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An Irish Methodist Challenges America’s Churchly Pacifists
It is “morally corrupt” to excuse terrorism, the theologian William J. Abraham writes.
(Page 2 of 2)
Abraham hails the just war tradition for morally justifying the defense of the innocent from terrorists and other aggressors. He questions the “maximalist” view of just war that potentially applies suffocating “moral straightjackets” especially inadequate against an unconventional enemy. The “minimalist” stance relies more on “informed judgment” and more adequately understands just war teaching not as a stringent code but an evolving tradition. “Dealing appropriately” with terrorism requires adopting the minimalist view “without apology.” It must not “cut military and political action loose from morality” but understand the “world is shot through with evil and sin; people deliberately and systematically reject the full resources of grace in their private and public lives; the default position in human life is war not peace.”
The church’s role in public counsel over war and peace is “modest,” Abraham writes. At its best, he suggests, the church “bears witness to a World that stands above our political realities; and that World calls us to a judgment that puts all our temporal interests in their proper place in the life of eternity.”
Shaking Hands with the Devil offers an unusually authentic Christian realism for addressing war and peace from a broadly classical orthodoxy. Irish Methodists are not often renowned for their influence on America Christian thought. But hopefully this particular one at Southern Methodist University will make a plucky splash with his challenge to sloppy thinking about the War on Terror.
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (11) | Leave a comment
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rlranger907| 3.14.13 @ 9:46AM
So does the "the state’s vocation for rightful force", indeed valid in the sense of preserving civic order, translate to the state's impulse to exercise deadly force half a world away? No thank you. I'll take George Washington's parting message of governmental prudence over Rev. Abraham's sanction of imperial overreach. And I will freely confess to find Stanley Hauerwas' interpretation of a Christian's calling before a warlike Caesar to involve fewer mental and spiritual gymnastics than Rev. Abraham's pigeonholing of the Sermon on the Mount into mere guidance for personal interaction. I don't sign on to the entire Anabaptist premise of Prof. Hauerwas' writing, but I do find him necessarily and bracingly prophetic after twelve years of inconclusive and debt-financed war, continuing efforts to militarize our society, and continuing erosion of our liberties. Terrorism is evil. So is unbridled and unquestioned expanse of America's military force, and the deployment of other people's sons and daughters, to engage in "existential war" against an enemy we can't name, in pursuit of a strategy we can't describe, with money we are borrowing from the Chinese to burden our children and grandchildren with debt. One doesn't have to be a pacifist to find that to be idiocy. One doesn't have to be a Christian to see that it's wrong.
Mark30339| 3.14.13 @ 5:01PM
Bravo. Before and after becoming Pope, John Paul II counseled the Polish on non-violent resistance for decades and the tactic caught on. Rather than going out with a bang of nuclear armageddon, the USSR succumbed to a bloodless implosion. The US response to 3,000 dead on 9/11 led to 6,000 dead troops, 30,000 crippled troops and 250,000 civilians and insurgents dead in Iraq -- along with severely curtailed liberty at home. All this has been spent with no assurance that Iraq or Afghanistan are ever going to be secure, stable republics. If new Sadaam thugs can take over there, doing nothing after 9/11 would have been better.
One very forceful act of non-violent resistance we should have deployed (and still can) is having Americans switch their vehicles to natural gas and stop propping up oil import prices that fund terror. And then we would patiently observe while this and UN sanctions took effect. Economic decline from depressed oil proceeds might persuade places like the Kurd partition in Iraq, Jordan and Gaza to INVITE us in. I'm talking about building up commerce and jobs in these places and keeping security with troop placements. The point is to show neighboring peoples concrete examples of peaceful prosperity.
Mark30339| 3.14.13 @ 5:04PM
But we also had serious issues of state sponsored terror and WMD in Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Invading with Christian troops escalated terror in the region. We should have explored alternatives to foster resistance and regime change within those countries (with funds, food, phones, WiFi, international sanctions and the formation of credible governments in exile). Iran was very effective in smuggling explosives, weapons and insurgents to destabilize Iraq -- why isn't more done to smuggle resources in the other direction to foster regime change in Iran?
Bob K| 3.14.13 @ 10:34AM
From John Quincy Adams speech on the 4th of July, 1821 about America and it's prospects.
"She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."
Dimitry_Aleksandrovich| 3.14.13 @ 2:46PM
The Irish Republican Army's campaign to free the six occupied counties and reunite them with the Irish Republic was a just war. If we are Americans who believe in constitutional republicanism we should be sympathetic to the plight of our Irish brethren in creating a United 32 County Irish Republic where equal rights are guaranteed to all its citizens Catholic, Protestant and dissenter.
Bob K| 3.15.13 @ 12:25AM
So, it was a just war.
Whether we should draft our youth into the Military and dip into our treasury to support who ever is the just party is a different problem that has to be solved first.
If we don't solve it and we go ahead with the military support we can't complain if some call it tyranny.
Dimitry_Aleksandrovich| 3.14.13 @ 2:55PM
I also disagree with so called Christian pacifists. We are called to love and pray for even our enemies, but that doesn't mean you don't defend your own family, community or nation. I do not believe that guerilla warfare in and of itself is evil, I believe the deliberate targeting and killing of non-combatants is a sin.
RAM| 3.14.13 @ 3:48PM
In some cases, they condone terrorism because they don't like the victim groups.
Petronius| 3.14.13 @ 3:50PM
The Real issue for "christian pacifists" is validation of their refusal to fight for a state which is not to their liking and refuses to subsidize their deficiencies.
nike air max pas cher | 3.15.13 @ 5:04AM
largely because of the War on Terror. www.shoxinfr.com/nike-air-max-bw-c-27.html In his book, Abraham specifically challenges the highly influential neo-Anabaptist ideology of Stanley Hauerwas and others, who insist that Christian faithfulness demands opposition to all violence.
Occam's Tool| 3.15.13 @ 3:52PM
This TCU grad likes the cut of the SMU prof's jib.