Methods & Theories in Justice & Peace
The Iliff School of Theology
Prof. Dana Wilbanks
19 February 2001
WHAT'S AGAPE GOT TO DO WITH IT?: HOW I UNDERSTAND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JUSTICE AND PEACE
©2001 Khrysso Heart LeFey
In this class we have been discussing the influence of faith (read: Christian faith) on understandings of Justice and Peace. While I always appreciate the impulse toward J&P regardless of what world view the impulse comes from, and while I, too, recognize in myself an impulse toward J&P, an impulse based firmly in my world view, I cannot say that that impulse in me comes from the same place that it does for the thinkers and writers whose work I have been asked to interact with in this reflection.
Before I engage other writings, I will describe something of my world view, which is rooted in pantheism and the Gaia Theory. Pantheism, for me, means that the entire cosmos is itself divine and that there is no God that transcends the cosmos, since it seems redundant to me to conceive of "all-plus-something." If there is something transcending the all, then the all is not the all. Therefore, according to the etymological meaning of "pantheism," "all is God." Gaia Theory says holds the entire Earth is an organism, operating dynamically at every level to maintain equilibrium.
It is in equilibrium that my concept of J&P rests. I see conflict in terms of the relationships of energies to one another, illustrated by electrical energy in the air that, when unbalanced, creates a thunderstorm in order to restore equilibrium. At a strictly material level, the impulses—literal impulses—that fire within our brains when we think and feel and judge relate to similar energies that are firing in the brains of others with whom we interact, so that when we agree or conflict, energy is relating to energy.
If Gaia Theory is correct, then my ethic of J&P is rooted in the fact that we are literally all one, a view that is shared by Christians who look to Paul's epistles for truth:
"For Christ is like a single body with its many limbs and organs, which, many as they are, together make up one body. For indeed we were all brought into one body by baptism, in the one spirit . . . . If one organ suffers, they all suffer together. If one fluorishes, they all rejoice together." (1 Cor 12:12-13, 26, NEB)
The difference between me and the Catholic Bishops is that they consider membership in the body to be a right of baptism, and I consider membership in the body a right of birth: existence is its own justification. Therefore, I think it redundant to speak of dual audiences for Catholic teaching about the morality of war: why address discussion of the morality of war to the Catholic faithful, when J&P (i.e., equilibrium) is right for everybody by the very fact of their birth? Furthermore, the very fact that Catholic teaching takes on its stance as a community of teachers of the world is inherently paternalistic; if teaching is universally right (and, though I am not necessarily a perennialist, I do think that J&P are human rights and therefore universal needs), then it must be taught because it is right, not because it is Catholic. The issue of its being Catholic is a red herring. The message is prophetic not because of the messengers but because of the message.
The Catholic Bishops speak of natural law, of moral principles written on the human heart by God (p. 7), but the principles have nothing to do with God: they are true whether there is a God or not. They are true because all life relates to all life in order to maintain the equilibrium of Gaia. Gaia Theory grew out of the observation that Venus and Mars have static, not dynamic, atmospheres, and if enough life kills enough life, Gaia will lose her precision equilibrium and devolve into stasis. We must refrain from killing one another not only because it is morally wrong to do so, but because we literally depend on one another for our own survival—it's the same reason why we cannot continue to annihilate the rain forests or deplete the ozone layer. With apologies to Tina Turner, "What's Agape Got to Do with It?" At one level, nothing: it's strictly a matter of mechanics. Hollenbach describes social justice as a political virtue (p. 27), but it's only so because it's a medical virtue: the need for it arises in the brain stem, with our survival functions, not in the frontal lobe, whence originate love and sense of justice. Agape may have to do with our appreciation of this fact, and it may well be what keeps us on the course of survival, but social justice is a need more fundamental than love alone can sound.
It is axiomatic that "if you want peace, work for justice," but it works the other way as well: if you want the justice that leads to our continued survival as a living planet, and citizens thereof, work to keep the peace that keeps us from annihilating one another in the lightning-strikes of our conflicts.
I look at peace and justice issues, in the ways we frame them in class, as being at a macro-level of what I have studied about conflict resolution and small-group process beginning with my high-school forensics classes on group facilitation and continuing up to my education at Iliff. [Dr.] Larry Graham, in his [Introduction to] Pastoral Theology [and Care] class, points to a model described by [the late Princeton professor] Manfred Halpern as being dynamic (just as water is constantly flowing in search of its own equilibrium), according to a process in which he identifies eight stages: emanation, subjugation, isolation (the crisis point), buffering, direct bargaining, new agreements, transformation, and incoherence, which leads to new emanations from centers of power that begin the process all over again.2
Karen Lebacqz says that "justice is a constant process of correction, not a once-and-for-all program" (p. 153). Speed Leas of the Alban Institute describes five levels of conflict, the first three of which can usually usually be "resolved" because it may be presumed that the opposing parties believe in a mutual desire for resolution, while the last two involve damage and a belief in inevitable enmity. The implication is that one of these levels is always in operation—it's just that at some times the level of conflict is below anyone's, or at least most parties', threshold of discomfort: injustice and justice, conflict and peace, are dynamic in their relationships with one another. Rarely is water truly still, but we can still gauge where sea-level is, and there is the benchmark by which we identify "peace." In other words, just as individual happiness does not require that life be perfect, so peace reigns when people are happy enough and free enough within a range of mutual functionality: ripples in the surface do not ruin a boat-ride.
In our quest for this equilibrium, we go about the process of, as Lebacqz says, "correcting what is unjust." Ada Maria Isazi-Diaz provides a useful set of standards by which we can identify injustice according to her description of five modes of oppression experienced by Latina women: exploitation, marginalization, cultural imperialism, powerlessness, and systemic violence.
As I reflect on Isazi-Diaz's descriptions of mujerista accounts of injustice, I am struck by an analogy that was referenced in one of my readings for this quarter's Self-Care for the Long-Term Struggle class. Metaphysical psychologist Larry LeShan describes the experience of the cancer patient as a "nightmare" according to several structural components of terror dreams:
(1) Terrible things are being done to us and worse are threatened;
(2) Outside forces are in control, and our will is helpless;
(3) There is no set time-limit, and we cannot predict when it will be over.3
By this token, oppression is a nightmare, and the task of just-peacemakers is to give the oppressed tools for waking up, an analogy hearkening to Lebacqz's statement that justice requires something different from the oppressed and the oppressor (149). Just-peacemakers cannot wake up the dreamers; we can at best give them the wherewithal to extricate themselves from the nightmare. But the oppressed can use those tools, and oppressors can cease oppressing and make amends.
Paolo Freire addresses the importance of the oppressed extricating themselves and transforming their relationships with their oppressors, and in fact answers Tina Turner's question, as co-opted by me, by implying that loving intent or a theology of love are not requirements for justice-making, since justice-making is inherently a loving act:
"Yet it is—paradoxical though it may seem—precisely in the response of the oppressed to the violence of their oppressor that a gesture of love may be found. Consciously or unconsciously, the act of rebellion by the oppressed . . . can initiate love . . . . [The oppressed] restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression."4
Isazi-Diaz's eight essential elements of a mujerista account of justice resonate with both Lebacz and Freire and are not as important for my purposes here as is her insistence upon an account of injustice and a vision for justice and, with the others, her insistence upon transformative justice, which will not create a world of perfect peace but can provide the flexibility necessary to create and re-create equilibrium, a state in which justice-making and peace-making can operate reflexively with one another.
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Course Text References:
"Catholic Bishops" = National Conference of Catholic Bishops, _The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response_.
"Hollenbach" = Hollenbach, David, "Modern Catholic Teachings Concerning Justice," _Peace and Human Rights_.
"Lebacqz" = Lebacqz, Karen, "Ramifications: Implications for a Theory of Justice," _Justice in an Unjust World_.
"Isazi-Diaz" = Isazi-Diaz, Ada Maria, "Un poquito de justicia—a Little Bit of Justice," in _Hispanic/Latino Theology_, edited by Isazi-Diaz and Segovia.
Footnote References:
1. Of course, one could take this statement to a fatalistic end, saying that Gaia needs for the electrical impulses in one species' brains to act toward the killing of other members of the species in order to maintain the proper number within each species on the Earth, but I am not willing to go there. In true process form, I believe that while Gaia compensates, she does not have the will to appoint.
2. I have looked in vain for a primary source with this information. [Larry Graham, who knew Halpern, did not get his information from a published source, and indeed, it may not be in one.]
3. LeShan, Lawrence. (1977) You Can Fight for Your Life: Emotional Factors in the Causation of Cancer. New York: M. Evans, p. 163.
4. Freire, Paolo. (1993) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, new revised edition. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos, 1999. New York: Continuum, p. 38.
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