A new peace prize winner...

Imagine the shock - and let's not forget the awe - to awaken to the news that Barrack Obama had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I sense that at least two realities are at work in this bold award:

+ First, the Nobel Prize Committee is recognizing the radical shift that has taken place throughout the world as a result of Obama's work towards reconciliation and understanding. To be sure, there is a tremendous amount of work yet to be accomplished from the Middle East and North Korea to North/South relations and global warming. Nevertheless, because Obama represents such a definitive break from the arrogance and bluster of the Bush regime, many understand that now is the time to marshall support for his efforts.

Clearly, the ground breaking initiative begun with Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo is central to being given the Nobel Peace Prize, but so is the way he has finessed Iran to the international bargaining table. And let's not forget his brilliant re-framing of America's original sin - slavery - and the way he was able to discern common ground amidst our ugly and still unresolved past. What's more, despite the Republican carping about Obama's commitment to apologizing for past US actions all over the world, the rest of creation seems to be listening - and grateful. It is all too obvious that given the limits of the office, this president is still going to do things in a new way.

As a Christian realist in the spirit of Reinhold Niebuhr, Obama is keenly aware that often the United States has committed horrible crimes against humanity for the noblest of reasons. Conversely, we have shared wonderful blessings, too, clearly out of self-interest. Such is the irony of American politics. So when Obama asks for forgiveness and embraces the wounds the United States has created, it goes a long way towards healing. There is a balance to be discerned, a pathway that utilizes power and humility, lest our hubris continue to blind us and wreak havoc upon the innocent. Niebuhr put it like this at the start of the Cold War:

"The first element of irony... is the fact that our nation has, without particularly seeking it, acquired a greater degree of power than any other nation of history" and we "have created a 'global' political situation in which the responsible use of this power has become a condition of survival of the free world... But the second element of irony lies in the fact that a strong America is less completely master of its own destiny than was a comparatively weak America, rocking in the cradle of its continental security and serene in its infant innocence. The same strength which has extended our power beyond a continent has also interwoven our destiny with the destiny of many peoples and brought us into a vast web of history in which other wills, running in oblique or contrasting directions to our own, inevitably hinder or contradict what we most fervently desire. We cannot simply have our way, not even when we believe our way to have the 'happiness of mankind' as its promise."

Often - and now - the critiques of Obama from the Left are grounded in the smug refusal to appreciate the complexities of wielding great power in an inter-dependent context. From the wars in the Middle East to the debate of health care, American progressives tend to be "know nothings" who are certain that ideological purity is more important that results. In all too many ways, however, they are simply the shadow voice of the mean-spirited Right who operate out of fear and insecurity. It is true that America is an incredibly "utilitarian" nation a la Dewey, but our impatience and lack of nuance often chokes to death any chance of working cooperatively with others. Thankfully, the International Peace Prize Committee can see "the eagle in the egg."

+ Second, this prize is equally about rendering judgement on the Bush administration and all their belligerent naivete: from Kyoto to "mission accomplished" and "bring it on," the Bush team regularly ignored results for ideology. And their ideology was often driven by a reckless innocence that usually left the earth and its people scorched in its wake. They yearned to rebuild the world - the neo-con agenda since 1980 has been built upon the assumption that America could change culture and nations to support a free market in addition to birthing Western style democracy - and tried to live into their vision. Apart from the incredible arrogance of this vision, however, is the simple fact that they wanted to renew American empire on the cheap. As Robert Bellah observed after the start of the Iraq war, the United States was embarking on a naked quest to consolidate empire at the same time the Bush administration came to power on a platform of limitted governement and reduced spending. This clash of commitments - to say nothing of world events - could never be reconciled and eventually undercut their plans time and again.

What I see happening in this new peace prize is the stinging repudiation of all such ugly ideology: the Nobel Peace Prize chastises any sense of American exceptionalism. That is part of what brought the prize to Al Gore during the days when the Bush doctrine was at its height and that is part of what has happened now.

Like another African-American Nobel Peace Prize winner, the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama grasps the complexity of this moment in time. He is imperfect and sometimes overly cautious, but given the abandon of the past this is a welcome alternative. Dr. King once said:

Any nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. (At the same time) all progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

So I celebrate the awarding of the Peace Prize to Mr. Obama - and pray he grow into its promise.