The death of Christian pacifism

In 2015 we foundedProvidence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy partly to rebut neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism, which seemed so prevalent. But now that form of Christian pacifism has nearly disappeared. We’d like to claim credit! And we will claim some by having presented historic Christian teaching about just war and about Christian Realism. But larger forces were at work.

Those larger forces were partly connected to the retirement of Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University, now age 82, who had made neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism popular and compelling for a subset of Protestant thinkers from the 1980s onward. He popularized the work of John Howard Yoder, the Mennonite thinker who died in 1997 and who wrote the very influential The Politics of Jesus in 1972. That book insisted that Christian nonviolence was the Gospel’s central message, as Jesus on the Cross was supremely a rejection of all violence.

Hauerwas is a brilliant thinker and compelling teacher who won enthusiastic disciples with his rejection of all violence and “empire,” along with his self-professed contempt for the American project and “liberalism.” He was an early postliberal. His disciples were mostly young seminarians or graduate students, either young Baby Boomers or Generation X, who wanted some form of Christian orthodoxy without being “conservative” or “evangelical.”  The Religious Right of the 1980s and 1990s was a useful foil to them as it evinced, in their eyes, that American Christianity was captive to cultural and political idolatry.

George W. Bush and the post-9-11 wars bestirred neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism maybe to the apex of its influence. Conservative Christian support for Bush and for the Iraq War fulfilled Christian pacifism’s worst fears and elevated it, in the minds of its votaries, to a nearly prophetic status. Opposing American Empire became a defining identity for neo-Anabaptist Christian Pacifism.

But their zeal began to dissipate perhaps in the 2010s. Maybe it was mostly a generational shift. The Yoder-Hauerwas message did not resonate with the new generation. Hauerwas was stepping back from his teaching responsibilities and publishing less.  And in 2013 renewed attention focused on Yoder’s vast, decades-long sexual exploitation of students and church members.  His seminary employer and the Mennonite Church launched new investigations, exposing Yoder’s abuse of many scores of women.

Some revelations had surfaced before Yoder’s death, for which he faced church discipline, but later reporting revealed the epic scale of his misconduct. More disturbingly, he privately constructed theological justifications for his abuse, further discrediting his perspective. His friend and chief disciple, Hauerwas, had known about the misconduct, which he did not condone, but which, in the eyes of some, he minimized for the purpose of salvaging Yoder’s work.

In the era of “Me Too,” extolling or even citing Yoder became problematic for many. Yet no new major neo-Anabaptist thinkers have emerged on the scale of Yoder and Hauerwas. Exponents of their perspective are now mostly middle-aged activists, social media personalities, podcasters, and writers of middle-brow niche books. It’s hard to find disciples who are under the age of 40.

Oddly, the Trump alliance with the Religious Right did not resurrect neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism, maybe due to the lingering cloud from Yoder’s shattered reputation. Possibly national polarization also detracted from the appeal. The demographic most inclined to neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism largely abandoned claims to a third way and receded into the generic left. Even the current preoccupation with Christian Nationalism, the perfect foil for Yoderite Hauerwasians, has not provoked revival, which implies the movement is permanently deflated.

Another factor deflating neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism is the receding of the American “empire.” With U.S. troops gone from Afghanistan and Iraq, although still present elsewhere, there is less preoccupation with America as the supposed anti-Gospel new Roman-style imperium. And the effects of this withdrawal have not been positive. The alternative to the American “empire” turns out to be chaos and greater repression.

Finally, there is Russia’s bellicose attempt to revive its real empire by invading Ukraine, which has made all forms of pacifism more unappealing. Who would dispute Ukraine’s right to resist aggression and destruction by a tyrant like Putin?  The neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifist perspective would insist that Ukrainians simply surrender and be a witness for peace by accepting their plight and perhaps resisting through civil disobedience. Few if any are trying to argue so.

Putin and its flunkies, including the Russian Patriarch, embody the merger of the church with violent imperialism that neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism long claimed to oppose. Yet its remaining exponents have been fairly subdued. Their previous ferocity was largely reserved for America alone, not other transgressors.

There’s one final factor in the decline of neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism, which is the decline of Dispensationalist Christian Zionism. In the minds of the former, the latter embodied Christian entanglement with empire by sacralizing modern Israel. Neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism was already pseudo-Marcionite because of its discomfort with ancient biblical Israel, with its God-ordained nation-state, kings, armies, battles, and warrior-heroes. Dispensationalism, by making modern Israel the focus of the End Times, and politically insisting on American support for Israel, was another favorite foil. But Dispensationalism is receding in influence. And Israeli-Arab peace has made the region less of a focus, although the Iranian threat endures.

Doubtless, there are other reasons for neo-Anabaptist Christian pacifism’s retreat. Our Providence journal played a role amid wider cultural trends. That movement’s diminishment opens an opportunity for more serious political theology and Christian reflection on statecraft against the utopianisms, idealisms, and dogmatisms of left and right. How can we glean the wisdom of historic Christianity in current statecraft? That task always requires a careful and narrower path, choosing prudence over zealotry. Who will be the laborers?

Originally published at Juicy Ecumenism.