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EDITORIAL

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Peace protests and vigils marking another anniversary of the Iraq war can be just as depressing as the anniversary itself.

Many of us who worked countless hours to prevent the war remember the feeling of defeat when the bombs started dropping on Baghdad. Millions of people demonstrating around the world had not been able to change the minds of policymakers.

Five years later, Iraqi citizens and soldiers, as well as soldiers from the United States and allied countries, are still dying, and people of faith and conscience are still planning events calling for an end to the war.

A Christian Peace Witness for Iraq is gathering March 6-10 in Washington, D.C., for the second year. Organizers have encouraged smaller groups to hold vigils across the United States as well, to worship and witness in the prophetic tradition of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Members of two Mennonite congregations in northern Chicago and Evanston, Ill., attended the event in March 2007, but returned feeling cynical about their ability to affect policymakers’ decisions.

Instead of letting their frustration become apathy, they planned the Cynicism and Hope Conference in November. Academics, activists and church members spoke, reminding participants that cynicism can be positive when it teaches Christians to be skeptical of hopes placed in the political process.

Peter Dula, assistant professor of religion and culture at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., and the conference’s keynote speaker, explained that while Christians can take part in political witness, that is not where they should place their hope.

“Hope is in the cross,” Dula said.

Christians involved in prophetic witness can find it easy to describe themselves as trying to change the world or even to save the world. When we see ourselves as saving the world, and our actions fail to end injustices, it is easy to become depressed and cynical. It is then that we need to remember there is only one Savior of the world, and he has already changed the world irrevocably.

John Howard Yoder, a Mennonite theologian and author, argued in a 1988 speech, “To Serve Our God and Rule the World,” that Christians ought to evaluate historical triumphs and tragedies in light of Christ’s lordship over the world.

“To see history doxologically is to own the Lamb’s victory in one’s own time,” Yoder said.

Being in fellowship with Christ as Lord will take different forms at different times, Yoder said, and can include “humbly building a grassroots culture, with Jeremiah.”

Continued Christian peace witnesses could then be viewed not as saving Iraq or the world, but as building a grassroots culture to end violence.

Some of the organizers of the Cynicism and Hope conference are building such a culture as they plan a peace vigil for Iraq at 7 p.m. March 14 at Reba Place Church in Evanston. Instead of a more typical protest, the vigil will include time for confession, mourning, challenge and encouragement, said Roselyn Wilson of Reba Place, a conference organizer who attended last year’s peace witness in Washington.

Among the goals of the event is to remember and draw attention to the war, Wilson said. “A lot of the time we don’t even realize a war is going on,” she said.

So, as Christians rally again for peace in Washington, in Evanston and across the United States, we can remember the brokenness in Iraq even as we witness to God’s saving presence in the midst of it.
— Celeste Kennel-Shank