Who is speaking for peace while everyone else is speaking about war? Reflecting on the letter from 29 churches and remarks by Pope Leo about what makes for security in the world today

 

By Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

This is the second part of Arnold’s reflection on the new national security strategy, In part one he reflected on how it prepares Canada for conflict, but not for preventing it.

The week Canada’s new security strategy was released, 29 Canadian churches and organizations released an open letter for the Prime Minister about what constitutes security from aChristian perspective.

Signed by Mennonite, Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Quaker, and United Church bodies, the letter acknowledges legitimate security concerns but challenges the assumption that security can be achieved primarily through military means.

It argues that conflict prevention, diplomacy, development, climate resilience, and peacebuilding are not luxuries but essential components of genuine security.

What strikes me most about this letter is that it does not begin with military strategy but with Christian anthropology.

The signatories begin with the claim that war diminishes the God-given dignity of everyone involved, both those who suffer violence and those asked to inflict it. They ground their appeal not in political ideology, but in Jesus' command to love our neighbours, near and far, especially the vulnerable.

From that starting point, they challenge one of the defining assumptions of our time: that security can be achieved primarily through military expansion. Genuine security, they argue, is broader than defence spending and includes public health, food security, affordability, climate stability, poverty reduction, diplomacy, and conflict prevention.

In a year when military budgets are rising across much of the Western world, the churches ask whether a nation can become more heavily armed while becoming less secure in the things that actually sustain human flourishing.

Particularly noteworthy is their claim that conflict prevention is not only morally responsible but economically prudent, citing evidence that preventing conflict costs far less than responding to the crises war creates.

In a political climate increasingly shaped by fear, deterrence, and preparation for future wars, the letter offers a distinctly Christian conviction: that peace is not the naïve alternative to realism but the more realistic and ultimately more faithful way of seeking security for all.

A week before that letter was issued, Pope Leo XIV spoke to an international peace gathering in Assisi on October 27. Reflecting on the resurgence of nationalism, militarization, and great-power conflict, he warned against a "culture of power" and insisted that "war can never be waged in the name of God."

Most strikingly, he declared: "There is no such thing as a holy war: only peace is holy." He called for renewed commitment to dialogue, mediation, prayer, and becoming "unarmed instruments of peace."

Leo's diagnosis of our moment is striking. After the Cold War, many assumed that globalization, trade, and economic integration would gradually produce a more peaceful world. Instead, he observes a "troubling revival of war as an instrument of international politics" and challenges the assumption that ever greater accumulations of weapons can secure peace.

He locates Christian hope not in military strategy or geopolitical power, but in prayer, dialogue, mediation, and communities capable of speaking a different language from that of fear and national rivalry.

For me, as a Mennonite—part of a tradition that has long warned that militarization can create the very fears it claims to address—the Pope’s words offer a timely affirmation.

At a time when religious leaders in several countries are increasingly tempted to bless national ambitions and military projects, his insistence that only peace is holy sounds both ancient and urgently contemporary.

Neither the letter or the Pope’s words strike me as naïve. Rather, they raise a neglected question: Who is speaking for peace while everyone else is speaking about war?

This question feels particularly pressing from the perspective of the churches. I have enough ecumenical experience to know that the vast majority of Christians in Canada support maintaining armed forces. That reality will not change. Nor am I suggesting that Mennonites like myself possess easy answers to extraordinarily difficult geopolitical problems.

Indeed, our own history counsels humility; like other Christians, we have sometimes lost our footing. In various places and times, Mennonites too have been seduced by nationalism, fear, ethnicity, and promises of security.

Yet the church's ecumenical peace tradition still has gifts to offer. One is the conviction that Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is not an unrealistic ideal but a political and spiritual vision worthy of serious consideration—a conviction the Pope shares.

Another is the belief that peace is more than the absence of war. Peace must be built. It requires relationships, trust, justice, truth-telling, reconciliation, and patient work across lines of difference.

The letter from 29 Christian organizations and denominational bodies, and the Pope, matter. They challenge us as Canadians to think differently about what makes a society safe.

"Soft power" may invite eye-rolling in some circles, but both the letter and the Pope’s remarks remind me that security cannot be reduced to military capacity. Some of the most enduring forms of security emerge from relationships, diplomacy, dialogue, economic opportunity, trustworthy institutions, and the possibility of human flourishing.

Perhaps this is where Christians, and others who want to promote peace, can contribute something distinctive in the years ahead. Not by demanding the impossible, shouting from the sidelines, or assuming moral superiority, but by asking a different set of questions. How do enemies become neighbours? How do we prevent conflicts instead of merely preparing to fight them? How do we avoid making weapons production the engine of economic prosperity? How do we invest as much imagination in peacebuilding as we invest in preparing for war?

And perhaps most importantly: How those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus remain followers of the Prince of Peace when the world increasingly assumes that lasting peace can only come through greater capacities for violence?

This is the second part of a two-part series by Arnold on the meaning of national security. Read part one here. 

Arnold is Associate Professor of Theology at Tyndale Seminary of Tyndale University, Toronto, where he previously served as dean. He is currently on medical leave with Long COVID.