Duke Divinity School, one of United Methodism’s 13 official seminaries, has convened a series of panel discussions to discuss the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The September 13 topic was "Christianity, War and Patriotism." The three panelists seemed somewhat uncomfortable with some of the patriotism aroused since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But none of the three ruled out U.S. military retaliation as an acceptable Christian response if done within the confines set by Christian "just war" teachings.
Richard Huetter, professor of Christian theology, described the struggle against terrorism as "spiritual, moral and ideological." He chastised President Bush for once employing the word "crusade," but also said that Bush’s apology for it showed an "amount of greatness."
Still, Huetter worried that the idea of "crusade" might still "lurk in the corners." The concept of crusade implies a war of "ultimate good" against "ultimate evil," he said. It does not require repentance, restraint or even the ability to win. It is merely the "struggle of salvation through violence," and therefore Huetter called the crusade mentality a "mode of idolatry" and a "heresy for Christians."
"Crusade" is rife with the "sins of pride and self-righteousness," Heutter warned. "Crusade" was not left behind centuries ago but remains a temptation wherever Christians are in power.
Huetter said Christians are historically torn between Christological pacifism (as opposed to humanitarian pacifism) and just war teachings. Both Christian pacifists and just war advocates agree that the state is an instrument for just order and that the state can exercise legitimate force. But they disagree on whether Christians can participate in civil government.
"Don’t put the burden of proof on the pacifists," Huetter pleaded. Instead, he said the mainline traditions, including Methodists, face the burden of proof to maintain their own tradition of support for just war. Most of the just war tradition has been forgotten, Huetter complained. It needs to be rediscovered.
"The hook hangs on care for neighbors," Huetter said of the just war teaching. "Christians are allowed to participate in that order that cares for neighbors, including police and justified war." He listed the main criteria required to justify going to war: just cause, legitimate authority, the goal of peace, an absence of hatred, the exhaustion of other means short of war, and the probability of success in war. He also summarized the criteria for prosecuting war justly: the indispensability and proportionality of the military means employed, the protection of innocents, and respect for international law.
Just war requires us to seek "concrete limited goals," not revenge or the eradication of evil, according to Huetter. He warned that any attempt to rid the world of evil is an "eschatological project" that will lead to more evil. We must be wary of any "false hope of bringing permanent peace," he asserted.
Huetter claimed that in the present situation there is no organized state opponent. So the United States should think of "criminal prosecution backed by police and military force," he suggested. Just war and pacifism need each other to broaden our imagination, in Huetter’s view. The U.S. needs elements of "self-criticism" and an "international order that dries up roots of fanaticism and despair." There is a "tradition of colonial conquest and humiliation for Muslims that Christians need to acknowledge," Huetter remarked.
Amy Laura Hall, a professor of ethics, expressed concern about some displays of patriotism in churches that are "liturgically inappropriate." Sometimes the right response to tragedy is simply silence, she suggested. She spoke at length about the ramifications of singing "God Bless America" in church.
"The song is not meant to be sung as a fight song but as a prayer," Hall argued. She warned against singing the song as though the U.S. were "singularly good over against evil." Hall allowed that some patriotism was fine. "But we must not allow the terrorists to take away our ability and duty to reflect critically," she added. "True patriotism requires patient assessment of blessings and errors."
"At our best we are hospitable and generous," Hall said of her fellow Americans. "Also in many ways we are inhospitable, aggressive and hateful towards strangers," she added, citing victims of hate crimes and also unborn fetuses. "We are a complicated mix of blessing and curse."
Hall lamented that the U.S. exports anorexia through J. Crew catalogs and through the mindless sex and violence of U.S. films. "We must be both grateful and deeply critical of our country."
Hall preferred singing "God Bless America" to having flags in the sanctuary, which she worried might compete with the cross for attention during worship. "Our flag stands there open to multiple idolatrous interpretations," she warned, although the flag itself is not "necessarily idolatrous."
Hall admitted: "I struggle with the possibility that Christians can be patriots….We should be grateful for the order that allows us to spread the Gospel. Grateful but appropriately critical."
Grant Wacker, professor of history of religion in America, said he was impressed by the "degree of judiciousness from our [U.S.] leaders." He stated openly that he was not a pacifist. "This sort of terror will strike again," he said. "The task of government is to reduce the frequency and minimize the damage."
Wacker urged separating the "explanation" for the terror from the "legitimization" of it. He recalled a statement from the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries that said, "We ask that God's transforming presence reach those who would be in such pain as to participate in such horrific acts."
"I don’t recall any United Methodist official asking us to understand Timothy McVeigh’s actions and his pain," Wacker said with sarcasm. "We used more commonsensical language."
Wacker urged making a distinction between the just war theory and a crusade. He also pointed out that pacifism has never been a "large sociologically important tradition." He suggested that the U.S. does need to reform its own behavior, such as "disciplining" Hollywood for its "unbridled violence and sexual rapacity." Too often U.S. popular culture portrays "secular freedom without restraints at its worst," Wacker observed.
Surprisingly, none of the panelists openly advocated a pacifist position, which has many adherents on seminary campuses. Nor did any of the three attempt to blame the U.S. for provoking the terrorist acts or morally equate the U.S. with the terrorists.
Duke ethics professor Stanley Hauerwas seemed to do both in recent statements. On the Duke Divinity School website, a prayer written by Hauerwas asks God: "Try to help us remember that how we feel may be how the people of Iraq have felt as we have been bombing them. It is hard for us to acknowledge the we in ‘We bombed them.’"
In a recent statement for The Chronicle Review, Hauerwas exclaimed, "Americans have no sense of how it is that we can be this hated." He continued: "It never occurs to them [Americans] that our country’s actions have terrible results for other people around the world, and that they blame us." He went on to note that September 11 was the anniversary of the overthrow of the Salvador Allende regime in Chile and the "beginning of a regime of torture there, and of course that was U.S.-sponsored. Why shouldn’t people be mad at us?"
In a statement to The New York Times, Hauerwas said he was "absolutely dumbfounded" at the ease and haste with which American Christian leaders adopted a belligerent stance that is at odds with Christianity. "Christians have a very hard time in America distinguishing themselves from the assumption that we are on board whatever America wants to do," he continued. "Most American Christians are blank check people who believe we should go kill whoever the democratically elected American president says we should kill." Hauerwas did not name any of these supposedly bellicose Christian leaders.
Similar sentiments came from Duke Divinity School homiletics professor William Turner, whose statement appears on the Duke website: "This is a hard word, but it is nevertheless true: we know the source of the pain that has led to the bitterness that presently defiles and violates us a nation." Turner goes on to describe the terrorists as the "fruit—yea the harvest—of bitterness" of three or four generations of angry Palestinians.
"As long as our nation supports Israel in treating Palestinians as they please there will be no improvement in these matters. For bitterness must be extirpated from the root." Turner went on at length about the Palestinians, although there is little evidence that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group is motivated by their plight. Most reports indicate that bin Laden’s top grievance against America is the presence of U.S. troops in his native Saudi Arabia. None of the terrorists involved in September 11 attacks seems to have been Palestinian.
But these facts did not deter Turner from using the terrorist attacks as an occasion to vent his own grievances against U.S. policies. "Arab people who act in hateful ways to this nation are not insane; they are descendants of generations of scarred, hurt people who were herded like cattle from the land, or they react with vengeful means in defense of their brothers and sisters," he explained. "But we [Americans] are not better people by nature: if we indulge our bitterness, pander to pain in the wrong way, we can be just as evil. Bringing those who commit crimes to justice is one thing; killing out of revenge is as heinous as any other bitter and vengeful act."
Of course, bin Laden is a multi-millionaire from a fabulously wealthy Arab nation. He has never been "herded" anywhere. But Turner continued: "Others may speak in terms of hunting down terrorists and waging war against nations who harbor them. Our [Christian] language is not that of inflicting pain and suffering on those who may be as innocent as we are."
The September 13 discussion at Duke did not give adequate answers to all the moral questions that have been raised since September 11. But it showed more moral seriousness than do the published statements of Duke faculty Hauerwas and Turner. For that we can be grateful.
Mark Tooley is the executive director of UM Action, a committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.