No lesser a Christian than Martin Luther understood our predicament: Anyone, he wrote in On Temporal Authority, who tried ‘to rule the world by the gospel and to abolish all temporal law and the sword on the plea that all are baptized and Christian, and that, according to the gospel, there shall be among them no law or sword—or the need for either— . . . would be loosing the ropes and chains of the savage wild beasts and letting them bite and mangle everyone, meanwhile insisting that they were harmless, tame, and gentle creatures; but I would have the proof in my wounds.’
The above is a quote from Eric Cohen’s review of Christian pacifist Stanley Hauerwas’ War and the American Difference: Theological Reflection on Violence and National Identity. Cohen’s review nicely encapsulates the argument against pacifism — that argument being, that pacifism is well-intentioned but dumb, and that it will get us all killed. There are dangerous people out there in the world, and if we don’t use force to stop them, then, well, they won’t be stopped, will they? For Cohen, this logic is so clear that anyone who doubts it must be, literally, crazy. Or, as Cohen puts it, “if Hauerwas’ political theology is the true political theology of Christianity, then Christianity is a form of eschatological madness.”
Hauerwas would probably accept that designation happily enough — with the caveat that the efficient rationality of modernity is its own kind of madness, what with the gas chambers, the drone strikes, the enhanced interrogation, and the nuclear weapons always on the table.
Indeed, Hauerwas’ point is that war is not simply a natural disaster from which prudent nations must protect themselves with the minimal force necessary. Rather, war is its own logic and its own morality. This, Hauerwas says, is especially the case in America. He points back to Abraham Lincoln’s justification of the Civil War at Gettysburg. Lincoln, of course, said that the war had to be continued in order “that these dead shall not have died in vain,” and further “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Hauerwas argues:
A nation determined by such words, such elegant and powerful words, simply does not have the capacity to keep war limited. A just war that can only be fought for limited political purposes cannot and should not be understood in terms shaped by the Gettysburg Address. Yet after the Civil War, Americans think they must go to war to ensure that those who died in our past wars did not die in vain. Thus American wars are justified as a ‘war to end all wars,’ or ‘to make the world safe for democracy’ or for ‘unconditional surrender’ or ‘freedom’. Whatever may be the realist presuppositions of those who lead America to war, those presuppositions cannot be used as the reasons given to justify the war. To do so would betray the tradition of war established in the Civil War. Wars, American wars, must be wars in which the sacrifices of those doing the dying and the killing have redemptive purpose and justification.
“War,” Hauerwas concludes, “is America’s altar.”
Eric Cohen recoils at this conclusion, arguing that
There have indeed been times when we have used massive and terrible power against terrible enemies; and yet, right now, brave American soldiers endure great risk to themselves in an effort to avoid killing civilians. And while the history of America’s wars is hardly a story of moral perfection, it is, by human standards, a mostly heroic story of doing the right thing and doing it for the right reason.
Putting aside for a minute the accuracy of the claim that most of America’s wars have been righteous (the Philippines? Vietnam? the Indian wars?), I think Cohen’s rhetoric here is actually an almost perfect example of Hauerwas’ point. Specifically, from a just war perspective, or from a realist perspective, war surely should be limited and pragmatic, always fought with a consciousness of the tragedy, brutality, and terror which war unleashes. And yet, here is Cohen, responding to that argument, by characterizing America’s experience of war as a “heroic story.” Moreover, that story is not “heroic” despite our history of war; rather, it is war itself that confers upon us heroism. Even our “terrible power” gains a grandeur, since it is unleashed against “terrible enemies” — and never, of course, against children, or civilians. America is moral because of the wars it fights, the ways it fights them — and because of the very terribleness of the conflicts. The obvious corollary is that if we did not fight the wars, we would not be moral — we would not, for example, have the opportunity to exercise restraint by not shooting civilians (except of course, when we do.),
Thus, for Cohen, war provides America with its moral standing and its moral experience; its heroism, its bravery, its sacrifice. This is exactly Hauerwas’ point. War is how America understands itself as a good people; it is how we see ourselves striding across the world stage to protect the weak, avenge the innocent, and establish justice for all.
If any war was fought to protect the weak, avenge the innocent, and establish justice for all, it was the Civil War. Hauerwaus acknowledges the evil of slavery, and insists that Christians were bound to witness against it. He insists, though, that the witness against slavery should not be war; that the moral opposite of slavery is not killing. For Hauerwas, to argue otherwise is idolatrous.
War is a counter church. It is the most determinative moral experience many people have. That is why Christian realism requires the disavowal of war. Christians do not renounce war because it is often so horrible, but because war, in spite of its horror, or perhaps because it is so horrible, can be so morally compelling. That is why the church does not have an alternative to war. The church is the alternative to war. When Christians no longer see the reality of the church as an alternative to the world’s reality, we abandon the world to war.
When I read that paragraph, I thought immediately of that superstar atheist, Christopher Hitchens, and his bloodthirsty reaction to the September 11 attacks.
Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that.
Hitchens famously denigrates faith…but that’s not exactly a pragmatic, measured, calculus there, dripping with restraint and quiet reason. On the contrary, it’s in the genre of prophetic apocalyptic — it’s a religious statement. And the religion is, as Hauerwas says, the church of vengeance, the church of retribution, the church of death, self-justification, anger, honor, and war.
Hauerwas would like to get rid of war and violence — but what he really wants to get rid of is the church of war. As he says, the abolition of slavery (accomplished in part, of course, through war) did not eliminate slavery. There are still people who are enslaved today around the world. But the anti-slavery movement made it impossible for anyone to justify slavery. The church no longer says that it is god’s will for men and women to be chattel; the state no longer insists that it is righteous for some to be slave and others to be free. The abolition of slavery was the abolition of the church of slavery — and that abolition has had a massive, thoroughgoing effect on how people treat each other on this, our earth.
Hauerwas is asking Christians, specifically, to follow their faith to a similar confrontation with the church of war. He is not saying that all wars will be eliminated, or that all violence will disappear, any more than all slavery disappeared. Rather, what he wants is for the moral underpinnings of war to be systematically knocked out. He’s looking for a world in which Eric Cohen cannot use war to make the United States heroic; in which Christopher Hitchens cannot puff himself up as a savior/prophet in the name of cleansing violence. He’s looking for a world in which war is not the measure of reality or goodness, but rather a sin, indulged in only by those who have deliberately eschewed morality, heroism, faith, and sacrifice.
Again, Hauerwas is definitively, defiantly Christian. His message, therefore, is specifically to Christians. It is Christians, first, he believes, who must determine not to kill each other. It is Christians, first, who must reject the morality of war for the morality of the Cross. On the one hand, this is something of a relief for atheists like myself. Since I’m not a believer, I can cheerfully keep paying taxes for cluster bombs and hating my neighbor just as I’ve always done. Still, there is a bit of discomfort there too. If, after all, Christians were actually to take up Hauerwas’ challenge, if they were actually to bear witness to nonviolence and transform the world — well, I’d hate to say it, obviously, but it would be hard to escape the suspicion that that might actually be the work of God.
Until that day comes, though, we are stuck with war. And since that is the case, it might behoove us all to spend less time questioning the sanity of pacifists, and more time thinking about what this thing, war means to us. Is war our tool, with which we visit justice upon a grateful world? Or, alternately, are we the tools of war, with which it performs the age-old work of violence? Who, in short, do we serve? And is there anything — be it life, honor, love, freedom, or faith — that we will not sacrifice, or have not already sacrificed, in its service?
“If, after all, Christians were actually to take up Hauerwas’ challenge, if they were actually to bear witness to nonviolence and transform the world ”
If pacificists were the majority, which unfortunately’s never been and never will be the case.
“I’d hate to say it, obviously, but it would be hard to escape the suspicion that that might actually be the work of God. ”
Point well taken, considering that historically speaking in this country a majority of churches have supported most of wars that we have started.
Yeah…as I try to make clear, I think Hauerwas is significantly more disgusted/horrified by the American church’s warmongering than almost any atheist could be. He’s willing to go after Christian *abolitionists* for supporting the Civil War, which is pretty hard core.
I still think the peace church’s pacifist witness is pretty important and inspiring, though, for Christians and non-Christians alike.
What’s Hauerwas’ pacifist take on God Himself?
Well, you’d have to ask him…but in general I think there’s a pretty good case to be made that Jesus pretty profoundly changed the rules about violence. Hauerwas specifically says that Christ’s sacrifice means that the sacrifices of war are no longer sanctioned (and there’s certainly a lot of war in the old testament.)
I’m curious Charles…does the Christian pacifist witness not matter to you? And if so, is it the Christianity you object to? The pacifism? What stake do you have exactly in Christians being bloodthirsty? (I mean, obviously many, many Christians have been bloodthirsty — but if Hauerwas wants his fellow Christians to embrace an identity as pacifists…what exactly do you see as being wrong with that?)
I’d have to let the professional apologists really make an argument what Jesus rejects or accepts in the Old Testament, but that fellow linked to above gives us this:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” (Matthew 5:17 NAB)
And, yeah, I reject the Christianity, the pacifism and the notion that Christians are more likely than most to be anti-war. Where would slavery have been in the South without the war? Does Hauerwas talk about that?
Jesus also talks about old wine in new bottles though.
I’d also say that the Abraham/Isaac story can be read as a rejection of human sacrifice…and fulfilling the law depends on what law you’re talking about. There is “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in there, for example; fulfilling that to the absolute extent seems like it might get you somewhere different than in the Old Testament (when the law was not fulfilled.)
There are obviously a lot of debates theologically about pacifism in Christianity. You might check out John Howard Yoder’s *The Politics of Jesus*, where he makes a sustained argument that in his historical context, Jesus (and the Christians after Jesus) systematically rejected violence as a political solution.
But…the truth is you don’t really care about the theology, right? You’re welcome to reject the Christianity and the pacifism, of course…though it seems like if you really reject the Christianity, talking about the theological issues is really confused. Insisting on putting your critique in terms of the Bible suggests that you don’t actually have the resources to debate these issues in a secular context, which rather undermines the point I take you to be trying to make (i.e., that the Christian tradition is unimportant in terms of discussions of war and peace.)
Anyway, re your third point, I don’t think anybody believes that Christians are more likely to be anti-war than others in any systematic way. I think Christian theology has an important, ongoing anti-war strain, that is a valuable resource and an inspiration, but Christians themselves have participated in lots of wars and atrocities, and still do.
As I say in the review, Hauerwas believes Christians should have opposed slavery, but should not have supported war. He doesn’t go into it much beyond that, but obviously it’s a serious question.
To take it seriously, though, I think you have to honestly confront how much destruction and bloodshed the war wrought, and also honestly confront the aftermath…which, after a brief period of freedom, was basically another 100 years of oppression and racist violence. It was the civil rights movement, a movement dedicated to nonviolence (albeit not, of course, entirely nonviolent) which managed to end apartheid in this country, not the civil war.
Counterfactual history is hard to do; I don’t know what would have happened if there hadn’t been a civil war. Ta-Nehisi Coates is very dedicated to arguing that the civil war was not a tragedy, but a moral battle for freedom, and that it should be seen as such. Hauerwas is just very skeptical of the move to center our morality in war, or to link our moral experience as a nation to shooting people in the name of justice. I think he also challenges us in these discussions to question whether we actually care about justice, and are arguing for war in order to preserve justice, or whether war is its own logic, which appeals to us on its own terms.
So Jesus talks out of both sides of his mouth. Big surprise there. But, really, isn’t the whole religion founded on a bloody, violent sacrifice? The religion is nothing without celebrating that violent act. It’s what gives Christianity it’s meaning. So, yeah, I’m real skeptical of anyone who takes a non-violent message from the text.
“Counterfactual history is hard to do”
Sure, but if you’re criticizing the support of the war, then you’re posing a counterfactual situation (“my way would’ve been more moral”). Hauerwas would make a stronger case if he actually addressed the possible realworld results of his pacifism. It doesn’t appear that he does. He just criticizes from the safe environment of others already having made difficult decisions. Maybe the South would’ve just came around to thinking slavery immoral in a shorter time if allowed to perpetuate their violence on blacks without any forced constraints, but I’d like to know why Hauerwas thinks that. If he doesn’t care about that question, then we shouldn’t really take his pacifism seriously.
I think Jesus was perhaps trying to make some fairly complicated points about the law, violence, obedience, and transformation. He also wasn’t really writing a paper for peer review, you know? Trying to say that he was just seems bizarre. It’s like you think Christians have to be Biblical literalists — but Hauerwas really isn’t that. Lots of Christians aren’t.
Christianity is founded on a sacrifice, of course. Hauerwas is saying that the meaning of that sacrifice is that it’s the last one; no one else needs to make a sacrifice, because it has already been made. Again, I’m confused as to why you so violently reject that interpretation of Christianity. Would you rather that Christians insisted on bloodily converting everyone (as of course, some have done.) I just don’t see how it hurts you, or why you’re so resentful, of a Christian essentially telling other Christians not to use force on each other or anyone else.
I don’t think Hauerwas’ believe in the morality of nonviolence is based on a counterfactual, to your last point. He’s not a consequentialist like that. His arguement is eschatological and theological; not that he knows that nonviolence would make the world work better, but that for Christians, faith in nonviolence is a necessary part of their belief and their witness.
He’s arguing about the way America justifies wars, and how that started in the Civil War and continued to this day. He certainly thinks that has had actual, real-world consequences, and he’s calling on us (Christians especially, but I think it’s a challenge to everyone) to think that through and act like it matters. I think that’s a quite serious project — much more so than engaging in counterfactuals, to my mind.
It’s maybe worth pointing out that he’s very anti-Constantinian, so he really doesn’t think that Christians should tell the government how to conduct itself, or how to maximize happiness for all. He’s saying that Christians have no business advocating for war. That surely applies to Southern Christians as well as Northern ones.
It always comes back to Constantine. He poisoned Christianity during its adolescence, and it never really recovered (Hauerwas and the Mennonites being notable exceptions).
“It’s like you think Christians have to be Biblical literalists — but Hauerwas really isn’t that.”
If he’s arguing for a particular interpretation of the Bible, then he’s treating it as a literalist to some degree. He’s not saying that his reading is no better than anyone else’s, right? There’s some definite meaning that he’s arguing to be the correct Christian reading. Nor is the Bible merely literature for him.
And these two positions are contradictory:
“I just don’t see how it hurts you, or why you’re so resentful, of a Christian essentially telling other Christians not to use force on each other or anyone else.”
vs.
“He’s arguing about the way America justifies wars, and how that started in the Civil War and continued to this day. He certainly thinks that has had actual, real-world consequences, and he’s calling on us (Christians especially, but I think it’s a challenge to everyone) to think that through and act like it matters.”
I don’t much care what his interpretation of the Bible is, per se. I do care how that gets translated into a practical moral view that would affect the society in which I live should anyone take it seriously. This pretty much applies to religions across the board. That is, I don’t care whether some individual derived moral view P on some religion, only whether P is good view to have. For example, if a theist can’t justify P on grounds independent of his or her religion, atheists can safely dismiss the theist’s justifications.
See, you can’t just make words mean what you want to, I don’t think. A literalist believes that the Bible is literally true. Hauerwas believes that there is meaning there, but every jot and tittle isn’t necessarily literally true. In a lot of ways he’s more interested in tradition than in literalist readings (he says this himself.) Responding to Hauerwas by saying, “this thing Jesus says doesn’t work according to my not necessarily all that informed instant reaction, therefore you are wrong” — I don’t really see the point of that.
In re your second point about contradictory positions — it’s somewhat a response to the fact that I’m having trouble figuring out where you’re coming from too, I think. That is, your objection to the pacifism and your objections to Christianity seem to me to get kind of confused. Let me try this?
A. Hauerwas argues that war is not a pragmatic choice, but a logic and an experience of morality that is central to the way the nation sees itself and experiences itself as holy.
B. That means that war is essentially its own church.
C. Christians should be dedicated to the Christian church. Therefore, Christians should not go to war.
D. Ergo, Christians should never use force to convince others of their beliefs.
You’ve basically said nothing about A. Pragmatic arguments about the importance of the moral experience of the civil war, and how you have to think about morality in those pragmatic, war-defined terms, really seems like elaborately begging the question. War: does it serve us, or do we serve it? If you’re not willing to think about that question, then you’re not willing to engage with the book or with the essay, it seems to me.
For the other points; I presume you don’t really care about B, I presume you don’t really care about C, and surely you agree with D.
I really love when non-Christians tell Christians what they are and aren’t allowed to believe about Christian doctrine. It’s especially my favorite when they do it by proof-texting.
“See, you can’t just make words mean what you want to, I don’t think.”
!!! Where’s this attitude with the abuse of the term ‘misogyny’? — Just playing, let’s not get into that debate. I didn’t call Hauerwas a literalist. You brought the term up, and I replied with some of the ways that such a Christian does take the Bible to be more than metaphor and whatnot. I don’t take him to be a creationist or a 700 Club supporter.
“I’m having trouble figuring out where you’re coming from too, I think.”
Fair enough.
A. War is not black and white, either pragmatic (purely contingent on current circumstances, independent of how we see ourselves) or ideological (purely dependent on how we see ourselves, war defines us). You might have a real gung-ho warrior type fighting for something that actually is a good thing to fight for. And people who study war tactics, appreciate them in an aesthetic fashion, are people who you want to go to when fighting wars, not Hauerwas. I’m all for not having a country of bloodthirsty advocates who can be easily wooed into a war with some fear tactics, but sometimes people have to fight, and it helps to have experts who know and appreciate war (not that all such people are necessarily bloodthirsty — career military types are often equally wary of the costs of war).
B. So, nope, war isn’t yet another example of religious faith (more of those words meaning what you want them to). The latter is more a matter of ideology than the former. As you say of Hauerwas, faith isn’t really concerned with the practical consequences of the belief system (at least, in this world). War always should be (even when it’s driven more by ideology than anything else, it has to be sold in America as useful). If your faith leads you to absolute pacifism, then you and your flock take the bullet when it comes. However, I personally find something to admire in radical ideologues who put their belief to the test in the same way I can appreciate self-sacrifice in a war I don’t agree with. I suppose that has something to do with heroism always seeming more virtuous than survival.
And I don’t much care about how dedicated Christians should be to their church (C), except where it contradicts D.
Okay, that’s helpful.
You say this:
War is not black and white, either pragmatic (purely contingent on current circumstances, independent of how we see ourselves) or ideological (purely dependent on how we see ourselves, war defines us).
Hauerwas’ point is that, especially in a democracy, war slips inevitably from pragmatic to ideological…and then to a definitional moral experience. He provides a fair amount of evidence, from Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg on. I’m wondering if you have counter-examples?
You do actually provide evidence to support Hauerwas’ claim, viz:
“However, I personally find something to admire in radical ideologues who put their belief to the test in the same way I can appreciate self-sacrifice in a war I don’t agree with. I suppose that has something to do with heroism always seeming more virtuous than survival.”
That’s not just you. People in general find war a morally profound experience; something that creates heroes and casts a glamour on even the most unpleasant ideology. Is that an argument in favor of war? Or is it a sign that we should be very, very careful when we pretend to know how we’re going to use war, or how it’s going to use us?
I wasn’t clear: I agree with Hauerwas that, as you put it, “slips inevitably from pragmatic to ideological.” At least, it seems inevitable based on all the examples I can think of. Where I don’t agree is that it invalidates the use of war, period.
And, where we seem to disagree, is that I view the ideological pacifist as another example of the virtuous hero. Hauerwas doesn’t seem all that different in his commitment to Hitchens. It’s a similarly unrealistic mentality, just differently directed.
“[war] slips”
I should add: “differently directed” in the sense that Hauerwas is willing to sacrifice himself (provided he’s committed when the time comes) and Hitchens is willing to sacrifice others. So, the latter is more dangerous in a realworld, non-theoretical manner. We’ll never have to worry too much about a society thinking like Hauerwas, since it would always be eradicated by those not sharing his ideology.
I don’t know that Hauerwas would disagree about the parallel between pacifist hero and war hero. He sees the second as taking the place of the first. That’s why he calls war a church.
“We’ll never have to worry too much about a society thinking like Hauerwas, since it would always be eradicated by those not sharing his ideology.”
Quakers are still around.
Yeah, and they were exempted back when we had the draft. How strange for the Church of War.
Charles, your last remark is a grotesque misrepresentation of the Quaker movement. For over three hundred years and in many different nations, Quakers have been subjected to persecution, imprisonment, torture and sometimes execution for their commitment to pacifism. This history of persecution continues to the present day. I have several Quaker friends and acquaintances who have been physically abused by police officers for their acts of civil disobedience; I know of others who have been arrested and sentenced to jail terms for their opposition to US foreign policy. Here is a news item about one of them (Peg Morton – who was sentenced to jail in 2003 at the age of 73 for her opposition to the School of the Americas).
I can’t help but feel that your comment is insultingly dismissive with regard to one the most honorable (and philosophically consistent) splinter groups within the tradition of radical Christianity. It is, at the very least, historically misinformed.
Oops. Forgot the link about Peg. There are hundreds of similar examples I could offer Quaker history btw.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=20031124&id=7lJWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BOwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6231,5949773
That link says she was arrested for trespassing, not pacifism. But, regardless, my point wasn’t that Quakers, like many other groups, haven’t had to face persecution for their beliefs and/or actions, but that they still exist, because the society in which they live isn’t near as bad as many other places. And, in fact, exceptions have been made to accomodate their pacifism.
This is worth quoting, not that it’ll find a favorable reading here:
Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that ‘according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be “objectively pro-British”.’ But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious ‘freedom’ station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.
I am not interested in pacifism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If Mr Savage and others imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.
— George Orwell
Orwell repudiated that quote.
There are lots of people who have been nonviolent and have managed to get by one way or another (most women throughout history, as one of Hauerwas’ students pointed out.) On the other hand, lots of violent peoples have been wiped off the face of the earth.
You’re insisting that violence is safer than war; that force is a more dependable way of solving problems than peace. That’s not a statement of the way things naturally are, or of a universal truth. It’s an ideological position, for which you are tendentiously organizing evidence (like Orwell’s quote without the note that he repudiated it, for example).
This is precisely Hauerwas’ point. If you’re going to argue for war, he wants you to see that it is an ideological choice. It’s not an appeal to realism; it’s not pragmatic; it’s not the way things are. It’s the way you are ideologically committed to having them be. And he would like you to think about what that means, and whether ideologically fighting for a world in which warfare is okay, Quaker witness is denigrated, and Orwell is not allowed to change his mind — whether that’s really the world you want.
He repudiated the dismissal of intention, not his views on pacifism. Consider, from his 1949 (5 years after the repudiation) analysis of Gandhi:
However, Gandhi’s pacifism can be separated to some extent from his other teachings. Its motive was religious, but he claimed also for it that it was a definitive technique, a method, capable of producing desired political results. Gandhi’s attitude was not that of most Western pacifists. Satyagraha, first evolved in South Africa, was a sort of non-violent warfare, a way of defeating the enemy without hurting him and without feeling or arousing hatred. It entailed such things as civil disobedience, strikes, lying down in front of railway trains, enduring police charges without running away and without hitting back, and the like. Gandhi objected to “passive resistance” as a translation of Satyagraha: in Gujarati, it seems, the word means “firmness in the truth”. In his early days Gandhi served as a stretcher-bearer on the British side in the Boer War, and he was prepared to do the same again in the war of 1914-18. Even after he had completely abjured violence he was honest enough to see that in war it is usually necessary to take sides. He did not — indeed, since his whole political life centred round a struggle for national independence, he could not — take the sterile and dishonest line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins. Nor did he, like most Western pacifists, specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: “What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?” I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the “you’re another” type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer’s Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi’s view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.
At the same time there is reason to think that Gandhi, who after all was born in 1869, did not understand the nature of totalitarianism and saw everything in terms of his own struggle against the British government. The important point here is not so much that the British treated him forbearingly as that he was always able to command publicity. As can be seen from the phrase quoted above, he believed in “arousing the world”, which is only possible if the world gets a chance to hear what you are doing. It is difficult to see how Gandhi’s methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? The Russian masses could only practise civil disobedience if the same idea happened to occur to all of them simultaneously, and even then, to judge by the history of the Ukraine famine, it would make no difference. But let it be granted that non-violent resistance can be effective against one’s own government, or against an occupying power: even so, how does one put it into practise internationally? Gandhi’s various conflicting statements on the late war seem to show that he felt the difficulty of this. Applied to foreign politics, pacifism either stops being pacifist or becomes appeasement. Moreover the assumption, which served Gandhi so well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings are more or less approachable and will respond to a generous gesture, needs to be seriously questioned. It is not necessarily true, for example, when you are dealing with lunatics. Then the question becomes: Who is sane? Was Hitler sane? And is it not possible for one whole culture to be insane by the standards of another? And, so far as one can gauge the feelings of whole nations, is there any apparent connection between a generous deed and a friendly response? Is gratitude a factor in international politics?
I think that pretty much answers your last post.
Oh for pity’s sake; I replied to this and it didn’t get saved.
To briefly recap;
Hauerwas points out that to credit Gandhi’s success to the reasonableness of the British government, and/or (with the appeal to publicity) of the British public, or the Western public in general, seems not like hard-edged realism so much as naive special pleading. Was there really a free press in India? The right of assembly? The assurance that enemies of the government would not disappear? And for pity’s sake, the British imperial structure was basically kind-hearted and unfailingly responded to a generous gesture? I call bullshit. The British seem reasonable because Gandhi won; the logistical and strategic difficulties he overcame seem minimal because he and his people overcame them.
As for the Ukrainian famine; I just read about that recently, and it was truly, terrifically horrendous. But that’s not because the Ukrainians were pacifists. They weren’t. They didn’t mount a nonviolent resistance. They didn’t mount a violent resistance. They were just murdered by slow starvation. Gandhi’s tactics or the equivalent were not tried, any more than Che’s were. You can’t just attribute every genocide to the failure of pacifism and then smirk as if you’ve scored some unanswerable argument.
As for the point about publicity in Ukraine — please. People could easily have known what was happening in Ukraine if they wanted to. There were reports. The issue isn’t that Stalin’s secrecy was so complete that nonviolent resistance was ineffective because the cavalry wasn’t going to come riding to the rescue. The issue was that the cavalry, guns and all, didn’t give a crap about people starving on the butt end of nowhere. Even if they did, would a massive invasion of russia really have resulted in less loss of life and a happier outcome for all?
Hauerwas argues that pacifists are more realistic than proponents of violence, and I think he’s got a pretty good case as far as that Orwell quote’s concerned. It sounds all balanced and hard-nosed, but when you think about it for a second, it ends up being a mess of half-thought through nonsense, self-congratulatory idiocy, and assumptions which history has proven as wrong as history proves anything — or had you failed to notice that the Soviet Union fell through a peaceful, popular uprising?
The collapse of the Soviet Union is your example of a nonviolent resolution to totalitarian terror (ignoring all the weapons in the world that were the result of the Cold War, the millions and millions slaughtered up to the point that the Soviets were near collapse). Orwell has Western pacifists dead to right.
The rest of your response seems like a willful misreading: Gandhi’s methodology was effective to the degree that he was dealing with an opponent that could be counted on to be somewhat reasonable. As Orwell points out, it was under a labor government that Gandhi was most effective. Similarly, there was enough free press in the West that his actions were reported on. Contrast that to Stalin’s methods of oppression. How would a pacifist deal with the potential threat of Stalin not only internally, but on a global scale? Specifics please. Would it be something like Tibet dealt with the Chinese? That worked well. Maybe Gandhi’s suggestion of a mass suicide in protest?
Orwell’s point about Ukraine wasn’t that no one knew about it or that it was actually a protest, but that if the Soviets didn’t care much about that, why would they care about nonviolent protests such as, e.g., Bobby Sands’ starvation. The context has to be there.
You seem to believe that not being a pacifist means wanting to go to war (Hauerwas’ fallaciously equating war with religious faith), but it can be (often is) a defense against others who could do you harm. That’s a big omission on the part of pacifism. For pacifism to work, again, it takes a context that’s ready to accept it (and defend it). Quakers can live their lives the way they want (not without struggle, granted) because they’re defended by an implicit threat of violence in a country with governmental rules respecting human dignity. And that context developed through violent struggle. (Granted, liberalism has a terrible history of hypocrisy, but it largely laid its own groundwork for why it’s been hypocritical.) How effective are the pacifists in North Korea? Where were they in Pinochet’s Chile? Under Stalin? Mao? Khmer Rouge? Has it worked in Tibet? I can’t believe anyone takes pacifism seriously. It’s like undergrad daydreaming.
Millions and millions of dead bodies under horrible, totalitarian rule, eventually collapsing under its own weight so that there can be a “peaceful” overturn is about the silliest defense I can think of. The possibility of the country falling into complete violent chaos didn’t have something to do with the peaceful overturn? You’ve a funny notion of realism.
How am I ignoring anything that happened up till then? Are you telling me that Vietnam caused the soviet union to collapse? Millions and millions of dead bodies weren’t stopped by armed conflict either, as far as I can tell.
Genocide doesn’t prove that pacifism failed. It proves that you can use violence to kill lots of people. That’s it.
And as for specifics…how exactly would a war advocate deal with Stalin? Did war actually topple Stalin? I think he died in his bed…and then Khruschev prevented the world from getting blown up by backing down at the Bay of Pigs. All of which proves what for your thesis that nonviolence is irrelevant?
And jesus fuck, where are the effective violent resistant movements in Tibet? Under the Khmer Rouge? In any of the places you name? What the hell are you talking about? Again, it’s like any genocide anywhere in the world that actually occurred somehow invalidates pacifism, even though none of the people who were slaughtered were necessarily pacifists. I mean, do you think the US should have invaded every place in the world where there’s ever been injustice?
Pacifism doesn’t mean that you think there’s no violence anywhere in the world. The fact that people get murdered doesn’t invalidate pacifism. Yes, Stalin was a monster. He wasn’t overturned by violence or by nonviolence; he just died. Afterwards, the Soviet Union still sucked, but (thanks in large part to Khruschev) it wasn’t exponentially worse than any number of unpleasant regimes that the US sends guns to. Eventually, the people managed to change the regime, without violence, which is really good since they had nuclear weapons.
And lots of times countries that are about to collapse into violent chaos just collapse into violent chaos. Russia’s people managed not to do that. Is that a triumph or isn’t it? Would you congratulate them more thoroughly if they’d actually admitted that nonviolence never works and started shooting each other? Or what?
Or, maybe shorter…you seem to think that if pacifism hasn’t solved all the world’s problems, then it’s automatically invalidated. Again, war is real, and any nonviolence somehow doesn’t count. You believe in war a lot more fervently, and a lot more absolutely, than most religious folks believe in God, it seems like to me.
Pacifism hasn’t, nor will it ever solve any of the world’s problems. It would be nice, though. I’m not arguing that ever governmental turnover is a form of violence, only that your example wasn’t based on pacifistic example. Going from communism to capitalism isn’t a form of pacifistic revolt. Does Russia still have weapons of mass destruction? The thing is, you can’t name any example of a pacifist country existing, or a pacifist movement toppling a tyrannical government, because it hasn’t happened. If you want to talk realism, then you need a little empirical data.
Yeah, Stalin died of natural causes. That’s pretty much how every tyrant would die if pacifism was the only form of resistance.
And, if it isn’t clear, none of this means that I view pacifists as cowards or assholes. Many are quite heroic and deserving of our respect. I just think it’s a bit delusional hoping for an entire culture to ever be set up on that principle (no weapons, no defense, no threat of war). The likes of Stalin would have their lunch.
I was reading an essay on Bonhoeffer the other day. I like his idea that violence should always be seen as evil, but sometimes you have to commit evil to prevent a bigger evil. I think that perspective on war, if honestly felt, would be about as close to pacifism as we could get, unless all the assholes of the earth were to die off. But the world is never in short supply of assholes.
Left out this one thing:
“and then Khruschev prevented the world from getting blown up by backing down at the Bay of Pigs.”
Are you actually claiming he was a pacifist? Would he have backed down without any threat of violence from the US?
Jeepers, guys.
Can’t we all just get along? Or is that what we’re arguing about?
It seems pretty clear to me that an ideal world — one transformed by Christian revelation or class revolt or whatever one’s person apocatastasis is — is one without violence.
It also seems pretty clear to me that in this fallen world the church of nonviolence — again, with whatever secular or non-secular cast you want to put on it — can only fight the “long defeat.” Hauerwas probably even agrees with me. His moral truth-claims do not depend on efficacy and don’t bend to Charles’s critique. Likewise the argument that war is evil but may be the lesser of two evils is a non-starter for genuine Christians — it’s a utilitarian argument repugnant to traditional Christianity. That’s why “just war” theory argues with considerable pains that just war is NOT evil but a positive, moral response to aggression.
Just from this piece — which is all I’ve read of the book — it doesn’t seem clear that Hauerwas is arguing that ALL participants in ANY (or any American) armed conflict are members of the counter-Church of War. He’s saying that there’s a rival ideology staking a claim to the hearts and minds of Americans. That’s, um, clearly true, and doesn’t exclude the possibility of righteous, limited wars by itself — that’s a separate part of his argument.
Khruschev was absolutely not a pacifist. He murdered people, and was a thug and a bully.
However. He chose to change the Soviet Union from a violent, paranoid country based on mass murder into a run-of-the-mill authoritarian state…and in doing so he inspired resistance in the soviet union that eventually led to Gorbachev peacefully dismantling the soviet empire. He also, during the bay of pigs, chose peace rather than war, which is why I can sit here typing this for you today. (If it were up to Kennedy, there’d be nothing here but cinders.)
So, no, Khruschev was not a pacifist, and was an evil man in many respects. But I think his choice of nonviolence, at crucial moments, makes him a heroic figure to anyone who thinks nonviolence is important, or who just feels like destroying the earth is a bad idea.
I think you’re a bit confused about what we’re arguing about, is perhaps part of the problem? I’m not saying everyone should be pacifist. I don’t even know that I’m a pacifist. I am saying, following Hauerwas, that claiming that the one truth is war, or saying ridiculous nonsense like every tyrant would die in their bed if pacifism had its way (as if most of them don’t anyway — where’s Cheney going to die?)is a way to say that war and violence are the most real things — that they’re all that matter, and that they’re the grounds on which we should build our lives. Khruschev at the bay of pigs, the transition from communism…these are examples of people making nonviolent choices that mattered. They suggest that war is not more true than peace, and that violence is not inevitable, but is a choice.
I love arguing with Noah. No animosity here. That essay I mentioned is here (that’s a word document download). Here’s an example, which I don’t think quite constitutes utilitarianism (though my way of wording it above probably lends itself to that):
The errors that Bonhoeffer seeks to avoid with regard to the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount (namely sectarianism and secularism), roughly correspond to the misunderstandings he eschews in his discussion of the connection between the ultimate and penultimate. Both the radicalism that disregards the value of the penultimate and places all focus “elsewhere” in the ultimate, and the compromise that illegitimately places ultimate value on penultimate events are mistaken abstractions from reality. The ultimate determines the meaning and direction of events in the penultimate, but the penultimate has value and dignity of its own. “Christian life neither sanctions nor destroys the penultimate.” The penultimate cannot be disregarded because it is that which God redeems. For this reason, Christian faithfulness includes an opposition to any needless destruction of that which God has made and preserves. Bonhoeffer’s exposition of responsible action entails that in strained contexts this opposition might involve violent resistance.
There’s a lot more to it than that, so check it out.
Noah, when you can make a choice for nonviolent change, you should do so. There are plenty examples where that just wasn’t feasible. If that’s all your saying, that war is sometimes the right thing to do and sometimes the wrong thing to do, then we’re not disagreeing on such a truism. None of this has anything to do with pacifism, though.
No, it’s somewhat more complicated than that. Partially in that I’m saying that nonviolent choices do actually have a lot to do with pacifism, and that the reason that that’s so difficult to see is precisely because war is granted a special ontological status. I’m also saying that the truism war-is-sometimes-right-and-sometimes-wrong is much too easy; that it ignores the way that the logic of war isn’t something you can use, and therefore making choices about its rightness or wrongness is almost always besides the point.
But…maybe enough? It’s ben fun; I should read that article, though it may take me a while to get there…
Yes, Cohen’s examples seem to make Hauerwas’ point for him!
“His message, therefore, is specifically to Christians. It is Christians, first, he believes, who must determine not to kill each other.”–this point of Haerwas seems to get lost in the America-is-a-Christian-nation mindset.
My take on the subject in my journey from Marine to Christian pacifist:
http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Pacifism-Fruit-Narrow-ebook/dp/B005RIKH62/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_1
Hauerwas so doesn’t think America is a Christian nation. I bet he doesnt’ think a nation can be Christian, actually.
“…this is something of a relief for atheists like myself. Since I’m not a believer, I can cheerfully keep paying taxes for cluster bombs and hating my neighbor just as I’ve always done.”
Where do you disagree with Haerwas?
Uh…I don’t really disagree with Hauerwas. I mean, he believes in Christ and I don’t, but on most of the other points in his book, I think he’s right.
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Hauerwas’ take on the God of violence is fairly simple: That Christians worship a God who would rather suffer than cause violence.
This is hard for someone outside of the church to understand. Hell, it’s hard for someone within the church to understand. But it is traditional, accepted orthodoxy within the major branches of Christianity that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” and that “all the fullness of God dwells in him” and that “no one has seen the Father, but God the Son has made him known.” (All New Testament quotes, by the way.)
In other words, Christians do not have the luxury of interpreting the Hebrew scriptures in a way that is not Christological. We don’t say that Jesus is like God…instead, we say that God is like Jesus. That is a crucial difference.
And also why Hauerwas condemns church-sanctioned violence as sin. He is ready (as all who reject violence on Christian grounds) to judge the church just as well as Charles…perhaps more, because he has a bigger dog in the fight (so to speak).
To the extent that Christians have supported violence, they are ignoring not just the received teachings of Christ–they are rejecting the idea of actually being Christlike. The Christian witness apart from the received testimony of the life of Christ is unintelligible.
One last point regarding Christ not changing “on jot or tittle” regarding the law. Firstly, the Hebrew scriptures were not canonized until after Christ. Second, he seemed to do a lot of “you have heard (this), but I tell you (this other thing)”. He also acted in many ways that appeared to his religious contemporaries to have no regard for the law. In this, Christ basically demolishes their interpretation of the scriptures. He says, “You study the scriptures because you think they give you life, but you have failed to recognize the one to whom they testify.”