Inter-Christianity

One of Christianity’s greatest strengths is its adaptability. Scriptures, liturgies, governing styles, as well as how love, joy, and other Christian traits get expressed all are translatable into new languages and settings. The Christian faith “comes home” into all human settings. That’s one way that God graciously draws close to all of us.

   That strength can also be a weakness, however. Particular settings – nations, generations, militarist movements, etc. – fortify themselves through co-opting religion for non- and even anti-religious purposes. The Third Reich and Apartheid co-opted Christianity, Imperial Japan co-opted Shinto religiosity, ISIS co-opts Islam; the list goes on ad infinitum.

   Christianity’s two-sided strength-weakness makes “Inter-Christianity” all the more essential. Central to the Good News of Jesus Christ is that everyone, all kinds of people, human beings without distinction through faith alone are welcome and belong to each other. Christianity’s “inter-“ traits demonstrate the wideness of God’s grace as well as combat against the self-promoting, co-opting tendencies of all groups and settings.

   International Christianity warns against nations exalting themselves and their warriors as the world’s greatest, mightiest, and most honorable, hallowed, and eternally secure.

   Interconfessional Christianity humbles particular traditions to learn from other traditions’ strengths and insights.

   Interdisciplinary Christianity encourages self-awareness of our demographic makeups – economic, ethnic, political, linguistic, social, and otherwise – that shape us and through which others readily view us and hear our gospel witness.

   Intergenerational Christianity helps the old to hear the young, the young to honor and hear the old, and all those living both to stay connected with our ancestral “cloud of witnesses” and to live responsibly for the sake of those yet unborn.

   Interdependent Christianity drives us all – intertwined as we are with our particular nations, traditions, religiosities, and generations – to embrace our need for those in other groups, all under the umbrella of our dependence on God and interdependence with the rest of God’s creation.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Hiroshima, then Nagaski. August 6, then 9. Every anniversary gives fresh opportunity for reflection, discussion, and current political posturing.

  This year I was in Seoul on August 6 and for the few weeks leading up to it. Since late July the huge box-office hit movie “Gunhamdo” (“Battleship Island,” or “Hashima”) has been showing in theaters, depicting Japanese wartime treatment of Korean laborers. The movie has a scene depicting the atomic mushroom cloud rising above Nagasaki, not far from Gunhamdo. When I saw the movie I wasn’t sure what to make of that scene, so I asked several Korean acquaintances what they thought the scene meant. The prevailing interpretation was that the Korean laborers viewing the atomic blast from nearby Gunhamdo were thinking of the Koreans in Nagasaki who would have been killed by the blast. That wasn’t one of the options I had considered, but neither am I Korean.

  On August 6 itself I also asked Korean acquaintances what they thought of in association with that date. All of them drew a blank. More than August 6 or August 9, it is August 15 that Koreans particularly remember as the day of Korea’s liberation from Japan, when Japan surrendered in the wake of the atomic bombings. It seems that the Korean view of the atomic bombings is that they were important insofar as they facilitated the end of Japan’s deeply resented 35-year colonization of Korea. Moreover, the main tragedies of the bombings were the deaths of Koreans in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of whom were there not by their own choice.

  The Japanese view of the bombings is of course much, much different: Japan suffered the only atomic bombings in history, and the horror of those events must never be repeated. A nuclear-armament-free world is thus imperative. Period. That is, unless Japan must somehow develop deterrent capabilities in light of North Korea’s developing nuclear arsenal.

   Discussions in the U.S. about the moral, military, and political rationales for the bombings continue to this day. To distill the debates to an oversimplified generalization,  the prevailing U.S. view seems to be that Truman’s decision was the least horrible option available at the time. Dropping the bombs certainly saved a host of U.S.-American lives that would have ended in an invasion. Many will differ from that generalization in one way or another, but I suggest that statement best characterizes how many U.S.-Americans come down on the matter in the end.

   So what do these various viewpoints tell us about Korean, Japanese, and U.S.-American moral, historical, and political sensibilities? All of us hate suffering and destruction, especially when they are unjustly inflicted on people like us. All of us tend to evaluate historical events in connection with how they promote the status and well-being of our own countries. How events fit into the metanarrative of our countries’ most noble aspirations also plays an important role in how we view such monumental events as those of August 6 and August 9, 1945.

  Learning what others think, and why, has a broadening effect on our otherwise unwittingly self-serving viewpoints. That does not mean we just take the most generalized position we can come up with. It does mean that what such events mean for all of history, including the implications for what steps to take henceforth, should override simply what best serves my kind of people. The God of all the earth expects no less of us.