Just Peace Theory Book One: Spiritual Morality, Radical Love, and the Public Conversation

JUST PEACE

THEORY

BOOK ONE

SPIRITUAL MORALITY, RADICAL LOVE, AND THE PUBLIC CONVERSATION

(with blog posts from God’s Politics, The Washington Post On Faith And Tikkun Daily)

BY VALERIE ELVERTON DIXON

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Just Peace Theory Book One

Spiritual morality, Radical Love, and the Public Conversation

Copyright © 2012 by Valerie Elverton Dixon.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-5262-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-5263-6 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 11/26/2012

This book is dedicated to my parents—Lillie and Jesse Elverton. They taught me to keep faith in God and faith in myself and everything would be all right. And, they sent money.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One President Barack Obama, 2008 Election And Beyond

The Content Of Character

The Candidate And His Prophetic Pastor: Obama And Wright

Michelle Obama, A Womanist Woman

A Matter Of Judgment

We Know In Part (Part One)

The Power Of Prayer Prayer Beyond The Election

In Support Of Rick Warren

Diamond, Odetta, And Obama

On The Occasion Of Barack Obama’s Inauguration

Three Inaugural Prayers

A Singular And Unique Event

A Just Peace President?

A Just Peace President? (Part Two)

The Fable Of The Wind, The Sun And The Traveler

A Just Peace Speech

On President Barack Obama’s Speech In Ghana

No Faith

Stuck On Stupid

The Expectation Of Peace

Confessions Of Effort

A Just Peace Prize

A Prize Awarded In Faith

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The Imperatives Of A Just Peace

An Expanded Moral Imagination

Enough Of The Hyperbole

Our Responsibility For The Government We Deserve

Negotiation Rather Than Faith In Institutions

King And Obama At The Just Peace Nexus

The Nuclear Security Summit: A Just Peace Step

President Obama Cannot Please Everyone

President Obama On The View

A Necessary Presidential Faith

President Obama And Just Peace Pragmatism

President Obama’s Remarks To The Indian Parliament Elements Of Just Peace Theory Obama’s Remarks To The Indian Parliament And Just Peace

So What The Fuss

Strategic Mutual Sincerity

The State Of The Union Address: Please Hold Your Applause

President Obama, Human Rights, Egypt And Just Peace

Birther Madness

God Bless Donald Trump And The Birthers

The Meaning Of America:

The Meaning Of America:

Solomon’s Wisdom

Medicare, Taxes, Income Inequality And Presidential Leadership In 2012

Manners And Morals

Chapter Two Health-Care Reform

Health Care And Structural Violence

Health Care Is A Human Right

Health Care Within The Context Of Human Rights

A Sin And A Shame

To Whom Much Is Given

While We Are Waiting The Free Market Cannot Heal Us

Unalienable Rights, Responsibility And Idolatry Life, Liberty And Health Care

The Judgment Of The Nations Judgment Day: Does Matthew 25 Apply To The Health-Care Debate?

Liberty And Justice For All

Thirty-Seven Why The U.S. Ranks 37 Among The World Health Systems Plus Four Alternative Models

On President Obama’s Health-Care Speech My Reaction To Obama’s Speech? It’s A Start, But I Wanted More

We The People Of The United States Health Care: Human Right, Civil Right, Privilege Or Market Commodity

The Revolution Is Not Over

A Health-Care Roller Coaster The Health-Care Roller Coaster Rolls On

The Fierce Urgency Of Now Today’s Elections Don’t Change The Fierce Urgency Of Now

Freedom Freedom From Fear In The Health-Care Debate

Faith, Hope And The Advent Of Health-Care Reform

Now Is The Time For Courage Now Is The Time For Congressional Courage In Health-Care Reform

A Legitimate Expectation For Comprehensive Health-Care Reform

Thoughts On Socialism What Is And Isn’t Socialism

February 25Th Obama’s Attempt At A Bi-Partisan Health-Care Summit

Good Will Health-Care Polls, Good Will And The Golden Rule

Notes On The Health-Care Summit Coverage Is The Main Issue For Me

Republican Rhetoric And Health-Care Reform

Abortion And Health-Care Reform

Endurance Endurance In The Struggle For Health-Care Reform

Praise God For Health-Care Reform Health-Care Reform: Hallelujah And Hallelujah Anyhow

What Chief Justice Roberts Did Not Say

Chapter Three The Economic Crisis And Economic Policy

Peace That Passes All Understanding Peace In The Midst Of Economic Turbulence

Confidence In Crisis

Toward A Ten Percent Solution Should Wealthy Nations Tithe To The Poor?

A Radical Love Economy

Excremental Deals Goldman Sachs’ Excremental Deals

God’s Provision In A Recession

One Unemployed Man

The Morals Of Mammon

Investment As Investiture The True Meaning Of Investing In Our Future

Hold Fast To The American Dream Our Budget Must Hold Fast To The American Dream

Financial Madness Debt Showdown Reveals An Out-Of-Touch Congress

Financial Madness (Part Two) More Financial Madness

Congress’s Constitutional Responsibilities

The United States Government Is Us Let Us Be Clear: The Debt Ceiling Crisis Is Purely Artificial

The No New Taxes Pledge And Alexander Hamilton

Half Of America Is Poor Righteous Indignation: Half Of America Is Poor

Chapter Four War And Peace

Why Bother?

Just Peacemaking And Counterinsurgency

Prayer For The World’s Bad Actors

Instruments Of Peace: St. Francis And John Lennon

Prayers For Burma

Afghanistan

Living Epistles Christian Soldiers In Afghanistan

A Response To President Obama’s Speech At West Point

Afghanistan: Praying Our Part

Just Peace In Afghanistan, A Global Moral Obligation

President Obama’s Gradual Withdrawal From Afghanistan

President Obama’s Just Peace End To The War In Afghanistan

The Sabeel Conference: From The Apartheid Paradigm To Commensality

Enough Of Blood And Tears. Enough! Gaza: Enough Of Blood And Tears, Enough!

Just Peace Theory And The Gaza War

A Fitting Response Combatants For Peace

Courage Of Conscience Speaking Tour Palestinian And Israeli Former Fighters Unite For Peace

Combatants For Peace And The 21St Century Civil Rights Movement

Just Peace Considerations In Gaza

The Decade Of A Culture Of Peace

A Step Closer To A Just Peace In Gaza

Saying Yes To The Holy Yes

Newt Gingrich Is Wrong

From Just War To Just Peace Paradigm

What Is Done In The Dark Torture Memos: What Is Done In The Dark

Torture And The American Civil Religion

Jack Bauer Meets Paul Weston

The Spirit Of Fear

A Terrorist Is A Criminal

Terrorism, South Park And The Burqa

Sick Twisted Criminals Terrorism Is Criminal Sin

A Win For Al-Qaeda Love Rather Than Fear Can Defeat Terror

An Understandable But Unrighteous Celebration The Death Of Osama Bin Laden Is Retributive Justice

Terrorism, Faith And Fear

Mubarak’s Possible Radical Love To Mubarak: If You Love Egypt Leave

A Just Peace Revolution

Democratization: Another Mountain To Climb In Egypt

A Just Peace Paradigm Shift Truth And Freedom: A Just Peace Paradigm Shift

Kaddafi The Revolutionary Ought To Join The Revolution There Is No Such Thing As Just War

A Duty To Love A Duty To Love In A Time Of War

Universal Human Rights Vs. The Plutocracy

An Apt Comparison

After Wisconsin: Hallelujah Anyhow

On Conscientious Objection And Faith Faithful Objection To Military Action

A Truth Commission On Conscience In War

Selective Conscience Objection And Just Peace Theory

Chapter Five Glenn Beck, Terry Jones, And Rush Limbaugh

On Glenn Beck And Social Justice

Glenn Beck’s Faulty Logic

Glenn Beck, Wrong Again

On Glenn Beck And The Restoring Honor Rally (Part 1)

On Glenn Beck And The Restoring Honor Rally (Part 2)

Restoring Honor, Reclaiming The Dream

Social Justice Is Not Totalitarianism

Glenn Beck’s Offensive Attacks On George Soros

We Have Our Brother Back

Terry Jones: We Have Lost Our Brother

Anathema Terry Jones: A False Prophet

The Biblical Lessons That Rush Limbaugh Have Yet To Learn The Bible Lessons Rush Limbaugh Must Have Missed

Rush Limbaugh, Verbal Abuse, And Objective Violence Against Women

Chapter Six Cordoba House/Park 51

The Mosque, A Fitting Response Land Of The Free, Home Of The Mosque Near Ground Zero

In Spirit And In Truth (Part One) In Support Of The Cordoba Initiative Mosque And Community Center

In Spirit And In Truth (Part Two) Not A Cuddly Love Living In Spirit And In Truth: In Support Of The Cordoba House (Part Two)

The Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center And American Values

Park 51 And America’s Unresolved Pain

Faith Is The Balm In Gilead Imam Rauf Can Learn From Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love, Faith And Forgiveness We Need Love, Faith And Forgiveness

Chapter Seven Bp Oil Spill, The Environment, And Animal Rights

Bps Response To Stuff Happens Or Houston We Have A Problem

The Bp Oil Spill And Religious Environmental Ethics

Animal Rights And The Governance Of Love God Must Love Dogs

August Recess In Gasland

Chapter Eight Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer, Questioning, Intersexual, Asexual, And Allies Rights

So Glad

God’s Overflowing Love And The Heterosexual Obligation

Spiritual Power In War

Civil Unions For All

Faith Between The Already And The Not Yet On Marriage, We See In A Mirror, Dimly

When God Does A New Thing

My Own Evolution On Lgbtqia Rights

Chapter Nine Women

On Don Imus And The Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team

Un International Day Of Peace And Global Ceasefire Women’s Equality And Peacemaking

Servant Knowledge

A Culture Of Life A Womanist Culture Of Life

We Are The Ones: Hopi Wisdom, Womanist Poetry And Grizzly Bears

Shirley Sherrod’s Revelation Shirley Sherrod’s True Revelation

More Than Abortion There Is No Right To Be Born

Oprah Winfrey And The Feminine Divine

Sacred Places Michelle Obama And The Women Of South Africa

The Personhood Of Women The Legal Personhood Of Women

State Rape

Ann Romney’s Work Choices Miss The Point

Women’s Rights And Duties

Ch Apter Ten A/Theisms

On Faith And The Existence Of God Faith The Only Proof Of God

I Am The True Vine

Perfect Love Love Your Political Enemies: A Response To Jimmy Carter’s Comments On Racism

On The Earthquake In Haiti

Exercise Health And Fitness Are Better Than Any Gold

The Spirituality Of Sexuality

Silent Prayers And A More Than Perfect Game

Notes On The Unity Of Religions All Religions Call Us To Radical Love

An Open Letter To Anne Rice

Taste And See

On Faith And Reason We Need More Faith In Our Politics

A New World And Our Human Obligation A Just World In The World To Come

Religion And Science Yes, Professor Hawking, There Is A Heaven

We Need A Little Gospel

A Future Time A Meditation On Meditation

Mainstream Acceptance Of Atheists Towards Mainstream Acceptance Of Atheists

Windows Into Transcendence Black Jesus

Widows Into Transcendence Sophia

A Sunday School Lesson (Isaiah 61:4) For The New Salem District Night Sunday School

Chapter Eleven Patriotism

On Lift Every Voice And Sing

War, National Debt, And Taxes Why The Tea Party Movement Should Be Anti-War

The Dangers Of The National Day Of Prayer

Tea Party Conservatism Tea Party Reactionary; On The Wrong Side Of History

On American Exceptionalism American Exceptionalism: Useless, Potentially Dangerous

Radical Love For My Country

Please Go To See Red Tails

The Idea Of America

Chapter Twelve Against Violence

Healing Violence

21St Century Weapons Technology And The Second Amendment

Rethink, Not Reload

Capital Punishment And The Medium Is The Message

Innocence And The End Of Capital Punishment

Chapter Thirteen Religion And Politics

Religion And Politics (For The Interreligious Center On Public Life)

I Am A Values Voter

Rhetoric And Faith

Hell And The Ethics Of Jesus The Conservative Bible Project, Jesus And Hell

Prophetic Justice We Need A Prophetic (Not Necessarily Protestant) Justice

Anti-Logic And Immigration Reform Christian Anti-Logic And Immigration Reform

The Arizona Immigration Law And Outlaw Faith Arizona Immigration Law Outlaws Faithful Acts

Jon Stewart On Craven Political Expedience

Kaleidoscopic Mystery The Plan Is A Kaleidoscopic Mystery

Silent Screams And The Senatorial Debates

Even Jesus: Some Negative Ads Jesus: Soft On Defense. Wrong For America.

Justice, Simple Justice In 2012, Justice, Simple Justice

The Response Jeremiah Wright And Current Pastor Problems

Costly Grace Cheap Talk, Costly Grace

Thy Kingdom Come On Earth As It Is In Heaven

The Poor People’s March And Occupy Wall Street

From Faith Claims To Civic Virtues How Does Christianity Translate Into Public Policy?

Winter Is Coming The Occupation Of #Ows

Mitt Romney, American Civil Religion And A Strategy Of Lies

Mitt Romney, Luxembourg, And America The Beautiful

The Call To Be Faithful

The Catholic Bishops Are Worshipping The Idol Of Church Doctrine A Clash Of Rights: The Catholic Bishops And Contraception

Why This Baptist Is Opposed To The Catholic Bishops On The Birth Control Mandate

Let Us Pray, The First Step The First Step: Let Us Pray

Congress Reaps What It Sows

Dred Scott And The Dreamers

Dear Mr. President

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

W e live our lives as a tale that is told.

—Psalm 90:9 (KJV)

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

—Shakespeare The Tempest

The world and nature never sleep.

When we open our eyes to a new day, returning from our inner space travels, from the universe of dreams with its own phantasmagoric space-time physics, with its own translogical logic, its surreal reality, our today is already yesterday for the people on the other side of the earth. Northern winter is southern summer. And ordinary life in the real world is at once very different and very much the same for peoples across the globe. We wake to a day already in progress with seven billion stories shaping human history.

Imagine a tapestry.

It is a work of art where images are woven together to tell stories. Imagine the tapestry of life where a multitude of images tell the story of each human being on earth. Image our own individual story, our part in the drama. Our part, our place, the colors of the threads we add to the tapestry are our actions and reactions to the world around us. Our part of the story also consists of the things we believe, the stories we tell, the allegories that help us make sense of abstract concepts, the way we understand our relationship to flora and fauna, and the symbols and signs and things that inspire and define us.

Our lives intersect with the lives of other people, some we know and a great many that we do not know. And, it is impossible to step outside of the tapestry to look upon the world, history and our part in it from a distance. We can only know the world from within our own imbrications. So, we listen to the stories of other people; we engage in private and public conversation; we expose ourselves to the arts and sciences of life; we participate in the contestation of ideas in order to understand the world and to understand the meaning of our own existence. In so doing, it is possible to facilitate the moral evolution of humankind. It is possible to change the world.

This book is a collection of essays written from the perspective of my own interpretation of just peace theory. They are acts of theoretical journalism, the record and analysis of current events told through a theoretical frame. Theories systematize and organize knowledge. They provide a set of principles that help to analyze and to explain phenomena. They provide principles that act as guides and moral measures for what we and others do. Theoretical journalism is not a theory of journalism or a theory of communication. Rather, it is a kind of journalistic intentionality that uses theory in both an inductive and a deductive way to select a set of particular facts for consideration within the context of general theoretical principles.

Theoretical journalism recognizes the problem of the hermeneutical circle. This is the problem of text interpretation where each word only makes sense within a larger context, and the larger context is composed of the meanings of each word. Theoretical journalism treats the intertextuality of public discourse as a text, understanding that the record of events only makes sense within a wider context, and the wider context is created through our understanding of particular events.

Most journalism takes the wider context of meaning for granted, and therefore considers that reporting and analysis of events is and can be objective. Such journalism is not objective and is unknowingly trapped inside its own hermeneutical circle of texts, pretexts, subtexts, and contexts. Theoretical journalism intentionally places theory as the wider context and knows that it is reading events through a selected frame.

Theoretical journalism makes no pretence to objectivity because no journalistic effort is objective. One cannot step out of time and space and history and context. We cannot jump out of the tapestry. We see everything from a particular perspective. Theoretical journalism is clear about its position. The theoretic frame of these essays is just peace theory.

In my interpretation of just peace theory, it is the mid-point between pacifism and just war theory. It is a theory that argues that peacemaking, peace-building and maintaining a peaceful world is everyday work. Unlike just war theory that begins at the moment when violent conflict seems inevitable, just peace theory says humankind ought to look toward preventing war, that we ought to work every day to establish justice in all of its forms in order for a sustainable peace to exist. Just war theory considers under what circumstances it is right to fight war, what tactics are right to use in the midst of war, and what are the best ways to end war so that the smoldering embers of conflict do not reignite into more war. Just peace theory works to prevent conflict from ever reaching the moment where violence seems to be the only solution. However, when the moment of violent conflict does occur, just peace theory intersects with just war theory to think about whether or not war is justified, how noncombatants can work during war to bring about a just end to the conflict, and how stabilization efforts can pave the way to a positive peace.

The just war tradition, a middle way between pacifism and total genocidal war, is hundreds of years old. Once upon a time in human history genocidal warfare was fought in the name of a tribal god. We see a biblical example of this in I Samuel 15 when the prophet tells King Saul:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both men and women, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. (I Samuel 15:2-3)

When King Saul disobeys the genocidal command, the prophet Samuel rebukes him and says that the LORD will reject him from being king. (I Samuel 15:23)This savage episode would be outside of the boundaries of just war thinking.

One of the first and most important advocates of just war in the Common Era is St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine was born in 354 C.E. during the decline of the Roman Empire in the West. He taught that it was permissible for Christians to fight in wars that met certain criteria, among them: war declared by the sovereign of the state for the sake of the security and honor of the state; retributive justice against a state that refuses to punish one of its citizens who has caused harm to the offended state; to enforce orthodoxy; and war by divine command. During war, Augustine thought violence ought to be proportional to the stated ends and perpetrated only by the state’s armed forces. He thought mercy ought to be shown to captives and noncombatants.

The problem with this formulation is its emphasis on the justice of the sovereign. Augustine understood the world as binary and hierarchical. His formulation is a power-over construction where state power to enforce order and orthodoxy is its own justification since for Augustine such exists because God wills it. This means that wars of liberation against an unjust sovereign cannot be considered just. Writing in the essay Augustine on Just War I say:

An ethics of liberation calls for a new ontology, one where being is not understood in hierarchical binary relationships, but rather where a kaleidoscopic absolute existence brings the truth and the beauty of those at the margin into the center, where everyone participates in a unity whose substance is radical fairness. (31)

Radical fairness is the essence of justice. Yet, justice challenges the very notion of just war because war in and of itself cannot be just. It can never meet the requirement of proportionality and immunity for noncombatants. Innocents always die in war whether or not they are intentionally targeted. Animals, nature, infrastructure and architecture always suffer damage in war. And once war begins, warring parties fight to win by any means necessary.

The good news is the just war tradition has made the total genocidal God-commanded war morally indefensible if not yet unthinkable. The paradigm of war as a crusade is also morally questionable. Just peace theory is the middle way between pacifism and the just war tradition. It is one of four paradigms for thinking about war—pacifism, just peace, just war, crusade. Relative to just war theory, as a systematic theory and as a coherent list of practices, just peacemaking is in its infancy. In the mid1980s, the United Church of Christ declared itself a just peace church. In 1986, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite edited the book A Just Peace Church to help the UCC understand just peace ministry.

According to Thistlethwaite, in the mid 1990s, 23 scholars—Christian ethicists, biblical scholars, moral theologians, experts in international relations and conflict resolution, and peace activists—met at the Society of Christian Ethics, at the American Academy of Religion, and other places to think about just peacemaking. The results of these discussions became the book Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War edited by Glen Stassen. The idea was to suggest peacemaking practices that already had a record of success. In May 2005 religious leaders, primarily Christian and Muslim, met and produced a document against nuclear weapons, and in October 2008 the US Institute of Peace published Abrahamic Alternatives to War: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Perspectives on Just Peacemaking edited by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite and Glen Stassen. This interfaith work continues with Interfaith Just Peacemaking: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on the New Paradigm of Peace and War edited by Susan Thistlethwaite and published in 2012. (See A ‘Just Peace’ Future Part 1 United Church of Christ News 9 August 2012 http://www.ucc.org/news/a-just-peace-future-part-1-1.html and "A ‘Just Peace’ Future Part 2 United Church of Christ News 9 August 2012 http://www.ucc.org/news/a-just-peace-future-part-2.html.)

In the 1980s, other faith communities published books on the ethics of peace and war, and they wanted a positive theology of peace. In 1992, Stassen published Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace. This was an explication of seven practices of just peacemaking. Stassen has been working on understanding peacemaking since at least 1969 when he studied as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard’s Center of International Affairs. In 1981, he spent a year at the Protestant Research Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. Stassen brings together peacemaking practices with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in the Sermon on the Mount. This fusion became the foundational work for just peacemaking, and it became another way to think about the practical realities of war and peace as well as a theology of peace.

Working with a group of scholars, Stassen et. al. published Just Peacemaking in 1998. Stassen’s conversation with German thinkers continued around 2008 as he compared the ten peacemaking practices in Just Peacemaking with the practices described in a document published for the Protestant Church of Germany, Aus Gottes Frieden Leben-fur Gerechte Frieden Sorgen (Live from God’s Peace—Care for Just Peace).

Just peace thinking is also taking place in Europe. In the winter term of 1998-1999 two professors at the University of Geneva taught a seminar on ethics in international relations. Pierre Allen, a professor of political science, and Alexis Keller, a professor of history of legal and political thought, saw that little work had been done to formulate a just peace alternative to just war theory. In the fall of 2001, they organized a round-table discussion at the University of Geneva. The result is a collection of essays by the participants—What is a Just Peace? edited by Allan and Keller and published in 2006.The two approaches to just peace have much in common, including a recognition of the importance of human rights and the knowledge that religion can play an important role in peacemaking. The discourse on rights within the international community can give us a common language through which to talk about what justice is and what constitutes a just peace. At the same time, the language of rights has its limitations.

In my own interpretation of just peace theory, I posit three broad categories necessary to a just peace—truth, respect and security. The 10 just peacemaking practices that Stassen et. al. describe are:

1)   Support nonviolent direct action.

2)   Take independent initiatives to reduce threat.

3)   Use cooperative conflict resolution.

4)   Acknowledge responsibility for conflict and injustice and seek repentance and forgiveness.

5)   Advance democracy and human rights and interdependence

6)   Foster just and sustainable economic development

7)   Work with emerging cooperative forces in the international system.

8)   Strengthen the United Nations and International efforts for cooperation and human rights.

9)   Reduce offensive weapons and weapons trade

10)   Encourage grassroots peacemaking groups and voluntary associations

Stassen et.al. divide these 10 practices into three groups:

Peacemaking initiatives: 1-4

Justice: 5-6

Love and community: 7-10

These practices are reflective of the theological virtues of grace, justice and love.

In my three categories of truth respect and security, I arrange the practices in the following way:

Truth: 1 and 4

Respect: 3,5,6, and 10

Security: 2,7-10

Just peace theory says there can be no peace without justice and justice cannot live in an atmosphere of untruth, dissembling, obfuscation and selective memory. The purpose of nonviolent demonstrations is to reveal the truth. Also respect for other peoples, for their history, culture and aspirations is critical to a just peace. Respect means that we maintain due regard for the dignity of human beings, for the imago dei, the image of God that each human being carries. Respect also reaches beyond humanity to include animals, nature and all of creation. Sustainable economic development, one of the ten practices of just peacemaking as outlined by Stassen et. al. requires a regard for the environment. Finally, in my interpretation of just peace theory, security for individuals and for nations is built from the bottom up. Grassroots peacemaking is important, perhaps even more important than initiatives taken by governmental officials. I agree with other formulations of just peace theory that reckon the necessary role of international organizations both regionally and globally.

Stassen, a student of Reinhold Niebuhr, is clear that we ought to understand that the 10 peacemaking practices are just that—practices not principles. The idea is that peacemakers ought to be realistic about the world and know that peacemaking happens within the context of competing interests. Thus, practices have explanatory and persuasive power when we can demonstrate that they work in the real world. Stassen notes:

Principles are like general ideals that we hope will guide what people do. Practices are what are actually being done, and are in fact preventing a significant number of wars. The just peacemaking practices are not merely ideals or principles hovering above history. They are actual. They work. They prevent wars. (Stassen E-mail)

I say the practices are also principles, and the three categories I suggest—truth, respect, security—are also principles that at once emerge from the ten practices and find their justification beyond the practices. These principles find their warrant in the Golden Rule.

We all want to hear the truth. We all want to be respected. We all want to feel secure in our person. Moreover, when we think of the practices as principles and when we think of truth, respect and security as modalities and as virtues, just peace becomes a way of life. It becomes an ethical yardstick by which to measure the morality of our words and deeds and the words and deeds of others. It becomes a way to think about our personal and political relationships. It becomes a way to think about the world.

Another point of divergence between my interpretation of just peace and that of Stassen et. al. is whether we ought to conceive of just peace as a middle way between pacifism and just war theory. Stassen says:

Just peacemaking is not a middle way between JWT and pacifism. Those two paradigms seek to answer the question whether war or a particular war is justified. Just peacemaking does not answer that question. Its authors include just war theorists and pacifists. We do not agree on the question whether war is justified. We seek to answer the question that those two paradigms have been leaving unanswered: what peacemaking practices are biblically based and supported by political science that actually do prevent numerous wars? (Stassen E-mail)

I say: humankind has the capacity for moral evolution, and just as it is unthinkable to justify genocidal complete warfare in the name of a tribal god, we will evolve to the moral place where we recognize that there is no such thing as a just war. We know that no war can meet the just war criteria of immunity for noncombatants. Sadly, we are still at a place in human moral evolution where we may have to meet violence with violence. The purpose of just peace theory is to solve the conflict before it gets to the point of violence.

Just peace theory also has the capacity to change the nature of the discourse around war. In the Fall of 2002, when President George W. Bust was preparing the country for war with Iraq, he and others in his administration made a just war argument. In early 2003 when the war began, the Bush administration made certain to check all the just war boxes. Just war theory says that for a war to be just it must:

1)   Have a probability of success

2)   Be fought for a just cause

3)   Be a war of last resort

4)   Be fought under just authority

5)   Be fought with just means

6)   Costs and benefits must be proportional

7)   There must be a just intent

8)   The war must be announced

   (Glen Stassen Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace)

The Bush administration argued that the most powerful army on earth could easily defeat a country with a weak army; that it was right to fight the war because, according to the administration, Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that he planned to unleash on his neighbors; that the war was a war of last resort—even though it was a preemptive war—because for 12 years Saddam Hussein had refused to obey UN resolutions; Congress granted Bush authority to go to war and the administration tried to get authorization through UN Resolution 1441; the war would be fought with sophisticated weaponry that would spare the civilian population; Iraqi oil resources would pay for the war and for the reconstruction of the country; the just, even noble intent was to defend the world from weapons of mass destruction and from terrorism and to rid the Iraqi people of a brutal dictator. On March 17, 2003, Bush issued a public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq. The war started on March 20, 2003. (17 September 2012 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/86112/George-W-Bush/278444/Operation-Iraqi-Freedom)

The public conversation surrounding the Iraq War could have been quite different had it been conducted within the paradigm of just peace theory. We would have asked: what independent initiatives have the United States taken to prevent war? What cooperative forces are working to prevent war? What is the United States’ responsibility for the state of affairs in Iraq? How can the international community encourage grassroots efforts to topple Saddam? Thinking about the principles of truth, respect and security, we would have demanded more proof regarding the presence of weapons of mass destruction. It turns out they did not exist. We would have talked of Hussein, evil actor that he was, with respect. We would have been concerned with the security of the Iraqi people, knowing that war, any and all wars, would destabilize their society. We asked the wrong questions and reached the wrong conclusions.

(It is important to note that people in the United States and across the globe took to the streets to demonstrate against the war before it started.) Within a just peace paradigm, the American people and their elected representatives would have waited for the UN weapons inspectors to complete their work before going to war. We would not have gone to war without the second vote required by 1441. We would have given more thought to the sustenance and joy of the Iraqi people.

My interpretation of just peace theory relies on the concept of commensality. It is the meaning of human life found in communion. In the Christian tradition communion is the ritual where bread and wine symbolize the body and the blood of Jesus, a memorial of the last supper Jesus shared with his disciples. Christians eat bread and drink wine to remember the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as a celebration of radical love made incarnate in Jesus as the living logos, the living Word that was from the beginning with God and that was God. When we partake of communion, we are entering into a space of holy hospitality, generosity and participation where the pouring out of ourselves does not leave us empty, rather it fills us to overflowing. Communion, the ethics of commensality, is a mode of peacemaking that invites the Other, even the enemy Other, to share a table. It wants sustenance and joy for all of humanity and for all of creation.

In my interpretation of communion and its significance for just peace theory, the bread is also a symbol of sustenance and the wine a symbol of joy. All of the basic human needs necessary for human flourishing and for peace can be contemplated in relation to either sustenance or joy or both. When it becomes difficult to know what in a particular situation constitutes justice, when the language of human rights becomes exhausted with competing and conflicting claims of rights, the modality of communion, the peace ethic of commensality can take up the burden and provide a new vocabulary, a symbolic language for a shared understanding across cultures, place and space.

Moreover, sustenance and joy allows for the entrance of the arts in peacemaking. Throughout human history the arts have helped us to see and to understand the horrors of war. They give us literature and plays and pictures and films and dances to dance and songs to sing of peace. The arts, at their best, tell the truth and bring joy into our lives. They also happen in spaces that foster community and communion. We eat culinary art. Grassroots peacemakers are using theater to help young people think about conflict resolution. The arts help us to imagine a different world to live in, and they give us an avenue to examine our humanity in ways that can aid human moral evolution. We can get to the day when violent conflict is a distant nightmare existing only in history.

However, today, while just peace theory works to prevent violence, it is not a pacifistic theory. There are times when police and/or military force are necessary. For just peace theory, the legitimation of military intervention against another country requires more international

consent and cooperation. It stands as a critical observer of the centuries-old justifications for war—transgressions of territory, honor, economic activity, or the human rights of a population. My interpretation of just peace theory intends to make just war theory obsolete. I am hoping for a human moral evolution that takes us beyond the concept of just war.

Just peace theory understands that there are various forms of violence—the subjective violence that happens between identifiable individuals, groups or nation-states and the objective violence of political, economic and cultural systems. Political-economy, religion and culture often form the wider context that makes violence sensible. To make violence and war nonsensical, it is first necessary to change the logic of the wider context. Such is the work of just peace theory. This is what I intend in these acts of theoretical journalism.

These essays are Acts.

The poet Nikki Giovanni once said: mess with a poet, you get a poem. The poem is a response. It is an Act. It is a deed done by a moral agent who has decided to assume and to use h/er own powers in a way that s/he sees fit. An Act that derives from a decision is an assertion of one’s humanity and a declaration of freedom, even if the Act occurs in the most horrific of circumstances, within the most oppressive of systems. Acts are works of signification. They say: this is how I interpret the world; this is what I think is important. Our Acts give our lives meaning and help to shape all of human history.

Philosopher Slavoj Zizek writing in his book Welcome to the Desert of the Real, says that when we are standing in the face of evil that there are two fundamental ways of reacting to the trauma: the way of the superego and the way of the act (142). The superego is the part of our psychological selves that reflects our community’s moral standards. However, the Act may cause us to deviate from those standards, especially when those standards are oppressive and unjust. Thus, the Act is often rebellion against the status quo. It is a challenge to conventional wisdom. It goes against the grain of received tradition. It is ethics asking morality if it is still moral. And, in this sense, it is also a risk. Zizek says:

An Act always involves a radical risk what Derrida, following Kierkegaard, called the madness of a decision: it is a step into the open, with no guarantee about the final outcome—why? Because an Act retroactively changes the very co-ordinates into which it intervenes. (152)

These essays are Acts of theoretical journalism—just peace theoretical journalism. My intention is to intervene in a public discourse whose context for interpretation is too often structural/systemic violence and the idea that war is a human inevitability. Just peace theoretic journalism—just peace journalism—is a descendant of advocacy journalism, and it is a sibling of peace journalism, the counterweight to war journalism.

War journalism is more than the reporting that comes from a battle zone, but it is also the kind of journalism that makes war seem rational. In their book Peace Journalism, Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick present contrasts between peace and war journalism as formulated by Professor Johan Galtung, a founder of peace studies. Some of the contrasts are:

War journalism asks the question: what is the case for war? Peace journalism asks: what is the case for peace? Beyond starting from different premises, peace journalism recognizes the spiritual aspect of humanity, and also recognizes that without a holistic understanding of the human being, we will never get to peace grounded in justice. There are at least three aspects of humans—body, mind and spirit. In our public discourse, we speak easily and often about the body and about meeting its basic needs for survival. We speak about the mind, thinking about the best ways to organize society to meet those needs. We tend not to speak about the spiritual aspect of humanity, except within the context of religion. And, we think about religion with regard to its influence over political-economy and our shared values and beliefs. However, religion and spirituality are not interchangeable terms.

The spiritual aspect of humankind and of all living things is a mystery. It is the animating life force that comes into the body with our first independent breath. It is the vital self that departs at the moment of death. For believers, the spirit is the inner person that lives beyond death. It is the life-force that loves. It is the aspect of life that connects us with transcendence. A holistic spirituality understands that our spiritual person is at once connected with divine transcendence, with the Source, with Divine Love, and it is connected with our fellow human beings, animals, the natural world and all of creation. The spirit also takes us deeper into ourselves. It is the wellspring of emotions. It is the source of our intuitive insights. It celebrates and it mourns. It is within and beyond reason, mind and body. The spiritual self longs to understand itself within the context of ultimate reality and ultimate meaning. However one need not be a believer in the Divine to understand our spiritual selves as that which connects us to all that lives.

To think of human beings without consideration of the spiritual person is to fail to fully appreciate humankind and our multi-faceted complexity.

An appreciation of the whole human being through the logic of holistic spirituality helps us to understand the role and the function of religion, but holistic spirituality is not religion. Religion is the tie that binds. It is the rituals, doctrines and disciplines that bind together a group of like-minded believers. (Or, in the case of atheists, it binds together groups of like-minded unbelievers.) Religion can provide a structure to recognize the importance of the body, mind and soul of humankind, and it celebrates the holiness of ordinary life. Religious communities welcome the new born, provide rites of passage for teenagers, bless marriages, honor elders, and memorialize the dead.

Further, religious communities care for the least among us and help us to navigate the moral questions of human existence with integrity. Religion at its best helps us learn to live in love rather than in fear. At its worst, religion is tribalistic and jealous and oppressive, more interested in keeping people trapped in a relationship with rigid disciplines and doctrines rather than in helping to provide passage to greater freedom and more love to The Divine, to fellow human beings, nature and all of creation. Religion is destructive when it insists that believers worship the religion rather than the living God. When religion becomes tribalistic, it becomes violent and dangerous.

Consideration of the spiritual and religious character of humankind is important in the construction of a non-violent philosophical ethics, and I say, to the construction of a spiritual morality. A holistic understanding of humanity, including a holistic spirituality, is critical to peace journalism.

Philosopher Clifford G. Christians, in his essay Non-violence in philosophical and media ethics thinks that the social contract theory of ethics and the understanding of the human person within the classical liberal political tradition—the autonomous individual a.k.a. bourgeois white man—cannot provide an architecture of peace. Christians prefers to understand the holistic human as relational, dialogical and spiritual. Thus, he rejects social contract theory. He prefers an ethics of non-violence rooted in the Golden Rule: "In everything do to others what you would have them do to you."

I agree with Christians that the better way to understand the human individual is in h/er holistic complexity. S/he is dialogical and relational. However, for me, this does not mean that we must or ought to discard social contract theory as a mechanism for promoting justice and peace. The social contract in and of itself, as an instrument of political-economic organization, is not necessarily moral. Philosophers who criticize social contract theory for its failure to account for the basic prejudices and inequalities that are inherent in this or that social contract are correct. However, there is usually enough in the contract to allow for various interpretations and mechanisms for correction. The public discourse becomes a way for us to define and to refine the social contract.

The social in social contract reasoning allows for the relational and dialogical aspects of humankind. And, as we have seen earlier, a holistic understanding of humanity includes the spiritual. Similarly, the social includes the religious and the moral teachings of various faith communities. This moral reasoning informs the public discourse and establishes shared values and beliefs that create the moral common sense of a society. The problems come as we struggle to come to consensus on what justice is, what it requires and how justice leads to peace.

In these essays, in these Acts of just peace theorizing and of just peace journalism, I often refer to social contracts such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other international conventions that describe a vision of just human relations, especially in the area of culture and health care. In an existential sense, we have been thrown into a world where such contracts already exist. We are not hypothetical individuals living in a hypothetical world where we have no race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or historical location. We do not live behind a veil of ignorance where we enter into contemplation of questions of right and wrong without an awareness of our own particularities. Moreover, we do not always determine what is right based on reason, but we do make decisions everyday about how we will live within the social contracts that govern our lives. Many of us go along to get along with a let’s—not—rock—the—boat—preserve—the—status—quo caution. Then there are those of us who use the documents of our social contracts to secure more justice and more peace. The purpose is to rock the boat and to disrupt the status quo when it is unjust.

We do not always reach our ideals of what a moral reality ought to be from reason. We reach these ideals from listening to the voice of our inner spiritual person whispering our fears and/ or our love. It is my contention that if we listen to the inner voice of love, we can begin to change the social contracts toward more love, more justice, and more peace.

Radical Love

I first started to think more about the concept of radical love after September 11, 2001 when participants in the public discourse were grasping for the right terminology to describe the people who perpetrated the horror. They were called radical Islamists or Islamist extremists. It seemed to me that the word radical was being used interchangeably with violent. This is a conceptual error not unlike the entire notion of a war on terror. The word radical means from the root source, extreme, to the limit, and revolutionary political change. If Islam means submission to a compassionate, gracious and merciful God, then radical Islam is radical submission to compassion, grace and mercy. It is an extreme submission to an all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful God who does not need human beings to kill each other, especially people who are noncombatants.

Moreover, Islam reveres the teachings of the prophets, including Jesus. So, radical Islam would mean an extreme submission to the teachings of Jesus, including even Jesus’ commandment to love one’s enemies. (Koran 2: 136) The better way to think about people who perpetrated the murders of 9/11 and other acts of terrorism in the name of Islam is criminal apostates.

Thinking about the roots of Islam caused me to think about the roots of Christianity. It caused me to think about love. Jesus said: A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. (John 13: 34-35) This is difficult enough, but Jesus requires more. The love that Jesus commands goes beyond love for friends, family, tribe and nation. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught: You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. (Matthew 5: 43-44)

This is complete, mature, perfect, extreme, radical love. This is the love that crowds out fear. Biblical wisdom teaches us: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. (I John 4:18).This is both radical holistic spirituality and radical Christianity. Further, since we ought to never forget that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, Jesus’ commandment to love is an integral part of Judaism. In Leviticus 19:18 the people are commanded: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. And, in Deuteronomy 6:5 they are commanded: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And, according to New Testament scholar Obery Hendricks, Jesus was the first to put these two commandments together. Jesus commanded: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and you neighbor as yourself. (Luke 10:27 ESV)

Now the questions become: how does such radical love inform a spiritual morality? How does a spiritual morality inform and shape the shared values and beliefs that justify our social contracts and move our political-economy closer to justice and to peace?

Radical love is a concept that shows up in several ways within the Christian tradition. It is a way for people to understand the meaning and the requirements of their personal salvation as we seek to live our faith in ordinary life; it is an open door to queer theology; it is a description of the work of Catholic activist Dorothy Day. In their book Radical Love Forever Changed, Donna Lowe and Kimberly Parker argue that when one makes the decision to become a follower of Jesus, one assumes the duty of radical love, to become a vessel through which God’s own Holy Spirit loves the world. They write:

Loving others with God’s radical love is a key component of your salvation. How do we know? In order to bear fruit (of which love is a component); you must receive the Holy Spirit because that part comes first. Holy Spirit brings the love. (64)

Like the principle meaning of Islam, the Christian walk requires submission to the will of God. The believer commits to obey Holy Spirit, the dimension of God that lives inside us. This gives us the power to love with a radical love. At the same time, disobedience causes us to lose fellowship with God. Lowe and Parker explain:

This is not to say you lose your salvation when you sin, but when you do not walk under the authority of God, your access to His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control is restricted. (69)

For Lowe and Parker, one obeys the call to radical love out of faith and trust in God. Such trust leads to an acceptance-with-joy of the vicissitudes of life. Such trust brings personal peace.

Kimberly Parker gives her testimony:

With acceptance-with-joy at my core, I have one simple reason for continuing to trust God. I have tested His peace that surpasses all understanding and there is nothing like it. Nothing else will fix the misery in this world. If every person could accept-with-joy their circumstances, the ugliness of control, blame, envy, fear, unforgiveness and pride would indeed be choked out by His love. (208)

In my interpretation of just peace theory, justice and peace in the world cannot happen until we each find justice and peace inside ourselves. We cannot love our neighbor with a radical love unless and until we love ourselves through the power of Holy Spirit.

Radical love as self love and acceptance is the heart and soul of the project of queer theology as explicated by Patrick S. Cheng in his book Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology. Cheng defines radical love:

a love so extreme that it dissolves our existing boundaries, whether they are boundaries that separate us from other people, that separate us from preconceived notions of sexuality and gender identity, or that separate us from God (emphasis original) (x)

This is a profound insight, and it is the goal of spiritual work, to expand the concept of self beyond the limits of our own skin named with our own proper name. A spiritual morality grounded in the Golden Rule sees ourselves in the Other and sees the Other in ourselves. According to Cheng, the boundary erasing capacity of radical love intersects with queer theory, a theory that argues sexuality is not merely a biological or medical fact, but is socially determined and is thus negotiable. Queer theory disrupts fixed binary oppositions. Cheng writes:

In other words, queer theory challenges and disrupts the traditional notions that sexuality and gender identity are simply questions of scientific fact or that such concepts can be reduced to fixed binary categories such as homosexual vs. heterosexual or female vs. male. As such, this third definition of queer refers to the erasing or deconstructing of boundaries with respect to these categories of sexuality and gender. (6)

Radical love within the context of queer theology—the queer God word—is a vehicle by which to understand God and other theological doctrines. Cheng defines God: God is the sending forth of radical love . . . . not only is God defined as radical love itself, but God’s very being consists of the continuous sending forth of this radical love to others (44). For Cheng, Jesus Christ "can be understood as the one who recovers radical love for us (71).Mary is the God-bearer and one who says ‘yes’ in giving herself to God (71).Atonement is how we become ‘at-one’—with God (70).Holy Spirit helps us to return to the radical love from which we all came (100). Cheng says it is a kind of GPS (global positioning system) that helps us get from here to there, and the destination is the radical love that erases the boundaries between self and God, between self and neighbor (101).

Further, queer theology gives LGBTQIA people a vocabulary to understand and to express their relationship to Divine Love. Yet, at the same time, queer theology like liberation, womanist and feminist theologies is instructive for us all. It is explicit in reminding us that our relationship with God, humanity, nature and all of creation ought to be an expression of radical love that erases boundaries. It ought to take us beyond the well worn grooves of our own certainties. It ought to take us beyond a faith in static dead and dying doctrines that seek to preserve themselves by preserving the boundaries that separate us, even from God. Rather, we ought to put our faith in a living God who reveals new dimensions of H/erself each day, who sends new mercies with every sunrise.

Radical love is not afraid to declare itself radical. This brings me to the life and work of Dorothy Day, a radical and Catholic activist who dedicated her life to the service of God through service to the poor. Day was born into a middle-class family in 1897.Her family fell on hard times after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906.When her father lost his job as a sportswriter because the earthquake destroyed the newspaper plant, the family moved to Chicago and lived in a tenement district. She saw and experienced income inequality. She read Sinclair Lewis and visited the poor neighborhoods portrayed in his work.

In 1914, she attended the University of Illinois and became a socialist. When her family moved back to New York, she worked for a socialist newspaper. She fell in love, became pregnant, aborted the child, met and married briefly another man, took reporting jobs in Chicago and New Orleans, wrote an autobiographical novel, then sold the screen rights and used the money to buy a house on Staten Island.

And, then came Foster Batterham, an English biologist who was an anarchist and atheist (7). Patricia Mitchell writing in the introduction to collection of Day’s writings, Radical Love: Wisdom from Dorothy Day, tells us that Day became his common law wife and became pregnant. She started attending Catholic Mass on Sunday because, according to Day, the working class people she met in her work and in her activism were usually Catholic. When her daughter was born in 1936, Day baptized her into the Catholic Church. This created tension with Batterham. She knew she would have to choose between the man she loved and her desire to be baptized into the Catholic Church. She chose the Church and was baptized in December 1927.

However, she remained committed to making life better for the poor. Mitchell describes the moment in Day’s life that came when she was on a reporting trip to Washington, DC.

A great divide now separated her from her former communist and socialist friends, who did not share her faith. Yet Dorothy knew that Catholics should be fighting for the poor, just as the communists were doing. Before leaving Washington, she went to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and offered up a prayer which came with tears and with anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, the poor. (7)

Peter Maurin was the answer to her prayers. Maurin was a French intellectual who believed that Catholic social teachings could be a basis of a philosophy of work and of a new social order capable of changing the political-economy that caused the Great Depression. He also recognized the power of journalism to educate people about how Jesus’ command to love could become real in the world. His program went further. Maurin advocated radical hospitality in the form of houses where the poor could live together and share food. He taught the dignity of work, and he thought that people would be happier working the land rather than working in factories (8).

Day chose voluntary poverty, and she lived and died with the poor in a Catholic Worker house of hospitality. She and Maurin started The Catholic Worker newspaper in May of 1933.The money came from the generosity of ordinary people. In the first issue of the paper, Day writes of the newspaper’s initial benefactors.

The first number of The