldier of every nation, for God cares for every person of every nation; but God judges our violence and grieves over the death and destruction that it causes. God calls us back to the true ways of peace, to the ways of nonviolence. The great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh writes that there is no way to peace, peace is the way. He isn’t Christian, but he gets the truth about God and violence far better than most Christians. He teaches and lives far better than most Christians the truth about violence that Jesus taught and lived. Violence doesn’t lead to peace, violence leads to violence. Peace leads to peace. Justice leads to peace. That is a core truth of true Christianity but one that actual Christianity mostly rejects.
So what must our attitude toward the current glorification of the military, which amounts to nothing less than a militarization of American culture, be? It must not be that we judge or condemn those who choose to serve in the military. God doesn’t judge or condemn them, and neither should we. They are products of their culture, our culture; and their culture, our culture, tells them that serving in the military is honorable and heroic. Many of them choose the military because they see no meaningful opportunities for themselves in civilian life, and we are in no position to judge their choice.
We must not, however, buy into the glorification of the military, into the militarization of American culture that was so clearly displayed during Obama’s speech last night. The myth of the American military permeates the air we breathe today, and it functions to legitimate war and perpetuate violence. We must not let the mythology of the military, with its stirring symbols of flag and uniform, cloud our vision. We must not let it obscure the truth. Jesus is for us Christians the truth. Jesus taught us Christians the truth, and the truth is that violence is not God’s way. It is not God’s way because God is not violent. God is a God of grace, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, and violence is the opposite of those divine characteristics. God is a God of life. Violence destroys life.
So we must be people of peace. We must be people who work for an end to violence. Our ideal, our goal, must be a world without violence, a world without armies, a world without weapons, a world without war. We must strive always to beat the swords into plowshares and the spears into pruning hooks. We will never see that vision realized. The powers of the world, fallen as they are to use Walter Wink’s imagery, are too powerful. They aren’t going to go away any time soon, but that is no reason for us to capitulate to them, to give in to them. Nonviolence is the way of the Christian. Nonviolence is the call of the Christian. With Christ as our guide we can see the myth of the American military for the idolatry that it is, analyze it with clarity, judge it with wisdom, and work to replace it with the way of God, the way of nonviolence. If we would be truly Christian we can do no less.
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