Category Archives: Current Events

Why We Christians Don’t Love Our Enemies

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Ted Grimsrud—September 24, 2011

If there is one passage in the entire Bible that points to both the glory and the shame of Christianity, it is this famous statement by Jesus: “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:44-45).  Here we have a direct statement of a profound ideal, a call to break the cycle of violence that so bedevils our world.  And here we have as stark a reminder as we could imagine of just how far Christianity tends to have strayed from the will of its founder.

“Love Your Enemies”: An Obvious Need in Our World

“Love your enemies,” such an obvious statement of what our world needs.  We see so clearly in our present day how hatred of enemies fuels war with simply incredible costs – in the name of stamping out “terrorists” our country spends billions upon billions to pour violence upon the nation of Iraq, diverts resources in a way that made the Gulf Coast more vulnerable to devastation from recent hurricanes, alienates people throughout the world, sends hundreds upon hundreds of our soldiers to their death along with thousands upon thousands of Iraqis.  This hatred fuels a spinning cycle, eye for an eye for an eye leading to more and more blindness.

Hatred of enemies fuels our nation’s prison-industrial complex, sending millions behind bars where they are all too often brutalized, infected with devastating diseases such as hepatitis, permanently disenfranchised as stakeholders in civil society (as someone said, no matter how long a convicted criminal’s official sentence might be, it is invariably a “life sentence” in terms of the impact going to prison has on one’s life).  In the name of “security,” we only increase the spiral of destruction and alienation.

In many other ways as well, hatred of enemies leads to unhappiness, brokenness, pain being visited upon pain – and the cycle of creating only more hatred.  So, Jesus’ words cut like a warm knife through butter.  He gets to the heart of things – we need to find ways to love instead of hate.  We need to find ways to forgive instead of simply punish.  We need to find ways to heal when there is brokenness, not simply retaliate. Continue reading →

Reflecting on September 11, 2001—Then and now

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Ted Grimsrud—September 8, 2011

It just so happened that I was scheduled to preach at Shalom Mennonite Congregation in Harrisonburg, VA, the Sunday after the September 11, 2001 incidents. I was grateful for the challenge of trying to put into words some of what I was feeling and thinking during that very intense time. I ended up submitting an edited version of the sermon to The Mennonite and it was published a few weeks later.

Now, ten years later as I reread that article, I find myself wanting to reiterate what I wrote back then—the call for people of goodwill to continue to grieve the loss of life and other destruction from that terrible moment and to continue to critique the American way of Empire that helped precipitate those incidents.

Certainly, the circle of grief-worthy events directly related to 9-11 has continued to expand greatly as the United States responded to the terrible violence of 9-11 with wave after wave of even more terrible violence in Afghanistan (and Iraq). Few people would have imagined in 2001 that these waves of violence would still be growing an entire decade later.

So, now, even more than was the case ten years ago (if that is possible), critique is necessary. The American way of Empire has dragged our nation into an ever-deepening pit of ruin. Continue reading →

Beyond Vengeance

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Ted Grimsrud—June 22, 2011

When human beings are violated in major ways, profound needs are created in the survivors.  By “survivors” we mean people who survive violent acts themselves and those left when one of their loved ones’ lives is taken in violence.  Major violations create for survivors the need to restore their dignity, sense of identity, selfhood, and honor.  We have several ways we might restore our dignity: taking personal revenge, relying on the state’s retribution, and seeking some sort of vindication that restores the sense of selfhood without exacting vengeance on the wrongdoer.  I believe the third path best opens the way to restored wholeness.

Revenge

I will define “revenge” and “retribution” as pointing toward two distinct, though overlapping, responses to violations.  Revenge occurs when people, in response to violations, seek to retaliate, responding to wrongdoing apart from “official” governmental channels.  Retribution occurs when the state takes over for the victim (and victims’ associates).  State involvement brings formal procedures to apprehend, try, offer judgment, and punish the offender.

A major violation leads to the victim feeling diminished.  When people feel damaged, they tend to want to get even.  Being violated leads to a loss of dignity and a powerful sense of shame.  A violated person may feel a powerful drive to do something that will restore their sense of honor.  In many cultures, people assume that ones restore this lost sense of honor by retaliating against the violator.  Social pressure plays a large role in pushing people to seek vengeance, especially in contexts where a high premium is placed on reputation and honor. Continue reading →

The Military Industrial Complex and the Moral Legacy of World War II

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Ted Grimsrud—1/14/11

[Presented at the Military Industrial Complex at 50 Conference—Guilford College, Greensboro, NC—adapted from earlier lectures at Eastern Mennonite University and Goshen College]

Dwight Eisenhower was, I think, an unlikely, and not altogether believable, prophet against militarism. Nonetheless, if we pay attention to a few of his words (in contrast to a long career of actions), we will find some powerful insights.

Most notably, almost exactly fifty years ago, on his way out of the presidency, Eisenhower critiqued what he so incisively called the “military-industrial complex.” Tragically, the past fifty years only underscore both the prescience of Eisenhower’s warning and regret that he did not do more to curb militarism when he had a chance.

In a typically perceptive article called “The Tyranny of Defense, Inc.,” in The Atlantic’s January 2011 issue, Andrew Bacevich writes in appreciation of Eisenhower’s speech. But Bacevich also points out that Eisenhower’s farewell speech came as a kind of bookend, paired with a speech from near the beginning of his presidency in 1953.

That first speech reflected on the dangers of militarism in the United States. Eisenhower stressed the problems of high military spending with these forceful words: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. [When a nation spends so much on warfare] it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” Continue reading →

Core Convictions for Engaged Pacifism

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Ted Grimsrud

[Published in The Conrad Grebel Review 28.3 (Fall 2010), 22-38]

“One of the most pressing questions facing the world today is, How can we oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves?”[i] These words opened Walter Wink’s Engaging the Powers nearly twenty years ago — and voice the concern that remains at the center of many peacemakers’ sensibilities. Wink’s question about resisting evil without adding to it points in two directions at once, thereby capturing one of the central tensions we face.  On the one hand, we human beings of good will, especially those of us inclined toward pacifism, assume that at the heart of our lives we have a responsibility to resist evil in our world, to seek peace, to be agents of healing — that is, to enter into the brokenness of our present situation and be a force for transformation.  On the other hand, we recognize that efforts to overcome evil all too often end up exacerbating the brokenness.  We recognize that resisting evil can lead to the use of tactics that add to the evil and transform the actors more than the evil situation.

So, how might we act responsibly while not only remaining true to our core convictions that lead us to seek peace but also serving as agents of actual healing instead of well-meaning contributors to added brokenness?

In recent years, various strategies with potential for addressing these issues have arisen.  These include efforts to add teeth to the enforcement of international law (the International Criminal Court) and the emergence of what has come to be known as the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine affirmed by the United Nations Security Council in 2006. In this general arena of seeking to respond creatively to evil, we could also include creative thinking that has been emerging out of peace church circles related to themes such as restorative justice,[ii] “just policing,”[iii] and projects such at the 3D Security Initiative[iv] and Mennonite Central Committee’s “Peace Theology Project.”[v]

The tension seemingly inherent for peacemakers in these efforts at responding to evil appears in the tendency to incline either towards “responsibility” in ways that compromise our commitment to nonviolence and the inherent worth of all human beings, even wrongdoers, or towards “faithfulness” in ways that do not truly contribute to resisting wrongdoing and bringing about needed changes. We face a basic choice. Will we understand this tension as signaling a need to choose one side of it over the other — either retreating into our ecclesial cocoon and accepting our “irresponsibility” or embracing the call to enter the messy world in creative ways that almost certainly will mean leaving our commitment to nonviolence behind? Or will we understand the tension as a call to devote our best energies to finding ways to hold together our nonviolence with creative responsibility?

I affirm the need (and the realistic possibility) of taking the “tension-as-opportunity-for-creative-engagement” path. A number of the people and writings cited in notes 2 through 5 below have been embodying just this kind of path; I do not mean to imply that peace church practitioners haven’t make significant progress in understanding and applying our peacemaking convictions to the “real world.”[vi] However, I am not content that we have yet done the necessary work at sharpening our understanding and articulation of the “faithfulness” side of the responsibility/faithfulness dialectic. Our creativity in engaging these issues may be drawing on increasingly depleted traditions of principled pacifism that found their roots more in traditional communities than in carefully articulated theological ethics. We may not have the resources to live creatively with this dialectic unless we do more work on clarifying and solidifying our understanding of our peace ideals.

With this essay I will articulate a perspective on pacifism that might be usable for thoughtfully engaging human security issues. My contribution is mostly as a pastor and theologian, not a practitioner. My hope is to help with the philosophical underpinnings, not to direct a program of engagement — though I will conclude with a few thoughts on how I see the pacifist perspective outlined here possibly applying to our present situation. Continue reading →

The Long Shadow: World War II’s Moral Legacy

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Ted Grimsrud—EMU University Colloquium—9/29/10

[During the 2010-11 school year, I am taking a sabbatical and working on a book project on the topic covered in this lecture. This is kind of a preliminary report. I hope to post drafts of the chapters of the book on this website as I get them ready. Comments are coveted!]

World War II was the biggest catastrophe ever to befall humanity. Think of it like this: say a meteorite crashes into Harrisonburg and kills 40,000 people. This would be incredible news. America’s worst ever natural disaster. But then, imagine that something like this happens every single day for five years. You can’t imagine that? Well, that’s what World War II was—40,000 people killed every single day for five years.

But World War II wasn’t a natural catastrophe—it was something human beings did to each other. These 75 million people didn’t just die due to impersonal nature run amok. They were killed by other people. World War II was an intensely moral event. Human choices. Human values. Human actions.

And World War II has cast a long shadow. We’re still in its shadow. As William Faulkner wrote, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Just one example. In Barak Obama’s acceptance speech upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, just last December, he alluded to the necessity for America to fight our war in Afghanistan—and cited the war against Hitler as one key rationale. That war was obviously a necessary war, our nation’s “good war,” and it helps us see our current wars as necessary as well.

So, to come to terms with our moral stance concerning our present wars (and all wars require a moral stance of one kind or another), we need to come to terms with the moral legacy of the big war, World War II, the one that stands, in this country, as the paradigm for war’s necessity. This is my focus during this sabbatical year.

As I work on this project, I reflect on this war’s impact on my own life. World War II brought my parents together. My father, Carl, grew up in Minnesota. My mother, Betty, in Oregon. In early 1941, Carl enlisted in the Army and was first stationed in eastern Oregon. He met Betty, they fell in love, and promised to join together as soon as the War was over. This is their wedding picture. Carl fought with distinction for three years in the Pacific war, was promoted to captain, and actually asked by the army to stay in. But he’d had enough of guns and wanted to build a life with Betty, who had spent the war years also in the army as a recruiter.

They started having kids right away, ultimately contributing five to the baby boom generation. It took until 1954 to come up with a boy. Betty wanted to name him Carl III, but Carl said no, I want to name him Ted, after my best friend who was killed in combat.

I didn’t hear a lot about “the War” growing up; it was always in the background though, as something important and good that my parents had played their part in. The one conversation I remember came when I was 17. My dad urged me to apply to attend one of the military academies. He said his military service was a terrific experience and he thought I’d value it too. I didn’t agree, and he didn’t press the point. Continue reading →

America’s Shame

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Tim Weiner. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Anchor Books, 2008.

This is both an illuminating and frustrating book. Tim Weiner is a long-time reporter for the New York Times whose beat has been the American intelligence community. This book won numerous rewards, is engagingly written, and draws on a remarkable selection of sources—including direct interviews with many involved in intelligence work and wide-ranging examination of archival materials.

Weiner probably is uniquely qualified to write this book. To his credit, he names names, cites his sources, lays the materials openly on the table. I think we should, to a large extend at least, believe the tales he tells. And hair-raising tales they are. Weiner shows us that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Central Intelligence Agency has from its beginning in the aftermath of World War II been a force for incredible evil in the world.

At the same time as we learn of the CIA’s mostly uninhibited zeal for murder and mayhem, generally in the context of the denial of self-determination for innumerable peoples around the world, we also learn of the extraordinary failures of the Agency. Most notably, the CIA utterly failed to gain understanding of the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. In the first couple of decades, the CIA left the American government pretty much completely in the dark concerning Soviet activities and intentions. It’s amazing and extremely distressing to realize that the entire first generation of American cold warriors, who shaped our nation in tragic ways toward domination by militarism, beat the drums of warning against the Soviet threat with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of what was actually going on with the Soviets. It truly boggles the mind.

Then, at the end of the Cold War, with the CIA continuing to feed its political masters the analyses that were desired to sustain the Cold War that had become so profitable for the American Military-Industrial Complex, our “intelligence” service complete missed the signs of the impending collapse of the Soviet system. Continue reading →

Learning from the 1940 Debate about War?

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Joseph Loconte, ed. The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm. Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.

“Even though you meant it for evil, God intended it for good.” These words, a paraphrase of Joseph’s finals words to his brothers in Genesis 50:20, came to mind as I read this book that Joseph Loconte, a scholar on the staff of the Heritage Foundation, put together. Loconte meant for this book to serve the rhetorical campaign American militarists are waging to garner and sustain support for the “war on terrorism.” Though these purposes are highly problematic, the book (excepting Loconte’s introduction) is actually fascinating and important—though not for the purposes indended.

Loconte has gathered an extensive collection of writings from prominent American Protestant leaders (plus one Jewish writer) who engaged in a passionate debate in 1939-41 about the role the United States should play in relation to the war being waged in Europe between the Nazis and British. The first half of the book includes pieces from those who opposed military intervention, generally on pacifist grounds; the second half gathers materials from those who supported taking sides with the British and offering material aid for the Allied cause (though, since the materials all were published before Pearl Harbor in December 1941, even these latter writings do not overtly advocate American direct military engagement).

So, we have an important resource here that sheds light on Christian perspectives during what was a momentous time in American history. Despite his present day agenda, to Loconte’s great credit the introductions to the various writings are models of objective description that do a nice job of putting the articles in historical perspective.

Continue reading →

A Surprising Critique of World War II

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Patrick J. Buchanan. Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. Crown Publishers, 2008.

This is a surprising book, at least to me. I’ve not read much of Pat Buchanan’s stuff. I know him mainly by reputation—a speechwriter for Richard Nixon, self-labeled paleo-conservative, critic of empire, quasi-isolationist, third party presidential candidate in 2000 whose candidacy would have cost George Bush the election had the votes in Florida been accurately counted. And, now, a sharp critic of America and British involvement in World War II.

Buchanan surely is not a pacifist, but there is little here that wouldn’t give the reader the impression that he leans in that direction. He does not come across as a Nazi sympathizer. He greatly dislikes Winston Churchill (with good reason) and Joseph Stalin (also with good reason). One does sense a somewhat extreme hatred of Soviet communism, but this antipathy does not come directly to the surface very often.

Buchanan is not a professional historian—a fact that probably works more in his favor than against him. It’s just that the reader must recognize that what this book gives us is a somewhat speculative essay on what didn’t have to be with numerous historical illustrations (not an exercise in careful archival research tested with professional historian peers). However, the strength of the book is the clarity of its argument which is not overly burdened with qualifications, or with careful delineation of minute arguments, or with “on the one hand/on the other hand” summaries. Certainly, Buchanan’s points need to be viewed cautiously and should stimulate further efforts on the interested reader’s part to test them against the evidence and other opinions. But that’s all to the good.

In a nutshell, Buchanan suggests that Great Britain should not have gone to war against Nazi Germany—which would have meant that the United States would not have gone to war with Germany either. If this had happened (or, rather, not happened), Germany and the Soviets would basically have ground each other to dust, the British Empire would not have disintegrated so quickly, and—probably most important for Buchanan’s purposes—the United States would not have succumbed to the hubris of striving to be the world’s one superpower and followed its current path to self-destruction.

Buchanan’s agenda is surely different than mine. As a Christian pacifist, I am pretty suspicious of Buchanan’s style of American-first patriotism. However, I am willing to walk quite a ways down the path he articulates in this book outlining the hugely problematic dynamics of the American and British participation in World War II and the disastrous consequences (for American democracy and the well-being of millions of victims of American imperialism in the past 65 years) of the aftermath of that war.

So, I am grateful to Buchanan for this stimulating and mostly well-written book. I recommend it, only now I have to figure out if I dare cite it when I try to articulate some of my critical views about World War II and its consequences.

Book Reviews

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