Dear Friends,
Today is Halloween; it also is the 501st anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and one of the important distinguishing characteristics of that movement—now more than half a millennium in the making—is that the reformation is meant to be ongoing. By design, we Protestants are part of a church that is reformed and always reforming.
One of my fondest hopes for the ever-reforming Church is that we will embrace pacifism as an official expression of Protestant orthodoxy. For a long time, the Presbyterian Church—along with most Christian churches—has tried to encourage governments to wage war ethically. In fact, Presbyterians have been trying to articulate rules for moral warcraft since before there was even a Presbyterian Church. In Scotland, St. Adomnán, one of the great abbots of Iona, and a leader in the Celtic Christian movement that continues to influence our tradition, was articulating principles for the ethical waging of war as far back as the seventh century of the common era. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and others, all tried to articulate rules under which war might be allowable, and none of it has made a bit of difference.
In the United States, war has become a permanent fixture in American life. With every passing year, with every war that is waged, it seems to me that the slaughter of non-combatants is becoming increasingly accepted—this despite warnings from every Christian thinker on the subject, that killing civilians in wartime is not morally acceptable. Our nation has become so addicted to warfare that our leaders are deploying the military to guard the US/Mexico Border from the eminent arrival of a caravan of unarmed Central American and Mexican campesinos who are hoping to find a better life in our country.
It is time to reform the Church’s understanding of war. We need to declare war to be morally unacceptable, and this is why I hope the congregation of Montclair Presbyterian Church will declare itself to be a peace church on November 11, the hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War, and the day when our congregation is scheduled to vote on a Peace Church Declaration.
Some members of the MPC congregation have asked me what we will achieve by signing a peace church declaration, and the answer (or part of the answer) is this: by signing the peace church declaration we will, in a small way, be part of the ongoing reformation of the Christian faith. It may be a small part, but it still is important.
I hope you will show up on November 11 to vote on the Peace Church Declaration, and in advance of the vote, I hope you will read the updated version of the declaration, which has been revised to reflect input from the congregation, and which can be found here.
God’s Peace,
Ben