Wanted: a culture of peace

Alan Bock writes on how religions might contribute to a “peace culture” by which he means one “in which most people view war as only a last resort and a tragedy if necessity forces us into one.”

One of the key components of the “new American militarism,” according to Andrew Bacevich, is precisely the tendency to see military action as a routine tool of policy rather than as a last resort to be used only in extreme circumstances. Along with this is a culture that views soliders and the military as inherently more virtuous than the rest of society.

Bock elaborates:

Americans are encouraged to worship soldiers, and for most it is hardly a hard sell. All the “highbrow,” supposedly educational cable channels – History, Discovery, even PBS and the like – increasingly feature wars and war stories on their programming, which subtly reinforces in the minds of viewers the notion that war is inevitable in this world and simply a part of ordinary life rather than an extraordinary disruption of normal life that is viewed as undesirable even if necessary. Although the United States ended its last constitutionally declared war in 1945, a case can be made that the country has since then been constantly involved in some war or another and that while we haven’t yet become like the Spartans of old, the dominant culture comes rather close to being a war culture.

It’s pretty apparent that even popular culture tends to glorify war and violence, conservative complaints about pinko Hollywood undermining the war effort notwithstanding. It clearly taps into something very deep in human nature. Peace, it seems, has to be learned. This is why Williams James argued that we need the moral equivalent of war to offer the same opportunities for virtuous action that war, for all its horrors, often calls forth.

Bock suggests that religion, in particular Christianity, might help by transforming our ideas of what it means to wield power, exercise authority and display virtue:

The story of being pushed out to a stable or cave because there was no room at the inn might have fit in with Isaiah’s prophecy that he shall be “despised and rejected of men” (which may or may not have been meant to refer to Jesus), but it hardly fit with what most of society, then and now, considered the way for somebody worthy of respect and reverence to have been born. The early church, then, viewed itself as radically separated from – not necessarily in active opposition to but perhaps more indifferent to – the claims of the powerful and influential in that society or any other society. Many early churches forbade their members to serve in the military or police.

Matthew has the local king so anxious and jealous about some obscure nobody prophesied to become king of the Jews that he seeks to kill the young child by killing all the infants in Bethlehem. Thus Jesus is seen from the outset as dangerous to duly constituted authority. Properly understood – and despite the unseemly love of some current Christians for state authority in all its forms – I believe he still is.

When the Romans came to take Jesus away for trial and Peter drew his sword (again, the significance is not in the literal truth but in the fact that all the gospels consider the incident significant enough to include it), but Jesus admonished him. In Matthew’s telling (King James, which I still like despite some archaisms and questions about accuracy), he said, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” This was not an advocate of conversion by force, let alone military force, but of seeking followers by setting an example of peaceful living and then submitting, even unto death, rather than fighting back when he knew death was almost certainly imminent. One can argue whether Christianity implies pacifism, but it is difficult to see Jesus as an advocate of war and violence.

I’d add that the stories of the saints also offer examples of heroism that involves renouncing the use of force, even to save oneself. I think whatever side we come down on with respect to the question of pacifism, Christianity certainly points to a strong presumption against violence as the default setting.