Mark Tooley has done us a service by
calling attention to Stanley Hauerwas’s challenge to C.S.
Lewis’s demolition of Christian Pacifism. However, I believe there
are several further points to make on this subject.
Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, had the wily old devil
Screwtape point out to his pupil that, from the point of view of
Hell war, though it caused agreeable terror, wickedness and
suffering among humans, also, unfortunately, led to deplorable
instances of bravery, nobility and self-sacrifice. In wartime
people were aware of what was in fact always with them — death,
and one of Hell’s most useful tools, contented worldliness, was
lost. From Hell’s point of view, war was a two-edged sword, and
devils should not be too quick to unthinkingly rejoice over it.
The “patient” in The Screwtape Letters — the young man
whose damnation Screwtape and his pupil are working towards —
becomes an air-raid warden, dies bravely doing his duty and is at
once translated into the presence of God — from Hell’s point of
view a disastrous ending.
Thus, for Lewis war, as such, was morally important only insofar
as it led one to Heaven or Hell. This is not, of course, to say he
was either unpatriotic or a war-monger. As Mr. Tooley pointed out,
he had served in the front line in World War I. He was a junior
Lieutenant. One of a class that had an average life-expectancy of
about two weeks. Some details are given in his autobiography,
Surprised by Joy.
In World War II, though still carrying shell-splinters in his
body from the previous war, he joined the Home Guard and took part
in freezing, dreary patrols on bitter English winter nights, in
addition to his other war-work, such as broadcasting and giving
talks at Royal Air Force Stations. Lewis believed — his sermon
“The Weight of Glory” is one of the most powerful expressions of
this — that we were beings who were going to live as spirits
forever.
That we were going to die on Earth was inevitable and not very
important. The state of mind in which we died was all-important,
and a life devoted to avoiding death at all costs, even if it meant
allowing Treblinka and Auschwitz to flourish undisturbed, was not
admirable and certainly not Christian.
“Auschwitz” by the way, is one of a number of words
conspicuously not mentioned in Hauerwas’s essay. He does claim,
however: “But there are nonviolent alternatives to protect innocent
people from unjust attack. It is, moreover, quite a logical leap
from using force to stop a homicidal maniac to justifying war.” And
what about when you are confronted by a whole nation, or a large
part of one, behaving like homicidal maniacs? This avoidance of the
difficult questions is typical of the flabbier Christian-pacifist
writings and deserves no respect.
Refusing to defend oneself was one matter; refusing to defend
others was another. In another essay, “The Necessity of Chivalry,”
Lewis wrote in praise of the Knight, the figure who combined
strength and valor with gentleness and care for others. The knight,
Lewis said, was an artificial creation — most men when unimproved
were either wimps or brutes — but the knight was essential for
Christian civilization. In The Lord of the Rings, Lewis’s
friend J.R.R. Tolkien put in a pacifist, the forest-spirit Tom
Bombadil; he was kindly and helpful, but it was made clear he could
not cope with the task of standing up to evil.
However, one of the major points against pacifism, which is not
mentioned in Mr. Tooley’s column, is its history: it has a record
in the last century of being on the wrong side, too frequently to
be by mere chance.
The war in Vietnam produced massive pacifist demonstrations
against the defense of South Vietnam, but North Vietnam’s massive
and direct invasion of South Vietnam in the first part of 1975
produced no protests whatsoever. Similarly, in World War II,
pacifism flourished in the British Empire (and previously France)
for the most part before the German attack on Russia. With
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international peace movement
also collapsed, though wars went on. Quite apart from empirical
evidence, innumerable studies (such as William C. Fletcher’s
Religion and Soviet Foreign Policy) have put it beyond
doubt that the international peace movements in the 20th century
were predominantly communist-controlled.
It is quite enlightening. with the advantages of hindsight, to
read the literature put out by various pacifist/religious bodies
during the Cold War today and see how total their pro-Soviet bias
was.
Much literature put out by the World Council of Churches, the
Christian Peace Conference and the Congress for International
Co-Operation and Disarmament, for example (they were constantly
sub-dividing and changing their names), supported even such utterly
indefensible and inhuman episodes as the Pol Pot genocide in
Cambodia and terrorism in southern Africa.
The International Ecumenical movement, blending into the “peace”
movement, opened the way for the positioning of Russian clergymen
who were actually KGB officers in key strategic places within it.
The whole religious-pacifist complex was made up of interlocking
committees, councils, individuals, national churches, denominations
and special interest groups in a way that defied analysis.
It goes virtually without saying that they were fanatically
opposed to the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative. When the
anti-Communist clergyman Richard Wurmbrand attacked the
pro-communist bias of the World Council of Churches and its failure
to expose or condemn communist atrocities, a pamphlet was produced
by the WCC, Richard Wurmbrand: A Reaction, accusing him of
“persecuting” the Soviet Union, although without detailing the
numbers of secret police and armored divisions with which he was
carrying out this remarkable feat.
The point is that it is not the likes of C. S. Lewis who are in
the dock having to explain themselves. It is the pacifist groups
and churches that allowed themselves to be used for so long, to the
detriment of Christianity, and who have perverted a noble
ideal.
