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War and the American Difference
America is assumed to be different. We are different because Christianity is thought still to thrive in America. Whereas Christianity is allegedly dying in Europe, it seems alive and well in America. That Christianity still seems a vital faith in America confirms for many the contention that there is an inherent link between Christianity and… more »
Editor’s Note: What is it Good For?
Editor’s Note
What is it Good For?
I was seven when I first saw war. It was 1995, and NATO had recently entered Bosnia, joining a conflict marked by incredibly brazen war crimes, including ethnic cleansing and brutal mass rape.
As the conflict raged on that September, I watched from the safety of my living room in DC’s… more »
The Dispatch II: When Should Christians Go To War?
Samir Paul, Harvard
Let us reframe the question: Do we take the hope of Christ seriously enough actually to trust in it?
Nonviolence is a consequence of hearing the glad tidings of the Gospel. It follows from obedience to the messiah who would rather die than take up the sword of revolutionary violence, the God who does… more »
Bonhoeffer and Pacifism
Courage and cruelty, honor and horror, miraculous escapes and damning coincidences are the stuff of film and novel, but also — at singular moments of history, for some few people — the stuff of life. In the wild days of World War II, a mild-mannered young German pastor, a theologian of some note and a… more »
Just Peacemaking in the Context of Terrorism and Nuclear Threat
For too long, people have interpreted Jesus’ teachings of peacemaking practices as Platonic ideals, high and beautiful, but not practical in real life. But when Jesus taught the leaders in Jerusalem that they needed to practice peacemaking or the temple would be destroyed, he was talking realistically about a real threat and about the practical… more »
Love and War in the Early Church
We shouldn’t be surprised that the early church struggled with the morality of war. Protestants, like myself, too often assume that the return to the sources demanded by Renaissance humanists and the European reformers necessarily renders earlier better, or at least simpler. It is my contention that while we should recognize the important insights of… more »
Must Christians be Pacifists?
You see a known murderer break into your neighbor’s house. Your neighbor and his entire family are sound asleep; the only people awake are you and the murderer. You grab your handgun from its hiding place and quietly follow him into the house. You enter to find the murderer poised over your neighbor’s children’s beds…. more »
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