"Dying in War"

... is not the only way to be remembered well.

Interview conducted at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, IN during the Peace Among the Peoples Conference on July 30, 2010, hosted by the World Council of Churches.

My vocational call is to humanize service members, and to recognize that the same virtues that drive all of us — whether we've never been in the military, whether we've considered it, or whether we'd never consider it — the virtues that drive us individually: submission, service, duty, sacrifice — those are common to military members too.

I think part of what I hope I can do is reassert the Church's moral attractiveness. The military has almost a monopoly on... [thought trails off here in the original]

I think it's important to name war for what it is, but also to recognize that this doesn't necessarily mean everyone perpetuating war is beyond repentance, beyond reconciliation — internally, but also externally.

I think one of the things I hope Kingston addresses is the common ground that developed nations — especially their militaries — have with the Church's calling to peacemaking. Members of the military have a very deep investment in peace. Nobody actually wants to die in war; they want the honor of being remembered well. But I don't think we should allow the myth to perpetuate that dying in war is the only way you can be remembered well. We have a long history of martyrs that speaks against that — and not even just martyrs, but the entire history of the saints, I think, speaks against that.

So hopefully developed nations, the churches, and the militaries within them can get together and speak deliberately about their common calling to restrain war. As Michael Walzer said in Just and Unjust Wars, the beginning of peace is the restraint of war.

I think if we're addressing some of the peripheral things, but not also attacking the beast that is war itself — if we're not leashing the dogs of war, and we're allowing the lords of war to unmercifully dictate to the pawns of war, who are the lowest echelon of the military — then I don't think we're starting off on the right foot in peacemaking.

So that's what I hope the conference in Kingston can do effectively.