Risking Peace

A Holiday Greeting from Burkhard Paetzold, serving as Regional Liaison for Central and Eastern Europe, based in Germany

December 2017

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6

Dear Friends,

I wish you a peaceful Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

Peaceful?!

These days, we are flooded by reports about wars and proxy-wars, and it looks like some politicians — instead of calming down — feel they should add fuel to the fire and return to saber-rattling. With this attitude, they hold millions of people hostage. In particular, when these politicians are leaders of the most powerful nations.

There seems to be an escalation in threatening each other with more and more arms, underlined by stronger and stronger words. Such things have always happened in a step-by-step process, but can escalate much faster in times of Twitter.

My mind goes back to the time of the so-called Cold War. The official doctrine in the east and west was deterrence. Some people thought this would save peace, but as the peace movement in Central Europe noticed, this fragile deterrence will never be static. Rather, it will always entail ongoing escalation. If it had failed during the Cold War, we in Central Europe might have become the nuclear battlefield — which means eradicated.

I remember a paradigm shift that was advocated for by the Palme Commission. The basic idea was that in the nuclear age, peace and security cannot be achieved against each other, but only together as a common security (others call it security partnership). Features of common security are: consider the need for security of the other side, relinquish weapons to build trust and reduce fear, and keep only those arms that show your defensive intentions.

Olof Palme was a Swedish prime minister who was assassinated in 1986. To honor his life and commitment to promoting peace, in 1987, peace groups and churches called for an Olof Palme Peace March on both sides of the iron curtain to advocate a nuclear-free zone of 30 kilometers.

This was the first time churches and independent peace groups in East Germany were allowed to speak about our Christian vision that comes from our faith in the Prince of Peace and call for unilateral steps to put an end to the arms race and nuclear deterrence. I took part in the pilgrimage that included visits to former Nazi concentration camp memorials at Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen and Terezin. This was designed to show that we learned our lesson from WW II and recognize our responsibility.

This was 30 years ago. The iron curtain doesn’t exist anymore — or has it moved?

For the 30th anniversary of the pilgrimage — September 3, 2017 — I took a bike tour with friends to remember the 1987 peace pilgrimage path. We visited the memorials, planted a tree, attended a worship service and talked with different eye witnesses of the 1987 peace march.

In the eighties, I wrote an essay that was published as an east German church booklet, “Possibilities and Impossibilities of Unilateral Disarmament — the Concept of Gradualism.”

The most common argument says unilateral disarmament is unrealistic. But we also know that sustainable social justice comes from non-violent action (Gandhi, M.L. King). If violence today can lead to mass destruction and mass murder, we have to understand and pursue the above-mentioned concept of “common security” and risk calculated unilateral steps to end violence and potential wars.

Even Bonhoeffer, who accepted the need to fight the evil Nazi government with violent means as a last resort, affirmed in the long run: “There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe.”

Jesus talks about risking peace when he says, “bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:29) and “the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (James 3:18).

Since complete unilateral defenselessness seems unrealistic, we can still work gradually to build peace and trust. In a nutshell, the concept of gradualism says that when escalation has happened in a step-by-step process, there must be likewise a way to deescalate in a step-by-step process of small unilateral steps. If big unilateral steps will make one defenseless and unprotected, one can choose unilateral steps of a small size that do not risk much, but show a willingness to risk peace rather than war and to induce a “dis-arms race.”

Recently, I had to search my archives for preparing a memorial service in my home church in Petershagen honoring an earlier pastor and his wife (Jürgen and Erika Henkys). Here I found in my Stasi files — the reports of the East German security police, which I, like many, was able to request after the end of the East German regime — a report that describes a worship service in the early eighties in my home church during which we illustrated in a little play how escalation works. Block by block, each block marked with a name like “fear,” “lack of communication,” “militarization,” “arms trade,” etc., we constructed a wall. After building the wall, we showed how a wall that has been built in a step-by-step process can be torn down by removing stone after stone. A very simple image most of us have experienced in our personal lives. The Stasi spy, who was present at almost all church meetings, found this a shocking insight.

Did the iron curtain move?

It was déjà vu when I visited Lampedusa (an Italian island close to the North African coast) on October 3 for an ecumenical memorial service commemorating the tragedy of October 3, 2013, when 368 migrants drowned just in front of the island.

The worship — again — used the image of laying bricks for a wall between “us” and “them.” These bricks were marked “Prejudice,” “Fear,” “Slavery,” “Exploitation,” “Selfishness” and “Militarization.”

This stone wall was torn down — again — by removing the bricks one after another.

Lampedusa has a little museum showing the few belongings of those who died and a cemetery full of untold stories. In 2015, a group of German artists took away some of the symbolic crosses of those who got killed when trying to climb over the Berlin Wall and brought them to the Mediterranean coast to become a memorial of the thousands who have died when trying to enter Europe from the global south.

Did the iron curtain move?

The worship in Lampedusa was a component of the international conference on migration I had the privilege of attending September 30–October 4. Living and Witnessing the Border, organized by Mediterranean Hope and the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy (FCEI), brought together Christians from all over Europe and several guests from the US.

While the conference was underway, International Peacemaker Paola Schellenbaum of the Waldensian Church in Italy, together with a wider group of global peacemakers, visited PC(USA) churches and presbyteries to present the mission of Mediterranean Hope.

In late November, the German Sanctuary Movement held a forum in Berlin during which PC(USA) pastor Robert Bashear from New York shared stories of Christians engaging in activism at the US-Mexican border and European activists discussed their efforts to save refugees at the Mediterranean and other European borders. They promoted and asked for signatures for a joint declaration based on the “Commissioners Resolution: on Affirming Principles of Sanctuary in Response to the Global Escalation in the Number of Displaced Person/Refugees” from the PC(USA) GA meeting held in Portland in 2016.

Let me finish with my humble translation of the last verse of one of my favored German church songs (“Gib Frieden, Herr, gib Frieden,” by the above-mentioned former pastor of my home church, Jürgen Henkys).

“Make us brave to reach out and to talk without lying and turn us into a sign showing that peace will win.”

I wish you God’s blessing for such a task wherever you are, and I kindly ask you to pray for and support my ministry.

Grace and peace be with you,

Burkhard