Arnold: Losing Our Religion

December 31, 2003

Johann Christoph Arnold has an inter­est­ing piece on the inter­sec­tion of peace activism and reli­gion [orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Non​vi​o​lence​.org]. Here’s a taste:

The day before Mar­tin Luther King was mur­dered he said, “Like any­body, I would like to live a long life…But I’m not con­cerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.” We must have this same desire if we are going to sur­vive the fear and vio­lence and mass con­fu­sion of our time. And we should be as unabashed about let­ting peo­ple know that it is our reli­gious faith that moti­vates us, regard­less of the set­ting or the consequences.

Many peace activists are dri­ven by reli­gious moti­va­tions, which is often all that keeps them going through all the hard times and non-appreciation. Yet we often present our­selves to the world in a sec­u­lar way using ratio­nal arguments.

It took me a few years to real­ly admit to myself that Non​vi​o​lence​.org is a min­istry inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed with my Quak­er faith. In the eight years it’s been going, thou­sands of web­sites have sprung up with good inten­tions and hype only to dis­ap­pear into obliv­ion (or the inter­net equiv­a­lent, the line read­ing “Last updat­ed July 7, 1997”). I have a sep­a­rate forum for “Quak­er reli­gious and peace issues” [which lat­er became the gen­er­al Quak­er­Ran­ter blog] In my essay on the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny, I wor­ry that mod­ern reli­gious paci­fists have spent so much effort con­vinc­ing the world that paci­fism makes sense from a strict­ly ratio­nal­ist view­point that we’ve large­ly for­got­ten our own moti­va­tions. Don’t get me wrong: I think paci­fism also makes sense as a prag­mat­ic pol­i­cy; while mil­i­tary solu­tions might be quick­er, paci­fism can bring about the long-term changes that break the cycle of mil­i­tarism. But how can we learn to bal­ance the shar­ing of both our prag­mat­ic and reli­gious motivations?

 

Sheen: Appealing to almighty God

November 14, 2003

In the Bruder­hof mag­a­zine, an “inter­view with actor Mar­tin Sheen”:www.bruderhof.com/articles/sheen.htm?source=DailyDig. It’s a pro­file that focus­es not only on his act­ing fame or activist caus­es but on his reli­gious faith and how it under­pins the rest of his life. Read, for instance, Sheen on civ­il disobedience:
bq. It is one of the only tools that is avail­able to us where you can express a deeply per­son­al, deeply moral opin­ion and be held account­able. You have to be pre­pared for the con­se­quences. I hon­est­ly do not know if civ­il dis­obe­di­ence has any effect on the gov­ern­ment. I can promise you it has a great effect on the per­son who choos­es to do it.
Sheen’s rad­i­cal Catholic faith is not a super­fi­cial con­fes­sion that pro­vides him with a place to go on Sun­day morn­ing, and it’s not pas­sive iden­ti­ty from which to do polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing. Rather, it’s a rela­tion­ship with God and truth that demands wit­ness and sac­ri­fice and suf­fer­ing. It’s the faith of some­one who has per­son­al­ly gone through the depths of spir­i­tu­al hedo­nism, and who has watched his coun­try become the “most con­fused, warped, addict­ed soci­ety,” and who has found only God left standing:
bq. God has not aban­doned us. I don’t know what oth­er force to appeal to oth­er than almighty God, I real­ly don’t.
I could quote him for hours, but read the interview.

Betting on Terror

July 29, 2003

The news sites are all report­ing a Pen­ta­gon plan to bet on future ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty (BBC). It’s report­ed as a stock market-style sys­tem in which sucess­ful pre­dic­tions by investors would win them money.
Some­one at the Pen­ta­gon has read a lit­tle too many books about the infi­nite wis­dom of the free mar­ket. There are those who have a reli­gious faith in the pow­er of unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism, who posit it as a kind of all-knowing, self-correcting God. With the input of enough self-interested actors, the truth can be dis­cerned. I’d argue that stock mar­kets are more like blogs (the highly-linked New York Times ver­sion of the arti­cle), with every­one rush­ing to make the same links (Asso­ci­at­ed Press).
The truth of the mat­ter is that recent intel­li­gence laps­es have been the result of polit­i­cal med­dling in the col­lec­tion and ana­lyt­i­cal process­es. When the boss wants a cer­tain result (proof of weapons in Iraq, proof of Al Qae­da links), then the group-think pres­sure to con­form will warp the sift­ing process. A stock market-style sys­tem for pre­dict­ing ter­ror would be about as accu­rate as a poll of CNN and Fox News watch­ers – it will tell you what every­one thinks but it prob­a­bly won’t tell you the truth.