Remembrance is about being peacemakers today
We are the Body of Christ on Armistice Day and always, writes George Pitcher
It was depressingly predictable that this year’s Armistice Day, on Saturday, was going to polarise public opinion. With the backdrop of the war in Gaza, a massive pro-Palestinian demonstration is called a “hate march” by increasingly bellicose home secretary Suella Braverman, while Met Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley stands his ground on the rule of law and right to protest in our democracy. Meanwhile, London’s Jews feel beyond intimidated by the capital’s belligerent response to the bombing of Gaza by Israel, some 3,000 miles away.
It’s worth remembering (and I use that word carefully) that among the war dead being commemorated this weekend will be those who blanket-bombed German civilians some 80 years ago in cities such as Dresden. That was very much to defend our borders, the chosen phrase of prime minister Rishi Sunak in his support for Israel today.
Britain’s indiscriminate bombing policy in World War II was somewhat courageously opposed in the House of Lords at the time by George Bell, Bishop of Chichester. But his was a lone voice in defence of innocent civilians. How times have changed.
Bell might have garnered wider support for his point if he made his speech during a British war today, but I rather doubt it. It’s easy to have strident views on wars thousands of miles away, but defeating an enemy who wants to kill one’s own family rather concentrates the mind.
Protecting lives of non-belligerents
Nevertheless, the bishop sought to articulate the Christian view, that in a just war we should seek in every way we can to protect the lives of non-belligerents. And I wonder how that Christian view, in an at least nominally Christian country such as the UK, could be applied today.
We don’t hear much of it. We witnessed it in how our late Queen religiously (in every sense) insisted on marking Remembrance Sunday, with dignity and solemnity. It looked like the honouring by a head of state and of the established Church of those who had died to save the world from tyranny and a re-commitment to the peace they had bequeathed us.
Today’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, tries to channel some of this by citing those who wish to remember the war dead “in peace and dignity”. But he does this in the context of condemning the pro-Palestinian protest in London on Armistice Day as “provocative and disrespectful”. It’s hard to avoid the unworthy thought that he might approve only of peace marches with which he agrees.
The Christian idea of remembrance
Before coming to what is provocative and disrespectful about his own government’s policies, it might just be worth unpacking a bit about the Christian idea of remembrance. It’s at the heart of Christian religious observance in our communion. We repeat the words of the Christ, at his last supper with his friends, as we break bread as his body and share wine as his blood: “Do this in remembrance of me.”
This is not an act of simple recollection of that event. To understand what it really is, it’s helpful to hyphenate the word: “Do this in re-membrance of me.” We come together in our communion (or Eucharist, which has as its root the Greek word for thanksgiving) as members of the body of Christ, putting that body together again in the world – we remember him by re-membering him.
We might argue that we do the same on Remembrance Sunday. We come together as the body of the Prince of Peace in the world. And we might argue that anyone who comes together with a multitude for peace, be they Muslim or Jew or unbeliever, does much the same thing. They might even do it on a march.
Peacemakers are children of God
Last week, we celebrated the feast of All Saints, at which the Beatitudes are traditionally read, the gospel’s summation of the Christian ethos. We heard: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”
If Christians, Jews, Muslims and those of other religions and none march peacefully for peace on Saturday, then they are children of God. Before anyone accuses me of being other-worldly, they also march, in the Christian view and therefore in the eyes of the state, in resistance to and defiance of those who chant anti-semitic slogans and promote violence.
They may be at the same march but they’re not of the same march. What we’re separating here, as the police might, are the peacemakers from the “provocative and disrespectful”, the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff.
And in those same Beatitudes, we hear: “Blessed are poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
We have a home secretary whose proposed solution to homelessness is to deny street-sleepers the charity of tents, claiming theirs is “a lifestyle choice”. This Remembrance Sunday, we might all like to make our own lifestyle choice by asking just who is being “provocative and disrespectful” here.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest