Toward a New Theology of Peace

THIS SPRING, the Vatican hosted a historic convocation focused on what Pope Francis called “the active witness of nonviolence as a ‘weapon’ to achieve peace.”

Eighty participants from around the world told striking, at times heroic, stories of nonviolent peacemaking at the Rome gathering, convened by the Catholic peace movement Pax Christi International and the Vatican’s justice and peace office.

Many of them arrived directly from situations where they are mediating between violent factions using pragmatic nonviolence fueled by Christian faith—as in Uganda, Iraq, Colombia, and Mexico. Others are engaged in nonviolent peacebuilding in regions recovering from traumatic violence—as in Sri Lanka, Kenya, and the Philippines. Some are active in unarmed civilian accompaniment, shielding people under threat of violence—as in Palestine, Syria, and South Sudan. Theologians, ethicists, and international policy negotiators contributed broader context to the situational experiences.

The conversation focused on four key questions: 1) What can we learn from experiences of nonviolence as a spiritual commitment of faith and a practical strategy in violent situations across cultural contexts? 2) How do recent experiences of active nonviolence help illuminate Jesus’ way of nonviolence and engaging conflict? 3) What are the theological developments on just peace and how do they build on the scriptures and the trajectory of Catholic social thought? 4) What are key elements of an ethical framework for engaging acute conflict and addressing the “responsibility to protect” rooted in the theology and practices of nonviolent conflict transformation, nonviolent intervention, and just peace?

The convocation concluded with an astonishing document, presented to Pope Francis, titled “An appeal to the Catholic Church to recommit to the centrality of gospel nonviolence.” Recommendations included a request for a papal encyclical calling Christians to return to their fundamental vocation of nonviolent peacemaking. That means rejecting just war theory as the “settled teaching” of the church and replacing it with Jesus’ life and teaching as the foremost guide.

WHAT COMPELLED the group to make these recommendations? First: Confidence that the life and teaching of Jesus provide a much more appropriate guide for responding to violence and making peace than current just war teaching. The call of Jesus to be proactive makers of peace has been strangled in the church because just war theory was made the centerpiece of church teaching on war. The focus on war has diverted Christians from the real challenges of building cultures of peace—preventing war, solving conflicts before they fester, building community, and reconciling peoples.

Recent scripture scholarship makes it clear that Jesus took nonviolent action to resist oppressive structures of violence. He was nonviolent himself, and he used nonviolent action to resist the oppression of his time. In his life and his teaching, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, he showed an alternative to “fight, flight, or accommodate”: weaponless resistance. Love your enemies; do good to those who persecute you. Turn enemies into friends by the way you live.

Second: The early church consistently followed the Sermon on the Mount, and they took great pride in doing so. They refused to join the revolt against Rome. They returned love for hate as they endured Roman persecution. They so demonstrated Jesus’ call to peacemaking that, as Thomas Merton said, “Christianity overcame pagan Rome by nonviolence.”

Third: Active nonviolence is both faithful and effective. Those who gathered in Rome had all witnessed the dead-ends of violence and surprising successes using nonviolent strategy. Policy analyst Maria Stephan shared the groundbreaking research she has done with Erica Chenoweth scrutinizing more than 300 resistance campaigns. Their data found that “between 1900 and 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts.”

Some of those who have criticized the Vatican conference invoked the tired old debate between just war and pacifism—missing the point altogether. The topic at issue here is proactive, positive, nonviolent strategic peacemaking, an emerging body of data, theology, and praxis that goes well beyond the false choices of justifying war or refusing to confront it.