Just-peace in the
title of this panel is not one word, but linked by a hyphen. The in-between
space and the interconnection between justice and peace is the subject for our
discussion this afternoon. Can we have peace that is not just? Can we demand
justice and justice alone without peace? And who is to decide what is justice
and justice to whom? Is peace a utopian state without war, conflicts, and
tears?
We are reminded of
the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when he
said that he was “gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who is more
devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the
absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
wrote that there is no cheap grace in his resistance to the Nazi regime. Today Christians
must come to realize that there is no cheap peace. In the Gospels, Jesus
confronted the power of the Roman Empire and the religious elites of his time.
He proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God, as a counternarrative to the
imperial rule of Caesar. Instead of glorifying military might and fanfare of
war, Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they shall be called sons of God” (Matt. 5:9). He was tortured and died a
political prisoner on the cross, an instrument to instill suffering and fear
for anyone who dared to challenge imperial rule.
Yet throughout the age, the
message of Jesus has been domesticated and coopted to serve the status quo.
Time and time again, Christian doctrines and beliefs have been misused and
misappropriated to justify the Crusades, the conquest of the Americas, and
colonization of the world’s majority. The Christian Right and those advocating
the Gospel of Prosperity have used the Gospel to bolster the 1% and to
discriminate against the 99%, especially women and children, the working class,
racial minorities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
Middle-class churches proclaim peace, where there is really no peace.
Just-peace requires nothing less
than a collective metanoia (repentence) of our own complicity in supporting the
violence of an unjust system. Our economic system that condemns one out of four
young children to live in poverty is both violent and unjust. Without
recognizing the terror and violence inflicted in the name of national security,
bailing out the big banks, and protecting corporate interests, we as Christians
will never fully understand the cost of just-peace and the cost of
discipleship.
The pursuit of just-peace requires
us to begin to speak divine power in radically new ways. Christian images of God are commonly shaped by dominant images of power and might.
In the past, God was often envisioned as a heavenly patriarch or monarch.
Divine power understood as hierarchical, patriarchal, and one-sided has been
used to reinforce the powers and principalities on earth.
Just-peace requires us to see divine power in
relations, in the interstices, in the spaces between us. We need to see beyond
the false dichotomies of black and white and to embrace the pregnant
potentialities in the gray areas. At the Episcopal Divinity School, we
encourage students to say both-and and not either-or.
The question in interfaith dialogue and engagement
is not to draw a simple line between Christians and non-Christians. The issue
at hand is not whether people profess belief in God or not; the question is
what kind of ultimate reality and what kind of power people affirm. Those who
affirm power as a top-down process and those who see God or ultimate reality
upholding it are closer to each other, no matter whether they are Christian nor
not, than those who affirm alternative forms of power that move from the bottom
up.
From understanding
dialogue as service to mission in the first half of the twentieth century to
the discussion of multiple religious belonging, Christian churches have changed quite drastically in their attitudes toward other religious traditions.
As we face the future, interfaith dialogue must address some of the burning
issues in our world, such as the rise of fundamentalisms of all kinds, the
assertion of religious identity and fragmentation of community, the
exploitation of religious passion for violence, the widespread suspicion of
political and religious leaders, and cynicism about possible social change.
Interfaith dialogue must be a force for peacekeeping. In contemporary politics
there are the dual forces of politicization of religion and the theologization
of politics.
In the past several
years, a group of theologians have begun to explore the concept of polydoxy in
order to describe the multiplicity and relationality of God and of our world.
Polydoxy, as its prefix “poly” suggests, acknowledges both the internal
diversity of the Christian tradition and the plurality of the world’s religious
and spiritual traditions. Colleen Hartung has said, “Polydoxy, a space for many
opinions about belief within a body of belief, or alternatively a place of many
faiths within a circle of faith, implies an openness to diversity, difference,
challenge, and multiplicity.”
Polydoxy foregrounds the diversity of cultural and religious traditions
of the world, and sees such diversity as a blessing and not a curse. Polydoxy
debunks the myth of the superiority of one God, one creed, and one Church, and
holds multiple traditions and perspectives together when looking at God and
reality. A theology of multiplicity seeks company, and does not reduce the
Other into the Same.
* Remarks at a panel discussion on "Nurturing a Culture of Just-Peace: Opening Local Communities for Interfaith Engagement" at the Episcopal Divinity School on May 2, 2012. The videos of this panel are available on the School's website.