In the evening of June 24, 1859, Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman traveling in northern Italy, witnessed a horrific sight. Scattered across a battlefield just outside the city of Solferino were thousands of wounded and dying men, bloodied combatants on both sides, crying out for medical attention. “So much agony, so much suffering!” Dunant recalled in a book published a year later. “Could not voluntary aid societies be founded,” he asked, “whose function would be to provide . . . help for the wounded during wartime?”  

The response to Dunant’s anguished question emerged in the form of the International Committee of the Red Cross, an organization he helped to establish in 1863. 

In the decades that followed, the ICRC has distinguished itself for its commitment to address the needs of suffering people regardless of the circumstances. Indeed, a key — albeit controversial — factor in the organization’s success has been its commitment to neutrality. In the language of its charter, the ICRC “may not take sides in hostilities or engage at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.”

I’ve thought of Henri Dunant and the ICRC frequently in recent months, particularly amid the hyper-partisan vitriol of American political culture, the tragic violence in Israel/Palestine and our own conflicts within the church. In such settings, it seems, any appeal to nuance, much less neutrality, is almost certain to be met with incredulous outrage and the clarity of moral conviction that can brook no compromise.

I understand the concern. Three recent Herald Press books — How to Have an Enemy by Melissa Florer–Bixler, Sarah Augustine’s The Land Is Not Empty and Jonny Rashid’s Jesus Takes a Side — all appropriately challenge the privileged complacency of Anabaptist Christians who are quick to appeal to “a third way,” to “middle ground” or to “moderation” when confronted with controversial issues. Arguments for neutrality or compromise in the face of oppression can easily become a smokescreen to mask indifference and privilege. For the prophet and activist, nuance is a luxury of the powerful. To seek middle ground in the face of oppression is to be complicit in the structures of injustice. One cannot negotiate with terrorists, racists or fascists. 

I hear these concerns, and I understand. Jesus did take sides. The actions of the early Anabaptists deeply offended those in power. Privilege is almost always invisible to those who enjoy it.

Yet nagging questions persist.  

After all, in other settings most of us are quick to recognize the danger of a single story or to challenge those who reduce the world into simplistic binaries. We rightly resist language that dehumanizes others by reducing them to fixed social, economic, racial, or gendered categories. We resent the presumption of those who dispense moral judgments with absolute certainty, especially when those judgments are directed against us by people uninterested in our stories. 

At an even deeper level, we are aware of our own profound flaws and take comfort in the fact that the same God who cares about justice has nevertheless chosen to love us recklessly and irrationally, despite our presumptions and failures.

Our world right now confronts us with a host of choices where neutrality is not an option. Ukraine or Russia? Democrat or Republican? Israel or Palestine? Conservative or progressive? Pro-life or pro-choice? Climate crisis or climate denial? We cannot ignore the suffering that has given rise to these battles or the pain that these battles have inflicted on the combatants. Indeed, there are undoubtedly times when we are called to join in the struggle on one side or the other. 

But Anabaptists have been rightfully skeptical about theocrats — those who are ready to join the certainty of their religious convictions to political and military power. At our best, this skepticism about aligning religious certainty with political causes has given Anabaptists a freedom to resist binary options, to search for windows when all doors are closed, to seek alternatives in the dangerous space between the battle lines. 

The neutrality of the ICRC is not the same as inaction or indifference. It has preserved the possibility of responding to human conflict and violence while recognizing the essential humanity of all. 

Is there still room in our polarized world for a Christian ministry of reconciliation? For a ministry focused on binding the wounds of the suffering, comforting the brokenhearted or offering shelter to the refugee, regardless of the circumstance? Is there still room for a ministry of lament?