pacifism

Gun Deaths in Pittsburgh

/ uurevjeff

I may be living in New York City now, but I am a long-time Pittsburgher. Today, I can only think of the heartache being felt in my City after the senseless deaths of three police officers at the hands of yet another disturbed gun owner.

When will this ever end?

I’ve heard all of the arguments before. Tell them to five girls who have lost their fathers, and two wives and a fiance now left widowed. Please, tell them to their faces why these men needed to die to protect your right to own firearms.

How about a silly example. Let’s say that I loved bowling more than anything in my life. I bowled every day and owned 16 different balls for different lane conditions. But, every year, thousands of people were being murdered and injured by people with bowling balls. Yes, I can argue that I have a constitutional right to pursue happiness. Yes, owning a warehouse of bowling balls is legal. And yet, I would not for one second think twice about giving my passion up completely if there was any hope that getting rid of bowling balls (or at least making it marginally difficult to obtain them) would save innocent lives. I place the value of human life above a legalistic fanaticism to maintaining my rights and to the pursuit of a unique form of pleasure.

Pick your study. Gun-related deaths per capita in the United States dwarf those of other developed nations. In some instances, our rate of gun violence is 10 or even 20 times that of other developed nations. Quibble away with the statistics, but this is simply unacceptable.

A long-time friend said that the shooter was opposed to ‘Zionist propaganda’ and was fearful that his right to own weapons would be taken away. “He always said that if someone tried to take his weapons away he would do what his forefathers told him to do and defend himself.” Is this the right the gun lobbyists in this country really want to defend? I say that the right of the police, as well as hundreds of millions of innocent citizens, to live their lives free of fear and violence trumps paranoid delusions and reactionary propaganda about what the founders of this country really intended.

This madness will not end until enough citizens petition their legislators to enact sane gun control laws. We cannot hope to address this issue until the voices calling for reason and responsibility outnumber the dollars of the gun lobbyists.

Network of Mutuality

/ uurevjeff / 2 Comments

I have just returned from a worship service at our seminary in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. During the service the words of his Network of Mutuality were read.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted. Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that. We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamation of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war. One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.


Reminded of these powerful and prophetic words, I am even more deeply saddened by our recent draft Statement of Conscience on Peacemaking.

At first, I was willing to shrug my shoulders at the inevitability of its ambiguity. We are, after all, a diverse denomination in many ways, especially regarding the philosophy of international law and politics. But, Dr. King reminds me that we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

I am not asking that the Statement of Conscience be couched in a dogmatic framework of certainly, shutting out those pursuing anything less than absolute pacifism. I wrestled with Just War theory for decades myself, so I of all people respect the intellectual struggle this topic engenders. I am asking, however, that we consider adding language to the statement not only open to pacifism, language not merely welcoming of pacifism, but language that takes pacifism within the bosom of Unitarian Universalism and embraces it with all of the love we can muster for its challenge and its promise.

I propose that we seek language that expresses the opinion that, in time, we must commit ourselves to the belief that killing can never end killing, and diplomacy can never end injustice. Only love can lead us to a world where humanity can seek the promise of a community of hope without war. I cannot imagine better words than those written by Dr. King as a framework for committing Unitarian Universalism to a path to becoming a peace church.

Peacemaking: Draft UUA Statement of Conscience

/ uurevjeff / 4 Comments

I have reviewed Peacemaking: A Draft Unitarian Universalist Statement of Conscience (November 2008 draft). I am not surprised at the content, and frankly wonder how it could have taken so long to craft the statement.

Aside from this one note of snarkiness, the draft certainly expresses the point of view I expected, since the Association is simply not ready to become a peace church. That said, my main response is this. Someday, maybe in the not too distant future, we are going to have to get off the fence. Someday, we will no longer be able to rationalize our use of violence…ever. Because if you support war, in the end it does not matter what your rationale is. You are still supporting war. Which means that we have compromised our first principle to affirm and promote the inherent worth of every person.

Now, I have made the personal choice to become a pacifist, so it is fair to ask me how we can resolve conflicts that seem to meet all the criteria for engaging in a just war. I ask you to imagine a possibility. Imagine that a country is engaged in a terrible civil war and innocents are being slaughtered on both sides. All diplomatic avenues have been exhausted. The only solution left would seem to be to load up the planes and ships with soldiers and guns and send them over to invade.

But, instead of sending 100,000 soldiers with tanks, rifles, and bombs, what if we filled all those planes and ships with 100,000 peacekeepers and crates of food, medicine, and other supplies? Using the same infrastructure one would use to support a military force, what if we unloaded 100,000 people, armed with only good will and knowledge to help the country rebuild? What if those 100,000 people simply walked, arm in arm, across the border and into the middle of the fighting? What would happen?

Some would almost certainly die. Ten, a hundred, even a thousand. But, some would walk and continue walking. They would be joined by the people of that country, becoming a human arrow of nonviolence into the country. In time, the shooting would stop. Impossible, you say. I say, “Why not?” People are already dying and will continue to die. You cannot kill people to make them stop killing. Killing only produces more killers, if not now, then in the next generation. Only by irrevocably breaking the pattern of killing can we end war.

The UUA Statement of Conscience is a present-oriented statement and probably reflects the opinions of the current membership of the Association very accurately. But, war and violence is never going to end through incremental transformative change. It will take a nonviolent revolution to end war. It will take enough people committed totally to peace who are willing to sacrifice everything to end war. We must begin building a peace army to engage in that revolution.