Just Peace: Ecumenical, Intercultural, and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

By Olav Fykse Tveit

Christian theology and ethics have wrestled with the challenge to apply Jesus's central message of nonviolence to the injustices of this world. Is it not right to defend the persecuted by using violence? Is it unjust if the oppressed defend themselves--if necessary by the use of violence--in order to liberate themselves and to create a more just society? Can we leave the doctrine of the just war behind and shift all our attention toward the way of a just peace?

In 2011 the World Council of Churches brought to a close the Decade to Overcome Violence, to which the churches committed themselves at the beginning of the century. Just peace has evolved as the new ecumenical paradigm for contemporary Christian ethics. Just peace signals a realistic vision of holistic peace, with justice, which in the concept of shalom is central in the Hebrew Bible as well as in the gospel message of the New Testament.

This paradigm needs further elaboration. VU University gathered peacebuilding practitioners and experts from different parts of the world (Africa, Latin America, North America, Asia, and Europe) and from different disciplines (anthropology, psychology, social sciences, law, and theology)--voices from across generations and Christian traditions--to promote discussion about the different dimensions of building peace with justice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Sep 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781621898832

Book preview

Foreword

He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

—Isaiah 2:4

Promoting Just Peace is indeed beating the swords and spears of Just War into ploughshares and pruning hooks and requires a commitment to learn what makes for peace rather than for war. Taking up the impulses of the historic peace churches and their tradition of non-violence, a number of churches began to transform their thinking about war and peace, and violence and non-violence already in the twentieth century. They recognized the fact that weapons of mass-destruction and modern warfare led to bloodshed and destruction far beyond anything that could still be justified with the theory and doctrine of just war, which was once developed to tame the fury of war.

Among those churches was the United Church of Christ (UCC) in the United States of America whose Fifteenth General Synod adopted the pronouncement Affirming the United Church of Christ as a Just Peace Church.¹ The text of the pronouncement explains that it "is based on insights from all three of the historic approaches of Christians to issues of war and peace—pacifism, just war, and crusade—but attempts to move beyond these traditions to an understanding rooted in the vision of shalom—linking peace and justice. Since Just War criterion itself now rules out war under modern conditions, it is imperative to move beyond Just War thinking to a theology of a Just Peace."

Since then, both the Conciliar Process on Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC), which followed the 1993 Vancouver assembly of the WCC, and the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV), which was called for by the 1998 Harare assembly, offered a fruitful environment for further developing the vision of Just Peace, its theological grounding, and constructive debate on the intricate relationships between peace and justice not only in the Bible, but also the realities of today. The DOV culminated in the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) in 2011 in Kingston, Jamaica, which was organized with the vision of Just Peace at the center as spelled out in the Ecumenical Call to Just Peace.²

The swords and spears are beaten into ploughshares and pruning hooks. They now need to be used by farmers, vine dressers, and gardeners to prepare the ground for sowing seeds, caring for the plants, and finally, harvesting the fruits. That is their purpose. Producing them is not an end in itself. They are meant to facilitate and enhance the life of communities. Using the tools, farmers, vine dressers, and gardeners will also have much to say to the blacksmiths and give them valuable hints how to improve the products of their work. Also, ideas for developing better tools by other craftsmen in other places are valuable for the progress of the community.

This book hands over the vision and basic concept of Just Peace to the craftsmen and practitioners so that it contributes meaningfully to the struggle of communities for justice and peace and can be further developed. The vision of Just Peace is examined and enhanced through contributions from three distinct perspectives and contexts: ecumenical, inter-cultural, and interdisciplinary. The goal is to continue the journey towards an ecumenical theology of Just Peace. That this is done in dialogue with the peace church tradition reflects very well the life-journey and commitment of one of the editors and author of the introductory article, Prof. Dr. Fernando Enns, a Mennonite and highly experienced ecumenist who pushed—with all his energy and inspiring thoughts—the WCC forward on the way towards the vision of Just Peace.

Still, there are voices of people and churches in different parts of the world who are not sure if just peace is bringing the churches and the ecumenical movement closer to the prophecy that there will be a time where righteousness and peace will kiss each other (Psalm 85:10). They regret that justice becomes a property of peace, which can well be competing with other adjectives according to context and situation. They prefer to speak of peace with justice, pointing to the need of keeping the two in dialogue together on the journey. Such reasoning is often based on the experience of colonial and neo-colonial oppression where national and international law was misused to pacify the conquered and subdued.

A book like this will help to bridge the gap because it relates the vision of Just Peace faithfully to concrete contexts and challenges. I would like to see many more attempts like this, also in dialogue beyond the churches with people of other religions and experts of different disciplines. There are many opportunities out there in the world or even just in Geneva where the secretariat of the WCC is placed. The Geneva Accord which has been a proposal for progress towards peace in Israel/Palestine was partly built on a secular vision of Just Peace. Two professors teaching at Geneva University who had been involved in the negotiations published some years ago a thought provoking and stimulating book with the title "What is Just Peace?"³ I am convinced that dialogue also with such wider community of people and experts will help to improve the tool and to overcome obstacles on the way.

I want to conclude by thanking Fernando Enns wholeheartedly for his tireless contribution to the debate on just peace and to the editors of this volume by expressing my hope that this book will inspire many, many readers to embark on the journey with the authors and their communities.

Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit

WCC General Secretary

1. Online: http://www.ucc.org/beliefs/theology/general-synod-pronouncement.html.

2. Konrad Raiser et al., eds., Just Peace Companion (Geneva: WCC,

2011)

,

1

–

13

; this book offers important additional reflections and material on just peace.

3. Pierre Allan and Alexis Keller, eds., What Is Just Peace? (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2006)

.

Introduction

Nearly 2000 years ago, a poor, young, Jewish carpenter from Nazareth told his disciples, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. With these words, Jesus defined how his followers could be identified. They would be the peacemakers in the world, bringing wholeness to the lives of those they met. Peace was so integral to Christ’s message that it was the gift he left the same disciples on the night that he was arrested and brought before Pontius Pilate. On that night, Jesus not only taught his disciples that they could have peace, but that peace would transcend the world and set them apart from the world. It would not be their task to only touch the lives of others with a created peace, but Christ equipped them with a peace that came from him, his peace—Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.¹ We see again that when Christ first spoke to the disciples after his resurrection that peace was the most important lesson he could give them. His first words were, Peace be with you.²

For 400 years nonviolent peace remained the mark of the Christian until a theologian named Augustine explained how war could be just and used to create peace. As the Christian church changed from being an oppressed and persecuted minority to a tolerated religion among others to finally become the uniting power of a whole empire through the Constantinian shift, Christian theology felt challenged to explain how power politics could be justified from a Christian perspective. It was this shift of perspective and status—from the poor and oppressed to the powerful—that caused the change in the Christian position on violence and nonviolence.

Ever since, Christian theology and ethics have wrestled with the challenge to translate Jesus’ central message of peace to the injustices of this world. Is it not right to defend the persecuted by using violence? Is it unjust if the oppressed defend themselves—if necessary by the use of violence—in order to liberate themselves and to create a more just society? Is it really unchristian to establish justice by the threat of force? Is not the human being so corrupted by sin that the use of violence to limit evil could even be called a Christian duty?

Through all of the centuries there have been minorities within the different church traditions who criticized mainstream theologies for justifying war and called for a more simple and unambiguous interpretation of that central message of Jesus Christ: following him in a nonviolent way. It took an almost global disaster of unimaginable horror and cruelty such as World War II for the churches to come together in an ecumenical spirit in order to reconsider. In so many ways the churches had become involved in violence and even justified the most horrible crimes against humanity—the very image of God. Confessions of guilt are only a beginning. Can we leave the doctrine of just war behind and shift all our attention towards the way of just peace? This is far more than an alternative or opposition to war. Just peace signals a realistic vision of that wholistic peace—with justice—that so central in the Hebrew Bible (shalom) as well as in the gospel message of the New Testament.

In June 2011, an international conference titled Just Peace, hosted by the Seminary of the Dutch Mennonite Church and held at VU University Amsterdam, discussed various dimensions of such a vision. The conference was interdisciplinary and included anthropologists, psychologists, social scientists, justice advocates, and peacemakers, as well as theologians, from many different cultural backgrounds and traditions. Many of the contributions are included in this volume.

The conference was also a celebration of the establishment of the Chair for (Peace-) Theology and Ethics at the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam by the Dutch Mennonite Conference. Fernando Enns presented his lecture at the conclusion of the conference. It is this oration that forms our first chapter. Enns describes the 2011 International Peace Convocation of the World Council of Churches that was held in Kingston, Jamaica. While celebrating the work accomplished over the last ten years—The Decade to Overcome Violence that the convocation closed—Enns realizes that much work for peace with justice still needs to be done. As a response, he offers a reflection of the eschatological truth of wholeness as a key to sowing just peace. Enns claims that a Christian’s identity with the kingdom of God equips him or her to be shalom bearers in the here and now. He points to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s vision of a servant church as a bearer of the message of peace to the world, but also to the church herself. Enns sees this church as an ecumenical body that is renewed and reconciled; justified, spirit-filled, and in communion; and focused and formed by a Trinitarian understanding of God. Enns’ vision is not only for the worldwide ecumenical church, but he longs for peace with justice to be extended in interreligious dialogue as well.

In the next chapter, Jürgen Moltmann brings us a timely discussion regarding the religion of death that confronts society today. Detailing the rejection of life that terrorists embrace, he asks us what solutions we will design in answer to those who do not love life. The dangers are great; not only is the world threatened by weapons of mass destruction, which can annihilate life, but humans have further added to the culture of death and suffering through contributing to climate change and the exploitation of natural resources. Moltmann argues that we will only know peace when we begin to love and revere life—both in the human and non-human world wherein we find ourselves. For Moltmann we can learn to love life by the love of God, and we can recognize the world as transformed by the work of Jesus Christ.

In his chapter, Eduardus Van der Borght returns to the topic of identity introduced by Enns and gives us an account of the resulting conflicts that occur when identity is closely tied to nationalistic identities. Citing the Bosnian war and the part that religious communities played in that war, Van der Borght allows us to see the struggles that churches and religious communities suffer when their nationalistic identity collides with their Christian identity. He also points out that solving conflicts which involve conflicting national identities is not easy for church and ecumenical bodies. Van der Borght also points out that the church is aware of her commission to bring the message of peace to the world, but the socio-cultural realities of regional loyalties can derail this process. He pleads for more work to be done on Christian identity in unity as a precursor to restore the church’s peace message.

Continuing to address nationality and the part that religious community plays in peace theology, Katya Tolstaya theologically reflects on the possibility of doing theology after the Gulag. Tolstaya points out the impact that the Holocaust had on Western theology; however, this type of reflection over the Gulag is missing. She compares literature about the Gulag from two Russian writers—Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn—in order to clarify the moral lessons learned from their experience. Tolstaya investigates what being human means in the face of suffering and offers a framework for thinking about and developing a theology after the Gulag that is based on theosis—divinization.

Mient Jan Faber writes further about suffering as he examines why people lie in war situations. Faber tells the story of the Responsible Outsiders—those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, but who have the duty and ability to intervene in violent situations. He writes about his own nation’s United Nations Peacekeepers’—the Dutch battalion—participation in and failure to stop the genocide of Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, Bosnia Herzegovina. Faber examines how these responsible outsiders fabricated an account of the events in order to appear innocent. Reminiscent of Hannah Arendt’s, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil, we find even peacekeepers performing the horrendous act of sending people to their death as a matter of procedure, all the while lying about the situation and necessity—perhaps even to themselves. Faber ends his chapter by describing the finding of the International Court of Appeals in the Netherlands—the Dutch battalion’s own country—that the Netherlands acted unlawfully in the situation. This justice came, however, after court cases and appeals, and long after peace was established; the ruling occurred sixteen years after the massacre.

A specialist in the Balkans, Matthijs van de Port writes about the role of myths and culture in Eastern European conflicts, and how those myths are used to restore balance after the horrors of war and suffering. Van de Port points out that we cannot live day to day with the reality that peace and order are fragile and easily broken, nor can we live with the horrors of war that we experience in our conscious. He explains that humans create stories in order to reconstruct their reality. Unfortunately, the reconstructed reality is often in opposition to the other. This allows the myth maker to move back into a livable existence, but the myth’s role in future conflict is not always clearly understood by those hoping for intercultural peace. Van de Port’s contribution assists peacemakers by helping them to understand that myths and stories may be a defensive mechanism to restore sanity and order for both individual and societal stability.

Annette Mosher considers the difficulty of justice and peace in our modern culture by reviewing the attempt of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to create space for peace in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 40s. Bonhoeffer believed the church was the Christian messenger to his society regarding Christ’s peace and wholeness, and so he worked tirelessly to reveal the church’s mission to her. Mosher first reviews the historical content of Bonhoeffer’s message and then explains how his theology addressed the societal implication introduced by Nazi ideology. She compares Bonhoeffer’s struggle to build peace in a violent and aggressive culture through the church to the contemporary work of Christian Peacemaker Teams in current conflict areas.

It is the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams that Maarten van der Werf enlarges and explains in the chapter following Mosher’s. Van der Werf provides a framework for peacemaking while explaining the practical work of Christian Peacemaker Teams’ attempts to disrupt violence by acting as observers of conflicts and abuse. He explains the importance of solidarity with the victim as a nonviolent method to answer violence. Van der Werf, in the tradition of nonviolence, calls the reader to join Christian Peacemaker Teams in order to bring the message of peace to troubled areas.

Andrés Pacheco-Lozano continues the call for justice as a partner to peace in his chapter about social injustice in Columbia. Pacheco-Lozano explains the long history of land-grabbing in Columbia and dispossession of land ownership as the basis for much poverty and misery. He explains how international outsiders stimulate war in order to protect their own financial interests, stirring up war and destabilizing communities in order to accomplish their goals. Pacheco-Lozano calls for a just peace mentality to replace that of just war. Included in just peace must be the understanding that land and the use of it is an integral part of any development of peace.

Hans de Wit provides us with a hermeneutical reflection on Andrés Pacheco-Lozano’s ideas regarding the shift between war ethics to peace ethics. De Wit addresses the idea of reading the Bible using a war metaphor that results in the reader entering the battlefield. He calls for the reader to consider if their reading of scripture is life giving or life sapping. De Wit tries to create space for a dominance free reading of the Bible and turns to Lozano’s Columbia to show us a practical application of peace ethics and biblical hermeneutics.

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela addresses the idea of restorative justice in cases of large scale crimes that are national and even international in scope. She introduces us to the event of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions as tools used in restoration after crime, and as methods of confession to clear the way for possible forgiveness. As both a psychologist and former member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Gobodo-Madikizela offers us a unique insight into how restorative justice can teach groups of people involved in violent situation to live together again. While Gobodo-Madikizela is aware that forgiveness is not always possible, and she does not demand forgiveness, her chapter addresses the healing of wounds that are of a great scale and influences multiple victims.

The role of justice and the court process in restoring and building peace is brought to light by Barb Toews, a Mennonite restorative justice expert. Toews discusses the role of justice in building peace between victims and perpetrators. Many victims hope to find peace when the offender has been punished by the legal system only to find that when the judge hands down the final sentence they still feel hollow and are left searching for the peace that they thought the court decision would give them. Restorative justice acknowledges this wound and actively assists the offender in order to restore the victim to as much wholeness as possible after the offense while helping perpetrators to process their actions and accountability in the crime. As a pioneer in her field—Toews began the restorative justice program in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the same county Don Kraybill discusses in his chapter—Toews describes the process of restorative justice’s attempt to build peace at the individual and societal level.

In our final chapter, Donald Kraybill turns our attention to the role of forgiveness in peace building among individuals. As a specialist in Amish culture, Kraybill was one of the first non-Amish on the scene after Charles Carl Roberts IV entered the West Nickel Mines Amish School in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA, and shot and killed five young Amish girls and seriously wounded five more. Roberts then shot and killed himself. Kraybill functioned as a cultural translator between the press and the Amish community, and he was able to witness firsthand the Amish response to the family of the gunman. Kraybill tells the moving story of how the families of the victims quickly—and seemingly without hesitation—visited Robert’s wife, children, and family to offer forgiveness. This act, which was a necessary and most self-evident expression of their Amish faith, caused amazement in the non-Amish culture. Many people wondered how this was even possible. Kraybill attempts to explain what forgiveness means to the Amish, and in doing so teaches us faith lessons about forgiveness and its place in the Christian life, even in the face of injustice.

It is our hope that the reader will find edification and increased awareness about peace with justice from this volume. It is meant as an invitation to further explore, discuss, and share that great vision of just peace—shalom—as well as its obstacles, in order to grow deeper into that call and promise.

We wish to thank those who have made the conference and this ensuing volume possible: The Faculty of Theology of VU University Amsterdam—and the Doopsgezind Seminarium (Mennonite Seminary) as part of it—as well as the VU Institute for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society (VISOR); the Algemene Doopsgezinde Societeit (Dutch Mennonite Conference) and its WereldWerk (Mennonite Agency for Solidarity and Peace); the Inja fonds and the Oosterbaanfonds; as well as the Mennonite Central Committee.

1. John

14

:

27

, NIV.

2. Luke

24

:

36

, NIV.

Part One

Developing Theologies of Just Peace in Light of Violence and Injustice

1

Towards an Ecumenical Theology of Just Peace

Fernando Enns

Glory to God and Peace on Earth!

Glory to God—and Peace on Earth!"³ This was the biblical motto of the recent International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) of the World Council of Churches (WCC). It is most appropriate to begin any theological and ethical reflection on peace and justice (Peace on Earth) by the doxology Glory to God!

One thousand participants from more than one hundred nations gathered on the campus of the University of the West Indies (Mona) in Kingston, Jamaica, during the week of 17–25 May 2011. As a truly ecumenical gathering, representing churches from all traditions, including the Roman Catholic Church and some Pentecostal communities, we confessed our common understanding: "We understand peace and peacemaking as an indispensable part of our common faith. Peace is inextricably related to the love, justice and freedom that God has granted to all human beings through Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit as a gift and vocation. It constitutes a pattern of life that reflects human participation in God’s love for the world."⁴ To accept the gift (or grace) of peace as a common vocation of the church worldwide and as a central expression of our common faith in the triune God is a milestone in a long ecumenical journey.⁵

This global peace convocation marked the culmination of the ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches Seeking Reconciliation and Peace. 2001–2010, which was decided upon by the VIII Assembly of the WCC in Harare/Zimbabwe in 1998. One of the goals of that decade was to move peace-building from the periphery to the centre of the life and witness of the church.⁶ For the past ten years churches throughout the world—often with partners from other religions and from the secular realm—have been determinedly engaged in investigating and exploring possibilities for violence prevention, nonviolent methods of conflict resolution, civil forms of conflict management, training of civilian peacemakers, and active work for reconciliation after recourse to violence. Universities and seminaries have contributed their insights from research and think tanks. All these activities have often been summed up as developing cultures of peace.⁷

And yet, we are not satisfied. How could we be? There is such an extensive field of injustices as ongoing obstacles for peace. The peace convocation tried to identify the wide range of direct/personal violence, indirect/structural violence, as well as cultural forms of violence.

Peace in the Community8

Violence in our communities has many ugly faces. We have listened to the voices of struggle within communities and neighborhoods in one of the most violent capitols of the world—Kingston. Young people are killed on the streets every single night. We have met courageous people who are inventing new steps towards community building by