Of bishops, bombs and ballast -Sep 22, 2005

What are we to make of the newly issued advisory report from the Church of England’s synodical house of bishops, ‘Countering Terrorism: Power, Violence and Democracy Post 9/11’?

As I was attempting to summarise it for Ekklesia, I found myself experiencing mixed emotions: gratitude for a serious, substantial and carefully-crafted piece of work, certainly. Irritation that the media has instantly reduced it to a rather feeble-sounding ‘apology’ to Muslims. And concern that even good people atop an established church inevitably end up side-stepping the difficult peace of Christ in a dubious attempt to establish their credentials as ‘political realists’.

As a bit of policy wonkery, the report is pretty reasonable. Its criticism of the Iraq war is substantial, but it also faces the messy ambiguity of political life in a way that (I fear) many anti-war activists don’t.

There are also positive indicators for the United Nations, for a truth-and-reconciliation process focussed on the Middle East, and for the development of civil rights and plural polities in the face of a culture of fear.

I’m considerably less happy about ‘pre-emptive military action’ being transmogrified into ‘anticipatory self-defence’ in the face of immediate threat – the geopolitical equivalent of the Met’s dodgy ‘shoot-to-kill’ (or ‘shoot-to-defend’) policy.

But at the end of the document there’s a reassuringly solid case study about the nuclear row surrounding Iran, which politely seeks to show the West how it might consider not messing up again.

And the assessment of American power is pitched just where it needs to be in a church report – identifying the religious right’s abuse of Christian texts and doctrines as an illegitimate cipher for nationalist self-projection.

But it’s the theology of the document as a whole that niggles at me. In its (probably doomed) attempt to be taken ever-so-seriously by those who really wield power, this report simply by-passes the church as an example-setting community bound up with the suffering love of God in Christ.

That being so, the radical tradition of Christian non-violence is rapidly remaindered, and all hope is instead pinned on the historic ‘just war’ doctrine.

Don’t get me wrong. Given the world we’re in, moral rules to limit conflict are badly needed. And shorn of its historic association with the justification of Christian Empire (something the bishops don’t tackle) a renewed version of the ancient code of proportionate response – with its useful equivalents in Jewish, Muslim and secular thinking – is not to be despised.

On the contrary, the bishops are right to encourage discussion of the ‘just war’ compromise. However, they should also know that it isn’t, at the end of the day, Gospel.

What I mean is that regulated war is nowhere near the painfully difficult personal-political transformation involved in Jesus’s call for his life-companions to love our enemies, to repay good for wrong, and to pray for those who persecute us.

Sure, these aren’t public policy prescriptions calculated to win ready agreement from Bush, Blair or Bin Laden (whatever their religious rhetoric); but they do happen to be key elements in what we might call the ‘foreign policy’ of the Body of Christ.

So while there is desirable political realism in the thoughtful analysis of the bishops of Oxford, Coventry, Bath & Wells and Worcester, there isn’t the equivalent tough-mindedness about what is most deeply at stake in the Christian message – a call to costly discipleship for people who find security not among those with the power to kill, but in a God who gifts life out of death.

The Christendom mindset tends to condition bishops to think that you cannot square political maturity with such forthright Christian vision. But that is only so if the community of Christ, in its own life, is basically unwilling to talk about what risks it is prepared to take for a just peace – rather than simply for a less unjust war.

Here Christians might expect rather more courage from Christian leaders – an indicator of where the churches can change the agenda, as well as middle axioms for a wider debate. And they might get it, if those leaders weren’t over-worried about being idly dismissed by the powers-that-be. (I say that out of sympathy, not blame.)

The key word behind this report is ‘credibility’. But the question is, with whom? Politicians who face tough decisions in ‘the real world’ may find some of the bishops’ ‘thirteen ethical and theological principles’ persuasive. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

So we Christians will still find ourselves stuck with proclaiming a message of transformation towards a way, a life and a truth which isn’t simply reducible to what the markets, the polls, the PM or the generals will buy into.

This might be what Jesus was getting at when he said that we should match being ‘wise as serpents’ with being ‘gentle as doves’. For without its relation to disarming integrity, natural sagacity risks becoming little more than intellectual ballast in an economy of bombs and bullets.

Simon Barrow (www.simonbarrow.net) is co-director of Ekklesia. His background is in journalism, adult education, politics and theology, and his weblog is: http://faithinsociety.blogspot.com