Peace in the Face of War

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Andrew White, ‘the Vicar of Baghdad’, in his article, Give Peace a Chance, brings us to the negotiating table and gives us a sense of the creative work involved in negotiating peace at the political level in the Middle East among nations that are intensely religious. Discussions leading to politicoreligious peace are built on intellectual/spiritual foundations. It starts with strengthening relationships of persons, establishing trust. The work usually suffers many setbacks, but eventually can bring monumental social and spiritual rewards. Uri Avnery, a self–proclaimed secular Jew, wants us to distinguish between true and false kinds of political peace. Drawing lessons from history, he applies these various scenarios to a two–state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. As one of its original architects, he writes elsewhere that nations have to know sovereignty, preferably without dictatorship, before they can taste the fundamentals of freedom. False amalgamation of cultures into single nation states that neglect cultural boundaries and identities, eventually break up into independent sovereign states: Ireland and Northern Ireland, for example; former Czechoslovakia into Czechs and Slovaks; former Yugoslavia into Serbs, Croatians, Bosnians, Slovenes etc; the former Soviet Union into Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine etc; the Kurds, left out during the formation of Turkey, Syria and Iraq, are now seeking their own sovereign state; and so it goes on. This natural tendency toward independent sovereignty along lines of identity is the background for Avnery’s two–state solution between Israel and Palestine. For the Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his recent book, Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence, the key to peace is education. ‘Wars are won with weapons,’ he writes, ’but it takes ideas to win a peace.’ To this end, Dr Sacks explores the various kinds of group dynamics that trigger religious violence in order to understand best how to defuse them; also the counter-narratives in Hebrew Scriptures and Midrash that provide sanguine means, such as role reversal, to overcome both the individual and corporate impulse to violence; and finally the eirenic recourse to the sages to clear up misunderstandings that religions themselves inadvertently have caused through their sacred writings, especially when misinterpreted by fundamentalists. Just as hatred and war are learned, so peace can be taught and learned. All this is set against the background of a particularly virulent strain of anti–Semitism that has taken root in the Islamic world since the Second World War. Peace is achievable only through a combination of many disciplines and perspectives coming together collaboratively. None of our authors say that 6
peace is easy. To the contrary, it requires immense dedication, in patience and ‘long suffering’. How long is ‘long suffering’? All lovers of world peace should be advised, as they prepare for the long haul, to expect to endure ‘until your last breath.’ QUESTIONS OF WAR AND PEACE IN THE THEOLOGY OF ARCHIMANDRITE SOPHRONY SAKHAROV (1896-1993) ‘The greatest suffering, which I have continuously endured throughout my whole life, has been caused by the bitter and salty waves of hatred between people. There are no prayers that can stop and overcome this poison which fills the air of our planet with the stench of blood and the terror of death. The soul of man is tired of this exceedingly sorrowful sight and desires no longer to continue its days on earth drinking from this “cup”.’ Thus wrote Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov towards the end of his long life. He was born in 1896 in Moscow and died in 1993 in his monastic home at Tolleshunt Knights in Essex. He lived through the whole of the twentieth century and was a witness to the greatest wars the world had ever seen – a tragic consummation of the history of Adam’s children, which he diagnosed with the short phrase, ‘the whole human corpus is sick’. 1 My aim in this paper is to bring into sharper focus the problematic of war and peace in the theology of Fr Sophrony. I shall seek to demonstrate that his works provide a uniquely consistent theological response to what he called the ‘exceedingly sorrowful sight’ of war in the twentieth century. I see my investigation as belonging to the field of contemporary Orthodox theology where the assessment of the significance of war for theological thought is still very much in its infancy. In the context of the growing number of publications on the topic of war and Orthodox theology, what appears to have remained less developed is an engagement with monastic efforts to respond to the ultimate theological questions on the nature of God and on divine providence in the last century scarred by global military conflicts. It is here that Fr Sophrony’s contribution breaks new ground and deserves further attention. Although I shall argue for the need to see war as a key factor, I do not claim that my reading of Fr Sophrony’s works offers the key to unlocking the 1 A. Sophrony, His Life is Mine, tr. by R. Edmonds (London: Mowbrays, 1977), p. 92. 7
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Peace in the Face of War

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