March 19, 2015

Just read the article (please)! Please click on: Why I Support the Death Penalty

An excerpt: During World War II, famed literary scholar and “mere Christian” C.S. Lewis delivered a lecture to a pacifist society entitled, “Why I am Not a Pacifist”. From a writer whose pen could never be dull, this piece was Lewis’ authorial nadir. It is akin to Bertrand Russell’s essay, “Why I am Not a Christian”, which discusses only philosophical abstractions. In it Russell sets the rules, such that, by “reason” outside of God’s revelation…

An excerpt: The other day Pat Robertson of the 700 Club called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela. That would be, bluntly, counsel to commit murder. And some people acted surprised! One thing that should not surprise anyone is Christians supporting and carrying out murder of others. Almost ever since good religious folk first cried “Crucify him!” to Pilate, majority Christian religious types in the West (at least) have endorsed and carried…

Justice Without Violence Conference, June 5 - 7, 1997, Albany, New York An excerpt: Introduction Whither Now? The question presupposes a prior: Whence Already? Part of knowing who we are is discerning from where we have come. Do we feel rooted in a hopeful story? Part of our cultural milieu is to deny there is a "metanarrative", an overarching story. I am suggesting nonetheless that we are storied people, and that there is a discernible…

by René Girard. It is an edited version of The Martin D’Arcy Lecture delivered in Oxford in November 1997. Please click on: Victims, violence and Christianity

This article of course states the all-too-obvious. It does not absolve ISIS or the Boko Haram (for instance): it simply puts their killings in perspective. An excerpt: AUSTIN, Texas - Timothy McVeigh killed twice in his life. For one of those acts, he was sentenced to die. For the other, he was awarded a Bronze Star. To make that observation is not to equate McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City with the…

“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents... There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.” --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. “The lie can be maintained only for such time as…

An excerpt: It seems that we Christians always have had difficulty keeping together Christian points of tension. Whether the two natures of Christ, our will and God’s choice, faith and works, etc., we tend almost invariably towards extremes. Likewise on the issue of spirituality. I was raised in a conservative evangelical church tradition. The spirituality sought in that tradition was almost entirely God-directed. Church attendance, prayer meetings, and quiet times were greatly emphasized. Mission understandings…

WN: Some of the material in the essay below, now reworked, first appeared in The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice, “Christianity: The Rediscovery of Restorative Justice”, editor, Michael Hadley, by Pierre Allard and Wayne Northey; New York: SUNY Press, 2001. In light of two books by historian William Cavanaugh, I would be less sweeping about “Christian Violence”, accepting that so much of the Middle Ages violence – and subsequently was greatly tied to the emergence…

This paper was written by Anthony F. Buzzard. I do not recall how I came across it. It is easier to read it online, because footnotes and text are interlinked. It is also clickable below nonetheless. An excerpt: A simple confession underlies this presentation of a theology of peace: I read the New Testament following an invitation to see what the Bible says about the use of nuclear weapons. I found a Jesus in the…