John Dear
The Need for Prophets for Peace and Justice in a Culture of War and Injustice
One reason for the world’s violence, poverty and wars lies in our crisis of ethics and leadership. Instead of pursuing a culture of morality, we have descended into a culture of immorality. Instead of leadership that truly leads us toward greater disarmament, justice, and peace; we are misled, brought backward toward the dark ages of poverty, greed, and permanent war--the jungle.
By a culture of immorality, I mean the fundamental immorality of institutionalized violence that leaves two billion people hungry, homeless, destitute, ill, illiterate, and unemployed. Any culture that executes its prisoners, bombs children abroad and maintains thousands of weapons of mass destruction, I submit, has descended into grave immorality. Yet today we regard these horrors as normal, legitimate, even natural.
“Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness,” Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote. “For modern society, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes and the customs of a particular community. We have unconsciously applied Einstein’s theory of relativity, which properly described the physical universe to the moral and ethical realm.”
Moral leadership requires a vision of peace and justice for the entire human family. This vision goes beyond our national borders to see the benefits of global peace and justice for ourselves and all people. Visionary leaders lift that vision up for all to see and then point the way forward to make that vision of peace a reality here and now. If we had authentic, moral leaders, everyone would be inspired to join the great work at hand--the task of abolishing hunger, poverty, homelessness, the death penalty, war and nuclear weapons. Because we would be inspired, the spirit of peace would spread like a holy contagion, and justice “would roll down like waters.”
Our immoral culture of violence is the natural consequence of a failure of leadership. Authentic leaders concerned with the noble principles of truth, love, justice and peace, would never lead their people to wage war, oppress the poor, or maintain nuclear weapons. They would not risk death for their people or other people. They would never adopt policies that destroy the environment. Today, the culture of war, backed by its media and corporate billionaires, pulls the strings for its misleading puppet politicians to reap huge profits for the oil and weapons industries. Instead of pursuing noble principles, our misleaders have no vision of truth, love, justice or peace. They literally can not imagine such a world. They certainly do not want such a world. They are happy to rake in the billions for their corporate sponsors, turn their backs on suffering humanity, and preserve their own immorality.
Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrated moral leadership. When he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1964, he upheld that vision of peace in his Oslo address, a vision we rarely hear: “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today’s mortar burst and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that one day humankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land.”
One of the many blessings of this work has been the privilege of knowing some of the great moral leaders of our time. I would like to reflect on one of them, Cesar Chavez.
Cesar Chavez, Apostle of Nonviolence
Cesar Chavez was the founder of the United Farm Workers, but he was much more than a labor organizer. He fasted, prayed, marched, picketed and boycotted on behalf of the poor and the day laborer, but most interestingly, he espoused a strict nonviolence in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King. He became one of the world’s beacons of nonviolence.
Cesar Chavez was born on March 31, 1927 into a family of farmworkers. After his father lost his farm, his family migrated from Arizona to California as itinerant farmers. In the 1950s, he studied the Catholic church’s social teachings on the rights of workers, and became a community organizer. In 1962, Cesar founded the National Farm Workers Association with Dolores Huerta. In 1965, they began a five-year boycott against grape growers that rallied millions of supporters to the UFW. In 1968, Cesar undertook a 25-day fast to reaffirm the UFW commitment to nonviolence. “For us,” Cesar said, “nonviolence is more than academic theory; it is the very lifeblood of our movement.”
At the end of that famous fast, Cesar called everyone to take up the nonviolent struggle for justice. “I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of humanity is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice,” he said. “To be human is to suffer for others. God help us to be human.” Later, in the 1970s, Cesar led the largest, most successful farm strike in U.S. history, calling for a grape, lettuce and Gallo wine boycott that drew the support of over 17 million Americans.
Eventually, the UFW moved their headquarters to Keene, California and named their compound, “La Paz.” Pledged to voluntary poverty, Cesar never earned more than $5,000 a year. In 1984, Cesar called for another grape boycott to protest the use of cancer-causing pesticides which killed farmworkers and their children. The boycott gained new national recognition in July, 1988, when Cesar fasted for 36 days “as an act of penance for those who know they could or should do more.”
A few months before he died, I interviewed him for a Catholic peace journal. “I’m always hopeful,” he told me. “I know it doesn’t take everybody in the world to get things done. It takes a few and those few are there. So, it’s not a question of converting anyone or getting people to make a new commitment. The commitments are there. We just have to find them. That’s a hard thing. Getting the word out, communicating, giving people some action they can take. Together, there will be a great impact.
“We have a rule not to write or to preach about nonviolence,” he continued. “I’ve never written a word about nonviolence. There are people like you who have written all about nonviolence. We don’t have to write about it, interpret it, or dissect it. It’s very simple for us. We just do it. Nonviolence has to go beyond the rhetoric. There’s no real trick to being nonviolent if you’re in your room praying the rosary. Anybody can do that. But how about being nonviolent in the face of violence? That’s where it really happens.
“In the early days of the struggle, I talked a lot about nonviolence, more than I should have,” he continued. “And so, we had many people running around like saints with their hands folded together, looking like angels. So I said, ‘No, you don’t have to go around like you’re in another world to be nonviolent. That’s not the idea. Be yourselves and do things, but just don’t use violence.’ Nonviolence is not passivity. It requires real action. You have to get beyond the talking, writing and planning stage and get into real action if you want to change anything. Things change when you actually confront people, as in our case, the grape industry. So it is very important to concentrate on public action for justice and peace. Without action, things are not going to change. But with action, things happen. That’s my recommendation: Get involved with public action for justice and peace.”
As we concluded the conversation, I asked him about his accomplishments, and his response, I think, defines: “There’s a difference between being of service and being a servant,” he observed. “If you are of service, you serve at your convenience. You will say, ‘Oh, I can’t do this today at 5:00 or on Sunday, but perhaps I can next week.’ If you are a servant, you are at their convenience. You are at their service all the time. You are there to serve people. That’s faith and commitment.”
We Can All Become Moral Leaders
In a culture of violence and war, authentic moral leadership inspires us to feed the hungry, house the homeless, educate all children, employ the unemployed, fund universal healthcare, abolish war, support nonviolent solutions to world conflict, and dismantle our arsenals so that we can live in peace with everyone. Moral leaders make it easier for us to be moral.
Each one of us needs to carry on the legacy and pursue the noble causes of justice, disarmament and peace. Each one of us is called to reject violence and take up the path of active nonviolence. Each one of us can become a moral leader. If we do, we might just be able to transform our immoral culture into a culture of morality.
