The Gospel in a Time of Drones

Recent media comment on the Times Square bomb attempt (May 1st) underlines the background to this particular piece of terrorism is Taliban, not Al Qaeda, and a stand-out cause of radicalization of individuals in this context is the U.S. campaign of aerial bombing by drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Whether the confessed bomber, Faisal Shahzad, is giving a sincere account of his motives or not, he has presented this as the justification of his actions. The conclusion by a number of bloggers and opinion-makers: the aerial campaign has had as its consequence not the suppression of terrorism but the opening of a new seam. You don’t say!


Nothing enrages and radicalizes more than aerial bombardment. It had that effect in Britain. I remember the bomb sites when I was a child, still there in the late fifties. Aside from not having much money the British were in no hurry to clean them up because in their own stark way they were a monument to bitter resolve and victory. They said you may bomb us to the ground but we will never give in. Bombardment creates a Promethean will to defy whatever god comes from the sky to force us to submit. (You really have to kill everyone—or at least show you’re willing—to produce defeat from the air; hence the bumper-sticker logic “Nuke ‘em all!”.)

Bombardment from the air is one of those things that stops war being a gentleman’s game as it seems to have been viewed before, and gets everyone involved. This is a key part of Girard’s argument in Battling to the End—whole populations are mobilized psychically and physically in modern war so there is nowhere to escape bottomless rivalry between peoples. Thus we truly are battling to the end. But where is Christianity in all this?

In the same book Girard’s answer is that historical Christianity has failed. The gospel has removed sacrificial restraints but Christian churches have failed to persuade people to abandon rivalry in favor of forgiveness. I think this is the world-weariness of a thinker who has thought long into the night and is carried away on the tide of his own thoughts. Human logic cannot trump the gospel. Historical Christianity is historical Christianity. Contemporary Christianity is something else, and that is what is failing but it has not yet failed.

Contemporary Christianity is under a unique set of challenges, such that it really cannot look to the past for answers. Benedict XVI said recently that the most serious attacks on the church come from within and I think that is the most infallible thing he ever said. His words go way beyond the pedophile crisis and resonate with the accommodations that Christians have made with a world of violence. Christians look back to arguments of just war, of separation of church and state, of “spiritual” things being their concern and the world having a different set of rules. But a world that has been radically destbilized and deconstructed by Christianity cannot have its own rules. It can only survive with Christian “rules”, i.e. forgiveness, compassion, nonviolence. At the moment, however, formal Christianity seems to be the last to understand this. As a result Christianity today fails to come to the level of its own meaning in the world. In a world where the core cultural dynamic is the revelation of the victim the only future is to turn the other cheek. You would think that Christians who read the Sermon on the Mount would “get this,” but they are so filled up with the tortuous compromises that have defined the church since Augustine they cannot grasp the intense relevance and vitality of their own message.

But as Benedict hinted “the center cannot hold” and all those old formulations are failing. In their place something new is coming, a direct encounter of the ordinary average Christian with the text and spirit of the gospel in all its historical rawness, challenge, wonder and power. Small groups are springing up and they are engaged with the gospel in its full re-creative significance at the heart of the contemporary crisis. They are springing up everywhere and they alone are the way forward. As the drones pollute our skies with the rumor of total war the gentle wind of the Spirit speaks to the hearts of Christians the promise of new heavens and a new earth.