Expanding the peace movement.

EXPANDING THE PEACE MOVEMENT

THE NUMBER OF churches in thepeace movement may just have jumped by 45,000. That is how many churches belong to the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), which a few days before Chirstmas unveiled its Guidelines for a new Peace, Freedom, and Security Studies Program. Note the name of the program, for it indicates why this ambitious project is not merely more of the same. The peace movement, according to the NAE, must also be a freedom and security movement, or else it will end up being very bad for peace, freedom, and security alike.

Those who thought they had a corneron the religion-and-peace agenda are, to say the least, somewhat ambivalent about these new recruits to the movement. At a conference in New York, critics of the NAE Guidelines said the document was intemperate in using words such as "scandal,' "shameful,' and "tragedy' to describe positions taken by what it calls "some of our most influential religious agencies.' The positions in question include propagandizing for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, denying or minimizing religious persecution in the Soviet Union, and exploiting Central American refugees to score points against U.S. policy. In short, they are positions that thoughtful people might describe as scandalous, shameful, and tragic.

The piquancy of the intemperancecharge is that it comes from people who have drafted church statements-- such as last year's from the United Methodist bishops--that blithely assert that those who support U.S. defense policy are guilty of idolatry and are the enemies of poor people. A chief drafter of the Methodist broadside said the NAE Guidelines are marred by "ecumenical estrangement, ideological taint, dubious facticity, and questionable prescriptions.' In other words, he disagrees with the NAE about what peace means and how to achieve it.

Father Bryan Hehir, who was behindthe Roman Catholic bishops' 1983 pastoral letter, "The Challenge of Peace,' also is not pleased. He seems to be more than a little upset at the way these Evangelical upstarts are trying to steal the spotlight. The NAE program, he said, "combines political innocence with a view that is worthy of Dean Acheson.' In some corners of Roman Catholic opinion, "Dean Acheson' is a short way of saying right-wing, anti-Communist, reactionary warmonger.

Hehir questioned how the NAE canact simultaneously like the "new boy on the block' and the "wise old man in the debate.' In addition, he told the NAE participants in the meeting, "You are clearer about what you don't like than about how you will carry out the task.' That's not much of a criticism, since it would seem to apply to most of us with respect to most questions of great moment. For example, we certainly do not like war and tyranny but are less certain about how to prevent them. At least, those of us who are not United Methodist bishops are less certain. Their greater certainty is no doubt related to their wondrous insouciance about tyranny.

Father Hehir does raise an interestingpoint, however. The reason why the NAE seems so wise and seasoned upon its formal entry into the war/ peace debate is that it had as its principal consultant the very wise and seasoned World Without War Council. Do not be fooled by the name. The WWWC is anything but another pusher of utopian fixes. Under the indefatigable leadership of a certain Robert Pickus, the WWWC has for decades been insinuating a measure of moral realism into discussions of war and peace. According to "Pick,' the discussion is typically stymied by the sterile conflict between the "peace and disarmament party' and the "freedom and security party.' The point is not to find the middle ground between these two parties but the better ground that is ahead of both. Through many months of study and debate, that better ground is marked out by the NAE.

The NAE statement is clear aboutwhat it wants to do:

The intention of this program is to developwithin the Evangelical community leaders whose reflection on the theological, moral, and political problems involved in the pursuit of peace and freedom in a fallen world will lead to realistic opportunities for an American contribution to a world safe for free societies, in which international conflict is resolved without war.

There is a refreshing absence here ofany suggestion that those who disagree with the recommended approach are to be excommunicated from "the constituency of conscience.' Of course the NAE's every sobriety may be a handicap in generating the moral excitations associated with the peace movement. But that is a price willingly paid by those who prefer moral responsibility to moralistic melodrama.

EVANGELICAL leadership, which hasin the last decade assumed such a prominent role in our public life, has until now been missing from the war/peace debate: The NAE's belated but vigorous entry bids fair to redefine the terms of that debate. The NAE does not have the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic bishops nor the activist bureaucracy of the old-line churches of liberal Protestantism. It does have the advantages, however, of entering the debate with uncommon intelligence, a commitment to civility, an awareness that the work of peacemaking is never done short of the Kingdom Come, and a conviction that peace without freedom is the peace of the morally dead. If it works, the NAE program will mean that a peace movement expanded is a peace movement transformed.