Articles

A Critique of Jean Bethke Elshtain's Just War Against Terror and an Advocacy of a Constructive Alternative

Pamela K. Brubaker,

Glen H. Stasson,

Janet L. Parker

This jointly authored article critically evaluates the claim of Jean Bethke Elshtain that the war on terror meets the criteria of just war theory, presents evidence that elements of just peacemaking theory offers an effective alternative, and offers wisdom from World Council of Churches’ consultations on violence and terrorism about the role faith communities can play in peacebuilding.

Good and Bad Lessons from “The Good War”

David G. Rowley

The most widely “learned” lesson of World War II—that evil should be nipped in the bud—is a bad one. To justify the lesson “if you want peace, work for justice,” this article shows that the Versailles treaty established a patently unjust international order and gave Hitler a ready-made strategy for initiating war. To substantiate the lesson “there is no way to peace, peace is the way,” it argues that appeasement was a just policy and that preemptive war would have been no solution at all. Moreover, appeasement worked; it was military deterrence that precipitated the war. Even in 1939, the pursuit of peace and justice was a practical and hopeful policy.

Globalization, Religious Change and the Common Good

R. Scott Appleby

This article is expanded from a presentation at the International Interfaith Initiative forum in Indianapolis, Indiana, October 2009. It recovers the importance of cultural and religious trends in world events, which have been too long ignored, and challenges policymakers to educate themselves on world religions to improve the effectiveness of political engagement.

Eclipse of the Greater Jihad

Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi

This paper contextualizes the ascendance of the concept of armed jihad at the expense of the peaceful, moral or greater jihad in Islam. An empirical assessment of the decline of the moral jihad is undertaken, along with a reasoned analysis of the epistemological grounding of the concept in Islam, compared with the rising acceptance of the concept of armed jihad, or lesser jihad, due to the use of selective textualism by fundamentalists. I argue for an intellectual revival as a counterbalancing force to the ascendancy of armed jihad.

Resisting Terrorism

From Collective Trauma to Nonviolent Response

Cynthia Hess

The field of trauma studies offers a lens through which to analyze the psychological effects of terrorism and the character of a nonviolent response. Part of what makes terrorism so powerful is its ability to collectively traumatize communities and nations, such that the violence of terrorism becomes part of people’s psyches. A nonviolent response to terrorism involves drawing on narratives and practices that enable us to move beyond our collective traumatization and form ourselves as nonviolent people who refuse to act out of a space of trauma, either individually or through our foreign policy. Martin Luther King’s life and work point to an understanding of nonviolence that draws on specific narratives and practices to resist traumatization and to transform violence that becomes embedded within people’s psyches over time.

Religion and Peacebuilding

Heather Dubois

Religious peacebuilding is as an important specialization within the field of conflict resolution. This essay contrasts past marginalization of religion in international relations with contemporary evidence of religion’s global, socio-political importance. It uses the social theory of Alasdair MacIntyre to explore the socio-philosophical compatibility of religion and peacebuilding. It then describes academic and policy definitions of peacebuilding before offering a typology of religious peacebuilding and a brief listing of its strengths and challenges. Within a framework that acknowledges its ambivalence, religion can make positive and sometimes unique contributions to peacebuilding.

Between Dogmatism and Relativism

Duane L. Cady

One feature of religious identification is the strength with which it is held. For some, the faith is so central to their identity they cannot think of themselves aside from their religion. They are what I call dogmatists. They cannot think of their religion except as the one and only true religion. Only their religion can put humans right with the divine. On the other hand, the contemporary cultural upheaval that results from more frequent contact among people with very different perspectives, values, and practices sometimes leads to a too broad acceptance of difference: “I’m right, and if we disagree, you’re right too, from your point of view,” which I call “relativism.” My interest is in finding a way between dogmatism and relativism, in finding a third way to understand and even embrace religion, a way that avoids the problems of both dogmatism and relativism.

A Proposal For Grace

Mary C. Moorman

Modern theologians of the West have described ecumenical concern as a receding issue in a milieu of weariness over the ecumenical agenda. However, it is not the case that Christians in developing nations can afford such ennui in the face of political divisions that have fallen along religious divides and have hindered development. In modern Uganda critical tensions dividing north from south may be traceable to historical tensions between the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant/Anglican denominations. This paper calls for Catholic-Protestant reconciliation in modern Uganda by drawing attention to a neglected historical connection between Ugandan religious tensions and current regional conflicts. Having acknowledged the damages that denominational divisions imported by the Christian West have inflicted in this developing nation, Ugandan Christians are poised for the possibility of resolving their historical conflicts with grace.

The Significance of Religions for Social Justice and a Culture of Peace

Patricia M. Mische

One of the critical elements for a culture of peace is social justice. Perceptions of injustice lead to discontent, non-cooperation, conflict, civil unrest, and war. Religions have a powerful role in shaping ideas of social justice and legitimacy, and also in responding to perceptions of injustice and illegitimacy—e.g., passively accepting human suffering and injustice as the will of God and a badge of moral merit, or actively opposing them, and if so, whether by violent or nonviolent means. One reason that religions are often so powerful in war or peace is that they carry the archetypes, images, and symbols of meaning and identity that inform people’s thoughts and actions at deep, often unconscious levels. To maximize the potential of religions to contribute to peace and minimize those that breed war requires understanding these deep, unconscious levels of knowing and cultural formation; this is more elusive and difficult than addressing direct or even systemic forms of violence.

The Letter Killeth

Hector Avalos

Reinterpretation of violent biblical texts fails both morally and practically in stemming the use of sacred scriptures to justify violence, argues Hector Avalos. Accordingly, he outlines a case for decanonizing biblical texts, using an explicit theological principle that any portrayal of a loving God as endorsing or committing violence must be understood as false. Although the author is a secular humanist, he demonstrates that a plea for decanonizing violent texts can be made within a Christian theological tradition. Avalos reviews historical examples of how Anabaptist and other Christian traditions have rethought the biblical canon, and he proposes that using nonviolence as a fundamental theological criterion for canonicity would yield a Bible more consistent with Christian pacifistic principles.