Some interesting blogging this week on this topic, as Martin Roth reflects on the prevalence of AIDS in Christian countries in Africa, Andrew Sullivan tries to reconcile his belief in the importance of preserving the profitability of pharmaceutical companies, to encourage more research, with the question of how to relieve the dire situation in Africa, and Peter Nixon links to a story in the UK Catholic magazine the Tablet on the impact of the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

Outside the blogosphere, I have belatedly noticed a July 4th Reuters Health story on tapping Africa's traditional healers for safe sex help.

This week at St. Blog's
Sursum Corda has been summarizing each chapter of the report issued by President’s Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry, and also has an interesting article on praying the Liturgy of the Hours. Father Jim Tucker reflects on his experience at the North American College in Rome, and Eve Tushnet links to an amusing article on the quickening pace of news coverage.

Two very different views of homosexuality

Rex Goode is a Mormon who struggles with same sex attraction. His page contains some very personal reflections on his (heterosexual) marriage, and on his struggles.

Dr. Louie Crew is an out of the closet gay Episcopalian. He has a comprehensive page of links for Lesbigay Christians, as well as an extensive set of Anglican pages.
posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 2:27 PM

is joined in the Great Blog War about Homosexuality, as Mark Shea posts a link showing that some gay people are pretty darn kinky, and Jody counters with a link showing that some straight people are just as darn kinky themselves. But both of them missed the alarming Onion story, which I found through the web log at Jody's link, which predicts the anti-spam legislation will have dire consequences for the penile enlargement industry.

I should have known, of course, of the penile enlargement industry's heavy dependency on spam email, because, as it turns out (judging from the bounces I regularly get from Mailer daemon) half of the net's penile enlargement spam email is now being sent in the name of my very own Family Album Ring email address. This email address, apparently, also specializes in advertising XXX sites, and mysterious sucker herbal cures which purport to give Viagra a run for its money. Bad Family Album Ring, bad! Never mind. Out of lemons, I shall make lemonade. I fully expect that by posting the subjects of these emails, I can bring thousands of disappointed Web surfers to my blog.
posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 6:16 PM

What Was Your PastLife?
posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 11:21 PM

I had not set out, that evening, to hear about Salonika. Joel and I were simply browsing at our favorite independent bookstore, when I overheard an author, speaking of his book to a small audience, say the word "Salonika." My father was born in Salonika, Greece, and my grandmother grew up there, so naturally this caught my attention.

It turned out that Victor Perrera, author of The Cross and the Pear Tree, was speaking specifically about the Jewish community of Salonika (as part of the story of how he had traced his Sephardic Jewish family tree through various countries). Salonika at one time was the home of a thriving Jewish community, so much so that it was known as "the Jerusalem of the Balkans." Some emigrated after Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire, and nearly all of those who were present at the beginning of World War II died in Hitler's concentration camps. Picture New York City losing its Jewish population; Salonika was much the same.

My own family, on my father's side, is Greek Orthodox, but my grandmother had the unusual last name of Veniamin, which is the Greek way of saying Benjamin, so when Victor Perrera took questions about Sephardic names, I asked him if this could be one, and he said yes.

I never did find out how grandmother's family came to have that surname (all the records I've been able to find show them all as Christian), but the search for information about Veniamins in Salonika brought me down another path. I had heard that the Holocaust Library in San Francisco had a book called Zikhron Saloniki, which is what is called a Yizkor book: a book commemorating the Jewish community of Salonika. So, I carefully wrote down the Hebrew for the name "Veniamin," and visited the library. I figured I could look for an index which might include the name "Veniamin," find any pages on which the name occurred, and get a friend to translate them for me.

I found nothing about Veniamins - no index, and far too much Hebrew for me to scan effectively - but I did find something else: Some of the chapters had summaries in Ladino. Ladino, sometimes called Judezmo, is a kind of Judeo-Spanish which was once widely spoken among Sephardic Jews, although few speak it now. It was widely spoken in Salonika in the early twentieth century; I'm told that my grandmother was fluent in Ladino, as well as Turkish (and, of course, Greek). And, it turns out, if it's in Roman characters (as it is in this particular book - sometimes it is written in Hebrew characters), you can more or less get the gist of it from whatever Spanish you know. I was surprised and pleased to find that I'd picked up enough reading understanding of Spanish in my years living in California that I could somewhat make out the Ladino.

Through a series of suggestions from one person or another, I wound up first consulting a list for Sephardic Jewish genealogy about some of the Ladino words I couldn't make out, and ultimately being persuaded to set up a translation project with the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, to get this book translated. That is where things stand right now. I've given up being the one to translate the Ladino portions myself, since other people more fluent in the language can do a better job, and, knowing not much more of Hebrew than the alphabet, I never expected to translate the Hebrew. So, we have several volunteer translators working on different portions of the book, and also a translation fund set up with JewishGen for anyone who wants to contribute. And someone has joined me in coordinating the translation. It's been a bit slow in getting started (it's been a couple of years since I got permission from the author to do the translation, and set up the translation project), but we're gradually making progress.

Do Girls Just Wanna Have Fun?

Eve Tushnet suggests that women often have sex for reasons other than desire, and wonders whether, in the sexual revolution, sex lost. Father Bryce Sibley responds by wondering why, if women are not interested in sex and pleasure, they buy so many books on how to better achieve orgasm.

Hey, I resemble that remark! I read Salon magazine (and Savage Love, though the interests of Dan Savage's correspondents are generally more, um, exotic than my own), regularly flip to the sex and relationship articles in women's magazines, and once bought a Lonnie Barbach book. (Now, do I have to turn in my credentials as a Christian blogger for reading Dan Savage?)

I can't speak for what women want in general, because I'm only one women, and quite possibly I'm a particularly weird and perverse one. But I can say what I want, and how I feel about the sexual revolution. And my feeling is: Sex is fun. Absolutely. I'm all for orgasm and pleasure, and I'm happy any time to hear about something (so it's not too kinky) which might add to my husband's or my pleasure. Why not? And, to some extent, I do believe that, in the sexual revolution, sex won. It's a good thing to be able to talk openly about sex - whether it's being able to talk plainly about sexual health, or whether it's feeling free to speak up, without embarrassment, to your spouse about what you want in bed. Equally, it's a good thing for women to be able to speak up when we're victimized sexually, rather than silently bearing the shame of it. So, in so far as the sexual revolution brings these things, it is a boon. I'll even go out on a limb and say that birth control is a boon (so long as people don't expect of it more than it can deliver), though I doubt Father Bryce Sibley will agree with me there.

On the other hand, some of the extremes of the sexual revolution seem, to me, frankly, unerotic. For example, I can recall the following (some from Salon, and some from one or another women's magazine):

An article suggests that sex first, then dating, is a far superior arrangement to dating first, then sex.

A movie review maintains that playing the field and having sex with a lot of different women is, if you can manage it, one of the best ways to get over a breakup.

An article provides advice to women, from the editors of a lad's magazine, on how to attract men. The advice includes staring at the most attractive man's crotch when you enter a party, and letting him know that you are ever so drunk and aren't wearing any underwear.

Another article, describing the different types of women regarding dating behavior, gives one type as "Miss Priss," who wants nothing to do with casual sex and could never bring herself to actually ask a man out, since a man needs to make the first move. The advice to Miss Priss is to try sex with a man she isn't all that in love with - she'll like it. (Why can't the advice to Miss Priss be to pick up that phone and call the man she really does like? That's a whole lot more likely to bring her happiness than fooling around with the man she doesn't particularly care for.)

And so on. Some of these articles must be less than fully serious, but at the same time, even some of the sort of serious ones seem to be sending the message that life will be more sexy if your sex life is more casual, free, and has no strings attached. And, morality aside, I find this extreme of the sexual revolution very unsexy. I don't care if you look like Brad Pitt. I'm not staring at your crotch the second I first see you, across a crowded room at a party (and wasn't even when I was single), not just because it's tacky, but also because I'm not thinking about your crotch if all I've done is set eyes on you. Attraction comes after conversation; it just does. Words, songs, laughter, the sound of someone's voice and what that someone says, are all critical. I'd no more want to short circuit them than I'd jump for joy at the prospect of going directly to intercourse without any preliminary caresses. Even when I met my husband - whom I liked as quickly as I've liked any man, ever, in my life - it was our first conversation, not the mere sight of him (good-looking though he is) which drew me.

And no, making out with someone you don't care that much about is not fun - I learned that lesson well in college, when I was foolish enough to try it. An IRC chatter assured me the other day that birth control allows women the boon of having sex more "like a man" (where "like a man" means casually). I don't know how far men really like having sex "like a man," but it's not my favorite fantasy. Not by a long shot. So, in that measure, I'm with Eve.

I've read, sometimes, in the more pro-casual sex sorts of books (I guess the term is "sex positive") that these kinds of feelings are culturally bound; I'm just retaining the inhibitions I was raised with. I don't know about that. My husband has written, in his blog, about what we learned at the San Diego Zoo: that female rhinocerouses will not mate unless there are enough other females around. Evidently they have some sort of instinctual reluctance to reproduce unless there's a herd around to help raise their young. I see myself as, in my own way, like a female rhinocerous. Knowing someone likes you enough to stick around is sexier than any fantasy of a quick, no strings attached liaison.
posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 7:22 AM

The Book of Mormon is by no means a pacifist tract. It is, in fact, a book in which nations frequently make war, and in which there often seems to be approval for the warlike activities of one side. If I believed it to be an actual historical account (rather than a work of fiction), I would say that it was chiefly the account of Nephite patriots, who recount with approval their side of a long-standing military rivalry with the Lamanites.

And yet, in the middle of this book, we find the odd story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. The Anti-Nephi-Lehies are a people who, brought to repentance for their "many sins and murders," "did lay down the weapons of rebellion, that they did not fight against God any more, neither against any of their brethren." They covenant with God that "rather than shed the blood of their brethren, they would give up their lives; and rather than take away from a brother they would give unto him."

Two things strike me, as I reflect on this story. The first is that, after all, the route that the Anti-Nephi-Lehies take to pacifism is not so different from my own. Not that I have personally committed any murders. But I doubt that all of the individual Anti-Nephi-Lehies have, either. More likely, they have some record of national atrocities on their conscience, which leads them, as a people, to a corporate repentance and laying down of their weapons. And, as for many people my age, my own initial impetus, if not yet toward pacifism, at least toward dovishness, was shaped by the fact that I first became aware of the news at the time of the Vietnam War, and that, as I grew old enough to develop my first political opinions, I was aware of things like our suspected involvement in the assassination of Allende (a CIA description of past CIA activities related to Allende - which denies direct involvement in the coup - can be found here). Later, of course, I developed my beliefs further. But if part of my inspiration comes from the memory of My Lai, or of Allende, does that weaken the witness of my pacifism to those for whom these weren't such formative events? Are the Anti-Nephi-Lehies pacifist as an alcoholic must avoid drink (while others, less burdened, may fight with impunity), or has their consciousness of their past shown them a side of the truth that others may be missing?

Second, as the story continues, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies become recognized vowed pacifists, in much the same way that monks are vowed celibates. People who themselves feel no compunction about fighting support the Anti-Nephi-Lehies in their oath of renunciation of violence, in that they welcome the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, defend them without asking for them to participate in their army, and even, when the Anti-Nephi-Lehies waver in their oath, encourage them to adhere to it (despite the obvious cost to their own ability to raise an army). Why do they do this? What special witness do the Anti-Nephi-Lehies represent? Are they meant to show the spirit of non-resistance of the Sermon on the Mount (at one point their peaceableness does win converts, and the story of the martyrdom of Abinadi occurs at about the same point in the Book of Mormon)? Or the value of penitance? Or perhaps the importance of sticking to an oath? Or all of these?

Does vocational pacifism make sense? Is pacifism the sort of thing that can be a vocation? Or is it something which, if binding for any Christian, must be binding for all?

Bonhoeffer

"Numerous theologians have cited Bonhoeffer as one of the best examples to justify violent resistance. Yet this plot and others failed. As a result some 5,000 more persons died who might have lived. What if, I have conjectured, pacifists would cite such a failure to illustrate the validity of the nonviolent way?" Dale Brown, Biblical Pacifism: A Peace Church Perspective.

Brethren writer Dale Brown rightly points to the tendency people sometimes have to overestimate the successes of violent resistance, and to be too ready to dismiss nonviolent resistance whenever it fails, while not applying the same standard to violent resistance. A failed act of nonviolent resistance is taken to show the weakness of nonviolence, in a way in which a failed assassination attempt is not taken to show the weakness of violence. And yet, as I read his response to the common critique of pacifism that based on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's decision to join in a plot to assassinate Hitler, I realize that for me, the main challenge in Bonhoeffer's decision isn't based on its practicality. Perhaps the most practical action Bonhoeffer could take against Hitler - the one most likely to bring success - was, in fact, to join in the assassination plot. Or perhaps it wasn't. Maybe, had he known, some completely nonviolent form of resistance would have been more likely to be of practical use. Perhaps none of his available alternatives stood much chance of worldly success.

For me, the challenge of Bonhoeffer is more about fidelity. Dale Brown says elsewhere in the same book that "pacifism is still the way for those who would be Christians even if this way leads to the cross." I believe this. And at the same time I believe - how could I not? - that Bonhoeffer, in choosing to join the assassination plot, was choosing to be faithful to the demands of the cross in a way that few of his time and place were willing to be. Could I say, from my comfortable place, that I wouldn't do the same in his shoes? Could I even say that I would do as well? Wouldn't my more likely response have been the far less admirable route of cowardice and acquiescence? For all I know, Dorothy Day (who did remain pacifist throughout World War II), if placed in exactly the same position as Bonhoeffer and with the same information, would have come to the same conclusion as he did. Urging pacifism, retrospectively, on Bonhoeffer, feels like smugly looking down on a hero and a saint. If that makes me less than a pure pacifist, so be it.

And yet I am troubled about where the use of the example of Bonhoeffer leads. Life is imperfect, and sometimes, in difficult situations, the best choice we know how to make is one which contains a wrong. Fine. But war is now institutionalized, is part of normal Christian life. I expect (and expected even before 9/11) to live in a world in which my country fights one war or another every few years, in which we prepare ourselves for the possibility that we may need to fight two wars at once, and in which some ostensibly Christian country or another is, it seems, always at war. Something is badly awry here; something cries out for a better way to be pointed to.

To make an analogy: we all know that marriages do not always last. Perhaps most of us know that there are some circumstances in which we ourselves might not be able to make a marriage last. But would we want, should we as Christians want, by pointing to a particular hard case, to institutionalize the failure of marriage by encouraging Christian couples to prepare prenuptial agreements, on the expectation that half their marriages will fail anyway, or by shifting the wording of the marriage vows to "as long as we both shall love"?

Moreover, whenever I have sought what I am led to adhere to, I am continually brought back to the Quaker peace testimony. On the Friday after September 11th, unable to make it across town for the Quaker meeting which had been called for the day of prayer, I instead walked down the hill to the monastery, and prayed there. After a while, the people there being engaged in silent prayer, I found myself moved to walk around the church and meditate on the Stations of the Cross. And when I went home, I put the wooden rosary that Joel had given me in my purse, as a reminder, whenever I should need it, that on this occasion, as on all others, my way should be the way of the cross, which is the way of suffering love. And I have it there still.

The Fighting Sailor Turned Peaceable Quaker

Larry and Licia Kuenning's web site of early Quaker texts contains an account of a fighting sailor turned peaceable Quaker which may be of interest to those interested in peace church (Quaker/Mennonite/Brethren) traditions regarding fighting.

Pacifism and the Bible

There is so much blogging going on about the interpretation of various Bible passages, in relation to pacifism, that I am hardly sure where to begin in responding. Moreover, Telford Work seems to be doing perhaps a better job than I could of expounding the Bible on this point. And yet I do want to give some response to Peter Nixon's remark that the Bible is divided on this issue, and does not offer a compelling case for pacifism.

I try to read the Bible daily, and over the years have used various ways of keeping myself going. One year, I decided to use the order of readings for the Episcopal Church, but, to add interest, to look for a couple of particular themes. The two I chose were, what do I find about peace and war, and what do I find about economic justice. What I remember of that year was that it seemed that every day, one passage or another was talking about the rich and the poor, and usually it was a condemnation of the injustices of the rich, or a hope that God would assist the poor. Meanwhile, issues of peace and war, while common enough themes, were often absent on a given day, and, when I did find them, often appeared inconsistent with what I read on a different day. So, yes, it's easy, pulling one passage or another, to make the Bible support either side of the fence about pacifism.

In one sense, that doesn't bother me, because, as I've said, I'm not a sola scriptura Protestant. Certainly I don't expect individual passages in the Bible, all by themselves, to be self-interpreting. And yet, I do feel, overall, that the Bible better supports the pacifist side than the just war side.

Why do I feel this, in the face of a number of Old Testament passages, and even some New Testament passages, which can be used to support the other side? Not, surely, by balancing the number of passages on each side (although there is also no shortage of peaceable passages in both Testaments). Rather, I take this position because of what I see as central in the story of Jesus' life and teaching. In this, I have two main grounds. The first is the prominent place of the Sermon on the Mount in Jesus' teaching, and that difficulty of reconciling that sermon, in particular, with making war. The second is that I believe that, of all the aspects of Jesus' life, the one in which we as Christians are particularly bound to imitate him is in taking up the cross, and I believe that the way of the cross is a way of suffering love, rather than of fighting with outward weapons. In contrast, a lot of the New Testament passages cited in support of the use of force seem weaker to me: the two swords passage, which seems unlikely to have been intended as a practical application of violence, argument from silence when discussing the case of soldiers, a passage in which Jesus' use of force doesn't seem to extend beyond turning over tables and using a whip to prod some livestock, and passages which refer to the activity of pagan governments.

Constantinianism

"Even if soldiers came to John and got advice on how they ought to act, even if the centurion became a believer, the Lord, by taking away Peter's sword, disarmed every soldier thereafter." Tertullian, On Idolatry.

The basis in church tradition for a Christian pacifist position has to be the evidence that, for the first three centuries, Christians historically did take more of a pacifist position, with a distinct shift in perspective occurring after the conversion of Constantine. This is sometimes referred to as the triumph of Constantianism. And, indeed, Christian writings do show a shift in perspective, on issues of war and peace in particular, at the time of Constantine.

Since I'm coming into this discussion by way of reading Catholic blogs, several questions are immediately raised in my mind by this line of argument:

First, if I use the witness of the early Church against just war Catholics, on the matter of pacifism, do they get to use the witness of the early Church on their behalf, on some other issue where, perhaps, the early Church Fathers take a view more similar to Catholicism than Protestantism? I suppose I would give a qualified yes. I don't believe the Church, any branch of it, has ever been exactly inerrant, but sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and, to the extent that the early Church Fathers have weight, they have weight on all issues (or at least, if I don't want to give them weight on a particular issue, I should have a justification for why they might have gone astray on just that issue).

Second, and more directly relevant to the current discussion, how sharp, really, is the break at the time of Constantine? Is the Church faithful before, and thoroughly apostate afterward? Hardly: the Church is actually messy, conflict ridden, and sometimes confused both before and after. There never is a pristine, faithful Church, and there never is a thoroughly lost, apostate one. OK then, is the Church thoroughly pacifist until the time of Constantine, and thoroughly committed to just war afterwards? Probably not that either: Tertullian, in the pre-Constantine era, must be countering someone with his pacifist arguments. Moreover, after Constantine, reservations about the military linger both in constraints against clerics shedding blood and in the pacifist example of some Christians (such as Martin of Tours) after Constantine.

Still, the shift is there, and it is recognized, to some extent, even by non-pacifist historians. I have, for example, on my shelves a book called The Early Fathers on War and Military Service, by Louis Swift. This isn't, as far as I can tell, a book by a pacifist who assembled his sources to support his position. It is part of a Message of the Fathers of the Church series, which contains books assembling the words of Church Fathers on various topics (I have another book in this series, Women in the Early Church, by Elizabeth A. Clark). The author of this particular book, judging from his introduction, appears not to be pacifist, and he is at pains to point out the ambiguities of the pre-Constantine position on this subject, rather than presenting the pre-Constantine Church as simply and straightforwardly pacifist. But he still includes, for example, Justin Martyr's "we who formerly killed one another not only refuse to make war on our enemies but in order to avoid lying to our interrogators or deceiving them, we freely go to our deaths confessing Christ," and defenses of pacifism by Tertullian and Origen. On the whole, I come away with the impression that the pre-Constantine Church, if not universally opposed to violence, was at least a good deal more supportive of pacifism and abstention from the military than most Christian churches have been post-Constantine. The perspective of the Church when it is a suffering and persecuted body is significantly different from what its perspective becomes once it has gained temporal power.


posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 7:56 AM

Eve Tushnet has pointed out, in the context of the discussion of
pacifism, how differences in basic assumptions by Catholics and Protestants about scripture and tradition may influence how we
approach this issue. So, before I go further in laying out my view on pacifism, I figure I will describe briefly (I hope) my
background, and my views on scripture and tradition.

I was raised Episcopalian, moved away from Christianity as a teenager, and became a Quaker during college (I didn't formally become a member of a Quaker meeting until a couple of years after college, but I began attending Quaker meeting during college). I married
a lapsed Catholic. I sometimes volunteer at the local Catholic Worker house, and can occasionally be found at Episcopalian or
Catholic services, but most regularly at Quaker meeting.

The traditional Episcopalian view of authority, as I understand it, is Richard Hooker's three legged stool: one looks to scripture,
tradition, and reason. Quakers traditionally believe in the direct guidance of the Spirit, with scripture as a secondary rule
(at least, that is how Robert Barclay, the closest thing early Quakers had to a theologian, described it). So I have never
seen myself as a sola scriptura Protestant. On the other hand, though I value a lot of what I see in Catholicism (particularly
the Catholic Worker movement, but also other things, such as the example and writings of certain of the saints), I don't, naturally, have any commitment to reasoning within Catholic tradition. In fact, on issues related to peace and war in particular I often look to Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren.

I'm far from fundamentalist, but, on the other hand, I tend to treat the Bible as more historically reliable than, say, the Jesus
Seminar, or Bishop Spong; in that respect I'm most likely to listen to commentary somewhere in the Raymond Brown or John P. Meier
range. But I'm not above using something like the Jesus Seminar books (in fact, I am using the Jesus Seminar books) to provoke
discussion, in the Bible study I lead at my Quaker meeting, which I suppose may make me a flaming theological liberal from the
point of view of St. Blog's (I'm that St. Joan's parishioner everyone wants to rescue, except that, not being Catholic, I
suppose I have an excuse).

Salonika/Thessaloniki Yizkor Book Project

After too long stagnating, mainly due to my poor leadership as translation coordinator, this is finally picking up. I now
have two volunteer translators for the Hebrew sections (which is the bulk of the book), two for the Ladino summaries, and I just heard that yet another volunteer is available. Check it out; we just added another chapter, translated by Judy Montel.

Topic for another day: How did I get involved with the Yizkor Book Project to begin with?

Nevertheless

While I try to write more about Christian pacifism (and catch up with what Telford Work has already been writing on the topic), I thought I would recommend the book, Nevertheless: The Varieties and Shortcomings of Religious Pacifism, by John Howard Yoder. Actually, I'd like to review it for Ganesha's library, but I seem to have misplaced my copy, and it's been a while since I read it, so I'd like to look at it again before I do a longer review. In the meantime, this brief description will have to do. Yoder (a Mennonite) reviews a variety of different forms of pacifism, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each. You can read about, for example, a sort of pacifism of the very long run, in which pacifism is justified by the very long term ill effects of violence, or, on the other hand, a pacifism based on Jesus' example of suffering love, and a variety of other reasons that back up pacifist beliefs. Most actual Christian pacifists would probably combine several of the varieties of pacifism described in the book, while giving less weight to others.
posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 8:09 AM

That's what Peter Nixon has requested I call him, so I am happy to oblige.

Seriously, though, I've heard so much condemnation of pacifists since September 11th that it's hard for me to work up any anger at someone who can't bring himself to agree with pacifism, but is prepared to respect it. However, I will respond with my own view, both of the practical difficulties, and the theological ones.

On the practical difficulties first:

I recently read Dorothy Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness (now loaned to someone else, so I can't look up the exact wording of the passage I am remembering), and one of the passages I was struck by was one where she said something like: The
spiritual works of mercy are to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to admonish sinners, to bear wrongs patiently, to forgive
offenses willingly, to comfort the afflicted, and to pray for the living and the dead. And we always thought that leafletting and picketing
were part of this.

This made sense to me. When our local Catholic Worker house serves lunch at the civic center, when homeless families sleep in, basically, much of the first floor of the house, when clothes are distributed, etc., that is part of the works of mercy. When Dwight explains to the volunteers (as I wrote about a week ago) about the effects of economic injustice in this area, or when, on Good Friday, the Catholic Workers (including a priest who works with this house) did Stations of the Cross on the streets of Santa Ana, and wound up at the police station, because some low income housing money had been used to add to the police station, and bringing some of the homeless there would point out where that money had gone, that is another kind of work of mercy.

So Christian pacifists should be out there, acting in the world, in many ways - sometimes bringing relief to war torn regions, sometimes reporting back on what is happening there, sometimes calling attention to government policies; all of these seem to me appropriate activities. Sometimes in doing so we may prove to be naive, or mistaken - well, that is a risk we need to take, just as anyone does who wants to have a say, as a citizen, in what our government is doing. Some of that being out there in the world may involve pragmatic proposals, in particular situations, for alternatives.

But these kinds of pragmatic arguments can't be the basis for Christian pacifism. So, on the whole, I think I agree with Peter Nixon on the practical side: it's fine to advocate whatever policy alternatives we think right (just as it's fine for death penalty opponents to advocate whatever criminal justice alternatives we think right), but Christian pacifism is, at bottom, about being faithful to the Gospel, whatever the cost, and not about a particular war not making pragmatic sense.

So, why am I, then, a Christian pacifist? There are three reasons, basically: The first is that I, personally, have a strong sense that, regardless of what anyone else does, I am called not to take part in war. (Of course, this reason doesn't take me very far in persuading Peter, or anyone else, that Christians in general should not take part in war - what I personally am called to do could be seen as more of a matter of vocation.) The second has to do with my reading of the Bible (which does, indeed, have individual passages pointing in both directions, but I read its general thrust as favorable to Christian pacifism), and the third has to do with my reading of what the position of the very early Church was on the matter.

I don't have time right now to elaborate on either set of reasons tonight, so this will be a first installment. I will make further posts, sometime within the next few days, about the Bible and the early Church on this matter.
posted by Lynn Gazis-Sax at 11:37 PM