What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?

IRAQ: A friend’s visit to Baghdad

September 6th, 2008
in:
by Garland Roberts

At an evening gathering to say goodbye to one of the CPT Iraq team members, I visited with Rajal.  He is about twenty-five-years old and works as a technician with a U.S. university here in Suleimaniya.  At the party, he told us about his recent drive to Baghdad, where he visited his old neighborhood—his first trip back since he and his parents had relocated to Suleimaniya in mid-2006.

He was shocked by how the mood of the city had changed.  He already knew of the terribly distressing experiences the residents were forced to endure in 2007, how each new day revealed more bodies lying in the streets.  The bloating corpses and foul stench were evidences of brutal, sustained violence.

Now the city is quiet.  He believes it is safe from random attacks and intrusive searches.  However, only about three of the twenty families who had lived before in his neighborhood are still there.  New groups are living in their houses, in his house.  The behavior of the people is more austere.  They seem fatigued and depressed....

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History

In 1984, Ron Sider challenged the Mennonite World Conference in Strasbourg, France with these words:

 

Over the past 450 years of martyrdom, immigration and missionary proclamation, the God of shalom has been preparing us Anabaptists for a late twentieth-century rendezvous with history. The next twenty years will be the most dangerous—and perhaps the most vicious and violent—in human history. If we are ready to embrace the cross, God’s reconciling people will profoundly impact the course of world history . . . This could be our finest hour. Never has the world needed our message more. Never has it been more open. Now is the time to risk everything for our belief that Jesus is the way to peace. If we still believe it, now is the time to live what we have spoken.

About CPT

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) arose from a call in 1984 for Christians to devote the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war. Enlisting the whole church in an organized, nonviolent alternative to war, today CPT places violence-reduction teams in crisis situations and militarized areas around the world at the invitation of local peace and human rights workers. CPT embraces the vision of unarmed intervention waged by committed peacemakers ready to risk injury and death in bold attempts to transform lethal conflict through the nonviolent power of God’s truth and love.