Like or Dislike: 0  0

Yes, I was giving more my expectation of their reasoning, rather than arguing it’s best not to criticize terrorists.

It’s interesting that in the Bible and early church, there was rarely any argument to Rome, directly against Rome. It was always to those who were already the believers. Maybe this is meant to be on that model.

The obvious problem with that, of course, is that the writing is on a very public website, not in a letter or other writing directly to those in the US they’d like to persuade.

Brad

Like or Dislike: 0  0

I agree it would be almost certainly futile (and agree equally that it would be wonderful if it worked). But I think it’s important to remember that there is more than one audience out there, listening. CPT seems to be directing all of its efforts at reaching only one of those audiences — the kidnappers and their sympathizers.

The cost of this is that now, when CPT is actually getting some ink in the western press, CPT is coming across to a lot of people as being pro-terrorist and anti-Coalition, rather than being true peacemakers.

There’s an additional, spiritual harm, too, I think: by refraining from criticism of an act of violence, CPT is essentially betraying its own values. The peace churches have a long tradition of “speaking truth to power”; George Fox and others were persecuted and accepted prison (and worse) as a consequence of firmly stating their views. I don’t understand why CPT appears to be shying away from that standard.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

I recently read the book *When Jesus Became God*, about the Arian “heresy,” which points out that prior to the 4th century AD, the idea that Jesus *was* God would have been the heresy, except that there really wasn’t any way to enforce that view. My church history is a little hazy, but I do see a connection between so-called “heresy” and violence-backed powers of enforcement.

Kirk, I don’t think we should have this discussion here since it’s way off-topic, but I couldn’t find an E-mail at your blog site.

If you want to pursue this feel free to contact me (my e-mail can be found on my home page). My comment: while I will certainly defer to you on Friendly history, if you are taking the claim I cited above seriously you know little about the early Christian Church.

All you have to do to refute the claim that “prior to the 4th century AD, the idea that Jesus *was* God would have been the heresy” is to read the New Testament. Not even the Church Fathers. Just the New Testament. I’ve been teaching a class on this in my parish the past couple of weeks…

But again, please don’t reply to me here. If you want to continue the discussion, let’s take it offline.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

Simon, I’ve seen Ekklesia before, very good site (especially for those of us in the US - from a news perspective it serves as a supplement to Christianity Today’s Weblog here in the US).

Brad

Like or Dislike: 0  0

Like or Dislike: 0  0

True enough. If you consider the present moment, however, you might realize why they’re not heaping up criticism on the kidnappers.

If you read between the lines, even in the current situation, you can see that they’re not so one-dimensional. For instance the blog-post by Gene Stoltzfus, which looks at both sides. You just have to read a little more carefully to see what he thinks of the terrorists on the opposite side from “ours.”

Like or Dislike: 0  0

Like or Dislike: 0  0

Like or Dislike: 0  0

And yet, I think Michael has the right of it. Surely the West holds itself to a higher standard, but that is not excuse for letting the terrorists off the hook. CPT (with which I have considerable sympathy) would have more credibility in the west if they would criticize the actions of the kidnappers as clearly as they have criticized the actions of the Coalition.

Someone on a mailing list I subscribe to (unfortunately, I can’t recall which one or who said it) remarked a week or so ago that when Jesus was on the cross, he didn’t plea, “Forgive them, for they are the product of Roman imperialism.” He preached love and forgiveness for EVERYONE.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

Obviously, there are ambiguities. I recently read the book *When Jesus Became God*, about the Arian “heresy,” which points out that prior to the 4th century AD, the idea that Jesus *was* God would have been the heresy, except that there really wasn’t any way to enforce that view. My church history is a little hazy, but I do see a connection between so-called “heresy” and violence-backed powers of enforcement.

This point of view comes out quite plainly in a work I recommend for anyone wondering about the early Friends. Edward Burrough’s wrote an epistle in 1658, just 6-8 years after the start-up of the Quaker movement, in which he denounces the violence used to suppress the Quakers and calls for open debate, grounded in scripture, so that everyone could see who was correct.

“Come forth in fair dispute, to contend in the spirit of meekness …” Burroughs urges. The entire epistle is worth reading, as it is also one of the earliest contemporary histories of the Quaker movement, written at a moment when it was just taking shape, by someone who would have been a strong leader except for the fact that he died in prison not long after.

Ah, well, what would have happened if the Quakers had managed to seize the reins of power? Wouldn’t they have used force to rid themselves of those who disagreed? Fortunately, we’ll never really know, because the world was changing around them. I document one instance of where this came close to happening in Pennsylvania, but the will of Quaker authorities was thwarted, in large part because they had instituted trial by jury.

So I guess I disagree with the suggestion that “‘heresy’ is not a power construct,” that it is instead “a label that claims that some idea is wrong, wrong in a way that endangers the souls of those who hold the wrong opinion.” Show me the source of that definition, please, or explain why such a definition is useful for more than just twisting what I said earlier into an arbitrary “he-said, she-said” difference. (“Ah, well, we’re all heretics in someone else’s mind, so why bother talking about how State-violence can be used to enforce such distinctions?”)

I think you are misrepresenting the early Quakers, by the way, although the difference may seem subtle. They felt they were led to a correct understanding by “one, even Christ Jesus,” and that others who looked to the Bible or the established Church for the Truth were missing the point. It was not the opinions or doctines you held that endangered your soul, but the life you led if you did not acknowlege, accept and follow the divine guide.

William Penn, in his work Primitive Christianity Revived, expresses it as follows:

> That which the people called Quakers lay down as a main fundamental in religion is this — That God, through Christ, hath placed a principle in every man, to inform him of his duty, and to enable him to do it; and that those that live up to this principle are the people of God, and those that live in disobedience to it, are not God’s people, whatever name they may bear, or profession they may make of religion. This is their ancient, first, and standing testimony: with this they began, and this they bore, and do bear to the world.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

I want to remind you of something that bears on your tradition (Quaker) as well as on mine (Anglican):

In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. … The man was proud of being orthodox, was proud of being right [even] if he stood alone in a howling wilderness.

G.K. Chesterton, in his introduction to Heretics, reminds us in his inimitable fashion that “truth is just truth. You can’t have opinions about truth” (as Professor Peter Schickele ironically tells us). Or, to quote Chesterton again,

Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. (Orthodoxy, Ch. 3)

What I’m long-windedly trying to remind you of is that “heresy” is not a power construct. “Heresy” is a label that claims that some idea is wrong, wrong in a way that endangers the souls of those who hold the wrong opinion. For the first Quakers, the idea that one should defer to others in matters of faith was heresy in that sense (I hope I am not misrepresenting them). For modern Quakers (though perhaps not for those who started the Quaker movement) the very notion of heresy seems to be itself a heresy; the “inner light” of personal revelation is perhaps all-sufficient and not to be questioned, though I think that y’all would strongly question, even condemn (as heretics?), those whose inner light led them to support, say, the use of force.

But (and follow me closely here) Quakers like yourself (as you’ve shown in your post) believe that they are right and the orthodox (who subscribe to such heresies as the authority of tradition and Just War and the like) are wrong, wrong so as to endanger our immortal souls. We are the heretics, to you.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

That’s a good place to start. I mean, what’s “heresy” if there’s no way to punish heretics? An “established” Church had the backing of police and court systems to enforce its authority, and the Church in turn supported the regime in power — including the use of violence. Disestablished churches (you can see I’m building up to antidisestablishmentarianism, right?) lost that backing, so where does that leave the so-called “heretics”?

The Anabaptist “heretics” opened the door to a lot of changes in the 16th century — Baptists and Quakers in England went through that door a century later, for example, and Methodists and just about everyone else after the Church-State alliance had been broken. As DK says, “free-church Evangelicalism and much of Protestantism in general increasingly thinks and acts Anabaptistically.” Why? Because the general framework has changed.

So what happens to the support that the established Church used to give to organized State-sponsored violence? Especially when scriptures are, at best, ambivalent about it. (“At best” in the view of those who “live by the Sword,” of course.)

For a discussion of this problem, and of some of the darker aspects that develop when regimes get into no-holds-barred types of warfare, see Gene Stoltzfus (founder of CPT)’s recent post.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

Like or Dislike: 0  0

One of the ironies for me about the hostage situation has been how it’s blurred the line between my peace website and my personal Quaker website. I started Nonviolence.org ten years ago and it’s been primarily generic/secular all this time. My Quaker stuff goes on my personal site and into the Quaker Blog Watch. With the CPT hostage situation, I’ve realized that it’s important for Nonviolence.org to not just to report the news (link to mainstream news sources) but to explain the motivations of Quaker/Mennonite peace activists. I’ve been linking to the blogs of personal friends/Friends (including Kirk Wattles!)

Over the past two years I’ve been trying to consciously encourage a deep-thinking Quaker blogging community. It’s seemed odd at times to spend more time on that than on the secular Nonviolence.org, which gets twenty times the traffic. But in hindsight I see I was helping to lay the groundwork for coverage that has an explicitly-religious angle.

The most intriguing article in all this has come from the Guardian, Hostage: how the Muslim world battled for the life of Norman Kember. It hints at the possibility that this unusual and surprising coalition of Muslims calling for the CPT hostages’ release might be part of a larger shift in Western/Muslim relations and that only a Western group that’s earned the kind of respect that CPT has in the Muslim world could move this shift forward.

Like or Dislike: 0  0