Human rights and pacificism

[Jon Stovell]

I saw this article today, and I found myself thinking that it might shed some light on why Hauerwas considers the concept of human rights to be flawed. If human rights are acknowledged as legitimate, then there is a moral obligation to defend people when their rights are imperiled. If this article's argument has merit, the implication seems to be that the concept of human rights is essentially incompatible with pacificism. (The article doesn't bluntly state that, but it seems to be the implication.)

If this is the case, I see two resulting questions:

• Does this explain the objections of Hauerwas' and others of Anabaptist leanings to the concept?
• Are there any alternatives that could resolve this problem for pacifists?

Regarding the second question, I'm not sure whether replacing the concept of human rights with something else would gain the pacifist anything. It seems to me that any sort of ethical concept that insists that some actions must not be done to human beings carries with it an ethical imperative to do our best to ensure that those actions are not done. Replacing the concept of human rights with something else doesn't seem like it would accomplish anything to help the pacifist position.

[Billie Hoard]

I would agree with your impression that the the article implies that human rights are essentially incompatible with pacifism, though I am not convinced that they necessarily are. I think that replacing a human rights paradigm with an agape paradigm widens the area of moral concern. A human rights paradigm focuses attention on those whose rights are being abused or denied, where an agape paradigm requires that all persons be loved, both abusers and the abused. And the human rights paradigm has long struggled with the problem of contradictory rights. Locke tried to resolve the conflict with his states of nature, slavery, war, and civil society; but was unable to find a solution which did not require the sacrifice of at least some rights. Once we add the negative/positive rights distinction (Locke was pretty exclusively concerned with negative rights) the picture only becomes more complicated: If you have a right to health care, or instance, I lose a right to do what I like with my time/resources. And I am certainly not the only person to notice that, as benevolent a document as the UN UDHR is, it contains a number of contradictions.

But a agape paradigm shifts perspective and seems to dissolve a number of these problems. Under an agape paradigm (so far as I understand it) one asks what love looks like towards all persons. Suddenly pacifism seems to become far more likely as killing seems (at least initially) incompatible with love for the person being killed. So under an agape paradigm, the demand is higher on us (we must love ALL persons, abusers as well as the abused) and we the constraints are greater (we cannot fail to love one group in the interest of loving anther). That limitation puts an ethical actor in a double bind. As you mentioned @Jon Stovell , the requirement to love Bob (the abused) may seem to require non-love towards Henry (the abuser). But I don't think that is necessarily the case. If the agape paradigm incorporates the conviction that we are only called to act out of love, it leaves consequences in the hand of God. So ethically the constraints of the agape paradigm dissolve the tension by rendering certain actions impossible. In this paradigm, if I see one person (Bob) attacking another person (Henry) I am not able to do anything which is not love to either of them. If that means that violence is off the table for me, then a person operating by an agape paradigm will see violence towards Bob as impossible and will not be held ethically responsible for Bob's actions toward Henry so long as the person makes every possible (non-violent) attempt to rescue Henry. It is only from within the human rights paradigm that the non-violent person is morally culpable for failing to use violence to save Henry, from within the agape paradigm violence was never possible and we do not hold people morally responsible for a failure to do the impossible.

[Doug Erickson]

during the 90's U2 did live audio feeds from Sarajevo during the civil war. at one concert a Bosnian woman famously said, "we would love to dance to the music also, but we can only hear the screams of the wounded, the tortured, and the raped" .

the contestants in the miss sarejevo concerts wore banners that said " don't let them kill us".

only UN military intervention stopped the slaughter of the muslims by the serbs. the serb leaders were immune from world opinion, and diplomatic pressure. the only option left to the UN was military strikes.

pacifism is attractive in theory, and in simplistic thought experiments. in realty, too often, pacifism is choice of the privileged. an agape paradigm might help me resolve the issue of breaking up a street fight, but when it comes to Pres. Assad slaughtering his own people, i fail to see how that will go anywhere.

ugly as it may seem, i could see that "human rights is essentially incompatible with pacificism".

[Billie Hoard]

I think Hauerwas got me at the conference when he said "anyone committed to non-violence has to face the fact that innocents will suffer for your conviction, but that is true of just war theory as well".
In a still broken world, I think it is true that a commitment to non violence will mean the deaths of the innocent. So far as I know, few pacifists will deny that. But I think the problem can be flipped as well. If we aren't able to trust God to act where he has (according to the non-violent) forbidden us to, or to allow in His Wisdom, what we never would, then how do we say that we are people of love. The real problem with the agape paradigm is that once we hear about it, we can't un-think it. We have to answer the question "how do we love all people in a terrible situation rather than loving only the hurting?" Until that question is answered, I don't know how one gets back to a non-pacifist stance.

Or if I were feeling snarky I might point out that a pacifist stance would require us to not use violence even in the prevention of Deicide, but then Jesus told Peter to put his sword away.

[Jon Stovell]

I think Hauerwas got me at the conference when he said "anyone committed to non-violence has to face the fact that innocents will suffer for your conviction, but that is true of just war theory as well".

 —

That merely suggests that neither option can claim to be the perfect answer. It doesn't tell us anything about which is the better answer.

If we aren't able to trust God to act where he has (according to the non-violent) forbidden us to, or to allow in His Wisdom, what we never would, then how do we say that we are people of love.

 —

This assumes that pacificism is always God's will and wisdom. Yet that is not God's consistent response to evil, neither in the Old Testament nor the New. The evidence appears to suggest that God considers different responses to be appropriate in different cases.

The real problem with the agape paradigm is that once we hear about it, we can't un-think it. We have to answer the question "how do we love all people in a terrible situation rather than loving only the hurting?" Until that question is answered, I don't know how one gets back to a non-pacifist stance.

Unless preventing Bob from acting violently against Alice is more loving to Bob than not preventing him from doing so. I'm not necessarily making an argument that in some cases that might be true, but to say there's no apparent way that being motivated by love might lead to a non-pacifist stance would require one to prove that violence against Bob can never be loving.

Or if I were feeling snarky I might point out that a pacifist stance would require us to not use violence even in the prevention of Deicide, but then Jesus told Peter to put his sword away.

These facts would also be consistent with most just war views, and especially any that makes God's will for a situation (rather than a human ethical imperative) it's foundation.

[Jeffrey Koperski]

I'm wondering whether a City of God/City of Man distinction needs to be made here.  Can a Christian say that he/she has a duty to be non-violent *and* be okay with the state stepping in with violent means to stop evil from time to time?

[Billie Hoard]

I think I mostly agree with a lot of your commentary on my last post. I don't call myself a pacifist at this point and am still trying to work through the subject. I guess take a lot of it as an attempt at empathetic understanding of an approach I find compelling but which is not "native" to my history (I have been a fairly thoroughly confirmed just war and human rights guy for most of my life. I have been questioning and challenging it only for the last several years). So let me try some specific replies:

I think Hauerwas got me at the conference when he said "anyone committed to non-violence has to face the fact that innocents will suffer for your conviction, but that is true of just war theory as well".

 —

That merely suggests that neither option can claim to be the perfect answer. It doesn't tell us anything about which is the better answer.

 —

Agreed. I find, and found Hauerwas' statement emotionally compelling in that it faces up to facts and does not try to maintain a sort of blithe utiopianism regarding non-violence.

If we aren't able to trust God to act where he has (according to the non-violent) forbidden us to, or to allow in His Wisdom, what we never would, then how do we say that we are people of love.

 —

This assumes that pacificism is always God's will and wisdom. Yet that is not God's consistent response to evil, neither in the Old Testament nor the New. The evidence appears to suggest that God considers different responses to be appropriate in different cases.

 —

Here I am not so sure I agree. Certainly I think there is a lot of work to be done (and for me to read) on the hermeneutics of what can and should be taken from the OT with regards to violence. My first reaction though is to want to bring in the discussion of the inaugurated Kingdom of God and whether human on human violence is compatible with the Kingdom. I know that the Mennonites I have been talking to make a really clear distinction between violence excersized by the Kingdoms of this world (which may be well intentioned and may even improve a situation) and violence enacted by people following the Kingdom of God (for whom "the sword" is not appropriate). This seems to fit fairly well with the "now and not yet" approach, (if I understand it correctly, and maybe I don't) as it recognizes that in a still-broken world the Way of the Kingdom will seem futile and will even occasionally lead to what may look like disaster, precisely because it is in conflict with the way of the world. I know that Anabaptists read Paul's bit about God giving the power of the sword to earthly authorities as  a concession to the system of the world, while maintaining non-violence as the calling for Kingdom living.

The real problem with the agape paradigm is that once we hear about it, we can't un-think it. We have to answer the question "how do we love all people in a terrible situation rather than loving only the hurting?" Until that question is answered, I don't know how one gets back to a non-pacifist stance.

Unless preventing Bob from acting violently against Alice is more loving to Bob than not preventing him from doing so. I'm not necessarily making an argument that in some cases that might be true, but to say there's no apparent way that being motivated by love might lead to a non-pacifist stance would require one to prove that violence against Bob can never be loving.

 —

I pretty much agree. That is something I am trying to work through but I am not, at this point, convinced that an agape paradigm necessarily precludes all killing of persons...

Or if I were feeling snarky I might point out that a pacifist stance would require us to not use violence even in the prevention of Deicide, but then Jesus told Peter to put his sword away.

These facts would also be consistent with most just war views, and especially any that makes God's will for a situation (rather than a human ethical imperative) it's foundation.

 —

I don't disagree although I do think that the pacifist interpretation of the passage is the most straightforward (which does not automatically mean that it is true)

[Derek Morphew]

It just happens that I have read this thread while just having read Samual Moyn, Christian Human Rights, and while I am somewhere into Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice, Rights and Wrongs. So my thoughts are on the topic. I am yet to get to where Woltgerstorff deals with the NT on human rights, but like many, he takes issue with Hauerwas's general position.

I do believe kingdom theology speaks to this subject. A sharp distinction between what is right and proper for the State, and what is right and loving for Christians assumes an eschatology where the two "worlds" of the secular and the sacred are unrelated, as is the tendency with the Pietist tradition. However, if in the eschaton God renews all of humanity, and if the mandate of the gospel is the inauguration of that ultimate renewed humanity, then we cannot consign the "secular" to a world that we do not relate to. Rather the power of the kingdom is a continually subversive influence, working in and through Christians, and sometimes through divine providence outside of the redeemed community, sowing "already" that which is to come. Christians as the church, as a community, provide a prophetic witness to the "powers", but also Christians as individuals exercise all sorts of roles in society, as teachers, judges, bankers, politicians, philosophers etc. where the Lordship of Christ must inform and empower their contribution. While we are never naive about the brokenness of human society, we never totally give up on it either. If we withdraw into an evangelical "ghetto" we invite other, more sinister influences into the space we might have occupied.

I would argue that ones eschatology is the basis of ones ecclesiology, or ones understanding of the way the church should witness to the kingdom in the world ("in" but not "of"). I hope our kingdom theology will keep us from a form of Pietistic dualism or withdrawal. Eschatological dualism (two ages) and ethical dualism (light versus darkness) does not have to lead to a social dualism, or disengagement. The lesson we learned so painfully in South Africa under apartheid was that those who argued for a radical separation of the gospel from "politics" merely helped the evangelical church bluff itself that is was not "into" politics, when in fact it was "into" State orchestrated politics, with internal separation between black and white churches being a mirror of apartheid ideology. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches who were zealous for the separation of the Christian life from politics had to later confess their complicity with shame.

In this context, there were also discussions about pacifism. Such discussion were not really critical to discerning our witness. What was more important was to discern where the front line of spiritual warfare was being played out, namely in the realm of ideologies that exercised control over the masses. Here, the Christian leaven of human rights confronts competing ideologies (in our case, they were Marxist and Fascist). In terms of the human rights narrative, either we keep injecting the narrative with the biblical worldview, or if we withdraw from society, we allow secular humanist and atheistic worldviews to redefine human rights "their" way.

[Billie Hoard]

I do believe kingdom theology speaks to this subject. A sharp distinction between what is right and proper for the State, and what is right and loving for Christians assumes an eschatology where the two "worlds" of the secular and the sacred are unrelated, as is the tendency with the Pietist tradition. However, if in the eschaton God renews all of humanity, and if the mandate of the gospel is the inauguration of that ultimate renewed humanity, then we cannot consign the "secular" to a world that we do not relate to. Rather the power of the kingdom is a continually subversive influence, working in and through Christians, and sometimes through divine providence outside of the redeemed community, sowing "already" that which is to come. Christians as the church, as a community, provide a prophetic witness to the "powers", but also Christians as individuals exercise all sorts of roles in society, as teachers, judges, bankers, politicians, philosophers etc. where the Lordship of Christ must inform and empower their contribution. While we are never naive about the brokenness of human society, we never totally give up on it either. If we withdraw into an evangelical "ghetto" we invite other, more sinister influences into the space we might have occupied.

 —

I am fan of taking an eschatological approach on this one (though I think we should also incorporate Jesus direct comments on the subject - the eschatological should inform but so should direct teaching). But I am not sure that I think about that "sharp divide" in the same way you do. The Anabaptists I have talked to seem to want to talk about the state as a thing with combined goodness and badness, it is a thing which is passing away and which will be ultimately eclipsed by the Kingdom of God. So I guess the question is whether you think there will be "secular government" in the eschaton. I tend towards thinking that there won't be, that the only Kingdom will be God's. I actually can't see how the secular could be renewed qua secular, I can see secular pursuits (like government) being renewed as fully sacred. So I don't see any reason to recommend that Christians abstain from any public roles which they can fulfill and simultaneously remain true to the way of Jesus, but neither do I think it is wrong to conclude that certain roles are so thoroughly mis-constructed by the world that there is no way for a Christian to perform them without betraying the way of Christ. Those roles may either pass away (president, soldier, police) or be reconstituted in the eschaton.

[Billie Hoard]

Also, I'm a little curious about how this looks from the "other side". What does an agape paradigm lack which a human rights paradigm provides?

[Jon Stovell]

the state [is] a thing with combined goodness and badness, it is a thing which is passing away and which will be ultimately eclipsed by the Kingdom of God. So I guess the question is whether you think there will be "secular government" in the eschaton. I tend towards thinking that there won't be, that the only Kingdom will be God's. I actually can't see how the secular could be renewed qua secular, I can see secular pursuits (like government) being renewed as fully sacred.

 —

I'm in agreement with that. From some thoughts on Romans 13:1:

Thus, while social structure—and therefore governance—is good and intended by God, all social structures and governments we have made are malformed and shot through with sin. We therefore need our social structures to be redeemed and set right by the reassertion of God’s own rule—which will mean the end of our self-rule.

However, I'm not sure why you think that is a disagreement with Derek. It sounds to me like an agreement about "sharp distinctions" between secular and sacred, or the lack thereof. I'm also not sure whether you think that this amounts to an argument in favour of pacifism, nor, if so, why you do.

[Jon Stovell]

Also, I'm a little curious about how this looks from the "other side". What does an agape paradigm lack which a human rights paradigm provides?

 —

Well, that would be its own topic. Perhaps you could start a new discussion asking that.

[Billie Hoard]

I'm probably unclear because I am still waffling on the pacifism question. Or maybe I am leaning heavily in that direction but haven't committed yet. I am also not sure how much I am disagreeing with Derek over a sharp distinction between sacred and secular. I would say that the secular can often be redeemed and thereby become sacred (though it will probably transform in the process), so that would seem to indicate a sharp distinction in that (so far as I can tell) the secular is only secular insofar as it is not sacred. Maybe @Derek Morphew wouldn't mind talking about how he might see the sacred/secular divide breaking down... we might be close to on the same page.

I'm getting a little self-conscious about starting new threads but... twist my arm

[Derek Morphew]

I sure do not think that there will be a secular government in the coming age. And, yes, Anabaptists can think creatively about engagement with society. As individuals, they can even play a very positive role. My question is, does our overall kingdom theology framework fit well with us becoming Anabaptists in our ecclesiology and view of the church/world relationship? I would hope that we would think twice about going there.

As a related point, why is it that most recognized authors on human rights from a Christian perspective do not agree with Hauerwas on human rights? I think if you look into it, they do not have a Mennonite view on this question.

By the way this in no way means that America got it wrong on the disestablishment of the church. I think America got it right, but historically, this was as much to protect the freedom of religion against the intrusion of the State, as it was to prevent the idea of a State church.

Can we combine a clear disestablishment, and therefore a secular State, with a society that continues to be profoundly leavened with the gospel because the church does not retreat into an evangelical ghetto?

How can we call out our young future leaders in the Vineyard to be new Wilberforces? What theological framework will empower them in this direction? How can we inspire them to neither get into a fundamentalist conservatism, nor become disenchanted with the whole notion of Christian engagement with the public arena?

[Daniel L Heck]

This is a great discussion, and is helpful as I work on my SVS paper. In thinking about the refugee crisis, I think we inevitably run into public policy and governance questions, and so we can't bracket them off from discussions of hospitality and holiness; the hospitality of the nations where we find ourselves, which claim us as their members, is really at the heart of the matter. And especially sitting here in the United States, the most obvious-seeming response to human rights abuses often involves dropping bombs on people, overthrowing governments and helping overthrow governments.

I think this exchange provides us with one interesting re-entry point here:

I think Hauerwas got me at the conference when he said "anyone committed to non-violence has to face the fact that innocents will suffer for your conviction, but that is true of just war theory as well".
— Bill Hoard, November 09, 2015, 06:56:44 PM

That merely suggests that neither option can claim to be the perfect answer. It doesn't tell us anything about which is the better answer. -- Jon Stovell

First, I'd like to ask what perspective we are imaginatively taking, if these comments make sense to us. Whatever that perspective might be, it isn't my normal perspective as a largely disempowered citizen in the United States; I could devote my entire life to efforts to convince my government to take a non-violent approach to ISIS, for example, and I'm almost entirely certain I would have no impact on public policy at all. Even if I were to help lead an extremely powerful peace movement that substantially reduced military spending, and put that money into substantially investing in non-military international policy interventions, I still doubt that I'd be able to make more innocents suffer for my conviction. But even that isn't the perspective that we're effortlessly, imaginatively adopting here, at Hauerwas's urging.

So what perspective are we adopting? I think we are taking on the mind of the nation. In a US context, we are pretending, in essence, to be the President of the United States...but probably with more power, influence and decision-making latitude than even the President really has. So maybe we can say that we are pretending to be the genius of the nation...a figure that sounds bizarre, but which we also adopt effortlessly. (The huge success of games like Civiliation also illustrates how effortlessly people adopt these imagined national persona. If you have played a game as Abraham Lincoln, leading the United States from its humble beginnings as a stone age tribe to become a world-conquering Empire, I think you have a good sense of the ease and absurdity of taking on this persona of the national 'genius'.)

All of this raises a different question for me: how does all of this look if we in fact take on the mind of Christ (at least in part, insofar as we can), rather than imagining ourselves to take on the minds of the nations?

If we do this, I don't think we necessarily arrive at pacifism, but I do think pacifism emerges as a substantially more viable option...especially given the pacifist nature of Christ's ministry. However, I think this question reorganizes the entire discussion much more fundamentally than that...it shakes the foundations of the discussion more deeply than a typical argument for pacifism might. In fact, I find it disorienting enough  that I'd like to pause and sit with the question, and question the question, before I even try to answer it. But I'm confident that an inaugurated eschatology is central to any good response...and I'm grateful to be in a community that wants to understand what that might mean for us, here and now.