Category Archives: justice

freedom, justice, peace, solidarity

Pacifism in Light of Freedom, Justice, Solidarity, and Peace

I’ve had this post in me for months. Nearly a year actually. This post seeks to re-look at pacifism in light of what freedom, justice, peace, and solidarity are. This is in one way, the next logical step for my study in theological language: a series of definitions. This is to show that the real discussion around violence and non-violence is about how to properly understand the language that shapes us and the categories that constitute the discourse, rather than simply shouting louder or moralizing one’s desires.

So quickly, a refresher. The words I have focused on are freedom, justice, solidarity, and peace. I have sought to give my own definitions elsewhere, but I shall sum them up here:

Freedom: Christian freedom is the space and power provided by the Christian community (and God) to be and do the things your Christian community (and God) needs or asks of you. In short, freedom is not about choice, but the recognition that the subject is constituted by the community and the word freedom encapsulates the desires, goals, or telos that the community calls the member to seek. In Christianity, this is love because the community is formed by, and therefore called to, love. Importantly, this is not a tame love. This love will show itself throughout the rest of this post. It is not safe, but it is good.

Justice: Christian justice seeks to holistically set relationships aright. Justice is to take people and their problematic relationships — out of their imbalance, abuse, and brokenness — and to transform/heal people and their relationships that they may flourish. Justice is redemption work. It is reconciliation work.

Solidarity: Christian solidarity is not representative; rather, it is choosing to live with the marginalized and seeking to empower the voice of those who have been silenced. Solidarity is a partisan justice: justice that seeks the good for the hurt and hurt-er alike by propping up the victim while calling into question the victimizer (who is killing them-self as well).

Peace: Christian peace is living out and participating in the continuing redemption by God through grace and love. Peace is not the silencing of parties, instead it is altering the very logic or fabric of life as we know it. The outcome is that swords are turned into plowshares. We live peacefully and hope for true peace at the end of things where everything is made new.

I believe I am right when I say Love is the Movement (of Freedom, Justice, Reconciliation, and Solidarity) because love is the action that knits us back together in the face of rupture. Love exists in a separate economy, with grace, rather than an economy of bargain and the self. In fact, love must exist in its own way because it is clear that the status quo revels in death at its telos and its method. Love brings us out of the cycle of death and into a new way of relating to one another; love brings us into the freedom of the Christian community. Only in love, then, can justice, solidarity, and peace be realized because they exist in a different economy than self-serving power. Thus a crucial characteristic of this love is its universality. It is not selective. It is not exclusive. It demands nothing, but is for all. In this way, love is embodied as a pure gift. It is by its very definition: grace.

Also love inspires hope in the darkest of times. Despite the threat of death, love exposes the negative poverty of death. With love acting as love, rather than converting over to the economy of death, love stays true. With love as the key or method to true, holistic reconciliation, it must embody from where it comes: the kenotic, divine economy. Thus to live out the Christian freedom is to identify with Christ. To live the Christ love is to embody Christ.

So why say all this about subjects that seem to have little affect on why violence is problematic? Violence is problematic because it runs contrary to the Christological-biblical life I have just laid out. Simply, the Christian life is a life of change from one way of life to another, from one economy to another. The new hope we have — the Christological hope we live — is that the past does not have to rule the present, nor does the past have to command the future. Come what may, the Christian life is a work of love that seeks to mend people together, not enable people to make others disappear from sight. The Christian life seeks to make visible all who have been made invisible so that all may live well together.

Thus the Christian life has no room for the actions of violence and war because it has no room for the economy of death. In fact, the Christian life not only says that we will not make you die for our desires, but also that we shall seek to help you and die if necessary in the process because the Christian economy is the Christ love for all.

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freedom, justice, love, memory, peace, reconcile, redemption, solidarity

Love is the Movement (of Freedom, Justice, Reconciliation, and Solidarity)

This post functions in a few ways. It is partly a clarification for a few conversation partners at school. It is also a synthesizing work on the way towards a post on pacifism that I have long promised in light of the previous language work. Without further delay:

We begin our existence with break or rupture. With death. And throughout life relationships of all kinds die: between communities, within communities, or strictly between two people. At one time the relationship is there in a positive way, and in the next following second, it is gone, it is sick or broken or dead. This death is not merely the virtue of not being properly alive, but has taken on its own identity as broken — judged in relationship to how life should be, but toxic in its being.

And yet, the Christian life seeks to live contrary to this. Forgiveness, reconciliation, and the flourishing of life is not only the telos of humanity because of divine interruption, but the future living itself today from the same divine work and the promises therein.

Nevertheless, there exists a gap between life and death. The Christian answer, for the action between the act of death and the act of new life, is the Christological movement into love by way of a sacramental life that remembers Jesus in terms of anamnesis. God looked into the fullness of death and did not choose death. Love was the method — the way of being — instead. Through our active and participatory remembrance, God moves us into life by his love and her grace. In a blink, relationships can now in their time (in their own blink) be restored.

As such, the sacramental life — including the in-breaking of the rule of God — looks death in its face. It refuses to trivialize death. And yet, the rule of God says that in present, the repercussions from the past do not hold sway. Indeed, the toxicity of death is arrested by love in the act of reconciliation. This is justice.

However, the forgiveness of today is not exactly retrogressive. While death is stopped, and its eternal sting is indeed taken away in the christological act of redemption, we do not work history backwards. The old covenant of Israel was not dissolved backwards, nor the promises of God renounced to the troublesome humanity; but rather, the curtain between the Holy of Holies and the people was ripped from top to bottom at Jesus’ death — the Christological love in death that looked Death in the face opened the present and future to the continuation of God’s work and plan.

History, and the sufferings within history, leave wounds that linger as scars. We long for the full healing, and at times, we do receive it, but often today, the death in the past still exists. The wounds from the spear and nails were left in the Lamb who will be recognized as the “Lamb who was slain.” Nazi death camps, divorce, parental abandonment, murder, still exist as scars even after the reconciliation between people. But the hope we have is that the past does not have to rule the present, nor does the past have to command the future. Reconciliation today informed by the future eschaton makes the past the past as it confronts the pain and conditions of the past in the present. Rather than simply perpetuating death, love moves us into the freedom to love.

The problems of the past, however, are not left to simply be ignored. But the problems and death of the past is not to be left to memorials, like we do with war memorials. Instead, the past is to be remembered to know who we are and to make sure that we have reconciled today what was in the past that still lives in the present. This is justice formed from the memory of a just God who took pain and healing seriously. This justice is working towards the righting relationships, towards reconciliation.

But how do we live in love towards reconciliation? The death of the past living in the present conflicts with those of us Christologically formed. The answer is yet again Christological, because it is incarnational: a loving solidarity against the perpetuated evils. We are immediately in conflict with the sting of death as it continues today.

After true reconciliation life is able to flourish, relationships are established and strengthened, because swords have become plowshares. This is peace. We see glimpses of it today (and indeed participate in it one hopes) informed by eschatological memory and the small reconciliations that do happen. But while death is rejected in favor of love and reconciliation, death still exists. For now, formed by memory and urged on by hope, we work in love to participate in what divine reconciliation we can.

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justice, roman catholic

“Unofficial” Catholic Social Teaching on Justice

A major implication of the wider semantic field of biblical understanding of justice is that “biblical justice” is not as clearly distinguished from “charity” or caritative activity as in contemporary social ethics. Actions such as confronting the oppressive power of the wealthy and alleviating the sufferings of the poor are ultimately ways of “doing right” and seeking right relationships between God and humanity, and among humans themselves. On the other hand, today the traditional works of mercy (e.g., feeding the hungry, caring for the imprisoned, welcoming strangers) are equated with “social justice ministry,” often at both the parish and national levels. While such actions are certainly a hallmark of church life, a biblical concern for justice has three elements that supplement such actions: (1) biblical justice is embedded in those very narratives that form a people’s self-identity; (2) actions that manifest concern for the weak and vulnerable become mandated in law and are not, as often thought today, supererogatory; and (3) biblical justice always has a “prophetic dimension,” by virtue of entering into conflict with oppressive structures of injustice.

Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations, pg. 15.

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ecclesiology, justice, modern nation-state, peace, political theology, reconcile

Justice, Peace, and Reconciliation

I’m drawing to the end of my church and state paper, still tentatively titled “Imagination and Exploration in Church and State Relations: Rowan Williams, Sharia, Social Space, Christianity, and America.” Of course I’ve got a few books out and in lieu of having twitter, I’ll use this blog: “David is surrounded by his Metz books. His heart feels strangely warmed.”

I’ve also got an excerpt here from near the end, where I’m juxtaposing State and Christian ideas of justice and peace. I’m still editing it, but this is a blog, so I don’t think it all has to be perfect. That is also the reason why I haven’t put in footnotes from the actual work. As far as content, its also a bit of a playful “screw you” to those who understand reconciliation in terms of regression. I’m looking at you Milbank and Bridges.

While reconciliation is not the operative lens for the state, it is for Jesus and the church, among other foundational, interrelated politics like the economy of grace and forgiveness. However, the divine economy of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation are not limp wristed, passive attempts at mediating relationships. Importantly, Christian peace and justice also does not trivialize the rift or violation, instead it takes seriously the violation, the people, and the redemption. Human involvement in grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation on this side of the parousia does not disappear transgression, as if it never happened, but transforms relationships today into how they will eschatologically be – swords beaten into plowshares and the lion laying down with the lamb. Even much of liberation theology can be read this way, as it seeks to redeem people, oppressor and oppressed, and their oppressive relationship.

In fact, even the church today as the mission of the basileia of God does not achieve a thoroughgoing justice throughout the globe. It is a participant in what can be achieved locally throughout the globe – in the interruption of the way of death by God – before the parousia. Thus, reconciliation today is not particularly retrogressive. The Jews, homosexuals, and handicapped killed in the Holocaust and the Germans who designed and implemented the programs are both dead and beyond the reach of the church (as is the case in 9/11 or some of Darfur or some of Iraq, etc.). We live in the aftermath of dead, irreconcilable generations and only God can enact a full redemption at the end of time; nevertheless, the church has plenty of redemptive work to do today. In fact, to stop death in its tracks is the key to redemptive work; the past will not tyrannize the present or the future. Despite the shortcoming of the church, it is formed by the memory of Christ and eschatological hope and can therefore seek a true sense of justice and peace; the ecclesial vision is comprehensive and holistic. It attempts to live the interruptive action of crucified and resurrected grace that declares the end of death’s sting. Death will not have the last word; it shall be stopped, interrupted this very day, so as to make way for divine peace – the flourishing of people and relationships. The church, rightly understood even in its brokenness, seeks to embody the in-breaking of the basileia; if we act right, if we live up to our call to witness, we can participate in making space where the basileia breaks in and creates a social space of reconciliation, of redemption, of peace. It is this Christological power embodied in social existence that the State in its individualist anthropology cannot rightly account for. With these Christian relational definitions of justice and peace in mind, Paul’s exhortation for Christians to settle relational breaks among themselves – and so to be the “witness to the inauguration of the kingdom of Christ” – is intelligible.

The difference between State and Christian notions of peace and justice should make clear to the reader that Christianity attempts to go far beyond the State in the ecclesial endeavors to rightly remember Jesus (specifically anamnesis of the Christ). Thus, when reconciliation is achieved in lieu of, say, litigation, something better, something holistic and healthy has been achieved. Supported by Rowan Williams’ argument, this seeking of the global common good through prophetic reconciliation should be recognized as legitimate and helpful. The social body of Christianity, the church, and its jurisprudence should be recognized for the sake of the faith’s adherents (who are also citizens of the State), to avoid an oppressive exercise of law, and to embrace those who seek, and arguably achieve, the common good by peaceful means.

Before moving on, I want to make very clear that this understanding of equal jurisprudence and transformative accommodation is not to be understood within the categories of something like a chaplain in the United States army. Christian jurisprudence crosses the borders of human categories because it is relational. It is not to be coerced to enable the status quo as it seeks to continue oppression, of say, the Native Americans in the United States, rather it aims to achieve reconciliation that interrupts the abusive relationships and works towards a flourishing peace. The church is not to be behind the soldiers enabling them kill and absolving them of guilt, but in the crossfire and in the trenches, working for reconciliation. The church in its very being inherently works for this global common good. This is the natural political outworking of ecclesial/communal, ethical embodiment of its memory of Jesus that has been stripped by the State, as the church has been fragmented by the monopolistic jurisprudence of the State.

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justice, law, peace, political theology, reconcile

Justice, Peace, and Jurisdictions

In the face of the incommensurability of these accounts of justice, it is constitutional law, and the American fixation on the rule of law, that protects the nation-state from degenerating into the violence into which Thomas Hobbes predicted a society without the Leviathan would collapse. In this light, it should not be surprising that Christians’ willingness to absent themselves from civil litigation structures–and in doing so deny that those structure are necessary to produce peace–is threatening to the society at large.

Christians acknowledge this good work of the law without feeling the necessity to participate in the project of the law or worrying about the threat they may pose to the rule of law. In this regard, the Anabaptist witness appropriately suggests that Christians are not against the law and will follow it in its structuring principles, yet, likewise, see that it is merely a way forward in the midst of irreconcilable differences. It provides a form of closure to disputes–a real good–but often cannot provide a shared narrative substantial enough to bring the parties back into communion. Americans obey the law only because it is backed with the force of the nation-state and its violence. God’s law, on the other hand, is obeyed because it is the law in which the church finds its life.

First Be Reconciled: Challenging Christians in the Courts, pg. 119-120.

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justice, liberation

Justice Defined

This is part of a study in theological language, the rest of the posts can be found here.

Justice is a word often used in theological circles, well, mostly in liberation theology circles. Still, it crops up elsewhere as well, albeit, less frequent than it ought to. Also, I’m partially unsatisfied with justice as it is commonly used. It seems to be used in a number of ways: first, one’s rights or freedom have been blocked and seeking justice is the struggle for the recognition of said given rights; second, a notion of retribution or punitive — eye for an eye, lawsuit for malpractice, or lethal injection for murder with revenge at heart; third, setting aright relationships, or to the blind and objective judgment of lady justice in America, the scales are made even.

When it came to freedom, I argued that any notion of freedom is tied to a community, and what freedom really seems to mean, is is the space and power provided by the Christian community (and God) to be and do the things your Christian community (and God) needs or asks of you. (Or said in a way that mangles the English language: the action that a community pushes its adherents towards.) One is free to do something means that one is allowed to do something without the societal backlash from its community, because it is what the community wants. However, an American definition of freedom often relies on specific ideas of justice. When freedom is hindered, it is considered just for the freedom to be restored — freedom for pleasure and happiness.

However, when it comes to a definition of justice, understood by a Christian, justice is different. For one, rights language is unnecessary. A creation theology is more expansive and deeper than any rights language within the Christian community. Other shifts in justice also happen when freedom is understood from a Christological perspective. Freedom ceases to be empowerment for happiness — in our case, room made for the commodification and fetishizing of anything the market can lay hold of, like revenge — and becomes a complex salvation. In a word, liberation. Lastly, lady justice cannot and should not be a substitute for the crucified God. In the gospels, scales are used in the temple, the temple that Jesus overthrew. And in contrast, the salvation of Jesus is universal and not limited to those who can pay with coin. Jesus wasn’t also objective like so often our institutions claim to be (i.e. Justice, Science, Journalism), rather, Jesus advocated for people, preached the basileia, and died doing just that. So, of all the definitions above, justice may mean that we may need to fight for the recognition of one’s humanity for specific human beings (as opposed to using rights language), but that still falls underneath a better definition: setting aright relationships. This definition liberation theology affirms when it seeks to rehabilitate both the oppressor and oppressed.

Notably, if justice is truly putting people back into right, healthy relationships — if justice is holistic, then the government cannot fulfill true justice. Neither can certain institutions maintain a just understanding. Take for instance the less than freemarket market running amok as it created the housing/mortgage crisis. Even with some regulations, the “market” (as if it is a nebulous and uncontrollable force, which is just flat wrong) gave/pushed predatory loans. The most that seems to have happened so far is that the big lending banks got a boost from the government to keep them from folding, and now there is a new bill for some who did get hurt. At best, this is working with scales again. “We put everything back together again (presumably), so no harm, no foul, right?” Clearly there is nothing wrong with the system itself.

Now, I am myself sympathetic to the old time Social Gospel, I really am. However, despite the good it did do, it would not have worked without the ecclesial grounding from which the need for care came from. Dorrien insists that the Social Gospel movement should be referred to as the Third Great Awakening. I’m all for laws protecting people from harming children, yet, I do not think we can confuse the move towards using laws to curb evil by aligning self-interest with doing good, with a holistic salvation of Christological justice. The justice of Jesus, setting the possibility of righting relationships is grounded in the rule of God. God doesn’t weigh the misdeeds, but rather she redeems the people and their dysfunctional relationships. Redemption and new creation are the paradigms through which justice is done. Quite simply, the problems with the government, the market, the old time social gospel, and even some liberation theologies, is that they are not substantial enough. They are too narrow. Justice, holistic justice, cannot be achieved. But in the church, the communal body founded around the memory of Christ, redemption and new creation, found in the in-breaking of the basileia, is the entire idea.

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black theology, ecclesiology, James Cone, justice, modern nation-state, obama, Oscar Romero, political theology

Talking about Obama and His Church

I have to admit, I’m disappointed in Obama and the whole political process, but the latter doesn’t surprise me. Neither did Rush Limbaugh’s categorically false and woefully misinformed response: calling Mr. Wright “a race-baiter and a hatemonger.”

It is also safe to say that the media gets absolutely none of this as it did with the Williams row, or what the Pastor Wright really drives at. They should be ashamed of themselves – just as white as part of the church in America. Again, no surprise.

One aspect about theological study and discourse is that it is fundamentally dialogical. It is conversational, which is why I have no qualms about what I’ve done to follow in this post (other than that this may seem rather arrogant – Posting your own conversation? Well, I’m not going to post someone else’s am I?). I had a conversation with Chris Layton, a friend of mine, and it went something like this:

Me: None of this is good, as far as I can see right now. The first black president we might have and he’ll go with American innocence other than slavery? Publically, as far as I have seen, he hasn’t brought up slavery much, or the effects that still strongly linger today and doesn’t extend that critique beyond the “black experience” like most black liberation theology does. However, it was the potential to do so that was the most interesting things about Obama, him coming from a black liberation church and embodying the critique. I was quite excited to see it and how his presidency would turn out. I suspect it’d be rather Niebuhrian, but still, better than other stuff.

My “politics” or favorite candidate are quite different than Obama, I’m more of a Kucinich person if anything (but not really a Kucinich person either), but I figured some black liberation from the presidency would do this country a lot of good. Now I’m not sure it’ll actually be that; now he’s kind of like Clinton, Hillary that is, and what good is that?

Chris: I think that the nation-state is not the route by which justice will be enacted.

Me: I suppose there is an upside, there isn’t the bastardizing of Christian hope by making it American hope (although I do admit I haven’t read the book, but it still strikes me as Reagan-esque). As for justice enacted by the nation-state? Sure, it won’t fully, but if there can be some change in the state, peacefully, it’ll at least begin a discussion. Having a Christian in the presidency actually bringing up issues that the church needs to deal with, I could live with that. There are other aspects I object to, but at least he’d do things I don’t see Hillary or McCain doing, but now, in some respects, I’m not so sure.

Chris: I don’t know that someone who occupies that office can speak to the church about churchly affairs. Its a kind of idolatry.

Me: Oh no, I’m not saying he could speak to the church, however, if the society is talking about it, it makes it an easier issue to raise in the church.

Chris: I think it makes it harder. If society talks about it, it will be too easy to let society set the terms of the conversation. For us to talk about these things we have to be free to choose the vocabulary. We have a habit of letting the terms of a social debate be handed to us

Me: True, but we’re always free to choose the vocabulary, just sometimes we don’t.

Chris: I think the times we do are in fact really rare.

Me: That is our problem though, that is not a problem with the debate per se. We need to be that Christian body in the debate.

Chris: Its an endemic problem for us, though. I think wishing for the circumstances that perpetuate the problem is … not good.

Me: I’m wishing for the debate, otherwise some people won’t even talk about it no matter how much we say anything. Its our task to make our voice heard and how we understand such a debate to take place.

Chris: To have a Christian in the white house, no matter how much we hope for him/her, we invite the sorts of mistakes we have been making these past decades – mistaking America’s interests for Christ’s. I would rather a non-Christian in the white house, so we are not tempted to displace our political responsibilities onto the nation-state.

Me: Yes, this is true. I have the same criticism of Huckabee, as I would of Obama. I certainly object to a lot, but I think it would be helpful to have black liberation spoken from the presidency, insomuch that it would bring up a discussion about white America – instead we just assume whiteness isn’t racialized itself.

Chris: We need first to take up those responsibilities before we can “enter the debate” but its so much easier to say “that guy is a Christian and an American and the leader of the free world.” We need to be marginal before we can summon the energy to speak in a way that will reflect the values of the church. See – I am not completely ignorant of liberation theology!

Me: True, but I wasn’t originally talking about our responsibilities, I was talking about the opportunity of Obama could’ve brought, while at the same time living the downsides as well. I figured out of the three, Obama was the most interesting and helpful, but now he really is starting to sound like the other two.

Chris: That may be true, but I remain very doubtful of any move to place hopes in a person who is aiming at such a position.

Me: The other two seem to look like typical presidential contenders and will simply use Christian language to pull from a niche for votes. I wasn’t placing much hope, especially now. It wasn’t like I was gunning for him from the beginning, more than wanting to see a black president. I didn’t think even then, that would bring salvation or make the country un-racist. Its just that Obama would be the healthiest of the three and by that virtue alone, the most interesting. Perhaps he still is, although I don’t follow everything that closely, but when he severs ties with something I know a bit of, I’m seeing something that disappoints me.

Me: And then I think, we’re screwed no matter what, and really that’s the whole idea of the church. We can’t really control the machinations of the world – like violence brought upon ourselves – instead we react strongly as Jesus for the hurting as the church no matter the consequences. I think again, as I am often reminded, of Oscar Romero and martyrdom.

Chris: This is better, methinks, those last two, not being able to control the machinations of the world and so on. If we vote, it is as a subversive.

Me: Yeah, a lot of liberation theologians may only like part of that.

Chris: Well, I’m not much of a liberation theologian.

Me: Cone, as a Niebuhrian (or taking a lot from Niebuhr), is okay with seeking power. While Niebuhr’s conception of power is complex, it still is rooted in the idea of not letting the oppressor oppress. Of course I’m simplifying it, but that is the general gist. So he might half like what I said, but certainly not all of it, as I’m so critical of the “liberal” project of working in the state (ironically, a great deal of conservatives/evangelicals/fundamentalists buy into the “liberal” project, but deny its affects). While I think he would like the idea that the white church would have to give up its privilege to do what I described: to be with, rather than “speak for” the hurting (thats an incredibly incredibly important distinction). I’m not a fan of some ways we speak of in empowerment here at Union, but if we are empowering when we chose to live with and support the poor as they speak, then I’m all for that. None of this representation crap, that so many people advocate – it keeps people in the same position and does little to change the systemic problems.

And then we digress.

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