Columnist criticized for anti-war stance

In response to ìTrue People of Faith Would Never Participate in War or Join an Armyî by Marc Mullinax (in the Daily Planet) on May 22:

I appreciate Mullinaxís conversational approach to the issues of faith and the military. He seems to be inviting an open dialogue, and has the humility to admit that he might be wrong. Rightly, Marc differentiates between authentic faith and mere religious posturing, which too often manifests as the worship of cultural idols and violence. And clearly, we need to be capable of making moral judgments so that we donít careen down the path of destruction.

But his position, that ìa real person of faith will never, ever go into the military,î and the accompanying view that the violent Old Testament Israelites misheard God because of ìprior unexamined ëreligiousí prejudicesî begs a lot of questions. Where did this position come from? From what does he derive the authority to make categorical statements qualifying an individualís faith? And are you, Dr. Mullinax, asking me to believe that you are free from such religious prejudices?

Dr. Mullinaxís position implies that some distinct, countable group of people (presumably those who meet his personal moral standard) lies on the faith side of the line, while the remainder (presumably those who donít share his views about war) have crossed over into mere religion. This line he determines using a specific issue as a litmus test to gauge integrity of faith. Marc, have you not voted yourself and those of your political/spiritual camp as the holy determiners, based on a codified moral standard of your choosing, of who is righteous and who is not? And isnít that exactly what got us into hellish, religious posing in the first place?

When we encode a distinct set of moral imperatives to qualify for ourselves who is on Godís side and who is not, we rob God of his mysterious transcendence over knowable, visible standards and put ourselves in the position of ultimate mediators and interpreters of truth. Itís a very comfortable and tempting position because it allows us to perceive ourselves as better than others and frees us from the responsibility of un-condescendingly loving people we consider unspiritual. Unfortunately, we usually end up looking like what we hate.

In a further exposition of ìtrue faith,î Dr. Mullinax says ìpersons of faith do not usually define their sense of the divine,î a principle that he has already violated with his main position. Which is it that proves authentic faith ó simple non-definition of God, or conformity to the definition that Marc has given us concerning the military? If faith is simply a matter of pacifism, then he has defined his sense of the divine. If he means that we shouldnít give God an exclusive identity, then he has drawn another arbitrary line: that of defining certain qualities about God to the exclusion of others (non-violent), but renouncing other definitions (name, face, personal identity). Where does one get the authority to draw such categorical lines concerning where belief must be left off? Am I way off to suspect that it might be nothing but personal whim?

A much better approach is to let God be God. A useful axiom is that we simply donít know everything we would like to know, or think we know, about God and how he defines correct faith. Thus currently fashionable wisdom does not have the final word on the moral reasoning of historical peoples (Old Testament Israel); likewise neither I, nor Dr. Mullinax, nor those on whom he would confer the ìtrue faithî stamp have the final word on the integrity of anyoneís faith. This position allows God to retain transcendence and identify true faith on his own terms, instead of on the terms that near-sighted warriors and pacifists would like to dictate to him. We then avoid the dangers of moralizing our opinions and super-spiritualizing our beliefs about God, the roots of all religious posing.†

With this in view, itís not as difficult to suspend our judgments of† Christians and Muslims in their respective militaries, and of OT Israel. Not because we condone what they do, or understand it, or would retract our opinions about the war, but because we recognize that our judgments, being heavily influenced by enculturated preferences and subjective values, are untrustworthy; and because we would prefer that God alone retain the keys to things like righteousness and faith, even when his judgment violates what we have been powerfully conditioned to believe. It seems that, beyond explanation, God has sovereignly allowed people to do violence. What we need is not to vigilantly identify and repudiate sin on our terms, but to trust that God will deal with it on God-terms.

It is absolutely true that people ìsee what they want to see,î and thus commit religious violence. Unfortunately, college professors, pacifists, and opinion writers are not above this error.
Could it not be that the faith/religion struggle rages fitfully, not between two identifiable groups of people, but within each member of the military, within Marc Mullinax, and yea, even within this writer himself?

Are we not required to say with G.K. Chesterton ìI amî when asked what is wrong with the world?
Because it is an awful step in the direction of spiritual superiority complexes and guilt-wielding religiosity to label everyone in the military as a religious poser. I certainly canít justify the current war, or claim to understand the slaughter at Jericho, but I refuse to assume the Jeremiaic mantle and risk swallowing the religious poison myself. I would much rather kneel and repent.

NATE SPENCER
Asheville

EDITORíS NOTE: The following is Mullinaxís response to Spencerís letter.
ï
Iíll begin with a quote from Adlai Stevenson: ìMan does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.î

In my weekly columns I try to write about religion, spirituality, culture, politics ... and good taste. In the column Mr. Spencer references, I failed miserably the good-taste standard.
He is right, I allowed the politics of my own unexamined prejudices to get the better of me, and I am apologizing to those who felt I crossed the line. I did. I am doing what he recommends in his final paragraph: kneeling and repenting, and thanking Mr. Spencer for this opportunity to eat crow, followed by humble pie.

The columns I write week-to-week are ones in which ìthe big thingsî get addressed. This comes from my conviction that we do not talk enough about ìthe big thingsî in matters of faith and spirituality as a country, and because we do not, some real problems remain unsolved and unaddressed.
NaÔve me. I thought in the column Mr. Spencer addresses that I could enjoin a conversation for which I was not qualified. While the topic of faith and killing in war may be one worth addressing, I was not the one who had earned the right to serve it up. After all it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of my spiritual heroes, who attempted a military-style assassination precisely because of his faith. Stupid me.

Some topics that I see as academic and worthy of a fuller discussion are indeed NOT academic to many people; they are first and foremost held with emotional and faith-based ties. This topic is one of these, and I will not be discussing such again, in the same way that I will never address head-on the issues of abortion or homosexuality. One should restrict such conversations to small groups of people who already know and trust each other.

My tendencies to call forth further conversation in this matter backfired, and I ask the readersí pardon. Mr. Spencer is to be commended for one of the best letters ever written. It was everything that my column two weeks ago was not.

Bull in a china shop,
ó MARC MULLINAX