The “city of God” of Saint Augustine is a fundamental document in international relations, analyzing historical events – in this case the bag of Rome – through the lens of the Christian faith. This spring, Christian scholars have gathered in Tennessee in search of a revival of this secular and influential vision of the world in writing, research and teaching in IR. The conference of Christianity and international relations took place in March at Lee University in Cleveland. “It has really become obvious that there is really no Christian perspective in international relations, the discipline as we are teaching it at the moment. So, the perspective exists, but … I have not learned it in the higher school,” said the participant’s associate professor, Professor Peter Campbell of Baylor University. This article recounts some of the conference procedures.
The other participants included teachers. Michael McKoy (Wheaton College), Katherine Bryant (Westmont College), Ana Shipippey (Lee University), Chan Shin (Gordon College), Sukwon Lee (New York University), Justin Clardie (Northwest Nazarene University), Susan Haynes (Lipscomb University) and Tim Taylor (Wheaton College). A session was devoted to the revision of a project of “Christ and his Léviathans: a Christian introduction to international relations”, by Professor Robert Joustra of Redeemer University in Ontario, Canada. Joustra hopes that the book, which should be published by the end of the year, will help to fill the void of the IR Christian Stock Exchange. “Historically, it exists. It was simply not recovered, updated or updated in a contemporary way,” said Joustra about the IR Christian theory. “I have been able to find many things that have explicitly supported themselves on Christian foundations, theological concepts in terms of construction of international order, what we mean by justice, and what are the roles of states inside.”
Joustra said that the subject had started to decrease in the 1970s, to a few notable exceptions like Jim Skillen and Paul Marshall. Joustra said that his work was not intended to be a manual, but a start on how to see the global system in the context of the Christian faith. “How would a Christian approach the question of justice in international relations, and that could provide us with the Christian social and political tradition, theologically and conceptually … to apply and interrel the good news of the Gospel to the work of international politics?” Said Joustra.
The Christian theory of the IR comes from Augustin, while his most influential modern practitioner is Reinhold Niebuhr. The related field of classical realism presents a pantheon of philosophers of a variable religious perspective, notably Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Eh Carr and Hans Morgenthau and practitioners such as the American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and George Kennan. The two views begin with a vision of human nature as corrupt. But Christian Ir is distinct because he calls for morality on ideology in foreign policy. He maintains that even if states are motivated by personal interest due to the original sin, they are capable of good if they avoid utopia in favor of proximal gains.
IR Christian theorists see this principle in the biblical history of the “Babel tower” in Gen. 11: 1-9, in which the world gathers in unity, but their work moves God:
Then, they said: “Come, we build a city, with a tower that reaches the heavens, so that we can make a name for ourselves” … The Lord said: “If a people speaking the same language they have started to do this, then that they do not plan to do the city.
“Without a Christian foundation, individuals are sovereign of themselves, leading to self-orders,” said Lee.
The Christian IR is generally divided into: (1) Christian realism that teaches because there is no law on nations before the second coming, there is only the law between nations. Thus, he considers the capacities of the State as the priority of high power competition; and (2) Christian liberalism which emphasizes the role of state preferences and not only capacities. He sees the potential for cooperation and interdependence between states. A key principle is “democratic peace” – that democracies do not go to war with each other.
McKoy said that another familiar name should be part of the Christian tradition of IR – Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. He said that the King Sermon in 1963 “antidotes of fear” offers a torsion on the IR concept of a security dilemma, which explains how the movements of the States to protect himself – as seeking to join an alliance – the conflicts of the States. King wrote:
We generally think that war comes from hatred, but a meticulous examination of the answers will reveal a different sequence of events – first fear, then hatred, then war, then deeper hatred. If a nightmarish nuclear war switches off our world – God prohibits it – it will not be because Russia and America hated themselves for the first time, but because they feared first.
MCKOY said King asked how states have sought to face fear:
Our method to manage this fear was to wear the nth degree. Thus, the two camps contained in the world are engaged in a fever’s arms race. … “The larger weapons will express fear,” seem to say the nations. They only caused a greater fear. Thus, we are recalled in these turbulent and panic days to this wise affirmation of the New Testament: “Perfect love exposes fear”.
McKoy used the example of civil rights leaders who faced violence against themselves and their families, but did not respond in kind. King opposed the militant tactics of groups like the Black Panthers. “IR theorists have treated the dilemma of security as a failure of empathy and, therefore, to consider empathy as the solution. The king, based on a Christian anthropology, goes further by arguing that sacrificial love is necessary to overcome the security dilemma,” said McKoy.
Campbell said that he joined Christian Ir in the class by teaching classical realism before structural realism, which does not take into account in human nature. “The Christian perspective on war, and probably politics in general, is better summarized by CS Lewis in the weight of glory ” – of the perspective of the materialist individual, human beings are a flash in the pan and the institutions and states are the things that last,” said Campbell. “But for the Christian, the State and the institutions are only the thing for a moment, and the individuals last forever.”
The conference also focused on how the Christian IR can guide research and teaching. Haynes presented his research on how confessional groups was historically ignored in international aid and development. It started to change after the 2001 terrorist attacks against New York and Washington. “At the same time that security has started to focus a lot on non -state actors and terrorism, development literature began to really recognize the role of denominational actors in the supply of aid,” said Haynes. “There is an incredibly robust research program in this area, and it is completely omitted in all IR textbooks.” “So, the reality and current research are simply not brought back to our class.”
More recently, organizations and the World Bank have created offices for denominational initiatives, said Haynes. “They made a huge report on poverty and made a global investigation and found that many people in developing countries trust the confessional actors that they no longer trusted states, more than they trusted international organizations,” said Haynes.
Taylor presented research documenting the growing abortion rate based on Down syndrome in the world, aggravated by the state of the opposite opinions. “The United States has the highest rate of the non-term drop-down syndrome in the world developed at 67% completed. This is actually the best rate. Denmark has the highest rate at 98%. Denmark also has universal screening,” said Taylor, adding that his research has revealed that Christian parents have a higher non-termination rate. Taylor advised caution when using disability as a “flourishing” states measure. “I think our measures are descriptive, but become normative over time,” he said. “I guess my encouragement for all IR researchers are to pay very attention to the measures they push.” “It is good to see income inequalities. But often there are things I think are really important that are not completely measured. ”
Lee said that educators seeking a way to introduce Christian IR to their classes can focus on the impact of faith in “Shaping liberal democratic traditions”:
By wearing theological principles in conversations on political theory, international relations and the economy, we have a unique opportunity to question conventional secular accounts and to restore God as the fundamental source of human dignity and freedom.
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