Marginal Christianity

A peacemaking God? 9.6. 2016 Posted By: Drew Hart 2 Times read Drew G.I. Hart is Professor of Theology at Messiah College, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Drew is the author of   Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism .  He blogs for The Mennonite.  While humanity frequently experiences God’s goodness, including good creation, we also experience waves of devastating violence and brutal oppression. And when we consider the complicated ways that our own lives are directly and indirectly intertwined and implicated in systemic violence, it is hard for me to understand what it means to call oneself a pacifist. Of course, people have defined pacifism in a range of ways, many which are much more complicated than my own definition. In doing so, there are ways of considering pacifism without it being purist and doctrinaire. Yet still, the term has never been helpful for me, especially given its common usage. Even more challenging than consid...

Nonviolence in the Face of ISIS? By Micah Bales 03-04-2015    A couple of folks I really respect – Kate Gould of Friends Committee on National Legislation (aka, the Quaker Lobby), and Jim Wallis of Sojourners – were recently on the O’Reilly Factor . For those of you who don’t watch cable news, this is a television program where Bill O’Reilly basically screams at people and incites hatred of anything non-white, non-rich, and non-Republican. I normally don’t watch the show. But when I heard that Kate and Jim were going to be talking, I tuned in.   I knew almost immediately this wasn’t going to be good. It’s Bill’s program, so he gets to frame the question. Here’s what he asks: Do Christian pacifists have a solution for stopping ISIS?   It’s the wrong question.   O’Reilly knows it’s the wrong question, and that’s why he’s asking it. Both Gould and Wallis attempt to answer his question directly and rationally. Gould presents an argument for dipl...

FEB. 6, 2015   David Brooks                           If you read the online versions of newspaper columns you can click over to the reader comments, which are often critical, vituperative and insulting. I’ve found that I can only deal with these comments by following the adage, “Love your enemy.”   It’s too psychologically damaging to read these comments as evaluations of my intelligence, morals or professional skill. But if I read them with the (possibly delusional) attitude that these are treasured friends bringing me lovely gifts of perspective, then my eye slides over the insults and I can usually learn something. The key is to get the question of my self-worth out of the way — which is actually possible unless the insulter is really creative. It’s not only newspaper columnists who face this kind of problem...

Mark Engler and Paul Engler   December 10, 2014 Why are some protests ignored and forgotten while others explode, dominating the news cycle for weeks and becoming touchstones in political life? For all of those seeking to promote change, this is a critical question. And it was a particularly pressing concern after the financial meltdown of 2008. In the years following the crash, America entered into its worst economic crisis in three quarters of a century. The unemployment rate reached into double digits, something that had not happened in the lifetimes of more than a third of all Americans. State governments reported record demand for food stamps. And yet, debate in Washington, D.C. — influenced by the activism of the insurgent Tea Party — revolved around cutting the budget and trimming social programs. “We were basically having an insane national discussion,” remarked economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. It took an outburst of popular action to ...

(With thanks to Derek Rishmawy for his inspiration of this post.  Though he is not accountable for any errors, mistatements, and infelicities contained in this post)   The Bible’s God cannot be pacifist!   His people can be, must be, but only because he is not. This startling counterintuitive claim is true for at least the following reasons. 1.     Unless God has forfeited his role as the Ruler of human history in a world rebelling against him (Psa.2) and using nations as agents of his judgments against one another (Isa.10), he must be continuing to employ violence.   Though God “does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone” (Lam.3:33), he will do what is necessary for justice to prevail.     2.     We, followers of Christ, can only be non-violent, unless God enacts the vengeance justice demands (Rom.12:19).   Miroslav Volf is required reading here.   “One could object that it is not worthy of God...

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-p-klager-phd/the-vulnerability-that-ma_b_5579366.html Posted : 07/14/2014 12:41 pm EDT Updated: 09/13/2014 5:59 am EDT               I was privileged enough to chat with Stanley Hauerwas on how our theology impacts our perception of the Other, our political allegiances, and our desired response to our enemies. Nearly every article on Hauerwas mentions that TIME magazine designated him "America's Best Theologian" in 2001, so I guess I'll do the same here. He was also interviewed by Oprah. As the author of a veritable library and known as one of the world's foremost postliberal theologians, he was educated at Yale in a time when George Lindbeck and H. Richard Niebuhr graced its halls. Now the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, Hauerwas is proud of his heritage as a bricklayer's son and freque...

  October 2, 2014 by Preston Sprinkle 0 Comments I’ve been asked by many people, “When are you going to blog about ISIS?” And my answer thus far as been, “Probably never.” Even though I have quite a few thoughts on Christians and violence, I   don’t have much wisdom for how nations should fight against other (aspiring) nations, or the best tactic to rid the world of terrorists. When people asked another question: “What should we do with ISIS,” I’m always reluctant to answer until I know what they mean by “we.” Does it refer to our American identity or our Christian one? The two are not the same; they are very different. Strangely, Christians in America often use “we” to refer to their national identity rather than their Christian identity. North Korean and Saudi Arabian Christians rarely confuse the two. I don’t know what to do with ISIS. The current crisis defies simple answers. So I will give neither a patriotic nor nonviolent tirade about the m...

http://brianzahnd.com/2014/07/hitler-invaded-house/?utm_content=buffer7c5bb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer#more-3841 What If Hitler Invaded Your House? Brian Zahnd Lately I’ve been giving a lot of interviews on my new book A Farewell To Mars . It’s a semi-autobiographical confession of how I moved from being an enthusiastic supporter of war American style to proclaiming the peaceable kingdom of Christ. Since I’ve marched among the ranks of sincere war-endorsers for most of my life, I’m sympathetic with well-meaning Christians who believe in the way of Mars. I try to tell the story of my conversion honestly and gracefully. I level criticism, not at soldiers, but at myself. My aim is to take the reader on a journey where Jesus and war are examined in the light of an unencumbered reading of Scripture. But in a twelve minute radio interview there is little time for narrative and nuance. Instead, the interviewer usually lea...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jonathanwilsonhartgrove/2013/01/nonviolence-for-white-people/ January 4, 2013 By Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove   Sometime in the mid-60′s, when America’s black-led freedom movement was at the center of daily news, a white man asked Malcolm X why he did not accept and teach the nonviolence of Martin Luther King. Malcolm replied that he had not experienced a great deal of nonviolence in America. “If you believe in nonviolence,” he said, “why don’t you go teach some nonviolence to white people.” More and more, I’m convicted that Malcolm’s challenge is something of a call to me. Gandhi taught nonviolence to colonized Indians, which was a great gift to the world. King demonstrated the power of nonviolent love at the heart of the black church’s experience in America. This, too, was a gift. But I am not Gandhi or King. Still, the longer I live and pray against the realities they sought to change, the more convinced I am that white repentance–w...

(2012-05-17). A Faith Not Worth Fighting For: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Nonviolence (The Peaceable Kingdom Series) . Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition. “We begin this book with the audacious hope that you will accept our proposal to concede that following Jesus could demand a lifelong commitment to nonviolence” (6). In this book editors Justin Bronson Barringer and Tripp York invite readers to journey into the ever-popular and important concern of “what would you do if” objections to this claim. This first volume in “The Peaceable Kingdom Series” offers thorough yet accessible essays from a variety of contributors to address these matters from a center of what we might call Christological Realism. Stanley Hauerwas, in his forward to this volume, identifies this center as the legacy of the great Mennonnite theologian John Howard Yoder. These essays may then be considered a furthering of the tradition of Christological p...