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Having suggested an approach to the first part of our thematic question – the Bible – we now have to consider what we mean by “peacemaking.”

Through most of their history, the peace churches have built their peace testimony around the issues of war and military service. Peacemaking has been primarily pacifism. That is, the Quaker peace testimony has always featured a refusal to kill.

For early Christian pacifists, as well as Anabaptists and Quakers who revived Christian pacifism, the refusal to kill came into boldest relief when the societies around them were moving to war. Under intense pressures to match the sacrifice and risk of the soldiers in neighbors’ families, Christian pacifists needed a strong mooring point to keep from floating with the insistent tide of national feeling. While many came to pacifism, I suppose, through individual discernment of God’s voice, the New Testament was crucial to most.

Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 though 7 ) and its parallels might be the best example of a Biblical text that helps hold pacifists to their position. When called upon to join the national effort to kill enemies, the Christian pacifist who doesn’t make a habit of dodging inconvenient Biblical passages finds himself with no choice but to refuse to kill. Jesus goes to great lengths to make clear that the Christian ethic is in sharp contrast to the wisdom of the world:

“You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’; but I say to you ‘Resist not the evil one”... You have heard it said, ‘Love you neighbor and hate your enemy”; but I say to you, ‘Love your enemies...” (Matt. 5:38- 44)

Jesus has much more to say about this, of course, and so does the rest of the Bible, New Testament and Old. Many have explored these passages with care, and have done better than I can to explain their meaning to us. I recommend that you consult them for their careful analysis, which is mostly beyond the scope of this presentation. [1]

Insofar as the Christian peace testimony is pacifist, it speaks to one very simple concern: the evil of warfare and related forms of killing. Biblical pacifism comes in a variety of flavors, but they all share this commonality: we cannot kill an enemy we are commanded to love. Pacifism in its most basic form focuses on the exercise of lethal coercion.

I do not want to minimize the importance of this concern. Wars are evil, in perhaps the most concentrated form devised by humans. For much of human history war may have had competition for the title “monarch of human evils.” Slavery, imperial domination, racism, sexism – there are some impressive competitors. But the twentieth century’s rapid technological progress had an uneven effect on human evil. Slavery was already on the way out. One could argue that technology has done as much to undermine racism and sexism as it has to enhance them. Technology may be elevating some new evils – perhaps connected to genetic engineering – and nourished some old ones, especially materialism and pornography. But until we know more about the future of some of these renewed competitors, we can say with confidence that the exploding lethality of violence constitutes the worst single effect of modern technology.

And yet I must point out that classic pacifism, with its focus on lethal violence, is at best only a partial peacemaking ethic. Pacifism has two striking limitations. First, it is easiest to formulate in a negative sense – against killing. Sometimes Biblical believers have stopped there. A hundred years ago, for example, most Mennonites might have defined their pacifism almost entirely in terms of “nonresistance,” drawing on the language of Matthew 5:39 (“resist not the evil one”). Quaker quietists might follow a similar pattern.

But pacifism as mostly a protest against violence leaves pacifists awkwardly equipped when peacemaking is needed. Mennonites who knew their peacemaking as primarily nonresistance found themselves in a difficult spot in World War I when asked to explain to their neighbors why they would not join in the sacrifice and risk of “making the world safe for democracy.” [2] Negative pacifism reduces to mere passivism, as if the Christian command was “avoid your enemies” or “try not to bother your enemies” instead of “love your enemies.” Love implies being drawn toward one’s enemy, concerned for her needs and welfare. Pacifism needs to include an active program of meeting enemy needs before it can be called “love.”

The second limitation in classic pacifism is its narrow focus on only one of Kenneth Boulding’s three faces of power. [3] Pacifism addresses coercion, the threat “do what I want or I will do what you don’t want.” [4] And classic pacifism only addresses one aspect of the coercive realm in human relations: lethal violence. Coercion includes non lethal threats to impose one’s will on another, but classic pacifists may not care. Technically, a pacifist might be satisfied if rulers (to borrow Tacitus’ classic phrase) “make a desert and call it peace” as long as the desert was made without killing anyone.

Classic pacifism, then, focuses on “negative peace”, the absence of deadly violence. We can call this “irenic peace” to resonate with the meaning of the Greek word used in some New Testament passages. But the Bible also includes references to the Hebrew word “shalom,” which means much more than just the absence of violence. Shalom also includes some positive elements, particularly justice and right relationships. We can call the cessation of war “peacemaking” because it truly is an improvement. But to reach the fullest Biblical vision of peace, the “shalomist peace,” we have to go beyond tranquillity to harmony.

Classic pacifism’s focus on the coercive face of power also cuts another direction. Except for the rare event of a lethal personal attack – troubling to pacifists even though they are so rare – the bulk of deadly coercion is conducted by governments. In fact, political scientists consider a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of lethal force to be one of the classic hallmarks of a state or government. When states attempt lethal coercion upon each other, we call it “war”; when they do it against elements within their boundaries, we call it either “police action” or “revolution.”

If we think of politics (rather narrowly) as the contest for influence over governments and the policies they will follow, we can give pacifists (rather broadly) credit for considering the ethics of the political realm of life. But most pacifists spend much more time thinking about warfare than they do about police work. And they spend almost no time considering the non-coercive elements of political life, so we really can’t say that classic pacifists are even fully engaged in the ethics of politics.

If we are going to incorporate a fuller vision represented by shalomic peace, we have to give more thought to the other two “faces” of power. Boulding reminds us that most human interactions are not dominated by coercion, or the imposition of one person’s will over another. Much of our life, for example, revolves around “exchange.” Instead of threats, exchange involves bargains: “I’ll do what you want if you do what I want.” The heart of an exchange is a consensual transaction, where both sides choose to participate.

Even governments expend most of their energies in exchange transactions, at least in the democratic west. They employ bureaucrats at wages arrived at through contracts freely made. Many public services are essentially sold to willing buyers. International relations are built on a web of treaty and other relationships, most of which are essentially consensual.

But the pre-eminent institution of exchange in modern society is the market. The contract is the classic vehicle for consensual relationships in a capitalist economy. Contract law is designed to help us know when transactions are really consensual, conscious acts of will by both sides. Transactions that are coerced, or a result of fraud, misrepresentation, or lack of capacity to exercise will are not enforced. In Western societies, a superstructure of law has developed designed to protect the consensual nature of the market – labor laws, antitrust regulations, anti-bribery laws, consumer protection laws, etc.

A pacifist has almost nothing to say about how to be a peacemaker in the market – or any other arena of consensual relationships. A pacifist might urge us to avoid investing in arms manufacturers. But I suspect the Bible teaches a vision of peacemaking in markets that goes well beyond minimal socially responsible investing.

And then there is Boulding’s third face of power, which he calls affiliation, integration, or even love. Affiliation power does not turn on either threats or exchanges, but rather on identification with another. The person under the influence of affiliation power says “I’ll do what is good for you because you matter to me.”

Governments trade on affiliation power, to be sure. Patriotism is only one example, including its nationalistic forms. Markets also employ affiliation power. Michael Jordan’s value as an advertising icon is almost entirely affiliative. I suspect Britney Spears’ market value as a musician may also be almost entirely affiliative, although I cannot speak from any personal experience on that question. But there are realms of human life that are mostly affiliative. Families come to mind, as do clubs, churches, social groups, and voluntary organizations. I would like to lump all these groups under the heading of “communities.”

It is true that communities use coercion – I know I used to on my kids, although they probably wouldn’t respond to it much anymore now that I’m not several times their size. And communities sometimes use exchange. But it is still fair to say that communities are the arenas where affiliation power is the main medium of influence; markets are where exchange predominates; and politics is where coercion comes into focus.

[1] Perhaps the classic 20^th Century statement of the Christian pacifist position is in Father Richard McSorley’s New Testament Basis of Peacemaking (Georgetown University, 1979). Other good recent popular studies of pacifism include Dale W. Brown, Biblical Pacifism: A Peace Church Perspective (Brethren Press, 1986); Vernard Eller, War and Peace From Genesis to Revelation (Herald Press, 1981); Ron Sider and Richard Taylor, Nuclear Holocaust and Christian Hope (InterVarsity Press, 1982); and Ralph Beebe and John Lamoreau, Waging Peace (Barclay Press, 1980). The Biblical studies for a more academic audience include John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Eeerdmans, 1972) and Willard M. Swartley, Ed., The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament (Westminister, 1992).

[2] Melanie Springer Mock, (citation)

[3] Kenneth Boulding, Three Faces of Power (Sage, 1989).

[4] In summarizing Boulding’s three faces of power, I am partly drawing on Hugh Miall, Oliver Ramsbotham, and Tom Woodhouse, Contemporary Conflict Resolution (Polity Press, 1999), p. 11- 13.