Harry Potter and the Myth of Redemptive Violence

[Note: While this will engage some themes in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it should still be relatively safe reading for those who have not yet read the book but wish to do so. In other words, it should have no spoilers, though, of course, any discussion of any aspect of a piece of art involves a degree of spoiling. That said, no plot secrets will be revealed here.]

As I noted in my last pseudo-post, I've finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and have now had a few days to ruminate on it. I meant to post some initial observations on the end of the Harry Potter series earlier, but circumstances conspired against me until today. Perhaps there is some providence in that, as what I'm sitting down to write right now is not what I would have written right after I finished reading.

The final installment in the epic tale of Harry Potter was, like all of the others, and engaging - nay, enchanting -read. But, much like its immediate predecessor, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Price, it was also a disturbing read. Much has been made of the escalating violence in the Harry Potter books. While they began as children's books, they have been maturing with their audience, taking on more and more adult content.

"Adult content" - I'm not quite comfortable with that phrase. It is so often a euphemism for the worst sort of juvenile depictions of sexuality and violence. And there is a great deal of violence in the final Harry Potter book. But when I use the phrase "adult content" it does not merely euphemistically skate around something crass; rather, it indicates a deepening of the social and ethical content in the book.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a great story, but it is not just great because it captures the attention and imagination of the readers with compelling characters and an engaging plot. It is also great because it is an act of modern myth making. In fact, this is J.K. Rowling's genius: she creates modern myths, in an age in which mythos has all but been pronounced extinct.

I argued earlier that these modern myths - which I then called "fairy tales" - entailed both an existential and a mystical component. They also, I should add, contain an ethical component. As the Harry Potter books have matured, they have grappled with issues of racism, sexism, classism, totalitarianism, and violence. The final book brings all earlier ethical reflection to its telos, its natural end, its mature completion.

One of my biggest concerns about the Harry Potter series is that it, like so many other mythic works, divides the world into two basic camps: Good and Evil. This, coupled with the justification of the use of violence by the Good against the Evil, is an essential element of what Walter Wink identified as the Myth of Redemptive Violence. Wink calls this myth "the dominant religion in our society today," and its influence is not at all difficult to see. When president Bush identified an "Axis of Evil," he was speaking in the language of the Myth of Redemptive Violence. When he speaks of a war between Good and Evil, in which the Good will prevail if only they have the resolve to do what is necessary to fight and win, he speaks in the language of the Myth of Redemptive Violence. It could easily be argued that it is this myth - the true mythos of our culture - that lead us into the quagmire in Iraq.

And, it is no coincidence that Wink first noticed this myth not in his studies of ancient religions (though later he found it there) but instead watching cartoons with his children on Saturday mornings. Of the mythic structure of children's cartoons, he writes:

I began to examine the structure of other cartoons and found the same pattern repeating endlessly: an indestructible hero is doggedly opposed to an irreformable and equally indestructible villain. Nothing can kill the hero, though for the first three-quarters of the comic-strip or TV show he (rarely she) suffers grievously and appears hopelessly doomed, until, miraculously, the hero breaks free, vanquishes the villain or prevents his or her reappearance, and restores order until the next episode.

That's a familiar pattern that most of us recognize from our childhood entertainment. As Winks notes, you can see it in everything from Popeye to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is also a pattern that can be found in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation story, circa 1250 BCE, which Wink sees as possibly the origin of the Myth of Redemptive Violence. This mythic structure, then, has been around for well over 3,000 years, and has long shaped how we reflect on the ethics of violence.

As I understand it, two important hallmarks of the Myth of Redemptive Violence are:

1. the ineffectual nature of redemption, and
2. the relatively low cost of violence.

These two together mean that, in such a polarized and polemical moral universe (Good v. Evil), the Good are justified in using whatever violence they must to resist and overthrown the Evil threatening them. Attempts to somehow convert or reform the Evil are seen as cowardice at best, if not a covert Evil. There are generally disastrous consequences for nonviolent attempts to resist Evil, but there are little or no consequences for violent resistance. Sometimes violence is, in fact, the only mode of resistance contemplated.

In some respects, the modern myth of Harry Potter participates in this ancient but endlessly repeating Myth of Redemptive Violence. The magical world is essentially divided into two camps. There is a monolithically evil threat, Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters, who use Dark Magic. This threat must be resisted, and the resistance to it is often quite violent.

In one moment in the final book, for instance, Harry attempts to disarm an attacker rather than kill him, and the consequences are almost disastrous. He is chastised, reminded that this is war, and that he must be prepared to kill if he does not want to be killed himself. Toward the end of the book we see both Harry and one of his former teachers using so-called "Unforgivable Curses" - curses which, we are told at the beginning of the seven-book series, may never be justified - against threatening Death Eaters, with no apparent remorse.

This participation in the Myth of Redemptive Violence is quite compelling at times, which is one of the reasons that myth has survived and thrived for so long. I shed many, many tears reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; some tears of sorrow, some tears of joy, and many, many mixed and confused tears. One of the most gripping moments in the book, one of the moments that drew out of my at least half my daily intake of water, was when Hogwarts rises up against Voldemort, and prepares for battle. As the defenses are raised, as each character - including the school itself, which becomes a character - girds themselves for battle, I realized just how gripping the Myth of Redemptive Violence can be.

But despite those participations in the Myth of Redemptive Violence, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows deviates in some important and ethically instructive ways from that dangerous if compelling myth. Most importantly, it challenges two of the most basic assumptions of the Myth of Redemptive Violence: the irreformable corruption of the Evil, and the relatively low cost of violence.

In the Harry Potter series, the magical world seems divided into two camps: Good and Evil. I noted that above. But, as the series matures, the moral universe in it becomes more complicated. There is some bleed-through between the camps. There are other camps that are not so easily identified. Characters become more complex, more human, and less easily identified as monolithically Good or Evil. In the final book, not only does Severus Snape - long the sole question mark in the series - become even more complicated; but also do such polarized figures as Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort - long personifications of Good and Evil - become more fully human, more complex, and less monolithic.

This book explores the errors of Dumbledore's youth, making him a more tragic, more flawed, and ultimately more human and therefore more heroic figure. It also sheds some light on Voldemort's motives for his behavior, making him - like Dumbledore - a more tragic and more human figure. He is no longer a pure personification of Evil, but is instead a corrupt human being who has at least the option of redemption, whether or not he chooses to accept it.

Also, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the escalating death-count makes real the high cost of violence. Even though, ultimately, violence is imaged here as the best response to the threat posed by Evil, there are tragic consequences for the violence used, even when that violence is deemed just. There is simply no way to walk away from this book thinking that violence is ever easy. Too many friends lay dead at the end for that. It is, then, a very realistic depiction of our own moral universe, a universe in which we may occasionally find violence unavoidable (though my pacifist friends would say that situations in which violence is unavoidable are brought about not by the inevitability of violence, but instead by a lack of creativity) but never without harsh consequences.

Finally, this book deviates from the Myth of Redemptive Violence by its use of Grace. While not all in it are redeemed, there is no one in this book ultimately so intractably evil that Grace is not offered to them. No one, in other words, is beyond Grace. And that may be the most morally instructive aspect of this book, and the way in which it - despite its justification of violence - more closely resembles the Gospel than the Myth of Redemptive Violence.

If J.K. Rowling's epic tales of Harry Potter are to be our new modern myth, then they are a welcome replacement for the Myth of Redemptive Violence that has long gripped us, even if they contain some elements of that troubled myth.

Adam Makes a Sharp Distinction

Like all two-year-olds, my son Adam sometimes gets frustrated. He is growing, and developing new abilities and strong opinions, but his ability to communicate is not quite as developed as his desire for self-determination. He gets frustrated when he really wants something, but can't make himself understood. And, like his father, his frustration is quickly translated into anger.

I don't want to give you the wrong opinion. He is a sweet kid, and he has a very well developed concept of justice. Often when he breaks our rules, he asks to go to time out, understanding that behaviors have consequences, both natural and contrived. But sometimes his anger gets the best of him, and, like most two-year-olds, he tantrums. And, when he tantrums, all bets are off. I wonder, in fact, if his tantrumming isn't somehow connected to his sense of justice. When he has crossed a line, he acts like there is simply no returning. If he's going to be bad, he's really going to be bad. If he's going to get in trouble, then, by God, he's going to earn it.

Consequently, sometimes he hits. We've talked a great deal about this, because like most parents, his mother and I find hitting problematic. Violence may be a form of communication, but it isn't a form of communication that we want to encourage. So we keep trying to find creative ways to curtail Adam's use of physical violence when he gets frustrated by his inability to express himself and make his voice heard.

When he starts to act out, we try to help him find words, impressing upon him the value and power of language. "Use your words, Adam," we often implore. We help him find words to express his emotions, and try not to judge the words he chooses to use, understanding that anger and sorrow may be defined by most as negative emotions, but they are universally experienced, and far better expressed in language than in most other media. We teach him to say, "I'm sad," or "I'm mad." We also try to teach him to explore why he feels the way that he feels, and to communicate that as well. "I'm mad [because] you won't let me jump on the bed," or even, "I'm mad at you."

Like most other parents, we also consistently use timeout as a way to discourage inappropriate forms of communication, like hitting or flopping to the floor or screaming. We understand these behaviors as forms of communication, and try to replace them with more appropriate forms of communication. Both of these points are vital:

1. For us, violence and other forms of acting out are forms of communication, an example of self-expression that serves some purpose for the child (or the adult, for that matter, as we see these behaviors in ourselves, as well), and

2. We must be consistent in our use of disciplinary tools like timeout, because for Adam to learn to replace an inappropriate or maladaptive form of communication with a more appropriate one, he will have to be able to predict the consequences of his behaviors.

Anyway, as you can tell, we've been wrestling with his use of violence as a form of communication. When things in his world get out of control, he lashes out as a way to reassert himself, and regain some kind of power over the direction of his life. He's been getting much better at using his words, and so he has been less inclined to hit lately, but I'd say that he still slugs somebody a few times a week.

This morning, as I was getting him out of his crib, he didn't want to get out. At first he started to tantrum, but he very quickly moved to his words.

"Daddy, I don't want to get up yet. I want to jump in my crib!"

Part of being consistent, for us, is honoring his requests whenever we can, so long as he makes those request appropriately. If, in other words, he uses his words to communicate, and it won't cause some disaster to give him what he wants, we do our best to grant his request. So, he and I made a deal, and I set the kitchen timer. He would have two minutes to jump in his crib, and then he would get up and get dressed.

The timer went off, and I reached into his crib to get him out. He smacked me twice on the chest, and started laughing. I wasn't amused. After talking it over with Sami, I informed him that for hitting me he would have to get dressed immediately (if he hit because he didn't want to get dressed, it wouldn't do any good to send him to timeout straight away, because that would have accomplished his goal of avoiding getting dressed) and then, as soon as he was dressed, he would have to go to timeout.

"But Daddy, it wasn't mad hit, it was fun hit!"

We've never made that distinction before, but I think that he just made it as his creative way of saying that he wasn't angry or trying to fight, he was trying to play, and was just a bit too wound up.

Impressed with his ability to make distinctions and form a kind of argument for why he should avoid timeout, I let him off the hook. I still don't know if that was the "right" thing to do, but I felt like I had to honor both his communication and his intentions. I'm beginning to see that in parenting there is no "right" thing to do, there is only a kind of halting mediation between varying degrees of risk.

Violence Begets Violence?

After spending most of this morning writing the second of four essays for my Paradigms in Mission class (this one on the contemporary influence of Reformation ideas - not, I'm afraid, much of a page turner!) I decided to do a quick skim of the day's news before heading out to pick Adam up from his preschool. So, I headed over to the Christian Science Monitor, where I read this disheartening and disgusting article on sexual violence in the military.

In response to allegations of a staggering rise in the already all too high rate of sexual assault in the military, the military released this statement:

Sexual assault is a crime and is incompatible with military values. It inflicts incalculable harm on victims and their families; it tears at the very fabric of civilian and military communities; and it destroys trust among individuals and faith in our institutions.

Our policy has three major components: prevention through education and training; enhanced treatment and support of victims to speed their recovery; and accountability measures to ensure system effectiveness.

I wonder, however, if the instances of sexual assault in the military, rather than being "incompatible with military values," isn't instead the natural consequence of some of the values of the military - especially a particularly patriarchal concept of "masculinity," and a belief in the power of violence.

These values are not exclusively military values, and their insidious impact on the violently sexual behavior of those who hold them is not confined to active duty military personnel. In fact, such behavior is too often also commonplace in the male sports world, where once again aggressive masculinity, the prowess of power, and the potency of violence are held as ideals.

In any event, a male-dominated world in which violence is encouraged and one's talent for violence rewarded is not a safe place for women. This, at least, is not news.

More on Cone and "Revolutionary Violence"

Despite having now devoted 3 posts to the subject (see here, here, and here) I'm not quite done with James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power. I am especially not done with his wrestling with the role of violence in revolutionary struggles.

I have already discussed this subject at length, but this morning, in the closing pages of the book, I read an even more thorough argument concerning the role of violence in the revolutionary struggle for Black Power. It is first interesting to note that, despite the appearance given from some earlier readings on the subject, Cone does not that the subject of violence poses some real problems for his equating of Black Power with Christianity:

Our chief difficulty with Black Theology and violence... arises from the New Testament itself. The New Testament picture of Jesus seems to suggest that he was against violence as a proper redress. He certainly never resorted to violence. In fact, he seems to have avoided the term "Messiah" as a personal designation because of the political (violent) implications. Also his constant references to love and turning the other cheek seem to indicate that the Christian life cannot be one characterized by an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." ... Can we then, by strength of the imagination or clever exegesis, interpret his command to turn the other cheek to mean a turning of the gun?

Cone, then, is aware that the Christian argument against violence rests on something much more compelling that just the comfort of whites or the perpetuation of oppression. It rests on the very words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth. How, then, in the face of Jesus' powerful witness against violence, does Cone justify the Christianizing of violence in the struggle for Black Power? By once again attacking the assumptions of those who question the appropriateness of revolutionary violence:

The real danger of these questions is the implied literalism in them. Like the fundamentalist who stressed the verbal inspiration of Scripture, this view suggests that ethical questions dealing with violence can be solved by asking: "What would Jesus do?" We cannot solve ethical questions in the twentieth century by looking at what Jesus did in the first. Our choices are not the same as his... and thus we are placed in an existential situation in which we are forced to decide without knowing what Jesus would do. The Christian does not ask what Jesus would do, as if Jesus were confined to the first century. He asks: "What is he doing? Where is he at work?" And even though these are the right questions, they cannot be answered once and for all. Each question has its own problematic circumstances which force the believer to think through each act of obedience without an absolute ethical guide from Jesus... Therefore, simply to say that Jesus did not use violence is no evidence relevant to the condition of black people as they decide what to do about white oppression.

There is a great deal here that I can affirm, especially Cone's rephrasing of the question concerning violence. I agree that we - in a social, cultural and historical context far removed from first century Palestine - cannot decide what to do today merely by copying step for step the actions of Jesus of Nazareth. This is as absurd as imposing the laws of ancient Israel on present day America. That which was of God, and therefore effective, at one point in history does not, simply by virtue of its being ordained by God in a single place and time automatically become a universal fit for all places and all times.

However, I disagree with his assertion that Jesus' refusal to use violence to help the Israelites break free from oppression under the Roman domination system does not speak powerfully against the use of violence in the struggle for racial equality in America. First century Jews were an oppressed people, a violently oppressed people. Yet, in the face of this violent oppression, Jesus explicitly forbids the use of violence as a tool for resisting oppression. He did this, I suspect, not because he failed to see the innate violence in oppression, but rather because he saw nonviolence as the most powerful tool for fighting oppression. And, that his nonviolent method of resistance has been translated effectively to a wide variety of setting throughout history speaks powerfully to its enduring effectiveness as a resistance strategy.

To assert that one cannot simply copy the actions of Jesus should not be to say that one should do things that Jesus would never have approved of, in his name. Rather, to assert that one cannot simply copy the actions of Jesus should be an invitation to act creatively while resisting nonviolently. As both Walter Wink and Marcus Borg have noted, to take Jesus' instruction to turn the other cheek so literally that in all occasions of assault one simply turns their other cheek to be struck again is to miss the creative power of that strategy. It is offered not as a hard and fast rule, but as an example of how one can resist violent oppression with creative nonviolence, by refusing to allow their basic humanity to be stripped by the Powers.

I suspect that Cone's failure to recognize this stems from his framing of the issue of nonviolence in resistance. In the face of the violent nature of oppression, he argues:

The Christian does not decide between violence and nonviolence, evil and good. He decides between the less and the greater evil. He must ponder whether revolutionary violence is less or more deplorable than the violence perpetuated by the system. There are no absolute rules which can decide the answer with certainty. But he must make a choice. If he decides to take the "nonviolent" way, then he is saying that revolutionary violence is more detrimental to man in the long run than systematic violence. But if the system is evil, then revolutionary violence is both justified and necessary.

If Cone has correctly framed the answer here, then I suspect that we must conclude, in the end, that violence is indeed "both justified and necessary." But, must we really choose between affirming the violence of oppression and affirming the violence of revolution? Only if we fail to see the revolutionary power of nonviolent resistance.

The Christian who has faith in the methods of Jesus - and that faith is not a blind faith, but is instead supported by the success of nonviolent revolutions throughout the twentieth century - is not forced into the false dichotomy proposed here. Rather, the Christian who has faith in the methods of Jesus is free to choose the third way of creative, nonviolent resistance.

Safety of the Suburbs

When Sami and I first got married in August of 2001, we moved into a beautiful apartment in downtown Louisville, just a few blocks from where we now go to church. The area had been hit hard by white flight to the suburbs, but the architecture was amazing. We had tall ceilings, and nearly eight foot windows in our living room. And, all around us we were surrounded by beauty.

At least for the first week. When our honeymoon was over and we actually had to live in our neighborhood, we quickly realized why our family had been so nervous when we declared that we were going to live downtown. On every block you could count on at least two things: a church, and a liquor store, each engaged in a war with the other for the soul of the neighborhood. Just past the alley behind our apartment there was literally a crack house.

My wife grew up in a rural area. I grew up in the suburbs. Neither of us were quite prepared for the excitement our neighborhood offered.

Two weeks after we moved in, the greasy spoon across the street from us got held up. With an uzi. Yes, it seems our neighborhood bandit needed automatic weapons.

A few months later, slipping into our building after church one Sunday night, we were interrogated by a police detective. There was a dead body in the street, shot up by some unknown party. Had we seen anything?

That was too much. Like our ancestors before us (metaphorically, anyway), we white children of relative privledge fled to a quiet little house in the suburbs. A suitable place to raise a family. I still wrestle with some guilt over that retreat, and often fantasize about buying a house in our old neighborhood, fixing it up, and become part of a project to reclaim that part of town. We're already there two or three times a week for church events. And, our church is very involved in the community, working with local social organizations to help rebuild the community around the church. Moving back - this time for good - would be a continuation of our work with the church.

Today that plan seemed more attractive than ever. Most of us move to the suburbs to escape the complicated dangers of city life. But the safety the suburbs afford is both costly and illusory. Costly, in that in your flight from the complications of the city, you lose a great deal of culture. Illusory, because no matter where you live you cannot escape human nature.

We live across the street from a park. With two full length basketball courts, four tennis courts, a soccer field, a softball field, a meeting house, and a playground, it is almost perfect for our family. Whatever we want to do almost, we simply have to walk across the street and do it. However, twice today the police were called to our park. The first time it was because a fight broke out during a pick-up basketball game. Sure enough it devolved into a quasi race-riot, with white kids on one side and black kids on the other. I don't know how it started. I was pushing Adam in the swing when I heard screaming. He and I looked over, and kids were throwing punches and shouting obsenitites.

Daddy, he said, what 'dat?

I don't know, buddy. Let's just swing, OK?

OK, Daddy. Swing fun!

Or something like that.

The second time police came to the park was just an hour or so later. Sami came home from work, and watched Adam while I started writing a paper. She also took him to the park - did I mention having a park across the street is great when you have an "active" two-year-old? While she was playing with him on the playground, the police showed up to bust some teenagers for drug possession.

Here's a hint for juvenile pot-heads: Don't light up right by a playground full of mothers (with cell phones!) and their children. Mothers don't like older kids smoking pot in front of their babies. They tend to use their cell phones to let the police know that a group of teenagers, in broad daylight, are using drugs right by a playground full of children. So, unless you're just dying to get busted, you may want to find a little more private location.

Anyway, weren't those the sorts of things we were trying to leave behind when we fled to the suburbs?

Response to Cone's Theological Defense of Violence in the Name of Black Power

Last Wednesday I noted reading this powerful passage from James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power:

The black man's response to God's act in Christ must be different from the white's because his life experiences are different. Christian love is never fully embodied in an act. Love is the motive or the rationale for action. The attempt of some to measure love exclusively through specific actions, such as nonviolence, is theologically incorrect. Christian love comprises the being of a man whereby he behaves as if God is the essence of his existence. It means that God has hold of him and his movement in the world. But this does not take away the finiteness of man, the existential doubt in making decisions in the world. To accept Christ means both self-acceptance and neighbor-acceptance with the existential threat of nonbeing. What existentialists call non-being is never removed from man's existence. Thus the love of self and the love of neighbor, which constitute the heart of one's being in God, never escape the possibility of self-annihilation and destruction of the neighbor. The violence in the cities, which appears to contradict Christian love, is nothing but the black man's attempt to say Yes to his being as defined by God in a world that would make his being into nonbeing. If the riots are the black man's courage to say Yes to himself as a creature of God, and if in affirming self he affirms Yes to the neighbor, then violence may be the black man's expression, sometimes the only possible expression, of Christian love to the white oppressor. From the perspective of a Christian theologian seeking to take seriously the black man's condition in America, what other view is possible?

It seems that the mistake of most whites, religionists included, is their insistence on telling blacks how to respond "as Christians" to racism, insisting that nonviolence is the only appropriate response. But there is an ugly contrast between the sweet, nonviolent language of white Christians and their participation in a violently unjust system. Maybe the oppressor's being is so warped by his own view of himself that every analysis made by him merely reveals his own inflated self-evaluation. Certainly as long as he can count on blacks remaining nonviolent by turning the other cheek and accepting the conditions of slavery, there will be no real pressure to confront the black man as a person. If he can be sure that blacks will not threaten his wealth, his superiority, his power in the world, there will be no need to give up his control of the black man's destiny.

Having chewed these words over and over again in my mind, I'd finally like to post a response. This is not the knee jerk response that I would have posted last week, as someone committed to nonviolence. Rather, this is, I hope, a patient and charitable response, a response that stems in part from a deep recognition of my own need to repent for my participation in an ongoing, dehumanizing power-structure that still robs blacks and other minority groups from access to all of the trappings of white privilege that I enjoy.

In this passage Cone makes a sharp and useful distinction between two kinds of violence:

1. The violence of the oppressors, and

2. The violence of the oppressed, in response to their violent oppression.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of most forms of pacifism that I have seen is that they, in condemning all manifestations of violence, fail to make the proper moral distinction between these kinds of violence. The violence of power - whether it is found in physical beatings, lynchings, murder, bombs being dropped on villages, or in the perpetuation of dehumanizing ideas and values, or the economic exploitation of the poor and marginalized - is a categorically different kind of violence from the violence of those who would violently shake off the shackles of their oppression. If we cannot clearly articulate that distinction, then we have nothing of value to say to those who are being ground under by the wheels of oppression.

Cone rightly calls the white church on our hypocrisy on this matter. He sees us preaching nonviolence in the 1960s the way that we once taught obedience to slave masters - as a way to keep blacks from rising up and demanding to be treated as human beings. Cone sees whites imposing nonviolence as a primary moral and spiritual duty, all the while benefiting from a fundamentally violent and oppressive system of domination.

I think, however, that Cone - while perhaps accurately diagnosing the motives that many whites had in extolling to blacks the value of nonviolence - failed to appreciate the power of nonviolent resistance. Nonviolent resistance is not exactly the same thing as nonviolence. While both nonviolence and nonviolent resistance teach that nonviolence is (at the very least!) preferable to violence, nonviolent resistance does not teach the oppressed that their primary moral and spiritual duty is to nonviolence. Rather, nonviolent resistance - Jesus' response to the Roman domination system; the Satyagraha of Gandhi in the face of British colonial rule in his native India and apartheid in South Africa, where he once practiced law and then began his career opposing power; the "civil disobedience of Martin Luther King, Jr., etc. - teaches the oppressed that, first and foremost they are called to resistance.

Nonviolent resistance tells the oppressed that they are human beings, and should demand to be treated as such. (We have already seen here how that plays out in some of the teachings of Jesus. See, for example, how "turning the other cheek" can be seen not as a form of submission, but rather as a nonviolent yet potent demand to be seen as an equal, a human being with all the rights and respect that entails.) Then, and only then, does it tell them that the way to go about asserting their fundamental humanity is through nonviolence.

In nonviolent resistance, in other words, nonviolence is not a moral norm, but a tool - the most powerful tool - for resisting oppression. In Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way, Walter Wink notes the overwhelming success of nonviolent revolutions in the twentieth century, saying:

If we total all the nonviolent movements of the twentieth century, the figure comes to 3.4 billion people, and again, most were successful. And yet there are people who still insist that nonviolence doesn't work!

Wink attributes the persistence of the delusion about the power of violence and the impotence of nonviolence to a number of causes. First, because as a culture we are "so preoccupied with power politics and wars," our history books are full of stories of wars rather than with the success stories of nonviolent movements. Additionally, he notes the negative nature of the word "nonviolence":

It sounds like a not-doing, the putting of one's energy into avoiding something bad rather than throwing one's total being into doing something good... "Nonviolence" is identified by many as the injunction to be submissive before authorities.

But the nonviolent resistance that Wink and others advocate is neither passive nor submissive. It is not simply the refusal to act violently, but the commitment to act creatively. It is the "third way," the path between "fight" and "flight."

Wink makes a sharp distinction between the kind of nonviolence that Cone repudiates and the kind of nonviolence that Jesus calls us to. He also acknowledges, with Cone, that this understanding of nonviolence as a tool for resistance is not the understanding of nonviolence that most Christians have:

Most Christians desire nonviolence, yes; but they are not talking about a nonviolent struggle for justice. They mean simply the absence of conflict... What they mean by nonviolence is as far from Jesus' third way as a lazy nap in the sun is from a confrontation in which protesters are being clubbed to the ground.

In the face of this common Christian understanding of nonviolence, it is easy to see why Cone - writing in 1969, as cities are being burned to the ground by race riots - would dismiss Christian appeals for nonviolence in the face of the threat posed to white supremacy by Black Power. Such appeals can easily be heard as a longing for a time when things were less complicated; when blacks "knew their place" and didn't rise up demanding to be seen as human beings. After all, the riots are accomplishing something. They are giving voice to the cries of the oppressed, and forcing the oppressors to see them and hear them. As such, as far as Cone is concerned, they are doing the work of God.

God's fundamental concern, made manifest in Christ, is for the poor and oppressed, the marginalized, the victims of power. In twentieth century America, those poor, oppressed, marginalized victims of power are black. The race riots of the late 1960s - which give rise to Cone's Black Theology and Black Power, and shape the theology in it - can be seen as the rise of those oppressed blacks, who now demand that the whites who tried to steal their humanity turn and face them as fellow humans.

The question we must ask, though, is this: Is violence in general, and riots in particular, the best way for the victims of power to assert themselves? I know that Cone would bristle at the notion of a white man asking that question. Who am I, one who carries the face of the oppressor, to pass judgment on the way that the oppressed revolt against the power that favors me? Who am I to tell slaves (and Cone sees the state of blacks in the late 1960s as a perpetuation of slavery) how to (or not to!) rebel against their captors?

I can't answer that question, though I can honor the concern that gives rise to it. It is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for the oppressed to trust someone who looks like their oppressor. I recognize that many who have counseled nonviolence have had ulterior motives. I affirm that when slaves were taught the Gospel, they were taught the Gospel of submission to authority rather than the Gospel of the release of captives. I recognize that that Gospel of submission persisted long after slavery was formerly ended, as a way to keep blacks captive to an oppressive social structure.

But, in doing so, I also assert the power of nonviolence as a form of resistance, and as the form of Jesus' resistance. The way of Christ - and Cone is here associating Christ with Black Power - is the way of nonviolent resistance, and not rioting in the streets. This is not - as most whites might have asserting in the face of Black Power - because the way of Christ is the way of submission to domination. Rather, this is because the way of Christ is the most effective way, the way that best ensures the success of resistance.

That assertion - that Jesus' third way of nonviolent resistance is the most effective way to fight oppression - is, of course, an article of faith. But it is not an entirely unsupported article of faith. History is full of examples of successful, nonviolent revolutions, even if those examples are not always as neat and clean as the few mentions of them we find it books. And, of course, Cone is not entirely opposed to having faith in the way of Jesus. In fact, in offering us a theological defense of Black Power, Cone confesses a deep and abiding faith in Jesus as Christ. His understanding of Jesus as Christ shapes his view of Black Power. Why, then, does he have less faith in the third way of Jesus?

In the end I think it is because he is suspicious of those who preached nonviolence to him, whether they be white oppressors or the black pastors that he sees as taking the bribe of relative success under the white domination system. And, while I can see and understand that suspicion, I think that it blinds him to the power of nonviolent resistance. As such, seeing only two options for blacks in the late 1960s, submission or uprising, he chooses uprising.

I wonder what he would choose today...

Please Help Me Chew This

I've been reading Black Theology and Black Power by James H. Cone. Published in 1969, it is an admittedly limited book, with two critical failings:

1. Despite its attempt to build up a "black theology," it interacts almost exclusively with white, European theologians.

2. Despite its language of empowering the powerless, it uses exclusively masculine language, not just for God but also for humans.

Looking back at the book twenty years after its initial publication, Cone decided, despite having those failings brought painfully to his attention, to leave them in, unedited. This is, he claims, to remind him of his own participation in a kind of dehumanizing prejudice. One does not heal the wounds of the past by covering them up, but by letting them breathe, open for all to see.

I mention these critical failings because I am about to post two paragraphs from this book that really challenge me, and I don't want especially the second failing (the use of exclusively masculine language) to interfere with your reading.

At some point in the future, as I digest these and other words by Cone, I'll post some reflections of my own. In the meantime I am reeling. So, here are two paragraphs that have metaphorically knocked me down and disoriented me. I'd like for you, dear reader, to help me digest them:

The black man's response to God's act in Christ must be different from the white's because his life experiences are different. Christian love is never fully embodied in an act. Love is the motive or the rationale for action. The attempt of some to measure love exclusively through specific actions, such as nonviolence, is theologically incorrect. Christian love comprises the being of a man whereby he behaves as if God is the essence of his existence. It means that God has hold of him and his movement in the world. But this does not take away the finiteness of man, the existential doubt in making decisions in the world. To accept Christ means both self-acceptance and neighbor-acceptance with the existential threat of nonbeing. What existentialists call non-being is never removed from man's existence. Thus the love of self and the love of neighbor, which constitute the heart of one's being in God, never escape the possibility of self-annihilation and destruction of the neighbor. The violence in the cities, which appears to contradict Christian love, is nothing but the black man's attempt to say Yes to his being as defined by God in a world that would make his being into nonbeing. If the riots are the black man's courage to say Yes to himself as a creature of God, and if in affirming self he affirms Yes to the neighbor, then violence may be the black man's expression, sometimes the only possible expression, of Christian love to the white oppressor. From the perspective of a Christian theologian seeking to take seriously the black man's condition in America, what other view is possible?

It seems that the mistake of most whites, religionists included, is their insistence on telling blacks how to respond "as Christians" to racism, insisting that nonviolence is the only appropriate response. But there is an ugly contrast between the sweet, nonviolent language of white Christians and their participation in a violently unjust system. Maybe the oppressor's being is so warped by his own view of himself that every analysis made by him merely reveals his own inflated self-evaluation. Certainly as long as he can count on blacks remaining nonviolent by turning the other cheek and accepting the conditions of slavery, there will be no real pressure to confront the black man as a person. If he can be sure that blacks will not threaten his wealth, his superiority, his power in the world, there will be no need to give up his control of the black man's destiny.

Like I said, right now I'm reeling from the potency of Cone's words, words that I, despite my commitment to non-violence, must take seriously, because I stand condemned by them. I'm hoping to discuss this passage here, if anyone feels so inclined, and to eventually write an essay that attempts to address these concerns from the framework of non-violent resistance, rather than mere non-violence.

Violence as Communication

In order to combat violence, we must first understand its nature. Of course, a line like that implies that there is a single phenomenon called "violence" with a single, uniform nature. That is, of course, a gross oversimplification. Violence is, like everything else, a complex set of behaviors and events that take on many forms, and are brought about by many different kinds of causes. Even a single violent event participates in "violence" in many different ways, and stems from many different causes.

Some forms of violence are simple expressions of brute power. Violence, after all, is the way that powers hold on to their power. Other forms of violence stem from hatred or fear, from the prejudices that comprise the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. Such hatreds, such fears, such prejudices are so entrenched in our culture that most of us are almost never aware of them, or how we participate in them.

But, beneath all of that, violence is also interpersonal. With the exception of bombs dropped from the sky and the like, there can be no violence without some kind of a relationship, even if it is the most superficial sort of relationship, and even if that relationship begins only at the moment of violence. But, most acts of violence are not random, they are relational. And, at their core, they can be a form of communication used when all other avenues of communication either break down or are, for some reason, left untried.

While there is a disturbing trend of random violence in our streets - rapes and murders and muggings that have nothing to do whatsoever with the victim, but stem entirely from the malice and anger of the perpetrator - it is still the case that such random acts are very, very rare. So, most acts of violence are relational, and all of my peacemaking experience has dealt with, in one way or another, this kind of violence. Relational violence. Violence as a form of communication.

I want to make it clear here that when I speak of my peacemaking experience I am not holding myself up as a model to follow, some kind of saintly example. It may well be that of all of us who have signed up for the Christian Peace Bloggers blog-ring, I have the least experience actually confronting violence, save perhaps the violence that lurks in my own soul. That is why all of my peacemaking experience has confronted relational violence. In some way or another, all of the violence that I have strived against has concerned persons who were or are in some kind of relationship with me.

As a Youth Pastor I was often called on to help resolve family conflicts. I did this not from a position of authority, as though like some judge I could stand over the conflict, evaluate it, and render some verdict on it, blaming one party and rewarding the other. Rather I did this from a position of being in relationship with each party. As such, I had enough credibility to mediate between parties, encouraging each person to actively listen to each other, without passing judgment. I tried my best to, as I used to put it, translate the languages "teenager" to "parent" and "parent" to "teenager." I did my best to help the Youth that I worked with understand where they parents were coming from, and to help the parents understand how to more effectively communicate with their teenage children.

There are many sources of conflict embedded in each familial relationship, and if these are not addressed in a way that respects the interests of each party, some form of violence can emerge. But this is true of others sorts of relationship as well, even global, political relationships, relationships between groups of people, relationships of oppression, relationships of domination and submission. Like interpersonal and familial relationships, in these relationships each party also has an interest that must be addressed. And, if that interest is not addressed to each party's satisfaction, violence will emerge as the default form of communication.

I say that to say this: If we care about the cause of peace we must wage peace. And, to wage peace we must in part serve as agents who facilitate communication where it has broken down. Those of us in positions of power must lend our voices to the voiceless, allowing their cries to be heard by the powers that have grown deaf to their screams. Because when communication breaks down, violence is the natural recourse. When the marginalized realize they have no way to make the powers listen, they lash out, screaming with each riot, with each firebomb, "I bet you can hear my NOW!"

Of course, all of this is theoretical, and, as such, without concrete suggestions, is without value. Even if you agree with everything that I've written here - and I doubt that everything here is entirely true, though from my limited vantage point I, of course, need help discerning truth from falsehood in my own ideas - you could still say, "Sure, I buy this, but now what? How can we serve as agents of communication. How can we lend our ears and our voices to the unheard and the voiceless?"

That is found in what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "Deep and Compassionate Listening" and "Loving Speech." But that will have to be the subject of another post.