In March last year, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) hit international headlines when three of their number were finally rescued by Task Force Black, after a four-month kidnapping ordeal in Iraq. The body of American Tom Fox had been found on March 3, raising questions in some people's minds about the sanity of these Christian activists willing to risk their lives for "world peace'.
"The only thing some people like less than a terrorist is a peace activist," said Ted Olsen and Rob Moll from Christianity Today in summing up the media reaction. High-profile US shock-jock Rush Limbaugh labelled the kidnapping "a publicity stunt'.
"I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality," he said from the safety of his radio studio.
Talk of world peace is popular at Christmas time. This message is reinforced by the traditional carols, such as "Hark the Herald Angels Sing': "Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled".
Of course, as the words penned by Wesley indicate, global "peace' is ushered in by Christ's birth because he is the rightful and just ruler of the planet. The primary focus of Christ's mission is to reconcile a rebellious humanity with a loving God. Nevertheless, there is a horizontal dimension to Christ's ministry " peace should endure between human beings. So to what extent are Christians, in being faithful followers of Christ, called to be peacemakers in this world?
In the northern summer of 1984, well-known evangelical theologian Ron Sider launched a stinging rebuke at the Mennonite World Conference in France. He said his fellow Mennonites, pacifist since their bloody experiences of the Reformation, now effectively condoned war by merely defending their democratic right not to fight. If Jesus taught a non-violent approach to reconciliation, he said, then Christians must be ready "to die developing new non-violent attempts to reduce international conflict'.
For Sider, such sacrificial death echoed the example of the cross and so "is the only way to convince our violent world of the truth of Christ's alternative'.
"Everyone assumes that for the sake of peace it is moral and just for soldiers to get killed by the hundreds of thousands, even millions. Do we not have as much courage and faith as soldiers? I believe praying, Spirit-filled, non-violent peacekeeping forces would, by God's special grace, be able to end the violence and nurture justice. Again and again, we would discover that love for enemies is not utopian madness or destructive masochism but rather God's alternative to the centuries of escalating violence that now threatens the entire planet."
Michael Jensen, a Moore College lecturer currently writing a PhD thesis on Christian martyrdom, does not agree that pacifism is part of the gospel message.
"The gospel is the Lordship of the risen Christ," he says. "Jesus' message was not non-violence; he was non-violent to show that God's weakness is stronger than man's strength… but we do need to hear the challenge of Sider because the gospel is political - Christ is King. The church has far too easily colluded with terrible violence, or turned a blind eye to naked human power."
CPT was born directly as a result of Sider's challenge. They now have 36 full-time peacemakers and 152 part-time volunteers who serve in violence-reduction projects, mainly in the Americas and Middle East.
Gene Stoltzfus, former director of CPT, lists the "significant reduction' of violence since 1995 in the West Bank city of Hebron as one of the organisation's great success stories.
The home front
Meanwhile on the other side of the globe, Sydney-based mediation lawyer Bruce Burgess had concluded by the late 1990s that the Bible had deeper wisdom to offer than the secular approaches to conflict resolution he was utilising in legal practice.
"I saw how secular mediation processes fail to really address the core problems," says Burgess, who is a member of St James', Croydon. "They are focused on reaching a mediated "agreement' rather than healing the underlying broken relationships."
Burgess decided to explore the theological issue properly by undertaking a Masters degree through Morling College.
"My thesis compared two secular and two Christian approaches to mediating conflict," he said. The first of the Christian approaches was Mennonite.
"I found two big differences " secular mediation is focused on settling the conflict. Christian peacemaking has reconciliation as its focus, as well the resources of God to work in people's hearts."
Of the two Christian approaches he examined, Burgess became inspired by the biblical peacemaking principles presented by leading US Christian conciliator Ken Sande, so much so that Burgess, along with six fellow directors, finally launched PeaceWise last month in Sydney utilising the same philosophy.
While Burgess did not specifically examine CPT, he does say, "There is a stronger emphasis on the themes of social justice and healing in the Mennonite writing and work than there is in [Sande's] Peacemaker approach".
International conflict is not the key focus of Sande's model, which emphasises creating a "culture of peace' within local churches, though it has been used successfully in countries in which racial and social conflicts are endemic.
"The key focus of [Sande's] material is on transformation of the local church and the relationships of the people in it with each other and with those they interact with outside the church," says Burgess. "This is not in any way to say that "large-scale' social/international peacemaking is not valuable."
Making peace with Muslims
Working with Muslims in volatile situations, Christian Peacemakers Teams carefully emphasise that they are not a missionary organisation. For many Christians the failure to uphold an upfront proclamation ministry would render CPT as little different from secular do-gooders. Even the man who inspired the birth of Christian Peacemakers Teams admits he wishes they had more focus on Christian spiritual disciplines.
"If I were doing it, I would make prayer and Bible study more central," Ronald Sider told Christianity Today, "but overall I would say they do incredible work."
However, as Sider points out, CPT has done more than most organisations to be a positive witness for Christ in the Middle East. "I think the stuff in the West Bank and Hebron, for example, is an ideal illustration of what is possible. Probably because of that work, many of the radical Muslim groups spoke up for the three [CPT captives in Iraq] who were still alive."
The disdain shown to the kidnapped CPT activists in the West was a mirror image of the admiration in the Muslim world. Many influential Muslim clerics called for the release of the captives. Most remarkably, Islamic insurgent groups Hamas and Hezbollah signed a joint statement declaring: "Such peace activists should have been welcomed into Iraq and treated as honourable guests instead of… bargaining chips…We denounce as illegitimate any act of aggression against innocent civilians."
It's hard not to admire the courage of these Christian pacifists, derided at home while they put their lives on the line. Michael Jensen, who was against the war in Iraq because he believed it didn't fulfil the Bible's demands of justice, agrees that the activists' bravery is inspiring: "Their example does force me to consider if I should have done more for peace."
Before leaving for Iraq, one of the kidnapped activists, Professor Norman Kember, told Premier Christian Radio in Britain why he suddenly felt compelled to visit Baghdad: "I have done a lot of writing and talking about peacemaking. I have demonstrated. You name it, I have been on it " but I feel that is what I would call cheap peacemaking."
