Wednesday, March 14, 2007


WORLD has been posting a few thoughts about Stanley Hauerwas, a pacifist theologian with a controversial take on the validity of Christian nationalism. I have one book of his on the shelf, which is waiting for my concentrated Church/State study, something I hope to get to later this year.
HAUERWAS: That I have some sympathy with those who would refuse to allow another person to be unjustly injured or killed is simply a statement that any person should make. But that sympathy does not mean I think we should kill in order to prevent another from being killed. I've always insisted that Christian nonviolence is a harsh and dreadful love requiring that at times we may have to watch the innocent suffer for our convictions. But that is true of any serious moral position including the just war position. Of course Christians should have tried to prevent the massacres in Rwanda and Darfur. The question is how?

Read the whole thing.

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