Peace in a Bureaucratic Age

What Happens When Peacemaking Loses Sight of the Person

This is the second of two lectures delivered as the Ben Arbour Memorial Lectures at Weatherford College. You can find the first lecture—on how Christian just war thought became less about the person and more about the rule of war—below. If you’d like to read the whole thing, consider becoming a supporting subscriber.

In our previous talk, we opened up with a particular premise about the loss of the person in war and peace that I want to continue, by looking at the other side of the coin: peace in an age of bureaucracy. As I argued with respect to the just war, one of the pervasive trends which we see, as religious concerns began to think less about particular persons in conflicts and more about the rule of war—both internally and internationally. The effect was that the particular person became lost within a more bureaucratic approach to the management of human life.

Yesterday, justified war had its turn, and tonight, we’ll give peace a chance and see if fares any better. Spoiler alert: it will not do much better.

We’ll proceed in four parts:

First, we will examine where these discussions within Christianity began, looking this time at the way ancient sources thought about participants in war, this time focusing on those who were opposed to Christian participation in war.

Second, we will look at a series of monuments along the way through the modern period to illustrate how the rise of a bureaucratic approach to peace likewise yielded a loss of the person.

Third, having looked at both the justified war and anti-war sides of the coin, I will offer three figures in modern conflict that indicate, I think, that the person—lost from view—will not be forgotten forever.

And finally, I’ll offer some thoughts on a way forward: if not bureaucracy, then what?

Back to the Beginning: Religion, War, and the Person

Debates over Christianity’s view of war have been raging since Louis Swift’s 1983 volume the Early Fathers on War and Military Service. Swift, and a variety of commentators since, have argued that the literature on the ground is mixed in orientation, sometimes offering a more permissive view and sometimes offering much stronger prohibitions. As George Kalantzis has demonstrated, presumptions against participating in war range from West to East, in sermons, biblical interpretive texts, martyrdom accounts, church councils, private letters, and public missives. Prohibitions against Christians participating in violence are literally everywhere, and across the breadth of the Roman empire.