Tarnished images - Presenting the Issue - Editorial

Idolatry has long since gotten its comeuppance. Graven images are no longer what they used to be. Instead, people have gotten much more sophisticated in their attachments, as the Camp David Peace Talks in July, 2000 well demonstrated. Justice is well served when people are treated fairly; that is not the sense that outsiders gained in witnessing the negotiations. In truth, it may be a hopeless task given the complexities that have punctuated the vast history of the Middle East. Where can realistic lines be claimed, fought for, managed?

What seems lost amid all the painful negotiations is a sense of brotherhood that underlies the religious traditions now making legitimate claims for fairness. Given the conflicting, if not irreconcilable, claims that each of the traditions--ethnic, cultural, religious--makes for the land and the governance of its peoples, how else than with a spirit of brotherhood can these claims be adjudicated? If this were being handled in family court, perhaps the expected outcome would be mandated family counseling. Isn't that the claim that most in the region make, that Abraham is their father? Isn't it also true that each of the traditions has at its heart the notion of familiarity with one God?

But brotherhood is surely too fragile a concept to resolve the issues at hand. Even brothers fight and vie for priority of status and goods. If justice is to prevail, then some dynamic force must enkindle it from within. I'd thought that perhaps we should forget brotherhood and let women handle things; sisterhood may be the operative paradigm shift. Would women have more heart and sense of danger when war seems the only option? Might women reignite the sense of extended family so long overlooked among Abraham's offspring? I wonder whether women--not a stereotype of home-bodies, but those whose biological being may enhance their nurturing disposition--might blow the whistle, crack the whip, put an end to aggressive shows of strength. Could women do this? Would they? I wonder.

Needless to say, women as such can't be the only answer, for women have been present, operative, and even outspoken in these matters of seeking justice amid enormous complexity. Women have raised armies (Deborah), led them into battle (Joan of Arc), and ruled over vast regions (Hatshepsut). Women have incited their male counterparts to act, forced them to hold the line by using subtle or otherwise forms of intimidation. Women have been cruel, oppressive, greedy, not unlike their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons. But, what else can bring about a sea change at this impasse?

Women have been held at bay in traditional religious groups because there seems some irrational belief that God is male, that he has empowered males to take charge, and that religious leaders must observe this biological imperative to leadership. The popes have arbitrarily claimed that it is by divine law that women not be ordained priests. Orthodox Jews would likely await the arrival of the Messiah before accepting a woman rabbi. Muslims are scarcely likely to preempt Catholic or Orthodox Jews in recognizing a religious leadership role for women. All this means that looking to women would certainly be common ground for rejection. However, precisely because of that systematic exclusion, women have learned through cultural/religious necessity to find ways to resolve issues that are not based on physical power so much as they are on expertise in the power of persuasion. Maybe that is what is lacking: the ability to persuade each contending party to give enough to make settlement beneficial, fair, and an offer that cannot be refused.

The time is right. Other means have failed. No doctor can remedy the disease. No superman has been able to force justice. God hasn't taken sides, so far as we know. We need women to move the issue and find ways to nurture rather than destroy in the name of peace and justice.

If gender isn't really the only answer, then perhaps we can look to the ways of both brothers and sisters seeking to understand and accept one another. No family is devoid of differences--from birth, most parents learn soon enough. The pluralistic society is upon us whether we like it or not: no one individual is the ideal, no one religion is the whole answer, no one patriarch/legislator/savior/prophet encompasses all that is needed for fulness of life. Without a spirit of accepting limits on exclusive claims, in the interest of truth and justice, no side can or will win a meaningful resolution.

Reinhold Niebuhr succinctly identifies a critical element in the resistance to a settlement, based on the pretensions of superior truth: "Intellectual pride is the pride of reason which forgets that it is involved in a temporal process and imagines itself in complete transcendence over history" (NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN, vol. 1, p. 215). Whatever truth each group claims, whether by reason of divine mandate, revelation, or some historical "fact" that renders alternative claims null and void, the pride of reason, as Niebuhr characterizes the problem, renders a collective people rigid and self-righteous. A further element of the problem is contained in the recognition afforded by William J. Wainwright: