PAX AMERICANA

An Inter-American Perspective

by Ross and Gloria Kinsler

[Published in the Witherspoon Society's Network News, Fall 2003.  Posted here 12-11-03]

For other discussions of Pax Americana," or the "new American Empire," you might look at "Empire and Church," by Rick Ufford-Chase, and "Pax Americana: a crisis for the Church," by Kent Winters-Hazelton.

Also, David McPhail takes a careful look at the School of the Americas -- where it came from and how it works today -- as a window into the workings of U.S. power in Latin America.    [3-29-04]

For over two years now our mass media and our national government have insistently and incessantly directed our attention to the declared "war on terrorism" with primary attention to the Middle East and the Muslim World. The emergence of "the American Century" and the consolidation of its proponents at the heart of the Bush Administration, however, alert us to the threat of U.S. global military and economic hegemony. So it may be instructive to direct our attention to other regions, especially the Americas, where the threat of U.S. hegemony goes all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine. Having been commissioned by the UPCUSA in 1963 for mission in Central America and re-commissioned by our Central American colleagues in the year 2000 for mission in the U.S.A., we would like to share some of our changing perspectives on peace and some biblical perspectives on peace in response to today's global crisis.

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ON PEACE

The history of exploitation, oppression, military repression, and war in Central America during the latter half of the 20^th Century is well known to Presbyterians in this country, as is the role of the U.S. government in that region. Our General Assembly undertook, adopted, and circulated to all our churches and presbyteries major studies on the realities of Central America, beginning in 1983 with the report "Adventure and Hope: Christians and the Crisis in Central America." Some of our congregations were confronted dramatically with the arrival of refugees, especially from Guatemala and El Salvador, who were seeking sanctuary in our churches because our government would not grant them political asylum and could not recognize its complicity in the massacres, torture, and other atrocities that uprooted and displaced hundreds of thousands of innocent people, particularly poor Mayan peasants for most of whom the Cold War was unknown and irrelevant.

The presence of those refugees, most of them undocumented (not illegal!), the reports of numerous delegations of our people who went to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua to see for themselves, and the intensive work of Witness for Peace, Amnesty International, and other organizations raised the consciousness of many and pressured Washington to give peace a chance. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the last vestige of justification for massive U.S. military support and intervention in Central America gave way, and gradually peace accords were signed, the last in Guatemala in 1996. All of us who were concerned for the well being of the Central American peoples assumed or at least hoped that the peace accords would improve life for those who had suffered so brutally for so long. But what emerged from the ashes was continuing exploitation, oppression, and poverty, now primarily through economic imperialism directed by the U.S. government and corporations backed up by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization.

Dr. Oscar Arias was President of Costa Rica when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1987 for his decisive role in bringing to a close the wars of Central America. In 1999 he gave a lecture at Dartmouth College on "Globalization and the New Struggle for Peace." Following are portions from that speech.

While the age of the cold war has ended, it has not been followed by the promised era of peace and prosperity. This is supposed to be a time of peace. But how can we say that there is peace when thousands are made to work in dehumanizing conditions? How can we say there is peace when we build more prisons and fewer schools? How can we say that there is peace when so many go hungry. Today I challenge you to think about peace in a new way. When we demand peace, it must not only be a peace of national security, one which talks bombing and gunfire. It must also be a peace of human security, one concerned with the welfare and health of humanity.

The [globalization] system encourages insatiable consumption and consumerism for some, but denies many others the basic necessities of life.

I tell you that there is a much deeper crisis underlying the financial panic. I say that it is an economic crisis when nearly a billion and a half people have no access to clean water, and a billion live in miserably substandard housing. I say that it is a leadership crisis when we allow wealth to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. . . . I say it is a moral crisis when 40,000 children die each day from malnutrition and disease. And I say it is a democratic crisis when l.3 billion people live on incomes of less than one dollar a day and in their unrelenting poverty are totally excluded from public decision-making.

The tragedy of Central America is that the peace accords, which brought to an end most of the overt military repression, have not brought about the more basic peace that Dr. Arias has been calling for. Rather, national and international institutions and structures have been put in place to impose economic repression to benefit private and corporate interests at the expense of the majority poor under the rule of "free market" ideology.

This "free market" ideology and economic imperialism have been institutionalized under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico since 1994. The Bush Administration has been pressing for the expansion of NAFTA to embrace all of the Americas (34 countries, 755 million people, with the exception of Cuba), called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), in spite of the disastrous results of NAFTA, with which is reported to have cost millions of U.S. jobs and in Mexico one million more workers under minimum wage, 8 million more families.

Global Exchange summarizes ten reasons to oppose this new threat to the environment, family livelihood, human rights, and democracy through the globalization of "free market" fundamentalism.

1. The FTAA Expands a Proven Disaster.

2. The Agreement is Being Written in Secret.

3. The Agreement Will Undermine Labor Rights and Cause Further Job Loss.

4. The Agreement Will Exacerbate Environmental Destruction.

5. The Agreement Will Put Lives at Risk.

6. The Agreement Will Lead to Privatization of Essential Services.

7. The Agreement Will Provide a Back Door for the Multilateral Agreement on Investments.

8. The Agreement Will Spread the Use of Genetically Modified Organisms.

9. The Agreement Will Increase Poverty and Inequality.

10. There Are Proven Alternatives.

It is the globalization of this power arrangement that presents the two great threats to life in the 21^st Century: economic polarization and ecological destruction. As we have heard many times, continuing unrestrained development may well lead to the death of the planet's biosphere within this century. And extreme poverty takes the lives of 40,000 children every day, as Arias indicates. As U.S. Christians we must examine our biblical foundations and spiritual commitments in the face of the global crises, because we are among the chief decision makers and the main beneficiaries of these realities.

BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PEACE

One of the clear lessons from Central America's recent history is that peace is not just the absence of war but shalom, fullness of life for all God's people. The foundational experience or paradigm of Israel's faith, following deliverance from slavery in Egypt, begins with the story of the manna in Exodus 16. God's response to their hunger in the wilderness was to feed them, yes, but also to teach them that to live in freedom they must learn to share so that everyone would have enough, i.e., none would have too much! For if some were allowed to hoard, others would have less, and this could lead to such deprivation that some might fall back into slavery, which would be a negation of their identity and a profanation of their faith in the God who delivers. This was the time when Sabbath was introduced, a regular time for the whole household to rest and to remember. This lesson of the manna, of the Sabbath Day, still stands as the most fundamental economic challenge for God's people.

Another basic biblical lesson is that peace is not just charity but justice. This lesson is inscribed in Deuteronomy 15, which sets forth two basic mandates for the Sabbath Year: the cancellation of debts and the freeing of slaves in the seventh year. Clearly economic inequality or injustice is not just personal but structural. In ancient times the main mechanism for the accumulation of wealth and the growth of poverty was the debt system. In spite of anti-usury laws, those who had more and were called upon to loan to poor farmers when they lost their crops were tempted to charge high interest and even to expand their land holdings (capital) when mortgages failed. Those who lost their land often fell into slavery with their families. So the Sabbath Year mandates were intended to resist and reverse those practices so common among other nations. As Deuteronomy 15:4 indicates, "There will be no one in need among you," which is to say there should be no poverty among God's people. And Deuteronomy 15:15 provides the rationale: "Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; for this reason I lay this command upon you today." Here again the Bible teaches that to practice injustice and exploitation is to deny our identity and profane our faith in the God who liberates, who declares that there should be no poor among us..

The third basic lesson is that peace is not just religious faith but holistic salvation. This understanding is especially clear in Leviticus 25, the Jubilee chapter, which mandates that - in the 50^th year, the super Sabbath - families who had lost their lands and homes could return and rehabilitate them and so begin anew their lives with dignity and abundance as God desires for all. It is this vision that is taken up and radicalized in Isaiah 61:1-2a and proclaimed and enacted by Jesus, according to Luke 4:16-21. In fact it was put into practice by the early church with the infilling of the Holy Spirit, according to Acts 2:42-47, 4:32-35, 5:12-16. They practiced Sabbath economics or Jubilee spirituality as a necessary fulfillment of their identity and their faith in the God who liberates. They shared all their possessions and distributed them as any had need so that "there was not a needy person among them." (Acts 4:34)

Once the Sabbath-Jubilee paradigm is discovered, it opens up new understanding of many biblical texts, especially in the Synoptic Gospels. Take the Lord's Prayer, as one example. Jesus taught his disciples to pray that God's name be hallowed, God's Reign come, and God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, as the first three petitions indicate. Then he added three very concrete petitions about how they were to make that happen through their own lives. "Give us this day our daily bread" is clearly a reference to the lesson of the manna and the Sabbath Day, for it uses the plural, which means all of us, all of God's people. To pray this petition is to commit ourselves to the elimination of poverty and hunger so that all will have enough to eat. It means to reject the accumulation of wealth and to move into a life-style of sharing.

The next petition, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," is clearly a reiteration of the Sabbath Year mandates, for it too is in plural. To pray this petition is to commit ourselves to the elimination of onerous and unpayable Third World debt, of predatory lending in this country, and of all those unjust mechanisms that make the rich richer and the poor poorer and more numerous. It is to commit ourselves to work for economic justice and the elimination of massive inequities in our country and in our world.

The final petition of the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil," must today surely include the almost overwhelming pressure to accumulate, to consume, and to display in a culture that constantly proclaims "You deserve it" and "You are what you have." For it is this temptation that leads to the evil that drives the engines of our local and global economy and leads to unconscionable poverty and marginalization in this country and around the world.

The PC(USA) offers many avenues of response to the challenge of peacemaking as we have described it here, in terms of today's world and biblical teaching. In light of the national and global economic crisis we would like to recommend a fundamental, not marginal, commitment to the Presbyterian Hunger Program, which offers a comprehensive range of possibilities for responsible discipleship. To our minds the challenge of economic justice and peacemaking belongs at the very core of our faith and worship. As followers of Jesus we are called to bring good news to the poor, which surely means that they will no longer be poor if all of us learn to practice Sabbath economics/Jubilee spirituality. Likewise we are called, like Jesus, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free. This is our Sabbath/Jubilee calling; this is what it means "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." The Hunger Program proposes the following dimensions for this our calling.

Hunger Education and Interpretation. Learning about hunger and our response to it begins with the Bible.

Direct Food Relief. As Christians we demonstrate our love for sisters and brothers by supporting programs which ensure that food is available to those in need, while also working on longer-term solutions.

Development Assistance. The PHP encourages and supports land ownership by the poor, appropriate agricultural technology, rural community development, cooperative economic development, effective soil conservation, water resource development, equitable food distribution, community organizing, and nutrition education.

Public Policy Advocacy. It supports organizations and coalitions which advocate for public policies that provide food for poor and hungry people and empower their self-development.

Lifestyle Integrity. In this world where some go hungry because others consume too much, the PHP encourages families, church groups, and institutions to evaluate their own needs and develop new ways of being more caring and sharing of the world's resources in obedience to the Gospel.

Attached to the Hunger Program is a new unit in Louisville called Enough for Everyone, which engages our churches in basic steps toward economic justice in terms of the coffee we drink, the clothes we wear, the energy we use, and the money we invest. Such basic steps can lead to ever greater understanding of the world's crises and of the biblical message we affirm, through the leading of God's Spirit.

At the height of the wars in Central America some colleagues began to talk about the peace of empire, which was largely the imposition of absolute military repression and death, and the peace of the peoples, which was the hoped for freedom to work the land, raise families, value ancient cultural traditions, and worship the God of life without military, political, and economic threats. Latin Americans today join with peoples around the world in demanding the peace of the peoples (shalom), in rejecting Pax Americana (empire).

The authors:

For some of our earlier posts on the subject >>