CGR Vol. 26, No. 2 (Spring 2008)

I offer these reflections in recognition of the defining nature of the issues that policing raises for Anabaptists, and with gratitude for being able to participate in this circle of discernment with persons who share a passion for justice, peace, and faithfulness to the church’s mission.[1]

Andy Alexis-Baker’s “The Gospel or a Glock? Mennonites and the Police” (CGR Spring 2007) focuses largely on participation in police forces that we encounter and call on in our local neighborhoods. But, as he points out, the issue of policing has been framed for a much larger context by, among others, the MCC Peace Theology Project.[2] To illustrate the timeliness of this wider horizon, the Responsibility to Protect (“R2P”) “doctrine” that emerged in response to the catastrophe in Rwanda puts the issue of policing before Mennonites and others in the peace community in a most challenging way.[3]

While I value and deeply affirm Alexis-Baker’s passion for the church’s faithfulness regarding participation in policing, I take exception to his one-dimensionally negative characterization, even demonizing, of the police: “The police do not save us in the larger picture; they enslave us to demonic forces.”[4] As demonstrated by participants in this CGR forum, there are police officers who take on what they know to be a potentially dangerous life as an act of self-sacrificial devotion to the well-being of their community. Alexis-Baker muddies his radical stance by applying a Just War ethical calculus to when Christians might call on the police. That said, he is correct in putting the faithfulness of the church front and center, and thus placing the issue of ecclesiology at the center of our discussion.

Ecclesiology and Congregational Life

“Ecclesiology” refers to the doctrine of the church. Article 9 of the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, 1995, refers to the church as a “new society,” emphasizing both a distinct identity and a communal reality. As such, the church is nothing less than the “visible manifestation of Jesus Christ,” in effect the ongoing incarnation of Christ, and therefore a participant in the Messianic mission in the world. Since the church is a community, being part of one body together means that members offer and receive counsel as befits those who are responsible for and accountable to each other. Lofty and deeply challenging words, indeed – and unrealistic, many would say. Anabaptists are rightly suspicious of doctrines that are not lived doctrines, and thus move back and forth between poles of adjusting ecclesiology to practicalities and adjusting practice to high ecclesiology. Some are suspicious of one pole, some of the other. Alexis-Baker falls into the camp of those suspicious of watering down a demanding ecclesiology, and he rightly asks: “Do Mennonites currently have the necessary congregational life to form people able to make such discernments?” (40). He is referring in this instance to discerning when to call on police, but his question becomes all the more urgent when Christians participate in policing. Gerald Schlabach, building on John Howard Yoder’s insistence that involvement in the structures of society demands “the support and the discipline of congregational accountability groups,”[5] asks: “Is there still time to encourage the widespread development of congregational accountability groups for people in positions of governance (professional and corporate as well as civil and political)?”[6] We must find such time if we are to contemplate this direction in discipleship. I will thus place the limited focus of my reflections there.

Mennonite congregational life has undergone significant changes in recent decades. Broadly speaking, congregational life among Anabaptists in the not-too-distant past tended toward being insular, homogeneous, rural, inward-turned, and uninvolved in the structures of the state. Anabaptists were mostly theologically conservative, biblicistic, and “low-e” evangelical. While many Mennonites entered the military services during both World Wars, the prevailing church-sponsored stance was one of nonresistance, which meant refusal to bear arms in the service of the state, whether military or police. This stance was reflective of both identity as a people and a rather simple obedience to what was believed to be the clear teaching of Scripture. Today, Anabaptists and their congregations are culturally, ethnically, racially, linguistically and, even more so, theologically and ethically much more diverse, ranging from Evangelical to liberal Protestant – with all kinds of “peace stances” (or lack thereof) along that spectrum. “Anabaptist” for many has become short-hand for activist peacemaking and nonviolence, and less for vibrant congregational life and passionate commitment to calling persons to faith in Christ.

The questions surrounding participation in policing are thus occasioned by two quite different factors. One factor is the presence of police and military in Anabaptist congregations, often as a result of evangelical witness and hospitality.[7] Whatever pastoral challenges this brings to congregations and the church at large, it should be seen as a gift of God and a potential sign of the church’s faithfulness to its calling to reach out beyond its familiar borders. The other factor is an extension of an activist peace stance that asks what it takes to secure “the peace of the city,” as illustrated by the MCC Peace Theology Project. It is not so much a pastoral response to how churches should deal with people engaged in the policing professions (broadly conceived), but a result of the shift in ethos from nonresistance to peace- and justice-making. The issues overlap, of course, as do the theological, ethical, and pastoral challenges. But they are not identical. One has police asking whether they are welcome as police in Anabaptist congregations. The other asks whether the church’s peace mission calls Anabaptists to engage in policing, and if so, on what grounds, with what orientation, and under what constraints. If the answer is yes, these two agendas will, of course, quickly merge into one.

Both contexts of discernment demand a robust ecclesiology. The problem is that “church” as context of reference, orientation, and locus of committed activity is increasingly optional. This has enormous importance for what Keith Regehr rightly calls an “ethic of risk,”[8] for which circles of reference, accountability, and support (congregations?) are essential. What kind of guidance and accountability should those already engaged in policing expect to receive in the church? Are sisters and brothers actually granted, and do they exercise, the capacity to nudge and call, or conversely to warn, caution, and even prohibit? More broadly, is the fabric of church life knit tightly enough to produce a missional identity as the body of Christ and to sustain its faithfulness as it moves beyond familiar cultural and ethical enclosures?

Two factors impinge on how these questions are answered. One has been the impact and success at mission and evangelism, which has helped to undo the old solidarities of ethnicity and ethos. This is God-given, even if it brings significant challenges, as it did in Tertullian’s day.[9] If the only important thing is for individuals to experience a personal relationship with Christ, then the social dimensions (beyond personal ethics) of the church’s witness often tend to get pushed into the background. This is frequently compounded by an individualism that sees subjecting professional choices and behavior to community discernment and counsel as encroachment. In the absence of even a rhetorical emphasis on peace and nonviolence, the individual believer is left without much guidance. To be sure, many in this segment of the Anabaptist family would have looked, and might still look, uneasily at involvement in the structures of the state. At the same time, the loss of a “peace stance” among the most evangelical of the Anabaptists attests to where the priorities have been placed and raises a cautionary flag about where this development can lead. There are, of course, many less evangelical Anabaptist congregations that are quite accepting of persons involved in the security organs of the state. In such instances this might have less to do with an evangelistic concern to be open to those confessing Christ than with a history of accommodation to society. In either case, the congregational glue presently available works better for loosing than for binding.

The other factor has quite different roots. I have in mind Anabaptists and Anabaptist congregations that have placed peace- and justice-making at the core of their self-identity.[10] Briefly put, this is a shift from being separate to being very much a part of the world, from being set apart and rural to being engaged and urban.[11] It also represents a shift in theology and mission from salvation-oriented conversionism to this-worldly society-transforming peace activism. Such pacifism quickly becomes wedded to instrumentality, to “changing the world” or “building the kingdom of God,” and increasingly to the practical demands of social justice. It is not long before the demands of doing what it takes to “change the world” or just to render it “secure” raise the issue of policing. The question in such settings is not what do we do with and for the police or soldiers that the gospel brings into our congregations, but what do we do when consistent nonviolence might not be enough to get the job done, as it were, whether in the local neighborhood or the global one.[12] My sense is that for such discernment and accountability the present congregational glue is no stronger than for the former.

Middle Axioms and Conscientious Participation

One major contributor to this paradigm shift was John Howard Yoder, frequently cited by Alexis-Baker but also by Gerald Schlabach and others in this discernment process. Of particular importance is Yoder’s The Christian Witness to the State.[13] Yoder deliberately positioned himself as an Anabaptist in ecumenical engagement, cajoling his fellow Mennonites to get into the world and his Protestant interlocutors to learn to be not of it. He employed the ethical category “middle axiom” in order to identify how the church of Jesus Christ, who is Lord over not only the church but a still rebellious world, can witness from that vantage point.[14] Middle axioms become a way to push “the world” as far as it will allow itself to be pushed in the direction of the full will of God, recognizing that what must be expected of the body of Christ might not be expected of the state. The body of Christ participates in this way in the reign of Christ in the world. Middle axioms are thus “rules of thumb to make meaningful the impact of Christian social thought”[15] and “mediate between the norms of faith and the situation conditioned by unbelief.”[16]

Yoder refused to determine a priori how far society might be pushed or what kinds of professions Christians might be engaged in, including policing. While he resisted determining in advance where Christians might be called to live out their witness, he never doubted they must always be participants in the kingdom of Christ over a still rebellious creation. Instead of “conscientious objection,” Yoder called for “conscientious participation.”[17] The discussion we are having today about policing is hardly conceivable without Yoder’s having opened the door to such participation.

In later writings, Yoder frequently referred to Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon to the effect that they were to “seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the YHWH on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom” (29:7). “Seeking the shalom of the city” has rightly become a virtual byword among Anabaptists who have moved to the public square.[18] We have made our home in the “city,” and we see our calling there to seek that city’s shalom. Few of us want to go back to the ancestral farm, speaking metaphorically.

Herein lies my restlessness, shared by my interlocutors, no doubt: Are we in danger of forgetting that the “city” Jeremiah refers to is the place of exile, and thus not the church’s home? Are we in danger of forgetting that being the body of Christ is our first identity; that being the church is our first calling; that “the city” is at best where we are called to exercise our mission? As we become “participants,” to use Yoder’s word, are we in that sense fully “conscious” and not only “conscientious?” Surely Anabaptists, and more narrowly Mennonites, will always be “conscientious” in the sense of doing a good and thorough job – that usually commends us to the “municipal authorities,” to speak metaphorically. We too have our Josephs, Daniels, Esthers, Corneliuses,[19] and Erastuses[20] who do well across the whole spectrum of state-related jobs and professions, and their number is growing. But how good are we in remaining “conscious” of our exilic status? Will we, and do we, remember not to bend the knee?

The diminishing of ecclesial consciousness is an issue among those in the Anabaptist community most devoted to peacemaking no less, if not more, than in other sectors of the church. We are increasingly at risk, in my observation, of making what Yoder called the “middle” into the center, and thus decentering the church to the periphery, not of “the world” but of our own thinking and practice as Anabaptists. I am neither at peace nor unafraid for what this might mean for engagement in policing.

Leaving the turbulence of the public square for quieter, presumably safer, places is to act in fear and unfaithfulness, and cannot be an option for the body of Christ. But neither can being engaged in the public square while forgetting it is the place of exile and allowing it to set the terms of engagement. Captivity is most effective when exiles forget they are aliens. The demand for effectiveness will always push our thinking in the direction of what is “necessary” to keep order. Therein lies the challenge in policing. Anabaptists are answering the questions raised by law and policing – participation in the state in its ordering of society – from an increasingly diffuse identity, a hybrid of church and public citizenship in which church is an increasingly minority determinant.

We must learn “Babylonian,” as Yoder puts it in posthumously published correspondence.[21] But we should not forget it is never our first tongue. In Ted Koontz’s view, the church needs to be “bi-lingual” but its “first language” must always be the gospel,[22] even if sometimes as true migrants we can speak our first language only at home. The nature of “conscientious participation” must remain fundamentally mission, diversely engaged in but fundamentally oriented to reconciliation of the world with God through Christ. Only a strong ecclesiology with a “thick” gospel, nurtured in a congregational life oriented to empowerment and equipping for mission, will enable us to “speak Babylonian” without forgetting our mother tongue. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon make this point in their inimitable way:

Big words like “peace” and “justice,” [we might add “security” and “common good”] slogans the church adopts under the presumption that, even if people do not know what “Jesus Christ is Lord” means, they will know what peace and justice means, are words awaiting content. The church really does not know what these words mean apart from the life and death [I would insist on adding resurrection] of Jesus of Nazareth. […] It is Jesus’ story that gives content to our faith, and teaches us to be suspicious of any political slogan that does not need God to make itself credible.[23]

In my view, an ecclesiology up to such a task needs to have not an ideological commitment to peace and nonviolence but a gospel deeply rooted in the whole story of the Scriptures, in the reign of God at work from creation, and in the Wisdom that comes to its fullest expression in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus.[24] Moreover, this ecclesiology means the church must have a clear sense of its own identity as the body of Christ, and understand that identity “politically,” not least in terms of its relevance to the public square. Such an identity is imitative of, and participatory in, the strange “lordship” that finds expression in servanthood and cross, in deliberate vulnerability for the sake of the other, even if that other is the enemy. This is where identity and mission come together, where ecclesiology and ethics merge. This will remain the center of the challenge that policing places before us or, better, that the church places before policing.

Such a church needs to be made up of members who help each other make decisions not just in principle but in practice. It honors both the passion of those pushing in the direction of public engagement (in this case, policing) and those offering their gift in the form of prophetic warnings and pastoral caution. The faster the car, the more urgent a good set of brakes. Such a church, such congregations, will ask whether policing, whether in the local or the global neighborhood, can embody love for those threatening the peace of the city.

Vulnerable Policing?

What would deliberately vulnerable policing look like?[25] In an unpublished article entitled “War, Peace, and Counter-society,” peace activist Peter Sprunger-Froese asks: “What if Jews and Christians in the police force quit unless their job description was changed to a version of ‘nonviolent social referee’? Would state authorities abide police personnel who refuse to take up arms, even if only as an unused deterrent? Can policing abide recruits for whom the church and its mission are first in the chain of command? What would deliberately vulnerable international policing look like?”[26] Can armies, however benign their mission, abide recruits who will refuse to threaten lethally those they are ordered to take on? The answer might be: Of course not, that’s not how these things work. “The powers” are hardly that hospitable. Maybe, maybe not. Those working in restorative justice are continually surprised by openings that “the system” provides. Even so, we do not escape the old argument followers of Christ had in the early decades and centuries: Who is Lord? To whom are we beholden? From whom do we take orders? Who calls the shots?

On the other hand, if it is the voice of the Spirit we hear in the call to participate in policing, does this mean the church should become much more active yet in accompanying those serving in the police? What would such accompaniment look like? Should the church call for radical changes in how policing is done, especially in places where the mode of training is military? Yoder would have called such efforts “experimental plots,” demonstrations of what policing might look like if church folks get involved. Only a robust ecclesiology, however, one in which demonstrators and experimenters participate fully and committedly, will keep such experiments tethered to participation in the lordship of Christ, and keep them from being co-opted and adapted to the public square, or from providing the often missing but essential part of the just war tradition, namely to make sure all avenues other than lethal violence have first been exhausted.[27]

Given the nature of our identity and mission as church, and the still “fallen” nature of our world, I wonder whether we can and should ever attempt to give more than a tentative, provisional answer to the question of whether to participate in policing. Those engaged in policing (broadly conceived) and those contemplating such endeavors should respect such ambivalence as necessary and not view it as a sign of lack of trust in them. It is, rather, a sign of solidarity with members of the body of Christ seeking the peace and welfare of the city of their exile, and solidarity no less with the very world we are to love as members of the One who gave his life for it.

Notes

[1] I have stated some of what follows in earlier articles. See “Christian Counter Culture: Ecclesia and Establishment,” MQR 63.2 (1989): 193-209; “Varieties of Contemporary Mennonite Peace Witness: from Passivism to Pacifism, from Nonresistance to Resistance,” CGR 10 (1992): 243-57; “’In the Middle:’ Restorative Justice and the Bible,” MCC Restorative Justice Network Annual Meeting, Winnipeg, MB, Feb. 14-15, 2003: http://mcc. org/canada/restorativejustice/resources/articles/neufeld.html); “From ‘die Stillen im Lande’ to ‘Getting in the Way’: Theology for Conscientious Objection and Engagement,” JMS 25 (2007): 171-81.
[2] Duane K. Friesen and Gerald W. Schlabach, eds., At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security, and the Wisdom of the Cross (Scottdale/Waterloo: Herald Press, 2005); cf. also Schlabach, ed., Just Policing, Not War: An Alternative Response to World Violence (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007).
[3] See, e.g., the 2008 London Mennonite Theology Forum: Responsibility to Protect, sponsored by the London Mennonite Centre and Church and Peace, as part of the larger Decade to Overcome Violence program of the World Council of Churches.
[4] Andy Alexis-Baker, “The Gospel or a Glock? Mennonites and the Police,” CGR Spring 2007: 36. This is a stance reflected also in the contribution in this volume by Jodie Boyer Hatlem and Doug Johnson Hatlem (“Law Without Violence”).
[5] Quoted in Schlabach, “Just Policing and the Christian Call to Nonviolence,” in At Peace and Unafraid, 419.
[6] Schlabach asks this question in “Tracing the Grain of the Universe: Overview Statement: MCC Peace Theology Project.” It is not present in the version in At Peace and Unafraid. In this CGR forum, both Russel Snyder-Penner and Keith Regehr raise the urgency of this question at the end of their presentations.
[7] I am reminded of Snyder-Penner’s discussion of Tertullian and the soldier/policeman who becomes a Christian (in this issue, pages 61-71).
[8] Regehr, pages 87-88 in this issue.
[9] See Snyder-Penner’s discussion of Tertullian’s efforts to give guidance on policing/ soldiering to those who have come into the church while already in the ranks.
[10] This is a shift well documented by, among others, Leo Driedger and Donald B. Kraybill in Mennonite Peacemaking: From Quietism to Activism (Scottdale/Waterloo: Herald Press, 1994).
[11] “From ‘die Stillen im Lande’ to ‘Getting in the Way’,” 171-81.
[12] Schlabach tellingly relates that the issue where consensus was weakest among the scholars gathering to identify ten practices for abolishing war was that of military intervention to halt human rights abuses (Just Policing, 13-14). Notably, both Alexis-Baker and the Hatlems wrestle with the times when calling the police might be a last resort. Does this indicate that in a fallen world the “powers” (as represented by the police) have a role to play? Is that the ongoing relevance of Rom. 13:1-7? This still leaves the question open whether Christians can participate in that role.
[13] First prepared as a presentation for a study conference between Historic Peace Churches and main line European churches in Puidoux, Switzerland, in 1955, it was reworked and published under the auspices of the Institute of Mennonite Studies as IMS Study Series 3 (Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1964), and republished by Herald Press in 2002. The importance of this book is recognized as a “baseline” by Schlabach (“Just Policing,” 418- 19).
[14] “Kingdom of Christ” refers less in Yoder’s reading of the NT to Christ’s lordship over the church but to Christ’s lordship over the still rebellious world (Christian Witness, 8-10; cf. 1 Cor. 15:24-25).
[15] Christian Witness, 33.
[16] Ibid., 33, note 3.
[17] Ibid., 20.
[18] See, e.g., Yoder’s posthumously published discussion of the “Jeremianic Model” in “See How They Go with their Face to the Sun,” in Part IV of The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited, entitled “Christians and Jews Seeking the Shalom of the City,” Michael Cartwright and Peter Ochs, eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Duane K. Friesen’s major work on peace, entitled Artists, Citizens, Philosophers: Seeking the Peace of the City: an Anabaptist Theology of Culture (Scottdale/Waterloo: Herald Press, 2000); cf. also the title of Part II of At Peace and Unafraid, “Seeking the Welfare of the City: Essays on Public Peace, Justice, and Order.”
[19] Centurion, Acts 10.
[20] City treasurer, Rom. 16:23.
[21] “If we really ‘seek the peace of the city,’ why should we fear that by saying our message in Babylonian we would have to destroy its meaning? Why should we not be able to translate? .... I agree that my primary frame of reference is the people of God, but it does not follow that I have no concern for civil society. That concern is derivative, but it is real.” Thomas L. Shaffer, Moral Memoranda from John Howard Yoder: Conversations on Law, Ethics and the Church between a Mennonite Theologian and a Hoosier Lawyer (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002), 19.
[22] “Thinking Theologically About War Against Iraq.” MQR January 2003: 93-108. Cf. Walter Brueggeman, “The legitimacy of a sectarian hermeneutic: 2 Kings 18-19,” in Mary C. Boys, ed., Education for Citizenship and Discipleship (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1989), 3-4. Cf. also Lydia Harder, “Seeking Wisdom in the Face of Foolishness: Toward a Robust Peace Theology,” in At Peace and Unafraid, 149; for a critical engagement with Koontz, see Ted Grimsrud, “Anabaptist Faith and ‘National Security’,” in At Peace and Unafraid, 319-24.
[23] Resident Aliens (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1989) 38.
[24] 1 Cor. 1:18. The vulnerability in reaching for the category of “wisdom” is to let Egypt, Babylon, Athens, and Rome (wellsprings of a good bit of the wisdom tradition in the Bible), crowd out the NT insight that Wisdom became flesh in Jesus, thus declaring in very different language that “Jesus is Lord.” The danger of forgetting the “wisdom of the cross” is identified by Harder, “Seeking Wisdom in the Face of Foolishness,” in At Peace and Unafraid, in particular 144-46.
[25] Might not the work of Doug Johnson Hatlem be one such example?
[26] Might Christian Peacemaker Teams’ ministry of eyes, ears, and accompaniment in places such as Hebron and Colombia be an example, one of many?
[27] I am uneasy about the moniker “just policing,” since it taps both into the ambience of the vocabulary of “just war” and thus into the visceral suspicion that it is an oxymoron, and into the dismal history of its ineffectiveness as an ethical tradition, something of which Schlabach is fully aware (“Just Policing,” 409-14).

Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld is associate professor of Religious Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario.

In his reply in this CGR issue to my article “The Gospel or a Glock? Mennonites and the Police” (CGR Spring 2007), Gerald Schlabach contends that by “policing” he meant a function that includes everything from “policing” of a conversation to congregations having norms for members. But that is not how he has used the term in his writings. His essay in At Peace and Unafraid appears in a section titled “Practicing Wisdom in Public Systems.” There he writes about “political leaders,” “police officials,” “police officers,” “arresting agents,” and “community policing.”[1] He notes how various pacifists have called for international police forces to deal with terrorism. In “Just Policing: How War Could Cease to be a Church-Dividing Issue,” he notes various differences between the mentality of a police officer and that required in warfare. In his essays he has focused on the difference between the police as an institution and war.

By trying to change the meaning of “policing,” Schlabach has undercut his argument that the police represent a model for international relations. If any conversation where we check one another’s definitions or call each other to account is “policing,” then the term has been stretched beyond its usefulness and cannot be a model for either dialogue or international relations.[2] If everything is policing, what is not policing? That is why Schlabach’s supporters, such as Jim Wallis and others, have called for an international police force. Indeed, in his latest book Just Policing, Not War, Schlabach publishes many of these responses and never suggests they have “misconstrued” him.

Schlabach claims that “the most prominent sign of Alexis-Baker’s serious misconstrual of the just policing project is that he studiously reserves the terms ‘police’ and ‘policing’ for the militarized ‘crime-fighting’ institutions,” and asserts that by doing so I have “demonized” those who “practice humane and accountable forms of ‘community policing.’” It is striking, however, that Schlabach has not really examined community policing either. In “Just Policing: How War Could Cease to be a Church-Dividing Issue,” he says community policing is “a new name for an old strategy” that places police on foot patrols, into community meetings, and “integrated into the neighborhoods.”[3] Community policing, on this view, provides an opportunity to “make policing less violent overall” through partnerships with the community and nonviolent methods.[4] This, Schlabach maintains, can be a model for international relations because it allows: “(1) the sort of work on root causes of violence and conflict that pacifists advocate as basic for achieving real peace with justice, (2) a continued but modified role for apprehending criminals, and (3) ample room for developing less violent and nonviolent tactics for even that apprehension.”[5]

Though he has repeatedly republished the essay, Schlabach has not expanded on the concept beyond these tentative comments. However, in Just Policing, Not War, Catholic ethicist Tobias Winright expands a little on Schlabach’s suggestion.[6] Beyond crime fighting, the police work with community members “to prevent and solve their problems.”[7] Winright cites the “broken windows theory” upon which community policing is based, which claims that police can revitalize communities by confronting neighborhood nuisances that increase residents’ fears.[8] It is striking that Schlabach and Winright have so little to write on such an important theory.

In this article I take up Schlabach’s challenge and examine community policing.[9] I hope that by doing so I can encourage him to deepen his patience for a non-Constantinian and non-state based approach. I argue that since the theory promotes violence and uses the term “community” to mask political domination, it is not a good model for international policing. Finally, I indicate my willingness to attend to those in the police force who responded to “The Gospel or a Glock?” and I suggest that we miss opportunities for witness by not challenging their occupation.

Broken Windows and “Giuliani Time”

In 1994 New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani initiated a community policing policy that directed police to aggressively pursue misdemeanors such as public intoxication, loitering, graffiti, and panhandling. New York’s strategy originated in James Q. Wilson and George Kelling’s “broken windows” theory.[10] These authors argue that unaddressed disorders such as broken windows signal that nobody cares about the neighborhood and eventually leads to serious crimes. Disorders cause residents to develop a “fear of being bothered by disorderly people. Not violent people, nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed.”[11] As these fears arise, people stay indoors more often, avoid strangers, and disengage from their neighborhood, all of which makes it vulnerable to crime. Under the crime-fighting model, according to Wilson and Kelling, laws and procedural rules hobbled police from chasing disorderly people out of neighborhoods because such actions violated individual rights.[12] To better prevent crime, they recommend that seemingly harmless behavior like loitering be outlawed because such conduct undermines community controls and invites crime. By tackling these disorders as early signs of crime, police could prevent the decay of healthy communities and revitalize degenerate ones.

Giuliani’s implementation of the theory exposed its sinister side. Several high profile cases revealed rampant violence perpetrated by the police. In one case, officers shot an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, forty-one times when they mistook his wallet for a gun. In another, police arrested a Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima and raped him with a plunger. An officer involved in the brutal beating told Louima, “This is Giuliani time.”[13] This chilling message signals the potential for community policing to escalate violence rather than reduce it. New York’s community policing initiative caused an upsurge in complaints of police violence and misconduct.[14] In 1993, the Civilian Complaint Review Board received 5,597 allegations of police misconduct and 3,580 complaints. By 1996, allegations nearly doubled to 9,390 and complaints rose to 5,550. The New York Times reported that “from 1994 to 1996, the city paid about $70 million as settlements or judgments in claims alleging improper police actions, compared with about $48 million in the three previous years.”[15] Even Amnesty International reported on the surge in police violence.[16] Bob Herbert reported an exchange between investigators and a Bronx police officer:

“Did you beat people up who you arrested?”

“No. We’d just beat people in general. If they’re on the street, hanging around drug locations. It was a show of force.”

“Why were these beatings done?”

“To show who was in charge. We were in charge, the police.”[17]

Giuliani, quick to take credit for crime reduction, denied any connection between the community policing policy and the steep rise in police violence.[18] His administration argued the complaints were due to an increased number of officers who interacted more with the public. Bernard Harcourt refuted this argument. He demonstrated that the rise in complaints greatly outpaced the rise in police, so that the ratio of complaints to officers jumped significantly. And while police argued that their policies encouraged more complaints, Harcourt suggested the opposite: the highly publicized acts of extreme brutality and the reality of constant harassment may have discouraged people from complaining.[19] In fact, the nurse who reported the abuse done to Louima also reported that the investigator did not take her seriously. A subsequent New York Times report found that the police did not even fill out a complaint form.[20] “Giuliani time” articulates the administration’s message to the police – or at least their interpretation of it – and that in turn was passed on to those arrested. They were effectively declared outsiders to the community with which the police were collaborating. While Giuliani’s attempts to purify the city and restore it to ‘the good old days’ comforted some people, those for whom ‘the good old days’ had never been safe, heard a terrifying message.

Unsurprised by police violence, Wilson and Kelling reported with apparent approval how one officer described community policing efforts: “We kick ass.”[21] Kelling reported elsewhere that an officer in Chicago “described in similar terms how he dealt with gang members who would not follow his orders: ‘I say please once, I say please twice, and then I knock them on their ass.’ The officer meant it.”[22] Though Wilson and Kelling note that “none of this is easily reconciled with any conception of due process or fair treatment” and would probably “not withstand a legal challenge,” they nevertheless advocate these tactics to restore community controls.[23]

Community Policing and Paramilitary Units

Although Schlabach and Winright have sharply distinguished between various policing models, they have overlooked that militarization and community policing exist in collaboration.[24] Superficially, community policing appears incompatible with police departments’ militarized tactics, but in practice its proactive, preventative, geographically-focused emphasis is well-suited to the military model. The NYPD, for example, uses SWAT teams for routine patrols. One officer described their approach:

We conduct a lot of saturation patrols…. We focus on “quality of life” issues like illegal parking, loud music, bums, neighbor troubles. We have the freedom to stay in a hot area and clean it up – particularly gangs. Our tactical enforcement team works nicely with our department’s emphasis on community policing.[25]

While flaunting a massive display of force, these units “target suspicious vehicles and people” and “stop anything that moves.” Consequently, even a Midwestern officer boasts: “We usually don’t have any problems with crack-heads cooperating.”[26] Criminologists Peter Kraska and Victor Kappeler report that sixty-three percent of police officers responding to a survey agreed that paramilitary units “play an important role in community policing strategies.”[27]

The Violence Embedded in Community Policing Theory

Beyond the organizational compatibilities between community policing and paramilitary units, violence is deeply embedded in community policing theory as a result of a dichotomy between order and disorder. This dichotomy places many people outside of due process, fair treatment, and safety from state violence. Society used to view homeless people and beggars as objects of mercy or merely a nuisance. With community policing, the social meaning of disorders changes from harmless to harmful because it situates them on a continuum leading to heinous crimes. As Giuliani stated, “There’s a continuum of disorder. Obviously, murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes. But they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other.”[28]

This change in social meaning impacts how the police and “lawabiding” citizens see the homeless. Wilson and Kelling compare the homeless to inanimate objects: “The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window.”[29] Since the homeless are akin to garbage left on the street in community policing theory, city policies direct police to move them into shelters or arrest them for loitering, sitting on the street, panhandling, or breaking other laws that criminalize these people’s survival tactics.[30] By sleeping in a park or sitting on a bench too long, they have committed crimes, and this enables police to view them as a cause for, and an embodiment of, crime.

The next step increasing the potential for police violence is to change the social meaning of giving aid to the homeless from mercy to harm. In “The Regulation of Social Meaning,” Lawrence Lessig examines a New York Transit Authority poster campaign designed to change the social meaning of almsgiving. Before the Authority began its campaign, refusing to give to a beggar signaled that the passenger was “coldhearted, or cheap, or uncaring”[31] and entailed a social stigma. The poster campaign sought to change the stigma into a virtue:

The Authority told the public that it was wrong to give to panhandlers – that panhandlers were people who needed help, but that by giving to panhandlers, one made it less likely they would get help. To help the panhandlers … one must not give to them.[32]

The campaign made withholding charity an ambiguous action: it could signal either lack of charity or genuine concern for the panhandler’s well-being. To reinforce this view, city councils across the US have passed laws that prohibit feeding the homeless. Groups such as Food Not Bombs have suddenly found themselves in jail.[33] In The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne relates that after Philadelphia passed such a law, Christians gathered in a park to celebrate the Eucharist with homeless people. After a few weeks, the police cracked down and made arrests.[34] The laws changed the social meaning of feeding the homeless from an act of almsgiving and charity to a criminal act that stigmatizes givers with an arrest record and causes them inconvenience, such as a night in jail. In the name of community, the homeless are stripped of their most powerful allies.[35]

Since the homeless are seen as inanimate objects and criminals who cause heinous crimes, and since their few advocates are largely silenced, what prevents the police from freely committing violence? Wilson and Kelling recognized this problem. “How do we ensure that the police do not become the agents of neighborhood bigotry?”[36] Disturbingly, they say that “We can offer no wholly satisfactory answer . . . except to hope that by their selection, training, and supervision, the police will be inculcated with a clear sense of the outer limit of their discretionary authority.”[37] This is a troubling answer for those who nonchalantly suggest that “We kick ass” is an appropriate response to disorder. Rather than decreasing the propensity for police violence, community policing increases it by dehumanizing, criminalizing, and scapegoating people.

Although Schlabach and Winright claim that an “us versus them” mentality, which leads to violence, is inherent in the military policing model but not in the community policing model, the broken windows theory explicitly sets up such a dichotomy.[38] Even if the police force were stripped of its military weapons and training, the problem of violence would remain because of the dichotomy and intolerance it advocates. Far from Schlabach’s view that community policing can be “abused,” the violence of community policing theory is systemic.[39]

Whose Community? Which Order?

Although “community” is central to community policing, political theorists, police administrators, and theological ethicists who advocate community policing have not defined it. And “community” is a contested term. Marxists, anarchists, and republicans all cherish community but in incompatible ways. By “community,” community policing theorists do not mean “neighborhood,” since they tout social relationships as important for natural control of disorders. “Community” might signify that individuals are socially conditioned within a network of relationships they cannot completely escape. But community policing advocates use the term normatively, not descriptively. They portray reality in a way that favors their view, since community is a universally positive concept:

Community can be the warmly persuasive word to describe an existing set of relationships, or … an alternative set of relationships…. [I]t never seems to be used unfavorably, and never to be given any opposing or distinguishing terms.[40]

Combining the loaded term “community” with “policing” has political implications. Leaving the word ambiguous is a political move that seeks to silence police opponents. Who, except maniacs and misfits, could be against “community”? And since the theory equates the police with community, who can be against the police?

The Complex Community and Police

The word “community,” however, is deployed against certain people. In community policing, it deflects awareness of the contested nature of community and emphasizes defending the community from outsiders. Thus Wilson and Kelling also create an insider-outsider dichotomy and an illusion of consensus that masks conflict. For example, community policing theorists claim African-American skepticism of the police results from crime and the breakdown of community. A report in The New York Times soundly refutes this claim. It found widespread suspicion of the police amongst Black people in Camden, New Jersey. Even for the most violent crimes, they are reluctant to talk to the police, not so much because criminals intimidate them but because they do not trust the police. The article quotes a Harvard professor:

A lot of white Americans from suburban communities can’t understand why people wouldn’t talk to law enforcement…. But in a lot of inner-city communities, there is so much hostility to the police that many people of color can’t fathom why someone would even seriously consider helping them.[41]

Beyond mistrust between police and Black residents, the article reveals an even wider chasm. One woman, whose son’s murderers are still at large, stated that “Snitching, telling on people, isn’t something that I personally would involve myself with…. People don’t want to talk to you if they think you’re a snitch. If they were your friends, they’re not your friends anymore. You’re left totally all alone.”[42] The people whom Camden residents are asked to surrender to the police are often their children, their friends, or someone they are connected with in a meaningful way. Recognizing this fact, the Deputy Attorney General over Camden claimed that “the number of witnesses who remain silent because they fear for their safety is probably less than one-tenth the number who refuse to talk because they fear the social repercussions.”[43] The problem for the police is that a socially complex community has created an obstacle for the simplified, bifurcated “community” of community policing. Community is not absent; rather it operates on another economic and social level than do affluent communities. Community policing, for these Camden residents, is a threat to their social networks.[44]

The rise of the nation-state and its police contributed to the breakdown of tight-knit, self-sufficient communities. To the extent that older communities now exist, they generally have little interest in forming closer bonds with the police, as the Camden residents demonstrate.[45] While community policing theorists lament declining civic involvement in activities ranging from volunteer work to parent-teacher conferences, they doubt that communities can police themselves democratically. Thus Wilson and Kelling claim that the police must remain the primary policing institution. But if real communities are rare and uninterested in deeper police interactions, why do the police profess to act at the behest of shadowy uninterested communities? Sociologist Carl Klockars has suggested that

nonexistent and uninterested communities make perfect partners for the police…. [W]hile they lend their moral and political authority as communities to what police do in their name, they have no interest in and do not object to anything that might be done.[46]

The favorable term “community” confers an affectation of citizenpolice partnership and legitimacy on the police. It conceals that the police are a state agency with a monopoly on violence that historically hastened the atrophy of tight-knit communities. It is doubtful that community policing can reverse this trend.

Police-Citizen Forums

The common characteristic of community policing initiatives is that they have originated with the police, not with citizens. Consequently, the focus is state-centered. The police collaborate with the most cooperative groups, not those who are critical. Former Seattle police officer William Lyons points out that the community-police councils in Seattle had a business group as the community’s official voice. That group skewed the councils to concerns about crime control in commercial areas but typically ignored calls for broader representation in the councils and complaints of police misconduct. When the police needed more resources, they urged civilian participants in the forums to lobby city council or volunteer their own time. But whenever people raised concerns about police practices or misconduct, or suggested their own initiatives, the police rarely acted, thus encouraging “passive communities dependent on professional law enforcement agencies.”[47] Similarly, Wesley Skogan’s extensive study of Chicago’s police-community meetings reveals that the wealthiest residents attend these meetings. Their interests rarely corresponded with the majority in their neighborhood, and their view of the police was more positive than that of most residents.[48] As a result of biases, community-police interactions tend towards one-way communication, with only a semblance of police accountability and receptivity to feedback.

Root Causes of Crime

For Gerald Schlabach, community policing is a suitable model for international relations partly because it addresses the “root causes of violence.” Yet the present essay reveals the exact opposite. Community policing works well with paramilitary units, and it inscribes violence into policing through scapegoating and stripping people of their rights in the name of “community.” The root causes of crime are not “disorders” but issues the police have no control over and cannot use to enhance their power: a declining economy, a woeful education system, and dwindling social services. Community policing theorists do not address why policies focus on “crimes” committed by young Black males, not those committed by affluent White males. Why are loiterers more threatening to community than unequal business practices, corporate polluters, or stock market fraud? The disparities in police stops and incarceration between people of color and whites reveal a significant bias that can only be described as racist. Far from getting at the “root causes” of crime, community policing relocates the causes to politically convenient targets and does not provide a basis for achieving “real peace” as Schlabach contends.

Christian Witness to Police Officers

My analysis of community policing in no way demonizes individual officers; it addresses a theory and a state institution. The Canadian police officers responding in this CGR issue and in our consultations are people who do not want to “kick ass” as the theory encourages. They attest that much of their work is mundane, and a lot of it is social work. Yet these Mennonite officers carry weapons, and in our consultations one officer admitted she would kill if necessary. If police work is really social work, why not become social workers? Nobody calls the police when they really want a social worker. When people call the police, they want a non-negotiable solution to a problem. The police can offer such a solution because they not only carry weapons but represent a monopoly on legitimate violence. Their solution has teeth, and on the streets officers cannot allow challenges to their authority (they must maintain a “command presence”). Even if they mostly do social work, they do it behind the threat of weapons and collective violence.[49] In “Policing Issues in the Anabaptist Faith” (see pages 19-23 of this issue), Morley Lymburner relates how the Russian Mennonites in Toronto embraced his work and claimed to have no problem with his carrying a gun. They were glad for police protection. However, in refusing to challenge him, the congregation missed an opportunity for a powerful witness. In our consultations, I asked Lymburner if he would have left his job had the congregation told him that, since they had experienced the horrors of violence, they would require him to leave his occupation but would support him financially as he found new work. To my surprise, he said he would have left his occupation so he could remain part of the congregation.[50] His congregation thus missed a golden opportunity for witness and transformation. Likewise, some responses in this issue that balk at asking police officers to leave their jobs are denying structural changes that restore some accountability and could help people in violent occupations find meaningful work elsewhere.

Conclusion

Though Schlabach asserts that I disregard community policing in “The Gospel or a Glock?” he has not substantially explored the subject himself. Unlike Schlabach and Winright, my sustained analysis suggests that community policing is not a panacea for the ills of war.[51] Problems inherent in it would only be magnified on the international scene, where “community” is more contested and complex, and where the dominant players exert their will even more forcibly. Unsurprisingly, the nation-state’s best attempts to do this have resulted in “low intensity warfare” and outright attacks on other nations. Violence is inherent in the theory itself, and it privileges those in power.[52]

As noted, I do not want to demonize individuals working within the police force.[53] If anything, I agree with Stanley Hauerwas that the police are “in a quite compromised position, which means we should be all the more sympathetic towards them.”[54] By rejecting calls to vocational accountability and limits, I think we have not shown the few police officers in our midst the sympathy they deserve. Let us not offer them grace on the cheap, but grace that costs and is therefore precious.

Notes

[1] See Gerald Schlabach, “Just Policing and the Christian Call to Nonviolence,” in At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security, and the Wisdom of the Cross, ed. Duane K. Friesen and Gerald Schlabach (Scottdale: Herald Press, 2005), 409, 410.
[2] Similarly with Lowell Ewert’s response. I find it striking that he broadens the definition of policing to include activities like teaching, but then excludes the CIA and CSIS.
[3] Gerald Schlabach, “Just Policing: How War Could Cease to be a Church-Dividing Issue,” in Just Policing: Mennonite-Catholic Theological Colloquium, 2002, ed. Ivan Kauffman (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2004), 30.
[4] Ibid., 44.
[5] Ibid., 43-44.
[6] Tobias Winright, “Community Policing as a Paradigm for International Relations,” in Just Policing, Not War, ed. Gerald Schlabach (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007), 130- 52.
[7] Ibid., 142.
[8] Ibid. Schlabach’s references all use the broken windows theory as a basis for their studies. See Schlabach, “Just Policing: How War…,” 71, n60.
[9] I will respond only to the community policing issue, since it has come up previously. However, I want to explain how I categorized Schlabach in my article. In his “Just Policing” essay he described a SWAT team with recourse to lethal violence. He did not state who would participate in that team, but from the context it seemed clear he thought some Christians could do so. At a conference at EMU in 2006, I asked him about Christians killing as police. He said he was unsure, but if it were truly an exception, then maybe a Christian could kill. I responded that this was a big difference between us. Thus, my conclusion about his work was based upon his own words and writing, which often seem equivocated.
[10] Rudolph Giuliani and William Bratton, Police Strategy No. 5: Reclaiming the Public Spaces of New York (New York: New York City Police Department, 1994), 6. See also James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, “Broken Windows,” Atlantic Monthly 249, no. 3 (1982).
[11] Wilson and Kelling, “Broken Windows,” 30.
[12] Ibid., 35.
[13] David Firestone, “Giuliani’s Quandary: Mayor Who Linked Name to Police Success Is Now Facing a Very Ugly Police Failure,” New York Times, August 15, 1997, B9.
[14] The point is that the theory itself is not inherently less violent than the other theories of policing as Schlabach suggests, not that every individual officer is violent all the time.
[15] Matthew Purdy, “Handcuffs Are One Size Fits All: Nuisance Arrests Startle the Unwary,” New York Times, August 24, 1997, 30.
[16] Amnesty, United States of America: Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department (New York: Amnesty International, 1996), 14. Also cited in Bernard Harcourt, Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 168.
[17] Bob Herbert, “Connect the Dots,” New York Times, August 24, 1997, E13. Also quoted in Harcourt, Illusion of Order, 167.
[18] The largest review of community policing practices concluded that community policing does not reduce crime. See Committee to Review Research on Police Policy and Practices, Fairness a
nd Effectiveness in Policing (Washington: National Academies Press, 2004), 43. See also Steven Levitt, “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors That Explain the Decline and Six That Do Not,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 18.1 (2004); Robert Sampson and Stephen Raudenbush, “Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of ‘Broken Windows’,” Social Psychology Quarterly 67. 4 (2004); David Weisburd and John Eck, “To Better Serve and Protect: Improving Police Practices,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 593 (2004); Harcourt, Illusion of Order ; and Bernard Harcourt, “Reflecting on the Subject: A Critique of the Social Influence Conception of Deterrence, the Broken Windows Theory, and Order- Maintenance Policing New York Style,” Michigan Law Review 97.2 (1998).
[19] See Harcourt, Illusion of Order, 169-71.
[20] This example raises the question of how often the police do not file the claims reported by citizens, which would make the complaint numbers lower. See John Kifner, “Nurse Claims Staff Cover-Up on Louima,” New York Times, August 25, 1997, B1, B3.
[21] Wilson and Kelling, “Broken Windows,” 35.
[22] George Kelling and Catherine Coles, Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities (New York: Martin Kessler Books, 1996), 166.
[23] Wilson and Kelling, “Broken Windows,” 35, 31.
[24] See also Winright, “Community Policing as a Paradigm for International Relations,” 133.
[25] Quoted in Peter B. Kraska and Victor E. Kappeler, “Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units,” in The Police and Society, ed. Victor E. Kappeler (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1997), 472.
[26] Ibid., 470.
[27] Ibid., 472.
[28] Rudolph Giuliani, “The Next Phase of Quality of Life: Creating a More Civil City,” Speech given on February 24, 1998, http://www.nyc.gov/html/rwg/html/98a/quality.html.
[29] Wilson and Kelling, “Broken Windows,” 34. See also Robert Ellickson, “Controlling Chronic Misconduct in City Spaces: Of Panhandlers, Skid Rows, and Public-Space Zoning,” Yale Law Journal 105.5 (1996): 1182.
[30] One critic asks whether Wilson and Kelling’s article would have had the same impact had they titled it “Broken People.” Jeremy Waldron, “Homelessness and Community,” University of Toronto Law Journal 50 (2000): 386.
[31] Lawrence Lessig, “The Regulation of Social Meaning,” University of Chicago Law Review 62.3 (1995): 1040.
[32] See Ibid.
[33] For example, see “Orlando: ‘Don’t feed homeless’,” St. Petersburg Times, July 26, 2006 and Michael Janofsky, “Many Cities In Crackdown On Homeless,” New York Times, December 16, 1994.
[34] Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 233-34.
[35] In our consultation Steve Brnjas said we treated “Peter,” the drug addict at AMBS, coldly after we learned of his intentions. But my telling of the story was skewed by the purposes of the essay, which was to illustrate how using some kind of process, rather than knee-jerk reactions, could keep a violent police and justice system out of the mix. If I had told a longer story, I would have described how some students continued to give handouts to Peter and how they tried to interact with him compassionately even after the meeting. However, students all felt that sending him to services suited to help his addiction was far better than calling the police on him for interrupting our daily routines. Nevertheless, Brnjas’s criticism should cause some discomfort and a re-examination of how we treat people with needs.
[36] Wilson and Kelling, “Broken Windows,” 35.
[37] Ibid.
[38] See Schlabach, “Just Policing,” 45 and Winright, “Community Policing as a Paradigm for International Relations,” 139, 141.
[39] Schlabach, “Just Policing,” 43.
[40] Raymond Williams, Key Words: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Glasgow: Fontana, 1976), 76.
[41] David Kocieniewski, “So Many Crimes, and Reasons to Not Cooperate,” New York Times, December 30, 2007.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Black mistrust of police is much broader than just in Camden, New Jersey. For example, a relatively small city outside of Philadelphia called Coaxeville, where the sheriff and a dozen men once lynched a Black man with impunity, has implemented a community policing program. Yet a local newspaper reported that one officer laments, “‘[Black people] have their own little society, their own little culture,’ Audette says, saying many blacks won’t step forward when they witness crimes, even murders. ‘I don’t understand it.’” See Mark Fazlollah and Keith Herbert, “Old Town Tries New Approach,” Philadephia Inquirer, December 18, 2007.
[45] Modern universities, with their own security forces and disciplinary processes, are reluctant to turn their students and faculty over to the police for every infraction. Indeed, these forces and processes are meant to shield their members from the police rather than encourage more interaction. I worked as a dispatcher for Public Safety as an undergraduate at Wheaton College. When scuffles broke out or students were caught drinking under age, rather than handing students over to the police, public safety officers reported them to the dean’s office, which handled the matters internally.
[46] Carl Klockars, “The Rhetoric of Community Policing,” in The Police and Society, ed. Victor E. Kappeler (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1997), 435.
[47] William Lyons, The Politics of Community Policing: Rearranging the Power to Punish (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1999), 167.
[48] Wesley Skogan, “Representing the Community in Community Policing,” in Community Policing: Can It Work?, ed. Wesley Skogan (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2004), 65-67.
[49] One of the officers in our consultation even expressed willingness to shoot a person if necessary.
[50] Another officer in the group said that because of a “calling,” this officer could probably not give up police work.
[51] Winright references one article that is critical of community policing and may develop his own critiques in future. See Winright, “Community Policing as a Paradigm for International Relations,” 151, n49. In addition, he is much more skeptical that any model of policing can completely displace violence at an international level, and critiques Schlabach for trying to include it as a form of pacifism. See Tobias Winright, “Peace Cops? Christian Peacemaking and the Implications of a Global Police Force,” Sojourners 35.3 (2006): 20-24.
[52] Schlabach recognizes that states have bungled community policing on an international level, but seems to hope they could fix the situation somehow. See Schlabach, “Just Policing,” 72, n64.
[53] I do not, however, back away from calling the system itself demonic.
[54] Stanley Hauerwas, Personal correspondence August 24, 2006. Used with his permission.

Andy Alexis-Baker, a graduate of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, is an adjunct professor of Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana.

There is a lot of static in conversations among Mennonites about policing. My goals in this essay are to contribute to our conversation by identifying areas where we have real and genuine disagreements that we need to address, and to distinguish this more promising conversation from the static we need to move beyond. Too often we talk past each other because perceptions of the “other” are inaccurate and mislabeled, we use common terms but with quite different meanings, or we are not clear about how different assumptions lead to very different interpretations of policing. I do not presume either to propose a final solution or to resolve an ongoing conflict over ideas and practices about which we do disagree. We are at the beginning stages of a conversation. My plea is that we focus on the real issues, not pseudo-issues created by our own static.

What are We Talking About?

It is important to recognize the distinctions and linkages between three key terms: security, public order, and policing. Genuine “security” is grounded in a Biblical vision of shalom reflected in the words of the prophet Micah: “Everyone will sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one will make them afraid” (Micah 4:4). Mary Lou Klassen’s essay “Who Is – Will Protect – My Neighbor?” helps us focus on this key matter when it asks, “What should Mennonites do when an innocent neighbor is being violently attacked by a third party?” (29). (Page references in parentheses refer to articles in this issue of CGR. – Editor) The MCC Project that led to the collection of essays in the book At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security, and the Wisdom of the Cross sought to address this neglected question in Mennonite peace theology.

We need to be clear that when we talk about “security,” it cannot and should not be reduced to a function of “the state.” In her essay in At Peace and Unafraid, political scientist Pamela Leach criticizes the reductionism of the “national security model” and the militarization of policing that flows from it. She develops the alternative idea of an “abundant resourcefulness” that sustains an “inclusive human security” supported by the importance of non-state actors. As Gerald Schlabach points out in this issue, many essays in At Peace and Unafraid describe the role of non-state actors in nurturing human security (see page 54).

Leach points out that we must be careful, however, not to over-simplify this distinction between “the state” and non-state actors. In democracies, states do provide important security benefits such as public education, laws to protect workers and the natural environment, and protection of minorities against the tyranny of the majority. And, non-state actors are not always benign. “‘Developed states’ now have a 2:1 ratio of private to public security personnel. In Canada and the United States, armed private police officers have all the authority of public ones but significantly less accountability.”[1] Paramilitaries in Colombia and Blackwater in Iraq are symbols run amok of private security systems without accountability.

“Public order” refers to the systems of institutions, laws, and practices that are foundational to the flourishing of life. In his article on “the powers” Keith Regehr points out that “this ordering of existence is necessary for society to function, and is, for this reason, an essential aspect of God’s good creation.” Though the powers are fallen, he argues against the dangers of a dualism, reflected in Andy Alexis-Baker’s essay (CGR Spring 2007), that sees these powers as unremittingly evil. Lowell Ewert elaborates on the positive function of the powers by arguing that we need “to better understand the synergy that can and should exist between the law (institutions, structures, and enforcement) and peace theology”(see page 73).[2]

One of the conflicts in our conversation is how we link the values of “order, justice, and peace.” We talk past each other, because some of us interpret “law and order” or “security” as primarily a function of the state’s monopoly on violent force, whereas others emphasize that order is integrally linked to many non-state actors who contribute to justice and nonviolent conflict resolution. I think we can agree that we need to “unmask prevailing illusions about order that are often based on repressive, unjust, and violent notions about security.” However, because “order does not depend only upon ‘top down’ implementation by the state … creating a culture of peace is integrally linked to what Elise Boulding has called the ‘underside of history,’ the daily life of families and communities through which we learn how to order our lives.”[3] Ewert points to the role of the professions – accountants, social workers, lawyers, teachers – who enforce public order “in the creation of a peaceful civil society” (75).

“Policing” is a contested term. Alexis-Baker views even “community policing” as a state-centered repressive order in which violence is systemic (see page 106ff.). Police officers, “even if they mostly do social work, work behind the threat of weapons and collective violence” (112). Others view policing primarily as an “ordering” function of civil society, not reducible to “the state.” In between these polarized views of policing are other views of community policing that involve cooperative arrangements between civil society and the state.

Eleven Types of Policing

To help us better understand this conversation, I introduce the following continuum (see chart in Appendix). On the vertical axis, I identify the various actors who participate in some form of “policing.” They are on a continuum from civil society to those employed as police officers or soldiers by “the state.” On the horizontal axis, I identify the various actions of policing on a continuum from nonviolence to violence. The specific categories along the continuum are persuasion; nonviolent coercion; justified violence limited by moral norms; and unrestrained lethal violence. The following are brief descriptions of 11 “types” of policing:

1. The “ordering” processes of families and communities in civil society (the daily round of life; a public order that is sustained even in the midst of chaos when, at the macro level, nation-state order is absent).[4]
2. Policing within civil institutions: the “policing” functions of non-state institutions. (e.g., Alexis-Baker’s case study of “Peter” at AMBS)[5]; discipline and the “ban” in church institutions; institutional norms for employees; disciplinary structures for students on college campuses).
3. 3. Personal self-defense (in the United States, especially, the ownership of guns to defend life and property; many states have approved “concealed weapons” laws).
4. The “ordering” and “policing” functions of the professions accountable to public law and professional norms (note references in Ewert’s essay to accountants, teachers, social workers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, et al.).
5. Privatized security contractors (recall Leach’s point about the increasing prevalence of contracted private armed police; Blackwater in Iraq is a notorious example).
6. The broadening or extension of professional policing functions toward nonviolent strategies of intervention. (e.g., nonviolent intervention teams within communities who respond unarmed to domestic disputes;[6] the accompaniment/presence of CPT in conflict situations referred to in Tom Yoder Neufeld’s essay in this issue; Doug Johnson Hatlem’s description of his work with Sanctuary in Toronto, also in this issue; monitoring of contested elections by outside observers).
7. The nonviolent public welfare functions of professional police within democratic countries like the United States and Canada (see essays in this issue by police “peace” officers who describe their day-to-day work of responding out of compassion to meet human needs: Steven Brnjas, Allister Field, Morley Lymburner; Lymburner refers to the primary instrument of power as the pen; officers like these collaborate with professional school social workers to deal with the “Peter” types discussed by Alexis- Baker; though AMBS got rid of the problem without calling the police, “Peter’s” drug abuse could call for police to address child neglect or burglary to support his habit; Alexis-Baker would call the police to find a lost child;[7] Eileen Henderson’s description of Circles of Support and Accountability in Toronto, which partners with police forces to demonstrate “a symbiotic relationship, the net result of which, we believe, has enhanced community safety”).
8. The use of coercive force with violence as a last resort (the exceptional and rare use of lethal violence within the rule of law to protect persons from harm, and to arrest those who are a danger to public safety; Klassen’s reference to my essay in At Peace and Unafraid that distinguishes between “policing” and “war”; I cite there the “Boston miracle” as a good example of community policing, a case study of police who cooperate with other institutions within civil society to build positive structures of community order, address underlying causes of crime, and respond to those violating public order with the aim of building and restoring peace, and with minimal/rare employment of lethal force.[8])
9. The rigorous application of “just war” and “just policing” criteria to larger conflicts beyond the scope of local police forces (inter and intra-state conflicts). In such conflicts the primary actors are nation-states and/or international institutions like the United Nations. (Gerald Schlabach’s argument for just just policing, the rigorous application of norms that reduce violence and contribute to the restoration of peace with justice; Ewert’s reference to international law and the rule of law in the conduct of war.)
10. The militarization of policing: policing with violent force to maintain unjust and repressive social systems. (Policing as an extension of the arm of the state, inextricably bound up with violence, a fallen principality and power; Alexis-Baker’s interpretation of policing; to participate in “policing” at this level is idolatry and a violation of the Gospel. The church should come out and be separate. Policing as a profession should be banned from the church.)
11. War as “hell: unrestrained violence, not subject to norms that are effective in restraining violence” (Alexis-Baker in “The Gospel or a Glock?”).

What Theological Norms are Shaping the Conversation?

First, I want to test the assumption that in this conversation, despite sharp disagreements, we share a number of basic theological convictions. Within this context of shared convictions, I will attempt to identify issues on which we may not agree and need further discernment. Alexis-Baker’s initial article in CGR (Spring 2007) misinterpreted the MCC project and several of the essays in At Peace and Unafraid, and drives an unnecessary wedge between us (see Schlabach’s essay in this issue). My purpose is not to paper over differences but to help clear away the “static” so we can focus on crucial matters needing discernment. How can our language serve us so that moral discourse helps us focus on what it means to follow Jesus? It is helpful to recall the wise counsel of John H. Yoder on the role of the didaskalos or teacher (“agent of linguistic self-consciousness”):

The didaskalos as practical moral reasoner will watch for the sophomoric temptation of verbal distinctions without substantial necessity, and of purely verbal solutions to substantial problems. He will scrutinize open-mindedly, but skeptically, typologies that dichotomize the complementary and formulae that reconcile the incompatible. He will denounce the diversion of attention from what must be done to debate about how to say it, except when attention to language renews and clarifies the capacity for moral discourse.[9]

We share the conviction that the narrative shaping our basic identity as Christians begins with the story of Abraham, who is called by God to be a blessing among the nations. This story culminates in Jesus Christ, Lord of history and model of discipleship. Our primary social identity is the church called by God to “embody and carry out God’s mission in the world,” not the nation-state, family, or our profession. Alexis-Baker’s contention that the nation-state is at the heart of the MCC project is a profound misunderstanding that I think arises from his focus on the nation-state as the primary actor in policing.

The most perplexing policing issue is how we see our “participation in the state in its ordering of society” (Tom Yoder Neufeld’s language, page 96 in this issue). The tendency of Mennonites is to focus on “the state,” a focus shaping Alexis-Baker’s original essay. Also at issue is how we use our history. The persecution of Anabaptists by public authorities (“the state”) shapes the view of “policing” in the Schleitheim Confession of Faith. This history tends to reinforce a dualism, the church over against the state. Indeed, we do need to address our relationship to the state. However, society is not reducible to “the state.” The concept of civil society points to the rich and vast range of social processes and institutions between the individual and the state, between the church and the state. It is especially here where we also participate and contribute to the rule of law, security, and public order.[10] The Mennonite focus on “the state” diverts too much attention away from the contributions we do and can make to public order and policing within civil society.

We need to continue the conversation (addressed in several essays) about whether professional policing is an appropriate calling for Christians. In At Peace and Unafraid I introduce the concept of “vocation” to distinguish Christian discipleship from definitions of “responsibility” that accept uncritically the norms of a profession like policing (the problem with Luther’s view of vocation).[11] I believe the police officers writing in this issue do engage the question of their vocation with integrity. How does a Christian disciple implement God’s mission of love and compassion for both victim and offender, a love that includes the enemy? We agree that at the heart of the Gospel is Jesus’ call to discipleship, which includes enemy love.

All those working in any profession (law, teaching, social work) must learn how to be multilingual, how to think creatively in bringing to bear Christian convictions in relationship to the language and practices of a secular discipline. Asking how we practice discipleship as a police officer is not in principle different from asking how we practice it as a doctor or nurse. In At Peace and Unafraid, Lydia Harder develops the biblical concept of wisdom as the arena of “middle discourse” where witness for the gospel logic and the struggle for the good intersect. She does not locate “the theological roots for engaging in security in wisdom literature instead of the prophetic tradition,” as Alexis-Baker claims.[12] “Wisdom and prophetic speech intersect in their dependence on the indwelling of God’s Spirit of Wisdom that we need to discern wisely as to when and where to speak and act.”[13] This concept of wisdom or middle discourse is a fruitful area for ongoing conversation.

Tom Yoder Neufeld worries about our identity becoming more diffuse, “a hybrid of church and public citizenship in which church is an increasingly minority determinant” (96). We all struggle with the tension between being “in the world” but not “of the world,” though we tend to emphasize different poles in this tension. Some believe we are not engaged enough “in” the world, others that we are too much “of” the world. This is a healthy tension. It keeps us on our toes. But it requires that we listen to each other better about how we locate the tension.

Discerning What it Means to be Faithful

A concern in several essays is to what degree does (can?) the church function effectively to help us discern what it means to be faithful. Schlabach argues in At Peace and Unafraid that John H. Yoder’s Christian Witness to the State sets forth a largely neglected pastoral agenda; that “we will need the support and discipline of congregational accountability groups.”[14] Russell Snyder-Penner asks in this CGR issue whether “the Mennonite church has the institutional capacity to sustain the kind of case specific [discernment]” of how one can serve the safety needs of the neighbor and simultaneously love the enemy. Though he does not agree with Alexis-Baker, who would ban police officers from Mennonite congregations, he is “unconvinced that North American Mennonite churches presently have the pastoral and juridical structures for providing constructive moral guidance to congregations that are swiftly being assimilated into every aspect of the broader society” (68). We need both accountability structures within congregations and an equivalent to the Talmud in the Jewish tradition, a collection of stories and case studies (see the article by Doug Johnson Hatlem and Jodie Boyer Hatlem) that can give us a framework to support rigorous moral discernment.

I believe we share the conviction that God loves the world. But what does this mean for us? We can test this by asking, what is the meaning of Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom of God? The MCC Research Team describes Jesus’ teaching as “the power of God that is breaking into human life and culture to liberate people from the bondage of destructive powers and systems, thus restoring all of life to the wholeness God intends for the creation.”[15] We say the church is called to be the primary sign of the good news of the Gospel by being a compassionate presence among the poor, the marginal, and the victims of violence and injustice. We see this emphasis in Klassen’s essay, and in Yoder Neufeld’s, which calls for “deliberate vulnerability for the sake of the other” (97).

The unresolved question is what it means to be vulnerable for the other in a fallen world that continues to resist the breaking in of God’s Kingdom. When “responsibility to protect” by disciples of Christ entails rejecting violent force against enemies, do they nevertheless support violent force by the state? How do we think of this force? In a fallen world, does the state’s violent force serve a relative good by protecting the good and punishing the evil? Do we believe this violent force is necessary? Can disciples of Christ reject participation in the state’s violent force yet support the institution of policing as necessary in a fallen world?

The debate is not about whether some Mennonite pacifists are more optimistic and others have a more realistic view of sin. Nor does it mean that those who emphasize the Lordship of Christ and the reality that God’s Kingdom is breaking into the world look to the state as the “servant of Christ … to set up the reign of God on earth.”[16] The deeper question is what we hope for and what the grounds are for hope. If we believe that Christ is Lord, that Christ “is the grain of the universe,” then we will put our trust in creative nonviolence, even though it does not always succeed in the short run. Sometimes creative nonviolence will succeed in protecting the vulnerable, but not always. The cross reveals that sometimes violence appears to triumph. As Christ’s body in the world, we can risk practicing creative and imaginative nonviolence for the sake of others threatened by injustice and violence. Because we believe Christ is the grain of the universe, we can trust and have confidence in alternative systems of security that do not depend on violent force. Violent force also often fails to work. The resurrection hope that Christ is Lord is an alternative to the idolatrous faith grounded in an ontology of violence that believes violent force is “necessary” to protect the good and punish the evil.

Resurrection hope shapes our primary vocation to develop imaginative and creative nonviolent security practices. At the same time, we can also witness to policing systems that rely on violent force. Yoder’s concept of middle axioms to characterize this Christian witness to the state is well known. This is a summary of his position:

A government that is not committed to principled nonviolence may nevertheless be held accountable to do everything in its power to seek a just peace without violence. When it does resort to force, pacifists can hold it accountable to principles of just war theory. Likewise, they can hold a police force accountable to serve the community welfare by employing the least amount of force and use force only as a last resort.[17]

Can we build upon our common ground (and also join with other faith traditions) to become a more pioneering Mennonite church that contributes a vision and wise practices of policing to help nurture a more just and less violent commons? Will our commitment to Christ and his Kingdom give us hope and confidence to imagine and risk alternative practices of defending the vulnerable whose lives are threatened by the forces of evil? Could we develop a “Nonviolent Policing Model” analogous to the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program? VORP does not presume to replace the prison system. Nevertheless it has developed, alongside that system and in collaboration with the legal system, a vision and a set of practices for addressing the needs of both victims and offenders. Like the mustard seed and leaven, VORP is a sign of the Kingdom. Like VORP, we must be realistic about policing. We should have no illusion that we can replace the policing structures of the state. But could we put our shoulder to the wheel to develop an analogous Nonviolent Policing Model that is also a sign of the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom?[18]

Notes

[1] Pamela Leach, “Gadfly Citizenship: Faith Public Practices beyond the National Security Model,” in At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security, and the Wisdom of the Cross, ed. Duane K. Friesen and Gerald W. Schlabach (Scottdale: Herald Press, 2005), 83-115, at 100.
[2] See Lowell Ewert’s essay, “Law as a Sword, Law as a Shield,” CGR (Spring 2007): 4-22.
[3] Quotes in this paragraph are from my essay, “In Search of Security: A Theology and Ethic of Peace and Public Order,” in At Peace and Unafraid, 51-53.
[4] See the examples of “order” from the Congo and Somalia when state systems failed: At Peace and Unafraid, 62.
[5] Andy Alexis-Baker, “The Gospel or a Glock? Mennonites and the Police,” CGR (Spring 2007): 38.
[6] See the references to unarmed crisis intervention teams of social workers and counselors referred to in At Peace and Unafraid, 70, 80.
[7] “The Gospel or Glock?,” 37.
[8] At Peace and Unafraid, 69.
[9] “The Hermeneutics of Peoplehood,” in The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 33.
[10] Most of the essays in At Peace and Unafraid do not focus on “the state” but address the ways civil society contributes to public order and security, including the church itself (when it considers how to include a member charged with child abuse).
[11] At Peace and Unafraid, 56-57.
[12] “The Gospel or a Glock?,” 34.
[13] At Peace and Unafraid, 148-49.
[14] Ibid., 419.
[15] Statement from the narrative explanation of the visual model of the MCC Peace Theology Project Team, At Peace and Unafraid, 154.
[16] “The Gospel or a Glock?,” 34. Alexis-Baker’s portrayal of our position sounds reminiscent of Munster.
[17] At Peace and Unafraid, 59.
[18] Doug Johnson Hatlem’s alternative Talmudic narrative to the nation-state for pursuing order and security, and Circles of Support and Accountability described by Eileen Henderson are creative signs of the development of a Nonviolent Policing Model.

Duane Friesen is Edmund G. Kaufman Professor Emeritus of Bible and Religion at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas.

Appendix

Theological Considerations

Policing as a Christian moral issue cannot be dealt with adequately by isolating it, and dealing with it separately, independent from larger theological considerations such as the nature of God; creation, sin, and the fall; human nature and responsibility; Christ; the Holy Spirit; the Church; and the Christian view of history, to name just a few. Obviously in a short essay one cannot discuss all these areas. I will, however, make allusions to some theological assumptions in dealing with the topic at hand.

I take the church’s primary calling to be to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ (the Gospel); to foster prayer and worship, including administering the “sacraments”; and to incarnate and promote the life of Christian discipleship, which includes peace-making, reconciliation, and love of enemy (“non-resistance,” “pacifism”). I take the state’s mandate to be to preserve and further the social good and to restrain the evil (“policing”); in other words, benevolently to maintain law, justice, and order locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, a mandate that can be justified theologically, in contradistinction from “warring,” which in my view cannot be so justified. Allegiance to the church and its calling in the world takes precedence over all else for individual Christians.

To what extent individual Christians can participate in the mandate of the state, a participation that I consider theoretically possible, will depend on the individual conscience guided by the discretion of a discerning community. The Christian’s response to a call by the state to go to war must be an unequivocal “No.” However, the responsibility to participate in policing (i.e., the restraint of evil, and the maintenance of order for the common good) is more ambiguous and requires careful reflection, because it relies on coercion that is sometimes lethal.

In what follows I argue that: (1) one’s position on war and policing must be justified theologically; (2) traditional Mennonite teaching on the subject was thoroughly theological; it operated on the assumption of two kingdoms, spheres or levels, in which a strong coercive state, including policing, was necessary in a sinful world and was under the providence of God, but the true Christian church must be absolutely non-resistant and thus, with some exceptions, not participate in the state and in policing of any kind (this was Christologically argued); (3) the current debate has largely rejected the two-kingdom or two-sphere approach in favor of a onekingdom, “already-not yet” view of time and history as a basis for either rejecting all violence for both state and church or supporting policing as distinct from warring for both state and church; (4) a modified two-kingdom (or two arena) view, in which the church retains its radical witness to Christian nonviolence while making a tentative concession to policing, can be theologically and biblically justified in a way that war cannot.

Christian ethics needs to be theologically justified. All ethical imperatives for Christians concerning personal morality, and social and political obligations and responsibilities, are grounded in an understanding of the nature and works of the triune God; recognition of the current fallen state of the world and all human beings, including Christians; participation in the church’s life and mandate as the community of believers atoned for by Christ, and regenerated and empowered by the Holy Spirit within the context of a broken world; and hope for and anticipation of the final restoration and resurrection of all things, when the lamb and lion will lie down peacefully together. This is not the place to spell out in detail the ramifications of each of these theological claims for social and political ethics. Here I simply flag them as critical assumptions affecting how we talk about policing.

“Pacifism,” “non-resistance,” “nonviolence,” “restorative justice,” “just peacekeeping,” “just peace-making,” or “just policing” that receive their justification in some other way (non-theologically) may be welcomed in a world that needs all the help it can get, but may not be grounded solidly enough to withstand the test of time and faithfulness to the gospel. This does not mean Christians should not seek alliances with any and all, from whatever religious and humanistic background, who are dedicated to peace in our world. It is only to say that how we as Christians justify our actions and commitments matters profoundly. It matters, for example, whether someone after a crisis of conscience, prayer, and personal spiritual struggle engages in ethically ambiguous activity (e.g., Dietrich Bonhoeffer), or whether a pacifist who has lost her faith in a personal, living, transcendent divine reality devotes her life to the cause of peace and social justice as a purely human political activity without spiritual grounding. This is why a spiritually transformed and communally sensitive individual conscience is so important in ethical decision-making. God works not only through the community but also through the individual conscience.

Traditional Mennonite Teaching

Traditional Mennonite teaching on non-resistance was thoroughly biblically and theologically based. This is evident in a book like Guy F. Hershberger’s War, Peace, and Nonresistance.[1] Writing before the social historians of the 1970s and 1980s debunked the monogenesis myth of Anabaptist-Mennonite origins,[2] Hershberger makes assumptions about the consensus of Mennonite theology and ethics that are no longer viable. There is more diversity on the question of force among early Anabaptists than he allows for. In fact, as C. Arnold Snyder has persuasively shown, the rejection of violence was not a core trait of the first generation of Anabaptists. Only in the second generation did non-resistance gradually develop as a defining characteristic. Yet it is precisely Hershberger’s non-historicist, theological form of reasoning that continues to be relevant to today’s discussion of policing and war. As will become clear below, I modify Hershberger’s conclusions but I find much in his theological approach compelling.

Hershberger begins his lengthy study with a careful look at Old Testament and New Testament texts. Although he deals with difficult (particularly OT) texts a bit too easily, and doesn’t take historical-critical exegesis and hermeneutics adequately into account, he makes a strong biblical case for the consistency with which both testaments “agree that the way of peace is God’s way for His people at all times; that war and bloodshed were never intended to have a place in human conduct” (Hershberger, 15). The fundamental moral law of the Old Covenant is reflected in the Ten Commandments (especially the imperative “Thou shalt not kill”) summed up as loving God and neighbor. This fundamental moral law (in effect, nonresistance) remains the same in the Old and New Covenants. Jewish civil and ceremonial law is an accommodation by God to the sins and immaturity of the people (16). Hershberger does not soften the dark side or the wrath and judgment of God. God uses human agency to effect divine vengeance, but this human action is itself sin: “Therefore he who takes a human life, even if he acts legally as an official of the state, is violating the will of God for His people. The avenger plays a part in the operation of the divine wrath which requires that men suffer the consequences of their own sin: but the act of human vengeance itself is in violation of God’s fundamental moral law” (22). God’s judgment and wrath are but the cause and results of Israel’s sins and continue to be so under the New Covenant.

Unapologetically supersessionist (a problem!), Hershberger claims the New Covenant supersedes the Old. Although the fundamental moral law (not killing, and love of God and neighbor) is not superseded (it is confirmed and strengthened by the New Covenant), Jesus’ teachings call Christians to a higher standard: “Jesus also makes it clear that under the new covenant … the Christian is required to meet the higher standard [of nonresistance and love of enemy as found in Matthew 5]. The lower standard of the imperfect former covenant [Mosaic civil and ceremonial law] is done away” (Hershberger, 23).

What we are left with, then, are two standards, one for Christians and one for non-Christians:

From this point of view, therefore, there are two levels of humanity, which today would be called the Christian and the sub-Christian levels. It is God’s will that all men should live on the Christian level where they will observe the higher law of love; but those men who reject God’s will and choose to live on the sub-Christian level naturally must follow a different course, having repudiated the law of love…. As long as they reject His higher moral law He requires them to reap the consequences of their own evil. When a man on this lower level engages in theft, for example, another man, also acting on the sub-Christian level, although in a quite different category, arrests the thief and imprisons him. (Hershberger, 27)

In short, God through his “permissive command” or “permissive will” commands sinners to be punished by sinners on the sub-Christian level. This applies to moral issues such as divorce, kingship, blood vengeance, capital punishment, the legal oath, retaliation, and warfare. These were permitted and even authorized only as a kind of concession to the sinfulness of God’s people.

However, these concessions have been set aside by Jesus. With the coming of Christ under the New Covenant, his redemption on the cross, and the coming of the Holy Spirit, humans were given greater power for holy, non-resistant living than in former times.

The new covenant is better than the old because the consciences of men are now cleansed ‘from dead works to serve the living God.’ The law of God is no longer written merely on tables of stone, or with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God into the very hearts of men. The new and perfect covenant has invalidated the old imperfect one, and restored all conduct to the level of the fundamental moral law. The handwriting of ordinances as found in the ceremonial law is blotted out, and the civil law of Moses is brought to an end that the moral law might be truly fulfilled. (Hershberger, 46)

Non-resistance is possible because of divine grace, Christ’s atonement, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

This biblical and theological reasoning leads Hershberger to some inevitable conclusions concerning Christians and the state, including policing. The state, like the Old Covenant, operates in the context of a sinful world; its role is to administer justice and maintain order with the use of force on the sub-Christian level:

The function of the state is clearly stated in the New Testament. It is to maintain order in the evil society. Paul says: “Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.” In this capacity the ruler is the agent of God for good. Peter also says governors are sent of God “for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.” In what sense, then are rulers ministers of God? Only in the sense that in the operation of God’s law of cause and effect in sinful human society, which requires that man suffer the consequences of his own evil, society has found it necessary to organize a state and appoint rulers with the power of coercion. (Hershberger, 54)

However, those operating on the Christian level do not participate in the state’s use of force, including military service or police functions. Although they are submissive to authority, pray for those in authority, pay their taxes, and do all those things compatible with their life of non-resistance, they “are to manifest that same spirit of love and non-resistance which took Christ to the cross to die for the atonement of sins” (Hershberger, 59). They may be involved in many non-coercive activities of the state such as health, education, communication, and transportation, and they are law-abiding citizens – law being there for “suppression of evil and for the promotion of the public welfare” (159) – but they cannot participate in coercive functions of the state such as the department of justice, jails, police, or the military. It would therefore be difficult for non-resistant Christians “to hold, with any degree of consistency, a major executive, legislative, or judicial position in a modern state,” although there have been and are exceptions, which “should caution one against declaring it impossible to occupy an important state position and remain non-resistant” (161).

Concerning those who make a clear distinction between policing and the military, supporting the former but not the latter, Hershberger says this:

While it is true that the motives of an international police force sent out by a league of nations to punish an outlaw nation would be different from the motives of an army under the direction of an irresponsible conqueror, the resulting violence and bloodshed in the one case would perhaps be little different from the other. At best, both the domestic and the international police are instruments for the maintenance of order by means of physical force. This is necessary in a sinful society, but is forbidden to non-resistant Christians who seek to follow the Christ who taught men when smitten on the one cheek to turn the other also. There may be intelligent and unintelligent, or just and unjust, uses of force by both the domestic and international police. This makes the difference between good and bad government. But from the point of view of the statesman, as well as that of the non-resistant Christian, the domestic police and the international police, or army, are fundamentally the same. To attempt a fundamental distinction between them is to attempt a distinction without a difference. (Hershberger, 174)

Hershberger, representing the traditional Mennonite position, in line with the two-kingdom teaching of the Schleitheim confession of 1527 and the Dordrecht Confession of 1632, is entirely consistent in his theological defense of a strong state that needs sinfully to use coercion in the sinful world (within the providence of God but outside the perfection of Christ), and an uncompromising, non-resistant church whose sole allegiance is to the life, work, and teachings of Jesus (being inside the perfection of Christ).

I have some problems with Hershberger’s theology, especially his rather crude supersessionism, his un-nuanced distinction between the sub- Christian and the Christian levels (the fixed two kingdoms), and the sectarian perfectionism with which he views the church. His acknowledgement of the sinfulness of the world, including Christians, is only partial. Nevertheless, I have high regard for the consistency of his approach and his unapologetic defense of Christian non-resistance. It is a precious heritage that should not be squandered in our concern for relevance and ecumenicity.

Just Policing

In more recent thinking about war and policing, Mennonites have felt increasingly uncomfortable with the strict dualism between those who are uncompromisingly faithful to Jesus’ non-resistant teaching and those who are involved with the legitimate divinely ordained task of the state to foster order and restrain evil in society (policing). John Howard Yoder in his 1972 book Nevertheless already identified the temptation toward dualism in what he called the “The Non-Pacifist Nonresistance of the Mennonite ‘Second Wind’” (of the Hershberger type): “If one limits non-resistance to oneself, one can then be non-resistant and still patriotic and anti-communist; one can be accepted within denominational pluralism and within patriotic smalltown society without representing a challenge.”[3] This type of non-resistant pacifism spent as much time distinguishing itself from general North American pacifism as from liberalism.

Yoder himself in his theological and ethical proposals goes beyond the Hershberger form of dualism and strict view of non-resistance to argue for more positive political nonviolent engagement. He represents the beginning of the shift from non-resistance to nonviolent resistance and struggle for social justice (e.g., The Politics of Jesus), making “alreadynot yet” assumptions about history and the Kingdom of God. For Yoder, the state has a legitimate calling to preserve the good and restrain the evil (policing), and Christians might potentially be called to serve as police, although he has never himself encountered such persons.[4] It is clear that Christians are called to the task of reconciliation, but not clear that this task includes policing and being agents of divine wrath. In my conversations with Ontario police who have Anabaptist-Mennonite connections, I have been impressed that they see their daily task as primarily providing conflict resolution and peacemaking, not serving as agents of divine wrath through the use of the gun.

Gerald W. Schlabach, who has been very much involved in Mennonite- Catholic dialogue and, I understand, has converted to Roman Catholicism without breaking his connection to the Mennonite church entirely, has done the most careful thinking about just policing and just peacemaking. Just policing, he believes, is a point where those in the pacifist and justwar traditions can seek convergence: “Implicitly, the goal of peace church activist and stringent just war policy makers alike becomes just policing— just policing, not war.”[5] While he does not call for those in the pacifist tradition to give up their stringent adherence to nonviolence, he challenges them to seek to engage effectively in government positively, through just policing and just peacemaking, in a way that is convincing to those in the just war tradition.

Although quite aware of the fuzzy boundary between certain types of war and policing, Schlabach makes a convincing case for the distinctiveness of each as “ideal types”:

Policing seeks to secure the common good of the very society within which it operates, because it is embedded, indebted, and accountable within that community; according to the rule of law, it has an inherent tendency to minimize recourse to violence. Warfare may also seek to secure the common good of society, of course. But because it extends beyond that society through threats to other communities, it has an inherent tendency to break out of the rule of law. It thus cuts whatever slender bonds of accountability would truly limit its use to ‘last resort.’ And this difference is only the beginning. For having cut loose, war usually jeopardizes the common good not only of the international community but of the society in whose name it is being waged.[6]

Early Anabaptists, Schlabach reminds us, did not clearly distinguish between war and policing, because the position of magistrate included both. However, with time Mennonites have come to distinguish between them:

Within and among the historic peace churches that have opposed Christian participation in warfare and militaries, the same level of consensus does not exist concerning Christian participation in policing. Mennonite institutions such as colleges, with responsibility for the security of hundreds of residents, have quietly cooperated with local police—and even the strongest advocates of nonviolence on their faculties have rarely objected.[7]

Schlabach imagines a society that could dispense with war but not with just policing. This just policing would operate on principles approaching traditional just war criteria, and would apply to domestic and international situations, effective not only for local criminals but for criminal terrorists in a post-9/11 world. A last resort to some form of lethal violence would have to be a possibility.

Here Schlabach differs from those like Ronald Sider who, in a 1984 debate with Anglican moral theologian and ethicist Oliver D. O’Donovan, argued for a kind of policing that would never resort to lethal force.[8] O’Donovan, a staunch defender of the just war tradition even in the context of the cold war, argued that war is sometimes necessary in the defence of a third party, and considered Sider’s policing without guns to be naïve. I agree with Sider’s call for policing rather than war, and believe that policing can be seen as a form of peacekeeping and peacemaking; yet I also agree with O’Donovan that policing without the threat of force (even in the exceptional case, lethal) is unrealistic. I agree with much of what Schlabach says, although we may differ somewhat in our ecclesiologies (I am not ready to convert to Catholicism, although I consider myself a “catholic Mennonite”), and in our view of history and two-kingdom thinking.

My discussion so far sets the stage for a proposal that is outlined below.[9]

A Proposal: Policing and Conscience

1. God in his first dimension as inexhaustible transcendent mystery (God as creator and preserver of creation) transcends our understanding of good and evil, and thus also our own ethical systems, including our views on peace and violence. God is free, and has the right to give and take life, to reward good and punish evil. How human agency figures in this taking of life and punishing of evil remains somewhat of an enigma. The creation and preservation of the world is a free act of divine grace and mercy, contingent on God’s will and not logically necessary. God, therefore, is not a pacifist in the strict sense. The OT especially witnesses to this dimension of God, which we ought not to domesticate too easily through selection of texts and forms of supersessionism. See my “God is Love but not a Pacifist.”
2. God in his second dimension, historical revelation (Logos, Word, the Christ), is the formative principle of creation, redeemer, and reconciler of all things. The historical Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, in his being, life, ministry, and teachings is the incarnation of divine love, mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, including non-resistant and nonviolent love (“pacifism”), all of which reveal the inner heart and purpose of God for the world. As human beings, as Christians, this Jesus is the one we are called to follow in private and public life. However, for following Christ (discipleship) to be a possibility, we need an inner spiritual transformation, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Pacifism as an ideology without this spiritual dimension is a giant with feet of clay.
3. God in his third dimension is immanent, personal, transformative power. The Holy Spirit of God empowers us to live a resurrected life of nonviolent love already in this fallen world of sin and violence, but not with ideological fixedness and not without ambiguities. Reinhold Niebuhr was right to say that none of our choices is pure and unambiguous, without irony and tragedy. We live in a world of uncertainty, contingency, ambiguity, and violence. As my friend and jazz musician Alan Armstrong has impressed upon me, much of life is like jazz. While there are basic chordal structures underneath, the musicians are constantly improvising spontaneously into uncharted territory. The Holy Spirit empowers us to live boldly in a broken world, and by so doing we will break out of ideological straitjackets and inevitably “sin” in doing so. Here the atoning work of Christ on the cross forgives us our sins (even our violence) without excusing them.
4. We live in a fallen world characterized by broken relationships, injustice, oppression, and violence, and threatened constantly with chaos, anarchy, nihilism, and non-being. In such a world God has created principalities and powers, including human structures and institutions to preserve life and being, and to restrain evil. Creation itself was made possible by God drawing boundaries and creating order out of the watery chaos and nothingness. (See my discussion of Genesis 1-2 in “Trinitarian Foundations for Law and Public Order.”) Although these structures and institutions are themselves fallen (coercion is a sign of this fallenness), they are used by God in a rear-guard fashion to maintain order in a sinful world. Policing, ideally, is one such institution mandated to further and preserve order so as to make life possible, and ought therefore to be supported within limits by Christians, unlike war, which contributes not to order but to disorder, chaos, and non-being.
5. Since policing, despite its primary role in peacekeeping and peacemaking, is premised on the threat of force (sometimes lethal), how can Christians, whose basic allegiance is to Christ’s way of nonviolent love, support it or even participate in it? We might conceptualize this, and theologically defend it, by modified two-kingdom or two-sphere thinking: our primary home (the church) and our secondary home (the pluralistic world, the public square). The boundary between these is not as fixed as in Hershberger, but more porous and fluid. We live in both, and move readily back and forth between them on the basis of conscience. Sometimes we say “yes,” sometimes “no,” as did early Anabaptist Pilgram Marpeck.[10] It is not that one, the public square, is in the sinful world, and the other, the church sphere, is in the sinless sphere. Both participate in fallenness and sinfulness and wait for the ultimate reconciliation of all things. However, as Christians and members of the Mennonite community, our primary allegiance is to non-resistance and nonviolent love (pacifism, if you like).

The Mennonite church ought to remain uncompromising in its witness to the historic Mennonite peace position and its rejection of all violence. No taking of human life in the policing profession, for instance, can be theologically justified, although it may sometimes be a tragic consequence of the primary task of preserving the good and restraining the evil. Participation in the policing profession as a calling for Christians, including Mennonites, must finally be left up to the individual conscience, in conversation with the church community. The Mennonite church, in its historic understanding of the freedom of religious conscience, ought to allow for such individual calling and be supportive of it. It also ought to allow for, and be in dialogue with, other Christian traditions which differ in their understanding of Christian responsibility in public life. Each has a unique calling (charism) within the larger Christian community.

Notes

[1] Guy Franklin Hershberger, War, Peace, and Nonresistance (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1953).
[2] For a discussion of recent historiographical studies of Anabaptist-Mennonite beginnings, see my “From Denominational Apologetics to Social History and Systematic Theology: Recent Developments in Early Anabaptist Studies” in Religious Studies Review 20.3 (July 2003): 235-40.
[3] John H. Yoder, Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1971), 111.
[4] Yoder, The Christian Witness to the State (Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1964), 56-57. Also cited by Gerald W. Schlabach, ed., Just Policing, Not War: An Alternative Response to World Violence (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007), 83.
[5] Schlabach, “Just Policing and the Re-evaluation of War in a Less Divided Church,” in Just Policing, Not War, 18.
[6] Schlabach, “Warfare vs. Policing: In Search of Moral Clarity,” in Just Policing, Not War, 69- 70. Schlabach continues to list ways in which warring is distinct from policing: untethering from the common good, rallying-around-the flag, overkill (or use of blunt instrument), failure to meet requirements of the rule of law, the use of greater and greater fire-power (or the football phenomenon), adrenaline rush, defence of honor, militarization (73-76).
[7] Schlabach, “Warfare vs. Policing,” 80-81.
[8] See Ronald Sider and Oliver O’Donovan, Peace and War: A Debate about Pacifism (Bramcote, UK: Grove, 1985). The debate between Sider and O’Donovan, together with a discussion, took place at the Summer School of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies in August 1984. In July 1984 Sider gave a memorable address at the Mennonite World Conference in Strasbourg, in which he proposed the establishment of Christian Peacemaker Teams.
[9] Although I have done quite a bit of thinking and some writing on the subject of policing, my views are still evolving. See A. James Reimer, “God is Love but not a Pacifist” in Mennonites and Classical Theology: Dogmatic Foundations for Christian Ethics (Kitchener/ Scottdale: Pandora Press/Herald Press, 2001), 486-92; “Christians, Policing, and the Civil Order,” ibid., 493-500; “Gibt es ‘legitimat Gewalt’?” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 2004 (Lahr: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mennonitischer Gemeinden in Deutschland, 2004), 34-41. Unpublished translation in manuscript form under the title “Is Force Sometimes Justified?”; “Trinitarian Foundations for Law and Public Order,” unpublished, 2005, 1-5.
[10] See my “Law, Conscience and Civil Responsibility: Marpeck, Mennonites and Contemporary Social Ethics,” in C. Arnold Snyder, ed., Commoners and Community: Essays in Honour of Werner O. Packull (Kitchener/Scottdale: Pandora Press/Herald Press, 2002), 121-43.

A. James Reimer, recently retired from Conrad Grebel University College as professor of Religious Studies and Christian Theology, serves as academic advisor of the Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre at the Toronto School of Theology.