Spirit in Action
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer - A Government of Justice and Peace
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, assistant professor of Justice & Peace Studies at the University of St Thomas, spoke at the 2009 Ways of Peace conference sponsored by Friends for a Non-violent World. He's got an insightful and practical theology of transformation for our world which fueled his run for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate.
- Broadcast on:
- 06 Dec 2009
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- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one with every voice ♪ ♪ With every song we will move this world along ♪ ♪ And my lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice with every song we will move this world along ♪ I've got quite a treat today for you for Spirit in Action. Back in October, the friends for a non-violent world sponsored their first installation of a series of ways of peace conferences. And this first one was on non-violence in the Christian tradition. Today, I'm going to share Jack Nelson Palmaier's presentation from that event, followed up with a personal interview I did with Jack. Folks outside of Minnesota are less likely to know Jack Nelson Palmaier, but he sought Minnesota's Democratic senatorial seat against fellow Democrat, Al Franken. Jack teaches justice and peace studies at the University of St. Thomas and has a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He's got powerful beliefs and great insights, so let's listen in at the Ways of Peace Conference, and afterwards, I'll ask Jack Nelson Palmaier some follow-up questions. I can't think of any time that is more important than this time to be dealing with the topic for this conference. And I'm going to return to this towards the end of my remarks today, but let's be clear about our context. We're living in a nation in serious, serious imperial decline. I would say serious and rapid imperial decline. And how we face up to that is going to determine very likely the future of this country and maybe even the future of the world. And it's rather sobering to recognize that most empires don't go quietly. They go militaristically. So this is the broader context, and again, I'm going to close my remarks with that. So the first thing I want to touch on is my effort to position Jesus in relation to the violence of God's traditions that dominate the Bible. Jesus was a radical Jew living in first century Palestine, a very militaristic time under a very militarized empire, and he comes out of a tradition in which violence of God, I would say, is at the heart of the tradition. Expectations that hope is rooted in violence was at the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures. So let me just review some of you are maybe familiar with some of my writings on this topic, which have gotten me into lots of trouble on some levels and have inspired hopefully a fair number of people on another level. But here's my brief history that when I look at the biblical text, honestly, I see that the Bible is really dominated by three main storylines. And all these storylines are rooted in explanations of history and they're rooted in expectations that hope is rooted in God's violence. So that the first main storyline is the storyline of the Exodus, which is interpreted as a storyline about the liberating violence of God. We interpret the Exodus story as an oppressed people crying out for justice and that God hears their cry and helps them defeat the oppressive Pharaoh. And this is the interpretation unless you read the story. And if you read the story, it's about a tribal deity. It's a very ugly story that really orders the people, commands the people, encourages the people to commit genocide against the people who aren't happening in the land. It's a very, very troubling story. But in the tradition, this story comes through as a story about the liberating violence of God. And just as a parenthesis, when I lived and worked in Central America in the 1980s, the liberation theology had an incredibly powerful and overall very positive impact. On the awakening of people to a sense of hope and possibility that poverty wasn't God's will, that the social systems of injustice, God did not want in place, that the role of the church was to have a preferential option for the people who were struggling for change. All that was very positive. But there were elements of that story, of that liberation story, that also were kind of interpreted that, well, yes, maybe the Salvadoran government has more military power, but in this storyline, when the people do what's right, God will help them. And they will perhaps try. And what we see throughout history is that that rarely happens. That in almost every setting, when a poor oppressed people decide to fight on the playing field of violence, they lose. Because the powerful forces in society, the despots, the paramilitaries, the militaries, the support from the empires are so strong, that it's not a very level playing field. But that's the first storyline, the storyline of Exodus, the promise of the liberating violence of God. Now, the second storyline emerges in the Bible as a result of the fact that this storyline, the promise of liberation, really didn't take place within actual history. And in fact, the Israelites find themselves over and over and over again, being squashed by foreign empires. And so they experience exile. And so the second storyline is the storyline of exile, and this becomes, the interpretive lens becomes the punching violence of God. We did all of these things wrong. And there are millions of things that you can do wrong. And many of the different biblical writers in the Old Testament are just laying out all kinds of things. We didn't worship at the right place, at the right time. We followed Moses' leadership instead of Aaron's. We worshiped in Jerusalem too much. We didn't worship in Jerusalem enough. We carried out our sacrifices outside. We weren't just enough. But the storyline is we did something wrong. We deserved this punishment, and so this is a story of the punishing violence of God that explains exile, the loss of land, the experience of oppression at the hands of imperial powers. And a key aspect of this storyline, in addition to explaining to the people why all this troubling history, is it comes with a promise. And the promise is that if they change their behavior, if they do X, Y, Z, and it's again a long list you can choose from, then God's liberating violence will once again join forces with them, and they will defeat those who are now dominating them. So the biblical word for this is salvation, just take a look, and almost on every occasion that you will find in the Hebrew scripture's salvation named, it means the defeat of your enemy, the crushing defeat of your enemy. And it usually is implied that this is going to be God now turning on your behalf. God may have been punishing you, driving you to exile, have all these horrible things happen to you, but what we're going to see as a reversal within history in which God's violence will now be on our side and we will be saved. And our enemies will be crushed. Well, that storyline goes on for quite some time in the Hebrew scriptures, and then hundreds of years ago by, and the reversal doesn't happen. And in fact, the oppression deepens. And so about 175 years before Jesus is born, a third storyline emerges in the Bible, the apocalyptic worldview. And the writer Daniel captures this worldview fairly well. And in this worldview, what is essentially said is, you know what, now we're being crushed by Antiochus, this incredibly oppressive ruler who has said that the Jews cannot practice their religion or he will kill them. He puts a face of himself on a statue of Zeus and moves it inside the Jewish temple and bans the Jewish religion, very, very repressive time. In the apocalyptic worldview explains these events by saying, you know, God really doesn't want us to be oppressed like this, but the problem is that God is preoccupied with a cosmic war. God is fighting a war against the cosmic forces of evil, and a good news is that God is winning that battle. The bad news is, as long as that battle is taking place and until it's culminated on earth here, we're going to be crushed. But the good news is God is winning and will win soon, and we can place our hope not in a historical reversal as promised by the prophets, but we can put our hope in the end of history as we know it. That God will come, and this is a story of the vindicating violence of God, but it's a vindicating violence of God in a sense at the end of history, at least as we know it. And part of the storyline also introduces the idea of resurrection, that those who die during this oppressive rule who are faithful will rise, and those who have been unjust will also rise and they will fry forever. It's a great division between the good and the bad between George Bush's division of the world between good and evil has antecedent in this worldview, this apocalyptic worldview. So those are the three big storylines, and if we fast forward now to the birth of Jesus, we see that Jesus is born into a time of another imperial power, the Roman Empire. And Rome rules in ways that are frighteningly similar to the way the United States carries out its empire. There are essentially four features of Roman rule. The first was it provided an ideological justification for its rule, the piece of Rome. The ideology said without Rome's military power to hold the empire together there would be chaos. How many times have we heard something similar? Many of you may know that the client king ruler, which is the second feature of Roman rule, was to rule through client kings. You don't want Paul Bremer being in charge of a rock for too long. You have to place up friendly US government in power. Well, that's the way Rome ruled too, is by appointing client kings. And only when the client kings really failed did you put a direct Roman in power. So you have client king rule. And the Roman senate, not too many years before Jesus was born, declared that the emperor was divine, and that the emperor's son was the son of God, and the birth of the emperor's son was known as the gospel. So where have you heard those claims before? The first verse of Mark, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ's Son of God, is a direct challenge to this Roman imperial idea system. So that the importance again of the ideology. So Rome ruled with the ideology. Rome ruled through client kings. Rome ruled by co-opting the temple wheat. It set up a religious system in which, for example, the high priest was selected by Rome. This puts the religious officials in very, very difficult position, because if you want to keep your position you have to please Rome. And again, I would argue, in terms of parallels, that we have been a remarkably subservient church to empire throughout the history of this country. And that's the way empires rule, is they co-op the religious system. And, of course, the fourth feature of Roman rule was military power. And when things got out of hand and they couldn't rule effectively through client kings or through the temple wheat, they would send in their legions. And shortly before Jesus was born, or right at the time that Jesus was born, four miles from his hometown, Rome did exactly that, putting down a rebellion and burned down the second largest city in Palestine. And then crucified thousands of people and left their bodies in the street for wild animals to eat, or left actually their bodies on crosses, as signs for the people you don't mess with Rome. Now, again, parallels, any of us who have lived and worked in Central America know how terrorism functions, how terror functions, how torture functions. And US sponsored governments throughout the 1980s and now beyond have used terror and torture in ways very similar to the way that the Romans used crosses. It's a way of saying you don't mess with us. Okay, so that's kind of the context in which then we meet Jesus. And I would argue that many, many Jewish people living in 1st century Palestine were asking themselves two questions and rooting their hope in two expectations. The two questions they would have been asking were, "What did we do to deserve this? What did we do wrong so that God now is allowing us to be dominated by the Romans?" And the second question they would have been asking is, "What can we do differently to trigger God's favor?" Which included the expectation of triggering God's violence to be on their side so that they could wipe out the Romans, push them away, cleanse the temple, and set up a different religious and social system. The two expectations or two places where people rooted their hope were in these expectations. The first was the hope that God would send them a military messiah. And with the help of God's power, a smaller, less powerful force would be able to do that, throw the Romans out, cleanse the temple, and change things. And the second place that they rooted their hope, and keep in mind that there was this heightened expectation of a military messiah coming. And when Herod the Great, the client king ruler of Rome died, and there were rebellions throughout Palestine, for a while I think there were a fair number of people who thought this was Isaiah's moment. Isaiah promised that all the wealth of the world would come to Israel, and Israel would be the most powerful country in the world, and it'd throw out their oppressors, but Rome sent in their legions and just wiped them out. And one of the lessons that we need to learn from that experience is that bad news is always good news for the apocalyptic world. And so that's the second place then where people rooted their hope, which essentially is saying, no, don't put your hope in a historical reversal, put your hope in the end time. And in the end time we will see the vindicating violence of God. Our enemies will get what they deserve, and we will be vindicated. And I would argue that John the Baptist emerges out of the ashes of that failed rebellion, and really promises, he's announcing essentially the imminent end of the world as we know it, and calling on the people to repent and wait on the vindicating violence of God. Well, it's in this context then that we meet, and I must be honest here, if you read the New Testament, we meet competing Jesuses. So you're going to have to choose. The gospel writers in my view put a lot of apocalyptic saints on the lips of Jesus. So we have a pro-apocalyptic Jesus, but we also have, we get glimpses of a real person who lived in a real place named Jesus, who did a lot of crazy things, and said some very surprising things, and I'm just going to name a few of them. I mentioned that the crushing defeat of enemies was the understanding of salvation. What does Jesus teach? Love of enemies. There could be no more radical reversal in expectation than that teaching. And I know as Walter has pointed out, the Essenes, an apocalyptic remnant that grew out of that movement that I talked about earlier, they specifically taught the hatred of enemies. And so this idea of loving enemies is in contrast to that apocalyptic expectation. It's also in contrast as I'm indicating to the view that the crushing defeat of your enemy within history was the proper definition of salvation. And instead, Jesus suggests that salvation is healing, and salvation is restoring the outcast to community. Jesus roots hope in the alternative community, in the economic sharing that takes place there, in the fellowship that takes place there. Jesus models and calls people to compassion, and in the story of the compassion that Samaritan breaks down barriers, Samaritans were hated because they had intermarried during a time of earlier occupation. You know, this is a classic kind of divide and conquer technique, right? Keep oppressed people from being in touch with each other, keep them fighting about things that really don't matter so much, and that allows the oppression to go on, so Jesus teaches about compassion and breaking down those barriers. When asked about the reign of God, and in the context of some of these stories, you can tell that people who are asking Jesus are expecting Jesus to say something about "mightain bolts," and the end of Rome and cleansing the temple, and Jesus talks about mustard seeds and calls the community to be literally subversive weeds that grow where they're not wanted. Jesus, again, addressing this apocalyptic expectation says that the kingdom of God or the reign of God is in your midst, it's within you, it's within the community, radically different. Jesus, in the context of that punishing image of God that I talked about earlier, tells a parable about the prodigal who was forgiven by the God figure in the parable before even asking for forgiveness. Jesus says, "God is forgiveness, not God is forgiving, the nature of God is forgiveness, is mercy." Jesus, unlike this definition of power that we've been talking about in those common storylines, talks about the invitational power of God. You know, where I have probably met the most resistance in terms of my own writing on these matters is when I talk about the invitational power of God. When I say God does not have the power to end war, God does not have the power to force you to not be hateful, to force you to be welcoming of gays and lesbians and others. The God that we meet in the Bible through Jesus is powerless in that sense. But I would say is powerful in the sense that God is the invitational presence inviting us to new life in every moment of every day and every situation that we will. It's a radical re-conception of power, and it's one that the future of the planet depends upon us heating, it seems to me. And then I'm sure as Walter talked about this morning, Jesus was an active practitioner of non-violence. And the passage, you know, about turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile are remarkable first century examples of Gandhian or Kenyan ways of approaching oppression and standing up to oppression through non-violent means. Just a couple more words about positioning Jesus. It's also my judgment that the gospel writers pretty much lead us astray. Now that's not something that you can say lightly. I'm grateful for all that they provided and the information they provided. But they tended to interpret the meaning of Jesus' life and death through images of God that Jesus himself rejected. So an atoning sacrifice definition or interpretation of the meaning of his life fits if you accept that punishing God is out there ready to pounce and to get you when you do things wrong. It doesn't make sense if God's character is forgiveness. And even more troubling or as troubling, the second interpretive lens used by the gospel writers to explain the meaning of Jesus' life and death is the apocalyptic worldview that his death fits into God's apocalyptic plan. And so ironically Jesus, the non-violent one who calls us to be peacemakers, to love enemies and to be non-violent will return as the great violent cosmic judge to determine who lives and who dies. So those are the interpretive lenses that they use. Now having said that, it's rather remarkable to me. But the one thing that we can say with pretty much certitude is that this idea that Jesus was committed to non-violence survived and thrived within the early church. In fact, it was the heart of the early church for about 300 years where you could not be a Christian and a soldier. There were stretches here and there got to be in some cases you could be a soldier but you couldn't kill, you could build roads. But this was a deeply held view that survived and thrived. This message of the non-violence of Jesus must have been so, so clear that it was at the heart of what it meant to be a Christian for the first 300 years of Christianity. That's good news and it's a tradition that we can draw on and certainly many of you are aware that when Constantine comes along and begins the process of making Christianity the official religion of the empire, instead of an anti-imperial religion, we see a fundamental shift within Christianity. So our first challenge is probably a theological one and it's a theological one to take seriously this non-violent tradition that we have. Alright, these next two will be a little briefer. The second thing I wanted to touch on was just to say a few words about the inadequacies of just war tradition. Now, what just war tradition, it seems to me, the best interpretation I can give of just war tradition is that it sought to balance two demands. One was to limit violence and the other one was the imperative to prevent evil or injustice or to protect the innocent. And if you look at some of the principles and acknowledge that according to just war theory, all the principles have to be functioning at the same time or it could be considered a just war, for example, you know, a comparative position where you have to understand a conflict through the lens of the adversary as well as your own eyes. That it was supposed to be a last resort, that it was supposed to be discriminating, that it was supposed to be some kind of proportionality that you couldn't involve a lot of civilian casualties, that it had to be fought for a just cause, that there had to be likely successes, a whole series of principles that should actually function to limit war. And in fact, many people understood that just war was meant to limit war, and yet in almost every instance, even where the church has decided to say something about just war, it has given the benefit of the doubt to empires and given the benefit of doubt to governments. And so that's one of the fatal flaws of the just war theory in my view, or at least one of its great deficiencies is, again, part of the theological task, but it has a political consequence. When people in the churches confuse nationalism with faith, we're in deep trouble when it comes to just war. And when we allow political leaders to be the ones to determine whether criteria have been met for a just war, we're in deep trouble. Or when we allow religious leaders to have a say, but when they say, well, we can't really definitively say either way, that they don't then tell soldiers under that circumstance, you can't fight. Instead of under those circumstances, we won't say anything, and therefore it is okay for you to fight in a questionable war. And then the last thing I wanted to say about the just war tradition in terms of inadequacy is that it seems to me that it denies the powerful lesson that we need to learn about the futility of war. We really do need to start treating war the same way that we understood slavery. It's something that we no longer tolerate. It should no longer be acceptable, and we certainly have so few with any examples of war actually achieving objectives that are set out for it. And the flip side of that is in addition to not having us come to terms with the futility of war, it seems to me that it has allowed Christians to stand away from one of their principal vocational callings, which is to be instruments, experimenters, activists in nonviolent social change. And if there's any lesson that we could learn by actually looking at history over the last, well, just history period, but even in the last 30, 40, 50 years, it would be that most of the big fundamental changes that have taken place in the world have not taken place as a result of violence, but have taken place as a result of nonviolent movements. So that's why it's one of the reasons why I think it is so important that those of us who continue to call ourselves Christian, that we start being much, much more outspoken, much more engaged in just simply saying war is futile, is counterproductive, it doesn't work, it doesn't solve problems, that most of the grave problems faced by the world today will not be resolved, cannot be responded to through military means. And at the same time, we should be training, cultivating, teaching, the techniques, strategies, philosophies, theologies of non-violence. Alright, well, the third thing, just touch on this for a few minutes, our context. Well, our context, here we are living literally in the most militarized country in the history of the world. No other country has ever compared to the degree of militarism of our present society. The United States accounts for almost half of all global military spending. Last year, the United States accounted for 68% of all the weapons sold in the world, all the weapons sold in the world, 68% from the United States of America. In next year's proposed budget, 55 cents out of every dollar Congress gets to vote on, so-called discretionary budget will go to war, and war related things, 55 cents. We're in a situation where every effort that the United States uses to hold on to its privileged position in the world through military means is accelerating the pace of our internal economic decline. We're in a situation where the United States now occupies and invades countries when people don't like it, they fight back, and then we justify sending more troops because we want to stop them from fighting back, even though they're fighting back because they want to end the occupation. It becomes a circular logic that leads to escalation of wars that can't be fought, and I personally think that more of us need to just go out there and say it, which I've been doing in public settings, and I say it this simply. The United States has no moral authority, no economic capacity, and no military means to carry out successful warfare in light of the present problems that are faced. No moral authority, no economic, no moral authority, no economic capacity, and no military means to carry out successful military operations. If I gave a talk up in Duluth to a single-payer group, an annual conference up in Duluth last weekend, a segment of my talk was, what can $380 million buy you? That's how much has been spent by the pharmaceutical industry, the healthcare industry, and the related groups to derail meaningful healthcare reform in this country since January, just since January, $380 million. Now, there's six lobbyists, healthcare lobbyists, for every congressperson. We have the same process, only much more deeply ingrained into our political system when it comes to militarization, when it comes to military spending. There's a reason that people like me refer to it as the military industrial, congressional complex, because they have intentionally set up military production, military bases, to try to build in support from congressional people because all districts are involved. Well, this is very difficult to say, and some of you may disagree with me, but I think it's very important that we understand the Obama administration in continuity with the previous administration. And the neoconservatives are just towards one end in a very dysfunctional foreign policy spectrum. And the Democrats, many of you know, I ran for political office, and I told this story many times before, but the most disgusting party running for political office for me, or one of them put it this way, one of the most difficult things for me, was to attend fundraising events for local democratic party groups. And in themselves, they were fine, but they would always have guest speakers, and the guest speakers were usually elected officials from our state. And so over and over and over again, I mean, they were throwing something decent here and there, but basically the message was all of our problems in the country are related to George Bush and the Republicans, and the solution is to elect more Democrats. And whenever I got the chance, I would stand up and I would say that this, undoubtedly the Bush administration was maybe the worst, well, I would say it was the worst administration in US history. But nothing that they did could have been carried out without the complicity of Democrats. So, what that means, and back to our topic, what that means is we have to counter that myth of redemptive violence that was being talked about. Because that myth of redemptive violence, and the myth that militarism saves, the myth that when you have a problem, the solution is more military power, or a better military strategy. I was really struck by Holbrook, who's basically in charge of a lot of the Afghanistan policy. He apparently got the name, and I forget that I could give this to you, I get in my office, but it was someone who wrote a book about the Vietnam War, and Holbrook called him up and said, "I want you to tell me, from the lessons that you learn from your history of Vietnam, how we can carry out our counterinsurgency program, lessons can we learn from Vietnam, so we can carry out our more effective counterinsurgency program in Afghanistan." And so, this writer of this book said, "Oh, well, that's easy." The lesson that we should have learned is that we should not have been in Vietnam, and we should not be in Afghanistan. But that's breaking with a militarized mindset that holds us captive. I was telling someone briefly downstairs, one of the things that I'm deeply troubled by is that the death of every soldier, the return of every soldier, the sending off of every soldier, is used by Tim Polanti and others as a glorification for militarism and war. Every sporting event is used as a glorification of militarization and war. And yet, here's the great challenge we face, and maybe the great opportunity we face, and I'll close with these two remarks. The first is what I said, I think, is absolutely true. Every effort we make to hold on to privilege and power through military means accelerates the pace of our internal decline. We have huge problems in this country and huge opportunities. And I think people are starting, or at least with our help, with our persistence, with our organizing, there's an opportunity to make direct connections to militarism and the undermining of the quality of life in this country and around the world. Maybe one of the places we can do that best is around growing concern about climate change. Next year's budget, the U.S. budget will spend 85 times more on militarism and war than addressing climate change. That's the ratio, 85 to one. Now, people can get that. The second hopeful challenge that I'll leave you with is I do believe that there is growing disgust with the wars that we are engaged in. If you look at the numbers, they're actually quite remarkable given the propaganda on the other side. Seven of 10 Democrats want an end of the war in Afghanistan. They don't want to escalate the war in Afghanistan. So our problem isn't even so much the U.S. people, although there's some problems there that we need to address. But the problem is very powerful moneyed interests and very powerful groups that benefit from war and militarization and violence. But I suspect that our theological task is also the cultural task, then, of helping to create cultures of peace, helping to challenge the myth of redemptive violence, offering alternatives in terms of what we could be doing, what we need to be doing. This, in some ways, is a no-brainer. Think of what we could do if the United States, instead of spending half of the world's military. Here's what Obama should have done to get the Nobel Peace Prize. He should have called an international conference and said, "Going into this international conference, I'm committing the United States to a 50% reduction in U.S. military spending the next five years. We want to invite all the nations of the world to join us. We're going to devote that money to ending poverty worldwide and to addressing climate change." So we need to be lifting up that vision. I think in some strange way, the people are actually ready for some honesty about this. But that honesty, unfortunately, isn't going to be coming from our present political and perhaps even religious leadership. They need to be pushed. And you are the people. We are the people to do that. Thank you. That was Jack Nelson-Palmeyer, Assistant Professor of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas, and a recent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota. Speaking at the first ways of peace conference hosted by the Friends for a Nonviolent World. I'm your spirit and action host, Mark Helpsmeet, and this program originates via WHYS LP Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It's a Northern spirit radio production. Always available via our website, NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Listen, find links, and please post this comment when you visit because we'd love to get to know you. But right now we're going to talk one-on-one with Jack Nelson-Palmeyer, today's spirit and action guest. Jack, I'm so pleased you could join me for spirit and action. Nice to be with you, thanks. The speech you gave for the Ways of Peace conference was excellent, and I really look forward to finding a little bit more detail out from you. But I also wanted to ask you about some specifics of you. So I'm going to start with you before we come back to those other questions. For one thing, you ran to be a senator, and I figured that puts you in a difficult role if you're actually going to be serving government because you're serving all of the people. How did you think about that role of serving in our government? Well, it was a decision I came to quite reluctantly and quite surprisingly. I had been asked a number of times over the years people would hear me give talks on U.S. foreign policy. I lived and worked in Central America. I have done a lot of work on hunger and poverty issues. And every once in a while people would approach me and say, "You know, you should run for public office." The answer was always immediate. No, I really value the freedom that I have and the voice that I have. And so if I were to enter that arena, my fear was that people would then say, "Oh, well, you're just saying what you're saying because you want to get elected." So it was an arena I actually avoided quite consciously, and I came to the conclusion that it was such an important arena that it was too important to ignore, even though I find it a very frustrating arena. And someone approached me a number of years ago and said, "Jack, a number of us have been talking, and we think that you should challenge Martin Sabo because he's been a Democrat who has served for a long, long time, but he doesn't seem to be speaking out against the war and doing other things. And would you consider that?" And I actually surprised myself by saying, "Maybe." And then I had to pay attention to that maybe. And when I entered that political realm, I did so with an understanding that that is an arena that's different from the religious world where I had functioned most of my life. You were a very strong competitor, I think, in the primary against Al Franken. Of course, he eventually is now serving in the Senate. Would it in some way have handicapped you in terms of being able to express your deepest held beliefs to half the serving office? I mean, would that have meant a contradiction with some of the things that you believe strongly? Perhaps. The way that I looked at it, I was campaigning calling this the most important decade. And I would approach people and say, "This election really isn't about me, it's about us, and it's about where our country is and where it's headed." And then I would just speak openly about the issues as I saw them, that I really believe our country is a deeply and over militarized nation, for example, that we can't afford the enormous costs associated with militarily seeking to dominate the world. And I would pose for people the challenge of climate change and saying the environmental scientists were giving us a very narrow window of opportunity to act, or we could be creating a really poor situation for future generations. And I just thought as an arena where I was able to lift up many of my concerns that were certainly concerns that are informed by my faith, but not concerns that had to be dictated by my faith in bringing that into the public realm. But I will give you an example of where I was willing to see some of what you called a contradiction or at least potential problem areas. I deeply believe in the power of non-violence, and I am opposed to war as a means of seeking to solve problems because I don't think war solves problems. I would have been pushing for bills that would have called for a 50% reduction in U.S. military spending over the next five years in deeper reductions in the future, for example. That would have been consistent with my views on all fronts, and recognize that there would be places where, if a bill like that came up, that I would be voting in that way. But I didn't overall feel that I would be placed in many situations where I would be compromising some of my deepest held beliefs and concerns, which is really what I was doing with bringing those deep concerns and addressing them in that political arena, which is a different arena in some ways, but it certainly overlaps with... My whole life has been lived in that arena, just not as a candidate. Could you say a little bit about your religious-spiritual background? I'm wondering, the specifics, what did you grow up religiously, what are you now, are you, and officially designated as a minister? I'm not officially designated as a minister. My background is I grew up in the Lutheran Church. I attended St. Ols College, a Lutheran College. I had my life very much changed through a number of experiences I had studying in the University of Chicago, eventually teaching school there. I spent time as an undergraduate student studying in India and Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Japan, a number of other places that got me deeply involved and engaged in issues of hunger and poverty. Graduated from seminary, went to seminary where I really probed a lot the intersection of faith and politics. My life has been deeply immersed in religion, Christianity, theology, but very much driven by my practical involvement and concerns with issues of hunger and poverty. My wife and I then lived and worked in Central America for a number of years. I had actually studied with the liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, who was kind of a central figure in trying to reframe Christianity by suggesting that hunger and poverty were not things that God ordained or appreciated, but in fact the challenge to people of faith was to work to change the economic and political systems that were at the root of problems like hunger and poverty. I continue to be involved in a Christian faith community called the Community of St. Martin, an ecumenical community committed to nonviolence in the Twin Cities. I have been a longtime member of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in South Minneapolis, although I will say quite honestly that I have had a lot of trouble with the dominant Lutheran theology rooted in the atonement theory of God sending Jesus as a sacrifice in order to get us into a right relationship with God. Again, I don't accept that that is the reason that God sent Jesus and that that should come across in my presentation about the violence of God traditions. I would say now the deepest influences on my own spirituality have been in engagement with the Jesus of history that I talked about some in my talk in which I see Jesus as a person who lived in a real place in a real time, Roman occupied Palestine, and who was trying to make sense out of his own faith tradition as well as his political situation. And in that context, call people to love enemies, call people to be peacemakers, challenge the abusive domination system of his time, really embraced the idea of an inclusive community, broke down a lot of barriers, challenged a lot of the violence of God traditions around the punishing God or the apocalyptic worldview that hope was to be placed at the end of history. That encounter in my writings about that, my reflections on those things have deeply impacted the kind of faith that I know, practice. And I would say the other one actually comes out of the Buddhist tradition and that's Tiknot Han who really embraces the idea of mindfulness and the idea behind mindfulness is both a sense that we should appreciate the presence of God and the miracle of life. And each moment, if we can to be not be walking among miracles, sightless, but actually really have this deep, deep sense of appreciation for the mystery and miracle of life. And the other part of mindfulness is that it leads us, according to Tiknot Han, who are truly mindful to compassion and that that compassion is both personal in terms of how we relate to others and ourselves, but also in terms of how we approach it. In terms of how we approach the world itself and if we're mindful, we seek to build greater justice and respond to injustice. So I would say, like most other people, I think I'm on a ongoing spiritual journey and my own spiritual journey has led me to challenge many of the biblical assumptions about God's power and have led me, even outside of my tradition, on some aspects of, for example, engage Buddhism. And this all fits very well with your teaching at St. Thomas and you don't get too radical and get forced out of the college because of being too questionable in your beliefs. You know, I have experienced almost complete support in the program where I teach at St. Thomas. I teach justice and peace studies. I don't teach in the theology department directly, although the courses I teach sometimes overlap and intersect with those things. But I have never received any pressure of any kind to not be who I am, teach what I teach, introduce students to the issues that we grapple with. So it's actually, from even a very, very good fit to be teaching justice and peace studies here. Well, I want to ask you a few things from your presentation. One of the things that you said was that for the first few centuries that it would have been completely incompatible, you could not have been both a soldier and a Christian. I'm a Quaker and when Quakerism was founded, it was definitely thought of as primitive Christianity revived. Is that really the case? Would it have been completely unthinkable for those three centuries? And with that in mind, my question is, how could Constantine be drawn to adopt Christianity as the banner under which his military would march? It just seems like an amazing segue that happened there between a peaceful Christianity, which I believe in and which is certainly part of my Quaker faith. And this swords of the Christian soldiers under Constantine. Well, first, just to say that the impact of Jesus's commitment to non-violence was pretty strong, or the legacy of that. And as you mentioned, I mentioned that for the first 300 years or so of Christianity, one could not be a soldier and be a Christian. It was just understood that that was a contradiction. And part of that was you had the Jesus movement grew in the context of Roman imperialism. And so you had the Roman Empire throughout much of this period persecuting Christians. And so there was this conflict between allegiance to the state and the proclamation of Christians that Jesus is Lord. So that conflict was there for a long period of time and the understanding that Jesus called people to non-violence was deeply, deeply rooted. So the transformation, I think, took place. And I may not have this right, but as I recall, Constantine had a vision, had a dream, or a vision in which the cross became a sword. He became convinced that the success of the Roman Empire depended now on making Christianity the official religion of the empire. And how that worked exactly and how a movement that had been rooted in non-violence to come to the temptation of empire to become the servant of violence is somewhat of a mystery. I would expect that part of it is just rooted in the human condition itself, which would say that it's very difficult to face kind of constant persecution. And it's very tempting to have an avenue of triumphalism, which Christianity became associated with, then, with this idea that being the official religion of Rome certainly had some advantages. And I think really we see a fundamental shift in the nature of Christianity as a result of that shift. Of course, just war theory came after that period. I think maybe it was an attempt to make the rule of Rome compatible with following Jesus. And, I mean, that's my own speculation, of course, that that's why it happened. You said in your talk that there's a conflict between nationalism and evaluating just wars because you've kept motivations pulling you in opposite direction. Is there any way to be both a nationalist? And as a senator, of course, you would be somehow representing the nation. Is it possible to represent the nation and be a fair judge of what's a just war? Let me say, first of all, that I think that there is a contradiction between the teachings of Jesus and just war theory. So we already need to acknowledge, I think, that there's a problem there. And my strong preference and what I have advocated is that I believe that Christianity should be a religion and Christians should be practitioners of a religion that would take the power of nonviolence seriously. And I think what we see in actual history is that violence rarely solves problems. The war rarely solves problems. That it escalates a spiral of violence that is not easily broken and certainly isn't easily broken by more violence. So that's the first thing I would point out is I think that really what Jesus meant, what he said, which was, he calls us to be peacemakers and to love enemies and to believe in a different kind of power. And I think actual history bears that out. If you look at the major changes from overthrowing dictatorships in the Philippines to the solidarity movements, overthrow of a communist dictatorship in Poland to the civil rights movement to a variety of things, we can see the potential for nonviolence. And if we actually, as Christians, took nonviolence seriously, that's what the world, it seems to me, desperately needs. So that's my first comment. Second comment would be that just war theory, I think you're probably right, just war theory was a way of essentially justifying Christian participation in the Roman Empire. It was also, I think, in part a response to two competing claims. One was the issue of how do you respond to an injustice and protect the defenseless or protect the enemy. And the other was the question of whether or not you can embrace violence. So those two things were addressed by just war theory. The third thing I would say is if you actually study just war theory, it suggests that a whole series of conditions must be met in order for it to be treated as a just war, as opposed to an unjust war. And my point about nationalism is one of the great problems with just war theory is we let political leaders define for us what is a just war, rather than having a conflict. Rather than having religious leaders and religious tradition reflect upon a situation and say, you know, stepping aside from the patriotic rhetoric and the nationalistic impulses. I'm sorry, but either the first Gulf War or the invasion of Iraq or the actual occupation of Afghanistan, they really don't mean just war criteria. Therefore, Christians shouldn't be fighting in these wars. That is what could happen and should happen in my view if the church were to adopt a position that separated itself from those nationalistic and patriotic impulses and actually examined policies in relation to what just war theory itself says. And unfortunately, throughout our history, that has rarely happened, that there has been that kind of independence. Now, your final point is what would I have done had I been a senator? What I would have done would have been to try to use my influence in that setting, not arguing. I wouldn't even have had to have argued based on a Christian position or even based on a just war theory position, I would have argued it based on the actual failure of present policies. There are no military solutions to most of the problems we face. To spend 83 times more on warfare in our country's budget next year compared to climate change is insanity. For the United States to go into the world at this point and offer to reduce military spending by 50% and invite other nations to do that and free up those resources to address poverty and climate change is just the right thing to do. So I would have been arguing as a senator for practical policy changes because I believe the survival of the planet depends on making those changes. So I really don't think that I would have had, you know, other people may have posed dilemmas for me in terms of, well, how do you act as a Christian who's committed to nonviolence in that setting as a senator? I would have seen myself by pursuing the kind of policies I just named as pursuing the interests of the nation and the world and all the people of our nation. And I think actually it would have been, it would be a fantastic thing if we had a couple of principled people committed to the power of nonviolence and willing to challenge the mythology of war and violence in that setting. We would desperately need that and I recognize that would be in the Senate, you'd be one of 100 voices, but I sure wish we had one. I wish we had five and maybe we could get 10 or 15 if we got a few more people who didn't care as I didn't. I didn't care about pleasing special interest groups or the military industrial complex or the coal companies and oil companies. Those weren't the people I was interested in representing. What I was interested in doing was running a more movement-based political campaign that saw a senator as someone who would be organizing with groups that had the well-being of the planet and mind had the well-being of and the healthcare of the majority of people in this country in mind and also had, in my worldview, the huge number of people worldwide who desperately are struggling to survive. I think maybe you see more of a conflict than I do and part of that is just because maybe I trust who I am and the reasons I was doing what I was doing. I think it would have been a very frustrating arena to work, but again I think it's such an important arena. I wish we had more people who would bring some of these ideas with them and some of their commitments to movement building with them into that office because right now the analogy I oftentimes give is the United States is like a car traveling 150 miles an hour over a cliff. It seems like the best our political leader offers to blow the car down to 100 miles an hour, but now I would add that we have this corporate tailwind, the coal industry, the oil industry, the military industrial complex pushing us over the edge of this cliff. I think there are a lot of people in this country, Christians and non-Christians who would like to choose different pathways and that's what I would have been offering, I think. I think it's unfortunate you didn't make it up to the office, not that Al Franken is a bad alternative. I think you've done so much good teaching students. I think standing up and voicing these things in the public arena running for office is a powerful, powerful example. I wish we had more of it just like you do and I thank you for joining me for spirit and action. Well, thank you. I look forward to talking with you again. That was Jack Nelson Palmeyer, Assistant Professor of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can find his link on my northernspiritradio.org site. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.