Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

War, Police and Prisons: Cross-Examining State-Sanctioned Violence by Wayne Northey

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The Western state arrogated to itself sole prerogative to commit violence against its enemies. The state’s domestic enemies are criminals, its international enemies whomever the current government declares such. This presentation addresses morally, philosophically and theologically the state’s right to commit violence, especially lethal violence. It will argue that issues of societal violence from schoolyard bullying to murder perpetuate ultimately due to state modelling in training and duties legitimated for its police, prisons and military. It will suggest an alternative.

A pdf of the presentation is available here.

"Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate" by Terry Eagleton" -- Interactive Review by Wayne Northey

Interactions With Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God
Debate, Terry Eagleton, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009, 185 pp.

Introduction

I had generally felt uninterested in the recent spate of neoatheistic publications, including The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and God is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens. Both books and the “God Debate” are the focus of the book under discussion. In 2010, Eagleton, a noted literary critic and theoretical Marxist, is slated to give the most prestigious series of theological lectures in English today: The Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, on “The God Debate”, that will continue his probing this theme. With Eagleton’s offering, I suddenly realized how vital to our very humanity this discussion is! What, if after all, both the dilemma of the human condition and its solution cut far more deeply than the best offerings of secular good works done by say the International Red Cross, the Canadian International Development Agency, or the American Peace Corps? What if, after all, most of the Christian West with its early inversion of the Cross into ultimate symbol of violence, the Sword, was massively unfaithful to humanity’s ultimate destiny of peace that Judeo-Christian Scripture knows as the Kingdom of God? This publication raises these issues exquisitely and much more. To read the rest of this article, download the pdf file here: Download Book Review of Reason, Faith, and Revolution

"Lest We Forget" -- Peace Sunday Sermon by Wayne Northey

Introduction

The church is called to be now what the world is meant to be then. Peace is possibly the most poignant, difficult and elusive goal of the entire creation. Lest we forget, title of my sermon, the church is nonetheless called to peace.

This is perhaps the essence of the simple words of Jesus at the end of Luke 11:2: “… your kingdom come.”, and the more expanded words in Matt 6:10: “…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

In the Psalm we heard this morning were these words: “Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire (Ps 46:8-9).” This is God’s will throughout the earth.

Annalise Acorn's "Compulsory Compassion" -- Review by Wayne Northey

Book Review of Compulsory Compassion: A Critique of Restorative Justice, Annalise Acorn, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004, 207 pages. 

By Wayne Northey 

Introduction 

There is a longstanding difference in how to read the Gospels in relation to criminal justice and in how we read the Gospels in response to issues of violence and nonviolence in general.  One of Mohandas Gandhi’s repeated statements was that it seems everyone but Christians knows Jesus was nonviolent¹.  The author is not grounding her critique on Jesus or the Bible, though she cites Jesus’ words several times.  She joins with Gandhi’s “Christians”.  I shall return to the issue of her ethical epistemology. 

My point of departure is the church’s Jesus and Bible.  And I am with Gandhi, a non-Christian by his self-designation, in his assessment of (especially) Western Christendom’s remarkable longstanding rejection of Jesus’ nonviolence.  Noted evangelical author Philip Yancey once wrote of Gandhi (rightly I think) that he was possibly the only Christian (Christ-follower) in India at the time of his bid to liberate India from British rule.  

"A Great Irony of History": the Cross and Peace by Wayne Northey

Introduction

Ever since Clark Pinnock taught an interterm course in 1975 at Regent College, entitled “The Politics of Jesus”, for close to half of my life, I have been drawn to the nonviolent Cross of Jesus.  Pinnock later taught a full-semester course by the same title, based upon a then recent publication by Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (1972 & 1994), that theologian Stanley Hauerwas believes is the most important publication on ethics of the twentieth century.

What do I mean by “violence” in this talk?  A very succinct definition is given in Marjorie Suchocki’s The Fall To Violence (1994): “… at its base, violence is the destruction of well-being (Suchocki, 1994, p. 85, italics added.)”  Violence is the destruction of well-being.   

Is there a place for dreaming? by Wayne Northey

IS THERE A PLACE FOR DREAMING?
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND INTERNATIONAL STATE CONFLICT
by Wayne Northey

This lecture grew out of a six-month research project where Wayne served as first Scholar in Residence, Centre
for Research on Conflict, Conflict Studies, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada. He is also writing a book based upon this research.

Download spu_presentation_september_2007__3_1.pdf

Covenant of Peace by W.M. Swartley Book Review by W. Northey

Book Review of Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics, Willard M. Swartley, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2006; 542 pp.

By Wayne Northey 

It was my good fortune to have spent a little time with Mennonite New Testament theologian Willard Swartley at the June, 2006 Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R) in Ottawa, Canada. I first heard from him about what surely is his magnum opus, the volume under review. Though he has written and edited over 20 books during his fruitful career as professor (now emeritus) of New Testament at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhard, Indiana.

"Jarhead," Montreal Shooting Spree, and Western Civilization by Wayne Northey

It was while descending from a hike up Elk Mountain in the eastern Fraser Valley of British Columbia that someone shared about his son, one of Canada’s finest trained élite soldiers, who had recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

His son said the movie Jarhead would be the closest to depicting accurately the kind of training our élite soldiers receive to fight for Western civilization and democracy in Afghanistan right now.

A friend and I that same night obligingly watched the 123-minute 2005 release based upon the true story of Anthony Swofford’s experience of U.S. Marine life told in Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, published in 2003.  The movie depicts the systematic brutalization, bastardization, and “bellicosification” of the Marine recruit; the choking out of every vestige of civilized attitude and behaviour.  The “jarhead”/Marine once emptied of all human decency (utter inversion of “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten”) becomes receptacle for one all-pervasive value: to kill.

War and Hell by Wayne Northey

War and hell are inextricably interlinked in Christian history and theology.  Below are some thoughts about both, with relation to a movie and a book.

I.  The Christian and War: Reflections on “Saving Private Ryan”

“War is hell”, observed Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman.  And Steven Spielberg dipped us right into its fiery midst in his 1998 summer release.

War is indeed hell.  Yet, in the long history of the Christian Church, apart from the earliest era, every war engaged in throughout Christendom has been supported by the Church on both sides of the conflict.  How in the name of Jesus can this be? What, for starters, of Christ’s express words?: “Love your enemies (Matt. 5, Luke 6).”  Further, how can Christians do an end run around Jesus’ explicit teaching by reverting to Old Testament endorsement of war when Jesus flatly said?: “So in everything [except war?], do to others [except your enemies? - see Matt. 5:43ff] what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets (Matt 7:12).”; and “... ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor [except your enemies?] as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matt 22:37-40).”   

The Mumbai Bombs by Wayne Northey

July 12, 2006
21780 18th Ave.
Langley  BC
V2Z  1P8
wnorthey@peacesummit.com
(604)533-9767 (home)
(604)859-3215 (work)

Dear Editor:

    Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Peter MacKay predictably was the pot that called the kettle black in (otherwise legitimately) condemning the bombing horror in Mumbai this week.
            Last July Prime Minister Tony Blair likewise as hypocritically called the London bombings “barbaric attacks.” On September 1, 1939, President Roosevelt similarly wrote to the major powers that aerial bombing of civilians had “profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity” and was “inhuman barbarism.” He later as disingenuously referred to the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour as a “date, which will live in infamy.” President Bush joined the pharisaical chorus in designating the September 11, 2001 attackers “evildoers.”