New starting points in ecumenical peace dialogue-three perspectives: An introduction.

Mellen, Elizabeth Hanson

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In the ecumenical world it is a new historical moment for dialogue among the churches in the matter of peace. For many years discussion between the Historic Peace Churches and other churches (and often between Christian individuals) was structured around the question of the compatibility or complementarity of inherited "positions" or traditions--Christian pacifist understandings and just-war ethics. It was assumed that church reconciliation would involve getting that question resolved. Little progress was made. When pacifist understanding was dismissed as laudable but not possible, there was not even discussion.

The very exigencies of our present situation in a violent world bring us to a new place. These, along with the greater awareness of the myriad and interwoven forms that violence takes (crude and less crude; military and structural; public, personal, and environmental), have had their effect upon those gathered in the dialogical fellowship of the ecumenical movement. Out of common concerns as church people, from love of God and of each other, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, many Christians now find themselves drawn into common hope and prayer for peace and efforts to overcome violence. It would seem that we have with greater seriousness--more poignantly and existentially, more gratefully perhaps--appropriated the gospel conviction that conciliar churches could already affirm together at the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948: "Peace is the Will of God."

As a result, in ecumenical circles, energy for pursuing the earlier debate in the old way has dissipated. The old debate no longer compels interest. It is not that ethicists, both Christian and otherwise, have ceased to draw upon just-war theory; the many and varied discussions with very particular compelling focus following September 11, 2001, strongly attest otherwise. (1) General Christian reflection--ethical, biblical, and theological, on peace and peacemaking, conflict and resistance, war and violence--continues as well. However, in ecumenical circles there is a new and common focus: a compelling need to find our way in the world. The discussion is taken up as theological reflection and exchange rather than debate or dismissal. Common faith now seeks common understanding.

The three essays that follow, on the topic of "New Starting Points in Ecumenical Peace Dialogue," were written by members of Historic Peace Churches--a Quaker, a Mennonite, and a member of the Church of the Brethren--for the annual meeting of the North American Academy of Ecumenists in September, 1999, held at Messiah College in Grantham, PA. The authors in their various ways acknowledge as the context for their writing the changed environment that we have noted. Each of their essays, considered individually, is an effective entry point into Christian peace theologizing. Together, in ways truly diverse and complementary (the essays being so different in style and content), they provide a deeply informative, complex point of entry into a developed stream of Christian thinking that is well worth learning to navigate.

The essay by Ann Riggs focuses on the fundamental role that an understanding of the transformative power of God's in-breaking reign--and its invitation to participation--plays in Quaker peace thought. It would be more accurate to say that she expressively evokes and draws us into that understanding. Her words brought to this writer's mind the work of Catholic ethicist Lisa Sowle Cahill. In Love Your Enemies (2) Cahill has shown that Christian pacifist and just-war theory--both present in the heritage of Christian thought--are of a disparate character, their anatomies quite different. Cahill observed that just-war theory is grounded in "the practice of just and ordered political life," that it is "also characteristically theory-oriented toward defining and refining criteria by analysis and argument," that its thinking is "theoretical and rule-making." (3) Christian pacifism focuses on the new relationships spoken about, in Jesus' words about the "kingdom-at-hand," seen in him, and made possible for others by him. Thus, it is characteristic of Christian pacifists rather to

begin with a way of life formed in Christ, then searchingly carry that formation out toward practical details, not via code casuistry, but by an ongoing probing of pride, power, cross, love, repentance and forgiveness in their relevance to situations of the utmost concreteness and immeidacy.... [Christian pacifism thus] emerges from a close-knit and converted way of life, and its nonviolence is not in any fundamental way either a theory-derived or rule-oriented commitment but an outgrowth of discipleship that tends to be integral and distinctive (although not necessarily separatist), rather than culturally mediating and inclusive.... [It] exclude[s] as a systematic and extended enterprise the development of criteria for living as though the kingdom has not yet arrived." (4)

The understanding of God's reign as present and transformative reality is then both a fundamental matter in peace-church thought and something that differentiates it from just-war theory. In her conclusion Riggs suggests some fresh lines along which dialogue might be pursued in the future.

For John Rempel, historical and sociological developments call into question any consistent or necessary correlation, today, between an ecclesial capacity for peace witness and a gathered (or believers') church polity and baptismal practice. Conversely, he is happy to provide good evidence of capacity for peace witness in historically established or "mainline" churches. Thus, a more fundamental ecclesiological question or distinction is involved for peace witness: Does the church see its mission in peacemaking as linked to what it means to be the church? That is, will its members be so grounded in a community shaped by a sense of God's prior and present claim as a reality that its members have the freedom to live at creative and critical distance from the state and the general culture, as well as the freedom to take their own peace-witness initiative when the state is at war and at any time against violence and hurtful patterns? That is the critical ecclesiological issue.

The issue sounds another theological note as characteristic of peace-church thought as the focus on the "Kingdom of God" and the linked theme of caution about the powers of this world, of skepticism toward the voices of the world-as-it-is who insist that theirs are the only voices. Over against the authority/legitimacy that they claim, Christians in their new community are empowered to speak about another and greater authority and in themselves to be a redemptive counter-word of a different order. That word entails a theological caveat about the world's claims, which have the capacity to hold us in thrall and which also may retaliate when their legitimacy is questioned.

Just-war ethics lacks a theological frame upon which to hang a cautionary note about the powers of this world and their agendas. It focuses, as we have noted, on the behavior of the state. It speaks in terms of universal, generalized ethics (or natural law) about defining the circumstances under which the state may rightly use coercion (violence) in order to salvage the just order it sees as the precondition for peace. In that theorizing, useful and circumspect though it may be, theological statements about sin, redemption, and new life in Christ (over against the old life) are not the focal point.

One is not wrong, I think, to see Scott Holland's essay as an expanded variation on this theme: the cautionary wisdom and stance of Christian pacifism in face of the ideologies and idols offered by the world. For him this is fundamentally the wisdom of Christian faith itself, when it is not being heretical. It is a wisdom--this pacifism of counter-word and different-word power and vulnerability--that for him is grounded in an integrated theological vision of peace/shalom in the Jewish and Christian traditions. Holland succeeds in displaying its resilience and usefulness, philosophically and politically, in a postmodern, reactive, fragmented world that is still in need of healing and peace and community. He shows the sorts of things it undercuts and resists. He draws us along into philosophical and theopoetic explorations of the meaning/reality of the Christian revelation and of the peculiar nature of God's peace and the mystery of forgiveness and embrace at its heart.

(1.) One such discussion sponsored in early October, 2001, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life can be accessed over the internet at <www.pewforum.org>. Part of the discussion was published as "Terrorism and 'Just War.'" Christian Century 118 (November 14, 2001): 22-29. [Note that this issue of J.E.S. is delayed in publication, so this introduction was written in November, 2001. Eds.]

(2.) Lisa Sowle Cahill, Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994).

(3.) Ibid. p. 229.

(4.) lbid.p. 229-230.