At Easter: The Language of Power, The Language of Humanity

Easter is supposed to turn our eyes toward life and hope. This year, it has also exposed a stark divide in how the world’s leaders speak about war.

In recent days, foreign ministers from more than 40 countries met to discuss the Strait of Hormuz. Their statement was measured, technical, and precise: concern for “freedom of navigation,” stability in energy markets, and the security of vital shipping lanes. Tankers were counted. Trade routes mapped. Risk was calculated in terms of supply disruption and insurance rates.

Barely mentioned were the men, women and children being killed and maimed as the war in Iran grinds on.

At almost the same moment, faith leaders were speaking in a different register entirely. Pope Francis in his Easter message, called for an immediate ceasefire and urged the world not to become “accustomed to war,” insisting that “every human life is sacred.” the world Council of Churches spoke of “the unbearable suffering of civilians” and the moral impossibility of treating human beings as collateral damage. In Canada, the Canadian Council of Churches and other faith communities called the strikes illegal and demanded renewed diplomacy, humanitarian access, and respect for international law.

They began not with shipping lanes, but with suffering. Not with markets, but with lives.This is more than a difference in emphasis. It is a difference in moral language.

The language of power is managerial. It speaks of stability, deterrence, flows and risk. It counts what can be measured and managed. The language of faith is human. It speaks of dignity, suffering, and the irreducible value of each life. It insists that what matters most cannot be reduced to metrics.

On Easter, that difference becomes impossible to ignore. Easter also carries a quieter, more personal logic: the possibility of turning the page. It invites a release of what has hardened—grievances, fears, the habits of escalation—and opens space for something not yet fully visible. In that sense, it is less about triumph than about trust: the belief that even from trial and loss, something better can emerge, if given the chance. That instinct—toward renewal rather than repetition—sits uneasily in the language of war, but it is not irrelevant to it.

For Christians, Easter is not a metaphor but a claim: that violence and death do not have the final word. It is, at its core, a refusal to accept that the destruction of human life can ever be justified as a mere instrument of policy. That is why churches, mosques and synagogues are not issuing abstract statements. They are naming what is happening in plain terms: the killing of civilians, the destruction of homes, the shattering of communities.

By contrast, the near-silence of political leaders on these realities is not neutral. It reveals priorities. When official statements dwell on the fate of tankers in Hormuz while passing lightly over hospital wards and refugee columns, they tell us, inadvertently but unmistakably, what counts, and what does not.

That contrast should be a wake-up call for Canada.

When major Canadian denominations publicly question the moral and legal basis of our alignment with U.S.–Israeli strikes, they are not engaging in private theological debate. They are reminding elected leaders of a tradition Canada once claimed as its own.

We were, once, peacekeepers.

From Lester B Pearson’s initiative during the Suez Canal onward, Canada helped build a model of international engagement rooted in ceasefires, civilian protection, and the patient work of making space for politics. More than 125,000 Canadians served in UN operations. Over 130 died in that service. Even in Bosnia in the 1990s, under NATO command, Canadian soldiers often performed the quiet, difficult tasks of peacekeeping: patrolling fragile lines, escorting aid, sustaining the possibility of dialogue.

I saw some of that work at close range. It was not dramatic. It did not lend itself to headlines. But it saved lives and, more importantly, it made peace imaginable.

Over the last twenty years, that vocation has been steadily dismantled. A self-conscious “warrior” ethos redefined the Canadian Forces around combat missions, most notably in Kandahar. Talk of our job being “to kill people” was not just rhetoric; it marked a shift away from consent-based peace operations toward counter-insurgency and alliance warfare. The skills, doctrine and imagination required for peacekeeping were allowed to atrophy.

The current war, and Ottawa’s ambiguity toward actions that bend or break international law, shows how far we have drifted.

Easter invites us to imagine a different path.

To take that path seriously would not mean retreating from the world. It would mean re-engaging with it on different terms: rebuilding peacekeeping capacity, investing in civilian protection, mediation and de-escalation, and adopting rules of engagement that prioritize restraint. It would mean aligning our foreign policy not only with allies, but with the deeper instincts voiced by those closest to the human cost of war.

Those voices are not marginal. Across Canada, faith communities run food banks, sponsor refugees, and support the displaced and traumatized. They see, every day, how distant conflicts echo at home—in hate crimes, in refugee flows, in strained communities. Their call for ceasefire and diplomacy reflects a broad and deeply rooted moral intuition: that human life must come before the preservation of systems, including those built on fossil-fuel dependency.

In the end, the question is simple, even if the answer is not.

Do we speak the language of power, or the language of humanity

Do we measure success in secure shipping lanes, or in lives spared?

On this Easter Sunday, the answer offered by the world’s faith leaders is clear. The question is whether our political leaders, and we ourselves, are prepared to hear it.