First of all, thank you Jessi for taking the Wiki this week. I think that we are going to have to explain the differences of opinion in Just War (the varying stances) and Pacifism (the Varying stances). I don’t think that we have to rigidly define them, but acknowledge their existence. Once again thank you Jessi!

I feel like we are all beginning to take what we have been researching and asking more foundational questions. Like in David’s article on Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice, there is a quote which says “RTPV challenges the leaders of the U.S. peace movement to think more strategically and creatively than just preparing for the next demonstration.” Jesse’s analysis begins to show the pitfalls of young idealism gone wrong. The nature of the protest is right. Yet with concerns for war, often that is all it becomes. There have to be policy and forward thinking when it comes to combating various injustices. Being the loudest voice often does not cut it. I think that Sojourners is heading in the right direction by, not just organizing a protest, but actively seeking involvement from your local government. We have identified the interconnection of the Macro and Micro levels of the Powers. What is at task for the Christ follower in the present day is going to be a reinvention of the way we look at mobilizing. I think that the Quaker stance on educating low income areas on enlisting in the military is one. I also think that understanding the options of combating war, like the PBS documentaries, is another.

Hey guys I just wanted to let you know what is going on with me. My brother had a child last Friday morning, this past Tuesday after class my brother called me and let me know that she had stopped breathing, and asked me to pray for her. Later he called me back and told me that she had been resuscitated, but did not know how bad she was. From then on the reports went from 90% survival rate on one day to on Friday my brother called me and told me that I needed to come home because they did not know how much longer they could keep her alive, and I needed to go home. I got to meet my niece for the first time yesterday, and today at 7:09 she passed away. I am sorry that I did not do any work on my blog but my thoughts, and heart have been elsewhere this week, I will not be in class this week either and would appreciate if someone could keep me up to date.

sincerely in His love,

Reed Webster

Week of 10/17 group work:

Dave, excellent work. I think you captured the predicament that we find ourselves in as one of the super-powers of the world. We have backed ourselves into a corner, with our use of military force that has left other countries with little choice but to resort to terrorism. You left us with a question, “Is it a cycle that we as followers of Christ can break?” I would suggest that it is our responsibility to try. We are called to be the light of the world and in the end, we know that it is only by God’s power that oppression will be overcome.

I was further struck by the work we are doing in our exegetical class of Isaiah (you know what I’m talking about!!!) regarding God’s call to his people. I keep getting hit in the face with the idea that God desires that we lean on his power alone, not our own strength (he took away their leadership and their food sources to remind them of that) and not the strength of others (he rebuked them for turning to Egypt). Over and over again, Yahweh despised the haughtiness of the nation, their pride and their forgetting whose property they were! I just wonder what that says to us as the people of God. Are we to rely on the military power of our nation, or are we to challenge the supposition that more power is better? Should our alliance be to the Kingdom of God that sends into upheaval our notions of safety and security? Anyway, I was challenged by your work this week, thank you, Dave.

Josh, great insight as always. I appreciate your work on the discussion of powers. How do you think that we might incorporate some of the challenges you offered into our wiki? You mentioned at the end that we as Christ-followers need to become more involved in the microstructures of society. What effect do you think that might have on the things we say about war/terrorism/militarism? Would people be more willing to listen?

Jesse, thanks for the insight on some more structure for our wiki. We need to all be working on it. I was with you the whole way on the things you were writing about. I just had a question about the end. I was just thinking about whether or not it is possible to be absent from the historical process that we find ourselves in. I was challenged by the seminar the other day, because although it was not said out-loud, it got my wheels turning. Jesus seems to have been deeply rooted in his culture as a Jewish male. That had implications on everything that he did and said and thought and acted upon. Is it our call to be outside of history, or deeply rooted in it with a strong sense of our call all the while? I would love to hear what you think.

1. I think that the article on Sun Tzu "The Art of War" helps us understand the philosophy behind the powers. I also think that my link to propaganda would be useful in understanding the structures that give rise to War.

2. I read both Jesse and David’s analysis and it seems that we all have, to some degree, been thinking and writing not only about the powers, but how we as Christians become aligned with the powers. Jesse’s idea that “with the advent of industrialization and modernity, traditional family and social structures broke down. This caused massive social dislocation and anomie.” Therefore there was a need for a sort of configuration alongside the powers, namely patriotism. I believe that this was caused by the alienation of a people. People needed to be defined by something because of the distancing of humanness to industrialization. People began to look elsewhere and found there sense of unity within the structures themselves. Therefore the Church, as a people of God, failed to bridge the gap by alienating themselves from the present cultural pulse. What they saw as a rise of humanism within society was and is really a cry for some sort of definition. In time, the people’s fears became the Church’s fears which inadvertently led to the merger of Church and powers within the U.S. People are extra fearful because they do not have a definition and the powers continue to prey on their fears. When these fears become manipulated people will invariably look for protection. This is the post-modern predicament. How do we find a way to dig ourselves out of this hole? Maybe we need to begin to look for different means of attacking this problem, beyond violence. David’s article “Good to be King” states that we should be looking for economic solutions, not military, in our quest for a peaceful U.S. and world. The talk on Postmodernism in light of this very subject might seem whimsical but I really think that even what we might be doing in this group is a look inside the postmodern answer.( i.e. questioning structures/powers, getting clear on definitions (but wondering which is the right definition), uneasiness of our current situations…the list goes on)

Josh-
Great stuff on Propaganda. Because my research focused on the Iraq War, I would love to hear which of the four categories you think the U.S. and if possible, Iraq, fits into in this situation. I was watching the news this week and there was one really bizarre instance where there were supposed to be some U.S. soldiers giving a satellite press-conference on the current state of things. It was spooky because the cameras caught a White-House official prepping the soldiers as to what to say and what to do if someone asked a question that they hadn't practiced beforehand. When it came time for the press-conference, the soldiers appeared to be reading their responses as they occasionally stumbled over words when they lost their place and read in a monotone voice. The whole thing made me wonder about this question of Propaganda in war and how we participate in that, discern the truth, and what our response as Christ-followers should be in a instance like that.

David & Reed-
David, I loved your work on Shalom and how that begins to draw some implications for Christ-followers in this discussion on War, Militarism, & Terrorism. Where do our loyalties lie? What do we see as the source of our power? I was reminded of these questions as I read through Isaiah 13-26 this week. Those chapters offer some powerful challenges to us as we consider War as Christ-followers. That will be good for later on. Reed, I was interested in how your stuf connected with David's work. I think the two might work hand-in-hand as you described how we need to see the broader effects of war, not just the monetary side.

Finally I want to give my links that I feel adequately respond to the question “what are the practices/structures that give rise to the problem?”
http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Military.asp -I feel that this link is able to show how institutions are able to sugar-coat reasons for war. I think that the media is an institution that gives rise to our problem. For one because it already is aligned to various corporate counterparts, who have alignments back with the institutions. (This is what most lobbyist groups do in D.C., they push a corporate agenda, whose ultimate end is MONEY, mwoohaa, haa, haa)http://www.wichurches.org/board/statements/studyguide.doc - I came across this online. It is a sort of bible study/small group activity which has the people responding to the questions that we are asking. The statement declares the Wisconsin Council of Church’s’s intent to spread the knowledge of nonviolence in the

Responding to a different topic… it seems that militarism arises only in the countries whose peoples are identified synonymously with the state. Militarism arises when one nation becomes powerful and its subjects become reliant upon that power or personal gain, resulting in happiness. The only way to retain that power is to ensure around the world that you are the dominant power. When Institutions question your dominance, you therefore smugly reply, because with power comes great responsibility, and our responsibility is to make sure you all are doing alright. The will of the people becomes aligned with the state and its policies. Our allegiance first and foremost must be to God, not the nation-state.
(There is a lot of good information about Just-Peacemaking in the http://www.peacecoalition.org/facts/PDF/just_peacemaking.pdf article. However, I need more time to sit with this so I will probably be writing about it in the next week analysis. Also there is a case study in Somalia, concerning an aspect of just-peacemaking called just enforcement, and why it doesn’t work.)

(Reed) The casualties are something we must always keep in constant reflection. The powers and institutions that lead nations and states into war often times bypass these meager facts. Not only are we devastating the lives of innocent families, we are ruining future lives of soldiers (through various psychological problems) and their families and, almost matter of factly, ruining our future environment. As Christians, and people who see life as something significant, we need to take into account these people and their stories. There must be a voice keeping the powers accountable to the costs of war, not just the accrued cost, but the future cost as well. I think that this can be a strong point against going into war, especially a war with little parameters and no foreseeable hope for an end. A war declared against an idea (terrorism) is a war which may never have an end.

(David) I think that your progression of thought on the demise of shalom is solid. The good does become perverse because we become fattened up with the rich spoil of our plunder in war. We say “look, I am well fed! See, the perversion wasn’t so bad.” Or “If it wasn’t for this perversion you wouldn’t even be here, or have the freedom to enjoy your spoil” The benefits of going to war almost always seem to be ad-hominem, or after the fact. The so-called justifications of War are at most, credulous, and must be therefore strengthened, not in rational arguments but in subliminal propaganda. (See my post on propaganda and its relation to War and terrorism) Eventually, after the war has been fought the justifications become amusingly clearer. The evolution of the structure of the beaten up society well, evolves, and then we pick a good story and say, “look, if we hadn’t have gone to war, Women would not have been liberated in Afghanistan”. Like America would ever fight a war to liberate women. (maybe with Hilary in Office) They are not justifications for war; they are war consequences (I do not mean consequence in a bad way). They arise out of the ashes of war, and when the dust settles warring countries are able to examine them. If the ashes make a rather beautiful shape, they say look, were we not justified.