Just War

A huge dove of peace, with its sixteen-foot wingspan, led this congregation out of the sanctuary, through the atrium, out the front doors, and across the parking lot to the base of the hillside. It was two years ago, on October 24, 2004. Ten years earlier atop the hill the congregation buried 21 handguns as a memorial to non-violence. At one side of the path leading up the hill to the memorial, is the Guns Into Plowshares plaque. On the other side of the path, on that day two years ago, we planted and dedicated a Peace Pole

Peace poles have been erected around the world to act as a constant reminder for us to visualize, and pray, and work for world peace. On each of the four sides of the pole, in a different language, is the inscription “May Peace Prevail on Earth”. Since the first pole was planted in 1955 in Japan, more than 200,000 peace poles have been dedicated in 180 countries around the world.

This pole had been given to church member Lucile Green, honoring her commitment, for over fifty years, to the peace movement. Lucile wanted the Peace Pole here on these grounds as a reminder to all who come here. Lucile was here that day, but she died three months later. Her ashes, appropriately, are buried at the base of the Peace Pole.

As our white dove of peace appeared again today, so too, are those peace pioneers like Lucile, here among us.

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I want to talk with you today about war and peace and the challenges before us as a human community. This is a week of confluence. Today is United Nations Sunday, marking the 61 year history of this international effort to support the human endeavor to find peaceful and cooperative solutions to our problems. Tuesday marks the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Hungarian uprising, the cry of the human spirit for liberty. And our nation is deeply embroiled in and divided over an ill-conceived, costly, and unjust war in Iraq. We document the U.S. soldiers killed, and argue about the number of Iraqis who have died. I want to see what I can find in the confluence of these forces.

After the wrenching devastation of World War II, in April of 1945, representatives of 50 nations, including the United States, gathered in San Francisco to put the final touches on the Charter of the United Nations, whose stunning preamble we read this morning. The Charter went into effect on October 24, 1945.

The next decade was full of challenges for this would-be world body of nations. But steadily it grew through the last sixty years to embrace today 192 member states. It offers no easy solutions, but is an instrument through which nations can identify common problems, set international standards and take common action.

It was still in its early stages as an international organization when, at the end of its first decade, the United Nations faced the question of how to respond when citizens of a sovereign nation are oppressed by an outside force.

When tanks and soldiers of the Soviet Union rolled into Budapest to put down the first resistance to a Soviet controlled government, the young General Assembly of the United Nations responded boldly. A resolution was offered to call on the Soviet Union to stop using force immediately and withdraw its troops from Hungary. The vote was 51 to 8, with 15 abstentions. Though this vote could not change the course of events in Hungary, it affirmed the right of the brave Hungarians to work for change nonviolently and it reinforced the United Nations as the place within the world community to bring issues of human rights. Today we remember and affirm the Hungarian martyrs who fought against tyranny and oppression.

In the fifty years since the Hungarian uprising the world has seen almost continuous human conflict. The Cold War, with its threat of nuclear destruction, escalated and was diffused. Wars of destruction have raged in Southeast Asia, Africa, the former Yugoslavia, and the Middle East, to name only a few. A new era of terrorism and the rise, again, of fear of nuclear proliferation dominate the attention of the world.

Our United States of America, the world’s only superpower, is increasingly seen by others as a strong-arm aggressor. It is a sad irony that this nation, with its West Coast creation of the United Nations, and its East Coast home to its headquarters, chose to ignore the considered resistance of the United Nations before preemptively launching the current war in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost later, our leaders “stay the course,” failing to recognize that an unjust war, despite clothing it in the garments of liberation, is just war, and not the foundation of civil society.

Over the centuries political philosophers and theologians have explored the notion of what might justify going to war. The principles of a “just war” usually consider:
“having just cause,
being declared by a proper authority,
possessing right intention,
having a reasonable chance of success, and
the end being proportional to the means used.”∥

I’ll not go into a discussion of each of these, but suffice it to say that in justifying war one would hold, for instance “that aggressive war is only permissible if its purpose is to retaliate against a wrong already committed (e.g., to pursue and punish an aggressor), or to pre-empt an anticipated attack.” In what we now know as lies, the United States declared a relationship between those who attacked the World Trade Center and the government of Iraq, and the possession of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq. In retrospect we recognize our government posited these falsehoods to justify a pre-emptive attack.

The idea of “right intention” is “that a nation waging a just war should be doing so for the cause of justice and not for reasons of self-interest or aggrandizement.”∥ If we proclaim our expectation that we will be welcomed as liberators, deliverers of democracy, we re-direct attention from our desire to establish military bases to guard precious oil supplies.

Fifty years ago, as resistance fighters claimed their freedom and Soviet tanks rolled down the streets of Budapest, I was a nine-year old boy, playing with army men and toy tanks. I loved to line up the opposing forces, shoot rubber bands, and demolish military strongholds.

Thirty-six years ago, as the documented number of American casualties and the unknown number of Vietnamese deaths mounted, I was talking with a Quaker member of the faculty of my college. He helped me to clarify my position as a conscientious objector opposed to participation in war in any form.

All these years later I still struggle with the idea of a “just war.” I hold the right of anyone to defend themselves against attack, yet, from the bottom of my heart I believe, in the words of Albert Einstein, that “peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”∥

More and more, I see it as just war, nothing more. I see lives lost and families destroyed. I see soldiers sacrificed and financiers enriched. I want to hold to noble aspirations, and I see lies and deceit, in the name of my country. I want resources to go to helping those in need and in this wealthiest of all the nations I see increasing poverty, illiteracy and violence. I want it to stop.

I am glad that the delegates to the 2006 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association adopted a study action for the next four years to explore if the UUA should reject the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between peoples and nations and adopt a principle of seeking just peace through nonviolent means. We have never been, like the Quakers and Mennonites, a “peace church.” We have embraced the broad range of beliefs about just wars. It will be a telling exploration.

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I want to tell you about something remarkable. Imagine yourself entering a museum of anthropology. If it helps, imagine this museum is on the campus of the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. There amidst rooms filled with the artifacts of First Nations people: totem poles, canoes, art objects and long houses, you enter a very different room. On the wall in front of you are two white doves in flight. They each are six feet tall and eight feet long. You look closer and realize they are made of small toys glued to a background, all painted white. You look even closer and realize the toys are guns and knives and tanks and plastic army men.

These are toy weapons of mass destruction transformed into white doves - a symbol of peace.

Susan Ruzic is an educator who is encouraging kids to give up their war toys. She was appalled at the toys her students had. “Kids are playing with really scary stuff,” she said…“Real-looking machine guns, tanks, war video games…it’s pretty gross.”∥ So she started a peace program and invited kids to bring in their violent toys and make art with them. One by one, toy by toy violence was disarmed and transformed into images of reconciliation and peace.

These art objects of peace were placed on the floor and all over the walls of the museum room. Children from warring Uganda drew pictures of peace and sent them to be included in the exhibit marking a meeting of the World Peace Forum.∥ Quotations adorn the walls: John Lennon: “If everyone demanded peace instead of another T.V. set, then there’d be peace;” Jimi Hendrix: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace;” Martin Amis: Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.”

“Artist Bill Thomson, who admits to playing war as a child…[says] war toys can be a powerful tool to transform a culture’s vision of war and peace. You can’t isolate children…And kids are bombarded with aggressive, violent images of conflict on TV, in video games, and elsewhere…You can treat those images as both objects without meaning and [as] cultural artifacts. “Through art,” he suggests, “they can be explored. You can neutralize the aggression.”∥

Here, in this museum room of peace, surrounded by artifacts of First Nations people, we utter this prayer: “Oh Great Spirit…Give us the wisdom to teach our children to love, to respect, and to be kind to each other so that they may grow with peace of mind.”∥

Isn’t that what we want for all children, whoever they may be? We want creativity sparked with images of compassion. We want violence transformed into graceful giving. We want human dignity affirmed and nurtured. We want peace that lasts through the generations.

Gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by…the Tigris and the Euphrates.
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I want to tell you about something else remarkable. Last Sunday as 204 people stood here in this sanctuary, 23,542,614 people stood around the world in a demonstration to support Stand Up Against Poverty, Stand Up for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

The United Nations, now in its seventh decade, has invited all the nations of the world, rich and poor alike, to work together to improve the quality of life in developing countries. This congregation has selected as a priority for our attention support of these goals. Over the next ten years, we are invited and encouraged to commit ourselves to help:

- Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
- Achieve Universal Primary Education
- Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
- Reduce Child Mortality
- Improve Maternal Health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases
- Ensure Environmental Sustainability, and
- Develop a Global Partnership for Development

It’s a big job, but standing together with 23 million others, just think what we can do!
I encourage you to get involved, to think about ways we can work together on projects to help accomplish these goals. Already we are at work on them.
Last week, in addition to money we received for our local Dorothy Day House to ease hunger in our community, we raised over $300 for the UN World Food Program.

Soon you will hear plans for installing solar panels on this church building and an invitation to join in the investment that will use the sun’s energy to provide for the electrical needs of this building and the larger community. If you are interested in being part of a new Green Committee, please talk with me or Board President Susan Lankford.

There is so much we can do to remind ourselves and one another of the importance of this work. We can create doves of peace, from bed sheets, and from old war toys. We can stop by the Peace Pole and think of 200,000 peace poles around the world. We can climb the hill to the Guns Into Plowshares memorial and re-dedicate ourselves to non-violence.

First, we can join in this litany, spoken as we dedicated our Peace Pole two years ago. Please respond saying “May Peace Prevail on Earth.

In a world divided by human boundaries:

Response: May Peace Prevail on Earth

In a world of many colors, many languages, many religions:

Response: May Peace Prevail on Earth

In a world of human possibility for love and justice:

Response: May Peace Prevail on Earth

May we rededicate ourselves to work for non-violent resolution of conflict and creative transformation of human possibility, so that in an on-going chorus of voices we will declare:

Response: May Peace Prevail on Earth

As the white dove soars, and the toys of war become the symbols of peace,
May Peace Prevail on Earth.

May it be so! Amen.  ♦