Introduction to Christian Ethics

Conflict, Faith, and Human Life

Ellen Ott Marshall

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781611648904
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

All Christians read the Bible differently, pray differently, value their traditions differently, and give different weight to individual and corporate judgment. These differences are the basis of conflict. The question Christian ethics must answer, then, is, "What does the good life look like in the context of conflict?"

In this new introductory text, Ellen Ott Marshall uses the inevitable reality of difference to center and organize her exploration of the system of Christian morality.

• What can we learn from Jesus' creative use of conflict in situations that were especially attuned to questions of power?
• What does the image of God look like when we are trying to recognize the divine image within those with whom we are in conflict?
• How can we better explore and understand the complicated work of reconciliation and justice?

This innovative approach to Christian ethics will benefit a new generation of students who wish to engage the perennial questions of what constitutes a faithful Christian life and a just society.

1

Christian Ethics in Conflict

This book takes conflict as the context for Christian reflection on the good life. Conflict cannot be an occasion about which Christians make decisions only periodically, for conflict is an ever-present reality that Christians cannot avoid. We live in conflict. The dynamics of conflict are the stuff of daily life, the movement of history, the making and remaking of community, and the vibrancy of faith. To be is to be in conflict. Thus, the central question of this book is this: How do we live a good life in the midst of conflict? The task of this introductory chapter is to explain why the question matters, and to suggest a path for pursuing it using the resources and methods of Christian ethics.

TO BE IS TO BE IN CONFLICT

“To be is to be in conflict” seems a rather pessimistic statement, especially if one has a negative understanding of conflict (and there are certainly legitimate reasons to have a negative understanding of conflict). Violent conflict destroys life and livelihood. Ongoing interpersonal conflicts rupture relationship, erode trust, and debilitate us emotionally and psychologically. Conflict costs time, sleep, health, and material resources. To assert that we exist in conflict seems to trap us in a fundamentally anxious situation. This makes the assertion uncomfortable, but not necessarily untrue.

At its root, conflict means “to strike together,” the Latin com meaning “with” and fligere meaning “strike.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines conflict in its noun form as “a state of opposition or hostilities,” a “fight or struggle,” “the clashing of opposed principles.” To be in conflict means that elements are in opposition with one another; they strike together. We might think of this in contrast to confluence, where different elements flow together more smoothly. Conflicting elements are in tension, in opposition with one another. The power of this concept is that it describes a relationship between different elements. Com-fligere maintains the difference and the relationship. Because we exist as different elements (and of different elements) in relationship to others, our existence is one of conflict.

Conflict, in this way, is both natural and necessary. As parts of an ecosystem, we are organisms that are both different from and related to each other. Whether on the large scale of shifting tectonic plates or the small scale of worms and waste in compost, the world of which we are part is made and remade through conflict. We live as part of an ecosystem that undergoes constant change as elements strike together. To be is to be in conflict.

TO BE HUMAN IS TO BE IN CONFLICT

To this observation rooted in nature, we need to add a sociological description and a moral argument. Conflict plays a sociological function for human beings. More than a feature of our existence in the ecosystem, conflict plays an essential role in the formation and reformation of human communities. We may tend to fixate on the ways that violent conflict redraws national boundaries or changes the demographics of a society or fuels the emergence of social groups. However, as I will emphasize repeatedly in this book, not all forms of conflict are violent. Think of the way that, for good or ill, legislative jostling or conflict reshapes the policies that govern people’s lives and prompts the formation of organizations for advocacy or resistance. Think of the way that nonviolent social movements and actions, such as the 2017 Women’s March on Washington or civil rights sit-ins, protests, and marches past and present have used conflict to expose injustice, motivate negotiation, and force change. Every day, in small ways, conflict shapes human community. It affects the dynamics of friend groups, families, classrooms, work environments, and congregations. Conflict is a catalyst for change, and if approached constructively, it can be a catalyst for positive change. This view of conflict reflects the latest in a lineage of approaches: conflict prevention, management, resolution, and now transformation.¹ Rather than beginning with the assumption that conflict can be prevented, this approach understands conflict to be a normal and unavoidable part of life. Rather than perceiving conflict as something to be managed and contained, conflict transformation intends to work constructively with conflict as a “catalyst for change.”² Rather than focusing only on a problem to be solved, this approach also tries to engage conflict in a way that begins something new and good.³

In everyday speech, we apply the term conflict to everything from interpersonal tension to international war. So it is crucial to understand that the literature and the practitioners of conflict transformation are not claiming that everything we associate with conflict is natural and necessary. Rather, they are calling for a more precise understanding of the term. They sharpen our focus to the place and moment in which perceptions, needs, desires, ideas, or convictions “strike together.” Striking together is part of living in an ecosystem that is changing and interrelated. Conflict is natural and necessary. How we respond to these moments and circumstances of conflict warrants moral assessment and action. In other words, though we cannot choose whether to be in conflict, we can choose how to respond to it.

Violence is one response to conflict, but violence and conflict are not the same thing. To be accurate here, I need to distinguish firmly between the two, and then blur the distinction a bit. We experience violent conflict (a physical fight, for example) and nonviolent conflict (a verbal disagreement), and we respond to conflict with violence (a retaliatory strike) or nonviolence (a sit-in). When we conflate conflict and violence, we lose sight of a vast range of human interaction and the possibilities that reside in it. This distinction between violence and conflict is crucial, because one can also respond to conflict nonviolently and use conflict nonviolently for purposes of social change. If we lose the distinction between violence and conflict, we obscure the rich tradition and ongoing efforts of nonviolent resisters to engage conflict constructively for purposes of social change. Nonviolent resistance is also one response to conflict, one approach to or use of conflict. Moreover, nonviolence shares the umbrella of conflict transformation with practices of mediation, restorative justice, and circle facilitation, because all of these actions rest on the assertion that conflict can be a catalyst for constructive change in relationships and communities.

However, it is also important and honest to complicate these distinctions a bit. The lines between violent and nonviolent resistance are blurry because there are so many different kinds of violence. Violence is both overt and hidden; it is physical, structural, and psychological; it is already experienced and persistently threatened. Regimes and persons alike can behave violently in any number of ways without manifesting physical harm. Nonviolent resisters also blur the distinction between violence and nonviolence when they advocate sanctions that restrict access to basic goods or when they utilize resistance tactics that involve self-harm, for example. Similarly, it is exceedingly difficult to separate conflict from the forms of emotional, psychological, and spiritual violence that are inevitably part of striking together. So it is crucial to recognize conflict as a natural dimension of life in a related and changing system, and it is equally crucial to avoid romanticizing conflict or relaxing too much with this acceptance of necessity. Striking together, no matter how natural it is, is fraught with danger, and those dangers are compounded by issues of power and proximity. The costs of conflict land heaviest on those who are least powerful and closest to the dispute. When we reflect on contexts of conflict from a distance or from a position of comfort, we need to be particularly mindful of this. This is one reason why I privilege the perspective of victims of violence.

A second important distinction is between conflict and sin. One could read the preceding description of human life as situated in conflict and conclude that this is another way to talk about our fallen state, or our historical moment in the interim, the “not yet” in the Christian story. However, conflict as understood here is not a consequence of the fall, but a consequence of being interrelated and changing. Conflict is a dimension of createdness, not a result of sin. Our natural and social circumstance makes conflict a part of life. Moreover, unlike sin, conflict contains possibilities for good. Conflict can be a catalyst for constructive change. Thus, it is inaccurate to conflate conflict and sin, because possibilities for positive transformation reside in the dynamics of conflict. Through discussion with practitioners and trainers in conflict transformation, I have learned that they usually begin their work with Christians by helping them to disentangle conflict from sin. Such disentangling takes some doing because most of the Christians that these writers, practitioners, and trainers encounter still intuitively perceive conflict as being contradictory to Christian living, which they think should be marked by patience, forgiveness, kindness, and charity. To “strike together” seems to be unchristian or an indication of sin itself. Well-known peacebuilder John Paul Lederach writes, “During years of consulting, I have found this to be a common view of conflict in church circles. Conflict is sin. It shows that people are falling from the straight and narrow way. Working with and through conflict is essentially a matter of making sure people ‘get right with God.’”⁴ Lederach insists that being in conflict is not sinful. It is simply part of being created in relationship with the capacity for freedom and change.

Christian conflict transformation practitioners, like Lederach, regularly respond to this link between conflict and sin by providing a theological affirmation of conflict. In other words, conflict is not a consequence of fallenness, but of creation. As one practitioner-trainer told me, “For me, conflict is an ordinary and natural part of living. It’s a part of life, it’s a part of God’s creation.”⁵ We see this in manuals as well: “Conflict is a natural part of a creation that is relational and diverse, a creation in which we are free to make choices. God declares it good. We will always have conflict.”⁶ Lederach articulates this theology of conflict as being a natural part of God’s creation in a chapter aptly titled “In the Beginning . . . Was Conflict.” There he identifies key theological convictions that affirm conflict as inherent in God’s creation (that we are created in God’s image and given freedom, that God is present within each person, and that God values diversity).⁷ “By the very way we are created,” he concludes, “conflict will be a part of our ongoing human experience.”⁸ Conflict is a given. It is a natural and necessary part of God’s creation.

On this point, the practitioner-trainer explained that the task “is really about shaping an already existing, evolving process into something that might be life-giving and nourishing.”⁹ Conflict is happening. The moral dimension of conflict—that is, our assessment of it as good or bad—emerges in the active responses to it. Conflict can be incredibly destructive. It can also be a catalyst for constructive change in terms of interpersonal relationships or social justice movements. These destructive and constructive aspects of conflict arise as people act in response to the ontological realities of difference and friction. The things that we frequently attach to a conception of conflict—violence, separation, destruction, discomfort, or even constructive engagement and healthy change—are activities. They are not part of conflict essentially, which is simply what I defined earlier as a striking together; rather, they attach to conflict via our purposeful response to it. Sin enters as we fail to respond to conflict constructively. In chapter 4, I explore why conflict itself is not sinful, though we may respond to it in sinful ways.

We cannot choose whether to be in conflict, nor can we choose whether conflict affects the human communities in which we live; however, we can choose how to respond to conflict and what kind of change to bring about. How we respond to conflict is a moral matter. Conflict is a natural and necessary element of life. But our responses to conflict are weighted with moral considerations involving power, accountability, values, and beliefs. There is not one single response to conflict because conflict is highly contextual. There are myriad kinds of conflict, and people are positioned in conflict with various degrees of power and various kinds of responses. Conflicts range from interpersonal to international; they can be between couples or between countries. Conflicts may be violent, intense, and brief, or they may persist as a low-intensity “hum” that lasts for years. The nature of conflicts varies tremendously; so do our proximity to them and the extent of our power in the midst of them. One conflict may be a peripheral issue for someone who has the choice of whether or not to engage it, while that same conflict may be truly a matter of life or death for someone else. The same issue that one person opts to address with a postcard or phone call actually determines the future of an undocumented immigrant, a patient’s access to affordable medicine, or the length of a soldier’s deployment. Even within an interpersonal relationship, there can be a conflict that is perceived as a minor policy change for one person and causes deep personal harm to someone else. Consider, for example, the way that two colleagues might respond to their employer’s family leave policy if it assumes a narrow definition of family. The worker who is a straight, married woman accessing maternity leave might well argue that the narrow definition fails to address the needs of nontraditional households. She sees it as unfortunate but does not feel its effects directly. For the gay man in a lifelong partnership contemplating adoption, a narrow policy is one more personal attack on the value of his family and his deep hopes for it. These contextual differences underscore the importance of conflict as a site for moral reflection. Because we are related to one another in a variety of ways, we are already in conflict, and we must respond. Disengagement is not an option. Moreover, given the differences in proximity to and impact of the conflict, our responses must be particularly accountable to those who will carry their weight.

The assertion that to be human is to be in conflict is thus also a moral argument. This is more than an ecological or sociological description; it is also a normative claim. By normative claim, I mean that “To be human is to be in conflict” is an assertion about the way we should live, not only a description of the way we do live. As indicated above, the dynamic of conflict inherently reflects difference and relationship. To strike together, we must be different and somehow interacting. These claims relate to a view of human beings as autonomous and interrelated, different from one another and accountable to one another. In moral reflection, there are times when we emphasize autonomy over relationality, such as when we assert individual rights. At other times, we place greater weight on relationality—when, for instance, we speak of the common good. However, we are both autonomous and related.

Advancing the moral value of conflict is one way of affirming relationship and respecting autonomy. One of the pitfalls of relationality is that we obscure differences or downplay division in order to maintain the relationship. We say, “peace, peace when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). Autonomy can be a corrective to this effort at “peacekeeping” because it recognizes others rather than silencing them and because it respects the agency of others rather than denying their power. On the other hand, one of the pitfalls of autonomy is that we tolerate differences without seriously engaging them or feeling accountable to them. Under the guise of autonomy, we act independently (we do our own thing) despite its impact on others. Under the guise of autonomy, we live and let live. That separate living keeps us from being accountable to others, and it keeps us from challenging others. Conflict engagement is a practice of respect rooted in notions of relationship and accountability.

There are many reasons that people deny the presence of conflict, but one underlying reason is power. “There is no conflict here” is one way that those in power maintain the status q...