“What do you think about putting a sword in the display at the front of the church on Christmas Eve?” One of the decorators at church asked me a…
Tag:
violence
The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence Gary A. Haugen and Victor Boutros Oxford University Press There’s an epidemic destroying billions…
Killing Enmity: Violence and the New Testament
Author: Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld
It’s easy to find support for claims that the New Testament endorses violence. Within Mennonite communities, for example, people have suffered abuse, believing that New Testament Scripture requires passive submission, unqualified forgiveness, and compliant obedience. Tom Yoder Neufeld acknowledges that New Testament vocabulary, images, and metaphors can “create space for violence, validating, even enshrining violence,” yet argues that the presence of such language is intended to “subvert and finally ‘murder’ violence.”