Economies of scale: ecumenical peacebuilding
By Peter Noteboom

Canada's churches have an unusually rich and broad heritage of church engagement in the public square. Indeed, we invest in all kinds of ecumenical institutions, such as KAIROS, Project Ploughshares, Citizens for Public Justice, Foodgrains Bank, EFC, and more that make a difference in all kinds of spheres of influence.

Here is the story of one ecumenical body making a difference in Canada. The Canadian Council of Churches (CCC) represents the breadth and depth of Canadian faith communities, accounting for 85% of Canadians who belong to a church. National churches from the Anabaptist, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox and Protestant traditions come together in this "full consensus" forum—a structure which means all CCC statements must achieve the explicit support of each and every member. The CRC in Canada has been a CCC member since 1998, and has taken on important leadership roles throughout the structure of the Council.

Project Ploughshares (www.ploughshares.ca) is a signature project of the CCC, worth highlighting by itself for an effective record since 1976 of working with governments and NGOs, in Canada and abroad, to bear witness to peace, reconciliation and non-violence.

The CCC's Commission on Justice and Peace has coordinated country-specific work on the conflicts in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, The Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan and The Sudan (Darfur). On military policies and disarmament, the Commission has worked on nuclear weapons treaties, small arms agreements, the US Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) treaty, cluster munitions and the weaponization of space.

In addition to country-specific interventions and disarmament policies, the commission has looked at the peacebuilding components of human rights, refugees and migrant workers, and HIV/AIDS.

Together we stand

The CCC's greatest strength is its ecumenicity. Churches' collective witness for justice and peace has several latent advantages over dozens or hundreds of faith organizations re-inventing the wheel side-by-side. These advantages include:

1. Policy experts. Bringing together 22 national church bodies, it becomes much easier to find dedicated believers who are experts in their fields. The CCC's experts carry a depth of understanding and commitment to the issues that matches any other civil society, academic or government policy institution. Drafting letters that demand a broad and deep consensus gives them an opportunity to distill their years of experience, clarify and simplify their message for the moment, and ground their work in an explicit faith perspective.
   
   
2. CCC delegates who represent their churches on the various Commissions learn to forge productive friendships with the colleagues, developing respect for each other's strengths. This makes genuine dialogue possible, both when delegates agree on the substance of a draft document, and when they must work through differing perspectives on what constitutes a faithful response. As issues arise, church delegates make these issues their own, contribute their own policy expertise, and contribute their own unique theological and ecclesiological perspectives. Readers of this may imagine that all these differing perspectives lead to superficial statements and a low level of commitment. On the contrary, the strong Canadian tradition of ecumenical cooperation has set a high standard for faithfulness, timeliness and relevance on the topic of the day.
   
   
3. Better resources for church members is one natural result of a strong ecumenical council. Many peacebuilding initiatives have offered church members an opportunity for education, action and prayer. At the height of the buildup to the military invasion of Iraq, for example, many church members took advantage of CCC-facilitated educational materials, petitions, and corporate prayers. This was a moment when the combined work of the churches, exemplified in church leaders' letters, petitions and in church members themselves, made a memorable impact on the political establishment of the day: the Prime Minister remarked privately that the voice of the churches had affected his decision for Canada to refrain from joining the military invasion.
   
   
4. Stronger advocacy is an even more intuitive feature of the CCC. During visits or in formal communications, Canadian Members of Parliament have frequently commented on the importance of hearing the voice of Canadian churches. When churches have not spoken up, these representatives notice: "Where is the voice of the churches in this debate?" Simply put, Canadian churches provide language that finds its way into Parliamentary debate. While it is often difficult to track the effects of even well-coordinated advocacy efforts, there are notable moments. The Iraq abstaining mentioned above is not an isolated incident. A prior key moment for the CCC was hearing many of its own phrases and arguments used by the Prime Minister as he insisted that Canada not join the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

Today's challenge

Canada's role in Afghanistan is today's most urgent peacebuilding issue. As an example of Canadian leadership, Canada is the only country whose churches are on the record regarding military policy there—no other ecumenical council of churches has spoken out on Afghanistan. It is an extraordinarily complex situation where all the years of experience, competence and faithfulness are needed from Canadian military chaplains, disarmament policy experts, reconciliation practitioners, inter-faith dialogue theologians, geo-politics political scientists, human rights lawyers, and use-of-force ethicists, to name a few.

United in our concern for the people of Afghanistan, convinced of the limited usefulness of military force, and committed to the Gospel promise of reconciliation, may we continue to be faithful witnesses, until justice and peace embrace.

I will listen to you, LORD God,
because you promise peace
to those who are faithful and no longer foolish.

You are ready to rescue
everyone who worships you,
so that you will live with us
in all of your glory.

Love and loyalty
will come together;
goodness and peace
will unite.

Loyalty will sprout
from the ground;
justice will look down
from the sky above.

Our LORD, you will bless us;
our land will produce
wonderful crops.

Justice will march in front,
making a path
for you to follow.

—Psalm 85: 8-13, CEV

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