Some of us at Monroe Congregational United Church of Christ, the church that I serve as pastor in Monroe, Washington, USA, have begun exploring the possibility of our church claiming the identity of a “Just Peace Church,” an identity that the UCC has proclaimed for itself and that some of its local churches have adopted for themselves. (The UCC has a strongly congregational polity in which proclamations by the national bodies of the denomination speak to but not for the local churches, who are free to adopt what the national bodies have done or not, as they deem proper.) As part of that work I recently read the “Pronouncement on affirming (sic) the United Church of Christ as a Just Peace Church” adopted by the Fifteenth General Synod of the United Church of Christ in 1985 (hereafter “the Pronouncement”). To say the least I was not particularly pleased with what I found there. For one thing, the Pronouncement is badly written and edited. One sentence early in the Pronouncement reads “Since Just War criteria itself now rules out war under modern conditions, it is imperative to move beyond Just War thinking to a Theology of a Just Peace.” (Sic throughout) Did no one working on this thing realize that “criteria” is plural? What rules of capitalization they were following is anybody’s guess. Those things, however, are quibbles. There is a much more theologically significant flaw in the document, namely, that it resolutely avoids a radical endorsement of and commitment to nonviolence as the way of God made know to us by Jesus Christ.
The problems begin very early on in the Pronouncement. It states that it is “based on insights from all three of the historic approaches of Christians to war and peace—pacifism, just war, and crusade….” Crusade?! Really?! That crusade is indeed an historic Christian approach to war is of course true, but did the Pronouncement really have to say, and does it mean, that it is based in part on that historic approach? Does that part of the Christian tradition have any “insights” worth considering? Shouldn’t we be rejecting crusade categorically and repenting of the Christian tradition of crusade? I almost couldn’t believe it when I read that sentence in the Pronouncement. I will grant the drafters of the Pronouncement that in 1985 Walter Wink had just begun to publish his groundbreaking work on Jesus and nonviolence, so I can’t really criticize them for not referring to what Wink calls Jesus’ “third way” of creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to evil; but today no list of Christian approaches to questions of war and peace can be complete without including, and embracing, Wink’s contribution to our understanding of Jesus and nonviolence.
Things don’t get better as the Pronouncement proceeds. Early on it has a section labeled “Biblical and theological foundations” (capitalization sic). What that section says is all right as far as it goes, but the most striking thing about it is what it does not say. It makes no reference whatsoever to the truth that nonviolence is God’s way that we learn through the nonviolent teaching and even more through the nonviolent life of Jesus Christ. Because it utterly fails to refer to the nonviolence of Jesus it of course does not say that nonviolence must therefore be the way of the Christian. The Pronouncement’s failure to ground itself in this foundational teaching and example of Jesus is it’s most significant failure, a failure that is reflected throughout the Pronouncement in its rather ambiguous relationship to the question of violence generally.
The Pronouncement does use the term “nonviolence” on a few occasions. It says that “Nonviolent conflict is a normal and healthy reflection of diversity.” It says that “Nonviolence is a Christian response to conflict shown by Jesus.” But notice: It does not say that nonviolence is the Christian response to conflict shown by Jesus. The use of the indefinite rather than the definite article here badly weakens the Pronouncement’s commitment, such as it is, to nonviolence. The document’s weakness is also reflected in the statement “Violence can and must be eliminated in most situations. However, because evil and violence are embedded in human nature and institutions, they will remain present in some form.” (Emphasis added) Violence must not be eliminated in every situation? Should we not at least be committing ourselves to the ideal of eliminating violence in every situation? Violence is embedded in human nature? Really? Didn’t Jesus show us how God intends human nature to be, and didn’t he show and teach us that that nature is nonviolent? How can a Christian talk about human nature without making a distinction between how God intends humans to be and how humans far too often are under the conditions of existence, which, after all, is what the Christian notion of “the Fall” is all about? How can a Christian not express a commitment to human nature as God intends it to be? How can a Christian resign herself to the way things are when we see in Jesus Christ how things are supposed to be? The Pronouncement simply does not reject violence as it should. It does at one point say “We declare our opposition to war, violence, and terrorism.” Yet that opposition to violence that is here stated without elaboration is badly weakened by the document’s ambivalence toward violence which is its major voice on the subject.
The Pronouncement does not radically reject violence the way Jesus did. It does however reject war, and that is its major virtue. Right after the statements about violence that I quoted and criticized in the previous paragraph the Pronouncement says “War can and must be eliminated.” Later on it says “war must be eliminated as an instrument of national policy….” The “Summary” with which the Pronouncement begins says that it “Places the United Church of Christ General Synod in opposition to the institution of war.” Tragically, it does not place the United Church of Christ in opposition to the institution of violence as radically and consistently as it should.
The Pronouncement does a good job of connecting opposition to war with social justice around the world. There is of course no doubt that there is a connection between injustice and war and indeed between injustice and violence. Pope Paul VI famously said “If you want peace, work for justice,” and the Pronouncement puts the UCC squarely behind that that sentiment. Today, however, the world demands a much more radical commitment to nonviolence than the Pronouncement provides. As John Dominic Crossan says every chance he gets (and he gets lots of them), the world has never developed a weapons system that it has not used; and today our weapons systems have the capacity to destroy the world. Only a radical commitment to nonviolence can save us from ourselves. Beyond that, only a radical commitment to nonviolence is true to the teachings and the model of Jesus Christ. Obviously that doesn’t matter to non-Christians (although many non-Christians, like Gandhi, have understood Jesus’ nonviolence much better than most Christians have), but it simply must matter to Christians. If we don’t follow Jesus in this, one of his most foundational teachings and the basis on which he lived his whole life right up to and including rejecting violence even to save his life, how can we call ourselves Christians? The UCC’s Pronouncement on being a just peace church is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. It is time for us to revisit the issue and adopt a far more radical, and a far more Christian, commitment to nonviolence.
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