Oh snap!

I’m not such a fan of Keith Olbermann. His justification for himself being a talking head against other talking heads lies in his assertion about the need for “a state of exception” in public ‘discourse’ (although discourse may be a bit of a stretch). Ew. Agamben said something about that notion in relation to the state…. Still, Olbermann can have some rather excellent lines, but the major point of the video below is instead to notice that Glenn Beck literally associates “swords to ploughshares” — you know, one of the biblical phrases for peace (see Joel, Isaiah, and Micah) — with progressivism, facism, and communism (which are all conflicting ideologies by the way).

Personally, I think Beck finally did it. Much like Novak against Caritas in veritate, Glenn Beck took a step too far. Next time I see someone who has imbibed in Beck’s ‘cool-aid’, it’ll be time to whip out the old authoritative text. The juxtaposition will should be enlightening.

H/T: David

Favorite Quote of the Day

Now this is Syncretism. Let Rumsfeld be Harshly Judged.

From GQ of all places (who knew?):

ON THE MORNING OF Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”

Rumsfeld and your Constantinian underlings, I loathe you. And I pray for your true repentance from this evil.

The Strong No: Pax Christi v. Pax Americana

I firmly believe that at times, the Christian vocation is to say a very strong no. This can be seen as an “either/or” that so many theologians seek to avoid. Indeed it is often anathema: “You just did an either/or, not a both/and. You have ignored a truth that should be included!”

It should be recognized that whenever no is proclaimed, it is located in two spheres. It is first located within the grand yes to creation: creation is indeed good. In fact, it is very good. As Christians, we are in point of fact, incredibly strong materialists. The second sphere is that because the no to sin is located in the larger yes to creation, the no is an act of love. The no is inherently a call to justice and redemption — an act of the economy of grace first instituted by divine action. Thus the prophetic call, even those who carefully emphasize a radical discontinuity, is not committing an either/or. We should at the same time, however, be careful not to blunt the prophetic call. Instead the call must be sharp when it must, exactly because it does rest within the yes.

Thus we can recognize that the “peace” promised by the state, rooted in a flawed understanding of power — a self-serving, oppressive power, is over and against the peace of Christ. This is where we can call the state a simulacra of the ikon of God. We say no to such an understanding of power and therefore say no to the actions rooted in such power.

He is risen and the Roman soldiers, who represented the attempt by imperial power to keep Jesus in the tomb, were tossed about.

And so we join with Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton and Pax Christi:

And then as often, John Paul was especially aware of young people. He’s at the World Youth Day right now in Toronto where he really seems to be energized when he’s with young people — his concerns about them, what they will become. And so he asks the question, ‘Which voice will the young people of the 21st century choose to follow?’

A very important question. We come out of a century which was the most violent in all of human history. A new century, a new millennium is upon us; and which voice will the young people follow during this century? To put your faith in Jesus means choosing to believe what Jesus says, no matter how strange it may seem — and choosing to reject the claims of evil, no matter how sensible and attractive they may seem. Choosing to reject the claims of evil no matter how sensible and attractive — and often they can seem to be sensible, reasonable, attractive — for the way of Jesus, which might seem foolish, utopian, idealistic, all the words that people use about the Gospel. Which choice will I make? Which choice will you make? And to identify those choices clearly in the world in which we live — the reality of the world where we are right now.

I have a conviction that it’s a choice between what we’d like to call pax Americana, or the other choice, pax Christi.
On October 7, when President Bush announced the war strikes on the Taliban in al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan, he said, “We are a peaceful nation!” Then a few days later while speaking at the FBI headquarters, he declared, “This is the calling of United States — the most free nation in the world, a nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, reject murderers, and rejects evil. He says we are a peaceful nation, and that’s what we stand for. He would call it, I’m sure, “peace America, or pax Americana.”

But to show you how wrong it is to think of this peaceful nation as following the way of pax Christi, I call to your attention to an article that appeared on the MSNBC.com website by Arundhati Roy. And she pointed out that since World War II, since 1945, this peaceful nation has in fact been at war and bombed China, 1945 to ‘46, 1950 to 1953; Korea, 1950, 1953; Guatemala, 1954 — and for four decades we supported a cruel, low-intensity warfare there, killing 200,000 people; Indonesia, 1958; Cuba, 1959 and ‘60; Zaire, 1964; Peru, 1965; Laos, 1964 up to 1973; Vietnam, 1961 to 1973; Cambodia, 1969 to 1970; Granada, 1983; Libya, 1986; El Salvador, during all of the 1980s, again low intensity warfare killing tens-of-thousands of people; Nicaragua, the 1980s; Panama, 1989; Iraq, 1991, and still going on; Bosnia, 1995; Sudan, 1998; Yugoslavia, 1999. And now she says, we can add Afghanistan to that list.

Pax Americana: bombing, killing, wherever we decide. As Madeline Albright put it, “We are America. We are the indispensable nation. If we have to use force, it’s because we see further than anybody else.”

But pax Americana gets even worse when we begin to look at what is happening in the reality of the world in which we live; when we look at it even more closely. Many of us probably think that our present foreign policy — the war in Afghanistan, the war against the al-Qaeda, and the unending war that the President says we’re involved in — that this foreign policy is a result of September 11.

… The aim, simply put, was to establish unilateral control of the world. Such an aim would involve — and these are the kinds of words they use in the report — smashing all possible enemy threats — even before those threats become real. You may have heard we now have a pre-emptive military policy. We will attack another country whenever we decide that they are about to attack us, whether we have any proof or not, but we have a pre-emptive defense policy.

… [but] we could be the ones that would lead our Church and our nation away from pax Americana and to pax Christi, the only peace that really is peace. (15 seconds of applause).

I thank you for that response, and I leave you now with some very sober words, that will perhaps linger in our consciousness and help to continue to motivate us. The words were written, again by that Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, who is leading the way of India protesting against their nuclear weapons development. And at the end of the article which she writes deploring and protesting these weapons, she says this:

“The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that human kind has ever made.” and then she says, “If you are religious, believe in God, then remember, this is our challenge to God.” It is worded quite simply: “We, we, God’s creatures, have the power to destroy everything You have created.”

A very evil challenge that a religious person would make to God. It’s blasphemy:

“We can destroy everything You, God, have made — the God who made everything out of love, we can destroy out of our hate.”

But then she goes on to say, “If you’re not religious, then look at it this way: This world of ours is 4,600 million years old. It could end in an afternoon.”

Let that thought: if you are religious, that we do not want to offend God with that blasphemy. Or, if your faith doesn’t move you, the thought that we can destroy our world in an afternoon, let that move us to try with all that we can bring to it to reject pax Americana and to embrace pax Christi. Thank you.

A Theology of Curse

As I understand it, to say “F$#@ You” in the way I did, is fundamentally a curse — not profanity (it does not profane a sacred thing), name calling, or simply cussing. See below one little example of a curse in the Psalms, especially verse nine. Notice that this is within the genre of an imprecatory prayer. There are plenty of other examples in the Bible of similarly expressed calls of condemnation and action. So with this in mind, I still very much stand behind what I said. Now perhaps the post on torture can have its day as it was originally intended, and those who are squeamish about the theological basis for curse can comment here.

From Psalm 137 (New King James Version):

7 Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom
The day of Jerusalem,
Who said, “Raze it, raze it,
To its very foundation!”

8 O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed,
Happy the one who repays you as you have served us!
9 Happy the one who takes and dashes
Your little ones against the rock!

(The emphasis is mine.)

Carlin, Control, and Conscription

Edit: I had already published this post, but after looking a bit around the theoblogosphere, it finds some friends in Ben’s, Halden’s, and Michael’s posts for the 4th of July.

Conscription is an interesting term. I’ve made theological turns before that employ words like coercive and co-opting. There are also other important words like commodifing and control. But I’ve since begun to think of loyalty and support — in monetary terms, as well as the rest of our lifestyle — in terms of conscription. And George Carlin does a decent job of identifying and explaining to a certain degree, this concept of conscription:

Carlin on the Draft and Choice

Carlin on Control and the American Dream

Carlin makes a great point on choice. Choice in the country doesn’t really exist; it is an illusion of choice. Well, we could choose, but the choice for a Christian then is to choose to die, after all, this society is rather eager to kill. If we do not choose to die, we are conscripted from birth into a society that says this on bumper stickers:

Right. So Archbishop Romero said stop the killing and was shot. He wrote to our President to stop selling arms to the oppressive government, and Carter, Carter the evangelical President, responded with sending more arms and labeling the Archbishop a subversive. Do not tell me that such intention in the bumper sticker doesn’t exist. I think with such a statement, it is easy to see where the church should be — on the business end of a rifle. We ought not be conscripted, or at least we ought to fight it.

On Complicity and Engagement

Some may find the pictures below disturbing. The intent is not to disturb or shock for the purposes of sickening the reader into numbness. They primarily function to point towards our complicity.

Union is holding a conference on empire, “Empire: Resistance and Reimagination.” But they are far from alone. Empire studies seems all the rage right now. The sole purpose of some theologians is to engage complicity. And not to be left out, some fellow bloggers have focused on complicity in one form or another lately as well. Talk of complicity seems to be in the air. However, complicity goes deeper than a mere theological fad. One could argue that the constant question of complicity thoroughly permeates theology, if theology is being rightly done.

And so, how do we do Seminary, or more general, how are we Christians to live in a country of power? Power to abuse, that is. Importantly, there is little room in the Jesus story for those who kill. In the narrative, we’re the centurion at the foot of the cross. Covered in blood that is not our own, how do we read the bible with stained hands? To complicate reading, and indeed living as well, we do not exist apart from our context. We (or at least I) live in a milieu that is called American society. It is important to note, that in such a society, discourse is fundamentally violent, voyeuristic, and governed by Hollywood/TV.

To say that pop-culture’s imagination is violent is an understatement. We have a culture that relishes imaginative situations, which demand the good hero resort to gladiatorial violence and Machiavellian means.1 The beauty is in the blood that flies.2 “Through the safe distance of the media, we become death-watchers, voyeurs of what has become culturally obscene.”3 This warped view of aesthetics is based on a milieu of voyeuristic entertainment: “Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all discourse on television. No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure.”4 Comedian, and social critic, Jon Stewart made this same point when he visited the political show “Crossfire.”5 Even the “news shows” that make space for pundit “discussion” are primarily oriented towards entertainment. What is more, Stewart went on to lament, such entertainment is violent, as indicated by the name of the show and the argumentative action of the participants.

However, television is not simply voyeurism for a few; rather, it functions as a nation-wide, visual bacchanal of violence that forms society’s identity. “Television is our culture’s principal mode of knowing itself. Therefore—and this is the critical point—how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged.”6 Quite simply, the visual storytelling of Hollywood, imaginative and adrenaline-filled, defines culture’s categories and the primary category is the unquestioned use of violence and Machiavellian means.

And, so, again, how do we read our Bibles, construct a theology, and live our faith in such a context?

Well. First we have to acknowledge what we look like. We (or at least I do, as a complicit person) look like this:

and this

and this

and this

However, merely acknowledging our hands drenched in blood that is not our own (perhaps stemming from a theology that seeks or cares not about other’s blood) will not do. I am attempting to raise the issue in a way that breaks with our common method of discourse. We must engage complicity, rather than passively take it in like the hermeneutics of Hollywood would like us to do.

So, what should our method be? It can’t be violent or voyeuristic or subject to commercials. It must be loving, dialogical, and free. But what does that look like and how do we maintain that method of discourse?

_____________
1. The television show “24” is one of many examples.
2. An example is the movie 300.
3. Anthony Kelly, Eschatology and Hope (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2006), 97.
4. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 87.
5. CNN’s “Crossfire,” October 15, 2004. A rough transcript may be obtained here: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/15/cf.01.html.
6. Postman, 92.

I took the pictures above from a performance by a friend of mine for the Empire conference here at Union.

The Destruction of the Church by America

Fundamentally, the myths of innocence, nature, God, chosen, and millennial are stories that alter our identity in favor of a white washed America. It is true we are exceptional – we are exceptionally bad. We have a tragic past, as I have displayed, and a tragic future, as we maintain an innocence of our past. “The American national mythos is messianic; it seeks to tell a story of freedom spread through self-sacrifice, not victories won through the spread of terror. To sustain the myth, Americans need to rewrite history just as surely as did Stalin to sustain his own version of communist orthodoxy.”1 It is incredibly telling that to confront the myths of America, Robert Hughes spoke of the prophetic, Black experience. The implication is, that the American myths are categorically racist; the American hagiographic myths hide the evil past, present injustice and the future of malevolent violence. There is very little in the myths that pushes America forward in a moral way.2 Instead the myths make it possible for America to turn a blind eye to violence, to injustice, to torture and insomuch that Christians take in these myths, they take in the blindness as well. The simulacra of American messianism subverts the real Jesus, and therefore, it unsettles and divides the body of Christ.

_______________
1. Lee Griffith, The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 38.
2. Richard T. Hughes, Myths America Lives By, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 63.

The War Prayer

I recently came across this video, an animated depiction of Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer.” This text and video more than adequately describe the theological tensions of war, violence and constantinianism. It also calls into question the basic assumptions of holy war, righteous causes, justified anger and national innocence. Give it a watch and spread it around. Its a great illustration of the complexity inherent to one’s call for violence, which is the first necessary step for talking about war – whether one is pro or con.

The War Prayer Part 1

The War Prayer Part 2

My Concern with Huckabee

I’ve got concerns about all the candidates, but I do not think any of my concerns actually matter (the Alaskan vote means very little, that is, if I was partaking in state liturgy), until I saw this on Mike Huckabee. On this I cannot stay quiet.

Huckabee, who was a minister before he served two and a half terms as governor as Arkansas, took to the stage for about half an hour at two Baptist churches in South Carolina and told the congregations: “I am here today to talk about Jesus and not to talk about me.”

“I always try to remind people that there is a place for politics, but when I come to church, it’s to worship,” he said at Gateway Baptist Church in Irmo, where he was mistakenly introduced as “Governor Hucklebee.”

In Irmo and at First Baptist Church in Fountain Inn, Huckabee weaved jokes and anecdotes from his life in Arkansas into his sermons while also demonstrating a deep familiarity with the New Testament, quoting passages from memory.”God is still looking for good soldiers, good soldiers for Christ,” he told the congregation in Irmo. “Every single person here is a soldier that God needs in his army. He is just waiting on us to say here am I, send me.”

…After the later service ended in Fountain Inn, Huckabee and his wife Janet lingered for an hour shaking hands with dozens of church-goers who had lined up to meet them, many of whom told CNN they were already supporting Huckabee’s presidential bid.

Now, beyond the obvious problem of quoting Isaiah 6 (“Here I am Lord send me”) inside of an explicitly militaristic interpretation, I have a concern. I don’t quite care much that America could once again have a self-professed Christian as President; however, I am concerned that the body of Christ – the church – will have the President of America in it. Huckabee, like many other presidents and presidential candidates, makes a false, categorical distinction: that the person who orders the bombing runs on people for America could walk into worship without the acknowledgement of vicious, un-Christlike action, much less the with holding of communion or confrontation.

The movie Godfather I comes to mind. While Michael is in the church at the baptism of his child, the hits he previously ordered are carried out. The juxtaposition in the movie makes my stomach ill. The insidious nature of what Michael has done is clearly evident, but I also think about the complicity of the church at that very moment. In all likely hood the priest did not know what Michael was doing, but a pastor at a church, if the president were to walk in, would know. I would want to walk out, unless if the president were there for repentance. Still, I’m not sure that would be enough. Repentance of specific actions is a good thing, a necessary thing. Nevertheless, when the president walks into the church, he/she does not sever their ties with their position in the world, in fact, the exact opposite is true. When the president enters the church, he/she brings in violence and if the church does nothing, the church becomes complicit.

This is one reason why I have a hard time seeing a Christian as president, because to do so means one gives up so much of one’s self – relationships within the body of Christ (come on, don’t tell me that bombing a country doesn’t affect Christians there, much less other humans we should love) and one’s relationship with the divine. Relationships – the foundation of our humanity and faith – must be seriously, negatively affected. Machiavelli puts a serious strain on faith.

Cone on Moyers

Prof. James H. Cone is on Bill Moyers’ Journal tonight at nine. Woo hoo. From looking at the website, I expect it to be about the man, his work in Black theology, and not so surprisingly to those of us at Union, discussion on R. Niebuhr. Give it a watch on the screen or the net – its always interesting to see the person at work behind the theology.

Edit:
Here is the video of the Cone interview by Moyers. While it does touch some on Cone himself, Black theology, and R. Niebuhr, the interview is largely a platform for Black theology to have a voice, specifically on the subject of lynching and the cross. Give it a look.

On the State and the Market by Muslims and Christians

I am taking a number of classes this semester: “Justice and the World Order”, “Luke”, an Aristotle class up at Fordham, and lastly, a “Christian-Muslim Dialogue” class. In the Christian-Muslim dialogue class, taught by Prof. Knitter, one of the books we are reading is titled Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism and edited by Omid Safi. While I read the first two chapters of the book, I was struck with how much one learns about not only the other religions, but also one’s own religion within religious dialogue. A deeper understanding is gained inside such learning, but there are also challenges raised within the new horizon to that we must respond.

I also did not anticipate that I would see such similar lenses between I and a Muslim scholar. I was not sure what to expect really, but the theological and epistemological parallels are too close to ignore. Thus, from the knowledge gained from two chapters in the readings, this post seeks to find the teleological path of right response and unicity to the chaos currently reigning in Muslim culture.

The first chapter by Khaled Abou El Fadl on the chaos within the Muslim communities, particularly in the Arab world with the nationalized eradication of social space, seems analogous with William Cavanaugh’s theopolitical interpretation of the nation-state. Cavanaugh asserts that the jealousness of the state obliterates alternative social space, through the individualizing social contract and its use of coercive powers, for the state seeks to assert power over its citizens and justify its raison d’etat.1

The second chapter by Farid Esack seems to agree with Eugene McCarraher’s theoeconomic readings. McCarraher states:

The corporation parodies the ecclesia, and the trinkets of the market ape the delights of the heavenly city. The enchantments of capitalism pervert our longing for a sacramental way of being in the world. A fat, greasy, hoarding slob in ancient Babylonian lore, Mammon appears, in capitalists modernity, in a counterfeit angelic rainment.2

Esack similarly asserts, “This fundamentalism of the Market seeks to convert all other cultures in its image, utilizing them for consolidating the system.”3 And Esack continues: “The Market is thus being openly presented as the only way with the assertion that outside its pale there is no salvation for the world, only the hell-fire of destruction, or the limbo of ‘primitivism.’”4

Theologically these Muslim scholars are making the same turns that some Christian theologians and historians are and this reveals at least two important points. First, as Christians and Muslims we can both have a similar understanding of western power, which results in a condemnation of the powers as they currently exist.5 This leads to the second point which is more of a question: while the Muslims struggle against the encroachment and overt attempt to control by western imperialism, are we as Christians working prophetically against the chaos causing state and market that attempts to influence us or are we co-opted to justify the religion of the state and the market?

It seems to me that in order to help the Muslims in their profound chaos, for which we as westerners are culpable, our radical, prophetic spirit must be encouraged. Our only option is to side with those confused and on the receiving end of American violence. As both religious communities suffering from the divisive actions by the state, Christians and Muslims must join in some ways to truly combat market and state fundamentalism.

As Christians and Muslims we both stand in condemnation of the chaos and violence bringers, and in this case, the bringers are the state, the market and those who are co-opted into the systems of repression by the powers and their status quo. There can be no flourishing for Islam if relationships are continually broken because of bombs from planes obliterating the people and soldiers poisoning alternative social space. The moving forward of progressive Islam or an Islamic reformation (or whatever), much less the healing of the communities in general, cannot happen easily to say the least without the cessation of chaos inflicted by the nation-state and violence supplied by the west. Reformations have their own chaos, but it is not the same chaos broken relationships. We cannot afford to let the state and the market go on inflicting unnecessary chaos, for both the good of western Christianity, Muslim societies and life in general.

_____________
1. See Cavanaugh’s works Theopolitical Imagination and Torture and Eucharist.

2. “The Enchantments of Mammon: Notes Toward a Theological History of Capitalism” in Modern Theology, July 2005, pg. 433.

3. Progressive Muslims, 90.

4. Ibid., 91.

5. Interestingly it is the Muslim progressives that criticize the liberals of maintaining the nationalized status quo, but we in the west do not maintain a distinction as such up front, although the dichotomy between liberal and liberation may be a parallel distinction.

On Elshtain and Her Book on Just War

Response to Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World

Jean Bethke Elshtain, in Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World, writes for the justification of a just war against terror as not only necessary, but also that the war on terror is the responsibility of the only great super power left and the country upon which the stability of the international community rests on – America. She argues that the current order, and all its advances, is at stake, but the prosecution of the war is hamstrung by the fad of opposition in academia and a pulpit that tends toward “self-flagellation” (117). She cites Tillich and Niebuhr to justify a violent response to “Islamic fundamentalism.” In her mind, it is the duty of the state to maintain the citizen’s security (and presumably their wealth) and it is the state that should react violently with those whom attack us.

There is a great deal that I disagree with within this book and its overall position. The following are some of my criticisms and where some of the more foundational disagreements between Elshtain and I occur.

Semi-whiggish historiography (pg. 28)
Elshtain’s construction of history is uncomfortably close to what is called in the historical field whiggery, whiggishness, or whiggish historiography. Certainly Elshtain’s history is not a full blown whiggery, after all her subject is America and not England, but the over all perspective and methodology is strikingly similar – an elitist view of the past with a somewhat triumphal idea of the present and connecting the two events is a distinct impression of destiny and inevitability. In most of Elshtain’s historical narratives one can find a whiff of whiggery, but in her understanding of the collapse of American slavery, whiggery seems explicit: “Lincoln could not have made such a claim if he had lacked the principles from which to challenge the abhorrent practice he condemned. Slavery was not a founding American principle. It was a repulsive practice that clashed with our principles and was therefore doomed” (28).

The Definition of Terror and its Application (pg. 18, 19, 152)
Elshtain seems to define terrorism rather objectively as “violence that targets noncombatants, is random and unpredictable, and aims to sow overwhelming fear in a population” (152). By and large, this definition of terrorism seems objective and that it could potentially cut both ways. However, Elshtain never allows for the term “terrorism” to be applied to American force; America as terrorist is never given a thought. She never seems to move from her perspective to see business end of American force, which leads to the next two points.

Japanese Militarism and Democratic American Force (pg. 54)
Elshtain seems to have a false understanding about democracy and militaristic force. She characterizes imperial Japan as militaristic (and I think rightly so, or at least in the 1930s and 40s), but credits the passivity of Japan to democratic government established post WW II. Here again Elshtain commits another historiographic blunder of equating the reduction of arms and perceived peaceful trade with governmental change. Certainly such a change concerning militarism can exist through governmental change, however, to make it appear that it was the governmental change, and not the depletion of resources and the utter devastation inflicted upon Japan by the Americans that flattened not only the economy, but also the Japanese spirit, is simply wrong – very wrong. Not only does she exclude the other more vital factors, but she again draws connections of inevitability that no historian would be comfortable with if judged by historical peers.

Simply put, Elshtain’s assumption that democracy demilitarizes a population is flat wrong. Her anecdotal proof is easily rejected and exposes her bias that America could not be militaristic. Perhaps she has not looked at the government’s budget, where over half is spent on the military?

American Weapons Cannot be Just (pg. 65, 67)
Just war theory is entirely dependent on the fact that we can discriminate between civilian and foe. However, truth be told, we cannot not actually discriminate through our technological, falsely advertised weapons. The weapons that the government buys from defense contractors come in over budget, late and with normally far less abilities than promised. Couple the false advertisement of what our actual capabilities are with our extreme reliance on technology and the conception of fighting a war from miles away with drones, our abilities to discern the right target become suspect at best. Just war theory was developed with the idea of conventional battles in mind and fought with arrows and swords – not with using video feeds to determine a suspect target and with a push of a button an entire building is flattened with whomever is inside, be it a hidden arms factory or a school.

A Poor Understanding of Kingdom Theology (pg. 30, 47, 99)
Elshtain continually points out that just war is a highly complex idea, as is the circumstances to which we are reacting, however, she seems to act as if opposing arguments and their underlying theological basis are simplistic, or at least her depiction of the opposing arguments are simplistic. She quite simply has a poor understanding of the complexities in Kingdom theology. She asserts that the Kingdom is entirely and solely eschatological and the ethic that Jesus preached is for the eschaton. She never once recognizes that Kingdom theology, by every current and respected theologian that I have heard, is a carefully nuanced theology to reflect the complexity that the Kingdom is both here and not here.

A Poor sense of Justice and Peace (pg. 23, 55, 56, 63, 100, 130)
As Elshtain has a simplistic idea of Kingdom theology, she likewise generally has a simplistic sense of justice and peace. She does, to her credit, mention varying types of justice, however, she lacks extending this complexity to an understanding of peace. Peace must include justice, otherwise there cannot be peace. Justice, similarly, cannot be sought without peace, but she does not mention the interconnectivity of peace and justice, in fact she at times sees them as antagonistic. She sees peace at times in opposition to justice and as such simplistically characterizes pacifism against justice. Without nuancing peace and therefore simplistically characterizing pacifism as passive, instead of what it is as nonviolent action, does injustice to a position that emphatically disagrees with her.

A Poor understanding of Community and Social Space (pg. 30)
Elshtain also has a poor understanding of community and social space. She claims that the “Christian community is not territorial, that is, it is not tied to a specific place and space” (30). This is emphatically not true. Christianity forms a political, social body and that body is not only tied to space and time, but also to the community in which it lives. Christian communities cannot simply pick up and leave – that is instead the American way of life. Whenever a community within another community simply leaves, relationships are broken for the Christian life is not an individualistic, inner spiritual life, but instead the character of the Christian life is an organic, social body that helps the community in which it lives. Relationships are established and thus Christianity is inherently territorial.

Myth of the Nation-State as Savior (pg. 46, 161)
I outright reject Elshtain’s assumption that the Nation-State is the savior that supplies our safety. This is an Enlightenment narrative that justifies the existence of the Nation-State and the use of force. Certainly life would be hectic and different than as it is now, but life and civil society existed long before Hobbe’s social contract and to say that life and civil society would cease to exist if not for the state is simply wrong. For more on a critique of this, see Theopolitical Imagination by William Cavanaugh.

A Couple Last Words
The Niebuhr and Tillich arguments are worn out, that is to say that she is arguing a moot point because theology has accepted the Niebuhrian argument for a fallen humanity. Her argument against the “humanists” is precisely that, an argument against humanists who hold to an anthropology of decades ago, that or she mischaracterizes the pacifists, which she has admittedly done in the book.

The arguments for bringing Saddam to justice would work far better for bringing Pinochet to justice, but instead we supplied Pinochet. While Saddam clearly did some evil acts, the justification for intervention in one place and ignoring others (Chile, Darfur, etc.), merely on the basis of murder, genocide and human rights violations, seems to discredit much of the argument for invading Iraq.

Lastly, how come the neighbor for Elshtain is always only the victim? Justice and peace is about righting relationships – rehabilitating the oppressor and bringing the oppressed out of their hurting circumstances – not about simply killing off the victimizer until there is no one left or they are punitively smashed into submission.

M*A*S*H, War and Theology

I really like M*A*S*H. In fact, I think its some of the best (if not some of the only) war commentary on TV. It can be repetitive at times and sometimes too silly, but it is also often intelligent, witty and profound. Aside from the war commentary, the diverse characters grow throughout their time on the show and truly do take on a life-like quality that is rare in general, much less in current TV shows.

Recently a friend of mine told me he thought M*A*S*H to be stupid, silly him, but it also came up in a comment on the Niebuhr post on military chaplaincy. With the consistent inclusion of the chaplain (and therefore Christianity) and questioning the ethics of war, M*A*S*H provides a particularly fertile ground for theological discussion on all sorts of things war.

And so here is a list of episodes of some of my favorites to A. prove that M*A*S*H is not stupid, but instead thoughtful and B. supply a curriculum/syllabus, if you will, of some episodes that may provoke theological thought. This list is not intended to be a best of (though it does include some of my favorites) or is it meant as an introduction for someone looking for an overall idea of what the show is normally like, simply this list attempts to supply a beginning for those seeking a theological interaction with war and violence in M*A*S*H. Lastly, the episode summaries are shamelessly copied from Wikipedia.

1. Season 2, Episode 24 “A Smattering of Intelligence”
Two different American intelligence agents arrive at the camp and both appear to be trying to thwart each other and score federal funding for their rival espionage organizations. Hawkeye and Trapper John decide to have some fun by tricking both spies into going after Frank Burns.

2. Season 3, Episode 5 “O.R.”
A series of short sub-plots all focusing around drama in the operating room after a major assault. An Ethiopian soldier is featured.

3. Season 4, Episode 24 “The Interview”
A stateside television correspondent interviews M*A*S*H personnel about their experiences and thoughts. (in Black and White)

4. Season 5, Episode 13 “Hawk’s Nightmare”
Hawkeye’s sanity is wearing thin. He experiences constant nightmares and bouts of sleepwalking, so Dr. Sidney Freedman arrives to help Hawkeye deal with his problems.

5. Season 7, Episode 15 “Dear Sis”
December 1951: Father Mulcahy sends his sister a Christmas letter bemoaning his feelings of uselessness and his desperate desire to provide more comfort for the troops. Mulcahy has run-ins with two problem patients; one who won’t take anesthetic and nearly chokes Mulcahy, and an hysteric who punches Mulcahy.

6. Season 9, Episode 14 “Oh, How We Danced”
B.J. is upset as his wedding anniversary is coming up while he is thousands of miles away, so the camp gets a home movie shipped in from his wife. The camp also takes care of an injured Korean child and Major Winchester grudgingly performs a hygiene inspection on a front-line unit.

7. Season 9, Episode 17 “Bless You, Hawkeye”
Hawkeye has a serious sneezing problem that appears to be psychological in nature, so Dr. Sidney Freedman arrives to find out what has him sneezing around the clock.

8. Season 9, Episode 18 “Blood Brothers”
A G.I. dying of leukemia cares less for his own health than for the health of his critically wounded comrade. Father Mulcahy must prepare for an inspection from a particularly strict Cardinal.

9. Season 10, Episode 14 “A Holy Mess”
An AWOL soldier requests sanctuary during one of Father Mulcahy’s services, leading to a huge legal dispute and potentially ruining plans for a special breakfast in the mess tent-turned-chapel.

10. Season 11, Episode 16 “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”
July 27, 1953 The armistice is signed, ending the war, and the hospital staff must come to terms with the effects the war had on their lives. The finale ran for 2 1/2 hours. (I wouldn’t watch this one until I’ve literally gone through most of the available episodes, it is just too good to skip to the end and rob it of its punch.)

The Great Philosopher on War and Violence

I can think of no greater philosopher in our age than the great Bill Waterson through Calvin and Hobbes. Forget Foucault, Derrida, Sarte, Russell, Whitehead, or Wittgenstein, for they kneel before the wit and brilliance of child speak. Well, perhaps I am praising too highly, but I’d like to think not. Anyways, this is really an introduction to two Calvin comics that I was made aware of today. Good stuff I tell you.