SPRING/SUMMER 2019 • ISSUE 14
A JOURNAL OF CHRISTIANITY & AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
“IN HIM WAS LIFE, AND THE LIFE WAS THE LIGHT OF MEN. THE LIGHT SHINES IN THE DARKNESS, AND THE DARKNESS HAS NOT OVERCOME IT.” JOHN I — IV,V
Light up the Darkness Foreign Policy & Christian Missions SHADI HAMID
SPRING/SUMMER 2019 • ISSUE 14
THE ALLURE OF ISLAM
THE SUBMISSION OF MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ MICAH MEADOWCROFT
PREACHERS & SPOOKS
BEN PALKA
WHAT THE WEST GAVE US DANIEL STRAND
THE BATTLE FOR BONHOEFFER
REVIEW BY TIMOTHY S. MALLARD
SPRING/SUMMER 2019 | ISSUE 14
SYMPOSIUM: LIGHT UP THE DARKNESS — FOREIGN POLICY & CHRISTIAN MISSIONS From Missionary Kid to Global Bridge Builder By Joshua Walker
The Religious Sources of Russian Conduct By Matt Gobush
Preachers & Spooks By Ben Palka
The American Missions in Korea By Robert Kim
The Role of Morality in International Politics By Mark Amstutz
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ESSAYS Asia Bibi & America By Mark Tooley
Christian Missions: Divine Calling or Cause for Concern? By Drew Griffin
What Did Western Civilization Ever Do For Us?!? By Daniel Strand
SPONSORED BY
31 33 36
Authoritarians Won’t Save the Middle East’s Religious Minorities By Shadi Hamid
A Path to Submission: Michel Houellebecq, Sex & History By Micah Meadowcroft
The Assyrian Mind By Peter Burns
BOOK REVIEWS The “Bookcase” Section Have American Wars Been Just?
40 46 50 56 58
Review of Hall and Charles’ America and the Just War Tradition By Jimmy Lewis
How America’s Wars Have Been (Mostly) Just
Review of Patterson’s Just American Wars (War, Conflict and Ethics) By Mark Melton
A Conflicted American Perspective on Dietrich Bonhoeffer Review of Haynes’ The Battle for Bonhoeffer By Timothy S. Mallard
The World Turned, But in What Direction? Review of Jacobs’ The Year of Our Lord 1943 By Justin Roy
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PUBLISHERS
The Institute on Religion & Democracy The Philos Project
EDITORS
Robert Nicholson Mark Tooley
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Marc LiVecche
MANAGING EDITOR Drew Griffin
DEPUTY EDITOR
Mark Melton
ASSISTANT EDITORS Kirkland An Grayson Logue
SENIOR EDITORS
Joseph Loconte Luke Moon Keith Pavlischek
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Sohrab Ahmari Mark Amstutz Fred Barnes Nigel Biggar Joseph Capizzi J. Daryl Charles Paul Coyer
Michael Cromartie (1950-2017)
Dean Curry Alan Dowd Debra Erickson Thomas Farr Matt N. Gobush Mary Habeck Rebeccah Heinrichs Will Inboden James Turner Johnson Timothy Mallard Jennifer Marshall Paul Marshall Faith McDonnell Walter Russell Mead Paul Miller Joshua Mitchell Mackubin Thomas Owens Eric Patterson Ian Speir Danial Strand Josh Walker Travis Wussow
INTERNS
Joshua Arnold George Barros Micah Paulec Katy Vanderkwaak
FREELANCE EDITOR Sarah Pullen
PRINTED BY Explosive Illumination: Christian missions is often perceived as a mixed bag — it can be illuminating and it can be explosive. Regardless of which it is, it is complex and worthy of focus. Illustration by Kirk An.
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ISSN 24713511
SYMPOSIUM
View from Ankara Castle. By Omer Unlu. Source: Flickr.
From Missionary Kid to Global Bridge Builder:
Missions’ Place in American Foreign Policy & International Relations By Joshua Walker Throughout history and around the world, religious rhetoric has often been used to instigate and justify unspeakable horrors. Religious missions like the Crusades or “New World” discoveries have, at times, gone hand-in-hand with imperialism and expanded into colonialism. As a result, there are many nations and peoples that will never view missionaries, Christian or otherwise, as anything other than a cultural affront and an attempt at cultural subversion. Yet missionaries through the centuries have helped create institutions of comfort, education, and healing—from the inner reaches of the Amazon to Africa’s bushlands to Asia’s bustling metropolises. In addition, helping the least of these, like orphans and widows, has always had particular importance for Christians. Not all missions are humanitarian, but it can be argued that humanitarian aid would be greatly diminished by the absence of missions and missionaries. 4
For instance, in a May 2012 article for The American Political Science Review titled “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy,” sociologist Robert Woodberry demonstrates that “conversionary Protestants” helped spread democracy globally. Moreover, they brought with them religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, and colonial reforms that made stable democracy more likely. American foreign policy would suffer without the rich legacy of these Christian missionaries. Their extraordinary work that has left a footprint, but it is increasingly being erased, both around the world and even at home. Increasingly, as Christian heritage organizations branch out to appeal not just to the faithful who come every Sunday but the social Christians who are not part of churches but like to take part in Christmas and Easter, missionaries are seen more as religious zealots than as bridge-builders who help our interconnected world—whether by fighting human trafficking, seeking healthy
solutions to poverty, being good stewards of our environment, or otherwise. American Christians should, therefore, recognize and promote these missionaries’ efforts that both advance the Kingdom of God and ensure a more peaceful world.
worked on the Turkey Desk. I was conflicted as a scholar of international relations and a foreign policy practitioner who was also an active Christian, attended church across the street from the embassy in Ankara, and even served as a pastor for a time for the mostly African congregation.
FROM MISSIONARY KID TO FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR
The amazing irony that Asia Minor—where Saint Peter established the first church in Antioch, Saint Paul proselytized from Ephesus and beyond, and Christians have lived for millennia—was being closed off to missionaries was not lost on any of us. Bosphorus University, Turkey’s top university, originally began as Robert College, named after New York Presbyterian and philanthropist Christopher Robert, who funded its building in 1863. Christian missionaries founded or supported many other top educational and health institutions, not just in Turkey but also throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world. Given that Christianity is a religion of the book, Christians often taught people how to read and write, and they brought in printing presses so they could publish religious literature. In some cases, they invented alphabets for previously unwritten languages that led to societal advances that enabled more people to prosper. Such contributions raise the question of missionaries’ history, legacy, and ongoing impact.
As the son of Southern Baptist missionaries who have been faithfully serving out their calling for the last four decades in Japan, I have an admittedly biased viewpoint that America’s global leadership and the legacy of Christian missionaries are deeply intertwined. This is not necessarily a normative point of view nor an affirmative statement. There is an active and often vigorous debate within academic and policy circles about missionaries’ previous and ongoing role in the world. In recent years, advocacy for religious freedom has dominated the intersection between the humanitarian and religious elements of Christian missions and US foreign policy. The fact that many Christians across America who have never owned a passport or left their own communities can experience far-off lands through the missionaries their churches send is a unique legacy that is often underappreciated in official policymaking circles. My own understanding of the intersection between personal faith and foreign policy came after college when I was privileged enough to serve as a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey. Proselytization is illegal there, and the term “missionary” is associated with ravaging crusaders who converted or killed every Muslim they encountered en route to the Holy Land. Living on campus in one of the most prestigious universities in the capital, Ankara, I came across fellow Southern Baptists who ran small businesses or taught English as a means to carry out their own missional callings. Most of the time they had a deep cultural appreciation and linguistic abilities, but sometimes others seemingly wanted to be martyred for preaching God’s word in the public square. Given the strength of the US-Turkey alliance, those who were determined to break the law and proselytize in provocative ways were usually dealt with by the US embassy in Ankara, where I served as a local hire and subsequently
Turkey is a particularly emblematic and sad story, not just because the Pastor Andrew Brunson crisis became a flashpoint in US-Turkey relations after the 2016 failed coup attempt, but because the declining trajectory of US-Turkey relations means the already prevalent conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism make any rational discussion of missionary work almost impossible. Turkey today needs more bridge-building, understanding, and study than at almost any other time in its history precisely because the country feels so isolated from the West. When I first experienced this country I love almost two decades ago, I would tell my friends what my parents functionally did—my father was a pastor, and my mother was a children’s teacher—rather than saying they were “missionaries,” given the cultural context. Because of Turkey’s nationalistic and populist mood today, even this description would elicit a negative reaction. This is particularly sad because the groups I connected with most easily at the time were the religious communities that had been isolated for so long under secular Kemalist elitism. 5
Mosaics and Frescos in the Church of St. Savior in Chora, preserved as a museum in the Edirnekapı neighborhood of Istanbul. By Tom Sparks. Source: Flickr.
FINDING COMMUNITY, CONNECTION & MEANING THROUGH RELIGION My religious upbringing was not just a validator but a useful connection during my time in Turkey. I still vividly remember greeting my religious friends during the holy month of Ramadan with the phrase “Allah Kabul Etsin!” It’s a typical Turkish phrase taken from Arabic meaning “may God accept you.” I was in the old section of Ankara known for its many gecekondos, shanties built “overnight” on steep cliffs. My friend’s family entered the room to begin the Ramadan greetings. Seeing a foreigner, they stopped and simply nodded, until I arose from the floor and stooped to kiss the hands of the oldest member of the family. As I completed this ritual by lightly kissing the cheeks of the grandmother, I once again uttered the traditional Islamic phrase the faithful used during this holy month. With an astonished look, the grandmother broke into a wide smile, grabbed my face, and pulled me to her. As we sat down to break the fast with iftar, I was no longer an outsider. At that moment, I was welcomed into their culture because of my willingness to join them in their traditions. As we talked throughout the evening, they were not only accepting but fascinated by my background. They asked me to share my own faith journey and compare stories from the Bible and the Koran. At 1:00 am we went to the mosque to say prayers where I had no trouble participating, though I prayed a different prayer than their Arabic recitations. We returned to have our pre-dawn morning meal of suhur and ended up staying up all night talking until sunrise, and we fell asleep making our fast the next day particularly easy. 6
Choosing to fast with my Muslim friends seemed obvious to me. How could you show up to a feast having had full meals that day when everyone else attending had not so much as brushed their teeth for fear they might swallow water? While it seemed like common sense, I was consistently surprised to be the only American or even Christian who had that perspective where I was, and it took me talking to my dad to realize that I was practicing what he had often preached: meeting people where they were. The empathy that you have growing up not just in a far-away land but being placed on a particular type of pedestal as the pastor’s kid is a unique experience and one that has shaped my own appreciation for the world around me. Throughout the Middle East, the once-proud role of Christians and Christianity’s historic spread from the Holy Land is being erased by an Islamism and nationalism that has little place for their history. The so-called Islamic State is not the only organization that terrorized Christians and non-orthodox Sunnis and began to erase the role of missionaries; extreme secularization and separation of church and state made the use of non-religious humanitarian language much more vogue. Also making life more difficult for missionaries, religious zealots—whether they were extremist Christians, Jews, Islamists, or any other religionists—have throughout history given missionaries a bad name; even the Turkish term “missionary” comes from the crusaders. But missionaries created institutions around the world, including schools and universities, and their impact also includes bridge-building interactions with other societies. This rich legacy is being lost and with it America’s first encounters with this critical part of the world. Rather than driving us further apart, religion should guide and unite us as a community of faith, particularly those of us who share the interconnectedness of our Abrahamic tradition. After my Fulbright Scholarship in Turkey, I pursued a master’s in international relations at Yale University and found that almost all of the highly culturally and linguistically gifted Americans with whom I interacted had some background with missionaries, whether directly or indirectly. The way in which I and many others in these elite institutions were then recruited to work as diplomats, military or intelligence officers, or policymakers is also part of this history. I remember in my grand strategy class playing out a simulation with my friend, who played the role
of the “CIA director,” and we discussed the impact his missionary upbringing had on his own sense of duty and honor, which later led him to serving the agency. A quick survey of America’s most distinguished international officials, whether ambassadors or otherwise, finds a disproportionate correlation between missionary upbringing and service to country that far outstrips our diplomatic or military brethren who grew up overseas like us. Anecdotally, whenever I mention that I’m a missionary kid, I hear a new story wherever I go or serve. Yet few studies address the subject, and there seems to be a reticence even among missionary kids, which I can’t fully explain, to discuss this trend. Having served as a missionary kid counselor after college, I now fully appreciate how lucky I am to have grown up the way I did. Unlike diplomatic or military kids who often benefited from their proximity to American power, missionary kids often, even literally, run away from America and want nothing to do with their homeland, or pretend they and their parents never had another adopted homeland. I was born into international affairs, and while I did not pursue my parents’ particular profession, I see my own calling as being every bit as important and as informed. Serving as a bridge builder for Americans trying to understand the world and vice-versa is a particularly important role that few in the foreign policy community choose to follow precisely because of how difficult it is. Particularly in an American polity that is increasingly divided along partisan and religious lines, even on foreign policy, the domestic elements of populism and tribalism make it increasingly difficult to play this constructive role. Yet in my travels around the world, I’m amazed at how often international friends just want to look an American in the eyes and get an explanation for their particular policy questions and feel heard. Similarly, rather than hiding faith, I often find that the deepest connections and conversations come from sharing it. Whether in America or overseas, I personally believe it’s important to listen and meet people where they are first so that any subsequent engagement on issues of faith flows naturally rather than by forcing my own beliefs upon anyone.
BUILDING PERSONAL BRIDGES Misconceptions about missionaries that prevail in the Middle East—like how in Turkey they’re viewed as ruthless crusaders eager to convert all Muslims at the tip of a sword—have persisted for over a millennium and may always exist given the region’s tortured history. However, developing misconceptions in America today about what missionaries like my parents do on a day-to-day basis and the secularization of this tradition are troubling, especially given the dwindling numbers of missionaries. As outlined, I have no interest in defending zealots in my own faith or any other, but throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater is also not advisable. My own experience teaches me that missions is a microcosm of international relations, and an effective missionary’s calling of personal engagement still has an important place in American foreign policy and may even offer important lessons to our most important academics, diplomats, and leaders. People of different nations engage each other, carrying their misconceptions, fears, and politics with them, yet my own life demonstrates the value of personal engagement and travel because they disabuse people of prejudice and are an often unseen positive side effect of missions. Missions can help produce better diplomats and more human-centered international relations that takes theories to the individual level while introducing children to diverse cultures and minority viewpoints that others may overlook. Especially in the political moment we find ourselves in as a nation, creating empathy and bridges among all of God’s image bearers has never felt like a more important calling for all faithful believers. Joshua W. Walker, PhD (@drjwalk) is Global Head of Strategic Initiatives and Japan at Eurasia Group, the world’s leading geopolitical risk consultancy, and a fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Asia Program focused on Japan. Endnotes 1. For more see Andrew Spencer, “How Christian Missionaries Changed the World for the Better,” Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics, July 14, 2017, tifwe.org.
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President Putin during a thanksgiving service at the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow after his inauguration on May 7, 2018. Source: Kremlin.
The Religious Sources of Russian Conduct By Matt Gobush
To Russians, it was a cause for war; to Americans, a category error. Last October, the Orthodox Christian Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul declared the Ukrainian church “autocephalous,” or independent, of Russia. No longer would Ukraine’s 30 million Orthodox faithful defer to Moscow. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin summoned his national security council to the Kremlin and warned that the decision could lead to a “heavy dispute, even bloodshed.” To stop the church split, he allegedly ordered a cyberattack on the patriarch’s palace. As one advisor argued, Ukraine’s religious rebellion was tantamount “to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.” Such saber-rattling about a church administrative dispute is hard to imagine in the United States. Picture the American president sum8
moning the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the White House and deploying troops in response to the recent case of a Texas diocese breaking from the Episcopal Church and aligning with an Anglican bishop in Argentina. It would ostensibly violate our constitutional separation of church and state, and likely be dismissed as political grandstanding. Politics no doubt plays a role in Putin’s reaction to the Ukrainian church crisis. Over his nearly two-decade reign, he has consolidated power by stoking Russian religious sentiment. He restored the Orthodox Church to its privileged place in Russian society, coopted its hierarchy, and won its endorsement for his foreign adventurism. Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church’s highest authority and a member of Putin’s inner circle, has called his rise “a miracle of God.” As a KGB agent in St. Petersburg, Putin tailed Orthodox clergy. In power, he has used
his clandestine knowledge of the sacred institution to further his earthly ambitions.
SPIRITUAL SOURCES But it would be a mistake to interpret Putin’s warmongering as mere posturing. His conduct also uncovers a hidden current in Russian history. Like an underground river, the confluence of Orthodoxy and autocracy has irrigated the nation’s development since the baptism of the Rus nearly a millennium ago. Historically, national defense has spurred this merger; to repel invasions from the Mongols to the Nazis, Russian leaders have rallied the nation in the name of defending the faith. But the symbiosis between crown and cross is more than a marriage of expedience. It also reflects deeply held doctrines of Orthodoxy. In contrast to its Christian siblings, the Eastern Church lacks a coherent just war tradition. Instead, its moral theology encourages an advisory and pastoral role vis-à-vis the state, and its ecclesiology centers around national churches, resisting ecumenism. The unique character of Russia’s state religion not only lends insight into Putin’s conduct on the world stage, but also by comparison highlights the distinguishing aspects of the Western Christian church that lend insight into our own foreign policy. In his famous “X Article” published in Foreign Affairs in 1947, American diplomat George Kennan examined the “Sources of Soviet Conduct.” He argued that Stalin’s policies were driven by Russia’s historical security challenges as much as by communist ideology, and advocated for a policy of “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment,” which many credit for America’s ultimate victory. Putin’s policies demand a similar examination, but one that includes a dimension Kennan largely overlooked and few have fully appreciated—the religious sources of Russian conduct.
FROM NEW ROME TO THE THIRD ROME In his analysis, Kennan acknowledged Russians’ “capacity for faith and devotion,” but to truly appreciate its depth, one must turn to Byzantium—the “New Rome” established by Emperor Constantine and claimed by the Orthodox Church as its spiritual center. Modern Russia’s debt to this ancient Christian civilization is reflected in Russia’s official coat of arms, featur-
President Putin during a visit to the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on January 17, 2019. Source: Kremlin.
ing a double-headed eagle. Attributed to an eleventh-century Byzantine emperor, the exotic eagle represented the conjoined institutions of the Orthodox Church and the imperial bureaucracy. Church-state symphonia, as the Byzantines coined it, was a defining feature of the embattled empire and is in part responsible for its remarkable success in surpassing “Old Rome.” The Byzantines not only successfully defended their empire for a millennium but also evangelized the Slavic world, beginning with the conversion of the Bulgars and eventually the Rus in 998. Unlike the Catholic Church, which enforced the use of Latin and demanded allegiance to the pope, the Orthodox Church permitted more linguistic diversity and political plurality as it spread. The symphonia at the center was severed when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, and the ecumenical patriarchy, dependent on the state for its sustenance, was forced into semi-seclusion. Its Slavic spinoffs consequently assumed more autonomy, and eventually Moscow eclipsed Constantinople as de facto custodian of the Eastern rite. By the late nineteenth century, Russian tsars claimed the mantle of “The Third Rome,” succeeding Old and New Rome, and with it responsibility for defending the faithful. 9
Putin at the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, where he was awarded the highest award of the Serbian Orthodox Church. March 24, 2011. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
DOCTRINES OF DEFERENCE With this religious legacy, Russia also inherited Orthodoxy’s distinctive eschatology, or view of human destiny. As the body of Christ postlapsarian, meaning “after the fall,” the Orthodox Church’s primary missions are sacramental and pastoral, offering followers spiritual resources to overcome earthly adversity before Christ’s coming again. As such, this Orthodox worldview resembles the Christian realism of Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who insisted our aim in a sinful world should be not perfection, but proximate peace and justice. From Orthodoxy’s eschatology arise two doctrines bearing on questions of war and peace: oekonomie, translated as “economy,” and metanoia, understood as “repentance.” The former speaks to the need to reconcile ideals with reality, compromising laws if necessary to accord with the spirit of God’s commands. Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky described oekonomie as a “pastoral corrective of the canonical consciousness” emphasizing “working utility.” 10
Metanoia is similarly postlapsarian and pragmatic. The Orthodox Church views war as an inevitable consequence of man’s fallen nature, and therefore tends to the task of pardoning more than preventing it. St. Basil the Great advised clergy to “allow a pardon” to repentant warfighters, but “refuse them communion for three years, on the ground that they are not clean-handed.” St. John Chrysostom similarly emphasized the personal side of war above the societal one, preaching “when the individual is at war with himself,” it is “the worst of all” wars. Orthodoxy’s ecclesiology, or church governance, parallels its eschatology in its bow to reality. Whereas the Roman Catholic Church’s history prior to the Reformation was largely centripetal, with authority centralized in the papacy, the Orthodox Church has evolved centrifugally. True to its apostolic roots, its authority is distributed among a plurality of patriarchs. This decentralized structure extended into converted Slavic territories, where church plants were granted autocephaly by the ecumenical patriarch, who himself was merely primus inter pares, or first among equals.
CREED OF RESIGNATION
THE MIDDLE MATRYOSHKA
The church’s eschatology and ecclesiology contribute to what historian Richard Pipes has termed Orthodoxy’s “creed of resignation.” In matters of state, the church has deferred to proximate secular authorities; in matters of war, it has sought to remain above the fray. This creed of resignation has fostered an ethic of pragmatism which accounts for the institution’s durability.
This marriage has been consummated in Putin’s foreign policies, which revolve around a religious as well as ethnic and linguistic definition of Russian identity. Some have compared his brand of nationalism to a nested wooden matryoshka doll. Its outermost form is the empire of the tsars and Soviets, encompassing multiple nationalities spanning the continent and united under autocratic rule. Its innermost form is a Slavic, Russian-speaking core centered upon ancient Muscovy. Between these imperial and ethnic layers is the religious form to which Putin appeals, so-called “Holy Rus.” To be Russian is to be Russian Orthodox in this view, and to belong to a religious community which knows no bounds.
But it has also muted the church’s prophetic voice. The reluctance to pass judgment is grounded in an admirable humility, captured in Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s spiritual saga The Brothers Karamazov: “all the hope and faith of the saints” lies in the realization that “no one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal…and perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime.” In this spirit, and with rare exception, the Orthodox Church has withheld public criticism of its political patrons. Orthodoxy’s lack of a coherent just war tradition further reflects this uncritical creed. St. Augustine, the tradition’s Latin father, exerts little influence in the Eastern Church. Furthermore, throughout most of its existence, Byzantium’s military posture was defensive, and the just cause for the use of force self-evident. In contrast, the Catholic Church was more expansive, launching crusades in the Levant, the Baltics, and beyond. Western clergy at various times also sought to restrain warring nobles and rampaging conquistadors, especially in the New World. This push and pull necessitated a sophisticated framework for just war deliberation without analog in the Eastern Church. To Orthodox, the only just cause for war is a defensive one; Catholics and Protestants tend toward a more expansive moral imagination. Without effective supranational authority or a mature means of critiquing military morality, the Orthodox Church has proven vulnerable to jingoism. For example, the Russian Orthodox Church’s catechism accords with Putin’s nationalist project. While committed to serving the cause of world peace, it nonetheless upholds “love of one’s Fatherland,” and praises efforts to “bring the military back to the established Orthodox traditions of service to the Fatherland.” The marriage of fatherland and mother church is sanctified in Russian society to an extent largely absent in the Christian West.
The twentieth-century Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, a favorite of Putin’s, elaborated upon the concept of Holy Rus. Ilyin channeled the fascism of his day, but with a religious aspect. He portrayed the Russian nation as a suffering savior destined to play a redemptive role in history under the leadership of a singular iconic leader. In 2005, when he reinterred Ilyin’s remains in a Moscow monastery, Putin recovered his mystic philosophy to proclaim “Russia as a spiritual organism [that] served not all the Orthodox nations…but all the nations of the world.”
DEFENDING THE DIASPORA Through this prism, Putin’s remark in 2005 that the collapse of the USSR was the “major geopolitical disaster of the century” takes on new significance. Rather than a return to Stalinist-style rule, the ascendant autocrat envisioned a reuniting of Russia’s Orthodox diaspora, one of the world’s largest. An initial move in this direction was Putin’s success in securing the Act of Canonical Communion in 2007, which reconciled the Russian Orthodox Church with its overseas offshoots exiled during Soviet times. At the historic event celebrating this reunion, Putin proclaimed that Russia’s national revival is “impossible without reliance on the historical and spiritual experience of our people… That is why restoring the unity of the church serves our common goals.” The shared sense of mission for the Russian church and state partially explains Putin’s incursions in Georgia and Crimea, over tepid ob11
jections from Orthodox authorities, as well as his violent reaction to the Ukrainian church rebellion. It also points to potential new ventures. Outside of Russia and Ukraine, the largest minorities of Russian Orthodox faithful are found in Latvia and Kazakhstan. Might the Trump administration’s equivocal support for NATO invite Russian prodding of the Baltic state in the interests of protecting its persecuted Russian Orthodox? Or could the recent retirement of strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev provide Putin the pretext to defend Kazakhstan’s two million stranded faithful? Russian foreign policy is not one dimensionally deterministic; the reasons for Putin’s recent deployment of troops to Venezuela are not religious. But this source of Russian conduct should not be overlooked.
ECUMENICAL ENGAGEMENT To stymie Stalin’s designs, Kennan urged a US policy of containment. To blunt Putin’s, a multifaceted strategy is called for, one that includes religious engagement. Today’s Russian Orthodox hierarchy has pledged allegiance to the Putin regime, aiding and abetting his policies to reconstitute Holy Rus. But some within the institution’s ranks remain loyal to the countervailing vision of “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” of the Nicene Creed. The international ecumenical movement seeks the realization of this vision. The Orthodox Church has been active in this movement since its beginnings a century ago; as one of its leaders said, “The Church of Constantinople rung the bell of our assembling.” The World Council of Churches is one avenue for such engagement, but a more ambitious program of educational exchange is needed to reach
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Russian Orthodoxy’s clergy. During the Nazis’ rise to power, Protestant clergy in the West embraced Germany’s free church leaders; Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, mentored future martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer during his sabbatical in New York. A similar initiative would represent a worthy new mission field for the wider church today, a show of spiritual soft power to complement the secular hard power of deterrence and defense.
CANNON & BELL In his classic 1812 Overture, Pyotr Tchaikovsky celebrates Russia’s victory over Napoleon with a dramatic cannonade in the musical score’s crescendo. Behind the thundering cannon fire, one can also discern the unmistakable clamor of church bells. The composer conjures both the cannons of autocracy and bells of Orthodoxy in his symphony to recreate the symphonia to which Russians have historically credited their survival. Although Americans have largely been tone deaf to the harmonization of these melodies, Putin has not, marshaling both church and state to serve his expansive nationalist project. To better grasp Russian conduct, past and present, we would do well to become more attuned to this symphonic sound. Matt Gobush is a contributing editor to Providence, and previously served on the staff of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, and the US Senate. He currently serves on the Standing Commission for World Mission of the Episcopal Church. Matt works in the private sector and lives in Virginia with his wife and five children, adopted from Russia, Ukraine, and Latvia.
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ow the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.�
MATTHEW 28:16-19
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ut you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
ACTS 1:8 13
Preachers & Spooks CIA Memorial Wall in 2017. Source: Central Intelligence Agency.
Should US Missionaries Collaborate with US Intelligence Services? By Ben Palka Up until a few months ago, our church had the unusual opportunity to hold our weekly services at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. Our church, King’s Church, is a new Washington-based Baptist church “plant”—an agricultural analogy Christians use to describe a start-up or new church that is usually without a typical church building. The museum, which recently just moved down the road, is dedicated to the tradecraft, history, and contemporary role of espionage. It features the largest collection of international espionage artifacts currently on display to the public. Due to our atypical arrangement with the museum, many local friends and acquaintances humorously refer to us as “the spy church.” While we’re not a church of spies, the configuration conjured up in the mind is a silly juxtaposition between two seemingly polar opposites: ministry and espionage, truth and deception, 14
James Bond and Billy Graham. In the minds of many, the church and her clergy are public, contemplative, and morally upright. In contrast, in the minds of many, intelligence services and their spies are typically covert, pragmatic, and morally ambiguous. Said another way, spies kill and sleep around; pastors pray and preach the gospel. The institutions contrast sharply and, when seen matched together, may make us laugh or turn our heads in a similar way as when we see a grossly mismatched romantic couple. But not so fast—love works in mysterious ways. The apparent eternal incompatibility between intelligence services and the church is, of course, in our complex and surprising world not an accurate picture. These two highly unique institutions, we might say, already have a checkered past relationship. As students of history may know, the relationship between the two is extensive, and according to public media, it appears the relationship exists even in the modern era.
intelligence activities of the CIA, prohibit the agency, our premier civilian intelligence service, from entering into any covert intelligence relationship with US missionaries:
Hereford Cathedral, England. By Stephen Radford. Source: Unsplash.
How should we think about this relationship? Should US missionaries collaborate with US intelligence services? From the perspective of both institutions, this ought to be perceived as a moral question. American missionaries who are governed by the Bible and Christian tradition may find missionary moral guidelines and examples from the Apostle Paul’s early mission endeavors that are morally binding upon them. Moreover, if the American missionary is sponsored by a nongovernmental organization or formal mission agency, such as the International Mission Board (IMB) or Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru), policies usually require him or her to refrain from collaborating with any home or foreign government intelligence agency representatives as that may result in providing intelligence information to those agencies. This is wise, as a US missionary collaborating with a foreign intelligence service may be treasonous. Yet, how does the missionary respond if his or her home country’s national security is at grave risk and the missionary is in a unique position to provide actionable intelligence? Or, even more hypothetical, what if one’s home government invited the missionary to use lethal authorized force against a known terrorist target? On the intelligence side of this moral question, there has certainly been controversy in the past. In the 1970s, it was revealed that beginning after World War II, the US intelligence community (IC) engaged in extraordinary illegal activity and abused Americans’ rights.1 This eventually led to evolving guidelines and regulations that organized and limited the conduct of the IC. For instance, Executive Order 12333 and its implementing procedures governing the conduct of
No relationship will be established with any U.S. clergy or missionary, whether or not ordained, who is sent out by a mission or church organization to preach, teach, heal, or proselytize, except as otherwise provided in this regulation. Any CIA use of a U.S. clergy or missionary who is not made aware of CIA sponsorship of the activity, or any use of a person’s status as a member of the clergy or a missionary to provide cover for any CIA activity or assignment, is prohibited. Open relationships with clergy (for example, contracts to perform translating services or to lecture at training courses) are permitted. Open relationships are characterized by a willingness on both sides to acknowledge the fact and nature of the relationship to senior management officials of the organizations involved. American church groups will not be funded or used as funding cutouts for intelligence purposes.2
Unsurprisingly, it seems the agency does not hold an absolutist position regarding this regulation. For instance, decades ago, testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, CIA Director John Deutch reasonably stated that in extreme and highly uncommon cases of grave national security risk, waivers may be granted to permit CIA officers to employ and collaborate with missionaries for clandestine work.3 In layman’s terms, he said that in Jack Bauer national crisis situations, if a US missionary is among a foreign native group teaching the Bible and building wells and also happens to know the nuclear silo location that will prevent an imminent attack, there seems to be no doubt they may get recruited for assistance. Moral questions like this one, and the subsequent debate around them, should, in my opinion, reinforce the truth that in order for the American Christian missionary enterprise and IC to thrive in a complicated world, they both ought to be “open for moral examination” of questions of right and wrong. While the IC is much less “open” to the public in a traditional sense (and ought to remain as such), the American people and our leaders should continue to have a voice in how US intelligence operates 15
and, as such, its moral limits. Not doing so, ironically, has always damaged the mission of the IC. Said another way, if we and our allies are to win the war on terrorism and protect our security and interests, the American public must continue to work through conflicts regarding ethical issues, such as the use of missionaries, that could constrict and paralyze intelligence activity. If not, we will only see more repeats of the kind of national moral outrage that ensued from leaks regarding the NSA’s domestic surveillance program and the CIA’s enhanced interrogation programs.4 Furthermore, missionaries and organizations who sponsor them ought to be open to deeper thinking and self-critique. Ethical and moral issues such as citizenship, patriotism, and moral responsibility are not at odds with Christian mission and identity. Smart policies rooted in theological reflection and good knowledge of international relations are needed to provide nuanced answers to issues workers may face on the field. Without a robust ethic, missionaries may lack some guidance to complex decisions, such as this hypothetical collaboration question. Nevertheless, like all significant moral questions, where one lands on this issue carries real-world implications. As such, armchair philosophers and dismissive fundamentalists have the luxury, if they choose, of treating this question and others like it with triviality or insincerity. But for policymakers, ethicists, and actual practitioners, there is no such luxury. They must make choices, rooted in thoughtful moral reflection, in which every scenario may lead to confusion and heartbreak.
A HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIP Surprisingly, real-world examples and public fallout are legion. There are countless open public admissions and media reports of both military and civilian intelligence services from hosts of nations who have used clergy and religious institutions for intelligence advantage over adversaries. For instance, President Gerald Ford once admitted that the CIA had used active missionaries overseas as American operatives in the past and “may do so in the future.”5 Previously, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued a report that declared the CIA had used 21 missionaries and religious persons for intelligence work abroad. And a forthcoming book by Washington State Professor Matthew Avery 16
Sutton titled Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War claims to tell an untold story of the Christian missionaries who played a crucial role in the Allied victory in World War II through espionage.6 The US is not unique in having explored this collaboration on the world stage. During the Cold War, East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, known as the Stasi, infiltrated churches and developed a highly successful “church department” that recruited pastors, professors, and seminary students to spy.7 In another case, the South Korean Unification Church, which operated in the US in the 1970s, had significant links to South Korean intelligence, secured lobbying in the US Congress, and conducted other collection and influence operations.8 And recently, close to home, Russian intelligence services, in an effort to sway the 2016 US presidential election, entered American social media networks posing as evangelicals. Pretending to have the same religious convictions, they used tactics such as posting to social media platforms biblical memes to demonize Hillary Clinton and drum up Christian support for Donald Trump.9 It is important to note that not all of the cases referenced above or others alleged by the media or historians fit the narrow description of the active missionary collaboration question this article has in view. Some are alleged cases where intelligence services or government staff impersonate missionaries, clergy, or religious activists. Still others involve genuine missionaries sharing information with their home governments when they return home and are not in any sense instances of collaboration while on the mission field. These are important distinctions to make as this reflection attempts to answer whether or not it is right for active US missionaries to collaborate with US spy services.
ANSWERING THE QUESTION For the reasons listed below, I generally do not think it is a good idea for active US missionaries to collaborate with US intelligence services. While I think it is both right and good for Christians of all types to serve as intelligence professionals overseas, there are conflicts of interest theologically, practically, and ethically when we consider missionaries taking on dual roles in the foreign country in which they serve.
For missionaries, collaborating with intelligence services and having a dual role as a missionary can muddy the biblical distinction between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. According to Christian tradition, these two metaphysical “domains” have historically been in tension with one another. When the Messiah came, he said to the disciples that the “kingdom of God has come near to you” (Luke 10:11). The Bible later seems to suggest routinely that Jesus brought a spiritual kingdom or reality into the world where individuals are invited to participate under his rule. This “kingdom” is not of this world (John 18:36), and its adherents live out a different value system—“power under” rather than “power over”—foregoing earthly pleasures to be dedicated to the truths of God. In both domains, there are fundamentally different mindsets and belief systems, different ethics. This is important to note because all missionaries have an understanding that genuine mission work is to showcase this different kingdom. For a genuine missionary, they understand themselves to be on the frontlines showcasing that kingdom to a foreign population. For them, it is absolutely vital that in the eyes of a foreign population, they are understood (in so much as possible) as having pure commitments to God and his kingdom. Actively collaborating and taking on a dual role as a spy service case officer or informant could muddy the waters between that distinction as they would now be bound to two differing commitments that, although possible to be internalized in the mind of the missionary, could muddy the distinction of the kingdoms in the eyes of the foreign population. As a further theological consideration, American missionaries serving in Muslim-majority countries who were to possess a hypothetical dual role may also directly hurt the US government. From the perspective of many Islamic countries, a missionary carrying a dual role as preacher and spy may give more credibility to the perception that the US is engaging in an endless war on Islam with neo-crusader forces intended to take Muslim lands. More practically speaking, dual alignment seems to be a security risk. It is well known in US missionary communities across denominations that dozens of foreign populations across foreign countries are already suspicious of links between US missionaries and US intelligence services. I have heard firsthand accounts of missionaries across the globe who report being held in suspicion. If a formal dual arrangement were
to ever happen or be found out, not only would the individual missionary be put at high risk, but other missionaries and colleagues would be at grave risk. Furthermore, it could damage the future missionary enterprise in that country due to a breach of trust. The mere public perception that a few US missionaries might be gathering information for their government undermines the trust all such missionaries need to develop with the communities they serve. Finally, it would be fundamentally dishonest. Ask yourself this question: If you were a regular attendee at a church in the US and found out your beloved foreign reverend also worked as an intelligence collector for Mossad or MI6, would you not feel a great deal of distrust toward that reverend? Most would be very uneasy if their foreign clergy were not fully devoted to God’s purposes and were indiscriminately passing personal information to their foreign government. Missionaries are agents of the kingdom of God, bringing the good news of the Gospel to people and working for their flourishing. Spy services serve their host country, working for the security of their citizens and their nations’ strategic and economic interests. Our US intelligence services’ stated policies, as well as most missionary services’ stated policies, are reflections of the respect each institution inherently possesses. Furthermore, these policies, in my estimation, should give good reassurances to our political foes and allies alike that we as a nation in general and Christians in particular do not consider dual alignment a positive or moral norm.
EXCEPTIONS Nevertheless, we live in a complex and broken world. There may be exceptions, albeit in extreme circumstances, to an absolute ban on collaboration. As mentioned, the CIA seemed at least to think so 30 years ago, as per Director Deutch’s congressional testimony. And in my own discussions with retired missionaries about imagined scenarios, all agreed that, though personally unheard of, there could be hypothetically extreme national security situations when, if presented with the opportunity, a dual role may be permissible. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a World War II-era German Lutheran pastor who collaborated with the German resistance’s attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, was often held up as a closely related example. 17
While it is dubious that US intelligence services would seek to collaborate with active US missionaries and unlikely that a serious enough national security threat requiring missionary involvement could arise today—if this perfect storm situation were to occur, how should a missionary proceed? First and foremost, the missionary should be convinced in his or her own mind that this collaboration is in fact moral. Often times people, especially clergy, are unable to operate in gray areas because their ethical operating system is not dynamic or nuanced. They may be absolutist, ignorant of historical church teaching, and rely on proof-texting short Bible verses for complete answers on complicated questions. Therefore, they should have a clear conscience, stemming from a coherent ethical framework, about the actions they would be asked to accomplish. While there are several ethical frameworks by which one may operate, a coherent and intellectually satisfying tradition for Christians may be found in the just war tradition. The just war tradition originated millennia ago with classical Greek and Roman philosophers like Plato and Cicero, and Christian scholars like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas developed it further. Though heavily influenced by Christian thought, it is meant to be an ethical framework that people of all faiths or none can use. The tradition essentially provides criteria to understand if going to war is just or right and how that war should be fought. A good conscience is important for Christian missionaries because, if asked to collaborate in these ways as they live their lives before the face of God, they ought to be convinced in their own mind that such actions are morally justifiable. The just war tradition may not only satisfy their consciences but also provide real moral support for the said hypothetical covert actions. While the just war tradition is designed for states to discern how to act morally toward other states, it is critically important here because spying is a tactic or component of war and security. The Christian tradition provides moral grounds for spying as a tactic of war, and it can help permit, forbid, or guide the bigger moral problems that emerge regarding what tactics spies may utilize. Readers may be surprised to learn here that there is good consensus among thinkers in Christian faith and other faiths that if just war conditions are met, many things warfighters (of faith or not) are morally permitted to do in 18
times of war are also permissible in espionage. That is, there is good grounding for the moral allowance of lying, stealing, blackmailing, electronic eavesdropping, deceiving, interrogating, and assassinating in the just war tradition. Furthermore, if the hypothetical covert activity is illegal in the country where the missionary serves, as much covert activity is, the just war tradition may provide moral clarity to illuminate how an action can still be the moral and right thing to do. One may reach this conclusion because it conforms to the just war criteria. These criteria include the requirements of right authority, just cause, right intention, likelihood of success, alternatives, proportionality, and discrimination. If the missionary in a hypothetical dual role could see how the action may be moral, this may free his or her conscience from non-involvement. Thus, in this hypothetical collaborative opportunity, it would be wise for the missionary to be steeped in the time-tested ethic of the just war tradition. While it may give allowance and moral clarity to practice espionage, just war criteria will no doubt cause one to limit his or her participation in certain tactics. After all, that is a dimension of what good moral guidelines are about—protecting one from tainting his or her soul. Finally, a practical reason: I assume the missionary in this dual role scenario would want to remain a missionary. Accordingly, he or she would want to maintain integrity and the original purpose for being in the country in the first place. If not, it’s not so much a dual role anymore. However, if this is the case, he or she may be wise to ask, Does my participation in this action bring about good for the people I am serving? This is a crucial question because, in my opinion, certain actions—even if justifiable under just war principles for intelligence officers—will, if taken on by a missionary in a dual sense, undermine a missionary from his or her original purpose. For instance, there would be a major difference if a US missionary serving in China stole Chinese technology for the good of American military interests, versus if he or she helped dispose of a purely evil dictator who oppressed the people. In the first case, the missionary’s dual collaboration damages those whom he or she is called to serve in order to progress American military interests. He or she has been so compromised that the goal of helping people worship God and flourish as human
beings is tainted by the elevation of the state. In the latter case, by helping dispose of a dictator the missionary may be doing a moral act, even despite it being illegal, but it may not disqualify him or her from the original ministry. In this example, the missionary may be doing justice for the people whom he or she is called to serve by freeing them from tyranny and oppression. In this sense, collaboration may be perceived as a good thing and may be consistent with the missionary’s identity and mission.
CONCLUSION In sum, missionaries must ultimately remember they are working for the good of people spiritually, but that work also extends to the general welfare of humanity. Missionaries should, in most normal situations, decline collaboration with intelligence services. For trivial and even moderate threats, there is too much at stake for both the missionary enterprise and the intelligence community. Nevertheless, in perfect storm situations when combatting an extreme threat to the nation may require assistance and collaboration, missionaries should proceed cautiously and in accordance with their own conscience—understanding that morality and espionage, as well as statesmanship and spiritual service, are not mutually exclusive.
Benjamin Palka graduated from the State University College at Buffalo State with a bachelor of arts in communication and earned a master of theology from Southeastern Baptist. He works in the defense industry and also serves as a church planter at King’s Church in Washington, DC. Endnotes 1. David S. Kris and J. Douglas Wilson. National Security Investigations & Prosecutions, 2nd ed. (Vols. 1 & 2) (Eagan, MN: Thomson Reuters, 2012). 2. “AR 2-2 (U) Law and Policy Governing The Conduct of Intelligence Activities (Formerly HR-7-1),” Central Intelligence Agency, July 20, 2015, cia.gov. 3. Intelligence Gathering by Civilians, 104th Cong. (July 17, 1996) (testimony of the Honorable John M. Deutch, Director of Central Intelligence). 4. This is essentially the argument that James Olson makes in Fair Play: Moral Dilemma of Spying (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006). 5. Bob Allen, “Campolo says U.S. missionaries too close to CIA, later ‘regrets’ comment,” Baptist News Global, March 18, 2014, baptistnews.com. 6. See Elizabeth Braw, God’s Spies: The Stati’s Cold War and Espionage Campaign Inside the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019). 7. CIA’s Use of Journalists and Clergy in Intelligence Operations, 104th Cong. (July 17, 1996). 8. “House Unit Discloses South Korea Plan to Manipulate U.S. Organizations,” New York Times, November 30, 1977. 9. “The Social Media Ads Russia Wanted Americans to See,” Politico, November 1, 2017, politico.com.
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March First Movement leaders preparing to sign the Declaration of Independence. Source: Robert Kim.
The American Missions in Korea
Complete Success, Completely Forgotten By Robert Kim
KOREAN CHRISTIANITY: AN AMERICAN- INSPIRED REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
and during the early 1880s, Korea experienced foreign military incursions that exposed its vulnerability to modern armies and navies of the late nineteenth century, and the kingdom signed an unequal treaty with Japan in 1876. The last king of Korea, Gojong, saw the United States as Korea’s only possible ally and opened its first formal diplomatic relations with the United States in 1882. He welcomed American missionaries as carriers of ideas that would bring Korea into the modern world. There had been Catholic and Protestant missionaries from Europe before, and thousands of Korean converts were martyred because professing Christianity was a capital offense. But in 1884, an American medical doctor named Horace Allen became the first to receive royal permission to proselytize. American Presbyterians and Methodists transformed the country’s culture in the decades that followed.
American missionaries brought Christianity to Korea at a time when the country’s centuries-old kingdom and social order were dying, and patriots from the king to the common people were searching for a new way of life. Before
American Christians began the transformation of a mostly illiterate and uneducated people— whose upper class emulated Chinese culture and learned its language—into a nation fiercely proud of its distinct language and alphabet;
The American-led Protestant missions in Korea achieved perhaps the most rapid and complete transformation of a nation in the history of Christianity, but they disappeared into almost complete obscurity by the time that the Korean War forced Americans to pay attention to Korea. Few religious, social, or political movements have risen as quickly or enduringly, or been aligned as well with US foreign policy without receiving any recognition from Americans. The current time of change in the Korean peninsula is an appropriate opportunity to revisit and remember this unique episode that was the genesis of the US-Korea relationship of today.
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by the twenty-first century Korea was known worldwide for its high level of education. Homer Hulbert, an educational missionary, arrived in Korea in 1886 to teach at the Royal English School in Seoul—Korea’s first Western-style government-sponsored school. He created Korea’s first public schools and textbooks and began mass instruction in today’s official Hangul script, the Korean alphabet created in the 1400s that had long since fallen into disuse because of the edu- Homer Hulbert cated class’ use of Mandarin Chi- Robert Kim. nese. Korea’s first college, Union Christian College in Pyongyang, opened in 1905, and in 1915 a Presbyterian missionary named Horace Grant Underwood founded Chosun Christian College in Seoul, which still exists today as Yonsei University, one of Korea’s leading universities. American missionary leadership of higher education in Korea continued under Japanese rule until 1941, when Japan interned and deported the last American missionaries after its attack on Pearl Harbor. Presbyterian and Methodist churches created under American guidance, not the Catholic Church brought by European clergy, led the explosive growth of Korean Christianity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1900, there were 60,000 Christians in Korea (21,000 of them Protestants) and by 1910 there were over 200,000 Christians, two-thirds of them Protestants. The Korean Presbyterian and Methodist churches have continued to predominate in Korea into the twenty-first century. The Presbyterian and Methodist churches in Korea flourished in part because from the beginning their American founders planned for their converts to take over the churches and encouraged them to take their new religion in their own direction. A Presbyterian seminary for Koreans opened in Pyongyang in 1905 and graduated its first class in 1907. In the same year there began a surge of conversions called the Great Pyongyang Revival, in which Korean Christians in Pyongyang spontaneously confessed their failures and those of their nation then spread throughout the country to share the word and make new converts. The early Korean Christians showed this zeal and independence even further when the Presbyterians decided to send their own mission to China in 1912. Only five years
after their first clergymen had been ordained, they already were prepared to go forth and preach to the Chinese, whose culture they had once emulated. American political ideas and Christianity became inseparable elements of the Korean independence movement long before 1945 as Korean Christians became leaders of the patriot movements resisting Japan’s invasions and occupation of Korea in 1907. Source: that started in 1905. American missionaries avoided overt support for Korean nationalists, certain the Japanese would jail or expel them for it, but the schools and churches they founded became magnets for Korean patriots and refugees who gathered and organized there without fear of arrest by Japanese authorities. The March First Movement of 1919 showed the influence of the American missions on Korea’s independence movement. The March First Movement was a nonviolent revolution that Koreans in both the North and South consider to be the start of the Korean independence struggle. South Korea has made March 1 its Independence Day, and the shadowy North Korean resistance group called Cheollima Civil Defense issued its declaration of revolution against the regime of Kim Jong-un on March 1, 2019. The leaders of the March First Movement included 33 men and women, 16 of them Christians at a time when less than two percent of the population were; they met in Seoul in Seung Dong Presbyterian Church (which still exists today) to sign a Declaration of Independence. They demanded the end of colonial rule by Japan and called for the United States under President Woodrow Wilson, who had issued the Fourteen Points in January 1918, and other foreign powers to support Korean self-determination. Over 1,500 demonstrations roiled Korea in March and April 1919, but American missionaries informing American and international news media was their only foreign support. Japanese troops crushed the movement, with Korean sources claiming 7,500 Koreans killed, 15,000 wounded, and 46,000 arrested. A Korean government in exile, which the Republic of Korea considers its predecessor just as the US government considers the Continental 21
Congress, began under mainly Christian leaders during the March First Movement. The Korean Provisional Government founded in April 1919 spent a quarter century struggling for Korean independence in exile in Shanghai and elsewhere in the Republic of China. Its first president was Syngman Rhee, a Presbyterian educated in an American school in Seoul and then in the United States at George Washington, Princeton, and Harvard. His successor from 1927 to 1945 was Kim Ku, a convert who had learned about Christianity and Western ideas while in prison for killing a Japanese man. He embraced both Christianity and these Western ideas after escaping and living for years in rural Korea as a fugitive from the Japanese authorities. Kim Ku led the Korean Provisional Government in a triumphal return to Korea after US forces liberated the country in 1945.
DISAPPEARANCE INTO THE GREATEST GENERATION The American missions in Korea flourished until rising Japanese repression and war between the United States and Japan ended their presence. In the late 1930s, the Presbyterians withdrew from the schools they had founded when Japanese authorities compelled their students to worship the emperor of Japan, which they held to be a violation of the second commandment. Most Americans evacuated Korea in 1940 when the US Department of State warned them that war with Japan was imminent; the remainder were interned by Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and repatriated to the United States in 1942 in an exchange of citizens by the United States and Japan. The grandchildren of the founders of the American missions in the 1880s and the sons of the leaders of the early twentieth century were military age during the 1940s and became parts of the vast US war effort of the Second World War. Most joined the armed forces and became soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, but some joined the new US intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). OSS Director William Donovan had taken a special interest in Korea as a potential fifth column in the Japanese Empire since the first days after Pearl Harbor, and the OSS recruited numerous sons of missionaries to lead its projects to recruit Koreans and to infiltrate them into Korea as intelligence operators. They included Project NAPKO, which trained Korean agents on Catalina Island, 22
California, and planned to insert them into Korea from the Pacific by midget submersible; and Project Eagle, based in Xian, China, which cooperated with the Korean Provisional Government and trained exiled soldiers of its army to infiltrate Korea by parachute or overland from China. After the war some of these sons of both America and Korea returned to Korea with the US armed forces to contribute their knowledge of the country to the US military government of liberated Korea. They became the only American experts on Korea in the US occupation force, contributing immeasurably to its actions but exerting no influence over the decisions of the distant Department of State in Washington. US strategic mistakes abounded in Korea as a result as the Department of State refused to allow the US military government to support the Korean Provisional Government; the Korean Provisional Government dissolved into factions around Kim Ku, Syngman Rhee, and other leaders. Syngman Rhee won a bloody contest for power, all while the Soviet Union systematically created a Communist regime under Kim Il-sung in the north.
FORGOTTEN BUT NOT GONE Americans were destined to poorly understand the Republic of Korea, established in the south in 1948. The American public never knew, and the US government never sponsored or recognized, the role of turn-of-the-century American missionaries in Korea, which traced its intellectual heritage to those Christians. Korea became a thriving democracy with a predominantly Christian society, and Christians outnumbered all other faiths by the end of the twentieth century; embracing Christianity became practically obligatory in the educated class. Meanwhile, few Americans know that American missionaries brought these ideas to Korea in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The American missionaries of Korea were forgotten in the United States, or never actually known in the first place. The academic profession in the United States has completed the forgetting of the American past in Korea. The study of Korea in US universities was hijacked by leftist academics such as Bruce Cumings, who has ruthlessly denied the significance of Korean Christianity and the democratic aspirations of Korean nationalists
that date back over a century. Events such as the March First Movement and the spread of Christianity do not exist in Cumings’ version of Korea’s history, which is not unlike a history of Israel written by a Holocaust denier. Koreans themselves are amply aware of the American past in Korea and the role of missionaries in it. The Korean Presbyterian and Methodist churches and the universities that trace their origins back to American missionaries have never forgotten, and organizations, such as the Homer Hulbert Memorial Society, are rediscovering the contributions of Americans to the survival and modernization of Korea. Americans would be well advised to re-learn the role of American missionaries in the history of Korea
and the relevance of that past to the ongoing US disputes with North Korea and the evolving USSouth Korea relationship. Robert S. Kim is the author of Project Eagle: The American Christians of North Korea in World War II (Potomac Books, 2017) and has almost two decades of experience in law and foreign affairs. He has worked in international financial law at a New York firm and in financial regulation at the US Securities and Exchange Commission and at the Department of the Treasury. He previously worked at the US embassy in Moscow and served as the Treasury Department’s deputy attaché at the US embassy in Baghdad from 2009–10.
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Italian-built Palmaria self-propelled howitzers of the Qaddafi forces, destroyed by French Rafale fighter aircraft in the outskirts of Benghazi, Libya, in Opération Harmattan on March 19, 2011. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
THE ROLE OF MORALITY IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS By Mark Amstutz
Dept. of State Lecture—Nov. 8 What is the role of moral values in the conduct of foreign relations? Although many answers have been given, three major traditions predominate: realism, idealism, and principled realism. Realism, the dominant perspective in global politics, assumes that international relations are fundamentally conflictual and guided by national self-interest rooted in power. According to this tradition, morality is not an essential consideration in governmental action. Rather, what motivates and guides diplomats are the vital interests of states. According to George Kennan, the noted Cold War diplomat, a statesman’s primary duty is to secure such national interests as security, political independence, 24
and national wellbeing. In his view these interests have no moral quality. The second tradition is idealism. According to idealists, foreign policy involves the pursuit of moral ideals, such as peace, human rights, and global justice. According to this view, the goals and means of foreign policy should be based on morality. Because idealists assume a benign view of human nature and an optimistic approach to political life, they believe peace and prosperity can be advanced when statesmen are rational and cooperate toward common goals. According to the noted British historian E.H. Carr, the idealist tradition is premised on the optimistic assumption that interests can be easily reconciled. He termed this belief “the doctrine of harmony of interests.” The third tradition is principled realism, which
is based on a combination of the first two. According to this perspective, foreign policy involves the pursuit of interests based on power as well as fundamental moral values, such as freedom, human dignity, equality, etc. The noted political ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr identified with this tradition, declaring that “politics will, to the end of history, be an arena where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises.” In my view, the tradition of principled realism has helped structure much of US foreign policy, especially since the end of the Second World War. While the balance between power and morality has varied over time, our government has consistently sought to base foreign policy initiatives on both material interests and moral values. *** If we assume that morality can play a role in foreign policy, how should values be integrated with decision-making? In my view, there are at least three ways that morality can be integrated into policymaking. These are ends-based action, rule-based action, and tri-dimensional ethics. The tradition of ends-based action, often called consequentialism, assumes that action should be judged by its outcomes. An example is the reliance on nuclear deterrence during the Cold War when the US sought to deter Soviet aggression with the threat of nuclear retaliation. Nuclear weapons, however, pose a moral challenge. Because nuclear arms are weapons of mass destruction, they cannot be reconciled easily with wartime ethics. According to the just war tradition, the only legitimate targets in wartime are combatants. And since nuclear arms cannot easily discriminate between combatants and civilians, they challenge accepted rules of war. This is why political theorist Michael Walzer observes in his classic Just and Unjust Wars that nuclear weapons “explode the theory of just war.” Despite the moral problems posed by deterrence, however, this strategy was implemented as a means of inhibiting aggression and keeping the peace throughout the Cold War. The second approach to decision-making is rule-based action. Philosophers who typically identify with this approach define it as deontological ethics because it gives primacy to moral
Protestor on May 5, 1985, criticizing President Ronald Reagan for laying a wreath at the military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
duties. According to this perspective, morality is fulfilled when action is inspired and guided by fundamental moral obligations. US famine relief to the Soviet Union in 1921–22 illustrates this type of action. Although the US government was seeking to undermine the new Soviet Communist regime, the US government nevertheless gave humanitarian aid to relieve the hunger of millions of Russians. In the 1990s, the US government again relied on this approach in justifying food aid to the North Korean people to deal with a severe famine, even though we regarded North Korea as an enemy state. Both of these cases show that moral values can sometimes trump strategic considerations. The third tradition of decision-making is tri-dimensional ethics, an approach that seeks to overcome the limitations of both ends-based and rule-based decision-making by integrating both. According to this tradition, in order for foreign policy decision-making to be fully consistent with political morality, the goals, methods, and results of action must be moral. This is a tall order. Few decisions can ever hope to fulfill these three conditions. Perhaps the best that can be achieved is to advance some good at one 25
pandemic was wholly moral. In my view, the specific program goals of preventing the spread of AIDS, caring for those who are infected, and meeting the needs of orphaned children was completely just and praiseworthy. When we assess PEPFAR at the level of means, however, some ethical tensions arise. Some critics contend, for example, that an excessive amount of funding was devoted to HIV/AIDS, shifting medical resources away from other diseases, such as malaria. Similarly, other critics have contended that, given the high cost of anti-retroviral drugs, more lives could have been saved at lower cost treating intestinal and respiratory diseases. But PEPFAR critics generally fail to take into account some of the social and economic costs families and communities victimized by AIDS endure. Despite the criticisms focused on alternative uses of funds, I believe that PEPFAR was morally defensible.
Protester carrying badge made by European Union of Jewish Students. May 5, 1985. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
or two of these three levels. The following cases are illustrative as to the perils and the possibilities of applying this ethical approach. *** My first case is the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). President George W. Bush announced the PEPFAR initiative in January 2003. The program aimed to prevent the spread of AIDS, treat at least two million persons with life-extending drugs, and provide care to children orphaned by the disease. At the time that PEPFAR was announced, some 20 million Africans were infected with the virus, thousands of persons were dying daily from the disease, and close to 14 million children had been orphaned. The initiative, which was focused on 15 African countries, called for an original expenditure of $15 billion over five years. Since then, the program has been reauthorized several times, resulting in a total expenditure of roughly $70 billion. Judging PEPFAR from a tri-dimensional ethical perspective, we can say that the humanitarian goal of halting a dangerous, rapidly spreading 26
Finally, at the level of outcomes, PEPFAR was totally moral. At a minimum, millions of people are alive today because of the program, while 2.2 million babies have been born HIV-free to infected mothers. Additionally, more than 14 million persons have received anti-retroviral life-saving drugs, and care and support have been given to more than 6.5 million orphans. I believe that PEPFAR, which human compassion inspired, was a legitimate program. The initiative was morally unassailable at the level of goals and ends and despite its critics was also morally justified at the level of means. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated that PEPFAR will be remembered “as one of the greatest acts of compassion by any country in history.” Now to a more challenging foreign policy case— President Ronald Reagan’s laying a wreath at the military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany. In early 1985, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl invited President Reagan to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the defeat of the Axis powers. The visit’s aim was to demonstrate to the world that it was possible to overcome evil and establish a new political order, one with peaceful, productive ties between the two countries. In effect, the aim was to honor West Germany’s consolidation of democracy and strong bilateral ties with the US. The trip became problematic, however, when it was discovered that the president planned to lay a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery to honor German and American soldiers
and the Security Council adopted a principle known as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Basically, R2P says that a government is responsible for protecting its people’s basic rights. When a government is unwilling or unable to do so, sovereignty can no longer be used to shield egregious human rights offenses. This does not mean that states have a right to intervene but rather that the international community has “a responsibility to protect.”
President George W. Bush speaking at an event on May 9, 2018, to celebrate the life-changing success of PEPFAR and other related programs made possible by the generosity of the American people. Photo by Grant Miller. Source: George W. Bush Presidential Center.
who died in World War II. The problem was that among the two thousand soldiers’ graves were those of 49 SS troops. Despite significant congressional and public opposition, the president stood fast in his decision to honor US-West Germany ties of political reconciliation. He justified his decision by stating that it was important to honor West Germany’s transformation and to celebrate the two countries’ close ties. For Reagan, the success of political rehabilitation trumped past evil. Let us apply the tri-dimensional framework to assess Reagan’s decision. From the perspective of goals, there can be little doubt that the aim of celebrating the consolidation of democracy and the development of close bilateral ties between West Germany and the US was morally justified. At the level of means, however, the presence of SS graves presented a major moral obstacle. Nevertheless, Reagan believed that it was important to honor West Germany’s political rehabilitation. Not only had the country become a stable democratic state, but it had also sought to make amends for the genocide by prosecuting thousands of guilty Germans and providing substantial financial reparations. Finally, at the level of outcomes, we can say that the visit was beneficial to US-West Germany solidarity and was therefore moral. In short, while visiting the cemetery was morally problematic, the goals and outcomes of the German trip were morally unassailable. Our final case is a more recent one—the military intervention in Libya. In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, the UN General Assembly
In December 2010, a revolt in a small town in Tunisia unleashed a political uprising throughout the country. Through the technological miracle of social media, the revolt spread quickly to other nations in the Middle East. In mid-February, the political awakening—known as the “Arab Spring”—reached Libya, where rebel groups began to openly challenge the long-standing dictatorship of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. The political unrest began in Benghazi, some 600 miles east of Tripoli, and spread quickly to other cities. As the revolt gained momentum, Qaddafi loyalists responded by consolidating their operations, hiring mercenaries, and unleashing extreme violence against the rebels. Qaddafi, who compared the rebels to rats, promised to show “no mercy” to the opposition. By midMarch rebel forces were retreating, and Qaddafi’s armored columns were within 100 miles of Benghazi. A growing number of world leaders feared that if the international community did not respond to Qaddafi’s threats, Libya’s security forces would inflict mass atrocities—not unlike what had happened in Bosnia in 1995 when Serb forces killed some seven thousand Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. Given the possibility of a massacre, the challenge for world leaders was how to respond to the Qaddafi threat. In March 2011, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, which authorized military force to protect people in the Libyan conflict. Soon after, the military forces of the US, the UK, and France carried out an air war that dismantled Libya’s air defense system and air force while destroying a large part of its weapons depots and military installations. Within six months, the anti-government forces controlled most of Libya. After Qaddafi was captured and killed, an interim government announced that Libya was now free. Let’s now apply the tri-dimensional framework to this action. From a standpoint of intentions, the aim of protecting civilians is completely morally justified. Although the number 27
of deaths from the fighting was limited before NATO’s air war, the threat of mass killing in Benghazi and elsewhere was real. When President Barack Obama announced US military operations against Libya, he stated that the aim of the intervention was to stop a massacre. To be sure, the defense against a massacre is morally defensible, even morally necessary. The ethical problem with the Libyan operation, however, was not with the original mission but with its expansion. Had the air war remained limited, it is doubtful that a full-scale war would have erupted. But by dismantling and destroying Qaddafi’s forces, NATO also destroyed the Libyan state. At the level of means, the military operation was justified in providing limited, discriminating force to thwart government military forces from carrying out revenge against rebel forces and civilians. The problem with the means, however, arose when Western forces continued their military operations, in effect supporting rebels who were seeking to topple the Qaddafi regime. Regime change had not been authorized by the Security Council, nor was it a legitimate goal of the R2P operation. Finally, at the level of outcomes, the Libyan operation presents the most difficulties. When the NATO military operation began, fewer than 500 soldiers had been killed. But after the rebellion became a civil war, the conflict led to more than 30 thousand deaths. The most damaging outcome of the conflict, however, was the destruction of the state and the unleashing of tribalism. To some extent, the evolution of Libya was foreshadowed by the tale of Humpty Dumpty: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.” The dictatorship of Qaddafi is over, but Libya is now a collapsed, failed state. In short, while the protection of civilians was morally just, the dismantling of the existing regime was counterproductive, leading to widespread killing. Thus far, the three cases demonstrate how the role of such moral norms as human dignity, compassion, solidarity, individual rights, and political order to guide and assess decision-making. I now turn to the values of truth-telling, mercy, and forgiveness—norms that generally are considered more relevant to interpersonal relationships than to public affairs. I do so by addressing the problem of systemic human rights offenses. How should the US approach the problem of 28
regime injustice and collective violence? What moral principles should guide us in confronting widespread human rights abuses and restoring civic order? When I began exploring this subject in the late l980s, concepts like mercy, reconciliation, and forgiveness were largely absent from international relations discourse. After my book The Healing of Nations was published, a friend, a former ambassador, called and asked, “Mark, what’s happened? Have you left the realist fold?” When I began working in this area, the concept of political reconciliation was largely unknown in political discourse. Fortunately, that is no longer the case. Fundamentally, democratic states assume that the most effective strategy in confronting criminal behavior is to identify and prosecute offenders. This approach assumes that human rights are best protected through the rule of law. According to the legalist paradigm, when people commit offenses, they should be held accountable. For the legalist, there is no such thing as collective wrongdoing. Culpability is always individual, even when working for the state, and justice demands that perpetrators be individually accountable for their offenses. Legalism is the dominant global paradigm for dealing with regime atrocities and war crimes. It is the perspective that animates the work of war crimes tribunals and the International Criminal Court. This approach proclaims, “No justice, no peace.” Is this claim justified? Is justice a precondition for peace and the restoration of society? Could it be, as theologian Miroslav Volf argues, that the pursuit of justice can only be carried out when the ethic of inclusion or “embrace” is a priority? In his encyclical Rich in Mercy, the late Pope John Paul II reinforced this view by making the extraordinary claim, “No justice without forgiveness.” Rather than relying on legalism, I believe that a more effective way of dealing with systemic atrocities is through the strategy of political reconciliation. Whereas legalism is backward-looking and based on retributive justice, political reconciliation provides a forward-looking strategy that seeks to rebuild trust among enemies. While current scholarship on restorative justice provides few principles and norms for pursuing political rehabilitation, the following practices are generally considered important in pursuing this strategy: truth-telling, acknowledgment, reparations, apologies, and forgiveness.
What does the issue of forgiveness and reconciliation have to do with international ethics? The issue is a challenging moral dilemma because it pits legal accountability versus forgiveness, backward-looking retribution versus forward-looking political rehabilitation. I believe that more attention needs to be given to the healing of nations and that leaders should shift their focus from a reflexive retributive ethic to an ethic of truth-telling, forgiveness, and reconciliation. I think Archbishop Desmond Tutu has it right: “There is no future without forgiveness.” The most compelling illustration of this strategy in the post-Cold War era is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa. In 1995, the Parliament of South Africa passed the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, which called for the establishment of a truth commission. Building on the prior work of truth commissions in Chile and Argentina, the South African TRC made truth-telling a priority. The TRC’s logic was that truth, not punishment, was the necessary precondition for political reconciliation. To encourage truth-telling of past politically motivated crimes, the TRC promised amnesty to those who confessed fully their offenses. Once the commission got underway, it held more than 160 public hearings throughout the country, involving some 1,200 victims. Additionally, the TRC received statements from more than 22 thousand persons. The TRC’s final report was published in late 1998. When I first visited South Africa in 1985, I thought that a civil war was inevitable. In my view, the fact that South Africa has transitioned from an apartheid regime to a struggling democratic country is due in no small measure to the work of the TRC. Let us assess the South African strategy using the tri-dimensional framework. At the level of goals, I believe the aim of reconciliation is morally legitimate. Who can be against the healing and rebuilding of political society? Some critics argue, however, that pursuing reconciliation is inconsistent with democracy. They argue that democratic participation should be the goal, not the restoration of communal solidarity. According to democratic theorists, the only legitimate way of pursuing healing and restoration is through political participation. At the level of means, the granting of amnesty to those who disclosed their offenses fully is mor-
ally problematic. Whether or not one supports amnesty as a way of pursuing truth will depend in great part on whether or not one is committed to a retributive or restorative ethic. As one who supports the restorative justice model, I think the TRC approach is wholly justified morally. But I also recognize that human rights lawyers are likely to consider the South African approach deeply flawed. Finally, at the level of results, I believe that the successful democratic transition justifies the strategy taken by South Africa—that is, a strategy of political reconciliation based on the disclosure of truth. Not only was a civil war avoided, but some progress has been made in increasing non-racial political participation. Moral values have an important role to play in public life in general and foreign policy in particular. While moral values provide direction and inspiration, developing and implementing just policies is difficult since actions rarely can fulfill the demands of morality at the level of intentions, methods, and outcomes. Thus, in seeking to advance morally worthy actions, it is imperative that the policymaker pursues his or her calling with humility. This statement from Reinhold Niebuhr captures the challenge of pursuing moral action: Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
Mark R. Amstutz, a Providence contributing editor, is professor emeritus of political science at Wheaton College. He is the author of a number of works, including Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy; Just Immigration: American Policy in Christian Perspective; and Ethics: Concepts, Theories, and Cases in Global Politics, now in its fifth edition. 29
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?” I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o’er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait.”
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“When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” John Milton (1608–1674)
ESSAYS
Asia Bibi. Source: Open Doors USA.
Asia Bibi & America By Mark Tooley
Every American Christian should know about Asia Bibi. She’s the illiterate Catholic woman from rural Pakistan whom that country’s government imprisoned for a decade for allegedly committing blasphemy. In 2009, some village women were angry that Bibi drank from a public water cup supposedly reserved for Muslims and derided her Christian faith. They alleged she responded by insulting Islam. A mob attacked her home. She was tried and sentenced to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy law. The local governor who sympathized with her plight was assassinated. Pakistan’s only Christian cabinet minister, who defended her despite his likely death, was also murdered. Pakistan’s Supreme Court exonerated Bibi last fall, for which some justices received death threats. Her lawyer, also facing assassination, was forced to flee to the West. Islamist parties
organized mass demonstrations urging her extrajudicial killing and demanded she be refused exit from Pakistan. The government, acceding to the latter demand, detained her until May of this year, when she finally escaped to asylum in Canada, where her family had already fled.
Every American Christian should know about Asia Bibi, who remained steadfast in her faith during her decade of mostly solitary confinement. But very few do. Every Christian clergy from every American pulpit should have extolled her witness, but very few did. Every Christian advocate for social justice should have embraced her, an illiterate rural minority woman persecuted for her beliefs, as an icon of discrimination, prejudice, and injustice. Very few did. Asia Bibi and her Christian faith are so hated in the land of her birth, a country of almost 200 million, that she and her family barely escaped with their lives. They can likely never return. Others who defended her were murdered, 31
Christians in the world and throughout history, Christian faith is about sacrifice and danger. Asia Bibi’s torment and survival is for them an unwelcome challenge to their preferred narrative of cultural collective guilt.
Protest calling for Asia Bibi’s release. Source: HazteOir, via Flickr.
threatened, or forced to flee their own country, too, likely forever. And yet, very few American Christians have or will ponder the plight of Asia Bibi. Many American Christians, especially clerics, academics, and activists, imagine that America is a chief sinister force in the world today and in history. Many organize apologies for American misdeeds of long ago. Or they insist America is today irredeemably repressive and hateful. They see much of the rest of the world as victimized by America. Most American Christians of course don’t share these very hostile views toward their own country. But they are too often indifferent to their own liberties and blessings. Too often they are complaining, or they are resentful or despairing, although they remain some of the most privileged people ever to have lived and breathed on planet Earth.
Bibi, unable to live with any chance of survival in her own country, had to flee to the West. Several Western countries offered her refuge. We can pray she and her family live long and prosperously in Canada. And we should offer unceasing prayers of gratitude for countries, like most in the West, where there is religious liberty, which is unusual in the world today and throughout history. Persons in the West are not killed for blasphemy by their governments or by angry mobs with wide popular support, as Asia Bibi faced in her native Pakistan. The West, including America, has been shaped by an exceptional ethos asserting that persons should generally be free to practice their own faith without fear. This assumption goes back to the Hebrew revelation that each person is endowed by God with a mind, a soul, a conscience, and a will. And each person can only find authentic redemption if he or she is able to follow God without earthly coercion. Angry mobs and repressive regimes can see only exterior behavior. But God sees the heart. Asia Bibi knew that God could see her heart, which she reserved unto him, and which was not moved by suffering and threats from those who hate him. May all of us aspire to a faith and strong heart like hers. But may all of us also aspire to a better world where millions like Bibi don’t have to face threats, torment, or death because of their faith.
All comfortable American Christians should routinely contemplate the decade of horrors that befell Asia Bibi, who miraculously survived, and the horrors that killed her brave defenders. Her sufferings have been and still are the routine plight of millions of Christians in the world today and throughout history.
And may all of us who are American Christians be more grateful for and vigilant about our unusual blessings of liberty and relative safety. Let us ponder the providential historical circumstances that brought us unmerited protection and prosperity. And let us resolve, with God’s aid, to deploy our liberties and advantages for the deliverance of many others like Asia Bibi.
Coddled and smug American Christian elites often bewail that Christianity is the faith of empire and privilege. But for many if not most
Mark Tooley is co-editor of Providence and president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy.
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TUA RES AGITUR
Resurrection Church in İzmir, Turkey. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Christian Missions Divine Calling or Cause for Concern? By Drew Griffin The theme of this issue is the sometimes conflicted and often contentious relationship of Christian missions and US foreign policy. There are few arenas of public engagement where the precepts of Christian theology and the politics of American statecraft come in such proximity to one another. This interaction is unavoidable, and missionaries and international relations practitioners would do well to understand its origins and effects. The Gospel writers Luke and Matthew both recorded the closing admonitions of Jesus to his followers, and Jesus was explicit in his terminology and specific in his scope: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. (Matthew 28:19)
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:8)
The political ramifications of this command should be immediately apparent. Christianity was never meant to be a local phenomenon; it was destined to be a global and universal movement. Jesus’ language was explicit in addressing the task at hand for all of his followers and their posterity, just as he was specific as to where that task was to be carried out. His followers were to “go make disciples,” and this discipleship was to occur amidst “all the nations.” Jesus mentions specific cities and bounded regions, and then applies his mission to the entire globe. The final words of Jesus to his disciples on earth were the first words of the coming Christian millennia that would proliferate first in Jerusalem, then in Judea and Samaria, and then to the far corners of the earth. 33
The relationship between Christ’s otherworldly ethic and his worldly presence was meant to serve as foreshadowing and a model to his followers of the tension they would likely experience as “little Christs” or “Christians.” From the outset of the Christian movement, this tension was cultural, political, and at times fatal. There has never been a period, in all of Christian history, when the mission to proclaim the “good news” or Gospel of Jesus was not an illegal endeavor somewhere. And even when and where it was legal, it was rarely culturally palatable. Despite these prohibitions and hinderances, the Christian Gospel and the resulting culture that flows from the belief in that Gospel advanced and continues to advance. There have been periods when missionaries operated outside the purview and without the support of their native governments, and when they operated as agents of the state. There were times when missionaries were powerless and persecuted, preaching to a hostile community; a few times they were part of empowered minorities who persecuted others. The history of Christian missions is just as messy and controversial as the periods of history in which those missions took place. America was in no small part shaped by Christian missions. Early states were populated by Christian missionaries; the American government was constructed to accommodate their presence, and those legal accommodations made America an unparalleled platform for global Christian evangelism. Furthermore, it is undeniable that Christian missions and missionaries had an impact on American foreign policy. Motivated by their desire to bring good news to the nations, Christians send missionaries to engage peoples in global megacities and remote villages, in countries both allied with and antagonistic toward the US. They influenced foreign cultures for the Gospel, and as a result they influenced American perceptions of foreign cultures. Their presence and mission create a tension as old as the Gospels they preach; they render under caesar that which is caesar’s and unto to God’s that which is God’s. This dual-loyalty may be eternally significant, but it can lead to contemporary political difficulty. The impact of American missionaries on American foreign policy is three-fold: it can be applied outward to other nations, inward to our own, and upward into the official foreign relations apparatus. 34
OUTWARD: MISSIONARIES AFFECT A FOREIGN CULTURES PERCEPTION OF AMERICA Beyond the halls of power and influence, far from foreign capitals and megacities, missionaries frequently go where diplomats fear to tread. In small villages and remote hamlets, missionaries spread the message of Christianity, and where they go, it is unavoidable that the American culture that sent them is along for the ride. While at times this can be a hindrance to the mission, it is also an opportunity. While religious missionaries’ chief concern should be their religious obligation, they would do well to appreciate that, whether they like it or not, they will likely be the only American whom their hosts will ever meet. In 2013, I took part in a small scouting trip to northeast India in conjunction with a large American-based missions organization. Bihar, a state the size of Indiana but with a population of 100 million, was one of the poorest and least developed states in India. Out of the 100 million people who call that remote and crowded place home, I was one of only a handful of Americans present in the state, according to our embassy. Few missionaries traveled there, and fewer still stayed for very long. Those missionaries present in the region were surreptitious and under the radar to avoid political retribution and possible deportation. Regardless of the setbacks, there was work being done to provide water and infrastructure to a community in dire need of both. And while our presence was often met with skepticism and suspicion, we were just as frequently greeted warmly as “the Americans.” For all the sturm and drang caused by those critical of Christian cross-cultural exchanges and “Western” pollution of innocent foreign cultures, these exchanges are often invaluable to American interests abroad. Every well dug, every orphanage opened, every hospital dedicated, and every other kind gesture in a hostile world serves to erode the perception of American arrogance and indifference.
INWARD: MISSIONARIES AFFECT AMERICAN CULTURE’S PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD Despite the common perception that the United States had an isolationist beginning, from its inception America has been involved in the global community. By 1801, a mere 12 years after the US Constitution came into force in 1789, the US
enjoined Sweden in its war on the Barbary Coast and sent the Marines to Tripoli. We had ambassadors in foreign capitals before we had administrators in our own. That being said, individual Americans, by and large, have endeavored to keep to themselves. The building and expansion of our own country have often crowded out the American public’s interest in other countries. And even though the burden of global leadership has grown, American communities are often blissfully ignorant of the globe their country is leading. Coastal elites often blame rural communities and the “fly-over country” for America’s ignorance and indifference toward the world, but few appreciate missionaries’ role in dispelling this ignorance. The heart of America’s Christian community exists in these very places, for it is here you find churches. And missionaries are being sent from and returning to those churches. America’s largest global mission organization, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, is located not in New York or LA, but Richmond, Virginia. Organizations like the IMB, and countless independent missions and churches, mobilize tens of thousands of American missionaries to nearly every country on the globe. And from time to time, those missionaries return and report their experiences to their supporters and organizations. This is an invaluable line of cultural exposure to a region incorrectly decried as culturally indifferent. There are citizens from small towns in Mississippi and Alabama living in Mozambique and Albania. Churches in Georgia and Florida are building orphanages in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Community ministries in Arkansas are providing micro-loans for small businesses in Indonesia and Vietnam. One would be foolish to doubt the impact these missions and missionaries have on their communities of origin. Aside from the obvious cultural exposure, these missionaries’ presence in foreign contexts can have real political implications here at home. One needs to look no further than the case of Pastor Andrew Brunson. Originally from North Carolina, Brunson lived in Turkey for 23 years, pastoring a church in Izmir, Turkey’s third-most populace city. While applying for permanent residence in Turkey in 2016, he was accused of taking part in the failed coup attempt against Turkey’s illiberal President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Brunson was held and unlawfully imprisoned for over a year. America’s religious and evangelical communities respond-
ed swiftly to Brunson’s detention and instigated petitions, prayer drives, and actively lobbied the Trump administration to advocate for the pastor’s release. The Trump administration, which came to power in large measure due to evangelical support, applied significant diplomatic and economic pressure on the Erdoğan regime, ultimately securing Brunson’s freedom. In this specific episode, one can see how the experience of a North Carolina missionary informed and mobilized a large segment of the US population to influence policy.
UPWARD: MISSIONARIES AFFECT THE FOREIGN RELATIONS ESTABLISHMENT Finally, many of these missionaries return from abroad and channel their passion for international engagement to the public realm of international relations. They get elected to the White House (Jimmy Carter) and Congress (Tim Kaine, Mitt Romney, James Lankford, et al.); they become governors (Bill Ritter of Colorado); they work at the State Department, United Nations, and nongovernmental organizations. Informed by their international experiences on the mission field, these men and women shape foreign policy and international relations. They provide insight, experience, and empathy to a field often bereft of all three. Providence exists in part to equip the American mind to engage the real world, and to expose both the private and public sectors to the essential religious realities which underline and inform international relations and American foreign policy. History is replete of examples of what occurs when these realities are ignored, when countries and international relations professionals treat religious belief as a mere aesthetic interest. Missionaries are embodied reminders of the power of these beliefs and the impact religion can have on persons and policy. The mission they undertake will not end, until The End. So whether a Christian is a minister in a pulpit or a minister in parliament, he or she would do well to understand Christian missions’ impact. Drew Griffin is managing editor of Providence. 35
Aqueduct of Segovia in Spain, originally built around AD 112. Source: Pixabay.
What Did Western Civilization Ever Do for Us?!? A Qualified Defense of the West By Daniel Strand Perhaps one of my favorite tools in teaching Western civilization to undergrads at Arizona State University is to show clips of the masterpiece historical satires Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Besides being brilliantly hilarious and at times deeply offensive—the closing scene to Brian is just awful, awful, awful—Monty Python manages to drive home some extremely important points about the complex and compelling nature of Western history. When I teach about the Roman Empire, I show the students a scene from Brian where Jewish Zealots plot to kidnap and extort money from 36
the Roman governor of Judea. As they go over their plans and recount the history of Roman exploitation and oppression, the leader of the group, John Cleese’s character, denounces the Romans, “And what have they ever given us in return?!” After a second or two of grumbling agreement, one of his compatriots unexpectantly answers his rhetorical question, “The aqueduct.” Cleese responds a bit sheepishly, “Oh, yeah, they did give us that.” A second member of the group adds, “Sanitation.” To which one of the leaders agrees, “Oh yeah, Rich, remember what the city used to be like.” A third member pipes, “The roads!!” Cleese’s character responds, incredulously, “Oh yeah, obviously the roads. The roads go without saying.”
The skit continues this way for a while with other would-be revolutionaries chiming in with other benefits of Roman rule—wine, public health, education, medicine, public order, and so on. The seeming paradoxes are hilarious and illuminating. Here we have Jewish revolutionaries looking to topple the Roman government recognizing that many of things that have made their lives inestimably better have been brought to them by that very despotic and oppressive government. This is how Western history actually goes. It’s messy, ambiguous, brutal, and marvelous all at the same time. The semi-ridiculous conversation that ensued after Trump’s Poland speech about “Western civilization” reflected an equally narrow and reductive view of the West that was indebted more to each side’s contemporary biases than actual history. Western civilization was a narrow and bigoted dog-whistle to white nationalists, the commentariat bemoaned. Or it was freedom and free markets, which could be inclusive of other cultures and civilizations. Trump took a more gauzy view of the West, playing up its greatness and uniqueness. Many of these writers, defenders and critics alike, failed to notice that Western civilization is more complicated, ambiguous, fraught, and glorious than they appreciated. This is why I turn to Monty Python movies with my students. Not only does comedy get us to put down our guards and come out of our little culture-war foxholes, but it also communicates something that direct factual assertions miss. Western civilization is not one thing, and its effects range from epically fantastic to frighteningly barbaric. Our current political divisions get projected backward onto a history and culture that defies our tribal identities and positions. Both sides in this debate are right, but not completely. Our triumphs are more amazing and astounding, and our failures worse and more sickening than we know. What our moralistic defenses of Western civilization miss, and its critics get right, is that there is a dark side to societies and political systems that sprang from Greek and Roman soil in Western Europe and North America. But it’s much worse than the critics seem to appreciate. Violence and brutality have been the hallmark of the West, but so have they defined the history of much of the world. That’s the norm, not the exception.
We don’t need to rehearse the list, but surely the death and destruction of the twentieth century should give us more than a little cause for worry and poke holes in our overly confident views of progress and triumphalism. If we reviewed Western history century by century, we would find cruelty and evil lurking everywhere. The Romans were vicious and brutal in their conquests and suppression of local populations and their own people (see the Social War and Servile Wars). The Greeks were not much better. The early medieval period was a violent and brutal struggle for life amongst the peasantry. The High Middle Ages were turbulent and bloody. The Thirty Years’ War engulfed most of Europe in a long and bloody conflict that was essentially pointless. Voltaire is not far off the mark when he writes his rejoinder to Jean Jacques Rousseau “that history in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes.” But these same cultures produced incredibly humane and compassionate societies that have become deeply concerned about the mistreatment of women and minorities. Care for the poor and the outcast, as historian Peter Brown has shown, became shared social concerns through the advocacy of Christian bishops in the late empire. The development of Roman law, its systemization in the Justinian Code, and revival and complexification in Canon Law and secular law codes in the eleventh and twelfth centuries are astounding feats. We could elaborate on the development of the modern nation-state, the complex political systems that secure liberty and equality before the law for ever more people. Then there are the astonishing scientific developments, both theoretical and practical, that continue apace to this day. Alongside these, we have the development of ever more sophisticated economies that develop means of production and trade that largely benefit the poor and a growing middle class. The abolition of the transatlantic slave trade was brought to you by…the British Empire! Not exactly the counter-imperial narrative that one hears so often in the corridors of the modern university. Eventually, the United States ended its slavery through a bloody civil war, and though the road to full racial equality has been fraught, the vast majority of Americans desire a free and equal society for all peoples. Learning from our past mistakes is a crucial part of any society that hopes to move beyond its past failures. It’s the same for persons. We do not grow unless we learn from our mistakes. 37
But what should astound us even more is the progress we have made. Too many today imagine that modern day America is some sort of racist, kleptocratic dystopia. If only they knew where we have come from! And yet, there are many things that were done better in the past. Not everything about our contemporary Western world is right or can be set right. Societies are imperfectible, and more often than not, those who deny that and seek to create utopias on earth end up creating hell.
racies. To make that statement is scandalous in the eyes of many today, but that’s because we have a hard time holding two competing ideas together at the same time: societies and cultures can be both wonderful and flawed at the same time. America was a country founded on liberty and equality that denied both to a significant portion of the population. That does not make America a racist country, but a very human one, filled with great promise, peril, and contradictions all around.
What we miss in these simple readings of history is the both/and of history. Moralism skews our reading of the past. Rome was both grotesquely brutal and staggeringly brilliant. What the Romans managed to achieve should leave us in sheer awe, but so should their failures. In fact, that is exactly how human societies work. The British Empire had its fair share of evils that it perpetrated on the world, and yet this same empire ended the transatlantic slave trade, almost singlehandedly, and passed along political systems that have made many of its former colonies successful, prosperous democ-
Our desire for the perfect society is an admirable one, but we should not expect it. Instead, we should always expect that our societies will be all too human—a mixture of triumph, tragedy, and ambiguity all rolled into one. The West, for all of its darkness and tragedy, is also a story of amazing cultural, political, and social achievement that should make us both sober and proud at the same time.
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Daniel Strand, PhD, is a faculty member at the Air War College and a contributing editor for Providence.
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“... eligion stands on tip-toe in our land, Readie to passe to the American strand. When height of malice, and prodigious lusts, Impudent sinning, witchcrafts, and distrusts (The marks of future bane) shall fill our cup Unto the brimme, and make our measure up; When Sein shall swallow Tiber, and the Thames By letting in them both pollutes her streams: When Italie of us shall have her will, And all her calender of sinnes fulfill; Whereby one may foretell, what sinnes next yeare Shall both in France and England domineer: Then shall Religion to America flee: They have their times of Gospel, ev’n as we. ...” George Herbert 1593-1633
Participants hold flag, picture of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, January 25, 2014. By Hamada Elrasam for Voice of America. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Authoritarians Won’t Save the Middle East’s Religious Minorities By Shadi Hamid In every major Muslim country, governments use, abuse, and instrumentalize religion, but they don’t merely use it; they feature it as a major component of their foreign policy. We tend to think that Islamist governments and parties are the ones that mix religion and politics, to the point where they are nearly indistinguishable. However, the United States’ more secularly oriented and “progressive” Arab allies do it just as much—sometimes even more so. Why? The short answer is that Islam effectively mobilizes people, and non-Islamist governments in Muslim-majority countries, however authoritarian they may be, cannot hope to be insulated from their own populations—populations that almost without exception remain religiously conservative. Because Islam is so resonant in the public sphere, not promoting a brand of Islam leaves an ideological vacuum, which is simply a nonstarter for authoritarians. Religion, then, becomes not merely a private matter but a question of national security. So governments 40
must monitor and regulate religious knowledge and production. As Peter Mandaville and I discuss in a recent report on religious soft power, these regimes— including in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates—have all draped themselves in the flag of “moderate Islam,” each with their own nationalist spin on the concept.1 In doing so, they seek to counter domestic and regional ideological challenges emanating both from mainstream Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and extremist organizations like the Islamic State, or ISIS. Often, particularly in the cases of Egypt and the UAE, this means blurring together very different domestic and regional ideological challenges into a single, all-encompassing, anti-Islamist narrative. For them, religious extremism isn’t the problem; Islamism is. Pointing to the instability that the Arab uprisings wrought, authoritarian regimes argue—either directly or indirectly and with at least the implicit support of the US government—that
this is not the time for democracy, political reform, or anything that might challenge the existing authorities. Instead, they prioritize religious reform and promote interfaith dialogue. This is not, in other words, the time for anything rash, these countries’ officials caution American audiences time and time again. The UAE has emerged as a primary sponsor of interfaith summits with a focus on religious pluralism and coexistence overlaid with a strong Sufi tenor. In Morocco too, Sufi traditions—which were once associated with rebellion in the colonial era but today tend toward deference to political authority2—figure prominently in Morocco’s brand of domesticated, quietist Islam. As Sarah Alaoui writes, “This quietism is necessary in a country where the king rules over both the secular and spiritual spheres, and heavily relies on Islam— and a purported lineage to the Prophet Muhammad—to legitimate his rule. This control of the religious sphere has only increased post-September 11.”3 All of this raises a difficult but vital question: Can authoritarian regimes, which are by definition suspicious of dissent and free inquiry—bedrocks of religious freedom—truly be champions of religious liberty and pluralism? Arab governments appear to be saying yes they can, and that there is no other way regardless. A second, related question is whether religious pluralism can help pave the way for political pluralism. Empirically, at least in the case of the modern Middle East, the second question invites an easier reply. If religion and politics are inextricably intertwined even under anti-Islamist governments, then to have freedom in one but not the other is simply not possible. If certain religious interpretations are not strictly private but threats to the state’s religious legitimacy and control of religious production, then an authoritarian state will only allow religious expression that does not threaten the state. This repressive instinct might seem largely cynical—and to some degree it is—but there is a deeper set of philosophical assumptions driving what might be termed repression in the name of tolerance. One might even call it liberal, if we consider the long history of Enlightenment intellectuals in Europe striking Faustian bargains to protect hard-won liberties from the too pious masses. As the political theorist Faheem Hussain notes, “Enlightenment philosophes were prepared to make a spoken or unspoken agreement with authoritarian interests, promising obedience and loyalty as long as core liberal val-
President Donald Trump welcomes Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi on April 3, 2017, at the West Wing entrance of the White House in Washington, DC. By Shealah Craighead. Source: White House.
ues such as freedom of expression over private beliefs were maintained, at least those opinions that wouldn’t trouble the security of the state.”4 Hussain writes, “As the philosophes did before them, Egyptian liberals find themselves within societies that have religious majorities who view liberal ideas as at best religiously problematic, or at worst foreign or infidel.” For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote in the eighteenth century, the influences of the emerging liberal culture masked tyranny in rosier glasses. In Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (1750), he elaborates that “the sciences, letters, and the arts…spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains which weigh men down… and make them love their slavery by turning them into what are called civilized people.”5 “Liberal repression” today might seem unreasonable—a convenient excuse for the will to power and subjugation. But it draws on a widespread strain in political science that democracy, to be done well, requires a sequential, multi-stage approach. Before democracy, there must be a democratic culture (although it’s never quite clear how a democratic culture might come to be in an environment that discourages democratic behavior). More importantly for our purposes is the relationship between religious freedom and pluralism on one hand, and political freedom and pluralism on the other. In the sequencing paradigm, the liberalization of religious thinking is both a first step and a prerequisite, setting the foundation for everything that comes after. Hearts must be habituated to democratic ways, and this requires a change in mentality and attitude rather than a change in political behavior. The sequencing of religious reform first and 41
Tahrir Square on November 27, 2012, during the uprising against President Mohamed Morsi. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
then—and only then—democracy “worked” for Europe. Far from some well-thought-out grand strategy, however, this sequencing occurred naturally and organically in the nineteenth century. But to impose an outdated step-by-step process on modern societies is an altogether different (and patronizing) prospect. Knowing that democracy, or something like it, is within reach, citizens have no interest in waiting indefinitely for something their leaders say they are not ready for. Today, even as democracy finds itself in relative decline, it remains such a normative good that actively denying people the right to vote for their own leaders requires conscious and continuous acts of suppression. This suppression is precisely what numerous Arab governments have doubled down on, either suspending political reform or doing away with it entirely. And what drives the re-embrace of repression, after the interlude of the Arab Spring, is a mixture of religious and political insecurity and an almost obsessive need to keep at bay any challengers to political-religious legitimacy. The basic dynamic—of nations and peoples contending with divides over religion’s role in public life and Islam’s relationship to the state—is unlikely to change anytime soon. As I argue in my book Islamic Exceptionalism, Is42
lam, since its founding moment in the seventh century, has played an outsized role in public life and has proven resistant to repeated attempts to privatize it.6 Over the span of 14 centuries, the form these “Islams” have taken has changed according to time and place, but it has never disappeared. Even at the height of Middle East’s short-lived secular moment of the 1950s and ’60s—which, rather than a sign of things to come, is better understood as a brief aberration—governments remained intimately involved in religious matters. In attempting to de-politicize religion, they contributed to its ongoing politicization by trying to make it subservient to newly independent nation-states. This itself was a profoundly political position which drew on centuries of classical Islamic thought around deference to political authorities, however imperfect they may be. What we are witnessing today is an intensification of this basic posture of politicization through de-politicization. The timing is no accident. The Arab Spring demonstrated the power of religiously inspired mobilization, with Islamist movements gaining ground and even power through democratic elections across the region.
In addition, the rise of ISIS as a military and ideological threat created an even stronger Western and international desire for reliable regimes that were willing to use the authority and reach of the state to counter extremist narratives. For their part, authoritarian regimes deftly promoted their authoritarianism to those same Western audiences as a necessary evil in the broader fight against extremism. A strong, relatively “enlightened” state, however repressive, represented the best chance to secure the freedom and safety of two groups that tended to suffer under democratization—religious minorities and women. This was a message tailor-made for Western interlocutors, who were always looking for evidence of a long-awaited Islamic reformation. If the large majorities in these countries were conservative and retrograde on things like minority rights and gender equality, then top-down, authoritarian leadership wasn’t a bug, but a feature. Egypt, under General-turned-President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, was on the extreme end of the repression spectrum, presiding over the Rabaa massacre, which Human Rights Watch called the worst mass killing in modern Egypt’s history, on August 14, 2013.7 Yet he came to power by dissolving a democratically elected Islamist government that he (as well as Western powers) saw as holding to an outdated, rigid interpretation of Islam. Even as his government persecuted Shiites, gays, and atheists, Sisi, in a high-profile 2015 speech, called on the religious establishment to modernize its approach to Islamic sources as part of a wider “religious revolution.”8 None of this meant that Sisi wasn’t willing—in a way that his Islamist predecessor never could have dreamed—to rely heavily on the country’s clerical class to justify in explicitly religious terms the killing of Muslim Brotherhood members in Rabaa. As former Grand Mufti Ali Goma’a put it in a video made for the military shortly after the dispersal, “When someone tries to divide you, then kill them… Blessed are those who kill them, and those who are killed by them. We must cleanse our Egypt of this trash… they reek. God is with you, and the Prophet Muhammad is with you, and the believers are with you… [Oh God], may you destroy them.”9 That Goma’a and other pro-regime clerics would employ the kind of takfirist reasoning usually associated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State—arguing that Brotherhood members
A protester in Tahrir Square holds up a copy of the Koran and a Christian cross on November 30, 2012. By Y. Weeks for Voice of America. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
were akin to heretics and therefore their blood was licit10—belied the Sisi regime’s dogged promotion of “Egyptian Islam,” “moderation,” and religious tolerance. President Sisi also went out of his way to publicize his partnership with the Coptic Orthodox Church, portraying himself as a protector of Egypt’s Christian minority. Speaking at the opening of the Coptic Cathedral of the Nativity in January 2018, he proclaimed that the inauguration provided “a message for the whole world. A message of peace and love.” He continued, “We present a model of peace and love among us. Love and peace will come out from Egypt and spread to the whole world… Evil, havoc, ruins, and murder will never defeat good.”11 In reality, Sisi’s tenure has been just as bad—or worse—for Christians as his predecessors’. Discrimination remains rampant, including caps on the number of Christians who can serve in the military, police, and other security agencies.12 In one high-profile incident in February 2016, three Christian teens were sentenced to five years in prison for (oddly enough) mocking ISIS.13 They fled the country. The website Eshhad (“Witness”) documents the full scope of attacks and discrimination against Christians and other religious minorities in Egypt.14 Importantly, the database clarifies which actions are from state actors versus non-state actors. While the Egyptian government may argue that many of these incidents are out of its control, there are a striking number of incidents where state actors are implicated. Then there is the widely praised 2016 church construction law—which might have been considered the Sisi regime’s one concrete step, were it not for its lack of implementation. As the Project on Middle East Democracy’s Stephen McIn43
erney and Amy Hawthorne note, “Under the new law, the Egyptian state has legalized just 24 percent of the unlicensed churches that have applied for formal approval and, remarkably, has approved the building of new churches at an even lower rate than Hosni Mubarak’s regime… Under Sisi, tens of thousands of Christians have been left with nowhere to pray.”15 But optics can go a long way, and Sisi, whatever his faults or however intense or unforgiving his repression, can claim at least one thing: he is not an Islamist, something that would put him in good stead with most American administrations, but particularly the Trump administration, which has repeatedly floated the idea of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. In January 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the Cathedral of the Nativity and had words of effusive praise for his Egyptian counterparts. “It is a very special thing to have this in the heart of the Middle East, this enormous cathedral where people can come worship in Egypt,” he said. “It’s a land of religious freedom and opportunity. It’s remarkable.” Or as President Donald Trump tweeted, “Sisi is moving his country to a more inclusive future!”16 Similarly, the UAE’s emphasis on being a model of tolerance has, perhaps counterintuitively, coincided with increased levels of repression. In 2016, the UAE established a Ministry of Tolerance. Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, the minister of tolerance, explained the country’s mission: “We want to restore our real religion, which stems from our holy book the Quran, which believes in living together. It believes in the dignity of a human being.”17 Ahead of his historic visit to the United Arab Emirates—the first-ever papal visit to the Gulf—Pope Francis described the UAE as “a country which strives to be a model for coexistence and human fraternity, a meeting point of different civilizations and cultures. A place where people find a safe place to work, live freely and where differences are respected.”18 In the case of the UAE, there are virtually no Christians who also happen to be citizens (most Emirati residents are expatriates), but religious pluralism is just as important within faiths as it is between them. And there are only certain kinds of Islamic expression—those that de-emphasize political involvement and do not contest the religious authority of the state—that are permitted in the country. What the UAE does is not 44
“political Islam” in the traditional sense, but it is certainly a politicized Islam. As the preeminent American scholar of the Gulf, Gregory Gause, describes it, “The United Arab Emirates… represents a third trend in political Islam. Official Islam in the Emirates is tightly tied to state authority and subservient to it. Unlike in Saudi Arabia, the Emiratis have no ambition to propagate Islam beyond their borders. Just the opposite—they support anti-Islamist forces in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere. This is top-down Islam, but in one country.”19 In short, in the UAE, it is not Christians but Muslims who do not enjoy religious freedom. In Egypt, for similar reasons, Muslims do not enjoy religious freedom either. But Christians are also deprived of their freedoms—not just as Christians but also as Egyptians. Christians, like anyone else, deserve and desire the right to choose their own representatives at the local and national level. When there are no meaningful elections, Christians are affected just as Muslims are. The same applies to restrictions on, for example, the activities of non-governmental organizations. Christians should have the right to join an NGO of their choosing and advocate for the causes they believe in. But under regimes like Sisi’s Egypt that claim to be protectors of minorities, there are no organizations that can operate without fear of running afoul of the government. This is the danger of cordoning off minority rights as something separate from the overall human rights situation in a given country. Religious minorities aren’t only religious minorities; they are also citizens and shouldn’t necessarily be seen only or primarily through their membership in a minority community. Just like any of their other fellow citizens, minorities may value other things as much or even more than their identity in a minority group—and that may include basic civil liberties and political rights, such as the right to peacefully protest and the right to express their political and religious preferences in a context of free and open public debate. It is conceivable, at least in theory, that a “liberalizing” authoritarian regime could be good for minority rights, but it is hard to imagine what this would look like in practice anywhere in the Middle East. We have more than six decades and dozens of different regimes whose experiences we can assess and analyze. It is, unfortunately, a record of failure. As the Turkish author Mus-
tafa Akyol notes, “None of these regimes have really given their societies what should be the bedrock of modern civilization: individual freedom. They have suppressed dissent, replaced religious dogmatism with nationalist fervor, and enacted cults of personalities.”20 Despite a rather large number of cases to choose from, neither religious pluralism nor religious freedom has emerged in the absence of fundamental political freedoms. Until one state in the region—any state—can demonstrate otherwise, it is fair to conclude that the former is simply not possible without the latter. Even the regimes most intent on presenting themselves as progressive and “secular” are—and will continue to be—intimately concerned with religious authority and control. Under the authoritarian states of the Middle East, private acts of faith are never merely that. The sequencing of freedoms does, in fact, matter. But that sequence must begin with politics and not theology. Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brooking Institution and the author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World. Endnotes 1. Peter Mandaville and Shadi Hamid, “Islam as Statecraft: How Governments Use Religion in Foreign Policy,” Brookings Institution, November 2018, brookings.edu. 2. Shadi Hamid, “Misunderstanding the Victims of the Sinai Massacre,” The Atlantic, November 26, 2017, theatlantic.com. 3. Sarah Alaoui, “Morocco, commander of the (African) faithful?” Brookings Institution, April 8, 2019, brookings. edu. 4. Faheem Hussain, “Egypt’s Liberal Coup,” Faheem Hussain - Some Thoughts, August 13, 2014, faheemabdmominhussain.wordpress.com. A shorter version was published on the website Open Democracy, opendemocracy.net. 5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts,” Rousseau: the Basic Political Writings, ed. and trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co, Inc, 2012): 6. 6. Shadi Hamid, Islamic Exceptionalism: How the
Struggle over Islam Is Reshaping the World (New York: St. Martin’s, 2016). 7. Human Rights Watch, “UN Human Rights Council: Adoption of the UPR Report on Egypt,” March 20, 2015, hrw.org. 8. Dana Ford, Salma Abdelaziz, and Ian Lee, “Egypt’s President calls for a ‘religious revolution,’” CNN, January 6, 2015, edition.cnn.com. 9. David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh, “Egypt Military Enlists Religion to Quell Ranks,” The New York Times, August 25, 2013, nytimes.com. 10. “Full video for the fatwa of Dr. Ali Gomaa on the permissibility of killing and carrying weapons of Kharijites which was introduced to the officers and soldiers,” posted by Dr. Ali Gomaa, August 25, 2013. youtube.com. See also Elmasry, “The Rabaa massacre and Egyptian propaganda.” 11. “President Abdel-Fatah Al-Sisi speech in Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church,” posted by Egypt Today, January 8, 2018, youtube.com. 12. Marlo Safi, “Is Sisi Good for Egypt’s Christians?” Wall Street Journal, January 10, 2019, wsj.com. 13. Project on Middle East Democracy, “Egypt Daily Update: Teens Receive Max Sentence in Blasphemy Case; Nadeem Center Rebukes Health Ministry Allegations,” Fabuary 25, 2016, pomed.org. 14. Mustafa Rahooma, “Lawyer of ‘Minya Children’: I do not know anything about traveling abroad,” Elwatannews, September 5, 2016, elwatannews.com. 15. Stephen McInerney and Amy Hawthorne, “The Double Talk of Trump’s Favorite Dictator,” Foreign Policy, April 8, 2019, foreignpolicy.com. 16. Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), “Excited to see our friends in Egypt opening the biggest Cathedral in the Middle East. President El-Sisi is moving his country to a more inclusive future!” Twitter, January 6, 2019, 6:59 a.m., twitter.com. 17. Aya Batrawy, “UAE’s tolerance embraces faiths, runs up against politics,” Associated Press, February 2, 2019, apnews.com. 18. Associated Press, “His Holiness Pope Francis Sends Powerful Message of Peace and Coexistence Ahead of Historic Visit to the UAE,” February 2, 2019, apnews.com. 19. F. Gregory Gause III, “What the Qatar crisis shows about the Middle East,” Washington Post, June 27, 2017, washingtonpost.com. 20. Mustafa Aykol, “Islam and the West: Mustafa Akyol Responds,” Law & Liberty, February 28, 2019, lawliberty.org.
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Michel Houellebecq in Warsaw, Poland, on June 9, 2008. By Mariusz Kubik. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
A Path to Submission
Michel Houellebecq, Sex & History By Micah Meadowcroft With the 2015 publication of Submission, Michel Houellebecq became notorious. This slim novel speculated how Islamist parties might rise to power in a near-future France. The furor it caused in Europe, where the writer was already widely celebrated, crossed the pond, with the book’s launch morbidly boosted by the coincident Charlie Hebdo attacks. Anxieties about the West, decadence, and migrants translated rather well to a United States getting premonitions politics were about to become very strange. As things did indeed get stranger here, and the refugee crisis worsened there, Houellebecq became not just a chronicler of the moment but was judged to be some kind of oracle, his novels raised to the status of harbingers. Thus was his latest, Serotonin, dubbed “A Novel Made for the ‘Yellow Vest’ Moment” by The Atlantic and scrutinized for insight into the current health of the European Union. But Houellebecq is still the author of The Elementary Particles, and before that of Whatever, and after those Platform, The Possibility of 46
an Island, and The Map and the Territory. And maybe if what he writes now is, as they say, relevant, what he wrote then might be, too. So, let’s see. Who is he, this seeming prophet? That Houellebecq is still alive when other critics are not is suggestive. Yukio Mishima committed seppuku when he discovered a novelist could not restore the emperor of Japan. David Foster Wallace killed himself, too. Despite liberal modernity’s castrations via consumerism, Houellebecq chooses to live. (Though not without writing his own murder.) His art, not just novels but other media too, appears enough for him to muddle along; he has found an arrangement with the society he condemns and satirizes that seems to offer sufficient satisfaction. So there is the matter of his photographs. Not the ones Houellebecq takes, but the ones of him. Look him up online or turn to the back of one of his recent books and you will find that the author has— deliberately, one learns upon inspecting older pictures—cultivated his own ugliness. Hair, posture, wine-and-cigarette-tortured skin, even lighting all put in service to turn features that
have character, if striking is too generous, into a mask that is more than a little bit repellent. It is the knowing glance of a physiognomist he gives the camera, or the gaze of disregard away from it, that says perhaps it takes an ugly face to really see an ugly world. This isn’t simple misanthropy, though, or mere self-loathing. There’s something we his readers recognize in his novels as correct. Submission was darkly fortuitous in its timing, but even without the echoes of gunshots in Paris the story it told—of a comfortable academic and his post-regicide, post-Christendom France walking the path to Dar al-Islam—rang a bell. Modern liberalism itself was historically a consequence of the weakness of religiously-based societies which, failing to agree on the nature of the good life, could not provide even the minimal preconditions of peace and stability. In the contemporary world only Islam has offered a theocratic state as a political alternative to both liberalism and communism. But the doctrine has little appeal for non-Muslims, and it is hard to believe that the movement will take on any universal significance.
That’s Francis Fukuyama for the National Interest in 1989, when he was still willing to include a question mark at the end of “The End of History?” With the publication of his 1992 book version of the thesis, he affirmed his belief that it was liberalism that had won, would endure, despite its essential emptiness, despite the evident, even then present fact that “[t]he end of history will be a very sad time.” It is. Houellebecq has documented, probed, and anticipated its present apotheosis. His novels are, as his own fictionalized self puts it in The Map and the Territory, part of “the world as narration”—stories of individuals’ encounter with history, with their own differentiation in the midst of systems, societies, and processes larger than themselves. But in his novels’ completion they contain, too, elements of “the world as juxtaposition”—there is a place at which the good novel achieves what is properly the realm of the painting or poem—and our encounter is with a coherent image and not just a character. The image found in each of Houellebecq’s novels, juxtaposing the reader’s complacency with a constructed object that presents a disquieting other perspective, is one where it is modern liberalism itself, failing to agree on the nature of
the good life, that cannot provide even the minimal preconditions of peace and stability. Each novel is a picture of a failed life, or a life that succeeds only by recognizing the failure of the society around it. Communism and its eschaton is dead in Houellebecq’s work; the Chinese are tourists. But Islam, with its this-world emphases and order, is something alive, even outside Submission, a novel which contra Fukuyama asks us to consider the appeal Islam may indeed hold for non-Muslims. But all of Houellebecq’s novels could be attempted answers to the final thought of Fukuyama’s essay, the possibility that the “very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.” Throughout history, most men have deemed it correct, at a certain point in life, to allude to sexual problems as though they were just trivial childish games, and to assume that the real subjects, the subjects worthy of a man’s attention, were politics, business, or war, etc. The truth, in Daniel1’s time, began to be unearthed; it became more and more clear, and more and more difficult to hide, that the true goals of men, the only ones they would have pursued spontaneously if it were still possible for them to do so, were of an exclusively sexual nature. (The Possibility of an Island, 226)
It is in the deregulation of sexuality that Houellebecq sees the breakdown of modern liberalism. History will not end till sex has lost its power, and it will not do that, not naturally. Deregulation is the right word, for it is “the extension of the domain of the struggle” found in capitalism into a sexual marketplace, as the protagonist puts it in the writer’s first, too didactic work, titled in English as Whatever. Sexual liberalism, as recent concerns about a millennial “sex drought” has brought into the public conscience, can result in a kind of wealth inequality perhaps as drastic as and parallel to that produced by the global economy. The Elementary Particles established Houellebecq as a novelist, and not just, like legions of unheard-of Frenchmen before him, a philosopher with literary pretensions. In it the biographies of a pair of half-brothers, victims of a mother and society who fully embraced the spirit of 1968 and the sexual revolution, narrate the excesses and emptiness of the ’90s. One brother seeks participation, the other withdrawal. They are head and tail of the promise of appetitive satiation, a promise made by consumer culture 47
on one side and the bombs and guns of Islamic fundamentalists on the other.
Michel Houellebecq on November 7, 2016. By Luiz Munhoz for Fronteiras do Pensamento. Source: Flickr.
with ever greater insistence, as it produces new desires, cultivates new taxonomies of appetite as replacement for the universal and simple desire to love and reproduce. In the internet speech of the present, two decades after the book’s publication, they are the incel and the volcel—the involuntary celibate, who cannot, and the voluntary celibate, who will not. Neither brother succeeds in building a stable family, in repairing the rupture of their own ancestry. Instead, one succumbs to madness following a lifetime of failure to find satisfaction for his lusts, and the other dies alone, a scientist who studied the possibility of asexual reproduction, after a lifetime of detachment. The 2001 Platform asks if perhaps doubling down on globalism can provide the sexual satisfaction and personal meaning missing for the kind of dissolute, moderately successful bureaucratic functionary Houellebecq so often summons. New characters, new story, new experiments and growths in style, but the type remains. Platform could have been called “offshoring.” People of developing nations do the jobs Westerners won’t. Here jobs means provide sex and—dreaded emotional labor—companionship. Our hero is a sex tourist who goes all the way to Thailand to unexpectedly find himself a Parisian girlfriend, a woman who works in the travel industry. She is intelligent, beautiful, and liberated. In their unexpected happiness and hardworking success, they are generous meritocrats, for, thinking of the losers of the sexual marketplace, and the impoverished of the third world, and their own bottom line, they propose to facilitate better—more bang for your buck, you know—sex tourism available to all. But that venture ends as tragedy with disaster and death, attacked by an anti-colonialism Left 48
So, liberalism cannot solve its interpersonal crisis by global market means, not without aggravating its relationship with the rest of the world even while weighed down with inherited moral baggage. What if nature herself were to be changed? Houellebecq gestured at that possible solution in The Elementary Particles with the work of the scientist brother, Michel. In The Possibility of an Island he explores it in full; the narration follows a wealthy and famous comedian, the rise of a new gnostic cult—somehow, as always, sterile in its sexual freedom—and the creation and existence of neo-humanity. An elect mankind is changed; the question is how much. Old humanity, us, is abandoned to disease and the elements, and these new creatures live in splendid isolation, anchorites for a genetic destiny. But they are clones of us still, even if altered, and so, Houellebecq concludes, even they cannot escape the dissatisfaction and ennui of a loveless, safe existence. There is no self-gift, no act of creation, in the reproduction of copies. But here and now we are not copies, and the human capacity for creative acts seems boundless. If Houellebecq himself can muddle along, isn’t that enough? In his fictionalized, to-bemurdered voice, waxing enthusiastic about perfect products no longer available for purchase, Houellebecq utters a prepositional phrase too descriptive for all of us: “In my life as a consumer.” It is in the identities of consumer and of product that The Map and the Territory finds not just bureaucratic mediocrities but even the creatively successful—artists like the protagonist Jed Martin or the meta-Houellebecq—are reduced to and stuck. For Jed the complacency this worldview engenders causes him to let love go—his serious girlfriend taken away by work— and he is unable to resist the reasonableness of that parting. They are, after all, individuals, atomic, particular. And where does all this lead? To a murder, to suicide, to a Swiss street containing a whorehouse and a euthanasia clinic where Jed can only conclude that “the market value of suffering and death had become superior to that of pleasure and sex.” So this is what preceded Submission, and if it speaks with the voice of truth, should it be any wonder that France, or her stand in character François, would choose to submit and recite the Shahada? “It’s sad, the shipwreck of a civilization, it’s sad to see its most beautiful minds sink
without trace—one begins to feel slightly ill at ease in life, and one ends up wanting to establish an Islamic republic.” That’s from The Possibility of an Island. For Houellebecq, it seems what placed the West at the crossroads of the grave and Mecca, dying of consumption and in need of strong medicine—why, to borrow a phrase from the political theorist Patrick Deneen, liberalism failed—is a collapse of public Christianity and marriage. Marriages are, in Houellebecq’s novels, either broken and banal in their brokenness—the common ancestral wreckage from which his, yes, usually male characters emerge into alienation—or they are mysterious and remote in their tenderness. There are happy marriages and contented permanent partnerships for peripheral characters to be found in these works, but they are for older people and inaccessible, only to be approximated by his protagonists, temporarily, in basically accidental periods of monogamy. The natural purpose of such monogamy, the production and loving nurture of children, is nearly absent. Sterility, by choice or condition, plagues even the most domestic of loving unions depicted by the novelist. In these conditions, without the limits of covenant or offspring, sex is an unleashed force in human lives, with nothing creative in its power for destruction. Basically, for Houellebecq, polygamy is perhaps a good solution. “But here, in the absence of the risen Christ, you needed nymphs, shepherdesses, tits and ass, basically,” (178) the protagonist of Platform puts it, at a funeral. This failure to marry and be given in marriage, this failure to reproduce, emerged in a time of Christian retreat. The Catholic Church—though other denominations may be mentioned, this is France—survives to Houellebecq as a peculiar object, but not as, properly, a witness. In the splendor of its architecture, at Santa Maria de Montserrat or SacréCoeur, and in the occasional sighting of those in holy orders, it possesses a public persistence, but one that makes no statement beyond its own diminishment. Of priests in The Map and the Territory: Jed had sometimes envisioned doing a portrait of one of those men who, chaste and devoted, less and less numerous, criss-crossed the big cities to bring the comfort of their faith. But he had failed, and hadn’t even managed to comprehend the subject. Inheritors of a millennia-old spiritual tradition that nobody really
understood anymore, once placed in the front rank of society, priests were today reduced, at the end of terrifyingly long and difficult studies that involved mastering Latin, canon law, rational theology, and other almost incomprehensible subjects, to surviving in miserable material conditions. (58-9)
Houellebecq, a peace-be-upon-and-with-him prophet of modern liberalism, portrays the good life by means of a via negativa, by the appearance of its absence and what it is not. He observes that the contemporary West fails to preserve the minimal preconditions of peace and stability. The shared preoccupation of author and characters with sex is revealed upon reflection to not be the dreary gratification of a pervert novelist but the heart of the matter. In the absence of a voice speaking loudly to this world of the next in words comprehensible to those who live here, this-world satisfaction reemerges as the only motive force giving coherence to life. Which is to say that when the spiritual strangeness of Christianity—with its promise of an eschaton where they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, every desire met by the superabundance of love in the beatific vision— exists primarily in public as a consumer choice among others, or as an alien rationality without transformative claim on current society or its perpetuation, then it is in the natural, animal terms of access to sex and the direction of violence that a life is measured. On those terms Houellebecq seems to suggest liberal order and political Islam are particularly juxtaposed, and that Islam emerges with possible advantage, more efficient (at least in theory, for many nations of the Muslim world face their own demographic crises) in reproduction and the distribution of sexual satisfaction and more effective in the assignment of meaning to inevitable human conflict. Consumer culture has nothing to offer beyond more consumption. If this ugly Frenchman sees the ugliness of the world clearly, then it is not, contrary to Fukuyama, boredom which jumpstarts history again but the denial of essential human nature, not just what Christians call fallenness but also animal flesh. Nature herself, or lady Wisdom of the Proverbs, cries out and will reassert herself. It is on us to listen. Micah Meadowcroft is associate editor of the Washington Free Beacon. 49
Chaldean Catholics on Palm Sunday in Al-qosh, Iraq, on March 25, 2018. The Kurdistan flag can be seen in the background. By Levi Clancy. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
The Assyrian Mind By Peter Burns
On the streets of Bakhdida—a Christian village in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains region that is rebuilding after the Islamic State (ISIS) was driven out—a local youth leader sees Athra and comes over to say hello. Athra slaps his hand in a huge handshake, and the two chat over a cigarette. A little boy comes out of his father’s shop and stands with them listening; Athra pauses and flashes a funny face at the boy, one eyebrow cocked. Growing up with older brothers, he learned how to win with charm instead of force and when to hold his tongue. After I visited the Nineveh Plains in 2018 and had the pleasure of getting to know Athra and to understand his Assyrian perspective, I felt compelled to write this profile to try to explain a very complex community to a world that often rejects them before truly understanding them. After spending time with Athra and other As50
syrian activists, I grew to appreciate their passion and commitment to a national project. Attempting to appreciate the mindset that drives the Assyrian activist is worthwhile if you wish to understand the politics of northern Iraq.
Athra is Assyrian to his core. His day job is a linguistics teacher who studies the roots of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. He was a founding member of an Assyrian Christian Militia known as the NPU, which was formed to fight ISIS. He also serves as the party chairman for the local branch of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, a Christian political party. Athra was born under Saddam Hussein in Alqosh in northern Iraq, grew up during United States occupation, and became a leader of his people during the fight against ISIS. Athra is a man who knows what he believes is right and pursues that relentlessly. He isn’t daunted by protocol or rank, charging ahead toward what should be, nor deterred by what is.
Northern Iraq is a patchwork of overlapping ethnic and religious traditions, made more complex by a web of nationalistic ambitions and international power struggles. This region is caught between Iran, which supports Shia militias to extend its influence (a billboard at a militia base in Bartella even sports Ayatollah Khamenei), and the US, whose unclear foreign policy broadly focuses on countering ISIS and Iran. Control of the Nineveh Plains is divided between the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga with a few other armed groups playing security roles. While the Kurdish region remains under Baghdad’s control, these two sides often operate with each other as hostile powers, watching each other from opposing checkpoints. The Christians of the region are a mix of Chaldean Catholic, Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, and Assyrian Church of the East Christians, living alongside Shabak Muslims and Yazidis. All these ethno-religious minority groups are still reeling from the volcanic rise and fall of the ISIS caliphate, which ripped through their homes and destroyed the world they had known. In the aftermath, factional tensions run high as these communities dispute whether they are safest aligning with the Iraqi central government in Baghdad or the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil. The Assyrians are a passionate subgroup within the Christian community. They see themselves as the direct descendants of the remains of the ancient Assyrian Empire, and dream of a day when they will again have autonomy within their homeland. They assert that all Christians in northern Iraq are Assyrian by heritage, while other Christian communities generally would not accept that label and counter this claim with more Iraq-centric or religious denomination-centric identity. Often, Assyrian nationalistic ambitions ruffle feathers within the Christian community, much of which prefers to avoid any conflict with authorities. But Assyrians are just one of the many ethnic groups in this region who desire independence. In the fall of 2017, the KRG held a referendum to secede from Iraq, and certain Shiite factions have called for a Shiite-majority southern region. In fact, one might consider Christians in the region who entirely lack territorial ambitions as more unique than their Assyrian brothers. To understand the fire in Assyrian nationalists’ souls, one has to understand their complex ethno-religious identity and historical claims. Most Christians of northern Iraq trace their Christian heritage back to St. Thomas and St. Thaddeus’
ministries well before the arrival of Islam. They believe they traveled around the world to spread the Gospel to Afghanistan, Persia, and even as far as China. Assyrians view their roots as going even farther back, claiming direct linkage to the Assyrian Empire. These two factors create a powerful cultural narrative for this community. Their faith gives them a common set of customs they do not share with their Muslim neighbors. This isolated them in a Muslim-majority region and preserved their identity through the ages, but their history here is bloody, replete with generations of persecution, martyrdom, and genocides.
THE SIMELE MASSACRE Religious minorities in northern Iraq as a whole, and Christians specifically, see themselves as oppressed and constantly fighting for their lives against forces that wish to obliterate them. This is not just paranoia; it is the reality of their history in the region. Few examples better illustrate this fact than the Simele Massacre. The conflict leading to the Simele Massacre began on July 21, 1933, when more than 600 Assyrian genocide-surviving refugees from Iran and Turkey crossed from Iraq into Syria in hopes of receiving asylum from the French Mandate of Syria. Iraq at the time had seen a rise in anti-Assyrian rhetoric. The Assyrians were not given asylum but were given light arms and sent back to Iraq on August 4. They intended to surrender themselves to the Iraqi army but instead became embroiled in a skirmish with an army brigade while crossing the Tigris River. The Iraqis were beaten back to their base in Dirabun, but the Assyrians believed the army had deliberately targeted them. As such, they attempted to attack a barracks. These clashes on the border resulted in few casualties on either side. Historians are conflicted with regards to who started this spate of conflicts. While all fighting ceased by August 6, 1933, both the Assyrians and Iraqis were incensed, each believing the other was acting as the aggressor. These events were the necessary sparks to ignite the vicious anti-Assyrian sentiment which had been building in Iraq. Beginning on August 8, 1933, the Iraqi army responded to exaggerated reports of Assyrians committing atrocities and executed every Assyrian male found in the Behkar region. While these executions were occurring, Kurds and Arabs were encouraged to loot Assyrian villag51
Chaldean Catholic holding a keychain with the Assyrian flag and the ancient cities of Nineveh and Babylon marked. By Levi Clancy, March 25, 2018. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
es. More than 60 Assyrian villages were looted and destroyed. The town of Simele eventually became the last refuge for Assyrians fleeing the looters, but it did not prove to be much of a refuge. On August 10, local police allowed Kurdish and Arab looters to take freshly cut wheat and barley, along with whatever else was available, from the Assyrian refugees in Simele. Finally, on August 11, the Iraqi army and Kurdish militias began to methodically kill all the Assyrian men in the city. Women and children were brutally murdered as well, though Iraqi commanders claimed they ordered them to be spared. The Assyrians were all defenseless and were killed in cold blood. Official British sources estimate the number of Assyrians killed during August 1933 to be around 600, while Assyrian sources put the number at 3,000. This atrocity is burned into the minds of Christians in northern Iraq. When you speak with them, they refer to ISIS as only the most recent attempt to wipe them out.Â
deny any form of a memorial to the massacre. In one area the ground has eroded away, and protruding from the earth human bones can be seen plainly. During my visit, I had the opportunity to visit the site of the Simele Massacre with Athra. He was clearly deeply angered by it, even though he had been here a hundred times before. Climbing over the barbed wire fence, he walked around under the cell tower, examining the ground in defiance of those who would keep him from the place of his ancestors’ tragedy.
The Christians of the region have wanted to build a memorial on the spot where the Assyrians were killed, but at the time the Iraqi government would not let them. More recently, a cellphone tower was built on the site and a fence put up around the grounds. Now the spot is under Kurdish control, but the KRG continues to
But that is unacceptable for many Christians who are more religious than nationalistic because they see the term Assyrian as carrying a political as well as historical connotation. The majority of Christians are Chaldean Catholic and Syriac Orthodox, by denomination, and neither denomination ascribes to the Assyrian
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ASSYRIAN POLITICS The question of self-identity has become incredibly important for Assyrians and divisive for Christians. Assyrians claim that Chaldean and Syriac Christians in northern Iraq are Assyrian by heritage and therefore ought to call themselves so.
political agenda; instead, they operate under the Saddam-era notion that they are best off living as peaceful, patriotic Iraqi citizens. So while Assyrians make a factual historical claim about the identity of Christians in northern Iraq, Chaldeans and Syriacs often run from the title to avoid being tied to its current political affiliation. Such a response causes Assyrians to see those not willing to claim their heritage as traitors to the cause. Of course, Iraqi Christian denominations are not monolithic; many of those in the ranks of the Assyrian movement also claim a Chaldean or Syriac faith identity. Assyrians as a political movement are not the largest in the neighborhood and often try to present their influence as greater than it appears. An Assyrian analysis of its political position in the Nineveh Plains can seem overly optimistic. One such analysis begins by numbering the political party offices in the towns Christians in the Nineveh Plains inhabit (22). The analysis states that different Assyrian political groups have 10 of these political party offices, which leads to the conclusion that at least 45.5 percent of the Christian population in the Nineveh Plains is aligned with Assyrian political parties. This conclusion was drawn by simply dividing the number of political party offices held by Assyrian political groups by the total number of offices held by Christian political groups. Election results tend to show a more divided electorate. While Assyrians are an important political force in the Christian community, they are one of a handful. Assyrians often suggest those Christian parties’ willingness to make deals with Kurds is a clear sign that they sold out, often pointing to funding from Kurdish sources as the reason. Chaldean Christians, who make up another major block of the Christian minority, often look for ways to work with the Kurdistan Regional Government but take offense at being branded traitors, considering their approach more pragmatic.
DIFFERING NARRATIVES ON CHRISTIAN MILITIAS When ISIS approached Athra’s hometown of Alqosh, the inhabitants fled for safety. At the time Athra was in Germany and was heartbroken upon hearing Alqosh had been abandoned. He returned to Iraq and was one of 20 men the United States special forces quietly trained, and then he participated as a translator for the special forces during the subsequent two rounds of
training for the militia known as the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit. Such militias help improve regional security, a regularly expressed desire of all Christians and even all minorities in northern Iraq. They believe such groups are necessary because both the Iraqi army and the Kurdish peshmerga fled when ISIS advanced, leaving minority communities at the mercy of a truly brutal ideology. Christians and Yazidis often recall that if they had been allowed to defend themselves the outcome would have been different. There are currently a few different armed groups of Christians in the Nineveh Plains. Christian leaders in Quaraqosh formed the Nineveh Plains Guards Forces (NPG), which was the first Christian militia in the area. Other Christian leaders in smaller and less-vulnerable localities felt there was no need to form militias. The Kurdish peshmerga and the NPG were seen as holding enough power to provide adequate protection. This confidence in the peshmerga was decimated when they abandoned minority areas and ISIS moved into the Nineveh Plains. Likely as a result of this decreased confidence, Christians fractured into multiple armed groups. Some Christians stayed with the NPG, which has stayed closely aligned with the Kurds. Others split and formed the Dwekh Nawsha, the Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU), and the Nineveh Plains Forces (NPF). These groups have maintained their ties with the Kurds, but the NPU currently works primarily with the central government of Iraq. Another group, the Babylon Brigade, has entirely broken with the Kurds and works closely with pro-Iranian groups in Iraq. It has been widely reported that the Babylon Brigade only has a handful of Christians in its ranks, the vast majority of its fighters being Shia Muslims. While the specific strengths of each of these militias can be disputed—depending on if you count the number of paid soldiers, the number of actual guns the militias possess, the number of men who have received some military training, or, most broadly, the number who have volunteered to fight—the reality is none of the Christian militias are independently large enough to provide the needed security. But attempts to unite these militias, even efforts made by the US State Department, have been unsuccessful. Athra argues that, of the other major Christian militias, the NPG is an unreliable organization. While this is a disputed claim, Athra’s experi53
ence with the NPG has not been positive. On May 3, 2016, Athra joined a handful of NPU fighters who were under attack in the Christian town of Teleskof, along with a contingent of peshmerga and NPG fighters. As ISIS rolled into Teleskof, the peshmerga and NPG pulled out, leaving the NPU to face the onslaught alone for 20 minutes, until the NPU had exhausted its ammunition and also had to withdraw. The NPU and NPG are also funded by different entities, Baghdad and the KRG, respectively. The fact that the NPG is funded by the KRG leads many within the NPU both to distrust the KRG and perceive the NPG as Kurdish pawns.
ATHRA, THE ASSYRIAN In a meeting, Athra stared intently at a bookshelf, seemingly distracted as others talked business. Suddenly, he jumped up and ran over to the bookshelf and grabbed two dictionaries in a set that had been placed on the shelf upside-down. He corrected them. At another time, our group could not enter the tomb of Nehum, the Jewish prophet who prophesied the fall of the Assyrian Empire, due to a construction project that had blocked the area. In a moment, Athra jumped the fence and provided the group a
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tour from inside the barrier. It is very Assyrian to feel deeply that which is wrong and must be corrected and to pursue that end without traditional inhibitions. In a recent correspondence with Athra, he wrote that “all the people around us are harmful as much as they are able to be, unfortunately…and we are always trying to do our best to stop that.” Sitting in the West, it is easy to find the passion of the Assyrians abrasive, or their exasperation with the seeming lack of interest in their plight as a lack of gratitude. Instead, we should try to understand them from their own context, not ours. Beleaguered by a Kurdish government that seems focused on realizing a Kurdish state even if that means smearing away other regional ethnic identifiers, Shia militias that sow instability in the service of foreign interests, and a history of genocidal violence, Assyrians are doggedly pursuing a better future for their people. Peter Burns is a government relations and policy director at In Defense of Christians. Burns is a Philos Fellow and an alumnus of America’s Future Foundation’s Writing Fellowship.
“Two little lines I heard one day, Traveling along life’s busy way; Bringing conviction to my heart, And from my mind would not depart; Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. Only one life, yes only one, Soon will its fleeting hours be done; Then, in ‘that day’ my Lord to meet, And stand before His Judgement seat; Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. Only one life, the still small voice, Gently pleads for a better choice Bidding me selfish aims to leave, And to God’s holy will to cleave; Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. Only one life, a few brief years, Each with its burdens, hopes, and fears; Each with its clays I must fulfill. living for self or in His will; Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. When this bright world would tempt me sore, When Satan would a victory score; When self would seek to have its way, Then help me Lord with joy to say; Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. Give me Father, a purpose deep, In joy or sorrow Thy word to keep; Faithful and true what e’er the strife, Pleasing Thee in my daily life; Only one life, ‘twill soon be past,, Only what’s done for Christ will last. Oh let my love with fervor burn, And from the world now let me turn; Living for Thee, and Thee alone, Bringing Thee pleasure on Thy throne; Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. Only one life, yes only one, Now let me say, “Thy will be done”; And when at last I’ll hear the call, I know I’ll say “twas worth it all”; Only one life, “twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last.”
“Only One Life, ‘Twill Soon Be Past” CT Studd 1860 - 1931 English Missionary to China, India, and Africa 55
BOOK REVIEWS
“The Bookcase” Section
The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, by Ben Shapiro (Broadside, 2019). This broad-sweeping work takes a stab at 3,500 years of Western history and philosophy to argue for the exceptionalism of Judeo-Christian culture, Western civilization, and the United States. The book sets up the twin influences of Athens and Jerusalem as the primary drivers of success in Western society, and the American founding as the best political manifestation of Greek reason and Judeo-Christian values. Shapiro provides a vision of moral purpose and reason that made the West great, how that vision was lost in modern thought, and some suggestions on regaining it. God in the Qur’an, by Jack Miles (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018). Pulitzer Prize-winning author of God: A Biography and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, Jack Miles broaches Islamic conceptions of God in his latest book. Miles, a practicing Episcopalian, approaches the subject from the standpoint of a literary critic, asking readers to suspend their personal beliefs about Islam to better understand the literary character of Allah. The book focuses on characters and stories shared by both the Bible and the Qur’an like Adam, Cain, Abel, and Jesus. Miles sets Bible passages alongside the Qur’an to highlight what is distinctive about Allah, attempting to provide insight into the Islamic tradition, an approach that appeals to the religious and secular alike.
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What Justice Demands: America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, by Elan Journo (Post Hill Press, 2018). Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a decades-long goal of American foreign policy, although many political leaders seem less interested in the issue than 15 years ago. Elan Journo recognizes disillusionment with the conflict, but he attempts to offer a way forward in his latest book. Journo lays out the main three approaches to the issue: middle-ground moderate, pro-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian. He argues that all of these approaches are inadequate. As an alternative, Journo attempts to present a moral framework of freedom and human dignity and evaluate the conflict through that lens, concluding that America has failed to consistently support these values throughout its involvement in the conflict.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, by Shoshana Zuboff (PublicAffairs, 2019). In this tome of original research and analysis, Shoshana Zuboff sounds the clarion call of our digital age. Zuboff lays out the structure and logic of what she terms “surveillance capitalism,” an unprecedented system of commercial incentives, technology, and vast knowledge that feeds off of the data of human experience. She argues that what the industrial excesses of the early twentieth century did to nature, surveillance capitalism is doing to human nature today. Zuboff’s book will no doubt be turned to frequently over the coming years if only for the extensive, original terminology she provides to help understand the disturbing trends at the growing intersection of technology, big business, and everyday human life.
The Empire and the Five Kings: America’s Abdication and the Fate of the World, by Bernard-Henri Lévy (Henry Holt and Company, 2019). French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy examines the decline of American power in the world in the face of five growing enemies: Iran, Turkey, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia/Sunni radical Islamism. With his characteristic erudition, Lévy details the essential elements of America’s creed that have defined its leadership in the world, the abdication of that leadership—beginning before but continued by the Trump administration, and the enemies at the gates of the West and liberal democracy. The book is equal parts philosophical history, cultural commentary, and foreign policy admonitions for America and the West. Lévy implores America to reverse its abdication, arguing that the country is at its greatest when defending the values of the American creed both at home and abroad.
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Have American Wars Been Just? Review of Hall and Charles’ America and the Just War Tradition
Mark Hall and J. Daryl Charles, University of Notre Dame Press, 2019, 338 pages as America’s wars with the Native Americans or the US-Somalia conflict in the early 1990s, the authors carefully chose the conflicts, and a volume that justly addresses every US conflict would be unwieldy in comparison with this text. A different scholar authors each chapter, offering somewhat different perspectives, but this approach is a strength rather than an inhibitor of the book. In chapter one, Hall and Charles articulate that the same criteria will judge each conflict’s justness, and indeed this is fulfilled throughout the book. None of the chapters’ methods or conclusions contradict one another; rather, they seem to build on each other and provide the reader with a richer and more thorough understanding of both the just war tradition and US conflicts.
Review by Jimmy Lewis
O
ver the past few decades, literature on the just war tradition has grown exponentially, both in depth and breadth, as each article and book contributes some unique perspective or provides a new approach to applying the just war criteria. In America and the Just War Tradition: A History of US Conflicts, Mark Hall, the Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Politics at George Fox University, and J. Daryl Charles, the Acton Institute Affiliated Scholar in Theology & Ethics and a contributing editor for Providence, satisfy just war scholars on both accounts. America and the Just War Tradition does not cover all conflicts throughout the country’s history, but it does cover a dozen of the most significant in terms of shaping the US as a nation— ranging from the American Revolutionary War to the ongoing War on Terror. Though the book does not address some notable conflicts, such
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This book contributes to the just war tradition in at least two ways. Firstly, though America and the Just War Tradition is not a history book, each chapter takes into account—in a way and capacity unrivaled in just war literature— the historical context of each conflict. Secondly, when determining a conflict’s justness, scholars typically consider whether the war was entered justly (jus ad bellum) and whether warfare was justly conducted (jus in bello). Hall and Charles consider these facets of the just war tradition as well as justice after war (jus post bellum)— whether the war had just ends—which scholars have only begun to address in the past 15 years or so. Gary Bass’ 2004 article “Jus Post Bellum” in Philosophy and Public Affairs is a great, early treatment of the subject. Though addressing jus post bellum is not unique to Hall and Charles’ work, coupling such a thorough, historical view of US conflicts from beginning to end in order to determine whether a conflict had just ends is in fact uncommon and welcome. Hall and Charles’ approach to studying these conflicts allows the authors and readers to look back on US conflicts in their historical context as a whole. This “bird’s eye view” helps the authors determine whether the decision to go to war, the way the war was conducted, and the war’s outcome and aftermath were just. Being decades and even centuries removed from
these conflicts enables the authors to look at each conflict holistically, from its declaration to its eventual outcomes. Coupling the vantage point of modernity with the application of the just war tradition gives this book a perspective on US conflicts that just war literature has yet to address, until now. Additionally, as in Charles’ The Just War Tradition: An Introduction (2012), Hall and Charles articulate why they chose to discuss the topic as the just war tradition instead of the just war theory. “We intentionally refer to the tradition of just war and not to ‘just war theory,’ since this way of thinking about war and peace is embedded prominently within the wider Western cultural heritage. A ‘tradition’ (from the latin traditio: a handing down) implies that a cumulative wisdom, in its development and refinement, accrues over time.” In short, just war is not something that the West is “trying out” to discover if it’s right for them; just war is a tried and true tradition in the West that developed over generations and will continue to develop as conflicts occur. Hall and Charles are correct in identifying just war as a Western tradition and not merely a theory. This tradition nearly stretches as far back as Western civilization itself, from Cicero, to Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suárez, Francisco de Vitoria, and John Locke, to name a few. Moreover, though the just war
tradition is not solely a Christian one, Christians and Christian philosophy have been key contributors to just war and its resilience as a Western tradition. Hall and Charles note this in their book as well, a work that coincidently advances the just war tradition considerably. Whether one is a historian who hopes to learn more about America’s conflicts, a philosopher who works in ethics or political philosophy, or a soldier or veteran who enjoys military history, America and the Just War Tradition addresses each of these topics and audiences from a variety of authors in a range of disciplines. Those who care deeply about the moral future of America should study not only America’s past for its triumphs, but also for its failures, its experience as a bastion of justice and ethical leadership in the world, and its blunders. Americans should understand these aspects of their history through the lenses of morality and justice so that the US can be a global example of justice. This book has seriously undertaken this task, and for this reason it ought to accompany every bookshelf that earnestly concerns itself with the moral and military past and future of the United States. Jimmy R. Lewis holds a BS in religion as well as an MA in philosophy from Liberty University. His master’s thesis (Divine Utilitarianism) is on God’s ethics, and he is hoping to turn this into a book within the next year or so. Jimmy is a writing fellow for America’s Future Foundation.
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How America’s Wars Have Been (Mostly) Just Review of Patterson’s Just American Wars (War, Conflict and Ethics) Eric Patterson, Routledge, 2018, 218 pages Whereas others suggest the unique “American way of war” is essentially fighting with advanced technology and massive mobilization of manpower and other resources, Patterson contends in Just American Wars that the US is unique because of how it considers ethical and moral dilemmas when it fights. Particularly, the country’s democratic institutions force any politician who wishes to engage in a war to explain to voters, civil society, and other parts of the government why the war must be fought. While underappreciated, concepts from the just war tradition have grounded these debates. Patterson elaborates: During every US conflict there has been robust public debate about whether or not to go to war in the first place, and after the decision has been made, debate continues on the ethics of how the war is fought. Moreover, the US is unique in the fact that even when it’s victorious, it prosecutes some of its own military personnel who have violated the laws of armed conflict. This simply was not the case in most polities over the past thousands of years.
By Mark Melton
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n 2013 at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting, Providence contributing editor Eric Patterson heard a panel discussion over whether the colonists were justified in fighting the British in the American War for Independence. To his surprise, many on the panel and in the audience believed the American revolutionaries were unjust, so he began to research and write a response explaining why these academics were wrong. Eventually, his work became the second chapter of Just American Wars: Ethical Dilemmas in US Military History (2019), a book that delves into how the just war tradition applies to different aspects of several wars the United States has fought, including why the country went to war, how it fought, and how well it pursued peace when the fighting ceased. Through his various case studies, Patterson demonstrates how exactly America fights wars differently than other countries.
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As a recent case, he cites how in 2017 the US was the only country that took responsibility for collateral damage during its bombing campaigns against the Islamic State (ISIS), whereas other militaries implausibly claimed their airstrikes only killed combatants. While Patterson does explain how the United States has been just in fighting various wars, he does not defend every war or suggest the military has not violated the just war tradition’s criteria of proportionality and discrimination. But he emphatically demonstrates that Americans should be proud of their country’s war ethics, starting with the American War for Independence. Just American Wars begins with a discussion about why the colonists were justified to defend themselves against the British Empire, but the book does not flow chronologically. Instead, the conversation moves through the just war tradition’s concepts of jus ad bellum (ethics of going to war), jus in bello (ethics of fighting in war), and jus post bellum (ethics of ending war,
a concept Patterson has developed throughout his academic career). The first section covers jus ad bellum topics including why the US was right to fight Britain in both 1775 and 1812 and why America was initially right to wage war in Vietnam, though presidents were wrong to continue the war to boost their reputations and vindicate national honor. (Regular Providence readers may be familiar with this argument, which appeared in Patterson’s article for the Winter 2018 issue of the print edition.) The jus in bello section is the shortest and covers the Mexican– American War—including the bombardment of Veracruz that killed civilians and how irregular troops like the Texas Rangers fought—and the justness of using nuclear weapons. The final section reviews jus post bellum dilemmas, including problems with President Woodrow Wilson’s plans for global order after the First World War. (Those who wish to hear more on these and other specific topics from the book can listen to your reviewer’s interview with Patterson on the Foreign Policy ProvCast in “Ep. 32: American Justness in War—From Independence, WWII, Vietnam, and Beyond,” available on ProvidenceMag.com.) Patterson’s book covers very similar topics as America and the Just War Tradition: A History of US Conflicts (also published in 2019), edited by Mark Hall and J. Daryl Charles (another Providence contributing editor) and reviewed by Jimmy Lewis in these pages. But the two books’ content differs significantly. First, America and the Just War Tradition is an edited volume that includes various authors and different perspectives, while Just American Wars is written exclusively by Patterson. Moreover, Patterson does not cover every just war criterion for each war but instead focuses more narrowly in each chapter: when discussing the Mexican– American War, he does not thoroughly address whether the US should have fought Mexico, but he does cover how Americans fought in the war. The two books also draw different conclusions about whether the United States was just in different wars. One obvious difference is how John D. Roche in America and the Just War Tra-
dition argues that the colonists were unjust to seek independence in the American Revolution while Patterson makes the opposite argument. (During a Providence/Institute on Religion & Democracy event in May 2019 in Washington, DC, Mark Hall explained why he sides with Patterson and disagrees with Roche.) Raucous debates over the particulars of American wars are common in the foreign policy field, and yours truly remembers one he had with haughty Englishmen over the Revolution while we drank nips of whisky in a pub near my alma mater in Scotland. Indeed, Just American Wars will likely spark edifying debates among students who read the book together. But if readers assume the book’s primary purpose is continuing old discussions that are sometimes centuries-old, they may have spent too much time in ivory towers and will miss its greatest contribution. Patterson helps readers think through past events in such a way that will enable those in the government and military to make more ethical decisions. He has a keen appreciation for the stress real people endure while making critical decisions about war—whether they are working past midnight in the Pentagon, White House, Foggy Bottom, Langley, or the Hill, or they are literally in the trenches beside those fighting and dying. Students may not realize the debates they have in the classroom can have real consequences later, but Just American Wars can direct their discussions and shape their thinking so that if forced to make critical decisions under stress, they will have a firm-enough ethical foundation to make wiser choices. In this way, Patterson’s work may continue the unique American way of war, to the world’s benefit. Mark Melton is Providence’s deputy editor. He earned his master’s in international relations from the University of St. Andrews and his bachelor’s in foreign language and international trade from Mississippi College.
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A Conflicted American Perspective on Dietrich Bonhoeffer Review of Haynes’ The Battle for Bonhoeffer Stephen Haynes, Eerdmans, 2018, 213 pages and concerned by this polarization of the Confessing Church leader, and has for many years sounded the tocsin to warn American scholarship (and popular readership) of the dangerous trap which these two types of generalizations about Bonhoeffer offer us moderns. Indeed, as a member of the International Bonhoeffer Society, your author has appreciatively benefitted in the past from Haynes’ sober and reflective concern. Moreover, his call for balance in reading and employing Bonhoeffer has been a welcome correction to the contemporary tide of American eisegesis, and Haynes has often stood in fidelity to the international (particularly German) academic neutrality in letting Bonhoeffer speak from amidst his historical context.
Review by Timothy S. Mallard
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n recent years, critical American scholarship on the life and witness of Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer has uncritically polarized the anti-Nazi German pastor along two generalizations: he is either seen as a type of contemporary, Western Christian evangelical standing against state hegemony and tyranny (à la Eric Metaxas) or as a type of proto-liberal, progressive herald standing for unchecked secularist freedom (à la Charles Marsh, who also wrongly opined that Bonhoeffer was gay). Both poles have been operative in American scholarship about Dietrich Bonhoeffer since the initial post-World War II publications of his nascent works, especially Discipleship and Life Together. Professor Stephen Haynes is aware of
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Given Haynes’ past stance, then, this is what so severely disappoints about his present work, The Battle for Bonhoeffer: Debating Discipleship in the Age of Trump. As the title indicates (and as the book bears out), Haynes falls into the very trap for which he previously so rightly criticized others. Put baldly, he has read into Bonhoeffer a new type of caricature, one that calls us to stand against the perceived and feared cult of personality that American liberals fear in the presidency of Donald Trump. While Haynes reviews both the evangelical and liberal typologies above, this work seems to evidence that Haynes just cannot help himself from identifying with the latter camp. In the end, one finishes his work with a wish that Haynes had been honest with the reader from the outset about his political bias, and said candidly that as an American proto-liberal he would take the reader on a journey to prove his perspective. While he conclusively fails to persuade the reader of his argument, Haynes could have admitted the lens through which he perceives Bonhoeffer; astute but disappointed readers will come to this conclusion anyway by the end of this work. Haynes shapes his argument along two consistent trajectories. First, he admirably lays bare the trends in both scholarship and popular culture of misappropriating Bonhoeffer in support
of contemporary political agendas. Haynes is at his finest when he reveals the shoddy study or scholarship behind many such efforts, particularly the reflexive, internet-deep citation of Bonhoeffer’s actual or supposed words. So many American moderns—both conservative and liberal alike—routinely misquote Bonhoeffer that the contemporary scene is now littered with words which the famed pastor never uttered or wrote. As a lifelong and dedicated Bonhoeffer scholar, Haynes has the chops to recognize such fraud and does not generally fail to do so, but more on that shortly. However, he limits his capacity to fulfill this task in the second trajectory he takes. Indeed, while categorically laying bare the contemporary American liberal paranoia over the presidency of Donald Trump (throughout chapters 4 through 6 but particularly in chapters 8 and 9, which detail the presidential election of 2016), Haynes evidences a perpetual unwillingness to do two things. First, he is unwilling to listen equitably to the religious freedom concerns many Americans had over the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, who as an Obama administration cabinet secretary and Democratic Party nominee was on record as stating that the First Amendment needed excision from the Constitution, putatively over campaign finance concerns centering around the US Supreme Court decision of Citizens United. Second, he is unwilling to more rigorously call out liberal theo-political misappropriation of Bonhoeffer as much as he does that of conservative evangelicals. Indeed, in the latter stages of the book Haynes parrots the liberal hysteria over Trump being a type of despotic if not unstable ruler whose very existence imperils not only the republic but also humanity itself (see the “nuclear war” shibboleth, pp. 123–ff.). Here, Haynes (and presumably his liberal theo-political allies) could use a remedial course in American civics and governance. Not once does Haynes mention (or cite others who mention) elements of the checks and balances of American constitutional democracy, such as the president’s cabinet, interagency departmental secretaries who comprise that cabinet, the bedrock controlling principle of the civil-military divide, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court, circuit or appellate courts, state governors or legislatures, etc. In essence, Haynes quickly falls into morally correlating the presidency of Donald Trump with the almost unchecked power of Adolf Hitler when the two people and their political ideologies could not be more dissimilar in either form or func-
tion. Indeed, if the Trump presidency evidences anything it is the sheer genius of the political wisdom of the Founding Fathers who arranged the American body politic so that no single man or woman would ever wield unchecked power, which Haynes seems to believe Donald Trump now enjoys. In sum, notwithstanding Stephen Haynes’ professional reputation amongst Dietrich Bonhoeffer scholars or his prior excellent corpus of scholarly writings about the German pastor, his current book categorically fails to satisfy. If one wishes to read a balanced rendering of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one perhaps will do best to return to a standard such as Ferdinand Schlingensiepen’s outstanding 2010 effort (avoid at all costs the hagiographic, typological work of Metaxas or the poor historical and translation efforts of Marsh). Moreover, if one wishes to read a balanced theo-political analysis of Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church in context, one may enjoy the penetrating individual works of either Victoria Barnett or Wolfgang Gerlach. The best primary source for Bonhoeffer’s most rigorously sourced writings, sermons, etc. remains the 17-volume International Dietrich Bonhoeffer Society (English Language Section) translation of his works published via Fortress Press. In contrast, Stephen Haynes’ most recent work continues the oft-valid international criticism of the American academy’s misappropriation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to wit: whether conservative or liberal, we Americans are only interested in Bonhoeffer for what he can do for our contemporary theological, political, or social aims. Put another way, we wish to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a means to our own ends rather than as an end himself. The Martyr of Flossenbürg deserves better than that; wise students will read and study him for himself in his context and be all the richer for it. Chaplain (Colonel) Timothy S. Mallard, PhD, is a career US Army chaplain of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and now stationed at the Pentagon, Washington, DC. He has deployed to combat operations as a Battalion, Brigade, and Division Chaplain and is the incumbent Command Chaplain, United States Army Europe, and Seventh Army. 63
The World Turned, but in What Direction? Review of Jacob’s The Year of Our Lord 1943
Alan Jacobs, Oxford University Press, 2018, 280 pages intellectuals who struggled to process the total devastation the conflict wrought. Jacobs focuses primarily on five figures—Jacques Maritain, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, W.H. Auden, and Simone Weil—with other major figures, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, making guest appearances. Jacobs chooses these five figures because, while working separately, they all advocated for what he calls “Christian Humanism.” By humanism, Jacobs refers to the Renaissance definition: the rejection of medieval scholasticism in favor of a broad education, based on Christian and non-Christian sources, aimed at improving the individual and society as a whole. Having seen Western democracies fail to deal with the economic, political, social, and cultural turmoil that led to World War II, these five thinkers concluded that Western democracies were not ready for the postwar peace. They argued that only through the humanist understanding of human beings’ power and limitations would democratic societies be prepared for the new postwar order.
Review by Justin Roy
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n 1943, the tide of World War II shifted against the Axis powers, but as the Allies advanced, many began to wonder, What happens after the war? The luxury of this consideration came at great cost to the Allies and was earned through victories at Stalingrad, Guadalcanal, North Africa, and numerous other places in 1943. This was the year when leaders of the Allied powers came together to decide upon the world’s future. At Casablanca and Tehran, they declared the war would only end with the unconditional surrender of the Axis forces, the division of Germany, and the formation of the United Nations. As the war dragged on and men in power played geopolitical chess, Christian intellectuals realized the nations were not culturally or morally ready for the war’s end. Alan Jacobs’ book The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in the Age of Crisis investigates the hopes and fears of major Christian
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The Year of Our Lord 1943 charts the development of their thoughts and ideas through the course of the war and in opposition to both secular and Christian critics. Secular critics, such as Sidney Hook and John Dewey, attacked Christian Humanism as a form of religious utopianism. Meanwhile, it stood opposed to the other major Christian philosophy on international relations, Christian Realism, spawned in the aftermath of World War I. While there is much overlap between the two philosophies, they disagree on the humanist notion of individual and social improvement. The preeminent proponent of Christian Realism, Reinhold Niebuhr, said “the Renaissance…saw human history as a realm of infinite possibilities, but forgot that it is a realm of evil as well as good potentialities.” However, the Christian Humanists countered these critiques by pointing out that their opponents failed to address the social, economic, and cultural alienation that led to the war. They believed modernity and industrialization’s disruption of society caused the creation of extremist ideologies. As T.S. Eliot writes:
But the cause of that disease, which destroys the very soil in which culture has its roots, is not so much extreme ideas…as the relentless pressure of modern industrialism, setting the problems which the extreme ideas attempt to solve. Not least of the effects of industrialism is that we become mechanized in mind, and consequently attempt to provide solutions in terms of engineering, for problems which are essentially problems of life.
According to Christian Humanists, the ideologies that ravaged Europe and attempted to scientifically solve the problems of modernity were the byproducts of scientific advancement. This disruption of society unmoored the West from its heritage and bled into education where academia jettisoned the humanistic view of man and society in favor of a scientific one. Christian Humanists decried reforms in education that emphasized certain subjects for their perceived utility at the expense of classical education. These intellectuals also worried that, because of the failure of education and disruption of society, democracies would not see the war as a moral failure but as an incorrect step toward progress. They wanted the West to return to the classical understanding of man and society and felt the only way to do so was to revive the Renaissance’s humanistic education. They did not believe they could turn back the clock but rather wanted the past to illuminate the future. Jacobs succeeds in charting the history of these
writers and the evolution of their ideas. The Year of Our Lord 1943 itself is artistically written, weaving together various quotes and writings. Jacobs must have spent a considerable amount of time reading and documenting his sources. In that sense it feels very academic, addressing all sides of the debate from first-hand sources. The combination of its artistic style and academic writing make the book very dense. Casual readers may find the book challenging as the author does not always interject to neatly explain how the ideas are connected. Unfortunately, this shortcoming will probably limit the book’s audience at a time when Christian Humanists’ ideas are all the more relevant. The Year of Our Lord 1943 will not disappoint readers who wish to learn about World War II era theological and ideological debates about the world after the war. Considering the questions about the international order today, this work is very timely. Those who can cross its sometimes-uneasy currents may find wisdom that helps illuminate the future. Justin Roy works for the International Republican Institute and holds a Master’s in history from the University of San Diego. Previously, he worked with a humanitarian organization in Greece and Croatia during the refugee crisis and in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. He has been published in multiple outlets including Providence, The Federalist, and The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter at @ Justin_IR.
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Dark, in the realm and shades of Death, Nations and tribes and empires lie, But even to them the light of Faith Is breaking on their sombre sky: And be it mine to bid them raise Their drooped heads to the kindling scene, And know and hail the sunrise blaze Which heralds Christ the Nazarene. I know how Hell the veil will spread Over their brows and filmy eyes, And earthward crush the lifted head That would look up and seek the skies; I know what war the fiend will wage Against that soldier of the cross, Who comes to dare his demon-rage, And work his kingdom shame and loss. Yes, hard and terrible the toil Of him who steps on foreign soil, Resolved to plant the gospel vine, Where tyrants rule and slaves repine; Eager to lift Religion’s light Where thickest shades of mental night Screen the false god and fiendish rite; Reckless that missionary blood, Shed in wild wilderness and wood, Has left, upon the unblest air, The man’s deep moan the martyr’s prayer. I know my lot I only ask Power to fulfil the glorious task; Willing the spirit, may the flesh Strength for the day receive afresh. May burning sun or deadly wind Prevail not o’er an earnest mind; May torments strange or direst death Nor trample truth, nor baffle faith. Though such blood-drops should fall from me As fell in old Gethsemane, Welcome the anguish, so it gave More strength to work more skill to save. And, oh ! if brief must be my time, If hostile hand or fatal clime Cut short my course still o’er my grave, Lord, may thy harvest whitening wave. So I the culture may begin, Let others thrust the sickle in; If but the seed will faster grow, May my blood water what I sow ! - Charlotte Brontë 66
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