“Signal Communities in Witness of Peace”
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2008 Peace Colloquy
Community of Christ
Independence, Missouri
October 4, 2008
Dr. Donald E. Pitzer
Professor Emeritus of History and Director Emeritus of the Center
for Communal Studies
University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, Indiana
Introduction
I am honored to address this distinguished international gathering
on the vitally important subject of peace. It is of great
significance when religious bodies, such as the Community of Christ,
give top priority to bringing their spiritual, intellectual, and
communal resources to bear in witness of peace. For far too long
religious division, religious diversity, and religious exclusiveness
have made religions contributors to conflict rather than promoters
of peace.
Today, in this time of war, we are assembled to consider signal
communities’ witness of peace. Peace is an increasingly more urgent
matter. We have split the atom, stood on the moon, and discovered
DNA as the building block for life. Yet the world seems as ignorant
and impotent as ever about the top item on the human agenda—how to
live together peacefully, productively, and happily based on
mutually deserved trust. In the supposedly civilized 20th century
our wars killed 120,000,000 people, about half civilians. That
number equals almost 1,000 Independence, Missouris. How can we make
harmony from our diversity, resolve our conflicts with words rather
than arms, and empower leaders without reaping authoritarian
control, abuse, and aggression? How can we implement the simple but
difficult solution of Jesus: “Love your enemies and pray for those
who persecute you. . . .” (Matthew 5:44)? He said, “Blessed are the
peacemakers,” not blessed are the war makers (Matthew 5:9).
We might hope the world is now ready to consider what small,
voluntary communal laboratories teach us in their witness of peace
and justice. After all, communities are the witness of peace, the
stage for seeking, testing, and acting out peace. Thousands of
historic and current communal groups provide that stage for our
instruction.
My purpose in this keynote is twofold: first, to place the Latter
Day Saints’ communal efforts, and especially the signal communities
of the Community of Christ, in the context of this instructive
communal legacy, and second, to point out specific witnesses and
lessons from communal societies. Pursuit of these lessons has kept
me researching communal groups for forty years, thirty of them as
director of the Center for Communal Studies at the University of
Southern Indiana. I have approached communal societies as social
microcosms that test social and political theories, economic
systems, and religious doctrines and practices. I have found the
lessons they teach to have individual, community, and worldwide
implications.
Latter Day Saints in Communal History
Before exploring these lessons let us turn to our first objective—to
place zionic Latter Day Saints’ communalism in communal history. The
Saints’ communities are part of a social phenomenon with both
ancient and modern expressions. Historically, communal societies
were organized as communes with common property. We easily recognize
many of these: the first-century Christians in Jerusalem; monastic
orders; Protestant sects such as Moravians, Mennonites, Shakers,
Harmonists, Oneidans, Hutterites, and Bruderhof; and Jews still
living in kibbutzim in Israel. During the last century, communal
groups increasingly organized with less economic sharing as
cooperatives, collectives, joint-stock companies, land trusts, and
not-for-profit corporations. Members enjoyed more individual freedom
and became more engaged in governance. Groups have preferred being
called “intentional communities” or “planned communities” instead of
“communes” or “communal societies.” We recognize these today as
ecovillages, retirement centers, and cohousing projects, including
Harvest Hills as a signal community of the Community of Christ right
here in Independence since 1970. Variety, nonviolence, and
humanitarian witness mark thousands of contemporary communities.
The expanded forms and uses of communal living have made it
difficult for a general definition to keep pace. For decades I
required my students to learn a definition that I tried to stretch
over all past and present communal groups no matter what they did or
called themselves or however they organized their finances. It went
like this: “Communal societies are small, voluntary social units,
partly insolated and isolated from the general society in which
their members practice an ideology, an economic union, and a
lifestyle and experiment with their ideal systems—social, economic,
political, religious, and philosophical—in the hope that their
utopian vision will be realized worldwide by divine aid or human
effort.” A few students, or maybe I should say many, found this a
little long and a lot complicated. And it proved inadequate to
describe the kaleidoscopic changes within the founding movements and
over centuries of time.
Thus, the definition is in flux. It is adjusting to include the
realities of what I began calling in the 1980s “developmental
communalism.” Developmental communalism is a theory that sees each
movement that adopts any form of communal living as passing through
a developmental process—before, during, and often after its communal
stage. This approach views communal living as a means to an end, not
an end in itself. Developmental communalism also frees us from
judging the success of communal groups by the length of time they
remain communal. Rather, it focuses on the movements that establish
communal sanctuaries during an early stage—often for security,
solidarity, and survival—and then show their vitality by developing
into new organizational forms and employing new methods. The
communal method necessitates creating and managing a whole social
structure on a small scale. This alone can pose an unbearable burden
to founding movements.
First century Christians in Jerusalem chose the communal
developmental process. According to Acts 2:44, 45, “all that
believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their
possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had
need.” Some time after Ananias and Sapphira were stricken dead
because they lied about sharing all the sale of their land (Acts
5:1–10), the church relaxed the communal requirement to permit
believers to live anywhere and to own private property. This
developmental move, combined with forsaking the Hebrew customs of
animal blood sacrifice and circumcision, liberated the faith to grow
into the Greek and Roman worlds.
Early Christianity’s adaptability proved essential to its expansion
but raises the specter of what I call a communal double jeopardy
threat. Movements lively enough to develop into new organizational
structures, ideas, and methods tend to save their movements but lose
communal living. Witness the Moravians, Owenites, Inspirationists of
Amana, Iowa, and, as we shall see, even the Latter Day Saints. On
its other side, the double jeopardy threat dictates that movements
that make communal living a required commitment or tenet of faith
usually discover they have injured or eventually killed their
movement as with the Shakers and Harmonists. Demise is certain for
groups like these and monastic orders that demand celibacy unless
they gain new members from the outside.
As many of you could detail better than I, the Latter Day Saints’
movement provides a unique example of developmental communalism.
Soon after the publication of the Book of Mormon and the
establishment of the church in 1830, both the leaders and working
class poor who largely composed the membership felt a magnetic tug
toward the communal living promises of security, solidarity, and
survival. Prophet Joseph Smith Jr. and others knew the communal
example of the first Christians and likely the economic success of
the Shakers and Harmonists. Early leader Sidney Rigdon had even
heard Robert Owen speak about his New Moral World utopia and
socialistic model at New Harmony, Indiana. But the plan revealed to
Smith in 1830 and 1831 contained novel elements and justifications.
It not only brought justice to the poor, it ingeniously combined
private enterprise with community of goods. As practiced at
Kirtland, Ohio, and Independence, Missouri, in the 1830s, the system
of consecration and stewardship provided that members consecrate all
their possessions and annually all their surplus earnings to the
bishop. In return they received a stewardship in property and funds
to use as they chose (Doctrine and Covenants 42:8a–9b).
This arrangement was to restore the perfect social order of peace,
justice, and equality that existed for God’s people of Zion in the
ancient United Order of Enoch. As stated in the Doctrine and
Covenants “And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of
one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no
poor among them; . . .” (D&C 36:2h, i). Reviving the United Order
also tied the zionic Saints to the millennial purpose of the holy
city of Zion—a city built by Enoch and taken up into heaven to
become the center of God’s kingdom in Jackson County, Missouri,
after Christ’s return (D&C 36:3a–d). Restoring the United Order also
placed the Saints of the 1830s in the tradition of the Nephites who,
according to the Book of Mormon, enjoyed the blessings of the United
Order when they practiced it in America in the first two centuries
of the Christian era (IV Nephi 1).
The United Order gave the early Mormon adoption of communal living a
divine sanction and infused it with a zeal for the millennial cause
of Zion. But it did not prevent the public hostility and perpetual
migrations that upset the stability of the church’s financial base.
These realities induced the Saints to suspend their United Order
communalism. In its place at Nauvoo, Illinois, tithing became the
movement’s developmental change that proved to be financially
sufficient, less difficult to administrate, and more conducive to
nationwide and worldwide expansion.
In its post-communal phase, the Latter Day Saints can be compared to
the Amish who for 300 years have lived in tight-knit communities but
without demanding community of goods. They and the Latter Day Saints
both have practiced the communal ideal of close association,
fellowship, and assistance without losing their movement to the
communal double jeopardy threat. Regrettably, however, unlike the
Amish and Mennonites, the Latter Day Saints lost their peace
witness. When the Saints’ movement began, the young Smith advocated
the nonviolent stand of Jesus and the primitive Christians, and
Sidney Rigdon held to his previous Campbellite pacifism. But mob
persecution and militia murders in the 1830s severed this peace
commitment and both men ever after justified the Saints responding
with “redemptive violence.”
This makes all the more remarkable the developmental process through
which the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
has come in the last several decades. The very change of the name to
Community of Christ in 2001 announced the renewed emphasis on the
zionic mission as a witness for peace and justice in community and
reflects the early nonmilitant leadership of Joseph Smith III. In
March 2007, guidance of President Stephen M. Veazey confirmed the
priority of establishing signal communities (D&C 163:2b; 3a, b; 5a).
The Council of Twelve was admonished to “lead the church’s mission
of restoration through . . . the establishment of signal communities
of justice and peace that reflect the vision of Christ” (D&C
163:5a). In one of the most dynamic paradigm shifts and revivals of
communal usage within a movement in communal history this guidance
further asserts that: “The hope of Zion is realized when the vision
of Christ is embodied in communities of generosity, justice, and
peacefulness” (D&C 163:3a; see also 2b and 3b, c). Thus zionic
signal communities are being created anywhere, everywhere, and
including anybody while not negating the prophesied single community
of Zion as the future center of the millennial kingdom. According to
the Community of Christ statement of faith and beliefs, signal
communities are, in fact, using communalism for a new mission—to
infuse the realities of God’s kingdom into every human
dimension—“families, congregations, neighborhoods, cities, and
throughout the world.” Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned the world
becoming what he called the “Beloved Community”—“a community of love
and justice” where “brotherhood is a reality.” Signal communities
can move us in this direction.
Peace Lessons from Communal Millenialism
On this hopeful note we go to our second objective—examining lessons
from four dimensions of communities’ witness for peace—from
millennialism, humanitarianism, pacifism, and authoritarianism.
Beginning on the global level with millennialism we’ll work our way
toward the community and individual levels. Communitarians often
have found global peace and justice through future divine
intervention more easily embraced than peace and justice here and
now at the personal level, possibly because peace with one’s self
and one’s neighbor is such a daunting everyday challenge.
Millennialism promises peace through the appearance of a Savior, a
Godly kingdom for at least a millennium, 1,000 years. This is one of
the most potent ideas in history, and its most powerful expressions
have come in the Western World. In Hebrew and Jewish faith it has
meant that the Messiah will yet appear. Christians believe that
Jesus was the Messiah and will appear again as the Prince of Peace.
Many Muslims look for the Twelfth Imam, who disappeared in the 10th
century, to return and rule over a perfect world order.
Christian millennialism became the motivating belief for many
religious movements, but a vulnerable communal witness for peace.
Millennialist communal groups teach us that excessive reliance on
divine intervention to bring peace on earth usually results over
time in frustration and sometimes contributes to the decline or
demise of the founding movement. Forty celibate male millennialists
emigrated from Europe to Pennsylvania in 1694, the year they thought
Christ would return. Their commune was called the Woman in the
Wilderness after the prophecy in Revelation 12 about the woman who
would flee the dragon after begetting the millennial Christ. When
their leader, Johannes Kelpius, died in 1708 after claiming to be
immortal, the men scattered, some of them so distressed they took
wives.
Shakers, officially The United Society of Believers in Christ’s
Second Appearing, were optimistic millennialists. The eight who
emigrated from England to New York in 1774 believed Christ’s spirit
had already returned to earth in the female form of their leader,
Mother Ann Lee. Despite the violence of the American Revolution and
Civil War, Shakers thought peace would increase as the divine spirit
gradually permeated all humanity. Some 20,000 Believers lived in one
or another of the Shakers’ 19 settlements, but now only seven reside
in their last community at Sabbathday Lake, Maine. These remaining
few are optimistic still. As the now deceased Sister Gertrude Soule
told me in 1983, raising one hand: “Mother said when the movement
gets down to the number of fingers on one hand there will be a great
revival.”
The Harmonists, who followed their German prophet George Rapp to the
United States after 1803, were pessimistic millennialists. Their
reading of prophecy indicated that world conditions would become
steadily worse until Christ’s return. For a century these celibate
Harmonists watched the war weary world deteriorate. Rapp died at age
89 in 1847 still expecting Christ’s return during his lifetime. His
Harmony Society ended in 1916.
Millennialism’s lesson about peace is clear. No matter how much a
redeemer is anticipated, the solution to today’s problems is not to
sit idly by awaiting this event. The witness for peace demands that
we actively engage in the nonviolent peace process in the present,
addressing the suffering and injustice of our own times.
Ultimately, the peace witness of the shrinking Shakers and defunct
Harmonists is judged by their humanitarian deeds rather than by
their millennial beliefs. The Kentucky Shakers are celebrated for
ruinously overextending their own resources to feed and care for
both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. The
Harmonists are applauded for generously aiding the Zoarites,
Hutterites, and other sectarian immigrants.
Peace Lessons from Communal Humanitarianism
This leads us to our second lesson—the relationship between
humanitarianism and peace, that by dispensing justice and mercy to
the poor, diseased, and distressed we relieve the suffering that
often causes violence, revolution, and war itself.
You might be surprised that secular, rather than religious,
communitarians provided the major thrust for the communal
humanitarian witness of the 19th century. The violence of the French
Revolution and the poverty of the Industrial Revolution brought
Charles Fourier and Etienne Cabet of France and Robert Owen of
Scotland to found utopian movements that began more than 60
socialistic communal experiments in America and Europe. The Owenites,
in and beyond their communal phase, urged emancipation of the slaves
and helped usher in modern women’s and workers’ rights, public
schools and libraries, and consumer/producer cooperatives.
For centuries monastic orders have understood the immediacy of human
need and responded with hospitality, hospitals, and schools. Mother
Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for the service of her
Missionaries of Charity among the poor and diseased beginning in
Calcutta. Her Order’s witness now reaches to 600 missions in 120
countries.
Habitat for Humanity International, launched by Millard and Linda
Fuller at Koinonia Partners, is undoubtedly the best-known
humanitarian project to emerge from an American intentional
community. Koinonia Partners was rightly honored last evening with
the 2008 Community of Christ International Peace Award for its
courageous initiatives for peace and justice. It’s Habitat outreach
alone has built more than 250,000 homes for over a million
industrious poor people in every state of the United States and 90
foreign countries. How many here, like former president and first
lady Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, have assisted Habitat? If you want
to help, just call 1-800-Habitat.
By 2005 Habitat ranked tenth in income among charities in the United
States with nearly one and one half billion dollars
($1,500,000,000). That’s a wonderful one and five with eight zeroes.
But contrast that with the projected bill for the Iraq war
alone—three trillion dollars ($3,000,000,000,000). That’s a three
with 12 zeroes, three thousand billions. If all the Iraqi people
were divided into families of four, with $3 trillion, Habitat could
build a $422,000 home for each family in Iraq—or a $200,000 home for
every such family of four in both Iraq and Afghanistan! What will it
take for humanity to come to its senses, beat its swords into
plowshares, and use its resources for construction rather than
destruction?
The communal humanitarian lesson in witness of peace is that we must
first actively address poverty, disease, and despair if we hope to
make an assault on abuse, violence, and war.
Peace Lessons from Communal Pacifism
Our third lesson relates to pacifism, the persuasion that nonviolent
resolution of disputes is the route to true and lasting peace. Just
as Jesus did not resist his assailants and explained to Pilate that
“. . . if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants
fight,. . . .”(John 18:36), many communal pacifists have died rather
than fight—Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites among them. Many others
have witnessed for peace in community—Shakers, Harmonists, Quakers,
Brethren, Community of Christ, Catholic Worker’s, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, and monastic orders.
But most Christians, despite the example and teaching of Jesus and
the witness of the early church, accepted the arguments for
participating in a “just war” once the Roman state accepted
Christianity. St. Augustine in the 4th century, St. Aquinas in the
13th, and others opened the door for Christians to enter the
military. Warfare was justified if the bloodshed was defensive, for
a moral cause, and declared by a legitimate governing leader to
restore the peace after diplomatic means were exhausted. Much
Christian support for war during the last century rested on the
assumption that God blessed nationalism, empire building, and
defending or spreading democracy.
The witness and actions of pacifistic communalists have modified
this trend. They have sometimes helped convince governments to enact
laws that respect the beliefs of conscientious objectors and
noncombatants and to seek peaceful, diplomatic solutions to
international conflicts. Harmonist delegates successfully got a
provision for payment in lieu of armed service written into
Indiana’s first constitution in 1816. The Zoarites in Ohio declared
in their Principles of Separation: “We cannot serve the state as . .
. soldiers, since a Christian cannot murder his enemy, much less his
friend.” But they later compromised their pacifistic principles
during the Civil War to accommodate a few members who chose to fight
to free the slaves. The Shakers sent resolutions to President
Theodore Roosevelt from their Peace Conference during the
Russo-Japanese War in 1905. They uncompromisingly asserted that “all
wars are equally barbarous and equally unnecessary, their desolating
cruelty effecting nothing for the cause of justice or human liberty,
and to be regarded only as a return to primitive savagery.” They
called for peace conferences to precede military action,
international arbitration, armaments reduction, and disarmament.
Roosevelt went on to arbitrate an end to the war and win the Nobel
Peace Prize. Should we give the Shakers any credit? Maybe.
In 1989, the Nobel Peace Prize honored perhaps the most famous
communal pacifistic witness ever, that of the 14th Dalai Lama. This
Buddhist and Tibetan leader has nonviolently led the effort to save
the culture if not the independence of his native land since the
Chinese takeover in 1959. Even the recent Tibetan violence cannot
diminish his consistent pacifistic witness.
At a conference with the Hutterites at Bon Homme in South Dakota, we
were shown a graphic example of communal pacifists’ witness: graves
of two of their young men who were inducted against their
conscientious objection stand in WWI. Both were murdered in military
incarceration, then sent home in the uniforms they refused to wear.
You remember how the pacifistic Amish of Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
demonstrated the depth of their nonviolence and forgiveness when a
deranged man killed and wounded children in their school in 2006. In
their great grief the Amish not only forgave him, they sent
provisions to his family, which responded with appreciation to this
healing gesture.
I brought my “peace pole” today. It reminds me of the first one I
saw in the Atarashiki-mura (New Village) north of Tokyo. Its
six-foot-tall pole proclaims in eight different languages “May Peace
Prevail on Earth.” With my peace pole came a message that expresses
the communal New Village’s faith in the role of the individual as a
peacemaker. It states: “We are facing an age where the politics of
the world must be carried out by each individual. Every individual
who repeats the words ‛May Peace Prevail On Earth’ thus becomes a
great force for realizing peace in the world.” As Dr. Dean Ornish
observed: “When you embody peace, people around you feel it. . . .
When you meet hatred with love, fear with hope, that transforms you
and those around you.”
We know that pacifism is a radical position. It raises the
troublesome question of if, when, how, and how much force should be
used. But its communal witness clearly teaches us to address
conflicts on the lowest personal and community scales as soon as
possible. Christian pacifistic groups often follow the lowest-level
directive for conflict resolution in Matthew 18:15–17, 21–22.
Members first are to go alone to kindly discuss a dispute, then to
take one or two witnesses, and finally to bring the matter to the
community. Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof communities,
insisted on this process and reminded the members that “Only when
two people do not come to an agreement quickly is it necessary to
draw in a third person . . . .” Resolving problems quickly makes me
think of something I wrote a good while ago.
In the beginning the wound can be healed by a kiss
In the beginning the flood can be damned by a toothpick
In the beginning the fire can be snuffed by a breath
In the beginning the war can be avoided by a smile
In the beginning
Peace Lessons from Communal Authoritarianism
So let us look at our fourth and final lesson. This one derives from
communities’ attempts to control diversity, deviant behavior, and
authoritarianism. Communal experience teaches that the more
homogeneous the group the greater the conformity, unity of purpose,
and longevity. Homogeneous ethnic and religious communities with
deep common roots and commitments usually find it easier to achieve
that balance between unity and diversity that produces harmony.
Heterogeneous groups with fewer common ties and united mostly by
secular ideals usually find harmony and longevity significantly more
elusive.
All intentional communities—just like society at large—must deal
with deviant behavior. Their members are Homo sapiens—people not
only with proclivities for cooperation, benevolence, and altruism,
but also for aggression, territoriality, and hierarchical dominance.
At the end of a tour of the Deer Spring bruderhof in Connecticut, I
thanked the community as “a wonderful people.” When their
patriarchal leader, Hans Meyer, stood to respond, he said, “We are
NOT a wonderful people. We struggle every day to keep ourselves
under control and to obey the will of God.”
Communal groups, like other voluntary associations like churches, do
have important advantages over the general society. Members make
commitments, sometimes vows, to be in accord with the beliefs,
purposes, and practices of the organization and to obey its rules.
This lays a foundation for order, conformity, and peace. If members
do not conform, there are consequences: denial of privileges,
shunning as in Amish circles, and ultimately excommunication.
The sobering lesson from communal control of diversity and deviant
behavior is that, even with all their advantages, intentional
communities still find this a daunting task. And perhaps the
greatest challenge is to find ways of transferring communal
successes to larger and larger human venues, including nations. In
this, we must be realistic in considering the peacekeeping
disadvantages that nations face in managing their diversity and
deviant behavior. Except in theocracies, governments have no
spiritual authority. They can only follow the communal example to a
point: making laws and punishing violators. Perhaps shockingly, the
United States imprisons a greater percentage of its population than
any other country, and almost 50 percent of all prisoners worldwide.
All nations must accept newborns, legal immigrants, and naturalized
citizens. The United States tests the limits and potential of
diversity while holding to its motto E Pluribus Unum, “of many one.”
China is an amalgam of 56 ethnic groups. Iraq is torn by Kurdish,
Shiite, and Sunni differences. The diversified and disharmonious
Soviet Union lasted less than a century.
Results from communal laboratories suggest that nations should
cultivate a genuine harmony in diversity, a genuine unity of hearts,
minds, and spirits. India has taken the first bold initiative at a
state-sponsored communal experiment to unite international
diversity. With the blessing of the United Nations through UNESCO,
India founded Auroville in 1968 as “the first and only intentionally
endorsed ongoing experiment in human unity.” Seventeen hundred
people from 35 nations now live in communal Auroville attempting “to
realise human unity—in diversity.”
While we recognize the difficulties communities and governments have
in controlling their domains, we can never excuse their descent into
the abyss of authoritarianism. Charismatic, ego- and power-driven
leaders make unreasonable demands that rob their disciples of their
possessions, privacy, independent judgment, civil rights, and
sometimes their very lives. We know the celibacy of Ann Lee, George
Rapp, and monastic orders; the complex marriage and eugenic
experiment of John Humphrey Noyes at Oneida, New York; the polygamy
of Joseph Smith Jr. and Warren Jeffs, and the suicides of Jim Jones.
If leaders are restrained by consensus decision-making, such abuses
might not occur. Born out of the freedom-loving youth movement in
1972, Alpha Farm in Oregon pioneered this method—a process of open
discussion with full participation by all members until decisions
are arrived at unanimously, if possible. As you can imagine,
consensus decision-making can be lengthy, but it can keep the
authoritarian demon from the door while emphasizing the importance
of the individual in governing, conflict resolution, and peace.
Communal history shouts this lesson loudly: “Beware
Authoritarianism!” Authoritarian abuse must be questioned, resisted,
and rejected. This is true whether it raises its ugly head in the
name of God, of peace, or of security; be it in an intentional
community, a Nazi Germany, a Communist Soviet Union, or a democratic
United States of America.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the communal witnesses and lessons for peace we have
examined today lead us to conclude that even in community, peace
depends on each individual. All members are part of the matrix of
peace and any person out of order disturbs the peace of all. Each
individual must resolve his or her own conflicts within the communal
setting and arrive at internal control with the resources of his or
her own spiritual, moral, and rational grounding. Albert Bates of
The Farm community in Tennessee calls it “Reform by the square
inch.”
Yet, we also must conclude that, while peace is rooted in the
individual, it can only be displayed in community, in association
with others. Therefore, communities are the witness for peace.
Communities are the stage for acting out and demonstrating peace,
cooperation, and harmony. Only in relation to others can we know
ourselves fully and test our moral fiber.
How then can we individually and in community uphold peace, even
fight for peace, as contradictory as that might sound? We fight for
rights. We fight for principles. We fight for territory. We fight
for oil. At this time and this place let us find the resources and
resolve to fight for peace. This must mean doing battle armed with
love—love for ourselves, our Maker, our neighbors, and our world.
Again, Jesus reminds us: “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). As
revolutionary as this sounds, if we cannot embrace the truthful
negotiation and reasonable compromise that are the basis for
mutually deserved trust, we will repeat the misunderstanding,
hatred, and warfare that have characterized our traditional fight
for peace. In his March 2007 guidance on signal communities,
President Veazey urged “redemptive relationships in sacred
community. The restoring of persons to healthy or righteous
relationships with God, others, themselves, and the earth. . .
.”(D&C 163:2b). This will never be easy, but it is the way of all
true religion, good government, and proper reason. It is the only
way beyond the killing of more in the future than in the past.
Gandhi advised “Be the change you want to see in the world.” St.
Francis prayed “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.”
Therefore, let us sing out with all our hearts “Let there be peace
on earth and let it begin with me.” Let peace begin with me and you.
Let peace begin with me, you, and us. Let peace begin with me, you,
us, and them. Let us begin!