The Vision of ECAPC Essays by John K. Stoner

The Vision of ECAPC
by John K. Stoner
January 2008


    
1. Introduction: Notes on Beginnings

    On February 29 I will retire, completing my 14 month term as consultant to ECAPC. I find myself reflecting on the history and vision of ECAPC.    Seven years ago, in the year 2000 I started this project to expand the pacifist understanding of Jesus across the church spectrum, ecumenical to conservative.   The “justified war” tradition which has dominated Christendom since the Roman emperor Constantine (with highly questionable motives and honesty) declared the empire and himself Christian, has not served the church  or the world well.

    Over coffee in a local restaurant, Rick Stamm and I (sometimes with Susan Stamm too) discussed what it means that the major denominational traditions like their own Moravian Church, do not adhere to Jesus’ teaching to love their enemies as well as their neighbors.  As a member of the Mennonite Church, I reported on the pacifist tradition of the  historic peace churches, Mennonites, Brethren, and Friends, noting that the practice of active nonviolent peacemaking in these denominations was more and more a memory rather than a vital way of life.  And yet it remains the official denominational commitment of these groups, and amazing things have been accomplished over the years by their witness.

    Rick said, “why isn’t  every church a peace church?”  By definition, followers of Jesus should use the alternative form of power which Jesus used, the power of compassion, forgiveness, truth and love,  not the “redemptive” violence of empires and multinationals. So what would it take to make every church a peace church?

    It would take a revised understanding of Jesus and his message, we agreed.  An understanding which moved away from defining the good news primarily as a way to achieve personal salvation in heaven in the future, to a way to live in human harmony today on the earth which God gave humanity to inhabit.  How to deal with conflict creatively, or facing the hard cases up front, how to deal with enemies, would have to become the obsessing question to which the church speaks with the voice of Jesus.  In other words, for the church itself to be the change it wants to see in society.

    About this, I have observed, the Bible had a lot to say, but not all of it the same.  The voices of our ancestors in that book are distressingly like our own today, setting forth competing ideas.  On the matter of how to deal with enemies, the grand sweep of the book shows a general movement (but not  smooth or constant) from annihilation, to separation, to reconciliation as preferred responses to enemies.  It seems neither wise nor possible to act as if these three responses to enemies in the pages of the book are equally valid or obligatory.  

    In our restaurant conversations we agreed with that stream of the church’s 2000 year tradition which has held that Jesus always trumps Constantine, or Niebuhr, or whomever, when it comes to arbitrating among these competing voices of our ancestors.  And so we summed it up by saying that “the church could turn the world toward peace if every church lived and taught as Jesus lived and taught.”  The project became to look again at how Jesus lived and taught, to pay unusual attention to that, with a commitment to follow where it leads.  Out of that came the idea that there should be a witness, a voice, a movement which calls on every church to be a peace church because we understand that to be the call of Jesus.  

    In this, we were not questioning the legitimate claim that every church already teaches peace in family and personal relationships.  We know that every church teaches that all murder and spouse abuse are wrong.  We are addressing the fact that only some churches teach that all war is wrong, and we see that as a problem so big that it should be overtly and energetically addressed.  I am aware that there is a gap between teaching and achievement in issues of morality.  But I object to the church continuing the practice, since Constantine, of reshaping it’s teaching to fit its achievement in the matter of war, rather than vice versa.  

    After I retire from my consulting relationship with ECAPC I will continue to be a supporter of ECAPC, trying indeed to be the strongest of all the supporters of this important and visionary ministry.  

    

2.  Why Focus on the Church?
    The motto, or vision statement, of Every Church A Peace Church is: “The church could turn the world toward peace if every church lived and taught as Jesus lived and taught.”  This motto deserves some review and expansion, which is my project now in this series of essays.   

    Why “church” when it comes to the project of peacemaking?

    How to deal with people who threaten us (in the serious, hard cases called enemies), individually and corporately, is the most difficult and enduring question of human existence.  Do we overpower them by whatever means necessary?  Do we flee from them in fear?  Or is there another way, even a third way, of dealing with seriously threatening people?  According to Jesus, there is.  He lived and taught another way, and the church could well be expected to understand and demonstrate that way with its own life and teaching.  But does it?  Has it, over the centuries, shown anything better than the fight and flight responses to enemies?  Here it is worth noting that these two responses directly parallel the responses of annihilation and separation we identified above in the book and story of our ancestors.  

    The church is the “family” which many have chosen, which many find themselves in or near today, and it is the family image which makes it appropriate to call the Bible the book of the ancestors.  In spite of the rampant individualism of modern Western society,  human beings even here have not entirely lost the sense that we are creatures of community and relationship.  We still feel that we need the security of supportive others, and the friendship of people in relationship.  We are creatures of family and relationship.  That’s the way we evolved in creation.  

    But, we’ve traded the security which God intended and Jesus disclosed in trusting relationships for a pact with the devil offering protection through fight and flight, guns and walls, annihilation and separation.  This other hostility-based mode of relationships, rooted in envy, greed and blame, is managed in today’s world by states and corporations.  They perpetuate history’s greatest protection racket, the false promise of protection from enemies (ranging from next door neighbors to religions and states) for the price of our loyalty, taxes and shopping mall purchases.  

    It is not easy to think of the church as a community of trusting relationships and a central key to making peace.  But it is possible to think that way, and there is every reason why “Christians,” or people considering themselves followers of Christ Jesus, should think that the church is key in the challenge of peacemaking.      

    A community which orders its life, which maintains its relationships, with the principles of embrace, justice, forgiveness and compassion is a community of peace and an peacemaking community.  The teaching of Jesus (in Matthew 18, etc) that offenses between people are to be dealt with by an honest assessment of justice breached and truth betrayed, forgiveness extended and relationship restored is not a marginal footnote for religious fanatics.  It is a way to run a world.  Another way, to be sure- it is not fight nor flight, annihilation or separation way--but it is a way, and a way that works, demonstrated by experience and history.   

    Humanity will either learn that you cannot kill enough bad people to make the world work well, or it will kill itself by failing to learn that.  This is what Jesus meant when he said that whoever lives by the sword will die by the sword.  Like a lot of other things that Jesus said, this is usually falsely and stupidly thought to apply, if at all, only to individuals.  The fact is, it is an utterly social and political statement--groups and nations which live by the sword die by the sword.  It is a profoundly useful commentary on what kind of behavior is suicidal.  
    
    And so the church, the community charged with bearing witness to the truth which Jesus lived and taught,  has the potential to make a decisive difference in humanity’s quest for peace--for sustainable community.  Other world religions (How many are there?  How many which must be taken seriously?  Important questions, without easy answers, maybe no answers.)  have their roles as well.  I encourage them to do their work well.  But Every Church A Peace Church is a call to the church to do its work well, honestly recognizing that it can’t do everything, and especially, not everything at once.   

    Anyone who believes in the church enough to see it as a meaningful human community (in all of its varied forms from house church to global denomination and apostolic claimant) is able, on reflection, to see that the church should be the focus of an effort to make the  third way of human relationships which Jesus revealed a promising basis of church and world renewal.  



3.  The Church as A Community of Support

    Anyone hoping to contribute something to peace, whether locally or globally, needs a place to stand in the struggle to do that.  Some of us are stronger than others in our own individual being, but none of us are strong enough, in the end, to “go it alone” over the long haul.  At some deep level, if not consciously and honestly on a continual basis, we all recognize our need for community.  We need others to help us become and continue to be ourselves.

    In the United States (not only here, but especially here) many, perhaps most, try to satisfy this need for others, for a larger community of support, by identifying with the nation as their corporate family.  This may seem like a big jump-- from the individual to the nation state!  And it is!   But it is real, and it is local and personal, as real as the American flags which fly from millions of homes and decorate cars from bumpers to radio aerials.  This identification with the nation is summed up in the bumper sticker “United We Stand.”  Oh indeed--united how, to do what?  Mainly, to deal with threatening others, to deal with enemies by fight and annihilation, by flight and isolation.  

    This trust in the tribe or nation for security is not surprising as a general human phenomenon, but it is astonishing and deeply disturbing as a public display by the followers of Jesus.  That the typical church parking lot on Sunday morning will have more flags on bumpers than the nearby shopping mall will have should send a shiver of fear and sorrow through the soul of every person who has any intention to live and teach and Jesus lives and taught.  The world will not survive, let alone be remade, by “Christians” who have no better sense than this of what Jesus made possible for humanity.

    This turn to the nation for support reflects, at its root, a failure to understand the biblical meaning of salvation and of Jesus as savior.  The Bible’s concept of salvation is stated briefly and clearly by Zechariah in Luke 1 when he says:

    “God has raised up a mighty savior [horn of salvation] for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from the hand of all who hate us.”

That salvation coming in Jesus was not to be a restoration of the kingdom of David (Acts 1), but the realization of life in a supportive community (Acts 2), a life described in these words:

    “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at homes and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.  And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

    The support which we all seek from some  community  can be found in a church.  I do not say “the” church, because I know that not every church, nor “the” church as it is in every place, will be a supportive community.  However, as people go about that very human search for a larger community in which to find their identity and support, the community of disciples which Jesus modeled does offer a unique, demanding, and  creative community for life and service.  A central part of the task of Every Church A Peace Church is to support individuals in their (admittedly often very difficult) task of creating new, or transforming existing, house churches or congregations into supportive communities.  

    The fundamental point is that everyone needs, and more or less finds, some kind of community out of which to live their life.  The nation state in general, and the American empire in particular, is a poor pale reflection of what is needed, and available, as a community for support and social transformation.  The church as a voluntary community of honest, forgiving, justice seeking, and peacemaking people can fill in people’s lives the need they have for a long-term, supportive base for public life.  That’s one reason ECAPC makes the church central in its strategy for making peace.  

    

    


4.  The Church’s Potential for A Large and Impressive Witness

    Another reason the church is central in the ECAPC peacemaking strategy is that there is strength in numbers.  In the history of social change, maybe especially in the USA, individuals have often tried to stand alone for the truth.  They do it always with some effect, but seldom with great effect.  A corporate voice is needed to impact corporate behavior.

    We’ve all seen the struggle of the person of conscience, the prophetic individual or peace activist, to find allies and to increase their impact as a lone individual.  How often have we said, “If a thousand or a million people would do this....”  And the question is, where do we turn for company and to multiply the strength of our voice?

    The strategy of Every Church A Peace Church is to strike a middle ground between expecting the lonely prophet to go it alone, and expecting the public at large to join the movement right now.  By focusing on changing the church, intentionally, now, and first, ECAPC assumes a modest but challenging task.  It is not hopelessly idealistic (though we have sympathy for those who think it is) nor is it apathetically realistic (assuming that nothing can change).  

    The church exists in every nook and cranny of this nation, and just about of the world itself.  This tremendous ubiquity of the church makes it, from a standpoint of pure pragmatism, a logical focus of an effort to promote peace in homes, communities and the world.  

    Beyond that, for all who approach the challenge as Christians, or church members themselves, to make the church the focus of their energies is a no-brainer, as they say.  Surely if we who are in the church do not believe in it enough to make an effort to change it for the better, we should get out of the way and make room for someone who will try.  Anyone looking on from outside of the church surely has every reason to expect we who call ourselves “Christians” to make the church  a community which models Jesus as far as that is possible.  

    We must address the  monumental problem of people looking on and seeing in the church almost nothing but astonishing betrayals of the most fundamental elements of Jesus’ life and teachings.  A corporate modeling by the church of Jesus way of healing, hope and truth-telling would astonish the world in another way.  It would give the world an alternative to the suicidal practice of “redemptive” violence in response to evil and evil doers.  A church alive will show that annihilation and isolation do not exhaust the possible ways of responding to threatening people and situations.  The church’s potential for public witness is a tremendous untapped resource.


5.  The Church As A Model Of Human Community
    
    I think I am quite aware of the liabilities, as well as the possibilities,  of the word “church” in any invitation for people to find a place of personal healing and social ministry.  Indeed,  the experience of many people with church is so laden with pain and failure that they find it very difficult, if not laughable, to view the church as a serious option for either personal resource or peace action.  This has in fact led more than a few people to essentially give up on the church.  

    But there’s a further twist here that we must be aware of.  A significant number of the people who have given up on the church are still in the church.  They are still in the church as pew sitters, maybe even teachers or volunteers of some type, or, and it goes this far, even as paid employees of church structures or bureaucracies.  

    What this means is that these people will be a drag on any effort to renew the church or expect it to change.  They will be a drag without intending to be, perhaps without knowing that they are.  Every Church A Peace Church must be fully aware of this reality.  Such people will often disclose themselves by their tendency to favor political action over church renewal, social strategizing over mining the book of the ancestors for its wisdom, and benign neglect of the voice of Jesus while listening to many other voices.

    In contrast to these realities of weakness and failure, a peace church informed and shaped by the life and teachings of Jesus remains a powerful goal to pursue and a mighty witness by its very existence.  For every story of the church’s abject failure, descent into fear and violence, crass materialism and patriarchal and racist power there is a story, or three, of faithful witness, courage and compassion, generosity and sacrifice, and the inclusive, welcoming power of loving the other to the extent even of loving the enemy.

    Whether a church consists of 10 people gathered for a meal in a home or a cathedral filled with thousands of people with great organ music, when that church lives out the hope of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the healing of his touch and compassionate life, and the truth of his words in a culture marked by religious and political pretense and fraud--then that church is a light on a hill, and people will notice.  They will receive a positive message.  When the apostle Paul said that the church is the body of Christ, he was saying that the life of the church makes the life of Jesus visible in the world.  

    Of course, to live the life of Jesus in the world is to risk the death of Jesus in the world--but also his resurrection.  It may well be that, in the end, a peace church is a church which knows what happened to the body of Christ in the world, but still wants to be the body of Christ in the world.
    


6.   The World could Turn, Could Repent
    

    This slogan, or motto, of Every Church A Peace Church says that the church could turn the world toward peace.  What is mean by that turning?  What would it be?  And how difficult is that?

    In the words of Jesus, the word for turning is “repent.”  To repent means simply, and painfully and profoundly, to change your way of thinking.  It means to change your mind.   To turn the world toward peace would be to see the world turn away from some ways of thinking and acting, and toward other ways of thinking and acting.

    Of course, as we said above, this turning must first be modeled by the church in its own life as a community.  It is futile, and would be wrong-headed in any case, to try to change the world if the church has not first changed, or to change the world more than we have changed the church.  So this becomes a warning not to imagine that it is easier to change the world than it is to change the  church.  The difference between church and world might not be that great, in any case, but as long as we use both words and assume some kind of distinction, let us be clear that the world will not change more easily than the church will change.  Some liberal efforts in the past, and fundamentalist efforts in the present, to control humans or the world by controlling the levers of government have looked like efforts to reform the world when efforts to reform the church had failed.  The church must be the change it wants to see.  

    There is something to be turned from, and to, in every time and place.  In our time we can surely see envy, greed and blame as enemies of peace from which we need to turn.  And let us be honest, these are in the church as well as the world.

     Envy, or imitative desire, drives the economy of this land.  Getting ahead of the Joneses is more than a cliché--it is a desperately powerful engine of conflict and animosity, though it may cloak itself in the most innocent of phrases and outward appearances.

    Greed is the twin sister of envy.  In the words of Wendell Berry, Americans have a philosophy which says “if some is good, too much is better.”  Whether you are talking of food, clothing, shelter, travel, technology,  entertainment or fame,  too much instead of some describes our culture.  Sow envy and greed, and soon you reap conflict  and satiation.  Dissatisfaction and disease prevail.   Who is to blame?  We look for a scapegoat.

    Blame seeks a scapegoat.  Somebody has got to pay for all this trouble.  We  find somebody to blame, individually in our personal relationships, politically in our global relationships,.  See a threat.  Make an enemy.  Deal with an enemy.  How?   Which shall it be--annihilation or isolation?  A bomb or a wall?   These people are so bad they must be killed.  Somebody must be sacrificed.   An execution.  A war.  Either will do.  We make ourselves feel better by showing, as we think, how much worse the enemy is than we are.

    From these ways of death we are called to turn to the ways of life and peace, in Jesus.  We look now at those ways.
        

7. The Turn Toward Jesus and Peace

    The church’s good news is that the turn toward Jesus is a turn toward peace, and the turn toward peace is a turn toward Jesus.

    The instruction of Jesus when he sent out his disciples, or apostles, was: “When you enter a house, say “Peace to this house” (Luke 10).  

    And what did he mean by peace?  It is clear from the life and teachings of Jesus that for him the way of peace meant the embrace and welcome of others, the love of neighbor and enemy.  We must notice that it is not first a way to peace, but a way of peace.  In the words of A. J. Muste, 20th century American pacifist, there is no way to peace, peace is the way.  But Muste did not invent that truth, he restated it from the life and teachings of Jesus.  

    At their best, the Hebrew ancestors of Jesus did not divide peace from justice, or justice from peace, as humans throughout history have repeatedly tried to do.  His blessing on those who hunger for justice and those who make peace (Matthew 5) united what no one should put asunder.  He did not make justice a pre-condition of peace, as in the slogan, if you want peace, seek justice.  As Miraslov Volf has so ably written, “the will to embrace the other is the most fundamental obligation of Christians....   This will to embrace precedes any ‘truth’ about others and any reading of their action with respect to justice.”  He shows how this is necessary and true because the strict demands of legal justice will never be fully met.  Imbalances will always remain, and the reconciliation of people will be an unattainable goal.  In the will to embrace, or the search for peace, he makes clear, the economy of undeserved grace has primacy over the economy of just desert.

    One need only think of the parable of the prodigal son and the envious elder brother to see the will to embrace at the center of Jesus’ teaching.  

    The words “peace to this house” are not instead of “justice to this house;’ they communicate commitment to a mutual struggle for justice by means which respect the humanity of the other.  By his commitment to love the enemy, Jesus showed that respect for the life and potential of the other transcends abstract notions of justice.  When he said on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,”  he demonstrated in concrete terms what it means to love the enemy.  And he made it clear that this was not to be his way alone, but our obligation too, when he said, “Whoever would follow me must take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8).

    In the church it seems that there are those who believe that Jesus did it all for us (for humanity) on the cross, and those who believe that on the cross he showed the way for all of humanity to relate by forgiveness to one another. In the latter view, either we do it as he did it, or it does not happen.

    And so peace is the primacy of embrace, the commitment to reconciliation through and beyond all experiences of threat and injustice.  In the way of Jesus, the way of peace, the economy of undeserved grace does have primacy over the economy of just desert.  That is what, in the end, peace means--as a way of life, not just an idealistic goal.   To repent is to change one’s way of thinking to this understanding.
    
    But where might this turn toward Jesus and peace find traction in the grand welter of groups and bureaucracies which are implied by the word church ?  Every Church A Peace Church has identified six entities which could be pillars of a movement toward nonviolent peacemaking in the church.  These are the historic peace churches, the black church, denominational and ecumenical peace fellowships, denominational justice and peace offices, evangelical and charismatic churches, and educational institutions--seminaries, theological schools and colleges.  To these must be added youth and young adults.  The vision of ECAPC is to see these groups make the changes necessary to live and teach as Jesus lived and taught--to be the body of Christ in the world.