To Remember Is To Work for Peace

tl;dr: Some reflections on Remembrance Day as a believer in the peace church tradition.

Remembrance Day often carries two different tones with it:

1. War is horrible. We honour those who died by grieving that horror with all its lost lives.
2. War is super important and we need our national team to win, so support our troops and cheer when they do more violence than the other side does.

Anabaptists like myself are mostly ok with the first part. We hold in high esteem those who would sacrifice their lives for others. The only real question is how many soldiers really choose to sacrifice their lives, rather than being pushed to by nationalist forces who stand to gain. If it isn't chosen then it isn't really a sacrifice on their part. It is often more accurate to say that some politicians and war profiteers sacrificed those soldiers' lives for their profit. But I digress.

It's the second part that we start to have a problem with Remembrance Day. Anabaptists remain firm that our loyalty is to Jesus, not to any nation, and Jesus is pretty clear about the whole nonviolent love of enemies thing. So grieving violence makes complete sense. The nationalist jingoism, the cheerleading of violence as long as it is against THEM instead of against US, does not.

For several years, Mennonites have often worn a red pin that says "To remember is to work for peace." That might be in addition to the poppy (if we're focusing more on the first part above) or instead of (if we're focusing more on the second part). Either way, this is the most essential part in my worldview: if you truly grieve wars and violence more generally, if you truly want to remember and honour those who died, you will want to work to keep that from happening again whether that's in Ukraine or Canada or Palestine or anywhere else. Being a peacemaker is not a simple opting out of violence; it must be an active work toward a more just and whole world.

That's my quick reflection of the day. Here's Marlene Epp speaking at my church, Rockway Mennonite, about some of the history of Mennonites with Remembrance Day: