Anglican Peace and Justice Network Asks, 'How Do We Live with Former Enemies?'
Episcopal News Service. October 27, 1994 [94172]
The Anglican Peace and Justice Network, formed 10 years ago to draw on the experience of the Anglican Communion in the struggle for human rights, spent much of its time at its October meeting in Scotland wrestling with a big question: How do we live with former enemies?
It addressed attempts at social reconciliation in different parts of the world -- among blacks and whites in South Africa, Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East, Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. All those societies face a common problem -- how to reconcile those who had previously suffered violence at each other's hands and make them partners in reconstruction. In each case, the church has an important role in influencing the political process.
The timing of the meeting was dramatic because participants spent four days in Northern Ireland taking a closer look at the peace process that is attempting to move Ireland toward a new peaceful era in the face of threats of social disintegration.
The experience in Ireland provided a link with the Third World's history of colonization in other parts of the world. The voice of indigenous peoples was raised by the representative from Aotearoa/New Zealand and, in a powerfully direct way, in a video from the Canadians that illustrates the bitter resentment of indigenous people who were systematically stripped of their culture by church-sponsored schools.
Rwanda and Burundi were former German colonies transferred after World War I to Belgium under a League of Nations mandate, sowing some of the seeds of the present conflict. The Belgians encouraged ethnic divisions in an attempt to divide and rule, rather than face realistic differences of race or language.
The economic imperialism of Western capital exercised through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were sharply criticized by participants at the meeting. Network members returned to their provinces prepared to urge involvement in the international "50 years is enough" campaign. The slogan refers to the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1945 which was intended to be a commitment to post-war reconstruction but instead has become a way of imposing ideological solutions on debtor countries.
Other 50-year anniversaries were on the agenda since 1995 is the year for celebrating half a century since the end of the war in Europe and Asia. Participants argued that the churches should discourage any sense of national triumph and instead build an atmosphere of mutual forgiveness. Some wondered if it would not be a good opportunity to urge nations to move beyond international wars as an arm of policy.
As an accredited non-governmental organization at the United Nations, the Anglican Communion has been invited to attend a "Social Summit" planned for 1995 in Copenhagen, built on the conviction by Secretary General Boutros Ghali that it is better to meet social or political divisions at their initial stage rather than try to contain them once the shooting starts. The network believes that the Anglican observer's office at the UN, and its new representative Bishop James Ottley of Panama, could make an important contribution to this process.
The network also expressed its determination to work for renewal of the Non-Proliferation Treaty on Nuclear Weapons as one way of engaging the churches in the serious process of peacemaking. Part of this effort will include opposition of the sale of arms by developed countries to potential areas of conflict.
Members of the network are convinced that working for peace and justice requires a new vision of creation as the home where life is to be nurtured, rather than viewing the world as a place of constant division and exploitation. Participants asked themselves what models of theological thinking might help establish such a new paradigm. Some questioned the persistence of a biblical image of a chosen people marching into a promised land where it imposed its laws and enslaved the inhabitants. They offered another image, equally biblical, of the oikumene, the whole inhabited household, gifted by God and to be shared by all creatures as a theological framework better adapted to contemporary needs and experience.
The Rev. Brian Grieves, the church's peace and justice officer and a participant in the meeting, said that the network has matured over the years but has still "only scratched the surface" in its efforts. The next meeting will be in New York, he added, where the network will meet with leaders at the United Nations. Participants will also go to Washington, DC, "where policy is made that affects all provinces of the Anglican Communion -- and where members can deliver their own messages to our government."
Based on a report by Bishop Michael Hare Duke of Scotland's Diocese of St. Andrews.