NY Times Op-Ed: War And Faith

New York Times Op-Ed:  The Theological Truth We Must Press During War, by Esau McCaulley (Wheaton College; Author, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South (2023):

I am ordained, but I do not pastor a church. Still, I am often invited to be a guest speaker or lecturer in congregations and universities. Lately, when people ask me questions afterward, they want to know my opinion about the war between Israel and Hamas. I am happy to answer them. Members of the clergy aren’t shut off from the world, and I don’t think our words should be either — we can be a force for good. ...

[H]istory unfolds before us, giving properly humbled churches chances to begin again. We are at such a moment with the war in Gaza. So if our congregants want to know what we think about the war that began with Hamas’s terrorist attacks, what is the appropriate response? How might churches engage with a complex history that has so many competing claims? ...

A central teaching of Christianity arising from Genesis, a text it shares with its Jewish neighbors, maintains that every person, regardless of country of origin, is made in the image of God and deserving of respect. We are not alone in this belief. Other religious and secular traditions have articulated a similar idea. This provides an opportunity for cooperation. The belief in the inestimable worth of human beings can be a moral anchor in the turbulent seas of conflicting concerns.

There is no more crucial time to press this basic truth than in times of war, when the humanity of one’s opponents gets tossed to the side. Contending for the dignity of Palestinian and Israeli civilians is a theological act when the goals of victory and of the protection of the innocent struggle with each other for supremacy. Giving equal value to human beings on both sides of the conflict does not entail making moral equivalences between Israel and Hamas. It requires considering the lives of noncombatants in Israel and Gaza as equally sacred. ...

After the horrible events of Oct. 7, over 2,000 evangelical leaders issued a statement correctly condemning the actions of Hamas. They asserted Israel’s right to self-defense and affirmed that the people of the Middle East had “dignity and personhood,” but that statement did not speak explicitly about how that personhood ought to affect the conduct of the war. I would have liked to see the group outline how the humanity of all those involved places moral limits on military actions during wartime. ...

[I]f we really believe God values the lives of all civilians, then we ought to say so in our sermons, in our conversations and in our prayers. We ought to follow the events of the war and comment on them through the lens of protecting the vulnerable. We should encourage people to do what our faith tells us to do over and over, which is to see the humanity in everyone, even our enemies.

All nations know how to pick up swords. They don’t need encouragement to do so. But they may need help finding ways to put them away. 

Other op-eds by Esau McCaulley:

• Why I Am Still A Christian Despite The Evils Done To My Enslaved Family (Oct. 8, 2023)
• The Streets Sent Me to the Pulpit (Sept. 24, 2023)
• Frederick Douglass Knew What False Patriotism Was, Especially On The 4th Of July (July 4, 2023)
• My Father Failed Me. Here’s How I Learned To Forgive Him. (June 18, 2023)
• Lent: The Season Of Repentance And Renewal (Apr. 2, 2023)
• There Is Glory And God In Our Struggles (Feb. 12, 2023)
• Does The Meaning Of A Christmas Song Change Depending On The Race Of The Man Who Wrote It? (Dec. 25, 2022)
• MLK's Legacy: Push Past Tweetable Quotes To True Christlike Love (Jan. 17, 2022)
• The Dangerous Politics Of ‘We Will Not Forgive’ (Oct. 3, 2021)
• Why Christians Must Fight Systemic Racism (Aug. 1, 2021)
• MLK's Legacy: Push Past Tweetable Quotes To True Christlike Love (Jan. 18, 2021)
• What The Bible Has To Say About Black Anger: 'The Cross Helps Us Make Sense Of The Lynching Tree' (June 21, 2020)
• The Christian Response to the Coronavirus: Stay Home (Mar. 22, 2020)

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