MWR : Toward an evangelical peace movement

Last updated July 05.

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July 05

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North America War and peace issues

Toward an evangelical peace movement

By Aaron D. Taylor

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The vision for Evangelicals for Peace is to educate and mobilize American evangelicals into proactive and comprehensive peacemaking. However, Evangelicals for Peace is not a pacifist-only movement. There are evangelicals in the “just war” camp who agree with many of the stated goals of the summit and want to pursue peace within that paradigm. Rick Love, the co-founder of Peace-Catalyst International, the organization launching the network, who himself is a self-described Just-war theorist leaning towards pacifism, says, “For too long, evangelical theology in America has had the tendency to view peacemaking as a distraction from the ‘pure’ work of preaching the gospel, or as a slippery-slope towards secular humanism. We want to change this paradigm. We want the average evangelical in America to view peacemaking in the same way that they view feeding the hungry or serving the poor—as a demonstration of the good works of the Gospel of the Kingdom.”

It’s been a pleasure of mine to work with Rick Love, as well as the other partner organizations, in thinking through the dynamics of putting this summit together. When it comes to how evangelicals can best draw from the resources of our faith in order to work for peace, many questions naturally arise: questions about the Christian witness to the state, Muslim/Christian relations, the impact of Christian Zionism on U.S. foreign policy, the possibility of Just Peace theory as a middle ground between Pacifism and Just-War theory, the relationship between dispensationalism and peace theology, how the various theological traditions within evangelicalism can create a space for a peace-theology within their existing paradigms.

Very few of these questions lend themselves to easy answers; which is why we need your input. It will take a robust effort to construct an evangelical peace witness to the media, the political powers, and the culture at large, and we need your help to make it happen. We are calling evangelicals from all types of persuasions and agendas to find those areas of common ground where we can work for peace together.

I hope to see you there.

Aaron D. Taylor is the author of Alone with A Jihadist: A Biblical Response to Holy War and administrator of middleeastexperience.com.

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Comments

If you want peace, embrace war.

- Hominid (jul 6 at 9:12 a.m.)
With tongue in cheek, I'll say the hippies did rather well in influencing political policy with their make love not war slogan. Seriously though don't love and peace tend to go hand in hand. And isn't love a reoccuring Biblical theme. If love your neighbor as yourself is secular humanism then religion has not a hole but a huge chasm to dig itself out of. It's hard to go to war i.e. kill someone you love, divorce notwithstanding. The problem will be reducing your objective to our bumpersticker, 10 second soundbite mentality. I remember growing up mennonite and having some reservations about being a pacifist and my mother gave a story to read about soldier who had just killed an enemy soldier and as was customary he searched the dead mans pockets to find nothing but a picture of the dead soldiers wife and two small children in the shirt pocket next to his heart. Our soldier realized no matter how much he thought the enemy was wrong he had just killed another human being. Obviously that story stayed with me as I can still remember it lo these 50 years later. Didn't Jesus in essence teach that in having souls we are all Gods children and that love and peace toward one another is not just to be the fad philosophy of the day, but how we conduct ourselves every day. I sincerely hope the Mennonite religion hasn't devolved to such a politically correct organization that preaching love and peace is not allowed. If it has, the church and its members should lose their standing as legal pacifists. I really fail to see the religious or theological conundrum here with your objectives. Maybe peace and love should start in your hometown community and I guess in this day and age I'll also add your facebook friends. Always be mindful of what the bible says about those who are lukewarm and go for it by God I mean for God. Actually I guess by God through God and for God would all be appropiate. I don't really like politics especially church politics, but if you have a position open for someone to spearhead such a worthwhile Godly movement, I would consider it.

- c ken weaver (jul 8 at 1:22 a.m.)
I have searched for evidence that Billy Sunday made the statement Taylor attributes to Sunday and was unable to find it. All this is to accuse Billy Sunday that he does not measure up to the New Age Anabaptist measuring stick. Billy Sunday turned his back on a successful professional baseball career and answered God’s call for him to go into full time Christian ministry as a traveling evangelist. If Taylor and MWR want to measure themselves to Billy Sunday, they would be less than a gnat in comparison.

Lastly, Jesus was not a pacifist nor is pacifism taught in the Bible. — I

- Dale Welty (jul 8 at 10:58 p.m.)

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