When the State is Evil: Biblical Civil (Dis)Obedience in South Africa

My article “When the State is Evil: Biblical Civil (Dis)Obedience in South Africa”, co-written with Joel A. Nichols, has been published in St. John’s Law Review, issue 85, number 2. This article is a piece of historical theology of sorts that traces the use of the Bible in arguments about the (in)justice of civil disobedience to the apartheid government in South Africa. We focus on the arguments made by the Kairos theologians, Beyers Naude, and Desmond Tutu. Drawing on this historical sketch, as well as a brief biblical analysis, we make an argument that Christian scripture does not make one unified statement on the proper relation of Christians/the Church to oppressive and dictatorial governments. Rather, we argue that such a decision requires communal discernment and reflection, and that scripture provides much warrant for civil disobedience as a faithful act of obedience to God and as an appropriate Christian tool of social change.

You can find a .pdf version of the article, as well as the rest of the issue, here. I’d love to hear your feedback if you get a chance to read it.

Is the United Methodist Church a Pacifist or Just-War Church? Or is it Something Else Entirely?

Twenty-five years ago the United Methodist Church published In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace to help their members think through the ethics of war in a nuclear age. It was a controversial document in theological circles, with the most famous critiques coming from just-war theorist Paul Ramsey and pacifist Stanly Hauerwas in their co-authored book Speak Up for Just War or Pacifism. The overriding criticism of the piece was “Pick a side! Are you a peace church or not?!” The United Methodist bishops chose a (seemingly ambiguous) middle-way of sorts that named war sinful, admitted its necessity in times of extreme injustice (like genocide), and affirmed the conscientious decision of individual members to choose pacifism or participation in certain wars. This position seems wishy-washy to many theorists, but seems to represent the lived experiences of its members rather well.

My teacher Ellen Ott Marshall wrote an article several years ago titled “United Methodist Witness in Times of War: Five Characteristics (begins on p. 21)” in which she tries to makes sense of the church’s stance. She identifies five characteristics of the church’s stance: (1) a clear distinction between God and government, (2) a recognition of the continuing necessity of repentance, (3) reflection upon the church’s teaching that “war is incompatible with the
teachings and example of Christ,” (4) the requirement that Christians work for “positive peace,” and (5) a commitment to the process that “restores the image of God in all creation.” In other words, the United Methodist witness in war is to never allow one’s allegiance to God to be trumped by one’s allegiance to nation, to continually repent for one’s sinfulness so as to avoid hubris, always keep in mind the sinfulness of killing in war, and to commit oneself to a process of positive peacemaking that does justice rather than merely avoids conflict. For many, this is moral confusion or double-speak. For others it is an attempt to be faithful to the Christ while also accepting one’s responsibility for the world.

Recently, the Political Theology blog has had four Methodist theologians/ethicists reflect on this document, and the United Methodist Church’s teaching on war more generally, and we see some of the same debates occurring today that took place in the days of Ramsey and Hauerwas.

Tobias Winright introduces the series in his piece “On the 25th Anniversary of the United Methodist Bishops’ ‘In Defense of Creation’”

Kevin Carnahan tries to make sense of the UM stance in comparison to other denominational stances in his piece “United Methodism on War and Peace: Embracing the Tension between Optimism and Pessimism.”

D. Stephen Long argues for some sort of pacifism not grounded in the main halls of power in the UMC in his piece “War, Peace, and the Wesleyan Tradition’s Charism: to be ‘perfect in love in this lifetime’.”

J. Philip Wogaman argues that the ambivalence of the UM stance is a good thing in his piece “On War and Peace: Methodism’s Responsible Ambivalence.”

Finally, Nicole L. Johnson argues for an active nonviolence, rather than passivism, in her piece “’Inaction’ in the Face of Injustice? United Methodism on War and Peace.”

Now, I am not a member of the UMC and don’t exactly plan on joining it any time soon (even though I’ve done all of my graduate theological study at Methodist schools!). So, why do I find this interesting? Well, beyond my ongoing general interest in the Christian ethics of war and peace is my ecclesial interest in how churches/denominations that do not take an absolute stand on the pacifism vs. just war question (like, say, Anabaptists and Roman Catholics do) navigate the messiness of war and peace.

I am a member of the churches of Christ. We have no governing body or system beyond the local elders of each congregation, and we have no “official” stance on whether Christians can engage in war except for our appeal to “what the Bible teaches” (which is obviously contested). Within our ranks there are people who fall all along the spectrum of possible stances: crusaders, realists, just warriors (of various degrees), pacifists in the mold of Martin Luther King, Jr., and sectarian pacifists who eschew public engagement. We’ve got them all.

Now, trying to maintain Christian unity in times of political division can be a difficult thing. This proves especially difficult in wartime. It is nearly impossible in any cofC congregation that allows for or encourages open discussion of “political” matters within its membership (of course, saying the “political” is not “spiritual” and so ignoring the questions is one, unhealthy, way to avoid these dilemmas). So, I recognize the UMC as another denomination trying to makes sense of the lived diversity of Christians on controversial and vitally important matters. Whether they have been successful or not I do not know. I do know, however, that we in the cofC need to start somewhere to make sense of these important issues, and the example of the UMC cannot be any worse than where we are now.

Introducing The Yoder Index

Recently, John Nugent, along with others, has begun the process of compiling a searchable index of the writings of John Howard Yoder. When completed this will be an invaluable resource for persons interested in Christian social ethics, contemporary Christian pacifism, Anabaptist theology, and ecclesiology.

John Howard Yoder was one of the most important theologians/ethicists of the twentieth century and paved the path for many scholars of Christian pacifism, biblical theology, Anabaptist theology, and various other topics of interest to those interested in the ways Christians should engage with American society.

Please go check out the ever expanding The Yoder Index as soon as you get a chance.

Ten Years Later: Personal Reflections on the Decade Since 9/11

Ten years ago I was in my car driving to work at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in the early hours of the morning when I heard on the radio that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I arrived at the shipyard to extra security and a workday in which we watched the news for hours as we tried to make sense of what had happened. I was eighteen years old, a recent high school graduate. I had not pursued college and was a painting/sandblasting apprentice learning how to maintain the coatings on naval submarines and ships. This began what has become quite a long journey and a dramatic transformation in my life.

I am the child of a United States soldier and a Korean immigrant. My father is from a small town in middle Tennesse and my mother from the southern part of South Korea. My dad raised me on John Wayne movies, professional wrestling, SEC football, and Bible Belt-Church of Christ Christianity. My mother raised me on Korean food and immigrant dreams. As a youth I fell in love with hip hop music, my Korean-American identity, and the Church. I grew up imitating the Fresh Prince and idolizing Tupac Shakur. This was my existence. I came from a working class, immigrant family in a neighborhood where I could pretend I was Tupac when I wanted and still grow up in the safety of a loving church. This was my experience.

Part of that experience meant I was consistently conflicted: my conservative Christianity taught me a certain form of theology (and politics) that emphasized the individual, Puritan morality, and a romanticized American history; but my minority position in America and deep connection to the African-American community (through friends and culture) taught me a radical politics that exposed the contradictions and hypocrisies of my country and, sometimes, my faith. The result of being raised by a soldier who loved John Wayne movies and my deep love of hip hop music was that I embraced a deep belief in what Walter Wink has called “redemptive violence.” I firmly believed in an “eye for an eye” approach to the world.

Then two things happened: 9/11 and, a few months later, a call from God to enter the ministry. At this point my entire life and world began to change. I questioned the response to 9/11 I saw from my political and religious leaders. I heard questionable uses of Christian scripture and theology in the rhetoric of politicians and preachers. As I studied and meditated on the Bible to discern my call to the ministry I began to experience some cognitive dissonance with what I had always accepted as “just the way things are.” As we prepared for war I wondered if I could, as a Christian, participate in the preparation of weapons of war and remain faithful. As I went through my parents divorce and other hard times with family, the emptiness I felt making more money than I needed, and God’s constant pull on my heart I spent entire nights in prayer exploring what my future should be.

I eventually wound up at Pepperdine University where I studied Religion and went through a true faith transformation. I met some of the best friends I’ve ever had (they are truly my family) and studied with professors who challenged and transformed my faith. I studied scripture, theology, and history in a way that transformed my faith. I spent summers in slums in India and East Africa and was a minister at a church in inner-city Los Angeles. I learned about God’s special concern for the poor, the place of justice in Christian theology, and the call of God for Christians to be peacemakers. I studied the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi and became an ardent advocate of nonviolence and steadily grew to reject the conservative politics I grew up accepting as “appropriate” for Christians even though they didn’t mesh with my experience. My time at Pepperdine opened up a new understanding of Christian theology and ministry that also transformed my politics.

From there I married my best friend; a woman who has seen me through many hard times and been a faithful representation of God’s grace and love for me throughout the years. We are quite the funny little couple: she is Black, Puerto Rican, and German, and I am White and Korean. We both grew up in the churches of Christ (we can make Baptists look liberal!) and as multi-racial people in a world that doesn’t know what to do with us. She grew up in a home with a loving marriage and went to private school her whole life. I grew up in a home where the marriage eventually imploded and went to public schools with, um, “reputations.” She never watched Fat Albert and I never watched The Princess Bride. But we make it do what it do and we love doing it together.

I also went to seminary and ran a homeless shelter in southern California, and I am now a doctoral student in social ethics and theology at Emory University. My commitment to nonviolence has become more nuanced, and I am no longer in traditional ministry. However, God has taken me on a journey that is more than I could have ever imagined on that day ten years ago:

1. My understanding of ministry has become more holistic. I believe I have remained faithful to God’s call on my life in my ministries at churches, in American and international slums, in my nonprofit work, and in my scholarship and teaching. In all that I do I still understand myself as one called by God to do ministry, but it doesn’t always have to look like I once thought it did.

2. My commitment to racial justice has become even stronger than it was as a youth. I’ve never been fooled by the “post-racial” rhetoric. As a child of an immigrant I know first hand what it means to encounter blatant and not-so-blatant racism. I’ve been called “gook” and seen the ways in which society dehumanizes those whose skin is not so light as mine. Fortunately, my theological journey has opened up even more resources for me to challenge such structures, in both society and church.

3. I now have a “theology of justice.” The personal evangelical theology of my youth has been replaced with a robust social theology that emphasizes justice-seeking. Coming to understand the biblical call for justice was a conversion experience for me. It changed my understanding of God’s will in the world, Christian ministry, and politics. In many ways this was a response to the theology of my youth that failed to help me make sense of the blatant injustice and suffering I saw in the places God let me to.

4. I also now have a “theology of peacemaking.” This was a direct response to 9/11 and those Christian leaders I saw who had no ability to question America’s militaristic response to 9/11. I heard sermons that told us the Christian thing to do was to be patriotic and support American wars without any question. This didn’t sit well with me for some reason and I now know why: it wasn’t Christian. The examples of Jesus and MLK have forever changed my life. While the world has continued its violent ways since 9/11, I have tried very hard to live my life as a peacemaker. I have succeeded at this in some instances and have failed miserably in others, but I am working towards this every day.

5. I like to tell people I once said, “Two things I’ll never do: go to college and be in ministry.” God has since led me through college and two graduate schools, and has taken me all over the world doing ministry. My experiences in third world slums and America’s ghettoes have forever changed me. I’ve encountered many people and done many things I never imagined I could, let alone would, growing up in the home of an at one time unemployed soldier and a fast food service worker. I now find myself among the world’s elite talking about things I used to care nothing for. I’m just a cat from Tacoma, WA. I graduated from Spanaway Lake High School. My mother is a janitor and waitress. My father is a career soldier. I’m not supposed to be here. But this is where God has taken me. I’m excited to see where the next ten years will lead.

On the Varieties and Challenges of Contemporary Christian Pacifism

“What we must both admit, Christian pacifist and Christian just warrior alike, is that there is no way either of us can avoid the tragic fact that at times there is no alternative than to have other people, who may or may not share our conviction, suffer for our commitment to nonviolence or to just limits upon the use of force. Speaking for Christian pacifists, we are pledged to serve the neighbor by doing all we can to create contexts and habits that make peaceable communities possible. But we cannot deny that in certain circumstances it may be necessary to watch others die unjustly—which is surely harder even than envisioning our own deaths. The only thing worse would be our failing to witness to our brother and sister that God’s love took the form of a cross so that the powers that make our world so violent might be defeated. That our death and the death of others might be required if we are faithful to that cross cannot be denied, but it would only be more tragic if we died in a manner that underwrites the pagan assumption that nothing is more tragic than death itself.” Stanley Hauerwas, The Hauerwas Reader, 456.

[A] substantial Christian commitment is that the outsider – the different one, the one not yet in our realm of concern, the “enemy,” the one to whom we do not have a given relationship of pride and culture and language – is in a special sense the test of whether I love my neighbor. The neighbor I must love is not my near neighbor; it is especially the enemy, the adversary. – John Howard Yoder, The War of the Lamb, 187.

(*In this post I will refer to “Christian pacifism” and myself as a “pacifist” even though I don’t like this terminology because, as so many theorists of nonviolence have pointed out, “pacifism” sounds and often looks far too much like “passivism.” On that note, I tend to call myself a disciple or proponent of “Christian nonviolence,” peacemaking/peacebuilding, and/or Gandhi’s helpful term “satyagraha,” depending on my context.)

Recently, Tim McGee wrote a post explaining why he is not a pacifist. McGee claims his primary reason for not being a pacifist is his encounter with a Burmese Christian man who was a part of a militia to protect his family. In reflecting on this experience he calls into question the most popular school of Christian pacifism today – the “Hauerwas school” for lack of a better term – for its location in privileged churches and its willingness to accept the suffering of others, usually not so privileged. Tim doesn’t see the possibility of remaining “innocent” of the structural violence that benefits so many of those now espousing Christian pacifism. In response Rod of Alexandria, it seems to me, defends a pacifistic stance by rejecting that explicit violence is ever necessary. However, he too is critical of the “Hauerwas school” for its collusion with structural violence.

It is into this conversation that I would like to enter saying: I learned my pacifism from the world’s oppressed. My first teachers were Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jim Lawson, John Lewis, and Mohandas Gandhi. I then learned from Desmond Tutu and Oscar Romero. Only later did I discover the works of John Howard Yoder, who I found to be an important teacher. However, with these people as my early teachers I found the work of Stanley Hauerwas quite foreign to my understanding of Christian pacifism. (I want to be clear here that Hauerwas and Yoder are NOT the same thinker, and in fact seem to me to be quite different both in their theological method and social location. My following critiques of the “Hauerwas school” do not necessarily apply to Yoder, though I have my questions about some of his work as well.)

Along with Tim I find Hauerwas to have a peculiar notion of pacifism as a deontological duty for Christians. This is peculiar because he has devoted his career to bringing the language of virtue back into Christian ethics and espousing the importance of narrative. However, he has, from what I can tell, two inviolable principles to go alongside his narrative formed communities of character: truthfulness and pacifism. Right along with Kant, though I think he’d trace this conviction to St. Augustine, he espouses the necessity of truth-telling at all times and he rejects that violence is ever an option. Also, Rod is correct to point out that Hauerwas’s read of Bonhoeffer is questionable at best.

Having said all of this background I make my two key challenges to the “Hauerwas school”: first, along with Tim, I believe that this form of pacifism too easily accepts – even celebrates? – that part of their principled stance on violence means they will have to witness the suffering and death of others but that this is part of the price of discipleship; second, their choice to place a “preferential option for the enemy” in their understanding of discipleship leads them to often ignore the liberationist, and biblical in my reading, demand to have a preferential option for the poor in such situations.

Regarding my first challenge: the “Hauerwas school” accepts that their pacifism may lead to the suffering of others and that this is a consequence they must accept in order to be faithful to the way of Christ. Tim poignantly said, “I am still waiting to hear of a pacifism that has the courage to admit it might need to repent before God and others for this very pacifism.” The “Hauerwas school” is unrepentant about its watching others suffer because they view it as a sign of their own faithfulness. Not only is this a self-centered ethic – see H.R. Niebuhr’s The Responsible Self and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics for two accounts of “responsibility” that is other-centered as alternatives – but it seems to me to go against the core notion of the Christian ethic of neighbor-love. The question, of course, in some situations is “Which neighbor?” This leads me to my second challenge.

Challenge #2: the “Hauerwas school” chooses to love their enemy-neighbor over their “least of these-neighbor.” For them, loving one’s enemy is the hardest thing to do so it must be the true test of faith. In making this decision, however, they often leave the world’s least to fend for themselves against the world’s most powerful. In a roundabout way, it seems to me, they abandon the Christian call to care for the least of these by choosing enemy-love over oppressed-love. There are times when Christian duties – and I believe love of both enemy and least are such duties – come into conflict. From a liberationist perspective this is when the preferential option for the poor triumphs. In the “Hauerwas school” it is where the “preferential option for the enemy” triumphs. I believe the latter is less biblical than the former and therefore reject it as a measure for sorting out moral dilemmas.

Of course, in saying this I am accepting the reality of moral dilemmas – those times when people have no choice but to sin. Like Tim and Rod, I draw on Bonhoeffer as a source to sort out this complicated question. He helps me to make sense of this by accepting the fact that there may be times when through prayer and communal discernment one decides the use of violence is necessary. This does not make it just or right, simply necessary. In those situations I have made the decision to sin. I have violated the Christian call to make peace and not war. However, to love my oppressed neighbor I must choose not to love my enemy. I accept this and repent of it. Perhaps, if the “Hauerwas school” would be willing to repent of their sin against their oppressed neighbor their position would be more palatable, but even then I would argue they chose to ignore their Christian call to prefer the poor when they chose to love the enemy first.

In a world like this, where God has called Christians to choose peace but in which love of one neighbor may require I do not show love to another I end up wearing the label “almost pacifist.” There is no morally pure pacifism, as both Tim and Rod have demonstrated. Rather, there is a messy world we live in but it is still one in which I believe we can choose peace over violence more often than not.

The main point of this post, however, is to point out that 1) all forms of Christian pacifism, in the end, have their challenges that are not easily answered, there is no knock down argument for pacifism that is free from responsibility for sin, and 2) there are multiple forms of Christian pacifism present today. The “Hauerwas school” is not the only representatives of Christian pacifism. There is Rod’s pacifism and my “almost pacifism” and there are the countless disciples of King who can never be charged with “passivism.” So, Tim, in rejecting Christian pacifism let’s be clear that it’s a particular kind of pacifism you are rejecting. While Hauerwas may have nothing to say to your Burmese friend, King or Romero might. At least, that is where I stand today. Who knows where tomorrow may lead?

Joint Conference: PJSA and Gandhi-King

Exciting news! This year The Peace and Justice Studies Association and the Gandhi-King Conference will host their first ever co-sponsored conference this October at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee. The title of the conference is “A Living Movement: Toward a World of Peace, Solidarity and Justice,” and proposals are due April 15, 2011 (coming soon!). You can go check out the call for submissions below, as well as here and here.

The Peace & Justice Studies Association (PJSA) and the Gandhi-King Conference (GKC) are
pleased to announce our first-ever jointly sponsored annual conference. The PJSA and the GKC
are partnering this year to promote dynamic exchange among individuals and organizations
working for a more just and peaceful world. This partnership promises a unique conference
experience that combines the best of scholarly and grassroots perspectives on the pressing justice
issues in our communities and around the globe.
We invite submissions for the 2011 Annual Conference, to be held on the campus of Christian
Brothers University, in Memphis, Tennessee, from F riday October 21 through Sunday
October 23, 2011. We welcome proposals from a wide range of disciplines, professions, and
perspectives that address issues related to the broad themes of solidarity, community, advocacy,
education, and activism as they are brought to bear in the pursuit of peace and justice.
In particular, we seek to explore how civil rights and grassroots organizing can be reimagined
and reinvigorated as essential tools for peacemaking and addressing structural violence. We will
examine the many dimensions of identity construction and political association as they relate to
contemporary issues such as immigration, prisons, housing, and schools, and furthermore we will
strive to analyze the complex interweaving of these issues in the context of local communities,
framed by an ever-changing global landscape. We especially welcome contributions that explore
the theories, histories, and legacies of Civil Rights and other social movements, including those
addressing questions of environmental justice, first nations, urban landscapes, and militarism.
Submissions may propose offerings in various forms: research papers, presentations, roundtables,
panels, hands-on workshops, posters, and creative works using a variety of media to
address the broad themes identified above. Our goal is to create a stimulating environment where
scholars, activists, educators, practitioners, artists, and students can build community and explore
interconnections. We invite participants to engage in various modes of exploration, including
papers and presentations, hands-on practitioner workshops, and a youth summit. We aim to
foster an experience in which attendees will have multiple opportunities to meet and dialogue in
both formal and informal settings, against the unique historical backdrop of Memphis, TN.

I hope you consider submitting and/or attending. It should be good stuff!

President Obama’s Moral Logic for Intervening in Libya

Last night President Barack Obama delivered a speech defending US military involvement in establishing a no-fly zone in Libya. In doing so, he was responding to critics from both the Left and the Right. In this speech President Obama laid out the logic of his moral and political reflection on this issue. It is mostly another in a long line of thinking about American power and responsibility in an increasingly globalized world. However, there was also one piece of the argument that seemed relatively unique to our current president. Before examining the moral logic at work, please take the time (28 minutes) to watch the speech in full:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/all/modules/swftools/shared/flash_media_player/player5x2.swf

(Click here for the transcript of the speech.)

There were three key themes that resonated in President Obama’s speech:

1. America’s unique responsibility in the world.

2. Intervening in Libya is important to American interests and values.

3. The uniqueness of the situation in Libya

3a. The reality of an international coalition, including Arab states, willing to work together in intervening.

3b. The request of the Libyan people and opposition for help.

3c. The United States is not risking much in the action.

3d. The responsibility to take the often stated “never again” position towards genocide and mass killing seriously, perhaps for the first time in history.

I will take these different reasons for intervention one at a time.

Religion, Violence, and Peace: Call for Papers

As many of you know, I’m currently one of the Peer-Review editors for Practical Matters, an online, open access, multimedia journal that focuses on religious practices and practical theology. The journal is part of Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion’s Initative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology. (There are similar programs, though not journals, at Vanderbilt and Duke.) We’re currently working hard on our next issue, to be released this spring, focusing on Religion, Health, and Healing. Keep your eyes posted here because I will link to it when it is released.

Today, it was “officially” announced that I will be one of the Issue Editors, along with my friend and colleague Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon, for our next issue to be released next year. It will be entitled Violence and Peace. You can see the call for papers here or below:

Practical Matters is now seeking submissions on the theme of Violence and Peace. Practical Matters is an online, multimedia, transdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal designed to ask and provoke questions about religious practice and practical theology. Practical Matters is funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. and published out of the Emory University Graduate Division of Religion.

The fifth issue of Practical Matters will explore the intersections of violence and peace, which have emerged as valuable and exciting places for interdisciplinary research and dialogue. The submission deadline is September 1, 2011.

We are interested in featuring work on topics including but not limited to…

•Ethnographic or historical studies of the role of religion in causing and responding to conflict, violence and peacebuilding;
•Explorations of the resources available to religious communities of the past and present that contribute to both violence and peace;
•Explorations, both normative and descriptive, of the ways modern globalization and dynamics of interreligious contact contribute to both conflict and peacebuilding;
•The ways in which classic questions of religion and violence, religion and peacebuilding, and just war and pacifism are being addressed and reformulated today.
We especially encourage multimedia and interdisciplinary pieces of original scholarship. The submission deadline is September 1, 2011.

As one of the editors of this issue, I highly encourage you to consider submitting your work to the journal. There is room for classic peer-reviewed academic articles as well as peer-reviewed video content. Practical Matters also encourages reflections on teaching as well as pieces from practitioners reflecting on their experiences. To get a feel for the different types of pieces published in Practical Matters check out our submission guidelines here.

The journal has been going for several years now, and our publishing process has gotten more efficient and our name is becoming more well-known. If you’re at all interested researching religious practices, practical theology, the use of ethnography in doing theology or the role of religion in violence and peace please consider submitting something for the next issue.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell

I recently watched (I know I’m late) Pray the Devil Back to Hell. My recommendation? Go. Watch. It…Now. PTDBTH is a documentary that tells the story of the Chritian Women’s Peace Initiative, led by Leymah Gbowee, during the civil war in Liberia. This group of “market women” engaged in a nonviolent protest campaign that played a pivotal role in ending the civil war and ending the repressive presidency of Charles Taylor. It is a story of empowerment, peace, interreligious cooperation and the power of women who decide enough is enough.

There are many powerful moments in the documentary, but those familiar with contemporary Christian thought on nonviolent social engagement will find one scene especially entertaining and hopeful. Perhaps one of the most influential pieces of recent biblical scholarship among Christian pacifists/nonviolence pratitioners has been Walter Wink’s exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give your cloak as well portion. Wink has demonstrated, rather convincingly, that Jesus was not teaching passivism, but creative nonviolent resistance to social violence and injustice. For example, when Jesus teaches that a poor person taken to court by a wealth person for their coat should, in the courtroom, give them their cloak (i.e. underwear) as well. The poor defendant would then be standing in the courtroom naked and literally exposing the shamefulness of the rich exploiting the poor. Well, there is a scene in the documentary where Gbowee does just this – and it works. The peace talks that were stalling begin again with a new urgency and Taylor’s regime begins to crumble. It is a powerfully moving, and wonderfully affirming, moment that demonstrates the power of creative nonviolence to disarm those committed to violence.

Please, get this from Netflix or buy it online. And watch the 1-hour interview that is in the bonus features. Gbowee’s commitment as a student of nonviolence comes through more clearly here than in the documentary itself. Even if you are not interested in questions of Christians and violence/nonviolence, you will find this story powerfully moving, and, if nothing else, you will learn about a part of the world most here in the US know nothing about. Thank you Ms. Gbowee and your fellow “market women” who changed your part of the world into a more peaceful place through peaceful means. Your witness is not going unnoticed.

Soldiers of Conscience

I recently came across these interviews, after perusing The Ekklesia Project, from the upcoming documentary Soldiers of Conscience. Here is a description of the documentary:

Soldiers of Conscience is a dramatic window on the dilemma of individual U.S. soldiers in the current Iraq War – when their finger is on the trigger and another human being is in their gun-sight. Made with cooperation from the U.S. Army and narrated by Peter Coyote, the film profiles eight American soldiers, including four who decide not to kill, and become conscientious objectors; and four who believe in their duty to kill if necessary. The film reveals all of them wrestling with the morality of killing in war, not as a philosophical problem, but as soldiers experience it – a split-second decision in combat that can never be forgotten or undone.

Soldiers of Conscience is not a film that tells an audience what to think, nor is it about the situation in Iraq today. Instead, it tells a bigger story about human nature and war.The film begins with a little-known fact – after World War II, the Army’s own studies revealed that as many as 75 percent of combat soldiers, given a chance to fire on the enemy, failed to do so. The studies showed that soldiers, despite training, propaganda and social sanction, retained a surprising inhibition when it came to taking human life. The statistics surprised and alarmed America’s generals, who developed training techniques to overcome the reluctance to kill. But if the military found a solution to its problem, the moral contradiction for the individual soldier remained. The mental and emotional burdens carried by soldiers who have killed ripple across America’s families and communities after each of its recent wars. As this film shows, every soldier is inescapably a “soldier of conscience.”

And here is the trailer:

In these interviews you’ll hear a multitude of voices and opinions – from soldiers turned conscientious objectors, a former Evangelical Abu Ghraib interrogator and current soldiers – about the morality of war. It is definitely worth listening to and a valuable exercise in recognizing the complexity of moral questions and the seriousness of faithfully living the Christian life. Please go check them out here and let me know what you think about them.