Religion and the War

by Yale University. Divinity School

The Chinese and the Quakers, each in their own way, are finished products. What they are is all they ever can be. Which means from the standpoint of national idealism, that non-resistance is the "saving element."[10]

This eulogy of China, however, was written before the new Republic of China, stirring the long dormant instincts of Chinese patriotism, had roused to new hopes and visions of world achievement the body that had become as one dead, insomuch that the more part said, He is dead. But non-resistant pacifism is ever rich in paradox. Today China herself, so long inert, blessed for so many centuries with all the felicity of submission, has thrown off the Manchu yoke of domination. And in the first surge of new-found strength she declares war against Attila and his Huns, and in the declaration itself avows that she is "fighting to establish peace." To such inconsistency does non-resistance seem fated as soon as life triumphs over death, as soon as the Christian gospel of a world kingdom of righteousness and peace triumphs over Buddha's pessimistic obliteration of desire and hope together in the gray nirvana of extinction. "Eternal life" through death-defying loyalty to a divine ideal begins at last to seem preferable, even in China, to mere indefinite "survival."

Not Quakerdom itself seems able to maintain consistency with its non-resistant ideals. Alas,

they were abandoned by those who could not and would not see the connection between these principles and the uninterrupted peace which had long blessed the Pennsylvania colony.

Becoming itself directly responsible for the order and security hitherto guaranteed by the sovereign British power the Quaker commonwealth followed the example of its neighbor states and girt on the sword.[11] For this, doubtless, we may hold the influx of alien immigrants more responsible than the genuine followers of Fox and Penn. But it must at least be admitted that Quaker leaven showed little power to work, so far as the doctrine and policy of non-resistance are concerned.

Inconsistencies such as these on the part of the greatest modern exemplars of non-resistance are saddening to its champions, but there remains ever a more ethereal realm, where philosophy can build without fear of the stern realities of life, the limbo of utopias.

V

Jesus, too, they tell us, though greatest of all non-resistants, was also "inconsistent." Was he, then, inconsistent with himself? Or was his pacifism the active pacifism of those who give their lives for just and lasting peace, the peace that is real and not mere devastation, not destruction and tyranny miscalled Kultur; not might triumphant over right and unashamed; but a peace that endures because justice and right have been enthroned?

Jesus closed his public teaching with the doctrine that all religion, all duty to God and man, is summed up in the two commandments: Unreserved, unqualified, unfaltering devotion to the One God of Righteousness and Truth; unselfish devotion to the common weal of man. One who in obedience to this law of love took up the succession of Moses, David and the prophets, raising the standard of God's real sovereignty on earth, and paying to it the last full measure of his own devotion, has not deserved the accusation of inconsistency. Jesus was sublimely consistent. That interpretation of his words which refuses the witness of his heroic deeds to their true meaning is guilty of the inconsistency.

It is true, as Tolstoy finely says, that Jesus' noble depiction in the Sermon on the Mount of the forbearance of God as the standard of the higher righteousness means that we should "never do anything contrary to the law of love." But by what right does the great Russian pacifist (or any other who claims for his theory the authority of Jesus) omit from that law of love its "first and great commandment"? How can we ignore the demand of supreme and unqualified devotion to the God of Righteousness, whose kingdom of righteous peace Jesus gave his life to establish, and limit our obedience to acquiescence in the demands of men, be they righteous or the reverse? The second commandment of the Law of Love is dependent on the first, and in separation from it will assuredly be misconstrued. Equal love of neighbor can be no requirement of religion, save as it depends on the prior obligation of supreme devotion to a common Father, whose forbearing, forgiving love extends equally to all. Imitation of that Father's goodness and forbearance, overcoming the evil of the world with good, is the one teaching, the comprehensive, unifying principle, of the Sermon on the Mount. But the God whose goodness this great discourse sets up as the standard of the righteousness of all "sons and daughters of the Highest" is not a non-resistant God. It is the just and merciful God depicted in those Scriptures wherein Jesus read his beneficent will and purpose for the world.