Category Archives: Peace

Looking beyond the crises: A new agenda for peace

by Jim Hodgson

For years, I have gathered and often shared the stories of how people organize for a better future for their communities and the planet. A few days ago, I started gathering articles as they appeared about the ecological crisis.

And I am alarmed – though the rational part of my brain reminds me that I have long-known of the intersection of ecological disaster with civil conflict and war. 

In 1971, I was 13 when I attended my first demonstration. It was about peace and the environment: opposing the third in a series of U.S. nuclear tests at Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands between Alaska and Siberia. Again today, war and ongoing failure to respect ecology bring us closer to collapse. A previous test in 1969 gave rise to the Don’t Make A Wave Committee in Vancouver. The group became the global movement Greenpeace. (Photo: an old clipping from the Summerland Review, November 1971).

Addressing the UN General Assembly a week ago, Secretary General António Guterres pointed to the two canals most vital to world trade and management of supply chains.

Trade via the Panama Canal is down 36 per cent in the past month because of low water levels – a consequence of the climate crisis. 

Trade via the Suez Canal is down by 42 per cent, since the start of Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea more than three months ago. Those attacks in turn are a foreseeable consequence of the excessive – many argue “genocidal” – Israeli response to the Hamas-led attack on Israeli civilians from the Gaza strip last Oct. 7.

The Pressenza news service reports this week that for the first time on record, the average global temperature exceeded 1.5 degree Celsius over a 12-month period, according to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Last month was also the warmest January globally since C3S records began in 1950, with an average air surface temperature 0.7 degrees Celsius higher than the January average from 1991 to 2020.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic Ocean system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report published Feb. 9 in the journal Science Advances. Such collapse could lead to further sea level rise and cause temperatures to plunge dramatically in Europe and rise in the southern hemisphere.

A new UN report shows that about 44 per cent of migratory species worldwide are declining in population. More than a fifth of the nearly 1,200 species monitored by the UN are threatened with extinction.

In Mexico, prolonged drought led to sharp drops in production of corn and avocados last year. Lack of rainfall has affected water reservoirs used for agriculture. Across the country, water storage is at 42.7 per cent of normal, and down 34.8 per cent from 2022. This is leading producers to plant less in the winter 2023-24 season. Images from La Jornada: (left) “corn production dropped 40 per cent because of the drought;” (centre) “Monarch butterflies occupy 59.3 per cent less surface area than the previous year because of climate impacts;” (right) “Industrial activity in Iztapalapa (the east side of Mexico City) could be paralyzed for lack of water.”

In January, Mexico’s national weather service reported that 2023 was the driest in 82 years, with just 21.1 per cent of normal rainfall. Last year also saw the largest amount of land afflicted by wildfires.

The Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas has published an interactive map where you look at drought risks in any part of the planet. Half of Mexico and large parts of the western United States are in red, along with most of northern Alberta. 

Raúl Zibechi, the Uruguayan observer of social movements in Latin America, published a column recently that examined these and other risks.

“We continue to be stuck in the minuteness (‘chiquitismo’) of consumerist and narcissist daily life,” he wrote – “the latest telephone or clothing; the football game where we are merely spectators; the electoral campaign that only entertains, but does not resolve anything profound. This is the strategic triumph of capitalism: taking us headlong toward collapse while we look at the screen, ignoring the destruction and massacre of life.”

Views from Corpus Christi, Texas, June 2007. (Photos: Jim Hodgson)

In the speech by António Guterres that I noted above, he denounced the wars and ecological destruction, and offered some signs of ways forward. He spoke of A New Agenda for Peace.

“Peace is a rallying cry,” he said. “It is a call to action.” And he went on to describe the actions that must be taken: ceasefires, negotiations, addressing causes of migration, protection of species, debt and development finance, real action on climate, and reform of UN systems including the Security Council.

“We must also make peace with the planet. Humanity has waged a war we can only lose: our war with nature,” Guterres said. “For my part, I can guarantee that I will never give up pushing for peace.”

Liberation theologians see relationships as key to overcoming Israel-Palestine conflict

A demonstration in Toronto during the July 2014 Gaza War.

by Jim Hodgson

For people like me whose faith found new grounding in the waves of liberation theology that have emerged over the past 55 years or so, a global conversation about solidarity with Palestine offered a chance to reflect with people who are living with the effects not just of the present war, but of generations of conflict that preceded it.

The zoom conversation – “Transnational Solidarity Amongst Liberation Theologies: Palestine & Beyond” – organized by the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre (a United Church of Canada global partner) in Jerusalem, was held Nov. 10 and drew together about 100 people from around the world.

Sabeel’s director, Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek (an Anglican priest) spoke of both the immediacy of the “crushed children of Gaza” and of the urgent need to “understand the other, respect the other, accept the other. Without those, there is not a healthy or productive exchange.”

“These are absolutely crucial when we think about rebuilding relationships (not just homes), and building solidarity for the future of all the people of Palestine and inside Israel,” he said, adding: “Have in mind the tragedy and the suffering; that is the departure point for us.”

Ateek encouraged those who would be in solidarity with Palestinians to be “pro-peace, pro-understanding, pro-liberation, and pro-reconciliation. We need to be looking for justice in accordance with international law.”

Sabeel is a space where community reflection continues to drives new action for justice and peace, and to build relationships far beyond Jerusalem. You can also follow Canadian Friends of Sabeel (CFOS) on Facebook.

Dr. Farid Esack of the University of Johannesburg (and a member of the United Church of Canada’s first partners council a decade ago) spoke of the reflection-action process in liberation theology that drives praxis beyond theorizing. “We must always reflect on our praxis, and make that affect our praxis,” he said. “Colonialism, imperialism and capitalism always view the Earth as territory to be captured.” For Palestinians, he added, the task is to elaborate a vision of what a “post-Zionist society would look like, and for the rest of us, to follow that.”

Esack, a Muslim scholar of liberation theology in South Africa, emphasized the need to “not demonize all Jews and to always fight anti-Semitism, but I will not fall into the white trap, not privilege that above other forms of racism.”

In response to a question about the role of inter-religious dialogue in seeking justice and peace, he warned against platitudes and “a butterfly dance of escapism and digression.”

“The occupation is not a result of Jews not understanding Muslims or Christians not understanding Jews. In liberation theology, the priority now is inter-religious solidarity against occupation, the armaments industry, the military, and not to remove attention from the occupation.”

This is to put it mildly, but global South views of current conflicts tend to be different from the positions taken by leaders in countries like Canada. A Brazilian Methodist feminist theologian, Rev. Dr. Nancy Cardoso, hoped to press that point as one of the speakers invited to be part of the Sabeel conference. Working now in Angola, she was unable to join the zoom call because of internet problems. I have known her for many years, and contacted her later because I was curious about what she would have said.

“Doing liberation theology implies a distrust of the tradition of bourgeois knowledge, a guerrilla war relationship with the church, university and their bunkers and dictators, a difficult relationship with publishers and their audiences, because it is always marked by class struggle,” says the text she shared with me. 

She drew attention to the actions of “Christian Zionists” – Christian fundamentalists who think Israel needed to be re-founded so as to bring about the return of Jesus Christ – whose “apocalyptic and hypocritical visions… dream with the past.”  

“Reconstruction of hope,” Cardoso insisted, “to be real and not illusion, should spring from the poor and excluded.”

The methods of liberation theology demand re-reading of religious texts including the Bible from the perspective of the poor, she said, and “returning the text methodologically to poor communities, not as a book of power and authority but as a possibility of dialogue with other narratives of faith present in cultures.”

In the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on an Israeli music festival and kibbutz, and then the overwhelming Israeli military response, images like these proliferated in social media – a sign of the hope, perhaps, that the rest of the world holds for peace between Palestinians and Israelis and among religions.
You can find some good content analysis of Canadian reporting on Palestine and Israel at The Breach.

Talking about peace when there is no peace*

Jim Hodgson, May 23, 2023

Peace is a pre-condition for any possibility of transforming the global economy for the sake of humanity and the Earth – or, more modestly, achieving those elusive Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

In the weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I added my voice to those of others who pleaded for peace talks. In recent weeks, new efforts from church leaders and global South political leaders are underway to bring the sides together. But peace initiatives are either ignored or disdained by most media and “Western” leaders.

Headlines and images from Mexico’s La Jornada and Argentina’s Página 12 newspapers. On the left, Lula asks that a new Cold War between China and the United States be avoided and defends the use for currencies other than the U.S. dollar for international trade. On the right, from top: Zelensky asks for support from G7 powers; G7 leaders create new sanctions against Russia and debated in Hiroshima the nuclear arsenals of other countries; The Vatican makes its peace effort official so as to end the war in Ukraine.

Case in point: the participation at the recent G7 meeting in Hiroshima of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Financial Times dismissed Lula and Modi as Russian President Vladimir “Putin’s apologists.” Their participation was eclipsed by that of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who did meet with Modi, but blamed scheduling conflicts for not meeting Lula – and then joked with reporters that Lula was more disappointed than he was. 

Well, yes. Lula’s interest in peace has everything to do with funds diverted to war and away from efforts for authentic development that could help alleviate the other crises of climate change and migration. (Lula also said that Zelensky did not show up for a meeting they had scheduled.)

In Hiroshima,  Lula criticized the division (or re-division) of countries into two antagonistic blocs and abandonment of a multipolar world that seemed to be emerging in the wake of the pre-1991 Cold War.

Meanwhile, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was not even invited. But he and other African leaders are involved in a peace initiative to end the war in Ukraine. In a news conference May 17, he said he had had “separate telephone calls” with Putin and Zelensky over the weekend, where he presented an initiative drawn up by Zambia, Senegal, the Republic of Congo, Uganda, Egypt and South Africa. Leaders of the six countries say they plan to travel to Russia and Ukraine “as soon as is possible.”

In his weekly newsletter on May 15, Ramaphosa said South Africa would not be drawn “into a contest between global powers” despite having faced “extraordinary pressure” to do so.

“We do not accept that our non-aligned position favours Russia above other countries. Nor do we accept that it should imperil our relations with other countries,” Ramaphosa said.

During the same week, Chinese envoy Li Hui visited Moscow, his first stop in a European tour that would also take him to Kyiv, to develop a 12-point plan proposed by Beijing on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion. 

Last September, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for establishment of a Commission for Dialogue and Peace that would facilitate the search for a solution through negotiations. 

Nobody has a “magical formula to achieve peace,” writes Juan Pablo Duch, La Jornada’s Moscow correspondent. “But [proponents of peace] hope that Russia and Ukraine would establish a ceasefire and sit down to negotiate their conditions with the objective of putting an end to the bloodshed and devastation. All that is lacking is that Moscow and Kiev by open to making concessions – the first not wanting to cede Ukrainians regions already annexed and the latter refusing to lose territory – but without concessions, it does not seem possible to open a path toward peace in a war that, say what you will, only brings calamities.”

WCC delegation with Ukrainian church leaders in Kyiv on May 11 (WCC photo); Patriarch Kirill with WCC general secretary in Moscow on May 17 (ROC photo).

Meanwhile, the World Council of Church and Pope Francis have both renewed their efforts for peace. 

In mid-May, a delegation led by WCC general secretary Jerry Pillay visited church and government leaders in Kyiv and Moscow. In Kyiv, the WCC delegation met with senior leaders of both the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, two churches whose dispute has intensified since the Russian invasion. In Moscow, they met with Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church and widely viewed as a supporter of President Putin.

For his part, Pope Francis has given Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi the task of leading a mission in hopes it can “ease tensions” in the Ukraine war and lead to a path of peace. The pope has said has said he would go to Kyiv if such a journey would help bring peace, but said that could happen only if he could also visit Moscow.

* The phrase “peace, peace, when there is no peace” is found in Jeremiah 6:14 and later at 8:11. It is also found in Ezekiel 13:10 and 16. The direct criticism is of those who build flimsy walls and smear them with whitewash: a makeshift solution to a problem. The metaphor then and now is points to poor leadership. In our time, we can think of leaders who promise that war will lead to peace. “They have treated the wounds of my people carelessly,” writes the prophet Jeremiah, “saying ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”

War Never Again – Westerplatte, Gdansk, Poland (site of the first battle of World War II in 1939).