I seem to find myself drawn to books during the “American Lenten Season” (between Memorial Day and July 4) that highlight the reasons why “America” is not the “last best hope for the world” as nearly every politician and president or candidate for president will say in one way or another —and this particular quote is from Obama, who is my preference from among those who are left. It just goes to show that no matter what the “Christian convictions” espoused by the candidate, that none will show any sign of independence from the great American myth that calls unto itself a secular sounding version of a salvific role to play in the world. Just look at the outcry against the “blasphemy” of Dr. Jeremiah Wright who dared to call us out on “God Bless America”.
Another Dr. Wright, a Nazarene pastor whose blog I read regularly, has a piece about Hauerwas and war.
Finally, Hauerwas concludes the essay, “Surely the saddest aspect of the war for Christians should have been its celebration as a victory and of those who fought it as heroes. No doubt many fought bravely and even heroically, but the orgy of crusading patriotism that this war unleashed surely should have been resisted by Christians. The flags and yellow ribbons on churches are testimony to how little Christians in America realize that our loyalty to God is incompatible with those who would war in the name of an abstract justice. Christians should have recognized that such ‘justice’ is but another form of idolatry to just the degree it asked us to kill. I pray that God will judge us accordingly” (p. 152).
Perhaps God has judged us accordingly. The celebration of the Gulf War in the churches lowered the ability of the churches to resist an unprovoked war called on at the very least ambiguous data, the result of an elective policy rather than a military contingency. The United States is paying; the conservative evangelical church is paying for its mindless idolatrous loyalty. There is a sense of secularism that is spreading and a justification for a theological liberalism (itself at the forefront of justifying the first Gulf War and the invasion of Afghanistan), it seems to me at large in our culture. But I wonder if congregations have gotten it — I wonder what was celebrated in congregations throughout the United States — Pentecost or Memorial Day? I’m deeply suspicious that I know the answer.
I am not a pacifist; I am a Christian. Hauerwas reminds us over and over again that “Christians do not become Christians and then decide to be nonviolent. Rather, nonviolence is simply one of the essential practices that is intrinsic to the story of being a a Christian. ‘Being a Christian’ is to be incorporated into a community constituted by the stories of God, which, as a consequence, necessarily puts one in tension with the world that does not share those stories” (p. 137). I think that the problem with war is that it offends “the God revealed in Christ,” not that war is “irrational given the progression of the human race” (p. 141). I pray that this day after Pentecost Sunday, we might remember this offense to God, maybe even make a memorial day of it.
