Category: Pacifism

“Biblical authority” and peace: Is there a problem? [Peace and the Bible #5]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 27, 2023

When I became a Christian in 1971, one of the first beliefs that was emphasized to me was an affirmation of the strong authority of the Bible. From that point, for many years, I assumed that if I wanted to make a case for some theological or ethical position, I needed to ground it in the Bible.

A belief that the Bible mattered

I somehow had the idea that if I could make the case biblically, I would be able to persuade people of the truth of my position. And so, I went to work. Well, it took a few years after my initial conversion, but from, say, 1976 on, one of my main points of focus has been to argue based on the Bible for, among other convictions, pacifism, the inclusion of women as leaders in the churches, the peaceableness of the Old Testament and of the book of Revelation, full welcome toward gay people, economic and racial equality, rejection of the death penalty, resistance to Empire, and so on.

Now, I have produced a pretty lengthy collection of writings as a result. I have authored, co-authored, and edited 17 books. I have filled up two websites with writings on these themes. I taught dozens of college classes that drew on this work. Written out over 400 sermons. Conversations beyond counting. I don’t regret this work, except that it hasn’t made more of an impact. And that gets to my point. I have done my best. I think I’ve done a decent job. I have persuaded a few people along the way. And I love the Bible more than ever—and am more convinced than ever about the message of the Bible. I still think my interpretations are largely correct.

However, my initial premise has been proved to be untrue. Making a persuasive case for something based on the Bible is not going to change much. Most Christian convictions are not actually based all that much on the Bible. In practice, most Christians don’t actually decide what their core convictions are going to be based on careful study of the Bible. Biblical authority is not, operationally, the basis for convictions in practice. For whatever reasons and in whatever ways, Christians do not actually base their convictions on the Bible in a way that would lead them to change those convictions in face of biblical evidence.

Continue reading ““Biblical authority” and peace: Is there a problem? [Peace and the Bible #5]” →

A resolution to the problem of violence in the Old Testament? [Peace and the Bible #4]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 24, 2023

The Old Testament has a poor reputation among many Christians (and others) for telling stories of terrible violence that is either initiated directly by God or clearly favored by God. Certainly, this can be a problem for Christian pacifists. But it actually should be a problem for anyone who gives the OT authority as divinely revealed scripture. I had a student once who thought he was in favor of OT violence and sought to gather evidence for an argument against pacifism. As he studied the OT, though, he realized that it was a lot more violent than he had anticipated; before long he had given up on Christianity altogether. Thus, I would say that the “problem” requires attention, even for those who do not find it a deal-breaker for faith.

Not long after I became a pacifist in 1976, I had a short time of struggle as I confronted the problem of violence in the Old Testament. I was assured by some people I respected that the problem could be overcome. So, I kind of put it on the back burner and moved ahead with developing my peace theology, emphasizing, of course, the message of Jesus. Since that time, I have not been troubled by the OT problem all that much but have focused more on finding a peace message on those writings. However, I have remained interested in how to think about divinely initiated violence. Here are some of my current thoughts.

An alternative political economy

The first argument for a certain kind of pacifist reading of the Old Testament that I encountered was a chapter in John Howard Yoder’s book The Original Revolution, the first book on Christian pacifism I ever read. Yoder drew heavily from his colleague at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, Old Testament professor Millard Lind. A bit later, I used the library at the University of Oregon to track down Lind’s PhD dissertation on war and the Old Testament that Yoder cited. Lind turned that work into a book, Yahweh is a Warrior: The Theology of Warfare in the Old Testament. As it happened, this book was published late in 1980 when I was a student at AMBS. In the spring of 1981, Millard taught a class on the book, and I was fortunate enough to be able to take it.

In my memory now, the class was quite helpful, though it was fairly narrowly focused. The main emphasis was on how to understand the stories in the books of Exodus and Joshua of God’s violent intervention in liberating the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and driving the Canaanites out of the promised land. Millard’s main point, as I remember, was that the stories tell us that God fought instead of the Hebrews. It was a unique moment in the people’s history that was not repeated. The key motif was that the people needed to depend on God for their security, not on their own military might. After they settled in the promised land and established a territorial kingdom, their political dynamics changed. They became “like the nations,” including establishing a standing army. Crucially, the kingdom became quite corrupt, practicing injustice against the vulnerable in their community and also beginning to practice idolatry. Because of these injustices, God turned against the Hebrew kingdom and allowed it to be destroyed by the area’s great empires, Assyria and Babylon.

Continue reading “A resolution to the problem of violence in the Old Testament? [Peace and the Bible #4]” →

Why isn’t Protestantism’s Bible peaceable? [Peace and the Bible #2]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 20, 2023

A big question arises for people who believe that the Bible is a book of peace, especially with how it tells the story of Jesus. The question is this: What about Christianity, which for most of its history in most of its manifestations has scarcely been a religion of peace? This is a complicated question and any possible answer will be contested (as, of course, are my assertions that the Bible is a book of peace, and that Christianity is not a religion of peace). In this post, all I will offer is a sketchy set of over-generalizations! I want to test a few thoughts.

The turns toward doctrine and toward Empire

One obvious place to look is at the changes among the Christian churches in the 4th and 5th centuries after Jesus. In a general sense, the early years of Christianity have been seen by many as an era of Christian pacifism (in the sense of non-participation in war). That was drastically transformed in the 4th and 5th centuries into an era where Christianity became the official religion of the decidedly non-pacifist Roman Empire. While Christianity’s status as an official state-religion has come and largely gone, the general sensibility where Christians with few dissenters support their own country’s wars seems as strong as ever.

At roughly the same time that Christianity became pro-Empire, it also established authoritative creeds and confessions as the core definers of the faith—bases for determining formal membership in Christian churches. Not coincidentally, these creeds and confessions easily lent themselves to non-pacifist interpretations and essentially sidelined the gospel stories about Jesus’s life and teaching (notoriously, for example, summarizing the story of Jesus as “born of a virgin” and “crucified under Pontius Pilate” without a word about his message in between).

The roughly one thousand years after the establishment of creedal Christianity could be characterized as a long period of churches paying little attention to the peace message of the Bible—or to the Bible at all. We may note the continual emergence of small dissenting Christian groups that did place the story of Jesus at the center (for example, the Waldensians, the Franciscans, and the Hussites and Czech Brethren). However, these groups were often treated as heretics and viciously persecuted—or absorbed into the Catholic Church as monastic orders with little impact on the broader church. This dynamic of marginalizing the Bible did change, though, with the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Why, then, didn’t the new churches, as a rule, embrace the peace message of the Bible?

Continue reading “Why isn’t Protestantism’s Bible peaceable? [Peace and the Bible #2]” →

Peace and the Bible: How clear is the connection? [Peace and the Bible #1]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 17, 2023

As I have evolved in my thinking, my convictions about the importance of peace—saying yes to social justice and wholeness and no to war and domination—have become ever stronger even as my commitment to self-identifying as a Christian has gotten weaker. As a young adult, I started my intellectual journey first as a Christian first and then as a pacifist. A main part of the Christian part was a strong belief in the truthfulness and centrality of the Bible for my belief system. I had to be convinced that the Bible had a peace agenda.

Once I came to see the Bible as a peace book, though, I threw myself into what has proved to be a lifelong project of trying to construct a strong peace theology based on the Bible. Interestingly, as I have become more and more persuaded of the Bible’s peaceable content over the years, I have become less and less impressed with how Christianity has appropriated that resource. That is, my movement away from self-identifying as a Christian has in part been due to the Bible. If I have to choose between the peaceable message of the Bible and the generally accepting disposition toward war of Christianity and Christian doctrine, I will choose the Bible every time.

I remain as interested as ever in wrestling with the stories in the Bible (and the big, over-arching story that I believe the Bible tells) in relation to our current needs for peace convictions and in relation to the troubling warist legacy of the Christian religion. My energy for putting thoughts that emerge from this wrestling into written words ebbs and flows depending on what else I am focusing on. I seem to be feeling more energized about these issues right now, and so I want to spend some time writing a number of blog posts on “Peace and the Bible” in the weeks to come—maybe to end the year with a small burst of creativity (here is a link to the homepage of the series).

In this first post, I will briefly address several of the general questions I have been thinking about lately. In the posts to come, I plan to range pretty widely. I don’t have an ordered agenda of material I want to discuss so much as simply a variety of ideas that have popped into my mind in recent months. Typically, some thought will get my attention, and I will jot a few notes in hopes that at some point in the future I will devote more reflection to the issue. Sometimes I do that; more often I don’t. Here’s a chance to pick up on some of these brainstorms. I think there will be a general coherence to the set of posts, though: The Bible is peaceable and relevant. These will be some of the reasons why and how.

Continue reading “Peace and the Bible: How clear is the connection? [Peace and the Bible #1]” →

One pacifist’s reflections on the Russia/Ukraine war

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 21 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—September 4, 2023

I have a number of friends who are quite sympathetic to the plight of the Ukrainian people in the face of the terrible war that is going on in the eastern part of that nation. Along with that sympathy seems to exist a corresponding sympathy with the American military support for Ukraine and the account of this war given by US/NATO sources. I share the first sympathy but not the second.

As has famously been said, the “fog of war” renders clear understanding of the elements of any war very difficult—generally, this “fog” extends to the various stories that are told about the factors that led to a war and the factors that could resolve it. I certainly don’t claim to be able to pierce all these levels of fog in relation to the Ukraine war, but as I struggle to make what sense of the situation as I can, I have some reflections to offer. (I want to thank one of my doubly sympathetic friends, Howard Pepper, for some stimulating comments he made in response to my recent blog post on Philip Short’s biography of Vladimir Putin. What follows is meant not so much as an argument with Howard as simply a chance to spell out my position without an attempt to offer evidence or justifications.)

The Russian choice for war is morally wrong

As a pacifist, I *do* condemn Russia’s military engagement with Ukraine as immoral. I think it is wrong in principle, and I think in practice it does not and will not serve the wellbeing of Russia and its people. At the same time, I condemn as immoral Ukraine and its US/NATO backers for provoking that engagement and fueling it with weaponry and training. I condemn US/NATO for building up Ukraine’s military for many years and for helping to exacerbate the longstanding tensions among the Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking residents of Ukraine. It is quite clear already that pursuing a military response to Russia is not and cannot hope to serve the wellbeing of Ukraine and its people. I don’t think one has to be a pacifist to express this condemnation on both sides, but certainly no pacifist should fail to do so.

I condemn the Russians for not working harder to find ways through diplomacy to address the concerns that led them to take the step of greatly accelerating the militarization of the conflict with Ukraine that had been simmering since at least 2014. Probably even more, though, I condemn the US/NATO and their allies in the Ukrainian leadership for not respecting what seem to be legitimate security fears on the Russians’ part in relation to the eastward expansion of NATO nor being willing to converse with Russia’s expressed concerns and expressed willingness to negotiate in the months leading up the Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

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Why do so many Christians support warism? [Questioning Faith #20]

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Ted Grimsrud—April 13, 2023

One of the aspects of Christianity that has long troubled me and has played an increasingly significant role in my sense of my own faith has been how Christianity has for so long and so decisively been comfortable with “warism” (by which I mean to believe in war, to have a generally uncritical and positive disposition toward preparing for, threatening, promoting, and ultimately fighting in war). I grew up in my family with a mild warism and a vague Christian sensibility and had no sense that there could be a tension between the two. After my conversion at age 17, my religious convictions became much stronger as did my warism (in church, I was presented a very favorable view of America’s wars).

However, a few years later, I embraced Christian pacifism and became convicted that warism and Christian faith should be mutually exclusive. The contradiction became apparent once I began to see Jesus’s message as politically normative for Christians. Very quickly, I also came to see warism as deeply problematic on its own terms even when not judged in light of Jesus’s message. Mainly, though, my convictions about Jesus showed me the inherent problems with warism. As John Prine sang back in those days, “Jesus don’t like killing, no matter what the reason for.” I faced a crucial historical question. What changed? If Jesus was about peace, how did his followers become so warist?

Christianity’s turn from Jesus’s way

From the time of my embrace of Christian pacifism, I have wanted to understand better why the large majority of Christians have tended not to do likewise. I learned that the history of Christianity from New Testament times to the fourth century is ambiguous on questions of war and peace. Hence, analyses tend to be contested. I feel comfortable saying, though, that earliest Christianity did (with few exceptions) apply Jesus’s teachings in a way that led to pacifism. We have no record of a Christian leader supporting participation in warfare until the 4th century.

The evolution of Christianity during its first few centuries did move in the direction of the acceptance of war even though not in overt and direct ways. The big picture political situation changed early in the 4th century when Emperor Constantine formally established a rapprochement with Christianity following generations of intense and at times deadly persecution. Christians, it seems, accepted that connection immediately and without debate and in short order became soldiers and supporters of the Empire’s wars—to the point that less than a century after the initial rapprochement, only Christians were allowed in the Roman military.

Shockingly (at least from the point of view of Christian pacifism), the history of Christianity since the 4th century is, essentially, a history of the largely uncritical acceptance of war in almost all Christian communities. This is shocking because this warism seems so drastically contrary to what Jesus advocated. It is also shocking because we have virtually no record of debate or disagreement with the turn toward war among Christian leaders. And it is shocking as well that Jesus’s life and teaching essentially disappeared from the main accounts of Christian theology and ethics (this is apparent early on in the authoritative creeds and confessions of the churches that, typically, if they mention Jesus’s life at all, jump from his virgin birth to his crucifixion).

Continue reading “Why do so many Christians support warism? [Questioning Faith #20]” →

How does Christian pacifism work? [Questioning faith #15]

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Ted Grimsrud—January 29, 2023

My definition of pacifism starts with the conviction that no belief or commitment or loyalty matters more than loving all others. It follows from such a conviction that participating in or preparing for or supporting warfare would never be acceptable. A key element, then, of this kind of conviction is that it requires a break from the widely held assumption that we should allow our nation to decide for us when war is okay. This assumption I call the “blank check”—the willingness (generally simply assumed more than self-consciously chosen) to do what our nation calls upon us to do, to give it—in effect—a blank check.

I have studied the responses American citizens had to their nation’s all-in call for fighting World War II. Only a tiny handful refused to take up arms, and I would say that almost universally those “conscientious objectors” shared a sense of loyalty to some higher moral conviction than accepting the blank check—and those who weren’t COs did not share that loyalty. Those who went to war did accept that their highest loyalty was owed to their nation.

If I add the modifier “Christian” to the term pacifism, the basic definition remains the same, but it adds the source of the conviction about the centrality of love. “Christian pacifism,” I would say, is the conviction that loving others is our never to be subordinated moral commitment, and this is due to the message of Jesus. Christians who aspire to have love be their central moral conviction (that is, “Christian pacifists”) look especially to Jesus’s teaching that love of God and neighbor is the heart of God’s will for human beings.

Why self-consciousness about pacifism matters

The two main inter-related reasons for why it is so important actually to understand Christian pacifism are: (1) in the long history of Christianity, hardly any Christian groups have in fact been committed to pacifism despite it being so central to Jesus’s message and (2) in the long history of human civilization hardly any Christians seem to have seriously questioned the validity of giving the state a blank check when it comes to warfare despite war being so obviously a violation of Jesus’s core message.

Continue reading “How does Christian pacifism work? [Questioning faith #15]” →

Is Christian theology war theology? [Question faith #14]

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Ted Grimsrud—January 9, 2023

The kind of theology I believe in is what I call “peace theology.” By “peace theology” I mean the conviction that love of God and of all neighbors are the center of faith. No other conviction or commitment is as important as love. As a result of this conviction, violence, warfare, injustice, and domination are all rejected as acceptable behaviors—that is, I believe we are called to a pacifistic way of life. One of the main emphases of peace theology is to seek to understand all of our key convictions in light of this core conviction of love.

I also recognize that the Christian tradition has not affirmed peace theology. The vast majority of Christian teaching and Christian practice has found war and other forms of violence to be acceptable for most of its history. However, I believe that peace theology is the original Christian theology—it follows directly from the life and teaching of Jesus. So, for me, one of the key questions that arises in relation to Christianity is: Why did things change (see my earlier blog post, “Why did Christianity move so far away from the message of Jesus?”)?

The social context for thinking about peace theology

The question that just now has intrigued me is this: In recognizing that Christian theology (defined here in terms of what most Christians believe) is no longer peace theology, does that mean that Christian theology is “war theology”? In this post, I want to reflect on that question. I will start with an assumption that not everyone will share. I suspect it is impossible to be neutral about war in our current world, at least in the United States. That is, the momentum in our society it towards war. Public spending, policy decisions, and the message of popular culture all are prowar, pro-preparation for war, pro-military response to conflicts. Peace theologian Walter Wink used the term “myth of redemptive violence” to describe the general disposition of American culture (and most other cultures). Americans believe that violence works to solve problems, that often it is the only thing that works. So, we are drawn to orient ourselves toward violence and warfare. Another coined term fits in describing our general disposition in the US: “warism.” By “warism” I have in mind the belief in war, a belief that leads to the acceptance of making preparation for war-making the most important focus of our society (as measured, say, by public expenditures).

In a warist world that is shaped by the myth of redemptive violence, theological neutrality is impossible. To say nothing and to ignore the dominant mythology in our society is actually to offer implicit support and affirmation. To say nothing also seems to be blind to the ways that warism shapes everything about how we perceive the world—including our theology. I tend to think we either self-consciously notice and oppose warism or we, at least implicitly, affirm it. We can’t avoid it.

Continue reading “Is Christian theology war theology? [Question faith #14]” →

Why did Christianity move so far away from the message of Jesus? [Questioning faith #7]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 21, 2022

From the time I made a commitment to Christian pacifism in the mid-1970s, I have believed that Jesus and the Bible as a whole support that commitment. In the years since, I have learned a lot more about how this “support” is complicated and at time ambiguous. However, I still believe that the general message of the Bible and more clearly the message of Jesus obviously point toward peace, compassion, care for the vulnerable, and what we now refer to as restorative justice—even if some may quibble about whether it explicitly teaches pacifism.

A few years after my turn toward peaceable Christianity, my wife Kathleen and I spent a year at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. We gained a terrific foundation there of biblical peace theology, especially from Old Testament professor Millard Lind and New Testament professor Willard Swartley. I have preached through much of the Bible in the 40 years since attending AMBS, each year during my 20-year teaching career at Eastern Mennonite University I taught a class called “Biblical Theology of Peace and Justice,” and I have written several books on peace based on the Bible. I feel quite established in my sense that the Bible (especially, but not only, Jesus) gives us a strong message of peace.

The difference between the Bible and Christian practice

So, that leads to the obvious question. What happened to Christianity? The history of Christianity is a history full of wars and militarism, conquest and domination, crusades and the embrace of empire. One statistical piece of evidence comes from the United States. In 1940, after several years of intense lobbying by peace advocates, the legislation passed to begin a military draft included allowance for pacifists to be exempt from joining the military. So, this proved to be kind of a test case.

From my analysis, I would estimate that about one out of 1,000 American Christians chose the conscientious objector route. For the vast majority of the young men who were drafted, the option to be a CO—and the sense that Jesus would support such a stance—seemingly never even entered the realm of possibility. Not only have Christians around the world almost always supported their nations’ wars, even when they would be fighting other Christians, it actually seems to be the case at least in the United States that Christians are more likely than non-Christians to support wars and preparation for wars. It doesn’t seem farfetched to call Christianity a pro-war religion—the opposite of Jesus’s message.

So, again, the question: Why the transformation? This is a question that has interested me for a long time, but I have never devoted serious attention to it. I have come up with a preliminary list, though, of what seem to be key elements of the evolution away from Jesus’s teaching.

Continue reading “Why did Christianity move so far away from the message of Jesus? [Questioning faith #7]” →

Pacifism and saying no to the state: Various motives for refusal [Pacifism today #7]

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Ted Grimsrud—April 15, 2022

With a breathtaking rapidity, the United States in the last couple of months has moved decisively in a militaristic direction. As historian Andrew Bacevich recently wrote, many American leaders “welcome the Ukraine War as the medium that will reignite an American commitment to the sort of assertive and muscular approach to global policy favored in militaristic quarters…. Putin … has handed the United States ‘a historic opportunity to regroup and reload for an era of intense competition’—with not only Russia but also China meant to be in our crosshairs.”

The delight of these militarist leaders and the arms dealers who also are profiting so greatly from the new conflict should give people who actually care about peace on earth pause before believing the spin our government and corporate media are giving things right now. We will almost certainly face a continued ratcheting up of militaristic dynamics in our society for the foreseeable future. The warism of our culture has always been bubbling just below the surface even as other crises have demanded attention. For it to move front and center hopefully will clarify that militarism is the problem that must be resolved if we are to make progress in overcoming the climate crisis, the curse of white supremacy, the violence of our policing and mass incarceration regimes, environmental collapse, the functioning of our democracy, and many others.

Effective opposition to the warism seems far from possible at this moment, though. The one single issue that seems to unite Democrats and Republicans is expansion of our war-making capabilities. The apparent impossibility of opposition does not diminish what may be a fact—we turn from warism as a society, or we all go down.  

In face of all this, the witness of pacifism seems more relevant than ever. When there is such uncritical support for pouring weapons of war into Ukraine, Germany greatly expanding its military spending, and the dynamics of confrontation rather than reconciliation with Russia and China, it seems pacifists are some of the few who voice opposition. One hope we might have is that with our nation’s warism so front and center, more people will question whether we actually do want our nation to be so committed to military “solutions” after all. Maybe this will lead to more interest in pacifism.

Continue reading “Pacifism and saying no to the state: Various motives for refusal [Pacifism today #7]” →