Articles

Sacrificing the Sacrifices of War

Stanley Hauerwas

Hauerwas plays out William James’ call for a moral equivalent of war. He delves more deeply into the compelling nature of war in the search for a compelling nature of peace. In war we are compelled not by the sacrifice of life but by the sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill. What is the moral equivalent for peacemakers?

Religious and Cultural Dimensions of Peacebuilding

Nathan C. Funk

Contemporary Islamic-Western tensions are challenging scholars and practitioners of conflict resolution to engage more proactively with cultural and religious dimensions of peacebuilding. To be effective, however, responses to politicized religion need to recognize the complex and dynamic nature of contemporary identity conflicts, which are driven by a broad array of factors and not by religious ideas alone. Fundamentalism and religiously justified violence need to be understood as outcomes that have been reinforced by protracted confrontation and rivalry between identity groups, and not as autonomous phenomena abstracted from historical, cultural, political, or economic contexts. When informed by such an analysis, religious and cultural peacebuilding becomes a process through which the identity dynamics of conflict are transformed through dialogical engagement, activation of religious peace resources, and integration of religiously informed rationales for peacemaking with other forms of peace and justice advocacy. The essay concludes with a brief survey of priorities for Islamic-Western peacemaking and a call for heightened Canadian efforts to bridge cultural and religious divides.

Meeting In Exile

Gerald W. Schlabach

The designation “Historic Peace Churches” emerged from the coalition of Mennonites, Friends or Quakers, and Brethren as they advocated for the rights of conscientious objectors in the pre-World War II years. Their shared conviction has been that Jesus’ life and teaching makes the rejection of violence normative for all Christians. Yet other churches believe themselves to be working for peace and sometimes call themselves peace churches too. Mennonites and Catholics exemplify different yet overlapping understandings of what it means to be a peace church. Schlabach argues that as Christians recover a fuller sense of what it means to be a global church, in a globalizing age, a growing sense of identity and identification with a people spread through many nations will make it harder and harder for Christians to kill. Encouraging Christians to recognize themselves as a transnational people that always lives in diaspora will thus do more to create a global peace church than resolving the longstanding impasse between Christian pacifist and just war positions.

Holy War: Toward a Holistic Understanding

Brian A. Victoria

To speak of “holy war” today is, at least in the West, to speak of Islam or Islamic fundamentalism. Yet, even a cursory glance at history reveals that at one time or another all of the world’s major religions have sacralized violence, at least under certain conditions. This article seeks to understand why, despite the great variety in doctrine and praxis, the world’s major religions have, and continue to, support warfare under such guises as “just war,” “jihad,” or “defense of the [Buddha] Dharma.” While recognizing the important role that doctrine, especially competing claims of exclusive truth, plays in religiously endorsed warfare, this article seeks to take a holistic look at the multiple causes of this phenomenon, including anthropological, sociological, economic, psychological and even evolutionary factors. A wide variety of historical examples from multiple faiths compliment the theoretical constructs, revealing that the elimination of holy war challenges believers to live up to the highest tenets of their respective faiths.

From Monastic Ethics to Modern Society

Charles Prebish

In 1964 Winston King asked the then critical question defining studies of Buddhist ethics: “What is the relation of ethics to the total structure of Buddhist doctrine and practice, particularly with regard to the definition of moral values ... and the nature of ultimate sanctions.” Nearly half a century later, this question retains its status for inquiries about Buddhist conduct. This paper examines the critical role of Vinaya, or monastic regulations for the renunciant tradition, in contrast to the code of conduct, known as

A Kairos Moment in the History of War

The Evolution of State Sponsored Violence

Daniel C. Maguire

War is state sponsored violence. It has been facilely justified by the misuse and misinterpretation of the “just war theory.” A proper understanding and application of that theory proves that the United States’ recent wars are immoral. This is a kairos moment in which increasingly war is being shown to be ineffective and anachronistic, and biblical wisdom on violence can be seen as newly and pointedly relevant to contemporary assessments of violent power and peacemaking.