[1] This paper was originally presented as a PowerPoint
based lecture at Pacific Lutheran University on February 10, 2003,
for a conference titled Two Kingdoms Collide: A Lutheran
Perspective on War, Peace, and Social Justice.1
[2] "Just peacemaking" Lutherans have not often used that
terminology2.
We have, however, engaged in just peacemaking, often even as a
trait of a Lutheran way of life. It is about time that we
name this trait as such and naming it can help us better claim just
peacemaking as a Lutheran manner of living. In this address I
will concentrate on the contemporary situation as I address
congregational strategies for reinvigorating Lutheranism's just
peacemaking tradition. Toward this goal I will identify three
particular strategies for congregations. But with war with
Iraq looming I first want to put this exploration of congregational
strategies into the context of "just war tradition."
[3] A Lutheran beginning point for discussing under what
circumstance a war might be justifiably prosecuted is Article 16 of
the Augsburg Confession (CA). Here is the relevant portion from the
Latin text:
Concerning civic affairs
they teach that lawful civil ordinances are good works of God and
that Christians are permitted to hold office, to work in law
courts, to decide matters by imperial and other existing laws, to
impose just punishments, to wage just war, to serve as soldiers, to
make legal contracts, to hold property, to take an oath when
required by magistrates, to take a wife, to be given in
marriage3.
[4] The Lutheran confessors offered Article XVI to distinguish
themselves from certain Anabaptist traditions of the time. "Just
war" is mentioned in a series of practices, offices, and
institutions that are permissible as "good works of God."
There is no explanation what the confessors mean by these things,
including "just war." They simply assume the tradition in
which they are living. Indeed, they assume the "just war tradition"
and they affirm it. They did not create "just war" tradition and
the Lutherans themselves-at least Luther and his contemporaries-did
not change or improve upon it in any particular way. One
further point must be mentioned. Their placement of "just
war" between "impose just punishments" and "serve as soldiers"
emphasizes that just war is a form of just peacekeeping on an
international scale, if I can use that term 'international' rather
loosely.
"Just War" in Context
[5] There are basically four kinds of traditions in the West
about the relationship of war and peace: war realism; holy
war-crusade; just war; and pacifism(s). Further, it is
crucial to see that just war is a critical alternative to the other
three. My key assertion here is that the justifiable war
tradition lies embedded always within a larger normative context of
just peacemaking. In other words, just war must be understood as a
peacekeeping activity within the larger circumference of just
peacemaking, a peacemaking based on justice.
[6] The just war tradition grew up in order to combat traditions
of "war realism."4 War realism goes
something like this: every culture is called to a vocation in the
world-sometimes a culture's consciousness of its calling is
weighted with theological awareness and content invoking a Deity or
Nature or some such. In war realism some cultures are called to
lead the world. Every culture becomes a leader by becoming a state
and a state always has the power of the sword. War realism holds
that going to war is a necessary way for a state to find meaning in
its life as a people, as a nation, that leads. War realism is very
old and has taken on many different forms. This happened to
Germany in the middle and latter part of the 19th century and into
the 20th century. Germany developed a culture and philosophy
and even a theology of war realism that ascribed meaning to the
Prussian German nation as world leader with imperialist militarism
as a key tool of leadership. This provided backdrop for Germany to
enter World War I.5 Now, war realism in
Western civilization is as old as the Roman empire. The just
war tradition emerged as an alternative to war realism; indeed, the
justifiable war tradition actually negates war realism and its
basic assumptions. This point cannot be too fervently asserted and
will be explored later.
[7] There are ancient versions of war realism as well as modern
renditions tied closely to the rise of the modern
nation-state. "Holy war-crusade" has ancient roots and
contemporary manifestations. It is similar to war realism,
though with a more explicit and manifest theological content and
heightened claim to moral and religious purity and perfection
rooted in a sharply conflicted dualism between light and darkness,
without the 'modern' institutional separation between organized
religious community ("church") and state. Here we can recall the
Christian Crusades to reclaim Jerusalem for Christianity beginning
at the end of the eleventh century and continuing in various forms
even through the middle of the fifteenth century. The just war
tradition is a counter tradition also to holy war-crusade.
[8] The fourth great tradition in the West regarding the
relationship of war and peace is pacifism, though it is better to
speak of pacifisms since there are different kinds. Duane
Cady notes: "Pacifism is a complex and subtle range of value
positions on morality, peace, and war, not the stereotyped extreme
of conventional wisdom. The varieties of pacifism have emerged
within a just-warist value tradition, to some degree building on
and extending that tradition."6 One thing to remember
about all of the pacifisms is that pacifism has two sides to it,
what some pacifists call the 'critical' side and the 'positive'
side. The critical side-in principled pacifism-is "no war, no
violence, no sword, by anyone under any circumstances." The
positive side of pacifism is to work tirelessly, vigorously, and
endlessly for the establishment of peace according to just
criteria.
[9] A crucial thing for Lutherans to think about-from within the
Lutheran tradition-is that while, as Lutherans, we will not adopt
the critical side of pacifism, we have every reason in the world to
be in alliance with the historic pacifist traditions-such as the
Mennonites and the Quakers-as they have developed their positive
peacemaking side. Here as Lutherans we have much to learn from
them. We also have much that we can develop anew coming from
our historic past. While I was a pastor at Resurrection
Lutheran in Portland, we at Resurrection participated vigorously
with the regional hunger ministry. In that collaborative,
ecumenical endeavor we worked closely with several Mennonite
communities and, quite a bit of the time, they showed the way. "The
problem with the just war tradition," they told us, "is that it
talks about peace and justice as if it were a hundred yard sprint;
we Mennonites imagine peace and justice to be a long-distance
marathon." I will return to this issue somewhat later.
[10] Often people who claim and desire to live according to the
just war tradition really are living according to assumptions and
aspirations more fully coherent with war realism, assumptions and
aspiration that they unknowingly transfer into the just war
tradition from the tradition of war realism. James Turner Johnson
captures some of this when he writes:
In Western civilization the
general term of the tradition that has grown up to justify and
limit war is 'just war theory.' This term, however, is an imprecise
one-ambiguous because of the variety of contexts out of which the
just war idea has arisen, because of the metamorphosis of the
concept of just war over time; because of the existence at any one
time of numerous theories; because of the imprecision of language,
especially in equivalence of terms between different languages;
and, not least, because of the expectations of many persons today
regarding war, expectations that are transferred to the just war
idea7.
The Just War Tradition
[11] The concept of just war has a long history; indeed, it is a
tradition. Like any tradition, it is historically extended, it is
socially embodied, and it is an ongoing argument8. Cicero is credited
with the first Western attempt to think systematically about the
circumstances under which engaging in war could be justifiable. He
desired to overcome the war realism of the Roman Empire in which he
lived-to offer an alternative to Rome's 'war is what gives our
empire meaning.' He thought that such an outlook was against
the natural law of the universe. Cicero argued instead that there
existed within the natural universe a strong presumption against
killing and therefore against engaging in war. Going to war
could only be undertaken if certain criteria could be met and
therefore he sought to think through how the bar should be
set. We will review these criteria later.
[12] In the Christian tradition, Tertullian, Lanctantius and,
significantly, Ambrose began in a preliminary way to ask whether it
was ever justifiable for Christians to participate in war.
Ambrose's significance resides in who one of his students was:
Augustine. In his great treatise, The City of God, and in other
writings Augustine develops just war reasoning within the framework
of specifically Christian concerns.9
[13] Gratian is the next person to take up the topic in a
significant way. While his name is not well-known among
Protestants, Gratian from Bologna, Italy is the twelfth-century
compiler of the Decretum Gratiani, the precursor of what we today
call 'canon law.' As a compiler, Gratian was not an innovator as
such. Rather, he gathered together all of the traditions of
the western church into a coherent body of law, a coherent body of
doctrine. Significantly for our purpose here we collated
Augustine's thinking about just war. Thomas Aquinas was the primary
thinker to take Augustine's just war reflections compiled in canon
law, think theologically about them, and pass them along to the
later Middle Ages.
[14] There is not much innovation within the just war tradition
between Aquinas and the Reformation. Thus, when the Lutheran
confessors came to Augsburg in 1530 to make their confession before
Emperor Charles V, they took the basic framework of the just war
tradition for granted. When in Article XVI of the Augsburg
Confession they offer a sampling of activities and callings in
which Christians are called and permitted to do within
society-serving as magistrates, getting married, having children,
farming, trading-they list 'just war' as well10. While Calvin
emphasizes different aspects of just war, he also does not make any
major innovations within the tradition. He is particularly
interested in matters of legitimate authority.
[15] The next important person for understanding the development
of the just war tradition is Vitoria or Victoria, a contemporary of
Luther. He founded a new theological tradition at the University of
Salamanca in Spain by reestablishing Thomas Aquinas's theology as
the basic approach rather than Peter Lombard's. Vitoria's
followers then made Salamanca into the premier university in
sixteenth-century Europe for the study of Scholasticism. He took
the just war tradition that had not developed much over the
previous three centuries and put it into the context of what we
today might call international relations. He argued against
colonization in the Americas and against the conquest of the
Indies, which was among the crucial questions of his day. By
arguing that "difference of religion is not a cause of just war,"
he undermined the then-dominant notion that Christianity's
superiority as a religion was reason enough for militarily
conquering those with a primitive and thus inferior religion.
By rejecting religion as a justifiable reason for war he made the
decisive distinction between the just war tradition and the holy
war-crusade tradition that often functioned within western
Christendom. Vitoria's innovative contribution can hardly be
underestimated.11
[16] For the purposes of this brief review I call our attention
to Hugo Grotius, a Dutch reformed theologian and jurist. Grotius
writes in the midst of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) and helps
to conceptualize the notion of the modern nation-state each with
its own bounded sovereignty. Often called "the Father of
International Law" Grotius places the developing just war tradition
within the context of nation-state sovereignty and bases just war
thinking on a strictly natural law or secular form of reasoning
quite distinct from specifically "Christian" biblical
reasoning12.
jus ad bellum/jus in bello
[17] We turn now to consider the criteria that stand at the
center of the just war tradition. Michael Walzer, the eminent
political philosopher at Princeton University offers this pithy
maxim: "In the just war tradition war is always judged
twice."13
First, one must judge when war is right-i.e., the justice of going
to war, jus ad bellum-and second, one must judge the means for
fighting in war-what in war is right, jus in bello. These are the
two ways war-or, you might say, peace-is judged in the just war
tradition.
[18] There are different ways to enumerate the criteria for just
war. There are conversations in the history of the just war
tradition about how many criteria there are and in what order they
come. I will use a way that goes right down the center of the
tradition.14 The first two I list,
for instance, are often reversed.
A war is justifiable …
1) that is in response to a real injury that has been
suffered-just cause (justa causa);
2) that is declared by legitimate public authority-legitimate
authority (auctoritas principis);
3) in which those prosecuting the war have good
intentions-right intention (recta intention);
4) in which the damage likely to be incurred by the war will
not be disproportionate to the injury that has already been
suffered under the first criterion-proportionality ;
5) that is undertaken only after all reasonable means of
peaceful settlement have been exhausted-last resort;
6) in which there is reasonable hope for success and a new
state of peace-probability for success;
7) that employs only legitimate and moral means (debito
modo)-the proportionality of means and discrimination of
non-combatants.
[19] There are many nuances for all of these criteria, even when
they are isolated from particular situations. Furthermore, when it
comes down to the particulars, into concrete situations, the
criteria can become very complex. And of course there are many
questions about the internal logic: how do these criteria relate to
each other? does any criterion have more priority than another?
what happens when one criterion is fulfilled but another one is
not? do they ever conflict, and if they do, then what? to what
extent do you have to fulfill the criteria? how pure do our
intentions have to be? Such things are part of the messiness of of
the just war tradition because they are part of the messiness of
life. The just war tradition is a prudential ethic. It lives in the
real world, in the 'knottiness', the nervousness, in the messiness
of life.
[20] The first six criteria relate to jus ad bellum, regarding
possible justifications for going to war or not going to war. The
seventh one-many renditions separate this criterion into two,
three, or four points-involves jus in bello and thereby assumes
that war is happening. This seventh criterion has two sides.
Aquinas starts thinking seriously about the moral means of for
fighting a war when in the late Middle Ages military technology
begins changing significantly. It is here that we consider the
issue of the proportionality of means. The other significant
consideration is the discrimination of non-combatants and the
matter of 'collateral damage.'
Just PeaceMaking and Strategies of the
Imagination
[21] It is crucial for Lutherans to remember that the just war
tradition assumes a broad, vigorous context of just peacemaking.
That is reflected in the sixth criterion but is a fundamental
presumption for the entire tradition. Tragically, this fundamental
presumption is far too often neglected, understated, or even
denied. Without the larger context of just peacemaking, war realist
traditions and the just war tradition are too readily blurred,
especially in the popular imagination, and that aspirations of war
realism are surreptitiously transported into the just war
tradition. This broad, vigorous context of just peacemaking is why
just war tradition communities ought to establish long-term,
collaborative alliances with the historic peace churches. As we
turn our discussion to congregational strategies, please notice
that the topic is 'reinvigorating' Lutheranism's just peacemaking
tradition. While we have a lot of work to do as Lutherans, it is
not as if we have never done anything. Still, Lutherans are not all
of a single stripe and some have been more vigorous in this way
than others.
Thou shalt not kill.
[22] We can consider the Fifth Commandment to be the first
commandment of the just war tradition. If it is not first because
the First Commandment must always be first, then "Thou shalt not
kill" surely is the second commandment of the just war tradition.
As Luther asks in his catechism regarding all of the commandments,
"What does this mean?" "We are to fear and love God, so that
we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but
instead help and support them in all of life's needs." It is
amazing, really, to see what Luther was able to weave into his
explanation, what he was able to get into the imagination of an
eight-year-old kid, the age that I was when I had to memorize these
commandments! The first thing was to include the First
Commandment-"we are to fear and love God, so that"-in each of the
other commandments. That is, the biblical God has something
at stake in each commandment and therefore across the whole breadth
of human life.
[23] In Luther's explanation, we also see that the 'not' of the
commandment leads to Luther's 'buts.' Strictly speaking, the
moral prescriptions that Luther includes in the 'but' clauses do
not exist in the Exodus recording of the commandments, though they
do exist throughout the Bible, as Luther notes. Therefore,
Luther puts them in his explanations. The 'but' clauses represent
the just peacemaking side of the Ten Commandments. For Luther, just
peacekeeping and the just war tradition go together. He believed
very strongly in the right of political authority to exercise the
power of the sword. And while it is the side of Luther probably
least read by Lutherans, Luther also talks a lot about just
peacemaking15.
[24] Another facet of the biblical imagination to consider
besides 'Thou shalt not kill'-one could pick many-is Isaiah 58:12:
"You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of
streets to live in." Now that's not a bad vocation, even for
Lutherans! With these features of the biblical imagination in
mind, I would like to discuss three kinds of strategies for
congregations as they engage in just peacemaking: Strategies of
Imagination; Strategies of Interruptive and Reconstructive Action;
and Strategies of Formative, Integrative and Restorative Action. I
will lead with imagination and follow with action and practice.
Two Strategies of Imagination
[25] First, I want to start by imagining congregations as public
companions. In Lutheranism, we often talk about vocation-one of the
gems of our heritage-but we almost always reduce our understanding
of vocation to the lives of individuals only. Many people are
familiar with Habits of the Heart, written more than 15 years ago
by Robert Bellah and his bunch of researchers. It is a good book,
but the Bellah-bunch follow-up book, The Good Society, is even
better. The first chapter of The Good Society is titled "The
Institutions We Live Through." Their assertion is that individuals
always live their lives through institutions and that institutions
have vocations as well.
[26] As we imagine our congregations having public vocations, I
suggest that we imagine them with the vocation of 'public
companion.' In order to do that, we must imagine where these
congregations are going to have public vocations. That is,
what is the public social space for the vocation of public
companion? Once we imagine the public social space then we
can imagine with whom they will have the vocation of companion. The
public social space most relevant to congregations as public
companions is "civil society." I use the term, "civil society," in
a very particular way. The greatest thinker on civil society in the
last twenty-five years is Vaclav Havel, who just retired this year
as president of the Czech Republic. He is the one who really put
his finger on the significance of civil society within western
civilization, a topic to which I will return.16
[27] To initiate the imagination of congregations as public
companions, I will reference the mission statement of Luther
Seminary. The first part reads, "Luther Seminary educates leaders
for Christian communities called and sent by the Holy Spirit
…." There is a purposeful ambiguity in our mission
statement. As a seminary, we imagine that congregations are our
constituency and that we serve them by educating leaders for
them. So, according to the mission statement who is being
called and sent by the Holy Spirit? Is it the leaders or the
Christian communities? Who is called and who is sent? The answer:
they are both both called and sent!
[28] And what are the leaders and the Christian communities
called and sent to do? Our mission statement continues, ". . . to
witness to salvation through Jesus Christ and to serve in God's
world." We at Luther Seminary do pretty well discerning our being
called and sent by the Holy Spirit; helping people figure out their
vocations and to what they are called. And we are also really good,
I think, interpreting and confessing Jesus Christ as the source of
salvation: "to witness to salvation through Jesus Christ." To be
self-critical of my home institution for a moment, however, it
seems to me that exploring the depths and riches of "to serve in
God's world" is the least-developed portion of our curriculum and
of our course work. Perhaps that is the case for many congregations
as well. Each congregation has to ask itself that question from
within its own context. When it comes to Luther Seminary, it is at
least a part of our imagination regarding for what we are called
and sent, both for ourselves and for the leaders we educate.
[29] "To serve in God's world"? Can we think more
pointedly and more profoundly about congregations as serving in
God's world? We can use many prepositions: in the world, with the
world, against the world, and for the world-"in-with-against-for."
Notice that 'over' is not included in this list. We do not serve
'over' the world. 'Over' would signal a theocratic tradition, a
reality reflective of certain times and traditions within Christian
history. In a theocratic situation, you usually end up with either
coercive political power in the church's realm or you end up with
some sort of moral superiority resulting in a Christian aristocracy
that rules by virtue of that superiority.
[30] Just as imagining congregations as public companions is not
to imagine them as serving 'over' the world, it is also not to
imagine them serving 'under' the world or being 'of' the world.
Both of these would be to accommodate to the world, to have the
world set the agenda for the church. The church, surrendering to
whatever is, would then be voiceless, even becoming colonized by
the world. This is a real possibility. It is what the peace
traditions often suspect has happened to just war tradition
communities-we ought to listen to that suspicion.
[31] To serve in God's world is also not to serve 'without' the
world. That would be the sectarian option, which is what worried
Lutherans about the Anabaptist, left wing of the Reformation as
discussed by Jane Strohl. Historically, Lutherans have had a very
strong doctrine of God as Creator who continually engages in the
ongoing creation of the world. This understanding of the
creational, left-hand rule of God asserts that God is alive and
well and has not surrendered the world to the Devil. To serve in
God's world is to be 'in-with-against-for,' not to be 'over' or
'under' or 'of' or 'without.' The metaphor of congregations
as public companions attempts to imagine congregations in that
light.
[32] It is important to draw attention to Lutheranism's
'critical participationist predilection.'17 Normatively speaking,
that is what Lutherans aspire to be: critical participators in
society and in the world. This metaphor "public companion"
resonates with the mission emphasis of the ELCA. This paradigm for
mission is found in a recent statement released by the ELCA's
Division for Global Mission:
The concept of accompaniment
is becoming a central theme in an emerging vision of global
mission. Its promise lies in inviting the ELCA to take seriously
the contributions of other expressions of the global church. The
interaction of companion churches around the world reflects their
evaluation of and attitudes about their relationships with other
Christians in both North and South. Their evaluations of past and
present interactions offer valuable insights into how the ELCA can
learn to participate effectively in God's mission together with
other Christians18.
[33] The metaphors 'companionship' and 'accompaniment' go
together. Indeed, you can see the word 'companion' in 'accompany.'
Further, in Latin the word panis means bread. To be a companion,
therefore, is to 'bread' together with others. The
Eucharistic-communion nuances in the metaphor of 'companion' and
'accompaniment' are there, waiting for further exploration.
[34] Most synods in the ELCA have companion synods from other
places in the world. Also, many congregations have companion
congregations. When I served as pastor at Resurrection in
Portland, we introduced "Zacapa partners," our companion
congregation relationship with a base community of Lutherans in
Guatemala. That helped reinvigorate our congregation and its sense
of missional partnership in the world. 'How to bring the world to
Resurrection Lutheran Church and us to the world?' was one small
but crucial part of an overall strategy to develop a missional
imagination. Post 9/11 perhaps we can begin imagining 'companion
faiths.' Isn't it about time that we really take the risk of being
companions with other faith traditions-with a Hindu or Buddhist
temple, with a mosque, or with a Jewish congregation?
[35] The relationships developed through companionship help
create what Michael Walzer calls "connected
critics."19 Such critics are
neither sectarians nor cynics but rather fully engaged in
solidarity with the world they love-the countries, places, town,
cities, and regions that they will not, indeed, cannot abandon. The
metaphor of congregations as public companions, when tied to
notions and practices of critical participation and connected
critic, goes along with the public space of civil society.
A Sociological Map of the United States
[36] Civil society is that vast, spontaneously emergent,
plurality of networks, association, institutions, and movements for
the prevention and promotion of this, that, and the other thing.
When I use the term 'civil society' I refer to a sociological
space, not to a society that behaves itself civilly with civil
speech and the like. Civility is welcome, but my use of the idea
'civil society' does not mean civility. Civil society has emerged
as part of the architecture or landscape of western civilization
and, now, of other great civilizations as well.
[37] I introduce the concept of civil society to pique our
sociological imaginations. To that end, I would like to present a
sociological map of the United States. We are all familiar with
geographical maps, but a sociological map will help our
imaginations consider how congregations might be public
companions.
[38] In the United States, we experience something called the
political state.20 This can be
represented as a giant sphere, as a great system. The medium of
this system is power, administrative power. In our political state
we have the three familiar branches. Besides the political state,
there is another giant sphere, the market economy, where the medium
is money. These are the two great political systems that dominate
the landscape of our country. These mega-systems are not found only
in our country but are alive and well and powerful in other Western
countries as well.
[39] There is a third sphere that sociologists call the
lifeworld. The lifeworld is where our personal lives unfold, where
our values are formed, and where we make friends. In Figure 1, the
lifeworld appears squashed. And isn't that often how we feel about
our personal lives and also about our personal values? The kind of
values that we have in the lifeworld of our families and friends
seem to be not nearly as strong and as vital and as determinative
as do the two great systems with their respective media that drive
western civilization. I refer to this as the domination and
colonization of the lifeworld by the economy and the state. The
colonization of the lifeworld generates a lot of injustice,
diminished wellbeing, suffering, oppression, and a host of serious
unpleasant things.
[40] In this context we can ask what it would take to create a
vibrant, deliberative democracy based on the principles and
practices of just peacemaking. I suggest we take Vaclav Havel's
identification of the sociological space of civil society as a key
ingredient for what is needed. Civil society is that public space
where emergent just peacemaking happens. It's not that we do not
already have such a space. Indeed, it is the arena populated by the
hundreds of thousands of movements and associations for the
"prevention and promotion of this, that and the other thing." Some
of the things prevented and promoted-in fact a lot of them-I am not
at all interested in preventing or promoting! After all, in my
family background, my grandfather on my father's side was a
Klansman in Kentucky.
[41] What does it take to have an invigorated and invigorating
deliberative democracy that generates justice and peace? It takes a
civil society at the center of it all. And with civil society at
the center the political state and the market economy can take
their proper role; and so can the lifeworld-our families, our
friends, our values, our personal lives-have space to live and to
thrive. Civil society is the first, preferential space where the
public work, the liturgy, of citizenship goes on. The institutions
within civil society form what Havel called "the moral
infrastructure of western civilization." Civil society is a
sounding board and warning system for societal problems, for issues
of justice, civil and human rights, freedom, and well-being. It
often detects and identifies problems by problematizing issues that
seem to have been settled or even perhaps have been settled but,
due to new circumstances and insights, must be reopened.
Additionally, it defines the moral meanings of new problems in
convincing and influential ways while frequently furnishing
possible moral solutions to problems.
[42] Civil society also dramatizes both moral predicaments and
solutions for the broad citizenship as well as for governmental
branches and economic systems. It is a crucial arena within a
deliberative democracy since neither the political state nor the
market economy possess sufficient moral wisdom to create and
sustain a vibrant, just, and thereby peaceful commonwealth. That
civil society can provide "the moral infrastructure of western
civilization" is as much an aspiration as an already existing
situation. But without a vigorous civil society the lifeworld is in
danger of being colonized and abused. In Havel's situation
the state was the prime colonizer, in ours the economy is often
most overwhelming.
[43] I consider civil society to be God's preferential arena for
emerging moral wisdom. Perhaps Proverbs 8 can serve as biblical
imagination for my claim. It is a beautiful chapter:
Does not wisdom call, and
does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the
way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in
front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
"To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. O simple
ones, learn prudence; acquire intelligence, you who lack it. Hear,
for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is
right; for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination
to my lips. (vv. 1-7)
I, wisdom, live with prudence, and I attain knowledge and
discretion. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and
arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. I have
good advice and sound wisdom; I have insight, I have strength. By
me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; by me rulers rule,
and nobles, all who govern rightly. I love those who love me, and
those who seek me diligently find me. (vv.
12-17)
[44] In the United States we have a constitutional republic with
developing practices of a deliberative democracy. We imagine a
government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," to
borrow Lincoln's words. To discern civil society as God's
preferential arena for emerging public companions is to identify
that public space where congregations exercise a vocation along
with other civil society institutions to discover and generate
moral wisdom for justice and peace in the world. Though surely
living in a civilization quite different from a modern-postmodern
society, perhaps Paul still had something like that in mind when he
wrote, "Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what
the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to
themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on
their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness"
(Romans 2:14-15a).
Strategies of Interruptive & Reconstructive
Action
[Figure 3]
[45] What I like to call 'strategies of interruptive and
reconstructive action' have sometimes been called the 'non-violent,
direct-action' traditions. Some examples are Martin Luther King,
Jr., in our country and Mohandas K. Gandhi in India. Such actions
are frontally interruptive, radical, perhaps revolutionary; they
strike at deeply systemic issues and may be considered 'war by
other means.' Things like boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience,
marches, accompaniment and the providing of safe places and
sanctuary-these are actions that can happen when civil society
itself becomes colonized by the state or the market, when injustice
turns the corner into out-and-out wickedness. To some extent some
of the criteria of the 'just war' tradition can even serve as a
good test of whether this turn has occurred. Congregations must
join together to discern the appropriateness of these strategies in
their time and context. With more time we could obviously say
much more, and need to, about strategies of interruptive and
reconstructive action.21
Strategies of Formative, Integrative, & Restorative
Action
[46] As I stated above, Lutherans have not often used the
language of just peacemaking. But we have a long heritage that in
important ways we have let slip away, a heritage where we have
initiated and practiced just peacemaking-even though we haven't
called it that-in particular places and regarding particular
critical issues. We Lutherans tend to do very well at creating, as
the Bellah-bunch says, institutions through which we live out our
vocations. Unfortunately, we have not always vigorously recognized
and claimed the significance of our institution-generating
capacities. Now is the time, sisters and brothers, to
retrieve lost opportunities.
[Figure 4]
[47] We Lutherans have formed a new institution, which is only
about four years old, called Lutheran Services in America (LSA).
While you may not have heard of LSA, you will be glad to hear about
it and no doubt surprised by it as well. Did you know that historic
Lutheran identity and practice stand behind the largest nonprofit
in the United States? The total revenue for LSA in 2001 was $7.6
billion! Please take a moment to look down the list of the other
organizations on this list. This is a major Lutheran institution
that most congregations and members have no idea exists. Unless we
name it and claim it-our Lutheran heritage of just peacemaking,
that is-it will surely again recede and even slip away.
[48] One of the goals of LSA, which seeks to coordinate over 200
Lutheran organizations across the United States in all kinds of
ministries, is to reconnect with its Lutheran identity. LSA does
this by asking the question, "Does it make a difference that we're
Lutheran?" In crucial ways, we have lost that question among our
congregations. Can we name and reclaim the difference that being
Lutheran makes?
[49] Part of LSA's important work is to coordinate agencies for
the purposes of public advocacy. A lot of that work goes on around
the country. What I have tried to help us imagine here tonight is
civil society as a critical place for just peacemaking, even as
God's preferential arena within Western society for the nurturing
of an invigorated and invigorating deliberative democracy that can
continue to generate just peacemaking. And this is inherently
Lutheran, for God's just peacemaking represents within Western
civilization the alpha and omega of the peacekeeping aspiration
that is the strong presumption of the just war tradition given
witness in the Lutheran confession.
You shall be called the
repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
(Isaiah 58:12)
1 I am grateful to Robert Smith, my research assistant,
who has carefully transcribed this lecture with editing and also
for his insightful consultation on many of the issues that I have
addressed. The other conference address was by Jane Strohl from
Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, who took a more historical
approach focusing on the Reformation era. I accepted her exposition
of the Reformation tradition as a basic presupposition for my own
point of view.
2 For the term "just peacemaking" and for a good
introduction to this ecumenical approach see Glen Stassen, Just
Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War (Cleveland: Pilgrim
Press, 1998).
3 Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of
Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans.
Charles Arand, et al (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), CA XVI:1-2 (BC,
49).
4 I have been served by Duane Cady's analyses regarding
the distinction between war realism and just war tradition and also
regarding the varieties of pacifism. See his From Warism to
Pacifism: A Moral Continuum (Philadelphia: Temple Universithy
Press, 1989). On the basic assumptions behind war realism also see
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with
Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp.
3-33.
5 See John A. Moss, "Bonhoeffer's Germany: The Political
Context," in The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited
by John de Gruchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
pp. 5-9.
6 In Robert Phillips and Duane Cady, Humanitarian
Intervention: Just War vs. Pacifism (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 1996), pp. 32-33. For other expositions of
the varieties of pacifism see John Howard Yoder, Nevertheless: The
Varieties and Shortcomings of Religious Pacifism (Scottsdale, PA:
Herald Press, 1992); also Edward LeRoy Long, Jr., War and
Conscience in America (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968).
7 James Turner Johnson, Just War Tradition and the
Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1981), p. xxi.
8 As a working hypothesis I accept Alasdair MacIntyre's
description of tradition as "historically extended, socially
embodied argument" (After Virtue, 2nd ed. (South Bend, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 221-223).
9 For a good exposition of Augustine's thinking on just
war see Lisa Sowle Cahill, Love Your Enemies: Discipleship,
Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994),
pp. 55-80.
10 For a theological exposition of Article XVI see, Gary
M. Simpson, "Toward a Lutheran 'Delight in the Law of the Lord':
Church and State in the Context of Civil Society," in Church and
State: Lutheran Perspectives, eds. John Stumme and Robert Tuttle
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).
11 For Franciscus de Victoria, De Indis et De Jure Belli
Relectiones, ed. By Ernest Nys (Washington: Carnegie Institute,
1917) see: http://www.constitution.org/victoria/victoria_.htm.
For Vitoria's argument against holy war-crusade see: http://www.constitution.org/victoria/victoria_5.htm.
Johnson's exposition of Vitoria is quite helpful (op. cit. pp.
94-103.
12 Johnson, pp. 172-189.
13 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument
with Historical Illustrations (New York : Basic Books, 1977).
14 I have basically followed the listing of criteria in
The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1986), s.v. "Just War," by James Turner Johnson.
About the variety of ways to list criteria the renowned Christian
pacifist John Howard Yoder has stated: "Years ago I randomly
surveyed twenty-five lists offered by authors, each of whom assumed
that he was describing the general consensus. Yet the lists
differed significantly as to how the criteria were stated, how many
there were, what exceptions and conditions they were qualified by,
and what to do if they were not met. . . . [T]here is no standard
statement of just-war criteria by any ecclesiastical authority."
See John Howard Yoder, When War Is Unjust (Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock Publishers, 2001), p. 2.
15 For a marvelous look at the justice tradition at the
time of the Reformation, see Carter Lindberg, Beyond Charity:
Reformation Initiatives for the Poor (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1993).
16 Vaclav Havel, Living in Truth (London: Faber &
Faber, 1990), pp. 136-157.
17 For my understanding of Lutheranism's critical
participationist predilection see Simpson, op. cit
18 Division for Global Mission of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America, "Global Mission in the Twenty-first Century: A
Vision of Evangelical Faithfulness in God's Mission," 5, found at
http://www.elca.org/dgm/policy/gm21full.pdf.
The late Rev. Will Herzfeld was one of the persons who helped
formulate this new paradigm. He was a mentor of mine when we were
pastors together in Oakland, Calif. I learned much from him.
19 Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).
20 For a fuller rendition of this sociological map see
Gary Simpson, Critical Social Theory: Prophetic Reason, Civil
Society, and Christian Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2002), pp. 101-145.
21 See Stassen, op. cit.