Here's a commentary in UU World, about vengeance and peace. Let's examine this response from an organization of the "Religious Left" on the American response to 9/11 and future actions with respect to Iraq.
First off, a little background. The Rev. Dr. Rebecca Ann Parker is professor of theology and president of Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California, and co-author with Rita Nakashima Brock of Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Beacon Press, 2001). Here is an excerpt of a book review from an earlier issue of UU World. Christianity is blamed in this book for domestic violence. In the article discussed further here, Christianity and Western Civilization are blamed for world violence.
I'm going to single out a couple of statements that The Rev. Parker makes. Quotes from her article are in italics.
In Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Terrorism, Mark Juergensmeyer studies religious terrorists, whom he finds in every major religious tradition. What religious terrorists have in common is a view of the world as a site of cosmic struggle in which the forces of evil threaten the forces of good. Their theology evolves in a context of injury or threat. Holy warriors experience themselves as victims of an enemy's unjustified aggression and violence. Having been humiliated, they are fighting back to restore honor for their people and pay back injustices. They believe their own deaths will bring glory to their families, will be honored among their people, and will be pleasing to God. Acts of religious terrorism may not defeat the enemy; they may not even have a military or political objective. Their meaning is religious: an act of faithful defiance of evil to declare one's devotion to God.
The religious terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center operated with this kind of theology. The United States has been traumatized and families around the world are grieving because of people who believed that God desires the humiliation and destruction of enemies. We have been directly hit by the theology that says God saves through violence.
So Christianity and Islam are just the same when it comes to violence? And we Christians are responsible for perpetuating it just because we want to defend our country? I know the old objections to the Crusades. I also know, after doing some research, that the Crusades were a defensive response to Muslim aggression. I acknowledge that people went too far in retaliation, but I'm not convinced those actions were undertaken by true Christians. Sure, I know, you say today's actions are not done by true Muslims, either, but consider the founders of these two faiths. How many people did Jesus kill? Mohammed? Jesus performed miraculous works of healing and compassion. Mohammed? Suppose you're a sheep, and there are two shepherds calling you home. One has blood on his hands, as for the other one - he came looking for you when you fell into that ravine and couldn't get out. Who do you trust?
Such theology is not the purview of religious extremists alone. The idea that God saves through violence has been a core doctrine of Western Christianity for the past thousand years. At the end of the eleventh century Anselm of Canterbury formulated the theological idea that Jesus died on the cross to pay back God for the injury to God's honor caused by human sin. His theology, written to defend Christianity from Muslims and Jews, provided explicit justification for Christian holy war. The first crusade, called in 1095 by Pope Urban II, urged holy warriors to sacrifice their lives just as Jesus gave his on the cross. The Pope promised that their noble deaths would merit the forgiveness of debts and garner rewards to the slain soldiers' families. Inspired by a theology of sacrificial violence that justified the destruction of God's enemies as a holy act, Christian knights began murdering Jews in the Rhineland and Muslims in the East. From 1095 forward, Anthony Bartlett writes, "the holocaust became a possibility on European soil."
These words, Romans 5:5-11 ESV, written by The Apostle Paul, were written about 1000 years before Anselm of Canterbury:
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Alfred North Whitehead observed that there are times when violence is a last resort in personal or national defense. But the most violence can do is stop something. It can stop a violent aggressor. But violence can never create. It can never console. It can never bring peace into being. It can never repair what has been lost.
What is wrong, I wonder, with stopping a violent aggressor? Look at the situation in Maryland. I would love it if someone stopped this person with an act of violence. I wouldn't even mind if the sniper-slayer was not a policeman. Regarding the "inability to create", I question that. What ended slavery - creating freedom for Black Americans? Our Civil War. What stopped the Holocaust? World War II. What created the United States of America, starting what I consider to be the greatest experiment in human law: respecting the rights of man in a climate of liberty and economic freedom? Our Revolutionary War.
It is rather short-sighted to claim that violence cannot create, console, or bring peace into being.
In this time of war, when violence is a rising tide, our calling is to love. Our calling is to witness to a deeper wisdom regarding how security can be created, and how the anguishing aftermath of human violence can be healed. We must speak as public theologians and religious critics who address the theology of war and offer an alternative.
Such speaking will not suffice if we are merely idealistic, innocent as doves. Love is more than idealism. It is wisdom. And we need to speak as wise serpents who know the human capacity for atrocities, cruelties, stupidities, idolatries, and short-sighted, self-serving strategies. We cannot flinch in the presence of evil, but must press further with penetrating questions. Here are a few we should be asking:
What is the toll of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and why is this information so hard to find?
Where is the moral voice of protest? What would it take for Unitarian Universalists collectively to be such a voice?
How many people who look Middle Eastern have been detained in the U.S. by the police and are still in custody without being charged with a crime? What would it take for us to come to their defense?
Which non-violent movements for justice and equity in human affairs will become targets for infiltration and suppression sanctioned by the Homeland Securities act?
Who will benefit economically and politically from the present popular confidence in the necessity of war?
What would it take for us to remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s growing clarity about the relationship between war, racism, and poverty? What would it take for us to be clear advocates against racism and poverty in our present context?
I do not believe in war for war's sake, and if war comes there should be a criteria for waging it justly. This criteria must consider the right of people to defend themselves from aggression and ensure their own survival. I believe President Bush has done a good job of laying out such a case. I do not agree with the position taken by the Unitarian Universalist Association and many mainline Christian denominations opposing military action.
The Institute for Religion and Democracy has produced a useful essay containing points to consider when formulating one's own opinion about our response to Iraq.