Chaired by John Neugebauer
Followed by discussion.
As part of Churches Together in Clifton, Cotham and Redland’s Lent Lecture series
Wednesday 19 March, at Redland Meeting house

Diana Francis is a well known peace activist and was former President of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and Chair of the Committee for Conflict Transformation Support..  Her books include People, Peace and Power (2002), Rethinking War and Peace (2004) and From Pacification to Peacebuilding: A Call to Global Transformation (2010)

My approach is what I believe and what I have experienced as a Christian. We need to be a power for good; Jesus chose to live by such a power, specifically rejecting military ‘powerful’ power, when he was in the desert deciding on the nature of his ministry, and his death seemed like ultimate powerlessness, but proved otherwise.

For its first 300 years, the Christian Church was against war, with soldiers automatically resigning on becoming a Christian, but Constantine changed all that, with the church becoming intertwined with the state. In this situation, theologians designed a model to combine two radically different models of power and came up with the concept of a ‘just war’. This was not the gospel and not good news. The Bible says all are made in the image of God and Quakers say there is something good, ‘that of God’, in everyone, so every life is sacred.

Trying to change the way people think is hard work, like pushing a boulder up a hill. We have the power to touch other people so that, instead of acting out of fear, they, and we, reach out to each other’s humanity. In learning the skills for being a peacemaker, it is very important to do it well.

Conflict can be useful and does not have to lead to violence. In a war, the ‘wrong side’ may win anyway. Guerrilla warfare has a deadly impact on ordinary people who are caught between the guerrilla and government forces and does, indeed, entail the risk of the ‘wrong side’ winning. In contrast, many have resisted war without arms as they did in the townships of South Africa, with Nelson Mandela’s huge-hearted contribution coming afterwards. There are many other examples of uprisings without the violence that poisons the ground and inflicts wounds that are very deep.

Nevertheless, war goes on and many leaders, who want to look good, encourage it. Work to resist violent conflict, and transform relationships through dialogue, is undertaken by brave, ordinary people around the world and their efforts are often needed for many decades after war. For example, the work continues to this day in former Yugoslavia.

People need help to come to terms with what has happened, to appreciate that others may feel differently from them and must be prepared to operate and exercise influence in different circumstances. This applies, for example, to the relationship between Georgia and Abkhazia, which will have been negatively affected now by events in the Ukraine.

This work for peace may be complicated but it is better than war. Faith is needed to make change without taking the route to war. We need to do something different and look for another sort of power, one which we all possess.

a) Can the gospel message work?

b) What can we do to convince ourselves, and other human beings, that we are not doomed to behave destructively, and that the future could look different and much better?

People make a huge amount of money from war and the war machine is heavily subsidised, but many such products are not building real wealth. This is a system that has to change. Any such change has to be massive but ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’.

We must have the courage, and find the power, to speak out and disagree with the general point of view. Politicians and governments, especially in old imperial countries like ours, (less so those in Scandinavian countries, for instance), are wedded to the idea of dominating, military power. However, Jesus showed us a radical new way of being, so that we do not need to be afraid of power but use our own cooperative, loving version of it for good. We have to come to this understanding ourselves.

Peace starts with each of us. We need to discuss and consider peace with others to find our true selves and power for good.