From War Culture to Cultures of Peace:
Practices of Peace in Religious Communities
Keynote Address, Friday, March 26, 1999
by Victor Kazanjian
Dean, Religious and Spiritual Life, Wellesley College
Introduction
What a joy it is for me to be here, among so many of you who as friends and partners
in the work of peace building and peace being have inspired me and shaped my life
and work ... and also what joy to be among the rest of you whose friendship and partnership I look forward to in the days ahead. Before I begin my reflections, there are certain
rituals that are important as we begin a gathering such as this that remind us of
the sacredness of the moment and its relationship to a long history of moments of
people gathering as part of a movement committed to peace.
The first is the honoring of our elders in this movement and there are many. But there
is one whose life continues to have a particular impact on this movement and on my
life. Elise Boulding, both in the unique beauty of her personhood and in the long
legacy of peacemakers whose spirits come alive in her, is our mother and we pause to praise
the power and passion with which she gives us life.
Then we must also give thanks to the gatherers, those who give shape and form to vision
by creating a space and structure for the movement to express itself. To Ginny Straus,
Karen Nardella and all those here at the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century, we pause to praise the instinct and insight that has given us place and
space to deepen our work.
And finally, we bring to mind those who are engaged in the struggle of building cultures
of peace in the face of the day to day violence of a culture of war. Each of us can
no doubt bring to mind those people engaged in peacemaking efforts across the world: from negotiators engaged in international situations of conflict; to community
organizers working to empower local communities to build a peaceful and just future;
to women and men giving their lives to creating a culture of peace and aliveness
with their partners and within their families. We honor all of these peacemakers. Tonight
I am particularly thinking of two friends of mine whose work at creating a culture
of peace in their lives amidst the culture of war brought about by cancer has been
fundamental to shaping the words that I offer this evening. On behalf of all those engaged
in the struggle, I offer praise and thanks to my friends Dick Nodell and Kate Harper-Nodell,
and their commitment to seeking aliveness in the face of deadness and peace in the face of war.
I would like to begin with a moment of reflection assisted by the transformational
jazz riffs of John Coltrane and then a poem by Howard Thurman.
Jazz is for me central to an understanding of moving from the culture of war to cultures
of peace. Jazz takes us beyond the rigid forms and structures of our lives and invites
us to flirt with the chaos of new possibility. After a bit of Coltrane (accompanied by McCoy Tyner), the poem that I will read is from Howard Thurman, an African-American
mystic, an author, a poet who was Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University. Although
I knew him only as child knows a great-uncle, his gentle spirit which I knew as a child has become embodied in his words as I have encountered them as an adult.
["Love" from John Coltrane's "First Medications"]
There is a sense of wholeness at the core of humanity
that must abound in all we do;
that marks with reverence our every step,
that has its sway when all else fails;
that wearies out all evil things;
that warms the depths of frozen fears
making friend of foe;
and lasts beyond the living and the dead,
beyond the goals of peace, the ends of war!
This we seek through all our years;
to be complete and of one piece, within, without.
Go beyond the goals of peace, beyond the end of wars. That is what I would challenge
us to do tonight and tomorrow to go beyond our familiar conversations about ending
war and establishing peace and to envision a new paradigm, a peace culture that is
about completeness, about wholeness, drawing on the particular wisdom of religious communities
and also rooted in the spiritual principles that ground our common life. I would
urge that our discussions not become some airy philosophical discourse but rather
be called forth from us as if we were holding the blood-drenched body of a young man
for whom honor was standing up for his brothers in a gang war, or as if we were smelling
the stench of rotting flesh coming from the earth where a mass grave marks the trail of those for whom national pride and religious fervor found expression in ethnic
cleansing, or as if we were embracing the bruised and battered body of a young woman
violated by those for whom power over another found expression in rape. Peace is
never simply a philosophical discussion, particularly when it comes to religion, but rather
peace is both, a practice, as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, a practice of cultivating
a peacefulness within one's self which then expresses itself in action; and peace
is a process, as taught by Elise Boulding, a process of imagining into reality a world
not based on the principles defined by the culture of war but rather a world transformed
by cultures of peace.
In my reflections this evening, I am going to suggest that although there have been
many and varied forms of peacemaking philosophy and action that have emerged from
religious traditions, by and large they all remain attached to and defined by a
culture of war and thereby are unable to offer a new vision for the wholeness of humanity that
is necessary for peace. I will also suggest that the single most destructive form
of this attachment by religious traditions to the war culture is their explicit
or implicit exclusivist claims to truth. I will then propose that if religious traditions
are to play a positive role in the building of peace cultures in the next century,
they must first transform themselves by moving from exclusivism to pluralism and
from tolerance to interdependence.
Before I delve any further into these reflections, I would like to share with you
just a bit of my own experience that grounds me as I approach moving from a culture
of war to cultures of peace. I am the grandchild of survivors of the Armenian genocide,
raised on the stories of the atrocities committed against the people whose body is
mine. Images of mass slaughter, of families separated, of communities displaced and
in Diaspora, stories of escape and separation, of loneliness and loss, were a part
of my childhood anthology. As an adult I carry these stories as memories etched upon my
soul, inscribed upon my flesh, never to be forgotten, always remembered as that evil
of which human beings are capable. Yet beside these memories is the image of my Armenian
grandfather, his face shining with hope, love, compassion and life; devastation and
hope side by side, reality acknowledged and yet possibility undenied. Here was a
man who had experienced the depths of human cruelty and emerged with a belief in
the possibility of the healing of humankind.
In the first part of this series, "From War Culture to Cultures of Peace," we focused
on creating cultures of peace within family life and education.
In her talk entitled "Navigating the Waters of Human Potential," Maria Guajardo Lucero
talked about being taught "to navigate the waters of human potential" by her three
sons. I loved what she said about how her sons had taken her "to depths of self-exploration that were previously unknown to her and that the core of family life is respect
for human dignity." In her remarks she stated, "if one accepts this core of human
dignity, then one must decide if a culture of peace is to guide one's family life.
In order to make this shift in consciousness, this shift in being--as an individual and
as a family--there needs to be a determination. A conscious decision to make a break
with those habits that allow a culture of war to define our existence."
My experience as a parent and partner, as a son and grandson and as particularly as
a father confirms these powerful insights. There is a way in which the circle of
our intimates provides the ground from which all of our peacemaking efforts grow.
A second aspect of my life's experience which forms the foundation of my approach
to cultures of war and peace has to do with the faces of the people who lived around
St. Ann's Episcopal Church in the South Bronx in New York City where I lived and
served as a seminarian. Here was a community all but forgotten and dismissed by society. Here
were the throwaway people of America, the disposable ones, blamed for their own demise.
These beloved people were to become my teachers, my guides and sages towards a deeper understanding of hope and peace. Jonathan Kozol writes about this community in
his powerful telling of life in the South Bronx in a book called Amazing Grace(1). Here he writes about what I lived, on St. Ann's Avenue: love and despair, life and
death occurring simultaneously. As I read his words, I could once again see the faces
of children beaming with life even as their bodies wasted away with illness and malnutrition. I could once again feel the power of community even as I could smell the
odor of greed always in the air as building after building was burned for profit.
In the second conference in this series, Gar Alperovitz challenged us to consider
the importance of a new economic paradigm to creating cultures of peace. I believe
this--the South Bronx taught me that--and I take to heart his challenge that neither
the reform of existing economic systems, nor a revolution which merely replaces one manipulative
system with another is the answer that we need. It is, in his words, the reconstruction,
or in the words of my friend and colleague Donna Bivens, the transformation, of our economic structures into a new system based on principles of cooperative
engagement and the common good which is needed.
As a community organizer for most of my adult life, I have no illusion about the difficulties
of a dream of a just and peaceful society and yet it was precisely the emergence
of the human spirit out of the devastation of genocide and injustice that has confirmed my belief that any real change must emerge from an inner transformation, a
spiritual awakening to the radical possibilities of the human heart loosed from the
oppressive chains of resignation to the status quo. It is here that the religious
communities have much to offer our quest for building cultures of peace.
And so this evening, and tomorrow, we focus our thoughts and actions on exploring
the role of religious communities in this transformational process of moving from
a culture of war to cultures of peace.
What comes to your mind when you think about religion and peace? Take a moment and
try and identify for yourself some of the associations that you have with the role
of religion in issues of violence, war and peace.
The Historic Role of Religions in Defining Cultures of Peace
In my experience, religion is equally as praised for being a catalyst for peace as
it is condemned for being a cause of violence. On the one hand I have within me vivid
images of religiously inspired peacemakers engaging a violent world towards the ends
of peace. There are those, mostly men, whom we most often identify as famous religiously
inspired peacemakers: Buddha, Mohammed, Amos, Jeremiah, Jesus, Gandhi, King. But
there are so many others. I hear the words of Jain Acarya Tulsi; Confucianist Pan
Chao; Buddhists Thich Nhat Hanh, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Ueshe Tsogyel; Sappho of Greece;
Baha'i prophet Baha'u'alah; Hindus like Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Mirabai; of
Native American peacemakers Chief Joseph and Wilma Mankiller; Muslims Rabi'a and
Badshah Kahn; Christians Lucrecia Mott, Sojourner Truth and Oscar Romero; Taoist Li Ch'ing-Chao;
Jews like Nelly Sachs and Abraham Joshua Heschel; and perhaps most of all, the millions
of activists whose names we will never know, those women, men and young people whose daily acts of peacemaking make manifest the religious traditions from which
they draw inspiration and understanding.
And yet, on the other hand these same traditions have been used to justify horrendous
atrocities. My mind is filled with horrific images from history: of genocide in
Armenia and in America, of the organized policy of extinction called colonial expansion,
of the crusades, of the holocaust, of slavery, of apartheid. And this continues today,
in Northern Ireland, in Rwanda, in the Balkans, in the Middle East, and in America,
both in its extreme form as white supremacists and their dressed up cousins the religious right spew anti-multicultiural, anti-gay, anti-women hatred and also in its
more socially accepted form of the kind of triumphalist rhetoric used against Iraq.
In each of these, cases religion has been and continues to be used to justify acts
of aggression and of war in the name of a higher power or on behalf of divinely given authority.
What are we then to make of the role of religion when it has both been central to
the development of some of the world's greatest peace movements and been a contributing
factor if not the contributing factor to some of the world's most horrific human tragedies?
There is no doubt that religious traditions have given much to our understanding of
building cultures of peace and no doubt that we still have much to learn from the
wisdom therein. In preparing for this conference, I had intended to spend time in
my reflections reviewing some of the powerful peacemaking philosophies and practices from
each of the religious and spiritual traditions in the world. But I'm not going to
do this. Instead I would refer you to a collection of articles in the book Subverting Hatred, published by the Boston Research Center which beautifully describes the peace cultures
of many of the religious and spiritual traditions of the world. I have chosen a different
path this evening because I believe that, as powerful as the vision of peace that these traditions offer is, ultimately this power is undermined by their attachment
to the principles of the culture of war and it is here that we must begin.
In his paper, Peacework 3 the World of Cancer, Richard Nodell speaks of how our world, even our peacemaking efforts, are attached
to the world of war. He writes,
Our common world is a world defined by war. War is our walk of life. Peace is often
defined as the end of war not as its alternative. We live a life of campaigns. Success
is victory. Health is the eradication of disease. We have wars against poverty and
injustice. We fight for morality and preservation of values. And we do this all very
well, perhaps as well as it can be done.
We have constructed a world in expectation of warfare. We dream of opposition and
overcoming. Our traditions of learning, law and medicine derive from ancient chivalric
orders. Schools are competitive, justice adversarial and medicine treats disease
as the enemy. We know all this and it has been written a thousand, thousand times.
There are any number of traditions that offer alternative modes of being yet for
all of their wisdom and deep understanding, even these traditions fail to offer a
viable alternative way of being in the world. (Often they are most successful in
either ignoring the world or creating a niche in it.)
What is the world of war and where does it come from? Crudely and simply put, it comes
from our fear. We are by nature weak and defenseless creatures, mid-sized mammals
with no claws, fangs or even fur. Our will, intelligence and group coordination have
nonetheless succeeded so that we are the dominant predatory species on the planet. And
behind all this will, intelligence and coordination stands our fear, our unifying
principle.
So what are some of the essential characteristics of this (fear-based) world of war?
We know it as life in opposition of struggles and obstacles, of either/or of me
and not-me. When we occupy this world we are motivated by fear which can be excited
into anger (and leads to violence)."
The Role of Religions in Defining the World of War
Religion is deeply invested in this culture of war. Movements which in most cases
began as an inspired vision of a new way of being in the world based on principles
of spiritual aliveness, quickly became institutionalized in a way that adopted the
psychology, structure, language and principles of a world where insight and understanding
are possessions in a competitive game of survival, a world at war.
Religious Identity
Religious identity is as often defined as what one is not as what one is. Rather than simply identifying oneself as a follower of a particular spiritual practice,
among a variety of different practices, religious traditions often require what amounts
to an oath of allegiance to a particular system of beliefs and/or institution which views itself as threatened by other, different religious communities. This
relationship to otherness, in the words of Richard Wentz in his book The Culture of Religious Pluralism, leads to the human response to diversity of being either conquest or conversion,
both of which are acts of war.
Institutional Structure
Religious institutions have often modeled themselves in ways that adapt structures
created by a war-based world. The world of war is the world of power over rather
than mutual empowerment and in as much as our religious institutions reflect this
philosophy of power over in their structure, they are attached to the world of war. This inequality
may appear as hierarchical structures which offer special status based on gender,
race, sexual orientation, age, or class background. It is one thing to honor members of a community who perform a particular role within the community as a teacher,
elder, or ritualist. It is quite another matter to privilege some in ways that diminish
others.
The Language of War The Language of Exclusive Claims of the Truth
Many religious traditions have adopted trumphalist or fear-based language that encourages
a convert-or-conquer attitude among its members. In these traditions the simple act
of speaking, singing about or practicing one's religious beliefs sets that person
in an adversarial relationship to others who are not of that tradition. Exclusivist
language is an especially pernicious form of this language of war and religious traditions
are rife with it. It is in this language of war that is used to express religious identity, that religion is particularly susceptible to becoming entangled with nationalism.
History is filled with situations where the rhetoric of nationalistic identity becomes
infused with the rhetoric of religious identity. Religious songs about vanquishing negative spiritual power, become patriotic anthems calling for the destruction
of evil regimes. According to Richard Wentz, Columbus, in his Book of Prophecies,
spoke of his mission as the "conquest of a new continent, the conversion of its inhabitants and thereby the destruction of the Anti-Christ." Hear these words of Columbus
and then listen to the rhetoric of Slobodan Milosevic as he combines nationalistic
fervor with Christian claims of truth to justify his ongoing acts of genocide--a rhetoric, by the way, which we in this country were deaf to for the longest time because of
our own attachment to Christian rhetoric of exclusivism. Where would we be now had
we heard the cries of Albanian Muslims in Kosovo ten or fifteen years ago when they
were pleading for assistance?
The Transformation of Religion
Certainly the history of religion is in part a history of reform, but I believe that
the reform of our religious traditions is not enough. We need to transform them,
to disentangle them from their attachment to the war culture and recreate them, so
that they might provide the spiritual energy necessary to create and sustain cultures of
peace.
There are two movements that I would like to suggest as central to the transformation
of religion. The first is the movement from exclusivism to pluralism and the second
from tolerance to interdependence.
From Exclusivism to Pluralism
I have the privilege of sharing in the lives of more than 3,000 students, faculty
and staff and some 33,000 alumnae at Wellesley College as we attempt to create a
learning community which respects and draws upon the great diversity of human experience.
It has become clear to us as we attempt to nurture community among diversity that we
must reach beyond the usual superficial levels of communication and tap into a much
deeper source of understanding if we are to cross the barriers that have historically
divided human beings one from another and understand the meaning of pluralism in the world. In creating new paradigms, Elise often asks us to use our imaginations to envision
that which we have not yet experienced ... so I want you to use your imaginations
for a moment as I share with you an image, a parable really, that helps me to envision
this deeper source of understanding necessary for creating cultures of peace. To do this,
however, we need to create some space in our bodies, so why don't we stand as you
are able, stretch and use a few deep breathes to clear some space within you. Please
be seated.
Imagine, if you will, a group of people, a small community, living together in a
harsh, dry, barren land. At the center of this community is a well--dug deep into
the ground--from which the people who gather around it draw the water that sustains
them in the harsh environment of their lives. In fact, there are scattered across this desert
many communities, gathered around many wells, but because of the distance and danger
that separates them, each community lives in relative isolation from the other. The
people of each well believe that they have found at their well the only way to survive
in the desert of their lives. They celebrate this discovery and guard their precious
water that gives them life. From time to time travelers from other parts of the desert
visit with stories of other wells which also provide water and similarly sustain the
lives of other communities. But the people of each well generally discount the possibility
that any other well could provide the kind of nourishment that theirs does. So in their separation, their lives go on.
Improved methods of transportation increase the ability of people to cross the desert.
People of different wells begin to encounter one another with increasing frequency
and learn more about each other. At first there is great fear and confusion at the
discovery of these other foreign communities. But amidst the confusion and occasional
acts of aggression, a general attitude of tolerance begins to emerge. The people
of the wells learn to tolerate one another and accept the fact that each well seems
to provide water of a slightly different consistency and of a slightly different flavor. While
publicly and politely practicing tolerance of each other's claims, each community
privately maintains the superiority of their water. Each is convinced that their
own experience is evidence that their well is the true well of the water that sustains life
in the desert. For many years, this tolerance continues, until one day, one memorable
day, a diver exploring the deepest parts of one of the wells, makes a discovery.
Far beneath the surface of the earth, beneath the harsh reality of the desert, is an
endless sea of water which is the common source of all the wells in the desert.
For us to begin to understand the creative possibilities that are held within the
diversity of human experience and embrace the complexity of the human community,
we must take the plunge and dive deep into the waters that lie beneath the surface
of our lives. We must move beyond exclusive claims of truth, whether they be religious, political,
or ideological and embrace a relational understanding of how truth becomes known
only as we encounter one another. If we are to move in the direction of pluralism,
then like the people of the wells, we must first move out of our fearful isolation, out
of the world of war and risk encounter with one another, develop a sense of mutual
respect for the diversity of each other's experience and then explore the bonds that
weave together our common humanity.
At Wellesley College we have established a new multi-faith model of religious life
in which all religious traditions and spiritual perspectives are valued and in which
no one is seen as normative. This is in contrast to usual religious life programs
in which there is one dominant religious tradition, usually Protestant Christian, around
whom everyone else must orient themselves. The program currently involves thirteen
different religious traditions, including, Baha'i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain,
Jewish, Muslim, Native American, Native African, Neo-Pagan, Sikh, Unitarian-Universalist
and Zoroastrian. In this work, I am institutionally charged to nurture all without
representing any one religious tradition. I work together with a multi-faith team
of advisors and student leaders to develop new models for religious life and community ritual
in which each religious tradition is respected and in which no one voice dominates.
We work together as a team, supporting each other's individual group life, while
exploring in depth the possibilities of interdependence and inter-religious cooperation.
Our primary work, however, is not theoretical but relational, the intentional nurturing
of relationships with each other and within the community. The one thing that I am disappointed in about the timing of this gathering is that it is spring break at
Wellesley. Now that seems like a strange thing to say, but because it is spring break,
I was unable to bring with me the students who have been my teachers these past years.
I wanted you to realize that this work is not about disembodied dialogue but about
Colby, Suzanne, Sarah, Anindita, Yasmeen, Simi, Jackie, Lisa, Stacie, Des, Allaire,
Meg, Shannon, Kim, Rachana and other women who have through a series of carefully
structures retreats and meetings risked going deep into encounter with one another.
This has precipitated a shift from a dialogue in which people attempt to tolerate
each other's claims of truth to a process in which truth is seen as residing somewhere
in between us and where we understand that through our relationships with one another,
we gain a more complete understanding of ultimate truth. To this end we are attempting
to live out an ethic described in the work of Diana Eck in her book, Encountering God, where she speaks of the importance of religious pluralism as she describes the different
responses to dealing with religious diversity.
First there is the exclusivist response: Our community, our tradition, our understanding
of reality, our encounter with God, is the one and only truth, excluding all others.
Second, there is the inclusivist response: There are, indeed, many communities, traditions, and truths, but our own way of seeing things is the culmination of the
others, superior to the others, or at least wide enough to include the others under
our universal canopy and in our terms. A third response is that of the pluralist:
Truth is not the exclusive or inclusive possession of any one tradition or community. Therefore
the diversity of communities, traditions, understandings of the truth, and visions
of God are not an obstacle for us to overcome, but an opportunity for our energetic
engagement and dialogue with one another. It does not mean giving up on our commitments;
rather, it means opening up those commitments to the give and take of mutual discovery,
understanding, and, indeed, transformation.(2)
Although this concept of a shared truth is the hallmark of our work at Wellesley,
it should be noted that those who hold claims to exclusive ownership of the truth
are not excluded from this process. This is not simply a group of like-minded, liberals
holding hands and celebrating relativism and universalism, but rather a structured place
of encounter for all people where serious dialogue can occur in the context of deepening
relationship.
This model is about transformation. It is about transforming ourselves and others
by reaching beyond self-serving ideology, learning from each other's experiences
and thereby coming to understand that the future of humankind depends on our ability
to realize that our lives are inextricably linked to one another in a way that is inescapable
as we enter the next century.
This work has now taken on national and even international dimension with the establishing
of the Education as Transformation Project, an inter-institutional program based
at Wellesley which is now working with representatives from more than 400 colleges
and universities to engage a dialogue and change process around issues of religious
pluralism and spirituality in higher education.
Beyond Tolerance
One of the things that I have encountered in this work at Wellesley and beyond is
that too often in the work of interreligious dialogue, we have settled for tolerance
as our goal rather than risk the possibility that our lives are in fact connected
and that it is possible to celebrate one's own experience without negating that of another
and conversely celebrate another's experience without diminishing one's own. Therefore
the second part of transforming religions to play a positive role in the movement
from a war culture to cultures of peace is moving from tolerance to interdependence.
What then is tolerance?
Tolerance, at least as it is defined in the west, is conflict arrested. It is a great
harness applied to the destructive forces of ignorance, fear and prejudice. It provides
a wall between warring parties. At best it is a glass wall where protected people
can see one another going about parallel lives. But nonetheless it is still a wall
dividing us from each another. As such, tolerance is not a basis for healthy human
relationship nor will it ever lead to true community, for tolerance does not allow
for learning, or growth or transformation, but rather ultimately keeps people in a state
of suspended ignorance and conflict.
In the face of a world punctuated by acts of intolerance, how could tolerance possibly
be an unworthy goal for which to strive? At a time when tolerance has often been
replaced by overt acts of hate in our communities and our world, a little tolerance
seems a worthy goal. History, however, tells us otherwise. Tolerance as the ultimate goal
has not and will not lead us to cultures of peace.
The current unraveling of social policies regarding racial justice in our society
is a stunning reminder of the limits of tolerance. After nearly 35 years of legislated
tolerance, it has become clear that very little has fundamentally changed in terms
of our society's understanding of racial identity and prejudice. The racial Balkanization
of America holds the same lessons as the ethnic fragmentation of the Balkans. Tolerance
forced or legislated does not lead to mutual understanding, societal transformation and community.
If religious communities are going to play a positive role in moving us beyond the
limits of tolerance, then they are going to have to move beyond the kind of interfaith
dialogue where people eventually agree to disagree and tolerate each other. This
is a weak alliance at best. No, religious communities must examine what is it about their
own principles that keeps them from discovering the reality of our interdependence
on one another.
The movement from exclusivism to pluralism and from tolerance to interdependence begins
at home. Too often religious peace activists speak out against the injustice of oppressive
governments and remain silent about the oppressiveness of their own religious insitutions. I have witnessed over and over again in my own Christian religious community
activists who fight injustice with exclusivist words and war-like tactics which bind
them to the culture of war and obscure their message of peace.
Turning Our Attention to Our Own Traditions
And so in conclusion I would like to share with you one way in which I have turned
my attention to challenging my own religious tradition to rid itself of its exclusivism
and move beyond tolerance. I have thought long and hard about how best to speak this
message to my brothers and sisters in the Christian community about this movement
from a culture of war to a culture of peace and eventually I found that the best
way to communicate was to write a letter. So, this past January, as I sat on the
Banks of the Ganges River in Varanasi, India I started a letter to the Christian community. It
is the first of what I hope will be a series of letters on this subject.
A Letter to the Christian Community on the Violence of Christianity
Victor, a servant of God and follower of Jesus Christ, to all my sisters and brothers
in the Christian Community.
Peace to you all.
I hope that this letter finds you well in body, mind and spirit and that your days
are filled with meaning. Of course in as much as meaning is made not only from pleasant
times but also from times of struggle and sadness, let me begin by offering my prayers that meaning be made from all the moments of your lives.
I have often sat down to write to you out of love and concern for your life as a community
of faith. My concern is both political and personal. Political in the ways in which
Christians continue to impact the total complex of relations between people living in this world, and personal for I myself am a priest in the Episcopal sect of your
community.
I write to you from a place far away, a place very different from the country that
I call home. I am in India surrounded by the beauty and complexity of manyness, which
is India. I write you as a stranger as well as a friend. How strange this seems,
because at this moment I feel both more connected and more alienated from the Christian
community than ever before. It has only been by coming to this far-off place and
allowing myself to plunge deep into the waters of the kind of pluralism that India's
many cultures and religions offer that I have discovered the aliveness of God in me and around
me. What irony that I came to India to learn about religions other than Christianity
and yet what I found in me, was a Christianity that I had always known but never
fully experienced. How far we must go sometimes to see that which is within us. And
so it is from this new vantage-point that I look with fresh eyes at the Christian
community in the United States, and feel both inspired and troubled by what I see.
I am inspired by the deep and abiding love that I see flow from many of you to friends
and strangers as acts of kindness. I am inspired by the devotion of your worship
and how through words spoken, sung, danced and played you express the wondrous wisdom
which you continue to gather from scholars and sages, telling the unfolding story of
that which you call the Spirit of God so alive in your community. I am inspired by
your practice of prayer, spoken and silent, through which you weave together an intimate
relationship with the one whom you call God. I am inspired by the spaces in which you
gather whether they be arrayed in ornate splendor where color, shape and form proclaim
the greatness of that which inspires you or whether they be sacred in their simplicity providing no distraction from contemplation and conversation. I am inspired by
the spiritual movements which you call justice, striking out against that which oppresses
the body and binds the soul. There is so much of beauty that has grown from a ground watered by the spirit carried by those who seek to be followers of Jesus. And for
a long time, no doubt too long a time, I allowed myself to view mostly this part
of the picture. But now my view is different. That which was obscured has been revealed
and I am troubled, deeply troubled.
I am troubled by the ways in which the ancient and alive spirit of the divine expressed
in the historic and contemporary Christian community continues to be the source of
a violence, hatred and injustice.
Many have written from a Christian perspective on the ills of our world, decrying
the immoral forces around us and calling upon Christians to stand up and speak out
against such evil. Perhaps you've read this work or maybe you've been involved in
standing up or speaking out. I have devoted much of my life and ministry to doing just this,
to proclaiming a vision of a peaceful and just society based on principles of equity,
cooperation and interdependence and critiquing aspects of our society which violate
these principles. I have stood with other Christians trying to practice their faith
by challenging the unjust aspects of society and I know the importance of this work.
But I am now standing in a different place, with a group of people who have looked
and are looking at the Christian community itself and asking a different set of questions.
Questions like: How is it that a religion based on love generates hate? How is it
that a religion based on peace produces violence and war?
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, there is something fundamentally wrong with
the way in which we have come to understand and practice Christian faith. It has
everything to do with an attachment to exclusivism, the belief that Christianity
is the one true path to God. And I want you to know--the world needs you to know--that the only
possible outcome of this belief is violence. Exclusivism is violence.
When most of us think of religious exclusivism, we think of extremists. Exclusivism
conjures up images of fundamentalist Christians who make reference to biblical passages
to provide justification for their every thought and action. Perhaps you have your
own associations about who these exclusivists are: bible thumpers, doorbell ringing
crusaders, TV evangelists, or even the more extreme cult leaders or those who bomb
clinics or public buildings.
But it is not simply so-called "religious fundamentalists" who practice this exclusivism.
No, there is a kind of inclusivism preached by liberal church folk which really is
exclusivism dressed up in more refined garb. And these principles of exclusivism
are embedded within the doctrine and dogma of nearly all of the Christian sects that
I know.
If you believe that one can only be in relationship to the divine, that one can only
fully know God by being a Christian, then you are practicing exclusivism and you
are committing violence.
If you are not satisfied by witnessing to the fact that God has acted in the world
through the person of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit but feel compelled
to proclaim that God has not acted as powerfully in any other way before or since
then you are practicing exclusivism and are committing violence.
I write these words with love in my heart.
I am a Christian.
I make this claim with love and also with pain.
I have come to know the beauty of God and the possibility of peace through the life,
death and resurrection of Jesus and through the moving of the Holy Spirit in the
historic and contemporary community of followers and I have seen the destruction
brought upon the people of this earth by this same community of followers as they claim exclusive
ownership of the truth and provide justification for horrific acts of violence.
What a paradox that something of such beauty can cause such destruction.
We who sent our brother Jesus to the cross ... we have sent others to their death,
to the crusaders sword, to the lynching tree, to the gas chamber, to the mushroom
cloud, all in the name of that same Lord. And today still, in the Balkans, Serbian
forces are committing the atrocities of ethnic cleansing emboldened by their identity as Orthodox
Christians fighting a battle against the ungodly. Christian exclusivist claims of
truth have been used throughout history by nationalists to lend credence to their
claim to exclusive power.
Does it matter that others do the same thing in the name of their God?
No, it does not. We must be concerned about that which we have the power to change.
Our selves and our religion.
I believe that we have a magnificent and formidable journey ahead of us. It is the
reconstruction of the Christian movement in a way that rejects exclusivism and embraces
pluralism.
Several months ago I wrote a letter to my brothers and sisters in religious communities
other than Christianity. Let me close by sharing these words with you ...
"We walk side by side, fellow travelers on life's pathways. I speak of being awakened
to the wonder and mystery of the world, using words that reflect my window to the
Divine, the one whom I call my Lord and my God, Jesus, the Risen Christ. You too
speak of being awakened to the wonder and mystery of the world, using words that reflect
your window to the Divine through the teachings of the Buddha, of Baha'u'llah, of
Lord Mahavir, of Muhammad, teachings from the Torah, the Guru Granth Sahib, and the
Vedas. As I hear you speak and as I look into your eyes, I see God. I feel God. I experience
God in you, not just a partial reflection of my Christian God, but the Creator, the
Divine Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being. How magnificent is this
Divine force that it should appear across the earth like the flowers of a garden in so
many different shapes and hues.
In my work, I am surrounded by people of a myriad of religious traditions who are
living witnesses to the magnificence of the Divine. At first, as we worked to understand
religious diversity as a resource rather than a barrier to creating community, I
came face to face with the language of Christian exclusivism that had become so deeply
ingrained within me. As my heart softened, these claims of exclusive ownership over
truth began to peel away like scales before my eyes. Then, I not only discovered
the unique beauty and truth that lies at the heart of other religious traditions, but I also
discovered, in a much deeper way than I thought possible, the unique beauty and truth
that is the Christian experience, free from the idolatrous bonds of exclusivism which have held it captive for so long.
There is no place for religious exclusivism in Christianity. It has been arguably
the single greatest source of human misery during the past two millennia. It must
be replaced by an understanding of the interwoveness of all life, of all religious
traditions. For Christians to understand the magnificence of God, it is necessary for us to
bask in the beauty of the many other manifestations of this one great Divine force
by looking lovingly into the faces of people of other religious traditions and thereby
glimpsing a more complete image of the one whom we now see as though through a glass
darkly, but only then face to face."
Finally, my brothers and sisters in Christ, farewell, for now. Be not afraid. Remember
that God so loved us that we too might love, that we might give our hearts to the
world. May the peace of God be with you now as always.
This evening, tomorrow and in the days to come, may we go beyond the goals of peace,
the ends of war and seek through all our years to be complete and of one piece, within,
without.
Notes
1. Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace, (New York: Random House, 1995)
2. Diana L. Eck, Encountering God, (Boston, Beacon Press, 1993 p. 168) |