U.S. military aid to Colombia indirectly subsidizes the paramilitaries’ acts of terrorism against farmers and community leaders
The popular Dr. Seuss has published a new book, but one totally inappropriate for children, a book engaged in a primitive form of military escalation, and a story with no resolution.
Some 9,000 gun murders are committed every year by law-abiding citizens who might have continued to be law-abiding had they not possessed firearms. One thing is certain: guns don’t create love or trust. Guns don’t bring life -- they only take it away. And life is precious -- it is a gift of God.
Walter Wink reviews a book on gun culture: In no other industrialized nation in the world are there so many gun deaths as in the United States. The National Rifle Association insists that people are unsafe without the protection of guns. In fact, the arming of America ushered in an avalanche of violent crimes.
Battered women also seek solutions through the legal field or their religious community, but discover that others either do not detect the touch of a bleeding woman, or offer them only contempt, misunderstanding, indifference or blame.
Rapprochement between Marxists and Christians on the violence issue is possible -- and without the sacrifice of loyalties on either side. "violent force and nonviolent force" must be replaced by a definition that sees violence as "the imposition of one’s will upon another" and that recognizes violence as "an inescapable feature of the human condition."
Now the verdict is as clear as the evidence that links smoking to cancer: violence in media is causing violence in the society.
Are women more religious than men, while men are more violent?
The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City opened a window on the previously invisible subculture of militias, survivalists and conspiracy theorists.
It is time to break the silence on sexual and family abuse -- a silence that still haunts churches and schools of theological education even as these very issues are front-page news. Our silence will not protect us; it is life-threatening, and it is unfaithful to our commission.
The author suggests six basic principles to guide Christian behavior in a violent world.
The author reviews two books on religious violence. Is religion part of the problem or part of the solution? Is one kind of religion bad and another good? Do we know how to tell the difference?
Tens of thousands of Americans are busily outfitting themselves like army rangers or SWAT police. When members of a local gun club in New Hampshire, Indiana or New Mexico can control more devastating firepower than the armies of Tanzania or Paraguay, it is time to rethink priorities.
Judged by its activity, the NRA operates on the same principle as less reputable and less legal organizations: the principle that the end justifies the means. The author explains how the NRA fights effective gun control legislation.
Terrorists the world over have appropriated concepts and military strategies that originated in the West (Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima; the fire bombing of Dresden). As victims of terrorism we may be forced to rethink our own policies on the use of force, including nuclear force, in order to bring the terrorists in line with our moral denunciations of their acts.
Ethically, we are in an age in which there is grave doubt among theologians, philosophers, jurists and social scientists as to whether any universal principles exist which can be reliably known and used by the international community to define torture or terrorism as fundamentally wrong.
There seems to be a fascination with nihilism in situations of massive violence. We must refuse this fascination which so easily aggrandizes the perpetuators and gives them aid to others who might imitate them. Only those grounded in slow, quiet creation can resist this fascination of nihilism.
(ENTIRE BOOK) The truth is found in the violence of love, that is, in "Spiritual Violence:" It rejects all human means of winning a victory or registering effects. It totally excludes physical or psychological violence. It is based upon faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ.