IN this article, Hauerwas expresses the concerns I have for the integrity of Christian spirituality during these times of “War on Terror”.  It is appalling to me how so many in this “Christian nation” of ours are so absolutely quick to “bless the rhetoric of revenge” and give support for returning grievance for grievance.  An eye for an eye.  We say we are not taking revenge,  and yet we turn around and react with much the same kind of “diplomacy” of action which precipitated the feelings which motivated the act of war against the US by the terrorists. 

From the article:

“Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics at the Duke Divinity School, is an avowed pacifist who argues that the United States should construe its reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks as a police action in which the goal is not to kill but to arrest the perpetrators. Mr. Hauerwas said he had been “absolutely dumbfounded” at the ease and haste with which Christian leaders in the United States adopted a belligerent stance that in his view is at odds with the teachings of their religion. “Christians have a very hard time in America distinguishing themselves from the assumption that we are on board whatever America wants to do,” he said. “Most American Christians are blank check people who believe we should go kill whoever the democratically elected American president says we should kill.”“

I agree that the attacks were “an act of war”,  but by whom?  It was a cell,  a group,  a fundamentalist sect.  It was not done by Afganistan,  or by Muslims.