Relevant to the “God and violence” discussion on this thread, here’s a lecture presented by NT Wright on what he regards as the appropriate Christian response to terrorism. The overall thrust is consistent with what I understand of his broader theological position and I think with most “post-evangelical” thinking. Though no remarkably new revelations made themselves evident as I read this essay, a few things did catch my eye.

Wright seems to identify the USA as the “bad guy” in the current international drama, wielding its uncontestable power without restraint, altruism, accountability or good sense. He regards the Christian right as complicit in America’s disastrous foreign policy. Wright also interprets the Democrats’ victory in the recent elections as reflecting a widespread sense that American policy toward Iraq has been wrong all along. Toward the end of the essay Wright issues his first call to Christian political action: “The challenge now, and one of the central answers to ‘where is God in the War on Terror’, is this: to provide a critique of American empire without implying that the world should collapse into anarchy, and a fresh sense of direction for that empire without colluding with the massive abuses of power which the American people themselves have this week discerned, named and shamed.”

Though the Americans receive a stern rebuke, they fare better than the French. Here’s a comment from very early in the lecture: ” Some of last century’s greatest atrocities, notably the Gulag and the Holocaust, stood in the ignoble tradition of the French Revolution itself, killing for reasons of militant atheism.” Britain, and British Christians, come off relatively unscathed (though not completely so) in Wright’s critique.

Partly to serve as a restraint on American hegemony, Wright supports a revitalization of the Unitend Nations and the World Court. These organizations should serve as a worldwide police force. “It is time to make the transition globally that we in this country made in the 1830s when we moved from local militias to a credible national police force.” Wright does support the use of governmental force in the pursuit of justice and peace on earth. Consistent with his theology, where the nation of Israel is succeeded by a kind of multinational kingdom of God, the secular governing force too should be multinational.

“First, the creator God wants the world to be ordered, not chaotic. And the order in question is to be a human order: that is to say, God intends that there should be structures of government. God does not want anarchy. Just as God intends the world of plants and crops to work under human management, so God intends that human societies should be wisely ordered under human stewardship. This pattern, of delegated authority if you like, corresponds to the pattern of God’s action in and through Jesus Christ. That is what Paul says in Colossians 1. The alternative, that you either have anarchy or theocracy, has given us our present fixation on what we think of as left-wing and right-wing political leanings; if we could only understand how these have grown up within that false theological antithesis I spoke of earlier, we might be able ourselves to grow up beyond the sterile to-and-fro our our present western political life. But that’s another story.”

A revitalized UN would be the organization to intervene in places like Iraq and Zimbabwe. Wright contends that government is part of God’s plan for an orderly creation. For Wright, “the establishment of some kind at least of authority in Baghdad is better than chaos.” Presumably he doesn’t believe that the Iraqis could ward off chaos without Western presence, nor does he believe that the occupying force might be the source of chaos — though I confess that here I’m drawing inferences from what isn’t explicitly said.

I would conclude based on this essay that Wright does support multinational military interventions in world hotspots, as well as the establishment of multinational governments that rule with an iron fist if necessary to prevent chaos. He sees these multinational governmental interventions as compatible with the eventual establishment of Jesus’ kingdom of God on earth.