Throughout the Christian world, there is renewed interest in the importance of community for believers. That the Christian community is not merely an accumulation of atomistic, autonomous beings, but rather a substantial society (or even polis) of followers, has become an essential topic in the study and explanation of Christian relations. However, with the growing attention to the communal nature of Christianity, the interaction between the church community and the secular world becomes more challenging. Specifically, when emphasizing the importance, indeed primacy, of the church community, what duties, if any, do Christians owe to the secular world, especially as it regards coercion used by the secular government? For many Christian communities, this is a delicate balancing act. But why try to find such a balance? Indeed, in order to remain completely pure in one's membership in the Christian community, it would seem reasonable to simply distance one's self from any dealings with the state. This would be the perspective of some recent pacifistic religious thinkers.

In particular, I will focus upon the works of two prominent Christian pacifist communitarians: Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder (1927–1997), professor at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary and University of Notre Dame, and an important figure in 20th century Christian pacifist thought, and United Methodist ethicist Stanley Hauerwas (born in 1940), currently at Duke University (previously at Notre Dame) and one of the most prolific and well-known Protestant Christian ethicists in recent decades. These two thinkers are interesting in that they present a challenge to current discussions of religion in American politics, and indeed may present a “Third Way” between the Religious Right and Left. On the one hand, these thinkers unabashedly identify their ethics and politics with a specific religious tradition, and emphasize the importance of Christianity as Christianity, which might lead to placing them among the Religious Right. For instance, Hauerwas was an editorial board member of the conservative-leaning journal First Things until 2002 (cf. Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2002a). But on the other hand, the specific political positions of Yoder and Hauerwas would seem to put them on the Religious Left: both define themselves primarily through the importance of non-violence, argue strongly against the use of war to advance state policies, and both critique various elements of advanced capitalist economies. The Christian pacifist communitarian position, as presented by these two thinkers, might be attractive as a middle ground, where conservative Christians (focused on the primacy of their religious identity) and progressive Christians (concerned with war, economic redistribution, and other issues under the broad “social justice” label) could join forces for society's betterment. I will argue, however, that the views of Yoder and Hauerwas are poorly suited for such a project. By looking at their beliefs, and the necessary results of them, I will explicate some of the difficulties and consequences of Christian pacifist communitariansim, when the idea of non-violent community disregards the necessary interaction between the coercive secular world and the religious world. The best way to show this is by looking at the crucial issue of political force.

I will begin with a short discussion of the concept of “Constantinianism” and its relation to the pacifistic Christian community. Specifically, I will analyze how “Constantinianism” provides a categorization schema for Yoder and Hauerwas. Next, I will focus specifically on the arguments of Yoder, explaining how his ethical/historical (rather than metaphysical/philosophical) methods of exegesis frame his views of Christian community and peace. I then consider the views of Hauerwas and his use of a narrative methodology to come to similar conclusions as Yoder. Finally, I will consider some of the consequences of Christian pacifistic communitarian ideas. In particular, I will focus on the tendency of such views toward separatism, an inherent need to be (or at least appear) persecuted, and an inability to adequately consider topics such as genocide.

ESCHATOLOGY AND “CONSTANTINIANISM”

For both Yoder and Hauerwas, peace (especially understood as non-violence) is the cornerstone of Christianity. Indeed, the truth of the faith is not primarily an issue of metaphysics (as it would be for St. Augustine or St. Aquinas), but rather an issue of ethics. Since Christian ethics are of a radically different order from that of the world, the Christian community always will be radically different from the surrounding society. Indeed, for both thinkers, Christianity must be understood to have a social focus, much more so than an individualist one. The community is the mission of the faith (Yoder), or the community provides the “story” of the faith (Hauerwas), and it is in the community that one truly can act, and be, a Christian. Moreover, the Christian community (usually simply referred to as the “church” by both thinkers) presents its best witness and its critique of the world by its own being. The community is the existence and perpetuation, which reveals the kingdom of God to the world. By forming and perpetuating a community based on non-violence and non-resistance, true Christians reveal to the world that violence is not necessary. As such, Christianity, more than an individual matter of belief, is primarily a matter of social (and political) revolution. It is a revolution against the violence-accepting world, even the violence-accepting world of some versions of Christianity that are influenced by Constantianism. By accepting, or even legitimizing, violence, the church acts against the core beliefs of Christianity.

For the two major pacifist thinkers I will discuss, an important concept is “Constantinianism.”Footnote ¹ The concept obtains its name from the Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire, the prince who, within his reign, removed the legal restrictions on Christianity, and who then was instrumental in making Christianity effectively the state religion of Rome. However, the importance of this concept for Yoder and Hauerwas is not only historical, but normative. For both authors, Constantinianism is perhaps the most important and long-standing heresy of the Christian faith. Indeed, while not said explicitly by either author, the implication seems to be that what most people, believer and non-believer, think are key elements (at least ethically) of Christianity are in fact merely doctrines of the Constantinian heresy. Most churches (Orthodox, Roman Catholic, the vast majority of Protestant denominations) are Constantinian churches, rather than more pure Christian communities. While this heresy has had various names throughout history (Christendom, the Christian state, the Christian republic), its underlying principle remains the same — that the church, as the unique, distinctive, and witnessing community of God, is subsumed by “the world,” usually denoting the state and the surrounding (non-Christian) culture. This subsuming of the church by the world is the core error of Constantinianism.

There are various consequences of this error, perhaps the major one being a lack of faith, and hope in the miraculous acts of God. This lack of hope leads to a focus on “realism” or “responsibility,” where violence is answered by violence rather than following the essence of Christianity, which is non-violence. Indeed, for Yoder, the Christian state (with its violent emphasis) replaces the hope of God's peaceful kingdom (Yoder Reference Yoder1984, 136–37). In other words, the trust that should be placed in God is instead placed in the Christian ruler. Moreover, the idea of major change in the world is given up, replaced instead with a belief in the sanctification of the world as it is. As Hauerwas says, “We have been beguiled by our established status to forget that to be a Christian is to be made part of an army against armies” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1998, 196). The Christian community (the true, non-violent church) is at its heart anti-world and a church that is comfortable with the world is betraying its witness. Yoder would completely agree that “…the cross is a sign of what happens when one takes God's account of reality more seriously than Caesar's” (Hauerwas and Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 47).

While Yoder and Hauerwas use the term Constantinian to describe a current situation, they also employ it to describe the history of the church. To better understand this historical treatment, we must return to the world of Rome in the fourth century. At and around the time of Constantine, one sees various responses to the issue of church and state: Tertullian/Donatist separatism, the Eusebian acceptance of the prince as God's vicar on Earth, the more nuanced position of St. Ambrose, and finally the two cities notion of St. Augustine. Of these three positions, along with that of St. Augustine, the only one that would seem “Constantinian” would be that of Eusebius. However, for Yoder and Hauerwas, Eusebius, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine would be Constantinians. All three accept (or attempt to legitimize) the state in relation to the Divine. Consider Yoder's discussion of the Constantinian elements in St. Augustine's works:

In Yoder's interpretation of St. Augustine, the Bishop put aside eschatology and instead accepted the Constantinian solution. In a remarkably revisionist reading of St. Augustine's thought, Yoder's argument is that St. Augustine, rather than separating the people of God from any particular nation, instead falsely combined the Christian people with secular, violence-laden institutions (the state specifically and the budding institutional Roman Catholic Church implicitly). For Yoder (and implicitly, Hauerwas), the turn of St. Augustine and the church toward Constantinianism, and metaphysical universalism, was the start of the long decay of the general Christian community.

As Yoder's comment on St. Augustine makes clear, embedded in the issue of Constantinianism is a version of eschatology, specifically concerning the nature of peace and the kingdom of God. St. Augustine defines peace as “the tranquility of order” (Augustine Reference Augustine and Bettenson1984, 870[XIX.13]). Peace, for St. Augustine, is both relative and absolute — the former goes on in the saeculum, the latter with the City of God. As such, the eschatological issue is key — peace in the saeculum can never be peace of the Heavenly City. Indeed, St. Augustine makes it clear that this is the case, in order to avoid the mistake of thinking that the current world could be made what it is not, a world of true peace.

For the religious pacifists, peace entails a different eschatology. As the Kingdom of God is developing in the world now, and not at some endpoint of time, the peace of the Kingdom can, and should, hold sway. The eschatological difference between the pacifists and St. Augustine that leads to this more present emphasis on the kingdom is strongly related to the importance (or non-importance) of metaphysics. While St. Augustine bases his thought upon certain metaphysical distinctions on existence and the human person, Yoder and Hauerwas are quite explicitly against viewing the Christian faith in such non-theological (even “pagan”) ways. Rather than focusing on the metaphysical, both pacifists instead base their systems upon a strong notion of the church as community. For Yoder, this communal focus is based upon an understanding of the history and context of the life of Jesus and his early ministry. For Hauerwas, the communitarian ethic is based upon narrative and the ongoing “story” of the Christian people. Metaphysics, in the view of both, creates a false universalism within the faith, more akin to the “Kingdom of Ends” in Kant's thought, rather than focusing on the radical specificity and particularity of the Christian community. Both Yoder and Hauerwas make it a point to say that the path of non-violence is not effective but right — for Yoder, the cross best represents this, while for Hauerwas, the story of the Christian community (different from other stories, he continues, because it is true) relates the rightness of non-violence. Moreover, as will be discussed below, Yoder sees suffering from non-violent resistance as key to the Kingdom.

YODER: CHRIST AS SOCIAL REVOLUTIONARY

While Yoder and Hauerwas share many similarities in their views on the central importance of community and pacifism; there are some stark differences (Carter Reference Carter2001, 26). In the case of Yoder, his ethics are based upon a community flowing from the activities of Christ. In Yoder's telling, Jesus was an explicitly and primarily social and political revolutionary, while matters that are internal to the soul or metaphysical are at best secondary, at worst distracting from the “true” mission of the church. It is a matter of understanding the historical context of Jesus (in terms of his Judaism, the situation in Palestine at his time, and the rise of the Zealots, among others) that this social/political revolutionary emphasis becomes clear: “Jesus was, in his divinely mandated (i.e., promised, anointed, messianic) prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships” (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 52). In contrast to the theology of St. Augustine, where the saeculum period requires the mixing of the wheat and the chaff and where the pilgrim church must still act responsibly within the world, Yoder views Christianity as an ongoing social movement with the aim of converting the violent world into a non-violent one, the kingdom of God.

For Yoder, pacifism is central to Christian community, based on the notion of the “jubilee year” (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 60–70), and Christian community is central to Christianity. Indeed, he sees the way of non-violence as the entry of the kingdom of God into the world, and at times this pacifism seems like warfare by other means: when told of her unique mission in life, Mary, the mother of Jesus, praises God. While this praise is traditionally considered a sign of Mary's great piety, for Yoder, “Mary's praise to God is a revolutionary battle cry” (Yoder Reference Yoder2003b, 14). A major inspiration in his thinking is the Anabaptist movement (Nation Reference Nation2006, 32–42). While Yoder himself has been called a “radically catholic” thinker, this is true and misleading. Yoder did not want to be considered merely a Mennonite or Anabaptist thinker, but often he came close to equating New Testament belief with Anabaptist belief (Yoder Reference Yoder2003a, 43, 45). While some scholars have claimed that he was “catholic” in trying to reach all Christians (Nation Reference Nation2006), in practice this became effectively sectarian.Footnote ²

For Yoder, Christianity is primarily about community, shaped by ethics and the declaration of Jesus of the coming of the kingdom (via the “jubilee year”). This community had to be of a very specific nature, although Yoder is loath to give specific institutional suggestions (Yoder Reference Yoder1998, 323–73; see also Yoder Reference Yoder1997, 37–50). Indeed, ethics overwhelm metaphysics: “According to the New Testament, Jesus death was not some kind of metaphysical experience in itself, as some theories of atonement claim; rather it was a perfect ethical act. …” (Yoder Reference Yoder2003a, 58)Footnote ³ This is true even with those parts of Scripture that traditionally have been considered very metaphysically important: “Thou art my Son” is not the definition or accreditation of a metaphysically defined status of sonship: it is the summons to a task. Jesus is commissioned to be, in history, in Palestine, the messianic son and servant, the bearer of the goodwill and the promise of God” (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 24). Salvation comes through the community, and the community is at its core pacifist and non-violent. Even sin is made social over individual. For St. Augustine, pride (in its self-deification) is the primary sin. This is inherently an individual, internal disposition, which chooses (against the highest good) one's own temporal goods. For Yoder, on the other hand, it is external action, and external effects, which show the greatest sin: “War is the only sin in which the result is so irrevocable; other sins may destroy the one sinned against, while killing always does” (Yoder Reference Yoder1992, 105). By placing ethics over metaphysics, Yoder tends to invert Christianity as it is often understood — external over internal, revolution now over salvation later, the Kingdom as imminent rather than the Kingdom coming. This inversion helps clarify how Yoder's system is formed. Moreover, it helps explain some of the unpleasant consequences that follow from his system.

Along with preferring the ethical to the metaphysical, Yoder places the historical above the philosophical. Indeed, his most famous book, The Politics of Jesus, argues that, by understanding correctly the context (historical, social, political) in which Jesus did his evangelizing, it would be clear that Christ was much more a social revolutionary, caring more about societal change and non-violence, rather than a metaphysical (non-political) event, focused more on the internal turning of souls toward salvation. For Yoder, in a rather Anabaptist style, perhaps one of Jesus' most important acts was creating the non-conformist community of disciples that would become the church: “a visible structured fellowship, a sober decision guaranteeing that the costs of commitment to the fellowship have been consciously accepted, and a clearly defined life-style distinct from that of the crowd” (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 39). Along with non-conformity, a key trait of the church is suffering — not suffering in terms of the human condition,Footnote ⁴ but specifically suffering for the church: “The believer's cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of social non-conformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost” (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 96).

Also like Tertullian and the Donatists, Yoder's idea of church is inseparable from persecution: “The cross [this social/political suffering] is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come” (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 51). Indeed, it is hard to envision how the church could continue to be the church without persecution. This may be the origins of the Constantinian idea — as with the Donatists, when the church is no longer being violently put down, one must find a new enemy for “persecutions,” a prime candidate being a “fallen” church with a too-comfortable relationship with the state or culture in which it resides. This connection between the church and necessary persecution will be discussed below.

In his discussions of pacifism, Yoder would also deal with the just war doctrine. At times, he does attempt to use just war reasoning to advance the pacifist position, or merely to show the pacifistic elements of just war.Footnote ⁵ One major reason Yoder argues against the correctness of just war derives from his idea of the Christian community. In a way not unlike that of Tertullian (Reference Tertullian and Schaff1996a), Yoder argues that a Christian cannot be an officer of the state, because holding such a position reveals the Constantinian nature of many churches and runs the risk of idolatry. As he explains, “Can a person simultaneously pull out the sword and “turn the other cheek”? The New Testament explicitly reckons with the incompatibility of these two functions” (Yoder Reference Yoder2003a, 27). Indeed, Yoder argues that the ministries of the state and God “cannot be carried out simultaneously by the same person” (Yoder Reference Yoder2003a, 27). This makes legitimizing just war difficult, since just war depends upon legitimate authority. Yoder, a priori, denies just war such a possibility. It is only by subsuming the faith to the Constantinian heresy that something like just war is possible. Yoder's notion of Constantinianism, however, is not limited only to princes and political leaders. Indeed, it would seem that St. Augustine is among those most guilty of perpetuating the Constantinian heresy. In discussing the “amillennialist” notion of the End Times, Yoder notes that most Protestant denominations hold this idea, and such a situation may speak against the truth of the idea: “It could be argued that all “major theologians and denominations” are still under the impact of Augustine and that therefore their tendency toward Hellenism cuts at the historicity of fulfillment. What does it mean to say that God is fulfilling history, if at the same time God must stop it?” [emphasis added] (Yoder Reference Yoder2002b, 266).

As this section reveals, Yoder sees the Bishop's use of philosophy in a way not dissimilar from Tertullian — both are against referencing the faith by any means other than a strict Biblicism. However, as noted above, Yoder does allow judgment from the historical perspective, even if not from the philosophical perspective. Or, in other words, while any form of “Hellenism” and worldly philosophy is inherently suspect when used to justify Christianity, the methods of historiography (even the most modern and non-religious) may be used to discover the truth of the non-conforming Christian community. Indeed, for Yoder, historical context is a more important guide to judging Christianity than syllogisms or philosophical systems.

Yoder's historical arguments, however, are not as conclusive as he believes. This places his entire system into question. Since he argues that we can know the social/political ethics of Jesus through looking at the context in his life, historical errors on the part of Yoder can bring his conclusions at least somewhat into doubt. While there are various assertions that Yoder makes that are open to debate, I will only consider one of particular interest for the pacifistic perspective, specifically on the nature of the “sword” in the state. When he considers the relation between the “sword” and pacifism, Yoder makes a specific distinction between war powers and police functions. So, in The Politics of Jesus, he writes:

This distinction is necessary for Yoder's larger argument that his pacifism does not denote total antistatism. Although the state, as part of the world, enforces its will by force, Yoder here argues, focusing on the letters of St. Paul, that Christians should be “subject” (in non-resistant fashion) to the policing/juridical functions of the state, while not acquiescing to the more violent and unacceptable activities of war. This understanding of the historical context becomes key for Yoder's explication on what the state can and cannot do:

As the above shows, Yoder's analysis of the “sword” is not a merely speculative task — his explanation of the proper Christian response to war and the state depends upon his analysis being correct. Indeed, Yoder must place a great deal of emphasis upon this distinction regarding the “sword,” or else the distinction between police power (potentially acceptable) and military power (never acceptable) disintegrates. However, this distinction cannot stand. As Oliver O'Donovan explains:

The only way Yoder can make the distinction between the “police function” and war powers of the state, requires him to import into the scriptural texts meanings they could not possibly have contained, at least if the focus is primarily on history and context. As this distinction is untenable by Yoder's own method, his position becomes problematic. On the one hand, Yoder argues that the Christian community must be non-violent and non-conformist. On the other hand, he states that the church cannot be separated from the world, but must rather be a witness to it. This straddling relation of the church toward engagement with and difference from the world is possible under his erroneous exegesis, but if the distinction is unviable, it would appear that the church has only the choice of separatism. If, in the historical context of the Scriptures, the “sword” meant the full force of the state, it appears that no element of it, juridical or otherwise, can be accepted by the Christian community. The necessary result, then, would be for the church to return to the catacombs, waiting in preparation for the next Diocletian persecution or for the End Times. Indeed, if the criticism of Yoder's notion of force is sound, the only form of state that may potentially be acceptable would be the type of voluntary government proposed by Nozick (Reference Nozick1974), a type of state not likely to appear in the foreseeable future. Otherwise, any interaction the Christian community had with the state would lead to, by its nature, a temptation toward the Constantinian heresy. Perhaps Hauerwas can present a less separatist route to Christian “resident aliens.”

HAUERWAS: THE STORY OF NON-VIOLENT RESIDENT ALIENS

While Yoder is better known in Mennonite and Anabaptist-oriented denominations; he did inspire the Methodist Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas. However, Hauerwas was also influenced by Wittgenstein, and especially by virtue/narrative ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre. While he argues strongly against metaphysical or other “foundationalist” systems in discussing the faith, he often connects his views of ethics and the Christian polis to the works of Aristotle (cf. Hauerwas & Pinches Reference Hauerwas and Pinches1997). His thought is eclectic, and can often appear extreme. Indeed, he often argues that he is not a “sectarian, fideistic tribalist” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2000, 10),Footnote ⁶ especially in the implications of his community notions.Footnote ⁷ Rather, he (like Yoder) sees allegiance to the state as the greater sectarianism: “Tribalization comes about when people take their loyalty to the United States, or the Roman Empire, or Cuba, or South Africa more seriously than they take their loyalty to the church. Tribalism is the pinch of incense before the altar of Caesar” (Hauerwas & Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 156). Moreover, he argues that non-violence is the path (through community) to truth: “There is, therefore, an inherent relation between truthfulness and peacefulness because peace comes only as we are transformed by a truth that gives us the confidence to rely on nothing else than its witness. A “truth” that must use violence to secure its existence cannot be truth” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1983, 15). Obviously, community is central to Hauerwas's view of pacifism, and indeed of truth. However, Hauerwas's notion of community depends upon narrative. Hauerwas's whole ethical system (at variance with Yoder), descriptively and normatively, depends on the idea of narrative and story. It is here that Hauerwas's ideas become problematic.

This communitarianism, based upon narrative, is not only normative, but descriptive. For instance, when Hauerwas tries to give the fairest argument for war, it is purely a matter of narrative communitarianism: “We fight wars because our ancestors have fought wars. Wars provide us a way to realize our continuity with our ancestors, to locate ourselves within their continuing saga, and in the process, to give to that saga an otherwise absent coherence over time” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1984, 31). Hauerwas, like Michael Walzer, is an antifoundationalist,Footnote ⁸ basing his views on a more communitarian basis. However, Hauerwas connects this communitarianism to the truth:

In this way, Hauerwas expresses opinions not terribly dissimilar to Walzer. Both see the political community as the highest part of society. The difference between them is what one considers to be the true polis. For Hauerwas, this is the church:

The church, therefore, is not only a polis not unlike the secular versions, but it is superior over the secular varieties because it is a polis based on truth. In this way, Hauerwas echoes St. Augustine, as both would say the true city is the one with Christ as its foundation and head. The difference, however, is that Hauerwas sees this city as presently on earth, while the Bishop argues that the Heavenly City is only fully formed after the Final Judgment. The church is the true polis, and it is based on non-violence. Alignment to any other polis, in Hauerwas's thought, is idolatry.

Hauerwas' thinking is distinctly anti-metaphysical in its antifoundationalism.Footnote ⁹ As he states, “The attempt to make God knowable separate from how God has made himself known through Scripture makes a world without God thinkable. God could not help but become another “thing” amid other metaphysical possibilities. Accordingly, Christians “robbed the world of its story” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2000, 39). This makes the statement of truth difficult — truth is known only through the community (Church), but is not solely constructed by the community. What, therefore, is the door to truth? As Hauerwas is exceptionally against the idea of natural law and the like, it would seem that he is “fideistic.” Indeed, his focus on the community over individual experience makes the issue unclear: “Our ethics do involve individual transformation, not as a subjective, inner, personal experience, but rather as the work of a transformed people who have adopted us, supported us, disciplined us, and enabled us to be transformed” (Hauerwas & Willimon Reference Hauerwas and Willimon1989, 82). Individual experience, therefore, is at best secondary — it is the “stories” of the community that matter, both in their perpetuation and communally lived existence. This community is the story-telling group that witnesses to the world the peaceable kingdom of God.Footnote ¹⁰ This being the case, there seems to be no way to communicate the truth of the faith except by blind acceptance or rejection. As such, Hauerwas's requirements for the church end-up being the same as Yoder's — the church must separate and isolate itself. The world will not listen to the truth, and Hauerwas sees no intermediary language (like natural theology or natural law) that can communicate the pacifist message of the faith. If the “story” is to continue, the community must isolate and prepare for persecution, in the hope that others will join the polis of story-tellers. The church, therefore, must be isolated (“tribalist”), communicating only by the Christian story (“fideistic”), and distanced from the Constantinian communities (“sectarian”).

COMMUNITARIAN CHRISTOLOGY, SEPARATISM, AND PERSECUTION-ENVY

For both Yoder and Hauerwas, to be too metaphysical in one's Christian faith is to judge God by a lower form of reasoning, specifically the world's. Arguments from natural law or other philosophical systems, therefore, are questionable on their face. But is this “Biblically” acceptable? While both question the interpretation of St. Paul's statement that there are truths “written on the heart of men” as indicated within the natural law tradition, they seem to also neglect the way St. Paul himself proselytized. Consider St. Paul's witness to the Greeks, where he says, “For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). By using some of the pagan beliefs of the Greeks to turn them to Christianity, would St. Paul, then, be guilty of Constantinianism? Indeed, it would appear that St. Paul attempts to justify God by using the measures of the world, specifically Greek forms of reason. Is St. Paul placing God under the judgment of the world? Surely, both would disagree. However, it is hard to see how St. Paul's action could be anything but Constantinian, unless Yoder and Hauerwas forgive him this aberration due to (their interpretation of) his ideas regarding the state. Needless to say, such a “solution” to the problem is questionable. It would seem to confirm the critique that “world” simply means “state” to the pacifists.

A reflection of this problem is the general down-playing of justice for both thinkers. Hauerwas says that, “Once “justice” is made a criterion of Christian social strategy, it can too easily take on a meaning and life of its own that is not informed by the Christian's fundamental convictions. It can, for example, be used to justify the Christian resort to violence to secure a more “relative justice”‘(Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1983, 112–13). Yoder argues that justice, as it is generally understood, is more a myth or legend that perpetuates the turn to violence (Yoder Reference Yoder2003b, 165–67). As non-violence is an absolute in both their systems, those concepts that might signal an acceptance of force are immediately questionable. Just war is an ideal example, in that it allows force to countermand force. Moreover, “justice” can have similar invidious influences on the faith in ways not dissimilar to metaphysics. “Justice,” if it is not derived from a rather particular (pacifistic) understanding of Christianity, becomes merely another method by which God is measured by standards below him. This does not mean that Yoder and Hauerwas are against discussing the issue of justice per se. Rather, it is that both see justice as necessarily connected to pacifism and non-violence, and that any action that would require force is itself unjust. In this way, only that Christian community that defines itself by pacifism, more than any other doctrinal element, has the right to claim the mantle of true Christianity. Those who are truly just may not be effective, may (indeed, must) be persecuted, but the peaceable community is the only one that truly understands justice and acts justly. As with truth, so too is justice dependent upon the community: the truth of Christianity is only transmitted through the community (and cannot be “translated” into non-Christian terminology), and justice can only be understood through the words and actions of the pacifistic community. Yoder and Hauerwas could argue that defining truth and justice through this particular community permits believers to be critical of the world, and thus helps transform the world into the Kingdom of God. But this isolation of truth and justice to the narrow, pacifist community results in it only being critical without being constructive, and thus only able to define the community, its truth, and its justice negatively. In this way, a criticism of Frankfurt School critical theory may also apply to Yoder and Hauerwas's resident aliens: “the slogan nicht-mitmachen was the imperative that protected the theory (and thus the theorists) from any possible conformity, while holding open the space that makes critique possible” (Howard Reference Howard2002, 45). The defining element of the pacifistic community, perhaps even more than specific Christian doctrines, is its refusal to interact with the world. As with the critical theorists, the resident aliens gain critical distance through non-conformity. The cost of this distance, however, is sectarianism — rather than acting as a Christian witness to the world, the pacifist community instead presents itself as offering a constant negative evaluation of the world, without giving much clarity as to what the community itself has to offer. Internally, the community tells itself stories reconfirming its pacifist assumptions; externally, all it presents is the constant refusal to become involved.

This community focus also shares similarities with the Donatist heresy. Consider these comments from Hauerwas:

While the ideas of the truthfulness of a witness and the transformation of the believer are not alien to traditional Christian theology (and, indeed, St. Augustine would find much with which to agree), the implications of Hauerwas's view are more problematic. With the community focus of Hauerwas, there is an underpinning idea of purity connected with faith. While the Donatists focused on the purity of the individual, Hauerwas seems to change this to the purity of the community. Purity is the equation of truth, and remains so. In combining this notion of purity with a social ethic, what past groups count as “true” Christians become limited and problematic. Yoder believes that “[f]or a serious advocacy of Jesus’ exemplarity in social ethics one would need to go back to Franciscan, Czech Brethren, or Anabaptist models” (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 5, fn.7). One wonders whether “Franciscan” would include the Spiritual Franciscans (Burr Reference Burr2001). More to the point, this notion of purity makes the “story” of Christianity a peculiar one. While the idea that true Christians are the minority is not new, explicated by St. Augustine, Luther, and others (a point Yoder repeatedly makes, usually to respond to the “sectarian” critique), it becomes more awkward when placed in the community-centered systems of Yoder and Hauerwas. If most churches have been Constantinian from 312 CE until the present, then few communities of true Christians could have existed. Without the true communities, by implication, there could be no true Christians. Therefore, except for the spontaneous growth of more orthodox groups, like the Franciscans (heretical or otherwise) and the Anabaptists, it would appear that the Christian “story” is of Christ's true church existing during the persecutions of Rome, followed by the abandonment of the church by God to Constantinianism for over 1200 years until the Reformation/Anabaptist appearance, culminating in God's continued negligence of the church until the present “post-Constantinian” era. How exactly Hauerwas can explain this story, or Yoder explicate the millennium gap between true Christian communities, is unclear.Footnote ¹¹

Another similarity of these pacifist communities to the Donatists is the need for persecution. This persecution focus for the Christian community leads to an odd absence in the works of both Yoder and Hauerwas. While both can connect non-violence to pacifism, anti-capitalism, even murder mysteries (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas2000, 201–10), one topic surprisingly missing is the Holocaust. Certainly, these authors do not neglect the events of World War II. Both discuss how many of the Christian theologians, following a more Constantinian perspective on the church's relation to the state, were negligent in witnessing against the policies of the Nazi regime (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 193). Hauerwas discusses the need for memory in healing Jewish-Christian relations after the Holocaust, especially as a call for Christians to be on guard against Constantinianism (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1992, 61–90). But as for what a Christian pacifist community should do when faced with a situation of genocide perpetuated by the state, neither Yoder or Hauerwas gives any suggestions. Indeed, Hauerwas writes: “I am still not sure how the Holocaust should be assessed from a secular or theological point of view. For me it simply continues to stand there starkly as sheer horror” (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1992, 62–3). How could these pacifists avoid the question? While Hauerwas upbraids those who accept violence as not being “imaginative” enough (Hauerwas Reference Hauerwas1992, 54–9), and while Yoder reproaches those who use force for not acting to find a “creative way out” of violent response (Yoder Reference Yoder1983, 27), neither of these individuals offers advice on dealing with the genocidal actions of a totalitarian state, or even any guidance on what a creative or imaginative response would be. Just as a just war theorist must consider issues of terror bombing and atomic warfare (both highlighted by World War II), genocide seems to present a major challenge that pacifists must answer. It is not enough to assume “…that war, at least modern war, is worse than any other evil which can befall a society” (Yoder Reference Yoder1992, 46). Certainly, one can reasonably argue that European Jewry, the Roma, and other targeted subgroups would say that tyranny is far worse than modern warfare.Footnote ¹² Why, then, are Yoder and Hauerwas silent?

Due in large part to the community focus of their theologies, they must be silent. The Christian pacifist community, in many ways, must remain lethargic in the cause of anti-genocide. The reasons for this lethargy, however, will show some of the contradictions within these theologies themselves.Footnote ¹³ For Yoder and Hauerwas, the kingdom of God is at hand — since the Incarnation, the movement toward the peaceable, non-violent kingdom has slowly been making its way through history. The movement, specifically the community, has gone on as a witness to the world. The world will reject the church's witness (the true church, of course, not the Constantinian one) and will persecute the church. It is a history, or “story,” of the church and the world. If the Holocaust had been directed at what these thinkers would consider to be the “true” church, then they could explicate the event. The Holocaust would be the expected reaction of the world against the community of Christ, the true witness to the world. The “story” of the Holocaust would therefore simply be a continuation of the martyrs' stories, going from the Roman persecutions to the maltreatment of the Anabaptists. But the Holocaust did not happen to the true community, but rather to a part of “the world.”Footnote ¹⁴ As such, what could be said? The world is identified by its violence. If one part of the world is violent against another, what is so stunning about that? Indeed, given the eschatological nature of Yoder's and Hauerwas's thinking, the most shocking thing about the Holocaust would not be the sheer genocidal fury of the Nazis, but rather that the slaughter was directed at a group other than the “true” Christian community. In effect, neither of these authors can make sense of persecution that does not fall upon the “true” church. As such, imaginative, creative solutions for dealing with genocide become problematic.

For both, the community is the mission of Christians — “let the church be the church,” so it can be a witness to the world. Through pacifism and non-violence, the church will show the way toward the peaceable kingdom. Indeed, that is why the church suffers, “The willingness to suffer is then not merely a test of our patience or a dead space of waiting; it is itself a participation in the character of God's victorious patience with the rebellious powers of creation. We subject ourselves to government because it was in so doing that Jesus revealed and achieved God's victory” (Yoder Reference Yoder1994, 209). But Yoder (and Hauerwas) focus on the church suffering. Both have been accused of sectarianism and “tribalism” because both emphasize the different duties and responsibilities of Christians as Christians, the greatest of which is the non-violent way of life. This being the case, both can argue for why Christians should accept suffering, but not why the world should do so. More to the point, neither adequately explains why Christians can force others to suffer as the church suffers, specifically through Christian lack of action. Let me be clear — I am not arguing the matter by asking what would happen if all people acted like the “true” Christian communities Yoder and Hauerwas advocate. Yoder, after all, frequently argued that this question presumes a false (Kantian) universalism.Footnote ¹⁵ Rather, I am arguing that the practical lack of action that Yoder and Hauerwas seem to permit the Christian community in effect forces other to take on suffering involuntarily that the church's members have chosen to accept.

The church is by necessity a voluntary organization for Yoder and Hauerwas. Indeed, a Christian community that grows more by propagation than conversion reflects a lack of missionary focus and the potential formation of Constantinianism within the church (Carter Reference Carter2001, 57). These members are concerned to live a Christian life, one that is not focused on violence. This results in making justice a much lower priority for both thinkers, as discussed above. So, suffering from persecution, unjust though it is, is accepted by the members voluntarily. For both thinkers, this consent is important, as one cannot be forced to join the faith. However, their silence in the case of the Holocaust implies that they do, in practice, force others to the faith. How so? If the call for non-violence is specifically directed toward Christians and Christians only, can the pacifists allow others to suffer from persecution? In the case of Constantinian Christians, perhaps the pacifists could be apathetic. In this case, the pacifists would simply be pointing these heretical Christians toward the true understanding of Christian doctrine. But what about the Jews? By not acting, potentially with violence, to protect the Jew from genocide, has not the pacifist effectively forced the Jew to follow Christian beliefs of non-violence? By making non-violence an a priori absolute, have not the pacifists required those who are persecuted to accept suffering like a “true” Christian, even if the victims are not? If Hauerwas and Yoder wish to keep the voluntary nature of the church in their respective theological ethics, this lacuna must be addressed.Footnote ¹⁶ This lacuna not only brings into question the voluntary nature of the church, but indeed the very idea of Christian charity toward others. As the Methodist theologian Paul Ramsey writes:

Yoder and Hauerwas both believe that “effectiveness” is a dangerous concept, one that leads to the use of violence. Yoder and Hauerwas emphasize turning the other cheek and resisting not evil. And yet, as this selection from Ramsey notes, can Christian charity allow for inaction in ending the suffering of someone being victimized?Footnote ¹⁷ Or, in other words, by keeping “pure” through non-violence, have Yoder and Hauerwas forgotten that we are, to an extent, our brothers' keepers? In this way, we are pointed back to the Augustinian solution — non-resistance to evils perpetrated against one's self, while protecting others when threatened by violence or injustice (Augustine, Reference Augustine, Benjamin and Hackstaff1964, 11–2[I.5]). Yoder and Hauerwas would prefer pacifist purity, even if this leads to silence, and inaction, in the face of the Holocaust.

Certainly, the pacifist community can argue against genocidal activity, and present themselves as Christian witnesses against state aggression. But this does not present any qualitative difference in the practice of the pacifist community. For Yoder and Hauerwas both, the world is defined by its violence and Christianity by non-violence. As such, the only difference between a police action and genocide is quantity, not quality. The nicht-mitmachen position of the pacifist community makes its witness of all the less helpful, as it cannot make qualitative distinction in its criticisms of state violence. While this can present problems for Christians themselves, it also limits the assistance that the pacifist community can give to those who are persecuted and not of the “true” church. Consider Yoder's view of the effectiveness of making peace:

His examples are not focused upon pacifist communities that are losing, but rather nationalities. Rather than offering (potentially violent) assistance to those suffering from oppression, Yoder can still protect the purity of Christian pacifism while also claiming that non-Christian groups are better off with peace rather than war. If the losers are always “better off” to make peace rather than fight, there is no reason or need for the Christian community to interfere, and indeed the non-Christian groups, simply as a matter of effectiveness, would be better served following the non-violent path. Inherent in the pacifist position, therefore, is an a priori assumption not only of non-violence, but of the ability of a group to “rise up again” through resistance rather than war. But is this a reasonable assumption? Consider Yoder's poor choice of an example, Poland. When the Poles rose up against the Soviets in the 1980s, one could note the conspicuous absence of Jewish movements. Indeed, Yoder's assumption that the loser would always be “better off” to have made peace early is obviously faulty in the case of Poland's Jews — would a quick surrender to the German military have ensured the Jews an opportunity to “rise up again,” or merely guarantee their more effective extermination? The religious pacifists present no answer. Indeed, they cannot. The only persecutions that make sense are those against the true church, and the only resistance to persecution acceptable is that of the true church. Any other type of persecution, or response, must be impossible to comprehend.