War

I’ve just finished reading Meic Pearse’s brilliant book The Gods Of War: Is Religion The Primary Cause of Violent Conflict? I’m not posting a review here, because my copy is a review copy for Ministry Today, and eventually my overall thoughts will appear there. In the meantime, I found that two aspects of Pearse’s argument chimed with stories from my past.

Firstly, he argues that Christians may not fight to defend their faith, only die for it. However, they may go to war to defend the weak. (He sees this as a middle line between the just war and pacifist positions, both of which he regards as indefensible.) It reminded me of a fellow student at Trinity College, Bristol. John Njoroge was in the same year as me. He was an Anglican priest from Kenya, and a member of the Kikuyu tribe (which makes this reference poignant in the light of current events). John argued that he would never fight back if he were mocked or attacked for his faith, but he would if he were attacked for being a black man. Was he right?

Secondly, Pearse argues that the greatest threat to peace today comes from western secular liberal democracies, who force their views on other cultures, which are often of a more traditional and hence religious nature. The war is waged not only with armies, but with globalised economics, the media and slanted political treaties (you can only join the EU or receive this aid if you implement certain policies on sexual issues such as abortion and homosexuality). This made me think I wasn’t so far off the mark when I wrote an article on my old website in the summer of 2003, in which I argued that the real reasons Tony Blair went to war over Iraq was to protect the liberal consumerist democracy so central to postmodern culture. Although critics tied Blair and Bush together on religious grounds, their expression of Christianity is vastly different – Blair more liberal, Bush more conservative. But both wanted to protect consumerism. Remember Bush’s infamous call in the wake of 9/11 that people support America by going shopping. Is postmodernism fundamentally violent? Any thoughts?

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