International Peacemaking and the Anti-War Movement

by Mark C. Johnson

The anti-war movement is alive, if not well. It is committed and active in international peacemaking at an increasingly systemic and structural level. But the forces aligned to contain its impact are also increasingly sophisticated.

Case in point: this May, over 600 activists participated in the now-infamous Gaza Freedom Flotilla effort. Consider the logistics of six ships carrying members of government from European nations and at least 30 countries, loaded with goods for reconstruction, education, health care. This is a testament to the capacity to organize.

Yet, notwithstanding the connections made at the recent One Nation Working Together mobilization in Washington, in early October 2010, our movement has failed to sustain the nexus identified by Martin Luther King, Jr., between the costs of war abroad and the disintegration of economic well-being at home. Under the stress of recession, the government uses the lever of enlistment as a magnet for creating commitment, if not loyalty, to warring among the economically most depressed. A fragile global economy — resting on fractured monetary policies and over-extended credit structures, on pension funds imbued with weapons manufacture and trade, and small circles of decision-makers beyond the reach of regulators and the public interest — defuses the peace movement.

A catalogue of global injustices today — the blockade of Gaza, the oppression of indigenous peoples, a racially-corrupt U.S.“justice” system, and the list goes on — will in each case trigger an image of violence and oppression, and inspire petitions, letter writing, demonstrations, fund-raising, and/or liturgical reflection and prayer. Beyond these educational and awareness-building efforts, there are methods that involve more substantive commitment, training, and institutionalized support. The most active tools are civilian diplomacy, protective accompaniment, track-two dialogue and negotiation, and a nascent conversation across the bridges that link peace-making to peace-building, peace-building to humanitarian assistance, and humanitarian assistance to a sanitized military agenda.

Denied legitimate attention by the Fourth Estate, the movement accepts an internal critique that it is dying or is dead. Successfully marginalized and manipulated by a politicized media, it is dismissed by global pundits within governments or entrained to them. Starved of financial resources controlled by corporate structures which shape markets and the academy to exclude and divert philanthropic and intellectual resources, the anti-war movement is characterized as insurgency, equated with non-state enemies of the status quo, and put on the defensive in its relationship to civil society.

The root paradoxes thus are located at the intersection of language and culture. Governments, the press, and corporations succeed in confusing the public by disrupting the discernment of truth and inhibiting creative intelligence. They poison the possibility of critical will by diluting community with distrust.

The U.S. faith community is in a state of transition across a variety of axes. Historically mainline or orthodox Judeo-Christian communities, which have produced prophetic voices at the margins, are in decline, and thus the prophetic messages are pushed further into the periphery as threats to a more rapid decline. A rise in both Pentecostal and individualized spirituality focus on personal salvation rather than social conscience.

The issues of pluralism have not matured to the point where the multitudes of organizations and the growing proximity of different faith communities have created sustainable strategies of cooperation and response. A purposeful engagement in interfaith dialogue and the intentional practice of nonviolent community is urgently needed on a widely distributed basis to prepare the ground for progress. I conclude with a hopeful message: there is good reason to expect international peacemakers could be responsible to that task.

Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D., is executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. A greatly expanded version of this essay appears in the Fall 2010 issue of Political Theology.