WAR, PEACE, AND RELIGION March 23, 2003 Kenneth W. Phifer Is peace possible? Does our survival as individuals or as a society require that we be prepared to kill? Is non-violence an adequate response to violence? Is there any human situation that gives us the right to slaughter others? Is violence sometimes necessary in order to resolve intractable human conflict? Are war and preparation for war an ineradicable part of human life? Is peace possible? These questions are usually answered in political, economic, or sociological terms. Each of these categories is, of course, important, but if we are to understand war and peace we must also address these questions from a religious standpoint. The religions of the world deal with the ethical and spiritual dimensions of human life. The religions of the world are not centrally about tangible things like land and money. The religions of the world have to do with that which stirs our souls, fills our hearts, excites our minds. The religions of the world help to clarify what is special, unique, and precious about being human. What do the religions of the world say about war and peace? One thing they say is that sometimes war is good, that sometimes killing is moral, that sometimes violence is necessary. It might almost be said that without religion there would be no war. Religion is about meaning. Religion gives us a framework within which our lives make sense. Our lives can take on a larger, worthier significance because of the deities we embrace, the theologies we believe, and the moralities we act out. We are made ready for the ultimate sacrifice of life or the disabling sacrifice of body or mind that war asks of its participants by believing that our way of life and thought is divinely sanctioned. Our faith then requires of us that from time to time we be prepared to defend it at the cost of life or limb. To die, to be wounded, to give up personal comfort is worth it if we are fighting for the right cause. When George W. Bush has spoken of Saddam Hussein, he has described him as being part of an “axis of evil.” He has talked of all nations choosing to be for us or against us. He has spoken of our nation as divinely called to lead the world. He has used the presidency, as others before him have done, as a bully pulpit. If one believes the president’s rhetoric, how could such a person not be on the front lines in Iraq right now? Saddam Hussein has spoken in the same vein, though he is not noted for his religious convictions. He still uses the word, jihad, as a call to unite the Muslim community against America. A leading cleric in Baghdad just three days ago urged Muslims to kill Americans wherever they are as a sacred duty to protect the faith. Religious justification for war is an ancient and ubiquitous phenomenon. There were war gods like Ares among the Greeks and Mars among the Romans. The Scandinavians had Wotan and Thor and hosts of other militaristic deities, while the Yoruba had war-like Ogun. War among tribal peoples was a fact of life, which the gods themselves honored and joined in. In a majority of human societies, war has been held in reverence and the call to arms answered as readily as a call to nature. The Zoroastrians even built a whole religion around the concept of war. Life, they contended, was a battle between light and darkness. Our task is to align ourselves with the forces of light and goodness against the forces of darkness and evil. One of the most important sacred texts of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, is the story of a battle in which one of the gods tells a reluctant warrior that “there exists no greater good for a warrior than war enjoined by duty.” Dying in such a war is worthy and not to be avoided, not even when it means killing others. Buddhists justify war for self-protection and Confucianists as a last resort. The Israelites relied on “the Lord, mighty in battle…(who) will go with you to fight your enemy for you and give you the victory.” Christians were told by their leader, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword…let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one.” Muslim jihad, striving, is partly directed against unbelievers and enemies of the faith. It can involve the use of violence against threatening foes. Gad Horowitz has written of the concept of blood sacrifice that is part of every religion and part of every war. He argues that what ancient peoples did in sacrificing humans to appease the gods, we have come to do in war. We as much as the Moabites and the Aztecs need to rid ourselves of evil impulses. They did it with a scapegoat human being on whom all wickedness was symbolically laid. This sacrificial person was then consumed in flames on a high altar. We do not sacrifice people on high altars now. We use the fields of battle for a similar purpose. We send our children into war knowing that some of them will die and that some will be maimed. We do not blame ourselves for these deaths and injuries. We blame the Enemy. One soldier in the Persian Gulf War of 12 years ago described the enemy as “cockroaches…as they come out of their holes we kill them.” Wickedness in us is replaced by righteous wrath against the Other, who is evil personified. Norman O. Brown said of this psycho-theological transference that “the problem of war is the problem of idolatry.” The religions of the world give aid and comfort to war in their absolutism, in their fatalism, in their other-worldliness, in their idolatry. War would be much harder to justify without the aura of meaningfulness which religious support gives to it. For the most part Unitarians and Universalists have not done this. We have no absolute god or creed or text or guru that could give us the assurance that heaven is smiling on our murderous behaviour. Each of us as an individual chooses what stance to take, militaristic or pacifistic. Yet even we have had our dark moments. Several months after this nation entered the First World War, former President William Howard Taft presented a resolution at the May Meeting of the American Unitarian Association that called on all ministers and all congregations to give full and open support to the war effort, on pain of being denied any help from the Association. Twenty-six ministers lost their jobs for standing against the war. An apology some 20 years later did not erase this stain on our heritage. The religions of the world sometimes justify war. The second thing that the religions of the world say about issues of war and peace is that peace begins in the inner life of the individual. If we are frightened and insecure and lonely, if we are filled with bitterness and anger and hatred, we are more likely to be subject to the lure of war. A hate letter I received in the wake of my interview with an Ann Arbor news reporter about the differing views on war and peace that my son, Karl, and I have clearly illustrates this. In a two page handwritten letter, the author was venomous in his condemnation of me for opposing the use of violence and thought my soldier son was a great hero. His language was vituperative and hostile, a man ready to be called to fight wickedness. War makes things simple. War is Us against Them, Right against Wrong, the very language that the president has used frequently since 9-11. War gives us a transcendent cause that enables us to quit wallowing in our own woes and weaknesses. War enables us to feel good about ourselves, whether we ought to or not. Jean Paul Sartre has described this process as that of creating a Demonic Double. We cannot face ourselves, so we project onto some other person or group that which we most hate and fear in ourselves. Seeing that evil we most despise in ourselves out there in someone else, we can then relax our inner watchfulness and become the very thing we are most afraid of being and do the very things we are most fearful of doing. War is the ultimate act of Demonic Doubling. Nothing is quite so satisfying to our psyches. As King David in Joseph Heller’s GOD KNOWS puts it, “There is no palliative like war for the terrors…that our inner lives ordain for us.” It is against this internal mechanism of avoidance and transference of the truth about ourselves that the religions of the world contend. The Bhagavad Gita is on the surface a tale of battle, its justification and its necessity. Gandhi was one of many to point out that it is wiser and more correct to read this story as a spiritual battle which takes place in the soul of Arjuna, the warrior. Gandhi said that he drew great lessons about satyagraha, truth force, and ahimsa, non-violence, partly from reading the Gita. If we win the war with ourselves, we will know peace and be at peace with the rest of the world. The Islamic concept of jihad is similar. Jihad is a personal striving for goodness, purity, spiritual depth and understanding, and compassion that characterize the truest meaning of this holy war of the Muslim believer. It is a holy war against the believer’s worst impulses. The Tao Te Ching teaches that “peace throughout the world…begins with you and me.” Taoism teaches us to look inward and esteem ourselves. Learn simplicity. Be open to what others can teach us. Be in harmony with nature. Face our fears. Learn to relieve the tensions of our bodies. Detach ourselves from complicated things. Laugh! As we take control of our inner lives, as we practice wu-wei, non-effort, non- striving, receptivity, we create in ourselves and in those around us a calmness, a beauty, an order that enables us to further the cause of peace because we are living it. There is a story in the Korean Zen tradition that tells of a time when a rebel army swept into a town and conquered it. All the monks at the local temple fled, except for the abbot. The general in charge of the armed forces came into the temple and became annoyed when the abbot did not show him enough respect. “Don’t you know,” the general shouted at the abbot, “that you are looking at a man who can run you through without blinking?” “And you,” the abbot replied calmly, “are looking at a man who can be run through without blinking.” The general stared at the abbot, bowed in respect, and left, not to return. If our heart is truly at peace, violence cannot conquer it and violence will not erupt from it. This was the message of the prophet Jeremiah when he spoke of the religion of the heart. It was the message of Jesus when he talked of cleansing the heart before one prays at services. It was the message of Martin Luther King, Jr. when he said that he had been to the mountaintop and he was not afraid of dying. Coming to terms with ourselves, learning to love and accept who we are without deception or excess, being unafraid to die if living would violate our integrity, we are then able to love others and avoid the scars of violence and war. Among the Unitarian Universalists this is a central teaching. Do not look for saviours to rescue us. Look inside to find strength, intelligence, sensitivity, courage, and peacefulness. The work of peace begins in our own individual souls. Peace begins inside us. This is a major teaching of the religions of the world. A major purpose of all religious communities is to help us practice this inner peace. It must not stop there. The religions of the world teach that we must act for justice. There is an ineradicable link between peace and justice. War and justice do not go together. In war our lives are at stake. Our highest value is survival. Justice takes second place, if it has any place at all. In war we forget that those whom we fight against are our fellow travelers on this earth, our brothers and sisters in humanity. How can we strive for justice if the face we see is not that of our neighbor but of an enemy? That is why the Tao Te Ching teaches that with those with whom we contend we should strive not to be opponents but partners in transcending conflict and discovering equitable solutions. It is why Jesus taught that we should love our enemies and do good to those who despise us. In Judaism the faithful are enjoined to care for the widow and the orphan and to treat the stranger as one of their own. Righteousness should flow down like waters and justice like a mighty stream. Homelessness and hunger, economic inequalities, discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation or religion or birth or any of the other categories of people who are oppressed only ultimately lead to disorder, disturbance, violence, and not infrequently war. If there is to be peace, there must be justice. Where justice is found, there will be peace. All religions teach the lesson of consequences, that we reap what we sow. If we want peace and justice, we must sow the seeds that will raise up the flowers of kindness and cooperation, caring and sharing, restraint and equitability. A long time ago someone did just that among the Arapesh in New Guinea. Aggressive behaviour is not approved of by this gentle people. Kindness is the norm. Blood feuds do not exist and those who commit violence are looked on with pity, not admired or made into objects of vengeance. The aim of all people in this society is to grow things: plants, pigs, children. Conflict resolution at its most extreme involves the parties isolating themselves from one another. Religious ritual is centered on the theme of the worthiness of all to do the work of living together without anger or hatred. In the Arapesh society, because there is peace there is also justice. Because justice matters to these people and they have found a way of building it into their society, there is also peace. The whole of the community is organized for the welfare of all its people. The means of achieving that welfare are themselves part of the ends being sought. This is a central truth in our heritage as liberal religious people—that we reap what we sow, that working for justice is a mandate of our religious faith, that working for justice is part of the way we can work for peace. From King John Sigismund’s Decree of Toleration in 1568 that brought peace among warring religious parties in Transylvania because all were treated the same under this Decree to the efforts of Unitarian Universalists today to provide gender equity, full rights of citizenship regardless of sexual orientation, fairer standards of racial justice, equitable economic practices, and hosts of other areas where UU’s are involved, peace and justice have been linked in our thoughts and actions. Peace and justice are inseparable. This is a universal teaching of the religions of the world. Is peace possible? It is if we can rid ourselves of the curse of holy war, the curse of divine sanction for our slaughter of the other guy, the curse of thinking we are chosen as God’s emissaries and so can do as we like. Let us rid ourselves of those curses. Is peace possible? It is if we are willing to take seriously the need to begin peace-making with our own personal lives. Let each of us begin that task today. Is peace possible? It is if we commit ourselves to work for a world that is just and equitable for every single human being. Let us make that commitment. Could there possibly be a worthier cause to which we could commit ourselves than to prove to the world the possibility of peace. - - Copyright 2003, Kenneth W. Phifer All rights reserved.