Whose side?

"I don’t believe God picks sides in politics. I believe God calls us to be on His side."

--Scott Walker, quoted in Matthew Rothschild's "Scott Walker Believe He's Following Orders from the Lord"

The Republican Bible is repeatedly filled with passages showing that God is on the side of the rich and powerful. Weirdly, the Bible I've read says exactly the opposite.

I don't need to take seriously the claim that the Republican Party is about Christian values--not when its primary goal is to enact policies that benefit the rich at the expense of everybody else. Whether it's working to eliminate governmental environmental regulations so that industries can pollute the air, land, and water the rest of us share, or staunchly opposing tax increases and instead cutting and eliminating institutions and programs for social good (Amanda Marcotte notes, "Consider that the top 400 wealthiest Americans have a combined wealth that’s almost equal to what the bottom 153 million Americans have. Consider that Republicans are saying that’s not enough, and they will do whatever it takes to break working people and turn this country into a banana republic"), Republicans are squarely on the side of the rich and powerful. Gross economic inequality is of no concern.

This is not a partisan attempt to claim that the Democratic policy platform is sanctioned by God--but then, Democrats rarely claim that it is.

Addendum

Peter Laarman in Religion Dispatches:

"It is simple class violence, waged (as always) by the powerful against the vulnerable. It’s nice, I guess, that Scott Walker loves Jesus. He’s clearly not acquainted with the Jesus who lifts up the lowly and pulls down the powerful from their thrones."

On Being a Leftist Christian

Most of the ethical, political concerns that I believe my religion requires (concern for the poor, opposition to war, striving for social equality, care for the environment) are today more likely to be concerns shared by secular minded folk, while religious minded folk (at least politically) often seem opposed and even hostile to these concerns.

So to see goals that I consider deeply Christian goals be achieved, it is better for society to become much more secular.

Religion and Justice

Today in church, the Old Testament reading included the following passage from Leviticus:

"The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning."

It is a simple, specific rule, but it is typical of the Bible's concern for social and economic justice. The writers of this text tell us that according to God, employers are to deal fairly with their employees. According to God, there is a righteous and an unrighteous way for workers to be treated.

What does this mean for us today?

The Journal Sentinel's Annysa Johnson cites a Catholic Archbishop, a Methodist Bishop, and a Rabbi expressing support for unions and collective bargaining in Wisconsin. Johnson also cites Illinois churches and synagogues that have offered sanctuary to the Democrats from Wisconsin that fled the state to avoid a vote stripping state workers of collective bargaining rights. These religious leaders, with their conviction and faith in God, are standing up for the rights of workers and the usefulness of unions and collective bargaining.

Christians and Eating Animals

(portions reposted and revised from December 9, 2006)

There are objections one can make if Christians insist that humans can eat animals because God has made the animals for us to eat, or that the purpose of animals is human use. These are objections that either come from within Christian thought, can fit into Christian thought, or do not contradict Christian thought.

According to the Book of Genesis, in God's perfect plan for creation, humans did not eat animals.

At the creation of the world in the book of Genesis, God gives man dominion over the earth and all the animals. He says in 1:26 "let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth" and in 1:28 "have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

Interestingly, in 1:29, God says "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food." Even after giving man "dominion" over the animals, God specifies that man can have the plants for food. The text repeats the point. Again in 2:9, "And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food..." And then before prohibiting man from eating from one particular tree, God says in 2:16, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden." Again, God explicitly tells people they can eat the plants He created, but there is no explicit mention of whether the animals are available for food.

So before the Fall, there is no mention that people eat animals. I find this absense striking. God commanded man to have dominion over the animals, AND God explicitly commanded man to eat plants. With such explicit mention of dominion over animals AND explicit mention of what people are supposed to eat, it seems like a loud silence on animal consumption. It would seem perfectly within context to mention eating animals at this spot, but it doesn't happen.

It seems that the permission to eat meat was a later accommodation for sinful humans. This all makes theological sense, too: it was humanity's sin that tainted creation and brought death into the world.

And the fact that according to Genesis, God made the animals first suggests that they have his special concern and consideration. It is not that God made humans and then gave them food: they existed for some purpose other than the benefit of humans when they were first made.

So did God create animals for the purpose of humans to eat them? In the perfect plan for creation, God didn't tell people they could or should eat animals, and in fact the text makes explicit that plants are meant for human consumption.

Simpler: what is an animal made for?

What did God create animals for? I don't know. But I think it is hard to argue that God, say, made a chicken so that it could have its beak cut off and spend its entire life in an extremely small cage. There are all sorts of ways that humans have manipulated and limited animals in ways that run contrary to any biological understanding of what the animal was designed for.

Even if at a fundamental level, a Christian understanding of animals is that they are ours to use, that would not justify the extreme cruelty and suffering of current animal agriculture.

They know the score: Isaiah

A portion of Sunday's Old Testament reading stuck out to me (Isaiah 11: 6-8):

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze;

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.

Maybe these animal references, rich and diverse and detailed as they may be, are symbols to illustrate coming peace and reconciliation of enemies (though the specificity and power of the language shows a voice with understanding and attention to animals). But maybe also this is a reminder that animals are a part of God's creation, that they are imbued with dignity, and are included in some way in God's plan of salvation for the world.

agape

“The gospel is that everyone being loved by God must be my beloved too, even if they consider me their enemy, even if their interests clash with mine."

-John Howard Yoder, He Came Preaching Peace

Today at the church I attend, the pastor led us in prayer, and asked that U.S. soldiers are able to show and feel agape in what they are doing.

I'm not entirely sure how a soldier can show agape, short of laying down his/her arms. Can you love your enemy while killing him/her? Does taking up arms, in any cause, allow for a godly, selfless, forgiving love?

Response to "Humans first"

At not one sparrow, Dean Ohlman explores how Christians can respond to the question, "Aren't people more important than animals?" This is a question posed to animal advocates not only by Christians, and I would like to propose another response to this question.

I think an individual with literally zero concern for the suffering of animals, but compassion and concern for human beings and humankind, should be a committed opponent of the way animals are currently used on our planet.

The first chapter of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's The Face On Your Plate, "The Only World We Have," focuses not on the suffering of animals, but on the environmental and health impact of factory farming. The chapter offers us many examples to raise questions about how current animal agriculture impacts human beings.

Animal agriculture is a major contributor to global warming. How does this affect human beings?

Factory farming creates a massive amount of animal waste (the poop and pee), which has a devastating impact on the local environment, and a history of making people living nearby such farms sick. How does this affect human beings?

The conditions of factory farms, including the excessive overuse of non-therapeutic antibiotics on animals, may lead to superbugs resistant to our drugs, and may one day become responsible for a global flu pandemic. How will that affect human beings?

Raising animals for food requires massively more resources, including fresh water and arable land, than growing plants for food. How will scarcity of water affect human beings? Will we deplete the earth's good soil? How does use of resources for meat affect worldwide hunger and undernourishment?

It is important that we continue to inform people about the impact factory farming has on the world, and on us. A person with zero regard for animals, when informed of the truth of factory farming, may emerge as an ally and opponent of factory farming. When I read about such things, I am, frankly, terrified (more on this in a later post). I only became serious about environmentalism after and because of becoming a vegetarian, but more and more I'm coming to see the cause/effect direction can go the other way too.

And that's how the question could be answered. To a religious person committed to a belief that God granted us the right to dominate animals, or to a cynic unconcerned with the suffering and death of animals, or to a conscientious person sincerely struggling to make life better for humankind, I would say, for now, forget about the animals. I would ask another question: can we continue and support an industrial activity that has the potential to wreak such catastrophic consequences on human beings, and that wastes so many resources that might otherwise be used to help human beings?

Christianity and Eating Animals

"Churches are paying closer attention to connections between humans and animals" by Lisa Black (via Mark Hawthorne)

It is a deeply ingrained belief in Christianity: God gave humans dominion over the animals, interpreted to mean we can use them for our own purposes in whatever way we choose. I think, however, that a discussion of our relationship with animals can fit into mainstream Christianity. Christian animal advocates can focus on two areas when discussing animals with fellow Christians.

Stewardship. Stewardship is a regularly discussed, mainstream concept in the Lutheran churches I've been a part of. God grants us many gifts, but they still belong to God: we are stewards of God's things, and we must be good stewards. The focus on stewardship leads directly to a Christian environmentalism: God granted us the earth, and it is our duty to take care of it and protect it, not use it up however we see fit, ultimately destroying it.

Stewardship, I believe, also leads us directly to concern for animals, for even in a mainstream Christian view, we are also stewards of the animals God created. So we can ask questions. We can be specific: is it good stewardship to cut off a chicken's beak and make it live its entire life in a very small cage? We can also be broad: is any part of the factory farming system really good stewardship of God's creations?

Compassion. I come back to this argument again and again: if you eat animals, you choose your own momentary pleasure over the life of an animal. In the modern developed world, we do not eat meat for our survival, but for tradition and for pleasure. As Christians, can we really selfishly choose our own pleasure over the life of a living creature? A creature that thinks, feels, and suffers? As we learn more about the mental and emotional capacities of animals, and as we learn more about the ways they suffer in the factory farming system, I wonder if we can set aside our basic Christian principles in order to continue our focus on superiority and dominion.

God's Creation is populated by God's Creations

on animals

At God's Politics, Tracey Bianchi writes about giving up meat for Lent. Most of her reasons for doing so, she writes, are

"rooted in my love of God’s Creation."

She goes on to write:

"And since raising beef and other meat places a heavy burden on our ecosystems, and because it is considerably kinder to the planet if I eat grain and vegetable products, I’m going to skip it altogether for this season."

and

"since God made this place, it seems wise to take note of that fact and make a commitment for a few weeks to help honor that Creation."

Bianchi is writing about vegetarianism and about environmentalism. However, at no point in her post does she even hint at any actual concern for animals. I find that absence glaring. She is skipping meat to help the environment, but not mentioning helping the creatures that share this environment with us. She expresses sincere love and concern for God's Creation, but in this context creation seems to include the earth itself, but not the sentient creatures that God created. She advocates skipping on eating animals to protect the earth, not to avoid causing death and suffering to those very animals.

I am aware, of course, that vegetarianism is not traditionally associated with Christian thought or practice, and that furthermore Christians can cite scripture to justify eating animals (I might only point out that Genesis strongly suggests Adam and Eve did not eat meat before the Fall--perfect creation did not involve killing animals for food). But an environmentalist concern for God's creation, I think, should not leave the concerns of animals out. They are a part of God's Creation, and are in fact thinking, feeling beings created by God. Being Christian did not teach me to be a vegetarian; however, being Christian taught me about compassion and integrity, virtues which led me to be a vegetarian.

I am glad that Bianchi is concerned for the environment, and using a medium to encourage others to reduce their meat consumption. If Christians can eliminate (or even reduce) consumption of animals during Lent, that is a good thing. And I would encourage Christians to consider Lent a beginning, and to try make a long-term change to avoid eating animals.

Torture and Christians

I am particularly disgusted when Christians advocate and defend torture. It is not primarily that Christians worship a Lord who was himself unjustly tortured, but about what that Lord taught. Jesus commands that we not return evil with evil. He commands that we love and bless our enemies. More broadly, the gospel of Christ insists that we see all human beings as children of God, all men and women as brothers and sisters in humanity. Torture denies that.

Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic, further details the wrongfulness of torture.

Temptation and Violence

on peace

"Into the merits of these idealizations it is not here necessary to inquire: suffice it to say, without prejudice, that they have convinced both Americans and English that the most high minded course for them to pursue is to kill as many of one another as possible, and that military operations to that effect are in full swing, morally supported by confident requests from the clergy of both sides for the blessing of God on their arms."

--Bernard Shaw, The Devil's Disciple

Philip Berrigan was imprisoned for his act of protest against the Vietnam War, and he explores some of his ideas in Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary. For Berrigan, the crime of war is directly connected to inequality, racism, wealth, and economics. He writes that

"A sober student will find it hard to avoid the conclusion that Americans have institutionalized war to maintain capitalist prosperity, and that institutionalized warmaking may now have a life of its own."

Berrigan opposes the Vietnam War as he opposes much American foreign policy because it is exploitative. What becomes clear, however, is that Berrigan is not opposed to violence because it is violence. When addressing problems in Latin America, Berrigan explicitly defends violent revolution: he does not take the stance that violence is against the will of God or the command of Christ:

"the Christian is neither for nor against violent revolution; he transcends such a choice by his dedication to a more basic change, the spiritual revolution commanded by Christ. On a given occasion, he may tolerate and approve--but not actively join--a violent revolution, having judged that political and social injustice had reached insufferable limits, without reasonable hope of redress."

Berrigan goes on to make other arguments defending the necessity of violent revolution (among other things, he claims that "the respect accorded life by revolutionaries is vastly superior to the contempt given it by tyrants," a rather dubious claim, further muddied by the reality that violent revolutionaries typically become the tyrants when they take power). Berrigan, then, is not opposed to violence itself. He opposes violence when he opposes the desired ends of the violence, but when he sees the cause as just, he supports violence. Because he thinks the cause of social justice is right and necessary, he is willing to support violence to achieve those ends.

But this is merely what Christian ministers have done for centuries. He chooses a side in a conflict that he thinks is right, and then defends that side's use of violence to achieve its ends. This is not "chaplaincy," where the Christian church works to defend and support the existing social order,* but it is still a Christian supporting violence because he sees its ends as just, righteous, and necessary.

In defending violent revolution, Berrigan diminishes the humanity of those whom the violence would be targeted against. How does violent revolution fit into the command to love and bless one's enemy? No matter how noble one perceives the cause to be, no matter how just the grievance, no matter how righteous the end, Christians are commanded to love our enemies.

In "A Declaration on Peace: In God's People the World's Renewal Has Begun," Gwyn, Hunsinger, Roop, and Yoder seem to speak directly to Berrigan's impulse:

"The royal servant people will resist temptations to the righteous crusase or holy war, whether defending democracy from the right or just revolution from the left. The church's sharing in God's favoring of the oppressed and exploited cannot partake of violence against the oppressor. That tactic finds no precendent in Jesus. It can at best achieve a trading of places between oppressor and oppressed, aggressor and victim."

Violent revolution, just like violent defense of the nation-state, is unchristian. It goes against the commands of Jesus, the unity of the church, and, I think, does not present a good witness of Christ to the world. Elsewhere in the book, Berrigan recognizes his need to love all people, and he most certainly acted on antiwar, nonviolent principles. I think Berrigan's defense of violent revolutions in Latin American demonstrates just how strong that "temptation to the righteous crusade or holy war" can be, of how "sharing in God's favoring of the oppressed and exploited" can tempt one to support any means to assuage the suffering of those oppressed and exploited.

Berrigan writes that the Christian's "sympathies lead him to identify with those afflicted enough and desperate enough to rebel." Indeed that is so, but the Christian must also resist the temptation of violence to aid those afflicted. In fact, in The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder understands Jesus himself to have resisted "the temptation to exercise social responsibility, in the interest of justified revolution, through the use of available violent methods," that he rejected the "genuinely attractive option of the crusade." Jesus was revolutionary, but nonviolence was central to his revolution.

--

*John Howard Yoder is in many of his writings quite critical of the role the church plays in nationalism. In The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism, Yoder calls it "Constantinianism," where the church acts as "chaplain to society." Yoder suggests that since Constantine, the church has operated to sanctify and support the existing social order and power structure, whatever it may be in particular. Yoder suggests that the church needs to abstain from tying itself to the given social order, and that it is this close alliance with the given social order which leads the church too often to support wars (and wars that exist primarily to support the existing power structure of the particular society's self-interest) (the previous three sentences are reposted and revised from 8-14-07). In He Came Preaching Peace, he talks about

"the development of official Christianity (religion identified with the nation, with the state, with the world). [...] If Christianity is an official religion, it means that we can follow Jesus only by rejecting that kind of Christianity. We can call people to the Jesus Christ of the gospel only by calling them away from the "Christ" they already know--away from the official, conformist, power-related religion of the West."

and

"For Christians to seek any government's interest--even the security and power of peaceable and freedom-loving democracy--at the cost of the lives and security of our brothers and sisters around the world, would be selfishness and idolatry, however much glorified by patriotic preachers and poets."

I mention this here because Philip Berrigan seems to hold a similar view. Berrigan writes

"we embarrased the Church in terms of its own profession and rhetoric. Try as it might, the Church cannot entirely kill the Gospel or its Christ. It will always possess an inner dynamic rebelling against wedding with the powers of this world."

And his brother Daniel Berrigan writes in the introduction to the book,

"And what of the impact of the war upon the Church? Officially speaking, in the Catholic instance, the sacred power has quite simply followed the secular, its sedulous ape. Bishops have blessed the war, in word and in silence. They have supplied chaplains to the military as usual and have kept their eyes studiously averted from related questions--ROTC on Catholic campuses, military installations, diocesan investments."

Evil and Violence

on peace

"...social evil cannot be resolved by violence. Whatever our theory of evil we know that in practice it lies in the heart of man. It is not something external to him which can be struck and smashed or carted away, or which can be destroyed by an atom bomb. The waging of war only aggravates and spreads the trouble, and the Christian must turn from this to the far more difficult and unpopular task of attacking evil at its root. The only way to end war is to cease to fight, for the devil cannot be driven out by Beelzebub."

-- from "Peace is the Will of God," by Historic Peace Churches and International Fellowship of Reconciliation Committee, Geneva, Switzerland, October 1953.

In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo, I believe, identifies the dual strains of Christianity. There is Javert, who believes in the essentialism of criminality. Once a person reveals himself/herself to be a criminal, then he/she is always a criminal, and so the focus is on sin, judgment, and punishment. And then there is Valjean, who shows a story of change, redemption, and human dignity. Javert's worldview is Manichean: there are the pure good and the pure evil, and it is the duty of the pure good to find and punish the pure evil. Valjean's story reflects more orthodox Christian belief: all humans beings are imbued with inherent dignity, are capable of spiritual redemption, and are worthy of forgiveness.

So when in "Obama's Christian Realism," David Brooks muses on the nature of evil in all humanity, I reach different conclusions than he does. I don't reach the conclusion that evil is out there in the world, making war "necessary." I reflect instead on the potential goodness of an enemy, and that war with the evil in a nation inevitably becomes a war against the goodness in that nation, too (civilian casualties, for example). I reflect on our own side's capacity for evil (something Brooks acknowledges without reaching the same conclusions), which makes me question our side's motives for war, our side's ability to wage it "justly," and our side's abilities to achieve the supposedly noble ends that undergird support for the war.

In the same column, Brooks simplifies, distorts, and straw-mans the views of liberal war opponents:

"But after Vietnam, most liberals moved on. It became unfashionable to talk about evil. Some liberals came to believe in the inherent goodness of man and the limitless possibilities of negotiation."

Far from trumpeting the "inherent goodness of man," many anti-war liberals cite our own side's capacity for evil, and reflect on the ethical and practical problem of using evil means to achieve what might otherwise be a noble end. And I know very few liberals who believe the possibilities of negotiation are "limitless;" rather, war opponents often believe the constructive possibilities and potential effectiveness of negotiation to be far preferable to the costly, destructive, deadly possibilities of war. This is a typical gloss/smear: the war proponent labels the war opponent as the naive idealist. I cite again John Howard Yoder, who in Nevertheless criticizes the "irrational leap of faith" required for the rhetoric that "by supporting a puppet government, we are enabling democracy to grow." Yoder goes on:

"There is no more utopian institution than an idealistic war. [...] War is utopian both in the promises it makes for the future and in the black-and-white way of thinking about the enemy, which it assumes."

Inherent to the argument of evil as a justification for American wars is this: America is good and the evil is out there, so America is justified in fighting the wars America chooses to fight. Evil exists, but America can never be evil, and so America may wage wars against that which America deems evil.

The very fact that "evil" exists is not itself justification for invading a country, for occupying a country, or for bombing a country. Given the death, destruction, and waste of war, including horrors inflicted on the innocent, I would say that war itself is evil.

Environmentalism and Religion: "the child is father of the man"

on animals (reposted from May 1, 2009)

"It is understandable that Luther could have found this preoccupation [with personal self-acceptance] in the apostolic message since it was his own question. [...] It was also perfectly natural for a John Wesley, a Kierkegaard, or today for an existentialist or a conservative evangelical reader to make the same assumption and find the same message--for all of these are in their variegated ways children of Luther, still asking the same question of personal guilt and righteousness."

--John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

In some strains of Christianity, you may find a human-centered chauvinist attitude toward the natural world. The thinking seems to go that since humans are the pinnacle of creation, the rest of the created world exists for whatever humans wish to use it for. There is, then, a divinely sanctioned human "dominion" over the rest of creation (this way of thinking may be opposed by the concept of "stewardship"--essentially the idea that God made all of creation for himself, and humans are caretakers. In this way of thinking, nature has transcendent purpose, and humans have a moral obligation to care for creation. I commend the concept of "stewardship" for finding in nature if not "inherent" value, then a value wholly separate from humankind's utilitarian use of it).

This religious human-centered attitude toward the environment actually eases into secular human-centered attitudes toward the environment (or do these secular views emerge from the religious thought?). In one business-friendly strain, what matters is human benefit, and if the environment is damaged for the economic interests of humans (or corporations, or governments), so be it--what matters is human use. Another strain can suggest that humans, as the most advanced species, have an inherent right to use the lower species for whatever purposes humans want. As Harold Herzog writes in "Human Morality and Animal Research: Confessions and Quandaries," "Research with animals is based on the premise that a 'superior' species has the right to breed, kidnap, or kill members of 'lesser' species for the advancement of knowledge."

I think it possible that these secular arguments about human use of nature (including animals) may develop from the same historical strain as Christianity's arguments about human use of nature (including animals). The child may be father to the man.

One might think that "Environmentalism" is an alternative, or a corrective, or in opposition to, a religious-based human-centered attitude toward the environment. But this is not always the case. It seems to me that some (I won't say many) environmentalists maintain human-centered chauvinist attitudes toward the natural world. Some environmentalists view the natural world as worth protecting and preserving--so that humans can continue to use it. What environmentalists? Environmentalists that eat meat.

If you claim to be an environmentalist but still think animals can be killed for your pleasure, then whom are you really trying to save the environment for? You're not trying to save the environment for the animals (you probably don't see inherent value in the animal, if you are willing to eat it for your pleasure). And you probably don't see inherent value in the natural world outside of human use. Environmentalism can maintain this chauvinism, can still see humankind in a power-relationship over the natural world. Secular environmentalists can still believe in human "dominion" over the rest of the natural world, can still see humans in a position of control, capable of using any part of the natural world (including animals) for our own purposes. It is worth preserving the environment, not for its inherent value, but for its value to humans.

The child is father of the man.

Nonviolence and our lives

on peace (reposted from November 27, 2007)

Jesus was nonviolent, and he taught his disciples to be nonviolent. When Jesus was being arrested, Peter tried to use force to defend Jesus. Jesus told him not to, saying "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword," suggesting that those who act violently are likely to come to a violent demise.

Of course, we know who else came to a violent demise: the nonviolent Jesus and most of his nonviolent disciples.

Turning the other cheek, loving and blessing our enemies, these are not maxims to live a cheerful and successful life. A life of nonviolence often comes with suffering.

Certainly those who live a life of violence may suffer a violent end. But so too can children, victims of wars they don't create or understand. So too can Christian martyrs, who willfully choose their death and do not fight back. So too can the victims of genocide, killed not because they lived by the sword but merely for who they were (and are).

Those who live by the sword may die by the sword--though they may not. Those who live a life of peace and love may also die by the sword.

What does peace mean?

on peace (reposted from September 11, 2007)

This isn't a comment on a book, but on a book cover--it's meant not to critique a book (which I haven't read), but to examine a screwed up way of talking about "peace."

Robert Spencer has written a book called Religion of Peace? Why Christianity is and Islam Isn't.

Of course you know that I do believe Christianity is a religion of peace, that peacefulness is imbued in Jesus's message. But looking at history, it is easy to believe that Christianity has in practice not been a religion of peace (see this, this, this, and of course this, and I shouldn't have to verify for you that a lot of Christians in America support America's wars). But let's step aside from this historical examination.

The book cover for Spencer's book includes a brief blurb from Ann Coulter on the front, and a longer blurb from Coulter on the back. The front blurb calls the book "a clarion call to America to wake up and fight back." The back blurb says "This goes a long way toward explaining why liberals never wanted to fight this war in the first place."

So let's be clear here: a book proclaiming Christianity a religion of peace, and condemning Islam as being not a religion of peace, features blurbs on the cover by a pro-war Christian criticizing people who oppose a particular war.

So what on earth does "peace" really mean?

Yoder's "Nevertheless"

on peace (reposted from March 24, 2008)

In Nevertheless: the Varieties and Shortcomings of Religious Pacifism (Revised and Expanded Edition), John Howard Yoder does not explore the biblical or theological grounding of a pacifist stance. Instead he examines different forms such pacifist stances can take. Most chapters are structured similarly (though later chapters cover other types of pacifism more briefly): Yoder explains a particular nonviolent stance, followed by:

"Axiom" the underlying principle driving this stance

"Shortcomings" fair and reasonable arguments against this stance

"Nevertheless" why despite its shortcomings this stance is still a respectable, valid stance (later Yoder writes that "In each case we were able to criticize but not really to refute")

"After All" how war advocates also use the logic of this particular pacifist stance, but in a deeply flawed and terribly destructive way.

Perhaps the strongest arguments in the book are in the "After All" portions. Yoder shows that despite any shortcomings of a particular pacifist stance, it is still preferable to any equivalent violent stance. For example, in the chapter called "The Pacifism of Utopian Purism," Yoder writes:

"This utopian pacifism trusts less to an irrational leap of faith than does the rhetoric which tells us that by forcibly making refugees, we are defending self-determination; or that by supporting a puppet government, we are enabling democracy to grow. There is no more utopian institution than an idealistic war. [...] War is utopian both in the promises it makes for the future and in the black-and-white way of thinking about the enemy, which it assumes."

A pacifist can read this book and find easy counters to any war advocate's objections; the war advocate often uses arguments similar to the pacifist, but in manner that frequently ignores the way in which war dehumanizes, and in a manner that justifies deadly destruction (as Yoder writes, "every serious critique one can address to the pacifist, if taken honestly, turns back with greater force upon the advocate of war").

But with Yoder, the point is not to win an argument: if all that happens after reading Nevertheless is that I'm able to pull out a stronger argument and counterargument when debating a war advocate, then my pacifism is empty. A religious pacifist reading Yoder should come away with greater conviction, greater spiritual commitment, greater desire to put belief into action and practice. While Yoder asks that "each type of pacifist reasoning be respected in its own right," he also writes that "the moral commonality of all of them is greater than the systematic diversity."

My enemies are my neighbors and I am commanded to love them.