30 comments

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  Anna

  1 year ago

  Our church will probably haul a flag up and do some sort of patriotic song or the pledge. Thank the Lord, the U.S. flag is not up in front every week. That in itself is a remarkable thing for a church in a town owned by the Military-Industrial Complex. No joke...Haliburton has their headquarters nearby.
  
  Well, a soft-core approach in our situation might be to take up the idea of remembrance of our "heroes" of faith within the Christian context, with a little dash of the history of Memorial Day mixed in. Folks probably won't notice the lack of a flag or soaring anthems and still have their nationalistic needs met.
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  Kevin

  1 year ago

  My first Sunday as pastor of a Mennonite congregation (first Sunday of July) we sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I chose not to sing, but also not make a scene of it. I was left thinking "What have I gotten myself into now?" Good post.
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  hewhocutsdown

  1 year ago

  I spoke to the pastors at our church about this (they have an American flag and a notice to pray for 'our' troops before and after every service, along with other announcements and whatnot) and their basic response was "we agree in theory, but in practice this is less controversial"
  
  Why they take the easy road on this issue and the high road on others makes me wonder....
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  Michael Cline

  1 year ago

  That may be the most frustrating response ever, but at least they agree in theory. I'm yet to find too many churches that would even go that far with you (outside the historic peace churches).
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  Nathan

  1 year ago

  An edifying and protest-oriented response might be to similarly sing the national anthems or raise the flags of America's enemies with a heavy emphasis on loving them. When you're just a pew-sitter, you could wear an Iranian-flag button or some such thing. At the very least it would open up conversations with people who probably won't recognize it.
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  Sara

  1 year ago

  That's a tough one, Michael. I recently endured a church breakfast sitting next to two veterans from World War 2 talk about their colonoscopies and how the boys who died invading Normandy weren't given enough credit anymore for their "good job". I found myself asking, how can we be faithful to Jesus and yet not appear as haughty youngsters who don't give a damn for the sacrifices of those we are told won our freedom? Maybe somehow we could carry the Memorial theme back a little further into history and retell the story of Jesus as God's quintessential "soldier" who fought against the powers of evil by submitting to the degrading death of the cross, who forgave his enemies and offered no resistance to his persecutors, who took the path of human defeat in order to become the victory of God. Then have the Christian Memorial feast- the bread and wine, as opposed to the barbecue. :) And I suppose there is a place for remembering all the dead soldiers from every warring nation, because it is a great tragedy and like all tragedies they must also be brought to the cross in order to be healed.
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  Michael Cline

  1 year ago

  I'm all for remembering them in light of tragedy-- it's in the light of divinity that makes me woozy. All sacrifice is not on the same level. So how do I honor their sacrifice while still finding a way of communicating that Patton's quote of "the object of war is not to die for you country, but to make the other poor bastard die for his," while summing war up pretty accurately, does not reflect the cross of Christ?
  
  I'd also like to add that I have no theological objections to barbecues. ;)
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  DC

  1 year ago

  If I were giving a pastor advice on how to preach Memorial Day, I would offer the following: remind the congregation to remember all the victims of war and other violence. There's good sermon material hidden in the fact that the U.S. no longer keeps an official count of enemy casualties and civilian casualties in our wars. I try to remember on Memorial Day that I should repent for my participation in a system that demands soldiers commit violence that harms them just as much as our "enemies."
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  Michael Cline

  1 year ago

  And how do you navigate those who would rather you be a little more patriotic?
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  DC

  1 year ago

  I should say up front that I am not a pastor, but am just thinking out loud (in writing...um...?). I'd point to the history of Memorial Day. It started just to remember the Union soldiers (not the Confederate soldiers) who died in the American Civil War - we excluded the southern people who died in war from the moral universe. Were they not people, made in the image of God, too? We then expanded the holiday after World War I to include all soldiers that died in war or other military operation. Our dead, but not the enemy dead. "We" are worth remembering; "they" are worth killing. And just take off from there...remembering all people.
  
  But, if you wanted to be reallllly subversive, just do a sermon "for all those who died for our freedom," and start into the martyrs, and let the sermon reveal that the kingdom you're referring to with patriotic fervor is not America, but the Kingdom of God.
  
  If people want a patriotic rally, you might refer them to the nearest BBQ. A pulpit is for preaching the word of God and the Empire doesn't get to dictate the subject matter on any given Sunday.
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  Maria Kirby

  1 year ago

  I would concur with DC. To me, the best way to honor our veterans on Memorial Day is to apologize to our veterans for causing them to go through the horrors of war .
  
  To me, and I think one could make a Biblical argument that, war is a consequence for our sin. I think of Deuteronomy with its curses and blessings. I think of the plague God sent on Israel because David performed a census (in order to go to war). I think of the judgement Issiah pronounced on Hezikiah for showing off his wealth to the Babylonians. If we weren't so greedy, if we didn't seek retribution, if we pursued diplomacy with more vigor than violence, we might not go to war. Of course, I recognize that other's sin may force the war issue, but even so, it take two to quarrel and we can repent of our part in the conflict.
  
  My grandfather told me that before the twentieth century there were great revivals after wars because people felt like war was a punishment from God. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-526764...
  Robert Newman's History of Oil describes how the first Great War of the twenty first century was about oil. If we had repented then about our greed which drives us to consume so much oil, maybe we would have avoided half (or more) the wars we've been in since then, maybe we wouldn't be in our current war, maybe we wouldn't have global warming. But it's not too late to start repenting, repenting to God, repenting to our brothers who have sacrificed their lives for our greed and pride, repent to our brothers who God in his mercy redeemed from the horrors of war, repent to our children who will bear the burden of the consequences of our greed. It's not too late to put on sack cloth and mourn like Ninevah. It's not too late to change our ways.
  
  May the Spirit who came at Pentecost convict our hearts, and comfort us in our mourning.
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  Casey Ochs

  1 year ago

  War, like sickness, death and poverty, is a result of the fall and our own sin. (Judges 5:8, Gen 4:7-8, James 4:1) As Kingdom people we should be beating our swords into plowshares now.
  
  Your grandfather had insight that many religious today do not.
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  Joel

  1 year ago

  I remember when 9/11 happened, I went to the church my parents attend with my mother. The church had called an emergency prayer meeting that evening in response to the happenings of the day. The prayer service was presided over by one of the elders of the church since they were without a pastor at that time. To my great surprise, they prayed not only for the victims of the terrorist attacks, but also for those who carried out the attacks. Not at all what I would have expected from a church that displayed the American flag in the front of the sanctuary right next to the cross! I was very impressed in the way that those people conducted themselves that evening. Christ was indeed working in the hearts of those people that day.
  
  Go ahead and pray for the troops. They need all the prayers they can get. But, so do those whom this nations wars against. Pray for all of them.
  
  Oh, by the way, I like DC's suggestions for sermon topics.
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  thomas

  1 year ago

  Memorial Day can be a day that we reflect upon the folly of war.
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  Ted

  1 year ago

  This morning (Sunday) I was asked to play at a service at our local Christian camp. I suppose I knew what I was getting myself into; I was not prepared for the preacher to go so far as to renounce pacifism as "illogical" and wrong. I wanted to implode.
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  hewhocutsdown

  1 year ago

  What did the pastor recommend in it's place?
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  Ted

  1 year ago

  The usual "realistic" appraisal of the necessity of war and the possibility of participating in armed conflict as a means of working for justice. Especially since, you know, we have democracy and stuff now.
  
  btw, not that it matters but I should have said "denounce" instead of "renounce" in my comment.
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  hewhocutsdown

  1 year ago

  Here's where Ellul's introduction to Subversion Of Christianity still gets me (paraphrased, as my copy's loaned out):
  
  We make 2 mistakes when lifting our 'enlightened' perspective above those of the past. In reality, we are making the same compromises as the church as always made; under feudalism, capitulating to feudalism, under fascism, capitulating to fascism, under democracy, capitulating to democracy, etc.
  
  The second mistake is that of arrogance; that our capitulation is somehow better, more honorable, more reasonable, more realistic than those of the past, and condemn past heroes of the faith to show ourselves in a better light.
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  Ted

  1 year ago

  That's good stuff.
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  Michael Cline

  1 year ago

  The good ol' pragmatic response. There is something to doing what will seemingly "work," it's just that no one has proven that violence works on any real level. Of course, we'd have to define what "works" even means.
  
  Your pastor has been sucked into Reinhold Niebuhr's "Christian Realism"...who, by the way, is one of Barack Obama's favorite philospher's.
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  Ted

  1 year ago

  I deliberately chose "realistic" for that reason -- nice catch.
  
  You make a good point about the criteria for pragmatism; what does it mean for a given action to "work" from a Kingdom perspective? On a certain level, the ethics of the cross doesn't "work" at all, unless the goal is to get crucified. This doesn't always happen, and sometimes very good things (like reconciliation) come out of it, but to claim any control over that would be to miss the point.
  
  Would we go too far to suggest that to take up the sword, even for the most admirable ends, is to claim for ourselves the knowledge of good and evil? To justify coercion for the sake of a recognizably noble purpose is really just that much greater a temptation. When we do that, inasmuch as we do that, we forfeit our opportunity to live beyond the Fall. Does that make sense?
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  Sara

  1 year ago

  That does make sense. To simply say that war is the only alternative to watching our neighbors suffer at the hands of their oppressors is to embrace a fatalistic ideology. "If we don't do something now then they're all gonna die and the bad guys will win." It leaves no hope of reconciliation via the proclamation of the gospel. Even so-called "peace talks", that justify war as a last resort, still use the threat of war in order to manipulate the decisions of the other side. The world will never see peace until there are people willing to commit their lives to reconciliation or die trying.
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  Phil Stout

  1 year ago

  I've been pastoring a non-peace church for twenty-one years and somehow I've gotten away with never celebrating Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Veterans Day or any other patriotic event in our public services. We don't have an American flag in the church (although they did when I arrived) and when I pray for our soldiers I pray for our enemies as well and I pray for peace. I remember when I first came here and the music director wanted to do a patriotic musical. I nixed it and he channelled his efforts elsewhere.
  
  To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure how we've kept unity in our church. As a pacifist I'm clearly in the minority here. I guess the truth is that we haven't kept unity - it has been a gift from God. We pray for it and love each other intensely. And, in the midst of it all, hearts are changing.
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  Cory

  1 year ago

  I am new to this site but this is my 2 cents.
  
  I don't understand why people attend churches in which they obviously have major disagreements with. I think peace should be preached straight forwardly, albeit with respect. Jesus was mocked and made fun of, I don't know why we should expect anything different.
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  Anna

  1 year ago

  Many of us have the choice of attending non-peace churches or no church at all, unless we have the gumption to start a peace church. Then we might be awfully lonely. My husband and I chose the former. We get to be salt, creatively, in our context. Maybe, just maybe, we can be an open ear to someone who is thinking the same things but is afraid to speak out.
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  Michael Cline

  1 year ago

  We give a lot of lip service to listening to the "other" among us...usually meaning the oppressed or the disenfranchised. But in this case, my "other" includes WWII vets and local leaders of the VFW.
  
  That's a little harder to swallow isn't it? We tend to want to listen to the "other" in our midst as long as they aren't the "other" that looks a lot like us but just thinks differently.
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  markvans

  1 year ago

  We have to be careful not to take my next statement too far: in a way, the Pharisees were the "other" to Jesus. In other words, not all line-drawing is bad. Not all denouncements are created equal.
  
  I'm not advocating that we become jerks to WWII vets. But at the same time, I don't think it is sufficient to merely say that we should simply listen to them with respect. Perhaps we should, but at the same time they should, gently, be called to repentance.
  
  I hope you can see the fine line I'm trying to dance here...
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  Michael Cline

  1 year ago

  It definitely is a fine line, and you are dancing it quite well--but I come from a background where dancing was discouraged for Christians, so I'm not sure my opinion matters much.
  
  I guess my emphasis was on HEARING the other and giving place for the other, and not so much on agreeing with sinful activities and attitudes. I am afraid that Cory's comments could lead to a "well, we're the pure church" kind of attitude that has caused, not reconciliation and righteousness, but unnecessary splintering and finger pointing. (not that all splintering is bad). People who disagree with us on issues of war and violence are not going to be best served by being left to their own devices. If the veterans leave, they are just going to find the best civil religious organization around, not Jesus.
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  Michael Cline

  1 year ago

  And I also agree that as we listen, we should call them to repentance gently. It's the "how" of this that I'm trying to get at. Got any ideas?
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  Cory

  1 year ago

  I definitely do not want to become the "holier than thou' type of person, it's just I wouldn't feel comfortable attending a church that wouldn't promote nonviolence, or at least be open to discuss it.
  
  In the same way, i grew up in a baptist church, my parents wouldn't think about going to any other denomination because that's not what they believed. Likewise, I don't have plans to become a member of a non-peace church.
  
  I definitely don't think I have everything figured out.
  
  Jesus approached the religious very abruptly, and made quite a large scene...just a thought
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