Jonathan Martin

Last night, Renovatus had the great honor of hosting a screening of the film With God on Our Side, with Producer/Director Porter Speakman Jr. and Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer as our special guests. It was a powerful, and for me at least, gut-wrenching experience. Speakman’s film is a devastating critique of Christian Zionism, which often results in uncritical support for any and all policies of Israel as a nation-state. In North America especially, this system is deeply related to dispensationalism, a relatively modern theological system that interprets Scripture (particularly as it relates to eschatology–how we think about the end of time), according to a particular grid.

Porter’s film tells a side of the story that is not often heard in the evangelical Church (and I fear in our context, the Pentecostal Church). In his own words, as an 80-minute documentary it does not present all sides of the conflict, but rather confronts the Western Church with stories and struggles of brothers and sisters whose voice is not often heard. I had tried to prepare our congregation that this is a provocative film that would promote robust conversations. And in that regard, the evening did not disappoint. We had a packed house which included many that were not from the Renovatus community. And as anybody who attended the Q and A last night would tell you, the conversations generated from the floor got somewhat heated.

I had many things ringing in my ear when the evening was over. First and foremost, I am proud and thankful to serve as pastor of one of the greatest churches in the world, a brave community that forces people to ask hard questions about God, the Church, culture and the world. The day we stop doing that is the day I get out of the business. We are the people of God, and we believe the local church is the hope of the world. So we are not remotely squeamish about having hard conversations and raising difficult questions. In volatile times, this is a crucial part of our vocation. I have said before and will say again–Christians who are content with pat answers and are unwilling or disinclined to wrestle with big questions about what it means to be the Church are NOT going to feel comfortable at Renovatus. Keeping you uncomfortable is practically a core value of our local body.

This is all a long way of saying I was thrilled with the turnout last night (including those who came out to essentially protest the film), and thrilled at the hours of conversation I was blessed to have when it was over. I am especially thankful for the courage and vision of both Speakman and Sizer, who showed exemplary grace under fire.

But it did leave me with nagging questions about my own role in all of this. I still have the first-hand accounts of Palestinian brothers and sisters ringing in my ears, stories I feel personally accountable to share. The weight of all I have learned under my spiritual grandmother, Margaret Gaines, is tremendous. And if I am honest, in the course of several years of intensity in leading a thriving young Christian community, I do not feel like I have stewarded those stories well. I have in my possession a document that (so far as I know) nobody else has access to–a short but potent little book Margaret wrote called Small Enough to Stop the Violence. It is unpublished to date. Margaret is often received as a saint within my tradition, so we often regard her life of service with a kind of reverent awe–while utterly ignoring what she has had to say. She is 78 now. As I sat in the film with tears streaming down my cheeks, I knew I had to do something with what I have been given (even if that means we self-publish the book).

Initially, I thought I might share some sections of the manuscript online as a way of generating interest. But then I remembered another document in which I already have done much of this… I contributed a chapter to a book called Pentecostals and Peaceamaking, and I have no idea where it is in terms of production. But as these issues are more pressing on my heart than ever, I thought it would be appropriate to share some of it with you here. As you will see, late in the chapter I include large chunks of Margaret’s unpublished work. I wanted to share it with you in its entirety to give you the broader contours of my pastoral concerns, both in context of these complex matters in the Middle East and beyond. Ultimately, the chapter attempts to capture something of the essence of Christian peacemaking in our own city. I wrote it in 2008, and it really could be much stronger. But I’m sharing it with you with relatively few edits, believing that there is something of the shape and scope of the ideas that need to be heard, albeit in an imperfect form. Without further ado, here is part one (several other sections to follow–so hang with me these next few days. Several names have been changed for obvious reasons.):

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I will never forget the Saturday afternoon last fall when I heard screaming coming from our front yard. I walked out to see Dennis and Elizabeth Donahue, leaders in our church, in a tense confrontation with a man and woman in our driveway. A founding partner of a Charlotte real estate business, Dennis is known for his jovial demeanor and disarming wit, so he was about the last person I would have expected to see in a heated showdown outside my front door. The last person except for Elizabeth, who spent years as the public relations director at Sea World—the picture of cordiality and restraint.

On a grass roots level, Dennis and Elizabeth have spearheaded the effort for several years to help a friend in our church community named Carol. A neighbor of the Donahues, Carol lived in poverty and an abusive relationship with her boyfriend for much of her life. Now well into her 50’s, she was kicked out by her landlord (really more a slumlord), Dennis and Elizabeth felt God calling them to help get her into an apartment across the street from my house. To this day, there is a group within our church that works together to make sure all of her physical needs are provided for. When they helped get her out of the abuse, they met the wrath of her ex-boyfriend, a man with a violent temper and a host of addictions. That day, he and his mother had followed Dennis and Elizabeth from Carol’s apartment until they got them to pull over in front of our house.

As I stepped out on the porch, I heard the man, Nolan, hurling every filthy epithet imaginable to Dennis and Elizabeth. As he directed crude, sexually explicit insults at Elizabeth, I watched a flushed Dennis (who, like me, is about 6’5”) about to lose his cool. In a moment of fury, he actually threw down his glasses and started to walk past me, saying “I don’t care if you are here Pastor…” I simply put my hand on his chest and said “We aren’t going to do that, Dennis.” Though every impulse in him was screaming to fight for his wife, he didn’t resort to violence. After some calming words from us (and some even raunchier responses from Nolan), he finally sped off, all the while shouting “I know where you live Donahue…and I’ll be back!!!”

The Donahues were shook up from the experience. They had been brave enough to bring peace to a woman in need, and both human and demonic principalities and powers had been threatened by their presence. The powers came back roaring—and they were resisted. They were not resisted with violence or force. But they did come eyeball to eyeball with a Christian couple who were not going to stand idly by while their sister in Christ was abused, willing to stand between the oppressor and the oppressed without fear. Such is the toughness demanded by those who would endure the gaze of violence in Jesus’ name.

Ironically, those who embrace the call to Christian peacemaking are often stigmatized as being “passive” or unwilling to confront unjust principalities and powers as they are revealed. But our congregation has learned this is far from the truth. This is especially strange given the reality that those most committed to Christ’s peace are often more likely, not less, to face down the powers of darkness.

The Donahues’ story is just one example in our community of a people attempting to bring the peace of Christ in Charlotte, NC. As a product and now a preacher of “the Christ-haunted” American South, I am learning along with my congregation something of how challenging it is to witness for the peaceable kingdom. In the south, we have always been good at naming our enemies. It somehow doesn’t seem responsible much less realistic to talk about making peace when the world seems too be full of enemies of the cross. At its worst, talk of peacemaking may degenerate into bland accounts of tolerance and acceptance. Christian peacemakers seem to be in denial, unwilling or unable to take seriously either the reality or the challenge of hostile times. We may be seen as wishful thinking hippies who lack the courage to acknowledge the violent milieu in which we live.

Given the near giddiness within our church culture towards apocalyptic signs, even worse we might be seen as impediments to fulfilling prophecy, those who would try to turn back the clock on events that must occur in order for Christ to return. In the face of potentially cataclysmic events to come and in light of our own inner violence, is there any real reason to be hopeful toward kingdom peace in apocalyptic times?

Indeed it would seem that critics of our mission are not entirely wrong, if Christian peacemaking were defined as simply playing down our differences and looking on the sunny side of life. I am neither particularly inclined to be optimistic about human progress in matters of war and peace, nor am I inclined to suggest that the church does not have real enemies in the world. As the saying goes, it is not paranoia when they really are out to get you. Thankfully, a Pentecostal vision for peacemaking is by no means contingent on naïve optimism, nor pretending that the Church doesn’t have enemies. On the contrary, we are given the resources and the language with which to recognize our enemies. The reason we name our enemies is only to identify who it is that Jesus has called us to bless. We are not inherently optimistic about human nature, the myth of progress, the economy, or the future of American politics. And there is nothing remotely sentimental about looking deeply into the eyes of those who would do us harm and, as Jesus did with Judas, speak the word “friend” to our enemies.

Even so, to speak with pastoral boldness a word of kingdom peace in a violent world is to invite suspicion and even pity from sincere people who assume that we have just not adequately understood the charts and graphs supplied by popular end-times enthusiasts. Dispensational theology assumes very particular outcomes, and gives us the comfort of knowing what’s ahead (however dark or inevitable the future might be). Given such inevitabilities, why fight the future—especially if it is God’s future? A steady diet of such teaching has not only bred a passivity among Pentecostal Christians towards issues of peace, but even a hostility towards those who would hope not accept it. In the face of such prophetic certainty, to take anything less than a defensive posture towards our enemies seems not only irresponsible, but even treasonous.

(part two to follow)