Tag Archives ⇒ culture of peace

The peace of Christ for those with ears to hear

March 9, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Over on Quak­er Oats Live, Cherice is fired up about tax­es again and propos­ing a peace wit­ness for next year:

My solu­tion: Quak­ers, Men­non­ites, Brethren, and whomev­er else wants to par­tic­i­pate refus­es to pay war tax­es for a few years, and we suf­fer the con­se­quences. I think we should cam­paign for a war-tax-free 2010 in all Quak­er meet­ings and Mennonite/Brethren/etc. com­mu­ni­ties. What are they going to do – throw us all in jail? Maybe. But they can’t do that for­ev­er. No one wants to pay their tax­es for a bunch of Quak­ers and oth­er paci­fists to sit in jail for not pay­ing tax­es. It does­n’t make sense.

A com­menter chimes in with a warn­ing about Friends who were hit by heavy tax penal­ties a quar­ter cen­tu­ry ago. But I know of some­one who did­n’t pay tax­es for twen­ty years and recent­ly vol­un­teered the infor­ma­tion to the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice. The col­lec­tors were non­cha­lant, polite and sym­pa­thet­ic and set­tled for a very rea­son­able amount. If this friend’s expe­ri­ence is any guide, there’s not much dra­ma to be had in war tax resis­tance. These days, Cae­sar does­n’t care much.

What if our wit­ness was direct­ed not at the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment but at our fel­low Chris­tians? We could fol­low Quak­er founder George Fox’s exam­ple and climb the tallest tree we could find (real or metaphor­i­cal) and begin preach­ing the good news that war goes against the teach­ings of Jesus. As always, we would be respect­ful and char­i­ta­ble but we could reclaim the strong and clear voic­es of those who have trav­eled before us. If we felt the need for back­up? Well, I under­stand there are twenty-seven or so books to the New Tes­ta­ment sym­pa­thet­ic to our cause. And I have every rea­son to believe that the Inward Christ is still hum­ming our tune and burn­ing bush­es for all who have eyes to see and ears to lis­ten. Just as John Wool­man min­is­tered with his co-religionists about the sin of slav­ery, maybe our job is to min­is­ter to our co-religionists about war.

But who are these co-religionist neigh­bors of ours? Twen­ty years of peace orga­niz­ing and Friends orga­niz­ing makes me doubt we could find any large group of “his­toric peace church” mem­bers to join us. We talk big and write pret­ty epis­tles, but few indi­vid­u­als engage in wit­ness­es that involve any dan­ger of real sac­ri­fice. The way most of our estab­lished bod­ies could­n’t fig­ure out how to respond to a mod­ern day prophet­ic Chris­t­ian wit­ness in Tom Fox’s kid­nap­ping is the norm. When the IRS threat­ened to put liens on Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing to force resis­tant staffers to pay, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary and clerk said all sorts of sym­pa­thet­ic words of anguish (which they prob­a­bly even meant), then docked the employ­ee’s pay any­way. There have been times when clear-eyed Chris­tians did­n’t mind loos­ing their lib­er­ty or prop­er­ty in ser­vice to the gospel. Ear­ly Friends called our emu­la­tion of Christ’s sac­ri­fice the Lam­b’s War, but even sev­en years of real war in the ancient land of Baby­lo­nia itself has­n’t brought back the old fire. Our meet­ing­hous­es sit quaint, with own­er­ship deeds untouched, even as we wring our hands won­der­ing why most remain half-empty on First Day morning.

But what about these emerg­ing church kids?: all those peo­ple read­ing Shane Clai­borne, mov­ing to neigh­bor­hoods in need, orga­niz­ing into small cells to talk late into the night about prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty? Some of them are actu­al­ly putting down their can­dles and pre­ten­tious jar­gon long enough to read those twenty-seven books. Friends have a lot of accu­mu­lat­ed wis­dom about what it means the prim­i­tive Chris­t­ian life, even if we’re pret­ty rusty on its actu­al prac­tice. What shape would that wit­ness take and who would join us into that unknown but famil­iar desert? What would our move­ment even be called? And does it matter?

—–

Any­one inter­est­ed in think­ing more on this should start sav­ing up their loose change ($200 com­muters) to come join C Wess Daniels and me this Novem­ber when we lead a work­shop on “The New Monas­tics and Con­ver­gent Friends” at Pen­dle Hill near Philadel­phia. Methinks I’m already start­ing to blog about it.

Words and reason fail when faced with such horror

April 17, 2007
· Martin Kelley

It’s hard to know what to say about yes­ter­day’s hor­rif­ic mas­sacre at Vir­ginia Tech, where a gun­man killed 32 peo­ple (at lat­est count) in two sep­a­rate inci­dents. Is this an indict­ment of an Amer­i­can cul­ture of vio­lence? Vir­ginia Tech has a strong mil­i­tary tra­di­tion, so is our war men­tal­i­ty to blame? Guns?, can we blame guns? Or how about the alien­ation of so many young peo­ple in our society?
Any answer seems glib and besides the point. This isn’t the time to be a pun­dit. Peo­ple snap for all sorts of rea­sons and usu­al­ly for mul­ti­ple rea­sons that can nev­er real­ly be untangled.
Like all humans, I’m shocked and sad­dened. I’ve spent time on the cam­pus and the stu­dents and fac­ul­ty I met were always warm and hos­pitable, gra­cious and open. What must they be going through? Think of the fear of the trapped stu­dents, the fear of par­ents turn­ing on the news, the fear of sur­vivors who will have to live with the mem­o­ries of this night­mare for the rest of their lives. I add my hum­ble words to the mil­lions of prayers that have been mur­mured these last twenty-four hours. May God com­fort the vic­tims alive and dead, includ­ing the shoot­er, who must cer­tain­ly be a vic­tim of some­thing himself.
How do we stop the vio­lence? How do we show our youth that vio­lence is not the way? And how do we get these damned guns out of their hands?

Neat idea: postcard for World Peace

February 22, 2007
· Martin Kelley

A project from Esto­nia, a “blog of post­cards for world peace”:http://postcardworldpeace.blogspot.com. From the site:
bq. The idea is sim­ple: Send us a post­card from your country/city (or any post­card you want) writ­ing in the back­side a mes­sage of peace to the World. All the post­cards will be uploaded in the blog, and there will be a record of how many post­cards per coun­try we receive (includ­ing a map show­ing the coverage).

Of Floods and Prophets

October 11, 2005
· Martin Kelley

The tragedies were reflec­tions not on the pow­er of nature but on the pow­er of our human dis­re­gard for one another. 
When the ram­parts of New Orleans burst and flood­ed its streets and homes, I was at a hos­pi­tal prepar­ing to wel­come a child. As my part­ner and I cel­e­brat­ed new life we saw images of peo­ple trapped in attics, heard tales of loved ones swept away as they sought to pro­tect their chil­dren. We watched oth­er new par­ents and their vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren caught with­out food, water or ser­vices in a city sud­den­ly unable to operate.
The tragedies show our human dis­re­gard. The trapped were almost all African Amer­i­can. They were almost all poor. Sto­ries on the news – shot-at heli­copters, mass vio­lence in the Con­ven­tion cen­ter – reflect­ed Amer­i­ca’s racist imag­i­na­tion more than real­i­ty. The lev­ees failed because our polit­i­cal lead­ers ignored the rec­om­men­da­tions of gov­ern­ment engi­neers and sci­en­tists and slashed spend­ing on storm pro­tec­tion. Even the hur­ri­cane itself was super­charged by a cen­tu­ry of burn­ing fos­sil fuels, our dis­re­gard for nature and our stonewalling over the real­i­ty of glob­al warming.
A favorite image of paci­fists comes from a line in the Book of Isa­iah, that part in that talks about beat­ing the swords into plow­shares. But sur­round­ing pas­sages have been echo­ing in my ears late­ly. Like this one:
bq. Bring no more vain obla­tions; incense is an abom­i­na­tion unto me; the new moons and sab­baths, the call­ing of assem­blies, I can­not away with; it is iniq­ui­ty, even the solemn meet­ing. Your new moons and your appoint­ed feasts my soul hat­est; they are a trou­ble unto me; I am weary to bear them.… Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings before mine eyes; cease to do evil. Learn to do well; seek judge­ment, relieve the oppressed, judge the father­less, please for the wid­ow. Isa­iah 1:13 – 17.
The right­eous indi­ga­tion that fol­lowed the images from New Orleans is fad­ing. Life is return­ing to nor­mal in Wash­ing­ton DC and the high costs of recov­ery (and the con­tin­u­ing costs of Bush’s wars) will be shift­ed to the poor. We can­not stay silent to the vain obla­tions of our gov­ern­ment. It is time to do well and pro­tect the poor. It is time to relieve the oppressed and demand jus­tice for the human deci­sions that led to bro­ken levees.
This isn’t all finger-pointing: we each need to seek a self-judgement about our Amer­i­can lifestyles that have fuelled glob­al warm­ing with its con­sumeris­tic dis­re­gard for con­se­quences. We need to depend upon each oth­er more, seek a com­mu­ni­ty deep­er and more inter­laced than that offered by Wal­mart and McDon­alds. We are all part of one anoth­er, part of the earth and brethren to our human fam­i­ly. We need to gath­er togeth­er as a peo­ple who know that gov­ern­ment and con­sumerism alone can nev­er address our soci­ety’s deep­est needs and that vain obla­tions alone will do noth­ing to put away the evil of our doings. We need to get angry and sing a song of change. We need more Isaiahs.

Bandaging our wounds, mourning our dead and loving our enemies

July 7, 2005
· Martin Kelley

I’m away from my usu­al haunts on work-related duties but the news sites have plen­ty of arti­cles about the hor­ri­ble bomb­ings in Lon­don; there is no need for yet anoth­er list.
It is always trag­ic to see the cycles of vio­lence, ter­ror­ism and state-sponsored war feed­ing one anoth­er to new acts of vio­lence. Our prayers that the new round of heart­breaks in Lon­don don’t lead into a kind of retal­i­a­tion that will only hard­en hearts else­where. We need to envi­sion a new world, one based on love and mutu­al respect. It’s impos­si­ble to nego­ti­ate with the kind of ter­ror­ists that would bomb a packed bus but we can be a wit­ness that hate can be con­front­ed with love. We must ban­dage our wound­ed, mourn our dead and con­tin­ue to build a world where the occa­sions for all war have been transcended.

Responsible Journalism and the Flim-Flam Show of Insider Loudmouths

May 19, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Bill Moy­ers, a recently-ousted PBS jour­nal­ist and the elder states­man of respon­si­ble jour­nal­ism “recent­ly gave a great speech on media trends”:http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/1329245:
bq. One rea­son I’m in hot water is because my col­leagues and I at “NOW” did­n’t play by the con­ven­tion­al rules of Belt­way jour­nal­ism. Those rules divide the world into democ­rats and repub­li­cans, lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives and allow jour­nal­ists to pre­tend they have done their job if, instead of report­ing the truth behind the news, they mere­ly give each side an oppor­tu­ni­ty to spin the news.
(Thanks to “Beppe”:http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/bill-moyers-response.html for the link.)

Howard Zinn: The Scourge of Nationalism

May 18, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Howard Zinn, one of our favorite pro­gres­sive his­to­ri­ans looks at the tool of nation­al­ism in this mon­th’s _Progressive_:
bq. Is not nation­al­ism – that devo­tion to a flag, an anthem, a bound­ary so fierce it engen­ders mass mur­der – one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with reli­gious hatred? These ways of think­ing – cul­ti­vat­ed, nur­tured, indoc­tri­nat­ed from child­hood on – have been use­ful to those in pow­er, and dead­ly for those out of power.
I par­tic­u­lar­ly like his call to “assert our alle­giance to the human race.” So many of the polit­i­cal lead­ers who call for war do so by whip­ping up fear that the ene­my has already called for war against us. We jus­ti­fy our armies by point­ing to oth­er armies. It’s like a big glob­al rack­et dreamed up by the arms deal­ers who are often hap­pi­ly sell­ing to both sides. Threats are indeed real, but we need to see beyond our self-justifying pro­pa­gan­da of the war machine.

Bulldozing the U.N.

March 8, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Pres­i­dent Bush has nom­i­nat­ed a “foe of the Unit­ed Nations to be its U.S. ambassador”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. Ten years ago he declared: “There’s no such thing as the Unit­ed Nations,” and went on to say “If the U.N. sec­re­tary build­ing in New York lost 10 sto­ries, it would­n’t make a bit of dif­fer­ence.” This is a fel­low who called his role in with­drawl­ing the U.S. sig­na­ture on the treaty rat­i­fy­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court “the hap­pi­est moment of my gov­ern­ment service”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. The Guardian reports that “fought arms con­trol agree­ments, a strength­en­ing of the bio­log­i­cal weapons con­ven­tion and the com­pre­hen­sive test ban treaty”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1432701,00.html?gusrc=rss. With his nom­i­na­tion, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues its course of uni­la­te­ri­al­ism and open con­tempt for the world com­mu­ni­ty. Not a good way to build a last peace.