Living the Prophetic Imperative

I Haven't Been Here for a While - This Service I Gave at My Church May Explain Why

2011-10-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

Pre-service Reflection: The commanding, sustaining, transforming reality (of our religion) finds its rightful focus in ... free, cooperative effort for the common good ... Man comes most fully to terms with this reality in the exercise of freedom that works for justice in the human community.

Rev. Dr. James Luther Adams

Chalice Lighting Words: A person of education or ability, who is taken up with public affairs or suitable business, may take an hour and a half daily to exercise himself.

Nineteenth Annotation to the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, S. J.

First Reading: Excerpt from “Men for Others”, Pedro Arupe, S.J. Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Valencia, Spain, 1973

Education for justice has become in recent years one of the chief concerns of the Church. Why? Because there is a new awareness in the Church that participation in the promotion of justice and the liberation of the oppressed is a constitutive element of the mission which Our Lord has entrusted to her. Impelled by this awareness, the Church is now engaged in a massive effort to educate — or rather to re-educate — herself, her children, and all men so that we may all “lead our life in its entirety … in accord with the evangelical principles of personal and social morality to be expressed in a living Christian witness.”

Today our prime educational objective must be to form men‐for‐others; men who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ ‐ for the God‐man who lived and died for all the world; men who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for others is a farce.

... the paramount objective of Jesuit education – basic, advanced, and continuing – must now be to form such men. For if there is any substance in our reflections, then this is the prolongation into the modern world of our humanist tradition as derived from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. Only by being a man-for-others does one become fully human, not only in the merely natural sense, but in the sense of being the “spiritual” person of Saint Paul. The person filled with the Spirit; and we know whose Spirit that is: the Spirit of Christ, who gave his life for the salvation of the world; the God who, by becoming a Man, became, beyond all others, a Man-for-others.

Second Reading: From “Sailors Get Training For Guarding Terror Suspects” – Carol Rosenberg - Miami Herald, 18 October 2005

GULFPORT, Miss. - Training for hundreds of sailors bound for guard duty at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, starts here with a stark slide-show image: Army Pvt. Lynndie England at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, holding a naked Iraqi captive on a leash.

”Your kids are going to read about this in their history books,” Navy Capt. Thomas Beall tells the mostly volunteer Navy police force. “We're writing a new chapter in the history of our Navy -- and it's going to be an honorable chapter.”

As the fourth year approaches for the Pentagon's offshore prison camp for suspected terrorists, the Navy has been fashioning its first, full-time guard force to patrol the cellblocks at Camp Delta in southeast Cuba.

And it starts here at a Seabee base where Beall and other commanders trained and screened about 120 men and women sailors at a time, mostly Navy cops called Masters at Arms, or MAs.

They have volunteered from U.S. ships and ports from the world over -- from Iceland to San Diego, from Pearl Harbor to the Persian Gulf.

For a year now, military officers at Guantánamo have avoided Abu Ghraib analogies, eschewing it as an American detention anomaly half a world away, in Iraq.

But Beall, a 43-year-old former frigate commander, is confronting the Abu Ghraib image as he pioneers the Navy's first professional, POW-style guard force.

“I do know that it's different from what sailors have done in the past. I do know it's under a lot of scrutiny. And I do know that people have screwed it up -- all you have to do is look at Abu Ghraib,” he said in an interview.

But, he tells his sailors, the president has authorized the creation of a prison camp at Guantánamo; Congress has approved it and the courts have so far ruled it constitutional -- even as “the American people are questioning why we're doing it and how we're doing it.”

So he has declared that every sailor guard begin each Guantánamo day by reciting The Sailor's Creed -- I proudly serve . . . with honor, courage and commitment.

Third Reading: From a letter to naval officers and sailors assigned to Joint Task Force Guantanamo, Captain Thomas R. Beall, USN; Commander of the JTF Navy Element, October 17^th, 2005.

What happened at Abu Ghraib probably stemmed from failure of leaders to order their soldier's priorities. Soldiers who put loyalty to themselves or their immediate comrades over loyalty to their country and the mission, can easily do illegal or stupid things. It is up to us to ensure they don't by, in part, helping them order their priorities correctly.

Professor James H. Toner of the Air War College offers a context in which to order priorities by emphasizing the importance of knowing what one ought to do.

. . . the key for military ethics is this: What (service men and women) do may not be the same thing as what they ought to do. Sound simple? Yes, but it isn't, for military hierarchies sensibly insist upon obedience to orders and upon prompt, total discipline. Ethics, however, demurs, insisting upon conditional and contextual obedience to orders, which ought to be obeyed if lawful. So there is often, but not always, tension between the demands of military authority (or command) and the demands of ethical judgment (or conscience). So we have here not just what is (which is might and power or the man-made or positive law) but also what ought to be (which is right or ethics or the natural or moral law). Some things we cannot deny knowing, for anyone of normal mental and moral development must understand certain things (such as knowing that the slaughter of the innocent is wrong).

While it is every service member's responsibility to determine what he or she ought to do, it is the military leader's particular responsibility to resolve moral ambiguities and give orders to his / her subordinates that are grounded in "what is right" or what is consistent with our Constitution, our laws and what the American people would have us do.

In short, Toner offers a context within which we should lead our Sailors:

1. Owing: It's not about me, it's about my responsibility to serve those whom I owe: my country, my fellow citizens, my family, and the mission.

2. Ordering: Given this responsibility, it is important that I help my Sailors live up to this responsibility by helping them order their priorities and ensuring they understand that their obligation to those whom they owe comes before obligations to self or to their circle of comrades.

3. "Ought-ing": As I help my Sailors order their priorities, it is my responsibility as a leader to take away any ambiguity about what they are doing by ensuring that my orders to them are grounded in what we all ought to do. In other words, it is my responsibility to ensure that what I do, what I tell them to do, and what I ensure they are doing are firmly grounded in the Code of Conduct, the Sailor's Creed, and our core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment.

“Surprising Turning Points”

Thomas R. Beall

My name is Tom Beall. I have been a member of this church for just over ten years. During that time I have served on the Property Committee, co-chaired the Social Action Committee, developed the “Hot Topics” program to address Congregation conflict, chaired the annual fund drive, chaired the Governing Board, co-led the Coming of Age Program and chaired the committee that guided the Congregation in formulating the vision statement you find on the cover of each week’s order of service. Two years ago I led all of the services while our minister was on summer vacation. I also led or lay-led 1/5 of the services conducted in that year. Finally, I have served as both Vice President and President of this church.

Because of this impressive volunteer resume, I believe that many here came to think of me primarily as a church leader with all of the expectations that go with that role. While this is certainly an important dimension of my relationship with our religious community, it is only one dimension of who I am. Having recently renewed my connection with you after 18 months’ absence, I sought and welcomed the opportunity to tell you more about who I am in the context of two turning points in my life.

The Jesuit value of service as a “Man for Others” is central to my own philosophy of life. I was reared in this philosophy by my parents and by Jesuit Fathers who were my middle and high school teachers. It was this philosophy that inspired me to pursue a military career and, subsequently, a career in teaching. My own sense of self – worth has been founded on service to my community and my country.

This is not to say that I have not personally benefitted from my life and career choices. As a naval officer, I was well paid, I travelled throughout the world, I was challenged in many positive ways, and I was promoted and given greater responsibility and authority when I met those challenges. I reaped the rewards of a successful first career and am now reaping the rewards of my second through personal satisfaction teaching young people at a charter high school in Providence. My community and my country have been good to me under that covenant which requires service to the community in return for its benefits.

Because of these rewards, however, I never fully experienced selfless service until six years ago when I was ordered to take up a command at the Guantanamo detention facility. I won’t spend any time talking about what I did there. If you are interested, you will find a volume of my writings relating to the experience in the Channing library. What I will say, however, is that service at Guantanamo was the most rewarding experience of my naval career and one of the happiest times of my life.

This may seem an odd statement given that Guantanamo was a terrible place. It was not terrible because there was any torture or other illegal activity occurring there (there wasn’t). It was not terrible because the detainees were confined and cared for in a cruel or inhuman way (they weren’t). It was not terrible because terrible people worked there. In fact, some of the finest people I met in my 25 – year career were those I worked with at Guantanamo. What made it terrible was what makes any prison terrible. Like all prisons it was a place where human dignity gradually eroded because human freedom did not exist.

So why was Guantanamo a happy and rewarding experience for me? In the first place, it was an opportunity to put my values, formed with the help of my parents, the Jesuits, and the Navy, into practice in a really important context – important not just to me but to my Sailors, to the Navy, and to my country. The responsibility for training the Sailor guards involved more than just teaching them new skills. It involved ensuring they understood how to practice those skills with honor, courage, commitment, and compassion. To do this, I had to reflect deeply on my own values and then learn and put into practice new ways of communicating, inspiring, and leading in accordance with those values. If you read my account of my experiences in the church library, I think you will agree that I succeeded in doing this – success from which I derive a great deal of pride and satisfaction. It was truly the capstone to my naval career.

There was an added dimension, however, one I had never fully experienced before. Service in Guantanamo had absolutely no positive impact on my career. From the start I understood that success would not lead to promotion or further advancement in the Navy. The reasons for this are too arcane to try to explain. The result, however, was that I found myself in a situation in which I was asked to serve with no possibility of personal reward. To my surprise, it was this element that made Guantanamo one the happiest times of my life. I really felt that it was important to succeed for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. I really felt that I had been finally called in some way to be that “Man for Others”. It was a fulfilling and deeply spiritual experience. It was a surprising turning point for me because I finally really understood what clerics, whether Jesuit or Unitarian, have been trying to tell all of us. A person only becomes truly human (created in the image of Christ) when he or she exercises human freedom to work for justice in the community.

When my Guantanamo service came to an end, I returned home to Linda, to our cats and, of course, to this (UU) church. Almost immediately, I took up the role of Church President and led the Congregation during two years in which, together, we underwent a discernment process leading to a new vision of our future. We began to make that vision a reality by finding consensus on how to address many challenges such as rebuilding our steeple and expanding our religious education program. We laid the groundwork for financing and reconstructing the steeple through grant applications and a capital campaign – initiatives brilliantly carried through to completion by my successor and all those who worked with him to accomplish something that none of us thought possible a few short years ago. During my two-year term, we accomplished a great deal together and, as my term drew to a close, I was conscious of a feeling of satisfaction in that accomplishment. Once again, service had brought many rewards.

I was also conscious, however, of a feeling of emptiness. I realized I had no other connection to this church than as a leader and I really had no idea how to reenter our religious community as a member rather than as a leader. As I told one person, I felt that at my church I had a lot of colleagues but no friends. I also felt that some of you didn’t really see me as anything other than a leader and weren’t that interested in who I really was or what my needs from this community were. Because of this, I felt increasingly bitter. It is the reason I stayed away for so long.

I am the first to admit that I may not have been wholly rational about this or that I may not have been fair to you. It is, however, how I felt and I have come to recognize that my feelings have as much value as anyone’s in this community.

I felt so bitter that I formally resigned my membership one day not long ago, only to rescind it a day later because I realized that doing so greatly increased my loneliness and isolation. In rescinding my resignation, I told a few people how I felt. Each one of them reached out to me with compassion, listened to what I had to say, offered me their perspectives, and expressed their wish that I come back. Their caring and compassion is the main reason I am standing here today.

As I was deciding to come back, I asked myself two questions: (1) when was it that I had most enjoyed about being a member of this Congregation and (2) why should I come back to this church? In answer to the first question, I realized that the time I most enjoyed this church was when my wife and I first joined. We went to services, helped out in simple ways, and began to develop and forge a spiritual connection with this religious community. I discovered it was also during that summer month when I led all of the services. To prepare those services I read and thought a lot about Unitarian Universalism and began seriously to explore my own spirituality.

I discovered the answer to the second question “Why should I return to this church?” in a book my mother recently gave me, The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything (a typically Jesuit title). In it, I first read about Saint Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. The founder of the Society of Jesus developed these exercises for a very important reason. Loyola understood that there is an important dimension to being a “Man for Others” that I had always overlooked – the dimension that involves developing a spiritual life that gives real meaning to service. This is the second surprising turning point: The realization that life and service are enriched if they have a spiritual dimension.

For the Jesuits, this spiritual dimension involves communion with God. I am not sure what it means for me as a Unitarian Universalist except that it involves communion with this religious community. My second question was answered.

So, in coming back, in renewing our covenant together, I am asking you to help me develop the spiritual dimension of my life as a “Man for Others.” I hope to develop this spirituality not through participation in a lot of programs or service on a lot of committees or the Board. I have done enough of that and, in doing so; I have learned that these are not the things for which I want to come to church. Rather I hope and need to do this through communion with this Congregation at Sunday service, helping out together in simple ways, and exploring together the spiritual dimension of being a Unitarian Universalist and a “Man for Others”.

Benediction: Spiritual Exercises (are a) way of examining one's conscience, of meditating, of contemplating, of praying vocally and mentally, and of performing other spiritual actions...

For as strolling, walking and running are bodily exercises, so every way of preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all the disordered tendencies, and, after it is rid, to seek and find the Divine Will as to the management of one's life for the salvation of the soul, is called a Spiritual Exercise.

Bearing Witness

2010-07-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

The critique of a blogger who strongly disagrees with my pacifism and specifically my previous post, asking my own question of me, "Captain Thomas R. Beall, USN (ret.): Are You Prepared To Do So?" has led me to reflect on why I continue to write in the face of criticism such as this. In fact, I have found on some days that I am reluctant to go back into the bloggosphere for fear of finding harsh words or criticism. No one likes to read that. I certainly don't, even as I recognize it is the price of speaking out in this forum. We all have strong views and feelings on this issue as on many others and, like this other blogger and me, argue our views with passion. Still, I think I have always spoken respectfully and compassionately. If I have not, I am sincerely sorry.

To answer my critic's question above, I will let my 25 years of service as a line naval officer speak for itself. Enough said.

To answer his second question, "Why isn't the question directed to the pacifist?", I think a reading of my previous post will provide an answer.
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To answer his third question, "Are you prepared to do nothing in the face of aggression?", pacifists and practioners of non-violence (not always considered the same thing) don't "do nothing in the face of aggression". They simply do not perpetrate violence on the aggressor. Many have acted non-violently and selflessly to aid victims of aggression. Some have accomplished great things. I am awed by their courage.
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To answer the question as to why I write. It is not because I think I will change anything. My views are too much at odds with the great majority of opinion in this country. When one is on the wrong side of a great majority, one can only ask of oneself, "Am I the one who is wrong?" Maybe I am but I don't feel that I am and I feel strongly enough about this issue that I need to speak out.

Why? Simply to bear witness to my beliefs - even if no one is really listening (and I am not so arrogant as to think many people read this blog). Still, bearing witness in this fashion is one of the things I can do. Believe it or not, just as I felt I was doing during my 25 years in the Navy, I feel I am serving my country by speaking out and bearing witness. In this way, I feel I am embracing the moral buck, not passing it.

Are You Prepared To Do So?

2010-07-19T17:19:00.000-07:00

I honor those in the UU community who worked so hard to build the consensus that resulted in the statement "Creating Peace". As a congregational leader, I came to understand the importance of building consensus on difficult issues - often, it is the only way to move forward. This document, reflecting a consensus among the congregations of the UUA is truly a remarkable acheivement.

That said, the statement saddens me because it does not go far enough. By affirming the view of those who "...bear witness to the right of individuals and nations to defend themselves, and acknowledge our responsibility to be in solidarity with others in countering aggression...(and who) believe force is sometimes necessary as a last resort...", UU's make it possible for themselves and others to justify a wide range of wars. These include the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which, it was argued by the Bush Administration and many others, were "wars fought as a last resort". By affirming "the sometime necessity of war" UU's help perpetuate American militarism and the national security state that our once great republic has become. This is not the way to create peace.

In writing this, I know that there are those who will disagree with me. They will find my embrace of pacifism to be naive, foolish, and impractical. They will argue that ours is a world in which, as our President has said, "...there will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified." They will argue that while they do not like war, they know it is sometimes necessary.

To those people, including our President, I say that I respect your views. Clearly you have arrived at them after much reflection. I only ask one thing. When the necessary war comes about (and many, like our President, argue that our war in Afghanistan is such a war) I ask that you be among the first to volunteer, to serve, and to fight and that you ask your children to do the same. I am not talking about supporting a decision by a child to make a career in the military. I am talking about asking yourself and your children to put aside everything to, as Nathan Hale said, "...place your mortal body between (your) loved home and war's desolation."

If you truly believe that a war is necessary, I ask you to do this before you ask a young man or woman who may have volunteered for our armed forces because it was the only place in our society that offered him or her a chance to get ahead to do the same. If a war is truly necessary and truly just, we should all be prepared to make this sacrifice.

Are you prepared to do so?

Pacifism

2010-07-03T04:33:00.000-07:00

This entry is written in response to a very thoughtful blogger's statement about whether or not he is a pacifist.

To my fellow blogger I say that I am the person who wrote, "Why can't we just say no to war?" only to be answered by someone, "Because war doesn't say no to us."

My view is this person makes an argument that has at its root a highly questionable self-perception many Americans share; that we are a just people who only fight when others thrust war upon us. Our history, read objectively, says otherwise. I cannot think of a single war in American history (and I include the Civil War, the war against Hitler, and the Global War on Terrorism) concerning which, at some point in the days, months, or years before the war, we could not have said "no" by choosing paths that led to peace. There exists enough professional historical argument to support this view and to argue that the theory of "just war" has never truly been put into practice. There exists enough professional historical argument to make the case for pacifism as an approach that is at least worthy of our consideration and effort.

The arguments you make in your blog entry are well considered and thoughtful but I still reject your argument that, in the world as it exists, war is inevitable and we must be ready to fight aggressors to reestablish peace and justice. War happens, as one of your commenters said, because man chooses to make it happen - and man can choose not to. That is what John F. Kennedy said in his famous peace speech. I am not a deep theological thinker but I always thought ability to choose is what free will was all about. If we, in fact, have free will then we can choose peace - always.

Many Americans argue, "Certainly we want a world that is at peace. We only fight because THEY force us to!" But do you really believe that there are any wars in American history (and again I include the Civil War and the war against Hitler) that we truly fought ONLY to end someone else's agression and / or establish peace and justice among men? Do you really believe that in any of our wars there weren't selfish earthly reasons indellibly mixed up in the rationale for war; or that we really would have fought if selfish considerations of 'national interest' weren't involved? Do you really believe that human beings have demonstrated in the past the inclination to choose war or peace on the basis of altruism and justice alone? If mankind had thus far demonstrated the inclination to do so, I think I could support the theory of just war. But if men, including Americans, had truly acted with justice and altruism in the past, I think they would invariably have chosen peace. As you point out, many veterans argue for peace - and for good reason. War, stripped of all the trappings of patriotism and justice, is just simply awful.

It is this awfulness that is the reality we must confront. Many people make the argument that pacifism is an extreme separated from practicality and reality. Again I disagree. Pacifists confront the reality of war - in all its sheer awfulness - when they argue for peace. I think it is those who hide themselves from this reality who find it so easy to make the case for war.

OK, so you don't have to agree with me - you don't have to agree that there is never a case for war. But ask yourself this. Doesn't making the case for "just war" make it possible for those in our society who support American militarism, the national security state, and the uncounted (literally) billions spent on the military, to continue on this path? Doesn't this view make it possible for our political leaders to refuse to expend resources on the poor arguing that, "We can't pass on to our children so much debt!" while they refuse even to discuss how the expenditure on war and militarism, unsupported by taxes, is creating an unbearable debt burden for those very children? Doesn't "just war" theory, by defining war as a just act under certain (unquantifiable) circumstances, make it possible for us to perceive all our wars as just acts; giving us permission to go on preparing for and making war while many other portions of our society fall into advanced decay?

I think so. The "just war" argument gives us permission to avoid these fundamental questions - questions that go to the very heart of who we are. The question we avoid is, "Are we truly a republic founded on justice and a desire to promote peace on earth or are we a national security state so wedded to war that we don't even discuss its impact on other segments of our society?" Agree with me or not, this is a question we, as Americans, need to answer now before we pass an unbearable legacy on to our posterity.

The Last of the Patricians

2010-07-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

This morning I pulled a thin volume from a shelf in my library and looked at the frontispiece. It is a picture of a distinguished man in a three-piece suit sitting amongst his books and papers. On his lap is an open book. The man, holding his eyeglasses, is sitting in a pose of reflection. But for his modern garb, he could easily be taken for a Roman patrician and senator, a member of the ruling-class of one of the first successful constitutional republics - an exemplar of a governing system that our own founding fathers looked to for guidance in the forming of our own polity.

The man is United States Senator Robert C. Byrd and the book is a series of addresses he made to the Senate of the United States in 1993. The issue before the Senate was whether to give the President the authority to strike out portions of a Congressional bill of which he did not approve while still approving the remainder of the bill. This "line-item veto" authority was seen by many as a solution to out-of-control government spending because it would give the President authority to cut "pork barrel spending" out of a bill while giving members of Congress the political cover of voting for it in the first place.

Senator Byrd was appalled for two reasons. First, the line-item veto would deprive him of the power to help the people of his state by directing Federal funds to their benefit. Second, and most important to him, it would curtail Congress' power of the purse - the one power that Senator Byrd felt served as a check on the growing power of the "Imperial Presidency."

Rather than resort to the demagoguery so common then and today, Senator Byrd drew on his deep and profound understanding of history to instruct his colleagues in the dangers of their proposed course. In this way, he was very much like the great Roman historians such as Pliny who wrote history to promote virtues they believed were being undermined in modern life. Senator Byrd spoke of the fall of the Roman Republic into an imperial despotism as a warning that, by surrendering powers to the President as a matter of expediency, his colleagues were laying the groundwork for the American Republic to suffer a similar fate. Congress heeded his warning and did not give the President this new power.

Senator Byrd continued his fight to protect the powers and prerogatives of the Congress against growing Presidential power to the end of his life. Following 9/11 he was one of the few voices in Congress who argued against increasing Presidential national security powers at the expense of the other two branches of government - taking the long view that by doing so, we would do far more damage to our Republic than any terrorist would. Like many of the Patricians of the late Roman Republic, Senator Byrd suffered ridicule and was marginalized in the post 9/11 environment of the national security state. Fewer and fewer people listened to him. And yet, briefly at least, as he is eulogized by his fellow countrymen, his warnings are being heard again. I hope we heed them. I hope that Senator Byrd will not be the last of the Patricians of a Republic that falls into a despotism not unlike that of ancient Rome.

Letter to Kathleen Parker, re: "What Blumenthal Might Have Learned from the War Zone"

2010-05-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

Ms. Parker,

I always read your column because, even though I am on the left of the political and philosophical spectrum and you are on the right, I find your writings thoughtful, thought-provoking, and respectful.

In your 23 May column, you compare Richard Blumenthal with men who actually served in combat in Vietnam, stating that, "Real heroes never brag, and real Marines don't lie." For some time, I have been troubled by our use of the word hero to characterize the men and women who serve in the armed forces in "harm's way."

I am aware that the word hero, in the modern context, is used to characterize one who has been ready to sacrifice her / his life for the good of others. Originally, however, the word was used to describe a demigod with superhuman strength and ability. That definition still lingers today. All one has to do is look at how our serving men and women are most often portrayed in the media (whether movies, TV, or in recruiting materials) to perceive that we endow them with superhuman abilities and character. By making them gods, however, we separate ourselves from them and their experience. In so doing, we shield ourselves from the reality of what we are asking them to do - making it easier for us to ask them to do it again.

Like Mr. Blumenthal, however, all Marines (and Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Coast Guardsmen, police officers, firemen, etc.) are all too human. They do brag about many things and they do sometimes lie. They are also all too human in their response to what we have asked them to do. Maybe most don't talk about it simply because it is too horrible to revisit.

Some do, however. Chris Hedges comes to mind. In his personal memoir and reflection, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, he paints a vivid, inglorious picture of the horror and futility of war as he has personally experienced it. When I was Captain of a U.S. Navy ship just prior to the outbreak of the Iraq War, I insisted that my officers read it, saying to them, "You don't have to agree with his conclusions but if we go to war soon, I want you to get a sense of what you will be doing from one who has experienced it first hand." Maybe if more of us read books like his, we would be more hesitant to ask our service people to do this horrible thing again and again. As it stands, however, it is all to easy for us to consign our "heroes" to doing the dirty work for us as we shield ourselves from it. It is all too easy to put them on a pedestal and then leave them there alone.

Thanks for reading this and thanks for your column.

Sincerely,

Tom Beall

It Was Necessary to Keep Us Safe

2010-05-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

It should not surprise any of us that we, the people of the United States, have secretly detained and tortured people who are at our mercy. According to so many of our leaders such acts are necessary to keep us safe:

Mr. Cheney said he also supported officers who strayed outside Justice Department rules and used unauthorized interrogation techniques, saying they did so to keep Americans safe.[i]

To many people, anything the government does is justified if it might save American lives. U.S. Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, put it baldly: "We should do whatever we have to do."[ii]

Even our current President, despite statements to the contrary, supports this view:

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools, you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."[iii]

The argument that inhuman acts are necessary and acceptable when used against an evil enemy to preserve national security is not new. Adolf Hitler justified genocide of the Jewish community in Europe on the grounds that it was necessary to the survival of the German race. Soviet Leaders such as Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev firmly believed that the millions sent to the Siberian Gulags were a threat to the Communist revolution and the Soviet state. Arbitrary arrest, indefinite confinement without trial, mental abuse, and physical torture have been and are today tools used by nation states (including the United States) in the name of their people to “keep them safe.”

I am sure that this statement will be challenged. “How can you compare us to Hitler and Stalin? Such hyperbole has no place in a rational debate!” I probably would have said the same thing not so long ago but, the more I think, read, and reflect on this, the more I have come to believe that comparing the United States to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is not hyperbole. Our nation is becoming like those which we, at one time, fought to bring down because of the evil they let loose among humanity.

Recently I was reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, specifically the chapters in which he describes arrest and interrogation in Stalin’s Soviet Union.[iv] As I read his descriptions of interrogation techniques (all of which he describes as torture) I was struck with similarities I found with some of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EIT) described in the recently released report of the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on United States detention and interrogation activities since September 11, 2001[v]:

CIA EIT: In cramped confinement, the detainee is placed in a confined space, typically a small or large box, which is usually dark. Confinement in a smaller space lasts no more than two hours and in a larger space it can last up to 18 hours.

Solzhenitsyn: Prison begins with the box, in other words, what amounts to a closet or packing case. The human being who has just been taken from freedom, still in an inner state of turmoil, ready to explain, to argue, to struggle, is, when he first set foot in prison, clapped into a ‘box’, which sometimes has a lamp and a place where he can sit down, but which sometimes is dark and constructed in such a way that he can only stand up and even then is squeezed against the door. And he is held there for several hours, or for half a day, or a day. During these hours he knows absolutely nothing! Will he perhaps be confined there all his life? He has never in his life encountered anything like this, and he cannot guess the outcome.

CIA EIT: Insects placed in a confinement box involve placing a harmless insect in the box with the detainee.

Solzhenitsyn: In the dark closet made of wooden planks, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of bedbugs, which had been allowed to multiply. The guards removed the prisoner’s jacket or field shirt, and immediately the hungry bedbugs assaulted him, crawling onto him from the walls or falling off the ceiling. At first he waged war with them strenuously, crushing them on his body and on the walls, suffocated by their stink. But after several hours he weakened and let them drink his blood without a murmur.

CIA EIT: During wall standing, the detainee may stand about 4 to 5 feet from a wall with his feet spread approximately to his shoulder width. His arms are stretched out in front of him and his fingers rest on the wall to support all of his body weight. The detainee is not allowed to reposition his hands or feet.

Solzhenitsyn: Then there is the method of simply compelling a prisoner to stand there. This can be arranged so that the accused stands while being interrogated – because that, too, exhausts and breaks a person down. It can be set up in another way – so that the prisoner sits down during interrogation but is forced to stand up between interrogations. (A watch is set over him, and the guards see to it that he doesn’t lean against the wall, and if he goes to sleep and falls over he is given a kick and straightened up.) Sometimes even one day of standing is enough to force him to testify to anything at all.

CIA EIT: The application of stress positions may include having the detainee sit on the floor with his legs extended straight out in front of him with his arms raised above his head or kneeling on the floor while leaning back at a 45 degree angle.

Solzhenitsyn: The accused could be compelled to stand on his knees – not in some figurative sense, but literally: on his knees without sitting back on his heels, and with his back upright. People could be compelled to kneel in the interrogator’s office or the corridor for twelve, or even twenty-four or forty-eight hours.

CIA EIT: Sleep deprivation will not exceed 11 days at a time.

Solzhenitsyn: Sleeplessness was a great form of torture; it left no visible marks and could not provide grounds for complaint even if an inspection – something unheard of anyway – were to strike on the morrow.

CIA EIT: The application of the waterboard technique involves binding the detainee to a bench with his feet elevated above his head. The detainee’s head is immobilized and an interrogator places a cloth over the detainee’s mouth and nose while pouring water onto the cloth in a controlled manner. Airflow is restricted for 20 to 40 seconds and the technique produces the sensation of drowning and suffocation.

It is interesting to note that Solzhenitsyn does not describe waterboarding as one of the techniques used by Soviet interrogators.

Reading the above, it appears almost as if CIA interrogators took a leaf from Solzhenitsyn’s book to develop their program.

Hyperbole? I don’t think so.

The belief that “harsh measures are necessary to ensure our safety against a uniquely dangerous and evil threat” has made it easy for all of us to turn away from our principles to “promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relations; the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; and respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” It has made it easy for us to live with and accept actions committed in our name which, because they deprive human beings of human freedom and dignity, undermine our society by undermining what we truly believe in. In this way, we are becoming like those who, in the past, turned a blind eye to what was being done in their names such as the vast majority of people who lived in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

As we are in danger of falling into this abyss I ask myself, “Where is our outrage? Why are we not, as a church, speaking and acting more effectively against this monstrous injustice that threatens the fabric of American society? Why are not Unitarian Universalists, collectively, at the forefront of those seeking to bring us back to those American values of freedom and justice that made possible the birth and growth of our church?” Granted, many UU’s have spoken out[vi] but this issue has been obscured and even lost among so many others in our desire to promote new ideas, foster open discussion, and respect all points of view. As history demonstrates, this approach is ineffective and self-destructive.

From his Gestapo prison cell in 1943, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of the failure of those who embraced the “reasonable, rational approach” to affect any change in Nazi Germany:

Just as Bonhoeffer's times demanded more of the voices of humanity and compassion among the religious in Nazi Germany, so do our times demand more of us. If we truly want to be “the religion for our time” as our new UUA President Rev. Peter Morales has called us to be, then we need to speak out and act against the injustices of secret rendition, detention without trial, and torture with more than just a few pages on a web site, more than just a few voices in the blogosphere, more than just a few activist Congregations. We need to speak out with one voice and act with one heart today and every day to end these injustices. As one angry woman said at a recent health care debate, “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!” Well, I want my country back too, a country founded on values we as UU’s embrace as a matter of religious conviction.

So I ask myself again and ask all of you, “Where is the outrage?”

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[i] Swarns, Rachel L. "Cheney offers sharp defense of C.I.A. interrogation tactics." New York Times, August 30, 2009.
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[ii] Chapman, Steve. "Rationalizing torture." Chicago Tribune Online, August 27, 2009.
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[iii] Miller, Greg. "Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool." Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2009.
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[iv] Sohlzhenitsyn, Aleksandr (1995). The gulag archipelago, 1918 – 1956: A literary investigation. Abridged edition translated by Thomas P. Witney and Harry Willets. London: The Folio Society, 2005.
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[v] Central Intelligence Agency, Inspector General (2004). Special review: Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001 – October 2003). Langley, VA: Office of the IG CIA, p. 15. Downloaded from the National Security Archive, August 31, 2009, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torture_archive/index_ig.htm.
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[vi] For example, see the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s statements on torture at: http://www.uusc.org/stoptorture.
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[vii] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1943). "After ten years: A reckoning made at New Year 1943," in Letters and papers from prison. London: The Folio Society, 2000, p. 4.

Is War Ever Just, Necessary, or Inevitable?

2010-04-26T14:56:00.000-07:00

Good evening. I want to thank you for affording me the opportunity to speak to you. I must confess that I have come here with a feeling of trepidation. As a career naval officer, it was my duty to support the lawfully elected government of the United States, support government policies, and obey lawful orders. While I am under no such legal obligation now, old habits are hard to break. At the same time, in questioning American militarism, which I am now doing and which I will ask you to do tonight, I open myself up to the criticism of failing to support the troops and of being unpatriotic. Such criticism would be hard to take, even as I know it would be unjustified. I served with many good people during my military career. To this day I regard the United States Navy as one of America’s greatest institutions because it is the sum of the men and women who serve in it; sailors who at this moment practice the Navy’s core values of honor, courage, and commitment in the four corners of the Earth. I wish to do nothing to harm or dishonor my former shipmates.

So why am I here? I am here because over the years, and particularly since 9 / 11, I have come to disagree with those, like President Obama, who, while recognizing the evils of war, believe that (quoting the President), “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.” [1]

Unlike the President, I no longer believe that war is ever just, necessary, or inevitable. I alone, however, won’t put an end to it. All I can do is what peace advocates have been doing for years and what those of you who agree with me can do today: bear witness to our beliefs and promote a meaningful dialog that might lead to a more peaceful approach to world affairs. Far from failing to support the troops, such advocacy honors them because advocacy is an American core value, one which I served to uphold and which they serve to uphold today.

So, who am I? I am a master of the science and art of war – literally. In addition to a career in military service, I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in military history, a Master of Science degree in military operations research and a Master of Arts degree in national security and strategic studies. Like most career officers, I have studied the history of warfare, the science of battle, and the politics of the national security state. I have read the great military theorists, including von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, written about Alfred Thayer Mahan, and have had published my own research on the mathematical modeling of naval combat. I am grounded in the theory of war and, as a naval commander, skilled in its practice. I am, therefore, both a scholar and master practitioner of death and destruction. This may not have been the most uplifting education but it has prepared me to question a paradigm virtually unchallenged in history – that theory of human affairs which states:

1. War, if practiced in accordance with certain broadly accepted rules, can be a just, even a noble endeavor.

2. War is practiced by just nations in self-defense and, therefore, is a necessary evil.

3. War is inevitable.

4. True peace, among all men and nations, founded on love, compassion, respect, and a profound sense of community is impractical and only embraced by un-pragmatic and foolish dreamers.

I have come to believe that this theory is false and that mankind can embrace a different path – one on which (paraphrasing journalist and theologian Chris Hedges) we put aside the myth of war as a force that gives us meaning and begin to build what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the beloved community on earth. This sounds awfully idealistic but, just as human history is littered with the folly of war, so it is also filled with examples of humanity’s efforts to seek a better, more just community – literally peace for all mankind. In fact, human history is a struggle between these conflicting views of man’s destiny. Perhaps this is the true battle between good and evil. How that battle is finally resolved has been and always will be up to us.

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Those who would call me a foolish dreamer might consider reading Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The Homeric epics, the literary foundations of Western Civilization, speak to us across the centuries of the utter folly and futility of war and of the promise of peace. Achilles, the hero of the Iliad, is motivated by a vain lust for glory, honor for his military prowess, and vengeance – and by nothing else. The opening lines of the poem say it all (1:1 – 5):

Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,

murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,

hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,

great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,

feasts for the dogs and birds...[2]

Achilles and his fellow Greeks brutally kill their enemies and ultimately destroy the City of Troy, the archetype of the Greek city-state. In other words, they destroy human civilization as they know it – all for a lust for glory, revenge, and booty.

The Odyssey, on the other hand, bloody as it is, offers a promise of peace. Odysseus, whose Trojan Horse led to the downfall of Troy, is condemned to years of wandering and many trials before he can truly come home. As Chris Hedges writes in his book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, this odyssey is a metaphor for the personal journey all soldiers must take to transform themselves from warriors into civilized men once their wars are over.[3] Odysseus’ goal is not glory but a peaceful death among those he loves (11: 153 – 156):

And at last your own death will steal upon you...

a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes

to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age

with all your people there in blessed peace around you. [4]
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Having portrayed the reality of war in the Iliad, Homer offers us the promise of peace in the Odyssey. Together, his stories set the stage for competing visions of mankind’s destiny, one of war and the other of peace, that preoccupy us to this day.

Unfortunately, our civilization has often disregarded Homer’s cautionary tales mainly because, over the centuries, we have convinced ourselves that wars, particularly so-called just wars conducted ostensibly in self defense, are an inevitable part of the human condition and even necessary to human development. Rather than work actively for the eradication of war and the establishment of a just peace on Earth, we have institutionalized war in our laws, in our communities, and in our lives. To prove this to yourself, all you need do is examine employment statistics for Rhode Island. Defense and defense-related jobs account for over 7% of employment in the state’s manufacturing sector and as much as 50% of the state’s manufacturing wage base. [5] Even as jobs are lost throughout our state during the current recession, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport is expanding. Like most regions of our country, loss of the defense industry would have a very detrimental economic impact on our state and its citizens – in other words, you and me. We can’t do without the defense industry because it has become an integral and essential part of our livelihoods and, hence, our lives and our society. We are addicted to the industry and infrastructure of war and, hence, to war itself.

How did this happen? How did we turn away from Homer’s portrayal of the reality and consequences of war? How did we institutionalize human conflict to such an extent that we are addicted to it? And how can we break the cycle of addiction?

It happened because we fooled ourselves into thinking that war is necessary, inevitable, and, when practiced by a just people, is a just act. This myth of necessary, inevitable, and even just war goes back to ancient times, almost to Homer’s day. The ancient Athenians fought wars of imperial conquest under the pretext of enhancing their security by spreading democratic ideals (sound familiar?). Alexander the Great justified his war of choice on the Persian Empire by old arguments of Greek self-defense and by dreams of a peaceful world kingdom founded on Greek civilization. Finally, the great Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, who is justly credited with establishing the centuries-long Pax Romana, did so only as an afterthought, justifying a war that was little more than a naked power grab as necessary to bring peace and reestablish civil order. In this he succeeded but at the cost of a civil war that ravaged the ancient Roman aristocracy, laid waste to large portions of the civilized world, and nearly destroyed the fabric of ancient society.

While in the ancient world, wars were often justified as the means to spread or sustain civilization, Christian theorists developed a more insidious justification founded on their reading of early Christian theologians such as Saint Augustine of Hippo. According to these theorists, what matters is not so much the act but the motivation behind the act. Even though Christ enjoined his followers to “turn the other cheek” in response to being struck, Christians need not take this literally. Killing, when commanded by God or by a legitimate ruler who is carrying out God’s intent to restrain evil on Earth, is justified. [6] This theory of just war sanctioned by God is gained traction as justification for the Christian crusades to the Holy Land in the High Middle Ages. At that time, Gratian of Bologna theorized that:

The subordination of the individual to God allows (one) to resolve the apparent contradiction between war service and the precepts of the gospel, because...this subordination appears in man’s intent rather than in his deeds. The demands of the gospel which apparently tell against war service relate to the ‘preparation of the heart’...Wrongful individual conduct makes war service into sin: for example, a wrong motive such as hatred, or selfish behavior arising from greed for booty. Conversely, war service which seeks not personal advantage, but the good of the political community, is deserving of the highest praise. [7]

This concept that fighting for a just, God-sanctioned cause is praiseworthy was further refined by St. Thomas Aquinas into the Theory of Just War that is currently enshrined in international law and the United Nations Charter. The concept of just war is a logical theory embraced by people of good will and righteous conviction for centuries. I have embraced it and so have many of you.

And yet, I think you can guess where the logic of the theory breaks down. Since God very seldom offers guidance or direction on which wars we should fight and which we should not, it is left to men to make these decisions. Oliver Cromwell, Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Hitler – our history is littered with leaders who spoke of a mandate from God to wage war, acting with justice to eradicate an evil they stated was offensive to God. Their peoples were convinced too – else they would not have kept their leaders in power. As David Hume said in 1740:

When our own nation is at war with any other, we detest (the enemy) under the character of cruel, perfidious, unjust and violent: But always esteem ourselves and allies equitable, moderate, and merciful. [8]

Or, in a more modern context, we easily convinced ourselves that the 9/11 bombings in New York and Washington were evil but “shock and awe” perpetrated on the people of Baghdad was an act of justice.

Just War Theory founded on self-defense against evil aggression, which Western leaders have used to justify their own aggression for centuries, which President Bush used to justify the war of choice in Iraq and which President Obama uses to justify war in Afghanistan is, therefore, founded on a false premise – that fallible men can be trusted to make the choice between war and peace on the basis of justice and compassion alone without any consideration of self or national interest. Recent American history demonstrates that, even in democratic societies, they cannot.

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On reflection, I think that my own personal journey from ardent believer to one who questions the justice of American militarism began in 1992 when I was the Operations Officer of U.S.S. Worden, a Navy cruiser deployed to the Arabian Gulf. A Russian cruiser was also operating in the Gulf and, in the spirit of the new, friendly relations with our recent Cold War enemy, it was decided that our two ships would operate together for a period of time.

Now this Russian cruiser was of a type that was particularly feared in the U.S. Navy – a large, seemingly powerful ship loaded with weapons that could wreak havoc on our own naval forces. In fact, all of our training in the Navy in the previous thirty years had been geared toward fighting and defeating ships like this one which we had been taught was part of a fearsome and possibly superior Soviet Navy.

As my ship pulled into the port of Abu Dhabi where the Russian ship was docked, we saw her for the first time – looking as fearsome as we had expected. It was not until we tied up at the pier that we noticed that only the side in public view had been painted – the other side looked decrepit with rust streaks down the side of the ship. When we went aboard, we found that the crew shared the ship with a lot of cats – to take care of the rat problem. Much of the equipment, including the weapons and fire control systems, was of 1950’s vintage and very primitive. In other words, this ship was a paper tiger. If she represented the Russian Navy’s best (and she did, else the Russian Admiralty would not have sent her alone on an Arabian Gulf deployment) then perhaps the rest of their Navy was a paper tiger too.

It is hard for me to convey how profoundly revealing this experience was. For years, we had trained to fight the Russians under the impression that they were at least as capable as we were. We believed that the United States needed a large Navy, centered on multi-billion dollar nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, atomic submarines, and cruisers and destroyers with state-of-the art weapons and fire control systems to meet this threat. We believed that we needed to train, train, train (in the words of my first commanding officer) at sea with these ships if we were to have a hope of surviving combat toe-to-toe with the Russian bear. Now, having seen this Russian cruiser, I began to suspect that none of this was true; that the Russians were not nearly as powerful as we were; that our overwhelming military power – built at great cost – had not really been necessary to our national security. I also began to suspect that people in our own government must have known this – our intelligence services are not that inept after all.

Of course, I still believed that the Soviet Union had been an aggressive, expansionist power, even if their military was not as capable as we had been led to believe. I still believed that they might have unleashed their large army on Western Europe and their nuclear-tipped missiles on the United States to achieve their goals. I still believed that somehow they were different from us – we loved peace and freedom, they valued power and a world in which human freedom and dignity were sacrificed if they stood in the way of national goals. I still believed that the Cold War had been a necessary conflict and that our powerful conventional and nuclear forces had been a necessary check to their supposed aggressive nature. I still believed that our national security strategy, and the magnificent military that supported it, had as its ultimate goal the eradication of Communism and the establishment of a just peace on Earth. Following 9/11, I began to question these beliefs as well.

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In 1948, George Kennan, a Soviet expert employed by the U. S. State Department stated that the Soviet leadership believed coexistence with the United States was impossible.

We have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken if Soviet power is to be secure...Impervious to logic or reason, (the Soviet Union) is highly sensitive to the logic of force. For this reason, it can easily withdraw – and usually does – when strong resistance is encountered at any point. [9]

Kennan’s thesis was very appealing to government and military leaders who mistrusted Communists in the first place and who had just witnessed the Soviet Union assert control over most of Eastern Europe following the Second World War. His thesis provided the rationale for the policy of containment which became enshrined in the United States national security strategy for the next forty years. It provided justification for massive monetary expenditures, institutionalized deficit spending, stockpiling of over 30,000 nuclear warheads, a U. S. government and military maintained in a permanent state of wartime alert, military bases and facilities in virtually every city and town of the nation – in other words it provided justification for conversion of our republic into a national security state – “a state in which nearly all aspects of political, economic, intellectual, and social life are dominated by considerations of national defense and the drive to maintain a defense establishment capable of protecting the state against all comers.” [10] If you don’t believe that we are such a state, just consider the distribution of discretionary spending in the U.S. Government budget today. Over one-half is allocated to military and military-related programs. [11]

These consequences might have been acceptable if the threat of Soviet aggression had been real and the goal of containment just. Modern research, relying on materials made available after the collapse of the Soviet Union indicates, however, that the threat was not real and that it was the American policy of containment itself that fueled the arms race of the Cold War. According to Pulitzer Prize – winning historian Neil Sheehan:

Preventing further expansion of the Soviet Union was sound policy for the United States to follow in the postwar era, but not from motives of fantasy and in an atmosphere of fear and irrationality that could bring excesses of its own. The idea that a man as respectful of American power as Stalin was would commit his badly wounded nation to a venture as foolhardy as the attempted destruction of the United States was ludicrous, but that is what many men in Washington wanted to hear. Having just triumphed over the expansionist monster Hitler and the forces of Imperial Japan, they seemed, unconsciously, to be seeking a new monster with whom to do mortal combat. The perception of Communism as some sort of contagion that could, by almost biological means, infect and destroy society was also widespread in the United States. If Russia was a society with a profound sense of insecurity...America was equally so. [12]

If the idea that the Soviets never embraced aggression is hard to accept, consider the Cold War arms race. Throughout, it was the United States that was always first with the newest technology – the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, the intercontinental bomber, intercontinental missiles, a practical submarine-launched ballistic missile system, etc., etc. Throughout, the Soviets simply tried to keep up and did so because they were afraid of American aggression, and with good reason. Twice since the beginning of the nineteenth century, Russia had been invaded and nearly destroyed by a Western power. In the years after the Second World War, the United States with its atomic bombs and the means to deliver them ringed the Soviet Union with air bases and battle fleets and warned there would be no sanctuary inside Russia. Writing of the first years of his father Nikita’s leadership of the Soviet Union in the 1950’s, Brown University Professor Sergei Khrushchev states:

...the Soviet Union was surrounded by U.S. military bases and their nuclear armed bombers were able to reach almost any point in the country. The United States itself was invulnerable. The Soviet Union had practically no nuclear warheads and did not possess a single airplane that could, even in theory, accomplish such a mission...Father (therefore) considered national security to be of the utmost importance...The Soviet Union had to acquire arms so modern that no adversary would even dream of invading. In those years policy was carried out only from a position of strength. However, the recent war had taught Father something else: hatred of war. He genuinely sought to avoid conflict. Throughout his life he retained vivid memories of dead bodies, the fetid smell of decomposition arising from battlefields, and ruins, ruins, ruins. [13]

I am not trying to argue that the Soviet Union was a just society, it was not. But it also was not an evil empire whose goal was to destroy our way of life by whatever means possible. Rather, it was a state seeking to defend itself. But if it was not an aggressor, then the Cold War was not a just war founded on self-defense but a war sustained in part by our own dangerous, paranoid, unrealistic understanding of the true motivations of the Soviet state.

Could this happen again? In fact, it did. We attacked Iraq in March 2003 with the expressed purpose of removing from power a dangerous aggressor who possessed weapons of mass destruction and planned to use them either himself or by putting them in the hands of terrorists who would use them against us. In fact, as suspected by many observers and analysts at the time, Saddam Hussein possessed no such weapons and only obscured that fact to protect his regime against what he perceived to be the likelihood of aggression by the United States. Again, Hussein’s Iraq was by no means a just society but it also did not pose the threat we used to justify our attack. The war was not a necessary act of self-defense. It was not a just war.

Could this happen again? Consider the case of Iran, a state that we have branded as part of an “axis of evil” and which we have declared is not to be permitted to develop nuclear weapons because possession of such will destabilize the region. Consider Iran’s perspective, surrounded, with an American army to the west in Iraq and to the east in Afghanistan, American military and air bases to the north and a powerful American fleet in the waters to the south. Isn’t it just possible that Iran might perceive us to be the aggressor? Therefore, would an assault on Iran be just?

No, not any more than the Cold War was just or our attack on Iraq was just. While we may convince ourselves that we act with justice, in truth, we go to war for, at best, coldly calculated reasons of national interest and at worst out of fear and paranoia. We have been no better at putting just war theory into practice than have powerful, aggressive states in the past.

But if the theory of just war cannot be put into practice by fallible humans, what are we left with? Simply war as Homer portrayed it – brutal, inhuman, and evil and, therefore, never an act of justice.

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President Jimmy Carter has said that war may be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil. I agree that it is always evil but is it ever necessary? Is it ever inevitable? Heinrich von Treitschke, one of the philosophical fathers of Hitler’s Third Reich thought so, stating in the late nineteenth century:

War is not just a practical necessity; it is also a theoretical necessity, an exigency of logic. The concept of the State is power...That war should ever be banished from the world is a hope not only absurd, but profoundly immoral. It would involve the atrophy of many of the essential and sublime forces of the human soul...A people which becomes attached to the... hope of perpetual peace finishes irremediably by decaying in its proud isolation... [14]

This idea that war is a necessary and inevitable consequence of human development is not confined to totalitarian states. National security advisors in the Reagan administration believed that, “war, not peace, is the norm in international affairs,” while George W. Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy advocated preemptive war and spoke of a war on terror of uncertain duration. [15] Many of my students at the Naval War College firmly believed that war is inevitable. It is this sense of inevitability that has made it so easy for us to convert our republic into a national security state. It is what makes it so easy for us to justify the continued expenditure of vast resources on defense even as other important elements of our society enter into advanced decay. It is what makes our addiction to war possible. To end our addiction to war, we must convince ourselves that it is not inevitable.

Cynics will once again say that this is a pipe dream. “The world is a complex place,” they will argue. “We all want peace but it is not practical. You are being too simplistic.” Yet isn’t it those who make the case for war who often reduce complex situations to simplistic rhetoric? Does the statement, “Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror,” adequately capture the complexities of the world as it is today or is it just political rhetoric designed to get ignorant people emotionally engaged in a war they really don’t understand? [16]

Peace advocates on the other hand respect our intelligence and appeal to our better natures in making the argument for peace. Far from being overly idealistic, many recognize the world for what it is and appeal to us to take practical steps to make it better. President John F. Kennedy did this in his famous peace speech at American University in 1963:

First examine our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again...Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions -- on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems. [17]

Kennedy did more than just talk. He found practical ways in which we could advance the process of peacemaking. He negotiated the first meaningful arms control treaty with the Soviet Union. He consistently resisted calls by his generals to send ground combat troops into Vietnam, and he harnessed and channeled America’s competitive spirit into the peaceful Apollo Moon landing program – arguably mankind’s greatest achievement. Kennedy was not perfect and his record on war and peace is mixed. But, more than any other President in modern times, he embraced a vision that war is not inevitable, that mankind is not doomed, and that there is a better path for our country to take – one founded on peaceful solutions to mankind’s problems.

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So, I have concluded that war is never just, never necessary, and not inevitable. The next step for me, the newly-minted peace advocate is to advocate. Gradually, I have been doing that and have found that many who disagree with me offer the following arguments to substantiate that sometimes war is just, necessary, and inevitable:

1. “We had to fight for our freedom from the British. Freedom isn’t free.”

2. “What about the fight to end slavery in the Civil War? Would you have just stood aside and let that continue?”

3. “Have you ever heard of a man named Hitler? Would you have just stood aside and let him take over and oppress the peoples of the Earth?”

These are compelling and emotionally engaging statements because they arise from a self-image of ourselves as a just people who fight to uphold the values and principles articulated in our Declaration of Independence and not to advance our own self-interests. While I would like to believe that we are that kind of people; our history demonstrates that we are not. Further, these statements also are founded on an interpretation of history that is certainly open to being questioned and debated. For example:

1. Yes, we did gain our independence from Britain through resort to arms. What if, however, we had chosen not to fight – a choice many Americans of that time advocated? Most of the remainder of the British Empire won its independence without fighting and many of those former colonies are prosperous, democratic societies today. Isn’t it just possible that we could have enjoyed that outcome without a bloody, brutal war?

2. Further, if we had remained part of the British Empire, isn’t it possible that slavery would have been outlawed in America in 1834 as it was in most of the rest of the British Empire, without a bloody and destructive civil war?

3. Finally, with regard to Hitler, many historians have traced the development of German history along the path that led to the Nazi regime. Implicit or explicit in their analyses is the argument that, at any point along that path, men and nations could have chosen a different path. As Kennedy put it, “Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man.” Hitler and Nazism need not have happened if, at some point in history, we had chosen to solve the systemic problems that led to Hitler in a different way than we did.

Of course, no one can predict the future but we can learn the lessons of the past. If we open are minds and hearts to the idea that war is not just, necessary, or inevitable, we can better ask ourselves how it could have been avoided in the past; setting the stage for a conversation about how it can be avoided in the future.

______________________________

Not long ago, I attended a workshop at Channing Memorial Church in Newport led by the Rev. Richard S. Gilbert, a Unitarian-Universalist minister and long-time social justice activist. His example, and that of many others, has inspired me to advocate for peace even as the majority of my fellow countrymen honestly believe the wars we are fighting today are no less just, necessary, and inevitable than those great wars in our past. In the face of such overwhelming public opinion, it would be so easy for me to despair of my ability to bring about any change. As Rev. Gilbert reminded us at the workshop, however, (quoting peace activist Fr. Daniel Berrigan), “Despair is a luxury beyond my means.” Uplifted by those words and by the example of Berrigan, Gilbert, and many others, I’ve decided to advocate for peace. What I ask of you tonight is not to agree with me but merely to question whether war is ever just, necessary, or inevitable. I ask that we engage in this reflection and discussion before the next war begins. Thank you very much.

[1] Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Norway, December 10th, 2009. Accessed online February 28, 2010 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-acceptance-nobel-peace-prize.

[2] Fagles, Robert (translator, 1991). The Iliad of Homer (p. 1). London: The Folio Society.

[3] Hedges, Chris (2002). War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (p. 12). New York: Public Affairs.

[4] Fagles, Robert (translator, 1996). The Odyssey of Homer (pp. 190 – 191). London: The Folio Society.

[5] Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (2006). The Defense Industry in Rhode Island: Economic Impact Report (pp. 12 – 13). Downloaded 06 July 2009 from http://www.riedc.com/files/DefInd_EconImpactReport_August2006_0.pdf.

[6] Holmes, Robert L. (2001). "A Time for War? Augustine's Just War Theory Continues to Guide the West". Christianity Today Online (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/septemberweb-only/9-17-55.0.html?start=1), Sept. 2001.

[7] Hehl, Ernst-Dieter (2004). "War, Peace and the Christian Order". In Luscombe, David and Riley-Smith, Jonathan (eds.). The New Cambridge Modern History, volume IV c. 1024 – 1198, part I (p. 220). Cambridge University Press.

[8] Hume, David (1740). "A Treatise on Human Nature." Quoted in Hedges, Chris (2002). War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (p. 1). New York: Public Affairs.

[9] Cited in Sheehan, Neil (2009). A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon. New York: Random House, p. 82.

[10] "national security state." The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military, 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 23 Apr. 2010.

[11] Kogan, Richard (2008). “Federal Spending, 2001-2008: Defense Is a Rapidly Growing Share of the Budget, While Domestic Appropriations Have Shrunk”. Center for Budget Priorities Report accessed online 23 Apr 10 from http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=125.

[12] Sheehan, Neil (2009). A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon. New York: Random House, p. 83.

[13] Khrushchev, Sergei (2000). Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower. University Park: Penn State University Press, p. 42.

[14] Quoted in Shirer, William L. (1995). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (p. 109). London: The Folio Society.

[15] Bush, President George W. (2002). The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Washington: The White House, September 17th, 2002. Downloaded July 10th, 2009 from http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/.

[16] Statement of President George W. Bush, November 6th, 2001. Cited in CNN article found online at http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror/.

[17] Speech given by President John F. Kennedy at the commencement ceremonies of American University, Washington, DC, June 10th, 1963. Found at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html

For One of the Dead - Week of January 24th, 2010

2010-01-24T14:59:00.000-08:00

Please remember David A. Croft Jr., a 22 year-old man who was killed on January 5th, 2010 near Baghdad, Iraq. I don't know him but I do know his life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.

Source: CNN U. S. and Coalition Casualties: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2010.01.html

For One of the Dead - Week of January 17th, 2010

2010-01-17T04:53:00.000-08:00

Please remember a mentally ill 17-year-old man, mistakenly shot dead on 24 December 2009 near Tal Abta, west of Mosul in Iraq. I don't know him but I do know that life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.

Source: Iraq Body Count.

For One of the Dead - Week of January 10th, 2010

2010-01-10T04:34:00.000-08:00

Please remember four school children who were killed near Jalalabad in Afganistan this past week. I don't know them but I do know that their lives were every bit as sacred as mine. Their deaths diminish all of our lives. [i]

Yesterday, I was having a conversation with a man who was passionately arguing that we need to continue the fight in Afghanistan because, if we don't, the women of Afghanistan will be oppressed once again by the Taliban. He showed me a picture of a family he knew there which included a young girl who now goes to school and has the opportunity for a better life than she had before our invasion. He said to me, "What we are doing there is right. This girl proves it. That's a fact!"

I didn't dispute his facts but I asked him and I ask all of you to consider the fact of that young girl who may well have the opportunity for a better life and balance that against these four children who will have no life. The question for all of us is not whether some good has come out of this war but rather if, in the balance, we are creating the best outcome we can. Is there a way, other than through war, that we can help Afghanistan create a better life for all its people, not just the ones who survive the fighting?

Source: Dallas Morning News Online, January 9th, 2010. Accessed online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-afghan_07int.ART.State.Edition1.4ba1761.html

For One of the Dead - Week of January 3rd, 2010

2010-01-02T14:42:00.000-08:00

Please remember Engineman Third Class David M. Mudge, United States Navy, a 22 year old man who died while serving in U.S.S. Rentz, a ship of the U. S. Fifth Fleet operating in support of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Petty Officer Mudge was killed in the line of duty in an accident onboard the ship.

I can't say that I know him but Rentz was the ship of which I was Captain some years ago so I feel some connection there. His death is a reminder that there are thousands of young service men and women who at this moment are doing dangerous jobs in support of our ongoing wars. His life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.

Nonviolence IS a Practical Peacemaking Alternative

2009-12-29T05:11:00.000-08:00

It is no surprise that John Yoo, who developed the Bush administration’s legal justification for setting-aside long-cherished American values in the name of “keeping us safe”, should applaud President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech as well as the President’s escalation of military operations in Afghanistan (“Closing Arguments: Platitudes won't guarantee world peace.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 20, 2009). To men like Mr. Yoo, who states that, “Maybe the Obama administration is growing up,” peacemaking and nonviolence are childishly naïve in a world of “terrorists and rogue states who wish to do us harm.” In Mr. Yoo’s “grown-up world”, war is inevitable and only fools would “turn the other cheek” when attacked.

What did surprise me was that President Obama embraced this grim world vision as well, calling on history to justify American militarism while ignoring ample historical precedent for the effectiveness of nonviolent alternatives to armed conflict. Although Mr. Obama paid tribute to men like Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he went on to say that as commander-in-chief of the United States, he could not be guided by their examples alone because, “Evil does exist in the world...To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.” With these words, Mr. Obama demonstrated that he is in fundamental agreement with the Bush administration’s world view.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Most Americans subscribe to this world view and pacifists like me form a small minority these days. But to those who say that Mr. Obama and Mr. Yoo are right and that I am childishly naïve, I say demonstrate to me that war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, war on terror in general are the only options. Demonstrate to me, not through “Cheney-esque” platitudes like, “We have forestalled another attack for all these years,” but through fact-based, quantitative analysis that we must at great cost wage destructive war and that we must deprive people of their civil rights for good cause. Demonstrate to me that there are no other effective alternatives and that, therefore I must put aside the fundamental American value that all people are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (because in war we kill people and destroy their homes and lives) to achieve some higher good.

Although I served in the Navy for twenty-five years and have degrees from both of the Navy’s graduate schools I have yet to hear that compelling case. I suspect that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Obama can’t really make it which is why they resort to emotional arguments about evil in the world and how the noble American soldier brought down Hitler’s empire and ended slavery in the Civil War. In making these arguments, they ignore the power of nonviolence for they fail to remind us that it was Gandhi’s nonviolent movement that brought down another great empire, that of Britain in India; and that it was King’s nonviolent movement (and not the Civil War) that finally ended the enslaving oppression of African Americans in this country. Gandhi, King and their followers faced down the military and police powers of two of history’s greatest empires and, in so doing, demonstrated that war is not the only answer. Their records of success in bringing about justice in the “real world” far outshine those of Mr. Yoo, Mr. Obama, or anyone else who claims to have waged war in the name of justice. After eight years of war, the cost of which has yet to be counted but will surely be a burden to us for decades, maybe it is time we turned away from the grim world view of Yoo and Obama and explored a fundamentally different way – a nonviolent way of bringing justice to our troubled world.

For One of the Dead - Week of December 27th, 2009

2009-12-26T18:59:00.001-08:00

Please remember Kristjan Jalakas, an 19-year old Estonian killed in Afghanistan on December 15th, 2009. I don't know him but I do know that his life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.

Source: U. S. and Coalition Casualties - http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/oef.casualties/2009.12.html.

Silent Night, Holy Night

2009-12-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

On December 24th, 1968 two United States Air Force officers and a United States Navy officer spoke to the people of a planet that, to them, seemed so small, so fragile, and so beautiful. They were men trained in war who where chosen to go in peace where no man had gone before. They spoke from the silent night of space and while they spoke words from the Judeo-Christian scripture that was their heritage, they really spoke with the awe and reverence of voyagers who were witnessing the majesty of creation.

086:06:40 Anders: We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

086:06:56 Anders: In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

086:07:29 Lovell: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. And let it divide the waters from the waters." And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

086:08:07 Borman: And God said, "Let the waters under the Heavens be gathered together into one place. And let the dry land appear." And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth. And the gathering together of the waters called he seas. And God saw that it was good. And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth. [i]

Of the voyage of Apollo 8, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote:

What lifts our hearts today seems to be more in the realm of the human, the psychological, and the spiritual. Perhaps...space exploration safely absorbs man’s aggressive and competitive instincts, and in applauding the astronauts’ exploits, we are grasping at a hope of preserving peace on earth. Those noble qualities of man – heroism, self-sacrifice, dedication, comradeship in a common cause – which are tragically brought out in war, are evoked in many places of the space development. And these qualities must continue to be aroused in some fashion, or man will cease to be all that man can be...[ii]

In witnessing to God's creation, the crew of Apollo 8 offered us a vision of peace - one that the men and women on this small, fragile planet can achieve because it is within the grasp of creatures created in God's image. May we put aside our quarrels, our hatreds, our petty differences and, in the silent night of Christmas, visualize what Colonel Frank Borman, Captain James Lovell, and Major William Anders saw from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, 1968; a beautiful world at peace in the vastness of space.

[i] Apollo 8 Flight Journal. Accessed online 21 December 2009 from: http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/15day4_orbits789.htm

[ii] Lindbergh, Anne Morrow (1969). Earth shine. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., pp. 39 – 41.

For One of the Dead - Christmas Week, 2009

2009-12-20T05:03:00.000-08:00

Please remember James Stephen Brown, an 18-year old Englishman killed in Afghanistan on December 15th, 2009. I don't know him but I do know that his life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.

Source: U. S. and Coalition Casualties - http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/oef.casualties/2009.12.html.

Far From Being the Hardest Choice, Use of Force Is the Easiest Choice

2009-12-14T05:22:00.000-08:00

United States Presidents from Truman (who ordered use of the atomic bomb and authorized force in Korea) to Barack Obama (who just escalated the War in Afghanistan) have often spoken of how hard to make was their decision to use military power. Was it really such a hard choice?

Consider the following statistic quoted from Eastern Mennonite University's 3D Security Project website (http://www.3dsecurity.org/):

The U.S. spends less than 5% of the discretionary federal budget on development and diplomacy while it spends over 60% of the discretionary federal budget on defense.

Given the vast amount of military resouces that we put at our President's sole discretion and the paucity of other resources we give him, is it any surprise that successive Presidents have chosen to use military power so frequently as their (nearly) sole instrument of national security policy?

If we rebalanced how we allocate our resources, giving an equal amount to diplomacy and development, and then used those resources to begin to rectify the vast distributive injustice in the world, would the outcomes be any worse than they are now (eight years of war with doubtful results)?

Those who tell us that war is inevitable consistently fail to ask and answer these questions.

For One of the Dead - Week of December 13th, 2009

2009-12-13T05:45:00.000-08:00

Please remember the wife, the seven year-old daughter, the five year-old daughter, and the two-year old son of Omed Abdul Wahid who were killed by gunfire in Iraq in September 2009. I don't know this family but I do know that their lives were every bit as sacred as mine. Their deaths diminish all of our lives. [i]

I wonder if Mr. Wahid, who lost his family, would agree with those who say that the Iraq War is winding down?

[i] Source: Iraq Body Count - http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/incidents/k14013.

Ask Not ... And You Get Not

2009-12-11T05:18:00.000-08:00

"And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." [i]

With these words, President John F. Kennedy began his administration with a call to the American people and the citizens of the world for action and sacrifice to solve the problems of their times. Kennedy did not intend his words to be "...a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation,' a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself." [ii] Kennedy's intent was to offer a vision not only of a better world but a vision of a humanity that could achieve it. By offering this vision, he called on his fellow citizens and his fellow man to come together to start making it a reality.

Kennedy, himself, walked his talk. Yes, his administration was beset by international military tensions and, yes, he did not shrink from the use of armed force or recognize that, in the very near term, he was required by his Constitutional duties to use that force. But he also lived his own imperative to strive for a "...more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions -- on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned."[iii] These concrete actions included not only those more celebrated such as establishment of the "Peace Corps" but also resistance to the calls of many of his military and civilian colleagues to resort to armed force - whether in Cuba during the missile crisis or when those colleagues insisted he send ground combat troops to Vietnam.

Few people thought that Kennedy possessed much moral courage before he became President. Eleanor Roosevelt, reflecting on Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage, said, "I feel that I would hesitate to place the difficult decisions that the next President will have to make with someone who understands what courage is and admires it, but has not quite the independence to have it." [iv] And yet, Kennedy did possess the kind of courage of which he wrote. Profiles in Courage is about political leaders who possessed the "grace under pressure" to act in the national interest against the will of their constituents. Like them and almost alone among Presidents in modern times, Kennedy had the courage to resist the easy decision to employ American military power. He had the courage to find alternatives to armed conflict. Often this was not a popular approach but, in retrospect, Kennedy has commanded the admiration not only of historians but of those who lived in his times. No less a person as Kennedy's great "adversary" Nikita Khrushchev wrote of him:

I have the best memories of...the President. He showed himself to be levelheaded; he didn't let himself become frightened, but also didn't let himself be inoxicated by the might of the United States. He didn't go for broke. It doesn't take great intellect to start a war; he showed wisdom and real statesmanship; he did not fear condemnation by right-wing forces and he achieved peace. [v]

John Kennedy was an accomplished politician and pragmatic leader - essential talents in a President of the United States. Kennedy brought those talents to bear, however, to work for the noblest of idealistic goals, true and lasting peace among men. Although his life was cut short, he achieved much. He set the stage for the detente of the 1960's and 1970's that arguably prevented a worldwide nuclear holocaust. He achieved this because, also virtually alone among American Presidents, he believed that true and lasting peace was possible:

Too many of us think (peace) is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again.

I was mindful of Kennedy's words, vision, and accomplishments as I read President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech yesterday. President Obama was mindful of Kennedy's legacy as well, citing his famous "peace speech" given at American University in 1963. It is interesting to compare the two speeches because, in them, each President articulates his understanding of the world as it exists in his time and sets out his vision for world peace. There is much that is similar in these speeches and, yet, it was the fundamental differences that made me sad.

To give him credit, President Obama never said he would be a peace President and he did say he would fight the war in Afghanistan to a successful conclusion. His actions to date indicate he is true to his word. Also, to give him credit, he spoke thoughtfully, compassionately, and intelligently on a subject which obviously weighs heavily on him. He is clearly aware of his grave responsibility as a President leading his nation in two wars as well as his responsibility to the legacy of peacemakers such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whom he quoted as saying, "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones." [vi]

Like Kennedy, President Obama does have a vision of a world at peace. Unlike Kennedy, however, he offers us no vision of how to achieve it. Instead he tells us, "We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified." [vi] Far from recognizing that the belief in war's inevitability is, as Kennedy said, "...a dangerous, defeatest belief...", President Obama accepts it as always inevitable, sometimes necessary, and sometimes just; at least in our lifetimes.

Given his belief in war's inevitability, he then tells us that our first task must be must be to conduct it within accepted and more "humane" rules. "To begin with, I believe that all nations — strong and weak alike — must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates — and weakens — those who don't." [vii]

At the risk of sounding trivial, this reminds me of an episode of the old Star Trek TV series in which Captain Kirk and his crew happen upon two planets that have been at war for 500 years. They have managed to sustain this war by fighting it with computers and then asking people whom the computers determine to be casualties to commit suicide. "The people die but our culture goes on," the leader of one of the planets tells Kirk. By making war palatable, they make it easy to carry it on indefinately. Our "rules of just war" make it possible for us to do the same. Our President seems content with that.

Another striking difference between the two speeches is that, while Kennedy called on his countrymen to do some hard things, Obama does not. Kennedy asked all Americans to critically examine their strongly held views of war, peace, other nations, and our responsibilities to peoples around the world as well as to those suffering in our own society. He recognized that this self-examination could lead to the setting-aside of prejudices founded on ignorance and the beginning of compassion toward other human beings who had, heretofor, been regarded as faceless, inhuman, evil. Kennedy, as clearly stated in his inaugural address, also asked for sacrifice to achieve peace.

President Obama on the other hand, asks us to do nothing. Rather than advocating for a critical self-examination, he restates the same old platitudes that got us into these wars in the first place - "Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaidas leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason." I have argued elsewhere against the commonly held view that war is inevitable and that we must be prepared to fight it out of necessity to promote justice. It makes me sad that, unlike Kennedy, Obama fails to ask us even to consider (as Kennedy did) another point of view. Just as it makes me sad that the only people from whom he requires sacrifice are members of the armed forces.

President Kennedy did not fully arrive at his vision of peace until his third year in office. Perhaps it is unfair to ask President Obama to make the moral and intellectual leap that Kennedy did so soon in his Presidency. I wonder, however, if he and we ever will. As historian and national security analyst Robert Kagan said yesterday, President Obama's vision, with its, "...emphasis on military power, war for just causes, and moral principles recalls Theodore Roosevelt's phrase, 'the just man armed.' There is something much more quintessentially American and traditional about this speech, compared to most of his rhetorical approach throughout the year." [vii]

Quintessentially American and ultimately hopeless. It is more aligned with the vision of President George W. Bush than that of President John F. Kennedy. Far from asking us to consider what we can do for our country and the world to bring about peace; President Obama asks us to consider nothing and do nothing. As a result, nothing will change, we will remain content with the world as it is and war will continue forever. If we choose to embrace President Obama's vision, then we have no right to complain when asked to send our children to the next war.

[i] Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, January 20th, 1961. Accessed online December 11th, 2009 at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkinaugural.htm.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] American University Commencement Address delivered by President John F. Kennedy, June 10th, 1963. Accessed online December 11th, 2009 at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html

[iv] Quoted in Schlesinger, A. M., Jr. (1965). A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. New York, Houghton Mifflin, Co.

[v] Quoted in Khrushchev, S. N. (2000). Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

[vi] Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Address deliverd by President Barack Obama, December 10th, 2009. Accessed online December 11th, 2009 at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iRWjTDaT4JuS0nFj9APZAues8vjAD9CGFID00

[vii] Statement by Robert Kagan, December 10th, 2009. Accessed online December 11th, 2009 at: http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Robert_Kagan_765AA3B7-E28D-4F99-B052-412C7518CEFC.html.

A Vision of Peace

2009-12-10T03:39:00.000-08:00

As we watch our President receive the Nobel Peace Prize just days after escalating the War in Afghanistan, I offer the vision of another President who resisted calls to escalate a war and took practical steps to realize his vision of peace. Unfortunately, John Kennedy's life was cut short and his vision remains unrealized. Further, his successors, from Johnson to Obama, have often turned away from his vision. The Beloved Community seems a distant dream.

Kennedy's vision, however, is no less inspiring today and can still be realized if we only choose to do so.

John F. Kennedy
American University Commencement Address

delivered 10 June 1963

President Anderson, members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst's enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and to the conduct of the public's business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support. "There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university," wrote John Masefield in his tribute to English universities -- and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to towers or to campuses. He admired the splendid beauty of a university, because it was, he said, "a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."

I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles -- which can only destroy and never create -- is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace. I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of peace or world law or world disarmament, and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitudes, as individuals and as a Nation, for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward, by examining his own attitude towards the possibilities of peace, towards the Soviet Union, towards the course of the cold war and towards freedom and peace here at home.

First examine our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again. I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions -- on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor, it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors. So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly towards it.

And second, let us reexamine our attitude towards the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent, authoritative Soviet text on military strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims, such as the allegation that American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of war, that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union, and that the political aims -- and I quote -- "of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries and to achieve world domination by means of aggressive war."

Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth."

Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements, to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning, a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and families were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland -- a loss equivalent to the destruction of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again -- no matter how -- our two countries will be the primary target. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this Nation's closest allies, our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle, with suspicion on one side breeding suspicion on the other, and new weapons begetting counter-weapons. In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours. And even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal.

Third, let us reexamine our attitude towards the cold war, remembering we're not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different. We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. And above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy -- or of a collective death-wish for the world.

To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility. For we can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people, but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system -- a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished. At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention, or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others, by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and Canada.

Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge. Our interests converge, however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope, and the purpose of allied policy, to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.

This will require a new effort to achieve world law, a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of others' actions which might occur at a time of crisis.

We have also been talking in Geneva about our first-step measures of arm[s] controls designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and reduce the risk of accidental war. Our primary long range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament, designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects are today, we intend to continue this effort -- to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.

The only major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security; it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

I'm taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard. First, Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking towards early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hope must be tempered -- Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history; but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind. Second, to make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on this matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not -- We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.

Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude towards peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives -- as many of you who are graduating today will have an opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home. But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete. It is the responsibility of the executive branch at all levels of government -- local, State, and National -- to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within our authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch at all levels, wherever the authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of others and respect the law of the land.

All this -- All this is not unrelated to world peace. "When a man's way[s] please the Lord," the Scriptures tell us, "He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights: the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation; the right to breathe air as nature provided it; the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can, if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement, and it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers, offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough -- more than enough -- of war and hate and oppression.

We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we must labor on--not towards a strategy of annihilation but towards a strategy of peace.

Some Thoughts on Leadership - Congregational and Otherwise

2009-12-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

This post is an expansion of a comment I posted on Peter Bowden's UU Growth Blog. If you are interested in UU Growth I recommend his blog. Peter has lots of experience in UU lay leadership and is also a really thoughtful guy. His insights are valuable to anyone at any level of UU church leadership - lay or ordained.

I've been making the case in my own blog that the UU church should become a peace church. I have also argued that, regardless of where we go on that issue, we should and must more firmly embrace our core values. To me, that is the recipe for growth because core values offer newcomers a reason to choose our church over another and they give people who are in the church a sense of identity and a reason to stay (or leave if the fit isn't right).

This brings me to the issue of leadership. I really believe that one of the reasons the UU church doesn't grow is that our leaders have not articulated a clear, compelling, inspiring vision, founded in core values, of why we are worthy of growth - in other words, how our church will meet the spiritual needs of its members, more closely bind its members together, and as a more tightly woven community rise to the challenges of our times. All the talk about being the religion for the 21st century is meaningless unless we know why we should be that church. Despite each individual's reason for walking in the door (and sometimes walking out again) I have yet to hear that collective, inspiring vision.

Being visionary is one essential component of leadership. Empowering people to act on that vision is another. Below are some of my thoughts on how to be an empowering leader - something I have learned a lot about mainly through a lot of trial and even more error.

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I have heard before that many of the challenges we face are common to all churches. I agree with that. The issue for us, however, is how UU’s uniquely meet or fail to meet those challenges. I think Michael Durall’s ten characteristics of the UU faith (none of which, he argues, interest the church shopper) may give some insight into our unique challenges in this regard.

For example, let’s consider “empowering leadership.” UU’s are pretty good at setting ambitious goals – that is always easy. The role of leaders in our church (lay and ordained) is to “empower” their congregants to meet those goals. What does that mean?

Leadership is not about making decisions. Anyone can make decisions. Most people can even make good ones. Good leaders, therefore, waste little time on deciding things. Instead, they spend most of their time articulating a vision for an organization, inspiring people in the organization to embrace it, and empowering people to find ways to achieve it.

I think some of the essential characteristics of empowering leadership are:

A. Building consensus on important issues so that people can go forward to achieve goals without fear of anger or conflict within the congregation. To build this consensus, leaders need to recognize that ours is a church and not just any old “non-profit”. As such people don’t always act with “reason and intellect” when it comes to important congregational issues. They act emotionally – because, “IT’S MY CHURCH”. These emotional needs must be compassionately understood, respected, and “co-opted” to achieving the congregation’s goals.

B. Articulating a vision and leading from that basis. Some would say “No, the congregation should arrive at the vision on its own.” True to some extent but, in the best organizations, the group vision often springs from the leader’s foundational vision. This happened in my congregation. We were frozen in indecision about some important issues for a number of years. The leaders of the church one year collectively decided that in that year, the congregation would make a decision. They then developed a discernment process and saw it through with the congregation – leading to the needed decision. At the outset, many in the congregation were skeptical the discernment process would work but the leaders believed we could come to a decision and it was their vision and faith that made the decsion possible.

B. Providing clear and useful guidance when needed. We say we respect all points of view and out of this respect we don’t want “to tell people what they should do.’ First of all, we do not respect all points of view on all things. I have heard Unitarian Universalists contemptuously dismiss the strongly-held beliefs of others (especially if they are outside the “liberal box”). Leaders should recognize that and also recognize that, sometimes, people want their leaders to lead or at least suggest in what direction people should go. Leaders of the most democratic organizations do this every day. In the process, conflict is sometimes created but, in the long run, such guidance helps people come to an informed and reasonable decision – because the guidance is offered by those who, at the outset at least, are more informed and experienced and whose views are generally respected.

C. Supporting the minister. In the UU church, it is especially important TO SUPPORT THE MINISTER. Recently, I lay-led all of the services at my church during the month of July when our minister was off. I got some insight into HOW HARD HER JOB IS– and I was just doing one small part of her job that month. The experience also reaffirmed that the minister is the key resource in any congregation seeking to grow and thrive. The minister inspires us, the minister guides us, the minister helps us avoid common conflicts and the minister helps us navigate the uncommon ones. The minister can only do this, however, if we trust her / him to bring that professional expertise to bear to help us. The role of all church lay leaders should, first and foremost, be to support the minister that the congreation has called. Those who arrogantly or naively dismiss a good minister’s gifts do so at their own peril.

D. Supporting volunteers. Leaders who ask members to take on important tasks and then fail to support them by guiding them, offering insight from experience, and managing the conflict that may arise from the task at hand are simply bad leaders. Why should people take on challenging tasks if the end result is nothing accomplished except more dithering conversation and more conflict?

E. Making church work fun. People don’t come to church to engage in stressful work or drudge work. People come to enrich their lives. Church work should be part of that enrichment. It can be if church leaders recognize that making it fun IS THEIR PRIMARY TASK. I think we often fail to make it fun because of too great a focus on process and problems rather than vision and strategy. It is easy to fix that – leaders just need to shift focus.

There’s lots more to this – these are just some ideas I’ve formed from being a leader – and I’ve been both kinds, good and bad.

IT IS JUST WRONG!

2009-12-01T17:46:00.000-08:00

I just finished listening to President Obama's speech making the case for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan. It has been a long day for me and I am too tired to make a logical, reasoned, informed, academic argument against his decision to escalate that war. I will try to do that later.

In my church last Sunday, as I do whenever I attend church, I spoke during our "Time of Sharing" about someone who has been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan recently - reminding people of the very human cost of these wars we wage. Last Sunday, I spoke of a baby whose name was not even recorded, who was killed in Iraq. A baby who will never even be able to experience the joy of life - something we take for granted. I was amazed at how that simple statement touched people, perhaps because they, themselves, have or have had babies and can relate to the senseless tragedy of a baby child's death in war.

I don't have the logical, rational arguments at my fingertips at this moment to argue against what is now President Obama's war. All I can say is that there will be more deaths - you, your children, them, their children - people whose lives are every bit as valid as our own.

It is just wrong, it needs to end, and we need to come together to help bring it to an end.

Stand Up or Stand Aside

2009-11-29T04:52:00.000-08:00

I saw a billboard for the Army National Guard the other day that called out to young men and women - your sons and daughters - to "stand up or stand aside." That really made me stop and think. I had just been engaged in a conversation about our church and its diffidence in deciding whether it is a "peace church" or a "just war church." As it stands now, we are neither, "welcoming and respecting both views." Some might argue that this inclusivity is our strength but I think it reflects our collective failure to rise to the challenge of our times. Consider the following two statements:

"We affirm the right of individuals and nations to defend themselves, and affirm our responsibility to protect our neighbors from aggression. Some of us believe that these can be done without the use of lethal force; others believe lethal force is sometimes necessary...For Unitarian Universalists, the exercise of individual conscience is holy work. Conscientious discernment leads us to engage in the creation of peace in different ways. We affirm a range of individual choices, including military service and conscientious objection (whether to all wars or particular wars), as fully compatible with Unitarian Universalism. For those among us who make a formal commitment to military service, we will honor their commitment, welcome them home, and offer pastoral support. For those among us who make a formal commitment as conscientious objectors, we will offer documented certification, honor their commitment, and offer pastoral support."

"The “reasonable” people’s failure is obvious. With the best intentions and a naïve lack of realism, they think that with a little reason they can bend back into position the framework that has gone out of joint. In their lack of vision they want to do justice to all sides, and so the conflicting forces wear them down with nothing achieved. Disappointed by the world’s unreasonableness, they see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness; they step aside in resignation or collapse before the stronger party."[i]

The first statement comes from the recently released draft UU Statement of Conscience (http://www.uua.org/documents/csw/peacemaking/0910_draft_soc.pdf) and appears to be a consensus statement welcoming and honoring those who believe we should be a "peace church" and those who believe in "just war". Above all, as in so many things UU, it honors individual right of conscience on these matters. It is a consensus statement written by reasonable men and women whose goal appears to be peacemaking and unity within our Church.

The second statement is an indictment of this kind of thinking. It condems "reasonable" people who, in their zeal to honor all points of view, in their lack of a collective, meaningful, and substantive vision of a better world (not just a "vision" of platitudes which can be interpreted to mean whatever one wants it to mean) are worn down by discussion and debate and become impotent to bring about real change. Standing aside, they let those who are convinced they are acting in the name of God and on behalf of all people, lead us down a destructive path. Furthermore, in their failure to take a stand, they are, in fact taking a stand on the side of those convinced zealots who declare, "you are either with us or against us in this war," because, in their silence and inaction, they are empowering the warlike zealots to advance their cause over the cause of true and meaningful peace.

The second statement, an indictment of the German Christian Church, was written by Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer from a Gestapo prison while the country he loved was waging a brutal war of aggression which would lead to its own destruction - physically and morally. He wrote it months before his execution. He wrote it as a call to us across the years not to make the same mistake of standing aside while the forces of war, aggression, hate, and evil are once again allowed to prevail. Unfortunately, we have not heeded his call.

I often read about how any statement against America's wars, any condemnation of our country's actions amounts to a failure "to support our troops." With vague recollections of the Vietnam War experience (one which fewer and fewer people were alive or old enough to remember) we listen to those voices who say that dissent amounts to a betrayal of our "uniformed heroes." Fearing that we might be unjust by failing to "support" we shy away from standing up to take a principled position against war.

I wonder how many of you have considered that by supporting our current wars (even tacitly); by asking Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen to engage in unjust war, "shock and awe" destruction on a massive scale, unjust detention of the innocent, torture, and a host of other injustices you collectively dishonor all that we serve for and all that we aspire to be. By dishonoring us, you fail to support us.

Speaking for myself, I joined the military because I viewed it as an opportunity to do something bigger than myself - to serve a nation founded on justice, freedom, and equality in a meaningful way. Serving my country was an honorable, meaningful thing to do - it is what made all of the hard work and sacrifice worthwhile.

You asked me to serve in the wars of the last decade. You asked me to train Sailors to be guards at Guantanamo. You asked me to walk those cell blocks in the middle of the night, ensuring another Abu Ghraib would not happen and that those detainees (some of whom have proven to be innocent but were detained because, "well, we can't be too careful with those 'Islamo-fascist terrorists' who just can't be reasoned with...") were well guarded in a remote outpost away from your homes. You asked me to do all of these things and you asked many, many others to do a lot more. Did you ask us to do these things because of a steadfast commitment to freedom, justice and the Beloved Community - in other words a commitment to the values of our faith - or did you ask us to do them out of post 9/11 fear, loathing of an 'other' you did not understand, and anger at those "evil bastards"?

If you asked for the latter reasons, and many, many of us did, then far from supporting us you dishonored us because you dishonored what we have served for and, in some cases, forced us into situations where, ill-equipped, ill-trained, ill-led, we betrayed our core values - we betrayed ourselves.

I recognize a couple of things. First, I and all who have served in the armed forces have the responsibility for our own actions. Second, if the UU Church had been a "peace" church when I joined in 2001, I may not have been as welcomed as I was. If you had not welcomed me for that reason, however, I may have been forced to come to terms with my own convictions about war and peace much sooner. I arrived at my pacifism on my own. How much better it might have been if I had done so with the spiritual guidance and support of my church? I honor conviction and a commitment to core values highly - as most military men and women do. A "peace church" living a commitment to peace would have been where I wanted to find myself.

Unfortunately, that is not (much to my dismay) where I have found myself. Instead, I have found myself in a Church that appears to have every intention to stand aside and let this monstrous injustice go on.

Those who argue against pacifism will often cite the example of World War II. "Would you have just stood aside and let Hitler conquer the world? Would you have let that monstrous evil prevail? Huh? Huh?" Bonhoeffer shows us, however, that the question offers a false choice. He tells us that if he, his fellow ministers, and their Congregations had spoken and acted in the years before Hitler came to power with the same conviction that Hitler, the Nazi's, and their allies did, then the war would never have been fought and Germany would not have wrought such destruction before, herself, being destroyed.

By becoming a "peace church", we have an opportunity to take a stand that truly reflects our stated values. We have an opportunity to speak out meaningfully and forcefully against all war and, in so doing, become a force that can end this one. We have an opportunity to honor all those who have served, fought, been injured, or died by striving to remake our country into the ideal for which they served, fought, and sacrificed. We have an opportunity to stand up rather than just stand aside.

It is what we must do.

[i] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1943). "After ten years: A reckoning made at New Year 1943", in Letters and papers from prison. London: The Folio Society, 2000, p. 4.

A Wise Observation

2009-11-26T14:10:00.001-08:00

"Forgive me, I seem to be commenting on everything." Lieutenant Commander Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Making a Difference

2009-11-21T15:08:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching the movie Star Trek: Generations. It is not the best of the Star Trek feature films but it is special because it is the one in which the character Captain James T. Kirk (of the original Star Trek series) teams up with Captain Jean Luc Picard (of the sequel Star Trek: The Next Generation) to save the galaxy as so often happened in that wonderful TV series and all of its sequels.

Now Captain James T. Kirk has always been my hero. His devotion to duty, to his ship, to his crew inspired me to become a naval officer and aspire to be the Captain of a United States Ship. My command philosophy when I was Captain of USS Rentz and when I commanded the Navy Sailors at the Guantanamo detention facility was "Accomplish the Mission, Bring the Crew Home Safe, Uphold the Sailor's Creed, Try to Find a Way to Say Yes." I think James Kirk would have had a similar philosophy because to James Kirk, duty and responsibility to the mission and to one's ship and crew were important above all things.

Captain Kirk dies at the end of this movie, literally in the arms of Captain Picard and after successfully accomplishing their mission. Kirk's says to Picard, "Did we make a difference?" When Picard assures him that they did, Kirk's dying words are, "It was fun!"

Kirk and Picard, of course, are fictional characters but I have often said that everything I learned about naval leadership and a lot I learned about life comes from Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry's vision of the fulfillment of the human adventure. If, at the end of our lives, we can say that we made a difference and that it was fun, we will truly have lived a good and meaningful life. Thanks Captain Kirk for yet another lesson.

For One of the Dead - Week of November 15th, 2009

2009-11-15T15:24:00.000-08:00

Please remember Justin Boyes, a 26 year old Canadian man who died in Afghanistan. I don't know him but I do know that his life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.

Source: U. S. and Coalition Casualties - http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/oef.casualties/2009.10.html.

Crises of Faith

2009-11-15T09:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I stood with like-minded people at a peace vigil sponsored by a local anti-war group. I felt good standing with these people. They were clear in their conviction that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wrong. Their clarity matched mine and it felt good to share this time with them.

In a recent blog entry, Rev. Fred L Hammond spoke of “A Crisis of Faith.” If I understood him correctly, he stated that Unitarian Universalism is a creedless faith – one that does not “...claim that one doctrine is the correct one above all else.” He then speaks of Jesus’ commandment:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22: 37-39 NIV)

...concluding that if he can (and, I infer, we can) “...hold to the standard of loving the utmost highest good with my whole heart, mind, and soul then the rest will be commentary.” In other words, our crises of faith, founded on questions about religious doctrine will seem less significant if we can all come together to live our lives by Jesus’ commandment. I couldn’t agree more. And yet I have been experiencing a “crisis of faith” as a Unitarian Universalist because I am not sure what our faith is and, therefore, I am uncertain with what it is I have identified myself.

According to my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, faith is:

1. Confidence, reliance, belief esp. without evidence or proof. Belief based on testimony or authority.

2. What is or should be believed; a system of firmly-held beliefs or principles; a religion.

I infer from these definitions that a religion is and must be founded on faith in something. This does not necessarily mean faith in one, doctrinal, definition of who or what is God. But, to me at least, it does mean belief in and action upon a commonly-held system of principals or values; for if the word religion comes from the Latin word religare, “to bind fast”, then for Unitarian Universalism to be a religion there must be something that binds us fast to our spiritual community.

So what is that something? As I was standing in the rain with the other peace activists yesterday, one of them asked me what Unitarian Universalism is. My “elevator speech” went something like this:

Unitarianism has its origins in a doctrinal dispute – whether the Christian God is a Trinity, and, therefore, Jesus is God or whether God is a Unity and, therefore, that Jesus is divine and of God but not God. Universalism has its origins in a doctrinal question in which the first Universalists disputed the notion of predestined and exclusive salvation, arguing that salvation is open to all people. Both traditions, therefore, arise from openness to new non-doctrinal ideas as well as a belief that these doctrinal differences need not be the cause for schisms among Christian peoples.

This openness and inclusiveness is the key element that identifies Unitarian Universalism today. While we do not embrace or exclude any personal religious creed, we do recognize that there are people who are embarked on their own journeys, searching for truth and meaning. UU’s come together as a religion to celebrate and support these journeys.

Maybe I have this all wrong but, if this is a good description of modern UU'ism, if this is why we “come to church”, then where is the faith – the collective belief in something? Of course, many UU’s would say that the “something” is our seven principals. This brings me to the crux of the issue for me and the reason I am undergoing this crisis of faith. For I question if we truly embrace these principals as a church even as many UU’s do individually.

As Rev. Hammond points out, Jesus’ commandment to “...love your neighbor as yourself” can be found in many faith traditions, including our own. We state that we believe in “...the inherent worth and dignity of every person”, that we advocate “...justice, equity and compassion in human relations”, that we promote “...the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all”, and that we show “...respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” But do we really as a church? If so, to cite two important examples,

Why are only 61% of U.S. and Canadian Unitarian Universalist Congregations “Welcoming Congregations”? Shouldn’t all of them be?

Why can’t we as UU’s say “No” to war? Instead of becoming bogged down in discussions about “just war”, “respecting our troops”, and whether the world is too complex for simplistic pacifist notions; why can’t we accept as an article of faith that peace is possible without recourse to armed force.

These two questions are not ones of religious theory or doctrine. They are examples of practical questions asked by seekers like me who want to bind themselves closer to a community of like-minded people who share and seek to live by common values. I would really like to know the answers for, while the answers may lead me to seek another place, failure to answer them most assuredly will.

I am not speaking for all UU’s, only for myself. My crisis of faith is founded on my inability to find our (not my) answers to these questions. Many of our ministers are meeting in a convocation in Ottawa, Canada this weekend. Are they pondering these and other important faith questions of our day? I hope so because I want to stand among members of the UU church who share the kind of clarity that those people at the local peace vigil did. Only then will I feel at home in my church. Only then will I proudly call myself a Unitarian Universalist.

Men for Others

2009-11-07T07:17:00.000-08:00

Recently I attended a gathering of a group within my church during which we all shared some of the life experiences that inspired us to come together and advance the work of this group. As I heard from each person, I became increasingly uncomfortable with all of the “Catholic Church dissing” that was being spoken. Don’t get me wrong, I understand it. Among many UU’s, particularly in Rhode Island where the Catholic leadership actively lobbies our state legislature to embrace political positions that are anathema to most UU’s, the Catholic Church is not well-loved. Still, I found myself becoming increasingly defensive. I was raised a Roman Catholic by loving parents who were convinced that Catholicism was a good faith and religion in which to raise children. Part of my education was in Catholic schools, most importantly during my adolescent years when I was educated in a Jesuit high school. It was that education and what it meant to me that I was most mindful of when I became uncomfortable with the comments of my fellow UU’s at the gathering of which I spoke.

On July 31st, 1973, Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J., the Father General of the Society of Jesus, reframed the educational mission of his order in terms of the Catholic Church’s mission to advance the cause of justice among men:

Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-for-others; men who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ —for the God-man who lived and died for all the world; men who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for men is a farce.[i]

To Father Arrupe and many Catholic clerics of the time, this educational mission arose from the imperative of the Christian Gospels to address what they perceived to be a new ascendency of injustice worldwide. A 1971 synod of Roman Catholic bishops declared in their statement “Justice in the World”:

"Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation."[ii]

Arrupe and his Jesuit brothers decided that their particular role in fulfilling the church’s greater mission “for redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation,” was to prepare young men to be among those who would advance the cause of justice in human society. In so doing, these men would proclaim the Gospel by living lives more like that of Jesus. Arrupe concludes his letter:

Men-for-others: the paramount objective of Jesuit education —basic, advanced, and continuing— must now be to form such men. For if there is any substance in our reflections, then this is the prolongation into the modern world of our humanist tradition as derived from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius (the founder of the Society of Jesus). Only by being a man-for-others does one become fully human, not only in the merely natural sense, but in the sense of being the "spiritual" man of Saint Paul. He is the man filled with the Spirit; and we know whose Spirit that is: the Spirit of Christ, who gave his life for the salvation of the world; the God who, by becoming Man, became, beyond all others, a Man-for-others.[iii]

In my heart I have never been a Roman Catholic. I have never embraced the Catholic faith. But I did embrace the Jesuit philosophy as a youth. It is one reason I chose to become a naval officer – in order to serve my country in some way. I still do embrace that philosophy. It is one reason why I have decided to become a teacher as a second career – in order to serve my community in some way. I am not alone. My brothers, my father, my uncle and many of the men who graduated from my school, The University of Detroit Jesuit High School in Detroit, Michigan and from Jesuit schools worldwide, have all chosen careers and lives of service in some way – mindful of the Jesuit imperative to be “men for others.”

I think it is also true that my Jesuit education made it possible for me to become a Unitarian Universalist. While UU’s do not use the Christian term “Kingdom of God,” we do speak of an imperative to work for the Beloved Community – arguably the same imperative embraced by the Catholic bishops in 1971. As the Rev. Richard S. Gilbert has said:

“I contend that the Unitarian Universalist movement lives under a prophetic imperative, a religious mandate for the corporate address of the church to the systemic problems of society... The imperative to be stressed is that which emerges from the disciplines of freedom. Freedom is not merely the absence of restraint, but the will and capacity to act on one’s environment. It is a freedom that implies responsibility to enrich and expand freedom in the social order. Freedom, a central value of Unitarian Universalism, is a social concept, and, if it is to be preserved, an obligation is placed on the free person. I believe we are not free to desist from struggling for freedom for self and others. Freedom, by its very nature, places an imperative claim on the free person to expand that freedom to all.”[iv]

While Gilbert speaks of “freedom” and Arrupe of “becoming fully human”, I believe they are talking about the same thing. The whole, free human being is one who embraces the imperative of which they both speak and who then works to advance the cause of justice among all men – building the Kingdom of God / Beloved Community with each act done in the service of others.

As Unitarian Universalists engaged in our own self-examination of the direction of our ministry and the future of our church, I think we need to ask ourselves if we truly and collectively (rather than individually as many do) embrace this imperative. While I do not call myself a Roman Catholic, I proudly call myself a Jesuit-educated man because the Jesuits gave me something very important and powerful – a community of men who proudly and meaningfully embrace the Jesuit philosophy of being “men for others.”

To thrive and grow, Unitarian Universalists need to do the same thing. Our core values are clearly articulated. We only need to more fully and collectively embrace them. In so doing, more and more people, young and old, will proudly embrace the imperative and, in so doing, proudly call themselves Unitarian Universalists.

[i] Arrupe, Fr. Pedro, S. J. “Men for Others,” Valencia, July 31, 1973. Accessed online November 7th, 2009 at: www.sjweb.info/documents/education/arr_men_en.doc.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Gilbert, Rev. Richard S. (2000). The prophetic imperative: Social gospel in theory and practice. Boston: Skinner House Books, pp. 4-8.

For One of the Dead - Week of November 1st, 2009

2009-11-01T04:24:00.000-08:00

Please remember Mayyadah Muhammed Abd‑al‑Hasan, an Iraqi woman who died in the Iraq War. I don't know her but I do know that her life was every bit as sacred as mine. Her death diminishes all of our lives.

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Source: Iraq Body Count - http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/individuals/kn1445.

Repairing Bridges

2009-10-31T04:58:00.000-07:00

In this blog, I have written of what I believe to be an imperative for Unitarian Universalists – an imperative to embrace pacifism as the true expression of our stated values of, “the inherent worth and dignity of every person;” and “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” By embracing this imperative, I believe we can become a real force in our society for peace, justice, and the realization of the Beloved Community. In my writings, I have tried to make the case for this imperative in terms of international relations, war, diplomacy, and peace on the world stage. What I am coming to understand is that there are many dimensions to embracing a conviction of peace and that to advance the cause of peace in the larger world; one must also embrace it in one’s own life and in one’s relations with others.

Now I understood this personal dimension of peace in my head but I am not sure I understood it in my heart. I first began to really think about it during a Quaker Meeting I attended recently during which one of the Friends stood up and spoke of the necessity of finding inner peace in order to advance the cause of peace in the larger world. This was a dimension of the Quaker Peace Testimony to which I had not given much thought. I guess I had a misconception that the Quaker Peace Testimony was like being part of some big social action committee that worked for peace in the world. Of course, on reflection, this was a silly misconception. What I think the Peace Testimony really means is bearing witness to peace within ourselves, within our families, among our friends, in our communities, and in the wider world. Quoting from a Quaker Home Service pamphlet [i]:

On the simplest level, “testimony” means “bearing witness” and Friends’ long heritage of witnessing to peace can be found in their refusal to bear arms in times of civil and international conflict, in acts of prophetic confrontation and of quiet, reconciling diplomacy. But these acts are merely outward and visible signs of inward conviction. This conviction springs from a living Spirit, mediated through the human experience of those trying to understand and follow its leadings. It grows afresh in every worshipping group, in every generation.

At the heart of this conviction is Friends’ experience that there is something of God, the seed of the Spirit, in all people. Quakers believe that more can be accomplished by appealing to this capacity for love and goodness than can be hoped for by threatening punishment or retaliation if people act badly...

...The peace testimony is not something Quakers take down from a shelf and dust off only in wartime or in times of personal or political crisis. Living out a witness to peace has to do with everyday choices about the work we do, the relationships we build, what part we take in politics, what we buy, how we raise our children. It is a matter of fostering relationships and structures, from personal to international, which are strong and healthy.

This past week, I had two experiences which helped make these ideas more than just words for me. I reconnected with two friends to whom I had almost burnt all my bridges because of feelings of hurt and anger. In the first instance, I reconnected with someone who had been a dear friend 26 years ago when we were college students together. I had been hurt not long after graduation when we stopped writing to each other (the Navy had taken me to the West Coast, far from where this person was living). This small hurt had stayed with me all these years and I guess I had always wanted to reconnect with this person who had meant a lot to me. Just this past week we did reconnect, we did speak candidly to each other, we did recall our friendship with fond memories and good feelings, and, I hope, by talking about our lives since, reminded each other of why we had become friends in the first place. For me, the hurt disappeared and I was once again at peace with someone who had been very important to me.

This experience led me to realize that I was burning a bridge to another person, one with whom I had forged a more recent friendship out of shared experiences working for something we both feel passionately about. With all things of this nature, the dreams born of one’s passions often are not fully realized. I have been unhappy and angry about that and I was taking those feelings out on my friend – blaming my friend for disappointments that were no one’s fault. Realizing this, I told my friend I was sorry – asking forgiveness for the hurt I had caused. In so doing, once again, my own anger and hurt disappeared and I felt at peace with someone with whom I had a valued relationship.

If you have gotten this far, you are probably thinking, “Did it take you nearly 50 years of life to figure out the importance of individual peacemaking?” Perhaps it has, reminding me once again that I am not as smart as I thought I was. As one who wants to see humanity end war, however, I am coming to realize in my heart that to begin to do that we also need to end all the little wars we fight with each other. These two people taught me that lesson this week. I will be forever grateful to them for that lesson and for helping me find a little inner peace.

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[i] Leavitt, Mary Lou (1989). Quaker Peace Testimony. Quaker Home Service, London Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends.

Core Values, UU Health, and Growth

2009-10-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of converstation in the bloggosphere about growth in UU'ism. For what it is worth, I agree with Boston Unitarian's comment:

The reasons why Unitarian Universalism does not grow are legion and fairly well known. To me the most significant is one that is also inherent-our lack of a unified message. Since this really cannot (and should not) be "fixed" it seems fairly clear that significant growth will never happen.

What I do not agree with is that this should not be fixed. I believe that Unitarian Universalism needs to embrace a set of core values founded in our history, heritage, theology, and religion - not to grow for growth's sake but to remake ourselves into a healthy, relevant church for the twenty-first century. I am reposting an address I gave at Westminster Unitarian Church over Memorial Day Weekend that sets forth my case for UU's seriously embracing a set of core values. Or you might read (or re-read) Rev. Richard S. Gilbert's The Prophetic Imperative: Social Gospel in Theory and Practice. He says what I have been trying to say since I stated this blog so much better than I.

Core Values and the Prophetic Imperative

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Address Delivered to the Congregation of Westminster Unitarian Church, East Greenwich, Rhode Island

May 24th, 2009

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Good morning. Thank you for asking me to speak to you today. I am sure you are wondering what I am going to talk about given that I opened this service with a statement from the United States Navy’s Core Values Charter[i] and then we recited together the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of the Beloved Community.[ii] Please bear with me as I try to link the two together.
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In 2003, the U. S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute wanted to find out what motivated American service people to put their lives on the line in combat. Researchers asked U.S. troops who had just fought in the Iraq invasion what were their motivations for continuing to fight in a battle. Not surprisingly, the foremost answer was that they fought for each other. What was surprising to some was that American troops also cited the importance of the cause for which they were fighting – and that “cause” was not finding weapons of mass destruction, not overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but bringing liberation and democracy to the people of Iraq. Fighting for ideals and values which Americans believe are their own was of great importance to these troops. Historians have found similar motivations in other wars. Civil War historian James McPherson found that Confederate troops fought “for liberty and independence from what they regarded as a tyrannical government” while Union troops fought “to preserve the nation created by the founders from dismemberment and destruction.” Freedom from tyranny and liberation of the oppressed are goals that American service people have always fought and died for.[iii]
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These findings don’t surprise me. American military service culture exposes young Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen to service core values from the day they take their oaths. In my service, the Navy, Sailors embrace values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment and a creed that embodies those values and which states:
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I am a United States Sailor.

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and I will obey the orders of those appointed over me.

I represent the fighting spirit of the Navy and all who have gone before me to defend freedom and democracy around the world.

I proudly serve my country’s Navy combat team with Honor, Courage and Commitment.

I am committed to excellence and the fair treatment of all.[iv]

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Our Constitution, freedom and democracy, and fair treatment of all – these are the values we serve and fight for. These are values that were so important to some that they gave their lives to uphold them.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a day on which we honor and remember our service men and women who fought and died for these values. It is appropriate that we do so but I think it is also appropriate that we ask ourselves, “What can I do to really honor this sacrifice?”

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It is my belief that we can best honor them by the practice of our faith as Unitarian Universalists.
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I want to share with you why I became a Unitarian Universalist. As a career naval officer dedicated to the practice of my service’s core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment, I became disillusioned and disgusted with what my country has become after 9/11. I believe that our government, with our tacit consent, has practiced unjust war, denial of human rights, abrogation of civil liberties, and torture – all in the name of a war whose enemy we don’t even formally name. In so doing, I believe our government, again with our silent acceptance, has dishonored all of those who wear the uniform, serve, fight, and sometimes die for the values I spoke of. These are harsh and, perhaps, surprising words coming from a retired career officer but I feel I must say them.
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Because I feel this way and because, while on active duty, I could not speak out and still be true to my oath, I became a Unitarian Universalist as my own personal act of witness against what I believe is so fundamentally wrong in our society. In a country in which so many believe that (in theologian and journalist Chris Hedges’ words) “war is a force that gives us meaning”, Unitarian Universalists have always looked for meaning elsewhere. The Rev. James Luther Adams in 1946, calling our religion “A Faith for Free Men,” wrote, “...that the commanding, sustaining, transforming reality (of our religion) finds its rightful focus in meaningful human history, in free, cooperative effort for the common good. In other words, this reality fulfills man’s life only when men stand in right relation to each other. Man, the historical being, comes most fully to terms with this reality in the exercise of freedom that works for justice in the human community. Only what creates freedom in a community of justice is dependable...Only the society that gives every man the opportunity to share in the process whereby human potentiality is realizable, only the society that creates social forms of freedom in a community of justice (where every man is given his due), only the freedom that respects the divine image and dignity in every man are dependable.” Rev. Adams concludes, “As Lincoln put it, ‘Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.’”[v]
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Adams is describing what the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the Beloved Community, a completely integrated society, a community of love and justice wherein brotherhood will be an actuality in all of social life.[vi] I became a Unitarian Universalist because I believe that our core value is the Beloved Community and our mission in the world is to build it and sustain it. The freedom that arises from life in such a community is, I believe, the freedom those who serve in the armed forces fight for. You and I can honor all those who fought and died for this freedom by striving ceaselessly for realization of the Beloved Community.
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The Beloved Community may seem a lofty, unrealistic, unattainable goal. I believe, as many in our church do, that it IS attainable. This belief is fully consistent with our sixth principle to affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

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But how well have I done, have we done affirming and promoting this Beloved Community? I asked myself this question recently when experiencing a crisis of faith – wondering whether we as a church strive as we must to build this community. As Rev. Amy Freedman, my own minister, has said, “As human beings we can either obstruct the establishment of a just and loving community or participate in creating one. Our faith in the goodness of life calls us, you and me, to speak and work, live and love in order to bring more understanding and healing into this world.”[vii] Do we choose to embrace this mission? Do we choose to embrace our core value of the Beloved Community and work steadfastly for its realization?
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In one of my final assignments for the Navy, I rediscovered the power of core values – how putting them into practice can make a difference in the world and how practicing them can sustain one in morally challenging times. I was assigned as the Commander of the Navy Element of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, the enemy combatant detention facility. My principal job was to organize, train, and equip Navy Sailors to be detainee guards. It was 2005 and Abu Ghraib was fresh in everyone’s memory. I really wondered how I would train Sailors in such a way as to prevent something like Abu Ghraib happening at Guantanamo. I realized that fundamentally what I needed to do was preach and practice the Navy’s core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment every day. Just as in previous commands, if I did that, my Sailors would follow my example.
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Let me offer one story to illustrate this. Our Sailors went through rigorous training, conducted by Army soldiers, to be guards at GTMO. Much of this training involved simulated exercises with Army role-players acting as detainees and acting in a way that created the worst possible scenario for the guard-trainees. After each exercise, the Sailors (who were normally soaking wet (with simulated urine), covered with baby food (simulated human feces), and, in some cases, a little bit pissed off, would gather for a post-exercise critique with the Army instructors. I found this to be an excellent process. It forced the Sailors to discuss what they had done right and what they had done wrong in a non-threatening environment. Often the Sailors, to their credit, would talk candidly about their mistakes and find ways among themselves to correct them and do better.
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I always attended these post-exercise critiques but seldom interjected, preferring to let the Sailors identify their own problems and find their own solutions. I would speak up to clarify an issue or to ensure that the Sailors found solutions that were consistent with how the Navy wanted them to perform in Guantanamo. For instance, at one post-exercise critique, the Sailors were having a heated discussion with their instructors over the forced extraction from a cell of a role player who had a simulated weapon. Sailors are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to remove a detainee from a cell who was fighting not to be removed. Normally a forced cell extraction involved the Sailors dressing in riot gear (pads, helmets, plastic shield) and entering as a group linked like a chain. They force the detainee up against a wall, wrestle him to the floor, and secure his hands and feet. They then pick him up and remove him. Sailors are taught to apply pressure to points on the detainee’s body to cause him to stop resisting in accordance with accepted unarmed self-defense tactics. During this particular exercise, one Sailor was trying to apply pressure with his knee to a point on the role player’s body (a technique the Sailor had been taught). Unfortunately, the Sailor was doing it incorrectly and it appeared on the film record (forced cell extractions were always filmed) as if the Sailor was gratuitously “kneeing” the role player.
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The Army instructor pointed this out but the Sailors (who still had a little adrenalin in their systems) indignantly held that they were only doing what they had been taught. The instructor then pointed out that it didn’t matter what they were trying to do. The important thing was that it appeared on the film to be gratuitous hitting; something the media would most certainly make use of in a real life situation to paint a picture of abuse at Guantanamo. It was important, therefore, to be sensitive to media and public perceptions.
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At this point, I spoke up. As I started to speak, one of the Sailors told everyone, “Be quiet, the Captain has something to say.” It dawned on me at that moment that these young men and women were looking for clear guidance and I needed to be very clear in what I told them. I said that media perception and public perception were not the issue. What was important was that the Sailors were misapplying the technique they had been taught with the result that they were, in fact, unnecessarily hitting the role player and hurting him. It is simply wrong to apply any more force than is necessary to restrain a detainee in a real-life situation since to do so might cause him unnecessary harm. I then told them not to worry about media or public perceptions. Just strive to do the right thing always, simply because it is the right thing to do. They accepted this – certainly that is how they performed in Guantanamo.
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Did they really – you might ask? I know they did because, after we arrived in Guantanamo, I often conducted unannounced walk-thru’s of the camps at night – a time when not too many senior officers were around. One night, I happened to notice a group of Sailors in a formation getting ready to go into the camps to assume guard duty. They were reciting aloud that Sailor’s Creed I read to you earlier – reminding themselves of what was expected of them. Later I observed these same Sailors acting with the skill they learned in training and with the professionalism and compassion expected of United States Sailors.
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I’m not telling this story to illustrate what a great leader I am or how well my Sailors took orders. What I said was not all that profound. In fact, it was only what the Navy expected me or any other Captain to say to the Sailors in this situation. Further, the Navy expected me to ensure that the Sailors performed in this fashion just as I expected the Sailors to do so. I am, to this day, extremely proud of them but I was never surprised that they performed as they did. We all embraced the Navy’s core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment and put them into practice. In the process, I think we made Guantanamo a slightly better place.
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Identifying with and practicing core values empower one to achieve that which may seem otherwise unobtainable. As Unitarian Universalists, we identify with our core value of the Beloved Community but how do we embrace it in such a way as to empower ourselves to work meaningfully and ceaselessly for its realization?
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I mentioned I recently experienced a crisis of faith. Frankly, I see a lot of complacency in our society now. “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for Bush!” is something I have heard more than once. Others say, “Barack Obama is in the White House so now things will be better – we can relax.” But even now, people are saying things like, “We need to go slow on closing Guantanamo, evaluating all the complexities,” or, “While we condemn torture, nothing is served by prosecuting those who were just following orders. We need to look forward not backward,” and, of course, the conservatives and the nativists are still on the march marginalizing the poor, condemning Mexicans for spreading swine flu, and frightening people with the threat of transferring “terrorists” to super-max prisons near their home towns. Seems like the Beloved Community is still a long way off and no one is doing much to achieve it.
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That’s unfair; lots of people are working toward it – including my minister, many social justice activists in my church and many in the larger UU communion. But, in spite of all that I asked myself, what is my church as a whole doing about it? I felt we weren’t doing enough and also felt I was alone feeling this way – maybe I belonged elsewhere. Then I happened to find the writings of the Rev. Richard S. Gilbert, a UU minister, whose book The Prophetic Imperative: Social Gospel in Theory and Practice kept me in the church by assuring me that I was not alone and that my rather ambiguously-framed concerns and critiques have been given more eloquent form and are a part of the identity of our church.
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Gilbert writes, “I contend that the Unitarian Universalist movement lives under a prophetic imperative, a religious mandate for the corporate address of the church to the systemic problems of society. I cannot prove that; I do not assert it as a divine imperative; I only feel it deep in my bones. Otherwise, we will be trapped in individualistic self-interest promoted by the dominant reactionary rhetoric and by neoconservative ideology, both political and religious.”

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He goes on to say, “My intent is to apply the term prophetic primarily to the religious community. The prophetic church is a religious community that seeks to intervene in human history for the sake of social justice. This intervention is made in the context of religious conviction, but without the supernatural confidence of the Hebrew prophets. The authority of the prophetic liberal church will instead be derived in somewhat more humanistic terms that articulate a transcendent standard for justice.
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“The imperative to be stressed is that which emerges from the disciplines of freedom. Freedom is not merely the absence of restraint, but the will and capacity to act on one’s environment. It is a freedom that implies responsibility to enrich and expand freedom in the social order. Freedom, a central value of Unitarian Universalism, is a social concept, and, if it is to be preserved, an obligation is placed on the free person. I believe we are not free to desist from struggling for freedom for self and others. Freedom, by its very nature, places an imperative claim on the free person to expand that freedom to all.”[viii]
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Echoing Adams and King, Gilbert states that by enriching and expanding freedom in the social order we help build the Beloved Community, calling it, “...a humanistically oriented substitute for the Kingdom of God...a poetic metaphor to describe, not theological salvation in the next world, but social salvation in this one.”
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Gilbert explores the roots of the prophetic imperative in Unitarian and Universalist history and then sketches out a model for how a congregation like yours and mine can embrace it. His model moves away from the traditional stove pipe approach to church programs, with constituencies for ministry, religious education, fund raising, social justice, property management, etc. and toward a more integrated approach in which the spiritual and social action do more than coexist. They are integrated into a whole to the extent that one cannot survive without the other because each is an expression of the other. Such an integrated congregation can be a powerful force in the community for meaningful social action and systemic change.
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Gilbert’s is a model that will empower each of our congregations to embrace our core value of the Beloved Community and work more effectively for its realization. It is our religion given expression in action and it is, I believe, a blueprint for the future of our church. That idea is not original with me. For example, one of the candidates for President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. Peter Morales, has said, “True religion teaches us that we are all in this together and that everyone matters. And if we really take that to heart then we will work to end suffering and hatred and violence and oppression. If we are to create a little corner of paradise, there is no room for hatred and injustice.”[ix]
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Unitarian and Universalist clerics have preached about freedom since the days of Channing, Parker, and Ballou. In each case, they speak not of privileges but of the obligation to work for social justice – the foundation of freedom in the Beloved Community. Gilbert speaks of that obligation and offers us a model to fulfill it. It is a model that inspires me to work for the Beloved Community – what I believe to be the core value of the Unitarian Universalist church.
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The freedom of which Channing, Parker, Ballou, Adams, King, Gilbert and others speak is the freedom the men and women we honor this weekend fought and died for. If we truly honor their sacrifice, we should fight for that freedom too.
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[ii] “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.” From: King, Rev. Martin Luther, Jr. (1957). “The Role of the Church in Facing the Nation's Chief Moral Dilemma.” Downloaded May 20th, 2009 from: http://www.wearethebelovedcommunity.org/bcquotes.html.

[iii] Wong, Leonard, et al (2003). Why they fight: Combat motivation in the Iraq war. Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

[iv] The Sailor’s Creed and the history of its development can be found on the Naval History and Heritage Command website at: http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/creed.htm.

[v] Adams, Rev. James Luther (1946). “A Faith for Free Men.” Cited it David B. Parke, The epic of Unitarianism: Original writings from the history of liberal religion. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1985, pp. 151 – 152.

[vi] See Smith, Kenneth L. and Zepp, Ira G., Jr. (1974). Search for the beloved community: The thinking of Martin Luther King. Jr. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press.

[vii] Freedman, Rev. Amy Bowden (2007). “Five Smooth Stones of Liberal Religion.” Sermon delivered to the Congregation of Channing Memorial Church, Newport, RI, found at: http://www.channingchurch.org/Archives/Talks/2007/5SmoothStones_9.30.07.pdf.

[viii] Gilbert, Rev. Richard S. (2000). The prophetic imperative: Social gospel in theory and practice, 2nd edition. Boston: Skinner House Books, pp. 4-8.

[ix] Morales, Rev. Peter (2008). “Paradise: Lost or stolen?” Sermon delivered to the Congregation of Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden, CO, found at: http://www.jeffersonunitarian.org/sermons/morales/pm_paradise.html.

For One of the Dead - Week of October 18th, 2009

2009-10-19T07:58:00.000-07:00

Please remember Anthony G. Green, a 28 year old man who died in Afghanistan. I don't know him but I do know that his life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.[i]

[i] Source: U. S. and Coalition Casualties - http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/oef.casualties/2009.10.html.

The Last Man

2009-10-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

In October 1838, Lord Auckland, Queen Victoria’s Governor General in India outlined a British campaign in Afghanistan designed to secure that country as a buffer between British India and the Russian Empire. Not long after, a British Army invaded Afghanistan, secured the country and left a garrison at the capital city of Kabul to complete the pacification. Most believed that the world’s mightiest nation would easily subdue the stone-age country of Afghanistan. Some more experienced military officers, “old India hands” as they were called, thought otherwise. Colonel Dennie of the 13th Light Infantry said, “You will see, you will see: not a soul will reach here from Kabul except one man, who will come to tell us the rest are destroyed.” British author Jan Morris recounted the retreat of the British garrison from Kabul in 1842 in her 1973 reflection on the British Empire, Heaven’s Command, An Imperial Progress:

On 6 January 1842, the army began its retreat, the most terrible in the history of British arms, and the completion of a tragedy whose “awful completeness”...was unexampled in the history of the world. To reach the safety of the British garrison at Jalalabad, the force had to travel through ninety miles of desolate mountain country, deep in snow, held in fief by the predatory Ghilzais, and now additionally infested with Ghazis too. The cold was terrible, and the march began in confusion. In all some 16,500 souls struggled out of the cantonment: about 700 Europeans, 3,800 Indian soldiers, the rest camp-followers and their families. More than a thousand horses went with them, together with bullocks to pull the carts, camels, mules and ponies. Most of the European women and children travelled in camel-panniers: the camp-followers straggled along as best they could, frightened, bewildered, littered with babies, and cooking pots, and all the voluminous half-fastened baskets, boxes and bundles that poor Indians carried on the march.

...The retreat was a misery from the first step. As the troops marched in tolerable order along the snow-covered track across the plain, the camp-followers in their thousands milled all about the column, turning the march into a muddled rout, pushing their way frantically towards the front, shouting and jostling, separating platoon from platoon, soldiers from their officers. Sometimes troops of Ghazi horsemen dashed among them, slashing with their sabres and galloping off with loot: the rearguard lost fifty men almost before it had left the lines.

...Within an hour or two many of the soldiers were frostbitten, while hundreds of Indian bearers threw down their loads in despair and ran away into the wilderness. Before it had left the valley, the army was virtually without food, fuel, shelter or ammunition, and behind it left a trail of dead and dying people, like a track of litter after a grisly holiday – some wide-eyed and insensible, some pleading to be put out of their misery, some stabbed about with knives, for the fun of it, by Afghan children who swarmed through the melee. When the British camped for the first night, only six miles from the city (Kabul), they looked back to see the night sky red and flickering with flames of the burning cantonment: and when the rearguard arrived in the small hours, exhausted from its running day-long battle, and its soldiers shouted in the darkness, “Where’s the 54th? Where’s the 6th?”, they found the camp in a state of nightmare chaos, men and women dying all around from hunger and exposure, and were told everywhere, as they looked for their units, that “no one knew anything about it.”

The retreat lasted just a week. During the first three days the way led through a serious of precipitous passes, most of them 5,000 feet high and all deep in snow, and day by day the struggling mass of the British with their dependents grew smaller and weaker. They were never left in peace...Terrible scenes were enacted in the snows. We see Lieutenant Melville of the 54th Native Infantry, speared and stabbed in the back and head, crawling after the column on his hands and knees. We see Dr. Cardew of the medical service, fearfully wounded, tied to the last gun and left beside the road to die, while his soldiers mumble their goodbyes to him. We see Mrs. Boyd and her son Hugh, aged four, tumbled out of their panniers as the camel that carries them is hit by a bullet and crumples slowly, groaning, to its knees in the snow. In the middle of the carnage, the hunger, the cold, the terror, we see an Indian deserter from the Mission guard, blindfolded and ragged, shot on the spot by the firing squad.

By the end of the fifth day the last of the sepoys were dead or missing...perhaps 12,000 people had died since they left Kabul, only a few thousand Indians survived, and the only people fighting back were the men of the 44th Regiment and the 5th Light Cavalry...

On the sixth and seventh days the survivors struggled through the worst of all ravines, the Jugdulluk, an allegorically gloomy defile, where the winding track passed between immense impending crags, and only a few scraggly holly oaks broke through the snow. Here the Afghans blocked the way with a barrier of prickly ilex, six feet high. The soldiers fell upon it with their bare hands, while a fury of horsemen galloped mercilessly among them – scrabbling frantically away with their frostbitten fingers, dying in their hundreds, until at last a gap was made in the barricade and there was a mad rush of flying, crazed soldiers sometimes shooting at their friends, and into the confusion Afghans falling with their knives and long swords to leave the snow stained with blood, mashed with footfalls, and littered with redcoat bodies.

By the eighth day the army had no commander...

By the ninth day, six survived...At Futtehabad, sixteen miles from Jalalabad, the officers found themselves kindly welcomed by the villagers, who offered them food, and urged them to rest for a while: two of them were murdered there and then, three more were killed as they fled the place.

So there remained, on 13 January 1842, only one survivor of the Kabul army – Surgeon Brydon, Army Medical Corps, galloping desperately over the last few miles to Jalalabad, Afghans all around him like flies, throwing stones at him, swinging sabres, reducing him in the end to the hilt of his broken sword, which he threw in a horseman’s face. And quite suddenly, in the early afternoon, Brydon found himself alone. The Afghans had faded away. There was nobody to be seen. Not a sound broke the cold air. He plodded on through the snow exhausted, leaning on a pony’s neck, and presently he saw in the distance the high mud walls of Jalalabad, with the Union Jack flying above. He took his forage cap from his head and feebly waved. The fortress gates opened; a group of officers ran out to greet him; and so the retreat from Kabul, and the first of Queen Victoria’s imperial wars came to its grand and terrible end.

“Did I not say so?” said Colonel Dennie, who was watching from the walls. “Here comes the messenger.”[i]

The last man out of Afghanistan at the end of the Soviet intervention (1979 – 1988) was General Boris Gromov. In May of 2008, he said, “I have more than once expressed my opinion about this. I believed and believe that the war was a huge and in many respects irreparable political mistake of the leadership of the Soviet Union at the time.”[ii]

President John F. Kennedy, who resisted the urgings of his generals to send combat troops to Vietnam and who initiated the first overtures to the Soviet Union that led to meaningful détente, was said to have been influenced by Barbara Tuchman’s great work The Guns of August wherein she described how the leaders of Europe in August 1914 believed war was necessary and inevitable and let “events take their course” leading to the carnage that was World War I. Learning those lessons, Kennedy arguably avoided nuclear war with the Soviets in October 1962 and delayed America’s serious involvement in Vietnam. In short, he had learned the lessons of history and concluded that war was never necessary or inevitable.

I hope that President Obama has also learned the lessons of history and has listened to the words of Colonel Dennie, Surgeon Brydon, and General Gromov. Afghanistan has never been kind to the nations of the West. When will we learn that clear lesson of history and find another solution in Afghanistan – one that doesn’t involve more troops, more bombs, more killing?

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[i] Morris, James (1973). Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress. London, The Folio Society, pp. 74 – 83.
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[ii] http://en.afghanistan.ru/doc/85.html.

Friends

2009-10-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

I attended a Friends Meeting this morning. Those who have read my blog should not be surprised. It is the Quakers’ spiritual commitment to peace that attracted me. When asked to get up and introduce myself at the conclusion of worship I told the gathered meeting (a term analogous to congregation in the UU church) that I was a retired Navy officer who hungered for peace in the world and also hungered for the inner peace that might come from embracing pacifism with like-minded people.

I would like to share a couple of impressions from this experience.

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Worship began promptly at 10 AM. As you may know, Friends have no ordained clergy or traditional order of service. The meeting (or, at least, this particular meeting) gathers quietly and sits in silent reflection. As the spirit moves a member, the member may stand and speak – offering a reflection as part of what appeared to me to be truly shared ministry. We sat for one hour with no more than five people speaking for a total of perhaps 10 minutes. Most spoke of peace – peace in the world and the inner peace that we all must find before peace on Earth can be achieved. This was a powerful message for me.

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Sitting there in silent reflection for one hour, I became more aware of my body and how I felt than ever before in my life. I really experienced the physical pain that I know I have had for several years; pain brought on by anger and disillusionment at the course the country I love has taken in the last decade; anger and disillusionment at how my life’s work as a naval officer now seems to have so little meaning. I am not free of this pain but I am beginning to understand it. The experience of sitting quietly for an hour in the presence of people committed to peace helped me come face to face with it just a little bit more. It was a beneficial spiritual experience – something I have not felt about a worship service for some time.

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As I mentioned, the worship began quietly. There were no announcements, no directions to the bathrooms, no enjoinder to turn off one’s cell phone. People just walked in, sat down, and began their worship. About half way through, it dawned on me how wonderful this was. As a UU congregation leader, I have always had half my mind on “church business stuff” during worship. The pre-service announcements reinforce this focus by reminding me of the money that still needs to be raised, the volunteers that still need to be solicited, the week’s coming meetings, the work that always needs to be done. I didn’t realize until today how much those announcements (often made by me) diminished my worship experience. There were announcements at the conclusion of the Friends worship but, by that time, we had all been refreshed by the shared worship experience.

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One final observation. I was made to feel very welcome. A number of people spoke to me during coffee hour and really engaged me in conversation. As a church leader, I know what a challenge it is to inspire people to do that. This particular meeting seems to have found a way.
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These impressions are just initial ones. I don’t know where this exploration will lead me but I do know one thing. I will go back.

Foolish? Naïve?

2009-10-09T07:09:00.000-07:00

I am very troubled when people refer to those who embrace pacifism as foolish or dangerously naïve, some even going so far as to imply that pacifists are criminally irresponsible and will be judged accordingly by God and by history. Aside from the fact that the words “foolish” and “naïve” are emotionally charged and not useful in rational debate I believe that they are also misapplied in this case. Far from being foolish or naïve, most if not all pacifists are people who have assumed this identity after much thought, study, personal life experience, and reflection. Whereas a foolish person is (by definition) one incapable of forming an opinion by discerning and comparing, is one who lacks understanding and practicality, and is one who (as a result of these shortcomings) is incapable of making responsible decisions; most pacifists are discerning, responsible, compassionate people who have embraced non-violence and renounced war as practical steps toward establishing justice on Earth. Whereas a naïve person is (by definition) deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment; most if not all pacifists are educated, informed, and experienced people whose life experience and human understanding have led them to the conclusion that war and violence are never just, never necessary, and never inevitable. Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. among many others were not foolish and not naïve. I think they will be judged favorably before God and before history for lasting accomplishments founded on their commitment to non-violence.

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Now I’ve heard a lot of the arguments against pacifism. Many of them come down to the belief that there is evil in the world and that, in order to establish just and lasting peace, war is sometimes necessary. These “just war” advocates will often cite the American Civil War or World War II, asking the pacifist, “Would you have stood by and let slavery continue in the American South or let Hitler conquer and enslave the world?.” Often the pacifist is then asked, “Would you simply stand by and be killed rather than kill to protect yourself, your family, your way of life?” Far from being designed to provoke thoughtful consideration and judgment; these questions are emotionally charged and designed to confront one with the seemingly irresolvable dilemma of “kill or be killed.”

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I challenge the validity of these questions. In the first place, they are founded on the problematic “just war” argument. In theory, it is logical to conclude that evil aggression must and should be met by force and stopped before justice can be established among men and nations. The problem arises in the application of the theory. Who decides what is evil? Who decides when war is the only solution to halt the progress of that evil? The answer is fallible men who have demonstrated time and again throughout history that they are incapable of making these decisions on the purest of motives. Even Americans wage war as much for selfish reasons of national interest as they do for altruistic reasons of justice.

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Of course, many Americans dispute this, arguing as Alexis de Tocqueville did in 1831 that ours is an exceptional nation with a unique heritage of democracy and justice. Many argue that these exceptional characteristics uniquely qualify us to decide what is right and wrong, what is good and evil. As President George W. Bush stated in 2002 less than one year before launching the Iraq War:

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"The United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe. We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world."[i]
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In other words, “Democracy, development, free markets, and free trade are what the peoples of the Earth need and we are going to give it to them whether they like it or not!” Aside from the fact that the current “Great Recession” has seriously called into question the American model of free markets and free trade; my question is, who are we to say that our model of government and society is the best prescription for the peoples of the Earth? While many Americans believe as President Bush does that the value of our system to peacemaking is that “democracies don't go to war with each other”[ii] it is also true that democracies have proven no more capable of eradicating the scourge of war and establishing justice on Earth than any other nation. America has become more militarized, more aggressive, more colonial, and more violent in the past century as it has more fully embraced the mission President Bush articulated. As a military superpower, we have not been successful peacemakers. In light of this history, I dispute the notion that our system is the best prescription for mankind or that we are somehow uniquely gifted to decide when justice demands that we wage war.

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In the second place, I challenge the validity of those questions asked of the pacifist because they present a false dilemma that almost forces one to conclude that war and violence are inevitable. Most people who embrace compassion and justice would not have stood by and allowed slavery to continue in the American South or let Hitler conquer the world. Many who called themselves pacifists supported military action in the Civil War and in World War II, concluding that matters had come to such a point that war was the only solution. But this is not to say that these wars were just, necessary, or inevitable. Eradicating slavery is just. Standing in the way of a tyrant bent on world conquest is just. The wars that ended these injustices, however, were not simply because they could have been avoided if men and women of good will had come together years and decades beforehand to end the injustices that led to these wars in a peaceful fashion. No one forced Americans to enslave African men and women two centuries before the shelling of Fort Sumter. No one forced the statesmen and peoples of Europe to create the conditions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that convinced the German people that it was a good idea to bring Hitler to power. These wars were the consequences of decisions made by men and men could have decided otherwise.

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The pacifist does not argue that men can change overnight any more than the Christian argues that men can totally free themselves of sin overnight. Even Gandhi recognized that violence is an integral part of the human condition:

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“Man cannot for a moment live without consciously or unconsciously committing outward himsa (violence)… A votary of ahimsa (nonviolence) therefore remains true to this faith if the spring of all his actions is compassion, if he shuns to the best of his ability the destruction of the tiniest creature, tries to save it, and thus incessantly strives to be free from the deadly coil of himsa. He will be constantly growing in self-restraint and compassion, but he can never become entirely free from outward himsa”[iii]
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Gandhi recognized that men are imperfect and that violence is a part of our nature. The votary of non-violence is one who recognizes this, working every day to overcome his / her violent nature while acting with and promoting compassion and non-violence among men and nations. To argue that our violent natures make war inevitable no matter what we do is to turn our backs on peace before we even start working for it. It is this argument that makes war seem inevitable, necessary, and even just. If, as Unitarian Universalists and despite our violent natures, we truly embrace our principles, shouldn’t we be among those Americans who turn away from the false premise that war is just, necessary, and inevitable; embrace pacifism, and begin to create the conditions whereby war will be ended for all time?

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A Unitarian Universalist minister recently told me that UU’s agree war is a bad thing, we just can’t agree on whether it is ever justified. I got the impression (perhaps unfounded) that he thought it was enough that we agreed on war’s “badness” and that the disagreement on its justice was something we will just have to live with. Isn’t the question of war’s justice, however, the fundamental question? If we accept that some wars can be just, it is easy to take the next step and conclude that they are sometimes necessary and inevitable and that we would simply be wasting our time to try to end the conditions that make it so easy for us to wage war.

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The pacifist calls us to embrace a different approach. The pacifist calls us to reject the idea that war can be just, can be necessary, and is inevitable and, in so doing, begin to work for a world in which war and violence are eradicated forever. This is not a naïve or foolish notion particularly for people of religious conviction. For if the purpose of religion is to bind people closer together, how can we not turn away from something that sunders us apart? If Unitarian Universalism is to be the religion of the twenty-first century, then how can we not embrace pacifism as a fundamental tenent of our faith?[iv]

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[i] Bush, George W. (2002). The national security strategy of the United States. Washington, National Security Council. Accessed online 09 Oct 2009 at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0920-05.htm.
[ii] Statement of President George W. Bush 12 Nov 2004. Accessed online 09 Oct 2009 at: http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/11/20041112-5.html.
[iii] Gandhi, Mohandas K. (1993). Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Boston: Beacon Press. Cited in “Pacifism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed online 09 Oct 2009 at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pacifism/.
[iv] To read more about non-violence and pacifist action, please take a look at the American Friends Service Committee website at: http://www.afsc.org/.

For One of the Dead - Week of October 4th, 2009

2009-10-04T19:19:00.000-07:00

Please remember Rowayda Fadil, an Iraqi woman who died in the Iraq War. I don't know her but I do know that her life was every bit as sacred as mine. Her death diminishes all of our lives.[i]
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[i] Source: Iraq Body Count - http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/individuals/fz1463.

Everything I've Learned About Command I Learned From Star Trek

2009-10-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

I was watching an episode of the original Star Trek TV series the other day and I was once again reminded how important and relevant that series is for me even now, over forty years after I began watching it. Unlike the subsequent spin-offs, the original Star Trek, at its best, was about mankind bringing the Beloved Community to the stars. Although the characters were members of a Navy-like organization called Starfleet (and got themselves into a number of fights with alien species), they always identified themselves not as military men but as explorers and peacemakers. The best episodes were often ones in which Captain Kirk and his officers found a way to promote peace without violence. They truly embraced many of our Unitarian Universalist principles and always found ways, individually and collectively, to live those values and put them into practice.

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When I was leading the Navy Sailors at the Guantanamo Detention Facility a few years ago, my greatest concern (shared by most officers assigned there) was that my Sailors live the Navy’s values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment, every day – putting them into practice so that, on our watch, there would occur nothing like the abuse that had been practiced elsewhere. One of the ways I reinforced the importance of these values was through a weekly letter to all my officers and leading petty officers. In them, I drew on my own experience to illustrate the importance of living by core values. One week, I used Star Trek to make my point. Below is that letter:

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January 15th, 2006

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You're probably wondering what this letter is going to be all about. Has he finally lost his mind? Has GTMO gotten to him at last? No, it hasn't but, yes, I really am going to use Star Trek as the springboard of my talk this week.

I've watched Star Trek since I was six years old. I'm not talking about the more recent spin-off series but the original that aired in the late 1960's. I've watched it continuously ever since and I have never gotten bored with it. Originally, I suppose, I thought the space ships and the science fiction aspects of the show were pretty neat (I've always been a fan of science fiction). Later, however, I came to appreciate that the show deals a lot with military leadership. I don't know if the writers for the show had military backgrounds. It certainly seems so. Many episodes reinforce the concepts of Responsibility, Authority, and Accountability; Honor, Courage, and Commitment. For example:

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Responsibility. In one episode, the Starship ENTERPRISE finds one of her sister starships has been wrecked by a giant spacecraft (which, given the primitive production values of the mid-sixties, looks like a giant Bugle corn chip). Alone aboard this other ship is the Captain who is haunted by the fact that he sent his crew, once his ship was wrecked, to what he believed was a place of safety only to have the place and his crew destroyed by the alien spacecraft. Towards the end of the episode, the haunted Captain commits suicide in a desperate attempt to destroy the alien ship. Captain Kirk (the Captain of the Starship ENTERPRISE, who is the hero of the show if you don't know / remember) tries to dissuade his brother Captain from killing himself. The other Captain tells Kirk, "A Captain is responsible for the lives of his crew and for their deaths - well, I should have died with mine." Haunted by his failure to live up to his ultimate responsibility, the Captain cannot go on living.

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Authority. In a rather strange episode, Captain Kirk is split into two physically identical people. One has the personality reflecting all that is good and humane in Kirk. The other, all that is harsh, angry, and mean. While the "bad" Kirk is doing awful things (assaulting crew members when enraged, trying to rape his woman yeoman, etc.), the "good" Kirk finds he is losing the ability to make decisions and exercise command. Much as he is appalled at confronting his evil self, the "good" Kirk learns that he cannot exercise command authority without that part of himself. His humanity, untempered by a measure of cold, heartless rationality inhibits his ability to make any decision because of the fear that someone might be hurt by it. The "bad" Kirk, likewise, discovers he cannot survive without his "good" half because it is that part of himself that allows him to overcome fear and face the hard choices of command. Command involves making tough choices, many of which affect people's lives. The effective leader is the one who listens to the voice within him / her of cold (and heartless) rationality, listens to the voice of humanity and compassion, and makes a decision that reflects a balance between the two.

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Accountability. In another episode, Captain Kirk is facing a court-martial because the computer records of the ENTERPRISE seem to indicate he is responsible for the death of one of his crew. Kirk's Commodore tries to persuade him to resign from his command and avoid court-martial by accepting a ground assignment. He tells Kirk, "Now listen, Jim. Not one man in a million can do what you and I have done, command a starship. A hundred decisions a day, hundreds of lives depending on you making every one of them right. You're played out, Jim. Exhausted." Of course, Kirk doesn't accept this and elects to face court-martial (As you would expect, he clears himself just before the final commercial break). The episode, however, speaks to the heavy burden of command (the Commodore's statement) and the how a Captain must always be accountable for his actions in the exercise of that command (the court-martial).

Honor. In one of the two episodes that won the Hugo Award (the highest literary award in Science Fiction), Commander Spock (the Executive Officer of the ENTERPRISE - the alien with the pointed ears) seizes the ship unlawfully. He does this to take his former Captain, who has been rendered a complete invalid by an accident in space, to a planet where he can live a full life. Unfortunately (for reasons too complicated to go into here) this planet is off limits with the death penalty awarded to anyone convicted of going there. In another dramatic court-martial (There were only two of these in the series. I just happened to pick both episodes to demonstrate my points), Spock demonstrates why he must take his former Captain to the forbidden world. Spock demonstrates he honors loyalty and humanity (interesting for an alien) above all else and is willing to risk his career and his life for what he honors most.

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Courage. As you might expect, courage is everywhere in an action-adventure TV series. In one particular episode, it is demonstrated by a crewman who overcomes the fear of the unknown to face up to his duty. The ENTERPRISE is exploring an uncharted part of the galaxy when it is captured by an alien spacecraft of immense size and power. The aliens decide to destroy the ENTERPRISE, stating that it clearly comes from a primitive and hostile society. The aliens grant the crew 10 minutes to prepare. As Kirk tries to come up with a way to stop the aliens, the navigator (a young, inexperienced officer) loses his head on the bridge. Kirk relieves him and sends him to his quarters. Kirk then tries to bluff the aliens. As they are waiting to see if the bluff has worked (and the 10 minutes has gone down to 30 seconds), the young officer reappears on the bridge and requests permission to resume his post. He is still afraid but masters his fear and finds it within himself to do his duty even in the face of possible death.

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Commitment. In the one episode to win an Emmy Award, Kirk and Spock must go into Earth's past. Another crewman (the ship's doctor, McCoy) has gone into the past and accidentally changed history with the result that the future that Kirk and his crew know is destroyed. During their sojourn in the past, Kirk falls in love with a woman who is a social worker in depression-era New York City. Kirk discovers that it is this woman who will cause the future to be destroyed. If she lives (and it is Dr. McCoy who will save her life), she will lead a movement that will keep the United States out of WWII with the result that the Nazi's will rule the world and, ultimately, destroy it. Kirk must choose between his ship / crew / future and the woman he loves. In the final scene, Kirk stops McCoy from saving her. Heartbroken at the loss of the woman he loves, Kirk chooses to live up to the commitment he has made to his ship and crew, saving them instead.

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Even in campy '60's TV shows, one can find object lessons that are relevant to naval leadership in this mission. Command is about the awesome responsibility for accomplishing the mission and bringing the crew home safe. To exercise it, we are given authority but we must be always ready to account for how we have used that authority. We must act with honor, upholding what we value most. We must demonstrate courage, mastering our fears and confronting our responsibilities to our mission and our Sailors, even in the face of death. We must demonstrate commitment, sacrificing much (even our lives if necessary) to live up to our responsibilities.

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Taken together, these six concepts represent the awesome burden of command. Successfully embracing them represents the ultimate reward of command. Whether you learn the burden and the reward through reading history, through your own personal experience, from a mentor, from watching an old TV show or, more likely, from some combination of all of these; learn them and apply them so that you may accomplish the mission and bring the crew home safe.

For One of the Dead - Week of September 27, 2009

2009-09-27T18:15:00.001-07:00

Please remember Jessica Y. Sarandrea, a twenty-two year old American who died in the Iraq War. I don't know her but I do know that her life was every bit as sacred as mine. Her death diminishes all of our lives.[i]

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[i] Source: U. S. and Coalition Casualties - http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2009.03.html.

Perspectives

2009-09-25T08:50:00.000-07:00

During a meeting one day in early 2006 at the military command at which I was stationed, the subject of some cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad recently published in a Danish newspaper came up in discussion. My colleagues (all military officers or senior DoD civilians) could not understand why the publication of these cartoons had caused spontaneous riots in many parts of the Islamic world. The disbelief of some came down to, “What’s wrong with these people, don’t they have a sense of humor?” Others thought that the rioting stemmed from the fanaticism that many Americans believe characterizes Islam; a belief expressed by this commenter on the National Public Radio (NPR) web site:

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I do not understand the religious basis that drives the reaction to the 12 cartoons. I probably never will. I suspect that the violent reaction has more to do with radical Islam's political agenda.[i]

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A couple of weeks later, another cartoon appeared in The Washington Post. This one included a highly-idealized picture of a wounded American soldier and a caricature of then – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Attending the same meeting shortly after the publication of this cartoon, I found my colleagues shocked...shocked that a political cartoonist would show such disrespect to brave American soldiers by depicting a wounded one in a cartoon which criticized government policy. Their indignation was shared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who, collectively, protested to The Washington Post:

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"We believe you and Mr. Toles have done a disservice to your readers and your paper's reputation by using such a callous depiction of those who have volunteered to defend this nation, and as a result, have suffered traumatic and life-altering wounds . . .
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"While you or some of your readers may not agree with the war or its conduct, we believe you owe the men and women and their families who so selflessly serve our country the decency to not make light of their tremendous physical sacrifices."[ii]
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What struck me about the reaction of my colleagues (and, it seemed, of many Americans) was how parochial it was. My colleagues seemed totally incapable of perceiving any connection between their indignation over the Rumsfeld-soldier cartoon and the indignation of Muslims worldwide over the Muhammad cartoons. Both were examples of political satire, both attacked images and ideals of profound importance to certain groups of people. Both caused pain and anger within those groups. And yet, many of us simply could not understand that the emotions expressed by Muslims were every bit as valid as our own emotions – deserving of just as much compassion and understanding. Such compassion and understanding is the basis for peace – the lack of it in our society is one of the reasons we do not say “no” to war.

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Take the case of Iran. President George W. Bush gave Iran charter membership in the “axis of evil.” President Barack Obama, although in comparison to President Bush, using more measured speech; keeps Iran firmly in that elite group of our enemies. Speaking of Iran and North Korea (another axis of evil charter member), the President stated:
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“...if the governments of Iran and North Korea choose to ignore international standards; if they put the pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead of regional stability and the security and opportunity of their own people; if they are oblivious to the dangers of escalating nuclear arms races in both East Asia and the Middle East — then they must be held accountable.”[iii]

Implicit in this statement is the belief that Iran is building nuclear weapons (as yet unproven – just as it was in Iraq) for some selfish, self-serving agenda at the cost of responsible action to promote regional security and the well-being of her own people. This may, in fact, be the case (who can know for certain the thoughts of others). Isn’t it just possible, however that Iran is acting from other motivations altogether?

Consider the following map and ask yourself, how would we respond if Iran had 140,000 troops stationed in Canada and 80,000 troops stationed in Mexico? How would we react if Iran stationed two naval striking forces close to our coastlines?

Now view the world from Iran:

140,000 American troops in the country on her western border; 80,000 American and NATO troops in the country on her eastern border; and two complete naval striking forces in the waters to the south. What would our reaction be if the country that believed ours to be evil arrayed such massive military power on all sides of us? Perhaps we would believe that it was this invading power, and not our country, that was a threat to stability in our own region. Perhaps we would consider the safety and future of our children and support the building of whatever weapons were necessary to deter this foreign, invading power from attacking us as it had our neighbors.

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This is not to say that Iran hasn’t been, at times, a bad actor in the world nor is it to excuse some of the inflammatory rhetoric that Iranian leaders have used in recent years. As historian A.J.P. Taylor has stated, however, it is important to focus more on what a country does than what it says.[iv] Iran has never invaded one of its neighbors (at least not under the current regime), let alone launched a war in another part of the world. Iran was brutally attacked by Iraq in the 1980’s but sought no territorial gains from Iraq once the latter had been beaten down in the first Gulf War. The United States, on the other hand, quietly supported Iraq (the aggressor) in the Iran-Iraq War, has stationed large military forces in the region since the early 1990’s, and then invaded the countries bordering Iran in the last few years.

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Of course we had reasons for doing these things – reasons that we believed to be in our national interest and that we perceived to be just. Most Iranians, however, probably have a different perspective – one that is every bit as valid to them as ours is to us. One which may be founded on a belief that we are the aggressor. Maybe it is that perspective that is informing their decision to develop nuclear weapons.
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The foundation for peace and stability in the Middle East is not an insistence that the countries of the region bow to our will. The foundation for peace is compassion and understanding of the legitimate hopes and fears of all parties and positive action on the basis of that understanding.

Reaching out to the Soviet Union in 1963, President John F. Kennedy said:
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Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements (concerning American “imperialism”), to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning, a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.
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No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue... So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal.[v]
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Although some would call Kennedy’s words hopelessly naïve, these words became the foundation for substantive arms control agreements with the Soviet Union that restrained both sides from pulling the nuclear trigger and destroying all life on Earth. That was a major accomplishment – one founded on compassion and understanding, not arrogance. It is an example we should embrace today so that we can take the first steps toward saying “no” to war once and for all.

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[i] Dvorkin, Jeffery. Muhammad Cartoons: Strong Listener Response, February 14, 2006. Accessed online September 25, 2009 at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5206152.
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[ii] Kurtz, Howard. “Joint Chiefs Fire At Toles Cartoon On Strained Army.” The Washington Post, February 2, 2006. Accessed online September 25, 2009 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/01/AR2006020102465.html.
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[iii] Cooper, Helene. “Obama Makes Gains at U.N. on Iran and Proliferation.” The New York Times, September 23, 2009. Accessed online September 25, 2009 at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/24prexy.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=obama%20arms%20curbs&st=cse.
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[iv] Taylor, A. J. P. (1961). The origins of the Second World War. London: The Folio Society, 1998.
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[v] Speech given by President John F. Kennedy at the commencement ceremonies of American University, Washington, DC, June 10th, 1963. Found at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html.

For One of the Dead - Week of September 20, 2009

2009-09-20T04:34:00.000-07:00

Please remember Azhar Abdul Abbas, a wife and mother who died in the Iraq War. I don't know her but I do know that her life was every bit as sacred as mine. Her death diminishes all of our lives.[i]

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[i] Source: Iraq Body Count - http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/individuals/nv1607.

Why Can't We Just Say 'No' to War? - Part 2: America, Religious Faith, and War

2009-09-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

One of the teachers of the law...asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one” answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:28-31)

According to Christian teaching, those who embrace these commandments will attain the Kingdom of God – the fulfillment on Earth of God’s will. While Unitarian Universalists do not, as a church, subscribe to Christian doctrine, we do, because of our Christian origins, embrace similar concepts. We affirm “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” and “justice, equity and compassion in human relations.” We seek to build the Beloved Community (analogous to the Kingdom of God) founded on “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” While Christian faith is founded on trust in God, whose grace will help mankind attain the Kingdom of God; our faith is founded in trust in each other that we will live by our principles and come together to build the Beloved Community.

This brings me back to the question I asked myself (and you) last week, “Why can’t we just say ‘no’ to war?” Why can’t we recognize that by fighting wars we shatter the interdependent web of all existence; we destroy the worth and dignity of the people who we kill; and we renounce justice, equity, and compassion. By embracing war, we turn our backs on our religion by failing to come together to build the Beloved Community. Why do we do that?

Of course, many UU’s would strongly disagree with me that in supporting war we turn away from our values and our religion. “After all,” they might argue, “there is evil in the world, evil which must be destroyed if we are to build the Beloved Community. Evil does not submit to rational discussion and negotiation. Evil is not compassionate or just. Evil is, well, evil! The only way to get rid of it is to eradicate it by force – by war, conducted by just nations (like ours) fighting in a just cause.” This argument, of course, presupposes that we (Americans) can objectively identify that which is evil. It also presupposes that we (Americans again) are inherently good, always acting (even in war) with justice, equity, and compassion. In other words, it presupposes that we are (as many politicians and clerics in our history have argued) the “City Upon a Hill” (Matthew 5:14), the repository of God’s truth and justice that shines as a beacon for all the world – “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16).

Many American Christian churches have, as one of the cornerstones of their faith, embraced this vision of America’s unique mission in the world – a mission to eradicate evil and promote justice through the use of military power. In fact, this vision is so intertwined with our identity as Americans that many of us barely give it a second thought. It has been the foundation of our foreign and military policy since at least the early twentieth century.

This vision was not created by ignorant people but was formulated and advocated by politicians, diplomats, and military officers of religious conviction during the years when the United States was emerging as a world power. Their influence was profound and long-lasting. One of the most influential of these visionaries was Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, U. S. Navy. While he is not well known outside the military today, Mahan was world famous in the years leading up to the First World War as a naval strategist and historian. His seminal work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660 – 1783 (Boston, 1890) was read by political and military leaders worldwide as a guide to attaining world dominance through the application of naval and military power. Mahan, himself, wrote to inspire his own countrymen to develop their navy in order that the United States might assume its rightful place among the great powers of the world. In this, he was very successful. Throughout the twentieth century, the United States Navy was among the world’s mightiest and was one of the primary instruments used by American leaders to advance American power and influence. Even today, the United States Navy is the most powerful in the world, led by officers who still read and study Mahan as part of their higher education at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, U. S. Navy

What is little known about Mahan is that he was not only a strategist, historian, and staunch advocate of American world power; he was also a devout and learned Christian who believed that Christianity was the bedrock of civilization. According to his biographer:

He never relinquished his conviction that Christianity, and only Christianity among the world’s religions, had uplifted men and nations, and was directly responsible for the advent and continuation of human civilization and progress.[i]
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Mahan’s religious conviction is implicit in his writings. In one of his later the works, The Problem of Asia (Boston, 1900), Mahan argued that the peoples of Asia (particularly those of China) were ready for uplift from a degraded state by an outside power that acted aggressively in the region. In this, he completely ignored that there exists an Asian civilization that was (and is) in most respects more advanced than that of the West. Instead, Mahan advocated Western, most importantly American, engagement in Asia because:

The character of the civilization which it (Asia) is destined to receive, from the influences now surrounding and impinging upon it, will go far to determine the future of the world; for civilization, in the final analysis, means, not material development in the external environment, but the elevation of personal, and, through personal, of national character.[ii]
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Elevation of personal character through faith in the Christian God was a key component of Mahan’s religion as it was of many of his contemporaries. Mahan himself articulated its importance in a book he wrote late in life and which offers insight into his religious faith. The Harvest Within (Boston, 1909) has been called Mahan’s spiritual autobiography and is a discussion of how no man can achieve the elevation of personal character of which he speaks in The Problem of Asia without the grace of the almighty Christian God. Tying the arguments of The Problem of Asia and The Harvest Within together, it is safe to conclude that Mahan believed that the future of the world depended on the character of the civilization that “uplifts” Asia. Mahan argued that it should be Western Christian civilization that did the uplifting.

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If the language of The Problem of Asia and The Harvest Within sounds familiar to you, it should. There is a definate continuity between the worldview of Mahan and his contemporaries and that of Americans today. Justification for the American wars of the last decade was founded on the same certainty of America’s mission to bring civilization to the world in the face of evil that seeks to destroy it. President George W. Bush, for example, stated in his 2002 National Security Strategy:

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Freedom is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person -- in every civilization. Throughout history, freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clashing wills of powerful states and the evil designs of tyrants; and it has been tested by widespread poverty and disease. Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom's triumph over all these foes. The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.[iii]

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Freedom (as uniquely defined by us and which, as stated earlier in the document, includes democracy and free enterprise) is non-negotiable and is threatened by evil. Our “great mission” (as the City Upon the Hill) is to stop the “evil designs of tyrants” and “further freedom’s triumph.” In this way, we will preserve and uplift civilization around the world. In the belief that we were fulfilling this great mission, we willingly went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq – wars which we still are fighting today.

In the face of such monstrous arrogance (and it is arrogance to believe that we are singularly gifted to define that which is good and to recognize that which is evil and combat it), what do we as UU’s, whose principles are clearly at odds with war, do? Unfortunately, very little, in part because many of us embrace the views above, believing that we are, yet again, fighting for justice in just wars. We believe that such wars are necessary and inevitable and that we have no choice. Often, those UU’s who disagree with pacifists cite the American Civil War as an example of a just war – one in which Unitarians and Universalists fought proudly in the cause of justice, having no other choice. As quoted on a recent UU blog posting (http://celestiallands.org/wayside/?p=214),

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One Unitarian minister, Arthur Fuller (brother of Margaret Fuller) served first as a Chaplain, and then as a combatant with the 19th Massachusetts Infantry. He died with a rifle in his hand at the battle of Fredericksburg, fighting for a cause he believed in deeply. At his memorial service in Boston, James Freeman Clark said, “Arthur Fuller was, like most of us, a lover of peace, but he saw, as we have had to see, that sometimes true peace can only come through war. So he went, with a courage and devotion which all must admire, and fell, adding his blood also to all the precious blood which has been shed as an atonement for the sins of the nation. May that blood not be shed in vain.”

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To cite the American Civil War as an example of how, “true peace can only come through war” is to ignore the fact that the war could have been avoided altogether if Americans, North and South, had chosen years and centuries earlier to renounce slavery. Arthur Fuller’s death, far from being a noble act, was the consequence of the foolishness of his ancestors in failing to turn away from the monstrous injustice of slavery. His death was a tragedy, nothing more. The deaths of those in Iraq and Afghanistan are no less so because they are the consequence of the failure of human beings, including Americans, to find solutions to their problems that do not involve war. In both cases, these deaths are the consequence of our collective failure, including the failure of UU’s, to embrace Jesus’ commandment to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” because doing so is the only way to end war and establish the Beloved Community on Earth.
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UU’s will argue endlessly whether Jesus was / is God. I am not sure myself but I am sure that he was right. When will we, Unitarian Universalists, finally “get” that and turn away from the false premises of just war and the monstrous arrogance of those who say we have a singular mission in the world? When will we truly embrace our principles and just say 'no' to war? I pray that day will come sooner rather than later.

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[i] Seager, Robert II (1977). Alfred Thayer Mahan, the man and his letters. Annapolis, Naval Institute Press, p. 577.
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[ii] Mahan, A. T. (1900). The problem of Asia and its effect upon international policies. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, p. 88.
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[iii] Bush, George W. (2002). The national security strategy of the United States. Washington, National Security Council. Accessed online 19 Sep 09 at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0920-05.htm.

For One of the Dead - Week of September 13, 2009

2009-09-13T03:57:00.001-07:00

Please remember Kyle Adams, a twenty-one year old Britain who died in the Afghanistan War. I don't know him but I do know that his life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.[i]

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[i] Source: U. S. and Coalition Casualties - http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/oef.casualties/index.html.

Why Can't We Just Say "No" to War?

2009-09-12T04:50:00.000-07:00

Why can’t we just say “no” to war? Why must we take so many years to decide whether “... the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between peoples and nations...”[i], is right or wrong, making that question the subject of countless “intellectually stimulating” discussions around the post-worship coffee pot, endless soul-searching about whether embracing pacifism will alienate UU's in the military or defense industry, or simply a means of forging closer connection amongst ourselves in small group ministry sessions? Why can’t we, as a religious community that makes respect for the interdependent web of life a cornerstone of its faith, simply reject war, end this interminable discussion and begin the real work of establishing a just and lasting peace on Earth?

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If a church member had asked me these questions when I was a Congregation President, I probably would have answered, “Well, you raise some very compelling issues and there are many in the Congregation who agree with you. Others, while agreeing that war is evil also believe that just nations must engage in just war to confront aggression by evil or irrational people who want to do us harm. Let’s work together to find a way we can all discuss this that will respect all of these views.” Such an answer promotes peacemaking within the Congregation. Such an answer also forgives us for doing nothing while the scourge of war continues unabated. I think that our troubled times demand more of us as Unitarian Universalists than just to turn away from this issue in the interest of Congregational peace and fellowship.

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But why do we turn away so easily, failing to take the simple step of renouncing war? Why can’t we just say “no” to war? The good UU answer is, “Oh, there are probably many reasons...” True but I wonder if a fundamental reason is that we simply cannot grasp, from our comfortable American homes and lives, the immense horror of war. If we could, I suspect it would be easy to just say “no” to it.

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John Keegan is a military historian who became famous by stating in his first book, “I have not been in a battle, not near one, nor heard one from afar, nor seen its aftermath.”[ii] Keegan, from the comfort and security of an academic post at the British Royal Military Academy, then devotes his book to an exploration of the reality of battle through detailed studies of three famous ones: Agincourt (1415), Waterloo (1815), and The Somme (1916). In each, he takes the reader down to the battlefield itself, describing what happened to the soldiers during and after the fighting. In a typical passage, he describes the effects of exploding artillery shells on soldiers emerging from trenches to assault enemy positions:

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Less spectacular, but sometimes as deadly, shell blast could create over-pressures or vacuums in the body’s organs, rupturing lungs and producing hemorrhages in the brain and spinal cord...Much the most common wounding by shell, however, was by splinter or shrapnel ball. Such projectiles travelled fairly slowly, and rapidly lost their velocity; to that extent, they were less to be feared than bullet wounds. But they often travelled in clusters, which would inflict several large wounds or many small wounds on the same person. The splinters were irregular in shape, so producing a very rough wound with a great deal of tissue damage, and very frequently carried fragments or other foreign matter into the body, which made infection almost inevitable. Very large shell fragments could...amputate limbs, decapitate, bisect or otherwise grossly mutilate the human frame.[iii]
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This kind of thing happens every day in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Casualties at the Battle of the Somme, 1916

Ask yourself, can you imagine this happening to you, to your spouse, to your child? If you can then how do you come down on the issue of whether we, as UU’s should reject, “...the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between peoples and nations...”?

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Journalist Chris Hedges is a man who has witnessed first-hand the horror of war. He lived through the worst of the siege of Sarajevo. He witnessed brutal civil conflicts in Central America. He saw the reality of the first Gulf War which we never saw on television. In his book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, this student of Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams describes war as an addiction to which we are all prone. In describing his own experience of war, he debunks the myth that war provides meaning and argues that the antidote to the addiction is love.

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To survive as a human being is possible only through love...the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all divinity, pity and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others – even those with whom we are in conflict – love that is like our own. It does not mean we will avoid war and death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has power both to resist in our nature to resist what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal.[iv]
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Keegan reveals to us the horror of war and Hedges tells us how we can end our addiction to it. By embracing the love of which Hedges speaks, we can convince ourselves that war is never just, never necessary, and never inevitable. We can begin to build the Beloved Community on Earth. We can just say “no” to war. I pray each day that my church will one day do so.

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[i] Quoted from UUA Congregational Study Action Issue, 2006 – 2010: “Peacemaking.” Accessed online 12 Sep 09 at http://www.uua.org/socialjustice/issuesprocess/currentissues/44160/resourceguide/44160.shtml.
[ii] Keegan, John (1976). The face of battle. New York: Viking-Penguin, p.1.
[iii] Ibid, p. 265.
[iv] Hedges, Chris (2002). War is a force that gives us meaning. New York: PublicAffairs, p. 185.

Learning, Teaching and the United States Navy

2009-09-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

It is because of the Navy that I decided to become a teacher. Navy life is founded on teaching and learning because the sea is demanding and unforgiving. Failure to understand the dangers that arise from operating a ship in the vast ocean have brought many ships and many sailors to an untimely end. To survive at sea, men and women throughout the ages have learned their skills from experienced sailors and then taught each new generation the art of the mariner – how to survive and thrive at sea.

As one of those sailors, I learned and eventually I taught – finding in the process that I love to teach. Reflecting on this today, as I go back to school to finish my teacher education this year and as children throughout the country go back to school, I am reminded of another Navy teacher who not only perpetuated our learning-teaching heritage but described it in one of the two great novels of the United States Navy. While the other great novel, Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny, taught me what it meant to be a naval officer; it was Richard McKenna’s The Sand Pebbles that helped me understand the fundamental importance of teaching and learning.

Chief Machinist’s Mate Richard McKenna served twenty-two years in the United States Navy, many of them in the engine rooms of ships of the old Asiatic Fleet that, for nearly a century, “showed the flag” in the Far East and particularly on the rivers of central China. Life in the engine room of a steam ship is demanding to say the least (I know this from personal experience). McKenna survived and thrived in this environment, rising to the rank of Chief Petty Officer. He learned the intricacies of naval engineering and passed that knowledge on to many other sailors. In the process, McKenna also learned what we all have learned; that the responsibility to teach, guide and mentor in the Navy is a great one because it doesn’t matter how pure is your soul, if you don’t understand and operate machinery correctly that machinery will hurt or kill you.

McKenna and a shipmate in the engine room.

Unlike many of his shipmates, McKenna loved to read. Throughout his career, he looked for any opportunity to read not only the technical manuals that went with his job but also literature and history. When he finally retired from the Navy in 1953, he enrolled at the University of North Carolina, studied English literature, and married one of the school’s librarians. With his baccalaureate degree in hand, he embarked on a successful writing career which was tragically cut short by his death from a heart attack in 1964 – caused in part, no doubt, by living in the unhealthy world of naval engine rooms for so many years. Before he died, however, he completed The Sand Pebbles, a novel destined for literary and popular fame, even becoming a major motion picture.

The Sand Pebbles is the story of Machinist’s Mate Jake Holman, a sailor who enlisted in the Navy to avoid jail and who has always been a square peg in a round hole. After seven years in the service, Holman is transferred to the Yangtze River gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo. There, he becomes even more disenchanted with the Navy mainly because he doesn’t share his shipmates’ distain for the Chinese laborers who do most of the real work on the ship. Holman doesn’t care where someone comes from or what is the color of his skin. Among those who work in the engine room, he only respects a man who can learn to understand and operate machinery as he does. Holman takes it upon himself to teach a young Chinese “coolie” named Po-han all that Holman knows about naval engineering. Po-han, who in many ways is very much like his teacher, is an eager learner, becoming every bit as good an engineer as Holman. For his part, Holman learns to respect Po-han as a man and discovers the joy and fulfillment of teaching through his relationship with his young protégé.

Much like Jake Holman, I have become disenchanted with what the Navy and other military services do. I have become a pacifist – believing that war is never just, never necessary, and never inevitable. Still, I love the United States Navy and believe it to be one of America’s greatest institutions. I love it because of what I learned from serving in it – learned from the men and women who have been and still are the Navy. I love the Navy because it gave me the opportunity to pass on that learning to young men and women who were not engaged in some kind of personal exploration but were seeking knowledge and understanding, guidance and mentoring so that they too could become skillful mariners, good shipmates, and trusted friends. The Navy taught me what it means to be a teacher. As I continue to study to become one, I will always be grateful to the Navy for that lesson.

For One of the Dead - Week of September 6, 2009

2009-09-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

Please remember Zaid Abdul Kareem Khayoun, a husband and father who died in the Iraq War. I don't know him but I do know that his life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.[i]

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[i] Source: Iraq Body Count - http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/individuals/vu1432.

A Plea for Compassion

2009-09-04T03:50:00.000-07:00

My service at the Guantanamo detention facility (2005 – 2006) was a defining period in my life. It was a major milepost on the journey from naval officer to pacifist and critic of my country. Even as I reaffirmed my love of the Navy, my pride in its Sailors, and my embrace of its core values I began to realize that my country’s actions in the so-called “War on Terror” were and are fundamentally unjust. Even then, while still on active duty, I began to question and speak out. The following is a reflection I offered at my own church (Channing Memorial Church in Newport, RI) in June of 2006, not long after my return from Guantanamo. At the time, I had not yet embraced pacifism as I do today but the journey had already begun. Even then, I made a plea for compassion in an increasingly warlike society – a plea no less relevant today.
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Last week, I read a quotation in a newspaper by the commander of the detainee camps at Guantanamo who, in the wake of the suicides of three of his charges referred to the detainees in this way, “They're nothing short of a damn animal that can't be trusted.” I suppose I should not have been surprised. Dehumanizing and demonizing our enemies is a recurring theme in our history. David Hume, in A Treatise on Human Nature in 1740 stated:

When our own nation is at war with any other, we detest them under the character of cruel, perfidious, unjust, and violent: But always esteem ourselves and allies equitable, moderate, and merciful. If the general of our enemies be successful, ‘tis with difficulty we allow him the figure and character of a man. He is a sorcerer: He has communication with demons. . .He is bloody-minded, and takes pleasure in death and destruction. But if the success be on our side, our commander has all the opposite good qualities, and is a pattern of virtue, as well as of courage and conduct. His treachery we call policy: His cruelty is an evil inseparable from war. In short, every one of his faults we either endeavour to extenuate, or dignify it with the name of that virtue, which approaches it.

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Some would argue that dehumanizing and demonizing one’s enemies is necessary to sustain public support for a war. To see a war to a victorious conclusion, people need to embrace its inherent cruelty and viciousness. This is often possible only by viewing the recipients of this cruelty and viciousness as less than human. After all, how can we justify our actions if they are carried out against fellow human beings whose worth and dignity is at least as valuable as our own? Unfortunately, by dehumanizing our enemies, we dehumanize ourselves. It becomes easy to accept cruelty and heartlessness. It becomes easy to deny the better side of our natures – that which embraces love and compassion. It becomes easy to deny the inherent worth and dignity of each and every human being.

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After 23 years as a naval officer, I am coming face to face with this truth. On our walls at home hang a number of the medals and citations I have received for military merit. I have always been particularly proud of the one I received for the significant part I played in planning and executing a bombing campaign on Iraq in 1998. My pride stems from the fact that the award recognizes superior performance in a military operation. Not long ago, however, I looked at the medal and citation in a new light. I wondered how many people had died or been injured as a result of my skill and efficiency as a naval officer during those four days in 1998. I thought about taking it down but decided not to. I am not ashamed of the service to my country that the award represents but now I think of those people whose lives were lost or changed as a result of my actions. I always want to remember them.

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As most of you know, I served at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay for several months last year. I am proud of this service as well, proud of being asked to lead Sailors in a nationally-important mission and proud of those Sailors for their service in a job more difficult than you can imagine. As I walked around the camps at night, however, I made a point of looking at the face of every detainee. I would try to imagine what it must be like to live like they did in a small cell with no freedom to do any of the things we take for granted, freedom to run, freedom to be with whomever we choose, freedom to be alone, freedom to love and to show love. I stood in one of their cells once and it made me feel very uncomfortable, very claustrophobic. Often my Sailors, tired and frustrated after long watches walking the blocks, would ask me why we treated the detainees better than we, ourselves, are treated. I could not argue with what we provided the detainees: the good food prepared to halal standards, the excellent medical care, the good exercise facilities. I also could not argue with the bad behavior of some of the detainees – the verbal abuse they would direct at the Sailors, the feces and urine some would throw at them, the attempts to physically assault them. I would tell these Sailors, however, to spend a week living as a detainee did in a small cell or shackled when moving from place to place and then we would revisit their question. Often I heard people serving in Guantanamo take pride that, despite the fact that the detainees are (quote) “some of the most evil people on Earth – people who would give no thought to acting with heartless brutality” (endquote), we treated them so well. I often wonder whether these people stopped to think of the life the detainees are really living or did they view each day simply as another phase in the “asymmetric warfare” we are waging with the detainees. I often wonder how many of these good men and women serving there really felt compassion for their charges. I confess that I never really did until I served there.

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What these two events and others in my military service have taught me is not that the wars we have waged are necessarily unjust but, rather, that we often wage them without compassion. For me, the bombing campaign in 1998 and the Guantanamo assignment were each just a new challenge, another step in the career, another job. On reflection, in part because of my embrace of Unitarian Universalism, I have begun to think of how my actions and the actions of my country impact my human brothers and sisters. How many of us, as Americans who benefit from and sanction the use of our military power around the world, reflect on its impact on others? How many count the number of Iraqi and Afghani dead and wounded in addition to our own? How many of us have decided that the Iraq War was a mistake only when the predictions of easy victory proved false? How many people, such as myself, took 23 years to figure out that compassion is an essential ingredient in any person’s, any people’s, any nation’s relationship with others.

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OK – reflection and self-examination are fine but, what can we do about it? If compassion is so lacking in America that we can accept the brutality of war, we can pass on attitudes like that of the camp commander at Guantanamo, we can convince ourselves that suicide and death are simply “asymmetric warfare” waged by an enemy who is not worthy of human dignity, how can we as Unitarian Universalists effect change? As Rev. Tom Owen-Towle said, “We must stop agonizing and start organizing.” We can bear witness individually and as a faith community to the need for compassion as the basis for promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person. I’m not talking about doing this at coffee hour after service but around the coffee pot at work. Turn down the Fox News commentary on the TV set in the break room and appeal to your co-workers’ compassion. Ask your neighbors whether they think suicide really is an asymmetric warfare weapon. Ask questions, get people to think, appeal to their better natures.
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The other day, I visited the school of my two young cousins who live near Boston. I was asked to speak at their Flag Day assembly and talk to the children about what it means to be a Sailor in the Navy. The children were given the opportunity to ask me questions. One asked, “Have you ever killed anyone?” There was some giggling at the question – I think they thought it was much like the others they were asking such as had I ever been seasick, what’s the food like on a ship, etc. I thought for a second and answered, “Yes, I’ve helped plan and taken part in operations in which people have been killed.” As I suppose often happens when children innocently ask questions that go to the heart of the matter, it made me stop and reflect. Yes, I have killed people. Yes, I have participated in holding detainees at Guantanamo. Yes, I have accepted that these actions were necessary and in the defense of my country. And, yes, I accept that my actions have cost the life or the freedom of human beings whose inherent worth and dignity are at least as important as my own. Their suffering inspires me to appeal to you for greater compassion for our enemies and to inspire that compassion in others.

"It Was Necessary to Keep Us Safe"

2009-08-31T09:16:00.000-07:00

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Mr. Cheney said he also supported officers who strayed outside Justice Department rules and used unauthorized interrogation techniques, saying they did so to keep Americans safe.[i]

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To many people, anything the government does is justified if it might save American lives. U.S. Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, put it baldly: "We should do whatever we have to do."[ii]
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Even our current President, despite statements to the contrary, supports this view:
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The argument that inhuman acts are necessary and acceptable when used against an evil enemy to preserve national security is not new. Adolf Hitler justified genocide of the Jewish community in Europe on the grounds that it was necessary to the survival of the German race. Soviet Leaders such as Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev firmly believed that the millions sent to the Siberian Gulags were a threat to the Communist revolution and the Soviet state. Arbitrary arrest, indefinite confinement without trial, mental abuse, and physical torture have been and are today tools used by nation states (including the United States) in the name of their people to “keep them safe.”

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I am sure that this statement will be challenged. “How can you compare us to Hitler and Stalin? Such hyperbole has no place in a rational debate!” I probably would have said the same thing not so long ago but, the more I think, read, and reflect on this, the more I have come to believe that comparing the United States to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is not hyperbole. Our nation is becoming like those which we, at one time, fought to bring down because of the evil they let loose among humanity.

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Recently I was reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, specifically the chapters in which he describes arrest and interrogation in Stalin’s Soviet Union.[iv] As I read his descriptions of interrogation techniques (all of which he describes as torture) I was struck with similarities I found with some of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EIT) described in the recently released report of the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on United States detention and interrogation activities since September 11, 2001[v]:

CIA EIT: In cramped confinement, the detainee is placed in a confined space, typically a small or large box, which is usually dark. Confinement in a smaller space lasts no more than two hours and in a larger space it can last up to 18 hours.
Solzhenitsyn: Prison begins with the box, in other words, what amounts to a closet or packing case. The human being who has just been taken from freedom, still in an inner state of turmoil, ready to explain, to argue, to struggle, is, when he first set foot in prison, clapped into a ‘box’, which sometimes has a lamp and a place where he can sit down, but which sometimes is dark and constructed in such a way that he can only stand up and even then is squeezed against the door. And he is held there for several hours, or for half a day, or a day. During these hours he knows absolutely nothing! Will he perhaps be confined there all his life? He has never in his life encountered anything like this, and he cannot guess the outcome.
CIA EIT: Insects placed in a confinement box involve placing a harmless insect in the box with the detainee.
Solzhenitsyn: In the dark closet made of wooden planks, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of bedbugs, which had been allowed to multiply. The guards removed the prisoner’s jacket or field shirt, and immediately the hungry bedbugs assaulted him, crawling onto him from the walls or falling off the ceiling. At first he waged war with them strenuously, crushing them on his body and on the walls, suffocated by their stink. But after several hours he weakened and let them drink his blood without a murmur.
CIA EIT: During wall standing, the detainee may stand about 4 to 5 feet from a wall with his feet spread approximately to his shoulder width. His arms are stretched out in front of him and his fingers rest on the wall to support all of his body weight. The detainee is not allowed to reposition his hands or feet.
Solzhenitsyn: Then there is the method of simply compelling a prisoner to stand there. This can be arranged so that the accused stands while being interrogated – because that, too, exhausts and breaks a person down. It can be set up in another way – so that the prisoner sits down during interrogation but is forced to stand up between interrogations. (A watch is set over him, and the guards see to it that he doesn’t lean against the wall, and if he goes to sleep and falls over he is given a kick and straightened up.) Sometimes even one day of standing is enough to force him to testify to anything at all.
CIA EIT: The application of stress positions may include having the detainee sit on the floor with his legs extended straight out in front of him with his arms raised above his head or kneeling on the floor while leaning back at a 45 degree angle.
Solzhenitsyn: The accused could be compelled to stand on his knees – not in some figurative sense, but literally: on his knees without sitting back on his heels, and with his back upright. People could be compelled to kneel in the interrogator’s office or the corridor for twelve, or even twenty-four or forty-eight hours.
CIA EIT: Sleep deprivation will not exceed 11 days at a time.
Solzhenitsyn: Sleeplessness was a great form of torture; it left no visible marks and could not provide grounds for complaint even if an inspection – something unheard of anyway – were to strike on the morrow.
CIA EIT: The application of the waterboard technique involves binding the detainee to a bench with his feet elevated above his head. The detainee’s head is immobilized and an interrogator places a cloth over the detainee’s mouth and nose while pouring water onto the cloth in a controlled manner. Airflow is restricted for 20 to 40 seconds and the technique produces the sensation of drowning and suffocation.
It is interesting to note that Solzhenitsyn does not describe waterboarding as one of the techniques used by Soviet interrogators.

Reading the above, it appears almost as if CIA interrogators took a leaf from Solzhenitsyn’s book to develop their program.

Hyperbole? I don’t think so.

From his Gestapo prison cell in 1943, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of the failure of those who embraced the “reasonable, rational approach” to affect any change in Nazi Germany:

The “reasonable” people’s failure is obvious. With the best intentions and a naïve lack of realism, they think that with a little reason they can bend back into position the framework that has gone out of joint. In their lack of vision they want to do justice to all sides, and so the conflicting forces wear them down with nothing achieved. Disappointed by the world’s unreasonableness, they see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness; they step aside in resignation or collapse before the stronger party.[vii]
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Just as Bonhoeffer's times demanded more of the voices of humanity and compassion among the religious in Nazi Germany, so do our times demand more of us. If we truly want to be “the religion for our time” as our new UUA President Rev. Peter Morales has called us to be, then we need to speak out and act against the injustices of secret rendition, detention without trial, and torture with more than just a few pages on a web site, more than just a few voices in the blogosphere, more than just a few activist Congregations. We need to speak out with one voice and act with one heart today and every day to end these injustices. As one angry woman said at a recent health care debate, “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!” Well, I want my country back too, a country founded on values we as UU’s embrace as a matter of religious conviction.

So I ask myself again and ask all of you, “Where is the outrage?”

[i] Swarns, Rachel L. "Cheney offers sharp defense of C.I.A. interrogation tactics." New York Times, August 30, 2009.
[ii] Chapman, Steve. "Rationalizing torture." Chicago Tribune Online, August 27, 2009.
[iii] Miller, Greg. "Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool." Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2009.
[iv] Sohlzhenitsyn, Aleksandr (1995). The gulag archipelago, 1918 – 1956: A literary investigation. Abridged edition translated by Thomas P. Witney and Harry Willets. London: The Folio Society, 2005.
[v] Central Intelligence Agency, Inspector General (2004). Special review: Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001 – October 2003). Langley, VA: Office of the IG CIA, p. 15. Downloaded from the National Security Archive, August 31, 2009, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torture_archive/index_ig.htm.
[vi] For example, see the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s statements on torture at: http://www.uusc.org/stoptorture.
[vii] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1943). "After ten years: A reckoning made at New Year 1943," in Letters and papers from prison. London: The Folio Society, 2000, p. 4.

For One of the Dead - Week of August 30, 2009

2009-08-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

Please remember Edward C. Kramer, a 39-year old who died in the Iraq War. I don't know him but I do know that his life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.[i]

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[i] Source: U. S. and Coalition Casualties - http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2009.06.html.

The Firemen are at the Door

2009-08-28T04:46:00.000-07:00

I am a book collector. I inherited the gene that carries with it this sickness from my father. I grew up in a home with thousands of beautiful books, collected as much for their beauty as for their content. I do the same. But, although I collect books that are, in many ways, works of art; I never buy a book that I would not, at some time, like to read. Some of my books, however, are well-worn friends, read over and over – each time yielding a new insight, giving a new gift.

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From time to time, I have tried to identify my five “desert island books” – those I could not do without on a desert island if marooned for a long time. I have often had to do this as a result of my work as a seagoing naval officer. I could only stuff so many books into my “sea bag” when I went to sea and what I chose had to last me for several weeks or months. One sure choice was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Written over 50 years ago, Bradbury’s story of a repressive society in which firemen, instead of putting out fires, burn forbidden books (which ignite at 451 degrees F) carries as much resonance today as when it was written. I have three copies of this book including a limited edition, bound in aluminum because aluminum is resistant to heat.

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Guy Montag is a fireman, a ten-year veteran of the force who has never questioned what he does or why he does it. Two events change all this. First he meets Clarisse McClellan, a young woman who is a square peg and who asks him disturbing questions such as whether he takes the time to stop and smell the roses or to taste the rain, why do firemen burn books, and if he is happy. The second event is a fire call in which he and his comrades must burn a great hidden library. Unfortunately, the police have not yet arrested the owner and Montag watches in horror as the owner sets the library ablaze herself and commits suicide in the fire. Montag, sickened by what he has seen, takes to his bed. His captain pays him a visit. In an effort to get Montag back on his feet, the captain explains why things are the way they are.

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“You like bowling, don’t you Montag?”, [says Captain Beatty].

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“Bowling, yes.”

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“And golf?”

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“Golf is a fine game.”

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“Basketball?”

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“A fine game.”

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“Billiards, pool? Football?”

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“Fine games, all of them.”

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“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh?”, [says Beatty]. Organize and organize and super organize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges move from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before.

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“Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books too, the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you are happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.”

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“Yes, but what about the firemen, then?” asked Montag.

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“Ah.” Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. “What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word ‘intellectual’, of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school who was exceptionally ‘bright’, did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach the man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world . . . there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me.”
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“. . . You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, what do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.”
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“Yes”, (said Montag).

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“Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too . . . Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.”[i]

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When my wife and I lived in the Kingdom of Bahrain (1998 - 2000), an absolute monarchy in the Middle East, our news came from CNN International and the BBC World Service. While the United States heard little else than about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment, we learned about East Timor, Palestine, Israel, starvation in Africa, the news of the World – news that our countrymen knew or cared little about. Without the escape offered by American networks such as the Sci Fi Channel, TNN, Fox News, we rediscovered the books we had spent so many years collecting. We rediscovered conversation; we rediscovered people. When we came home, it was easy for me to slip back into the habit of mindless channel surfing on cable. Today, in the United States, we read less and we think less. We are happy and to hell with the rest of the World. We indulge in triviality. Murders and scandal lead the 6 O’clock news. Speeches by Nobel Peace Prize - winning former Presidents are drowned out by politicians who tell other politicians (without shame or apology) to “Go f--- yourself” and tell journalists to “Shove it”. Good looks are becoming a measure of a strong candidate. Political discourse has been reduced to sound bites and shouting. Captain Beatty would feel right at home here.

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Ask yourself, is Bradbury’s fable is coming to pass? I think so. I think the firemen are at the door. If we are not careful, someone is going to let them in.
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[i] Bradbury, Ray (1953). Fahrenheit 451. New York: The Limited Editions Club, pp. 50 – 53.

For One of the Dead - Week of August 23, 2009

2009-08-28T04:30:00.000-07:00

Please remember Mohammed Akeel, an 11-year old who died in the Iraq War on July 9, 2009. I don't know him but I do know that his life was every bit as sacred as mine. His death diminishes all of our lives.[i]

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[i] Source: Iraq Body Count - http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/individuals/fn1538.

United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy

2009-08-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

We lost a great advocate and actor for social justice today with the death of United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The New York Times obituary http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/us/politics/27kennedy.html provides a full sketch of his life touching on his mistakes and failings as well as his achievements and successes.
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He seems to have done a lot of stupid things in his life and was less than honorable in his private actions and in his accountability for them on more than one occasion.

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To me, however and in spite of all that, he will always be a great man - greater than his brothers. In an era when so many who are gifted with wealth and privilege devote their lives to increasing them, Kennedy devoted his life, wealth, and privilege to promoting distributive justice and building the beloved community. For these goals, he worked steadfastly with honor, courage, and commitment.
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At a time when the greed, selfishness, and excesses of many of the privileged in our society leave us breathless, Kennedy's failings seem minor in comparison. His achievements in the service of others, however, are monumental and an inspiration to all of us with a passion for justice.
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He leaves a legacy at least as significant as that of his great legislative predecessors - men such as Senator Daniel Webster. We were blessed with his presence and we will miss him.

Speakers for the Dead

2009-08-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

The other night I re-read Orson Scott Card’s science fiction novel Ender’s Game. As I was closing the book, I recalled that it is on the United States Navy’s recommended reading list. Curious as to why, I found the following description of the book on the Navy’s web site (http://www.navyreading.navy.mil/details.aspx?q=73):

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Beneath the sci-fi surface trappings, (Ender’s Game) reflects the author’s interests in the military culture, and at its core, it is very much about military problem-solving and tactical thinking. Its hero, Ender Wiggin, is a mere six-year-old at the story’s outset. At this tender age he already has been perceived by the International Fleet (I.F.) as having the special qualities necessary to lead Earth forces against the aliens who threaten from space. The I.F. sends Ender to the Battle School, where gifted children such as himself are drilled in military science. The core of the school’s education is a battle-simulation exercise; Ender soon proves himself master of the wargaming challenges, and becomes the youngest commander in history (he has advanced only to pre-adolescence by novel’s end). Life at Battle School, particularly the intricacies of the wargaming, is evocatively depicted.
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While it falls squarely within the science-fiction genre, Ender’s Game is really very much about a promising young military professional, training in strategy and tactics, honing his critical-thinking skills. For the up-and-coming individual in the real-world military, it is an especially resonant tale. With its vivid and laudatory depiction of the military-training culture, its stressing of the importance of the commander’s role, and its illustration of the necessity for the warfighter to be able to be multi-dimensional in his thinking, this book has developed a well-deserved following within the military.
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This is a good, but incomplete description of the book. I wonder if the Navy reviewer actually read it because the book’s conclusion is much at odds with our military culture; one that honors military service in the conduct of so-called just war above virtually all else. Far from being a laudatory depiction of military culture, Card has written a story that is highly critical of war; depicting it as never just, never necessary, and never inevitable.

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Young Ender Wiggin is as brilliant as the Navy reviewer describes him to be. He also hates military service because he hates what he is being asked to become – the perfect military commander who will ruthlessly eradicate his enemies. Early in his training, Ender realizes that his teachers at the so-called “Battle School” are creating situations in which he must figure out how to defeat and destroy his enemies (simulated and real) to survive. These situations, each more challenging than the last, are designed to develop Ender into the leader who will command Earth forces against an invading alien race that threatens to destroy mankind. Ender proves his abilities and is always victorious in battle exercises that pit one team of children against another. Likewise, Ender always defeats, humiliates, and even kills those older boys who try to bully him because they are envious of his leadership and tactical abilities. At the climax of the novel, Ender, already a killer and hating himself for it, believes he is merely fighting in another simulated battle. Instead, he directs the Earth star fleet in a real action in which he destroys the enemy home planet, completely eradicating the alien race. After he learns the truth, and amid much rejoicing among his comrades and teachers, Ender alone feels remorse for what he has done.

The aliens are an insect-like species who are so different from humans that the two races have no way to communicate with each other. It is the aliens (whom the humans refer to pejoratively as “buggers”) who attacked first. Throughout the novel, Ender’s teachers tell him that it is necessary that he become such a ruthless killer because only ruthlessness will defeat the “buggers” and save humanity. After he has practiced genocide, destroying the “buggers”, Ender wonders if such ruthlessness was really necessary.

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Travelling to one of the abandoned alien colony worlds (which humans are eagerly occupying and exploiting), Ender finds a message left behind by the “buggers”. Because Ender has devoted his life to "understanding the enemy” in order to defeat them, only Ender can understand the message. In it Ender reads that the “buggers” have come to recognize and regret their mistake in attacking humanity. Unable to communicate with humans, the “buggers” realize humans will destroy them. Facing death, they ask only that humanity understand them, forgive them, and make use of the former “bugger” worlds in peace.

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If only we could have talked to you...But since it could not be, we ask only this: that you remember us, not as enemies, but as tragic sisters, changed into a foul shape by fate or God or evolution. If we had kissed, it would have been a miracle to make us human in each other’s eyes. Instead we killed each other. But still we welcome you now as guestfriends. Come into our homes, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets; they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.[i]
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Ender now understands the “buggers” and makes it his mission to explain them to humanity, to be the “speaker for the dead.” It is his hope that, in telling the “buggers’” story he can convince mankind that by understanding one’s enemies, wars like the one just fought are not necessary and need never be fought. As “speaker for the dead”, he hopes to advance the cause of peace.
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I have argued that war is never just, never necessary, and never inevitable. Many disagree even as they would like to see an end to war. To those who believe that the scourge of war cannot be stopped, I say that perhaps one of the first steps to ending war for all time is to speak for the dead, reminding the living that those who have died were people just like us whose right to life was just as sacred as ours. If we can then begin to view war not as just, necessary, and inevitable but always as an act that deprives us of that sacred right, perhaps we will begin to find meaningful, practical ways to put an end to it.

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It is not possible to know intimately all those who have died but it is possible to speak their names. One’s name is a uniquely distinctive designation. Saying the name of one who has died in war is a way to remember and honor that person. By speaking the names of the dead, we can become speakers for the dead, reminding the living of the human cost of war. Find a way to speak the names of the dead in the wars of today. Find a way, like Ender Wiggin, to be a Speaker for the Dead.[ii]
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[i] Card, Orson Scott (1977). Ender’s game. Nowalk, CT: The Easton Press, p. 225.
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[ii] Names of the dead can be found at web sites such as “Iraq Body Count” (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/) and “U. S. and Coalition Casualties” (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/).

An Open Letter to the President and Democratic Members of Congress

2009-08-21T03:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President and Democratic Members of the House of Representatives and of the Senate,

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I write to you as a retired United States Naval Officer who served this country faithfully for twenty-five years in part because I believed that it was founded on the principle that all men are created equal and are entitled to liberty and equal justice under the law.

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I write to you as a committed congregant of the Unitarian-Universalist Church; a faith community which strives for creation of the Beloved Community – “a completely integrated society, a community of love and justice wherein brotherhood is an actuality in all of social life.” This Beloved Community is what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called a corporate expression of the Christian faith.[i]

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I write to you because I am beginning to lose faith in my country because it is straying from the principles I served to uphold as a naval officer and which I believe in as matter of religious conviction. We have become a country which in the last decade has engaged in unjust war, “shock and awe” bombing of hapless civilians, and torture of war detainees. We have become a country in which a wealthy minority uses its wealth and power to subvert our political and economic systems to enrich itself and serve its own ends while practicing demagoguery; appealing to religious zealotry, nativism, race hatred, and fear to sustain this subverted system. This is not the country I wanted to serve in the Navy. This is not the community my church seeks to build.

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This is not just the fault of conservatives or Republicans. For example, over a decade ago, a Democratic President bowed to the shrill voices of conservatives and agreed to “end welfare as we know it.” In doing so, he and the Members of Congress who supported the welfare reform bill bowed to political expediency and wrought massive distributive injustice.

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Today, with a new Democratic President and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, we have a historic opportunity to correct some of these injustices. We can end these unjust wars. We can stop torture and unlawful detention, holding those responsible for these criminal acts accountable. We can repair an economic system that nearly collapsed because of the unbridled greed of those who controlled it. We can work to build community spirit and the collective will to create the Beloved Community.

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When President John F. Kennedy spoke of the possibility of disarmament and world peace in 1963, [ii] he spoke not of a revolution in human affairs but of an evolution in human institutions, practical steps that could lead, gradually, to a sustainable peace. In a broader context, the Beloved Community can be built in the same way. It will never be built if, as so often in the past, we bow to the will of a minority motivated by anger and fear but it can be built by pragmatic people taking practical steps to attain it over time.

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Today, we have a historic opportunity to take such a step in the current initiative to reform our national health care system – transforming it into one characterized by distributive justice in which all citizens have access to adequate, affordable care throughout their lives. Such a newly transformed system will not be one in which the “free market” determines the cost and extent of care. Instead, it will be one in which the government of the people acts to regulate the health care system to insure that distributive justice is maintained and that all are adequately cared for.

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Unfortunately, I fear we are passing up this historic opportunity. The shrill voices of conservatism are once again dominating the national debate. Politicians looking to score “legislative victories” are preparing to abandon the principles of justice on which they were elected by a significant majority. In the process, they will not correct the distributive injustice in our health care system but sustain it by sustaining those corporate and political entities that have the most to gain by forestalling change.

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Mr. President, Democratic Members of Congress, I urge you to act in a different way. I urge you to stand by the principles of distributive justice upon which you were elected. As you, Mr. President and the leaders of so many faith communities have said, this is a moral issue. I urge you to take a moral stand and complete reform of our health care system that will be meaningful and beneficial to all Americans.

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Sincerely,

Thomas R. Beall
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[i] Smith, Kenneth L. and Zepp, Ira G., Jr. (1974). “Martin Luther King’s Vision of the Beloved Community.” Christian Century, April 3, 1974, pp. 361-363.

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[ii] Speech given by President John F. Kennedy at the commencement ceremonies of American University, Washington, DC, June 10th, 1963. Found at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html.

Passion for Justice

2009-08-17T06:40:00.000-07:00

It is easy to get angry these days. Those who dream of the Beloved Community on Earth see its realization a long way off. In the United States, since September 2001, we have witnessed great injustice. In our foreign affairs we have witnessed machismo trumping statesmanship; leading to unjust war, “shock and awe” bombing of hapless civilians, torture of war detainees, and many other injustices. In our domestic affairs, we have seen how a conservative, wealthy, mostly white minority uses its wealth and power to subvert our political system to enrich itself and serve its own ends while practicing demagoguery; appealing to religious zealotry, nativism, race hatred, and fear to sustain massive distributive injustice. Perhaps most disheartening, because of widespread complacency, injustice is thriving and, despite the good works and good intentions of many, its march in our society proceeds unimpeded.

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Like many religious liberals, I have experienced this anger but I have come to understand how such anger can consume one, damaging relationships and diminishing one’s quality of life.

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As I have written before, I became a Unitarian Universalist while still on active duty in the Navy as my own act of witness against injustice in our society. If I could not speak out while still in uniform, I hoped my new faith community would do so for me. I hoped it would speak with one strong voice, clearly linking its principles of, “justice, equity and compassion in human relations” and “the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all” to effective action to address systemic injustice in society. I found that this hope is not always the reality of my faith community.

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If you search the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) web site with the question, “What do UU’s believe?” you will find this page. On it, the UUA recommends to its members that, when asked “What do you believe?” we should:

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Explain that Unitarian Universalists believe in individual responsibility to search for and form their own beliefs and as a result many of them may believe different things. Explain that what holds UUs together is not common belief, but common experience, a common approach to life. Unitarian Universalism has seven guiding principles, rather than a creed.
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Instead of trying to sum up the philosophical/theological/historical nature of Unitarian Universalism in a few words, share what YOU like about your church, why you go, and what excites you about it.[i]
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To be fair, you will also find statements on this page about affirming that we should love our neighbors as ourselves and work for a better world. But I think the statement above leaves the door open both to a lot of ambiguity and the opportunity to choose whether or not to act for justice as one sees fit. For example, I believe that war is never just, never necessary, and never inevitable. That would make me a pacifist. Others, however, embrace the doctrine of just war – that it is sometimes necessary to wage war to stop aggression or establish a just peace. Both views are fully consistent with our broad principles of “justice, equity and compassion in human relations” and “the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” The difference is in how those who embrace each view would go about establishing “peace, liberty, and justice for all.” In addition to the basic choice of whether to fight in the armed forces, those who embrace each view might have vastly different opinions on how our society should be structured, how resources should be allocated, and what constitutes distributive justice. Many of those who are just war advocates fully embrace the need for the national security state which our country has become. A strong military, supported by vast resources, is necessary not only to our survival but also to establish justice by waging just war against terrorists and evil aggressors. A pacifist, on the other hand, would repudiate the national security state and advocate for a just redistribution of the resources that fuel it to the needy in our society. Both of these widely divergent beliefs are welcome in UU churches. Because they are it is a wonder we can take any action at all. Often, collectively, we do not.

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In theory, if not always in practice, Unitarian Universalism has a strong social action component. For example, the Rev. Richard S. Gilbert, in his book, The Prophetic Imperative: Social Gospel in Theory and Practice, argues that our movement has a religious mandate for the corporate address of systemic social injustice.[ii] He demonstrates how social action can and should be an integral part of each of our Congregations. He proposes a theory and a blueprint for the Unitarian Universalist practice of social gospel by offering following model of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation:

Visualize two circles, one inside the other.
The inner circle represents Worship – the celebrating community.
The outer circle is divided into three equally sized semi-circles: (a) Mutual Ministry – a caring community, (b) Religious Education – a learning community, (c) Moral Discourse and Action – a prophetic community.
Two-sided arrows link each semi-circle and the inner circle with all the others.[iii]

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What appeals to me about Gilbert’s model is that “Moral Discourse and Action" (i.e. Justice) occupy such important places in Congregational life – equal to that of “Religious Education” and “Mutual Ministry”. When first introduced to these ideas it appeared to me that by advocating for and implementing this model in our Congregations, we could elevate a commitment to work for justice to its rightful place in our faith community. We could inspire not only the committed members of church social justice committees but entire Congregations to act for justice, drawing on their collective power to make really meaningful progress in the cause of establishing the Beloved Community.

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I think now, however, that my understanding of the model has been incomplete and, as a result, I have not been fair to my fellow members of the Unitarian Universalist faith community. Gilbert’s goal is not to advocate that social action is the central function of the prophetic liberal church but, rather, to demonstrate that it:

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“...is a vital function, [that] must emerge out of [the] religious community that serves well the functions of worship, caring, and education...If I have described this circle within a circle correctly (the model above), you will notice that each section touches every other section (the arrows between them in both directions suggest their interpretation). They are understood not as administrative categories, but as dimensions, functions of the church occurring at many programmatic places. This is a model of the prophetic church. The church teaches by what it says and by what it does. It is a quadraphonic, not monaural sound.”

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Those of us whose goal is to elevate social action to a level equal to our passions can easily lose sight of why others come to church – to experience worship, to be members of a caring community, and to educate their children in our liberal faith. We can lose sight of the fact that it is not the purpose of these activities to fuel social action. Instead the healthy liberal church is one in which all four activities nurture and support each other.

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Like many Unitarian Universalists, I have served in many roles in my own Congregation. I have given and raised lots of money to help our church thrive and grow. I have served on and chaired committees, served as Congregation Vice President and President, chaired our Governing Board, chaired the annual fund drive, written church policies, led the Congregation’s effort to identify its vision, planned and led worship services, worked in our soup kitchen, delivered our food donations to the local food bank, walked to raise awareness about hunger and about marriage equality, and taught religious education. In all of this, focused as I was on my own vision of my church as powerful instrument for social action, I wonder if I really understood my fellow congregants and was truly compassionate to their needs and hopes for our church. I wonder if I was truly committed to nurturing their needs as well as my own. The model of the prophetic liberal church that Gilbert offers can perform this nurturing but only if all of us recognize our obligation to be compassionate to each other’s needs and recognize our individual and collective responsibility to nurture all of our hopes and dreams.

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In most Unitarian Universalist Congregations, the hopes and dreams of some include a more complete and collective embrace of social action. Others, however, are more focused on different areas of Congregational life. To thrive and grow, however, I believe that members of Congregations must come together in a collective hope and dream to realize the vision of a prophetic liberal church, completely integrating all components of Gilbert’s model.

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So what’s to be done? As one who has been a Congregation leader, I can offer a few suggestions. Those of us whose passions are focused in one area can try to reach out to others in a different way. We can try to do things we never thought of doing. I can volunteer to be a caregiver in our Congregation, while another can offer to plan and lead worship or teach a religious education class, while another can participate in social action. We can volunteer to be a church officer or chair the annual fundraising drive in order to get a holistic view of Congregational life. During worship, as church leaders, we can stop looking around the sanctuary to see if someone is there whom we need to ask to do some chore for the church. Those of us who are so busy with our individual programs can better partake of worship stopping, taking a deep breath and really listening to what the readers and the minister are saying. We can make an effort to experience fellowship hour as an opportunity to really get to know people rather than as some huge surrogate meeting where church leaders solicit contributions or volunteer efforts. We can try to stop focusing so much about where we, in our Congregations, will be at the end of the road and start simply to enjoy the journey with our fellow congregants. For myself, I can still work to inspire more social action but, more importantly, I can try to work with others to inspire us to become a more perfect example of the prophetic liberal church.

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Passion for justice can easily lead to anger these days. As Unitarian Universalists passionately committed to justice, perhaps we can find some peace and fulfillment in our church communities but only if we all work not individually but collectively to make our Congregations thriving, nurturing components of the prophetic liberal church.

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[i] “What Do UU’s Believe?” UUA Interconnections, November 1st, 2004. Accessed online August 14th, 2009 at: http://www.uua.org/leaders/leaderslibrary/leaderslibrary/interconnections/45061.shtml.

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[ii] Gilbert, Rev. Richard S. (2000). The prophetic imperative: Social gospel in theory and practice. Boston: Skinner House Books, pp. 4-8.

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[iii] Ibid., p. 121.

Core Values and the Prophetic Imperative

2009-08-08T16:11:00.001-07:00

Address Delivered to the Congregation of Westminster Unitarian Church, East Greenwich, Rhode Island
May 24th, 2009

Good morning. Thank you for asking me to speak to you today. I am sure you are wondering what I am going to talk about given that I opened this service with a statement from the United States Navy’s Core Values Charter[i] and then we recited together the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of the Beloved Community.[ii] Please bear with me as I try to link the two together.

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In 2003, the U. S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute wanted to find out what motivated American service people to put their lives on the line in combat. Researchers asked U.S. troops who had just fought in the Iraq invasion what were their motivations for continuing to fight in a battle. Not surprisingly, the foremost answer was that they fought for each other. What was surprising to some was that American troops also cited the importance of the cause for which they were fighting – and that “cause” was not finding weapons of mass destruction, not overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but bringing liberation and democracy to the people of Iraq. Fighting for ideals and values which Americans believe are their own was of great importance to these troops. Historians have found similar motivations in other wars. Civil War historian James McPherson found that Confederate troops fought “for liberty and independence from what they regarded as a tyrannical government” while Union troops fought “to preserve the nation created by the founders from dismemberment and destruction.” Freedom from tyranny and liberation of the oppressed are goals that American service people have always fought and died for.[iii]

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These findings don’t surprise me. American military service culture exposes young Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen to service core values from the day they take their oaths. In my service, the Navy, Sailors embrace values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment and a creed that embodies those values and which states:

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I am a United States Sailor.
I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and I will obey the orders of those appointed over me.
I represent the fighting spirit of the Navy and all who have gone before me to defend freedom and democracy around the world.
I proudly serve my country’s Navy combat team with Honor, Courage and Commitment.
I am committed to excellence and the fair treatment of all.[iv]

Our Constitution, freedom and democracy, and fair treatment of all – these are the values we serve and fight for. These are values that were so important to some that they gave their lives to uphold them.

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Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a day on which we honor and remember our service men and women who fought and died for these values. It is appropriate that we do so but I think it is also appropriate that we ask ourselves, “What can I do to really honor this sacrifice?”
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It is my belief that we can best honor them by the practice of our faith as Unitarian Universalists.

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I want to share with you why I became a Unitarian Universalist. As a career naval officer dedicated to the practice of my service’s core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment, I became disillusioned and disgusted with what my country has become after 9/11. I believe that our government, with our tacit consent, has practiced unjust war, denial of human rights, abrogation of civil liberties, and torture – all in the name of a war whose enemy we don’t even formally name. In so doing, I believe our government, again with our silent acceptance, has dishonored all of those who wear the uniform, serve, fight, and sometimes die for the values I spoke of. These are harsh and, perhaps, surprising words coming from a retired career officer but I feel I must say them.

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Because I feel this way and because, while on active duty, I could not speak out and still be true to my oath, I became a Unitarian Universalist as my own personal act of witness against what I believe is so fundamentally wrong in our society. In a country in which so many believe that (in theologian and journalist Chris Hedges’ words) “war is a force that gives us meaning”, Unitarian Universalists have always looked for meaning elsewhere. The Rev. James Luther Adams in 1946, calling our religion “A Faith for Free Men,” wrote, “...that the commanding, sustaining, transforming reality (of our religion) finds its rightful focus in meaningful human history, in free, cooperative effort for the common good. In other words, this reality fulfills man’s life only when men stand in right relation to each other. Man, the historical being, comes most fully to terms with this reality in the exercise of freedom that works for justice in the human community. Only what creates freedom in a community of justice is dependable...Only the society that gives every man the opportunity to share in the process whereby human potentiality is realizable, only the society that creates social forms of freedom in a community of justice (where every man is given his due), only the freedom that respects the divine image and dignity in every man are dependable.” Rev. Adams concludes, “As Lincoln put it, ‘Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.’”[v]

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Adams is describing what the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the Beloved Community, a completely integrated society, a community of love and justice wherein brotherhood will be an actuality in all of social life.[vi] I became a Unitarian Universalist because I believe that our core value is the Beloved Community and our mission in the world is to build it and sustain it. The freedom that arises from life in such a community is, I believe, the freedom those who serve in the armed forces fight for. You and I can honor all those who fought and died for this freedom by striving ceaselessly for realization of the Beloved Community.

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The Beloved Community may seem a lofty, unrealistic, unattainable goal. I believe, as many in our church do, that it IS attainable. This belief is fully consistent with our sixth principle to affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
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But how well have I done, have we done affirming and promoting this Beloved Community? I asked myself this question recently when experiencing a crisis of faith – wondering whether we as a church strive as we must to build this community. As Rev. Amy Freedman, my own minister, has said, “As human beings we can either obstruct the establishment of a just and loving community or participate in creating one. Our faith in the goodness of life calls us, you and me, to speak and work, live and love in order to bring more understanding and healing into this world.”[vii] Do we choose to embrace this mission? Do we choose to embrace our core value of the Beloved Community and work steadfastly for its realization?

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In one of my final assignments for the Navy, I rediscovered the power of core values – how putting them into practice can make a difference in the world and how practicing them can sustain one in morally challenging times. I was assigned as the Commander of the Navy Element of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, the enemy combatant detention facility. My principal job was to organize, train, and equip Navy Sailors to be detainee guards. It was 2005 and Abu Ghraib was fresh in everyone’s memory. I really wondered how I would train Sailors in such a way as to prevent something like Abu Ghraib happening at Guantanamo. I realized that fundamentally what I needed to do was preach and practice the Navy’s core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment every day. Just as in previous commands, if I did that, my Sailors would follow my example.

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Let me offer one story to illustrate this. Our Sailors went through rigorous training, conducted by Army soldiers, to be guards at GTMO. Much of this training involved simulated exercises with Army role-players acting as detainees and acting in a way that created the worst possible scenario for the guard-trainees. After each exercise, the Sailors (who were normally soaking wet (with simulated urine), covered with baby food (simulated human feces), and, in some cases, a little bit pissed off, would gather for a post-exercise critique with the Army instructors. I found this to be an excellent process. It forced the Sailors to discuss what they had done right and what they had done wrong in a non-threatening environment. Often the Sailors, to their credit, would talk candidly about their mistakes and find ways among themselves to correct them and do better.

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I always attended these post-exercise critiques but seldom interjected, preferring to let the Sailors identify their own problems and find their own solutions. I would speak up to clarify an issue or to ensure that the Sailors found solutions that were consistent with how the Navy wanted them to perform in Guantanamo. For instance, at one post-exercise critique, the Sailors were having a heated discussion with their instructors over the forced extraction from a cell of a role player who had a simulated weapon. Sailors are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to remove a detainee from a cell who was fighting not to be removed. Normally a forced cell extraction involved the Sailors dressing in riot gear (pads, helmets, plastic shield) and entering as a group linked like a chain. They force the detainee up against a wall, wrestle him to the floor, and secure his hands and feet. They then pick him up and remove him. Sailors are taught to apply pressure to points on the detainee’s body to cause him to stop resisting in accordance with accepted unarmed self-defense tactics. During this particular exercise, one Sailor was trying to apply pressure with his knee to a point on the role player’s body (a technique the Sailor had been taught). Unfortunately, the Sailor was doing it incorrectly and it appeared on the film record (forced cell extractions were always filmed) as if the Sailor was gratuitously “kneeing” the role player.

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The Army instructor pointed this out but the Sailors (who still had a little adrenalin in their systems) indignantly held that they were only doing what they had been taught. The instructor then pointed out that it didn’t matter what they were trying to do. The important thing was that it appeared on the film to be gratuitous hitting; something the media would most certainly make use of in a real life situation to paint a picture of abuse at Guantanamo. It was important, therefore, to be sensitive to media and public perceptions.

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At this point, I spoke up. As I started to speak, one of the Sailors told everyone, “Be quiet, the Captain has something to say.” It dawned on me at that moment that these young men and women were looking for clear guidance and I needed to be very clear in what I told them. I said that media perception and public perception were not the issue. What was important was that the Sailors were misapplying the technique they had been taught with the result that they were, in fact, unnecessarily hitting the role player and hurting him. It is simply wrong to apply any more force than is necessary to restrain a detainee in a real-life situation since to do so might cause him unnecessary harm. I then told them not to worry about media or public perceptions. Just strive to do the right thing always, simply because it is the right thing to do. They accepted this – certainly that is how they performed in Guantanamo.

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Did they really – you might ask? I know they did because, after we arrived in Guantanamo, I often conducted unannounced walk-thru’s of the camps at night – a time when not too many senior officers were around. One night, I happened to notice a group of Sailors in a formation getting ready to go into the camps to assume guard duty. They were reciting aloud that Sailor’s Creed I read to you earlier – reminding themselves of what was expected of them. Later I observed these same Sailors acting with the skill they learned in training and with the professionalism and compassion expected of United States Sailors.

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I’m not telling this story to illustrate what a great leader I am or how well my Sailors took orders. What I said was not all that profound. In fact, it was only what the Navy expected me or any other Captain to say to the Sailors in this situation. Further, the Navy expected me to ensure that the Sailors performed in this fashion just as I expected the Sailors to do so. I am, to this day, extremely proud of them but I was never surprised that they performed as they did. We all embraced the Navy’s core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment and put them into practice. In the process, I think we made Guantanamo a slightly better place.

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Identifying with and practicing core values empower one to achieve that which may seem otherwise unobtainable. As Unitarian Universalists, we identify with our core value of the Beloved Community but how do we embrace it in such a way as to empower ourselves to work meaningfully and ceaselessly for its realization?

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I mentioned I recently experienced a crisis of faith. Frankly, I see a lot of complacency in our society now. “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for Bush!” is something I have heard more than once. Others say, “Barack Obama is in the White House so now things will be better – we can relax.” But even now, people are saying things like, “We need to go slow on closing Guantanamo, evaluating all the complexities,” or, “While we condemn torture, nothing is served by prosecuting those who were just following orders. We need to look forward not backward,” and, of course, the conservatives and the nativists are still on the march marginalizing the poor, condemning Mexicans for spreading swine flu, and frightening people with the threat of transferring “terrorists” to super-max prisons near their home towns. Seems like the Beloved Community is still a long way off and no one is doing much to achieve it.

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That’s unfair; lots of people are working toward it – including my minister, many social justice activists in my church and many in the larger UU communion. But, in spite of all that I asked myself, what is my church as a whole doing about it? I felt we weren’t doing enough and also felt I was alone feeling this way – maybe I belonged elsewhere. Then I happened to find the writings of the Rev. Richard S. Gilbert, a UU minister, whose book The Prophetic Imperative: Social Gospel in Theory and Practice kept me in the church by assuring me that I was not alone and that my rather ambiguously-framed concerns and critiques have been given more eloquent form and are a part of the identity of our church.

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Gilbert writes, “I contend that the Unitarian Universalist movement lives under a prophetic imperative, a religious mandate for the corporate address of the church to the systemic problems of society. I cannot prove that; I do not assert it as a divine imperative; I only feel it deep in my bones. Otherwise, we will be trapped in individualistic self-interest promoted by the dominant reactionary rhetoric and by neoconservative ideology, both political and religious.”
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He goes on to say, “My intent is to apply the term prophetic primarily to the religious community. The prophetic church is a religious community that seeks to intervene in human history for the sake of social justice. This intervention is made in the context of religious conviction, but without the supernatural confidence of the Hebrew prophets. The authority of the prophetic liberal church will instead be derived in somewhat more humanistic terms that articulate a transcendent standard for justice.

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“The imperative to be stressed is that which emerges from the disciplines of freedom. Freedom is not merely the absence of restraint, but the will and capacity to act on one’s environment. It is a freedom that implies responsibility to enrich and expand freedom in the social order. Freedom, a central value of Unitarian Universalism, is a social concept, and, if it is to be preserved, an obligation is placed on the free person. I believe we are not free to desist from struggling for freedom for self and others. Freedom, by its very nature, places an imperative claim on the free person to expand that freedom to all.”[viii]

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Echoing Adams and King, Gilbert states that by enriching and expanding freedom in the social order we help build the Beloved Community, calling it, “...a humanistically oriented substitute for the Kingdom of God...a poetic metaphor to describe, not theological salvation in the next world, but social salvation in this one.”

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Gilbert explores the roots of the prophetic imperative in Unitarian and Universalist history and then sketches out a model for how a congregation like yours and mine can embrace it. His model moves away from the traditional stove pipe approach to church programs, with constituencies for ministry, religious education, fund raising, social justice, property management, etc. and toward a more integrated approach in which the spiritual and social action do more than coexist. They are integrated into a whole to the extent that one cannot survive without the other because each is an expression of the other. Such an integrated congregation can be a powerful force in the community for meaningful social action and systemic change.

Gilbert’s is a model that will empower each of our congregations to embrace our core value of the Beloved Community and work more effectively for its realization. It is our religion given expression in action and it is, I believe, a blueprint for the future of our church. That idea is not original with me. For example, one of the candidates for President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. Peter Morales, has said, “True religion teaches us that we are all in this together and that everyone matters. And if we really take that to heart then we will work to end suffering and hatred and violence and oppression. If we are to create a little corner of paradise, there is no room for hatred and injustice.”[ix]

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Unitarian and Universalist clerics have preached about freedom since the days of Channing, Parker, and Ballou. In each case, they speak not of privileges but of the obligation to work for social justice – the foundation of freedom in the Beloved Community. Gilbert speaks of that obligation and offers us a model to fulfill it. It is a model that inspires me to work for the Beloved Community – what I believe to be the core value of the Unitarian Universalist church.

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The freedom of which Channing, Parker, Ballou, Adams, King, Gilbert and others speak is the freedom the men and women we honor this weekend fought and died for. If we truly honor their sacrifice, we should fight for that freedom too.

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[i] “As in our past, we are dedicated to the Core Values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment to build the foundation of trust upon which our strength is based and victory is achieved. These principles upon which the U. S. Navy was founded continue to guide us today...We will be faithful to our Core Values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment as our abiding duty and privilege.” Found at: http://www.tpub.com/content/advancement/12024/img/12024_43_1.jpg.
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[ii] “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.” From: King, Rev. Martin Luther, Jr. (1957). “The Role of the Church in Facing the Nation's Chief Moral Dilemma.” Downloaded May 20th, 2009 from: http://www.wearethebelovedcommunity.org/bcquotes.html.
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[iii] Wong, Leonard, et al (2003). Why they fight: Combat motivation in the Iraq war. Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
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[iv] The Sailor’s Creed and the history of its development can be found on the Naval History and Heritage Command website at: http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/creed.htm.
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[v] Adams, Rev. James Luther (1946). “A Faith for Free Men.” Cited it David B. Parke, The epic of Unitarianism: Original writings from the history of liberal religion. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1985, pp. 151 – 152.
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[vi] See Smith, Kenneth L. and Zepp, Ira G., Jr. (1974). Search for the beloved community: The thinking of Martin Luther King. Jr. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press.
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[vii] Freedman, Rev. Amy Bowden (2007). “Five Smooth Stones of Liberal Religion.” Sermon delivered to the Congregation of Channing Memorial Church, Newport, RI, found at: http://www.channingchurch.org/Archives/Talks/2007/5SmoothStones_9.30.07.pdf.
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[viii] Gilbert, Rev. Richard S. (2000). The prophetic imperative: Social gospel in theory and practice, 2nd edition. Boston: Skinner House Books, pp. 4-8.
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[ix] Morales, Rev. Peter (2008). “Paradise: Lost or stolen?” Sermon delivered to the Congregation of Jefferson Unitarian Church, Golden, CO, found at: http://www.jeffersonunitarian.org/sermons/morales/pm_paradise.html.