NAGYPÁL Szabolcs
Agglutinative Labyrinth What you give to me, you give it to everyone – so says the earthly power. What you give to everyone, you give it to me – so says the heavenly power. (WEÖRES Sándor)
Words of Students More than thirty years ago, in 1969, the last issue of the world’s first ever ecumenical journal and the first international Christian journal, Student World, was published. Since 1908, Student World (SW) had been a voice and forum of ecumenically-minded students and young intellectuals, creating a network of concerns and ideas. In Johannesburg (South Africa), 2002, the Executive Committee (ExCo) of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) decided to restart this important ecumenical review. The story goes back almost a century. It was in 1907 when the WSCF General Committee Meeting in Tokyo (Japan) decided to publish the quarterly Student World (edited first by John R. MOTT), to become a major forum on the faith and life of Christians and of the Student Christian Movements. This meeting was the first international gathering of any kind to take place in modern Asia. For the next sixty years, the journal was a crucial forum for the widening and deepening of the ecumenical movement. Following the recommendations of the 1967 Executive Committee, the General Assembly in 1968 decided to replace Student World with a network of communication which they deemed more effective. The publication of the journal was discontinued at the end of 1969 (the last editor being Risto LEHTONEN), to be replaced by series materials (Dossiers and WSCF Books) and a house organ (Newsletter). These are the three decisions which set up the framework of our adventure now. Youth movements have the inclination to easily forget their own traditions, because of the revolutionary and reforming character of the age between eighteen and thirty-five in human life. WSCF was quick to answer the challenges of the times, but was sometimes also quick to forget its own history. According to the plans of the present editorial board - whose composition reflects the varieties and balances of the Federation - Student World will come out in one or two issues a year, with articles published in English, Spanish and French, the current official languages of the Federation. This first issue of 2003 focuses on “Power and Principalities” (Poderes y Principados, Pouvoir et Principautés). We have chosen essays and articles focusing on the connections between Christian faith and political power, but also between divine powers and the principalities of darkness. Authors were encouraged to contribute to ecumenical thinking by exploring power, with all its positive and negative features.
4
Biblical Powers and Principalities Where does our first topic come from? The meaning of the word power is more or less clear, but what is the role of principalities in the title? If we look it up the dictionary, this word has four different meanings. First, it has a historical, political meaning, referring to the area (state, office, or authority) governed by a prince. Then, it has a contemporary political meaning: it can be used when distinguishing or clarifying the reality of a political state. When used in the plural form, the word can refer to an order of angels within a celestial hierarchy. Finally, the fourth definition is the theological (biblical) use of the word. It is not the dictionary, however, which guides us ultimately in the choice of the title. There are four Pauline letters in the Bible where the two words in our title are grouped and used together: Romans, Ephesians, Colossians and Titus. In Romans 8,38-39 we read: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” In this text, powers and principalities are something humanity must struggle with, a force which might try to separate us from the love of God, but also a force that we can overcome. This thought is continued in Ephesians 6,12. Here they are the object of a struggle in which Christians must be engaged: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” It seems Paul is asserting this struggle to be quite fundamental to the life of a Christian, warranting the dawning of the complete armor of God. Ephesians 3,8-11 uses them to describe the rulers and authorities over which Christ has ascended. “I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ … to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Again, the idea that they are something to overcome. The syntagma appears twice also in the letter to the Colossians. 1,16-17 affirms the earthly nature of these things that were created by Christ and created for Him. “For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.” According to the tradition there are seven orders of angels: archangels, cherubs, seraphs, powers, principalities, dominions and thrones. The text emphasizes that they all centre around Christ. Colossians 2,15 is referring to God’s disarming of evil angels, the cross triumphs over these. “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” Finally, Titus 3,1-2 presents them as an earthly system of maintaining order to which Christians must submit themselves: “Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak
6 evil of no person, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all persons.” This verse seems to suggest the possibility of human governments to carry out good works.
Ideologies: Options for Today The title of the last issue of Student World (245-246) was Ideologies: Options for Today. We deemed it symbolic and rich in meaning to continue the life of the journal with a similar topic, which can take up the same questions, applied to the present context of our world. Let us now take a look at the structure of the present publication. The editorial is followed by an introduction to the topic from one of our CoSecretaries General. Then follow the four chapters. The choice of the topic for this edition is not the only bridge which connects the past with the present. In the first chapter, two Senior Friends share their thoughts with us on the history and future of the ecumenical movement. The second chapter deals with power in its political form. Here we encounter conflicts and co-operations between church and state, individual morality and communitarian behaviour: models of engagement and action are analysed. The third chapter continues this line, but from another angle. Freedom, cooperation, justice and peace are crucial and essential for a responsible personality: but how are they possible in systems of organised oppression? Lastly, we have a look at power understood in a spiritual way: as a temptation and challenge to our faith. The closing piece of the journal is a liturgy of exorcism of the war spirit, which is – unfortunately – more relevant today than ever.
Vine-shoots and Electric Circuit The power relationship of the urban human to nature has changed, as the illustrator of our issue, ALBERT Ádám tells us; it is a marvel and a challenge at the same time. Parks in the urban space, besides being small green reservations, constitute a special scene for social encounters as well. Gardens offer an infinite variety of exploration paths. This involves entering into the perspectives of various people in various eras, such as the character of a scientist or a gardener, to construct a new reality. On the back cover, we see vine-shoots, which remind us of an ancient exotic alphabet as well as of the two tablets of the Decalogue: the power of nature and law, knowledge and creation. On the front cover, there are the etched ruins of the antique princely palace of Knossos in Crete. In the form similar to an integrated electric circuit or a microchip, the picture depicts the interplay between the technical and industrial revolution and earthly political power, between order and culture. These two etchings are the emblem and framework of our present issue. According to historians, the building of the palace was agglutinative, new emperors and princes added new elements to the edifice, and that can be an explanation for its labyrinth-like ground-plan. Let us wander and wonder in the labyrinth of ideas and thoughts of this journal, never losing the red thread of Ariadne: our Christian discernment.
7
Laurence Nana BREW
A Comment on Principality and Power As I think about the subject of the present Student World, I wonder if there could be a common understanding of the phrase principality and power, or perhaps a shared perspective on the two separate words, principality and power, internally within the Federation, and externally in relation to our campuses, churches, and communities. Are there agreed points of view about our understanding of nation and race, about the authority of the state, or the meaning of our history? Would the interpretation of events in relation to principality and power within and outside of the Federation be similar? I am also reminded of the two versions of the history of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) in print: Seeking and Serving the Truth1, and Story of a Storm2. Following the lines of these two published interpretations, I wonder how the concept of principality and power has been understood and practiced in the period between Yamoussoukro3 and now, and if these months could have been spent more productively. The prospective view is even more daunting. It raises questions about the future of the Federation and indeed the wider ecumenical movement. What are our priorities? Are the issues of power and authority, local, regional and global relations, and community and witness, necessarily the same, or could it be that we are drifting farther from each other? Are we ready to engage in radical thinking beyond the present: thinking that should take us into unexplored notions about territory and authority? And, are we able to do it? Returning to the subject, the words principality and power could very simply refer to a designated territory4 and an authority5, respectively. The phrase, “principality and power”, invokes images of title, influence, control, administration and government. The words used to describe these images and concepts, and others such as “justice”, “peace”, and “freedom”, have been so often used and become so secularized that they are emptied of any real Biblical meaning. They have become slogans, tools of propaganda and party politics. A thorough study of these words as Lawrence Nana BREW is finishing his thesis on spatial patterns of HIV/AIDS spread in Ghana. His background is Protestant and Pentecostal. He is currently Co-Secretary General of WSCF. 1 The first and so far the only official history of the first hundred years of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) was written by Philip POTTER and Thomas WIESER (1997). 2 LEHTONEN Risto, Story of a Storm: The Ecumenical Student Movement in the Turmoil of Revolution. Geneva, 1998. 3 The WSCF Centennial Celebration was held in Cote d’Ivoire in 1995 4 Territory ruled by a prince (Collins English Dictionary, 1986 Edition) 5 Authority, control, influence or government (The Oxford Thesaurus, 1997 Edition)
8 Laurence Nana BREW used in the Bible will prove extremely fruitful and enriching, keeping in mind that material things are used as images or parables of the spiritual world. God makes the claim that all the earth is God’s6 and Jesus repeats that claim that, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him7. The Father loves the Son and has entrusted everything to Him, and there exist no realm of life (principality or power) outside the Lordship of Christ. All things were created through Him and for Him8, and He has entrusted power to women and men who will be required to account for the way in which they have exercised stewardship. Men and women belong to God for we are God’s handiwork. God “wrought” our being, and no biological or sociological theories can blind the fact that in God we live and move and have our being9. It is this total claim of Christ as Lord, Savior and Judge of this world that inspired our founding men and women and provided the foundation for our understanding and approach to matters of this world. It is often argued that the Bible is not meant to be a code of ethics, but a guide to personal salvation. It tells of God’s holiness and mercy, and calls men and women to repentance and to new life. This is true, but if we limit the power of the gospel to the individual, we escape from the stern realities of this world, and run away from its problems to seek refuge in the ‘inner life’ and leave the principality of the world to the power of the devil. Of course, we know that the devil, whom Jesus describes as ‘the prince of this world’ and who rules in the affairs of this world with a heavy hand, now stands condemned10. So we await the promised new heaven and the new earth where righteousness shall prevail11, knowing that the new city into which ‘the kings of the earth shall bring their glory’ is yet to come. However, we also know that Christ has already conquered, and the days of the prince of this world are numbered and that the power of the devil can neither be accepted nor taken for granted. It must continually be challenged in the name12 and authority of the legitimate King of all created things. As Christian students, we stand in the midst of worldly life and conflict, and we must continually reflect on what it means to be citizens of two worlds: the kingdom of God, and of this earth. How far should we adapt ourselves to the way of life of the surrounding post-modern civilization and culture? How relevant is it to the World Student Christian Federation today what Paul advised to the Colossian Church: to guard against hollow and deceptive philosophy, based on tradition and worldly principles rather than on Christ, who is the head of all power and authority13? In expressing ideas relating to constituency and authority both in words and in function it is imperative for all Student Christian Movements (SCMs) to study the Bible, to understand God’s perspective, and to correctly handle the word of truth14 in order not to fall prey to worldly ideologies, which use and misuse words to express notions of power. 6 Exodus 19:5 / 7 Matthew 28:19 / 8 Colossians 1:16 / 9 Acts 17:28 / 10 John 16:11 / 11 2Peter 3:13 12 Philippians 2:9-10 / 13 Colossians 2:8-10
10 Laurence Nana BREW The Federation as a whole, should want to explore the Bible together and to know what it has to say about issues such as: regionalization and the pursuit of particular interests and limited agendas; pluralism and diffusion within the Federation; inclusive community and the concerns of women, men, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people; partnership and ecumenical relations; ownership, distribution and use of money and resources; leadership and stewardship. To live with the Bible is to learn to know the mind of Christ, be guided by His Spirit, and to grow in knowledge. When we have so learnt Christ would we avoid the danger of projecting our concerns into the Bible instead of projecting the light of the Bible on to our concerns? While the Bible may not give us straightforward and ready-made answers on the way forward, it dœs present us with a host of witnesses to whom God has spoken to at different times and places, and leave the responsibility with us to make choices for which we will give account. The need for a critical review of our beliefs and expressions relating to power is already apparent knowing that we would be held accountable for our use or misuse of it. Those who no longer see our spirituality and relevance as a viable project are of the opinion that we are demonstrating a life-style, which is inconsistent with the power and authority vested in us and written down in our stated beliefs. As sinners tied up in the intricacies of a sinful world, a constant falling back on God’s mercy and forgiveness is needful.
14 2Timothy 2:15
11
Julio de SANTA ANA
The Ecumenical Movement at the Crossroads The modern ecumenical movement started to develop dynamically in the middle of the XIXth century. This development was initiated and sustained mainly by various lay movements including several Christian associations of young men and women, as well as by the concern of missionaries who became increasingly aware of the fact that confessional and denominational divisions negatively affect the very message of the evangelisation. Among the youth movements, the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), founded in 1895, quickly became an organisation of great importance. In its branches different parts of the world were represented and worked together. The Federation provided a forum where the problems and challenges of the ecumenical rapprochement were discussed. Moreover, WSCF was the international organisation in which several of the new leaders of the ecumenical movement obtained an important part of their “ecumenical formation.”
I. DYNAMICS
OF
ECUMENICAL HISTORY
John R. MOTT was one of the youth leaders who participated in the meeting of Vadstena, Sweden, where the Federation was established. He was a lay person of the United Methodist Church of the USA, who in 1948 became the first Honorary President of the World Council of Churches (WCC). William TEMPLE (the later Archbishop of Canterbury) and Joseph H. OLDHAM (layman, later to become the first General Secretary of the International Missionary Council and the General Secretary of Life and Work) also took part in the initiation of the student Christian movement striving for the unity of the divided Christiendom. The “Federation”, as it was called then, was the classic “nursery” of the ecumenical movement where most of its future leaders were trained for ecumenical co-operation. If the XIXth century is considered a historical period in which churches had to respond to the challenges of the Western modernity (to both of its versions - the bourgeois and the proletarian), then the ecumenical movement is to be understood as one of the ways in which Christian communities, especially in Western Julio de SANTA ANA was born in Uruguay in 1934. He is Methodist and studied theology in Buenos Aires. He received his PhD in Religious Sciences from the University of Strasbourg, France in 1962. He is a Professor of Social Ethics and Comparative Sociology of Religions. He has worked in the ecumenical movement since his youth, in WSCF in Latin America, in the WCC, in Brazil with Basic Christian Communities, and finally at the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey. He is the author of many articles and twelve books.
12 Julio de SANTA ANA Europe and North America, responded to the process of modernisation. It was an answer that started to be articulated in different situations in North America, in the United Kingdom, in Constantinople, in Scandinavia, as well as in other parts of the world. The concern and quest for Christian unity was not a newly born idea in Western Europe. Already in the second half of the XVIIth century diplomats like LEIBNIZ and JABLONSKY consecrated some of their efforts to the reconstruction of the unity of all Christians, which seemed to have been lost from the beginning of the second millennium of the Christian era. The ecumenical movement was concretised little by little among the youth and the laity. Some churches followed at the official level what had been started at the grassroots. It is especially necessary to mention the Anglican Community among those who played a significant role in the promotion of ecumenism. The already proposed suggestions were realized for the first time in the Anglican Church in the so-called “Lambeth Quadrilateral”, which played a very positive role in the ecumenical dialogue at the end of the XIXth century and at the beginning of the XXth century.1 The XXth century is perceived as the time of ecumenism in the history of Christianity. One of the main reasons is the fact that Christianity recognized itself as a faith whose roots were spread all over the world. The Christian faith began to be witnessed in almost all the countries of the oikoumene, the whole inhabited earth. Christianity became truly “ecumenical” for the first time in its history.2 The other reason concerns the fact that the movement for Christian unity made an enormous progress in the preceding one hundred years. It can be maintained that the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh (1910) was the first step in the process of the foundation of the World Council of Churches (1948). This process involved an increased ecumenical engagement of all of the Orthodox Churches as well as the later decision of the Roman Catholic Church to participate actively in the ecumenical movement, as articulated by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Ecumenism gradually became the most important project of Christian churches opening them to the challenges of modernisation. In the framework of dialogues and prayers for Christian unity the matters related to doctrinal and liturgical issues, to the interpretation of the Bible, to social thought and social action of different Christian communities, were studied and discussed. In Western Europe the progress in ecumenical dialogue gave hope to many families whose members belonged to different Christian confessions. In the United States and Canada, ecumenism promoted joint action in the area of social involvement and civil rights in different ethnic communities. 1 The Lambeth Quadrilateral was approved by the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion in 1920. The Anglican Bishops ratified what had already been proposed by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Chicago, USA (1886). It is a proposal about the four basic elements that the Anglican communion believes to be necessary for Church union: „(1) the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as the revealed Word of God; (2) the Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith; (3) the two sacraments – baptism and the supper of the Lord – ministered with the unfailing use of Christ’s words of ordination and of the elements ordained by Him; (4) the historic episcopate locally adapted int he methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his church.” 2 This view is presented by Karl RAHNER and Heinrich FRIES in the third thesis of their book: Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility. New York, 1984.
ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT 13
The ecumenical movement evolved into a dynamic trend that could no longer be kept solely within the limits of inter-church relations. Those participating in ecumenical dialogues were very much aware of the difficulties they had to face and the misunderstandings that often created new stumbling-blocks on the path to unity. They witnessed, however, the existence of a world community of people who became friends in spite of their confessional and denominational disparities. On the basis of such friendships, trust was created and the actors committed themselves to act in concert. Even the horrors of the war did not manage to break up this community. The Message of the First Assembly of the WCC clearly showed that even though terrible things divided the Christian churches and communities during the painful war years of 1939-1945, the delegates of the Assembly were able to state unanimously: “We intend to stay together.”3 Those who took part in the ecumenical movement were not many. As a matter of fact, Christian communities committed to the work for unity were few and small. Sociological research on the ecumenical movement is still to be published, but the research that has already been done allows us to claim that ecumenically minded people have fulfilled the call to be the “salt of the earth” and the “yeast in the dough.” WSCF has proved to be a sign of the times in this sense.4 3 Message of the first Assembly of WCC in W. A. VISSER’T HOOFT (ed.), The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches. London, 1984.
14 Julio de SANTA ANA The ecumenical movement proved to be fragile in certain cases where serious mistakes were perpetrated alienating people who were sincerely committed to work together for unity, justice and peace. However, nobody could deny that ecumenism unfolded in a surprisingly positive atmosphere with considerable outcomes from the Edinburgh Conference up to the last Assemblies of the World Council of Churches. As time gœs by, many important human endeavours lose their original enthusiasm. They can experience what Max WEBER called “the routinization of the charisma.” There is a law in social life according to which movements disappear from the society unless they become institutionalized. Therefore, in order to ensure survival in the mælstrom of historical events, movements are to be transformed into institutions. During this process, however, the movements experience not only their dynamism, but also their limits. The march forward slows down. The weight of the institution inhibits the action of those who are motivated by the spirit aiming to fulfil the original vision. The ecumenical movement is not an exception to the rule in this context. Throughout the XXth century the ecumenical dialogue became more and more institutionalized in the life of many churches. Naturally enough, the joyful dynamism associated with the beginnings of the movement started to decrease. Today, at the beginning of the XXIst century, the ecumenical movement appears to be rather uneven. At the level of ecclesiastical institutions, ecumenism became highly structured. Ecumenical structures were created. On the local level ecumenical communities are still very active. In a way, regional ecumenical organisations prove to be even livelier than the World Council of Churches itself. The people participating in the ecumenical movement on the local level are often ready to celebrate the Eucharist together. At the same time, on the level of the World Council of Churches, the delegates of ecclesiastical bodies discuss (and some even contest) the possibility of celebrating “ecumenical worship services.” In situations where the struggle for peace appeared to be a matter of life or death, believers of different confessions and religions were able to come together to witness their commitment against violence. In other places of the world, where migrants (many of whom are refugees) come and settle looking for better conditions of life, religious leaders and believers realise that ecumenism cannot remain confined only to the boundaries of Christianity. There is a growing claim that the ecumenical movement should become increasingly inclusive and open to inter-religious dialogue. It has been stated that it is necessary to “keep the coherence of the ecumenical movement.”5 What can this statement mean? Should we pursue a certain kind of homogenisation of ecumenical communities? Or should we seek an understanding of tolerance that is appropriate to our time? The presented article discusses certain problematic elements of contemporary ecumenism. It is intended as a 4 See Philip POTTER – Thomas WIESER, Seeking and Serving the Truth. The First Hundred Years of the World Student Christian Federation. Geneva, 1997.
ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT 15
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
contribution to the ongoing ecumenical dialogue among students of different denominations, confessions and religions and more particularly in the communities of the World Student Christian Federation of today.
II. FIVE PARADOXES OF ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT
THE
OF
OUR TIME
The Limits of the West The modern ecumenical movement is a project that emerged from the environment of “liberal Protestantism” at its inception.6 It is true, as W. A. VISSER’T HOOFT writes, that one of the most important antecedents that later led to the creation of the World Council of Churches, was the Encyclical issued by the Holy Synod of the Church of Constantinople at the beginning of January 1919.7 Nevertheless, from the second half of the XIXth century onwards, church leaders, officials of different missionary boards, lay movements – all of whom had been born within the realm of Protestantism – started to coordinate their efforts in the view of promoting Christian unity. The modern ecumenical movement is a fruit of the development of a part of modern Protestantism that was closely linked to the modern Western culture. This “occidental” type of ecumenism is still alive. When the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches decided to join the movement, they affirmed this response to the challenge of modernisation in their respective ways. Later, when at the beginning of the l960s the Roman Catholic Church officially joined the ecumenical movement, the Second Vatican Council took up the stance of aggiornamento. This step was understood as the acceptance of modernity by the Roman Catholic Church. This implies that the modern ecumenical movement was born in Western Christian communities, above all in Western missionary movements and Western lay movements. As it has been noted above, one of the main transformations of Christianity that took place in the last century was its commitment to become truly ecumenical and global. The missionary leaders’ motto at the beginning of the l900s was “the evangelisation of the world in this generation.” Even if the majority of the world population dœs not adhere to Christianity, Christian churches and communities are present in almost all the countries of the world. Furthermore, as Philip JENKINS indicated in his recent book The Next Christendom, churches are turning more dynamic and in the “South” they continue to grow.8 In the last quarter of the past century Christian communities of the South gave clear signs of approaching God through new types of prayer, new liturgies (rooted in the living context of the community), new songs, new theologies (with a clear emphasis on the practice rather than on traditional doctrines) and new ecclesial structures. Numerous 5 The Common Understanding and Vision of the World Council of Churches. Geneva, 1997. 6 Those theological expressions of Protestant communities are meant here that are not part of „conservative Evangelical” tradition or Protestant fundamentalism. The theology of Karl BARTH, as well as of Paul TILLICH and Emil BRUNNER is part of the mentioned trend. 7 Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere (192O). In Michæl KINNAMON – Brian E. COPE (eds.), The Ecumenical Movement. An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. Geneva – Grand Rapids, 1997. 11-14.
16 Julio de SANTA ANA observers have claimed recently that the centres of decision making in Christian communities ceased to be confined to the North (or North-West) and have started to move southwards. The “institutional” ecumenical movement, however, continues to be predominantly Western. Church leaders participating in ecumenical gatherings come mostly from the West. It is a fact that Christian communities in North America continue to give witness to their vigour and vitality; however, it is necessary to state that most of these churches are conservative and manifest an undeniable distrust towards ecumenism. When observing the current situation of Christian churches and communities in Western Europe, one faces a dilemma. Most Europeans confess they are Christian, but their participation in church events is decreasing. Both the number of faithful who attend church services and the amount of financial contributions that ecclesial institutions receive from their members are diminishing. It is to be mentioned in this context, however, that on certain occasions churches manage to organise large-size gatherings and meetings collecting thousands or even millions of people, as it was the case with Catholic youth pilgrimages. The community of Taizé in Burgundy (France) continues to be a beacon for ecumenically minded young Christians. This is, however, not the case in the so-called South. In the same way as new forms of Christianity emerged in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbeans, Asia and Pacific, new types of ecumenical relations developed in the mentioned regions, too. Less emphasis is placed on traditional doctrines and more attention is paid to the spiritual needs of the people. Theological debates arose in connection with topics as the evangelization of non-Christians or the reaching out to the baptized who do not seem to follow the moral standards indicated by churches. This new type of ecumenism looks neither to Rome (which has become the true centre of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue since the l980s) nor to Geneva (where ecumenical organizations are located, e.g. the World Council of Churches) in order to develop new styles of ecumenical dialogue, namely those in which divisions are not as important as the common action in the service of the people, particularly of the “poor.” It seems that the international ecumenical movement has not yet become fully aware of the mentioned shift. In this transformation a tension is clearly manifest between the West-centered ecumenism and the new “peripheral” expressions of the search for unity. Furthermore, these “Southern” ecumenical expressions seem to be more open to dialogue with communities of other faiths.
Minorities and Masses The ecumenical movement was carried forward by the action of committed minorities who were able to form new communities of faith. It is a fact that these small ecumenical communities were able to create projects that went beyond the limits of their own confessions and denominations. Ecumenism did not originate as a mass movement. 8 See Philip JENKINS, The Next Christendom. New York, 2OO2.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT 17
This situation provoked certain ecumenical mentors to think about methodologies that would prevent any forms of “elitism” that at times characterized some of the ecumenical activities. Different ways of actions were devised: visiting teams that sought to go beyond the boundaries of church leaderships and church bureaucracy, motivating the grassroot constituencies of the churches to open up to ecumenical visions. However, at the top of “institutional ecumenism”, the same people gathered again and again. In this way the ecumenical movement found itself hesitant and fluctuating between becoming a movement of masses and becoming a movement of concerned minorities. There are two points that should be taken into consideration in connection with this paradox. One is the ecclesiological and ecclesial dimension of the ecumenical movement. Some churches maintain that they are the “true body of Christ”, or that “the Church subsists in their structures.” Other churches still persist to claim that they are more than “ecclesial communities” and that the marks of the Church of Christ are also present in them (although in more or less perfect way). One way of overcoming these contradictions was to perceive the Church as a communion.9 This proved, however, unfeasible, especially when the dialogue on “communion” was carried out on the basis of dogmatic assumptions. But when ecumenism is debated as a matter of doctrines, it can be easily put into a freezer! With hibernation we cannot go too far in our way towards unity. Things change when we realize that ecumenical relations form a part of the pastoral life of the church. In this article the concept of “pastoral” relates to the process of shaping the body of Christ in the life of Christian communities (Galatians 4,19). This path of conformatio Christi is not a matter of doctrine, but an expression of “the life in the Spirit.” (As a matter of fact, I believe that the fourth and the fifth chapter, of that Epistle, where the Apostle writes about the Spirit, the pneumatic and the institutional, corporative, structural dimensions of the Christian communities are inseparable.) Furthermore, this “pastoral practice” is not – at least at the beginning of the process - an action of the whole community, but rather a concern of few believers who try to spread the spirit of unity among the other members of the Christian koinonia. It is important for the ecumenical movement to recognize that the way to unity is an expression of the Spirit of God, who is like the wind “blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it gœs” (John 3,8) - even if it necessarily includes doctrinal dialogue. Throughout the history of humankind, institutions have tried again and again to understand and control (mostly unconsciously) the actions of the Spirit. One of the most prominent ways to do this was by means of the primacy of dogma over the concrete life of the faith community. The paradox is obvious and must be overcome by giving priority to the pastoral dimension of ecumenism over the doctrinal one. The second dimension is sociological – the modern ecumenical movement is a 9 This was the theme of the Faith and Order conference at Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 1993.
18 Julio de SANTA ANA movement of concerned minorities. It is necessary to make a distinction between “minority” and “elite” in this context. As an example, the movement of Jesus was constituted by only a small number of people, although it addressed itself to the whole of Isræl and to the neighboring places. When Jesus died those who were waiting for the manifestation of the power of the risen Christ were very few. The first chapters of the Book of Acts give witness to the existence of a tiny minority of disciples who were part of the movement. It is true that crowds followed Jesus, recognized that he had an authority (charisma) unlike the masters of the law. Nevertheless, the teachings of Jesus are addressed to the small minority of disciples, and not to the ochlos. This small group of disciples was called to awaken the people. They played a role comparable to the animators of cultural circles who should fulfill what Paulo FREIRE described as the “pedagogy of freedom, pedagogy of the oppressed.” There is, however, a problem we are facing – the difference between a “concerned minority” and an “elite” can be very tiny. A minority can be tempted to develop an awareness of being an avant-garde, which happened to the Pharisees at the time of Jesus. In order not to fall into this trap, it is elementary to keep a lively dialogue between the minority and the majority. The ecumenical movement proved to be able to keep the balance many times. On the other hand there were also instances when it succumbed to the temptation of power. The present general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Rev. Dr. Konrad RAISER was right in noting that the movement should emphasize the practice of communication, not in a virtual way, but on an existential level.10 Philip POTTER recognized the same need when reiterating that ecumenical relations are like those indicated by Martin BUBER in the book I and Thou.11 In other words, a minority can avoid becoming an elite if its members listen attentively to the messages coming from the people living at the grassroots. It is always necessary to listen critically to the people when they respond to the question: “Who do the people say that the Son of Man is?” Nevertheless, not always the people’s response is the right one.
Individualization of Religious Experience The tension between the prevailing trend of “individualisation of religious experiences” and the ways of celebrating characteristic of ecumenical communities represents another paradox. At this point it must be recognized that when people are moved by the Spirit of God to praise the mystery of God’s being, nobody can stop them. We cannot put barriers to the inspiration of the Spirit. Participation in an ecumenical worship has always been a matter of joy as well as of pain for those who have been committed to ecumenism. Joy, because believers of different traditions were able to join in common worship; pain, because some, in full loyalty to their institutions, could not participate. One of the main problems of today is that religious experience is more and more 10 Konrad RAISER, Ecumenism in Transition. A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? Geneva, 1991. 11 Philip POTTER, Life in all its Fullness. Geneva. 44–49.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT 19
a matter of individual consciousness. The decline of institutions gœs hand in hand with the increase of individualistic religiosity. It is necessary to emphasize that this process dœs not concern solely Western societies, it has a global character. André DROOGERS, an anthropologist of the Free University of Amsterdam, put this paradox into well-defined terms: “The process of institutional erosion represents a policy problem for the churches’ leaders. Paradoxically, by emphasizing individual conversion, personal faith and freedom of choice, churches seem to have admitted a Trojan horse, thus creating the conditions for their own demise. What is more, individualism finds part of its roots in Christianity.”12 Very often, the individualization of religious experience is connected with a formulation of a personal religious synthesis, which is then pegged as syncretism, generally disliked by ecclesiastical institutions. The new situation presents new challenges to the ecumenical movement, as individuals search to formulate their personal synthesis by taking into consideration not only the traditional symbols of their faith but also their own cultural values and customs. There is an increasing number of individuals who remain open to ecumenism in spite of the fact that the institutions they belong to either are not ecumenical or do not pay sufficient attention to the ecumenical dialogue.
Macro-Ecumenism There are ecumenical circles in which the claim for a “wider ecumenism” is growing increasingly powerful.13 Believers, who were captured by the striving for Christian unity, push the question of “the others” into the spotlight, asking whether the ecumenical movement should include them as well. On the other hand, however, fundamentalist groups are formed that strongly oppose any contact with “the others.” These intolerant groups are often manipulated by extremist political forces, thus causing a clear break in the relations within the same religious family. Those who practice more inclusive forms of ecumenism frequently fall under the criticism of the authorities of ecclesiastical bodies who are concerned with keeping the depositum fidei of their traditions as correct as possible. Nonetheless, the challenge of the increasing practice of wider ecumenism is there and cannot be ignored. It is part of the development of the oikoumene.
Ecumenism in Modern Contexts In the last twenty years a growing influence of clergy has been experienced, mainly in the practice of the official and institutionalized ecumenism. The modern movement for Christian unity was originally above all a concern of the laity. The growing authority of the clergy in ecumenical affairs often pushes laywomen and laymen to the “individualization of ecumenical practices.” Of course, there are numerous ecumenical programmes attended by lay persons. However, many of these are “profes12 André DROOGERS, The Individualization of Religious Experience. Written as a contribution to the work of the Research Group of the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey on “Religious Life Today and its Challenges to the Ecumenical Movement” (unpublished). 13 Roman Catholic bishop Msgr. Pedro CASALDÁLIGA of the Diocesis of São Felix de Araguaia, Brasil, has been one of the most outspoken Latin American church leaders in favour of this conception of wider ecumenism.
20 Julio de SANTA ANA sional ecumenists” in the service of institutions. The challenge of our times is to make ecumenism appealing once again for the educated and activist-minded laity. There are other aspects influencing the current situation of ecumenism – the wide-spread feeling that nothing new is happening, no steps are made to give new strength to the believers working for unity, and thus ecumenical organizations are less supported with financial contributions coming from the public. These paradoxes call for a renewal of the ecumenical movement.
III. HOW
TO
MOVE
ON?
One of the lessons to be learnt from the history of religious communities is that when a call for renewal is made there are elements of the past that should be reaffirmed; awareness of the present dilemmas has to be raised in order to act appropriately; and certain new trends are to be followed.
Strong Piety What should be reaffirmed? The ecumenical movement (so often criticized as being worldly, “mundane”) has been an expression of strong piety. People as Jean Henri DUNANT, founder of the International Red Cross, who came from YMCA; John R. MOTT, founder of WSCF; J. H. OLDHAM; William TEMPLE; George BELL; Kathleen BLISS; Madeleine BAROT; Suzanne DE DIETRICH; D.T. NILES; Pierre MAURY; Philip POTTER; and many others were and are people who lived out their ecumenical commitment in a close connection with their sincere piety: practice of daily prayer, of constant biblical study, dialogue with others and careful service of those in need. These elements were essentially present in their existence. There cannot be a future of any movement in Christianity unless it is grounded on deep piety and a faith anchored on a strong rock.
Vital Awareness of Mission The Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth has been brought almost to the “end of the earth.” Nevertheless, there are many people who do not even try to live a life faithful to the message of the Gospel. Furthermore, legalism still remains a wide-spread phenomenon although the call to metanoia presented by Jesus is brought to every human longing to enter the Kingdom that is “near.” Mission is not only about “the way and the how”, but above all about the source, missio Dei, about the process through which God becomes human and assumes the life of the most deprived and oppressed people. One of the most crucial questions of today appears to be - how to preach the gospel in the modern world ruled by the power of money?
New Understanding of Ecumenical Social Ethics It would be illusory to presume that there is “one” ecumenical social ethic. Ecumenical communities commit themselves to overcome violence, to peace, to social justice, to defend and promote human rights, to respect the rights of the
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT 21
environment in different contexts. Ecumenical social ethics is always contextual, and it has to be so. However, there is a challenge of diversity – what are the common elements of the social engagement of ecumenical communities in their resistance against neo-liberal globalization in South Africa and South America? What are the common elements in the struggle of the North Americans and the British for more open and inclusive societies? Nevertheless, social ethics should be considered an essential element in the actions and reflections of the ecumenical movement. This also means that ecumenical social ethics is not an uncommitted one: it calls for action. Throughout the XXth century, the ecumenical movement gave witness of its different engagements and commitments. Ecumenical social ethics always takes side. Living out social ethics is the only way to be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, the “good news to the poor” and the “liberation of the oppressed.”
Faith and Order Bishop George BRENT, the founder of Faith and Order, formulated a program that has been put into practice step-by-step. However, the way proposed by Bishop BRENT has not yet been fully fulfilled. The carrying out of this program presents numerous difficulties. It is so especially in connection with the second half of the last century when new churches focused primarily on elaborating their own particular traditions, new liturgies were celebrated, new streams of theology appeared. There is no doubt that the “faith and order line” should be kept. Nevertheless, it is challenged to take into account the new situation of the churches in changing Christianity.
IV. THREE SUGGESTIONS FOR FINDING MEANING IN OUR COMPLEXITIES Inclusive Ecclesiological and Theological Dialogue Our ecumenical reflections cannot be reduced to traditional forms of faith. There are new forms that have come into being: Pentecostal and Charismatic, new inter-religious relations as fruits of the daily sharing with other religious communities; issues of intolerance towards ecumenical discussions. The women’s revolution (which in my understanding is the most important process of the change that affects all the societies of the world) deserves a priority in the new ecumenical dialogue. These issues are, however, not to be handled as mathematical items; quotas are necessary, indeed to revert and correct injustices. However, we need to go beyond quotas, to listen to women and consider their claims. Even if they, at times, might seem to oppose some of the traditions of our religious families.
Global Ecumenical Constellation When realizing that the centers of Christian faith are no longer in the West or North, it seems to be necessary to begin searching for a new world or a global ecumenical constellation. We cannot reduce ecumenism only to the traditional
22 Julio de SANTA ANA forms of Christianity; the time is ripe to widen the circles. In the contemporary “networks society” there is not merely one network in which we are bound to participate as individuals or associations, but rather several networks are open simultaneously.14 There seems to be a vital opportunity to bring different networks together (e.g. in a form of an “ecumenical parliament”). This could enable ecumenical communities to listen to one another in a more concentrated way. The coming-together should not focus on an establishment of a central power deciding upon what should be done, but rather on the motivation to stay on the ground of dialogue. “All in each place” should be linked more closely to “remain together” in order to make us realize that all of us are called to be one people of God despite the fact that we come from different families, cultures, and traditions. This potential line of action has already been suggested by Philip POTTER when he envisaged the ecumenical movement as a platform for a universal dialogue of cultures15. The oikoumene, the whole inhabited earth, where the faithful are called to witness the presence of God in the midst of our life, must be the main concern of the ecumenical movement. But how to form one people of God living in the diversity of the different cultures, ethnic traditions and identities of those who are part of the whole humankind?
Deciding the Line of Action The strength of the ecumenical movement has been based on the seriousness of its analysis and its search for adequate implementations of its theoretical findings ever since its inception. This rigor must continue to exist. The focal point is not the imposing of one common line, but rather the clearing up of the complex labyrinth in which we find ourselves today, sharing our analyses of this complexity with other ecumenical and religious communities, thus enriching their own decision making processes. This supportive work of the ecumenical movement was highly valued in the past. Personally, I am convinced that the World Student Christian Federation still has a vital role to play in this field.
Bibliography Philip JENKINS, The Next Christendom. New York, 2002. The Common Understanding and Vision of the World Council of Churches. Geneva, 1997. Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere (1920). In Michæl KINNAMON – Brian E. COPE (eds.), The Ecumenical Movement. An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. Geneva – Grand Rapids, 1997. Philip POTTER, Life in all its Fullness. Geneva. Philip POTTER – Thomas WIESER, Seeking and Serving the Truth. The First Hundred Years of the World Student Christian Federation. Geneva, 1997. Karl RAHNER – Heinrich FRIES, Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility. New York, 1984. Konrad RAISER, Ecumenism in Transition. A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? Geneva, 1991. Julio DE SANTA ANA, Ecumenismo e Libertação. Petrópolis, 1987. W. A. VISSER’T HOOFT (ed), The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches. London, 1948.
14 Manuel CASTELLS: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Cambridge, 1996. 15 Philip POTTER, op. cit. 154–164.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT 23
Julio de SANTA ANA: El movimiento ecuménico ante las encrucijadas El movimiento ecuménico experimenta varias tensiones y, al comenzar el Siglo XXI, puede ser caracterizado por varias paradojas. Al mismo tiempo que el ecumenismo oficial (o institucional, protagonizado por las instituciones eclesiásticas, sean occidentales u orientales) da muestras de estancamiento, no ocurre asó en lugares donde el Cristianismo testimonia ser motivado por un fuerte entusiasmo y dinamismo. La parálisis (que para algunos es agotamiento) de las instituciones eclesiásticas tradicionales contrasta con la práctica de una “imaginación ecuménica” entre comunidades e iglesias que se abren a una concepción más amplia del ecumenismo, que corresponda al creciente pluralismo religioso que se observa en nuestras sociedades. El artículo plantea una serie de puntos a través de los que el autor intenta lanzar un debate, que entiende necesario. La intención del autor es abrir un debate, en el que las comunidades de estudiantes cristianos participen, desafíen e inspiren a quienes participan en otros niveles del movimiento ecuménico.
Julio de SANTA ANA: Le mouvement œcuménique au croisement de chemins Le mouvement œcuménique est soumis à certaines tensions et renferme en ce début de XXIe siècle divers paradoxes. C’est ainsi qu’alors que l’œcuménisme officiel (ou institutionnel, préconisé par les institutions ecclésiastiques, occidentales ou orientales) montre des signes de fatigue, le christianisme témoigne ailleurs d’une grande motivation, toute enthousiasme et dynamisme. La paralysie (fatigue, pour certains) des institutions ecclésiastiques traditionnelles contraste avec “l’imagination œcuménique” de certaines communautés et Églises, qui adoptent un concept plus large d’œcuménisme, mieux adapté au pluralisme religieux croissant de nos sociétés. L’article met en avant certains aspects à travers lesquels l’auteur essaye de promouvoir une discussion qu’il juge nécessaire. L’auteur prétend lancer un débat ou il invite les associations chrétiennes d’étudiants à participer afin de défier et inspirer ceux qui participent à d’autres niveaux du mouvement œcuménique.
24
William WYLIE-KELLERMANN
Naming the Powers: William Stringfellow as Student and Theologian
“In this world as it is, in the era of time, in common history – in the epoch of the Fall, as the Bible designates this scene every principality has the elemental significance of death, notwithstanding contrary appearances. This is eminently so with respect to nations, for nations are, as Revelation indicates, the archetypical principalities… All virtues which nations elevate and idolize – military prowess, material abundance, technological sophistication, imperial grandeur, high culture, racial pride, trade, prosperity, conquest, sport, language, or whatever – are subservient to the moral presence of death in the nation. And it is the same with the surrogate nations – the other principalities like corporations and conglomerates, ideologies and bureaucracies, and authorities and institutions of every name and description…”1 “The Fall is where the nation is. The Fall is the locus of America… Since the climax of America’s glorification as a nation – in the ostensible American victory in World War II, most lucidly and aptly symbolized in Hiroshima – Americans have become so beleaguered by anxiety and fatigue, so bemused and intimidated, so beset by a sense of impotence and by intuitions of calamity, that they have, for the most part, been consigned to despair… Racial conflict has been suppressed by an elaborate apartheid; products which supposedly mean abundance turn out to contaminate or jeopardize life; the environment itself is rendered hostile; there is a pervasive Babel; privacy is a memory because surveillance is ubiquitous; institutional cœrcion of human beings has proliferated relentlessly. Whatever must be said of earlier times, in the past quarter century, America has become a technological totalitarianism in which hope, in its ordinary connotations, is being annihilated.”2 (William STRINGFELLOW, 1973) William STRINGFELLOW, who was an active participant in the World Student William WYLIE-KELLERMANN, a United Methodist pastor and community activist, is Director of Graduate Theological Urban Studies for SCUPE (Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education) in Chicago. A contributing editor for Sojourners and the Witness, he is author of Seasons of Faith and Conscience (Orbis, 1991) and editor of A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William STRINGFELLOW (Eerdmans, 1994). Portions of this article are adapted from Not Vice Versa, Reading the Powers Biblically: STRINGFELLOW, Hermeneutics, and the Principalities. Anglican Theological Review, Fall 1999; forthcoming in Anthony DANCER (ed.), William STRINGFELLOW: Theologies of Anglo-American Perspective. 1 STRINGFELLOW William, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Waco, 1973. 67-68. 2 Ibid. 19-20. STRINGFELLOW is employing an earlier chauvinism – using “America” to signify the United States.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
NAMING THE POWERS 25
Christian Federation during the post-war era, is best regarded in the US church as the theologian who reclaimed the biblical language of “principalities and powers” for social ethics. It was, moreover, his experience and conversation as a student in the WSCF that initially formed and shaped his early thinking and biblical insight concerning these powers. For most of its history, the gods of this world have blinded the Church to its own scriptures with respect to the “principalities and powers.” In the history of interpretation the powers have been excised, suppressed and obscured. One analysis, that of ecumenist W. A. VISSER’T HOOFT, ties the effectual disappearance and demise of the powers in Protestant theology to LUTHER and CALVIN at the very beginning of the Reformation.3 STRINGFELLOW, however, locates that dissipation at an earlier juncture, with the “Constantinian Arrangement” of the fourth century. Beginning with that time, Christians had “forgotten or forsaken a worldview or, more precisely, doctrines of creation and fallen creation, similar to Paul’s, in which political authority encompasses and conjoins the angelic powers and incumbent rulers.”4 Walter WINK, the New Testament scholar whose stunning trilogy on the powers was seeded by STRINGFELLOW’s work and who has since become the primary and practical North American spokesperson on the theology of the principalities, concurs. “The Church soon found herself 3 See W. A. VISSER’T HOOFT, The Kingship of Christ. New York, 1948. 15-31. He argues that the significance of the victorious cosmic Christ was lost in their attenuated struggle with apocalyptic sects of the time. 4 STRINGFELLOW William, Conscience and Obedience. Waco, 1977. 48.
26 William WYLIE-KELLERMANN the darling of CONSTANTINE. Called on to legitimate the empire, the church abandoned much of its social critique. The Powers were soon divorced from political affairs and made airy spirits who preyed only on individuals. The state was thus freed of one of the most powerful brakes against idolatry.”5
On the Principalities at Harvard When STRINGFELLOW first began to speak and write on the powers in the early sixties, he went on the road stumping in colleges and universities. He identified the powers with institutions, images, and ideologies as creatures before God having an independent life and integrity of their own whose vocation is to praise God and serve human life. In the estate of the fall, however, they are seen to be demonic powers. Their vocation is lost and distorted, in fact inverted: instead of praising God and serving human life they pretend to take the place of God and enslave human life. This exposition, which became chapter three of Free in Obedience (1964), met a strange mix of fascination and rebuff. He loved to tell the story of an early presentation, in fact two of them, given in Boston. Scheduled for similar talks the same day at Harvard Business School and at the Divinity School, he debated with himself about excising, from the business school version, any explicit biblical reference or language, but decided in the end to let it stand intact. The business school students it turned out, engaged him thoroughly, bending his ear long past the hour appointed, with numerous examples from their own experience of dominance and possession with respect to corporations and the commercial powers. Their experiences verified his own observations. Later at the seminary, however, with the identical speech, he was ridiculed and written off. Ruling authorities, principalities, world rulers of the present darkness! Come now! These were but the incidental vestige of a quaint and archaic language, Greco-Roman astralism, an esoteric parlance now obsolete, with no real meaning in history or human life.6
Hermeneutics and Historical Crisis Happily, things have changed with respect to the theological academy, but it took a series of historical crises to effect it. In Europe it was virtually the gathering storm of World War II, the rise of National Socialism, which urgently broke the hermeneutical impasse with respect to the powers. As Dietrich BONHœFFER wrote in 1932, “how can one close one’s eyes at the fact that the demons themselves have taken over rule of the world, that it is the powers of darkness who have here made an awful conspiracy?”7 One crisis would inform another. In STRINGFELLOW’s time and place – the United States in the sixties and seventies – it was urban crisis and the utter resilience of 5 WINK Walter, Naming the Powers. Philadelphia, 1984. 113. The other volumes in his powers trilogy are Unmasking the Powers. Philadelphia, 1986. and Engaging the Powers. Philadelphia, 1992. 6 STRINGFELLOW William, Free in Obedience. New York, 1964. 51-52. 7 Quoted in DAWN Marva, The Concept of the “Principalities and Powers” in the Works of Jacques Ellul. PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1992. 12.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
NAMING THE POWERS 27
racism which prompted the awakening to the powers. (That, and profligate war in Southeast Asia). STRINGFELLOW, upon graduation from Harvard Law School in 1956 had made a singularly “bad career move,” straight to the New York ghetto of East Harlem to do street law, before there yet was such a thing. And he claimed it was from the people of East Harlem that he got put onto the powers. “Slowly I learned something which folk indigenous to the ghetto know: namely, that the power and purpose of death are incarnated in institutions and structures, procedures and regimes – Consolidated Edison or the Department of Welfare, the Mafia or the police, the Housing Authority or the social work bureaucracy, the hospital system or the banks, liberal philanthropy or corporate real estate speculation. In the wisdom of the people of the East Harlem neighborhood, such principalities are identified as demonic powers because of the relentless and ruthless dehumanization which they cause.”8
Stringfellow Faces the Powers in Oslo His eyes to see and his ears to hear had been formed, however, years earlier substantially through his participation in WSCF. STRINGFELLOW’s first real dose of powers theology came at the World Conference of Christian Youth in Oslo, Norway which he attended in 1947 as a college sophomore. There he joined twelve hundred students from every continent, from seventy different nations, and from every major communion (including thirty-five denominations in the US alone). Under the banner of “Christ is Lord”, no flags, even that of Norway, were allowed in Filadelfia Hall. Sadly, however, the delegation from Japan, their bags already packed, were prevented by the Allied occupation from leaving their country9. They forwarded a word of gratitude to say what a grace the invitation itself had been. The German delegation meanwhile was permitted in, but only after extensive negotiations with the Norwegian government. In the course of the conference they held several (informal and unofficial) joint meetings with youth from Czechoslovakia, France, and the Netherlands to bridge the chasms of war and occupation.
WSCF in Solidarity and Resistance During the War, the European SCMs had tasted the acridity of death and their stories were being now openly shared. SCM leaders had been murdered and imprisoned. Groups were banned and went underground. In Germany, dissolved by the Reich, SCM member groups reconstituted themselves as student congregations within the Confessing Church, which was the ecclesiastical focal point of Christian resistance to HITLER.10 Forbidden previously to have international contact or send money out of the country, they smuggled out tiny lapel crosses to be sold as their WSCF contribu8 Instead of Death. 1967. 5. 9 MACY Paul Griswold (ed.), The Report of the Second World Conference of Christian Youth. Oslo, 1947. 7, 10. 10 POTTER Phillip – WIESER Thomas, Seeking and Serving the Truth. The First Hundred Years of the World Student Christian Federation. Geneva, 1997. 138-155, 158, 173. See also
28 William WYLIE-KELLERMANN tion. Very quickly, students who bought them came to recognize one another throughout Europe on trains, in work camps, in prisons and in resistance groups during the war. The unofficial symbol came to signify both the vitality of resistance and the unity of fellowship across all borders and barriers.11 Given such bridges of conversation and reconciliation, STRINGFELLOW was thoroughly scandalized when Bishop Stephen NEIL, on behalf of the archbishop, asked the Anglicans not to receive Eucharist at the Norwegian high mass since they were not properly “in communion”. Not bound in this matter of conscience, he and others in the delegation went forward to the altar nonetheless, and made a point of underscoring this in his formal church report, citing the prayer of confession from the liturgy itself: “Christian disunity...has been brought by pride… There is only one place where this pride can really be destroyed... that is in the very act of Holy Communion, of communion with Jesus Christ.”12 The meeting itself was in certain respects a confrontation with the powers. When STRINGFELLOW wrote up his experience for publication, he entitled his reflection, “Dœs the World Hate America? What an Innocent Learned Abroad”. He had found himself party to a kind of unmasking experience, “a creative disillusionment”.13 At the conference, a number of Latin American delegations joined in appealing for American churches to stand strong against the “Truman doctrine”, just announced, of arming Latin governments militarily, mainly against their own citizens. A few young people of the United States, STRINGFELLOW among them, were openly sympathetic to their thinking.14 EAPEN, a Ceylonese student who was part of STRINGFELLOW’s afternoon discussion group, confided a warning: “The next war will be a racial war” in which the colonized colored people turn the tables on the economic exploitation and racial injustice embodied in America.15
Beginning a Conversation It was, however, the plenary speakers at the conference whose theological influence proved most lasting upon him. They named the powers. They bore their good news of Christ’s Lordship out from imprisonment and the shadow of death. They spoke from Christian resistance movements under Nazi occupation. They were chastened and sober. Among them were Martin NIEMÖLLER (of the Confessing movement in Germany), Bishop BELGRAV of Norway (imprisoned for leading the church’s defiance of QUISLING and his henchmen), and Madeleine BAROT (participant in the French resistance).16 Madeleine BAROT, for example, 10 POTTER Phillip – WIESER Thomas, Seeking and Serving the Truth. The First Hundred Years of the World Student Christian Federation. Geneva, 1997. 138-155, 158, 173. See also MAURY Philippe – SHANKE Andreas, Christian Witness in the Resistance: Experiences of Some Members of European SCMs, 1939-1945. Geneva, 1947. 11 The Federation Cross. Flyer in WS scrapbook, 1949. 12 Handwritten journal, 7/25/47, 7/27/47; Crittenden Report. 4. Cornell Archives, Box 4. 13 STRINGFELLOW William, CA is Way to Church Unity. The Bates Student October 15, 1947. 14 WILL Herman Jr., Oslo 1947: From an Adult Delegate. Motive 1947/1. 20-23. STRINGFELLOW William (handwritten), Journal of the Second World Conference of Christian Youth. Entry for 7/24, Cornell Archives, Box 1. 15 STRINGFELLOW William, Dœs the World Hate America? What an Innocent Learned Abroad. The Churchman October 15, 1947. 10.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
NAMING THE POWERS 29
was particularly lucid in identifying the “chaos of order” in which humanity had fallen slave to its own systems, to its own production and discovery, and to its own propaganda for which she saw the Babel story as emblematic.17 Twenty-five years later STRINGFELLOW identified the conference as the beginning of a conversation with these very speakers from whom he acknowledged learning two things: firstly that in the overwhelming circumstance of Nazi possession and occupation, resistance (however symbolic, haphazard, and apparently futile) became the only way to live humanly, retaining sanity and conscience; and secondly that recourse to the Bible became in itself a primary, practical, and essential tactic of resistance.18 This confluence, a kind of sequence or circle really – Bible study, comprehension or discernment of the powers, and resistance for the sake of humanity – is hardly incidental. This conversation would prove seminal to his life and thinking. Under the “Lordship of Christ” there was plenty of room for the triumphalism that characterized most of postwar American ecumenism and already infected many students from the US. The word from these speakers was something to draw them up short. Something shook imperial privilege. Something disabused the naiveté of innocents. Following the conference, an issue of The Student World appeared shortly, devoted to, “Christians and Power Politics.”19 The magazine issue was loaded – a nexus of providence in STRINGFELLOW’s life. This would be true simply given the subject, and even more so given that the next year he would join the WSCF’s “Political Commission”, which had sponsored its publication. Surely these articles received STRINGFELLOW’s close attention. Nearly all were notable for the long term influence upon him which they initiated.
Going Deeper: The Conversation With ELLUL And finally “The Christian as Revolutionary”, marked STRINGFELLOW’s introduction to Jacques ELLUL, the French theologian and social historian, who would eventually become a life-long correspondent and friend. The piece was first spoken at a conference connected to Oslo and became a chapter from ELLUL’s seminal postwar book, The Presence of the Kingdom20, which discerned the incipient bondage at hand in technology, while affirming faith as the only source of radical and revolutionary freedom. Initiated by the post-Oslo publication, STRINGFELLOW’s life-long conversation with ELLUL certainly included their voluminous published works, but also a rich 16 Their speeches are transcribed in MACY (ed.), Report… 137-141, 153-165, 217-226. 17 Confronting Moral Chaos. 153-165. 18 An Ethic. 117-120. 19 The Student World 1948/3. POTTER and WIESER recount formation of the “continuing political commission to look into a whole range of concerns, such as power politics and the establishment of peace; the relation of Christianity and communism; and world order. The aim of this commission was (1) to stimulate discussion, thought and action on political issues and problems; and (2) to provide means for sharing information on political issues among the member movements.” Seeking and Serving the Truth. Geneva, 1997. 170. 20 ELLUL Jacques, The Presence of the Kingdom. New York, 1967. 3. The original was The Christian as Revolutionary. The Student World 1948/3. 221-226.
30 William WYLIE-KELLERMANN if sporadic and sometimes cryptic written correspondence. Consider these excerpts from an ELLUL letter remarking on STRINGFELLOW’s book, Dissenter in a Great Society21: “Bien Cher: I have just finished your book... with great emotion – the description you give of the current development of the USA is almost unbelievable. In Europe, no one pays attention at all to this reality... I often ask myself which is easier – on the one hand, to live, like me, in a country radically non-Christian, where the invocation of the Gospel means nothing to the “person on the street” – or, on the other hand, like you to speak in an officially Christian country, to have the facility that the message of the Gospel is normally well received, but where it is a matter of breaking through the misunderstandings, the hypocracies, and giving the Gospel its revolutionary power. I was terribly pleased with your last chapter. You and I are trying to transmit an insupportable truth – and I sense in your pages the same urgency, the same passion that I feel in myself. I do not know how to tell you how near I am to you, how much it consoles me to know that there is, over there, a person chosen by God to carry on this combat which sometimes seems desperate to me.”22 Years later, when STRINGFELLOW had been indicted by the Federal Government for “harboring a fugitive”, (the notorious anti-war priest and pœt, Daniel BERRIGAN) he wrote to ELLUL what reads like something of a reply: “It is difficult to put succinctly in a letter all that has happened and its background, growing out of the past several years in which this society has so much constricted and in which opposition to the regime has provoked a repression more serious and extensive than most people realize... There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that charges were brought against us because we have openly expressed our opposition to the barbarism in Indochina and the threatening totalitarianism in America. One might even say that we are attacked by the government because we are Christians, although I would not want to put it that way without a more complete designation of what that means.”23
Are the Powers Creatures? While still affiliated with WSCF as a law student at Harvard, STRINGFELLOW began envisioning a conference on theology and law that finally came to fruition in 1958. The conference, indeed overwhelmingly successful, was built around the English translation of ELLUL’s The Theological Foundation of Law. That volume, a radical Christian critique of natural law which comported with STRINGFELLOW’s own position, is pertinent to the topic of principalities in a number of ways, though a noteworthy one is that he there identifies institutions theologically with the principalities, powers, thrones, and dominions of the creation hymn found in 21 STRINGFELLOW William, Dissenter in a Great Society. Nashville, 1966. 22 Jacques ELLUL to William STRINGFELLOW 11/16/66 Box 9, STRINGFELLOW archives #4438, Cornell University; translated by RODES Robert, Notre Dame University. 23 STRINGFELLOW to ELLUL 2/23/71, Box 15 STRINGFELLOW archives #4438, Cornell University.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
NAMING THE POWERS 31
Colossians 1:15.24 That view is an anomaly in ELLUL’s writing, since he more generally rejects the view that the powers are creatures willed by the God of Jesus Christ which have been somehow deflected from their true and valid purpose. The latter is, however, precisely STRINGFELLOW’s view (and WINK’s who followed him) which may have been nourished by the book. For STRINGFELLOW, the principalities are indeed creatures, which is to say they have a life and integrity of their own.25 He references them to the Genesis story and the granting of human dominion (not domination, he would stress). In this view each power has a particular vocation to praise God and serve human life. Now this matter of “vocation” can prove to be a very useful tool in analyzing a given principality. (Walter WINK develops this further for practical use.26) It becomes actually quite a radical question to ask: What is the vocation of, say, a bank? How dœs it praise God by serving human life? Or, what is the vocation of a city? What is it called in the Word of God to be? What is the vocation of a nation, or a corporation, or virtually any particular institution? We are authorized by baptism to make these are interrogations. They are queries of practical analysis with enormous political import. They entail the gift of discernment. This “charismatic gift” is substantially what Christians may bring to struggles for social transformation, where they are often working side by side in improvisational alliance with secular folks who have a lucid social analysis but who are effectively blind to half of social reality. Stringfellow writes: “Proximate to the discernment of signs is the discernment of spirits. This gift enables the people of God to distinguish and recognize, identify and expose, report and rebuke the power of death incarnate in nations and institutions or other creatures, or possessing persons, while they also affirm the Word of God incarnate in all of life, exemplified preeminently in Jesus Christ. The discernment of spirits refers to the talent to recognize the Word of God in this world in principalities and persons despite the distortion of fallenness or transcending the moral reality of death permeating everything. This is the gift which exposes and rebukes idolatry. This is the gift which confounds and undœs blasphemy. Similar to the discernment of signs, the discernment of spirits is inherently political while in practice it has specifically to do with pastoral care, with healing, with the nurture of human life and with the fulfillment of all life.”27 The creatureliness of the powers leads Stringfellow to assert that they are not actually under human control, whatever naive misapprehension people hold in this regard. By way of the vocational question, it also signifies their standing before the judgment of God. STRINGFELLOW acknowledges that the exact origin of this creatureliness in the powers is a mystery. Human beings are obviously privy to the genesis of certain institutions (like universities or international stu24 ELLUL Jacques, The Theological Foundation of Law. New York, 1960. 25 See Free 52-53; Ethic 78-80; Conscience 27-32. 26 Naming 115-118. 27 STRINGFELLOW William, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Waco, 1973. 139; reprinted in WYLIEKELLERMANN Bill (ed.), A Keeper of the Word. Grand Rapids, 1994. 302-303.
32 William WYLIE-KELLERMANN dent movements or nations), but something more than human initiative also comes into play. Actually, though ELLUL denies their “creaturehood,” his view is not all that different. Concerning the nature of the powers, he situates himself somewhere between two positions, sometimes emphasizing one aspect, sometimes the other: 1) that they are less precise powers than traditional demons, but still possessing “an existence, reality, and as one might say, objectivity of their own” and 2) that they are simple human dispositions, human factors which are constituted as powers by virtue of being exalted as such.28 For example, he treats the city as a purely human creation, virtually an act of rebellion first by Cain against God. And yet on the basis of an etymological argument he observes that the word for city means also the Watching Angel, the Vengeance and Terror. “We must admit that the city is not just a collection of houses with ramparts, but also a spiritual power. I am not saying it is a being. But like an angel, it is a power on a spiritual plane.”29 So, perhaps not a creature with a vocation, but a mystery to which humanity has some privity and initiative.
In Agreement About the Fall In 1967, when the English translation of The Presence of the Kingdom (whose postwar theological manifesto clearly charting the future course of his whole life’s work) was republished, ELLUL asked STRINGFELLOW to provide an American introduction. Stringfellow wrote: “Few books by American authors purporting to deal with theological ethics discern the presence and power of death in this world, in this day, even in America, as an essential clue, to nations and institutions as well as individuals, of their radical alienation from one another and from themselves, that is to say, of their fallenness.”30 On this matter of fallenness STRINGFELLOW and ELLUL could not have agreed more. As far as STRINGFELLOW was concerned US Christians were hopelessly (the word is used advisedly) naive concerning the depth and ubiquity of the fall. Fallen creation included for him the distortion, confusion, and inversion of vocation in the principalities. It means they have become, every one, demonic powers – dehumanizing, enslaving, and dominating human life. It means they place their own survival above service to human life. It means, among other things, they usurp the place of God. The structure of the fall in ELLUL’s work bears prominently on the common observation that he wrote on two parallel tracks. Jacques ELLUL would do sociological or historical analyses of political authority, say, or propaganda, or technology and would match them with works of biblical theology. For example, his volume on power, The Political Illusion,31 would be matched by a book on the Elisha cycle of 2Kings, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man.32 28 ELLUL Jacques, The Ethics of Freedom. Grand Rapids, 1976. 151-152. 29 ELLUL Jacques, The Meaning of the City. Grand Rapids, 1970. 9. 30 STRINGFELLOW William, Introduction. In ELLUL Jacques, The Presence of the Kingdom. New York, 1967. 3.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
NAMING THE POWERS 33
Or consider the volume which arrived at STRINGFELLOW’s door, just as he had completed a first draft of An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.33 ELLUL’s book, The Meaning of the City (so radically pessimistic about human works and radically hopeful about God’s grace in history), is in fact the theological counterpoint to The Technological Society which is equally pessimistic about the tyranny of technique aggressively penetrating every aspect of human society. In this parallel process ELLUL made a rigorous methodological commitment to keeping his sociological analysis free of religious reference. He clearly desired the scathing sociological works to stand on their own as analysis, but he also wanted Christian readers to live with the dialectical tension of the two tracks. STRINGFELLOW takes the opposite literary tact. In writing on the principalities he moves seamlessly between social analysis and scripture or theology. It is all one for him. That method is rooted, for him, in a radically incarnational theology which refuses any otherworldliness. The genius of the biblical witness is that “the Bible deals with the very sanctification of the actual history of nations and of human being in this world as it is while that history is being lived.”34 It might well be said that if you took Technological Society and The Meaning of the City and compressed them together under the weight of racial crisis and war making in American empire, the dialectical sparks would fly upwards and you would get a book very much like An Ethic for Christians.
Tactics of Imperial Power In An Ethic for Christians, perhaps his most important book, STRINGFELLOW looked the Beast in the face without flinching, turning aside, or going weak in the knees. He was able to recognize in the principalities, and especially in the pretensions of American Empire, these characteristics in addition to those already mentioned: The powers are neither neutral nor benign, but aggressively arrayed against human life. They victimize all, including leaders who are so enthralled that they see neither their own enslavement, nor their moral incapacitation. They are engaged in rivalry and competition with one another whereby their ethos becomes a realm of chaos and their survival perpetually threatened, such that they suffer a morality of survival, which supplants every other purpose and is itself their idolatry and service of death.35 Note that while STRINGFELLOW understood the state as the preeminent principality, all of his observations are pertinent to a theological analysis of globalization, including the elaboration of superstructures like the World Trade Organization and its minions. Moreover, what he called the demonic “tactics” of the principalities have only become more entrenched and developed in this present era. These include: 1) the denial of truth; 2) doublespeak and overtalk; 3) 31 ELLUL Jacques, The Political Illusion. New York, 1967. 32 ELLUL Jacques, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man. Grand Rapids, 1972. 33 Op. cit. 34 An Ethic 47. / 35 An Ethic 77-94.
34 William WYLIE-KELLERMANN secrecy and boasts of expertise; 4) surveillance and harassment; 5) exaggeration and deception; 6) cursing and conjuring (which includes the current tactics of official defamation and demonization); 7) usurpation, assimilation, and absorption; and 8) diversion and demoralization.36 Note the heavy verbal character (he might have given more attention to the role of images in US culture). Together he summed these up as “Babel”. “Babel means the inversion of language, verbal inflation, libel, rumor, euphemism and coded phrases, rhetorical wantonness, redundancy, hyperbole, such profusion in speech and sound that comprehension is impaired, nonsense, sophistry, jargon, noise, incoherence, a chaos of voices and tongues, falsehood, blasphemy. And, in all of this, Babel means violence… By the 1970s in America, successive regimes had been so captivated by Babel that Babel had become the means of ruling the nation, the principal form of cœrcion employed by the governing authorities against human beings.”37
The Ethics of Resurrection Some will find STRINGFELLOW’s unflinching vision unduly pessimistic and heavy. His realism may even tempt some to despair. And yet, nevertheless, beyond all imagining, he proclaims a freedom literally from the power of death. William STRINGFELLOW lived and wrote in the freedom of the resurrection, the freedom to die. He wrote as it were in the estate of justification – free to stand at any given moment before the judgment of God. And he commended thereby an ethic, without principle or program, which was sacramental, improvisational, incarnational and eschatological, radically hopeful, an ethic of resurrection. It was, if one recalls the witness of Oslo, an ethic rooted in the “Lordship of Christ” alone. He was simply convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus or Lord.” In that freedom he died and lived.
Bibliography DAWN Marva, The Concept of the “Principalities and Powers” in the Works of Jacques Ellul. PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1992. ELLUL Jacques, The Ethics of Freedom. Grand Rapids, 1976. ELLUL Jacques, The Meaning of the City. Grand Rapids, 1970. ELLUL Jacques, The Political Illusion. New York, 1967. ELLUL Jacques, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man. Grand Rapids, 1972. ELLUL Jacques, The Presence of the Kingdom. New York, 1967. ELLUL Jacques, The Theological Foundation of Law. New York, 1960. MACY Paul Griswold (ed.), The Report of the Second World Conference of Christian Youth. Oslo, 1947. MAURY Phillipe – SHANKE Andreas, Christian Witness in the Resistance: Experiences of Some Members of European SCMs, 1939-1945. Geneva, 1947. POTTER Phillip – WIESER Thomas, Seeking and Serving the Truth. The First Hundred Years of the World Student Christian Federation. Geneva, 1997.
36 An Ethic 97-106. / 37 An Ethic 106-7.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
NAMING THE POWERS 35
STRINGFELLOW William, Conscience and Obedience. Waco, 1977. STRINGFELLOW William, Dissenter in a Great Society. Nashville, 1966. STRINGFELLOW William, Dœs the World Hate America? What an Innocent Learned Abroad. The Churchman, October 15, 1947. STRINGFELLOW William, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Waco, 1973. STRINGFELLOW William, Free In Obedience. New York, 1964. STRINGFELLOW William (ed.), Instead of Death. New York, 1976. The Student World 1948/3. VISSER’T HOOFT W. A., The Kingship of Christ. New York, 1948. WINK Walter, Naming the Powers. Philadelphia, 1984. WINK Walter, Unmasking the Powers. Philadelphia, 1986. WINK Walter, Engaging the Powers. Philadelphia, 1992. WYLIE-KELLERMANN William (ed.), A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow. Grand Rapids, 1994.
William WYLIE-KELLERMANN: Nombrando los Poderes: William Stringfellow como estudiante y teólogo William Stringfellow, quien fue un activo participante de la FUMEC en el período de post-guerra (SGM), es mejor conocido en la iglesia de los Estados Unidos como el teólogo que rescató el lenguaje bíblico de “principados y potestades” para la ética social. Su experiencia y conversión como estudiante de la FUMEC inicialmente formó y desarrolló su temprano pensamiento y fundamento Bíblico referente a los poderes. Específicamente determinante fue la Conferencia de Oslo de 1947, que incluyó entre sus oradores a Martin Niemöller (del Movimiento Confesante de Alemania), al Obispo Belgrav de Noruega (puesto en prisión por dirigir la oposición de la iglesia de Quisling y su servidor), Madeleine Barot (participante de la resistencia francesa), y sobre todo Jacques Ellul (otro participante de la resistencia, mejor conocido como teólogo y analista social de la tecnología). La devastadora crítica por parte de Stringfellow y Ellul respecto al poder imperial depredador se incrementó a partir de una correspondencia de cuarenta años, la cual es últimamente un testimonio a la ética de la resurrección.
William WYLIE-KELLERMANN: Nommer les pouvoirs: William Stringfellow, étudiant et théologien William Stringfellow, membre actif de la FUACE dans l’après-guerre, est surtout connu au sein de l’Église états-unienne comme le théologien qui récupéra la terminologie biblique «principautés et pouvoirs» pour l’éthique sociale. Son expérience et sa participation au sein de la FUACE ont formé et façonné, au départ, ses premières réflexions concernant ces pouvoirs. Dans ce sens, la Conférence d’Oslo de 1947 a revêtu une importance toute particulière; parmi les orateurs se comptaient Martin Niemöller (du mouvement confessionnel allemand), l’évêque Belgrav de Norvège (emprisonné pour avoir dirigé la résistance de l’Église face à Quisling et ses acolytes), Madeleine Barot (résistante française) et, surtout, Jacques Ellul (autre résistant, plus connu comme théologien et analyste social de la technologie). La critique féroce que Stringfellow et Ellul ont dirigée contre le pouvoir prédateur et impérialiste s’est étoffée pendant quarante ans de correspondance et constitue, en fin de compte, un témoignage ultime de l’éthique de la résurrection.
36
NAGYPÁL Szabolcs
Systematic Evil and the Freedom of the Individual Paradigms of Liberty in Kertész Imre and Ottlik Géza “Great personalities create their masterpieces after the passing away of the periods of passion, as the soil is the most fertile after the eruption of the volcano.” (CHAMFORT)
The XXth century brought forward two totalitarian systems that led human culture into unexpected shame, self-denial and deadlock. While encountering the many faces of evil in Nazism and Bolshevism, the subjects of the state had to accommodate the new circumstances in order to survive. Accommodation did not always help because particular layers of society faced total brainwashing, permanent humiliation, or certain death. The Nazi-type and the Soviet-type of totalitarianism had many common features and distinctive elements. We can consider the two phenomena as two faces of systematic evil. Systematic evil is an organism with diffused responsibility in which the freedom of private life is catastrophic and everyone is a link in the chain. The working methods of these two grand narratives, or rather ideologies, objectify the person. The main hotbed of evil is the bureaucratic system, where responsibility dissolves in the floating waves of rules. In such an environment the evil masks itself, gains ground and takes over. The territories which had the chance to look into the Gorgo-face1 of both of the systematic evils lie between Germany and Russia. This is the area known as Central Europe (from the Baltic to the Adriatic Sea). These are the countries which experienced occupation and oppression by both of these systems. NAGYPÁL Szabolcs (1974) is a graduate in comparative literature, linguistics, æsthetics and ecumenical theology. He is Roman Catholic, a theologian in the Békés Gellért Ecumenical Institute (BGÖI) in Pannonhalma, Hungary. He is a former chairperson of KÖD (Magyar SCM), and is currently a member of WSCF European Regional Committee (ERC) and global Executive Committee (ExCo). He is the editor-in-chief of Student World and Mozaik. 1 In Greek mythology, the three Gorgos (one of them being Medusa) are female monsters with snakes on their heads instead of hair. Anyone who looked at their face turned to stone.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
With this text we aim to concentrate on two Magyar (Hungarian) authors whose life overarches the century, thus enabling them to reflect upon the two systematic evils. OTTLIK Géza (1912-1990) studied in the Hungarian military schools between the wars. It was in these schools that future leadership of the Nazi-allied Magyar army was educated. OTTLIK’s decisive experience was four years in a military school. He describes this experience as a powerful allegory in his compendium novel, Iskola a határon (School at the Frontier)2. On the other hand, KERTÉSZ Imre (1929-) is a Magyar writer who was a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. As a person of Jewish origin, by chance or by Providence, he happened to survive the Holocaust. In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his novel on the Shoa, Sorstalanság (Fateless)3. 2 OTTLIK Géza, Iskola a határon. Budapest, 1958. In English: OTTLIK Géza, School at the Frontier. New York, 1966.
37
38 NAGYPÁL Szabolcs
I. F
RAGILE
E XPERIENCE
Three Steps of Destiny The experience the two writers went through was one of organised oppression and of (almost) total elimination of personal freedom. For OTTLIK the starting basis was military school. For KERTÉSZ it was Auschwitz. These two realities can only be compared from the point of view of their impact on two souls – two souls which were inclined to express themselves through literature. We do not look at the military school and Auschwitz as historical realities here and now, but as creative symbols of systematic evil. An even more important point, however, is the fact that the two writers were “survivors” of their experience, in a physical, intellectual and spiritual sense. Survivors are strange creatures; their physical and moral integrity was at stake (they could see the face of Gorgo), but instead of being petrified, dissolved and disappearing as entities, they “came back” and tried to enliven their treasures. For a writer the most important treasury is the experience, the thematic deepness. From a literary point of view, these artists were blessed by a compelling topic. Most importantly, OTTLIK and KERTÉSZ found themselves in an unique position. Since their motherland, Hungary happened to lie in the centre of Europe, they could experience how another totalitarian system overtook the first one. In 1945, their part of the world was liberated from National Socialism, and at the same time occupied by International Socialism. The Soviet type of systematic evil proved to be more “vital” than its Nazi counterpart, and lasted for several decades, retaining its dirty influence even up until now in this tiny part of the world. Writers and artists happened to have several destinies under the “existing socialism”. Some of them were tortured and killed, others were forced to emigrate, and many of them were brainwashed and made obedient servants of the mind control. There were some, however, who chose the “inner emigration”4, or to become a “single-person minority” by accepting the ban on the publishing of independent thought and writing only to their drawers. There might have been more conspicuous examples of these silent and free personalities in Central (and Eastern) Europe than OTTLIK Géza or KERTÉSZ Imre, but the way of interpreting their first-hand experiences with the two systematic evils makes them peculiar. Their way of coping with the unbearable “traditions” which they had to carry was to try to understand their experiences with the first systematic evil through the lens of their experiences with the other systematic evil. By living in such a system for decades, they managed to better understand the other systematic evil they were given to survive. Also by evaluating the first systematic evil, they could 3 KERTÉSZ Imre, Sorstalanság. Budapest, 1975. In English: KERTÉSZ Imre, Fateless (tr. Christopher C. WILSON – Katharina M. WILSON). Evanston, 1992. In French: KERTÉSZ Imre, Etre sans destin (tr. Natalia ZAREMBA-HUZSVAI – Charles ZAREMBA). Arles, 1997. In German: KERTÉSZ Imre, Roman eines Schicksallosen (tr. VIRÁGH Krisztina). Berlin, 1996. 4 Inner emigration in a sense of staying in the country, but also in a sense of emigrating to the inner self: G. MERVA Mária – Kovács Éva (szerk.), OTTLIK Géza emlékkiállítás a gödöllôi városi múzeumban (Exhibition in the Memory of OTTLIK Géza in Gödöllô). Gödöllô, 1994.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL 39
cope with the unbearable realities in the second one, and include their findings on both in their literary œuvre. The utilising of this unique position enabled them to world-class literature, to help humanity to come to terms with the great organised perversions of the XXth century.
The Barbaric Arbitrariness of History The peculiar aura surrounding the literary life in Central Europe in the second half of the century perverted the publication and reception history of books. The first version of School at the Frontier5 was ready in 1948, and OTTLIK even gave it to the press house for printing, after being accepted by the censors of the state. This year was, however, not an ordinary year in Europe; it was the year of the Communist take-over in the occupied Central European countries. Parties were dissolved except the Communist Party, opposition leaders were arrested, private schools banned, church institutions dissolved, the civil society terrorised. OTTLIK Géza decided to withdraw his novel from the press house and not to publish it for an unspecified period of time6. He was afraid that his novel could be easily misinterpreted as just another pamphlet against the previous regime. This was not an easy decision to make, especially for a writer who was in his mid-thirties and who had never published a novel. The reason for the withdrawal was partly political, and partly artistic. He felt that the novel was not ready, being too short and too shallow – and more like a short story than a real novel. But the main point was that he sensed that provided he and his integrity survives, his new and extreme experiences could and would enrich his worldview, his novels, and would help to understand his first totalitarian experience. He decided to include Bolshevism in his worldview on systematic evil. KERTÉSZ Imre was on the same path. After coming back from three concentration camps, he felt that he lost his own fate, his own destiny. He was forced to live a life which was not his own, and no one else’s either. In 1948, he was nineteen and it was clear that he did not have a place as a writer under the Communist dictatorship. The interpretation of the Shoa was simplified by the regime, and his deepening understanding on the nature of systematic evil was similarly dangerous for the Bolshevik system. The state of Isræl was established that year and KERTÉSZ could have emigrated there or elsewhere, as hundreds of thousands of his compatriots. He decided to stay, in spite of all this, or rather exactly because of this. It was clear that if he survived the regime with an integer soul, this experience would enable him to come to terms with his other built-in treasury, the memory of the Shoa. There was another peculiar time when writers and other citizens were again considering emigration. It was after the failure of the 1956 revolution and fight for liberty in Hungary. The nation received an unexpected and tragically short two weeks – when the world was able to have an insight of the real face of the monster – with enlightened and grateful spirit, as the two authors tell us in Buda7 5 Published fifty years later: OTTLIK Géza, Továbbélôk (Survivors). Pécs, 1999. 6 OTTLIK himself tells the story of the withdrawal in the strange compilation of his prose: OTTLIK Géza, Próza (Prose). Budapest, 1980.
40
NAGYPÁL Szabolcs
and Az angol lobogó8 (The English Banner), respectively. We do not find OTTLIK or KERTÉSZ among the again hundreds of thousands of emigrants. On the contrary, the novel of OTTLIK was ripe for publication.
When I’m 46 It was in 1958, when OTTLIK Géza finally published his novel, School at the Frontier, at the age of 46. The framework of the novel is a military school in midwar Hungary, where the little cadets attempt to find their personality, to build community and to understand the world. The author speaks about the two par excellence systematic evils of the XXth century, Nazism and Communism, in the very same novel. That is one of the reasons why his novel was interpreted differently as time went on, and various interpreting communities tried to influence the hermeneutical key of the reading of the novel. The two most prevailing of these ways of reading during the so-called Socialist times were the official interpretation and the alternative reading. According to the official version, the novel discloses the evils of the pre-Nazi Hungary by introducing us to the reality of a military school where the future leaders of the Second World War Magyar army were trained. The regime tried to interpret it as a usual antifascist novel, which, unfortunately, finds many positive elements in the life before the war, and therefore it has to be considered decadent and something which dœs not contribute to the building of international socialism in Hungary, as the official interpretation explained. For more than fifteen years no serious interpretation was published about the novel, and it seemed it was destined to disappear among the “tolerated” books during Communism. The discovery of the novel, at least among the educated people in opposition to the regime, happened at the same time as the publication of the first novel of KERTÉSZ Imre, Fateless. KERTÉSZ was also 46 when appearing in literary life, in 1975. The censors refused to publish his novel for the first time, a year earlier, saying that it is a usual novel about the Holocaust, but it is too cynical and desperate to uphold any values. A close reading of the novel, of course, discloses to us that the opposite is true. As the Nobel Committee put it three decades later: it “upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.”9 The novel was published in only about a thousand copies, and most of these were never sold. Some years later KERTÉSZ found many of them in a warehouse. The regime did not dare to ban it, but was afraid of distributing it. Up until the changing of the system in 1989-1990, Sorstalanság was read only by some thousands of people. The literary life was silent, and this novel, too, was destined to disappear during the systematic evil. KERTÉSZ was existentially disappointed, and wrote Kudarc (Fiasco)10, the second part of his trilogy11, about a writer who publishes his struggle with the Holocaust in a novel, but has to fail sociologically and artistically in Hungary. OTTLIK died in 1990, witnessing the sudden and miraculous collapse of the sys7 OTTLIK Géza, Buda. Budapest, 1993. 8 KERTÉSZ Imre, Az angol lobogó. Budapest, 2001. 9 The presentation speech, biography and bibliography of KERTÉSZ are on the Nobel Prize website: http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/2002.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL 41
tematic evil he spent most of his life in. The continuation of his first novel was published posthumously, under the title Buda (1993). KERTÉSZ Imre received the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002, as the first Magyar writer ever. Their novels are translated into more than fifteen languages.
Inverting Perversion Both of these artists tried to understand and elaborate their freedom through and parallel with their literary works. It is not only political freedom which they – together with tens of millions of their Central (and Eastern) European fate mates – were deprived of, rather it was their perception of the world which the systematic evil tried to deform and pervert. This deformation is well depicted in the negative utopias of the XXth century, (“the lubricants of political theory”12), especially in George Orwell’s 1984 (written in 1948), or – even earlier – in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and in the first negative utopia, in Mikhail Zamyatin’s We. The School and the Fateless are similar to these negative utopias in the sense that they try to build up organic parables which can live and function as defined worldviews and use a metaphoric reality to criticise the existing political systems. They are decisively different from this literary genre, however, in the fact that they are tenderly attached in many ways to the reality which the authors themselves experienced “on their skins”. The novels were born in reality, and they try to transform the deformation, to redeem the damned. Inverting perversion means to turn the dissolved value system upside down again. One has to have a great inner strength, with freedom as its source, to resist systematic evil. We are challenged to try to learn from their evaluated experience, when we also seek ways and spaces for individual freedom by resisting the powers of systematic evil. The novels can be interpreted at the political level, and surely there will be other ways to understand them as systems and regimes change. But it may be more interesting to have a deeper look at the novels as existential or even eschatological parables, or paradigms of individual freedom. After getting acquainted with the life of the authors as narratives on liberty13, let us immerse in the world of the two novels: how they function as lighthouses of freedom in the darkness of organised oppression.
10 KERTÉSZ Imre, A kudarc. Budapest, 1988. In French: KERTÉSZ Imre, Le refus (tr. Natalia ZAREMBA-HUZSVAI – Charles ZAREMBA). Arles, 2001. 11 The third part of the trilogy: KERTÉSZ Imre, Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért. Budapest, 1990. In English: KERTÉSZ Imre, Kaddish for a Child not Born (tr. Christopher C. WILSON – Katharina M. WILSON). Evanston, 1997. In French: KERTÉSZ Imre, Kaddish pour l’enfant qui ne naîtra pas (tr. Natalia ZAREMBA-HUZSVAI – Charles ZAREMBA). Arles, 1995. 12 TERRILL Ross, Revolutionare or Utopians? Student World 1969/3-4. 344. 13 “The educator transforms his life into a work of art”, says KERTÉSZ himself about OTTLIK, on the occasion of OTTLIK’S death: KERTÉSZ Imre, A nevelô (Ottlik Géza halálára) (The Educator. On the Death of OTTLIK Géza). Magyar Napló 1990. 44. sz. 5.
42
NAGYPÁL Szabolcs
II. F
ERTILE
S OUL
Personality in the Matrix of Structures We are interested now in human behaviour seeking autonomy and freedom under the systematic evil – freedom in a sense that it is “setting forth the whole human essence”14. We saw how OTTLIK and KERTÉSZ reacted in their lives. They had the honour to try out how their actors in their novels could react to similar circumstances. OTTLIK’s novel, which was a school for freedom, individuality and genuine community for many, seems to be wider and to have more dimensions, while the novel of KERTÉSZ digs deeper into a topic which offers more lethal insights, more perspectives vis-à-vis death. They themselves and their main characters try to reserve and preserve the chance for a distinct dimension of freedom where they would act as free beings. One of the most interesting phenomena in Central European thought embodied in the novels is the fundamental hopelessness of structural change. The velvet revolutions of the region also prove that crucial changes seem to happen for the great surprise of most of the concerned, and they do not feel involved in the process. Even the 1956 revolution in Hungary was a sudden event, but people reacted quickly and got deeply involved. Thus, the two novels do not concentrate on a revolt against the oppression; on the contrary, they seem to completely abandon. What was given for the subjects of the state is the improbable possibility to become sovereign, autonomous individuals, by intentionally working on their personal freedom15. The methods of freedom in Fateless and the School are exclusively those of a personal character.
No Escape We stated that two writers decided to stay in the country, and to give up the idea of emigration. In the novels themselves, escape seems to be only a temptation but not a real possibility. For Köves (the main character in Sorstalanság) the possibility of escape is only mentioned in connection with the smoke of the chimneys. In the novel of OTTLIK, there are three attempts to escape from the School. One of the pupils (Apagyi) denies obeying the commands: his fellow cadets beat him almost to death and his parents take him out of the School. Another pupil (Öttevényi) revolts by betraying the evil deeds of the collaborators among the pupils: he is immediately kicked out by the teachers. The most important attempt, however, is the one of Medve, the main actor of the novel. He gets fed up with the system, and during a dark night he escapes from the institution. His journey is depicted in a spiritual way, as the dark night of the soul. Even though he even leaves the country (since the school is at the frontier of Hungary), after a while he returns and gœs back to the system, accepting the punishment as well. 14 TUKA Béla (Vojtech), A szabadság. Politikai tanulmány. Budapest, 1910. 14. 15 In the first book published about Kertész, many essays deal with the building of the self in an extremely threatened situation: SCHEIBNER Tamás – SZÛCS Zoltán Gábor, Az értelmezés szükségessége. Tanulmányok Kertész Imrérôl (The Necessity of Interpretation. Essays on KERTÉSZ Imre). Budapest, 2002.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL 43
He has two reasons for that: it seems that there is no world outside the School, and it seems that one cannot escape from reality where one is placed by fate (even though in a fateless way). To build up personal freedom, one has to face the reality of systematic evil; one has to make a conscious decision that there is no hope outside the limits of one’s existence. Just before freedom started, it had already ended; this is the dilemma of the escaping and returning Medve. One has to stay and wait whether there is an immanence to have pity on her or him.
Impuissant Interdependence After the temptation of escaping, and after the return to reality one gives up the hope for either revolution or for switching off the world. Medve and Köves are at the point of accepting the absurdity of existence, and giving up the idea that we are the constructors of our own “carrier”. Fatelessness means that they are denied a say in their own life history (not only in their communitarian history). In the terminology of OTTLIK it is impuissant interdependence (which is similar to ‘inertial confinement’ in physics – OTTLIK studied natural sciences)16. Even though the main characters are children in both of the novels, they still appear as personalities without a specific age. The system and expectation of an environment depicted in the novels produces types of people, who develop their personality not towards the outside world but towards the inside one. Their interdependence finds its origo in the deeper layers of one’s inner world, where there is not much room for change.
Tiny Places of Freedom The fact that the main characters do not live their own fate should not mean that they are not responsible for their existential presence (Dasein) where they are. There is no escape, there is no communitarian solution to overcome the system, but there should be seemingly unimportant tiny places of freedom to be searched for and to be found. The distribution of food is such an event in both of the novels, where one finds moments of silence and reflection. More prominent examples are, however, the moments of contemplation over the phenomena of nature: the sunset and the sky in KERTÉSZ, and the snow (and snowing) in OTTLIK. When Köves is about to die in Fateless, he is lost in the admiration of the infinite sky. The snow is of elementary importance in the School; it covers and brightens at the same time17. Snow proves to be of structural importance also in the novel, being the title of one of the three parts. The three titles are based on Romans 9,16: “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.”18 The first part (Non est volentis) refers to the (free or servant) will, while the third part is con-
16 The interdependence and inner independence is the peak of the analysis of the first monograph written about OTTLIK: SZEGEDYMASZÁK Mihály, Ottlik Géza. Pozsony, 1994. 17 An excellent essay on the role of snow in the School: BALASSA Péter, Ottlik és a hó (Ottlik and the Snow). Jelenkor 1982/5. 407-412.
44 NAGYPÁL Szabolcs nected to running or escaping (Nor of him who runs). The middle part, however, dœs not mention the merciful God in the title, but Mud and Snow. Snow becomes one of the distinguishing marks of God, the symbol of pity, forgiveness and mercy.
Glimpses of Private Mythology A further step in development is when the actors themselves start to invent and create symbols and metaphors for themselves, instead of just discovering the already given symbols of nature. In this respect the two novels differ significantly. The first half of OTTLIK’s novel and the Fateless tell about a journey in solitude: the main actors do not have anyone to share their thoughts with, to build community in such a way. But while even the last sentence of KERTÉSZ expresses the doubt whether there is anyone to share the experience with, the second half of the School is about building community. Therefore, the metaphors of Köves are ones of loneliness, they are glimpses of a private mythology; the metaphors of Medve and Bébé (the other important character in the School) are points of crystallisation for a community under formation. There is an explanation, however, for this seeming contradiction: KERTÉSZ speaks about an event with a plethora of available metaphors (rail tracks, chimneys, crematoria etc.) in our historical memory, while OTTLIK has to construct these points of comparison. In that way, one of them is enlarging and universalising the experience of a small group to the grade of general significance; the other is personalising a massevent which we tend to deal with at the level of numbers and impersonal horror. That is why we found many metaphor-building efforts in the group of the small cadets fighting for common identity: such as athletics, bear dance, or the common cigarette even in the last sentence of the novel.
Art Maintaining and Upholding Communitarian symbols lead us to the role of art and literature in developing freedom. Understandably enough, in KERTÉSZ this side is more latent, being present rather in the form of culture; just some appearing quotations mark it, some Jewish or Magyar cultural signs, plus some intertextual allusions. For the pupils of the School, however, literature proves to be the most powerful maintaining and upholding force. The novel contains a variety of reception histories of books, pœms, short stories and tales. Medve and Bébé do not only read and perceive, but also create their own art: play music, cultivate bear dance, compose a drama and – furthermore – they write booklets and books together. They often choose literature and composition instead of life and action. Through perpetual reflection they try to record chaos. They do have their own will, and with the help of creation they can be free beings, similar to their Creator. They try to do what the two authors tried throughout their lives: to depict chaos in extremely well-edified constructions. Following the Magyar traditions, they 18 This translation is based on the Authorized King James Version.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL 45
used literature instead of metaphysics. Even though both of the authors emphasise the inability and impossibility to share such experience (OTTLIK in the beginning of his novel, KERTÉSZ rather at the end)19, they obviously seem to think the opposite, or both at the same time. Otherwise, they would not be writing one novel for decades until it is born as an organic text, starting to live and speaking for itself. OTTLIK and KERTÉSZ became in such a way the dignitaries of remembrance. Both in during-freedom and after-freedom, artistic creation takes the role of co-creation together with the Predestinator, and it provides a safe space for the individual to dwell in liberty.
Dispersed Theophanic Light The constant existence vis-à-vis death (which is present in OTTLIK as well in the form of threat), the permanent dance on the edge, on the border, reveals a latent transcendence, a dispersed theophanic light in the universe of the novels. This provides perspective for the characters, for the authors and for the readers to have mercy on the tyrants, the victimised oppressors. To have mercy on the tyrants and principalities, but not at all on powers and systematic evil. Finding their personal and individual freedom by staying in their fateless situation and history, by existentially being present in tiny places of freedom, by enabling and applying metaphors of art and literature, the novels reinterpret the traditions of obedience and collaboration in the school of the border-experience. The choice was not given to either OTTLIK or KERTÉSZ or to their literary characters to fight for political freedom in their realm either by armed force or by political means; and they were not that kind of persons either. The “inner emigration” was their choice within the systems of evil, with an ironic and sarcastic stance that civil disobedience (or rather civil obedience to their conscience) is possible and desirable.
From Blasphemy to Transcendence If we have a closer look at the style of the novels, we can discover that everything is portioned and selected in order to help everything to breathe – afterwards.20 The style – which is the person itself, as we know – becomes worldview per se in both of these novels. Concerning their style, their main armoury consists of irony, sarcasm, subtle mockery, of grotesque, absurd and grim humour, alternating with miraculous theophanies and lyrical moments of happiness, the smooth dizziness of freedom21. This double armoury is a treasure which was developed in Central Europe as a mentality, answering the oppressing challenges of the two systematic evils. 19 The Memorial Volume published in the memory of Ottlik gathers many essays concentrating on telling the untellable: KELECSÉNYI László (szerk.), Ottlik (Emlékkönyv) (Memorial Volume). Budapest, 1996. 20 Breathing is a keyword in the art of Ottlik, as one of the anthologies of essays on him shows: Fûzfa Balázs (szerk.), Mélylégzés. Adalékok Ottlik Géza Iskola a határon címû mûve elemzéséhez (Deep Breathing. Suppliments to the analysis of School at the Frontier by Ottlik Géza). Szombathely, 1997. 21 The expression is from Ottlik himself, and it became the title of the second monograph written about him: Kelecsényi László, A szabadság enyhe mámora. Ottlik Géza életei (The Smooth Dizziness of Freedom. The Lives of Ottlik Géza). Budapest, 2000.
46 NAGYPÁL Szabolcs Mentality sometimes has the chance to develop into spirituality, and blasphemy into transcendence, as we can learn from Fateless and School at the Frontier. And the systems of evil just fade away, anyway. Suggested Reading Major Works of Kertész Imre and Ottlik Géza KERTÉSZ Imre, Sorstalanság. Budapest, 1975. KERTÉSZ Imre, A kudarc. Budapest, 1988. KERTÉSZ Imre, Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért. Budapest, 1990. KERTÉSZ Imre, Fateless (tr. Christopher C. Wilson – Katharina M. Wilson). Evanston, 1992. KERTÉSZ Imre, Kaddish for a Child not Born (tr. Christopher C. Wilson – Katharina M. Wilson). Evanston, 1997. KERTÉSZ Imre, Etre sans destin (tr. Natalia Zaremba-Huzsvai – Charles Zaremba). Arles, 1997. KERTÉSZ Imre, Le refus (tr. Natalia Zaremba-Huzsvai – Charles Zaremba). Arles, 2001. KERTÉSZ Imre, Kaddish pour l’enfant qui ne naÎ tra pas (tr. Natalia Zaremba-Huzsvai – Charles Zaremba). Arles, 1995. KERTÉSZ Imre, Roman eines Schicksallosen (tr. Virágh Krisztina). Berlin, 1996. KERTÉSZ Imre, Fiasko (tr. Buda György – Agnes Relle). Frankfurt am Main, 2000. KERTÉSZ Imre, Kaddisch für ein nicht geborenes Kind (Buda György – Kristin Schwamm). Berlin, 1992. OTTLIK Géza, Iskola a határon. Budapest, 1958. OTTLIK Géza, Próza (Prose). Budapest, 1980. OTTLIK Géza, Buda. Budapest, 1993. OTTLIK Géza, School at the Frontier. New York, 1966. OTTLIK Géza, Logbook. A Danish Story for Iván (Hajónapló. Dán novella Ivánnak) (tr. Bátki János). In KÔRÖSY Márta (ed.), A Hungarian Quartet. Four Contemporary Short Novels. Budapest, 1991. 9-46. OTTLIK Géza, Nothing’s Lost (Minden megvan) (tr. MOLNÁR Eszter). In BART István (ed.), The Kiss. 20th Century Hungarian Short Stories. Budapest, 1993. 153-185. Suggested Works about KERTÉSZ Imre and OTTLIK Géza FÛZFA Balázs (ed.), Mélylégzés. Adalékok Ottlik Géza Iskola a határon címû mûve elemzéséhez (Deep Breathing. Suppliments to the analysis of School at the Frontier by Ottlik Géza). Szombathely, 1997. G. MERVA Mária – KOVÁCS Éva (eds.), Ottlik Géza emlékkiállítás a gödöllôi városi múzeumban (Exhibition on the Memory of Ottlik Géza in Gödöllô). Gödöllô, 1994. KELECSÉNYI László (ed.), Ottlik (Emlékkönyv) (Memorial Volume). Budapest, 1996. KELECSÉNYI László, A szabadság enyhe mámora. Ottlik Géza életei (The Smooth Dizziness of Freedom. The Lives of Ottlik Géza). Budapest, 2000. SZEGEDY-MASZÁK Mihály, Ottlik Géza. Pozsony, 1994. SCHEIBNER Tamás – SZÛCS Zoltán Gábor (eds.), Az értelmezés szükségessége. Tanulmányok Kertész Imrérôl (The Necessity of Interpretation. Essays on Kertész Imre). Budapest, 2002.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL 47
NAGYPÁL Szabolcs: El mal sistemático y la libertad del individuo. Paradigmas de libertad en Kertész y Ottlik La maldad sistemática es un organismo con responsabilidades difusas, donde la libertad de la vida privada es una catástrofe, y cada persona tan sólo es un eslabón más en la cadena. Los sistemas socialistas nacionales e internacionales fueron dos rostros de la maldad sistemática del siglo XX. En la primera parte, el ensayo se centra en el comportamiento de dos escritores Majiares: Ottlik Géza e Kertész Imre (ganador del Premio Nobel 2002), durante los dos regímenes totalitarios. La segunda parte, y más importante, analiza la búsqueda de libertad individual a partir de sus novelas más significativas: “Escuela en la Frontera” (1958), y “Sin destino” (1975). Novelas en las cuales sus personajes no cultivan la integridad, o hallan la libertad individual por medio de la revuelta o el escapismo, sino al mantenerse firmes en su situación “sindestino”, al estar presentes existencialmente en peque´nos lugares de libertad, usando y aplicando metáforas de arte y literatura. En las novelas la ironía, el sarcasmo, la burla sutil, lo grotesco, lo absurdo y el humor negro, alternan con milagrosas teofanías y líricos momentos de felicidad para revelar una trascendencia latente, el suave vahído de la libertad.
NAGYPÁL Szabolcs: La rationalisation du mal et la liberté individuelle. Paradigmes de liberté chez Kertész et Ottlik La rationalisation du mal se présente comme une organisation à responsabilité diffuse, où la liberté de la vie privée se considère catastrophique et les individus ne constituent qu’un simple maillon d’une cha[ne. Le national et international socialisme ont représenté les deux faces de la rationalisation du mal au XXe siècle. La première partie de cet essai est axée sur le comportement de deux écrivains hongrois, Ottlik Géza et Kertész Imre (prix Nobel en 2002), sous deux régimes totalitaires. La deuxième partie analyse la recherche de liberté individuelle reflétée dans leurs romans plus connus, «Une école à la frontière» (1958) et «Être sans destin» (1975). Les personnages de ces romans ne cultivent pas l’intégrité ou cherchent à atteindre leur liberté personnelle par la révolte ou la fuite, mais plut]t par leur permanence dans une situation sans destin, par leur présence existentielle dans d’étroites marges de liberté ou par la création et l’application de métaphores artistiques et littéraires. Ces romans alternent ironie, sarcasme, subtile moquerie, grotesque, absurde et humour noire avec des théophanies miraculeuses et des instants lyriques de bonheur pour révéler une transcendance latente, le doux vertige de la liberté.
48
Silke LECHNER
The Fruit of Cooperation – An Unusual Concept of Power Ever heard of ushay? Recently, I came across a very fascinating concept of power in a language basically unknown to me. In the language of the biggest group of indigenous people of Ecuador, Quechua, power is translated as ushay. Ushay means improving living conditions; it refers to the capacity to develop collectively1. Power is thus understood as the fruit of cooperation. Certainly a rather unusual understanding of the term.
Definition of Power How do we define power? Although at first sight it seems a clear concept, it is actually not that easy to define power when thinking about it more carefully. If we had to come up with related words as a first step to a definition, we would possibly come up with words like: authority, control, strength, might, domination. If we would then try to provide a definition we might say something like: “Power is the ability to exercise control over other people”. Essentially this is the definition used by most philosophers and theorists, ranging from VOLTAIRE to WEBER. We think of power as something happening between people, power is relational and is often defined as the ability of one person to impose her or his will on another. Political theorist Robert A. DAHL understands power in exactly this way: “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.”2 Power, thus conceptualised, has to do with force, it is something happening in the interest of one and against the will of another. In this concept, it is something that is attached to individuals, and, defined like this, it is clearly possible to pin down who has power and who has not. A dœs have power, B dœs not. While A is power-full, B is power-less. This definition implies a very negative view of power; power is something to be afraid of. If A has the power to make you do something you do not want to, then A is to be feared. Power is something in the hands of some people and not of others. Silke LECHNER is the chairperson of WSCF Europe. She is a Lutheran from Germany, currently living in London. After graduating in Political Science and English Literature and Linguistics at the University of Hanover, Germany, she spent a year in Ecuador working for the Latin American WSCF office. She is currently a PhD Student of Latin American Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. For comments, please write to: S . L e c h n e r @ l s e . a c . u k 1 KINTTO Lucas, We will not Dance on our Grandparents’ Tombs – Indigenous Uprising in Ecuador. London, 2000. 2 Quoted in MARSH David – STOKER Gerry (eds.), Theory and Methods in Political Science. Basingstoke, 1995. 213.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
ARENDT’s Concept of Power However, although this might be the prevalent understanding of power, it is certainly not the only way to conceptualise power. Hannah ARENDT3, described by Margaret CANOVAN as “one of the great outsiders of twentieth-century political thought, at once strikingly original and disturbingly unorthodox,”4 provides a radically different and refreshing concept of the meaning of power. In contrast to the definition above, ARENDT dœs not conceive of power as something that could ever be the property of an individual. It is something detached from individual beings; it cannot even be possessed by adding up the strength of a group of individuals. Instead, “Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it 3 Hannah ARENDT (1906-1975), political theorist, born in Hanover, Germany. Grows up in Königsberg, is raised in a Jewishassimilated family. Studies philosophy and theology, among her teachers are HEIDEGGER, HUSSERL and JASPERS. In the year the Nazis came to power, in 1933, she flees to Paris. In 1941 she is interned in a camp in France, after a couple of weeks she manages to escape to the USA. Living in New York she wrote her most prominent book The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Other works include The Human Condition (1958), On Revolution (1963), Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), The Life of the Mind (1978). The first woman to become a full professor (of politics) at Princeton University, she subsequently taught at the University of Chicago, Wesleyan University, and finally the New School for Social Research. 4 CANOVAN Margaret, Hannah Arendt – A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought. Cambridge, 1992. 1.
49
50 Silke LECHNER belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.”5 ARENDT believes that if people join together for some common political purpose, they can develop a potency that is disproportionate to the individual resources of the gathered people. As example for her conceptualisation she refers to GANDHI’s movement in India and the successful challenge this group of people mounted to the political order. Fair enough, we have seen different examples of powerful peoples’ movements in recent history. In my country, a peaceful revolution happened in 1989, effectively tearing down the wall that had divided Germany. It is a powerful example of how non-violent protest by a large number of people can actually generate a change of a repressive political regime. Indeed, in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe human beings have demonstrated the capacity to act in concert, to jointly generate the power to overturn established institutions and to free themselves from communist rule. The Solidarity Movement in Poland and the independence movements in the Baltic states are just two other examples.
Where People’s Power Failed However, can only this form of political action be considered as power? Looking at our world, we can see that in most places it is actually not the majority of people ruling, it is not the so-called powerless who shape politics and society and often peoples’ movements actually fail despite them acting in concert. Let us take the example of student protests in Mexico. On October 2, 1968, in the Tlatelolco Massacre, the government in a public square in Mexico suddenly killed hundreds of unarmed students. Protests against the government had started on occasion of the Olympic Games, students took advantage of the international attention during the Games to demand democratic reforms and social justice— 15,000 students marched throughout the streets of Mexico City. By the evening, 5,000 students and workers entered the Plaza de Tlatelolco. That peaceful student demonstration was suddenly drowned in blood. Although accurate figures are still unavailable, it is estimated that more than 300 people were killed, hundreds were injured and several thousand were arrested. Similarly, peaceful protest was stopped by force in China in the 1980s: In May 1989, students began to occupy Tiananmen Square protesting for democracy and human rights. On June 3, the government ordered Chinese troops to clear the students out of the square, resulting in the massacre in which an estimated 5,000 citizens were killed. Thus, despite a very large number of people – at times an estimated million or more people participated in the protests – acting in concert, people power failed. Another example of failed people’s uprising is the Magyar Revolution of 1956. The popular overthrow of the Communist regime was almost instantly reversed by the forceful invasion of Soviet troops. So, who had the power here? Certainly the Mexican, Chinese and Soviet rulers. 5 ARENDT Hannah, On Violence. London, 1970. 45.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE FRUIT OF THE COOPERATION 51
Power and Violence are Opposites ARENDT would question this—not, however, because she ignored political realities, nor because she had some romanticised view of social and political relations of humanity. On the contrary, her concept is just different. She put great emphasis on distinguishing between power on the one hand and violence on the other. Violence, as she understands it, is cœrcion. It means imposing one’s will upon others. Thus, this definition of violence comes pretty close to our original definition of power, and it becomes obvious how much we often see these two, power and violence, as belonging together. ARENDT, in contrast, argues that the two are opposites. “Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent… To speak of non-violent power is actually redundant.”6 Reading about this understanding of ARENDT, I was reminded of what happened at the beginning of April 2002 in Germany: a 19-year-old student entered his school and shot dead sixteen people and himself. This young man did have the power, the capacity to end the lives of a large number of people. But was this really an expression of power? This machine-gunner relied on weapons, on tools of destruction, to carry out his act, to enforce his will. His act was in fact an act of powerlessness. This case can be interpreted as a pure case of violence. Often, of course, power and violence are combined. While ARENDT claimed that the two have specific qualities that become visible when looking at pure cases of either power or violence, she did not argue that it is always, or even most of the time, either violence or power occurring. “Nothing … is more common than the combination of violence and power, nothing less frequent than to find them in their pure and therefore extreme form. From this, it dœs not follow that authority, power, and violence are all the same.”7 Furthermore, ARENDT argues that rulers are only able to exercise power if they can count on the support of society. A regime is thus only able to maintain its rule as long as the subjects are willing to lend their power to this regime, especially as long as they are willing to carry out their orders. Most of ARENDT’s work is based on her analysis of totalitarianism and on her experiences with the Nazi regime in Germany. In this regime, power and violence were unmistakeably combined. This system was only able to keep up its crimes against humanity as the majority of the German population did give its support, and was obedient to, the Nazi regime. Hitler was not the single, all-powerful dictator. He was only able to keep up his regime due to the wide support of the German population. Hitler was empowered by the people; he would have been powerless without the society’s consent and active support.
6 ARENDT Hannah, On Violence. London, 1970. 56. 7 ARENDT Hannah, On Violence. London, 1970. 46.
52
Silke LECHNER
The Danish Example By contrast, the same time period gives a very powerful example of a pure case of ARENDT’s understanding of power. In Denmark during the German occupation, almost all of the 6,500 Jews who had lived in Denmark in 1939 were saved. The Danish population acted in concert and simply denied the German occupants to deliver the Jews. The Danes did first hide the Jews and later organised what HILBERG describes as “one of the most remarkable rescue operations in history”8. After the Swedish government offered to receive all Danish Jews, the Danish population arranged the flight thousands of people in October 1943. “The organisers of the expedition were private people who made themselves available for the task at a moment’s notice. They were doctors, schoolteachers, students, businessmen, taxi drivers, housewives… The Danish police shielded the operators by warning them of danger, individuals helped sell Jewish belongings, taxi drivers transported the Jews to the ports, house and apartment owners offered the victims shelter, Pastor Krohn handed out blank baptismal certificates, druggists supplied free stimulates to keep people awake and so on… boats left almost every day throughout October, and when the operation was over, 5919 full Jews, 1301 part Jews, and 686 non-Jews who were married to Jews had been brought ashore in Sweden.”9 This is a very impressive example of how people in a seemingly powerless position, living under occupation and facing a very potent force, can achieve an incredible amount of power. The Danes acted in concert. Without much discussion it was clear to them that delivering the Jews is simply wrong, so they did what they considered as being right and resisted the orders of their superiors. Obviously, there was a very wide, maybe even close to total, agreement in Denmark about this procedure: otherwise, just a few people could have spoilt the whole endeavour by reporting to the Nazis who is hiding someone. Apparently next to none did. ARENDT recommended this story to all those “who wish to learn something about the enormous potential inherent in non-violent action and in resistance to an opponent possessing vastly superior means of violence.”10 In contrast to most prevalent thinking, ARENDT makes a clear distinction between power and violence. Power springs up whenever people act in concert for a public-political purpose. Violence relies on weapons and resources rather than on the plurality of people. Finally, political rulers can remain in and with power as long as the people endorse and support them.
Christian Understanding of Power: The Story of Puah and Shiprah I consider ARENDT’S concept and thinking as very close to Christian theology and very relevant for our faith. Her ideas are about the power of the powerless, a theme that virtually runs across the whole of the Bible. There are numerous stories of upside-down power relations, of powerless people being empowered, of being encouraged to act in concert. Exodus 1, 15-22 is a powerful example: 8 HILBERG Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews. London, 1985. 566. 9 HILBERG Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews. London, 1985. 566-568. 10 ARENDT Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil. London, 1994. 171.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE FRUIT OF THE COOPERATION 53
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “when you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, He gave them families of their own. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”11 The story takes place during the time when the people of Isræl live in slavery in Egypt. Since the Isræli population is growing at a very fast rate, the King of Egypt fears the potential strength of the Isrælites. At first he tries to weaken them by increasing their workload and by increasing oppression. However, the Isræli population continues to grow. The Pharoah devises a new strategy, and this is where this story of Puah and Shiphra starts.
An Example of Civil Disobedience When I first heard this story, I was almost overwhelmed by its powerfulness. I had never thought that a text from Exodus could ever come anywhere close to be one of my favourite biblical texts. Even less had I imagined that midwives could ever become my heroines or role-models. But here are Puah and Schiphra, these two incredible women, giving us such a wonderful example of civil disobedience, of challenging the powerful ruler. They do not obey the command to murder all male children, they simply let the children live. They risk their own lives; it was more than likely that the tyrannous King of Egypt would have killed them when hearing that they did not carry out his order. Not only are Puah and Shiphra courageous, they are also witty: When they are called before the King to justify why they had not killed done as he had commanded them, they reply, “well, you know, these Hebrew women are so strong, as much as we rushed to their houses, whenever we arrived they had already given birth without our help. There was nothing we could do. Sorry.” Thus, they trick the King, they do not only know how to save the lives of the children, they also know how to save their own lives. Given this state of things and the seeming innocence of the midwives – what can the King do but let the two women go? One of the most interesting aspects of this story is the women’s motivation: “The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do.” They feared God—meaning they believed in God. It is because of this faith that they challenge the powerful ruler. 11 New International Version (NIV).
54
Silke LECHNER
“By fearing God, the midwives are made immune to any fear of the mighty King. This fear of God certainly dœs not mean they were actually afraid of God. Puah and Shiprah are two persons who, because they fear God, learn to differentiate how far the competence of a King gœs and which matters are outside his sphere of authority. To this belongs the question of life and death. From the point of view of the midwives he exceeds his sphere of authority by giving the command to kill.”12
The Power of the Seemingly Powerless Puah and Shiprah are a wonderful example of how two apparently powerless people can challenge a seemingly powerful ruler. By taking political action they are able to generate power, they actually manage to turn power relations upsidedown by denying the King of Egypt their support. I believe this is an example of power in the sense ARENDT understands it. However, this story contains an aspect that is, naturally, lacking in ARENDT’s politico-philosophical conceptualisation. Her theory lacks an explanation for why people should actually act in concert, why they should ignore their self-interest. The source for challenging the ones who rule can come from belief and trust in God. Knowing that God’s authority is the one that should guide us rather than the authority of political rulers, we are empowered to act against oppression and for human life. I certainly do not mean to say that it is only Christians who can act in this way—far from it. All I mean to say is that our faith can give us the strength to challenge oppression, and it can give us guidance in differentiating between right and wrong. The story of Puah and Shiprah is just one example of biblical stories about empowered powerless people. For me personally, it is one of the most powerful stories of my faith and I feel called to action by this. Let me end this article by quoting a pœm by Adrienne RICH: My heart is moved by all I cannot save: So much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
12 TRAUSCHKE Martina, Sermon on Exodus 1, 15-22. March 19th 2000, Kreuzkirche Hannover, Germany.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE FRUIT OF THE COOPERATION 55
Understanding power in ARENDT’s sense as acting in concert and internalising the meaning of the Quechua word ushay, let our hearts be moved and let us cast our lot with the Puahs and Shiprahs of today to reconstitute the world. Suggested Reading ARENDT Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil. London, 1994. ARENDT Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York, 1968. ARENDT Hannah, On Violence. London, 1970. ARENDT Hannah, On Revolution. Harmondsworth, 1973. CANOVAN Margaret, Hannah Arendt – A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought. Cambridge, 1992. D’ENTRÉVES Maurizio Passerin, The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt. Routledge, 1994. HILBERG Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews. London, 1985. KINTTO Lucas, We will not Dance on our Grandparents’ Tombs – Indigenous Uprising in Ecuador. London, 2000. MARSH David – STOKER Gerry (eds.), Theory and Methods in Political Science. Basingstoke, 1995. WESTWOOD Sallie, Power and the Social. London, 1999.
Silke LECHNER: El fruto de la cooperación – un concepto inusual de poder El artículo cuestiona el concepto tradicional de poder, el cual es usualmente definido como la habilidad de ejercer control sobre otra persona. El concepto radicalmente opuesto a este tipo de poder de Hannah Arendt, se introduce entonces: poder es la habilidad de los seres humanos para actuar en concierto. Arendt traza una clara distinción entre poder y violencia pues ambas tienen diferentes características, aunque en ocasiones se presentan juntos. En la segunda parte del artículo el concepto de Arendt se conecta con el concepto de poder en el cristianismo. La historia bíblica de Sifra y Fúa en Éxodo 1:15-22, se utiliza como un ejemplo para demostrar cómo dos personas, aparentemente insignificantes, retan a un gobernador aparentemente poderoso. Esta historia nos presenta un poderoso ejemplo de desobediencia civil y nos anima a continuar desafiando y oponiéndonos a la opresión y la violencia.
Silke LECHNER: Le fruit de la coopération – Une vision inhabituelle du pouvoir Cet article met en cause le concept traditionnel de pouvoir, entendu comme la capacité d’exercer une domination sur d’autres personnes. Hannah Arendt introduit une approche radicalement différente du pouvoir: le pouvoir est la capacité des hommes à agir de concert. Elle distingue nettement le pouvoir de la violence, éléments qui possèdent tous deux des caractéristiques très différentes, bien que souvent associés. La deuxième partie de l’article traite du concept de pouvoir dans le christianisme. L’exemple de l’histoire biblique de Pua et Shiphra, Exode 1:15-22, illustre comment deux personnes apparemment sans pouvoir peuvent défier avec succès un dirigeant ostensiblement puissant. Cette histoire constitue un exemple magistral de désobéissance civile, qui doit nous encourager à contester l’oppression et la violence.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
“Discovering” us, Stealing our land, Raping the women, Killing us ‘In the name of God’, Sharing with us your diseases, Writing OUR history, Taking us from our traditions, Teaching us to be like you, Giving me my name, Poisoning our Mother Earth, And, most importantly, celebrating this day!1 Series after series of political programmes continue to be relentlessly forced upon the weaker peoples in order to keep them under perpetual control. Taking insight from Anisur RAMAN, Jeremy SEABROOK states how 1 PELTIER Leonard, Aboriginal Sin. In Neva WELTON & Linda WOLF (eds.), Global Uprising: Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century. Canada, 2001. 142.
57
58 PANGERNUNGBA »‘development’ was originally a western promise to the South, designed to counter the danger of socialism. It was the threat of Bolshevik revolution inspiring social revolutions in the Third World that was countered by a promise of “development” and “development assistance” to help underdeveloped societies to catch up with the “developed.”«2 Poverty had to be invented as a global reality in order to legitimise the need for development (domination). Similar is the present day ‘politics of human right and peace’ advocated under the shadow of the United Nations, G8, Non-Governmental Organisations, etc. The politics about UN peacekeeping forces or any other mechanisms advanced in the name of security, peace and human rights are farce at its core. This fact is aptly explained in the political comment of Samir AMIN: “Never have the armies of the North brought peace, prosperity, or democracy to the peoples of Asia, Africa, or Latin America. In the future, as in the past five centuries, they can only bring to these peoples further servitude, the exploitation of their labour, the expropriation of their riches, and the denial of their rights.” Genuine movements of resistance and liberation that emerge as a response to injustices are sealed off and contained in the name of terrorism and peace. Luis LOPEZLLERA sums this up, “for the most powerful nation in the world, terrorism becomes the main challenge today, without distinguishing violence as a structural cause and violence as an unpredictable effect. A global war is declared against effects of the same system.”3 This politics is successfully backed by NGOs ideologically fed and funded by the disciples of contemporary capitalism. NGO’s have become co-opted channels that execute the ‘practical field work’ orderly assigned to them by their masters. ‘Pieces of peace’ are exported and imposed upon at any time, irrespective of whether it is felt necessary or opposed by the people. Much of the conflict resolution and human right programmes are used as political commodities required for creating an artificial (forced) state of peace. Subversive methods of peace diplomacy, negotiation, resolution, ceasefire, etc. are packaged and handled through their armed ‘peace mediators’. It is an anathema for such politics of peace to work toward correcting structural errors based on the truth of history. The fact of confronting the truth scares those who perpetuate ‘false peace’ as it is too costly for them. Victims who suffer historical subjugation affirm that justice must be established first in order to have genuine peace. But the oppressors claim that (false) peace is possible even without confronting the ‘roots of injustice’. This is the reason why century long conflicts in many parts of the world remain sustained and unresolved. Old conflicts achieved through forced negotiation keep recurring as their deep wounds are not healed permanently and new unwanted conflicts keep emerging. NGO work dœs not bring about permanent change in the lives of people as their works are directed only at addressing the symptoms of violence and not the 2 SEABROOK Jeremy, Victims of Development: Resistance and Alternatives. London, 1993. 8. 3 LOPEZLLERA M. Luis , Multicellular Organic Society Vs. Virtual Illusions. Alliance of Hope 2002/8. 52.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE VIOLENCE OF PIECE 59
causes of violence. It is very crucial for us to ask whose peace we are talking about. Whose slogan are we shouting? Whose prayers are said every Sunday and whose path of peace are we following? Is the genuine road to peace a distant reality?
Liberating Peace from Ideological Captivity Peace, co-opted as a concept of global monopoly has become corrupt of its soul to heal violence. Instead of asking what peace is, we must rather ask whose peace, which peace, peace for whom and at what cost? We have given different names to peace. Our world has many interests and many types of peace. The peace produced by the dominant is imposed against the genuine demands of people’s justice. We are repeatedly told that there is only one peace - the peace of the dominant: ‘dominant peace’. Legitimate voices of peace are drowned and left unheard. Naïve expressions about peace abound -‘peace is simply peace’, ‘peace of rest’, ‘peace is peace’, ‘absence of war’ or ‘nothing more than peace’, ‘peace as avoiding conflict’, etc. We humans talk about peace but love war and conflict. Human actions promote injustice and perpetuate unwanted conflicts. Talks about peace contradict and betray the holder. Peace has become a global commodity for the proponents of contemporary capitalism. It is advanced and legitimised to mask the cover of violence, which their instruments of domination perpetuate. Peace is now a saleable commodity in the market; supplied plentifully in every nook and cranny by the agents of contemporary capitalism: nation-states, politicians, ruling elites, middle class, media, peace NGOs, etc. It is the religion that can be consumed, worn and spoken as the ‘social justice’ slogan of contemporary capitalism’s ‘ideology of peace’. Consuming this brand of peace becomes a way of attaining salvation and satisfaction amidst the insecurities generated by modern society. This illusion of peace has created “peace euphoria”. If I am allowed to misquote this ‘peace mania’ in the expressions of Karl MARX, peace has become the ‘opiate of the masses’. Recent strategies have been heavily banking on the fears and insecurity of people (e.g. war against terrorism after destruction of World Trade Center and Pentagon). The politics of peace has created a ‘false consciousness’ in the people. This peace is ‘produced’, ‘enforced’, ‘managed’ and ‘made to function’ in society to blind and obstruct people from raising true issues of peace. It is not only subverting the masses from indulging in the right quest for peace but robbing and fast-killing people’s sensitivity to engage and ask the right question that can direct a process of lasting peace in the world. It is important for us to deconstruct this ‘ideology of peace’ promoted by a few powerful to perpetuate miseries on the rest of the communities of the world. We need to wash away all the myth and farce that it advances. By doing this, we will not only reconstruct peace in its real essence but also liberate peace from its present violent ideology. We will have to be reborn with positive ideas and thoughts
60 PANGERNUNGBA that do not suppress but give value and space for genuine resistance and struggles of the people. Such peace is not manipulative, but redeeming. It is not destructive but upholds the values of life capable of creating a peaceful world.
The Church and Ecumenical Movement: Beyond the God of Peace! Modernity’s promise of peace has not only failed but also led humanity to a dead end ‘crisis of value’. We are now confronted with a crisis of ‘meaning’ caused by unprecedented fragmentation of ultimate values that held the matrix of life. Means have become an end and ends have been written off conveniently. This has been caused by the instrumentalisation and commodisation of the base of life and values that hold society organically. Christianity that applauded and pleased to sail together in the boat of modernity has now become incapable of providing a moral direction in the present crises. For Christians, the present crisis signifies a deep ‘crisis of faith’. It is about coming to terms with the ‘god of peace and shalom’ and re-evaluating the effectiveness of Christian utopia and eschatology that we seek to be part with God. Can we work together with the god of peace to create a world of justice, peace and truth? Is the world evolving into violence? We are tempted to resign and say how scarce peace can be today. Our reality speaks so, that, “peace can be nothing more than a short and precarious interruption of ever present and inescapable war. Violence had the first word in history; it will have the last word - and most of the words in-between too.”4 It has become necessary for the church to go beyond the ‘god of peace’ - beyond a ‘theology of peace’. Should violence become the destiny of humanity? Should this require of us a renewed faith to resurrect the ‘god of peace’ who is the beginning and end of human history? We must transcend the institutionalised ‘god of peace’. Our peace-building ministry must first start with a critique of the religious legitimacy of violence that is manifested through the institutionalised church vested in power. Power has become an important element in the life of the structures of the church. The glorification and veneration of our institutions have resulted in the inability of the church to speak up for ‘genuine peace’. No wonder, church programmes are now full of activities related to peace. Peace is the heart of all church services. The text of Christian worship and liturgy is full of references about peace and peace is a ‘prayer’ uttered from the lips of every Christian. It may not be too far for us to listen to Prophet Jeremiah’s warning, that, “they have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying “peace, peace,” when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:13-14). These and other numerous changing trends have direct political influence on the movements of the younger generation capable of causing potential misdirection, co-option or positive movement direction. There is at least one recognised perspective, that, ‘the globalisation process can succeed only with the uncritical 4 VOLF Miroslav, Exclusion and Embrace. Nashville, 1996. 304.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE VIOLENCE OF PIECE 61
participation of the younger generation’. For example, we need to seriously take stock of the global market of human rights and peace, which is luring and converting a large number of young people as mediators and transporters of their ‘ideology of peace’. While we should not undermine people who are genuinely committed to work within it without sacrificing their basic values; there are many who see it as a redemption and safe haven of activism from the disillusionment and insecurity impacted by the process of globalisation. The ‘powers that be’ promoting unequal global balance continue to fund and promote the legitimacy of comfortable NGO cultures of social justice. The younger generation must go beyond this doctrine of comfortable activism that leaves our contradiction and orientation unquestioned and ultimately serves to fortify the pillars of injustice. We must also caution ourselves not to be swept away without clear purpose in the present ‘activism mania’ generated by computer linked social movements. The church is still caught up in the traditional paradigm that regards leadership as the unquestionable prerogative of the elders. Analysis of our situation clearly indicates that the younger generations have become the ‘nucleuses of present glocal (global & local) movements. This is partly because the younger generation is more adept at discerning the dynamics of present social disorientation by transcending the ‘given’ traditional ideological lenses of social movements. The church must ‘deeply embrace’ this ‘nucleus’ (youth) in order to revitalise her historical effectiveness in present times. A recent initiative of the World Council of Churches, which declared 20012010 as “Decade to Overcome Violence”, is a hopeful sign and positive direction. Might the church, originally a counter-culture movement, repent to regain her vision in order to become a community that provides an alternative for the present situation? How might faith communities become avenues of reconciliation to direct the church toward a more imaginative and proactive social involvement in the 21st century? Are we required urgently to re-assert the vocation of Christians to peace, justice, liberation and wholeness and God’s reconciling work in Christ as the context of understanding Christian identity and ministry? Can we meaningfully engage in “beating the swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks” (Micah 4:3)?
Strengthening the Movement of Justpeace in Asia Ecumenical action for peace needs to find its launching points within the context of the emerging global movements confronting the hegemony of peace. The recent shape of global movements against the onslaught of neo-liberalism have not only transcended the traditional paradigms of social movements but also universally recognised one common enemy: contemporary capitalism, or whatever one may like to term it. With the historical project of socialism becoming untenable, not one but several alternative projects or models of the models are encouraged within the loose umbrella of global justice movements.
62 PANGERNUNGBA We are now in a momentous and propitious epoch where “the glocal citizen’s movement has made a momentous discovery and revealed a dangerous truth: the corporate coup d’etat, the triumph of the rich over the poor, market over society, rapacity over nature is not inevitable.”5 Margaret THATCHER’s TINA (There Is No Alternative) is replaced by TAMA (There Are Many Alternatives) and AWIS (Another World Is Possible). The movement is more “a kind of ‘trans-generational, trans-class, trans-gender and trans-national generation.’” The inherent contradiction of contemporary capitalism has become stark, accumulating comparable cracks of its downfall as a political project. Asia is still a place wrought in suffering and violence emanating from the deep scars and legacies of colonialism. The roots of human misery in Asia are located in the structures of violence that are manifested in new forms such as ‘structural adjustment programmes’ and many others. Transforming these inhuman structures must continue to be our main agenda for action. A peace-building ministry, which seeks to demystify the politics of peace, must identify and work within basic ‘rallying principles’ on peace. The first principle should be Justpeace (justice & peace going together). Justpeace is the ‘cultural act’ of peoples (victims) transforming concrete situations of human injustice from its ‘roots’ so that justice is established in a new form of inclusive human relationship. The primary task of this bottom-up approach is to confront the root causes, forces and structures of the violence. These processes would create genuine peace, tranquility and self-determination of people in society. The second principle must be our act of deliberately re-asserting the dynamics of ‘history’. Our struggle for justice and peace should be seen and defined within specific historical contexts, relationships of power and domination of North over South. This is the only true way that can help build genuine peace based on the establishment of truth in history. Different agendas are advanced in order to divert the oppressed in history from addressing these issues. Individualism, consumerism and hegemony of the US war on terrorism are but some recent examples. It is very true what Thabo MBEKI, the president of the South African Republic said, “until the victims started to write the histories of their own, the histories are the histories of the hunters.” The third principle is ‘people and culture’. Agendas of the dominant must be decentred in order to re-centre the participatory power, wisdom, humanising values and politics of the marginalised. Self-determination must be upheld as the core principle. Self-determination is the ‘cultural act’ of peoples ‘transforming’ concrete situations of human ‘injustice’ so that ‘justice’ is established ‘equitably’ in a new form of human relationship. We must insulate our work for peace form the ‘ideology of peace’ that works to strengthen the pillars and systems of historical domination and leave large sections of humanity dispossessed. Finally, our approach to peace-building must carry and inculcate transforming values that
5 GEORGE Susan, Global Citizens Movement. New Internationalist 2002/343. 7.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE VIOLENCE OF PIECE 63
respect the culture and worldviews of people. This approach challenges us to denounce the exclusive and dominating values that we often claim to be good and liberating.
Conclusion Could the ‘culture of justpeace’ become our daily resistance and vision of a just society for all? A Justpeace movement in Asia will need to confront the unjust forces of contemporary capitalism, subvert the violence of peace, promote counter-cultures of life and make alternatives irresistible. The future of humanity is bound together. I conclude with the ‘Aboriginal Activist Sister’ who reminds us “if you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together.”
PANGERNUNGBA: Desenmascarando la violencia de la paz El artículo de Pangernungba es un análisis sobre las políticas de paz. En él critica el concepto capitalista actual sobre esta, y sugiere que eso no es verdadera paz. Él afirma que para una inmensa parte de la humanidad, esta paz moderna es realmente un sinónimo de violencia, muerte y destrucción. La intención del artículo es desenmascarar “el rostro pintado de paz”, y al mismo tiempo propone una paz alternativa para el movimiento ecuménico, la cual es una paz en relación con la justicia: justipaz.
PANGERNUNGBA: Révéler la violence de la paix L’article de Pangernungba étudie la politique de la paix. L’auteur met en question le concept capitaliste dominant de paix et suggère qu’il ne renvoie pas à une paix véritable. Il affirme que, pour une grande partie de l’Humanité, le concept dominant de paix est synonyme de violence, de mort et de destruction. L’intention de cet article est d’]ter «le masque peint de la paix». L’auteur propose une paix alternative pour le mouvement œcuménique, une paix engagée dans la justice: la «justepaix».
64
Peter SAJDA
Personal Ethics and Political Action Human communities tend to live in a structured way. Structure assigns different roles and duties to groups and individuals that are then considered responsible for the compliance with these roles and duties. In the field of power, structure produces power distribution. In a structured society power can be delegated according to the rules stipulated by the given society (e.g. democracy) or it can be exercised without a broader consensus of the society (e.g. autocracy). No matter whether the power has been delegated or seized, those who exercise it generally claim to represent the society. If the society has a form of a state, these individuals add to their previous identities a new one – the identity of a statesman or politician. This identity then necessarily co-shapes their other identities, as well as it is co-shaped by them. It is the aim of this essay to present some hints concerning the interaction between the ethical or spiritual identity of an individual and her or his identity of a statesman/stateswoman or politician.
I. INTERPLAY OF THE ETHICAL AND THE POLITICAL Urho Kekkonen: Personal Virtues vs. Virtues of State “It is time to put an end to unrealistic political attitudes, based on personal bitterness, which have already led their adherents to a dead end. May SPINOZA’s words, ‘The grandeur of spirit or courage of spirit, they are private virtues, the virtue of state is security’, give them personal satisfaction and convey the respect of their countryfellow. As they leave the scene, they will know that they will be serving the supreme purpose of a citizen, the security of their own country.”1 These words were uttered by the President of Finland Urho KEKKONEN in his speech delivered on November 26, 1961 in connection with a tension between Peter ±AJDA is a Graduate of the Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. He is a member of Ekunet Slovakia, an ecumenical organisation focusing on ecumenical networking in Slovakia. He is a member of the Order of Preachers. He is currently a student of theology at the Theological Institute CMBF in Kosice, Slovakia. He is a co-opted member of the European Regional Committee of WSCF. He co-edited the book A Pentatonic Landscape. Central Europe, Ecology, Ecumenism (Budapest, 2002); he is also an editor of Mozaik. 1 KEKKONEN Urho, Neutrality: The Finnish Position. London, 1970. 108.
66 Peter ±AJDA the Soviet Union and Finland. KEKKONEN, who in his political theory often applied personal virtues to political relations (e.g. the virtue of trust), distinguishes in this case between private virtues and the virtues of state. In other words, if an individual wants to behave in a responsible way towards the state, it is not enough just to act according to her or his private code of personal virtues. Virtues of state might require a broader approach or may even be contradictory to private virtues. In this case, the conflict concerned personal justice on one hand and the security of the state on the other. KEKKONEN, who continuously stressed that security of small states, requires a very complex and cautious approach2, refused to accept the virtues of state to be a mere projection of personal virtues on the state level. The system of values of a state dœs not follow the same line as the system of values of an individual. KEKKONEN claims that even the modes of action are different in the case of the individual and of the state. The individual can e.g. flee from danger, whereas the state cannot simply move away. Its position is set. In this context it appears to be an utterly difficult task for a stateswoman/man to differentiate in her or his thinking between two overlapping but not identical value-systems: the value-system of personal morality and the value-system of the security of state.
The Notions of Danger and Sacrifice One of the highest personal values is the value of one’s own life. There are situations of danger in which individuals have to defend their mere existence. Nevertheless there are also situations in which individuals decide to sacrifice their lives for the good of their country, of other people, for their beliefs, etc. Selfsacrifice is in such cases considered a witness to one’s ethical values and the person is denoted as martyr. Henry KISSINGER claims that a statesman/woman, when she or he sees an approaching danger, has two basic possibilities – a) if he or she believes that the danger will continuously increase, she or he should try to eliminate it at its initial stage; b) if she or he believes, however, that the danger is just an outcome of a coincidental combination of circumstances, he or she should wait until it disappears.3 If the survival of the state is one of the primary tasks of the stateswoman/man, the question arises whether she or he is allowed to decide upon the death of the state (e.g. loss of independence). Furthermore the state is made up of a nation or nations. The statesman/woman is in certain emergency situations even charged with the utterly unenviable task of deciding upon the life or death of her or his own nation(s). Whether personal moral rules are to be applied in such situations for the nation is a question of considerable importance.
2 Cf. KEKKONEN Urho, Ekudden. Borgå, 1981. 11-37. 3 Cf. KISSINGER Henry, Um˘ení diplomacie (Diplomacy). Praha. 197.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
POLITICAL ACTION 67
Cardinal Richelieu and the Theory of Raison d’État The theory of raison d‘état was formulated and applied by Armand Jean du Plessis Cardinal RICHELIEU, the Prime Minister of France in the years 16241642. The fundamental idea, on which the theory of raison d‘état is based, is that the state constitutes its own reason. In other words, the state is not responsible to a higher instance, as the human individual is. Thus the behaviour of the state is not to be derived from ethical rules practised by individuals. The state is not a moral entity. Personal salvation and the ambitions of the state are based on completely different principles. The state is not immortal, it dœs not strive for eternal life. According to KISSINGER, RICHELIEU himself avoided mixing his personal salvation with his duties of a statesman4. Since the success of the state is not to be based on personal ethical values of its statesmen/women, it has to be based on something else. In international politics ruled by the principles of power balance, which ensued from the theory of raison d‘état, it is mostly based on strategic calculus and political intuition. The rival of RICHELIEU during the Thirty Years War was FERDINAND II (HABSBURG). FERDINAND II acted as a politician on religious principles. Since he waged a religious war against the Protestants, it was impossible for him to see non-Catholics as potential allies. RICHELIEU, on the other hand, did not categorise states according to their religious profile. They were allies or enemies solely on the basis of the measure in which they opposed or supported the interests of France. In RICHELIEU‘s theory and practice the religious and the political formed two independent fields of involvement.
Dag Hammarskjöld’s Spiritual Legacy The Swedish politician and the second Secretary-General of the UN, Dag HAMMARSKJÖLD belongs undoubtedly to the important mystical figures of the 20th century. Brought up in a traditional Lutheran environment, HAMMARSKJÖLD got gradually acquainted with the mystical writers of the medieval period, such as Meister ECKHART, JOHN of the Cross or Thomas Á KEMPIS. His understanding of political activism was closely linked with his personal spiritual development, as he explained in his radio speech‚ This I Believe in 1953: “The explanation of how a human should live a life of active social service in full harmony with oneself as a member of the community of the spirit, I found in the writings of those great medieval mystics for whom “self surrender” had been the way to self realisation, and who, in ‘singleness of mind’ and ‘inwardness’ had found the strength to say ‘yes’ to every demand, which the needs of their neighbours made them face, and to say ‘yes’ also, to every fate that life had in store for them, when they followed the call of duty, as they understood it. ‘Love’ that much misused and misinterpreted word, for them, meant simply an overflowing of strength which they felt themselves filled with when living in true self-oblivion.
4 Cf. ibid., 58.
68 Peter ±AJDA And this love found natural expressions in an unhesitant fulfillment of duty and in an unreserved acceptance of life, whatever it brought them personally of toil and suffering - or of happiness.”5 The quoted excerpt indicates that HAMMARSKJÖLD believed in the concept that political action of a stateswoman/man should be permeated by her or his personal spirituality and ethics. He himself was a living proof of this stance. His spiritual approach towards action in general can be seen in a number of records from his written legacy. In his spiritual diary, published under the title Vägmärken (Markings) he speaks of the respect for the word as the first step leading to an intellectual, emotional and moral maturity. He speaks of an inner love for truth as a conditio sine qua non (necessary condition) for the growth of the society6. HAMMARSKJÖLD confessed on several occasions that an important source of his inspiration was the life and work of Albert SCHWEITZER, in whom he saw a vital interplay of contemplative spirituality and active social involvement. Personal spirituality and ethics of these two men constituted the basis from which their active life drew its inspiration and strength. Therefore any deeper study of their active involvement is to search for links with their inner life, too.
II. THE POLITICAL VS. THE ETHICAL It is not the aim of the following paragraphs to capture the whole scope of potential conflicts between the ethical and the political identity of an individual. Nonetheless three basic stances are to be presented as hints for further consideration.
Compromise Unreached: Thomas More and the Act of Supremacy It is not to be expounded within the framework of this essay how the conflict between HENRY VIII and Sir Thomas MORE (Lord Chancellor) originated. The official accusation, however, concerned the fact that MORE refused to give his consent to the Act of Supremacy passed by the Parliament, which stipulated that the head of the Church in England is the King or Queen of England. As a consequence of this Act of Parliament, the authority of the Roman Pontiff was no longer the highest authority for the English Church. More, whose opinion differed from that of the Parliament and of the King, found himself in an unenviable position, since an open rejection of the Act of Supremacy would be qualified as high treason. More decided to adopt the following stance: he refused to make public his opinion on the Act of Supremacy. Through this approach he was trying to remain loyal to both of his identities as long as possible. He maintained that he could not be charged, since the law could not be broken by silence, but required a provable dissent7. Even if his opinion was not difficult to guess, he did not reveal it until the verdict on him was spoken. 5 SÖDERBERG Sten, Dag Hammarskjöld. Stockholm, 1962. 101. 6 Cf. HAMMARSKJÖLD Dag, Vejmærker (Markings). København, 1965. 89. 7 Cf. FARROW John, The Story of Thomas More. 97. http://www.cin.org/farmor
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
POLITICAL ACTION 69
It is obvious from the above-mentioned that MORE was avoiding an open conflict with the state. He was aware of the fact that he acted not only as a private person, but also as a public figure. His long-term silence was a sign to his adversaries that as a private person he was unable to compromise with his conscience, but as a public figure tried to avoid public distress and thus kept his opinion to himself. History proved, however, that his silence was dangerous enough. When sentenced, MORE declared that his personal ethics were in direct conflict with the Act of Supremacy. In the given situation a compromise between his religious identity and his political status could not be found anymore. His final choice was Either-Or.
Compromise Reached: Jozef Tiso’s Theory of Lesser Evil Dr. Jozef TISO was in the years 1939-1945 the President of Slovakia. After the war he faced the National Tribunal in Bratislava, accused of war crimes and collaboration with Nazi Germany. Since TISO was a Roman Catholic priest, the general public was interested in hearing his defence speech, which he delivered on March 17, 1947. In his Apology, TISO elaborated on the main points of his political involvement, explaining the ethics of his political behaviour. He maintained in several instances that his policy was to be seen in direct connection with his personal beliefs and his spiritual identity as a Roman Catholic priest8. As TISO was frequently accused of violating basic Christian principles, he decided to elaborate on his compromises with the Nazi policies of the WWII. TISO stated that he saw his main role in reducing the impact of the war on the Slovak population. As a President of a small country, he claimed to have had an utterly limited space for manœuvering and thus was often presented choices, in which he had to choose the less evil variant. He maintained that because of the lack of global influence, he could not live out his ideals as a free politician, but had to work with compromises that were often submitted to him in the form of a dictate. Nevertheless, he stuck to the ethics of lesser evil to prevent major evils from happening9. In other words, TISO’s policy towards Nazi Germany was based on assessing potential dangers and potential damage. Instead of fighting for higher ideals connected with higher risk, TISO aimed his actions at achieving relatively least oppressive relations with Nazi Germany. He claimed that his political line was always formed on ethical principles and having the choices again he would have acted more or less the same way10. In other words, TISO followed a philosophical line similar to that of KEKKONEN, taking personal virtues as important guidelines, but basing concrete political steps also on a strategic calculation of given facts. He sought compromises between abstract laws of morality and pressing political conditions. Principles should prove feasible. 8 Cf. Obhajovacia re˘c prezidenta Dr. Jozefa Tisu pred Národn´ym súdom (The Defence Speech of President Dr. Jozef Tiso before the National Tribunal). Bratislava, 1996. 89. 9 Ibid., 38, 82. 10 Ibid., 82.
70 Peter ±AJDA
Impossibility of Compromise: The Suicide of Ivan Hribar On April 18, 1941 the former Yugoslav senator, minister and mayor of the city of Ljubljana, Dr. Ivan HRIBAR died. He committed suicide in the centre of Ljubljana at the age of 90. On the bank of the river Ljubljanica his hat and his walking stick were found. In the note he left to his wife and daughter he stated: “My dear wife and you, my dearly loved Zlatica, forgive me. The stroke had proved to be too heavy, I could not bear it any longer.”11 The suicide of HRIBAR was an expression of his deep sorrow over the capitulation of Yugoslavia and the partition of Slovenia. In the days immediately preceding his death, Ljubljana was filled with Swastika-flags and Italian tricolors12. HRIBAR, who was known as a balanced personality, saw at the age of 90 the ruins of his life-long efforts aimed at a cultural autonomy of the Slovenian nation and a free Yugoslavia. It seems that the whole of the ethical basis of HRIBAR’s life was shattered by the occupation. It is impossible to say why exactly the whole construction of HRIBAR’s values was crushed so brutally in those very days. One of the reasons could be that “the stroke” was so sudden and so strong. Nevertheless the action of HRIBAR shows that he did not see any reasonable compromise anymore between the political reality and his potential ethical involvement. The values of his, which were known to so many of his co-citizens, were suddenly overshadowed by the tragedy of his nation and he himself might have felt useless. His solution was unexpected and tragic, but it proved that the mystery of the human soul is at times known to God alone. The above-mentioned examples capture just a part of the complex interplay between the ethical and the political identity of the individual. Nonetheless, they illustrate that the link between ethics and politics can be shaped in many different ways. They also show that ethical principles in their abstract form and given political reality often need a connecting element. How to connect these seemingly remote worlds is a matter of importance for those, who are involved in active political life and simultaneously cultivate their spiritual identity. How these two can be reconciled and how they can enrich and check each other, remains in many aspects still a terra incognita (unexplored area).
11 Cf. HRIBAR Zlata, Ko≠ c˘ ek slovenske zgodovine (A Piece of Slovenian History). In Homo sum… Ivan Hribar in nje-
gova Ljubljana (Homo sum… Ivan Hribar and His Ljubljana). Ljubljana, 1997. 12 Cf. MILCINSKI ˘ Lev, Smrt Ivana Hribarja (The Death of Ivan Hribar). In Samomor in samomorilni poskus v Sloveniji v letu 1996 (Suicide and Suicidal Attempts in Slovenia in the Year 1996). Ljubljana, 1996. 20.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
POLITICAL ACTION 71
Peter SAJDA: La ética personal y la acción política La teoría ética y la teoría política se presentan en ocasiones entrelazadas, complementarias o divergentes. En la historia podemos hallar situaciones y procesos en las que los individuos (políticos) presentan sus principios éticos, ya sea de una forma explícita (como afirmación), o implícita (como actitud). Los ejemplos que se analizan pretenden demostrar que la relación entre la ética y la política puede ser vista desde varios y diferentes puntos de vista, y que aún los políticos que alegan tener una misma herencia religiosa, no necesariamente comparten la misma opinión en la puesta en práctica de los principios éticos. La cuestión es cómo la ética y la política se influyen mutuamente en la vida de un político, y cómo ambas han de fundirse (si no del todo) para formar una base consistente para el comportamiento del homo politicus.
Peter SAJDA: Éthique personnelle et action politique Théorie éthique et théorie politique sont présentées, selon les époques, comme étant soit étroitement liées, soit complémentaires, soit divergentes. Néanmoins, dans toute situation et processus historique, il est possible de trouver des personnalités (politiques) qui ont manifesté leurs aspirations éthiques, que ce soit explicitement (par leurs déclarations) ou implicitement (par leur attitude). Les exemples analysés essayent de montrer que la relation entre l’éthique et la politique peut être considérée sous plusieurs angles et que même les hommes politiques qui se réclament d’un même héritage religieux ne partagent pas forcément la même opinion sur l’application des principes éthiques. La question qui se pose est de savoir comment l’éthique et la politique s’influencent et agissent l’une sur l’autre dans la vie d’un homme politique et comment les réunir (si nécessaire) afin de créer une base cohérente pour le comportement de l’homo politicus.
72
Bogdan POPESCU
Church and State: The Symphony of the Two Kingdoms
The relationship between Church and state has been one of the most controversial subjects in history and still remains a reason for strong controversies. I belong to an ex-Communist country and I experienced in the last years the great debates provoked by this issue. I realised that the different models proposed were not new and had strong roots, which greatly influenced history.
Constantine the Great: The First Score of a Byzantine Symphony The first important pattern of relationship between Church and state, can be considered the Byzantine cooperation. At the beginning of the fourth century, CONSTANTINE the Great was the “ferment” who produced such a revolutionary transformation, the “minister” who celebrated the incredible “marriage” between the civil state and the Christian Church. A religion that had been persecuted and considered a dangerous sect, became licita, received imperial favours and was integrated into the life of the Empire. Another head was added to the Roman eagle in order to represent the new symphony of powers. The army started to fight under a Christian standard, the wars became “just”, and the emperors convoked councils of bishops and built churches. The decisive step was made through the famous edict of Milan. In 313 CONSTANTINE and his brother in law, the emperor LICINIUS declared Christianity a free religion in the Roman Empire. This was the passport for the Christian faith, which gave free access to the Roman Empire, but it was just a meeting of two realities, a foretaste of the real symphony of powers, which followed. A good diplomat, CONSTANTINE knew that in a pagan state, a former persecuted religion could not be implemented overnight. This was just the first link in his political chain. However, the religiosity of the emperor was not a new element for the Roman State. Under an eastern influence, AUGUSTUS Cæsar adopted the title of pontifex maximus, considering himself the “representative of Jove” and the “giver of every good gift”1. CONSTANTINE kept in a way this tradition but he asked the protection Bogdan POPESCU was born in Bucharest in 1976. He graduated in the Orthodox Theological Seminary of Bucharest (1996) and in the Faculty of Theology, University of Bucharest (2000). He has a Master’s Degree in Ecumenical Studies (Bossey, 2002); his thesis dealt with the Church and state relationship. Currently he is a PhD student in Sibiu, doing research on patristics. He is also an assistant lecturer of History in the Orthodox Theological Seminary of Bucharest.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
of the Christians’ God and was called “friend of God” and “interpreter of God’s word”2. As a new element, the oneness of the Divinity gave the emperor the right to an autocratic rule. In a speech for the thirtieth anniversary of CONSTANTINE’s ascension, EUSEBIUS of Cæsarea showed that “monarchy far transcends every other constitution and form of government, for that democratic equality of power which is its opposite, may rather be described as anarchy and disorder. Hence there is one God, not two, or three, or more, for to assert a plurality of gods is plainly to deny the being of God at all. There is one Sovereign and His sovereign Word and Law is one…”3 But there is the condition of the faithfulness of the ruler. In order to receive this power which has its source in the unique God, the emperor must be Christian: “For how should he whose soul is impressed with a thousand absurd images of false deities, be able to exhibit a counterpart of the true and heavenly sovereignty?”4 In this vision, Christianity and monarchy are the two premises of a well-organised human society. 1 MICHÆL Azkoul, Sacerdotium and Imperium. Theological Studies 1971/3. 435. 2 VICENCIO Charles Villa, Between Christ and Cæsar. New York, 1986. 16. 3 EUSEBIUS of Cæsarea, The Speech for the Thirtieth Anniversary of Constantine’s Accession. In O’DONOVAN Oliver (ed.), From Irenæus to Grotius. A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought. Cambridge, 1999. 60.
73
74 BOGDAN POPESCU The great gift that Christianity offered to the “imperium” was the idea of unity and common belonging. In a world divided by plots and civil wars and torn by political struggles, CONSTANTINE needed a strong common denominator. The conquered territories were vast and the romanisation of the different people could not follow the rhythm of the conquests. The Greek element did not loose its strong identity and the oriental mentality was powerful. The different nations were living in an artificial state that had not a precise identity except the Roman one. CONSTANTINE understood that the Christian monotheism would bind together people belonging to different cultures and religions. The universality of the Christian message suited the desire of universality of the Roman state. “Conquer and baptise” became a slogan of the “basileous” and the religion of Christ played the role of Byzantine nationality. According to EUSEBIUS, “by the express appointment of the same God, two roots of blessing, the Roman Empire and the doctrine of Christian piety, sprang up together for the benefit of men (sic).”5 This eastern consonance was during time very differently interpreted and presented. Scholars such as AUGUSTINE of Hippo stressed that struggling to gain a temporal influence, the Church lost its Christian value. Others, like EUSEBIUS of Cæsarea, considered the Christian “imperium” of CONSTANTINE a gift of God, the beginning of the messianic kingdom prophesised in the Old Testament, the ideal form of government. Indeed there were abuses: emperors who tried to impose dogmatic formulas through the power of armies, civil wars provoked by religious misunderstandings or ministers too much involved in politics; but in the meantime, the empire facilitated the gatherings of the ecumenical councils, the spreading and the catholicity of Christianity6. Appreciated or detested, this model influenced the entire history of the world and has been adopted even after 1453, by the non-Christian conquerors of Constantinople.
Augustine of Hippo: The Two Kingdoms At the beginning of the fifth century, a revolution took place in political, social and religious thought in the Western part of the Roman Empire. The model of the Byzantine symphony started to be replaced by a strong dichotomy that transformed the cooperation into a severe separation. An important promoter of this different idea was the bishop of Hippo, AUGUSTINE. Influenced by ARISTOTLE and PLATO, he changed the entire perception of his contemporaries on this topic. Instead of speaking about a holy empire and an official church, he promoted the idea of the two separate worlds: the state and the church, the city of earth and the city of heaven. AUGUSTINE considered the Christians to be aliens, pilgrims on the earth, living in ephemeral earthly states and travelling to their real destina-
4 Ibid., 62. 5 EUSEBIUS of Cæsarea, The Speech on the Dedication of the Holy Sepulchre Church, In O’DONOVAN Oliver (ed.), From Irenæus to Grotius. A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought. Cambridge, 1999. 58. 6 MEYENDORFF John, Unité de l’empire et divisions des Chrétiens. Paris, 1993. 397.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
CHURCH AND STATE 75
tion: the kingdom of God. In his book, The City of God, he developed a different philosophy of history, speaking about two opposite worlds, which cœxisted from the beginning of the creation. For AUGUSTINE, the state is just a necessary evil that maintains an external peace and overcomes violence. Its purpose is not to promote a moral order but to force the citizens to avoid violent acts. The state is a non-natural institution. The law, the private property and the army are just marks of sin and do not belong to the original plan of creation. All these are consequences of the fall and bitter medicines for ill humankind, ways of preventing anarchy.7 AUGUSTINE compares the earthly kingdoms with bands of robbers. The only difference is that nobody can punish an emperor: “justice being taken away, then what are the kingdoms but great robberies? For what are the robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?” He reminds us of the answer a pirate gave to ALEXANDER the Great, being asked what he meant by keeping a hostile possession of the sea: “What meanest thou by seizing the whole earth, but because I do it with a petty ship I am called a robber, whilst thou who dœs it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”8 The state has to be considered, according to AUGUSTINE, a remedial instrument, which prevents greater evils. While EUSEBIUS adopted the assumption that the Christian Roman Empire could embrace the standards of the Gospel, AUGUSTINE stressed that the two cities cannot be united in a perfect Christian state. The real city dœs not need all the earthly institutions and it leads to the end of all the political structures.
Martin Luther: The Two Hands of God The reformers of the 16th century attempted to reshape the medieval Church but kept and developed many traditions and concepts that belonged to the western fathers. In this way the Augustinian idea of the two kingdoms survived and flourished in the writings of Martin LUTHER. The German reformer kept this dichotomous principle and adapted it to the new realities of his time. He divided the world in two kingdoms: ‘das weltliche Reich’, a realm of the fall and corruption, dominated by conflict, self love and lust of domination and ‘das geistliche Reich’, a community of love, faith and humility. He also emphasised the existence of the two regiments, corresponding to the two kingdoms. The earthly one serves God in this world through the civil law and the sword, and prevents the anarchy of evil. The heavenly one rules over the real Christians through the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. Both governments are instituted by God but their tasks and methods should not be mixed.9 The Godly kingdom is an inner one; a communion of love while the secular one needs works, fear and external formal relations. The former seeks the spiritual 7 DEANE Herbert A., The Return of Order upon Disorder. In Dorothy Donnelly (ed.), The City of God. New York, 1995, 52. 8 AUGUSTINE of Hippo, The City of God. Michigan, 1956. 66. 9 O’DONOVAN Oliver and LOCKWOOD O’DONOVAN Joan, From Irenæus to Grotius. A Sourcebook in Political Thought. Michigan, 1999. 582.
76 BOGDAN POPESCU transformation of its citizens and the latter only maintains an order of creation through coercion. They are not opposite but complementary: the state enables the spread of the Gospel, the Church contributes to the peace and stability of society: “Therefore care must be taken to keep these two governments distinct and both must be allowed to continue their work, the one to make people just, the other to create outward peace and prevent evil-doing. Neither is enough for the world without the other. Without the spiritual government of Christ, no one can be made just in the sight of God by the secular government… And equally where the spiritual government rules over a country and its people unaided, every sort of wickedness is let loose and every sort of knavery has free play.”10 At a first reading, this concept of LUTHER looks very similar to the thought of AUGUSTINE but there are also important differences. First of all, the secular state and its institutions are conceived very differently. The secular power is no longer considered to be a necessary evil invented by the children of this world. God is the creator of the two governments who gives the right and the authority to the earthly rulers. Luther speaks about two hands of God: the left one keeps the harmony of society through political institutions and the right one gathers the true Christians together through the message of the Gospel.11 Although the secular offices could belong to corrupt and ill-disposed people, the state remains a positive and important instrument in the fight against evil and anarchy and therefore has a divine origin: “It is better to suffer wrong from one tyrant… than from unnumbered tyrants that is from the mob.”12 A preacher has the power to address the rulers when they commit mistakes but not to contest their power and may only suggest a Christian attitude. It is very interesting to note the way LUTHER perceives the human personality in Christological terms. He promotes the idea of two identities, subsisting in one person. The Christian has a dual life, serving the two powers: a Christian lives due to the Gospel, by suffering, forgiving and loving and acts as a member of society, by obeying the law and using the sword. Life on earth is a continuous tension between these two identities. A real child of God dœs not need all these external institutions and restrictions but accepts them for the sake of others. In their particular life, a Christian has to suffer, to forgive, to love the enemy and to endure humiliation. But when a Christian acts on behalf of other people they have to use the secular ways and to become involved in the secular state. A Christian has no needs but has to fight for the needs of others. LUTHER considers that the child of heaven is at the same time a “Christ-person” and a “Weltperson”13. They create a shift between the inner life and the outward. The soul obeys the commandments of God and the body is subjected to the monarch. We live in this world and our body needs the food provided by the earth 10 LUTHER Martin, On Secular Authority. To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed. In HOPFL Harro (ed.), Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority. Cambridge, 1991. 12. 11 BRAATEN Carl, La Theologie Lutherienne. Paris, 1996. 169. 12 SANDERS Thomas, Protestant Concepts of Church and State. New York, 1964. 37. 13 O’DONOVAN Oliver and LOCKWOOD O’DONOVAN Joan, From Irenæus… 583.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
CHURCH AND STATE 77
that belongs to the emperor. Also the protection granted by the secular sword is necessary. Therefore, we cannot be only spectators of society but have to work and fight for it. When a Christian becomes an official of the state, they dœs not act anymore as a child of the Gospel but as a judge, tax collector, soldier or monarch. In private life, a Christian cannot oppose the forces of evil and injustice, but as a secular person has the duty to do it.
Huldrych Zwingli: The Christian Government Cooperation was not just a Byzantine tradition. The old pattern took a different shape, suited to the new reality of the beginning of 16th Century: the reformation of Zürich. The originality of this new model that belonged to Huldrych ZWINGLI was given through the important role played by the state. ZWINGLI ceased to speak about the Church as an institution, and influenced by nominalism he acknowledged only the local, concrete congregation. Leadership and organisation became tasks of the Christian government. Christians must be equal and for this reason the clergy cannot claim any authority over the bealivers. In the treatise Regarding Divine and Human Righteousness, ZWINGLI rejected ecclesiastical hierarchy: “If they want to govern like princes of this world, they should not be called messengers and bishops… By contrary, if they want to be preachers, messengers and supervisors for Christ, they should not govern.”14 So, the reformer did not make spectacular changes in the field of Church organisation and entrusted all the power of decision to the civil authority. The civil councillors became legitimate ecclesiastical representatives and the clergy had to carry out the will of the state. According to ZWINGLI, the government has - like the preaching office - a divine duty and God grants its authority15. Christ Himself confirmed the legitimacy of this institution, by accepting the political power of that time16. In order to defend his affirmations and to reconcile the different opinions, ZWINGLI developed the doctrine of the two justices. He considered the divine justice, claimed by radicals, pure and superior, but added a human justice, necessary for life in community. The precepts of the second justice have been given by God, in order to overcome the sin and anarchy of the world. Through them sinful humans can live “happy and friendly”17. The authorities, as servants of God have to safeguard human justice and to prevent disorder. If this divine gift were lost, society would not differ from a gathering of wild beasts. The doctrine of the two justices is reminiscent of the dichotomous Augustinian thought but the purposes of the two authors were very different: while AUGUSTINE strongly condemned human justice, Zwingli defended it and used it to legitimate close cooperation with the state.
14 ZWINGLI Huldrych, De la justice divine et de la justice humaine. Paris, 1980. 57. 15 COURVOISIER Jaques, Zwingli, soldat de Dieu. Genève, 1947. 95. 16 STEPHENS Peter, Zwingli le théologien. Genève, 1999. 365. 17 ZWINGLI Huldrych, De la justice divine… 41.
78 BOGDAN POPESCU
Jean Calvin: The Reformed Cooperation One of the most interesting patterns concerning the relation between the state and the Church, was born in Geneva, in the middle of the 16th century. Jean CALVIN was the promoter of this model, which had a considerable influence on the construction of modern society. While LUTHER transformed Christianity into an inner spirituality and entrusted social relations to the secular sword, CALVIN promoted the idea of a Church involved in public life. The message of the Gospel was no longer considered a private option but rather it became the ideology of the state and a source of inspiration for the civil laws. Even though CALVIN spoke about the two kingdoms, the concept differed from the Augustinian separatism. Many scholars related his ideas to the principle of symphony. A protestant Byzantium was born in a fragmented Western Europe. In his book, Institutio Christianæ Religionis, CALVIN promotes the idea of the two governments that are distinct but “there is no other way but to link them”18. The two realms are interdependent and cannot survive without mutual help. Theology has to influence the political system ideologically and the state must protect its source of inspiration. God is the absolute sovereign and naturally the word of God also becomes law in the political world. CALVIN did not want to separate the social life from the spiritual one. A Calvinist participates in the public life by keeping her or his convictions and trying to apply them. The government of Geneva elaborated so much social legislation in that period that it was called by scholars “Christian socialism”. CALVIN organised loans for the poor and refugees, and called for a proper organisation of public health, granted employment for the citizens and social protection through fixed prices19. CALVIN exercised this strong influence, however, without using secular power. He was just an employee of the state and received the title of bourgeois only in 1559. Like ZWINGLI, he influenced public life through preaching and counselling the government20. The Church did not constrain the state to be Christian, because this cooperation was thought to be natural and divine. CALVIN emphasised the biblical pattern of the king Saul and the prophet Samuel and showed that force was not necessary to impose this alliance, wanted by God21. Even if he speaks about the two kingdoms, CALVIN dœs not accept the Augustinian idea of the state as a necessary evil. The superiority of rulers is not a consequence of sin but is sacred, being a means of God’s providence for the world. Moreover, God is present and helps them to make right decisions. For this reason CALVIN considers that “civil authority is not merely a holy and legitimate vocation, but far the most sacred and honorable of all human vocations”22. 18 CALVIN Jean, Institutio Christianæ Religionis. In HOPFL Harro (ed.), Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority. Cambridge, 1991. 47. 19 MEETER Henry, The Basic Ideas of Calvinism. Michigan, 1990. 104-105. 20 KINGDOM Robert M., Reformation and Revolution: the Case of Geneva. In Derek BAKER (ed.), Church, Society and Politics. Oxford, 1975. 215-216. 21 STURZO Luigi, Church and State. Indiana, 1962. 202.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
CHURCH AND STATE 79
His opinion also differs from that of LUTHER. The latter considered the state a divine institution but divided the life of the ruler into two separate sides: the inner faith and the office. In LUTHER’s view a person cannot rule following Christian principles but has to separate his personal convictions from the external secular actions. CALVIN harmonises this dichotomy, by affirming that a Christian entrusted with authority has to act according to her or his belief. Political decisions and social life can be and have to be influenced by the Christian message. Also, CALVIN dœs not mix the two realms but interconnects them. The world cannot be ruled only by observing the precepts of the Gospel and the state cannot remain separated from the Christian faith because it becomes inhuman. The officials must be conscious that they represent God and therefore have to protect and act justly. Their functions are not profane but “sacred commissions.” They are not allowed to behave despotically because they are “God’s legates”. If they neglect their duties, they sin against God, who instituted the authority and they commit a blasphemy23. A theocratic mark could easily be detected in this thought: political power is not just a secular arbitrary means but becomes a public duty. The old patterns are still alive in our contemporary world and through an analysis of different denominations the reader could easily identify the separation of AUGUSTINE and LUTHER or the Byzantine and Calvinistic cooperation. Of course, there are different frames, different coordinates and different times but the models are the same and they could be identified in various concentrations and shapes all over the world. One important feature of a contemporary Church is the way it relates to the state and this issue still creates important conflicts and debates. After the analysis of the different models offered by history it seems that both cooperation and separation have positive and negative aspects. There are fields in which Church and state can be ideal partners but there are also cases when they have to be separate.
A Contemporary Debate In the case of politics both extremes could lead to negative results. A too close cooperation in Byzantine or Zwinglian style can create abuses and civil conflicts. A complete separation prevents the ecclesiastical partner to be present in the life of society and deprives the state from an important contribution. It is possible to speak about a politicaly involved Church as long as affiliations to various parties are avoided. For this reason the official presence of clergy in electoral campaigns must be prohibited. The ecclesiastical representatives must defend and serve the interests of the Church and not private purposes. Priests can also have personal political convictions but they are not allowed to recommend them as divine values. The political message must be limited to the recommendation of civil duties. The dichotomous example of LUTHER is useful but still not perfect. Christians 22 CALVIN Jean, Institutio Christianæ Religionis. In HOPFL Harro (ed.), Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority. Cambridge, 1991. 52. 23 Ibid., 54-55.
80 BOGDAN POPESCU should not become different persons in public life because they have to influence society through their identity. Religious representatives must be present in Parliament, express their opinions and attempt to give a Christian mark to the different laws. They cannot express their feelings just through sermons and protest marches. But there are two conditions. On the one hand, they must know exactly the limits of permitted influence, without trying to replace the civil system. History has proven that the sinful human society can not be ruled only according to the Gospel. Restrictive laws and cœrcion are necessary in order to prevent anarchy, but they must not be administrated by the ecclesiastical structures. The Calvinistic experience of Geneva demonstrated that a strong cœrcive influence of the Church in society could create tensions. On the other hand, the Zwinglian attempt to transform the state into a divine representative must be avoided. The Church must have the liberty to react when its interests and Christian principles are violated. Concerning the ideal form of government it is difficult to agree with the Byzantine monarchy or the attempts of LUTHER and CALVIN to emphasise the advantages of an aristocratic leadership. The democratic republic seems more suitable to Christian values. In the field of economy, a total separation seems more suitable because the two institutions have very different means and purposes. Cooperation can produce in this case only conflicts and misunderstandings. Even the supporters of cooperation did not encourage it. ZWINGLI did not reject the economic levers but entrusted them to the civil government. A Church must have, however, its own economic administrative structure. Of course, there are only a few domains suited for this involvement and they must be rigorously selected. Ministers can deal with certain economic aspects as long as this concern dœs not prevent them from fulfilling their religious duties. A minister must administer in a proper way the goods of the church and the levers of economics are necessary in this case. Also, in the case of finances, separation is a very good option. History offered many examples of emperors who used ecclesiastical funds in order to sponsor military campaigns or build palaces and of spiritual leaders who used civil money in religious affairs or personal business. A Church that is financed by the state cannot claim complete independent reactions and measures. The civil partner often has a great influence on important decisions. However, in the contemporary world, there is a clear tendency of separation in this field, even in countries with a long “symphonic” tradition. Regarding private property and wealth, the Church should avoid populist sermons. Wealth is not a negative aspect if it is attained in an honest way. By contrast, exploitation and unfair practices must be criticised. The attitude of John CHRYSOSTOM, the patriarch of Constantinople who condemned the excessive Byzantine luxury, can be a good model. The relationship between Church and military forces has been a very controversial issue throughout history. The examples offered by several Byzantine
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
CHURCH AND STATE 81
emperors and later by ZWINGLI are questionable. Religious wars proved to be the most dangerous and for this reason religion should not be involved in military conflicts. Wars that started in the name of God for the sake of Christian ideas left bitter memories. On the other hand, the Augustinian rejection of the army, embraced until today by certain denominations is not a realistic approach. The position adopted by LUTHER seems more appropriate: wars can be only defensive and any religious involvement must be left out. The idea of defensive war as an extreme but legitimate means was also well emphasised by CALVIN. Of course, ecclesiastical persons are not allowed to lead or to be part of violent clashes but cannot ignore them, either. They have an important task of mediating, using religion as a common denominator. The presence of chaplains among soldiers in some countries is a positive element. The Church cannot prevent wars through isolation but through witness and through temperate Christian pacifist preaching. An ideal domain of cooperation is that of social values. The religious partner could give precious help because it is able to realise through persuasion what the state only imposes through law and cœrcion. History shows that religious convictions had a greater impact than external secular demands. Citizens easily overpass human restrictions but they respect divine commandments. This aspect was taken into consideration by the Roman emperors when they embraced Christianity. The Augustinian separation and even the dichotomous thought of LUTHER lead to strange social relations. Christ did not intend to found an isolated community or to create double personalities. The social message of the Gospel is powerful and Byzantine or Calvinistic officials valued it a lot. Of course, there were abuses on both sides but also important successes. For this reason Church and state can cooperate successfully in the field of social ethics. Protection of family, social welfare, morality, protection of the oppressed, social assistance and human rights must be common goals. If the civil partner dœs not respect one of these values, the Church must react and the example offered by John CHRYSOSTOM is an eloquent one. Cooperation is possible concerning public health. Byzantine officials and bishops founded hospitals and the reformers did the same thing, using money confiscated from monasteries. The activity of the two institutions can be in this case complementary, because care for the body must not be separated from that of the soul. In many countries, the presence of priests in hospitals gave hope and strength and the Church supported health education. Problems could arise when complementarity is transformed into substitution. Special attention has to be given to the issue of biœthics, which has became very controversial and a reason of conflict between the two partners. I do not think that the intransigency of some Churches in the field is a constructive attitude. It is also not useful to operate with general terms. The different problems must be analysed in their context and with the corresponding implications. The great majority of states agree, however, with the attempts of churches to reject human cloning and euthanasia.
82 BOGDAN POPESCU Culture can be another common denominator because there is a long tradition of cooperation and reciprocal influence. Even AUGUSTINE, who repudiated the “pagan culture”, was very much influenced by it. Often, educational institutions have ecclesiastical roots. Byzantine emperors founded civil-religious academies and the reformers initiated public schools. There is no necessary conflict between secular science and theology. Indeed, the two spheres have different goals, tasks and methodologies but do not exclude each other. A Church of the XXIst Century cannot consider secular science evil and must use modern technology. Fidelity to the Bible and respect for traditions must not mean rejection of scientific inventions. Also, during the centuries, art and religion fused and gave birth to priceless masterpieces. It is not possible to study the history of art ignoring the religious element and in the meantime in some traditions art became a constitutive part of worship. In my opinion, another important contribution that the Church can provide, concerns international relationships. This aspect was proved by the Byzantine history: Christian ministers became successful ambassadors and wars were avoided through ecclesiastical mediation. Today, the old pattern can be useful again, even though the Church is divided into so many bodies. Ecumenism can be an important factor of stability in the world. Indeed, religion is a double-edged sword: through a wrong approach it is a source of conflicts but through constructive dialogue can be an important “bridge”. The Byzantine Empire survived for centuries and included various nations and traditions because of this fantastic power of cohesion. I am sure that contemporary cosmopolitan society can follow this example in order to solve conflicts. There cannot be stability and civil peace without a previous inter-confessional and inter-faith dialogue. Recent wars show that a peace, which has no religious background, is fragile. Even in many countries that claim to be secular, churches have a great power of influence that can be used for the sake of international welfare. History proves that the two main patterns of relationship between Church and state have advantages and disadvantages. It is not possible to speak about an infallible model. Cooperation and separation took different shapes and led to various results and the only possibility is to select the positive aspects and to avoid the extremes. We have to learn from the mistakes of the past in order to solve contemporary debates and to secure future stability. I wanted to emphasise through this paper the favourable and the dangerous fields of relationship. I hope that future spiritual and religious leaders will keep the right balance and will use the right side of the “double-edged sword”.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
CHURCH AND STATE 83
Bogdan POPESCU: La Iglesia y el Estado: la sinfonía de los dos reinos La relación entre la Iglesia y el Estado, ha sido un tema polémico a través de los siglos. Diferentes voces han propuesto varios patrones que han influido en la historia. Mientras que en Europa del Este (oriental), la sinfonía bizantina se convirtió en el principal modelo a seguir, el pensamiento occidental fue influido por la visión dicotómica de Agustín, el Obispo de Hipona. Los patrones se mantuvieron y desarrollaron por los reformadores del siglo XVI también. Hoy, la Unión Europea es una realidad, sin embargo, aún sus miembros y candidatos sostienen diferentes actitudes respecto a las relaciones entre los “dos reinos”. ¿Cuál es el mejor patrón, y cuál ha de ser la actitud de la Iglesia referente a la política, la economía y el uso de la fuerza? ¿Cuál es la forma ideal de gobierno desde la perspectiva cristiana? ¿Es la religión una fuente de conflicto o un medio de cooperación? No podemos responder estas preguntas contemporáneas sin analizar los errores y logros del pasado.
Bogdan POPESCU: Église et État: la symphonie des deux royaumes Les relations entre l’Église et l’État ont toujours été une question controversée au cours des siècles. Différentes voix ont proposé divers modèles pour ces relations, modèles qui ont influencé l’Histoire toute entière. Alors qu’en Europe orientale, la symphonie byzantine devint le modèle principal à suivre, l’Occident s’est inspiré de la vision dichotome de Saint Augustin, l’évêque d’Hippone. Ces modèles aussi ont été conservés et développés par les réformateurs du XVI siècle. De nos jours, alors même que l’Union européenne est une réalité, ses membres et candidats gardent toujours des attitudes divers vis-à-vis des «deux royaumes». Quel est le meilleur modèle et quelle attitude doit adopter l’Église par rapport à la politique, l’économie ou le recours à la force? Quelle est la forme de gouvernement idéale d’un point de vue chrétien? La religion est-elle source de conflit ou moyen de coopération? Nous ne pouvons donner réponse à ces questions contemporaines sans analyser au préalable les erreurs et les réussites du passé.
84
Suzanna VERGOUWE
Dynamics of the Holy and the Powerful: Stately Regimes and Development of the Greek Catholic Church in Transylvania The Greek Catholic church in Transylvania, the north-western part of Romania, has an interesting history, one that is characterised by an ever changing balance between clerical and secular powers. Looking at the dynamics of church and state as narrowly linked and as both depending on and influencing each other, a vivid picture of state and church interrelationships appears. This article deals with the coming of age of this Church in contemporary Transylvania, focusing on only one aspect of the relationship between Church and Society. This is a rather abstract one, as it focuses on institutions, rather than on people. These two constellations of power are often portrayed as solid and – so it seems – dominant structures, completely dominating the life of believers. Therefore, I would like to note here that it is my view that it is the people who make society, who express and form values, collective images and who have feelings, and it is the people who give expression to their faith.
Introduction Elijah is an important saint in the Byzantine tradition. His name day, 20 July, is celebrated with a holy mass in most Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches in villages and towns in Romania. One of these villages is a small community situated near the main road leading from Cluj to T[rgu Mures. In the small Greek Catholic church, people have gathered. As usual, men and a few small children are seated in front of the small church, while the women have taken their seats on the benches covered with colourful pillows in the back. The priest sings the prayers and hymns, assisted by a student from the seminary in Blaj. After the blessing, people gather outside in the courtyard for a chat. Men and boys who share the name “Elijah” (Ilie in Romanian) receive greetings and wishes. Shortly after, everyone returns home for lunch, and to have a nap. These days of rest are a welcome alternation to the days of hard work during the harvest season. The Orthodox congregation, whose church is just down the road, has left already; their service starts half an hour earlier. Suzanna VERGOUWE is an anthropologist, graduate of the Free University, Amsterdam, and of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London. She has conducted field work in Transylvania on the Greek Catholic Church, and in Vojvodina, Serbia, on the Romanian community in that area. She is currently working in Budapest as an intern for the Central European Subregion of WSCF-Europe.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
The picturesque Greek Catholic church of the community dates back to the XVIIIth century. It has been a house of worship to many generations of the village. It is probably one of the first churches that were built in this district, after the Greek Catholic church was officially established in Transylvania, which was, by then, part of the Habsburg Empire. This happened in the autumn of 1700. At that time, the largest Orthodox synod in Transylvania took place, gathering many priests, high officials and laymen. During this synod the Orthodox clergy decided upon the future of the Orthodox denomination in Transylvania. They decided to accept the four articles of the Council of Florence, which in 1439 had brought unity between Rome and Constantinople for a while. The articles included the acceptance of the Pope in Rome as the head of the Christian Church, the usage of unleavened bread during Holy Communion, the doctrine of purgatory, and the Latin doctrine on the Holy Trinity1. The former Orthodox priests kept the right to be married before being ordained as priests. 1 HITCHINS 1969. 16; and SOMESAN 1999. 33-35. The Latin doctrine on the Holy Trinity proclaims that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. In the Byzantine tradition it is adhered to that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone.
85
86 Suzanna VERGOUWE
Political and Religious Constellations in XVIIth Century Transylvania To understand the process, which led to this union with Rome, as it was officially called, we have to dive a little deeper in the social and political structures of those times. From the end of the XVIIth century, Transylvania had been part of the Habsburg Empire, with the status of principality. The Habsburg army had been in constant state of war with the troops of the Turkish Grand Vizier, whom they had defeated. As a result, the Habsburg government had obtained, among others, Transylvania, which from then onwards formed the border region with the Turkish Empire, a strategically important area indeed. The acquisition of these new territories, formerly under Turkish rule, confronted the government with certain problems. The authorities tended towards strong centralisation and accumulation of influence and in this process had to take into account the various political, religious and ethnic constellations within the Empire2. The Transylvanian society at the end of the XVIIth century was strongly segregated, and of a feudal nature. The Prince was the head of the state. The so-called three ‘Nations’, who had concluded their privileges in a league securing their political, economic and social position, formed the most influential groups. The Nations consisted of Hungarian noblemen (Magyars), Saxons and Szeklers (one of the Magyar tribes). Merchants, rich landowners and peasants from these three Nations formed the middle class. Their privileges distinguished them from the so-called “rabble”, which consisted mainly of Romanian, Magyar and Szekler peasants. In this political structure the Romanians, the fourth nationality inhabiting Transylvania, were not represented by nobility. The largest segment consisted of serfs, who worked on the land of large landowners and were obliged to pay tithes of their own produce to them. There had been a class of Romanian noblemen, but they had gradually taken over the language and the habits of the ruling elite of Magyars. The Reformation had influenced and altered the relationships and the balance between the various religious communities in Transylvania. An important part of the (Catholic) elite became Protestant. The Saxons adhered to the Lutheran denomination, the Magyars and Szeklers were Roman Catholic, Calvinist or Unitarian. These four denominations were the so-called “established” religions. “The faithful of each were guaranteed freedom of worship, and each church was granted equal numerical representation in all branches of the central administration and was allowed to manage its own affairs and to dispense justice to its adherents with a minimum of interference of the state.”3 Political position and religious liberty went hand in hand, so to speak. 2 According to ELIAS 1982, the basis of a legitimate state is its monopoly on taxation and its control of means of power and violence. The strive towards centralisation could be interpreted as a means to exert control over the inhabitants of the newly won areas to prevent internal conflicts and instability, and to guarantee a stable influx of financial means. Apart from this process, this tendency towards centralisation was strongly linked with developments outside of the Empire. The French King and the Empire of the Grand Vizier posed considerable and continuous threats to the stability of the border regions and the situation within the Empire (KÖPECZI 1994. 372; and VERDERY 1983. 114.). 3 HITCHINS 1969. 3-5.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE HOLY AND THE POWERFUL 87
The ethnic Romanians adhered to the Orthodox faith, a denomination, which was tolerated but not recognised. As the faithful of this figuration were mainly serfs, who had no income but the produce of their land, the church had no possessions such as land, churches and buildings, in those days the most important assets and sources of income and influence. An Orthodox priest was not distinguishable from his parishioners but by his headgear. Being a serf, he had to work the land of his lord and yield a tenth of the produce from his own small piece of land. The upper clergy had been given more privileges than the clergy in the villages, but the Nations subjected them to strict control on their administrative and religious practices. Priesthood was often passed on from father to son. A priest-to-be received his education in a monastery, from the priest in the village or even in a Calvinist school. This training was very limited. Priests learned how to read and write, but in theological matters they were hardly educated. The Protestant clergy, however, was well educated, and students went abroad to study regularly4. Beside the schooling system being superficial, the organisation of the Orthodox church in Transylvania was highly fragmented. Its centre was located in the Romanian principalities; the metropolitan of Walachia, after the prince of Transylvania had given his authorisation, appointed the Greek-Orthodox bishop5. During the course of time, ties with the main office in Walachia loosened. In 1567, Romanian had been introduced in the Orthodox liturgy, not to the liking of the Orthodox hierarchy. This contributed, however, to the development of Romanian literary and cultural life.6
Alliance between the Worldly Powers and the Roman Catholic Church Despite the fact that the Roman Catholic church had been one of the accepted religions in Transylvania, it had lost significant influence and number of believers. The ideas of LUTHER were spread by Saxon merchants and by students who frequently travelled to German towns. During and after the Reformation many members of the Catholic clergy had been expelled from the monasteries in the principality, and for a long period of time, they were not welcome there. The three Nations had a strong influence on the promotion of the Protestant ways of thinking and inhibited the Roman Catholic clergy from exerting influence. During the course of the XVIIth century, however, Catholic priests started to spread missionary activities into Transylvania from their home bases in the Kingdom of Hungary. Here, mainly Jesuit priests supported and brought further the counter-reformation and Catholic renewal – a development that not in the last place was enhanced by the close relationships between Rome and Vienna. Now that the lands bordering the Turkish Empire had been more or less secured, the Habsburg government directed its attention towards the policy of stabilisation and tranquillity within the Empire. In this process, the relationships 4 HITCHINS 1969. 12/3 and KÖPECZI 1994. 344., 403. 5 KÖPECZI 1994. 373. 6 SOMESAN 1999. 23-31.
88 Suzanna VERGOUWE between the Viennese authorities and the Roman Catholic church were tightly linked, because both benefited from a stable situation in the Empire. The state offered the Roman Catholic clergy as much space as was admissible in its strategy to promote centralisation and order in the principality7. Communities of believers were the most important entities of organisation. Therefore the religious “domestication” of the inhabitants by Catholic priests and friars was in the interest of the Habsburg government. Besides, the Pope of Rome contributed with a significant amount of financial means to the state treasury. The Catholic church, in turn, could not do without the military backing of the Habsburg army and its approval of the spreading of the Catholic faith8. However, none could do without the other, and in this process their ties of interdependence became stronger9. The Habsburg Emperor envisioned a political goal in Transylvania. “The Habsburgs fought […] against Transylvanian Calvinism. Not only as a heretic religious institution, but especially as bastion of Hungarian political resistance.”10 In this strategy, the Romanians were a central focus group. The emperor wanted to strengthen the influence of the state on the local communities, among other things, to pose a counterweight to the expanding, autonomous figurations of the three Nations. By uniting her to Rome, it was thought that the Romanian community, which consisted mainly of Orthodox, could be brought under the power and influence of Vienna and Rome and would be less perceptive to influences from Orthodox regimes in the neighbouring states.11 The motive, which was thought to be decisive, was the hope that the Orthodox believers would follow their priests, choosing the Catholic faith, with the prospect of improving their status in society.12 Although the Protestant elite was not considered as a threat to this goal because they were dependent upon the Emperor concerning the admission of privileges and decision making, still they were able to boycott the attempts of the Jesuit priests.
The Formation of the Greek Catholic Church In the conversion to Catholicism, the Jesuits, who came to Transylvania accompanied by Habsburg troops, first and foremost directed their efforts towards the clergy, hoping that this would eventually lead to a trickle-down effect in the villages. As one author put it, this was brought about through personal contacts with the priests, who became interested and were eventually in favour of an alignment with Rome.13 The biggest problems they were facing were the Orthodox dogmas. 7 HITCHINS 1969. 16. 8 See also BAX’ account on co-operation between the Habsburg regime and Rome in encouraging missionary activities by the Franciscan order in Bosnia Herzegovina (BAX 1995). 9 INGRAO 1994. 77/8; and BÉRENGER 1997. 1-25. This form of co-operation is not unknown in history. In other parts of the Empire, like in Bohemia, the wind was taken out of political opponents’ sails by exerting restrictions on admittance to public positions for nonCatholics and restricting the number of Protestant churches (INGRAO 1994. 30). 10 SOMESAN 1999. 33. 11 GHITTA 1995. 165/6. 12 KÖPECZI 1994. 373; HITCHINS 1969. 15/6; TEODOR 1998. 187.; VERDERY 1983. 108. The Jesuits, however, encountered resistance in their missionary activities, by the Protestant nations. In the Southwest of Transylvania, they were forced to leave (BARBU 1995. 157-164.). 13 HITCHINS 196. 918/9.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE HOLY AND THE POWERFUL 89
But in the end, as has been mentioned, a solution was found, and the four articles of the Council of Florence were the leading articles that had to be voted for. During the Synod of 1697, in which the Romanian hierarchy was present, it was concluded that the clergy would agree with unification. Certain demands were made, such as equal treatment of Greek Catholic clergy and access to means of education for Romanian students.14 In the following years, a new metropolitan was appointed. He was in the middle of disputes and interests of two sides. On the one hand there was the Calvinist clergy, who wanted him to refrain from the union. On the other side were the Orthodox bishops, who warned him of the Calvinist and Catholic pressure. He was in a difficult position and eventually called for a synod, which was held on 4 September 1700. In this Synod laymen were also present. There the final agreement, to enter in a union with Rome, was discussed and signed. One of the conditions demanded by the Roman Catholic bishops was that the Orthodox would break links and contacts with the Orthodox Churches in Walachia and Moldavia. The Uniate bishop of Transylvania would be directly subordinated to the Archbishop of Esztergom, Hungary. In this way, he remained independent from the Roman Catholic church in Transylvania15. The social and political status of the Greek Catholics remained unchanged for a long time, despite the fact that on paper Romanians had the same rights as other believers. Also from within the Orthodox church in Transylvania many protests were purported.16 However, in the course of the XVIIth century education became more widely available for Romanian students and a centre of intellectual activity slowly started to develop.17 During the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries the organisation of the Greek Catholic church in Transylvania consolidated more and more (although it lasted until the mid-XIXth century) until their basis was firmly established. It eventually entailed that the clergy became more and more independent from the Jesuit order and of the Roman Catholic Church.18 The relationship with the Orthodox churches from the South remained one of constant trial of strength. Many believers of the Uniate church re-entered the Orthodox congregation because the promises of abolition of serfdom and land reforms were not met. Apart from that, the Orthodox church in Transylvania was given a steadier basis with the appointment of an Orthodox bishop in this province during the reign of Maria Theresa. The three Nations did not strongly oppose this decision because they feared an 14 According to some authors, this was the first time in Romanian history that political claims were made. HITCHINS 1969; and SOMESAN 1999. 38. 15 The rights of the clergy were recorded in the first Dipoloma Leopoldinum. They were later added to the second Diploma. On paper, the Romanian clergy and believers were awarded the same rights as believers and clergy of other denominations. In practice, however, the relationships between nobility and serfs remained unchanged (SOMESAN 1999. 39-45). 16 See MURGESCU 1998. 174-183; VERDERY 1983; and SOMESAN 1999. 17 As has been argued in anthropological literature, emancipating tendencies in religious constellations tend to reduce the influence of the clergy on the life and ways of thinking of believers; by handing them the tools to emancipate (e.g. Education), independence from these institutions and from the dominant way of thinking is wrought as well. MEIJERS 1989. 18 The role and influence of the Jesuits gradually diminished during the course of the century. However, this process was noticeable throughout the Habsburg Empire, being strongly linked to a tendency towards rationalisation and secularisation of military, cultural and intellectual life. The order remained in charge of important educational institutions (INGRAO 1994. 165-168).
90 Suzanna VERGOUWE all too strong position of the Greek Catholic church and, most of all, they were cautious because of the plea the clergy and intellectuals made for the recognition of the Romanians as the ‘fourth Nation’ within the principality. Balancing between political choices whether or not to interfere, the Habsburg regime was more inclined not to support the development of the Orthodox church too strongly, and to put aside the claims made by the Romanian political and religious leaders concerning their status. An important reason for this being that the government did not want to lose the support of the ruling elite in Transylvania.19
Disintegration of the Habsburg Empire and Nation-Building Towards the end of the XVIIIth century, various revolts took place within the Habsburg Empire. The nobility as well as the less fortunate groups vented their discontent about the restriction of their privileges, or, on the other hand, the fact that their wishes had not yet materialised.20 Also, outside the Empire and especially in France, unrest remained among the population. This was reason enough for Emperor Joseph II to loosen his reign, and to sustain the development of more independent communities and factions in exchange for the prevention of upheaval. This development implied, however, that state bodies had less influence on these communities. In this atmosphere, a process came about that has been called “nation building”. The town of Blaj (Balázsfalva) played a central role as the main stage where ideas on Romanian identity were formed and put on record. Intellectuals, clergy, as well as laymen joined in efforts towards what has been called the “Transylvanian school”. Students were sent to Vienna and Rome to study and develop ideas about their identity as Romanians. Abroad, these students found out about the “origin” of their nation and subsequently, under the influence of broader trends in intellectual thinking, started to write about this relatively new topic. These discoveries, enhanced by the tradition of the Enlightenment, made them think in a very critical manner about the Transylvanian society. Therefore, their writings clearly intended to emancipate the Romanian people.21 Until the end of the First World War,22 the political thought among Romanian Greek Catholic intellectuals and politicians in Transylvania was directed towards their recognition as a the fourth Nation. In this claim, they were supported by the Orthodox, together representing one community. However, it would not be before 1863 that Romanians would be allowed to vote, and even longer before feudal relations were abolished.23
19 TEODOR 1998. 190. 20 In Transylvania serfs revolted out of unease with their economic and social situation. This revolt was broached by three men, under whose names it has become known in history; HORIA, CLOSCA and CRISAN (HITCHINS 1969. 39). 21 See HITCHINS 1969; SOMESAN 1999; and TEODOR 1995. Apart from being a political justification, their writings had the intent to be a justification for the union with Rome as well. 22 In 1918 Transylvania was joined with Great Romania, consisting of Walachia and Moldavia, forming what today is called Romania. 23 VERDERY accounts of feudal bonds that lasted until 1896, well within the recollection of the people she interviewed (VERDERY 1983:174).
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE HOLY AND THE POWERFUL 91
“We have always been Catholic”: the Greek Catholic Community beyond 1989 “We have always been Catholic, Miss,” was the phrase I heard so many times while living and doing field research in a Romanian community. In the village where I stayed, one third of the population belonged to the Greek Catholic congregation, the rest belonging to the Orthodox one. But, as most people admitted, they had been Catholic before, for a long time in history, and still considered themselves Catholic. “Before” meant “before 1948”, when the communist government abolished the Greek Catholic church in Romania, like in most of the other communist countries. Any church that had such close links with the Western part of Europe and the capitalist hemisphere was especially unwelcome to the communist doctrine of self-sufficiency and abstinence of (suspected) Western influences.24 Its property was confiscated by the state, as most of private and institutional property, or handed over to the Orthodox Church, and so were the believers.25 Under communism, the Greek Catholic community of believers was small and invisible, but nevertheless active. Most of the clergy, however, had been imprisoned or sentenced to labour camps. As some informants declared, marriages, baptisms and funerals were celebrated in private and led by Greek Catholic priests. Nevertheless, religious life in general was hampered, not to say discouraged, by the communist authorities. However, the persistence of some people in the Greek Catholic faith, rites and customs (but also in religious life in general) support the statement that state interference functioned only up to a certain level. It could not control the extreme, flexible and inventive acts of people. After December 1989, with churches booming, the Greek Catholic clergy reentered public life again. This congregation and other denominations as well, enjoyed a revival of church life. The most signifying struggle that all of the established congregations experienced was the fight for the restitution of their belongings. Most of the efforts of priests and higher clergy were consumed with dragging through the slowness of bureaucratic rules and assumptions. However, from the beginning the state drew back its hands from the problem. Cases are fought in court and the state makes every effort to stay on the sidelines, restricting itself to law-making and jurisdiction. It seems that the main fighting is left to the churches among themselves and to courts. Like in the village where people spoke to me about their church life, it had taken some effort, but the Greek Catholics regained their small wooden church. A priest settled in the village. From the first day on he began to raise funds to build a new 24 An explanation for the fact that the Roman Catholic church in Romania was tolerated is given by DELETANT. Its position was ambivalent, because monasteries were closed, but parishes and priests were allowed to function. The fact that the Roman Catholic community consisted practically solely of believers of Magyar origin prevented the Romanian communist government to forbid this church; since any action against the Roman Catholics in Romania might have been interpreted as directed specifically against the Magyar minority (DELETANT 1999. 92-94.). 25 They had to cede between 1800 and 2000 buildings; the 1,5 million believers automatically became Orthodox (RAMET 1998. 16.). For some Orthodox priests, however, this was a justification of the vexed unification with Rome of 1700 (DELETANT 1999. 101-103.).
92 Suzanna VERGOUWE church for his parishioners. The foundations were laid in 1947. This did not come about without tension between the “Orthodox” and the “Catholics”. But now relations settled. One could say that things became normal again, like in the old days.
Concluding Remarks In the preceding paragraphs, an effort has been made to outline the coming of age of the Greek Catholic church in Transylvania in the broader framework of relations between church and state. This relationship is one of the main characterising dynamics of power in a society because both compete for the same “rank and file” – that is, they fulfil important functions in the realm of organisation and orientation for people’s lives.26 Religious regimes are one of the players in the field of power and influence. In all periods described, the space in which both functioned was conditioned by outer influences, such as geopolitical constellations. At the same time, within these realms (the Habsburg Empire, as well as the Romanian communist state and the contemporary Romanian state) forces were (and are) at work that challenged the influence and authority of the stately regime. This balance changed over time and gave direction to the dynamic relationship between the two. This process, however, is not to be seen as separate from the “people”. It is they who act and think, who believe and give way to their values, who make society, and thus make state and church. As THOMAS has put it, “if people consider a situation as real, it is real in its consequences.”
Suggested Reading BAX Mart, Religieuze regimes in ontwikkeling. Verhulde vormen van macht en afhankelijkheid. (Religious Regimes in Process. Hidden Forms of Power and Dependency). Hilversum, 1988. BAX Mart, Medjugorje: Religion, Politics, and Violence in Rural Bosnia. Amsterdam, 1995. BÉRENGER Jean, A History of the Habsburg Empire 1700-1918. London, 1997. DELETANT Dennis, Communist Terror in Romania. Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965. London, 1999. ELIAS Norbert, Het Civilisatieproces.(The Civilising Process). Utrecht, 1982. GHITTA Ovidiu, Les débuts de l’organisation de l’Église gréco-catholique roumaine au nord-ouest de la Transylvanie. Stratégies missionaires. In CRACIUN Maria – OVIDIU Ghitta (eds.), Ethnicity and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe. Cluj, 1995. HITCHINS Keith, The Rumanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1780-1849. Cambridge, 1969. INGRAO Charles, The Habsburg Monarchy. 1618-1815. Cambridge, 1994. KÖPECZI Béla (ed.), History of Transylvania. Budapest, 1994. MEIJERS Daniël, De revolutie der vromen. Ontstaan en ontwikkeling van het chassidisme. (The Revolution of the Pious. Genesis and Development of Chassidism). Hilversum, 1989. MURGESCU Bogdan, Confessional Polemics and Political Imperatives in the Romanian Principalities (Late 17th – Early 18th Centuries). In CRACIUN Maria – OVIDIU Ghitta (eds.), Ethnicity and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe. Cluj, 1995. RAMET Sabrina P., Nihil Obstat. Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia. London, 1998. SOMESAN Maria, Inceputurile Bisericii Române Unite cu Roma. Bucuresti, 1999. TEODOR Pompiliu, The Romanians from Transylvania between the Tradition of the Eastern Church, the Counter Reformation and the Catholic Reformation. In CRACIUN Maria – OVIDIU Ghitta (eds.), Ethnicity and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe. Cluj, 1995. TEODOR Pompiliu, Tolerance and the Transylvanian Romanians: From Maria Theresa to Joseph II. In CRACIUN Maria – OVIDIU Ghitta (eds.), Ethnicity and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe. Cluj, 1995. VERDERY Katherine, Transylvanian Villagers. Three centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change. Berkeley, 1983.
Suzanna VERGOUWE: Dinámica de lo Santo y lo Poderoso: 26 For theory on state and religious regimes see BAX 1988.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
THE HOLY AND THE POWERFUL 93
los regímenes Estatales y el desarrollo de la Iglesia Católica Griega en Transilvania Los factores que llevaron a la creación de la Iglesia Católica Griega en Transilvania a finales del siglo XVII, fueron varios, y han de ser analizados desde diferentes perspectivas. El autor arguye desde el punto de vista de un antropólogo político, enfocado en las relaciones entre los regímenes estatales y clericales. La llegada de la Iglesia Católica Griega fue fomentada por las autoridades de Habsburgo y por la Iglesia Católico Romana. Esto con el objetivo de aumentar su campo de influencia en la sociedad transilvana, dominada entonces por una élite fundamentalmente protestante. Luego que el imperio de Habsburgo se desintegró, le siguieron una serie de cambios para lograr el equilibrio de poder; tanto hacia el interior como al exterior del Imperio. Entonces la Iglesia Católica Griega se mostró como una importante defensora y fuerza en la construcción dela nacionalidad rumana. Ya en los tiempos del comunismo la Iglesia Católica Griega pasó a la clandestinidad. Pero luego de 1989, la vida de la Iglesia se desarrolló nuevamente, y la Católica Griega ha retomado su lugar en la sociedad – no sin luchas – junto a otras denominaciones de su sociedad.
Suzanna VERGOUWE: La dynamique du sacré et du pouvoir: régimes étatiques et développement de l’Église Catholique Grecque en Transylvanie Les tendances qui ont abouti à la création de l’Église Catholique Grecque en Transylvanie à la fin du XVIIe siècle sont de nature diverse et doivent être abordées sous différents angles. L’auteur de cet article fonde son argumentation sur une perspective anthropologique, axée sur les relations entre le régime clérical et étatique. Ce furent en effet les autorités des Habsbourg et l’Église Catholique Romaine qui furent à l’origine de la maturité de cette Église; en étendant leur champ d’influence à la Transylvanie, ils prétendaient renforcer leur ascendant sur la société transylvaine, dominée par une élite principalement protestante. Après la désintégration de l’Empire des Habsbourg suite aux changements des rapports de forces à l’intérieur et l’extérieur de l’empire, l’Église Catholique Grecque s’érigea en important défenseur et véritable précurseur de l’édification de la nation roumaine. Sous le communisme, les activités de l’Église Catholique Grecque continuèrent en secret. Après 1989, la vie de l’Église repris, et les catholiques grecques ont désormais trouvé une place, non sans confrontations, néanmoins, avec d’autres confessions de la société roumaine.
94
Samuel MORENO MANRIQUE
Fe y Poder: ¿sinónimos, antónimos o qué? Una reflexión desde la perspectiva de la vida y enseñanzas de Jesús de Nazaret Si difícil se hace hablar sobre la Fe solamente, o hablar sobre el Poder solamente, más difícil se hace hablar de ambas en conjunto. Pero si difícil es, imposible no. Difícil pues, ¿cómo referirse, a través de conceptos a algo que no sólo tiene una dimensión racional, sino que además tiene una magnitud profundamente emocional, y que toca las fibras más profundas de nuestra condición humana como lo es la fe? Y también, ¿cómo abordar el asunto del poder, criticarlo y redimirlo, sin comprometernos en la reproducción de esquemas de dominación que no encajan con la propuesta de Jesucristo de hace casi 2000 años? Y por último, ¿cómo conciliar ambas realidades humanas tan diferentes – y para muchos sin algo o nada en común – y hasta antagónicas –, pero a la vez tan interrelacionadas, que a veces se llega al otro extremo de identificar a una con la otra? Por otra parte afirmamos que imposible no, pues no existe imposibilidad para hablar – o escribir – sobre algo que a diario vivimos. Pero que como experiencia de vida al fin, siempre estará matizada por la subjetividad de quien la vive. De ahí que lo que aquí se comparte se hace con la conciencia de que es una aproximación más – no una foto sino una pintura – a estas dos realidades y a su íntima relación entre sí para con el ser humano.
Una fe contextualizada es una fe viva No cabe lugar a dudas, y cada vez es más aceptado por la mayoría, que el ser humano constituye una unidad íntegra e inseparable; que en él lo emocional y lo racional, lo espiritual y lo material, se conforman de una manera tan estrechamente unidas que es imposible separarlos. Por lo tanto, hablar de fe o desde la fe tiene que ver con todo nuestro ser porque compromete a todo el ser humano. Pero además la fe determina un estilo, una manera específica de vivir y de aproximarse a la vida. Así, la fe cristiana en particular, como sucede también con otras manifestaciones de Samuel MORENO MANRIQUE es graduado de Licenciatura en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa de la Universidad de Matanzas Camilo Cienfuegos, Cuba. Actualmente cursa estudios de Teología a distancia por la Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana (UBL) de Costa Rica, atiende la Secretaría para la Formación de Líderes del Movimiento Estudiantil Cristiano (MEC) de Cuba, y es el Editor de la Región América Latina y el Caribe (ALC) de la Federación Universal de Movimientos Estudiantiles Cristianos (FUMEC), para la revista “Student World”. Y es miembro de la Iglesia de Cristo de Cuba.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
fe, træ como resultado una manera de vivir individual y colectivamente. Por lo tanto, la fe es experiencia, razón y práctica en medio de una cultura y un contexto económico social y político. Así sucede con la fe cristiana. Los cristianos hablamos de la encarnación. Dios se encarnó en un ser humano: Jesús de Nazaret (Flp 2:6-8). Este se hizo humano en un contexto histórico, social, y cultural específico: la Palestina de principios de nuestra Era, bajo el poder y dominio del Imperio Romano. Es decir, Jesús, a quien tomamos como nuestro paradigma, fue un hombre totalmente de su tiempo. Por lo tanto, ser cristianos significa intentar ser un humano pleno del tiempo, la sociedad y la cultura donde Dios nos ha situado. De ahí que si el cristiano quiere ser fiel seguidor de su mæstro Jesús, debe intentar encarnar realmente en su realidad, y es a esto a lo que llamamos contextualidad de la fe cristiana.
Todos y todas somos depositarios y ejecutores del poder En cuanto al poder, al hablar de este el pensamiento corriente y descuidado piensa enseguida en el poder político, y en correspondencia en el Gobierno o el Estado. Pero no es esta la única manifestación de poder, ni siquiera poder en sí. Por lo general se entiende el poder como una cosa, cuando en realidad se trata de personas. De lo anterior se hace necesario decir que el poder no es una cosa sino una relación. Y una relación de personas que conviven en una misma sociedad. La propia relación social constituye una relación de poder. De hecho, toda relación social incluye siempre un índice de poder; y el poder aquí toma forma de influencia mutua. De esta forma el poder está situado originalmente en la base de la sociedad, nace al pie de toda relación social y humana en general.1 1 BOFF Clodovis, El evangelio del poder-servicio, la autoridad en la vida religiosa. Santander, 1987. 31-32.
95
96 Samuel MORENO MANRIQUE Por ejemplo, cuando somos responsables de guardar o trasmitir cierta información; cuando tomamos decisiones respecto a un asunto dado; al supervisar una labor y cuidar por los bienes, derechos, espacios o salud de otros/as; al ser responsables o guías de un grupo de personas en cierto lugar y por determinado período de tiempo; cuando tenemos la labor de enseñar; y ¡hasta cuando realizamos un favor!; entre muchísimas – casi infinitas – interacciones sociales – relaciones sociales – más que a diario vivimos. Así, la propia vida en sociedad es un juego de influencias. En la interrelación humana hay todo un proceso de interrelación recíproca, donde cada uno es unas veces sujeto, y otras objeto; unas agente, y otras paciente. Y en la medida que alguien es agente, tiene un cierto poder con relación al otro (contra o a favor, sobre o con, etc.). En la proporción que alguien es sujeto social, es también poseedor de poder. En resumen, el poder es participación en la vida social, en la vida en común.
Fe y poder, binomio con aristas negativas Ahora bien, si el poder tiene que ver con las relaciones que se establecen entre los seres humanos en lo social, lo político, lo económico y en otras esferas de la dinámica humana; y la fe tiene que ver con lo íntimo del ser humano, con sus fibras más sensibles, pero que humano al fin, esa experiencia de fe se encuentra expresada en un contexto dado, que esto supone una realidad económico, político, social y medioambiental específica, entonces las relaciones que se establezcan entre los humanos afectarán directamente, para bien o para mal, y en mayor o menor grado, la experiencia de fe de cada individuo, y al mismo tiempo, la fe – que es poder en sí misma – también, en mayor o menor grado, y en dependencia de la intensidad con la que se contextualice y encarne, afectará las relaciones entre los seres humanos. De ahí que podamos afirmar que fe y poder están íntimamente ligados. Casi se podría afirmar que uno presupone al otro. Sin embargo, si bien lo anterior deja claro que estos dos términos no son para nada antónimos, con esto no se pretende afirmar que ambos son sinónimos. No. Existe un gran peligro en esto. A lo largo de la historia humana se ha puesto de manifiesto que a la fe, en reiteradas ocasiones, se le ha identificado con el poder porque ha estado a su servicio. Esta ha dejado de ser Fe, y ha pasado a ser un instrumento más de dominación en manos de los poderosos. Pero no ha sido esta una fe crítica y esperanzadora, sino una fe descontextualizada y de sometimiento; y por otra parte, el poder al que ha estado legitimando ha sido un poder dominación–opresión. Quizás por lo anterior existan personas que puedan identificar a ambas como quasi-sinónimos, sin embargo, una relectura de la historia, y más específicamente aún, una relectura de la vida, enseñanzas y testimonio de fe de Jesús de Nazaret, nos ayudará a aclarar esto.
Jesús, el paradigma de equilibrio entre fe y poder Hace aproximadamente 2000 años irrumpió en la historia un hombre que revolucionó totalmente los cimientos de los conceptos de las relaciones entre los seres humanos: Jesús, el Cristo. Según testimoniaron sus contemporáneos, fue
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
FE Y PODER 97
este un “varón poderoso en hechos y palabras” (Jn 7:46; Lc 24:19). Pero no lo fue por poseer muchos bienes materiales a su servicio, ni muchos hombres y mujeres a su disposición, ni por poseer ninguna otra cosa que para el humano siempre han sido símbolo de poder, o el poder mismo. Fue este hombre, poderoso en primer lugar, porque sus hechos siempre estuvieron en consonancia con sus palabras; porque hizo del servicio fuente de vida para todos/as, su primera acción en todo momento; porque fue crítico implacable de los injustos y opresores, mientras que era esperanza y alegría para los excluidos y oprimidos – los olvidados –; porque se atrevió a ir contra corriente, contra esquemas rígidos y obsoletos, degeneradores de vida; porque enseñó nuevas y mejores formas de relaciones posibles entre los humanos; porque mostró que el poder tiene un rostro humano, opuesto al poder antivida–dominación–opresión, que es precisamente el poder–servicio–entrega, dador de vida, que él puso en práctica durante todo su ministerio, y que fue producto de la fe que le inspiraba. Fue esto, y no otros atributos, lo que hizo que sus contemporáneos afirmasen que era él un hombre poderoso por lo que decía y hacía.
Lo que encontramos en el Nuevo Testamento Veamos ahora, pues, qué aprendemos hoy de lo que Jesús enseñó hace casi 2000 años. Fe como poder Innumerables son los textos que encontramos en el Nuevo Testamento que hacen referencia a lo que Jesús enseñó, o los mismos apóstoles siguiendo sus enseñanzas, referente a la fe como poder en sí misma para realizar milagros – casi fantásticos para los incrédulos – como lo son mover montañas, sanar enfermos, o salvar vidas. Así tenemos Mt 17:20; Mt 21:21; Mr 5:34; Rom 1:17; Gál 3:11; Heb 10:38 entre otros. También se nos muestra la fe como protección – escudo – contra los poderes del mal en Ef 6:16; o como seguridad ante lo incierto –ancla- en Stgo 1:6; entre muchos más. Jesús, crítico del poder religioso Pero además, vemos cómo Jesús constantemente fustigaba a aquellos que detentaban el poder religioso, y que hacían un mal uso del mismo al someter la fe a este. Fue implacable crítico de los Fariseos, Escribas, Saduceos (Mæstros de la Ley) quienes “decían pero no hacían”. Ellos eran claros ejemplos del sometimiento de la fe al poder – especialmente los Saduceos y Fariseos. En Mt 15:79,12 y Mr 7:1-23, encontramos pasajes en los que abierta y directamente Jesús desenmascara a los que tenían el monopolio de la fe sometida al poder. Les llamó por las claras: ¡Hipócritas! Otro pasaje es en el que Jesús alerta a sus seguidores sobre lo dañino y peligroso de la actitud (“levadura”) de los Fariseos – poder religioso –, y de la de Herodes – poder político. Este se encuentra en Mr 8:14-21 y su paralelo en Mt 16:5-12.
98 Samuel MORENO MANRIQUE Jesús, crítico de la fe sometida al poder Textos muy ilustrativos de la maldad y manipulación que de la fe hacían los monopolizadores de esta en la época de Jesús, los tenemos en Lc 16:14, Mt 6:5 y en Jn 18:14, donde se pone al descubierto la verdadera identidad de ellos. Pero el texto que recoge la más completa caracterización y desenmascaramiento, que Jesús hace de los hipócritas religiosos y manipuladores de la fe de su tiempo, está en Mt 23:1-36 y sus paralelos en Mr 12:38-40 y Lc 11:37-54. Ahí Jesús no economiza adjetivos para denominar a aquellos que jugaban con la fe y con el poder. De “hipócritas”, “sepulcros blanqueados”, “generación de víboras”, “guías ciegos” e “insensatos” califica a aquellos que legitimaban y reproducían esquemas de poder opresivos, excluyentes y de muerte, que se generaban en todos los niveles de aquella sociedad, y que abarcaba desde los gobernantes, pasando por los pequeños comerciantes, hasta llegar al mismísimo nivel familiar. Jesús, crítico del poder político Por otra parte, con relación a los poderes de este mundo – poder político – el Mæstro al ser interrogado por Pilatos, ante una advertencia que este le hace de que él tiene el poder, tanto para crucificarle como para liberarle, él le responde que no tendría poder sobre él si del cielo no se lo permitiesen – Mt 19:11. Dejando claro que el poder en el que Pilatos confiaba, era un poder temporal y que de la forma que él lo entendía pronto cambiaría. Jesús, nuevo concepto y practica del poder Pero al mismo tiempo que Jesús critica libre y abiertamente al poder–dominación–opresión de su contexto, también está presentando una nueva forma de entenderlo y vivirlo a partir de la fe que le inspira, es este el poder–servicio–entrega. Son muchos los textos que se refieren a esto. Algunos nos presentan a Jesús enseñando que en su Reino (o nuevo orden de cosas o relaciones inter-humanas) las cosas serán al revés, es decir, para llegar a ser un superior, un “poderoso”, habría que hacerse como un niño/a – Mt 19:13-15, y sus paralelos en Mr 10:13-16 y Lc 18:15-17. Otros textos nos hablan de Jesús enseñando a no temer a los que puedan dañar el cuerpo pero no el espíritu, antes debemos temer a los que dañan a nuestro espíritu (Mt 10:26-28). Es una enseñanza contestataria y que infunde determinación ante cualquier empeño. Él es claro, ningún poder humano puede impedir nuestra misión de fe. Jesús: “El menor será el mayor” Uno de los pasajes más elocuentes, y que revierte con total claridad el concepto de poder, grandeza y autoridad, es el que se encuentra en Mt 20:20-21 (y sus paralelos en Mr 10:35-45 y Lc 22:24-27). Son los textos que narran el deseo que tenían algunos de los seguidores de Jesús de tener dominio y poder una vez que él triunfase. Uno quería sentarse a su diestra y el otro a su izquierda. Ante esto el Mæstro deja categóricamente claro que “el que quiera hacerse grande entre vosotros será vuestro siervo”, y se toma a sí mismo como ejemplo al decir: “como
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
FE Y PODER
99
el hijo del hombre no vino para ser servido sino para servir, y para dar su vida en rescate por muchos”. Y antes de esto aclara que su lógica es bien distinta a la del mundo, pues “los gobernantes de las naciones se enseñorean de ellas, y los que son grandes ejercen sobre ellas potestad, más entre vosotros no será así”. Deja claro. No da lugar a dudas ni interpretaciones a conveniencia: el poder se ejerce al vivir la fe através del servicio. ¡Jesús, hombre poderoso! Fue tal la verdad y poder que de Jesús emanaban, que aún los propios espías enviados por los fariseos, para hallar en él falta alguna para acusarle, tuvieron que admitir que “¡Jamás hombre alguno ha hablado como este hombre!” (Jn 7:46). Tal era el poder de Jesús. Brevemente hemos dado un vistazo a lo que la Biblia, específicamente el Nuevo Testamento, habla sobre nuestro referente Jesús. Hemos visto cómo precisamente a los máximos representantes del poder religioso que mal utilizaban tal poder, es a quienes él más fustiga. No con odio pero sí con determinación y energía. Constantemente nos alerta sobre el peligro de que la fe sea manipulada o sirva de instrumento de dominación y legitimación del poder–opresión en manos de los poderosos. Fue él un ferviente crítico del poder por ellos detentado que mal empleaban. De ahí que podamos concluir que la fe y el poder tampoco son sinónimos.
Jesús entiende las cosas diferente a como el mundo las entiende Por otra parte, la propuesta de vida, de convivencia entre los seres humanos y de fe que Jesús plantea en su época, es totalmente revolucionaria. En un contexto donde la violencia, el engaño, la exclusión, el desenfreno, el adultocentrismo y patriarcado, el androcentrismo, el interés solo de las riquezas por las riquezas, y la pérdida de sentido de la fe y lo religioso, la orgía, la amoralidad y la corrupción estaban a la orden del día; en una cultura donde imperaba la ley de talión: “Ojo por ojo y diente por diente”; donde las diferencias entre los seres humanos estaban rígidamente delimitadas; donde el poder era juguete en manos de hombres inescrupulosos, sin principios ni sentido de humanidad; es ahí donde él desarrolla su mensaje, vive su fe, y actúa en consecuencia con lo que predica. A la enseñanza del odio–venganza, presenta la del amor-perdón; a la mentalidad exclusiva–excluyente, presenta la mentalidad aceptación–inclusión; ante el estilo de vida amoral, desequilibrado y orgiástico, presenta uno de equilibrio, de ética y en armonía con la vida; a una visión adultocéntrica, patriarcal y androcéntrica presenta una multigeneracional, familiar y heterocéntrica; a la lógica de riquezas para más riquezas, presenta la de las riquezas para el bienestar de todos y todas; ante la pérdida de significado de la fe y lo religioso en la vida humana, presenta una revitalización, resignificación y contextualización de estas; y ante un concepto y práctica del poder como poder–dominación–opresión, presenta un nuevo concepto y una nueva práctica para el mismo: el poder entrega–servicio. Y todo lo anterior como praxis concreta de la fe que le inspira.
100 Samuel MORENO MANRIQUE No en balde, luego de que el cristianismo se convirtiera en un pujante y creciente movimiento a principios del siglo I y hasta el IV, fue muy mal visto por los que detentaban el poder. Y esto sucedió precisamente debido al legado de fe y acción que Jesús dejó, el cual se convirtió en un contrapoder al entonces establecido. Era y es una alternativa de poder. Era y es un nuevo concepto o forma de entenderlo y vivirlo: poder como entrega, servicio, solidaridad, generador de vida.
Llamados/as a continuar la senda de Jesús hoy Es a esta forma de experimentar el poder que estamos llamados aquellos y aquellas que hemos optado por seguir las huellas del carpintero de Nazaret. Siempre estando alertas de no reproducir esquemas de poder hasta ahora establecidos, legitimados y que nada tienen que ver con esta propuesta a partir de la fe cristiana. Sin embargo, los “poderosos” de nuestro tiempo no han dejado de ver y vivir el poder como lo vieron y vivieron los de la época de Jesús. Hoy el peligro de una acción política, económica, militar, ambiental, o social de cualquier tipo, sin meditar correcta y humanamente sus posibles consecuencias, es potencial y astronómicamente mayor. Hoy, como nunca antes el ser humano imaginó, existe un desarrollo tal que se puede viajar el mundo entero en pocas horas; comunicarse de un punto al extremo más lejano en sólo segundos; tener acceso a la más amplia y variada información producida hasta el mismo momento de consulta sobre cualquier tema; y se avanza cada vez más en el conocimiento de los misterios de la vida y la naturaleza a través de todas las ciencias, entre muchísimas cosas más. Pero precisamente debido a ese superdesarrollo, y a la incapacidad de los que están haciendo uso del poder humano de entender ese mismo poder de otra forma que no sea la de dominación–opresión, es que el peligro aumenta cada vez más, y es que cobra cada día más fuerza y vigencia la enseñanza del carpintero de Nazaret sobre el poder como poder–servicio–entrega, en cada relación social que vivamos, como manifestación palpable y visible de una experiencia de fe interior e invisible. Y nosotros, como fieles seguidores de sus enseñanzas, debemos hacernos eco en palabras y hechos concretos, de cada una de ellas en un mundo al que los ángeles no han sido enviados a cambiar, sino que nos ha tocado a nosotros, hombres y mujeres de este tiempo, la responsabilidad de redimirlo con nuestras propias manos y con la asistencia del Dios que es Vida, y Vida en abundancia.
Conclusiones Concluyendo, la fe y el poder ni son antónimos ni son sinónimos. Afirmar lo primero sería como afirmar que un instrumento musical de percusión se opone a uno de cuerdas, cuando ambos se complementan al integrarse en una canción. Mientras que dar crédito a lo segundo sería como asentir que ambos instrumentos son para un mismo uso y finalidad, y por lo tanto que se podría prescindir de uno de los dos, cuando sus diferentes sonidos son necesarios para enriquecer y embellecer la armonía de una obra musical. Pero bueno, entonces ¿qué son la fe y el poder según la experiencia de este autor? Pues ambas son realidades que afectan al ser humano en todas sus dimensiones,
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
FE Y PODER
101
que mantienen una estrecha relación entre sí y que se manifiestan, o bien como sometimiento–opresión–dominación, o en transformación–regeneración–liberación para el mismo en caso de que así lo entienda, asuma y lo viva. A lo segundo es que estamos llamados todos y todas los cristianos/as: a vivir y mostrar al mundo el rostro humano del poder a través de nuestra fe, y de esta forma demostrar que relaciones fraternas, justas y generadoras de vida, son posibles y realizables entre todos los seres humanos hoy. En Jesús encontramos el paradigma. Continuemos aprendiendo de él y vivamos lo aprendido. Bibliografía: BOFF Clodovis, El evangelio del poder-servicio, la autoridad en la vida religiosa. Santander, 1987.
Samuel MORENO MANRIQUE: Faith and Power: Antonymous, Synonymous or what. An Analysis from the Perspective of the Teachings and Life of Jesus of Nazareth The article makes an approximation to the relationship between faith and power. It also deals with their influences upon human life taking as reference the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. First, it defines how the concepts of faith and power are understood. Secondly, a comparison of these concepts is made between Jesus’ perspective and the one of the “powerful people of the world”. Thirdly, passages from the New Testament are presented in order to show the many times Jesus taught and lived power and faith in the very same way we proclaim here: power as service, as solidarity and as a generator of life; faith as experience of life. Finally, a call is made to put into practice these teachings in a world which is already able to destroy itself. This will certainly happen if the concept and practice of power and faith is not similar than the one Jesus Christ taught almost 2000 years ago.
Samuel MORENO MANRIQUE: Foi et pouvoir: antonymes, synonymes ou quelque chose d’autre. Analyse à partir de la perspective des enseignements et de la vie de Jesus de Nazareth L’article traite la relation entre la foi et le pouvoir et leurs influences sur la vie des hommes en prenant comme référence les enseignements de Jesus de Nazareth. D’abord, l’article définit la façon dont sont compris les concepts de foi et de pouvoir. Ensuite, sont comparées la vision du Christ et celle des «puissants de ce monde» concernant ces notions. Par ailleurs, des extraits du Nouveau Testament sont présentés afin de montrer que le Christ enseigna et vécu le pouvoir et la foi de la même façon que nous proclamons ici, soit, le pouvoir en tant que service et solidarité, comme créateur de vie. Enfin, l’article appelle à mettre en pratique ces enseignements dans un monde déjà capable de se détruire, ce qui peut certainement arriver si le concept et la pratique du pouvoir et de la foi ne suivent pas ce que Christ enseigna déjà il y a plus de 2000 ans.
102
Rita NEHME
Blasphemy or Faith A Commentary on The Last Temptation of Christ
“The Church today depicts a distorted image of Christ,” a viewer of The Last Temptation of Christ remarked. “There were times during the film where I sensed this great provocation. I felt like destroying the screen. However, towards the end I realized how much we are being misled by the fundamental teachings and how far we are from the real Christ!” “I did not like the movie at all! It is nothing but a pure mockery of the Christian faith,” another viewer commented. These remarks were made by two viewers who watched the film, The Last Temptation of Christ at a conference organized by the Orthodox Youth Movement in Lebanon. It is well-known for the world-wide controversy that it aroused. Is the film a real alteration of Christianity as some have claimed, or is it a representation of faith in a new context? I support the latter. I have no specific plan to motivate you to watch the film. Although this article will summarize several critiques surrounding it and will tackle several main themes that can be drawn from it. My main objective remains, however, to pinpoint the hazy issues that the fragmented Church has laid before us. The main question remains: dœs this fragmented, partitioned Church of today resemble, to a great extent, the adulterous woman in The Last Temptation of Christ? In other words, if the Church is foreseen as the upcoming bride of Jesus, as Saint John points out in the Book of Revelation, “and I, John, saw the Holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband,” (Rev. 21:2) then what kind of bride is being prepared? This article works through collected reviews to confront this question.
Divinity and Humanity Martin SCORSESE’s film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) was based on Nikos KAZANTZAKIS’ 1955 novel in which, “Jesus appears as a tormented, fearful young man confused by sex and uncertain of his path in life.”1 Carol IANNONE remarks that the film was condemned by virtually every Christian denomination, both in the United States and abroad. It was protested, picketed, subject to boycotts and bomb threats, and excluded from titles carried by the movie rental mega-chain, Blockbuster Video. Rita NEHME is a Greek Orthodox from Lebanon. She is a middle school English teacher pursuing graduate studies in International Affairs in Beirut. As a member of the Lebanese Orthodox Youth Movement, she is also a member of the Executive Committee of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). 1 IANNONE Carol, Commentary.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
Even today this film is still banned in the Middle East region. When one of the Student Christian Movements decided to show the film during a recent conference on The Bible in Art and Literature, organizers took the risk of getting the film then translating it into Arabic. This movie has indeed overwhelmed critics for many years. In most cases it was condemned as “an international attack on Christianity,” as Joseph REILLY of Morality in Media described. The film drew criticism not only for its affront to conventional piety but also for æsthetic reasons as well. However, the astonishing controversy raging around this film, as Roger EBERT notes, was primarily the work of fundamentalists who have their own view of Christ. They are offended by the film because they feel that the movie questions the divinity of Christ. EBERT adds that most critics, who ironically have not seen the film, have issues with the final passages, during which the Christ is on the Cross, in great pain, and begins to hallucinate and imagine what his life would be like if he had been an ordinary man. Even though Christianity teaches that Jesus was both God and human, this fact has remained the central mystery of the Christian faith. Christian theology holds that Jesus was fully human: it is as heretical to deny Christ’s humanity as to deny his divinity. In this context, KAZANTZAKIS wrote in the
103
104 Rita NEHME introduction of his novel, “this book was not written because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death – because all three could be conquered, all three have already been conquered. Christ suffered pain and since then pain has been sanctified. Temptation fought until the very last moment has led him astray, and temptation was defeated. Christ died on the Cross, and that instant death was vanquished forever.” He added that the book is not a biography. Instead, it is a confession of every human who struggles. Through publication, KAZANTZAKIS fulfills the work of a person who struggled and led a much embittered life. He was certain that every reader would love Christ more than ever before.2 On the contrary, those who read the book acted differently. The book has led to KAZANTZAKIS’ excommunication from the Greek Orthodox Church. The novel was placed on the Roman Catholic Index of Forbidden Books, and Protestant fundamentalist groups in the United States sought to have it banned from libraries.
Efforts of the Ordinary Human As for SCORSESE, if Jesus was so easily, so effortlessly, so unambiguously divine, “then when temptations came to him surely it was so easy to resist them because he was divine.” SCORSESE declared that the teaching of the Catholic schools placed so much emphasis on the divine side that if Jesus would walk into a room, you would know that He is God because He glowed in the dark, instead of being someone “you could sit down with, have dinner and eat with.” Being a holder of this view, SCORSESE just like KAZANTZAKIS was drawn to a portrayal of the human Christ who had to struggle with fleshy desires and limitations. Tom POLLOCK, the producer of Last Temptation noted that some Christians “are very uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus is fully human.” In this regard, IANNONE seconded KAZANTZAKIS’ and SCORSESE’s views by saying that The Last Temptation of Christ seemed to her the effort of an ordinary man to understand Christ’s sacrifice from the inside and to experience it as his own. In order to speak to modern people, arriving so late in the ages of belief, Jesus must be made to bear the infirmities of our age – the doubt, the angst, the fear and trembling, the existential dread, and yes, even the sexual obsession. Moreover, in an age of complacent materialism Christ must be tempted not only by extraordinary evil but by the possibility of a life of ordinary pleasure as well – not only by lavish indulgence but also by the life of middle-class satisfactions. She also viewed that the sensational material that was used in the film proved necessary in order to bring out the full idea of what the sacrifice entails and some sense of the need to transcend the simple and humanly understandable desire for self-satisfaction. Generally, KAZANTZAKIS presented, and SCORSESE followed, a four-fold division of Jesus’ adult life. After a period of morbid doubt and dread, he journeys to an 2 KAZANTZAKIS Nikos, The Last Temptation of Christ. 1954.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
BLASPHEMY OR FAITH 105
essence-like enclave where he is freed of many of his besetting demons and emerges with enough strength and grace to heal and preach – though a little uncertainly and reluctantly, since each sign of his special nature brings him closer to the awesome realization that he is the anointed one. His message at first is a sweet child compendium of love, peace, acceptance, and forgiveness. However, he is driven to a second stage by the harsh apocalyptic teaching of John the Baptist. He recoils to the desert, is sorely tempted, and emerges with a philosophy of the “ax” – the need to destroy the evil power in the world. He is for a time swayed into thinking he must be the messiah of the zealots who will transform the earth through revolution. Finally, he realizes, with the help of a vision from the prophet Isaiah, that his mission is to be the sacrifice, the complete and willing sacrifice of self that will “save the world”, “save humanity from its sins” and show the triumph of the spirit over the flesh (or the “transubstantiation” of flesh into spirit, as KAZANTZAKIS might put it). However, at the penultimate moment, Satan (who had promised in the desert that they would meet again) returns in disguise, claiming to be from God, and urging Jesus to relinquish the delusion that he is the Messiah, leave the Cross, and live a normal life instead. In his turn Steven D. GREYDANUS highlighted the art in making the movie. He said in this regard, “a work of art be, on the whole, generally evocative of the truth about its subject.” In other words, the work of art should be reasonably true to that subject, that it not turn the subject into something antithetical to itself. “A movie about the man Jesus may have value if it shows Jesus to be recognizably and authentically human, while at least minimally leaving room for his divine nature, remaining at least compatible with Christian belief in his deity – in a word, while not turning him into an fallible, fallen man, one who could not be God.”
Creativity vs. Corruption Unlike IANNONE and EBERT, GREYDANUS remarked that The Last Temptation is a bad film if it is to be viewed from a religious perspective. He said in this regard, “in short, my conclusion is that the religious critics who think Last Temptation a bad film are correct. Dœs this mean that the fans and film critics who think it a creative masterpiece are wrong? I have made my case for the film’s spiritual bankruptcy, but what about its value as art?” It is quite true that a film can be morally or spiritually objectionable and still have significant artistic or entertainment value. This is the entire point of GREYDANUS specialized ratings system. As a movie critic, GREYDANUS had grave moral objections to The Cell, American Beauty and Being John Malkovich, but he gave them all high marks for artistic and entertainment value. Whatever other faults these movies may have in his opinion, each of them is in its own way interesting to watch. “Parts of them I might even want to see again,” Greydanus remarked. Yet, for him at least, The Last Temptation of Christ is a complete wash. Not because of a directorial failure on SCORCESE’s part, but simply because no director in the world could possibly make this material into a film worth sitting through for its own sake. GREYDANUS holds that it is possible to prescient from a movie’s offensive use of themes and appreciate its achievements in spite of its moral failings.
106 Rita NEHME However, how it is possible to bracket all the objections that must be raised to all that is anti-Christian in Last Temptation and still have something worthwhile left over to appreciate or enjoy? Past a certain point, objectionability obliterates all hope or desire of approaching a work as art or entertainment. “No level of production values or technically proficient filmmaking could make it worthwhile to watch a movie that indulged in child pornography, or that relentlessly celebrated the Holocaust, or that overtly romanticized the degradation and abasement of women. Cross a certain line, and message overwhelms medium, substance overwhelms style, what you have to say drowns out how you might be saying it”, says GREYDANUS. Although Last Temptation gœs way over that line and could be both poisonous morally and spiritually, GREYDANUS finds himself reflecting on the significance of the fact that this film represents the collaboration of a writer of Greek Orthodox heritage and a filmmaker of Italian Catholic background. Despite his severe criticism for some parts of the film, GREYDANUS summarizes, “only artists so steeped from childhood in the rich profundity of Christian tradition could possibly create something so profoundly antithetical to that tradition, so deeply heretical and blasphemous. Even a lapsed Protestant could never have made it by an ordinary nonreligious or atheistic filmmaker.
Where are we Heading? As you have seen, many well-known movie and novel critics held quite different opinions regarding Kazantzakis’ novel or Scorsese’s movie, The Last Temptation. Obviously no one could deny the artistic values entailed in both the film and the novel. However, I believe that there are many other points that one can still raise in the same context, especially the issue of the Christ’s humanity. In this regard, as SCORSESE himself noted, the Church rarely puts emphasis on this aspect. I would go further to say that the fragmented Church, through its leaders, presents Christ the way it enjoys. I believe that the extra weight the Church puts on the divinity of Christ is a cheap way of eluding the believers. The only way for church leaders to preserve hegemony is to illustrate an “omnipotent and glowing” Christ instead of a fully human one. Besides, the concept of marriage (immensely highlighted both by the film and the novel) is not merely a physical or a sensual matter. What is wrong and offending about it is that Christ is marrying an adulterous woman. Marriage itself should not be the disturbing issue here, as I have pointed out earlier in the introduction referring to the Book of Revelation in the Bible. However, I hold that the Church, with its present segmentation, greatly resembles an adulterous woman that knows very well how to torture her husband through her betrayal. Perhaps the most poignant point of closure comes from the inscription on KAZANTZAKIS’ tomb, “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” Bibliography EBERT Robert, The Last Temptation. www.suntimes.com GREYDANUS Steven D., The last Temptation – An Essay in Film Criticism and Faith. IANNONE Carol, Last Temptation Reconsidered. www.firstthings.com www.hollywoodjesus.com
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
BLASPHEMY OR FAITH 107
Rita NEHME: Blasfemia o fe. Un comentario sobre La última tentación de Cristo Este ensayo es un comentario sobre la película “La última tentación de Cristo” de Martin Scorsese. Un largometraje que fue basado en la novela de Nikos Kazantzakis, publicada en 1954. El ensayo recoge una buena cantidad de comentarios referentes a la película, y trata de enfrentar diferentes puntos de vista así como plantear una nueva visión respecto al filme. Por muchos años los críticos han elevado una crítica ácida respecto a “La última tentación”. Sin embargo, pocos la consideran, tal y como lo ha hecho Carol Iannone, como el esfuerzo de un hombre ordinario para entender el sacrificio de Cristo desde adentro, y experimentarla como suya propia. Además de Iannone, Roger Ebert sostiene que los críticos, quienes irónicamente no han visto el filme, se alarman y escandalizan fundamentalmente con los pasajes finales en los que Cristo está en la cruz con gran dolor y comienza a alucinar e imaginar cómo hubiese sido su vida de haber sido un hombre ordinario. Ante esto, estos críticos argumentan que aunque el Cristianismo enseña que Jesús fue tanto Dios como humano, este hecho continúa como el misterio fundamental de la fe cristiana. Por otra parte, críticos como Steven D. Greydanus, rechazan el filme desde la perspectiva religiosa, sin embargo lo aprecian como una obra de arte. De todas formas, “La última tentación” es un filme bastante polémico que abre puertas a infinitos puntos de vista, opiniones y criterios.
Rita NEHME: Blasphème ou foi. Un commentaire sur La dernière tentation du Christ Cet essai est un commentaire sur le film La dernière tentation du Christ de Martin Scorsese, inspiré du roman homonyme de Nikos Kazantzakis publié en 1954. L’article réunit une série de pensées sur le film en abordant divers points de vue et essaye de formuler une nouvelle approche. Pendant des années, les détracteurs du film ont soulevé d’amères critiques à son encontre. Néanmoins, quelques rares personnes, comme Carol Iannone, y ont vu l’effort d’un être humain ordinaire pour comprendre le sacrifice du Christ de l’intérieur et le sentir en personne. Roger Ebert, quant à lui, explique que certains critiques, qui ironiquement n’avient pas vu le film, ont crié haro sur les scènes finales, dans lesquelles le Christ sur la croix, en proie à des hallucinations provoquées par l’intense douleur, imagine comment aurait été sa vie s’il avait été un être humain ordinaire. Dans ce contexte, les critiques signalaient que, même si le christianisme prêche que le Christ était à la fois Dieu et homme, cet aspect est resté le mystère central de la foi chrétienne. Autres critiques, comme Steven D. Greydanus, ont rejeté le film du point de vue religieux, mais en ont apprecié sa qualité artistique. Dans tous les cas, La dernière tentation du Christ reste un film controversé qui ouvre la porte à une infinité d’interprétations.
108 Shawn Sanford BECK
Shawn Sanford BECK
Binding the Strong Man: A Liturgy of Exorcism of the War Spirit
The purpose of this liturgy is to gather together in a spirit of hope and resistance; to name and “bind” in prayer the forces at work in the war in Afghanistan; and to celebrate and “empower” a vision of peace. The people participating are the new “peace coalition” which has been gathering every Friday since the beginning of the war. This is a very mixed group, religiously and ideologically, with many ages and socio-economic backgrounds represented. Ideally, the group will have been prepared through Bible study to understand the relationship between “heavenly” and “earthly” realities within apocalyptic, but this will rarely be possible with such a group. Usually, the mythological images will have to speak for themselves within the logic of the ritual. The items needed are the following: fire barrel, four drums, rattle, rainstick, conch shell, large ceramic bowl, filled with dried leaves, spruce needles, herbs ,etc. (for incense); thin but strong rope, hot apple cider in thermos and plastic, recyclable glasses; and oat cakes in a basket. The seven officiants are: convener (conch), four “quarters” (drums), and two readers (rainstick and rattle). Throughout the liturgy, the four “quarters” will be playing the drums, modulating tempo and volume according to the rite and the energy. The fire will have been prepared before the rite, and will be blazing throughout.
THE GATHERING
CONVENER WILL BLOW CONCH THREE TIMES TO SUMMON PEOPLE TO THE THE READERS WILL MAKE SURE PEOPLE ACTUALLY FORM INTO A CIRCLE, AND THE QUARTERS WILL PLACE THEMSELVES IN THE FOUR DIRECTIONS. THE CONVENER WILL GIVE A FEW WORDS OF WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION OF THE LITURGY, AND THEN THE DRUMMERS WILL BEGIN. ONCE A TRANCE MOOD HAS BEEN REACHED, THE “NARRATIVE” BEGINS CIRCLE.
Convener: At once I was in the Spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with One seated on the throne! And the One seated there looks like The Rev. Shawn Sanford BECK is a theology student at the College of Emmanuel and St. Chad in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada). He is also assistant minister at the Anglican Cathedral in Saskatoon, and coordinator of the Student Christian Movement at the University of Saskatchewan. His interests include ecofeminism, anarchist thought and patristics.
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
EXORCISM OF THE WAR SPIRIT 109
jasper and carnelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God; and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal. Around the throne, and on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature is like a lion, the second living creature is like an ox, the third living creature has a face like a human face, and the fourth living creature is like a flying eagle. (Rev. 4:2-7) My friends, as we gather this evening, we can be sure that we are not alone. All the creation is here with us; all the powers of Heaven and Earth stand ready to lend us their strength. Let us therefore call on the four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind, to bear witness to our intent. AFTER EACH INVOCATION, THE CONVENER BLOWS THE CONCH.
East Quarter: Spirit of Air, bless us with Vision! Come and bear witness: we pray for peace. South Quarter: Spirit of Fire, bless us with Courage! Come and bear witness: we pray for peace.
110 Shawn Sanford BECK
West Quarter: Spirit of Water, bless us with Depth! Come and bear witness: we pray for peace. North Quarter: Spirit of Earth, bless us with Strength! Come and bear witness: we pray for peace.
THE NAMING Convener: Sisters and brothers, in our struggle against the brutal war machine, we must remember that our enemies are not individual people, but the system itself. For our struggle is not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Eph.6:12) Our ancestors, in their wisdom, passed down to us stories describing the origins of the transhuman, systemic evil which we face today. We may blink at their mythology, but we neglect our ancestors’ insights to our own peril.
Reader 1: And it came to pass, after the children of men had increased in those days, beautiful and comely daughters were born to them. And the angels, the sons of the heavens, saw and lusted after them. And they took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go into them, and mixed with them. And they became pregnant and brought forth great giants, who devoured all the acquisitions of humankind till people were unable to sustain themselves. And the giants turned themselves against humankind in order to devour them. And they began to sin against the birds and the beasts, and against the creeping things, and the fish, and devoured their flesh among themselves, and drank the blood thereof. Then the earth complained of the unjust ones. And Azazel taught men to make swords and knives and shields and coats of armour. (Enoch 6:1-2a, 7:1-6, 8:1)
Convener: In the old, old stories, it is the fallen ones, the corrupted angels, who teach humankind the arts of war. At the root of the patriarchy, these demons rape women, and giants are brought forth as the fruit of this violence. These giants are the mighty ones, the strong men, the kings of old. It is in the spirit of their dominion that systemic evil takes root, and when we engage the war machine, we must realise that we are confronting the spirit within it: Azazel, Satan, the destroyer of the Earth and the master of war. Today we gather to confront this spirit of war, and to bind it through the power of prayer. Yet it is well known among exorcists and shamans throughout the ages that you cannot defeat the demon until you can name it. (Convener holds up rope.) This
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
EXORCISM OF THE WAR SPIRIT 111
rope is the strength of our collective intention. It is the strength of our circle. As it is passed around the circle, I would invite each person to name an aspect, a part, a face of the spirit of war that is being fought in our name. It can be a force “out there” in the world, or “in here” in our own attitudes and ways of being. As you name this force, tie a knot in the cord, praying that the force would be bound by the power of Love. CONVENER BEGINS THIS PROCESS AND THEN PASSES THE CORD ON. AS EACH PERSON TIES THEIR KNOT, THE READERS SOUND THEIR RAINSTICK AND RATTLE.
THE EXORCISM Reader 2: And behold, a great portent appeared in Heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. Then another portent appeared in Heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of Heaven and threw them to the Earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to the divine throne; and the woman fled to the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that she can be nourished. And war broke out in Heaven; Michæl and his angels fought against the dragon. (Rev. 12:1-4,5b-9)
Convener HOLDING ROPE UP FOR ALL TO SEE: A promise was made in the days of old, when a prophet from Nazareth said, I give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on Earth will be bound in heaven. (Matt. 16:19a) Reader 1: And I looked and turned toward another side of the Earth, and I say there a deep valley with a burning fire. And they brought the kings and the powerful, and put them into the deep valley. And there my eyes saw how they make instruments for them, iron chains of immense weight. And I asked the angel of peace, who went with me, saying, “These chain instruments, for whom have they been prepared?” And he said to me, “These have been prepared for the hosts of Azazel, to imprison them and bind them.” (Enoch 53:1-5a)
Convener THROWING THE ROPE INTO THE FIRE: I watched Satan fall from Heaven like a flash of lightning. (Luke 10:18)
112 Shawn Sanford BECK
Reader 2: Then I saw an angel coming down from Heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, and bound him for a thousand years, so that he would deceive the nations no more. (Rev. 20:1-2,3b) CONVENER BLOWS CONCH SHELL, LONG AND LOUD.
THE CELEBRATION Reader 1: Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth; for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them; they will be God’s peoples, and God will be with them; God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And people will bring into the holy city the glory and the honour of the nations. (Rev. 21:1-4,26)
Convener: The time is coming when the City of Peace will be a reality. Indeed, when we gather together in prayer, when we imagine counterreality to the war machine, when we covenant to live our lives according to the way of non-violence and love, then we already inhabit the New Jerusalem. The spirit of war and oppression is doomed, it is bound, it is over! We are no longer constrained to pledge our loyalty to a system of death. Instead, we are invited to bring our gifts for the service of the City of Peace. What do we have to offer? What will we bring for the service of Life? (Convener picks up ceramic bowl full of “incense”.) I would invite you to come forward, as you feel led, to take a small handful of this fruit of the earth. Throw it on the fire to symbolize your own “thankoffering” in commitment to our work for peace. Feel free to speak this offering aloud, or hold it in the silence of your heart. AS PARTICIPANTS COME TO THE CENTRE OF THE CIRCLE, THE READERS SOUND THEIR RAINSTICK AND RATTLE EACH TIME A HANDFUL OF “INCENSE” IS OFFERED. Reader 2: Another angel with a golden censer came and stood at the altar, and was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before the Holy One. (Rev. 8:3-4) AS THIS PASSAGE IS BEING READ, CONVENER HOLDS UP THE BOWL WITH THE REMAINING
STUDENT WORLD 2003/1
EXORCISM OF THE WAR SPIRIT 113
“INCENSE”, AND POURS IT INTO THE FIRE.
Reader 1: Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! Our God reigns! Let us rejoice and exult and give God the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure,” for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Rev. 19:6-9) Convener: The Great Feast of Peace is ready! Let us prepare our hearts with song! THE CONVENER THEN BEGINS SINGING, “SHALOM, MY FRIENDS, SHALOM, MY FRIENDS, SHALOM, SHALOM”, WHILE INSERTING HER OR HIMSELF INTO THE CIRCLE, TO LEAD A CIRCLE DANCE. MEANWHILE, THE READERS WILL POUR OUT AS MANY GLASSES OF CIDER AS THERE ARE PEOPLE, AND GET THE BASKET OF OATCAKES READY. IT WILL BE UP TO THE DRUMMERS TO “READ” AND ENHANCE THE SPIRIT OF THE CIRCLE AS IT DANCES. WHEN THE ENERGY IS CLOSE TO PEAKING, THE CONVENER WILL “DETACH” AND GO BACK TO THE CENTRE, PICK UP THE CONCH AND BLOW IT LOUD AND LONG, AT WHICH POINT THE DRUMMERS WILL PEAK THE DANCE AND THEN GO SILENT.
Convener: The gifts of Peace, for the people of Peace! THE
CONVENER AND READERS DISTRIBUTE THE OATCAKES AND CIDER.
WHEN
EVERY-
ONE HAS RECEIVED, THE CONVENER WILL BLOW THE CONCH TO GET PEOPLE’S ATTENTION (IF NECESSARY).
Convener: We go in Peace, to work for Peace. May the circle be unbroken! THE CONVENER BLOWS THE CONCH LONG AND LOUD TO SIGNAL THE FORMAL ENDING OF THE LITURGY. PEOPLE ARE FREE TO STAY AND VISIT OVER MORE CIDER AND OATCAKES.