|
| Christian news worldwide |
 Home |
 Archives |
 Subscriptions |
 Adverts |
 Find a church |
 About us |
 Contact us |
 Site Map |
 PrintableVersion PeacemakersBuilding stability in a complex world‘Justice without force is a myth’PEACEMAKERS Peter Dixon is a former RAF pilot who, as director of a conflict resolution charity and a doctoral student, now has both practical and academic interests in his subject. In this book, which originated in four talks in the London Lectures series, he attempts to help ‘non-specialist Christians better understand how they can apply their faith to these complex matters’. He asks two fundamental questions. First, why should we work to bring peace or stability to distant conflicts that may seem not to concern us and, second, how should we get involved? In the process of answering them he argues that, although war is ‘nasty, brutal and distressing’, Just War criteria provide a framework which helps moral men determine their approach. For instance, there is a requirement to consider all alternatives before resorting to military action, and we must always apply Just War principles to the conflict’s end state, focusing, even while fighting and stabilisation operations are in progress, on our objective in becoming involved in the first place. He is, I think, wholly right to observe that we cannot assume a responsibility for righting the wrongs of the whole world: ‘It is enough for us to do what we can, when we can, where we can’. ReconciliationPeter Dixon goes on to examine the paradoxical nature of weakness and strength in the politics of the modern world, concluding that there are genuine bounds to the awesome power exercised by some states, who nonetheless find it hard to recognise ‘that others with fewer resources and less influence can play a useful role’. In this context, he first reflects on the role played by Concordis, his own charity, in attempting to help find a solution to the conflict in Darfur, and then goes on to consider the fundamental issue of reconciliation. He warns us that, in Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s words, ‘reconciliation is a process, not an event’, and has both social and spiritual aspects. It must embody the rejection of violence as a way of solving differences, an element of truth telling (for myth-creation serves to bolster a sense of combative identity), and the notion that some degree of justice has been done. Wise and powerfulThe book’s final chapter, ‘Effective Christian Engagement in 21st-century Conflict’, illuminates the biblical principles that lie behind his insights, while fairly acknowledging that he has probably ‘not done justice to other religions’ in the process. His concluding words are as wise as they are powerful. Peacemaking ultimately needs to be owned by those involved in the violence, not superimposed upon them from the outside; responses generated after the crisis has erupted are likely to be ‘rushed, inadequate and wasteful’; work must continue long after the last shots have been fired, and cannot concentrate upon any single level in society. No one entity is powerful enough to complete the task, and ‘many hands rowing in the same direction, probably for a long time, will have a chance of getting the boat to its destination’. Peter Dixon suggested, at the very beginning, that this is not a book for experts in conflict resolution or international relations. But it is an honest and mature assessment of one of the most practical challenges of our age. Over 300 years ago, the theologian and mathematician Blaise Pascal argued that justice without force was a myth. Would that the politicians, who have lately clamoured so hard for our votes, had paid more attention to the difficulty of reconciling the two. Peter Dixon’s book would certainly provide them with food for thought. Richard Holmes,
|
|
