Peace and Passivity

After reading Rudy Wiebe’s novel Peace Shall Destroy Many, I felt as if I had a much better understanding of the general response of the Mennonite church when the book was first published, as I found that it was a response I could sympathize with. We, as Mennonites, claim to be a peace church. How frightening it can be when beliefs we take for granted are shaken, turned on their heads, and flipped inside out; and by a member of the inside community, at that!

            It’s scary to have to disassociate peace and passivity when combining them is not only traditional, but also considerably easier and more convenient than being a radical, or even just doing things differently. One quote that really stuck out to me comes from the introduction to the novel, and states that “The peace based on neglect and evasion will destroy.” Reading this for the first time considerably freaked me out, as the idea of peace being destructive seemed so counterintuitive to everything I had been taught. However, seeing how Thom’s thought processing changed in the novel and my own further reflections prompted me to realize that this statement is very true when peace is equivalent to passivity and a hesitancy to think critically about actions, as it often is. A good example of this in the novel is when Thom is debating about the advantages and disadvantages of teaching Sunday school lessons to the native children in Canada. If he were to choose to maintain the church’s position on peace things would remain simple, but he would loose relationships and opportunities to minister.  To Thom’s congregation, taking the peaceful route would be synonymous with ignoring the native population. Joseph Dueck, however, provides Thom with many different ideas of peace. To Joseph, peace “is not a circumstance but a state of being”.  This dilemma challenges the reader to decide if the peaceful route is always the traditional or uninvolved route, as it often can be in the Mennonite church.            

Rudy Wiebe

The novel hasn’t yet taken my religious views and turned them fully around, but it certainly has made me consider what my role is as a peacemaker in the world, but not of it. It’s challenged me to consider who the outsiders are in my community, and what my role is in forming relationships with them. It also caused me to think about if I view peace as a state of being or as a circumstance, and what peace in both of those forms would look like for me and for my community. Overall, I think Weibe did a very good thing by writing the novel, even if it did rile up the Mennonite church. There is a gift in offering new ideas that can open eyes, however complex, and for that I am thankful.