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The war on terror

How should a Christian respond?

Adding up 7/7 and 9/11

THE WAR ON TERROR
How should a Christian respond?
By Nick Solly Megoran
IVP. 158 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978-1-84474-175-5

To my shame I might not have got round to reading this book, but I am very glad I did. It has prompted me to try and think Christianly on a serious contemporary issue — the ‘war on terrorism’.

It also challenged the automatic assumption that we in the West are liable to make: that we know who the terrorists are — Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Whereas ‘they’, of course, see Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair as terrorists with their British and American roles in the creation and support of Israel and the subjugation of Palestinians, as well as the US support of Russian atrocities against Chechnya and the backing of corrupt and oppressive regimes in Muslim states. We are liable to see terrorists as automatically evil, whereas they see them as ‘Freedom Fighters’. We quickly make a hero out of Nelson Mandela, but formerly he was a terrorist.

Mr. Megoran works hard at the biblical passages and rightly, I judge, emphasises the role that Christians must play as peace-makers, and he includes many moving stories of Christians who have loved their enemies and who have refused to retaliate with force of arms.

Pacifism?

Our author comes down with reservation and hesitation on the side of pacifism, though to his credit he quotes Professor Oliver O’Donovan’s critique of pacifism in that it has a weak conception of justice. The word ‘war’ confuses the debate, as the division between war and domestic police work is misleading — both are about using force to right wrongs. If wars are thus seen as an extension of the ordinary acts of judgment that police forces perform (sometimes with weapons), then pacifists must either condemn the police and the courts, leading to anarchy, or explain why they allow the police, but not soldiers, to use force.

I think I missed a bridge from personal peace-making (which was compellingly argued) and the role of Government. I was reading at the same time William Hague’s magnificent biography of Wilberforce, and was much struck by the way Wilberforce agonised over prosecuting the war against France and Napoleon, but sometimes did vote in support of the Government. Our leaders often have very difficult decisions to make, and at a more personal level it is interesting that a number of those who were pacifists during the First World War, nonetheless when they heard of the suffering of Jews and others, were prepared to fight in WWII.

I would also question the author’s emphasis on Jesus’s political role. It is true that the Jews were expecting the Messiah to have a political role, but Jesus’s ministry was a-political. The Jewish leaders were out to get him for blasphemy (and if his claims were not true this would have been a fair charge). This would not have washed with Pilate so they changed the accusation to that of ‘insurrection’ — and that simply did not stick. Jesus was no political threat to Pilate and Rome.

Although I did not quite agree with some of the emphases, I am very grateful to have read this book and to have been alerted to some false assumptions that I had been making. I recommend that it be read, pondered and discussed.

Jonathan Fletcher,
Wimbledon, London