For the fourth time in my nearly 15 years of ministry, I have to speak on matters of war and peace and insists, along with the ELCA’s 1995 social statement “For Peace in God’s World”, that “any decision for war must be a mournful one.” Declarations of war—or kinetic responses, or whatever euphemism we are using today—ought not be like celebrating a sporting victory or bellicose bragging, but instead conducted in sackcloth and ashes, followed up by the words Kyrie Eleison—Lord have mercy.
I would
ask you, if you are a praying person, to take a moment to pray this prayer from
our Hymnal:
“Gracious God, grant peace among nations. Cleanse from
our own hearts the seeds of strife: greed and envy, harsh misunderstandings and
ill will, fear and desire for revenge. Make us quick to welcome ventures in
cooperation among the peoples of the world, so that there may be woven the
fabric of a common good too strong to be torn by the evil hands of war. In the
time of opportunity, make us be diligent; and in the time of peril, let not our
courage fail; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
In light
of our attack on Iran, with the stated goal of regime change, it is incumbent upon
Christians living in a democracy to ask some stark questions of ourselves and
our government. For two thousand years we Christians have been struggling with
being faithful in the world as it is, in situations of persecution, famine,
feast, might, and war. And those struggles have given us a rich tradition of
thought and action, something much deeper than the knee-jerk reactions of TV
pundits and political intellectuals.
In
the early days of the Church, Christians were known for being pacifists. In
fact, the Society of Friends (Quakers) and Mennonites still are pacifists, they
see refusing to go to war as a witness to the world that the Prince of Peace,
Jesus Christ, reigns. Other Christians, such as us Lutherans, follow a
tradition that includes Just War Theory. This theory requires that we answer
well the following questions, before taking any military action:
Have we given all non-volent options a try before going to
war?
By what authority are we going to war?
What is the reason, the justification, for this military
action?
What does success look like in this war? Is that outcome
likely?
Will it all be worth it? Will the peace on the other side of
this action be better than the peace that existed before the action?
Will we use more violence against Iran than they have used
against us or those we are protecting?
What are we doing to ensure that we aren’t hurting or
killing civilians?
In
addition to these questions, here are a few statements from the aforementioned “For
Peace in God’s World” document, which particularized our understanding
of Just War Theory to the challenges of the 20th and 21st century.
Here are a few stand out statements:
“Wars,
both between and within states, represent a horrendous failure of politics. The
evil of war is especially evident in the number of children and other
noncombatants who suffer and die.”
“Helping
the neighbor in need may require protecting innocent people from injustice and
aggression. While we support the use of nonviolent measures, there may be no
other way to offer protection in some circumstances than by restraining
forcibly those harming the innocent. We do not, then--for the sake of the
neighbor--rule out possible support for the use of military force. We must
determine in particular circumstances whether or not military action is the
lesser evil.”
“From
the posture of the just/unjust war tradition, the aim of all politics is peace.
Any political activity that involves coercion should be held accountable to
just/unjust war principles. They are important for evaluating movements,
sanctions, embargoes, boycotts, trade policies to reward or punish, and other
coercive but nonviolent measures.”
And
as I began, "Any decision for war must be a mournful one."
1 comment:
This is very well thought out. Thank you. I find myself in accord with what you have written here. War is always mournful. It is the fruit of sin. As St Paul wrote , “…. and when sin is full grown, it too has a child and that child is death “.
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