The
Modern Churchpeople's Union
Violence: a Stubborn Pandemic
Reflections on the 2007 MCU Conference
Alan Race, and a letter from Judith Pritchard
Alan Race was Conference Secretary and Co-Chair.
Details of the 2008 MCU Conference - Saving the soul of Anglicanism - are here
Violence has been analysed as being rooted variously in human nature, social injustice, ideological rivalry, and the increasingly desperate competition over resources. But to this list we must now add ‘religiously-motivated violence'. Not only is the default position of much media commentary and academic out-put, but it is also receiving theological attention. Professor Mark Juergensmeyer, who was unable at the last minute to address the conference due to personal and family circumstances, has analysed religiously-motivated violence across five traditions – Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism and Judaism – in his book ‘Terror in the Mind of God'. The results are a frightening scenario. All of us, it seems, have the potential to put religious impulses to violent ends, irrespective of religious tradition, culture or civilisation. Had Mark been able to address the conference we would have been made to wrestle with this aspect of violence more than we did.
I arrived at High Leigh after just having read John Crossan's recent book, ‘God and Empire'. Always deeply provocative, Crossan points out how the reality of civilisation/empire is actually founded historically on what he calls ‘the normalcy of violence'. In other words, violence lies at the heart of civilisations and is not an aberration or symptom of decline. At its simplest, civilisations require policing at their borders and control at their centres of life. Further, Crossan depicts the Bible as a story (from Genesis to Revelation) of the struggle between the violent and non-violent God, and it remains an open question which one we shall embrace for the future. Justice is the key on which everything turns, so ‘how will we tackle justice today?' is his question to us.
Our conference did not set out to answer that question. But we know that it is not sufficient for us to complain that religion can be misused in the cause of violent ends and that religious commitment itself is essentially spiritually noble. Our religions themselves need purging from the ‘texts of terror' residing in all our scriptures. This means therefore that there is no escape from the theological dimension of violence and its continuing or its ending. If we are to dent the ‘stubborn pandemic' this will have to become a priority now.
This year's conference [Top]
Letter from Judith Pritchard
I was both surprised and gratified when my small part in having dreamed up the theme of our recent conference was acknowledged at its outset.
I enjoyed the conference immensely - the speakers, the company, the food and, above all the splendid eucharistic worship. So I was even more surprised recently, while happily engaged in deleting old files from the computer, to discover my original letter to Nick Henderson, requesting not a conference on violence but a conference on non-violence .
The difference perhaps accounts for the slight sense of disenchantment which has beset me since returning home. The conference assumed what is for me a less than complete theological outlook. I would have liked some reference to some understanding of the Cross which gives rise to creative pacifism as exemplified in Quakerism.
Giles Fraser came the nearest with his outline of the writings of René Girard - whereas Norman Kember, although well-received and respected, never even mentioned the crucial relevance of Bonhoeffer, whose name was incorporated in the title of his talk! Had he dashed off the title in response to the programme editor and then forgotten it?
I am not a trained theologian although I have had a lifelong addiction to casual theological reading. Do academic theologians have nothing to say about the impossibly-seeming otherness of the Cross? Plenty of people do, e.g. Martin Luther King, Walter Wink, Gandhi implicitly and Paul Oestreicher whose front page article in the current issue of The Anglican Peacemaker cannot be bettered. But, with the exception of Wink, they are not academic theologians and can perhaps better be described as radical (not liberal) thinkers.
The relevance of the atomic bomb unleashed on Hiroshima is not that it is just another weapon capable of destroying the world. Nor is it the case that most people cannot grasp this. Its significance lies in its crystal clear exposition of our modern-day experience of ‘the desolating sacrilege'. Where it merges with the Cross human thought comes to an end. Which is perhaps why we can't have a theology of the Cross. Or can we?
In the words of my favourite prayer ‘cleanse the thoughts of our hearts…'
A strange idea is it not?