Professor Beattie speaks on: 'Christian Pacifism, Just Wars and Drones'

Pax Christi Secretary General José Henríquez with Professor Tina Beattie

Professor Tina Beattie, Director of the Digby Stuart Research Centre for Religion, Society and Human Flourishing at the University of Roehampton was the guest speaker at the combined AGMs of Pax Christi and the National Justice and Peace Network in London on Saturday, 11 May.

The event was attended by members of both organisations from around the country and Pax Christi International's new General Secretary, based in Brussels, José Henríquez who comes from El Salvador.

The subject of Professor Beattie's lecture was Christian Pacifism, Just Wars and Drones. She suggested that drones are perhaps the most important development since nuclear weapons, challenging the rules of lawful engagement in war and making the likelihood of war easier for political leaders as military personal are safeguarded and distanced from the violence of warfare.

Dr Beattie began:

"War is a unique and enduring horror in the human story. We trumpet our claims to progress and civilization, yet war shadows all our endeavours with its deadly and consuming seductiveness. It’s not only war itself that points to some fundamental malaise in the human condition – whether we call that original sin or prefer some less theologically loaded term – it’s also our drive to form tribes and races and nations which legitimate this savagery and butchery, promoting it within our institutions and laws, sanctifying it within our religions, and masking its barbarism with the language of glory and heroism.

"Every species defends itself, but we alone have raised self-defence to a dark art that leaves its legacy in our most ancient archaeological remains, and extends before us in the malevolent genius of technological warfare on a scale never seen before."

To read the full text, which is an extended version of Professor Beattie's talk, go to:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1skrzAuEQsqtnMpiUjbk-PXuHxTe1SmDeiukePywZ_M0/edi