Address by Dr Tom Frame Anglican Bishop to the ADF

National Anglican Conference University of NSW, 22 July 2002

“Connecting as a Peacemaker in a World of Violence” Introduction

We live in a violent world. Violence is exploited by individuals, organizations and nations to seize property and secure power. Violence is employed to provoke conflict and frequently is the means by which those same conflicts end. Violence is prevalent in families, within and between communities, and among nation states to convey pride, to make a point or to protect a principle. We live in an age increasingly conditioned to resort to violence as the answer to all of its difficulties and there is no cause for optimism about the future as the most destructive and demonic form of violence – genocide: the removal of a problem by the eradication of a people – has become the weapon of choice for many regimes around the world over the last decade. What, then, are we to do in the face of violence?

If I understand Jesus correctly in his most famous public address recorded in Matthew 5, he expected from his followers active engagement with the world and participation in all its struggles. Jesus proclaimed on the mountain that those who promote peace, who take deliberate steps to forge and fashion peace – “peacemakers” – will so reflect the character of the heavenly Father that they will be called the ‘children of God’. The designation of such people ‘peacemakers’ is highly significant as it includes an imperative. But did he deny his followers the prerogative of using force as a means of making peace and receiving a blessing? This particular problem has vexed the Church for centuries and continues to cause us great concern.

A Hard Choice

In modern times, Christians have been obliged to decide between pacifism and the just use of force. Pacifism was a clear and largely unambiguous position; you were against the use of violence, always and everywhere. Therefore, war was wrong and Christians could not render military service. But if you consistently held to this position with integrity, you then had to 1) refuse any resorting to force in order to protect family, friends or property, 2) deny the civil police a mandate to use coercive violence in the performance of their duties, and 3) to counter genocide with as much civil disobedience and non-violent protest as possible before the last protesting individual was slaughtered.

But sanctioning resorts to violence was just as complicated. It needed an increasingly elaborate theory in the context of emerging technology and military tactics that would prescribe the circumstances in which the use of force was justified and that provided some ethical limits on its application. In applying this theory, there was a need for judgments about the importance of the nation-state and the efficacy of killing others, including fellow Christian believers. Whether Christians could render military service in good conscience was deemed a prudential issue on which individual liberty was granted. But Christians serving in the military needed to be confident that their convictions would not be violated by any campaign waged by those who did not share their fundamental concerns. Pacifism or just war? Both were complex and costly, and some stand was necessary given the inherent instability of the post-1945 international order.

When I was born (October 1962), the Cuban missile crisis threatened to cause a nuclear holocaust that would end human civilisation. For its part, Australia was attempting to under gird the security of the British dominion of Malaya from Marxist armed insurgency with the deployment of a rifle company while the Menzies’ Government had just decided to send a team of military advisers to Indochina in an effort to stem the flow of communism from China into south-east Asia. By the mid-1960s, Australia was engaged in limited and largely ideological wars against Indonesia and North Vietnam. In those days, indecision and indifference were not an option. The whole population was politicized by these conflicts. How times have changed in two obvious ways? First, there are presently more Australian units deployed overseas than during those turbulent days but the level of public discussion about these operations is minimal. Second, the objectives of these deployments bear no resemblance to the motivations that led to Australian participation in “Confrontation” (1964-1966) or the war in South Vietnam (19762-1972). Perhaps the latter explains the former? Or is this just a case of corporate indecision and collective indifference? I would hope neither.

Having said that, it is nonetheless my contention that traditional Christian deliberation on the ethics of resorting to force and the conduct of warfare – the stark choice between pacifism and just war – has become largely obsolete and almost irrelevant because both the reasons for which physical force is used and the nature of its delivery have changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War in 1989. Consequently, I want to argue that Anglicans ought to reflect anew on their calling to be peacemakers and to seek ways of connecting with other “peacemakers” in this violent world. These connections might even include for some participation in our Church’s growing mission and ministry to the Australian Defence Force (the ADF).

Emerging “Peace Operations”

I suggest this in ‘missionary’ terms because over the last decade, ADF personnel, including Anglican chaplains, have been involved in a diverse range of deployments now generally known as ‘peace operations’. They include Namibia, Rwanda, Somalia, Mozambique, Cambodia, Bougainville and East Timor. This is part of a much larger story. Intra-state conflicts now easily outnumber inter-state conflicts. This, in part, explains why genocide has become widespread even on our doorstep. In East Timor between 1975 and 1999, the crimes of the TNI resulted in a higher percentage of the population being murdered than in any other recent case of genocide. This also explains why the UN has sponsored more than 50 peace operations around the world since 1989 and each has involved military personnel. A total of 118 countries have contributed peacekeepers with more than 1650 deaths (including 9 Australians). In none of these places had war been declared, and yet, making peace required the possession of weapons and the actual use of force. And yet, no Australian was killed in any of these operations while using a weapon.

Alongside the proliferation of intra-state conflicts – or what we previously referred to as civil wars – there has been a most significant shift in attitudes towards the claims and pretensions of the modern political state and the relative value we accord national sovereignty. The former UN Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, remarked back in 1991:

‘We are clearly witnessing what is probably an irresistible shift in public attitudes towards the belief that the defence of the oppressed in the name of morality should prevail over frontiers and legal documents’. This view has gathered momentum. In his speech at Chatham House on 28 January 2000, the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook outlined his proposals for the conditions for intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state and stressed ‘. when faced with an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe and a government that has demonstrated itself unwilling or unable to halt and prevent it, the international community should act’. In Kosovo, NATO acted for the first time in its history in defence of human rights rather than oil or land.

Whereas previously, national sovereignty was an impenetrable barrier to intervention, it is no longer considered a ground for inactivity. The incumbent UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, concludes that military interventions which pursue the positive humanitarian goals of the UN Charter are, in fact, more justifiable than inactivity in the face of gross injustice and genocide. He states:

As we have seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina and elsewhere, of all UN activities, military interventions in international armed conflicts are particularly fraught with vexing choices and questions. But we also saw in Rwanda in 1994 . inaction has grave perils of its own . It seems to me far better to accept the risk of error or failure than to remain on the sidelines; there is no purity in the abstract, and only disgrace and worse in retreat toward some imaginary safe harbour.

This is a pragmatic response but not, I would argue, an unethical one. The story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 and Jesus’ own intervention to protect the woman taken in adultery in John 8 oblige the Christian casual observer to become an active participant and give no grounds for indecision or indifference in the face of violence. The dominical command is clear; the ethical imperative is obvious.

On this basis, I believe there was a right – if not a responsibility – on the international community and on we Anglicans (as citizens of a politically stable and materially affluent nation) to insist on intervention to stop the slaughter in Rwanda, Somalia, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and East Timor. By contrast, I am yet to be convinced that there was (or is) any obvious right or duty to intervene in Afghanistan (when, for instance, no such right was even considered in relation to the Russian army’s campaign in Chechnya) while I am not at all persuaded by the present arguments being advanced in favour of a new campaign against Iraq. But let me return to those recent deployments properly termed ‘peace operations’.

The involvement of countries, such as Australia, in peace operations must not merely be to end violence but to build a more just order in countries that seem to be the breeding grounds for terrorism. Military force and armed intervention is very much subordinate to a larger political solution. The root causes of violence are much more varied and profound. They include the availability of guns and drugs, and the prevalence of racism and sexism together with the dissipation of the family. These are just some of the factors that diminish respect for human life. If there is a pervasive cause, I would nominate poverty because poverty breeds instability, instability breeds fanaticism, fanaticism breeds hatred, and hatred breeds terrorism.

This kind of holistic approach to violence and conflict is consistent with Immanuel Kant’s view that there is a clear link between the domestic constitution of states and international order. Kant believed that the most peaceful kind of world is one based on a confederation of democratic states because democracies are less inclined to do bad things than authoritarian or despotic regimes. But this is some way from asserting that democracies have a right and duty to promote their convictions elsewhere by means of force. We must recognize the political, humanitarian and moral limits of our intervention and guard against the unwelcome intrusion of ideology. As Hedley Bull has argued: ‘Particular states or groups of states that set themselves up as authoritative judges of the world common good, in disregard for the views of others, are in fact a menace to the international order, and thus to effective action in this field’. I wonder if he had any particular nation in mind?

And, of course, Christians are not pure utilitarians. There must always be a commitment to prayerful reflection and to the need for contrition. We will always wonder whether we have done the right thing on balance in any grey situation. Moral certainty can lead to the worst excesses in human conduct. That force may be necessary does not mean that it is ever right or that it is ever a good thing. Once we start believing that it could be, we fall into the error of “crusading”, of imagining what is necessary, but wrong, is actually right. For me, I have great sympathy for the Eastern Orthodox position that stresses the necessity but not the justice of war because, among other attractions, it tends to eliminate the element of self-righteousness that just war theory appears to prompt in its advocates.

Anglican Prospects for Peacemaking

The life of the ACA is frequently self-consumed and inward looking. We are often transfixed by our own concerns and preoccupied with our own crises. But we also recognize that an introspective church will die; a church focused on mission will live. We cannot and need not and should not conduct our mission in isolation, we need to maintain links with our neighbours especially those within our primary sphere of influence.

As Anglicans, I believe we are strategically placed to make connections as peacemakers in a violent world. As members of a worldwide communion, we have not sufficiently exploited our capacity for creating networks of dialogue and cooperation. In my view, we need to consider the continuing combination of the headship of our international communion with the English Diocese of Canterbury. While there are many historic reasons and practical advantages in this long-standing arrangement, there are distinct disadvantages in the head of our communion also having official status in the world’s most successful former colonizer – quite apart from our complete exclusion from Canterbury’s episcopal selection process. In the same way that the position of General Secretary of the UN and the Commonwealth moves around its member nations, so the headship of Anglican Communion (which belongs to us all)

might rotate among the Primates although I would be happy to see the Communion’s headquarters remain in Western Europe.

I would also argue that To Lead and to Serve – the review of the See of Canterbury chaired by Lord Hurd of Westwell – presents additional arguments – practical and ecclesiological – for detaching the headship of the Anglican Communion from the English See of Canterbury although – and curiously in my view – the report actually recommended its retention. The report comments that the Archbishop’s ‘first responsibility lies at home where his immediate jurisdiction lies’. The period of time the report suggests should be made available for the Archbishop’s tours of the Anglican Communion – a mere two weeks each year! – is, to my mind, clearly inadequate with regard to the office holder’s unparalleled capacity to build networks for peace. There is considerable scope for institutional reform here.

We Australians also need to be more interested in the peacemaking work of the Anglican Consultative Council, the Anglican Communion Secretariat, the Anglican Centre in Rome (where our own Primate is a Director of the Friends organisation) and the Anglican Observer at the UN. There are other international Anglican organizations worthy of our support, such as the Compass Rose Society, that exists to support the work of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ACC. Within this country, I would argue for a greater diocesan commitment to the General Synod Office and to a vision of the Primate as being much more than the chair of General Synod. Australia is the major Anglican player in this corner of the globe and yet our capacity and readiness to extend hands of friendship and to strengthen the bonds of fellowship through the Primacy and the General Synod Office are minimal. I will be meeting with my New Zealand and Canadian counterparts at Wellington in September as a network building exercise.

I would also like to see more promotion of our major missionary organizations as the conduits for continuing contact and cooperation in the South Pacific in particular. These are all very significant initiatives but they are just the beginning. We do not yet have very close nor coordinated relations with a range of Non-Government Organisations (NGOs). The Anglican Church is not considered a partisan or politically aligned NGO and we have much to contribute in partnership with likeminded bodies such as the Red Cross and World Vision.

Younger Anglicans might consider overseas service with an NGO or a missionary organization, or even a career in the Australian diplomatic service or the ADF as a sailor, soldier or airman. Of course, there are also possibilities for clergy to make connections as ADF chaplains. The Anglican Church has the largest number of full-time (40) and part-time (50+)

chaplains; nearly 40% of all ADF chaplains are Anglicans while lay Anglicans comprise the largest denominational group in the Defence Force with a proportion much larger than the undifferentiated civilian population. There are a small number of vacancies at the moment for clergy who fell called to this vital national youth ministry.

In all of this, we Anglicans have an unsurpassed opportunity for the exertion of influence, agency and prophecy and I would not like to see us retreating or recoiling from these wonderful prospects for peacemaking. There are many who, for instance, share a great concern for the future of the Solomon Islands . which seems teetering on the brink of social and political anarchy . and for the future of Zimbabwe, particularly in Matabeleland, under the murderous regime of President Mugabe. There are, as I have outlined briefly, many ways in which we can connect with those striving to make peace. And when we do, we are blessed.

Closing Remarks

Yesterday’s Gospel reading from Matthew 13 reminded us that wheat and weeds grow together in a paddock, nourished by the same sun, often indistinguishable and always inseparable until they are cut down at harvest time. So it is, says Jesus, with good and evil in this life. History is not a success story – a saga of the irresistible onward march of goodness and the inexorable pushing back of evil. History is actually an account of tragedy – the persistent struggle between good and evil. And even when the triumph of goodness is at hand, the devil – the embodiment of evil – makes a last ditch effort to frustrate God’s purposes. In the meantime, we try to do what we think is right before God although the consequences of our actions are sometimes both good and bad … and we seem powerless to prevent otherwise.

This isn’t a cheerful view of life but it is a realistic one because life is not neat, tidy or morally clear-cut. It is often confused, murky and ambiguous. This truth about the interweaving of good and evil in life is so complicated and terrifying that sometimes the Church is tempted to retreat into a cocoon of personal piety and charitable work. To reserve, as it were, the Church for God while abandoning the world to the devil. But it is a temptation we must resist always and everywhere for the sake of the neglected, the oppressed and the wounded.

It is for this reason that we do well in this conference to seek ways of making connections with a world for whose redemption Christ was prepared to give himself even unto death.

Closing Prayer

Almighty God, from whom all thoughts of truth and peace proceed: kindle, we pray, in the hearts of all people the true love of peace and banish from our hearts the spirit that makes for war; and guide with your pure and peaceable wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth; that in tranquility your kingdom may go forward, till the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; hear us because we ask in the name of the Prince of Peace, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.