World Council of Churches
Dying in war is not the only way to be remembered well
Interview conducted at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, IN during the Peace Among the Peoples Conference on July 30, 2010.
Part of my vocational call is to humanize service members and recognize that the same virtues that drive all of us, whether we've never been in or we've considered or we wouldn't consider it, that the virtues that drive us individually of submission, service, duty, sacrifice, those are common to military members. And part of what I hope that I can do is reassert the Church's moral attractiveness. I guess the military has a monopoly on almost…
It's important to name war as what it is but also recognize that that does not necessarily mean that everybody who is perpetuating war is beyond repentance, beyond reconciliation, internally. Externally, one of the things that I hope Kingston addresses is the the common ground that developed nations have, and their militaries have, with the church. It’s called the peacemaking; members of the military have a very deep investment in peace. Nobody actually wants to die in war, they want the honor of being remembered well.
But we shouldn’t be allowing the myth to perpetuate that that dying in war is the only way in which you can be remembered well.
We have a long history of martyrs that speak against, and not not even just martyrs but the entire history of the saints, speaks against that. And so hopefully developed nations and the churches and the militaries therein can get together and speak deliberately about their common call to restrain war. Mike Walzer said in his Just and Unjust Wars, “the beginning of peace is the restraint of war.”
If we're addressing some of the the peripheral things and we're not also attacking the the beast that is war itself, if we're not leashing the dogs of war and we're allowing the Lords of war to unmercifully dictate the pawns of war, which are the lowest echelon of the military, I don't think that we are starting off on the right foot in peacemaking. So I think that's what I hope that Kingston that the conference of Kingston can do effectively
