UCC Thistlethwaite on Just Peace Process

From Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>
Date Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:52:56 -0700

A 'Just Peace' future: Part 1



Written by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
June 6, 2011


Following the recently concluded World Council of
Churches' International Ecumenical Peace
Convocation held in Kingston, Jamaica, United
Church News asked Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite to
reflect on the history, progress and potential
future of the Just Peace movement. In 1986,
Thistlethwaite edited the book, "A Just Peace
Church," which challenged the United Church of
Christ and its ecumenical partners to adopt the
Just Peace paradigm as a core theological
grounding. In this two-part series,
Thistlethwaite will first recount the activities
of the Just Peace movement over the last 25 years
and then position the paradigm in a post 9/11 world.

"Courage in the struggle for justice and peace"
is one of the powerful affirmations in the United
Church of Christ Statement of Faith. It is
central to the identity of our church. It is one
of our most ardent prayers and richest blessings.
To be part of the United Church of Christ is to
be part of the struggle for justice and peace.

In June of 1985 the Fifteenth General Synod,
meeting in Ames, Iowa, took two important actions
to strengthen this identity. They declared
justice and peace to be two of the priorities of
the church for the next four years. And they
passed a Pronouncement "Affirming the United
Church of Christ to be a Just Peace Church."

The first draft of what became the "Just Peace"
document was published in October 1984 and
circulated widely throughout the church. Many
people and groups reacted to this draft, sending
in hundreds of pages in response. The first draft
and the response to it became the basis for the
Pronouncement and the Proposal for Action, which
were sent to the Fifteenth General Synod. The
debate and the action of that synod have, in
turn, provided a basis for the book, A Just Peace Church.

In declaring itself to be a "Just Peace Church"
the United Church of Christ took made several
important declarations: The church as church made
a specifically biblical and theological
affirmation: it affirmed that making peace and
doing justice are the task of Christians given to
them by God in the shalom vision. This United
Church of Christ document further developed a new
theological language or theological paradigm of
peace theology, moving beyond the three historic
paradigms: pacifism, just war, and crusade.

In the years following the adoption of the Just
Peace pronouncement, many churches throughout the
United Church of Christ declared themselves "Just
Peace Churches" and engaged in a wide variety of
activities to widen and deepen that concept.
Unfortunately, the United Church of Christ did
not continue to participate in the nearly quarter
of a century of ecumenical, and now interfaith
work, that has followed that has developed the
concept of Just Peace into an established
paradigm for considering peace and war. It is my
ardent hope that is about to change.


Just Peace in Christian Ecumenism


The United Church of Christ is not the only

Christian denomination to have considered what
the church and individual disciples are called to
be and do in a warring world. The United
Methodists, the Presbyterian Church USA, the
Lutheran Church in America and the American
Catholic Bishops all issued statements and
pronouncements during the 1980's addressing
various aspects of this aspect of the human
condition and positing theological and biblical responses.

For example, in their pastoral letter "The

Challenge of Peace," the U.S. Catholic Bishops
say "Recognition of the Church's responsibility
to join with others in the work of peace is a
major force behind the call today to develop a
theology of peace. Much of the history of
Catholic theology on war and peace has focused on
limiting the resort to force in human affairs;
this task is still necessary,?.but it is not a
sufficient response. A fresh reappraisal which
includes a developed theology of peace will
require contributions from several sectors of the
Church's life: Biblical studies, systematic and
moral theology, ecclesiology, and the experience
and insights of members of the church who have
struggled in various ways to make and keep the
peace in this often violent age."

Official statements of the Presbyterian Church,
United Methodist Church, and United Church of
Christ proclaimed similarly that while the two
predominant paradigms limiting the resort to
force, just war theory and pacifism, are still
necessary, we also need a positive theory of just
peacemaking. In addition, several Christian
ethicists from different denominations, both just
war theorist and pacifist, authored books calling
for the development of a just peacemaking theory.

During the mid-1990's an ad hoc group of

twenty-three scholars ? Christian ethicists,
biblical and moral theologians, international
relations scholars, peace activist, and conflict
resolution specialists got together in meetings
of the Society of Christian Ethics, the American
Academy of Religion, by research and
correspondence between meetings, and in major
working conferences at the Abbey of Gethsemani in
Trappist, Kentucky, and at the Carter Center in
Atlanta. We, and I was one of them, worked
completely under our own auspices, though many of
us had been part of our own denominational
efforts to articulate the church's response to
justice and peace for a very long time.

The results of our work were published in the
book Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for
Abolishing War, edited by Glen Stassen. I have
often presented this document to groups by saying
that the read subtitle should be "How to end war
in your spare time" for the great emphasis we put
on grassroots and lay activism in the strategies for Just Peacemaking.

Over the five years we worked together, we

attempted to develop a road map for actions that
actually participate in effective forces that are
turning major parts of our world from war to
peace. When actions participate in these
world-changing forces, they are not mere ideals;
they are isolated and random; rather, they are
forces multiplied in strength and effectiveness.

We elaborated an approach called "practice

norms". Practice norms are a method that eschews
theory in favor of the normative nature of
practices that have a proven track record in
helping to reduce violence and increase the
presence of peace. One of the most attractive
aspects of practice norms as a guiding premise is
that our final list of "ten peacemaking
practices" engages more in description than
prescription. Each practice is introduced with a
verb, the historical development and specific
instances in which it has been used are
described, our rationale for inclusion in the
list of ten is included and the use of this
practice norm in the future is briefly described
as well. Practice norms completely by-pass the
way in which peacemaking is often dismissed: the
"well, that's nice but it's not possible."
Practice norms come out of the possible and lead to greater possibility.

Thus the ten just peacemaking practices in our
consensus model were not merely a wish list. They
are empirical practices in our present history
that are, in fact, spreading peace. They are
engendering positive-feedback loops, so they are
growing in strength. They are pushing back the
frontiers of war and spreading the zones of
peace. We, the authors of Just Peacemaking, came
to believe that because these emerging empirical
practices are changing our world for the better
and pushing back the frontiers of war, they are
moral as well as empirical guides for all
responsible and caring persons. They call all
persons of good will to lend their shoulders to
the effort. They give realistic guidance for
grassroots groups, voluntary associations, and groups in congregations.

Several historical forces produced the rationale
that went into our work that produced Just
Peacemaking. It is interesting and very
instructive that these forces, so powerful in the
mid to late 1990's have now almost been
completely eclipsed by newer historical forces,
though forces that find their point of origin
often in the historical moments we identified.

We noted that after World War II, the world was
stunned by the devastation of the war and the
threat of nuclear weapons. The reality of that
universally perceived thereat persuaded people
and institutions to develop new practices and
networks to prevent another world war and the use
of nuclear weapons. Now in the more than sixty
years that have passed, we have so far we have
avoided those two specters. Yet, more recent
developments have shown that nuclear
proliferation is a grave threat in the middle of
the first decade of the new millennium.

We were initially writing at the end of the Cold
War and anticipating the turning of the
millennium. What we saw was the ending of the
hostile rivalry between the United States and the
Soviet Union and their mutual nuclear escalation;
we thought we knew who we were as peacemakers in
a Cold War era. Our question was, who are we in
the post-cold war? Even then, the problem seemed
much more diffuse. We sensed at the time a
growing frustration that the divide continued
between just war and pacifist paradigms. That
meant that the debate was always framed around
whether or not to make war. The introduction of
the practice norms approach was specifically to
increase the things that make for peace, i.e.
prevention of war and reduction of harm within conflicts.


The theological development of the Just
Peacemaking group was intentionally very
open-ended. In the book, we wrote "We purposely
fashioned the wording of the ten practices of
just peacemaking so they could be adopted by
persons of many faiths or no official faith. We
wrote chapters explaining each practice so its
basis can be seen clearly in what is actually
happening in our time to change the world. We
appeal to all people of good will to adopt these
practices and work for them, grounding themselves
in a commitment to change our world (or at least
their own little briar patch) to peace rather
than war and oppression. Each person can base
these practices on his or her own faith. A Muslim
or Buddhist or simply a social scientist or human
being whose experience has led her or him to care
about making peace, not war, can say, "Yes, this
is happening in ways I had not fully realized,
and it is making a huge difference for good, and
I want to support it." We hope many, from diverse
perspectives, will make these peacemaking practices their own."


Yet, as events have unfolded, this now reads to
me as naïve about other religions and romantic
about our own intentions. Despite the fact the
original Just Peacemaking book has been through
several editions, and a re-writing post 9/11,
time has revealed a great deal more about other
religions and peacemaking and it was clear our efforts were not enough.

Part 2 of Thistlethwaite's reflection will be published Monday, June 13.

The Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is an

ordained minister in the United Church of Christ
since 1974 and a Senior Fellow at the Center for
American Progress. She is also Professor of
Theology at the UCC's Chicago Theological
Seminary and its former president from 1998 and 2008.


Contact Information
Gregg Brekke
News Director
Publishing, Identity, and Communication
Local Church Ministries/Office of General Ministries
700 Prospect Ave
Cleveland,Ohio 44115
216-736-2177
brekkeg@ucc.org



Michael Neuroth
Policy Advocate for International Issues
Program Team Based in Washington, DC
Justice And Witness Ministries
100 Maryland Avenue, NE
Washington,District of Columbia 20002
202-543-1517
neurothm@ucc.org