- A Little of Our History

Check out Kim’s new report on the founding of our SEW Peace Particular Group, at the top of the “Join Us” page. And while you’re at it, check out some updates on the “Events” page, the “Resources” page, the “Multitude” page… okay, maybe just everything! I’ve been busy here!  (Peace from Audrey)

- Hip-hop and War

Corbin invites you to check out this video:

This is the new video from the Seattle based hip-hop crew blue scholars.
Made up of Geologic (emcee) and Sabazi (producer/Dj) they bring a political
refelction to their art form. This is their latest video.

- Peace and Hip-Hop

- Working for Peace in Haiti

from Ari, Carla, and Djalòki, in Haiti

We just found your website today from a Google Alert and I just wanted to let you all know how very encouraging your blog is, especially to know that Christian leaders as you say are going forward with their eyes open to the system of the world and how it uses and sucks up the countries that it has pillaged!

We live in Haiti and have a vision for healing. The transatlantic slave trade was one huge event that has left its scars as well as the genocide of the native peoples. All this is infected our societies and threatens our future as humans on this planet.

We hope to come to San Fransisco this fall with our historical drama/mime with a complete soundtrack that we toured with last spring 2006 to universities. It is a play that describes the brutal history and possible scenarios for healing. It is our fear that keeps us going after wars, until we confront this fear, this ancient fear, we will keep going to war and keep fueling the machine for war because of our western arrogance that masks in a horrible way this fear. Love
casts out all fear. The miracle is that the healing responsibility is in the heart of the African people and they have proven that!

We are looking for universities to perform our play and talk about this vision of healing. If you think that this would be something the seminar at Berkeley would be interested, we have a committee in SF that is helping to set up our fall tour. Just let us know, but we would be honored if you would look at the blogs too.

Here are our blogs about our vision for healing the rascism that is based on the principle of Jesus, incarnation in order to know another’s pain, to relive another’s history in order to understand and bring healing.

http://nasonje.blogspot.com
http://memoryvillage.blogspot.com
http://3innocents.blogspot.com

- Reflection on Memorial Day

Written Monday 28 May 2007

Berkeley, CA

Memorial Day.
It is a sunny, moderately tempured day with a slight breeze in the East Bay, and here I am sitting in front of a computer screen typing away my depression hoping that perhaps this act of public bloging will get out the negativity before I go be social at somebody’s house where there will be merry-making. Sometimes I don’t even realize that I am cranky…you know how you sometimes push feelings to the back of your mind or just make yourself feel numb so that you don’t have to think about what it is that is really upsetting you? Well, I get that from time to time.
Memorial Day.
This whole weekend I have been listening to NPR and there have numerous programs about this day in the life of our civic religion. And, it is a religious event…we remember people who have died for a particluar reason and we do rituals with flags and music and processions and parades and get-togethers and what-have-you. It happens every year since just after the Civil War. That’s when this first started. NPR told me so. NPR also said that it used to be called something else, like Decoration Day or something. I wonder if the name will change again someday. I wonder what the new name will/could be? If the name changes, will the event change?
Memorial Day.
What are we memorializing when we celebrate and participate in this day? To whom do we give memory? For what, pray tell, do we give remembrance on this day that we consecrate (make holy) the deaths of millions of soldiers since 1861. Did you know that over 650,000 soldiers died in the Civil War? I can scarcely imagine such a figure. And that was out of a total population of just a few millions, much much less than the total population of the U.S. today.
Memorial Day.
Such sadness. On this day, it seems to me that I instinctively desire to be away from people, because I am not excited, nor glad, nor jubilant for those who have “given their lives for this country.” I am sad that those people died. I am sad for all the people who have died in war, in violence. The sadness is overwhelming and sometimes I feel it so terribly that I want nothing to happen…just nothingness. …. …. Then I remember the people in this life that I am about to visit. There will be hamburgers (and veggie burgers) and chips. And beer! Beer makes everything better. Right? Maybe not.
Memorial Day.
What’s it mean to you?

- On “War Chaplaincy” for Peace

by Audrey deCoursey

A member of a historic peace church, the Church of the Brethren, tosses out some thoughts on Memorial Day, after reading the exciting spectrum of opinions about military chaplaincy over at the blog of the Adventist magazine, Spectrum.

Because I put my Christianity first in my ethical decision-making, I believe that we must end war. The only question is how military chaplaincy fits into ending war. I tend to like to expand these discussions to talk about not only military chaplaincy but “war chaplaincy.”

We as Christians (especially in peace churches) need to do better pastoral care to all victims of war: members of the military, military families, veterans, and civilian victims. We must not leave pastoral care only up to official military chaplains. If we are in the beginning of an endless, limitless, undefined War on Terror, then we must expand our ministry of peacemaking, to offer prophetically pastoral care.

Congregational pastors need to take on part of the responsibility of ministering to victims of war. (Likewise, seminaries ought not leave the job of training military chaplains to the military institution alone, but ought to provide comprehensive education for future pastors and chaplains who will be living in a warring world.) Families end up doing the pastoral care spiritual leaders neglect. Pastors and all who would minister (priesthood of all believers, anyone?) need to reach out to individual soldiers (and contractors and aid workers and peace volunteers), through letters and calls and counseling when they come home on leave. We need to connect them into their home communities’ lives, connect them into their global community’s news and life, so that the soldiers can remember who they are: not just members of the US military machine, but members of a global body. Most of all, we should strive to remind these soldiers that they (as well as every person they interact with) are beloved children, created by God to be good people.

Does this seem too much like appeasement, bolstering the troops so they can continue their ‘duty’ of war-making? I think it is, instead, radically subversive.

The military survives on a culture of isolation. It creates its own subculture, in which acts are moral that are unthinkable elsewhere. Children are not children; they are enemies or objects. (Too many graphic YouTube videos will reveal that sick underbelly of the war machine.) The only people who matter are the people in your unit, on your side. They are who you can trust. The limited geography of the battle is the limit of reality. By breaking into this sub-world, we throw light on the micro-cosmos in which the battles take place, and we remind soldiers of the wider implications of their daily choices. We support their own realizations that, even in war, they are humans in relationship with other humans.

As pacifist chaplains or citizens or congregations, we don’t need to pontificate to soldiers about the evils of war or the US military. We ought not excuse or ignore harm people have caused, either. We need to offer radical presence that reminds these victims of war (be they civilian or military) of their humanity. This is recognizing the times and places to preach our absolute moral values, and the different times and places to just be present with people in pain. Only when a person has (re)claimed herself, her self-esteem, her humanity, her confidence, can we engage in explicit discussions of our values. These discussions can only be had when we share the implicit value of knowing ourselves as human children in a world God created.

This is the prophetic, pacifist voice of pastoral care: it is reflecting back to a person who she is, in a way that makes her love and believe in herself more, so that she is better equipped with the confidence needed to make ethical decisions, on the battlefield or anywhere else. I believe that our world will know peace when we know who we really are. To claim the loving nature within each human is to plant peace and defy the dehumanization war sows.

- Subverting the Means and Conditions for Perpetual War: A Call to My Seminarian Colleagues Across the Country

by Emily Joye McGaughy
Pacific School of Religion
May 17, 2007

In their recent publication Multitude, authors Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri put forth the idea that perpetual war has become the political modus operandi of the global empire. A current “state of exceptionalism” (applied in general by global networks but most specifically embodied in the political strategies and actions of the US) is part and parcel of this perpetual war paradigm. They cite this exceptionalism by locating its function in both legal and national behavior. A “state of exception” happens when, in a time of national upheaval, the constitution is “suspended temporarily and extraordinary powers given to a strong executive or even a dictator in order to protect the republic.” (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. (Penguin Books, NY: 2005) 7) This is the legal form of exception. The national form happens when any given nation state considers itself a) an exception to the rule of universal law and/or b) exceptional in its definition as superior over and above other nation states. Hardt and Negri contend the current disposition and political action of the US fits into this national “state of exception(alism).” In recent years, especially with regards to the US invasion of Iraq, we have both claimed our exceptionalism by assuming our supposed role as ambassadors of democracy and by preemptively striking Iraq without UN support.

Twentieth century neo-Marxist philosophers have often maintained that the ideology of super-structure is maintained by cooperation of ideological state apparatuses. (I am drawing here largely from the work of Louis Althusser.) These ideological state apparatuses must enforce the means of production and the conditions for reproduction that keep such an ideology afloat. Needless to say, in a state/world of perpetual war—and herein the ideology of super structure maintains that war is ontological—ideological state apparatuses must enforce means of production and conditions for reproduction that sustain the war industry. The war industry, though mostly dependent on the development of weapons, relies on various means and conditions: communication networks, political systems, rigid understandings of boundaries, the willingness of men and womyn to serve in the military, etc. This large spectrum of dependency creates an environment in which social apparatuses are largely responsible for and participants in perpetual war.

An ideological state apparatus can be two things: 1) an institution or group that is commissioned by and operative on behalf of the state, i.e. public universities, governments, police, etc and 2) an institution or group located within a particular state, though not commissioned by or operative on behalf of the state, that participates in the construction of infrastructure, public life & opinion, and social networking, i.e. non-profits, churches, private schools, etc. Again, the ideology of the super structure (in our case: “democracy,” capitalism, and “free speech”) is maintained when all ideological state apparatuses work in unison to upkeep the means of production and conditions for reproduction. The ideology of the super structure becomes vulnerable when one or two or three or four ideological state apparatuses start dancing out of sync.

Ideology is produced in a myriad of ways though we often assume word-systems are primarily responsible for the construction and deconstruction of ideology. While it is true that slogans such as “These colors don’t run” and “God is not a republican or a democrat”, documents such as The Communist Manifesto and Letter from Birmingham Jail, and speeches from the mouths of Malcolm, Stanton and Mao certainly participate in the ideological life of peoples, words are not solely responsible for ideology. Symbols systems and communal rituals also have the potential to enforce means of production and the conditions for reproduction. So now Christians, I hope your eyes and brain cells are waking up!

The Church in America is an ideological state apparatus. We do not work for the state, in fact in regards to the topic at hand we should be working against it, but because of our location in state territory we are participants in and susceptible to American ideology. Further, just because we are located in a certain nation state does not mean our allegiance must be given thereto. If our God is one whose love is not limited by borders, skin types, religious affiliations or mistakenness of human action—and really, isn’t that what grace implies?—then our attempts to be human in the image of God must mirror this limitless love. Our allegiance is not to the state, our allegiance is to love. And let us be clear about one thing: love is the opposite of war. If we believe that God came so that we may have life and have it more abundantly, then we simply cannot dance in sync with perpetual war. It is our duty, therefore, as the Church in America, as an acknowledged ideological state apparatus, to subvert the contemporary super structure. Our word systems, symbol systems and communal rituals must negate the role of violence and war in global politics.

I wonder, what does this mean for the way we have done worship? Can we continue to elevate a sign of politically-sanctioned torture as our dominant Christian symbol? Can we ever sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” or even allow this song to be reprinted in our hymnals? What about continuing the theological characteristics of God as vengeful, jealous, desiring the ‘victory’ and full of wrath? If we save these religious vestiges for the virtue of preserving tradition we are putting our stamp of approval on the super structure’s fascination with and reliance on mayhem.
My question for seminarians training to do religious leadership in the 21st century is this: what word systems, symbol systems and communal rituals will you promote and carry forward in this age of perpetual war? Let’s share ideas!

Military Chaplaincy

As seminarians, we must consider – what about military chaplaincy? What are the realities of the job? What are the ethical considerations of such work? Where are our loyalties? Is academic theology relevant in wartime realities – and if so, how? Are seminaries today adequately training their students to be military chaplains – or to tend pastorally to the needs of military families, veterans, and civilian victims of war?

God can be found or lost in a foxhole, but rarely does war leave someone’s faith untouched. In some ways, Benimoff’s story is common to people of all walks of life and all beliefs. It is the story of spiritual struggle—and of trying to accept a world of both good and evil, where pain and loss seem unconnected to faith and justice. Such tensions are magnified on the battlefield. Countless soldiers—not just chaplains—have struggled with how to reconcile a God of love with a God who allows the terror of conflict.

Those words come from a recent Newsweek article from 7 May 2007, which follows the story of one army chaplain Roger Benimoff. What are your thoughts?

Got Vision?

A mini sermon by Emily Joye McGaughy

M-Div Candidate, Pacific School of Religion

You can learn a lot about a place by its bumper stickers. I remember the first time I saw the bumper sticker “Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam.” Startled by the sharpness of that statement, I thought surely it was an over generalization. After all, wars have different contexts—different times and places and most importantly, different faces. Vietnam was about the spread of communism; Iraq is about terrorism. During the Vietnam era there was a draft; today ours is a volunteer army. Democrats Kennedy and Johnson waged war on Vietnam; whereas the Iraq invasion has been a neo-conservative, republican project.

I went to South East Asia with a curiosity about war. Born in 1981, I was the child of two Vietnam era activists. Anything I knew about the war America waged in the 60’s, I heard through the voices of privileged, white, middle class protestant parents. I heard another voice about war, perhaps from the whispers & screams of history, on the 17^th of January when my PSR colleagues and I took a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels of Vietnam.

The Cu Chi Tunnels were built by the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. They are located 30 kilometers from Saigon and exist today as a tourist site. They are an elaborate tunnel system stretching 75 miles. The NFL used these tunnels as a place to retreat from and organize against US troops who were occupying Vietnamese territory just a few feet above.

I was apprehensive about descending into those tunnels when given the opportunity because they were small and once you passed a certain point, you could not see a thing. Wanting to get out of my comfort zone on this trip, I chose to go down anyway. Besides, I was following Jeffrey Kuan and I knew he’d help me if I needed it. 30 seconds into my descent I froze with sheer terror. My eye-sight and hearing afforded me nothing. Professor Kuan was far enough ahead of me that he might as well not have existed and I was completely void of sight. I panicked—couldn’t move or say anything. The prayerful place in me cried out for help. The voice of wisdom came in response and I knew it was safe for me to retrace my steps. I had the choice to back out of this situation.

When I finally got above ground I began to cry and couldn’t stop when I thought about all the women and men, boys and girls that spent days in those tunnels without the option to surface, who could not see their homes or dads or friends—who could not ‘back out of this situation.’ And then I began to think about all the Iraqi civilians who turn their lights off—and without sight—wait for American soldiers to raid their homes and bodies.

There is a similarity in every war: a lack of vision—literally and figuratively—takes away our power.

Today, we are not allowed to see the bodies of our dead soldiers coming home—a visual right stripped by the government in cahoots with corporate media. Those of us with white skin and money are not seeing our Ivory Tower brothers and sisters shipped off to war anymore because military recruitment targets (literally and figuratively) poor people and people of color. Our veterans are behind decrepit walls, where the injuries and lasting effects of PTSD go unseen by the majority population. As such an apathetic culture, I wonder if our levels of spiritual empathy are determined by whether or not a potential victim looks and talks like us? Or worse, are we only motivated by the things we can literally see?

PSR historian Harland Hogue writes that PSR was founded by a group of people who acted out of “courage bordering on rashness” as they “worked for a world they could not see.” Here on Holy Hill, one hundred plus years later, we too work for a world we cannot see. AND yet, after having visited Vietnam I know one of the imperatives of justice ministry in the 21st century is bringing reality into full view. Be it through bumper stickers, blogs, sermons, demonstrations, classroom education, and/or relationships, may we always denounce the visionless monstrosities of violence.

My prayer is that in this future we cannot see our bumper stickers won’t say “Iran is Farsi for Iraq,” but “I helped close Livermore Labs.” May it be so.