[about the book of Amos] . . . a collection of Amos’s oracles were put into writing a generation or more after his death. . . . in the northern kingdom of Israel near the end of the long reign (786 to 746 BCE) of King Jeroboam II. . . . a time when the wealth and power of the monarchy and ruling class greatly increased and the condition of most of the population deteriorated. (170-171)
Amos proclaims in the final verse what God really wants from them: justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (174)
Amos’s threat was within history: loss of the privileged status of the elites through the destruction of their social order and exile. (175)
The imagery of hooks/fishhooks refers to a known practice of the Assyrian Empire, the major threat to Israel in the time of Amos: sending prisoners of war into exile strung and roped together with hooks through their noses. The meaning: the God of Israel will not intervene to save you, but will allow you to be taken into exile because of your injustice to the poor. (176)
The United States has the greatest income inequality in the developed world. And it has been growing for about thirty years. (181)
Studies indicate that we are the most individualistic country in the world. As an ideology, individualism is the foundation of conservative politics and economics. It shapes the voting of around 80 percent of conservative Protestants. Their political passion is primarily about the behavior of individuals, especially issues related to sexuality. Income inequality, economic justice, and a strong commitment to peace are not priorities for most of them. (182)
But the prophetic voices of the Bible are about economic justice and fairness—changes in the system as a whole—and not primarily about charity to individuals. (183)
Countries that take seriously the well-being of all are safer and healthier: they experience less crime and mental illness, lower infant mortality, longer life expectancy, less desperation, and so forth. In all of these categories, the United States lags behind most of the developed nations in the world. (183)
“We are the greatest country in the world.” . . . Seldom is the question asked, “Greatest in what sense?” . . . we have less upward mobility than many countries. The land where even the poor live well? No.
“We’re number one.”
“We are the most generous nation in the world.” The majority of Americans greatly overestimate how much we give to foreign aid. Rather than being most generous, we number about fifteenth among the developed nations.
“We as a nation are basically good and thus could never do anything radically wrong.” What do people say about us who live in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? (184-185)
“Christians Are Called to Peace and Nonviolence”
The United States accounts for almost half of the world’s military spending. (189)
Are war and the threat of violence against enemies consistent with being Christian? Sometimes? Always? Never? (190)
For the first three centuries of Christianity, Christians refused to participate in war. (193)
The notion that pacifism means passive acceptance of violence and injustice is conveyed by a common and unfortunate mistranslation of a saying of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. (193)
Or might Christians be responsible for defending not only themselves, but also their non-Christian neighbors? (196)
In this setting, St. Augustine (354-430), the most important theologian in the first thousand years of Christianity, developed “just war” theology—the conditions under which Christians may support war. The criteria fell into two categories: the justification for going to war (jus ad bellus) and just conduct in war (jus in bello). For the former, the war had to be one of self-defense and last resort. Starting a war was prohibited. Just conduct in war means acting as humanely as possible, including not deliberately harming noncombatants. (196-197)
What matters for our purposes is that they are the classic embodiment of “holy war” theology. Its central feature is that war is seen as a battle between good and evil. Within this framework:
God is unambiguously on our side
Thus the enemy is not just our enemy, but God’s enemy
Therefore, “anything goes.” . . . there are no limits to violence. The utter destruction of the enemy is fully justified. (197-198)
. . . that our war with Iraq was justified with the proclamation of our nation’s right to preemptive war. Namely, if we suspect that another country is acquiring weapons of mass destruction, we have the right to attack them. The policy not only violates international law, but also [sic] Christian teaching about war and peace. (200)
The war in Iraq was not the first war that we started. There are good reasons to think that we initiated the Mexican-American War in 1846 and provoked the Spanish-American War in 1898. But at least we had the decency as a nation to lie about it, for we still knew that starting a war was wrong. (200)
During the months before we went to war in Iraq, why weren’t millions of Christians in the streets demanding, “We must not do this”? (200)
But for Christians, Jesus is the norm of the Bible. And he repudiated violence, even in his historical context of violence and injustice. (202)
But Christian commitment to nonviolence has nothing to do with indifference to the victimization of others. . . . So also there is no contradiction between a commitment to nonviolence and the recognition that any society we can imagine requires police and a criminal justice system. Of course, it matters what that system is like. But a commitment to nonviolence does not mean that people who do wrong should not be restrained and punished. (206)
[Reconsidering September 11, 2001]: Suppose that we had decided to treat the terrorists as criminals and hunted them down as a police action (which could involve thousands of special forces) rather than declaring a “war on terror” that led to wars in two countries? Hunting them down would have involved entering Afghanistan—but imagine an international police action with a limited objective (again, perhaps involving thousands) rather than two extended wars. (207)
But I have become convinced that Christians who oppose war are more often right than wrong. Nonviolent resistance to evil, including the evils of injustice, should be the primary Christian response. (208)