Book Chapter
The traditional views of violence are discussed: Compromise, nonviolence and violence. Violence seems to be the great temptation in the church and among Christians, and this acceptance of violence has become the central problem facing Christian attitudes today.
Book Chapter
Christians conform to the trend of the moment without introducing into it anything specifically Christian. Attitudes toward the poor, material wants, downgrading the spiritual virtues, presumed sophistication are discussed. Revolutionary aspect of Christianity, a theology of revolution and the fusing of Christianity into the revolution are also given consideration.
Book Chapter
Christian realism demands seeing the facts as they are and grasping them thoroughly, without evasion or illusion, without recoiling in fear or horror as it becomes evident what the result of some trend is likely to be. Christian realism demands that a man understand exactly what he is doing, why he is doing it, and what the results of his doing will be. Idealism, on the other hand, always leads to the adoption of a false and dangerous position in regard to violence.
Book Chapter
The better we understand that violence is necessary, indispensable, inevitable, the better shall we be able to reject and oppose it. If we are free in Jesus Christ, we shall reject violence precisely because violence is necessary!
Article
In the name of the "war on drugs" much of Colombia is being subjected to terror in the form of massacres, assassinations, rapes and the spraying of poison from airplanes. When in August 2000 Congress approved President Bill Clinton’s request for $1.3 billion to implement "Plan Colombia," the faith-based organization Witness for Peace decided to …
Article
Ever since our children were young, my wife and I have enjoyed reading Dr. Seuss’s stories. Yearly on Christmas Eve we have read the now-tattered copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and agreed, at least until we opened packages the next day, that Christmas doesn’t come from a store. It is something more. Through …
Article
Handguns were responsible for the murders of 9,200 persons in the United States in 1976 — a figure amounting to 49 per cent of all murders committed that year. Over 117,000 people were assaulted with guns of all types; many of these people were blinded, deafened, paralyzed, dismembered or otherwise disabled. In my city of …
Article
Book Review: Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture By Michael A. Bellesiles. Knopf 603 pp. In no other industrialized nation in the world are there so many gun deaths as in the United States. In Canada, a country otherwise so similar to the U.S., there were only 68 handgun deaths in 1990 …
Article
Lisa Steinberg lay near death on the cold tile floor in the bathroom of her adopted parents’ Greenwich Village apartment. Hedda Nussbaum waited helplessly for the man she believed could heal Lisa to come and lay his hands on her. Joel Steinberg, Nussbaum’s lover and batterer for 12 years, had already laid his hands on …
Continue reading “Hearing and Healing Hedda Nussbaum – A Reflection on Mark 5:21-43”
Article
Latin America is the scene of what is probably the most lively Marxist-Christian encounter in the world today. In that part of the globe, economic exploitation and political suppression have produced polarized societies in which the privileged few bask in affluence while the disinherited many suffer in privation. Until recently, the dominant Catholic Church did …
Continue reading “Marx and Christ: The Question of Violence”
Article
Of all the people in industrialized nations, Americans are the most prone to violence. Between 1963 and 1973, when the war in Vietnam took 46,212 lives, firearms in America killed 4,644 civilians. In the past 50 years the per capita rape rate in the United States has increased by 700 per cent. During the past …
Article
“Women are more religious than men.” That’s a longstanding generalization made by pastors surveying their pews and by social scientists surveying the public. Husbands and single guys with other weekend plans might even offer that truism as an excuse for skipping church. Why the gender difference? Old explanations said women were less educated, or cited …
Article
The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City opened a window on the previously invisible subculture of militias, survivalists and conspiracy theorists. This radical right-wing subculture has existed for more than a quarter century, and its roots extend back to manifestations of nativism, racism and anti-Semitism earlier in this century. Many of the subculture’s …
Continue reading “Militias, Christian Identity and the Radical Right”
Article
The problem of sexual and family violence is at least as old as Lot’s offer of his daughters to the men of Sodom, an offer all the more grievous because it was made in the name of the ethic of hospitality to strangers and sojourners: "Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man; …
Continue reading “Sexual and Family Violence: A Growing Issue for the Churches”
Article
The genocide which occurred in Rwanda during 1994 was the one of worst outbreaks of violence in the 20th century. Many members of the ethnic group known as the “Hutus,” spurred on by the government, massacred approximately 800,000 “Tutsis” in less than a year. At its most frenzied, the pace of the killings exceeded the …
Continue reading “Six Principles of Christian Catechesis after Rwanda”
Article
The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation By R. Scott (Appleby. Rowman & Littlefield, 429 pp). Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence By Mark Juergensmeyer. (University of California Press, 316 pp.) The news media regularly report on events in which religion and violence come together. In a …
Article
Although the United States was spared any major assassination attempts during the past year, many Americans, both lawmakers and concerned citizens, are continuing to fight for gun control. The challenge of the Morton Grove, Illinois, no-nonsense handgun law has the National Rifle Association and other influential “pro-gun” groups scrambling for a major counterattack. As usual, …
Article
In our already bullet-riddled society, this summer’s gun-down of Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr., was more numbing than shocking. While it dramatized once more our need for gun legislation, the ritual responses to it were as rote as consoling words at the funeral of an aged cousin. Gun buffs once more fired off a round …
Continue reading “The National Rifle Association: Public Enemy No. 2”
Article
When nations find themselves in trouble, their difficulties have usually been a long time in the making. In the case of the terrorism that now afflicts the nations of the West, there is a long intellectual history behind it — one which is rather unflattering to those who see themselves as the main victims of …
Article
Deciding how to respond to acts of torture and terrorism is one of the critical issues of our time. But sadly, our response is limited by two factors, one ethical and one political. Ethically, we are in an age in which there is grave doubt among theologians, philosophers, jurists and social scientists as to whether …
Continue reading “Torture, Terrorism and Theology: The Need for a Universal Ethic”
Article
Your first book was an examination of original sin — not, for most people, a topic connected with joy. But the title of the book is The Joy of Being Wrong. What joy is associated with original sin? It’s the joy of not having to get things right. The doctrine means that we are all …
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) The truth is found in the violence of love, that is, in "Spiritual Violence:" It rejects all human means of winning a victory or registering effects. It totally excludes physical or psychological violence. It is based upon faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
