This was originally published on Matthew Barlow’s blog on December 27, 2012. … Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary I’ve had a few back and forth duels on facebook about gun control, mostly sparked over a few things that I posted. I didn’t necessarily mean for these posts to be inflammatory or controversial, it…
Posts Tagged
non-violence
Oscar Romero And The Violence Of Love
We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence…
Authority, power, domination & intimidation is what dictators, kings & emperors have used to subjugate & oppress their people for centuries. So why do parents do the same thing?
Authoritarian leadership–whether at home or in the classroom–means that the control is in the hands of the adult leader. It has been researched and proven for decades how ineffective maintaining control through power is. Authoritarianism often creates fearful and subservient children and/or rebellion. … I have come to the conclusion that parents over the years…
A Fetish of Intimidation
Fear-as-fuel causes a kind of social global warming, filling our social atmosphere with invisible toxins that subtly, silently, relentlessly change everything and make our society less humane and less habitable. Those who live by the sword, Jesus said, will die by it, and I imagine the same could be said for fear, because the sword…
Violence Is So Primitive
This is Just a quick thought about violence. As I was in the process of thinking about conflicts, how and why they occur, and how they can be resolved, I’ve come to the conclusion (probably not an original one) that violence is truly primitive. I think about this subject often and feel passionately about it…
Dorothy Day: Living a Life of Non-Violence
I just watched a series of three for four segments of an interview with Dorthy Day in which she was a guest on the Christopher Closeup Show. In the interviews, Dorothy discusses the origins of the Catholic Worker movement, shares her theology on war and nonviolence, and talks about the Christian call to the works…
Father Rohr on Dr. King
Jesus undercut the basis for all violent, exclusionary and punitive behavior. He became the forgiving victim, so we would stop creating victims ourselves. He became the falsely accused one, so we would be careful whom we accuse. Any worldly system actually prefers violent partners to nonviolent ones; it gives them a clear target and a…
Roman Peace (Pax Romana) = Peace Through Domination. Anyone Willing to Kill for Citzenship, Land and Wealth??
The early Christians were pacifists.¹ It was only in the second century did Christians become or remain soldiers. John Cadoux’s explanation for the Christian transition into militarism is of a slippery slope in moral ethics due to economic and political pressure. A major sociological shift had occurred after the second century to even allow Christian…