Committed to Jesus' nonviolence

by Debra Dean Murphy

DURHAM -- If opinion polls are to be believed, close to 95 percent of
Americans approve of the military campaign under way in Afghanistan. We have
been told for weeks now that America is united in its resolve to retaliate
against the Sept. 11 attacks, to use any means necessary to root out
terrorism wherever it lives and breeds.

Our putative unity goes unquestioned by the mainstream media, whose
reporting of recent events reveals what many have known for a long time: the
TV networks are virtually indistinguishable from each other in their
coverage and spin of current world events and all attempts at critical
distance and journalistic objectivity have been inexplicably abandoned.

While the quest for total neutrality in the news business was always an
illusory one, the current "hard news shows" -- with their jingoistic
slogans, melodramatic theme music, emotional sermonizing by senior news
anchors and tear-jerking nationalism -- emphatically and affirmatively
answer the tired old question of whether or not hard news has gone the way
of the soft and sensational tabloids.

It is not surprising, then, that the news media, which look and act alike,
are telling us that Americans are uniform in their responses to the
terrorist attacks and to the "war on terror" now being waged. It is not in
the nature of TV news to do nuance well; the complexity of political and
moral discourse cannot be communicated in the sound bite. And at a time like
this, when our frailties have been exposed and our illusions of safety so
violently shattered, there is the frantic desire to believe that we all feel
the same way about this monumental tragedy.

But of course we do not. Those who are deeply troubled by the bombings in
Afghanistan and who might have insight to offer are rarely given a voice in
the conversation. The media have written off war protesters as either
earnest but naive adolescents or aging, '60s-style peaceniks out of touch
with the real world.

Christians, like myself, who oppose the use of violence in our present
situation probably get the worst rap. We are commended for our "high-minded
principles," but are dismissed for espousing a position that, we are
emphatically informed, will never work. Jesus is admired for being an
all-around nice guy, but his refusal to use force against the Romans is
deemed bad political strategy. Turning the other cheek, we are told
impatiently, will just get that one slapped, too.

And then there are those Christians whose support of violence in Afghanistan
is proudly proclaimed from pulpits and pews, who get misty-eyed while
surveying a flag-draped sanctuary (seeing no irony or sacrilege in what they
behold), whose patriotism has been so easily wedded to their piety that they
have confused being a good American with being a good Christian.

Like it or not, I have to claim these Christians, too, as my sisters and
brothers. But for those who are committed to Christian nonviolence, such
commitment does not stem from its utilitarian value; the critics are right
-- nonviolence often does not "work." Nor does it stem from an optimistic
view of human nature.

Rather, the commitment to Christian nonviolence is rooted in the conviction
that the God whom we worship would not have us deceive ourselves about the
truth of our existence: the truth that our lives are not our own; the truth
about the kind of world we inhabit and, as one theologian has wondered,
where exactly it is we want to locate ourselves in a universe of which a
Jewish peasant dialectician is the monarch.

The gentle Jesus that the critics dismiss was always the phony one -- the
Jesus who amiably strolled the Galilean countryside preaching peace, love
and harmony. Such a Jesus would not have been worth the time and energy of
the Roman imperial authorities. But the Jesus who indeed was arrested and
tried on a charge of sedition and strung up on a garbage dump outside of
Jerusalem was a force to be reckoned with, a revolutionary of the first
order. That he sought to wage a revolution by nonviolent means is something
that many of his followers have never forgiven him for.

And so those of us who believe that violence is not the answer to our
current troubles are not dewy-eyed romantics. Instead we recognize that our
politics can never be separated from our worship of this one who overcame
evil with good, and who calls us, despite public opinion polls, to do the
same.