Comment to Religious Isolationism and Pearl Harbor

Mark Tooley's article at American Spectator on1930's pacificism is offered up as a backdrop to the 1941 Pearl Harbor event. My take follows:

Mark30339| 12.8.11 @ 9:25AM

There is no doubt that the Sermon on the Mount precepts on non-violent confrontation with evil are difficult to apply when two of the largest economies in the world (i.e. Japan and Germany) orchestrate systems of confiscation, displacement, torture and death on millions of people.

One of the most serenely Christian men we have ever known, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, had inside knowledge of the horrors inflicted by the German SS in Poland and elsewhere and aligned himself with the efforts to kill Hitler. Yet he considered this decision to be a profound human failing and clearly understood it risked his own salvation, and correctly so.

A most interesting aspect of Bonhoeffer's life is his escape to the US just before 1939. After arriving, he was troubled by the shallowness of leading protestant communities here -- to him, the only bright spots were negro churches where he sensed a profound faith in Christ. He chose to reject offers to teach in the US and returned to resistance work in Germany.

It is disappointing that 1930's Americans had so little compassion and understanding for the crimes committed against the Chinese, the Poles and the Jews. It was not until the attack of a legitimate military target, Pearl Harbor, that Americans chose to confront Germany and Japan with military force.

The saddest effort of all, however, was the unsolicited bid by Chamberlain to make peace with Hitler in 1936. At that time, resistance to Hitler in Germany was profound, and overwhelming majorities opposed any return to armed conflict. The resistance was ready to use Hitler's eminent call to war in 1936 to depose him. When Chamberlain butted in and GAVE Hitler territory, it irrevocably raised Hitler's stature in Germany and gutted the resistance movement.

Christ does not call us to pacifism. He calls us to CONFRONT evil -- but to do so without violence (and at the risk of own lives). Appeasement and enablement of evil is not a virtue, Christian or otherwise.

Further, military force is not per se wrong. The fact that we stationed troops in Japan, South Korea and West Germany protected communities from radical elements and nurtured great societies there. But on the other end of the spectrum, using robotic planes to blow up residential neighborhoods is seriously flawed -- especially when our supposedly Christian nation fails to mourn the loss of life and acknowledge the tactics as a human failing.

Perhaps the best example of non-violent confrontation rooted in Christ is the 50 years of suffering in Poland to resist totalitarianism. A bloodless collapse of the entire Soviet Union was the result. And that is the challenge Jesus Christ gives us, can our love of the other as a creation of God be so profound, that we will persevere in absorbing the violence rather than propagating it. It is understandable that there may be circumstances when humans fall short of this standard, but let us not delude ourselves into being proud of those moments.