Just Peacemaking: Canadian Church Perspectives and Contributions

Tasneem Jamal

…Glen Stassen on the 10 practices of just peacemaking, a Catholic view on just peace excerpted from the concluding document of the Roman Catholic–Mennonite dialogue (2003), and the Canadian Interfaith Call for Leadership and Action on Climate Change (October 2011). Also included is a list of symposium participants and the agenda for the day.

Contributed Papers A Christian Reformed Perspective on Peace and War Canadian Quakers and “Just Peace” United Church of Canada Seminar Presentation No War, Just War, Just Peace: Statements by the Anglican Church of Canada 1934-2004 Roman Catholic perspectives on peace Creating Peace: Unitarian Universalist Perspectives A Contribution from The Presbyterian Church in Canada A Lutheran Response to Glory to God and Peace on Earth: The Message…

Just Peacemaking: The New Paradigm for Ethics of Peace and War

Tasneem Jamal

Author Glen H. Stassen

Just Peacemaking: The New Paradigm for Ethics of Peace and War (Pilgrim Press: 1998/2004/2008) Interfaith Just Peacemaking (Palgrave Macmillan: 2012)

See www.justpeacemaking.org and www.fuller.edu/sot/faculty/stassen

Pacifism and just war debate whether to participate in war. It’s an important debate. But it’s insufficient. The following have all said we need a new paradigm with preemptive practices of peacemaking, so we can also focus on the practices that prevent war: -Methodists, In Defense of Creation; -Presbyterians, Peacemaking: The Believers’ Calling; -United Church of Christ, The Just Peace Church; -U.S. Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace; -The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (1996) “For Peace in God’s World” -The Christian Reformed Church of North America (2006) “War & Peace.”

Part

…

Response to an Ecumenical Call to Just Peace

Tasneem Jamal

…of the church, but also with the identity of the early church in the first centuries after the death of Jesus.

A second response

These documents challenge the traditional HPC understandings and assumptions. These challenges are welcome, but require additional, substantive, and diligent discernment by us. In these ways, this document is very helpful for us. I will point to only a few challenges:

• The document appears to suggest (overstate?) that the Mennonite-Catholic dialogue has brought us to a common mind in terms of “just policing,” which can serve as a basis to overcome the tensions between just war and Christian pacifism.1 This requires additional discussion.2

• Related to just policing is the Responsibility to Protect doctrine and…

Roman Catholic Perspectives on Peace

Tasneem Jamal

II identified war as part of the culture of death, and he found a positive sign of the times in “a new sensitivity ever more opposed to war as an instrument of the resolution of conflict between people, and increasingly oriented to finding effective but ‘nonviolent’ means to counter the armed aggressor.”

The Catholic tradition today upholds both a strong presumption against the use of force and an obligation to resist the denial of rights and other grave public evils by active nonviolence, if at all possible (cf. Rom 12:14-21; 1 Thess 5:14f.). All Catholics bear a general obligation to actively resist grave public evil. Catholic teaching has increasingly endorsed the superiority of non-violent means and is suspect of the…

Diplomacy and Reconciliation in Afghanistan

John Siebert

Authors John Siebert and Mike Hogeterp

Speaking Notes

Presentation to the House of Commons Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan by Mike Hogeterp and John Siebert for The Canadian Council of Churches

3:30pm – 5:30pm, November 17, 2010

Mr. Chair and Committee members: Thank you for the invitation to meet with you today. The brief before you, entitled, “Canada’s Role in Afghanistan,” was released on December 10, 2009, International Human Rights Day. It is a consensus position of the Canadian Council of Churches, the broadest ecumenical body in Canada with 22 member churches representing Anglican, Evangelical, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions. It is remarkable statement, given our diversity.

The recommendations were formed from a

…

The ICC’s Pursuit of the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Limits of Criminal Proceedings

John Siebert

…traditional or restorative justice approaches: “The current consensus about customary Acholi conceptions of justice has largely emerged from the aid-funded collaboration between Acholi traditional male elders and the Catholic and Anglican churches.”38 Countering Allen’s criticism is polling research that puts traditional forms of justice that are locally rooted and adapted for the purpose of reconciliation, truth-telling, and advancing a more just social and political order at the forefront of northern Ugandans’ hopes. In a survey of 1,143 internally displaced persons in northern Uganda, 97.5 per cent responded “yes” to the question, “Should the truth about what happened during the conflict be known?”39 In several studies using different methodologies, the vast majority of people in northern Uganda indicated support for an…

A World Without Nuclear Weapons

Tasneem Jamal

…to give renewed and urgent attention to nuclear disarmament. From time-to-time Prime Ministers in Canada have received written representations on this issue from individual Canadian churches and church bodies. Now we are pleased to address you collectively as members of The Canadian Council of Churches (CCC), representing 23 churches of Anglican, Evangelical, Free Church, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Eastern Catholic and Roman Catholic traditions.

Our Call

We are especially grateful to be addressing these issues at a time of growing hope and conviction that the international community both desires and is in reach of a world without nuclear weapons. Such a world has long been promoted by the disarmament movement in Canada and beyond, and it has…

Project Ploughshares Calls on Canadian Government to Restore Kairos’s CIDA Funding

Tasneem Jamal

…a boycott of Israel. The Ploughshares board finds the accusation by a minister that KAIROS is anti-Semitic to be both reprehensible and utterly baseless. For its “defunding” to be linked to misrepresentations of KAIROS’s work and to a false charge of anti-Semitism is alarming and outrageous.

The board of Project Ploughshares is profoundly concerned that the Government’s action appears to be based on a partisan political agenda rather than KAIROS’s record as a seasoned, respected international agency with a 35-year partnership with CIDA.

Our board includes appointees from nine major church bodies in Canada (Anglican, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, United Church, Christian Reformed and others). Project Ploughshares operates under the auspices of the 22-member Canadian Council of Churches, the most ecumenical…

The Termination of CIDA’s Partnership with KAIROS

Tasneem Jamal

…on this matter.

Thank you for giving your attention to these matters and we look forward to your careful reconsideration of this decision.

Sincerely, Dona Harvey Chair of the Board Project Ploughshares

cc. Prime Minister Stephen Harper Margaret Biggs, CIDA President The Hon. Gary Goodyear Peter Braid, MP Stephen Woodward, MP Harold Albrecht, MP Glen Pearson, MP John Rafferty, MP Caroline St-Hilaire, MP Mary Corkery, KAIROS

Project Ploughshares sponsoring churches: The Anglican Church of Canada Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace Canadian Unitarian Council Canadian Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) Christian Reformed Church in North America Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada Mennonite Central Committee Canada The Presbyterian Church in Canada The United Church of Canada

…

Nuclear Disarmament: The Time is Now

Tasneem Jamal

…race was “utterly in conflict with the Gospel of Christ” (1981) Celebrated the excellent work of the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in their 1983 Pastoral Letter on the nuclear crisis, “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and our Response,” while also using this as an opportunity to recognize the serious “unresolved questions” that confront all Christianswith regard to this difficult issue Expressed excitement and hope at the time of the Reagan-Gorbachev Meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, that almost achieved a breakthrough with regard to the elimination of both country’s nuclear arsenals (1986) Congratulated the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. on achieving an agreement in principle (later carried out) to eliminate intermediate nuclear forces from Europe (1987)

In 1999, the NCC

…