Be Not Awed
by Bill Wylie-Kellermann

"The reign of death and, within that, the pretensions to sovereignty over history of the principalities, is brought to an end in Christ’s resurrection. He bears the fullness of their hostility toward him; he submits to their condemnation; he accepts their committal of himself to death, and in his resurrection he ends their power and the power they represent. Yet the end of the claims of the principalities to sovereignty is also the way in which these very claims are fulfilled in Christ himself. The claim of a nation, ideology, or other principality to rule history, though phony and futile, is at the same time an aspiration for salvation, a longing for the reality that does, indeed, rule history." (William Stringfellow, Free in Obedience, 1964)

Whether it is in the death penalty or war, the exercise of official violence generally presumes to know or to execute (which is to say, usurp) the judgement of God who alone holds the power of life and death.

There is a sense in which violence always involves idolatry. Follow the blood of the innocents to the foot of the idols. For what and for whom are human beings willing to kill? Even against the "guilty," violence involves an idolatrous and preemptive exploit of the divine prerogative. This is more than merely "God on our side." Whether it is in the death penalty or war, the exercise of official violence generally presumes to know or to execute (which is to say, usurp) the judgement of God who alone holds the power of life and death.

In this respect, Gandhi, who more generally rooted his non-violence in a metaphysical anthropology, who counted it the essential nature of the divine and the truly human, once said something to this effect: In humility I’m willing to die for the truth, but I am not so certain of it as to kill in its name. It was a backdoor commitment, a way of having no idols. He was faithful the first of the ten commandments.

Awe: Who is like the Beast?

And yet something more explicit, actually more blasphemous, is going on in the present moment. I’ve been led to think about it from the Pentagon media catchwords of "shock and awe." The Bush regime and their military minions really do expect a kind of fear and worship, precisely reminiscent of the thirteenth chapter of Revelation: "Who is like the Beast and who can fight against it?" Here despair and idolatry are meticulously fused as one.

Beyond the war on terrorism, beyond regime change, beyond remaking the Middle East map or establishing new forward bases, beyond even the oil, the U.S. has gone to war against the Iraqis firstly to let the rest of the world know that it is willing and overwhelmingly able.

Legitimated domestically by violence

It is best to recall that this is an administration that prior to September 11 was of questionable legitimacy in the eyes of many. Elected by a minority. Selected by Supreme Court intervention, half the nation questioned the political legitimacy of this regime. It was hobbled and hampered. However, it was in actuality legitimated after September 11 by the exercising the authority of commander-in-chief. It was legitimated by warmaking. You can look up for yourself the political terminology for a government legitimated by military power. Nor should this be underestimated or ignored in the current crisis. The U.S. has invaded for a variety of reasons. One further is to seal the continuing legitimacy of this Presidency.

Above the law

There are those who argue that the date for the start of this war was essentially set last summer and that the diplomatic effort was little more than a matter of killing time while the forces of scale were arranged. In large part due to street level movements around the planet, that diplomatic ruse proved a disastrous theological self-exposure. In the unilateral move to war, the U.S. has not only shredded the fabric of international law, it has virtually declared itself above the law. This should be no surprise. Over the course of the past year, since "un-signing" the agreement on the International Criminal Court, the administration has been trying to negotiate, country by country, an imperial exemption to prosecution in the court. This is not merely to protect Kissinger from his crimes in Chile and Indo-china, or the Reagan administration’s in Central America, they have been carefully consulting lawyers over war crimes they have been planning to undertake. They DO know what they do. And they are doing it anyway.

All the talk about prosecuting Saddam Hussein or his own minions in the international court of law, howsoever truly legitimate, is freighted with supreme irony and projection. Let’s prosecute them in a court to whose authority we ourselves refuse to submit.

The Presumption of Omniscience

According to the President this war is predicated in part upon U.S. knowledge of the future. A threat we will face five years hence is sufficient reason to invade now. Never mind if someone were to project the curve on SUV fossil fuel consumption, I suppose if they did the math on oil needs for the American military five years from now, it would bode ill to say the least. Still, the claim of historical omniscience ought to be theologically suspect. (Who knows? Five years from now the American military may have collapsed of its own weight).

In like manner, it is sometimes presumed that the electronic mapping of Baghdad from the satellite heavens, or the latest report from a roving predator robot, is a God’s eye view. (Biblically, of course, a view from God’s eye would actually be in the streets and hospital beds of the city under attack, not from the computerized and abstract distance on high). Domestically, the parallel claim is the presumption to invade citizen email or phone conversation without restraint. To put citizens in the FBI dock. To see everywhere. To invade and know the thoughts of human beings.

The intention and the pretension are one and the same. Another usurpation.

Omnipotence: In Control of History

The Bush administration imagines itself calling shots in history. This level of imperial arrogance is what the Bible calls blasphemy. So prophesies Babylon, "I am. And there is none beside me. " (Isaiah 47). It seizes, as the current National Security Strategy proclaims, the "vast, new opportunities" opened by September 11 for "cooperative action with the other main centers of global power." By preempting divine judgement, acting as the lawless one, and claiming to know or the right to know all, this regime asserts it is in control of history.

The Good News

Here is some good news: it’s not.

Invisible as a back ally birth or a backwater resurrection, the Word is at work, hidden in the depths of history, breaking in to break out. Things are way more dynamic and alive that they calculate. Those who claim to be in control are self-deceived.

Dear friends, we enter this period of struggle with a movement spiritually deep and broadly connected. Keep connecting across barriers of faith and ideology. We have not collapsed or imploded with despair at the start of this war, but understand that now a deeper resistance is summoned of us. We are being strategic. We are being faithful. We are being human. We must keep at it. Conspire the next steps. Be in the streets. Be in conversation. Be in community. Refuse taxes. Refuse to fight. Disrupt business as usual. Prefer poetry to ideology. Pray for victims before nations. When you pray for nations, let it be for the best of their tradition, for their renewal and repentance. When you light a candle let it mean intransigent resistance. When you pray imagine a new world possible.

Death appears to reign. But it is undone. Live in the freedom of the resurrection. In short, dear friends: Be not awed by anything but the God who raised Christ Jesus from the dead.

Ed. Note: Reprinted from Catholic Agitator, April 2003 (632 North Brittania St., Los Angeles, CA 90033; 323-267-8789) and On the Edge, April 2003 (Day House Catholic Worker, 2640 Trumbull, Detroit 48216 313-963-4539).

Bill Wylie-Kellermann is director of the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE). He is the author of A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow. Bill is a long-time contributing editor to The Witness and frequently writes on faith and conscience. He may be reached by email at bill@scupe.com