Rejoicing... though kinda qualified
This morning I woke to the sound of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announcing that the Christian Peacemaker hostages had been freed by a multinational military operation.

What wonderful news to hear of the release of James, Harmeet, and Norman! And wonderful too that the "operation" was carried out without violence, though I'm not sure that this was done to honour the requests of the CPT team in the declaration I blogged on earlier or simply a fortunate circumstance attending the fact that the kidnappers were gone by the time the rescuers arrived. Indeed, the "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch makes one inclined to doubt the official reports of "successful" operations until all the facts (including the stories of the captives) are in.

The real qualification, of course, is the fact that one of the hostages was brutally murdered, and we should remember Tom Fox even as we rejoice with the families of the freed ones. I'll remember Tom's witness as I give thanks this evening. I'll also remember with thanksgiving the many Muslims who lobbied for the release of the hostages.

The Apostle of Ireland

... AKA St. Patrick. This is the day each year I trot out my Guinness shirt and green trousers in aknowledgement of the Christianization of the land of my birth. The form of Christianity that developed in Ireland after St. Patrick continues to hold great appeal to me and to many others around the world. Few realize the role of the Irish scholars in medieval monasteries who preserved much of the learning of antiquity during Europe's so-called "Dark Ages". Thomas Cahill spins a breathtaking account of that in How the Irish Saved Civilization. But it all began with a slave boy who was called by God... and the land. And there's no replacing the confessio of the man himself for a reading on this day (accompanied with a good draught of the black stuff). Here's an extract:

I cannot keep silent, nor would it be proper, so many favours and graces has the Lord deigned to bestow on me in the land of my captivity. For after chastisement from God, and recognizing him, our way to repay him is to exalt him and confess his wonders before every nation under heaven.

For there is no other God, nor ever was before, nor shall be hereafter, but God the Father, unbegotten and without beginning, in whom all things began, whose are all things, as we have been taught; and his son Jesus Christ, who manifestly always existed with the Father, before the beginning of time in the spirit with the Father, indescribably begotten before all things, and all things visible and invisible were made by him. He was made man, conquered death and was received into Heaven, to the Father who gave him all power over every name in Heaven and on Earth and in Hell, so that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, in whom we believe. And we look to his imminent coming again, the judge of the living and the dead, who will render to each according to his deeds. And he poured out his Holy Spirit on us in abundance, the gift and pledge of immortality, which makes the believers and the obedient into sons of God and co-heirs of Christ who is revealed, and we worship one God in the Trinity of holy name.

For the rest, go here.

Counting the cost and paying the price


I was deeply saddened by the news that Tom Fox's body had been found in Iraq today. Sometimes the phrase "blessed are the peacemakers" can become so cliched. It is read as "blessed are the idealists" or more negatively "blessed are those too scared to fight." But real peacemakers live in the in-between spaces. They are those who interpose themselves in situations of conflict and in doing so bear witness to the One who gave himself to stop the cycles of retribution and vengeance. It's a strangely appropriate Lenten thought.

Here's a statement by Tom Fox, given last March, showing that he and his colleagues did indeed count the cost:

We, members of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in Iraq, are aware of the many risks both Iraqis and internationals currently face. However, we are convinced at this time that the risks, while significant, do not outweigh our purpose in remaining.

Many Iraqi friends and human rights workers have welcomed us as a non-violent, independent presence. During the previous year they asked us to tell their stories, since they could not easily be heard, nor could most flee to a safer country. We continue to act as a resource to connect citizens of Iraq with human rights organizations, both local and international, as well as accompanying them as they interact with multinational military personnel and Iraqi provisional government officials.

As a peacemaking team we need to cross boundaries, help soldiers and other armed actors be humane, and invite them to refuse unjust orders. We need to help preserve what is human in all of us and so offer glimpses of hope in a dark time.

We unequivocally reject kidnapping and hostage-taking. In such an event, CPT will attempt to communicate with the hostage-takers or their sponsors and work against journalists' inclination to vilify and demonize the offenders. We will try to understand the motives for these actions, and to articulate them, while maintaining a firm stance that such actions are wrong. If appropriate, CPT will work with diplomatic officials from our representative governments to avoid a violent outcome.

We reject the use of violent force to save our lives should we be kidnapped, held hostage, or caught in the middle of a violent conflict situation. We also reject violence to punish anyone who harms us. We ask for equal justice in the arrest and trial of anyone, soldier or civilian, who commits an act of violence, and we ask that there be no retaliation on their relatives or property. We forgive those who consider us their enemies. Therefore, any penalty should be in the spirit of restorative justice, rather than in the form of violent retribution.

We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening non-violently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation.

(Signed)
Tom Fox, Springfield, VA
(plus other members of the CPT Iraq team)

Tom was a Quaker, an accomplished musician, and a grocer. You can read a bio here. I'll be remembering in prayer this new Christian martyr, as well as the members of his team still in captivity: Harmeet Singh Sooden, James Loney, and Norman Kember.

The Secular Religion of Blair and Bush
The fact that my lenten discipline includes things with screens means that my blogging is going to be a little sparse till Resurrection Day (though thankfully there are also little resurrection days, aka Sundays in Lent...). The following op ed piece comes via Jamie Smith's blog, and represents a nice example of theologians of the Radical Orthodoxy tribe engaging the "public" sphere. The authors are Philip Blond and Adrian Pabst:

Secular Britain was shocked last weekend when Prime Minister Tony Blair said that God would be his judge over the war in Iraq. Similarly, President George W. Bush has often used God to justify the war on terror as a religiously blessed and righteous campaign against "evil doers." Predictably, those who oppose the war view themselves as secular progressives untainted by religious fundamentalism and the madness it produces.

Unfortunately for liberals, the origins of Bush's and Blair's religious convictions lie not within Christianity but rather within the history of Western modernization and, most important, within contemporary liberalism itself....

To read the rest, go here.

Here are a couple more things from Blond and Pabst. The first follows on the same theme as above. The second hearkens to Cavanaugh's work I noted a couple of weeks ago.

• "Why the West Gets Religion Wrong"

• "Europe Needs to Start Thinking Locally"