Archive for the 'Pacifism' Category

Pacifism and the Animal Liberation Front: against the heresy of endowing property with rights

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 24, 2008
in Animal Rights and Pacifism
. 58 Comments

In a comment on the post immediately below this one, my friend Carlos writes:

It just feels to me that you’re sending a high-pitched, almost indiscernible signal that you do condone violence. I think Gonz accused you a long time of “praising with faint damns” those who use violence to liberate animals… on Facebook you list yourself as a supporter of Animal Liberation Front; on your sidebar you link to the Animal Liberation Press Office. Is this a oblique way of signalling your real views, which may be too radical to put out in the open?

What has happened to your pacifism, a subject about which you used to blog for years?

Here’s my archive on pacifism. It’s true I haven’t written on the subject in more than a year and a half. I came to pacifism after 9/11; seven years ago, following the horror of that famous day and its aftermath, I left the Episcopal parish in which I worshipped to join a local Mennonite church. I had started reading the great Mennonite philosopher John Howard Yoder within days of the September 11 attacks, and his Politics of Jesus seemed like the perfect radical alternative to all the warmongering that was in vogue seven autumns ago.

I’ve thought a lot about pacifism and violence over the years since, though I don’t know if those thoughts are particularly insightful. And though I was attracted to the Anabaptist radicalism of the Mennonites, with their peace witness and their call to simplicity, I ended up feeling a bit like an alien in their midst. (There’s still a strong ethnic element in many Mennonite churches — lots of Yoders and Swartleys and Brennemanns, folks descended from the original Swiss-German founders of the faith.) When I left the Mennonites, I dropped the most doctrinal commitment to pacifism, but remained — and remain — enchanted by the notion that in the struggle for justice, ends and means must be radically congruent. In other words, war is made possible by war, peace by peace. And as a Christian, I must still trust that God is in charge of the final ends — but it is my job to live a life aligned with the means which Jesus modeled when He walked the earth. Continue reading ‘Pacifism and the Animal Liberation Front: against the heresy of endowing property with rights’

Pacifism and the siren song of liberal internationalism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 25, 2007
in Christianity, Faith, Pacifism, Politics and War
. 19 Comments

I’ve been blogging for over three years, and in all that time, have not produced a single post about our war in Iraq. My cyber-silence on the subject is not due to a lack of strong personal feeling, but rather to the sense that others (far better informed than I) have said most of what there is to say and said it better.

This week, I’ve been listening a lot to to the “speechifying” of the pro-war right. As I listen to folks like the Christian conservative Hugh Hewitt (who, compared to many of his ilk, has a surprising degree of eloquence, even in the service of a bad cause), I’m struck by how tempted I am to agree whenever someone stresses that America has a duty to keep fighting in order to save the Iraqi people.

This is not a post about the actual merits of staying in Iraq. Rather, I’m struck this week by my own inner conflict — one that I sense from conversations with friends is not unique to me. I’m a cradle liberal, anti-war almost from birth. My pram (I am old enough that folks didn’t speak of “strollers”) was pushed in anti-Vietnam protests through the streets of Santa Barbara in 1968. The last time I committed an act of outraged civil disobedience was seventeen years ago, when the first Gulf War began. And heck, I supported the solidly anti-war Dennis Kucinich in the last presidential campaign, and am tentatively doing so again for oh-eight.

But two different voices compete inside my head. (Only two?) One is the voice of the secular, liberal, internationalist. This voice believes military intervention has a place, particularly in order to forestall humanitarian disasters. This is the voice that is informed by Lincoln’s remark that America is the “last best hope of earth”. This voice is stirred by the King James Version of Luke 12:48, and this voice thinks that our Lord’s words might apply to us:

For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.

Obviously, noblesse oblige has an instant and powerful appeal on my psyche, both in terms of my personal responsibility and in terms of my sense of how this most powerful of nations ought to act. This is the voice that tells me we ought to send troops to Darfur, and that we were right to send soldiers into the former Yugoslavia. And this is the voice that is seduced by those on the right who invoke the language of humanitarian relief and duty (rather than American capitalist hegemony) in the service of the current war. I’ve read my Pericles, and I know how easily words like “duty” and “burden” can get twisted — but while my head regards calls to battle with a high degree of suspicion, my heart beats faster when I hear that rhetoric employed.

The other strain that informs me comes out of Christian pacifism. I’ve read my Yoder, I’ve read my Hauerwas. I’ve worshipped, prayed, and marched with the Mennonites. The disagreements I had with the Mennonites — the ones that led me back to the Anglicans — were over issues of sexuality and liturgy, not theology or geopolitics. And the Mennonite pacifist view, the one that enchants me still, is the view that tells me that the Christian witness is always, always, a radically peaceful one. While the fallen world insists that only Caesar’s tanks can liberate the oppressed, the Christian pacifist is humbly certain that it is only through the renunciation of all forms of violence, even for a good cause, that peace can happen. Christian pacifism is not a theology of cowardice; true pacifism is always willing to die for a cause, just never willing to kill for one. The story of the cross is the story of how the death of a nonviolent man can change the world for the better, after all. Pacifism makes the claim that the blood of those who die without guns in their hands does more to save the world than the blood of those who do. That claim only makes sense in the context of the Gospel, of course, and is a “stumbling block and foolishness” to most.

My liberal internationalism feels desperately sympathetic to Tony Blair, whose rhetoric about the need for Iraqi liberation has always seemed kinder and gentler than what I hear from the American president. Part of me still believes that those of us who have power ought to exercise it for good in the world, intervening with force to protect the weak from the bullies who prey on them. The rhetoric that suggests we ought to act in our own self-interest has little hold on me, mind you; the suggestion that we ought to “take up the white man’s burden” and “send forth the best ye breed” does. I love poetry, and confess — with burning shame — to finding Kipling periodically compelling. Hell, I can recite “If” without a trace of irony, a revelation that makes me wince!

My pacifism, however, is stronger. What changed the world for good forever happened about 2000 years ago on Calvary and in a nearby tomb. John Howard Yoder was fond of saying vicit agnus noster eum sequamur: “Our Lamb has conquered, him let us follow.” The death of the Lamb is what liberates us, not our tanks and our missiles and our Cobra helicopters. It is the Good News of His message of peace, of justice, of mercy, of salvation that saves the world. And that message can only be carried effectively by those who use the methods He did: tears and prayers, a willingness to face death with courage, and a refusal to shed blod.

My faith in Christ and a life beyond this one trumps my liberal internationalism. It leads me to oppose this war — and every other one. It tells me that causes don’t matter nearly as much as methods do. It tells me that if you want peace, you must use peace; ends and means must be radically congruent. To my non-pacifist friends, this is incomprehensible, suicidal, self-indulgent, irresponsible, even nihilistic. But this is the heart of my faith, and all the eloquent speeches and terrorist attacks will not shake it.

“Our lamb has conquered”: A defense of pacifism in the aftermath of the Amish school shooting

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 4, 2006
in Christianity, Faith, Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Pacifism and War
. 96 Comments

First off, a confession.  A few weeks ago, I made the pledge that I would not get on the scale again until the end of 2006.  Yesterday afternoon at the gym, I "fell off the wagon" and weighed myself.  It’s a good comeuppance, for me, I suppose; I post so often on this blog about making commitments and redirecting impulses.  I’ve had so much success in so many areas of my life, but resisting the urge to climb on the scale is tougher than I imagined.  Just thought I’d share my slip…

It’s a busy day, and I suspect I will have time for only one post.  Both here and elsewhere, there’s been discussion of Monday’s shooting at an Amish school in Pennsylvania.  Thanks to my friend Jonathan Dresner, I read this particularly nasty piece from Judith Klinghoffer at my own History News Network.  Klinghoffer opines:

How low can one sink? No. I am not talking about the murderer, may his name be erased. I am talking about those who saved themselves by leaving the little girls at his mercy. Consider: 

"They found the suspect dead on the floor," Col Miller said. "Three other students between the age of six and 13 had been killed." He said that when Roberts, a non-Amish, first entered the school he apparently showed the handgun to the children and was "having some discussion in the class". "He told the kids to line up in front of the blackboard. Then, using wire ties and flex cuffs, he began to tie the females’ feet together. It appears that when he shot them he shot them execution-style in the head.

And they LET him. I have yet to hear about a single person who did anything to stop him. By doing nothing, they permitted a deranged man to fulfill his sick revenge fantasy.

This is the ultimate result of Amish pacifism. All evil needs to flourish is for good people to do nothing. Evil flourished in that schoolroom.

Bold is mine.  And here on my blog, thechief weighs in:

There’s something we need to realize about pacifists in general, including the Amish: They can afford to be pacifists because somebody else is holding a gun for them. They can afford not to raise their hand against evil because somebody else–a police officer, a soldier–is standing between them and true evil. Somebody else will do the dirty work of keeping them safe, except for those awful situations where the system somehow breaks down, like yesterday in Pennsylvania. Then the pacifists are going to be toast.

Let me be clear that I am an aspiring pacifist.  As Stanley Hauerwas always says of himself, I am a violent man trying to become peaceful.  When I read about stories like this one, my first thought is always "I wish I could have been there with a gun to blow the s.o.b. away."     That’s my first response, but happily, as a Christian, not my second.

Both Klinghoffer and thechief have a tortured, twisted view of what pacifism really is.  First off, most Christian pacifists don’t live in the United States.  The largest Christian pacifist communities are Anabaptists living in war-torn places like Indonesia, Nigeria, and Colombia.  The notion that pacifists are comfortable, middle-class white folks who are protected by a wise government willing to wield the sword is ludicrous and ahistorical.   Christian pacifism traces its modern roots to the blood-soaked Central Europe of the sixteenth century.    The pacifism of the peace churches (to which Mennonites, the Amish, the Quakers, and others belong) was a response to appalling violence by people who experienced that violence first hand.  The great lie that both Klinghoffer and thechief perpetuate is that pacifists are ignorant of the realities of human brutality; the historic truth is that pacifism was birthed by men and women who had infinitely more knowledge of the realities of violence than your average Marine in Iraq has today.

The other great lie is more simple: they equate pacifism with passivity.  A Latin lesson, girls and boys: pacifism comes from pax facere, to  "make peace"; it does not, contrary to popular misconception, derive from passus sum, to "suffer."  In other words, authentic pacifism is an active response to violence, not a passive one!   From the sixteenth century onward, pacifists have insisted that the goal of Christian witness is not to run and hide but "to get in the way."  Jesus says,  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  Soldiers quote that all the time, but wrongly.  Jesus calls us to the cross, He calls us to come and die, but He never calls us to kill.    From a theological standpoint, there is all the difference in the world between being willing to die for one’s friends and being willing to kill for them.  For soldiers, both may be true.   For cowards, neither is true.  For Christian pacifists, only the former is true!

The third lie about pacifism is that it is hopelessly idealistic and has no efficacy.  Once we convince our opponents that we aren’t cowards (after all, Christian pacifists are dying in places like Colombia and Iraq all the time), we usually get dismissed as "fanatics."   I mentioned in my post on Monday that I hoped that if it came to it, I would be willing to take a bullet for "my kids."  But I would not be willing to fire a bullet, even to protect the lives of my students or youth groupers.  That always strikes folks as irresponsible and prideful; I seem to be putting my theological convictions ahead of my obligation to protect the lambs.

But as a Christian, I know that there is more to our story than our life on this earth.  I love life, I love this planet, I love God’s incredible creation.  But my story — our story — doesn’t end here.  This is not my final home.  I am a "resident alien" in a beautiful, violent, scary, wonderful place.  I know that while death is overwhelming and terrifying, it is not the end.  Not only do I have an even truer home elsewhere, so too do those lambs I am called to feed.  They are Christ’s lambs, not mine.  Their lives are precious, but so too are their eternal souls.  Crazed gunmen can kill the bodies of the young and the innocent; crazed gunmen can break the hearts of a community.  But crazed gunmen don’t get to write the final chapter of the story.  After the tears, there will be rejoicing, no matter what, no matter what, no matter what.

It is with the certainty that death does not separate us from each other or from God that I can claim my pacifism. If I thought death was the end of the story, I’d probably be packing heat in the glove compartment of my Toyota Solara.  To prolong the short lives of my loved ones here on earth, I would do anything and everything.  But I know that love endures past the end.  I know that I am called to follow Christ first and foremost.  Thanks to Him, I already know how the story turns out in the end. Those of us who are true pacifists are not cowards who run in fear, muttering prayers of thanksgiving for the protection offered us by violent men. We are people who have seen the end of the book.  We know that after the crucifixion, comes the resurrection.  After the bullets and the terror comes the peace and the joyous new life.  With that certainty, we can offer up our lives non-violently.  It’s not that we seek death, or value life any less.  It’s that we are quietly, absolutely, peacefully certain that our Lamb conquered death for all of us 2000 years ago — and with fear, trembling, and yes, joyful certainty, we will follow Him.  No matter what.

A short note on freed hostages and pacifism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 24, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Family, Pacifism and War
. 24 Comments

I’m rejoicing this morning in the news that three of the Christian Peacemaker Teams volunteers have been freed in Iraq.  The three were freed by a multinational task force of soliders, who found the hostages unguarded.  No shots were fired and no one was hurt during the rescue operation.

Of course, joy in the release of the surviving three is tempered by the sorrow at the murder of a fourth hostage, a Quaker from Virginia, Tom Fox.  And as I celebrate, my inner pacifist finds myself wondering how I would feel if the rescuers had had to shoot the kidnappers.   I’m delighted that the men are all safe, of course, but I could not endorse or support the use of lethal force to free them.  I say that, mind you, in the full knowledge that if one of these men were my father or my brother, I might feel differently.  It’s harder to adhere to one’s pacifist commitments when one’s loved ones are in harm’s way.

It’s the old question that always gets thrown at pacifists: "what would you do if someone threatened your family?"  John Howard Yoder, the greatest Mennonite theologian of the past century, gave the best and most impressive answer to that question, and I recommend his little book to everyone.  I try and reread it fairly often.

A long reflection on gentlemanliness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 21, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Christianity, Class, Faith, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Pacifism
. 55 Comments

I’m still reflecting on the aftermath of last week’s major blogosphere debate about feminism, civility,and commenting rules.  No, I’m not going to revisit that issue specifically.

Rather, I’m thinking about the number of folks who’ve taken me to task for my attachment to notions of courtesy and civility.  Last week, over in this thread at Feministe, I wrote:

To me, civility is not about ideology. It’s about tactics. I judge people less by what they believe, and more by the tools they employ to convey those beliefs. Or, to put it another way, I care less about the “ends” and more about the “means”.

And a whole bunch of folks took issue with that.  Not surprisingly, I was initially very defensive — which was a mistake.  I eventually bowed out of the entire thread.  But in reading the challenges to my position, especially from DarkDaughta (NWS), I’ve been forced to ask myself a basic question to which I already know the answer:

To what extent does my passionate attachment to being "nice" really reflect my faith, and to what extent is it a reflection of my privilege as a middle-class white man with tenure?

Years ago, my theological wanderings led me to the Mennonites.  I became an enthusiastic Anabaptist (heck, I’m always an enthusiastic something).  I loved the Anabaptist/Mennonite commitment to social justice and to non-violence.  In the aftermath of September 11, I found the radical witness of the peace churches to be particularly compelling.  But I found, later rather than sooner, that I was making a serious error:

I tend to confuse Jesus’ call to be a peacemaker with my family’s admonition to always be "nice". 

I was raised to be what my family called a "gentleman".  In my family, it meant a "gentle man", with gentle in the modern sense of polite and kind, not in the older sense of aristocratic birth.  (Though some folks in my family did, in my childhood, have some attachment to the idea that gentlemen were also listed in the Social Register and belonged to the Right Clubs.  I’m not in either the Social Register or the Bohemian Club, though both were important to me when I was much younger).  My grandmother always said "A gentleman makes everyone around him feel comfortable."  And for years and years, I’ve worked so hard to live up to that ideal!  And when I became a Christian, I thought that one of the things I had found in my relationship with Jesus was a new power to become even nicer, and make my family even prouder.

But as better Christians than I tend to discover early on, Jesus is not "nice."  As C.S. Lewis says of Aslan, his Christ-figure in the Narnia books, "He’s not a tame lion!"  Jesus was non-violent, it’s true — and peacemaking was at the center of His mission on earth.  But Jesus never compromises the truth in order to save people’s feelings.  He may have said "turn the other cheek", but he also overturns the money-changer’s tables in the temple.  That was very, very, impolite of Him.

Jesus models a new way of relating to the powers and principalities that be.  Unlike the Zealots, He will not endorse violence against other human beings.  But His non-violence is not passive, and it isn’t "nice".  He makes people uncomfortable over and over again; He is not a proper gentleman. A proper gentleman of the sort I aspired to be would have had lunch with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the Romans and the Zealots, and told them all that they were awfully nice people and that God loved them just the way they were, and couldn’t they all be just a bit more civil to each other? Pretty please?

I’ve realized something this week that I don’t like about myself.  I call myself a pro-feminist and a Christian.  But too often, when my ideology and my faith come into conflict with my desire to be a charming people-pleaser who "makes everyone feel comfortable", my childhood aspirations of gentlemanliness trump my political and spiritual convictions.  So I end up more attached to my blog as a place where everyone can get along than as a place where the intersection of faith, feminism, and sexual mores can be thoughtfully — and honestly — explored. 

If I’m serious about my Christian faith, I will, to paraphrase Desmond Tutu, genuflect before the image of Christ that I see in all living things.  I will love God’s creatures as I love myself.  But I must find a way to be a bit more Christ-like, and that means I must be better about confronting evil rather than trying to accommodate it.  My pacifist principles mean that I must never hit those whose views are hateful.  But pacifism does not ask me to charm them, particularly when my own motives for being charming are less about changing the hearts and minds of those with whom I am in debate and more about cultivating a satisfying image of myself as perennially pleasant, irenic, and gentlemanly.

One spiritual advisor of mine always says, "Hugo, if you’re not pissing somebody off you’re not doing your work."  I hate it when he says that.  But I know he’s right.  If I’m going to walk with Jesus as I claim to want to do, if I’m going to be an effective advocate for pro-feminist principles, I have to be willing to let go of my childlike desire to be likable and inoffensive. I need to see that my very ability to remain aloof from the struggle is a consequence of my privilege rather than my commitment to Christ. 

And while I don’t need to start bopping people on the head (or even wielding a whip like my Lord in the temple), I could be of a hell of a lot more service if I let go of my incredibly strong infatuation with civility, courtliness, and being thought a "heckuva nice guy."

A long Monday post about the body of Christ, the body of feminism, and the importance of not drawing distinctions

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 13, 2006
in Faith, Feminism, Pacifism and War
. 98 Comments

I’m thinking this morning about feminism, Christianity, the death of Tom Fox, and what it means to always be "getting in the way."  Bear with me.

Over at Feministe, there’s a heated discussion of feminist inter-necine warfare. If you’ve been reading regularly over there, it seems the feminist blogosphere is going through one of its periodic rounds of soul-searching, where we all debate one another’s feminist credentials.  As always, some (including this blogger) want to define feminism broadly; we’re the "big tent" folks. Others worry that we big tenters are "dumbing down" feminism, or setting the bar so low that virtually anyone (even those with ugly sexist rhetoric) can define themselves as feminists.  It’s an argument as old as feminism itself, and it’s probably healthy — if painful — to have it from time to time.

The Christian blogosphere is having the same sort of discussion about who can call himself or herself a Christian.  This essay at Counterpunch by an atheist who calls himself a Christian inspired a couple of solid responses from the Feminarian, a feminist seminary student at Fuller.  This one is particularly vehement; she makes the case that the Counterpunch dude claimed too much:

The first rule of being a Christian, which means being like Jesus, living the way he lived, is that you subject your entire life to the mission of GOD in the world. Not to helping people or being nice or even healing or bringing justice. Jesus’ primary loyalty was to God. A person can not possibly follow Jesus without following this absolutely central aspect of who he was. Period. If you just follow the teachings, you’re a nice person, you’re in step with the universe, you’ll be well-liked. But if you do not acknowledge that it is all God’s story and you are doing these things because you are first and foremost a servant of God, then you cannot call yourself a follower of Jesus.

Following the message of Jesus is not the same thing as serving as he did.

I love the Feminarian and I share her theology — but this sends chills down my spine.  Not the good kind, either.

Somehow, we seem to be in the time of year when folks want to draw distinctions and decide who’s in and who’s out.  As someone who operates in both the feminist and Christian world, I’m struck by the fact that we’re having similar discussions at the same time.  I’m also saddened, at least in part because I so regularly have to defend both my Christian and my feminist credentials.

When I make it clear that I am an evangelical Christian, in love with Jesus and confident that I will spend eternity in His embrace — and all the while defend a modern and inclusive sexual ethic — conservative Christians question my salvation.  When I refuse to ban the likes of Mr. Bad and Gonzman (as long as they avoid nasty, profane personal attacks), my commitment to listening to women is called into question:

when male feminist bloggers entertain notably sexist debaters who spout the same shit over and over again, it makes that space safe for them and unsafe for women. But, hey, the worst sexist trolls are other men. Maybe that’s the appeal. Maybe women just don’t matter that much. Maybe banishing the male trolls will raise the bar too much for it to be comfortable. Maybe you’d have to listen to women.

Mind you, I’m not complaining because I’m thin-skinned.  In both the church and in feminism, we have an obligation to wrestle with definitions.  No one wants the terms "Christian" or "feminist" to be so broad and watered-down that they have ceased to have any meaning.  Categories are important.  Furthermore, it’s important for believers and feminists alike to challenge one another to improve, to grow, to become better followers of Christ and better advocates for radical sexual justice.  We need to give and take criticism.

But at the same time, we also have to accept the good faith of those with whom we debate.  I have never told anyone "Sorry, I don’t think you’re a Christian" or "Sorry, you’re not a feminist."  I’ve told people "Gosh, your view is incompatible with mainstream evangelical thought" or "Well, that’s probably a minority opinion in contemporary feminist circles".  But I never, ever, question the right of others to define themselves as they so choose.  It’s one thing to challenge someone’s ideas — and another thing altogether to challenge their self-identification.  That may seem a meaningless distinction to some, but to me it’s everything.

Somehow this is all getting wrapped up in my thoughts about Christian Peacemaker Teams and the murder in Iraq of Tom Fox, a Virginia-based Quaker and pacifist.  What I love about CPT is that they reject the "either-or" duality of the secular world: "Either you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists!"  Before he died, Tom Fox wrote of resisting "both the soldier and the kidnapper."  He was committed to doing what CPT has been committed to for over two decades: getting in the way, standing in the middle, bearing witness to love while refusing to use the weapons of war for any cause or for any reason.

Tom Fox refused to choose who it was that he should love.  He loved American soldiers and Iraqi insurgents equally. He resisted to his death the culture that requires we choose one side or another.  Tom Fox wasn’t interested in the causes for which people fought as much as he was interested in the tactics people use.  And as a peacemaking Christian, he believed — as I believe — that God cares little about why we fight but cares everything about how we fight.  The morality of any cause is ultimately judged by the methods its adherents use.  What makes a Christian is not just one’s assent to certain propositions, but one’s tactics.

I’m not daring to compare myself to Tom Fox.  I honor his faith and his service and his willingness to lay down his life.  But one of the many lessons I draw from him is applicable to this ongoing struggle I’m having with various folks over the terms "Christian" and "feminist."  I’ve long insisted that Christianity and feminism are compatible because they are both fundamentally concerned with the dignity and value of the human person; male and female and intersexed, we are all not only equally beloved of God, we are all called to equal (and interchangeable) service in the Kingdom.

And as we work together to build a more just and peaceable world, we need to be infinitely kinder and more charitable to both our allies and our enemies.  And one way in which we live out that charity is by acknowledging that both Christianity and feminism are like bodies — with hands and feet and lungs and hearts and myriad different organs and bones.  As the apostle reminds us:

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don’t need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don’t need you!"

To my brothers and sisters in the body of Christ — and to my brothers and sisters in the feminist blogosphere — I implore you to remember that we are indeed one body with many members, struggling and working together towards a common (if vaguely defined) goal.  In the spirit of Tom Fox, let’s be committed to resisting the temptation to draw artificial distinctions, to exclude, to set up boundaries, to question credentials, and to say to our allies in the struggle, "I don’t need you."

Tom Fox on agape

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 12, 2006
in Pacifism and War
. 2 Comments

I rarely post on Sundays, but I do so to honor the memory of Tom Fox, the slain Christian Peacemaker Teams volunteer whose body was discovered in Baghdad yesterday. His words about why he was in Iraq, written the day before he was abducted, are the best epitaph:

I have read that the word in the Greek Bible that is translated as "love" is
the word "agape." Again, I have read that this word is best expressed as a
profound respect for all human beings simply for the fact that they are all
God’s children. I would state that idea in a somewhat different way, as
"never thinking or doing anything that would dehumanize one of my fellow
human beings."

It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I
dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its
way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically,
structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or
her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process
that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.

"Why are we here?" We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization
that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by
oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop
people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God’s children, no
matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.

I’ll be praying to live this Lent as Tom Fox lived — fearlessly and peacefully, in love with God and all of God’s creation.

Please join me in thanksgiving for the life of Tom Fox, and the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams — my favorite non-animal charity. 

Monday morning notes

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 30, 2006
in All Saints Pasadena, Athletics and Fitness, Faith and Pacifism
. 6 Comments

I’ll try for a more thoughtful post later this morning.

Some assorted Monday morning odds and ends:

My wife and I have started attending the brand-new "family eucharist" at All Saints Pasadena; it’s every Saturday afternoon at 5:00PM (upstairs in the learning center for folks who might consider coming).  It’s targeted to families with young children, but all are welcome.  The service is far more informal than our Sunday morning offerings, and as one with a strongly evangelical low-church streak, I’m over the moon with pleasure to have guitar music and modern praise songs (actual Vineyard tunes!) sung in an Episcopal church!  The homilies are tailored to a child’s attention span, which is excellent news for me — most of what I need to know from the Gospel is comprehensible to a six year-old (though Scripture also offers enough mystery and subtlety to satisfy the most theologically curious adult).  The service lasts only forty-five minutes, and juice and cookies are served afterwards.   I’m a happy camper indeed!  So folks in the Pasadena area looking for something different than the button-down Sunday morning experience, and those wondering whether you can have an inclusive, progressive church but still jump around and clap to guitar chords — come to All Saints Saturdays at 5:00PM.

On an utterly unrelated note, I started my boxing classes this weekend, working one-on-one with a trainer.  I last took boxing classes back in 1998, so I need to relearn everything.  Key goal for the next few weeks: learn to skip rope.  I couldn’t do it when I was a kid, and I can’t do it now.  Something about the hand-eye coordination…  I’ll be practising lots.

Working on the jabs and crosses and other punches was exhilarating, of course.  But at the same time, it reminded me of how complicated my own relationship is to pacifism and violence.  I remain a committed pacifist (even after having left the Mennonites), and my interest in boxing has much more to do with fitness than with self-defense.  But I won’t deny that there’s an extraordinary pleasure that comes with hitting things!  I’ve hit plenty of punching bags before, but yesterday, as I stood in the ring and hacked away at my trainer in his big mitts, I felt a different sensation.  There’s no question that for me, there’s a big distinction between hitting a punching bag and hitting another person, even if there is no chance that I can injure the very man who is trying to teach me to spar.

It reminds me of a long debate that was held at Pasadena Mennonite Church over whether the church ought to offer self-defense classes as an "educational option."  I only heard about the debate after the fact, but remember being told that the largely pacifist congregation was quite torn over the issue.  Some thought that self-defense (learning boxing techniques and other martial arts-related skills) did not compromise one’s pacifist commitments; others felt that even sparring or practising self-defense technique was a violation of Matthew 5’s injunction to always turn the other cheek.  (It was pointed out to me, on a parenthetical note, that the debate split on gender lines — it was mostly men who objected to the classes as incongruent with the peace church tradition, while a number of the women — perhaps in recognition of their greater vulnerability — were more willing to defend the suitability of Mennonites learning to box and punch.  That’s a whole other post, I realize!)

Anyhow, I realize that for me, learning to box is different than my other physical activities.  In the act of hitting — even a bag — I feel a charge inside myself that I don’t feel when I run or bike or swim or do Pilates.   Though it shares with these other activities the happy function of reducing me to eventual exhaustion (and concomitant exhilaration), it also gives me a visceral pleasure that the other forms of exercise do not.  Perhaps it is simply a healthy outlet, or perhaps it is something darker.  Most folks outside of the peace tradition probably don’t worry about the ethics of joining a private boxing gym, but while I’m excited with my new activity, I’m also reflective on what it is within me and within others that takes such delight in hitting things.  I know I’ve got a huge reservoir of aggression in me; I know that I’ve dealt with it for years with exercise.  Perhaps by choosing such an aggressive form of working out, I’ll do an even better job of taming that rough beast within me. 

A note on CPT

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2005
in Faith, Pacifism and War
. 4 Comments

First off, I ask for prayers this morning for the safety of the four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams who were kidnapped this past weekend in Iraq.  When I was actively involved with the Mennonites, there was no charity as near and dear to our collective Anabaptist hearts as the work of CPT.  I’ve known several members of Pasadena Mennonite Church who have traveled with CPT to places such as Iraq and the Israeli occupied territories.  For several years, CPT was my favorite charity.

CPT is made up of committed pacifists who take seriously the authentic meaning of pacifism: to "make peace" (from the Latin pax facere).  (Here’s a BBC profile of the group.)  Too many folks, both literally and metaphorically, confuse pacifism with passivity (a different Latin root altogether).  Real pacifism, especially in the Anabaptist/Quaker/Peace Church tradition from which CPT sprang, is about actively "getting in the way".  It is about protecting those who are most at risk, whether the threat comes from uniformed armies or insurgents. CPTers know the dangers they face; where others travel with armed guards or in Humvees, they travel light (without even the small sword Jesus suggested they take!)  And of course, anyone working for CPT is particularly vulnerable to being kidnapped.

As a pacifist, I still find it possible to honor those who carry weapons to the world’s most dangerous places.  But I honor still more those who leave the comforts of home, and armed only with the Gospel and a profound commitment to nonviolence and peace, place themselves "in the way" of destruction.  They are my real heroes, and though they now face a not unanticipated danger, I am praying for their safety and for the larger mission of CPT.

No more silent “good guys”: some thoughts about North Country

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 31, 2005
in Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Movies, Pacifism, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexual harassment
. 18 Comments

Last night, my wife and I were finally able to see North Country, the new Charlize Theron film about sexual harassment in the Minnesota iron mines.  I’ve been eager to see it since I was first asked to be part of the Stand Up online community organized by the film’s producers, Participant Productions.

What struck me most about the film was the pivotal role that seemingly good men play in allowing sexual harassment to flourish.  The iron mine in which Theron’s character works has a long-standing culture of hostility and resentment towards women, often expressed in brutal and degrading ways.  But not all of the men in the mine are flagrant harassers.  Others are simply witnesses, even with flashes of sympathy for their female co-workers.  They do not participate in the abuse, but they are unwilling (at least until the end of the film) to confront the harassers.    What allows the harassment to flourish in the film — and in so many settings in real life — is not only the complicity of management, but the silence of the "good guys". 

I’ve worked with young  - and not so young — men around issues of sexual violence, date rape, and harassment for quite a few years now.  I often get the same line:  "I don’t need a training program.  I’m a good guy!  I don’t harass women; I know that "no" means "no".  In the workplace, in college fraternities, any one who does sexual harassment prevention work will run into many a "good guy" who will vehemently insist that only a small minority of men are real threats to women.  In a very literal sense, they "good guys" may be right.  But the goal of sexual harassment prevention is not only to target the harassers or potential rapists! The goal is to reach the "silent majority" of "good guys" who are too afraid to challenge the harassers and the culture that encourages them.

The pre-eminent scholar of masculinity, Michael Kimmel, points out that American men live their lives in a heavily homosocial culture.  We are raised to seek the approval of other men on the athletic field, in the workplace, in the bar.  Homosociality means that most men are more likely to risk disappointing women rather than their "brothers."  And of all of the rules of male homosocial culture, one stands above all others: the importance of silence.  Men are raised not to call each other on their treatment of women, no matter how offensive or abusive it may be.  To speak out, to "stand up", is to risk being thrown out of the brotherhood.  (Brotherhood is an important subtext in the film.)    To stand up against sexual harassment is to risk ostracism from a community of men whose acceptance is vital to most men’s self-concept.

The key goal of sexual harassment prevention, at least as I’ve been involved with it, is never just about reaching potential harassers. It’s about creating a climate where men feel emboldened to challenge each other.  It’s about identifying the "alpha males" (not always the bosses or the presidents, just the guys with the highest degree of homosocial credibility) in the office, the fraternity, the factory, and getting them to "buy in" to the idea that men can and should hold each other accountable for how they treat the women with whom they share public and private space.  Effective sexual harassment prevention is about reaching young men, and empowering them to speak up when they see other boys or men engaging in abusive behavior.  Above all, effective harassment prevention is about undermining a culture of silence that allows so many men to imagine that they are "good guys", even as they are complicit in the abuse and mistreatment of their coworkers, sisters, daughters, and female friends.

Let me be honest:  in my work, I’ve found that nothing is more difficult than getting men to hold each other accountable for how they treat women.   And yet, I’ve seen many guys start to do just that.  The key, as always, is offering them role models whose masculinity is unimpeachable, but whose commitment to standing up against a culture that encourages harassment is unquestionable.

I’ve got no qualms about using the language and rhetoric of masculine culture to try and undermine the conspiracy of silence.  Though some of my feminist allies cringe when I use the phrase "real men", I’ve found that the most successful way to reach guys is to make use of familiar concepts and ideals.   My friends as Men Can Stop Rape have been doing this for years with their "men of strength" campaign which offers an alternative vision of what it means to be a powerful, authentically masculine man.

Above all else, the vital message of North Country is one of individual responsibility.   Stopping harassment and abuse is about making every one of us, especially men, aware that remaining silent in the face of the mistreatment of women makes one a co-conspirator.  Real men stand up.

“Utterly indispensable”: reflections on men, women, military service

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 20, 2005
in Feminism, Pacifism and Politics
. 134 Comments

I’m interested in the discussion (a civil one, I am happy to say) below this post.  The subject of men, women, and the draft has come up.  The military draft is a troublesome issue for feminists and pro-feminists, as it brings a variety of important issues together:  equality for women, social justice, and the morality of war, just to name a few.  From the discussion, I can sketch together a few basic positions:

1.  Social Conservative/Traditionalist:  Women should not be drafted.  Women should not serve in combat positions even in a volunteer army, because their primary role ought to be as wives and mothers, not "cannon fodder."  The fact that women are already fighting and dying in Iraq is a disgrace.  Men, on the other hand, are natural protectors and fighters and ought to be required to serve.

2.  Men’s Rights Advocates: Women ought to be treated exactly as men are treated.  If and when a draft is reinstated, women ought to be drafted.  Women should be required to register with Selective Service, just as men do now.  Ala Warren Farrell, men bear an unequal burden; they could be conscripted and are forced to register for that conscription, while women will not bear that burden of being required to fight for their country.

3.  Feminists: Well, not surprisingly, there is no clear feminist unanimity on this issue.  Liberal feminists who favor full inclusion for women in all aspects of society tend to support Selective Service registration for women, as well as the opportunity for women to serve in combat.  More radical feminists tend to oppose registration and all forms of military service for both sexes.  But few serious feminists defend the current system; they either want more women in the military or they want a complete re-think of how our nation wages war.

Here’s where my pacifism actually leads me into agreement with some of the Men’s Rights Advocates.   (Shock of all shocks.)   Warren Farrell, a man I disagree with 85% of the time, is absolutely right when he calls Selective Service registration "the psychological preparation to be disposable."   Farrell is rightly upset that our national rhetoric around war sees men’s bodies as not worthy of protection:

We don’t call the one-million men who were killed or maimed in one battle in World War I (the Battle of the Somme) a holocaust, we call it "serving the country."

Indeed.  Pro-feminist men (of whom I count myself one) and MRAs share, I think, a real sense of outrage at cultural messages that glorify the deaths of young men in battle.   We share a mutual anger at those from all points of the political spectrum who argue that men have a natural inclination for violence that somehow makes their dying in battle justifiable. 

But few MRAs are actual pacifists.  I oppose the draft because I am fundamentally opposed to war on religious and ethical grounds; I don’t want either my sisters or my brothers fighting.  The thought of any of my loved ones being killed — or killing — fills me with equal horror.  And I get angry at right-wing rhetoric that cheapens men’s lives:

America owes much to its women service members.

But they shouldn’t be in combat. First, they are the bearers of life and the heart of family life, an utterly indispensable role. When America sends young women off to war, watching them kiss their toddlers goodbye, we are making a moral choice that children are just not important anymore. It is much more important to drive a military truck. This callousness is an outgrowth of the abortion culture in which human life itself is cheapened. Any job those women do could be done by a man, but nobody else can be a mother to her children. It is bad enough for children to lose their father, but it is utterly unnecessary for them to lose their mother...

If women are utterly indispensable, what are men?  Here, I think, pro-feminists, feminists, and MRAs can stand together.  While some would like to see women drafted alongside men, and others would like to see a world where war was renounced forever as a policy tool, we can all agree that a  worldview that sees men as fundamentally more dispensable than women is abhorrent.

I stand with my feminist allies who push men hard to change.  I’m a pro-feminist because I want to see the men in my life become better lovers, husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers.  I’m a pro-feminist because I refuse to believe that men are biologically oriented towards domination, violence, and poor parenting skills.  I’m a pro-feminist because I believe that both men and women benefit from a society where gender roles are less rigid and more fluid, and where both men and women have access both to political and economic power as well as the opportunity to nurture the vulnerable.  But I’m also a pro-feminist man because I love men.

My faith tells me that every life is equally precious, from the unborn in the womb, to the hungry child in a refugee camp in Darfur, to the murderer on death row in Texas, to a lance corporal in the Marine Corps.   My consistent-life ethic tells me that no living body is more or less valuable than any other, whether or not it is has a brain, whether or not it has committed a crime, whether or not it has a penis.

According to the God who loves us and made us, we are all, each and every one of us, "utterly indispensable."

Violent fantasy,or how Hugo went through $24 worth of quarters in an hour

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 13, 2005
in Aggression and violence, Faith, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Pacifism, Porn and Youth
. 24 Comments

Camassia had a great post about pacifists, fantasy, and war games last week.  Writing about everything from competitive board games to violent movies, she warns against the "catharsis theory":

Back when I was in grad school I took a course on the media and children, and this is what they called the “catharsis” theory: if kids enjoy violent entertainment they’ll get it out of their system and be able to go on peacefully the rest of the time. It is, not surprisingly, a popular idea with makers and supporters of violent entertainment. Trouble is, there’s really no evidence to support it. In fact, the various studies we looked at it that course offered a consistent connection between violent entertainment and aggressive behavior.

Camassia and her commenters then enter a very helpful and interesting discussion about fantasy, reality, and what it means to be a pacifist in a world of violent entertainment.  I do recommend a visit.

I did not grow up playing video games.  They’ve never had much hold on me.  When I was in high school, I played Pac-Man with my friends at the arcades, but was quickly bored.   Frankly, I’ve tried playing more recent video games with my younger cousins (who all have X-Boxes and Playstations and what-have-yous) and been utterly unamused.  But I do know the power that one kind of arcade game has over me:  shooting games.

It was June 1999.  A friend of mine and I were at dinner in Eagle Rock, and he suggested we go play some games in the huge arcade nearby after dinner.  I was reluctant, but he insisted, so off we went.  He immersed himself in something, and I wandered around until I came to a huge machine with a great big screen and two very realistic looking handguns attached to the front of it.  Essentially, as I remember, the player is an undercover police officer shooting it out with bad guys.  The screen was big and vivid and colorful; having not played a video game since the mid-1980s, I was stunned at the quality of the new technology.  I put in my quarters, picked up the gun, and started to "play."

For the next HOUR, I was hooked.  When my friend stopped by to see what I was doing, I pressed a $20 bill in his hand and made him run to get me more quarters.  I loved the shooting.  I shot everything at first (including my fellow undercover operatives and innocent children), and then gradually got more judicious.  But I loved what happened to people, good and bad, when I shot them!  Blood would pour from heads and chests, and they would fly up in the air and collapse in a satisfying heap. 

I have never fired a handgun.  When I was a child, I fired a .22 rifle with my cousins at the ranch, and missed the can of Olympia at which I was supposed to be aiming.  I never had much interest in guns after that.  But on that June night six years ago, I was sweating with excitement, my heart racing, shooting and shooting until I had gone through almost $25.00 and my friend was demanding to leave.   He was a bit stunned at my obsession with the game:  "Dude, you were WAAAY to into that", he said.  He was right.  I felt excited, stimulated, and edgy.  I had trouble sleeping that night.

And several times over the course of that summer, I went back to the arcade to play that one game.  I eventually gave it up, as I began to realize that my fixation on the shooting was deeply disturbing to me.  Frankly,  it seemed a lot like porn.  Playing my shooting game, I was using fantasy images of other people’s bodies for my pleasure.  When one uses porn, one fantasizes penetrating and possessing another’s body; when one plays a shooting game, one’s imaginary bullets penetrate and destroy the flesh of imaginary enemies.   To me, then and now, using porn and playing violent video games essentially involve an identical sin: the sin of using others for selfish pleasure.  Of course, much of porn involves "real" actresses, and the images on my screen at the arcade were computer-generated.  But modern technology has seen the proliferation of computer-generated images in porn, and of real-life actors in video games.  The line between the two has become increasingly blurred.  And it goes without saying that the obsessiveness with which I played my shooting game was similar to an obsessiveness with porn; it was the sort of activity where one loses all track of time and all sense of accountability to others.

My anti-porn convictions are clear; I’ve written about them many times.  (Here, here, here).  But my own (admittedly limited) experience with violent, realistic video games has left me convinced that they are in a very real sense as problematic as pornography.   Porn offers the viewer the fantasy of consequence-free sex; the games offer the player consequence-free violence.  Players and viewers feel more powerful; porn and video games flatter the agency of their users.  When an insecure teenage boy masturbates to porn, he fantasizes that beautiful women can’t wait to have sex with him.  When that same boy plays his violent video games, he fantasizes that all the big muscle-bound bad guys end up dead as a result of his deft manipulation of his joystick or ersatz gun.  In both instance, he’s trying to overcome his insecurities and make himself feel big and powerful — invariably at the expense of others.  In porn the women all "want it" and in violent video games, the people you kill "deserve it."   And if there’s a significant moral difference between the two activities, I’m missing it!  (Yes, I am well aware that there are teenage girls and adult women who like porn and violent video games too — but I suspect that they are dwarfed in number by their male counterparts.)

When I have teenagers, I will be no more inclined to permit them to play violent video games in the home than I will be to allow them to visit hardcore pornographic websites.  Fantasy is not without its redemptive purposes, but when it is about sexual conquest or violent destruction, it is, I think, at odds with what it means to live an authentically Christian life.

Thoughts?

A very personal post on sentimentality and justice

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 24, 2005
in Animal Rights, Chinchillas and Pacifism
. 17 Comments

Here comes one big fat mea culpa.

I’ve been reflecting a lot this week on the responses to my PETA post.  Ms. B at Volsunga has also gently critiqued my stance.  I’ve been called to account for being so willing to overlook PETA’s massive flaws, including a penchant for cheap publicity stunts that alienate potential sympathizers as well as a troubling tendency to use objectifying, sexualized imagery in order to promote its agenda. 

Frankly, I’ve responded to this criticism with raw emotion rather than reason.  I’ve been an animal lover all my life, though it is only since January 2004 that I’ve been the guardian of a creature whose kind are regularly farmed and pelted.  I’ve watched the videos of how chinchilla pelting is done, and I’ve wept tears of helpless rage.  The idea of someone killing my Matilde for a coat makes me violently angry, so angry that I lose the capacity to have a civilized exchange with those who defend the fur trade.  Honestly, in my heart of hearts, I want to do physical harm to those who pelt.  Like an adolescent boy playing violent video games, blood-filled revenge fantasies run through my head when I think about folks who are involved in the fur trade at any level, from producers to consumers.  My faith is stronger than that primitive rage; prayer and meditation and lots of vigorous exercise tends to take the edge off that anger.  But it’s damned hard to be much of a pacifist when I think about chinchilla pelting.  Still, no one said pacifism wasn’t going to be immensely difficult; to paraphrase Hauerwas, I’m a naturally violent person trying to become like Christ.  That ain’t easy.

But my real flaw, I realize, is that I confuse sentimentality with justice.  Really, it’s rather embarrassing.  I’m 37, almost 38, two decades removed from adolescence, and my ethics are still all too often formed out of emotion alone.   Feelings, of course, are very important.  Our compassion, our sympathy, and especially our empathy ought to inform our morality.   It is axiomatic that a genuinely ethical human being is acutely aware of the reality of human and animal suffering, and in his or her own way takes conscious action to alleviate that hurt.  But there’s a difference between being genuinely compassionate towards all those in pain, and building an entire ethical framework based on one’s own personal sympathies and passions.

Frankly, my sentimentality means I regularly mistake the trees for the forest.  My attachment to animal rights stems from my own intensely emotional response to certain species (dogs, chinchillas) and even a few particularly wonderful relationships I’ve had with pets.  From those immensely important connections I’ve had, I build an entire worldview.  This is problematic, because I end up unable to reconcile the good of an individual animal with the good of a species.  I know that wildlife biologists will have to cull animal populations that exceed their carrying capacity in order that the majority will survive, but I am incapable of bearing the possibility that a single solitary beast will have to be killed.  (This tends to be truest when we are speaking of creatures that I find visually appealing!)  My sentimental attachment to individual beings means that I am not able to think effectively about the greater good.  It’s a huge character flaw, and one I am determined to work on correcting.

And yes, my faith is fundamentally emotional.  What attracted me to the Episcopal church was the mystical nature of the liturgy and the emphasis on welcoming everyone and affirming them constantly.  (It’s nice to be nice!)  What drew me to the Pentecostals was the ecstatic emotion that left me high and giddy and soaked in sweat.  What drew me to the Mennonites was the enchantingly appealing idea of being so amazingly nice that one would never, ever hurt anything at all!   For someone who has read Duns Scotus in the original Latin and once wrote a graduate paper on homoousious versus homoiousious, I’m amazingly adolescent and anti-intellectual in the actual practice of my faith!  No wonder I connect so well with fifteen year-olds.

Sometimes, I wonder if my entire consistent-life ethic isn’t a sentimental luxury.  I proudly announce that I am a vegetarian who is opposed to capital punishment, war, abortion, and euthanasia.  It makes me happy to think of myself as rigorously ethically consistent.  If one is against all forms of killing, one can maintain a certain smug superiority, and I confess I’ve been all too guilty of considering my position to be fundamentally more moral than those who find room for killing within their own ethical framework.  As many folks have pointed out to me, I can afford to be a vegetarian (even a vegan).   Because I am well-protected from a violent world, I can more easily see violence as utterly unnecessary.  And, to put it bluntly, I’m a man who very much wants to be a  father.  Big confession:  my pro-life stance is all tied up with my own very strong desire for a child.  All these years of activism, of studying and teaching feminist history and theory, of prayer and intellectual debate, and my whole freakin’ position on the great controversial issue of our time is based largely on how I feel right now.  Cripes.

Like almost every believer, I’m fond of Micah 6:8:

"He has told you, o mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with your God."

My problem is I am really pretty good at loving kindness (or "mercy", as it is often translated.)    Hey, I’m an ENFP/ENFJ.  Feeling comes very easily to me.  But the Lord didn’t say "love justice and do kindness".   That would have been more my speed.  "Doing" justice must mean more than doing those sorts of things that make me feel good about myself.   It must mean more than making moral decisions based upon my own emotions, even if those emotions seem to me to be fundamentally generous and kind. 

My own reliance on emotion means that I fail to see the complete picture.  In the case of the whole PETA issue, my visceral desire to protect every creature that looks like my little Matilde leads me down a slippery slope to the point where I am willing to countenance pointless destructive acts and appalling sexism.  I’m simply blinded by deep attachment to one delightful little creature who makes me feel good about myself.  That’s nice for Matilde (spoiled little princess that she is), but it isn’t helpful to the larger cause of justice in which I claim to be so interested.

I’m not abandoning my consistent-life ethic, mind you.  But I am aware of how often I mistake a relatively self-centered sentimentality for real compassion, and how often I love kindness but fail to do justice.  I’ve got work to do. 

Thanks, blogosphere friends, for calling me to account.

Morality, equivalence, and pacifism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 17, 2004
in Faith, Pacifism and War
. 36 Comments

Jonathan Dresner is single-handedly responsible for at least a dozen of my posts.  Today, he sent me this link to a Michael Neumann article in  Counterpunch. Entitled "How We Became Barbarians", it is a provocative op-ed on terrorism, civilian casualties, and collateral damage. It got me thinking about many things, especially pacifism (something I haven’t blogged about in a while).

Some excerpts:

People can get astonishingly sensitive when they discuss moral
issues.

Someone who can scarf popcorn all through *both*
Kill Bills will go hoarse about the killing of innocents in Israel or Iraq or
anywhere suitably distant. Someone who’d cheer a B-52 strike on Baghdad will
murmur feelingly about the perfect little hands of a second trimester fetus. And
everyone hates terrorism with a passion because it victimizes innocent people:
that’s so outrageous!

Really the claptrap about terrorism has gone far
enough. Brutes should at least recognize their own brutality. None of us, left,
right, or center, are all that bothered about the deliberate killing of
innocents. Virtually none of us think it’s that big a deal to tear the flesh off
a child.

Okay, now you’ve got my attention. What Neumann means, of course, is that since the advent of air power, we in the industrialized West have become increasingly accepting of the "collateral damage" (loss of civilian life) that comes with bombing.

The brutalization of attitudes towards attacks on
civilians was and is quite universal. We may deplore some such attacks, but not
all of them. We disagree, not about whether they are ever legitimate, but rather
about whether they should be blatant. Some think it’s ok to kill civilians as
long as they’re not really your target. Others think that they can be all or
part of your target. It’s the difference between dropping bombs you know will
kill civilians and dropping bombs to kill civilians.

Amen. It’s refreshing to see this argument made by a secular leftist rather than by an Anabaptist; Neumann sounds here as if he is  indeed close to the position of most Mennonites around the world.  It’s the refusal to see as morally legitimate the sophistry that he describes so well that led me to embrace pacifism in the first place.  Christian morality ought to be about total and radical congruence between "ends" and "means" — peacemaking can only be done peacefully, modelled on the life of Christ Himself.

But Neumann is not an Anabaptist pacifist. (He’s a Canadian philosopher.)   The central point of his article revolves around the distinction between "expected" and "unexpected" collateral damage.  You’ll need to read that bit carefully. 

But it’s Neumann’s conclusion that is so remarkable:

What, then, is left to us, if we have become so
cruel? We cannot say that two wrongs don’t make a right, or that our hypocrisy
doesn’t justify others’ savagery, because it is the very rules of morality that
we have come to view differently. We really do believe that murdering innocents
is, in the relevant cases, no sort of wrong at all. We cannot reproach others
for terrorism, not because this would be hypocritical, but because it would be
inconsistent. Our own standards allow what we might like to forbid.

Terror, by our own standards, isn’t always wrong.
Neither is the murder of innocent civilians, including children. Excoriating
these practices is nothing more or less than a cynical or pointlessly moralistic
diversion from any serious attempt to prevent them.

Such an attempt can’t attack the practices
themselves for the excellent reason that we have no moral basis for attacking
them. To the extent that they can be prevented, it is only through appeals to
self-interest, not to compassion or a level of decency we quite obviously
lack.

There’s much more.  Like much of what appears on Counterpunch, the rhetoric is harsh.  And I can in no way agree with Neumann’s rather remarkable conviction that this is why Israeli and American atrocities are so
much worse than Iraqi or Palestinian atrocities.

Uh, sorry Mike, you lost me there.  Neumann does a far better job of stripping American military tactics of moral legitimacy than he does of imbuing the intifadas with that same legitimacy.  Consistent-life pacifism is never as concerned with intent as other philosophies are; it is concerned with method.  The Mennonite vision of pacifism (to which I still cling) is one of radical faith that God holds us responsible for our actions, but He remains sovereign over the outcomes of those actions. 

Our limited humanity often sees no way other than violence to accomplish a good end; we are like Peter in the garden on that last night, flailing away with a sword at the guards who had come to take Jesus off to die.  We justify violence because we are, for all of our external piety, mostly "Good Friday" Christians.  We see the world as violent and chaotic, and feel compelled to use the sword to defend the vulnerable and to bring in justice.  Christian pacifism is an Easter theology — it is only when one is convinced and convicted of the absurd and marvelous Good News  of the resurrection that one can contemplate letting go of even the noblest justifications for the use of violence.

Biking and Beslan, and trying to stay a pacifist - UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 3, 2004
in Pacifism
. 19 Comments

I’m home from a midday bike ride, and at a bit of a loss as to what I ought to blog about.

With the contemporary culture of constant news (something to which I am surely addicted), it’s rare for me to be deeply affected by a news event. But something about the horrific terrorist attack on the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, has really shaken me. What really disturbed me was the story in this morning’s LA Times about a young mother of two small children, Zalina Dzandarova . She and her son and daughter were held hostage in the Beslan school overnight Wednesday, but yesterday Dzandarova was allowed to leave — but with only one child. She took her two year-old son, leaving her six year-old daughter (whose fate is still unknown) sobbing in continued captivity.

“Alana was clinging to me and holding my hand firmly. But they separated us, and said: ‘You go with the boy. Your sister can stay here with her.’ I cried. I begged them. Alana cried. The women around us wept. One of the Chechens said: ‘If you don’t go now, you don’t go at all. You stay here with your children … and we will shoot all of you.’ ”

She couldn’t save both of them. She could only die with both of them — or save one of them and herself.

“I didn’t have time to think what I was doing,” she said. “I pressed Alan even stronger to myself, and I went out, and I heard all the time how my daughter was crying and calling for me behind my back. I thought my heart would break into pieces there and then.”

Dzandarova cried as she talked. Her tears fell on Alan, who was sleeping. Even when his mother shook quietly with sobs as she cradled him, he didn’t awaken.

I haven’t cried over a news story in quite a while. I did today. I’m not a parent, but I’m sure that countless parents of more than one child, upon reading this story, are wondering what they would do if given a forced “Sophie’s Choice” as Dzandarova was. And I wonder if Christian ethicists have any clear position on what one ought to do in such a situation. Part of me imagines I would want us all to die together, clinging to the notion that no matter what, our family would not be separated. Another part of me knows that as parents, the lives of our children are paramount, and we must save them by any means necessary. And of course, I wonder how Zelina’s daughter will cope with her mother’s decision, if by some miracle little Alana emerges from this wretched holocaust alive.

Though I’ve returned to the Episcopal Church, I still hold in my heart to many basic principles of Anabaptist theology — pacifism, obviously, chief among them. Yet without the support of other Mennonites who share that conviction that non-violence is a moral absolute, I’m finding it hard to imagine how a pacifist can adequately respond to the Beslan horror. Because I am thinking more and more about becoming a father, I am becoming more and more aware that Christian pacifism is a doctrine far more easily held by the childless! And so today, as I cried for Zelina and Alana and little Alan, I also found rage-filled fantasies racing into my imagination, as I thought of what I would personally enjoy doing to the Chechen terrorists who had done this beastly thing. I wanted blood today, in a way I haven’t wanted blood before — not even on September 11, which was the last time I can recall feeling anything like this anger. And so today, even as I continue to believe that Christ calls me to pacifism, I can feel at my core just how utterly counter-intuitive a doctrine and a path non-violence really is. And I wonder if my commitment to pacifism will survive the birth of my first child.

As I rode my bike through Pasadena, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, Arcadia, and San Marino today, I thought about Zelina and her children. At least, they were foremost in my thoughts when I began the ride. But I’m still a novice bicyclist, still riding in old running shoes with cages on the pedals. I’ve only just figured out how to use all three chain rings with which my Trek 5000 is equipped. And though trail running has its hazards (bears, rattlesnakes, rocks, disorientation), there is something deeply unsettling about learning to bicycle on busy urban thoroughfares. So by the time I was half-way through the ride, my thoughts had left Beslan and Zelina and the countless other victims, and had turned to my sore bottom and the dangers of distracted drivers. And then I got home, turned on CNN again, and felt the sorrow — and yes, the visceral and inarticulate rage — wash over me once more.

I’m taking the rest of the weekend off from blogging; I’ll be back on Tuesday. Happy Labor day to all.

Saturday Update:

Little Alana did emerge from the devastation of the Beslan school alive and has been reunited with her mother, the LA Times reports today. It’s hard to rejoice about much in the aftermath of this slaughter of the innocents, but I confess I was more than usually eager to read the paper today to find out this particular bit of news. That family in particular, and all others in their community, are in my prayers today. Though today, for some reason, the words of my prayer seem vacuous.

And I now have a Shimano pedal system on my bike, and have graduated from cages. Now if I can just master the art of “clipping and unclipping” without breaking an ankle.

And my beloved Golden Bears were victorious in their season opener.

Off to shop for tile.