THE CHURCHES CHOKE ON PEACE.

Nobody can doubt that Christianity and the Bible major on Peace – peace with God, peace with yourself, with your neighbour, and nation shall speak peace unto nation. Christians follow the Prince of Peace. They are called to be peacemakers, pass peace on one to another, love enemies and get rid of weapons. But the Church has lost its voice for peace, especially peace between nations and disarmament. Why is this so? There seem to be four inadequate reasons and we consider each of them in turn.

(a) FOR COUNTRY AND MAYBE GOD.
The first is Patriotism. Nationalism has dominated much of the history of Europe for five hundred years, and frequently it has asked people to put the State first, before God, before what is right, and before the Christian faith – my Country, right or wrong. When wars have come, bishops, archbishops and churches have trimmed their sails to the patriotic cause. For god and Country becomes a loyalty call and god is on our side. The God of the whole earth is presented as pro-British or pro-American. God and My Right, says the motto, as if god was My Left. There have been fights over patriotism, but usually the churches have toed the line, siding with the nation, accepting arms, war and even going along with the conquest of empire and strategic interest. A line of Christians have been courageous in opposing patriotic nationalism and its evils, but often even “nonconformist” churches have concurred when their loyalty to the State is questioned. The Church of England and other national and established churches all too easily compromise into the national agenda, providing (good) chaplains to the forces and accepting the fear and aggression of modern military policy as necessary statecraft. Overall the christian faith has been subdued into patriotism as its greater loyalty rather than to the teaching and ways of Christ. We put aside the Gospel evidence showing Jesus as an unpatriotic Jew who demanded the deeper loyalty to God, himself and to people of every race and nation.

(b) THE CHURCH IN A BOX.
Second, christianity has been pushed into a church ghetto by Secularism. Christians do worship, prayers and stuff in church services, but the christian faith is to be kept in the building. Peace is peace in your hearts and a peck or handshake for the Christian sitting next to you, not PEACE out there in the big wide world. Theology becomes individual theology of conversion, atonement and sanctification, and God becomes a private thought. Everywhere else Christians must be secular. We have been put in a box and have closed the lid ourselves. Especially, “religion” and politics don’t mix. So, defence, weapons, war and politics are not the explicit concern of Christianity, but just in some outpost called ethics or staecraft. The Church of England is allowed to do some public rituals, but should keep out of everything else.

This position has emerged over a long period. It has been done to us. Politicians have often needed to cut out public issues of conscience, sin, evil, pride, judgement, fairness, guilt, repentance, confession, restitution and forgiveness. The Church represented these and had to be pushed from the public square. Autocratic rulers – hating accountability before God – have sought to silence the Church, and by and large they have succeeded. Judgement has still happened in war after war, but at least they have avoided facing it before God for a while. Or rather, since judgement is often what we do to ourselves despite the warnings of God, the rulers have been able to justify failures time and again without recognising what was wrong, and history has become one damned war after another. Prophets were not popular in the Old Testament holding rulers to account, and the Church has been similarly banished and pushed from the public political arena. We should not be surprised. But we have acquiesced and become timid and polite. We willingly call a spade a large flattened teaspoon. We think ourselves daring when we remember casualties (that bogus word) on all sides, not just our own. So, gradually the churches have learned to be irrelevant, light candles and argue about styles of worship.

(c) WE REMEMBER THEM IN SILENCE.
Third, there is Remembrance Day. The Church of England does Remembrance Day, though, as bishops complained at the time, there was no cross on the Cenotaph. All over the country We Remember Them in their tens and hundreds on war memorials in churches and churchyards throughout the land. The British Legion, rightly concerned with the honour of the dead and the needs of injured and needy soldiers, poppifies the event. Remembering the dead is difficult. Especially the loved ones need to believe their dying was a valid sacrifice, otherwise they might rail in madness. We quickly put the label sacrifice over all deaths in war, with an echo of Christ, and the churches maintain this sacred ritual.

Silently, “We Remember Them”, wrapping their loss in reverent Anglican rituals. Two minutes of inarticulate silence wraps up the War Dead of a hundred years in unqualified respect and national honour. This year we re- remember the 994,138 British dead of The First World War, perhaps the further sixteen million who also died and the twenty two million seriously injured. We think of the fifty million, minimum, who died of flu induced and spread by the poverty and famine of War and perhaps include the shell-shocked survivors. We are numbed into silence, seemingly for a good reason. You cannot honour soldiers and rubbish war. The Church of England chooses to do the former with dignity and restraint and not the latter.

Except millions of those who fought did do both. They were brave, but not unto death. They hated war and industrial murder. They knew their “enemies”, were also trapped in the War; for they had shaken hands in the Christmas truce. For almost all the millions of dead, nothing was worth the dying; it was forced on them by orders, often senseless, and by shells, gas, mud, rats, bayonets and bullets, the tools of death promoted by the merchants of death. The boundless optimism and patriotism of 1914 and Rupert Brooke had bittered into “When this bloody War is over.” Our sacred Remembrance is not theirs.

But it was more than this. Millions knew the Great War was unnecessary and should not have happened. The list includes Lloyd George, Keir Hardie, Lord Grey, Pope Benedict XV, Woodrow Wilson and many more. They knew that the escalation of arms, scares and the work of the munitions people with politicians had generated the confrontation. They knew the War, every War, was blindingly stupid and therefore built disarmament for all into the Treaty of Versailles. The horror of war, the waste of people, families, homes, infrastructure, work and living caused by war meant it should be banished from human affairs. Often, of course, those who knew war was pointless lost their voice because they were dead or shell-shocked. The Post War Wise know the truth. But the bishops and churches remain stuck on “We Will Remember Them” with a reverential silence and do not engage with militarism, disarmament and weapon capitalism, now a world-wide epidemic.

(d) PACIFISM OR JUST WAR THEORY?
Fourth, there is church thinking. For a century and more church thinkers have discussed Pacifism and Just War Theory. Either you reject war, weapons, and fighting and become a Conscientious Objector, or you support Just War Theory, accepting war is sometimes necessary when it is justified by the aggression of others. Most Anglicans are the latter, and pacifists become those who do not pull their weight and leave others to fight. And so, the two groups trade ethical points at the corner of a field while the action is elsewhere.

But notice what has happened. The powerful have learned to ignore both positions. War can always be justified in one way or another, and the just war theorists are pushed aside. Much of the problem is Just War Theory thinks only about War when it is an immediate issue and not about the Militarism which is going on all the time. Do you really think all the militaries around the world can be practicing war all the time, and war not happen? Would millions practice football without sometimes playing football? To carry on the analogy, Just War Theorists are like someone turning up at a football match a minute before the start, saying a linesman is missing, and ignoring the match practice, the travel, the league and the rivalry; the match will go on.

And it is not as though the Church is clear. When Tony Blair was invading Iraq in a war which was illegal under international law against an unarmed foe based on a lie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spoke up, but the rest of the Anglican establishment was as a wet rag. Just War theory is only wheeled out after the vast Military Industrial Complexes across the world are ready, a cart among tanks, and the War is starting anyway. Perhaps just one more war will sort it out…

At the same time, pacifism has become an individual protest, an act of conscience, of withdrawal from the scene. Pacifists are merely a gnat which needs swatting. They can easily be dismissed as the wet ones who will not pull their weight, who run away from the fighting, who ignore the realities of the situation. Compared with the realities of armed forces, missiles, espionage, terrorism, superpowers and war itself, pacifists are flies on the windscreen, distractions which need wiping away. Thus, the Church can be easily ignored; we debate two bankrupt positions seemingly of no influence.
So, the Church of England and others churches – too ponderous, it seems, to act decisively in any area of public policy – have been pulled into ineffectiveness on peace and disarmament by these and other factors. It is a severe indictment, yet the more so because militarism and war is steadily engulfing the world. We need to wake up, think strategically, recover the full Gospel understanding of peace and mobilise for what peace fully means.

THE REAL PACIFIST WARFARE AND CHRIST.
I still remember the shock of meeting real Pacifism. Tolstoy is the world’s greatest novelist, but he did not care. It was as nothing to the teaching of Christ on peace. He ripped into the stupidity of the military system – teaching mass murder as a great virtue – while individual murder was the greatest sin. He paraded the military vanity of the Kaiser claiming the loyalty of his troops to kill even their families, because he commanded them. He held the waste of war and arming up like shit on a pitchfork, and he wrote about the obscenities of the Crimean War as they were and the emptiness of military prowess. A man looks down and, lo, his leg is gone. Well done, War. We spend billions injuring one another and then billions more patching people up and giving them war pensions. He honoured the Doukabours who had a party and bonfire to burn the Tsar’s rifles and turn down being conscripted, and wrote his greatest novel, Resurrection, to rescue them. Tolstoy and other great Pacifists addressed the frenzy of madness which is war and the venality of those who promoted it – the arms companies, the merchants of death. How do we fall for it – marching out to get shot and have a cheap posthumous medal? Pacifism is not an individual withdrawal, but addresses the stupidity and destruction of the whole military enterprise.

Then we realise that Pacifism, as Christ taught it, similarly demolishes the whole military system into the heap of garbage it is. Jesus puts an earthquake under militarism. Right at the beginning he turns down the gain of any Kingdom based on doing evil – the greatest political temptation of all. He nails the consequences of going for violence: “Those who take the sword will perish by the sword.” The Romans are put in their place – “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s (a small coin) and render unto God what is God’s – everything.” He requires his followers to take up the cross, the instrument of Roman domination, and carry it. He negates the militarists’ central power. “Do not fear those who can kill the body.” He requires us to love our enemies, cutting out the silly and disastrous national enmities out of which wars grow and let peace be with us.

Jesus was deliberate; he replaced the Roman warhorse conqueror coming into Jerusalem with a parody – himself with his feet scarcely off the ground on an immature donkey, but it was more than that. The deliberate reference was to Zechariah 9: 9-10
See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the and from the River to the ends of the earth.
This was no local change but a world-wide transformation aimed at empires and conquest. Jesus addressed not just aggression, but the anger out of which aggression comes. He set up a model of peace – replacing marauding soldiers collecting taxes. The disciples were to go out passing out peace to households. If they were willing peace was to rest on them. Peace was to spread – simple, costless, one by one. Only the way of peace makes sense. Peace can be made, passed on and the whole world can put the LAMB on the throne. Peace, the peace of Jesus, can be with us, spread, and our sins, real as they are, can be addressed without the further evil of weapons. It is not even very complicated. The Gospel of peace for all is inescapably part of the Christian message and it is big.

But it also involves conflict. Matthew 10 describes the character of it. Christians go out as sheep among wolves, innocent as doves, but wise as serpents. The fight is about the principle of power. Is it the great false principle of control, intimidation, military conquest, slavery and accumulating wealth or the gentle power of God’s spirit of love, peace, service, meekness and wisdom? Are leaders servants or those who demand service and subordination? So, Christ fights, not with a sharp two-edged sword, but with the words which come from his mouth. We see this conflict escalate in the Gospels where the Roman, Herodian and Temple rulers, relying on killing and violence, decide they have to kill this Man of Peace, and so they do. The cross of military power is defeated in the Resurrection of Christ and the coming of the gentle Kingdom of God – no domination, but the handshake kingdom where nation speaks peace unto nation. Peace is not an ideal, but the only sensible way to live, and the way in which all good communities do live. Peace can spread to every tribe and nation, we just deliberately pass it on and do it. Now more than two billion people trust and follow this man. Unlike the F35 fighter, peace does not cost $1 trillion a throw – peace, law, making friends and sorting out quarrels without threats just works. Of course, the militarists will portray peacemakers as a danger, but we are called to stick with it as sheep among wolves and end this blot on humanity. Pacifism is out to close down the whole militaristic show and that is why it is feared; obviously being nice to one another is more dangerous than competitive nuclear threats.

CLOSING DOWN DISARMAMENT TALK WORLDWIDE.
Extraordinarily, this pacifism, the true pacifism, has been slowly chased off the scene. It begins with Jean Jaures being assassinated to allow WW1 to proceed, continues with the intimidation of Conchies, with Pope Benedict being ostracized and vilified for suggesting the Great War might be a tragedy and proposing the Christmas Truce. We see it after the Great 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference had been sabotaged by the militarists. We see it after Hitler had been plied with American loans to help him arm, after the Reds Under the Bed scare guaranteed we continued to have an enemy after 1945 and Paul Robeson and many others were seen as a danger to the United States for being friendly with Russia. We see it with Churchill, the great militarist, naming appeasement as the ultimate sin in all modern history. We see the Cold War talked up, and lied up, by the militarists. We see it after the militarists have done everything to make pacifism unthinkable to ordinary people, because it could kill their business dead. They talk complex military languages and arm themselves to the teeth in and talk in a sophisticated way about weapons in the understanding that they are safer when everybody is armed, while the silly ol’ people of Norwich walk about the city thinking they are safer without guns. Real Pacifism has been scrubbed off the map, and the churches have colluded in this. Christ’s great Good News of peace blessing ordinary people everywhere has been closed down by the military-industrial complex, fat cats making vast profits everywhere, and employing every sales move in the book from bribery to fear. Every war is a public relations triumph: “See you need more weapons.” Not, “Weapons inevitably precipitate wars.” Real Pacifism must not be talked about.

Yet, in reality we now live in an interdependent world where wars of conquest and occupation are mainly unthinkable. The global warming caused by militarism and war damages the planet. The waste of militarism runs into many trillions each year, but we must not think about disarmament and peace, because the arms people have sewn up world politics. But, really, their way is precarious and dangerous, and it need not be like this.

THE CHURCH CAN BE STRATEGIC.
Most church people are nice. They aim not to offend, confess their sins once a week or more and try to live a good life, to be innocent as doves, as Jesus asked them to. But Jesus also invited them to be as shrewd as snakes, to be aware and ready, to read the times. Often we nice Christians ignore this emphasis – a very strong one in Jesus’ teaching – to be strategic. I’ve spent fifteen years studying this area and am going to suggest a strategic overview, so that we know where we are going and can act fast. The points are not particularly original or difficult to agree with, but taken together they point to the strategic conclusion we might be seeking..

1. MILITARISM IS GROWING. World military spending is now some 70% higher than at the end of the Cold War and looks to increase further. Sophisticated arms industries in the US, UK, Russia, France, China, Japan and other states are expanding and supplying most countries with lethal arrays of weapons. Companies push their wares avidly and expansion has come mainly through creating chaos in the Middle East and resuming the Cold War.

2. THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IS INSIDE GOVERNMENT. The military and arms companies are (undemocratically) inside most governments, especially the heavily armed members of the UN Security Council. The military-industrial complex is in political and media control, and shapes most of the public reporting with scares, distrust, nationalist themes and rumours of wars.

3. ARMS ARE THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION. THEY CAUSE MOST WARS. Arms, not territorial gain, cause most wars. WW1 was precipitated by four arms races. Arms pressure in the 1920s and 30s opened the way for Hitler. The Cold War was about arms. The flooding of the Middle East with arms (for oil) has made much of it into an area of failed, war-ridden states. Both Iraq Wars were caused by arms. ISIS was founded on looted western arms. More arms mean more danger. If nothing is done, arms sales and macho politics will cause more wars, deaths and devastation. Refugees (50-70M now) and dire poverty will be even more serious and insoluble. Big power confrontations could destroy much of the world. Buying and selling the problem (arms) just causes a bigger problem.

4. MILITARISM IS THE BIGGEST FAILED EXPERIMENT ON THE PLANET. Yet this direction is an obvious catastrophic failure. It has caused 200 million deaths this last century and wasted perhaps 10-20% of all economic activity on the planet. Most people, given space to reflect, know wars and arming do not work especially if they have direct experience of war. All sides lose wars. All States waste vast resources through militarism; military expenditure brought down the USSR. The power to destroy is no power at all to thinking people. All countries, except the US, have a policy of internal disarmament because it is safer; the same policy can apply internationally. In an inter-dependent world, militarism is tragically stupid; weapons have shot their bolt.

5. MILITARISM IS NOT AS STRONG AS IT SEEMS. Militarism seems very successful – new weapons, new technologies of war, scares about terrorism, wars which last decades, the military inside governments, but it is not as powerful as it seems. First, its products can only destroy and have to be sold through scares, hype, bribery and intrigue. Second, the bogus hype around the Iraq War means some/most people have some distrust of the system and see the manipulation on which the arms system runs. Third, everyone now through television can see the damage of weapons and war, and fourth any halt in arms purchasing stalls the business strongly; it is prone to periodic recession. Like Dagon gods fall, and the blind god of military might is due a toppling.

5. MOST OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION IS, OR COULD BE, FOR PEACE AND DISARMAMENT, were they not frightened by the militarists and told peace is not practical. Vast industries of fear, east and west, keep this fragile militarism in place, while the old nationalist and patriotic idea of enemy is merely a myth for the military while the races mingle. In November 2018 the World’s population will reflect on the War to End all Wars and the possibility of peace. Football across no man’s land is now much more sensible than going back to the trenches.

6. FULL WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT – ARMING DOWN – IS EASIER AND MORE PRACTICAL THAN ARMING UP. If all nations disarm together, threats, dangers, costs and damage fall for all, and no-one needs “defence”. A clear proposal for DECREASING MILITARY SPENDING IN ALL STATES BY 10% A YEAR FOR A DECADE UNTIL IT IS ALL GONE creates the framework. It makes eminent sense for all, except the militarists. It needs backing by open and required inspection, a (decreasing) UN police force and a subsidized end to arms production. Immediately, the peace bonus kicks in for all countries, and threats diminish. Evaders can be punished. Deliberate world-wide disarmament is not difficult if the major powers back it together and work with the United Nations.

7. THE MILITARY MUST NOT BE IN CHARGE. Disarmament was proposed seriously in 1899, 1907, 1918, 1932 and the 1960s, but never actually tried, because the military-industrial complex sabotaged it and dominated political leadership. Especially in the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference the military establishment and arms company agents stopped President Hoover’s radical disarmament plan. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas. The military-industrial complex will try every which way to stop disarmament. Disarmament will be a fight against them, but not to kill and maim. Similarly, the militarists cannot be in charge of implementing it; They will create problems to break it down, though they owe it to their soldiers not to. Reliable political control of the military is a necessity.

8. THE ROUTE TO WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT, SIDE-STEPPING MILITARY CONTROL, IS POPULAR WORLD-WIDE DEMOCRATIC PETITIONS.
Nobody can really disagree with world multilateral disarmament. It is a commitment to disarm if everybody else does, and does not involve the “danger” of unilateralism. The closest the world came to multilateral disarmament was in January 1932 at the great Geneva Disarmament Conference when petitions of tens of millions were collected. It was thwarted by the arms companies and military interests, despite a very strong and popular proposal from President Hoover to cut world arms immediately by a third. If the disarmament proposal had passed, Hitler would probably not have come to power in 1933. This time we can do better.

Petitions are the strategic route, gathering democratic opinion. Not “petitions” in the sense, “we beg you”, but petitions in the sense, “We the undersigned insist this should happen.” We go round military control of the system. These petitions can grow in every nation, east and west, and we, the little people, can say, “This is where we stand – disarmament for everybody.” Democracy has often become a passive preordained choice every four or five years. With military establishments in charge no normal change will bring disarmament. Petitions, representing voting intentions and solid policy conclusions, can become majority viewpoints and move world-wide. They are solid levers for change and fit the Christian position of standing by faith, rather than “attacking”. When they gain traction, there will be problems with military dictators, superpowers, fearmongers and terrorists, but these problems are far smaller than weapons and war, and can be handled under the rule of law. President Eisenhower stated the possibility in 1958. “I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

The Churches must do this thing before it can become a common thought, calling congregations to sign up and creating a solid backing for action. Church structures need to act fast, mobilise ordinary people, make quick decisions and have bold aims to get this on the national and world agenda. There will quickly be allies. The precise action is a request for the UK Government to initiate worldwide multilateral disarmament proceedings at the United Nations. Then, with other initiatives, Christians in Europe, Asia, Africa, South and North America can make worldwide multilateral disarmament hum. Peace must be made, as Jesus said, and we can make it. Faith can move mountains, even the one of world militarism.

9. NOVEMBER 2019 IS A CRUCIAL TIME. The First World War was to be the War to End All Wars, and Disarmament for All was built into the Treaty of Versailles. It was frozen out by the military-industrial establishments and not tried, opening the way for Hitler. Now is the time to plant again, one hundred years late, the deep lesson of this Pointless War and disarm the nations. We, little people, have to do it and you, in your own way, with your friends and contacts, are invited to take it on by word and action. Each person counts for peace. This petition may be the start. You are invited to sign this proposal to the UK Government, multiply signatures to 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, a million until it cannot be ignored and set the ball rolling. Here’s the petition:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/226728

It’s time for Christ’s churches to make peace and to allow the two billion plus Christians worldwide to begin the disarming of the world.