Miller's misnomer: What we lose when we pit peace and justice against personal salvation
posted by Tim Nafziger on 12/13/09 at 11:10 PM
For the last few weeks, I've been wrestling with how to respond to Levi Miller's column on "peacenjustice." My first reaction was one of anger and frustration. No wonder the Mennonite church has had such a hard time integrating peace and justice into our whole denomination! The director of our publishing house mocks it as a buzzword and sees it as a product of "cultural chatterers." Miller seems to see shalom (the bible's word for peace and justice) as a little more then a worn out fad. It was much loved by the Sandinistas and Sojourners in the '70s, but it is time to grow up and move on.
Over the weeks, I wrote several paragraphs expounding on my outrage at an old white guy maligning a theology of liberation that challenges the unjust status quo. But then I realized that some day I too will be an old white guy, so I'd best not be too hasty. I was also forgetting what I've spent the last 6 years learning, first in the UK and then in Chicago: peace and justice and personal redemption belong together, not on opposite sides of an angry debate.
Through 17 years of U.S. Mennonite education I bought into Miller's dichotomy. I could either be a peace and justice Christian or I could be an evangelical. It was until I encountered the Anabaptist movement in England that I realized what a disservice I had been doing to myself. I discovered a charismatic vision of shalom that centered on God's vision for the redemption of all of creation, not just the soul and not just society. I befriended trade justice campaigners who sang classic praise songs. They talked about repentance for personal and social sin as they knelt in prayer outside the government arms trade offices. I heard a lot about God's heart for justice and shalom. I realized that we in the United States were missing out. Big time.
And so rather than throwing another log on the fire in the Mennonite culture wars, I'd like to suggest that our witness to the world will be stronger when we recognize that peace and justice is at the center of the gospel, right along side "Christian conversion, community, discipleship and hope in the resurrection." Jesus' invitation to redemption was for all of creation, not just individual souls, but whole communities, whole ecosystems. If we ignore structural sin of the powers and principalities to focus on personal bondage and sin, we do no more justice to God's invitation to wholeness than when we make the opposite mistake.
Miller is not the only Mennonite leader who sees discussion of peace and justice through the lens of their own experience in the '60s and '70s as a flower child. At the Mennonite convention in San Jose in 2007, I sat in on a panel discussion with young Mennonite leaders like Nekeisha Alexis-Baker, Hugo Saucedo and Immanuel Sila. I was sitting near the back and watched two senior leaders in Mennonite Mission Network whispering and giggling to each other through much of the presentation. When I asked them about it afterwards, they said that they'd heard it all before in the '70s, this talk of egalitarianism and justice. It isn't practical. It doesn't work in the real word.
So why doesn't shalom work? Miller has it all figured out:
However optimistic we peace and justice flower children were as youth, we lost our liberality on babies. The conservatives remained more hopeful, fruitful and multiplied—and eventually those trends influence the church membership and Sunday school attendance.
So basically conservatives "win" because they have hope and productive sex. On the first point, I realize I have to agree with him. Too often a theology overfocused on peace and justice can end up strident and triumphalist. We will shape the future! We will not be silent! We forget that it is God, not us who will save the world. Each time our attempts to shape the future fail or even backfire miserably, we grow a little more brittle and a little more cynical. Its no wonder that after 40 odd years of this cycle, Miller starts calling it "peacenjustice." But conservatives had hope. On this, I'll turn to Andrew Sullivan, a well-known conservative commentator. In a recent column he says:
Hope is not optimism. We have little reason for optimism given the first decade of the twenty-first century. Hope is a choice (emphasis in the original) As much a choice as faith and love.
Hope grounded in resurrection and Jesus triumph over death will not be so easily swayed by the latest political failures. It recognizes our need for personal liberation is as great as society's need for redemption. I have learned a lot about this from friends who depend on the redemptive power of Jesus in their lives on a daily basis. I think many Mennonite liberals could do well to learn this too.
Miller's second claim for the basis of conservative triumph is flawed in a number of ways. Reproduction rather then conversion as the basis of a faith community is the model of the old testament, not Jesus. It may have worked for Mennonites for 400 years, but you don't have to look much farther then the rapidly rising age of Mennonites to realize it won't work for the next 400.
So what about conversion? We often associate conversion with personal redemption and those first joining the Christian church, but new Mennonites may also come from other Christian backgrounds. In the '70s a whole new wave of converts came knocking on the Mennonites' doors. These are the people Miller derisively calls "Anabaptist camp followers." If this is the attitude of someone who was sympathetic at the time, how much more hostile were older, more traditional communities? Miller blames the new converts for unrealistic expectations. They shouldn't have expected so much from "home-grown" (in other words, white Swiss-German) Mennonites. I wonder if perhaps the problem wasn't instead leaders more concerned with envelope licking rather then envelope pushing (thanks, Joe). They were (and are?) more interested in keeping everyone inside the envelope happy than engaging with challenging ideas and people.
Today, we are seeing a new wave of "Anabaptist camp followers". As with the earlier wave, many of them come from evangelical backgrounds looking for the missing peace and justice. I've heard many first and second hand stories of young evangelicals walking into Mennonite churches longing for the whole gospel only to find a church doing its best to blend in with all the other Christian churches in town. Will we once again blame them as naive idealists and turn our back on them as we focus on keeping those inside the fold happy? Will the the ecumenical Anabaptist movement and the Mennonite church join, cross-pollinate and thrive together or will merely mingle and then go our separate ways? The choice is ours.
Tim Nafziger is a activist, writer, organizer and web developer. He lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago with his wife Charletta where he attends Living Water Community Church. He is the administrator for the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and serves as Outreach Coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams. For more about his life, read his first blog post.
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Tim, I read Miller's article differently than I think you did. I saw his article as focusing on the term "peace and justice" as a cliché. That is, I saw him frustrated with the language more than the concepts themselves: "Local congregations continued to describe MCC and our Christian service with a considerably greater variety of terms such as the sturdy and authentic terms compassion, generosity, helping, charity, aid, sharing, love of neighbor and acts of mercy." I have to admit that the phrase "peace and justice" often feels hollow to me. And I think that's a disservice to those who are interested in "peace and justice," like myself. I, too, would prefer we use more authentic language to communicate those ideals. Hauerwas has some interesting things to say about this, of course, and I think I agree with him.
PS - I meant to sign that last comment. I don't want to be anonymous. . . . With Peace, Pat McCullough http://patmccullough.com/
Pat,
Thanks for your comment. I agree that part of Miller's point is language choice, but I think his frustration goes deeper then language to underlying meaning. Otherwise why would he say things like "we lost our liberality on babies"? I've read his article through a number of times and, to his credit, there is a lot more complexity and depth than a simple disagreement on word choice would require.
For example, if "compassion, generosity, helping, charity, aid, sharing, love of neighbor and acts of mercy" are his alternative language choice, there is a key shift in meaning from "peace and justice". While all these words are laudable, noble values, none of them (together or by themselves) suggest any challenge to the status quo. They don't rock the boat.
On the other hand, here are some peace and justice values that will raise eye brows or even get you thrown out of your home town synagogue and almost pushed over a cliff:
Or, from Mary:
Last Christmas I tried reading these verses from Magnificat to my father-in-law, a conservative, rural, Mennonite and he looked at me like he'd never heard it before. These values, whatever words you use, still make a majority of Mennonites very uncomfortable. I can share all I want with my African-American neighbors, but if I start talking about structural racism and how we benefit from it, the eye brows and walls go up.
I don't know what "John Rempel's poignant Good Samaritan essay about what if there were faster donkeys", but I suspect it is a parable about how structural change is more important then a simple helping hand. For Miller, peace and justice (or whatever you choose to call it) is simply "our era's distinctions", but for me it is at the heart of the gospel.
Tim, Nice job of sorting through a complex issue, and special thanks for the compassion for older white guys! I enjoyed your stories about praying, praising social activists. You yourself mention that the polarity that Miller points to was a part of your thinking through 17 years of Mennonite education. That's quite an admission and suggests we have a problem. You probably weren't the only product of Mennonite schools who thought that way. Maybe Levi is reacting to his observations of that phenomena. While a passion for structural change is part of the gospel mix, my concern is that so often that passion takes on a kind of Messianic certainty that simplifies the complexity of structual issues and turns the gospel into a fixed and utterly predictable political ideology. Maybe you could call it cynicism, though I prefer to call it humility. While the kingdom of God is present in the world leavening and renewing social and economic structures, I don't believe that the kingdom of God is coming through incremental social changes brought about by us good and zealous Christian social activists. We plant signs of hope but there remains a hard nub of sin that isn't going to be dissolved by anything other than the work of God in our hearts and lives. Our hope is in the redeeming work of God in Christ, not in our programs. On your last paragraph...I also am in conversation with evangelicals/charismatics who have come into the Mennonite fold thinking they have finally found a church that holds the vertical and horizontal together but after awhile start feeling like the vertical is only given token attention while the main diet is the call to social action. Guess it depends which congregation you wander into. Good discussion.
Steve,
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Conversations with you while I was living in London were a part getting me thinking about the value of integrating an understanding of personal redemption with peace and justice values. In an earlier draft of this post I mentioned your paper "Addiction, Recovery and 'the Powers'" that builds connections between Walter Wink's theology of the powers and the reality of personal addiction. I think many of us who look to Wink for our structural analysis would do well to listen to this passage at the end of your paper:
I hope you'll consider making this paper available on the web some day because I think it offers an important bridge between the two polarized sides that would connect well with younger people who are wrestling with these questions.
Thanks also for your personal testimony to the way Mennonite churches can also turn away converts by having too much focus on peace and justice at the loss of a theology of personal redemption. If we are to begin reaching across the gap in our church we need to hear both of these stories.
I'd like a bit of clarification on what everyone means by "conservative". This term is not very helpful for me; here's why. I'm a pastor in a small town in South Central Kansas. Out of about 12 churches total, there are two Mennonite churches in town, let's say #1 and #2. At 90 people on a Sunday morning, #1 is the biggest church in town and, at times, draws a wide swath of people, along with some "traditional" Mennonites. It's also the church where I work. #2 has about 15 people on a Sunday and, outside of one couple, is mainly made up of traditional Mennonites. Between the two Mennonite churches #2 has always been considered the more "conservative" of the two churches. However, Church #1 would have a much higher percentage of political conservatives. I am a staunch pacifist. For many in church #1, that puts me squarely in the liberal camp. For church #2, it puts me squarely in the conservative camp. So what am I? When people I come across use the term "conservative" I usually ask; conservative like Amish or conservative like Pat Robertson? But really that definition is too weak. The term Conservative is only helpful in relation to that which someone is trying to conserve. It merely means a preservation of a belief of practice as opposed to acceptance of a new one. Perhaps the issue that both Tim and Levi seem to miss is that neither the "liberals" or the "conservatives" that they are referring to are actually conserving the Mennonite tradition. Both camps are at fault for setting up a false dichotomy of peace vs. faith. The early Anabaptists managed to both reject the sword and be so spirit filled that they would give the Pentecostals a run for their money. Both Tim and Levi have made some great points, but are we talking about the right thing here? As always, this is food for thought. I might be completely off base too. Grace and Peace, alan stucky
This issue has been with us for years in the Mennonite Church. Many things have contributed to this dicotomy, here are two. Some of our more conservative congregations get their theology from moody radio rather than the a solid anabaptist understanding, on the other hand much of what we heard from our academic and national publications promoting peace and justice seemed at some points to be un-related to Jesus and very closely related to left wing politics. In many churches people only see these two options. For starters we need a robust understanding of the gospel - starting from a kingdom prespective. The upside-down kingdom was a start but wasn’t really theological - more recently - Nt. Wright the Challenge of Jesus, Lee Camp “Mere discipleship” and Greg Boyd’s books. The last two solidly anabaptist - Peace and Justice and Jesus - from non- mennonite writers. Our Menn. Conf. of Faith has great theology… But has it filtered into the minds and hearts of people in our churches, how is making a compelling case for this theology, Ok John Roth and Michele Hersberger and a few others. This has been a passion of mine to help promote a robust kingdom gospel where - Peace and justice are crucial part of this good news of God’s Shalom breaking in - and that people are invited into this new life - “Salvation” because of the cross and the ressurrection. We are called as the church to point to that day when God’s reign will be over all and swords will be turned to plows. We are called to be a for-taste of what is to come(Growing up in mennonite churches my whole life I never heard this reason givin for our understanding of peace and non-violence) Last year the Vineyard Church in columus OH hosted a Justice - Revival with Sojourners seeking to bring these two Themes of the gospel together.
Tim Nafziger -- I appreciated reading your candid and thoughtful response, and I'll make a few comments. I see much common ground with your attempt to bring peace and justice and personal redemption together, and also the spirit of Steve Dintamin's comments. I would see my own effort as hoping for a renewed synthesis, including our language use, rather than driving a wedge between the traditional polaraties of personal and social salvation, but obviously I did not say that to you. I find your noting the radical biblical phrases helpful, although admittedly I mentioned mainly terms related to Christian service and what was traditionally called relief. I suppose here we'll simply disagree on emphasis because service, charity and mission are also a part of our Christian calling and have often been undervalued in the recent decades of justice language. In the American religious context, the term peacenjustice, if used by itself, often appears as little more than code language, attempting to give divine approval for whatever left-wing political projects. I also found Alan Stucky's comments clarifying on how contextual the terms conservative and liberal are. And, yes, I was raised in what Tim Nafziger calls "white Swiss-German" Amish and Mennonite churches and today worship in such a congregation, and I have also worshipped in Hispanic-majority congregations for a number of years. That my hope for more than "peacenjustice" language (think mission or evangelism), would be mainly an ethnic or cultural characteristic seems naive at best; I think the Conrad Kanagy study would show the same. Anyway, the fact that these discussions on what the Franconia Conference calls "the nonresistant Christian faith" have been with us for a long time, does not diminish from their importance, and I'm sorry if I seemed to imply otherwise. I'm thankful that another generation of young Anabaptist radicals (and also some young Anabaptist conservatives) are picking up the discussion--vigorously. Have a good Christmas and blessed new year. Levi Miller
Levi, Thanks very much for your response. I'm glad to hear that you are working for a synthesis between peace and justice and personal redemption. I recognize the value of having different strands of Anabaptist theology, including service and mission. I've written about that in my article Four Streams of Anabaptism.
Can you say more about what you mean by "left wing political projects"? I've heard this accusation about peace and justice thrown around quite a bit, but usually without much detail.
In terms of the relationship between peace and justice values and race, I wrote more about this on my blog post on Martin Luther King day. I hope I have been clear that I am not arguing we should do away with values of Christian service, etc. However, I am saying that our social position can affect the emphasis that we put on them in comparison with peace and justice values.
I too look forward to watching this discussion continue, virtually and otherwise.