November - Just Peace

Instructor: The Reverend Susan Page Townsley, Regional Minister, Fairfield County Region, Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Scriptural References: John 8:2-12; Ezekiel 37:36; Matthew 5:9; Isaiah 2:1-4; Isaiah 5:7; Psalms 27:1-6; Hebrews 13:18-

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice. "
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Introduction: The UCC Synod Pronouncement

In 1985, the 15th General Synod of the United Church of Christ voted the Just Peace Pronouncement, naming the United Church of Christ to be a Just Peace church and urging local congregations to consider how they could honor God’s call to build God’s realm.

Just Peace is based on the concept that is conveyed in the Hebrew word shalom. Scholar Gerhard Von Rad will describe shalom as a communional well-being in which God’s creation is justly ordered.

The pronouncement defined "just peace" as the interrelation of friendship, justice, and common security from violence. The pronouncement called the church to a vision of shalom rooted in peace with justice and placed the UCC General Synod in opposition to the institution of war.

Just Peace Now

Ralph Slater, a member of the Ridgefield Congregational Church, remembers a former pastor who would say that peace is more than the absence of war. “You have to wage peace,” he remembered the Rev. Clayton Lund as saying. Slater was sharing this concept with me as he talked about his deep ambivalence about the news that his son would be on his 4th deployment to the War-on-Terror battlefields.

Another UCC layman, Bruce Barrett, a member of the Woodmont Congregational Church, has used his billboard business to support peacemaking in the Middle East. You may have seen the billboards driving up Route 8 to Waterbury, or in the Stratford area. I Wage Peace, they proclaim.

This project began at Temple Emanuel in Orange CT. “The Palestinian, Sulaiman Al Hamri and the Israeli, Elik Elhanan were sharing their stories of their life as combatants and their decision to join forces non-violently to end the suffering of their people. I was moved by their words and invited them to come to our sign shop and paint a sign promoting their organization, Combatants for Peace. Quite unexpectedly, they asked me if they could paint the sign in the West Bank. I surprised myself by answering, ‘yes, we will find a way’. And so the project was born.”

From Pacifism to Just War

Within the UCC and its predecessor churches, approaches to the issues of war and peace have ranged from pacifism, to just-war, to crusade. Zwingli, Luther and Calvin, our reformer divines, were in the just-war tradition. Zwingli even served as a military chaplain and died on the battlefield when the Catholic Cantons of southern Switzerland attached the north.

While we are not considered one of the historic peace churches (the Mennonites, Quakers are) pacifism has often taken root in our midst. As early as the war of 1812, peace preaching can be found in the likes of David Osgood (1747-1822), pastor of the Congregational Church of Medford, Massachusetts, who said:

As a teacher of righteousness, as a minister of Christ I feel myself under obligation infinitely superior to all human laws, most solemnly to testify, both in public and in private, everywhere, in the hearing of all persons, rulers, and subjects, against this atrocious wickedness [of war], and to lay down my life rather than cease this testimony.

After the Civil War, The National Council of Congregational Churches passed resolutions affirming the work of the American Peace Society, which engaged numerous Congregational lay and clergy leaders. Later, and having joined with the Christian Connection, a number of resolutions in favor of peace were passed between the two World Wars.

The Congregational Christian Pacifist Fellowship was organized at Grinnell, Iowa in 1946 and adopted this covenant at that time:

In loyalty to the teachings of Jesus Christ and in obedience to the will of God as I understand it, I am committed in conscience to redemptive love as the way of life. In expression of this conviction I cannot participate in war or give it my support. I accept it as my task to work for peace, for justice, and for the reconciliation of mankind.

At the same time, Reinhold Niebuhr was reinvigorating concepts of just-war with his theology of Christian Realism. Out of the Evangelical and Reformed branch of our tradition, Niebuhr is perhaps the best-known public theologian of the 20th Century. The exigencies of the Second World War made Niebuhr plumb just war theory to understand how Christians ought to respond when standing by did not seem just.

Peace movements in our midst have clearly taken deep root in the UCC. Dr. Robert V. Moss, the second president of the UCC, wrote in 1971, "We now need to put as much effort into defining a just peace as we have done in the past in defining a just war.” The Just Peace pronouncement, passed the delegates 14 years later, names just-peace making as a central concern of our common life, and commends deep thought, prayer and discernment on the part of local congregations as they determine how to live our their particular local calls. The Justice and Peace Action Network is a resource for congregations and individuals who hear the call of peacemaking.

Of course, gospel freedom (a concept most clearly articulated by the Christian branch of our heritage) means each one of us is responsible to determine our own witness. In that spirit, and in the tradition of the Just Peace Pronouncement, UCC president John Thomas and Justice and Witness officer Linda Jaramillo attempted to deliver a pastoral letter with over 60,000 collected signatures to the Whitehouse. The pastoral letter states:

We confess that too often the church has been little more than a silent witness to evil deeds. We have prayed without protest. We have recoiled from the horror this war has unleashed without resisting the arrogance and folly at its heart. We have been more afraid of conflict in our churches than outraged over the deceptions that have killed thousands. We have confused patriotism with self-interest. As citizens of this land we have been made complicit in the bloodshed and the cries. Lord, have mercy upon us.

My own personal history is as complex as the United Church of Christ’s around war. I am the daughter of many generations of West Point officers, professors and one Superintendent. On my mother’s side, pacifism runs so deep that relatives of mine were ambulance drivers and registered conscientious-objectors during the first and second world wars.

The Just Peace pronouncement engages me to live out a difficult Christian commitment. It is not enough to react to wars with pacifism. I see the Just Peace Pronouncement as calling me to be an active participant in the making of justice in all the days of my life.

Jesus and Just Peace

Jesus saw a crowd gathered around a woman, all standing with stones ready to throw at her. Taking a stone into his own hand, feeling the damaging heft of it, he challenges the crowd: “the one of you who is without sin, go ahead and cast the first stone.” Jesus’ approach here is instructive. He manages to be both an advocate for justice and for non-violence (see John 8:2-11). Jesus engages the community to set to right the woman’s position. Only then is peace possible.

Living the Just Peace

The Just Peace Pronouncement recognizes the challenging call that is ours in Jesus Christ. It acknowledges that the risks are great, but that the church cannot be neutral. It admits that our witness to peace must begin long before the rumors of war, in addressing the inequalities, materialism, and political realities that contribute to war.

There is no one way to be a just peace church. Still, the blessed calling to be agents of God’s healing, wholeness and reconciliation overrides our concerns of the impracticality--even nigh-on impossibility--of the task. Peace churches study the Bible, partner with churches abroad, educate themselves in other faiths, read the newspaper, join coalitions and networks, sponsor missionaries, and worship the God of Justice and Peace.

Just Peace is not a Pollyanna approach. It is a Christian challenge in a complex and difficult world. It acknowledges that peace without justice is as dangerous as justice extracted without peace. Naming the biblical themes of friendship, the reconciling activity of Jesus Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, the church’s role of being the reconciling community and our hopes for God’s reign, Just Peace stands firming in a richly biblical and churchly heritage.

Questions for reflection and dialogue
1. What is your family history around war and peace, and how does it inform your beliefs?

2. What are the compelling critical voices against pacifism? What are the compelling critical voices against a just war approach? Do you hear Jesus’ voice in either of these?

3. What are the stories of peacemaking that inspire you?

4. How should the church be involved in justice making? How should you be involved in justice making?

5. Can you think of examples in which an easy peace might institutionalize injustices?

6. What is waging peace? Is war a means of waging peace?

Resources:

The Niebuhrs debate war: http://www.ucc.org/beliefs/theology/two-famous-brothers-debate.html

Becoming a just peace church:
http://www.ucc.org/justice/peacemaking/a-just-peace-church-1.html

The just peace pronouncement:
http://www.ucc.org/beliefs/theology/general-synod-pronouncement.html

Pastoral letter: http://www.ucc.org/news/significant-speeches/a-pastoral-letter-on-the-iraq.html

And excellent list of justice advocacy resources
http://www.ucc.org/justice/advocacy_resources/witness-for-justice/

Join the justice and peace action network:
http://www.ucc.org/justice/join-the-network/

For Further Reading:

Thistlethwaite, Susan, Ed., A Just Peace Church, New York: United Church Press, 1986

Chesterman, Simon Just War or Just Peace, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001

Thompson, Joseph Millburn, Justice and Peace: A Christian Primer, Maryknoll: Orbis Books 2003