One way or another, virtually all development and church workers in the Two-Thirds World face the challenge of revolution. Mennonite Central Committee personnel are obviously no exception. Many peoples of the world are hungry. Technical, micro-economic and local organizational changes are the stuff of most "development" projects as small nongovernmental organizations promote it. But if these changes do not fulfill their promises soon, or if national governments continue choosing policies that stifle rather than encourage local initiatives, then hunger and repression will eventually urge "the people" toward more drastic solutions. Revolution, whether it appears as promise or as threat, whether distant or near, is the backdrop of even the most benign projects.

There are certain places in the world, however, where revolution is no longer in the background, places where revolutionary possibilities have given way to real or present movements for structural societal change. While such movements are not inevitably violent, they often are. It is to the more acute challenges that face field workers in the presence of such movements that this paper addresses itself.

At its core, the challenge is this:

The church has taught, and the sending agency has encouraged, the field worker to "identify with the poor and the suffering." Now, however, the poor are to some extent identifying with an armed revolutionary struggle and organization. What next?

To exactly what extent the poor are doing so in a given case will undoubtedly be a hotly debated point. The clandestinity of the movement and the dangers facing would-be sympathizers necessarily render that debate inconclusive. Yet the point is highly relevant even for those seeking to administer strictly nonpartisan humanitarian aid to victims of warfare. To deliver their aid they must take account of the governing authorities. But who forms the legitimate government in a given locale?

If such practical issues are unavoidable, the faith issues involved may be anguishing -- particularly if Christ's nonviolent teachings and example are what have motivated the teaching church, the sending agency and the struggling field worker in the first place. In an openly revolutionary situation, how are they, practically and emotionally, to continue identifying with those they are called to serve, yet without compromising or abandoning the commitment to Christ that compelled them into service in the first place? Although this interior struggle of the field worker and the internal dilemmas of the agency are primary, the further fact that many constituents and some administrators warn a priori against "taking sides" does not make the struggle any easier. How to work in a nonpartisan way often becomes the policy question around which the other issues surface.

Biblically, there are various themes to which we might turn for help. One thing those struggling hardest with the issue soon learn, however, is that people are likely to read the Bible quite differently within the situation of relative comfort, as compared to a situation of revolution.

Does the Bible have anything to say, then, about getting situated, as Christians, in the first place? We have learned to take for granted that "identification" is good. Yet "taking sides" gives us problems. Is there really a difference? The key to a common understanding of revolution may lie in reexamining not revolution itself but that prior task of "identification."

Fortuitously, such an effort will take us in the vicinity of a text -- the call to love our enemies -- that is both central to concerns of historic peace church traditions, and which would seem to suggest the best argument against "taking sides." Because we covet clear words from the sacred text, however, we would do well to adjust our lenses to compensate for the glare of two conflicting myths of revolution.