From the Salmon

I read in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday about a large church in San Jose that aims to fill the Shark Tank with 18,000 parishioners for Easter. The article reports that “MC Hammer and Grammy-winning entertainer James Ingram will perform at Sunday’s San Jose service, and NFL Hall-of-Famer Jim Brown is also expected to attend.”

Wait. Are you telling me Hammer never won a Grammy? At the very least, they should give one of them Lifetime Achievement awards to his pants.

And why, exactly, is he featured entertainment at an Easter — sorry, I meant “Resurrection Sunday” (see the article) — service? Maybe he has an inspirational testimony about how the Spirit allows him to move in mysterious ways. Or perhaps he will deliver a rousing sermon entitled “Jesus: 2 Legit 2 Stay Dead.”

Man, I wish my church got Hammer. After the Resurrection Sunday hoopla is over, I think we’re gonna have to call a congregational meeting to see about a new booking agent.

After months of dragging its feet over what the proper response should be in the Sudan, the United Nations has finally taken a huge step in addressing the horrific plight of the people of the Darfur region. By a unanimous vote, the Security Council voted to commit an initial peacekeeping force of 10,000 to enforce the current tenuous North/South cease-fire and hopefully provide greater protection in Darfur against continued attacks from the Janjaweed.

I’ve been meaning to write about Sudan for a few weeks, but it’s been amazingly frustrating to watch the world move so slowly to respond, and it has seemed like there’s been nothing new to write about for so long. Until this news, that is. I think that this must be seen as only a first step, and not one that is in and of itself sufficient to bring an end to the atrocities in Sudan. After all, there was a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, and we know how that turned out. But it’s a start.

In general, I support the idea of the United Nations. But this has been one of those maddening situations where the deadlock caused by the interests of the indiviual member nations in the Security Council has led to thousands of additional deaths through inaction. The only reason that this resolution passed is because it didn’t include any language regarding sanctions (sure to be vetoed by Russia, China and Algeria) or the International Criminal Court (sure to be vetoed by the Bush administration).

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not yet a pacifict. But I’ll admit that I’m wrestling with whether a Christian can advocate for military solutions to the world’s problems, while still working through the church to model a peaceable kingdom in contrast to the world’s ethic of violence. I’ve been challenged on this issue by reading some of Miroslav Volf’s wrtings and by some of the discussions over at greg’s place. Those discussions in particular have considerably expanded my list of books to read, so I look forward to wrestling with and writing about this idea more in the future.

One of the reasons I’m not sure I can fully embrace Christian pacifism is precisely because of situations like this one in Sudan. I certainly know that the addition of thousands of armed troops to an already tense landscape can cause further chaos and death. But I really believe that not sending troops would allow the situation to deteriorate faster and the killing, raping and displacement to continue unchallenged.

This is particularly important now, because just this week, Sudan expert Eric Reeves reported that “Khartoum has ambitions plans for accelerating the obstruction of humanitarian access by means of orchestrated violence and insecurity, including the use of targeted violence against humanitarian aid workers.” And on Tuesday, a USAID worker was shot in the face when her convoy was ambushed by gunmen.

It seems to me that these humanitarian groups have three options: stay and help as many people as possible, regardless of the escalating danger; pack up and leave, for fear of their own safety; or hope that a peacekeeping force can provide the necessary cover under which to continue their necessary work. It may be you could argue that the first of these is the most consistent with Jesus’ teaching. But I still believe strongly that there’s the most hope for success in the last option.

Anyhow, if you are interested in staying informed about events in Sudan, I’d recommend a few resources:

• Coalition for Darfur — a collaboration between liberal and conservative bloggers to inform the rest of the blog community and raise money for Save the Children
• SudanReeves.org — the personal page of Smith Professor Eric Reeves, who has spent the last several years researching and writing about Sudan.
• Save Darfur
• The Passion of the Present

If you’re interested in donating to groups operating in Sudan, you can donate to Save the Children through the Coalition for Darfur link mentioned above or by visiting InterAction for a list of member organizations doing relief work in Sudan and refugee camps in Chad. By going through InterAction, you are assured that the organizations are reputable groups that meet certain standards. But by all means, feel free to do your own research before giving.