Barack Obama's Nobel speech, what did we expect?

I didn’t get a chance to watch Barack Obama’s Nobel speech live, but I’ve read the transcript and found very little in the speech that couldn’t have been given by any number of past presidents—including George W. Bush. Granted, absent from the speech is the grandiose rhetoric of “Bring it on”, “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” and “Ridding the world of evil”, but should being less arrogant than Bush qualify someone for the Nobel Peace Prize? Probably not. On the other hand, Barack Obama’s rejection of unilateralism, his willingness to dialogue with enemies, and his understanding of the limits of power—howbeit nuanced—make him about as good of a president as we can expect on the foreign policy front given the current state of American culture and, more specifically, the American Church.

According to the CIA world fact book, roughly 77% of the American people are self-identified as Christians. From its inception, America has been a nation of people that name the name of Christ on the one hand and trust in the power of their military might on the other hand. The American civil religion of God, guns, and country has been around for a long time and it’s the height of naivety to think that a few good speeches and a teleprompter are going to change that. If Obama’s escalation of the Afghan conflict has taught us anything, it’s that liberals can be just as susceptible to the value system of might equals right as conservatives can be. Those of us that oppose the escalation can chastise the president all we want, but the fact is there was very little political wiggle room for the president to make any other decision than the one that he made. Even the “liberal” networks of NBC, CBS, and CNN are steeped in the tradition of glorifying military heroes and showing off the Pentagon’s latest weapons technology.

As much as I would love to flatter myself, I know that Barack Obama is never going to read this article, and neither is he going to read the tens of thousands of editorials and blogs calling on him to change his mind. With all of the attention going towards one man, and whether or not he deserves a peace prize, I fear that a larger point is getting lost; and that is that history is defined less by people on top and more by people on bottom. Wars are fought because cultural, religious, media, and economic establishments support them. Wars are ended when the groundswell of the population refuse to support the institutions that make them possible. Until the words “fighting for freedom” become more associated in the average American mind with strikes, boycotts, and voter registrations than with ground invasions and bombing raids, no president is going to be able to deliver on a “change we can believe in” slogan.

To borrow from Jared McKenna’s What if scenario, what if out of the 77% of the American population that self-identify as Christians, the vast majority of them became convinced that following Christ and renouncing the sword go hand in hand? What if John Howard Yoder replaced Augustine as the intellectual giant of the Western Church? For that to happen, a lot more Bible- believing Christians are going to have to be convinced that Romans 13 is not a carte blanche for Christians participating in state-sanctioned violence, that the Old Testament is a poor pretext for just war theory, and that John the Baptist wasn’t condoning violence when he didn’t tell the Roman soldiers of their day to give up their occupations. If there’s one thing to be learned from Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation, it’s that Biblical paradigm shifts can have vast political consequences. It can happen again, but it’s going to take all hands on board. Any volunteers?

I apologize

In the Pentecostal Christian tradition, there’s a practice that has gained some ground over the past few years called identificational repentance. Taken from the examples of men like Daniel and Nehemiah in the Hebrew Scriptures (also known as the Old Testament), identificational repentance is when a group apologizes for the sins of its ancestors or when an individual apologizes for the sins of his or her family, church, or nation.

The term is a bit controversial because the word “repent” literally means “to turn the other direction.” Nobody can change his or her ways on behalf of another, so perhaps “confession” is a better word to use. Theology and semantics aside, the direction that Christianity has taken ever since the fourth century when the Church and State became one has produced an ugly monster that looks nothing like the movement that Jesus and the Apostles founded. There are many people trying to bring world Christianity back to its non-violent roots, but before that happens I think an apology is in order. So allow me.

I apologize for trampling on the teachings of Jesus and turning “love your enemies” into “kill your enemies.” I apologize for twisting Romans 13 to justify every single act of violence committed against my fellow man—as long as a “legitimate authority” perpetrates the violence. I apologize for listening to Augustine, Luther, and Calvin instead of the Apostles Peter, Paul, and James. I apologize for silly “arguments from silence” concocted by “just war theorists” to evade the clear-cut teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.

I apologize for the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials, the religious wars of the 17th century, the genocide of Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere, centuries of anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust, and all of the American wars that we rallied around with our crosses and our flags. Speaking of the cross, words cannot express how sorry I am for turning what should be the supreme symbol for non-violent redemptive love into a banner for blind patriotism. I apologize for confusing the Kingdom of God with the Kingdom of America. I apologize for wrapping Jesus in an American flag and turning Him into a tribal deity that we ask to bless our bombs.

I apologize for the T.V. evangelists that fleece the poor and use the money to finance Jewish settlements in the West Bank. I apologize for rallying around the Iraq war, calling for pre-emptive strikes against Iran in the name of God, failing to speak out against torture, and demonizing those that advocate for nuclear disarmament and an end to wasteful Pentagon spending. Perhaps most importantly, I apologize for my complicity in expanding the culture of empire, an empire that looks a lot like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Rush Limbaugh, very little like Jesus.

I realize that some of the things that I have mentioned are stereotypes that not every evangelical, let alone Christian, falls under. Indeed, followers of Jesus have also done much good in the world. Even in the midst of all of the terrible things I just mentioned, there have always been Christians that have shown the world a different path. For every Oliver Cromwell there’s a Mother Theresa. What grieves me is that the clear-cut teachings of the New Testament have been so perverted by so called Christians throughout the centuries that many people might confuse the perversion with the real thing, and never give the faith that I love a second glance.

My hope and prayer is that through this heart-felt apology, the harlot church might be exposed so that the church of the enemy-loving, foot-washing Jesus might shine brighter. One of Christianity’s best-kept secrets is that the New Testament is in fact an anti-war, anti-nationalist document, and that Christians for the first three hundred years unanimously and categorically rejected violence and warfare in honor of their founder. Rather than cursing the darkness, it’s time for a dedicated few to rise up and reclaim the faith. It’s time for a Reformation!