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CounterPunch
September
23, 2002
Return to the Catacombs
Reintroducing
the Nonviolent Jesus
by Archbishop Robert
M. Bowman
As the world lurches from crisis to crisis and
from war to war, we tend to hold powerful forces -- governments
and multinational corporations -- responsible. But for those
of us in the Church, it is appropriate for us to examine our
own culpability. We have all too often cooperated and colluded
with these forces, and have failed our parishioners by diluting
and distorting the message of Jesus we are commissioned to preach.
The big thing among Christians these
days is WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?). They wear WWJD bracelets,
necklaces, you name it. The problem is that many of them don't
have a clue what Jesus would really do, because their churches
don't teach them about Jesus. Jesus is almost completely missing
from much of Christianity. The churches worship an ethereal risen
Christ, but ignore the flesh-and-blood Jesus. Jesus was a first-century
Jew in Roman-occupied Palestine. With his parables, he challenged
the domination system of imperial Rome and its client kings and
temple lackeys. He exposed the injustices of the empire/temple
system, and made enemies of both the Romans and the Pharisees.
In parables he warned of the futility of violent revolution.
In the sermon on the mount he gave the people practical ways
to employ nonviolent resistance. He taught them to stand upright
and defiantly "turn the other cheek" instead of groveling
in the dust. He advised them to "go the second mile,"
knowing that it was illegal for Roman soldiers to conscript someone
to carry their pack for more than a mile. And he turned the old
ways upside down with his counsel to "love your enemies"
and "do good to those who persecute you."
But Jesus didn't just preach nonviolence.
He lived it, all the way to the cross. He showed us a nonviolent,
all-loving, infinitely-merciful God -- a God not at all like
the jealous, scorekeeping, vengeful God too often portrayed in
the Jewish scriptures. Yes, Jesus was a revolutionary -- but
his revolution wasn't against Roman rule, but against the distorted
image of God held by the people. He also drastically altered
our understanding of how God wants us to act. God, it turns out,
wants us to act like Jesus. He wants us to speak out against
and nonviolently resist the exploitative, imperial powers of
our day. (That means the oil companies and other global robber
barons, as well as their hirelings in the U.S. government.) He
wants us to promote the cause of widows and orphans, the poor
and the outcast, the alienated and the victims of discrimination.
He wants us on the side of single mothers, gays, Arabs -- all
the tax collectors, lepers, and Samaritans of today. Above all,
He wants us to forego violence even in self-defense.
The early Church understood that. Christians
were forbidden to be in the Army, to participate in capital punishment,
even to testify against one accused of a capital offense. Their
active nonviolent non-cooperation with Caesar resulted in their
being persecuted and outlawed. The roots of the early Church
were watered with the blood of its martyrs.
Then came Constantine. Christians came
out of the catacombs and into the palaces. By so doing, they
gave up their nonviolence, their independence, and their way.
Instead of following Jesus, they began following Caesar. Oh,
they came up with elaborate rationalizations for their actions.
They invented the "Just War Theory" to justify taking
up the sword for the emperor. And for the last 1600 years or
so, most Christian churches and their hierarchies have advised
young Christians to go to war for whatever is the latest adventure
of Caesar, whether he is called Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Bill
Clinton, or George Bush (with whatever middle initials). Tens
of millions of Christians have died in these wars. What's worse,
tens of millions have killed. Christian chaplains blessed Christian
crews as they left to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Is this what Jesus would have done? Of course not!
As a confused but obedient Roman Catholic,
I flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. Knowing what I know now,
I would not do it again. Why was there no chaplain to ask me
what Jesus would do? Why was there no bishops' conference to
speak out against the war? Why was there no pope to declare participation
in all warfare to be sinful? Why even today are the only Catholics
truly following Jesus the handful in Pax Christi and the Catholic
Worker houses around the country? Why does the Church not speak
out against the phony War on Terrorism and the coming wars against
Colombia and Iraq?
In the United States, only the traditional
peace churches are opposing Caesar, and they're small enough
to be ignored. But what would happen if a really big and influential
church became a peace church? What if the Roman Catholic Church
did so? Would the Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Methodists be
far behind? (The Baptists might take a little longer.) What if
Christians throughout the armed services demanded non-combat
service? What if no Christians volunteered or registered for
the draft?
What might happen is that wars would
stop. After all, how many wars can be fought without Christians?
Oh, we might lose our tax exemptions and our favored treatment.
We might even be persecuted again. If so, so be it. It's better
for us to follow Jesus in the catacombs than to betray him in
the halls of power.
What might also happen is that our government
would be unable to protect our property and maintain the affluence
gap between us and the developing world. They might not be able
to protect our right as Americans to consume eight times our
share of the world's resources. Giving up violence means giving
up the fruits of violence. We must be prepared for that. (What
would Jesus do?)
In the early 80s a Roman Catholic bishop
said, "Just war? What just war? No such thing exists. But
we must not tell this to the people." The late John L. McKenzie
said, "The statement of the renunciation of violence is
clear enough. Christians have never questioned either that Jesus
said it or that it admits no qualification. Christians have simply
decided they cannot live according to these sayings of Jesus.
... If the Roman Catholic Church were to decide to join the Mennonites
in refusing violence, I doubt whether our harmonious relations
with the government would endure the day after the decision."
In one of his many essays against the
Church's support for warfare, Emmanuel Charles McCarthy said,
"There are just some activities that there are no Christ-like
ways of doing. A house of prostitution can be filled with statues,
icons, incense, bells, piped in Gregorian chant, a theological
library and a chapel but that does not make prostitution an act
in conformity with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Nor would the
presence of a chaplain. ... The ultimate norm of Christian life
has to be Jesus, His words and deeds -- and if He is not the
standard ... who or what is? Plato? Aristotle? Hugh Hefner? NBC?
FOX?" He went on to conclude, "All attempts today to
justify violence from the life of Jesus or His teachings are
devoid of spiritual and intellectual merit. ... If a person does
not wish to truthfully tell the story of Jesus, then why be ordained?
Are the allurements of a secure income, status, power, and social
acceptance so magnetic that they can seduce a Christian leader
into falsifying a teaching of Jesus in order to obtain them or
retain them?"
The conclusion we must reach is that
when we emerged from the catacombs and embraced Constantine's
offer of secular power, prestige, and protection, we Christians
prostituted ourselves. Fortunately, we can still go back! We
can rescue the nonviolent Jesus from obscurity and restore the
heritage of the early Church -- the pre-Roman Catholic Church,
if you will. We can spread the true message of the real Jesus
through today's equivalent of the catacombs -- the internet and
NCR. I call on pastors of all denominations to declare their
parishes to be "peace churches" and to sign up at <www.rmbowman.com/catholic>
. Just click on "catacombs." I call on bishops to start
preaching the nonviolent Jesus and do the same for their dioceses.
I plead with conferences of bishops to have the backbone to oppose
Caesar. And I pray that the Pope, who has spoken so courageously
about peace, takes that one final step to sever the Church's
dependence on secular powers. Back to the catacombs!
Robert M. Bowman
is presiding archbishop and primate of the United Catholic Church,
an outgrowth of the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht, Netherlands.
He lives in Melbourne, Florida. He can be reached at: catholic@rmbowman.com
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