Overcoming Violence and War: April 2006 Archives

I continue to ponder these words.  Violence is the act of violating some other creature.  It is a purposeful act to humiliate, subdue, and assert domination over another creature.  Seeking non violent solutions to situations of conflict ought to be a principle of human conduct.

I make a distinction between violence and the use of force.  If I seek to arrest, restain, or deter a violent person, a criminal, but have no intent to destroy that person, that is necessary force, but it is not violent.  To be non violent is not to advocate no defense against violators,  it simply argues that one must seek non violent means.  I have seen non violent police (in Canada.)  They were able to use necessary force, but that force was limited and intended to deter and stop violence not to contribute to it. 

Is it a matter of definition?  Or is it a matter of difference in understanding of Unitarian Universalist principles?  How can violence be compatible with Unitarian Universalism?

Still, I find the phrase "in any form" problematic.  If I lose my temper while defending myself against a predator, ethically I am using force, but in my heart I may be engaged in violence.  My spouse and partner said she is categorically opposed to the death penalty, but she confess that she has felt "exceptions"  when confronted with vicious criminals.  She is for non violence, but experiences the urge to revenge emotionally.  I have as well.  Shouldn't we be urging Unitarian Universalists to strive to use non violent means, rather rejecting violence in any form? 

We are emotional creatures.  We are capable of ethical action as well.  We strive to be ethical, and to cherish those emotions that contribute to human betterment.  We minister to those emotions that are destructive to ourselves and others, they are part of who we are, but they do not justify vile conduct.

I wonder.  If I examine my own feelings over time.  I have reacted with anger toward the pacifist position.  Why?  Because pacifists are arrogant?  No.  Because they demand that I be peaceful?  No.  Most pacifists are quite benign.  I wonder.

I pick it up in comments about the proposed Study Action on Peacemaking.  The pacifists are going to make us debate this thing.  One wise minister expresses the feeling that putting the question in such with such clarity is manipulative!  It will make us go to plenary and discuss this idea, an idea which most of us already reject.  We would not otherwise go to the plenary.  Thus we are manipulated. 

Only some of the questions in the Study Action Initiative pose a pacifist challenge.  Pacifists are a minority, does that mean that they should shut up?  Does it mean we should not discuss a pacific option because most of us want to keep our options open?  Many of us think that we might find something to fight for or against some day.  Not now, but some day.

If I examine my feelings I think that part of my anger with pacifism is my own inner pacifism.    I find my principled just war reasoning to be more comfortable,  but when I put on that just war theological hat and look at real wars in real history I conclude that there never has been a just war.  No war in history has ever been "just"  given an honest application of the religious communities criteria for "Just War."

I ask another wise minister for her opinion, she was instrumental in bring the Study/Action Initiative to us this year.  She believes that many of us are anxious about this proposed study action proposal because it challenges us to self examination.  Most of our Statements of Conscience have been about "them."  This is about us.  We are asked to study a question that will ask us to look at our own propensity for violence, and what is a principled rational for just war.

I suspect those who think that the U.S. Civil War, or World War II or the American Revolution were just wars will be challenged to do some more reading in their history.  Did they miss what many others have found unjust about these wars, or do they dismiss fire bombing of Dresdan, the slaughter of Cherokee villagers to remove their potential threat (on orders of G.W. Washington) or the war of starvation ordered by Lincoln against the civilian's in the Confederate states.  All those are on the list of "do not do" for just wars.  Just war theory doesn't say "have just motives,"  it commands us to fight with just means.  No attacks on civilians.  Limited means to achieve clear ends.

What that has left me with is a just war theology looking for a just state power to implement it.  Why am I angry with my inner pacifism?  Because it judges me absurd.

John Buehren's wrote in response to the September 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.  This is what he wrote:

Progressive communities, including Unitarian Universalist congregations, are prone to painful rifts between pacifists and pragmatists. During World War I, pacifists felt ostracized among Unitarians. Former U.S. President William Howard Taft, as moderator of the American Unitarian Association from 1917 to 1918, persuaded the General Assembly that all ministers and churches receiving aid from the AUA be required to support the "crusade for democracy." Pacifist ministers lost their posts in some places, and the distinguished New York Unitarian minister Dr. John Haynes Holmes actually left the AUA with his church.

During the Vietnam era, virtually the reverse occurred in some congregations. Pragmatists sometimes felt morally condemned by pacifist UUs. The current response to terrorism must not be allowed to have that effect. Let those UUs who would witness for consistent nonviolence do so as a matter of conscience. But let us also recognize that pragmatic reasoning about reducing the threat of terrorism can be conscientious as well.

I was a Unitarian Universalist during the Vietnam war.  The debate within our movement wasn't between pacifists and pragmatists.  It was between those who supported the U.S. attempt to use military force to affect its own preferred political solution, and those who saw such an effort as both immoral, and incapable of success.  The anti war UUs were just as pragmatic, as the pro war UUs.  The Johnson and Nixon administrations positions were critiqued not on pacifist grounds, but on their lack of pragmatism and principle.

What the then President of the UUA was doing in this editorial was "reframing"  history in order to argue that we should avoid a divisive struggle in our ranks over the right way to respond to Ben Laden's terrorist network.  But in 2002 we were afraid to discuss what was the appropriate and pragmatic response, and we continue to have a weak response to this day.  John Buehren's pastoral advice missed its mark,  our divisions post Sept 11, have not been pragmatists versus pacifists.

Let us study the response by Dana Greeley,  and the Unitarian Universalist leadership in 1967 and 1968 as they struggled with their response to Vietnam.  It was not a pacifist versus pragmatist debate.  It was a break with nationalism, it was the first time that our religious movement clearly stated that the state power was wrong.  We never had made that judgement before, and many of our members resisted.  The idea of supporting the President was pitted against "the President is wrong, and this war is a disaster."  That has nothing to do with pragmatism versus pacifism.  The question of a religious communities relationship to the state was being raised and it was a shock to our whole self understanding.

I recall when I realized that the government of the United States was pursuing policies totally in variance with my UU values.  I cried.  But my response was not pacifism.  It was furry.  And my logic wasn't pacific at all,  I realized that Vietnam was a  stupid, immoral, counterproductive war in practice. It failed the test of "just war."

Let us not frame our discussions about war and peace around false dichotomies.  Pragmatists can and do oppose particular wars.  But it is hard for many people to recognize that the United States government may pursue an unjust war.  Calling the critics pacifists and therefore "absolutists" who do not appreciate "real politics" only goes so far.  Someday some one will expose the author of such remarks as a bad pragmatist.  After all the pragmatic test is "it works."  And in both Vietnam and post Sept 11 the war that was fought hasn't worked and fails the just war test.

The Commission on Social Witness has brought forth one study action proposal this year.  It is entitled Peacemaking.

It is important that people read the proposed study/action.  Discussion can not go forward based on responding to  misquotes and snippets taken out of context.

The proposal asks us to discuss what may be the central ethical question for Unitarian Universalists (at this time at least.)  How do we as a religious community respond to war, to violence?  Reading the study action proposal makes it clear that there is no attempt to dictate a predetermined position, it does not proscribe a creed.

This discussion will deepen the theological understanding of our faith community,  and congregations that engage the questions will be encouraging spiritual growth, and enabling us to really work toward that world of peace and justice that we proclaim as a foundation principle.

Some of the reactions to this proposed resolution  I find puzzling.  If we have differences on a fundamental question, do we avoid talking about those differences?  Is it divisive to study and discuss?  Some of the same objections have been raised before.  When we began to tackle our own Unitarian Universalist institutionalized racism, some objected that the discussion will be divisive.  When we began to talk about our own practice of homophobia we were warned that the discussion would be divisive.  The same objection was raised when we began to look at institutionalized sexism.  Some of us are threatened by conversations that challenge our pet prejudices., but more of us are conflict adverse.  We avoid discussions about subjects on which there is disagreement because we are afraid the discussion might get out of hand.

Are there irresponsible people on all sides of this question that might inject moral posturing, jingoism, uncharitable comments about those who disagree with them, and factional organizing into our discussion?  Yes.  How do we handle disrupters?  Vote them down.  Rule them out of order.  The Unitarian Universalists have avoided discussions of theology and ethics because we are afraid of divisiveness, and then we refuse to make and enforce rules of civil conduct.

Discussions among Unitarian Universalists can be transformative, we may be in a different place relative to war and peace after this discussion than we are now.  Still, I can't imagine how we could become pacifists after a year of congregational study.  I have been working on becoming non violent for decades and I still have a long way to go.  Becoming a committed peacemaker is hard work,  this discussion will only clarify the issues.  Yet we fear transformative discussions.

Often those who fear discussion attack those who make the proposal for a transformative discussion by pretending to divine motives.  When Unitarian Universalists have raised questions of racism, sexism, and homophobia, the proposers were accused of wanting to make people feel guilty!  Such was not the motivation, rather Unitarian Universalists were seeking to promote activity toward overcoming institutional oppression.  This proposal for study/action does not and can not impose a creed, it asks us to discuss just war and non violence, it asks us to tackle means and ends.  It asks us to be a little bit more clear about a moral and ethical question.