limits of neoliberal peacebuilding – mormon altarnatives

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peacebuilding, what is it?

Over the last few years, in certain LDS circles, some progressive leaders in the LDS church have argued for mormons to develop their own strand of peacebuilding, where LDS peacemakers find guidance, strength and faith for their work from mormonism’s own religious doctrines. Others are not so sure. Can a religion mainly concerned with bringing the good news of the restored gospel give the sufficient impetus that nonviolent practitioners need and is there space within a church with minimal presence in the world outside of the united states to actually make a difference? It is important first however before we may decide whether or not mormonism may lend itself to peacebuilding to differentiate between ‘a liberalizing mainstream approach’ to peacebuilding and ‘a transformative alternative approach’.

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Lewer believes that the very term ‘peacebuilding’ is problematic because it comprises a myriad of activities, both official and non-official. ‘It is not surprising that there is such confusion, when agencies put such diverse activities as providing emergency relief (medicine and plastic sheeting), development (digging wells and providing micro-financing programs) and peacemaking/ advocacy (high-level political mediation and human rights advocacy) within the meaning of the term’.

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the advent of neoliberal thinking – a historical backdrop

In the early 1980s, the neoliberals reacted to what they perceived to be the excessive controls exercised by states. They essentially viewed the power of states as blocking development. A series of global misfortunes followed: rise in oil prices, mounting foreign debt, structural adjustment programs, and increasing internal resistance to central government authority. These factors contributed to the states’ weakened capacity to command authority and control. The neoliberal experiment in essence dismantled the ‘developmental state’ of the 1980s and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) became recognized in mainstream development discourse as legitimate agents of development. LDS philantrophies and LDS humanitarian services of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints  fall under the conceptual umbrella of international NGOs.

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peacebuilding as a conceptual response to a volatile and transitional state of affairs

Peacebuilding emerged as an additional post-conflict conceptual tool within a larger discourse of international conflict management, subsequent to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The relatively unstable international environment in the Post-Cold War era forced international agencies, governments and military analysts to rethink their raison d’etre and come up with strategies better adapted to the new complexities. James Woolsey, director of the CIA in the early nineties, said that ‘the US has slain the Dragon, but was now facing a jungle full of poisonous snakes’. This thinking resulted among other things in the formulation of a rather ad hoc ‘peacebuilding’ policy influenced by experiences from natural disaster relief and reconstruction. There was a rather crude linear formulation reminiscent of early development theory, that with appropriate aid, countries could go from relief to reconstruction to development.

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peacebuilding: a complex process of societal transformation

By the mid 1990s, as various peace processes began to unravel, this simplistic vision of post-war reconstruction was challenged on various fronts. Peacebuilding was now viewed as a much wider range of agendas than economic reconstruction. Issues of institution building, democracy promotion, civil society strengthening, and security sector reform became major concerns. Peacebuilding activities by humanitarian agencies came to include non-violent processes (such as advocacy interventions, development programs and peace projects) attempting to prevent, mitigate and transform violent conflict, and contribute to building societies in which people would have fair access to resources based on social justice, and where fundamental human rights recognized under international law were respected.

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liberal market democracies: an ideal set forth for post-conflict societies

Richard Peet in Unholy Trinity, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO argues that the International Financial Institutions have actively cooperated to create a coherent, unifying policy position centered on free trade. ‘We now have what amounts to a single global institution governing the world economy, whose three parts specialize in currency stabilization (IMF), structural adjustment (World Bank) and trade liberalization (WTO). These institutions emphasize principles of ‘good governance’ and aim to establish liberal market democracies across the world through ideological and structural collaboration (somebody who understand the importance of working through culture and structure).

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In a similar vein, academics like Roland Paris have pointed out the limits of positing liberal market democracies as ideals for countries undergoing radical social transformation due to post-conflict reconstruction. Countries emerging from conflicts tend to be in such a precarious state that to immediately prescribe a competitive system such as liberal market democracies entail would simply further exacerbate a fragile peace. Post-war elections held before armies have sufficiently demobilized can jeopardize short-term peace and longer-term processes of democratization. Advocates of robust immediate democratic goals tend to underestimate the volatility of the processes involved in reaching those goals: a factor that needs to appreciated, anticipated, and managed, particularly where economic liberalization or democratization is concerned.

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first organize, then unite

Mormons have long argued and rightly so that ‘institutions are unworkable as reform instruments, if they are too far above the moral plane of the society to which they are given. Men and women must first organize their own lives; before they are to be united into a more perfect social and economic order’. The LDS church offer through its missionary discussions an initial ‘step-by-step’ approach, a gradual process of conversion to baptismal candidates, based on the first principles and ordinances of the restored. A minimum level of personal righteousness and commitment is expected of new LDS converts, such as honesty, chastity, tithing payments, abstaining from coffee, tobacco, alcohol, and drugs. Obedience to those ‘commandments’ predetermine their integration into the LDS church community and full participation in all church activities.

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neoliberalism and mormonism

The above idea is the well-known missionary-conversionist approach of the LDS church, and not necessarily workable in the more broad-based secularized, or faith-neutral, environment of peacebuilding activities, democratization of societies and liberalization of market economies. But many have argued that peacebuilders underestimate the unique motivational power for change and the widespread influence that religion has in the lives of the peoples whom they are trying to ‘help’. But there is a bad history behind this reluctance to actively use religion in peacebuilding efforts: colonialism and the spread of christianity came hand in hand. Is neo-colonialism doing the same today alongside its megachurches preaching the gospel of prosperity? Has neoliberal thinking equally become embedded in the tenets of the mormon faith?

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a neoliberal mormon

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Evidently, the underlying assumption of the teachings given to new converts by young, mostly uneducated, mormon missionaries is that the economic (re)structuring of the societies in which their converts live (Latin America, Africa and Asia) must happen along the lines of neoliberal thinking (small government, free market economies and philanthropy). Does that sound like gospel to you? If it does, it proves that neoliberalism is becoming, like in any other cultural framework, an integral part of LDS culture and teaching. The question remains nonetheless: does it sound like restored gospel to you? Was Joseph Smith jr. a proponent of free-market capitalism?

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Mammon and his markets

Besides neoliberal efforts to have Mammon rule the world without hindrance, there has been a growing recognition, even among international financial institutions, that many states actually have too little authority over their territories and their citizens than what is advisable for successful development. Economic development is nearly impossible without order and security and maintaining security and order is difficult without economic development. A triadic (here we go again with another triangle) consensus of state, market and civil society working together for sustainable development has emerged and is currently dominating contemporary  thinking and policymaking.

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This model seeks to avoid the confrontational tactics of the left and substitute these for a strategy of consensus politics realized in the form of partnerships and alliances. By bringing businesses and civil society into a partnership, the ‘socially responsible approach to capitalism’ seeks to reconcile capitalism’s creative energies with its socially and environmentally destructive effects without undermining the market principle of economic organization. This does not necessarily address inherent inequalities and injustices in the system or cultural practices that demonize the other or a state that does not employ violence against other states or its own citizenry. It is just another triangle that may use violent or nonviolent means to achieve its end purposes.

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neoliberal principles taken for granted

In most circles today, rather than requiring the reform of the international system (like the anti-globalization movement would), peacebuilding activities have adopted the widely accepted notion of socially responsible capitalism. Societies recovering from conflicts must be helped to fit into the global economic system and profit from it, while civil society must hold governments and multinational companies accountable to their citizenry and customer-bases by having them act more responsibly with regards to the societies and the ecosystems in which they operate. In fact, neoliberalist thinking has become so normalized in society at large that neoliberal forms of social/economic/political organization are now almost taken for granted: small but effective government, some regulation of market forces is a plus and an active citizenry acting as capitalism’s moral conscience is praiseworthy.

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mormon peacebuilders, watch out!

Although the cooption of nonviolent methods of social change by proponents of neoliberal thinking is inevitable, one must distinguish between two factors in relation to peacebuilding: ‘on the one hand: what is transformative from the point of view of existing mainstream discourses (latter day saints), and on the other hand what is transformative from the point of view of critical thinking (latter day satyagraha)’. A critical approach to peacebuilding must begin to ‘problematize existing dominant frameworks and seek to find alternatives which would transform institutions and social meanings’ – watching out against the pervasive power of dominant discourses and ‘accepted truths’.

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For future reference, there are two ways to think about mormon peacebuilding:

1. latter day saints who help converted societies to fit into the existing and consolidating neo-liberal market system

2. mormon altar natives who find alternatives to dominant frameworks, transform institutions and who liberate the captives

not as the world gives – join the altar nation!

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This LDS church video about mormon temples talks about the two sacred rooms that existed in the Jewish Temple: the holy place and the holy of holies. In the holy place, there used to be three sacred objects: the Menorah (symbolizing the light of God), the inner altar for incense offerings (also called the “Golden Altar”, the incense was symbolic of the prayers that were sent heaven-ward), and the Table of the Showbread.

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If ye are not one, ye are not mine

In 1831, God warned Joseph Smith and his followers in a revelation given to the prophet that “if ye are not one, ye are not mine”. During the succeeding century the scripture has served LDS church leaders as a rallying cry in their efforts to urge compliance of the general church membership to three grand designs for building greater economic cooperation among the Saints. The first of these was the Law of Consecration and Stewardship, initiated by the Prophet himself in Ohio and Missouri in 1831.

The Law of Consecration and Stewardship was intended to be a major instrument of reorganizing the social and economic patterns of life among the Saints. Moreover, it was to provide the model upon which all human society would be organized when the Savior returned to the latter-day Zion in Missouri. it would build unity among a people fragmented by their individualistic search for economic well-being.

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mormon anti-capitalism

Brigham Young’s reprise of Mormon communitarianism was by contrast to Joseph Smith’s introduction of the law of consecration and stewardship out of time and place – an unusual manifestation of anti-capitalist economic idealism at a time when Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were becoming national heroes.

Under the direction of Brigham Young, the Mormons launched a cooperative movement in 1869 (the birth year of Mahatma Gandhi) that transformed later into the United Order of the 1870s. Young encouraged in his time local innovation and adaptation according to the desire of the Saints and the judgments of local leaders. In consequence, the name United Order was applied to associations of all kinds, from full communes to loose cooperatives.

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not as the world gives

We understand from Doctrine and Covenants that the Lord had no intention of his people building peace or communities in the manner of the world:

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Now here is wisdom, and the mind of the Lord – let the house be built, not after the manner of the world, for I give not unto you that ye shall live after the manner of the world.

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Brother Brigham once said that: “the man or woman who enjoys the spirit of our religion has no trials; but the man or woman who tries to live according to the Gospel of the Son of God, and at the same time clings to the spirit of the world has trials and sorrows acute and keen, and that too, continually. This is the deciding point, the dividing line [...]. They who try to serve God and still cling to the spirit of the world have got on two yokes – the yoke of Jesus and the yoke of the Devil, and they will have plenty to do. They will have a WARFARE inside and outside, and the labor will be very galling, for they are directly in opposition one to the other.

Like Hugh Nibley suggested: “What makes one hesitate, before a conversion to consecration, is the absolute and uncompromising nature of the decision. Must it be one, or the other way, all the way? Countless books on how to succeed in the world all come down to one basic principle that total dedication to making money is the secret and the only secret. Mammon is a jealous god and so is the true God”. In fact, Nibley believed that the difficulty latter-day Saints have with the law of consecration is a cultural one:

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Since the days of Cain and Abel, men have been pulled in two opposite directions, given a choice between two ways. The two contrasting cultures may be characterized as stable or stationery on the one hand, and acquisitive or expansive on the other hand – eternal vs. temporary, agrarian vs. hunting, cooperative vs. competetive, comtemplative vs. execrated, seeking either wisdom or riches, and so on. The law of consecration is that of a stable society; the law of the [global] market is that of an expansive, acquisitive, brittle , untrustworthy, predatory society.

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the Altar Nation

I am suggesting that mormons become Altar Natives, or members of the “Altar Nation”. The Altar Nation is representative of a people willing to sacrifice, to consecrate, of a people of prayer and fasting that is seeking a deeper sense of community, pursuing social righteousness with an eye single to the glory of God: Jesus Christ.

Join the Altar Nation and become a living Altar Native!

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

John 14:27

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

John 10:10

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Plea for an AGAPE economy of life

Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth (AGAPE) is a call to the churches at the 2006 World Assembly of Council of Churches in Porto Alegre to become transformative communities:

We as churches are called to create spaces for, and become agents of, transformation even as we are entangled in and complicit with the very system we are called to change. We witness the massive violation of the human dignity and the integrity of creation. We confront the suffering, enormous economic and social disparity, abject poverty and the destruction of life, which result from the neoliberal model of economic globalization. As churches, we need to accept and assume the vocation to challenge the thinking of the present age, to be transformed ourselves by God’s grace, and to boldly develop visionary long-term strategies.

It is a pastoral and spiritual task for the churches to address the false spirituality of conformity, and to encourage Christian believers and communities to embrace a spirituality of life and transformation rooted in God’s loving grace. This is the way in which AGAPE, the love of God and neighbor, is translated into social and economic life. We are called to be with the suffering people and groaning creation in solidarity with those who are building [ALTAR NATIVE] communities of life. The locus of the churches is where God is working, Christ is suffering and the Spirit is caring for life and resisting destructive principalities and powers.