wfn.org | Episcopalians: Preaching peace in wartime characterizes Spiritual Formation conf

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

May 5, 2003

2003-095

Episcopalians: Preaching peace in wartime characterizes 
Spiritual Formation conf

by Dan Webster

(ENS) "Life is too short for nastiness," retired South African 
Archbishop Desmond Tutu told participants at the first of two 
Spiritual Formation Conferences sponsored by Trinity Church Wall 
Street and held at Camp Allen, Texas, April 7-11. 

"Have you ever thought of yourselves as a center of peace, as a 
pool of serenity?" Tutu asked his audience. "God only does 
something in the world with you, through youGod needs you. God 
is omnipotent, yes, but God is also impotent. God is 
weakbecause God needs you."

The Spiritual Formation program is a new mission outreach of 
Trinity, intended to introduce lay and ordained church leaders 
to the latest and the best methods of empowering the spiritual 
development of individuals and congregations and to equip 
attendees to introduce new practices and liturgies into their 
own parish programs.

Keynoters and presenters at the conference included Tutu; Walter 
Wink, professor of biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological 
Seminary in New York; Phyllis Tickle, religion editor of 
Publisher's Weekly; Joan Borysenko, author and lecturer; the 
Rev. Thomas Keating, OCSO, founder of Contemplative Outreach, 
Ltd.; and the Rev. Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral in San 
Francisco. 

A nonviolent revolution

"Peace never comes from the barrel of a gun," Tutu told a 
Trinity TV interviewer following his conference presentation. 
Clasping his hands and lacing his fingers together, he spoke of 
the importance of recognizing that the Iraqi people are part of 
God's family. The lesson we need to learn is interconnectedness, 
he said.

"Archbishop Tutu really moved me profoundly," said David Catron, 
a parishioner from All Saints Episcopal Church in Salt Lake 
City, Utah. "Tutu was the most powerful because of where he 
comes from, his personal experience. He speaks with authority 
because he has stood for peace when it meant putting your life 
at risk."

The theme of peace through nonviolence pervaded the conference. 
"It would be a tragedy if churches were not part of the 
nonviolent revolution," Wink told the conference as he stood 
under the huge wooden cross at the front of the camp's All 
Saints Chapel. He said the most important ethical challenge of 
our time is to grow a spirituality of nonviolence. "Violence has 
become the spirituality of the modern world," said Wink. Our 
culture believes "violence saves" and that "only violence can 
rescue us from the violence of our enemies."

Nonviolence is still resistance

"When pulpits are silenced because of fear, the church's 
integrity is at stake," said Wink, comparing current 
governmental influence on the church with that of the Emperor 
Constantine, who legitimized Christianity in the Roman Empire in 
313. Wink's suggestion for church leaders was to study Matthew 
5:38-41, Jesus' admonition about "turning the other cheek."  He 
used people from the audience to act out those stories from the 
perspective of Jesus using nonviolent resistance. "This text has 
become a way of making people subservient," when it is quite the 
opposite, said Wink. 

He and several volunteers demonstrated what the physical actions 
in the story would have meant to those who first heard this 
story. Turning the other cheek would have meant claiming 
equality against your aggressor, he said.  It would have been 
understood as a challenge, an act of resistance. Giving up your 
garments until you are naked was a defiant act protesting the 
oppressive economic system of the time. Being naked in public 
was not a shaming thing for the naked person, he said; under 
Jewish law, it would instead have shamed those who looked upon 
the naked person. 

Nor was carrying the pack of a soldier the extra mile an act of 
sheer generosity on the part of the follower of Christ. Wink 
acted out the text for his audience, showing that by that act it 
would have forced the soldier to break the law and could get him 
in trouble with his superiors. "Nonviolence is the heart of the 
teachings of Jesus," Wink said. "It is the breaking in of the 
Kingdom of God."

"Non-violence is absolutely gospel-based," agreed the Rev. Dru 
Ferguson, newly called rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 
Dallas. "Christ calls us to a radical way of living and very few 
of us, and I include myself in that," she said, "are willing to 
live into that."

"Violence begets violence," continued Ferguson, "and you never 
bring about peace through violence. That is an illusion." 

But not everyone agreed. "Walter Wink was a little too political 
for my taste," said one conference participant, who preferred 
not to be identified. "I don't know how we can say to Saddam 
Hussein turn the other cheek," said Wray McCash, a retired 
physician and parishioner at Trinity Episcopal Church in 
Longview, Texas.  But he said he was impressed with Wink's 
presentation.  It was the first time McCash had heard those 
interpretations of that passage of Scripture.

A person through other persons'

Other workshops included a presentation by Philip Roderick, an 
Anglican priest in the Diocese of Oxford, England who practices 
contemplative living.  He offered a prayer practice for 
discernment around any issue.  Catron said he hoped to use it to 
help heal the polarity that many are experiencing over the 
current war.

"Ubuntu theology" was the topic of a workshop offered by the 
Rev. Michael Battle, a parish rector and seminary professor at 
Duke University. Ubuntu is a concept of being that comes out of 
South Africa and that is summed up in a proverb: "A person is a 
person through other persons." Acknowledging that most of us 
have been asked if we have a personal relationship with Jesus, 
Battle asked the workshop how many had been asked if they had a 
communal relationship with Jesus.  No one answered.

The concept of ubuntu, says Battle, is the concept of Christian 
community envisioned by St. Paul in Romans 8. The personal realm 
and the communal realm are "inextricably tied together," he 
said. "I am because you are and you are because I am."

Such a concept of community is what made possible South Africa's 
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Battle explained. 
Government officials seeking amnesty sat in the same room to be 
confronted by the victims or relatives of those they had 
tortured and killed. Tutu was the chair of that commission.

A second Spiritual Formation conference will be held at Kanuga 
Conference Center in western North Carolina the week of May 11 - 
15.

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--The Rev. Dan Webster is director of communications for the 
Diocese of Utah.