“If you’ve got guns, you got money, and you believe in the American military, and you got your nukes, you don’t need God,” said the Rev. John Dear in a Faith Forum on War and Militarism hosted by Red Letter Christians on August 18. Red Letter Christians is an organization of primarily liberal Christians working to counter the voices of conservative Christians in the political sphere. The organization focuses on issues such as poverty, racial discrimination, global warming, and the military.
Dear, a Catholic priest and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was joined by Diane Oestreich, an Iraq war veteran, and the Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., an ordained elder in the Pentecostal denomination Church of God in Christ and president of the Hip Hop Caucus, for this discussion. The three collectively called for a complete rejection of war and militarism.
“If you want to do one little bit of violence, you are a blasphemer against Jesus,” asserted Dear. “To be a follower of Jesus and a person of nonviolence and a peacemaker means there is no cause, however noble, no matter what they tell us, for which you and I will ever accept the possibility of killing or taking a single human life, much less remaining silent while we’re decimating millions of people.”
Oestreich, who served in Iraq at age 23, holds Dear’s sentiments as an experiential truth. She became a “peacemaker” when she had to choose whether to run over an Iraqi child in the midst of combat. “Even though I had made an oath to my country, I knew between me and my faith and God that I would never take life,” she said.
Author and Christian pacifist activist Shane Claiborne, who moderated the conversation, questioned why, “when an individual kills another individual, everybody calls it evil, but when the state does it in mass, somehow we sanctify it and we call it justice, or we call it good. We baptize it with our religion.”
As far as Dear is concerned, the Christian religion leaves no room for war. Taking inspiration from the Beatitudes, Dear argued, “If you want to be a follower of Jesus, you have to work for peace, which means you can have nothing to do with war, which means you can have nothing to do with death or killing, and you end up like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King, pursuing the vision and the life of total non-violence which leads to universal love. It can have nothing to do with war because war is a total waste. It doesn’t work. It’s futile… It is the demonic. It is the anti-Christ.”
Dear has been arrested more than 75 times for nonviolent civil disobedience. Claiborne joked, “Some people celebrate their hundredth birthday, but we’re going to celebrate your hundredth arrest.”
On the political front, Yearwood criticized both American political parties for operating “within the confines” of the military-industrial complex. Politicians on both sides of the aisle will often “say they’re for peace, but their actions don’t speak to peace,” lamented Yearwood.
He stressed the need to speak against perceived wrongs no matter who committed them. “For those who are Democrats… if we see something that is wrong, we are quiet when Democrats are in charge. When we see something that’s wrong when the other side does it, we get very vocal. It should not matter what letter is on the back of someone’s name for you to be vocal. You have to speak up no matter who’s in charge.”
Dear recounted the time he and his colleagues decided to take the issue of nonviolence to the Vatican. “Let’s just go to the Vatican and get them to work on non-violence,” they said. In 2016, Pope Francis acknowledged their appeals and held a Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference, the first conference on non-violence in the Catholic Church. It was attended by 85 people who fulfilled at least one of three criteria: to personally have ended a war, be under constant death threat, or have been imprisoned. As a result of that conference, Pope Francis issued the Catholic Church’s first ever statement on non-violence.
According to Dear, the statement “basically said, there’s no more just war theory; you can’t be involved in the military anymore; Jesus was totally non-violent and all of us have to start changing the course; and, in fact, the church has to be disarmed.” Interestingly, the Vatican continues to employ armed Swiss guards, whom Cardinal Parolin thanked for their “precious service.”
Dear, however, took the statement to mean that “The good news, the scandal of Jesus, is that God is non-violent.” Dear called on listeners to “reimagine the image of God” as a non-violent God. “Only then will you begin to worship a God of non-violence, which therefore means justice, equality, and peace,” he declared.
Comment by Dan W on August 26, 2021 at 6:11 am
It’s easier to preach non-violence than to live it. I know Christian pacifists who would shoot you if you touched their fur baby.
Jesus clearing the Temple seemed pretty violent to me.
Comment by Loren Golden on August 26, 2021 at 9:19 am
“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.” (Rev. 19.11-16)
Comment by Douglas E Ehrhardt on August 26, 2021 at 7:38 pm
This sounds like more idolatry.
Comment by Bob on August 27, 2021 at 4:24 pm
These are the folks who critiqued Bonhoeffer as unchristian for planning Hitler’s assassination. These are the good samaritans who stumble upon an active robbery with the traveler being beaten to a pulp, standing to one side with bandages ready to help what’s left of the traveler when the beating is over.
Comment by Amber on August 28, 2021 at 6:50 pm
It is very strange to me to hear people who profess to be followers of Christ argue against or disparage those who preach non-violence. The message of Christ to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other cheek, and treat all of your neighbors as you would wish to be treated seems to preclude committing any acts of violence. Never are specific people who may be behaving badly, or who we suspect may behave badly in the future, exempted from these instructions; in fact we are explicitly asked “Why should God reward you if you love only the people who love you?”
I do, however, take issue with the statement that “God is non-violent.” It’s important to start with a clear definition of what violence is, and I define it as follows: the use of physical force to violate the property rights of another individual. (Note that the most fundamental property right is the self-ownership of one’s own body, so this includes offenses against both a person’s body and a person’s legitimately acquired material possessions.) God, however, is not subject to our human concepts of ownership. We need property rights as a baseline to arbitrate our human to human interactions, but these cannot apply to a sovereign God: as Psalms tells us, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” Therefore, the concepts of violence or non-violence cannot apply to God, as there is nothing that God doesn’t have ultimate ownership of, and nothing that God could do that would violate the property rights of another.
Comment by Paul Zesewitz on August 29, 2021 at 7:13 am
“If you want to be a follower of Jesus, you have to work for peace, which means you can have nothing to do with war.” Really? I guess these folks forgot the Jesus who came not to bring peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34). Just saying.
Comment by floyd lee on August 29, 2021 at 7:40 am
Two simple questions for Dear, Yearwood, Claiborne, etc.
What does Genesis 9:6 say? What does Romans 13:4 say?
Comment by Tim P Wohlford on August 30, 2021 at 12:24 pm
Even the Society of Friends makes allowances for self-defense. Earlham even has a football team, which seems to me to be a bit “violent”.
While I do commend anyone for taking a moral stand, I’m thinking that terms of our “fallen condition” mean that we have to be ready to use violence. The trick, of course, is to know “when”.