DownloadFeb. 23, 2009 issue
The CPT idea, 25 years later
By Melanie Zuercher Bethel CollegePage:
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NORTH NEWTON, Kan. — A little over 25 years after giving a speech that sowed the seed for Christian Peacemaker Teams, Ronald J. Sider came to Bethel College Feb. 15-16 to revisit the topic.
Guest speaker Ron Sider, second from right, talks to Paul Lewis, Bethel College professor of psychology. Looking on are Richard Zerger, professor of chemistry, Rachel Gaeddert, sophomore from Larned, and Omar Hasan, senior from Halstead. — Photo by Vada Snider/Bethel College
Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action and a professor at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University near Philadelphia, delivered a Sunday afternoon Peace Lecture in the series sponsored by the Kansas Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution on “It’s Time to Get Serious About Christian Peacemaker Teams.”
Sider recalled his address to the 1984 assembly of Mennonite World Conference in Strasbourg, France, in which he called on Christians to prove their commitment to the belief that “the cross is greater than the sword” by being willing to sacrifice everything, even their lives, through direct nonviolent resistance to injustice and war.
He noted that in the year or two after the address, Anabaptist-Mennonite leaders gave his proposals “the very best of mutual discernment.” Then, he said, they “stepped back and left it to the peace and justice activists. Thanks be to God, they did it” — by organizing Christian Peacemaker Teams, which trains and mobilizes Christians to respond to violent situations, such as the West Bank and rural Colombia.
After 25 years, Sider said, he finds his MWC address a bit “melodramatic” and the call to die “overstated.” He also admitted he was “over-optimistic, seeing 100,000 peacemakers in the field in two to three years.”
“CPT-type activity is not the only way to work for peace,” Sider said. “But it is an important way that we haven’t used as much as we should, and we should expand it. Pacifists should take the lead in developing CPT-type activity and encouraging just-war Christians to join them.”
The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history, Sider said, but it also produced “numerous stunningly successful nonviolent victories.”
Sider’s examples of the latter included Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian campaign for independence from Great Britain; Martin Luther King Jr. and the U.S. civil rights movement; the trade union Solidarity’s success in overcoming Soviet dominance in Poland; and the People Power Revolution in the Philippines that overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Just-war Christians, Sider noted, lay out criteria that must be met before war is considered, including “that all reasonable, nonviolent alternatives have been tried.”
“How can [just-war Christians] claim that everything else has been tried, when these nonviolent campaigns, in which the people had little training, have succeeded?” Sider asked.
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