Jan. 21 issue
Confession of peace
In a violent world, living what we say we believe
Practically every Confession of Faith accepted by Mennonites over the centuries takes a stand for peace. The current Mennonite Brethren Confession is no different. But confession should lead to action. Words should match realities. This month the U.S. MB Conference is doing something important: holding a study conference on parts of its Confession to seek greater unity and stronger identity as a peace church.
MB leaders and others will gather Jan. 24-26 in Phoenix for “Kingdom Citizens in a World of Conflict,” the first USMB study conference of its kind in many years. Media coverage is being limited to the denominational magazine, Christian Leader.
Purposes include examining two articles in the USMB Confession of Faith: “Society and State” and “Love and Nonresistance.” Participants will try to “more fully understand the complexities” of applying the articles in today’s world.
In keeping with the MB evangelical tradition, one of the event’s goals asserts the need to embrace the best of both the evangelical and Anabaptist perspectives.
A list of six purposes ends with this goal: “To challenge each other to retain and expand our identity as a church that emphasizes reconciliation and peacemaking as an integral part of faithfully following Jesus.” Every Anabaptist church could benefit by adopting this challenge. Among the beliefs we confess, loving our enemies remains one of the hardest to live.
A world addicted to violence cries out for peacemakers. Nonresistant followers of Christ must show the healing power of refusing to take an eye for an eye.
Our Confessions set high ideals. The MB Confession calls for being “agents of reconciliation in all relationships” and “peacemakers in all situations.” The Mennonite Church USA Confession says, “We witness against all forms of violence, including war among nations, hostility among races and classes, abuse of children and women, abortion and capital punishment.”
There was a time when standing for peace meant we didn’t go to war. Today’s peacemaking must go far beyond that, binding up many kinds of wounds.
Our world is deeply wounded by violence in ways that we are still learning to understand. Psychologists have developed the concept of “moral injury.” The term is usually applied to soldiers, such as those who suffered psychological trauma in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, every month nearly 1,000 veterans attempt to take their own lives. Christian pacifists need to find ways to support soldiers, veterans and their families as they deal with the trauma of war. A 2005 MC USA statement opposing the Iraq war called for doing this.
The concept of moral injury applies more broadly. December’s school shooting in Connecticut scarred an entire nation. With wounds still fresh, many now seek answers that would drive our communities deeper into a culture of violence. It is time to confess that we believe fighting gun violence with more guns will inflict deeper injuries, both moral and physical.
The world’s most heavily armed nation needs churches that live the words they confess about Christ’s way of peace.
Comments
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The Philistines once had a government policy to make fewer swords available to the Hebrews.
Now there was no blacksmith found throughout all the land of Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears. 1 Samuel 13:19
A personal position of pacifist non-resistance–not having a sword or spear–is one thing.
But to take the Philistine side–who desire a monopoly of force by disarmament of their political enemies–is antithetical to a pacifist position. It openly supports the side with the most firepower; it is worshiping the brutal State as savior.
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Yes, Brian. That was Jesus' strategy with the Romans. Wasn't it?
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Can you imagine Jesus calling for the brutal Roman Empire hierarchy to disarm those feisty Jews -- while dancing around the inconvenient fact that the Roman Police State gets to retain their assault weapons?
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Actually, yes Brian, I can. But Jesus also offered us a third way that doesn't see the world in terms of "armed" or "disarmed". Rather, Jesus calls us as disciples to be peacemakers and to love our enemies (whether armed or disarmed). Arming yourself against your enemy would seem to be antithetical to this central point of Jesus' message. As he said to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would have been fighting".
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One further (perhaps last) thought on this is that Christ's call to peace was not conditional on the peace of others. Quite to the contrary, His call to peace is, in my view, a radical pre-emptive unilateral act that is utterly foundational for the peace of others. In this way it calls others to peace and initiates peace rather than waiting for or reacting to the actions of the "enemy" or the oppressor.
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Arming yourself against your enemy...
Well, I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about the Mennonite Church advocating for State (government) policy that requires The Gun to enforce.
Liberal Mennonites do wish to use The Gun against their neighbors, not personally, but rather by delegating the necessary violence to government agents.
I just can't see Jesus delegating violence (via voting or political advocacy) to the Roman Empire government to effect any social engineering he'd wish on his neighbor.
Anabaptists once didn't do that. They didn't vote, then didn't get involved in politics. They understood that government policy gets enforced by one thing, or the threat thereof: The Gun.
That Gun is behind ObamaCare and the gun-grabbing agenda (favored by MC USA), just as much as its behind war taxes and the military-industrial-complex (favored by Religious Right.)
(At any rate, even if we disagree, I do thank you for a polite response.)
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Thanks, Brian. I certainly hope we can have polite responses and respectful dialogue and disagreement. We are talking about being peacemakers after all. :-) Though I agree this is oftimes regrettably lacking.
I think I understand your point a bit more clearly now. It seems your concern is with advocacy for a particular law / policy rather than around peacemaking itself. And it certainly raises the question about the role of Christian disciples in public / political life. And, I understand you are concerned about ceding power to a potentially oppressive state and see an armed citizenry as a legitimate counter-point.
My only question is this. Suppose you were faced with an oppressive state. As a disciple called to peace, what exactly would you suggest be done with the weapons the citizenry has stockpiled? I think we agree armed insurrection is antithetical to Christ's call to peace and love of the enemy. So, what actual good are the weapons at all if we are fundamentally opposed to their use, even against an oppressive state?
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