About Me
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Peace, peace, when there is no peace
The mural depicted here is from the Kansas State House in
Topeka, and shows a raging, almost maniacal John Brown, the fiery abolitionist,
with a Bible one hand, and a rifle in the other. The fuel for Brown’s violent
rage was the institutionalized violence and injustice of slavery. Even for
those who believe violence is a useful tool in the service of justice making,
Brown engaged in violence in ways that were not rational, sometimes raiding (jayhawking)
the farms of Missouri residents (the nearest slave state) who had no slaves.
Brown is a complex person, and while I don’t condone his
violent choices, I admire his intense opposition to institutionalized violence.
And while his raid on Harper’s Ferry was a tragic fiasco, his death by hanging
was a catalyst in the coalescence of northern opposition to slavery. What is a
Mennonite pastor to think about such a fellow?
My abolitionist and Underground Railroad activist ancestor,
Quaker minister Thomas Frazier, likely would not have condoned Brown’s
violence, but some of his fellow Iowa Quakers provided Brown with critical
support. Frazier and other Quakers were quite willing to violate the Fugitive
Slave Act, which got them in trouble with the law, but going into slave states
and bringing freed slaves back across the border was another matter. Brown and
other raiders would do so, and once slaves were across the border, Quaker
Underground Railroaders were willing to help out. The relationship between the
likes of John Brown and the likes of my great, great, great, great grandfather,
were complex. While they disagreed on methods of confronting slavery, they
shared abhorrence of that form of institutionalized violence. Those Quakers
seemed aware that peace in the abstract was not peace at all.
Some of the most surprising conversations in my life were
with those advocating an armed struggle against oppression in the Philippines.
I say surprising because it seems like another life time. As a pacifist these
discussions quickly focused on my position that armed struggle against
oppression is wrong. Always. The return from my interlocutors was my pacifism
is rooted in privilege and is a luxury, enjoyed on my part by failing to confront the
institutionalized social, economic and political violence against the poor of
the Philippines, which is to say the majority of the people. Furthermore my
place of privilege is sustained by violence. My pacifism is both disingenuous and
hypocritical.
Those conversations do not change my conviction that a “refusal
to bear the sword” is the faithful Christian ethic. But they do make me highly
suspicious of peace in the abstract, of cheap peace, as if we are morally pure
just by throwing the word around. Without a context, the word peace becomes not
only weak, but dangerous, in that it can be used as a mask hiding greater and
deeper violence than that which it claims to oppose, or build barriers to
conversations which might increase understanding.
As long as peace remains nothing more than an abstract concept,
it isn’t peace at all. As Jeremiah and Ezekiel would say, it amounts to shouting peace when there is no peace.
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3 comments:
For those of you interested, here is a link to a story that includes my Frazier relatives.
http://www.blackiowa.org/education/black-history-moments/the-slaves-of-ruell-daggs/
This was a well documented event, and I once stumbled across trial transcripts, where my UR activist kin are indicted under the Fugitive Slave Act. They were freed on technicality.
I think perhaps nonviolent peaceful responses are much more difficult and require much more courage and strength than I typically recognize. The knee-jerk anger response is easy, "feels" natural and almost always seems justified. I have yet to be given any proof that more violence leads to less violence.
It may seem less, but compared to peaceful responses, it is like "destroying" a dandelion by blowing up/off all of the seeds. I confess I also participate far too often in violence if even only in violent thoughts/words.
Perhaps I need to deliberately acknowledge my own daily violent responses, whether in thought, word or deed and at the same time, reclaim compassionate graceful responses which were actually bestowed on my soul at birth. I've restarted reading Nonviolent Communication and found this foreward to challenge me in this way. http://bit.ly/15uxRkW
In Graves vs. Indiana, Judge Baker of the Elkhart Circuit Court in Goshen, assisted a runaway slave to avoid being returned to his owners. The local judicial officers ruled that the warrant from KY had been incorrectly signed by the JP, there, rather than the clerk of their court. Therefore, illegal. The IN S. Ct. ruled for the slaveholders, and the US Supreme Court affirmed. Often an outcome is procedurally based.
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