Speech of Heinrich Bedford-Strohm

It is a very special occasion to speak about „Resistance against Evil” in a Conference with the title “Imaginer la Paix”. These two titles contain in a nutshell the whole complexity of ethical reflection on how to responsibly deal with violence.

 

We struggle with how to react to the extreme brutality of the October 7 murders but also of the cruel execution of innocent hostages just a few weeks ago. At the same time, there is good reason to deplore the completely disproportional response of the Israeli government to the Hamas attacks. Nothing can justify the bombing of a densely populated piece of land chasing millions of civilians from one place to the other and leaving over 40 000 dead, many of them children. Both actions, those by Hamas and those by the Israeli army, claim to resist evil. Nothing in these actions points toward “imagining peace” – unless peace is understood as violently imposing one’s own interests on others no matter what justice would demand. A just peace can never be achieved by weapons and bombs. It must always include a fair account of both sides’ interests on the basis of rules in accordance with international law.

 

In order to resist evil, we need something like “just policing” also in international conflicts, which means a protection of the law, with even military force as an ultima ratio. But the danger is extremely high – and we experience it in so many violent conflicts – that the military logic takes completely over and buries all efforts to put a stop to violence and bloodshed. 

 

As World Council of Churches (WCC), at our General Assembly in 2022 in Karlsruhe, we have pledged to engage in a pilgrimage of justice, reconciliation and unity until our next assembly in 2030. This means engaging in activities of conflict resolution at different parts of the world – in Colombia where WCC was asked by the government to be a permanent accompanier in the peace talks with the guerillas, in Israel and Palestine where we plea for overcoming the walls the separate each party from empathy for the suffering on the other side, a crucial prerequisite for opening the door to a peace process, in Sudan where a delegation of WCC has had talks with different sides and, of course, in Ukraine where we have tried to motivate at least the churches to engage in a round table to open doors for reconciliation.

 

The declaration adopted unanimously by the WCC Assembly in Karlsruhe in the first week of September 2022, which was remarkably also supported by the Russian Orthodox delegates, condemns the Russian invasion as "illegal and immoral”. "As Christians from different parts of the world" - says the Assembly - "we renew the call for an immediate ceasefire to stop the death and destruction, and for dialog and negotiations to achieve sustainable peace."

 

Notable in the statement is the clear criticism of the misuse of religion to justify war:

 

"We also strongly reaffirm the statement of the Central Committee that war is incompatible with God's nature and will for humanity and contrary to our fundamental Christian and ecumenical principles, and reject any misuse of religious language and authority to justify armed attacks and hatred."

 

 

 

Resistance against evil in international conflicts demands a realistic account of the necessities of using protective violence but also of its limits.

 

Resistance, however, can also be a theme arising within a country when a government becomes so evil that an ethics of responsibility might even demand violence to overthrow this government in order to prevent more evil. Even pacifists can come to the conclusion that it would be irresponsible to stick with their principle of non-violence if it would mean that such principled pacifism would actually mean thousands of even millions of deaths of innocent people.

 

The most prominent example is German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a pacifist and – in my view – remained a pacifist to the end of his life. Nevertheless he became part of the conspiracy of the German resistance with the goal to kill Adolf Hitler. The assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, failed. Hitler survived the explosion of the bomb placed in his headquarters by a military officer. Those directly involved were immediately executed. Bonhoeffer, already in prison then, was hanged later on orders from Hitler, on April 9, 1945, a few weeks before the end of the war.

 

Bonhoeffer carefully reflected the ways in which Christians must act towards the state in different situations and envisioned the possibility of resistance as early as 1933, many years before he would engage in such resistance himself.

 

In April 1933, with the first boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1 and the antisemitic “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” on April 7, the new National Socialist state demonstrated with particular clarity its character as a state of injustice. Shortly thereafter, Bonhoeffer gave a lecture to pastors in Berlin. In this lecture he clearly names the injustice done to the Jews. He describes three ways in which the church must exercise its responsibility toward the state:

 

"first (...) the question addressed to the state about the legitimately state character of its actions, i.e., holding the state responsible. Secondly, the service to the victims of the state's action. The Church is unconditionally committed to the victims of any social order, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.... The third way is not only to join the victims under the wheel, but to fall into the spokes of the wheel itself" (DBW 12, 355f).

 

For Bonhoeffer, the third option increasingly moved to the center. His reflections on Gandhi's nonviolent resistance, but then increasingly also his reflection on tyrannicide as a means of "falling into the spokes of the wheel," must be seen in this context. 

 

In his later manuscripts, published after his death as “Ethics” and as “Letters and Papers from Prison” he implicitly but nevertheless intensely reflected his decision to participate in the plot against Hitler. We become guilty if we plan the killing of a person. But we might have to consciously become guilty by violating the commandment not to kill, if this is the only way to prevent much bigger evil. For Bonhoeffer, being ready to become guilty for the sake of others, can be the act of responsibility needed. The example of the German resistance against Hitler is an impressive example for the plausibility of Bonhoeffer’s thoughts: If the tyrannicide had been successful, the lives of millions of people would have been saved: soldiers in the battlefields, civilian victims of bombings, but above all millions of victims of the holocaust. 

 

The call to “resistance” is is always in danger to be misused. A current example is the misuse of Bonhoeffer’s life and work in American politics. Christian Nationalists played a major role when a violent mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. That day showed that American Christian Nationalists do not shy away from violence in their contempt for their political opponents and democratic institutions. They misuse the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s resistance to justify such action.  A key role in this plays Eric Metaxas, author of a popular biography of Bonhoeffer who, on the basis of his flawed account of Bonhoeffer, explicitly embraces Christian Nationalism, including the possibility of using violence, as the Jan 6 perpetrators did. The resistance against the mass murderer Hitler is put on the same level as the resistance against a democratically elected government.

 

The absurdity of this misuse becomes clear when one looks at how fervently Dietrich Bonhoeffer himself criticized nationalism. In a sermon in New York in 1930, he warned that Christians should never forget that they have brothers and sisters not only in their own people, but in every people. If the people of God were united, he proclaimed, “no nationalism, no hate of races or classes could execute its designs, and then the world would have peace forever and ever.”

 

I conclude: „Resistance against Evil” and “Imaginer la Paix” must always be related to each other. If the “resistance” label is being used to justify brutal violence, be it the cruel killing of innocent hostages by Hamas or the attempt to overthrow a democratic government in order to establish an authoritarian regime in the USA, then, it is irreconcilable with imagining peace. Peace always includes the minimization of violence and the vision of a life of all people in human dignity.

 

There are good reasons to affirm that resistance must be non-violent. At the same time there are good reasons to put people above principles and stand up for human dignity, even if it includes becoming guilty.

 

As Christians we know that, if we confess our guilt, we can hope for God’s forgiveness.