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  Historical Committee
Book Review
by J. Robert Charles
Choosing
Against War: A Christian View. By John D. Roth. Intercourse,
Pa.: Good Books, 2002. 203 pp. $9.99 (paperback)
In a time in United States history when patriotic unity
and military adventures against foreign threats have captured the
national soul and sent Americans off to fight in other lands, what is
the meaning of the “good news” of the gospel? In a post-9/11 America
waging a war at home against an invisible and stateless terrorist
enemy—replete with code orange alerts, fighter plane escorts, grounded
planes, and hijacking warnings—does the church have any unique insights
or words of counsel to offer? As Americans wonder what freedoms and
conveniences they are willing to give up in order to rebuild their own
fragile sense of security, can Christian faith speak to the fear that
has led our nation to create a Department of Homeland Security?
Big questions
such as these are ones that John D. Roth,
professor of history at Goshen College and editor of Mennonite
Quarterly Review, aims to wrestle
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with in this work intended
for both Christian and non-Christian readers. He has taken up his pen
with the conviction that “the gospel of Jesus Christ does indeed speak
to the crises of our day with a perspective that is both distinctive
and unique” (p. 7) and to present “a straightforward argument that the
gospel of Jesus Christ should lead all Christians to renounce violence
and to love all human beings, including our enemies, with the same
generous love that God has shown to us” (p. 9).
The result is this eloquent, eminently readable essay that attempts to
explore how Christians might look differently on the world if we
seriously believed God’s love to be stronger than our fears about our
own security. Concerned that American culture teaches only two ways of
responding to fear—“a cowardly retreat or a fight to the finish”—Roth
is eager to offer a third alternative, found in Jesus Christ: “trust in
God—and in the transforming, surprising power of love” (p. 10). Roth’s
style is invitational rather than polemical, encouraging the reader to
look at the reality of a violent world through different lenses and
different narratives than “the default impulse toward patriotic unity
and a steely determination to exact ‘an eye for an eye’” (p. 8). Think
again about the myths of our culture, take a fresh look at Christ’s
teaching and way, question what passes for reason and common
sense—exhortations such as these are found throughout the six chapters
of his essay.
Roth opens by examining the popular evangelical question “What Would
Jesus Do?” and by pointing out that a serious grappling with this
problem cannot fail to bring us face-to-face with Christ’s clear,
consistent teachings on love—including love for the enemy. He then
moves to an examination of one of the core assumptions of
post-Enlightenment Western culture—that some kind of coercive violence
is ultimately needed if good is to triumph over evil—and suggests that
this is, at bottom, an atheistic, Nietzschean perspective to which God
is irrelevant. Roth follows this debunking of “the myth of redemptive
violence” by suggesting an alternative reality-constructing narrative
in the biblical account of the creation, fall and redemption of
Shalom—life in harmony with God, with each other, and with nature.
For pacifist Christians to live consistently in such a worldview and to
make their case to an indifferent or hostile world without succumbing
to relativism requires humility. In a very engaging chapter that puts
new zip into an old concept, Roth spells out what this means both
negatively and positively. “The humility of respectful dissent,” he
stresses, “calls Christian pacifists to listen carefully to the
concerns raised by their opponents” (p. 116). This longer treatment
extends his refreshing disclaimer at the outset that “this book will
not argue that pacifism always ‘works,’ in the sense of bringing about
a resolution to conflict in which the aggressor inevitably backs down”
(p. 13).
A subsequent chapter tackles the basic question of Christian
allegiance, arguing that it lies not primarily in patriotic loyalty to
a particular nation or state that all too easily is assumed to be
Christian, but rather in a commitment to Christ that must rise above
allegiance to the nation-state. Pacifist Christians will have, he
asserts, “rather limited expectations of the state or the political
process” (p. 155). Aware that this stance often appears too negatively
defined to fellow citizens, Roth concludes by outlining what Christian
pacifists can affirm and how they can put their faith into action. He
calls for Christian citizens to be “politically engaged—not primarily
in the traditional sense of party politics and partisan lobbying, but
in more creative and transformative ways that remain true to the
principles of Christian love and humility” (p. 13). This, he suggests,
is best done “by living lives of personal integrity, by nurturing the
dignity and well-being of their neighbors, by fostering perspectives
that transcend national borders, and by bearing witness in word and
deed to the promise of God’s Shalom” (p. 13).
By focusing on fear as the root of both insecurity and violence in
today’s world, and notably in the United States—ironically the most
powerful nation in the world, at least by most secular standards—Roth
has hit the nail on the head. Yet how is this fear to be overcome, not
just in the church but also in wider society? Will a theological answer
suffice, or must there also be a political one?
While extending an “an invitation to live more fully and joyfully in
the Christian conviction that ‘God’s love is stronger than our fears’”
(p. 9), Roth does not hesitate to admit—quite rightly—that “a life
lived in dependence on God offers no predictable outcomes or guarantees
of physical safety” (p. 13). And while such an affirmation is
appropriate from the pen of a Christian pacifist, in the mouth of
political authorities charged with the maintenance of civil peace it
will likely sound like a dangerous disclaimer. For where there is no
ordered civic peace and a continual fear and danger of violent death,
life becomes, in the famous words of Thomas Hobbes, “solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish and short.” It is in order to overcome such paralyzing
fear and to provide basic security—ordinary civic peace—that
governments are formed. To be certain, their powers are—and should
be—limited; and governments can foment plenty of violence outside their
borders, as sadly we have seen ours do over the past year. But Hobbes’
observations on the crucial role of government in overcoming domestic
social fear should not be too easily overlooked or dismissed by those
of us who nevertheless affirm, along with Roth, that we are called “ to
live more fully and joyfully in the Christian conviction that ‘God’s
love is stronger than our fears.’”
J. Robert
Charles, Goshen, Indiana is director for Europe at Mennonite Mission
Network and a member of Waterford Mennonite Church.
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