Deep questions of identity are always at play in war and peacemaking, sometimes hidden yet always decisive. Thus, for Christians, peace activism needs peace theology and, indeed, peace theology needs peace ecclesiology. Efforts to transcend classic debates between just war theory and Christian pacifism by developing a just peace ethic will falter if they fail to address more basic questions of how Christians are to sustain a primary loyalty to Jesus Christ in relationship to other identities of family, tribe, nation, (...) and global citizen. Attention to the biblical trajectory of Abrahamic community, the patristic embrace of life in exile, and Vatican II calls for the Church to be the “sacrament of human unity” by recognizing itself as a “pilgrim people” suggests that the Catholic Church can truly be a “peace church” only if it embraces life in diaspora. (shrink)

STANLEY HAUERWAS HAS FAMOUSLY TAKEN TO THE MENNONITES BEcause they constitute what appears to be an oxymoron—a tradition of dissent. He launched his career endeavoring to restore the stuff of continuity to the Christian life. In contrast, John Howard Yoder launched his career arguing against the assumption that traditions and organic communal life could carry practices of authentic discipleship forward across generations. Here lies a fundamental difference between Hauerwas and Yoder that runs deeper than whether one of them is more (...) "for" or "against" the nations. (shrink)

Both within and among churches that have traditionally held to just war teaching, various formulas in the last fifty years have allowed for the recognition that Christian pacifism is a respectable tradition alongside just war. It is not obvious, however, how historic peace churches can officially reciprocate with the same kind of ecumenical generosity by recognizing the legitimacy of the just war tradition. To do so, after all, would seem to require giving up their very claim to the confessional status (...) of nonviolence, thus undermining their very identities as historic peace churches. Glen Stassen's well-accepted exegesis of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount opens up an unexpected path out of this impasse. If he is right that the sermon is organized around a consistent succession of triads in which Jesus first named "traditional righteousness,'' then diagnosed a "vicious cycle," then presented a "transforming initiative" for escaping that cycle, then the relationship between just war and pacifism can be reconceived in entirely fresh ways. (shrink)