Pacifism

The BBC should bring back the skepticism of pacifism that Doctor Who used to have.

This week the editors discuss Debra Erickson’s article about why the Russia-Ukraine War is not World War III, an exchange about pacifism and the just war tradition, and a 75-year-old article about Easter and the resurrection.

I appreciate Michael McKoy’s recent “What Does Pacifism Have to Say About Ukraine?” But I remain unimpressed by the pacifist view.

Pacifism argues that the only means of breaking the cycles of violence is to recognize the short-term and long-term devastation of war, examine the decisions and dynamics that perpetuate these cycles, and make the tough decisions necessary to reject violence and ensure peace.

At the Christianity and National Security Conference, Paul D. Miller reviewed the history of how Baptists have thought about war, peace, and the just war tradition.

Melissa Florer-Bixler is angry, and she wants her fellow Mennonites to get angry, too. At least, that is the professed premise of her book, “How to Have an Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace.”

Advocates of Integral Disarmament believe the weapons of war are inherently evil. Their consequent prescriptions leave the innocent defenseless

The Holy Week Reader: Palm Sunday witnessed the rise of two cities in the world of humanity. Christians are citizens of both. Attendant responsibilities follow.

In this volume, Nathan Scot Hosler looks to Stanley Hauerwas, one of the most outspoken pacifist theologians of our time, as inspiration for contemporary “peacemaking” and “peacebuilding” efforts.