Article published September 15, 2001
Is principle for peace unpatriotic?
It was past 10 at night when we finished talking.
I was already plenty tired - the kind of tired that always greets night, yes, but also weary right down to my marrow from this most surreal week - and no doubt Richard Kauffman was tired too.
Just one more thing, he said, after I’d peppered him with my many inarticulately phrased questions.
"Can I ask you something now? Do you think our church will be vandalized after you quote me on all this?"
Is this how it is now in America?
Can it be that to advocate for peace seems unpatriotic?
All-out assault vowed said the banner Page 1 headline in yesterday’s Blade.
Inside, on Page 3, two headlines caught my eye: Bush calls for our prayers today, and Bush says his goal now ‘victory’ in the ‘1st war of the 21st century.’
"Americans like to think of America as a Christian nation," Mr. Kauffman told me Thursday. "But when push comes to shove, patriotism plays pretty strongly, and obviously we’re seeing a lot of that right now."
I sought out Mr. Kauffman because I wanted to know how someone who is a pacifist as a matter of faith thinks about the events of this week, a time when multiple opinion polls report that almost all Americans support military retribution for Tuesday’s terrorist attacks.
Mr. Kauffman has been pastor of Toledo Mennonite Church this past year and is a lifelong member of that denomination. He and the 110 members of his congregation "take Jesus very literally, and very seriously."
"Jesus talks about loving our enemies and praying for our enemies and doing good to those who do evil to us. We believe that Jesus on the cross was an example of how we should live in the face of violence and hostility. Jesus allowed himself to die, and absorbed in his own being the violence around him, rather than countering that violence. We believe we should pick up our cross and follow him," Mr. Kauffman said.
In Washington Thursday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said: "I think one thing is clear, that you don’t [retaliate] with just a single military strike, no matter how dramatic. You don’t do it with just military forces alone. You do it with the full resources of the U.S. government. It will be a campaign, not a single action. And we’re going to keep after these people and the people who support them until this stops."
Forget religion for the moment.
"Just look at this from a strategic standpoint," Mr. Kauffman said. "OK, we strike back, and we carry on a sustained campaign, which is what they’re talking about now. Isn’t that just going to become the seedbed for a whole new generation of people to carry hostility toward us?"
Like all of us, Mr. Kauffman is glued to the TV. He saw the footage of Palestinian children "dancing in the streets of the West Bank in jubilation over this."
"I wish our leadership would probe beneath the surface, and not just [yield to] a knee-jerk response. That’s not to say the people responsible for this dastardly deed shouldn’t be held accountable. They should be."
I’ve lost count of how many times this week I heard TV talking heads cry out not for justice, but for bloody retribution. Richard Kauffman’s seems the only voice I’ve heard to ask for justice alone, and how many of his fellow Americans will think him weak because of it?
Just recently, preaching a sermon on peace-making, Mr. Kauffman said he "tried to tell the congregation that I don’t necessarily think Jesus’ way of peace is the most efficient or effective way to respond to violence.
"The most efficient and effective way, in the short term, is a show of force, of counter-violence," he said.
But for religious pacifists, there are no shortcuts around principles.
"I see Jesus calling us to a different way of peace, which is to not return violence. For me, that’s a faith statement. It’s not what’s most efficient or effective, but it is the core value which I have chosen to take in my own life, this commitment to not want to take someone else’s life and, as a matter of fact, being more willing to die than to kill someone."
Pollsters tell us few Americans have much patience for the pastor’s principles. Maybe we think of ourselves at the moment as too - too what? Too pragmatic? Angry? Outraged? Too righteously American? - to settle for anything less than what has been described as a drastic pruning of both the branches and roots of terrorism.
Halfway through my conversation with Mr. Kauffman, I realized I sought him out not only to interview, but to draw strength from.
I want with all my heart to tamp down my blood-boiling desire to see destroyed those who have destroyed so many. I want with all my heart to nurture the small whisper within that warns how violence only begets violence, that warns against "taking out" an Osama bin Laden if for no other reason than this only leaves room for the next Osama bin Laden to take center stage.
"They’re talking about war," the pastor said, and his has been the only voice I’ve heard so far this week utter that word with the fearfulness it deserves. "When you start talking that way, you let something loose that is hard to pull back."
Roberta de Boer's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays,
and Saturdays. Email her at roberta@theblade.com or call 1-419-724-6086.
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