Honoring the nation’s war dead is discomfiting to many on the
pacifist Religious Left. One Protestant theologian’s fairly
thoughtful Memorial Day ode to fallen veterans this year hailed
their “sacrificial living.” But Bruce Epperly, a United Church of
Christ “process theologian” from liberal Lancaster Seminary,
cautioned against “American exceptionalism” or “America first”
ideologies in favor of embracing the “wellbeing of others,
including the planet.” After all, “We can celebrate our nation’s
fallen heroes without being nationalistic.” And he concluded:
“Memorial Day is about remembering, and then dedicating our own
lives to a larger, greater good for those we love, our nation —
and this may mean protesting against military action, injustice,
and enmity to immigrants — and the planet as a whole.”
Well, maybe. But most of America’s fallen veterans were
probably more focused on “American exceptionalism” than “the
planet.” Rev. Epperly’s sentiment contrasts with C.S. Lewis’s
famous defense of patriotism against abstract humanitarianism. “I
may without self-righteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend
my house by force against a burglar,” Lewis explained. “But if I
start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds —
wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine
— I become insufferable.”
More directly critical of Memorial Day than Epperly was a
column last year by Episcopal author Diana Butler Bass. “Every
Memorial Day, I remember how early Christians almost uniformly
rejected any kind of military service — and how little we have
learned from their witness to peacemaking,” she lamented. Bass
suggested “it may well be good for our souls” to consider “what it
means to be both a Christian and a soldier,” which from her
apparent perspective, is incompatible. Quoting her own recent book,
Bass insisted: “Long before theologians Ambrose and Augustine
argued for just war, Christians were not allowed to fight,” and “no
record exists that Christians served in the Roman army before 170.”
She perhaps overlooked the Gospel account of the Roman officer who
sought Jesus to heal his servant, not to mention the New Testament
account of Saint Peter’s momentous stay with the Roman centurion
Cornelius. There is, at most, insufficient evidence that
Christianity in the first 3 centuries had any settled teaching on
war, though the Apostles Paul and Peter both described temporal
rulers as ordained by God to wield the sword.
Ignoring the historic Christian teaching about war,
prominent Minnesota megachurch pastor Greg Boyd several years ago
blogged critically about Memorial Day. Formerly a relatively
conventional evangelical, he earned a New York Times story
when he renounced his own once conservative politics and denounced
the Right’s supposed version of “Christian America.” In 2007 he
described Memorial Day as leaving him “conflicted.” Boyd
appreciated the U.S. military personnel who had “laid down their
lives to protect this way of life,” since “I benefit from their
sacrifice, so it seems appropriate to remember them.” On the other
hand, the “taking of human life” is “demonically
arrogant.”
So Reverend Boyd is grudgingly grateful on Memorial Day to
military demoniacs. “The fact that I personally benefit from some
of the killing, because some of the killing is (at least is theory)
supposed to protect the ‘American way of life,’ doesn’t alter this
assessment,” he explained. “Jesus is my Lord, not the American way
of life.” He regretted that he continues to “benefit” from the
“often barbaric and dishonest conquest of my ancestors over the
American Indians and the enslavement of blacks.” Boyd offered
“solidarity” to families of fallen U.S. warriors. But he wants to
“revolt against the demonic arrogance of violent-tending
tribalism.” Likely most service families would decline this
pastor’s brand of “solidarity.”
Some years ago, prior to the World War II Monument’s
dedication in Washington, D.C. on Memorial Day, famed Christian
pacifist Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University decried the injustice
of the Allied cause because it was a “crusade” involving
“intentional killing of civilians” and demands for “unconditional
surrender.” Of course, Hauerwas believes every war is unjust,
though religious pacifists often exploit their version of Just War
arguments. He granted that some soldiers “showed great bravery and
attention to duty,” but for a cause that faithful people must
adamantly reject. Hauerwas complained that Saint Paul’s admonition
to submit to civil authorities was probably equally cited by German
Christians to justify service to the Third Reich. He regretted that
churches display American flags, in the mistaken notion that
war-time sacrifice counts as Christian sacrifice.
In a similar vein just prior to Memorial Day six years
ago, Religious Left activist Jim Wallis told his supporters that
“even those of us who advocate nonviolence must recognize the
humanity of those who, for many reasons, made the hard choice to
join the armed forces.” He explained that “as we protest a war and
an occupation that has claimed as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians’
lives, we must have compassion for the suffering experienced on all
sides.”
How generous that the Religious Left recognizes the
“humanity” of U.S. service personnel and will even reluctantly
honor them who have fallen, even as it sees them as primarily
victims, if not villains. The Religious Left’s smug pacifism and
grim rejection of most patriotism make Memorial Day, and most
national commemorations, difficult if not impossible to
affirm.
More traditional Christianity of course teaches that
believers need not have such contempt for the nations in which
Providence has placed them, nor decline military service to them in
legitimate causes. Memorial Day was founded after the Civil War
initially to honor slain Union veterans, whose “soldier lives were
the reveille of freedom to a race in chains.” Freed slaves were
reputedly among the most vigorous in commemorating the white and
black soldiers whose deaths had lifted their bondage. They
understood that wars can have moral consequences, and that fallen
warriors often deserve more than reluctant respect.
