Ken Adams, “A Mass for Peace,” and The Hunger Games

This last Sunday afternoon was filled with Dr. Ken Adams’ final concert at OC, The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, by Karl Jenkins. “Filled” seems a little too mild – “overwhelmed” is probably the better term for what we experienced.

First of all, thank you Ken for your wonderful service for all these years, and for the inspiration you have been to so many students and faculty who hope to be just a little bit like you – and maybe just half as good as you have been.

Not only was the concert a wonderful tribute to Dr. (and Mrs.!) Adams –a richly deserved tribute, too–but it was also Ken’s “parting shot,” “final message,” and indeed his legacy.

Jenkins’ work combines a variety of texts, both secular and sacred, to describe the tidal wave that sweeps human beings into war. The sacred texts employed from the Christian Mass seem to portray the justifications we attempt to give our tendencies to violence: every side of every war believes God is with them and against their enemies. But these texts in Jenkins piece seemed also to convey the gravity of the impending disaster and bloodshed — the gravity that is often ignored as the saber-rattling on each side, the chest-pounding rhetoric of threat, pride and bravado, reaches a chaotic crescendo. In Jenkins’ work, the crescendo is reached in the “Charge!” The chaos of battle is graphically recreated by a cacophony of . . . noise; random, screeching, vulgar non-musical noises that make you want to cover your ears.

“Charge!” is followed by “Angry Flames,” which includes part of a poem written from a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Then, “Torches,” from the ancient Hindu epic “The Mahabharata”:

The animals scattered in all directions, screaming terrible screams.

Many were burning, others were burnt.

All were shattered and scattered mindlessly, their eyes bulging.

Some hugged their sons, others their fathers and mothers.

Unable to let them go, and so they died.

Others leapt up in their thousands, faces disfigured,

and were consumed by the fire.

Everywhere were bodies squirming on the ground:

wings, eyes and paws all burning;

They breathed their last as living torches.

Then follow four pieces that reflect the aftermath of the battle, and the calm in which we realize the destruction and waste we have created in our latest “war to end all wars”: “Agnus Dei,” “Now the Guns Have Stopped,” “Benedictus,” and “Better is Peace.”


I was stunned after "Charge!" and at the end of the work could only pray for forgiveness for us all.  If you've never heard it, buy the CD or find it on your music service.  Find a way to listen to it.  You won't want to listen to it often, I suspect, but it's well worth having. 


I went last week to see The Hunger Games. The theme of the movie seemed to me to be the utter waste of lives – and the “sacrifices” we are willing to make and even celebrate in order to maintain certain causes – or even charades. In the movie, the whole nation looks on and celebrates the deaths of young people who are thrust into a situation not of their own making – part of which is the necessity to try to kill each other. Some of them are trained killers, and you can see from the beginning that their humanity was long ago drilled out of them. Some kill out of sheer hate, some only reluctantly. But the society looks on – and has in fact turned the event into an extended game show – and celebrates the “sacrifices.” All of the participants – both those killed and those who live – are heralded as heroes. The dead? Well, that’s just a price the nation was willing to pay. Sad, but it had to be done.

Nations go to war and and sell it to their people – sell the sacrifices – by telling them that these sacrifices just have to be made, that they are worth the price. I wonder.

Benedictine nun Joan Chittister wrote: “The vision of a culture lies in what becomes its major institutions, in what it remembers as its most impacting events, in who it sees as its heroes.”

Psalm 11.5: “The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and his soul hates the lover of violence.”


I don't really wonder.  I know that these sacrifices are not worth whatever "benefit" we get from them.  We make these sacrifices out of our selfishness.  May God have mercy.

Thanks, Dr. Adams, for leaving us this legacy of a man who loves peace. May we have more heroes like you.

President Obama and the Just War Argument

Though President Obama's decision to "surge" in Afghanistan should not have been unexpected by the American public, I was grieved to finally hear the announcement. I was surprised -- and happily -- that he enunciated a defense of the military efforts there in terms of the classic "just war" theory because it seems to me that we Americans always assume our wars to be "just" simply because they always seem to be defending "our freedoms" or "our way of life." In other words, we rarely question our nation, and we do so only on the most selfish level. Even protests against the Viet Nam war for the most part only dwelt on the issue of whether or not America had some kind of national interest at stake, so that if we did NOT have a vested national interest, then we should NOT be fighting in Viet Nam.

Such an explanation flies in the face of classic "just war" arguments. One of the primary qualifications for "just war" in those arguments is that the war CANNOT be fought for selfish purposes.

So, again, it was good to hear our President articulate a logical defense of his decision to surge. In part, it was good to hear because it may become clearer to all of us that this war and the one we are fighting in Iraq are indeed NOT "just." We are invaders in foreign countries; we are attempting to spread our empire; we are not fighting by just means. Thus our wars are not just, according to "just war" theory.

For an insightful analysis of President Obama's speech on the surge, see this short piece by Professor Stanley Hauerwas:

http://hopeofalltheworld.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-do-you-know-war-is-war.html

"Peace on earth." (unidentified angels)

America's Role in World Politics

Last week I heard a prayer offered on behalf of our upcoming election. The prayer asked for national guidance that we would select the man who would lead America in such a manner that "it would rise again to be the most powerful nation on the face of the earth."

Many people, including me, had a problem with that, especially a number of non-Americans in the congregation at that time! Personally, I'm thinking about petitioning the elders to supply barf bags in the song book racks.

I probably don't need to offer any comment on that prayer -- the blatant nationalism, the subjugation of God to our national agenda -- these are clear. On the other hand, why not?

A little more subtle assumption of this prayer is that America has LOST its prominence! How interesting. Darn it, W, how could you let that happen? You need a louder rattle on your sabre! Maybe you should take that $700,000,000,000 (gotta stop -- running out of zeros) and spend it on more military might! That'll show those turds who's boss! Obviously you've been spending way too much time at the negotiating table and not enough where it really counts! Obviously the last eight years have been a miserable failure. Go figure -- W dodged his military service (for the most part). What we need now is a seasoned war hero! Let's hit 'em with a little McPain! (Or would that violate the Geneva Convention's definition of torture? O, wait -- we don't care about that. Sorry, my bad.)

I could go on, but it's Saturday morning, and I've only had one cup of espresso (so far).

But, another assumption: God WANTS the U.S. to dominate! Well, aren't we the most righteous, most just, fairest nation of them all? Mirror, mirror, on the wall. . . . If we would just actually look into the mirror we would see that such claims are preposterous. In fact, I doubt that ANY nation should make ANY claim to "righteousness." Almost by definition, nations pursue self-interest, and national self-interest always comes at the expense of the self-interests of other nations. In fact, "self-interest" itself is nowhere near any Christian virtue! Events in the history of our westward expansion could be cited here to debunk the "righteous nation" claim, but let's not go there. Would God want us to dominate the world? I can't imagine why.

Third assumption: that God might actually answer the prayer! We just ASSUME God is on our side -- because of our righteousness, I guess. Let's see, going back to the thoughts of the previous paragraph: "No one is righteous, no not one." "All our righteousness is like 'filthy rags'" (if you don't know what the "filthy rags" refers to, look it up -- pretty gruesome analogy). So, we're just asking God to underwrite our national agenda. (Sarcasm begins here.) So, of COURSE he'll do that! I mean, clearly we're God's chosen nation -- the ones God wants to bless! We're such great people, and he wants us to spread the gospel of democracy to all the world, right? So, we have the mandate to spread democracy even to people who don't want it or don't understand it, and if they resist, well, we have the God-given right to cram it down their throats, wrapped around the barrel of our guns if necessary. (End sarcasm . . . for now.)

"But what about Romans 13?" I can hear someone asking. Doesn't that state that God puts all governments in place? Therefore if we win a battle or war, it's because God wills it. And since we indeed have been the most powerful nation on the face of the earth, that's God's tacit endorsement of our nation and its agenda of world domination.

I've written on this in a previous post, so now I'll briefly comment: no. It doesn't mean that. If anything, it shows that we are in the position of the nations in the OT that God moves around like chess pieces on a board in order to maintain relative peace in the world. Being utilized by God in that sense says absolutely NOTHING about our alleged "righteousness." In fact, since God uses all things to work for good, it means he can even turn evil into good. And it's not that God causes evil things to happen, but that he can take the evil that humans create and perform on each other to somehow work for general good. So God can take the evil inclinations of a nation and use them for his own purposes. I mean, if nations are going to do evil anyway, why not try to bring some good out of it?!

Finally, there is the assumption, built onto the previous assumptions, that helping the US attain world domination is inherently Christian -- something Christians should endorse (because it is clearly God's purpose and work) and in which they should participate.

On the other hand, if it is truly an inherently evil and selfish goal, and merely one more example of God using selfish national interests to somehow keep relative peace in the world, then Romans 13 cannot be used to validate Christian participation in such enterprises.

Funny how "freedom of religion," as one of our "basic rights," can turn us into warriors for the Prince of Peace. Ok, not so funny.

"America is Drowning in Pretend Patriotism"

Click Here.

This is a link to an insightful article by Robert Scheer of Truthdig.

Jimmy Carter on the Palestinian Humanitarian Crisis

Click here for a quick summary by the Ekklesia Project.

Click here for the full article by Jimmy Carter in The Guardian.

Former President Carter has recently visited the Gaza Strip and has seen first hand the suffering of the Palestinians. Our nation is largely responsible for this situation, and we need to change our national policy. Send these articles to your senators and state reps!

Happy Birthday, Israel: 60 years of. . . .

I wanted to say "screwing the Palestinians," but that would be rude. God forbid we be rude and say a word like "screw." Someone might get upset.

But we don't get upset over 60 years of oppression of the Palestinian peoples. Go to www.palestineremembered.com for a good account of the history of this oppression.

Church leaders around the world are signing on to a document that states clearly the oppression of the Palestinians, and Christian complicity in that oppression. Click here to read about it.

Part of the story recounted in Human Smoke (the history of the beginnings of WWII I'm currently reading) is that the Jews were sent to Palestine because no one else would take them. Great Britain refused. The United States refused. No one would let the Jews from Germany emigrate because everyone hated Jews. Everyone else in the Western world shared the antisemitism of Hitler and Goebbels and Goering. So we refused to let them emigrate to our countries, largely leaving them in Germany to be slaughtered, then afterward sending them to Palestine and thus giving away the land that had belonged to the Palestinians for centuries. Yes, the western nations gave away land that wasn't theirs. Why? Because we could. We had the military might to make it stick. The Palestinians couldn't resist against it.

So, Jews were slaughtered in Germany because of German/European antisemitism; Jews were banished to Palestine because of British and American antisemitism. We continue to suffer from terrorism today because of an antisemitic past. And here's the really neat trick: we disguise it by creating a Jewish state! So, it LOOKS like we are "Pro-Jewish"!!! Ingenious!

We owe both sides a deep apology.

Christmas in Fallujah

Check out this song/video by Billy Joel.

Chills. Brace yourself.

"'Scores die' in Iraq bomb attacks"

That's the headline over this story on the BBC website, posted just today (August 14, 2007). Over 175 members of a religious sect known as Yazidi were killed by suicide bomb attacks, apparently by fellow-Kurds.

This is the kind of violence the US presence has provoked in Iraq. Now, in a vacuum of power caused by the end of the Hussein regime, the ethnic groups in Iraq and the religious sects are vying for power.

Of course, the ethnic and sectarian tensions were present before, but were checked by the power of Hussein's central government. And of course, there was the threat of Hussein's next whimsical ethnic cleansing. Or so the story goes.

Is Iraq a safer place now? Is it a better place to live? Is the quality of life better now than it was before? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding "NO!" We have opened Pandora's Box, and now we don't know how to shut it.

I want us Americans to know the truth about what we have caused, and continue to cause. I want us to remember to grieve for the thousands and thousands of dead Iraqis, not just the dead Americans. The website "Iraq Body Count" reports that a minimum of 69, 334 Iraqi civilians have been killed, and a maximum of 75,775. On October 11, 2006 CNN reported that over 655,000 Iraqis had been killed in the war. The director of a 2003 door to door survey in Baghdad and southern Iraq has published his findings on this site, "Iraqi Civilian War Casualties. He includes names, ages and causes of death. This is the Iraq war made personal rather than letting it remain a remote conflict in an obscure part of the world, easily overlooked or forgotten.

Every day there are human beings dying -- being killed -- by both US forces and Iraqi militia or "death squads." Each one of these people has a family -- a husband or wife, a parent or grandparent, a child or children -- who now grieve. These are not just body count numbers, but people -- individuals. Each one is a life ended. Each one was a child of God, no matter what we think of their politics or religious beliefs.

When we think about what to do next in Iraq, we can't think only of US national interests. We cannot think only of the deaths of American soldiers and civilians (because so much of the war effort has been contracted out to private enterprises, some estimate that there are more American civilians in Iraq than American soldiers!). We have to remember also that the Iraqi people have suffered incredible loss -- tantamount to genocide. Many times more Iraqis have died than Americans.

Is it any wonder that the Iraqis want us out?

It has been argued that if we leave now, we will leave the Iraqis to their own self-destruction -- that the civil war that would ensue would be worse than our continued presence. That's an excuse, I think, to keep our armed forces there and to continue to pursue our national interests there. Let's get it out of our heads that we're just there to do the Iraqis a favor. If that were the case, our troops would also be in Dafur, and in many, many other places around the world where there is civil strife. The only way a war effort can be sold to the American people is by claiming national interests. Face it, we're not altruistic in the use of our troops. We send them out where it will ultimately help our economy. If it were mere altruism, we wouldn't risk American lives.

So, would the situation in Iraq be worse if the US troops leave? Or would the Iraqis find a way to police themselves and end the civil war presently going on?

I believe they would. It certainly wouldn't be easy or quick, but it seems clear to me that this conflict will NEVER end so long as US troops are there. We're their enemy, and they won't give up until we're gone -- just as many Americans would resent, for instance, a Chinese occupying force, and would never give up until they were forced out. So long as the enemy (us!) is present, there will be war in Iraq. Period. Oh -- unless every last Iraqi is killed. But that would be genocide, and we're against that -- aren't we?

Are we doing the Iraqis a favor by forcing democracy on them? I doubt it. Democracy is dependent on a number of ideas that existed in the Western world as a result of the enlightenment -- ideas like individualism and egalitarianism -- and that DO NOT exist in the middle east, and these ideas are not necessarily Biblical or the best ideas of humanity. (More on that another time, perhaps.) But without those concepts and practices having become a part of a culture, democracy will make no sense. And that's Iraq -- an inherently communal society that values societal roles and traditional hierarchies.

So, we're doing them no favors, but merely creating more strife and killing. Staying won't solve it, and leaving won't end it, at least not immediately. However, leaving will allow it to end eventually. Staying will have the opposite effect, and ultimately will result in more destruction of life than leaving.

Go to the Iraqi Civilian War Casualties and read the names. Look at the pictures. See the faces of those killed and injured. Love your enemies.

The Patriot's Dream by Gordon Lightfoot

Granted -- Gordon Lightfoot is a Canadian. We probably shouldn't hold that against him. But these lyrics, from his 1972 album Don Quixote, may speak powerfully to Americans (with apologies to Canadians, who for some strange reason like to insist that THEY are Americans, too). I've wondered sometimes why more US citizens weren't protesting the war in Iraq, and why the anti-war movement took so long to gain momentum. Perhaps it's because we didn't have good songs to move us like we did in the 1960s and 1970s during the Viet Nam war. Maybe we need some good new anti-war songs. In the meantime, try this one out. You can listen to it on Ruckus here (http://www.ruckus.com/ruckus/music/track.do?trackId=482768). But, here's the lyrics.

The songs of the wars are as old as the hills.
They cling like the rust on the cold steel that kills.
They tell of the boys who went down to the tracks
In a patriotic manner with the cold steel on their backs.

The patriot's dream is as old as the sky.
It lives in the lust of a cold calloused lie.
Let's drink to the men who got caught by the chill
Of the patriotic fever and the cold steel that kills.

The train pulled away on that glorious night.
The drummer got drunk and the bugler got tight
While the boys in the back sang a song of good cheer
While riding off to glory in the spring of their years.

The patriot's dream still lives on today.
It makes mothers weep and it makes lovers pray.
Let's drink to the men who got caught by the chill
Of the patriotic fever and the cold steel that kills.

Well there was a sad, sad lady
Weeping all night long.
She received a sad, sad message
From a voice on the telephone.
Her children were all sleeping
As she waited out the dawn.
How could she tell those children
That their father was shot down.
So she took them to her side that day
And she told them one by one,
Your father was a good man ten thousand miles from home.
He tried to do his duty and it took him straight to hell.
He might be in some prison, I hope he's treated well.

Well there was a young girl watching in the early afternoon
When she heard the name of someone who said he'd be home soon.
She wondered how they got him, but the papers did not tell.
There would be no sweet reunion, there would be no wedding bells.
So she took herself into her room and she turned the bed sheets down,
And she cried into the silken folds of her new wedding gown.
He tried to do his duty; it took him straight to hell.
He might be in some prison, I hope he's treated well.

Well there was an old man sitting in his mansion on the hill.
And he thought of his good fortune and the time he'd yet to kill.
He called to his wife one day, "Come sit with me awhile."
Turning toward the sunset, he smiled a wicked smile
"Well I'd like to say I'm sorry for the sinful deeds I've done,
But let me first remind you, I'm a patriotic son."
They tried to do their duty and it took 'em straight to hell.
They might be in some prison, I hope they're treated well

The songs of the wars are as old as the hills,
They cling like the rust on the cold steel that kills.
They tell of the boys who went down to the tracks
In a patriotic manner with the cold steel on their backs.

The train pulled away on that glorious night,
The drummer got drunk and the bugler got tight
While the boys in the back sang a song of good cheer
While riding off to glory in the spring of their years.

The patriot's dream still lives on today
It makes mothers weep and it makes lovers pray.
Let's drink to the men who got caught by the chill
Of the patriotic fever and the cold steel that kills.

I heard an NPR piece a couple of months ago about a new Neil Young album that was wholly a protest against the war in Iraq. I haven't yet heard it. Hope to soon.