From January 31 to February 2, over 400 peace activists within the United Methodist church met inNorth Carolinato lament the violence inherent in the world, and to seek alternatives to war and conflict. The speakers extolled the virtues of pacifism, while largely ignoring the church’s official teachings on Just War principles.
The participants gathered at United Methodism’s LakeJunaluska retreat center for the first annual Lake Junaluska Peace Conference. The event was sponsored by the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church & Society (GBCS), the Southeastern Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church, the Southeastern Jurisdiction College of Bishops, the denomination’s southeastern seminaries (Duke, Candler, and Gammon), Asbury Theological Seminary, the World Methodist Council, a couple local activist groups, and the Lake Junaluska Conference Center.
Retired Methodist Bishop Ken Carder lamented the lack of attention given to the Council of Bishops’ resolution calling for the immediate withdrawl of all U.S. forces from Iraq. |
The plenary speakers generally avoided acknowledging the Just War teaching incorporated into the denomination’s Social Principles. While the official United Methodist position speaks negatively of war, calling it “incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ,” it also recognizes the justifiability of warfare for “prevention of such evils as genocide, brutal suppression of human rights, and unprovoked international aggression” and affirms the church’s “support” for “those persons who conscientiously choose to serve in the armed forces.”
The conference, however, treated military action as unambiguously unacceptable.
In the opening night’s plenary address, South African Methodist Bishop Peter Storey urged his audience to heed revisionist Jesus Seminar guru Walter Wink’s call to reject “the myth of redemptive violence.” Storey rhetorically asked why “we persist in the belief that violence can make the world a better place.” He shared several impressive stories of ethnic violence being overcome inSouth Africa.
The South African bishop’s dream for the 21st century is that Methodism as a worldwide movement “will join the Quakers and the Mennonites” in rejecting “Christendom’s centuries-old compromise with violence.” While the Just War tradition came from “dead, white patriarchs,” the Bishop credited it for being designed to limit war. Yet “there has never been a just war.” He celebrated the recent decision ofCosta Rica to abolish its army, although it is still “not a perfectly peace-able kingdom,” as Costa Ricans “still have armed police.”
Also promoting full-fledged pacifism was Richard Hays, a New Testament Professor atDukeDivinitySchool. Denouncing “theories of Just War that have no basis whatsoever in the teachings of Jesus” and “the unprovoked and unjust war inIraq,” Hays argued that pacifism was “not just a matter of pulling out a few verses from the Sermon on the Mount” but rather was “consistent with the entire New Testament.” The biblical scholar made a point of repudiating the theologically liberal notion that Christ and Paul had contrary teachings, insisting that “nothing could be further from the truth.”
“We’re not motivated by the naïve hope that all people are really nice and will be nice to us if we’re nice to them first,” Hays said, but rather by obedience to the moral vision of the New Testament. “The distinctive vocation of Jesus’ followers is to denounce violence.” The church is to be a “counter-cultural community” that “prefigure[s] the peaceable Kingdom in a world racked by violence.”
Another speaker, Candler School of Theology Dean and former United Methodist Women chief executive Jan Love, said in an interview that while she “yearn[s] to be a pacifist,” she was not. Having “wrestled with it a lot,” she said that she knew that there are some hypothetical circumstances in which she would commit violence. In later remarks at the conference, she called for “a sabbatical from the Just War debate,” which is “so stale and hackneyed and escapist,” instead promoting individuals “largely from historic peace churches” who say that in theory they might not always be pacifists, but who direct the conversation to “realistic ways to avoid war.”
Emphasis on Iraq
Predictably, much of the conference focused on denouncingU.S. military efforts inIraq.
Retired Bishop Ken Carder, now a professor atDukeDivinitySchool, lamented that little attention had been paid to the recent resolution of the Council of Bishops calling for “immediate” withdrawal of allU.S.and coalition forces fromIraq, which “illustrates that bishops are not paid much attention to anyhow.”
“The distinctive vocation of Jesus’ followers is to denounce violence,” said New Testament professor Richard Hays. |
“The war must end; that is why we are here this weekend,” said GBCS General Secretary Jim Winkler. Calling the conflict “an unmitigated disaster,” he declared that “conditions are so bad inIraq due to our invasion that life was better under Saddam Hussein—and that was an era of fear and misery.” To “accomplish such a terrible feat,” he said,U.S.leaders had to “lie and cheat and steal.”
The denomination’s most visible spokesman demanded that the U.S. “leave Iraq so that Iraq can begin the process of healing,” but characteristically avoided any indication of how the resultant security vacuum would help the factional violence in that divided nation. Winkler insisted that theU.S.“cannot bring peace toIraq” and “cannot bring democracy toIraq,” but at least “can stop bombing and killing the people ofIraq.” Conference participants responded with hearty applause to this placing blame for the bombings of Iraqi civilians solely onU.S.forces rather than on the terrorists who actually plant and detonate the bombs.
“Gold Star Mother” Celeste Zappala spoke of her heartbreak after her son was killed inBaghdad, and her subsequent protest, “begg[ing] to be heard” outside the Pentagon and White House. Declaring that “this war is a betrayal of our military and the democracy” they are called to defend, she went on to more broadly condemn “sending the children of other people to kill people we don’t know.” She also lamented that the anti-war movement was not “led by religious people,” since “sometimes the message becomes as hateful and muddied” as that of “those we oppose.” The bereaved mother also insisted that the one point of consensus for United Methodism should be that “everyIraqveteran who comes home should be welcomed, honored, and cared for!”
Zappala’s son, Dante, made similar points. He portrayed his family’s United Methodist church, home to recently defrocked lesbian minister Beth Stroud, as one “committed to social justice” and that portrayed Christ as “an activist” and “a revolutionary,” providing an incongruous background for choosing military service, although Dante respected his brother’s motives.
Promoting the Palestinian Cause
Leading a workshop on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Winkler cited Israelis telling Arabs “if you recognize our right to exist, then we’ll move forward.” Aside from noting Palestinian concerns about which borders would be recognized, he quoted with apparent approval Rev. Naim Ateek of the Jeruslaem based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center: “What country has a ‘right’ to exist?”
While acknowledging “very strong competing narratives going on,” Winkler’s biases were clear. Speaking of the premillennial dispensationalist Protestants whose eschatology leads them to strongly support the Jewish state, the GBCS chief quipped that he was “not sure they’re really wedded to the Christian faith anymore.” He also plugged the controversial recent book, The Israeli Lobby, which forcefully critiques pro-Israel groups.
On the other hand, Winkler reported that he tells Palestinian leaders, “You have the moral high ground” and should embrace non-violence, but he has yet to see any clearly commit to doing so.
Winkler proposed that “perhaps what we need to be talking about is a one-state solution,” even if such talk makes Jewish groups “very apprehensive.”
Winkler also spent time defending the GBCS’s General Conference proposal to force widespread United Methodist divestment from Caterpillar because of the company’s “role in the occupation.” Within the denomination, “No one’s talking about divestment from Israel,” he asserted, claiming it is an “absolute falsehood” to say otherwise. He explained that the choice to single out Caterpillar was made not by the GBCS but by a larger international activist campaign, onto whose bandwagon the GBCS has merely jumped. Before endorsing Caterpillar divestment, the GBCS was not directly in touch with the company, which Winkler conceded was a “big oversight.” Winkler defended his motion by claiming that the United Methodist Churchhad similarly divested from apartheid South Africa. (Dave Zellner of the United Methodist Pensions Board reported at a recent pre-General Conference briefing that this is not true.)
Winkler recalled a rabbi telling him at this event that “you may not think this is anti-Semitic, but it feels that way to us,” and said that “we need to honor those feelings.”
Winkler warned that before General Conference, there would be much media attention about how “those dastardly Methodists are doing terrible things to the Jews.” But he asserted that if one truly sought peace for all in the region, “at some point, you’re going to be called anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.”
Recalling his very controversial trip to Iran with other liberal U.S. religious figures to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Winkler reported that they had challenged the “insanity” of his “denying the Holocaust” and calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Winkler recalled his group’s telling Ahmadinejad, “Throw us a bone, man! You’ve seen what these people are capable of in Iraq!” But apparently no bone was thrown.
Questions of Consistency
Given his call for the church to repudiate “redemptive violence,” I asked Bishop Storey, during an interview, how this might apply to abortion. For the South African bishop, this was an entirely different matter. He accepted the inevitability of “a number of Christian positions” on the issue, citing a lack of “a firm word from the Lord.” “The only view” which Storey was “most suspicious of is the one that’s dogmatic, on either side.” He opined that the church should “make space for a dialogue of pain” between such competing interests as “what’s done to the fetus” and “people in poor countries that are having their twelfth child.”
In an interview with the Rev. Jonathan Marlowe, a conference participant, Winkler defended his agency’s repeatedly lobbying against the “Mexico City policy” which prevents U.S. foreign aid dollars from supporting organizations that perform, promote, or refer for abortions.
In contrast, Richard Hays told me in an interview that he saw “a definite relationship” between “the church’s easy acquiescence” to the violence of abortion and its acceptance of military violence, and that he shared the concerns of Lifewatch, the denomination’s unofficial pro-life caucus.
Many would see a contradiction when “peace advocates” profess renunciation of force while seeking to advance their various social agendas through political power, which is ultimately based on force. But Hays said that while a Christian’s “relationship to power is complex” in a democracy, his speech was not intended to suggest that “the church should be engaged in lobbying Caesar.” Rather his focus was on how the church should order its life while “bearing witness to the peaceful way of God.”
Peace within the United Methodist Church?
Bishop Storey observed that within theUnitedMethodistChurch itself “there’s a mighty civil war going on” that is diverting attention “from people who are dying around the world.”
Jan Love acknowledged that the United Methodist Church has a great deal of racial, geographic, theological, and political diversity, along with much polarizing tension. She said that the church needed to be “healing our divisions” by “celebrating our diversity” while affirming common ground and mutual love.
Love asked how one could advocate for “peace and justice…without running roughshod over those who deeply and sincerely disagree and stand in our way.” She urged seeing “Christ anew in the one who offends us the most” and to “really listen to each other in love.” She recalled her challenging experience with such principles during the 1990s in World Council of Churches dialogues with Eastern Orthodox leaders dealing with such touchy issues as “the use of inclusive language” and the role of women in the church. Love pointed out that in “the mainstream of world Christianity . . . mainline Western Protestants are a distinct minority” in accepting women’s ordination.
I asked Love how she would respond to IRD/UMAction’s calling on the GBCS to focus on “common ground” causes, given our denomination’s diversity. She replied that the denomination’s “expansive” common ground was affirmed at each General Conference—in apparent reference to the Social Principles and the rarely read but extremely left-leaning Book of Resolutions—and saying that she did “not accept that that’s not mainstream” for General Conference delegates. When asked about general agencies’ work contradicting General Conference-endorsed positions, she agreed that “no general agency should be doing that,” but quickly added that she was not aware of any doing so.
Delivering greetings on behalf of his fellow Southeastern Bishops, James Swanson of the Holston Conference (Eastern Tennessee) strongly defended “that board that so many people either love or hate” it. He complained that the GBCS staff have been “demonized and made to suffer because they stood for what is right.” Bishop Swanson insisted that the GBCS simply did what the General Conference, rather than the GBCS staff or board, asked it to do.
Shortly after the conference, I e-mailed Bishop Swanson asking him how this applied to such GBCS activities as endorsing and participating in the April 2004 ‘March for Women’s Lives,’ staffers using their positions to speak against denominational policy on homosexuality, or the promotion of total pacifism in contrast to the Social Principles’ recognition of the justifiability of war in some circumstances. While I received a “read” receipt for my e-mail, as of this writing three weeks later, I am still waiting for a reply.
At one point, Winkler lashed out at fellow United Methodists who question the activities and priorities of the GBCS, as well as Episcopalians and mainline Presbyterians with similar concerns about their denominational lobby offices. He asserted that such criticism was really “all about” nothing more than the denominational lobbies’ “direct opposition to corporate and military interests.” There is “no other way to see it,” and any other arguments used for reform are a dishonest “smokescreen,” Winkler insisted.
The 2009 conference will include Jewish and Muslim speakers—perhaps even the Dalai Lama. But for all the interfaith inclusiveness, it seems highly unlikely that the GBCS and other leaders will seek to make the next Junaluska Peace Conference any less exclusive of more moderate and conservative members of their own denomination.
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