Review and Excerpts from

James W Skillen

With or Against the World

Americas's Role Among the Nations

Rowman and Littlefield 2005

ISBN 0-7425-3522-3

Thinking about Politics (3)

This is the third review in our "Thinking about Politics" series. I have been reviewing books that promote Christian political thought. In his overview of Christian political theory in Visions and Illusions (2003), David Koyzis is confident that a distinct, biblically-directed theoretical option is available for Christian political theorists to do their work in an academic context where visions and ideologies compete.

Jim Skillen's In Pursuit of Justice (2004) presents a Christian democratic rationale for developing Government policy about families, welfare provision, racial justice, education, environmental stewardship, education freedoms and electoral reform. Both books are useful for politically active Christians who want guidance about how to shape their political stewardship as citizens, party members or elected representatives.

So far so good. Christian politics seems to be a viable option in local and national terms. Still, as we know, local politics is shaped by developments on the national canvas. And national politics is always "under the pump" from forces in the international arena. So what about this global context? Can we open the newspaper, turn on the box, and interpret the daily news from around the world with a viable Christian perspective? How should 9/11 and its aftermath be interpreted? Is there a truly Christian response to terrorism? What about a Christian perspective on globalization? Can we develop a critical understanding of the place of our own nation among all the other nations of the world? And most important, is there any Christian basis from which to evaluate America's standing in the world?

These are tough questions. By now readers of these reviews will expect a resolute "Yes!" from me to the questions I have asked. And indeed the rest of this review will explain why Jim Skillen's With or Against the World (2005) is an extremely good resource to answer such questions. Skillen argues in a way that commends biblical Christianity. He asks "Did 9/11 change the world?" (Chapter One) and analyses the problematic of the "war on terrorism". Formerly for a war to be waged it had to be just and to be just it had to fulfil certain "just war" criteria. In order for a Government to sanction war a clear end was in view. The "war on terrorism" does not have, indeed cannot have, such an expectation. The Bush administration, in describing its response to the evil of terrorism and rogue states as a "war", in fact commits the United States to what could turn out to be endless warfare and no conclusion.

Let me include some biographical reflections here to give readers a picture of the kind of lifelong work the author has been doing. Skillen's first published article was back in 1969. Since then has been writing about political theory and public policy and also about how the bible should be interpreted in relation to our political and other human responsibilities. This present book is part of a development spanning 4 decades which brings a lot of his previous reflections together. This also involves his evaluation of his own country's politics. The first article I read of his was something he wrote in the early 1970s. It was titled "America first?" There he identified the problem with America's political view of itself.

"National self-interest" has long functioned as the primary principle for the conduct of foreign affairs by kings, presidents, prime ministers and national security managers… It is amazing that so many Americans can get stirred up and indignant over the immorality and illegality of a domestic scandal like the Watergate Affair and yet assume that foreign affairs should be conducted on altogether different terms. The regular work of American diplomats, CIA agents, the military, and special government personnel, involves secrecy, espionage, lying, theft, murder, and cover-up that would make the Watergate scandal look like righteousness itself. Within our democratic states we require the rule of law; between nations we continue to justify lawlessness.

All too many of us have been willing to believe that America is the world's only hope for peace, prosperity, and democracy, and that since this is the case whatever aids America's national interests necessarily aids the world. Why have we been so unable to see through this idolatry?

That was back in 1973. Skillen then is an American who loves America. He explains that his refusal to accept American idolatry of itself is because, as a Christian, he is called to love his fellow citizens and to seek genuine justice as the prophet Micah said: "He has shown you O people the good way. What does the Lord require of you? Just this: to act with justice, to love with mercy and to walk in humility with your God." The Christian way in politics is the way of justice and of citizens working for justice in national humility. It is not the mad push of self-interest that pushes past national borders into whatever country we may go. Self-interest is not a strength but a deep-down weakness. In the end it will tear a nation's life because only in love to all our neighbours will a nation's life is built with justice as the basis of its political community.

(This view helped me in my opposition to Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war. To challenge Australia's "national interest" did not mean I lacked loyalty to Australia. In fact, it is out of loyalty to my country that I offer criticism of the national self-interest criterion. Why? Because it involves a political path that wants to redefine justice rather than give it its proper form.)

Skillen also confronts America's tendency to forget its own past, as with its 20^th century leadership in setting up the United Nations. In identifying America's obsessive search to control the future, Skillen provides us with hints as to why America seems so provincial to its friends and allies. So, in order to present a clear picture of America's current position on the international stage, that his fellow-citizens can understand, Skillen delves into forgotten depths of history, to the Old Testament prophets and their view of the life of nations, to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, to Christianity, Islam, the Holy Roman Empire, medieval society and the rise of the modern nation state. Then he comes to describe the founding vision of the American Republic - it was to be a nation which was to stand as a witness to the end of history. His discussion traces its problematic transformation which came to light with Woodrow Wilson's view of America as "Vanguard". And so Skillen paints his picture of America at the beginning of the 21^st century and its problematic view of its relationship with other nations across the globe.

These days there is a lot of talk about "globalization". Think about the fluid way in which the word "we" is used by us in "our" speech. Such is the nature of the social market place that "we" regularly talk about ourselves, or respond as, "global citizens". Our role as citizens in our own political community is but one of the roles that we play. "We" are also members of the South West Pacific community of island states. "We" are part of the world that lies outside Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia. "We" from our sector are also fully part of the world's political community.

And then of course we are also members of other kinds of non-political communities like families in which other responsibilities come to expression. We have a local community and may support local sporting teams where our children compete on the playing fields. Some of our neighbours share our church communities and other do not. They have other churches, or other religions. The world may be more and more globalized so that we see the whole earth as "our" stage but it is also an extremely complicated network of relationships, an amazing web of social intricacies within which we have to live out our stewardship.

Skillen's political theory is formed with an understanding of these incredibly diverse and subtle aspects to the human condition world-wide. He knows that theory is abstract. The book as a treatise in political theory has had to delve into history, the history of the West, the development of the Roman Empire, the growth of the Byzantine Empire and how and where Islam emerged. These matters are issues that will now be revisited in school class-rooms around the world as we seek new understandings of our past, new understandings of the major spiritual driving forces that confront each other around the world. The book therefore had to be an attempt to understand Islam and its civilisations and its current interface with the west. The aftermath of the first war with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of modern Turkey cannot be underestimated. Neither can the deeply ingrained tensions between Sunni and Shiite.

American national pride and self-definition seems to relentlessly push on into new frontiers to control the world's future, but Skillen perceptively identifies the way in which the regime of George W Bush has seriously underestimated Muslim "memory"

Muslims do live by memory, inside stories of the past, even if the historical accuracy of what is present to them may at times be questionable. They remember the West's defeat of the Ottoman Empire as if it happened this morning. Consciousness of that devastation is closely bound up with living memories that originated four hundred and even fourteen hundred years ago.

Skillen quotes Michael Doran's account of the antagonism between Sunni and Shiite and how that functioned in the latest Iraq war. Ibn Alqami was a Shiite minister to the last Abbasid caliph, who betrayed his ruler in 1258 by conspiring with Hulagu, the Mongol. When US led forces turned their guns toward Iraq, Sunni began to ask Shiite: Will you, the grandchildren of Ibn Alqami do it again and this time conspire with Hulagu II? (ie GWB himself) The Sunnis have consistently observed that Saddam Hussein was toppled from within.

This, perhaps, is enough to give the interested reader a taste. There is much more including a challenging analysis of America's own inner national weaknesses, which was also broached in my review of In Pursuit of Justice. The title of this book shows Skillen's commitment to promoting a US Government policy agenda in which America stands as one nation, on the same level with, even if it is more powerful than, all others. But it needs to stand with all others. His argument is that the "war on terrorism" is not a war at all. The political rhetoric, generated by the US and its allies, blurs what needs to kept clear. All Governments must fulfil their vocations, under heaven, in this complex, highly differentiated global society and the way this is done is by our ongoing rediscovery of the norm of public justice not only within nations but as a basic principle for international law. If such a renewal is going to contribute to its universal application as a political principle, then the starting point must be that this world is God's creation. The earth and all that is in it is not here for us to exploit - it is here for the glory and purposes of Almighty God. God has made us with justice as a calling, a possibility intrinsic to our human condition. Our human sin does not cancel that created possibility, but simply misdirects it. We may make hurdles for ourselves on the path of justice, but with the hope inspired by the biblical vision of Jesus coming to meet us in John's Apocalypse, we can labour politically with a firm hope that in His time, God will ensure that justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

The "America First" ideology is still in Skillen's sights because the problem the world now faces is that the "America First" doctrine is also turning into a global ideology, with as yet not fully disclosed variants competing for a greater share of global power. This book is an American criticism of American political idolatry. Let us admit openly that our American friends do not have this spiritual problem on their own. It is often more difficult to resist that ungodly doctrine in our own countries because the self-interested libertarian spirit is too deeply embedded in our own political souls. This idolatrous motive was well expressed by the Australian Government when justifying the decision to join the pre-emptive war in Iraq. It is a spiritual problem that we - Americans and non-Americans - confront together. It is not just a local American issue. And it is to be resisted and overcome in the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as we learn in politics to love all our neighbours who like us have been made in God's image.

BCW Friday, August 12, 2005