Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Review of C. D. Marshall's 'Compassionate Justice' - by Wayne Northey

Book Review of Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice, Christopher D. Marshall, Eugene Oregon: Cascade Books, 2012.

At the first national teleconference in the United States on Restorative Justice (in 1991 I believe), a woman asked the panel about the Christian roots of Restorative Justice.  She was assured by a panelist that there were none, and no one on the panel said differently.  Christopher Marshall’s first book in this field, Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime and Punishment, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001, and The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice, New York: SUNY Press, 2001, published ten years later, demonstrated otherwise.  So does this second book by Marshall.

Christianity not only played the essential role in the development of the Western legal tradition (for good or for ill) as shown for instance in Harold Berman’s magisterial Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition,  Boston: Harvard University Press, 1983, Christianity centrally gave rise to the recent worldwide development of Restorative Justice programs and theory.

To read the rest of this review:  Download Book Review of Compassionate Justice

M2/W2 and Enemy Love As Core Gospel by Wayne Northey

Our entire ministry in criminal justice is summed up in three words: Love your enemies.  Our website (www.m2w2.com) describes the one-to-one prison visitation (M2/W2), the work with high risk sex offenders (CoSA), and our Thrift Store (Hidden Treasures) as unique expressions of enemy love.  All is done under the rubric of Restorative Justice, on which page by that name you will find lots to think about.  It too turns on an ultimate vision of enemy love.

There are some things in life that one sees, and once seen, one may never look back legitimately, though wilfully one may always violate that seen...  In the 1960’s, I saw this image circulated at our church:

The story is that a picture was taken by a Chinese photographer who was considering Christianity, and who converted to it after having seen this photo developed from one he took of melting snow.  One moment, he saw dark blotches on a white page, the next moment he suddenly saw an image of Jesus jump out at him!  Can you see the face of Jesus?  Many take some time to see!  Many never do.  Once one sees however, no matter how one looks at the image, one never fails again to see Jesus.  Though one can always wilfully suppress or deny it.  One can always claim the true image of Christ is “dark blotches on white”.  Can you see Jesus?

Response to Larry Dixon’s “Farewell, Rob Bell” by Wayne Northey

Larry Dixon and I were once friends and colleagues doing evangelism together on the streets of West Berlin in the early seventies. I eventually wrote a novel based on that experience (http://chrysaliscrucible.blogspot.com/) that treats in part this theme.  One may in fact detect an uncanny likeness to Larry in one of my novel’s characters.  

This response to his latest book, Farewell, Rob Bell, is an invitation to renew our dialogue. Perhaps Larry would also be open to discussion around Kevin Miller’s upcoming documentary, Hellbound?

The book is the author’s second go at hell.  Larry argued in his first book on the doctrine of hell that there is not Good News, period, but there exists as “gospel” supplement “The Other Side of the Good News”, the book’s title.  I believe Larry is right: there is another side, and it is indeed “hell”.  Only this is not a hell of God’s doing, but of human postulating.  As C.S. Lewis expressed it in The Screwtape Letters: “There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way.’ ”  It seems Larry would “have it his way” and hold out for a teaching on a “hell” of “eternal conscious torment”.

The Sports Crowd is Untruth by Wayne Northey

Photo courtesy of Justice Jersak

Søren Kierkegaard wrote “The crowd is untruth."

René Girard saw it in the hidden uncouth:

Scapegoating violence, originary, in all human cultures.

It is all innocent fun say dominant culture vultures

Of every sports win.  

Yet there lurks deeper Shame-faced, thumbs-ready, coliseumesque, sinister

Geared up to erupt the violence of the untruth mob

“Crucify him!” the crescendoing perennial sob

Fickle in wait of first blood unseeing the shroud

Of unknowing, smeared victims’ faces, no awareness allowed.

At the best of times the Vancouver CBC Early Edition guy and former sportscaster is an insufferable sports fanatic.  Together with the CBC national sports reporter, they prattle on endlessly year-round about organized sports events.  That’s one thing.  The other is the overt annual morality play they represent of forced ubiquitous jumping on the bandwagon when the Vancouver Canucks vie for the fortieth (or umpteenth/whatever!) time for the Stanley Cup.  Not to embrace Go Canucks go!is in the moment the ultimate social heresy, pure Vancouver lèse majesté, sheer “unthinkability”: such offenders deserving relegation to the hinterlands, hard labour without parole, or worse.  At minimum, it is ostracism of utter astonishment that onemay not actually be a Canucks fan!  Like being Alabaman or Georgian and not a Ku Klux Klan... 

Op Ed Piece by Wayne Northey: Brain Disturbances, Mirror Neurons, Osama and Obama

Brain Disturbances, Mirror Neurons, Osama and Obama

“A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.”

In a “paper [presenting] a conceptual framework that integrates findings from recent studies of the neurobiological effects of childhood abuse and exposure to domestic violence on brain structure and function … with epidemiologic data from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.”, it was found that “The likelihood of disturbances in any given function or behavior such as … aggression would have a cumulative or “dose-response” relationship to the number of ACEs, theoretically paralleling the total exposure of the developing central nervous system to the activated stress response during childhood (http://www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com/2009/6/anda_abuse.pdf).”

President Barack Obama on 60 Minutes recently spoke representatively of the American central nervous system in its yet one more act of extra-judicial aggression: “As nervous as I was about this entire process, the one factor I didn’t lose sleep over was the potential of taking Bin Laden out. Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would query that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn’t deserve what he received needs to have their head examined.”

Indeed.  And why David Livingston Smith calls humans “the most dangerous animal” (http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/why-war-most-dangerous-animal-by-david.php) in our "mirror neuron" imitations of violence from time immemorial – in need of much more head (and heart!) examination!

 

"Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil" and "The Armageddon Factor" - Reviews by Wayne Northey

Book Review of Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism, Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003, 392 pp.;

The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, 419 pp.

These are disturbing books.  One could feel having read them like a serious crime victim: the universe once seemed well ordered, predictably unfolding.  Until violent crime strikes.  And the equilibrium of the universe tilts.  One thought perhaps Canada was a safe democracy.  One thought the United States stood in reality for making the world safe for democracy.  Both books urgently cry out, Think again!

The Armageddon Factor is a second go at publishing on this theme, the first an essay in Walrus magazine in 2006.  Captain America is reprised publication from initial discussion thirty years prior, and variously since.  McDonald repeatedly alludes to, sometimes describes, antecedents from the States to the rise of Christian Nationalism.  Jewett and Lawrence give a full-blown account of what they call “zealous nationalism” from colonial times onwards.  I’ll begin with their account.

For Northey's full review: 
Download Book Review of Captain America and The Armageddon

Call For a Church Apology Vis À Vis Crime and Punishment by Wayne Northey

It is proposed that Western Churches issue an apology to all parties to crime for the past millennium of inappropriate response to crime promulgated by dominant Christendom.

When Anselm of Canterbury wrote Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man) in the 11^th century, the Church gradually changed the nature of the understanding of God, salvation, grace, law, sin, and crime. God became increasingly a “sentencing Judge”, salvation became something earned, sin, crime and law became separated from their natural settings of mercy and grace.

Sin was changed into something so terrible, it evoked the most destructive imaginable wrath of God – a promised hell far worse than the direst punishments perpetrated by humanity.

In order to respond to crime, the Church in the 11^th century accorded the State the right to punish severely. It was part of divorcing the secular from the religious, a heresy (false choice) originating from within the Church, growing to fruition in the Enlightenment and modernity. It became a God-given duty to deal with people on the temporal level as God surely would deal with them on the eternal plain. It was the ultimate double jeopardy!

The Two Greatest Commandments and Prison Ministry by Wayne Northey

[NOTE: This was Wayne Northey’s first devotional as new Executive Director given at M2/W2’s Annual General Meeting, May 21, 1998.]

Matthew 22:35-40

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:”Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Frankly, I struggle to understand the picture of God I find in some Scripture. This is especially the case when I read portions of the Old Testament. I am heartened nonetheless by the realization that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God to us who summed up the entire sweep of Hebrew Scriptures ethics with: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Whatever is difficult to understand in Scripture must first pass through the sieve of the revelation of God in Christ according to John and Hebrews 1. Jesus is the “key” to unlock the interpretation of all Scripture – something he demonstrated himself, as you remember, after the resurrection with some despondent disciples on the road to Emmaus.

A Tribute to Much-Respected Maverick Clark Pinnock

Clark Pinnock passed away August 15. The controversial theologian impacted many in the Christian community – including Christian Info Society president Flyn Ritchie, who studied under him. Following are tributes by several noteworthy commentators. 

Doug Koop

Clark H. Pinnock’s life journey is over. The influential and often controversial evangelical theologian died unexpectedly of a heart attack. He was 73. In March, the long-time professor of systematic theology at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, had announced he was withdrawing from public life – and that he was battling Alzheimer’s disease.

It was a difficult admission for a man whose mercurial mind and openness to the Holy Spirit led him to stake out theological positions that challenged evangelical orthodoxies.

Renowned for exploring the frontiers of biblical truth, he was reputed to study carefully, think precisely, argue forcefully – and shift his positions willingly if he discovered a more fruitful pathway of understanding. He said he preferred to be known, “not as one who has the courage of his convictions, but one who has the courage to question them and to change old opinions which need changing . . .”

Remembering Clark Pinnock by Wayne Northey

 As you may have heard, Clark Pinnock died of a heart attack August 15, 2010. Doug Koop has written an article on Clark in Christianity Today.

I reflected lots on Clark since hearing the news two days ago upon our return from a wilderness camping trip to South Barriere Lake near Kamloops.  I felt compelled to share a bit of this reflection with a few of you.

During two of the three years Clark was at Regent College, I lived in his basement.  The first year the Mack and Joan Goldsmith clan also lived in the house owned by the Pinnock's.  (Mack was Regent College's first visiting scholar).  They just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in August. For me 1974 - 1976 were a wonderful two years of theological/spiritual growth and healing.  I had just returned from two years as a short-term evangelist with (then) Literature Crusades (now International Teams) in West Berlin, was "raw" from that experience and in need of healing.  (My novel was based upon this time in my life, though it is a work of fiction. Clark and Dorothy both read and endorsed it! Clark's blurb is part of the publication.) Their house was a haven for me, including their Bible Study group I loved attending.

"Pardon Me?!" by Wayne Northey

“Pardon Me?!”   

      On Good Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper telephoned Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to overhaul Canada’s pardon legislation.  He declared “there are some crimes that should never be pardoned.”  On Good Friday!  The Prime Minister, a Christian believer, called Toews the day Christians worldwide celebrate the pardon Jesus’ death offered all humanity including the thief on the cross. 

      Vic Toews, also a believer, now proposes changing the term “pardon” to the blander “record suspension.” Forgiveness, said Toews, “is not the business of government.”   One editorial expressed, “That seems mean-spirited.”  Perhaps a tad unmerciful?  Contradictory even of The Lord’s Prayer that reads?: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (Matthew 6:12).”, with Jesus’ commentary: “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins. (verses 14 & 15).”

Obama -- Nobel Peace by Wayne Northey

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their [Martin Luther King’s and Gandhi's non-violence] examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.” – President Obama, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech 

How can one deny that President Obama is a militarist and a mass murderer?  Theologian John McKenzie observed that no American President since the nuclear age has been unwilling to push the button.  Obama is likewise not unwilling, “sworn to protect and defend [his] nation”, at the risk of thousands more civilian deaths.  “The world as it is” at the state level has always called forth a violent solution to violence.  “Evil does exist in the world”, and what Martin Luther King Jr. said of the United States of America exactly a year before his assassination still obtains: “[T]he greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government.”  America is prime candidate for “Evil Empire”. 

The “recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason” call forth a transcendence of same towards a new history of the state without violence.  It is thinkable and doable, and the only measure of human greatness.  There is one implicit truth in the above excerpt: To have a hope of being a bona fide peacemaker, Obama chose the wrong job.

War, Police and Prisons: Cross-Examining State-Sanctioned Violence by Wayne Northey

Podcast Download this episode (57 min)

 

The Western state arrogated to itself sole prerogative to commit violence against its enemies. The state’s domestic enemies are criminals, its international enemies whomever the current government declares such. This presentation addresses morally, philosophically and theologically the state’s right to commit violence, especially lethal violence. It will argue that issues of societal violence from schoolyard bullying to murder perpetuate ultimately due to state modelling in training and duties legitimated for its police, prisons and military. It will suggest an alternative.

A pdf of the presentation is available here.

"Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate" by Terry Eagleton" -- Interactive Review by Wayne Northey

Interactions With Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God
Debate, Terry Eagleton, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009, 185 pp.

Introduction

I had generally felt uninterested in the recent spate of neoatheistic publications, including The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and God is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens. Both books and the “God Debate” are the focus of the book under discussion. In 2010, Eagleton, a noted literary critic and theoretical Marxist, is slated to give the most prestigious series of theological lectures in English today: The Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, on “The God Debate”, that will continue his probing this theme. With Eagleton’s offering, I suddenly realized how vital to our very humanity this discussion is! What, if after all, both the dilemma of the human condition and its solution cut far more deeply than the best offerings of secular good works done by say the International Red Cross, the Canadian International Development Agency, or the American Peace Corps? What if, after all, most of the Christian West with its early inversion of the Cross into ultimate symbol of violence, the Sword, was massively unfaithful to humanity’s ultimate destiny of peace that Judeo-Christian Scripture knows as the Kingdom of God? This publication raises these issues exquisitely and much more. To read the rest of this article, download the pdf file here: Download Book Review of Reason, Faith, and Revolution

"Lest We Forget" -- Peace Sunday Sermon by Wayne Northey

Introduction

The church is called to be now what the world is meant to be then. Peace is possibly the most poignant, difficult and elusive goal of the entire creation. Lest we forget, title of my sermon, the church is nonetheless called to peace.

This is perhaps the essence of the simple words of Jesus at the end of Luke 11:2: “… your kingdom come.”, and the more expanded words in Matt 6:10: “…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

In the Psalm we heard this morning were these words: “Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire (Ps 46:8-9).” This is God’s will throughout the earth.

Annalise Acorn's "Compulsory Compassion" -- Review by Wayne Northey

Book Review of Compulsory Compassion: A Critique of Restorative Justice, Annalise Acorn, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004, 207 pages. 

By Wayne Northey 

Introduction 

There is a longstanding difference in how to read the Gospels in relation to criminal justice and in how we read the Gospels in response to issues of violence and nonviolence in general.  One of Mohandas Gandhi’s repeated statements was that it seems everyone but Christians knows Jesus was nonviolent¹.  The author is not grounding her critique on Jesus or the Bible, though she cites Jesus’ words several times.  She joins with Gandhi’s “Christians”.  I shall return to the issue of her ethical epistemology. 

My point of departure is the church’s Jesus and Bible.  And I am with Gandhi, a non-Christian by his self-designation, in his assessment of (especially) Western Christendom’s remarkable longstanding rejection of Jesus’ nonviolence.  Noted evangelical author Philip Yancey once wrote of Gandhi (rightly I think) that he was possibly the only Christian (Christ-follower) in India at the time of his bid to liberate India from British rule.  

"A Great Irony of History": the Cross and Peace by Wayne Northey

Introduction

Ever since Clark Pinnock taught an interterm course in 1975 at Regent College, entitled “The Politics of Jesus”, for close to half of my life, I have been drawn to the nonviolent Cross of Jesus.  Pinnock later taught a full-semester course by the same title, based upon a then recent publication by Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (1972 & 1994), that theologian Stanley Hauerwas believes is the most important publication on ethics of the twentieth century.

What do I mean by “violence” in this talk?  A very succinct definition is given in Marjorie Suchocki’s The Fall To Violence (1994): “… at its base, violence is the destruction of well-being (Suchocki, 1994, p. 85, italics added.)”  Violence is the destruction of well-being.   

Is there a place for dreaming? by Wayne Northey

IS THERE A PLACE FOR DREAMING?
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND INTERNATIONAL STATE CONFLICT
by Wayne Northey

This lecture grew out of a six-month research project where Wayne served as first Scholar in Residence, Centre
for Research on Conflict, Conflict Studies, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada. He is also writing a book based upon this research.

Download spu_presentation_september_2007__3_1.pdf

Covenant of Peace by W.M. Swartley Book Review by W. Northey

Book Review of Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics, Willard M. Swartley, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2006; 542 pp.

By Wayne Northey 

It was my good fortune to have spent a little time with Mennonite New Testament theologian Willard Swartley at the June, 2006 Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R) in Ottawa, Canada. I first heard from him about what surely is his magnum opus, the volume under review. Though he has written and edited over 20 books during his fruitful career as professor (now emeritus) of New Testament at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhard, Indiana.

"Jarhead," Montreal Shooting Spree, and Western Civilization by Wayne Northey

It was while descending from a hike up Elk Mountain in the eastern Fraser Valley of British Columbia that someone shared about his son, one of Canada’s finest trained élite soldiers, who had recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

His son said the movie Jarhead would be the closest to depicting accurately the kind of training our élite soldiers receive to fight for Western civilization and democracy in Afghanistan right now.

A friend and I that same night obligingly watched the 123-minute 2005 release based upon the true story of Anthony Swofford’s experience of U.S. Marine life told in Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, published in 2003.  The movie depicts the systematic brutalization, bastardization, and “bellicosification” of the Marine recruit; the choking out of every vestige of civilized attitude and behaviour.  The “jarhead”/Marine once emptied of all human decency (utter inversion of “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten”) becomes receptacle for one all-pervasive value: to kill.