Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

"Lest We Forget" -- Peace Sunday Sermon by Wayne Northey

Introduction

The church is called to be now what the world is meant to be then. Peace is possibly the most poignant, difficult and elusive goal of the entire creation. Lest we forget, title of my sermon, the church is nonetheless called to peace.

This is perhaps the essence of the simple words of Jesus at the end of Luke 11:2: “… your kingdom come.”, and the more expanded words in Matt 6:10: “…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

In the Psalm we heard this morning were these words: “Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire (Ps 46:8-9).” This is God’s will throughout the earth.

Annalise Acorn's "Compulsory Compassion" -- Review by Wayne Northey

Book Review of Compulsory Compassion: A Critique of Restorative Justice, Annalise Acorn, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004, 207 pages. 

By Wayne Northey 

Introduction 

There is a longstanding difference in how to read the Gospels in relation to criminal justice and in how we read the Gospels in response to issues of violence and nonviolence in general.  One of Mohandas Gandhi’s repeated statements was that it seems everyone but Christians knows Jesus was nonviolent¹.  The author is not grounding her critique on Jesus or the Bible, though she cites Jesus’ words several times.  She joins with Gandhi’s “Christians”.  I shall return to the issue of her ethical epistemology. 

My point of departure is the church’s Jesus and Bible.  And I am with Gandhi, a non-Christian by his self-designation, in his assessment of (especially) Western Christendom’s remarkable longstanding rejection of Jesus’ nonviolence.  Noted evangelical author Philip Yancey once wrote of Gandhi (rightly I think) that he was possibly the only Christian (Christ-follower) in India at the time of his bid to liberate India from British rule.  

"A Great Irony of History": the Cross and Peace by Wayne Northey

Introduction

Ever since Clark Pinnock taught an interterm course in 1975 at Regent College, entitled “The Politics of Jesus”, for close to half of my life, I have been drawn to the nonviolent Cross of Jesus.  Pinnock later taught a full-semester course by the same title, based upon a then recent publication by Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (1972 & 1994), that theologian Stanley Hauerwas believes is the most important publication on ethics of the twentieth century.

What do I mean by “violence” in this talk?  A very succinct definition is given in Marjorie Suchocki’s The Fall To Violence (1994): “… at its base, violence is the destruction of well-being (Suchocki, 1994, p. 85, italics added.)”  Violence is the destruction of well-being.   

Is there a place for dreaming? by Wayne Northey

IS THERE A PLACE FOR DREAMING?
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND INTERNATIONAL STATE CONFLICT
by Wayne Northey

This lecture grew out of a six-month research project where Wayne served as first Scholar in Residence, Centre
for Research on Conflict, Conflict Studies, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada. He is also writing a book based upon this research.

Download spu_presentation_september_2007__3_1.pdf

Covenant of Peace by W.M. Swartley Book Review by W. Northey

Book Review of Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics, Willard M. Swartley, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2006; 542 pp.

By Wayne Northey 

It was my good fortune to have spent a little time with Mennonite New Testament theologian Willard Swartley at the June, 2006 Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R) in Ottawa, Canada. I first heard from him about what surely is his magnum opus, the volume under review. Though he has written and edited over 20 books during his fruitful career as professor (now emeritus) of New Testament at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhard, Indiana.

"Jarhead," Montreal Shooting Spree, and Western Civilization by Wayne Northey

It was while descending from a hike up Elk Mountain in the eastern Fraser Valley of British Columbia that someone shared about his son, one of Canada’s finest trained élite soldiers, who had recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

His son said the movie Jarhead would be the closest to depicting accurately the kind of training our élite soldiers receive to fight for Western civilization and democracy in Afghanistan right now.

A friend and I that same night obligingly watched the 123-minute 2005 release based upon the true story of Anthony Swofford’s experience of U.S. Marine life told in Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, published in 2003.  The movie depicts the systematic brutalization, bastardization, and “bellicosification” of the Marine recruit; the choking out of every vestige of civilized attitude and behaviour.  The “jarhead”/Marine once emptied of all human decency (utter inversion of “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten”) becomes receptacle for one all-pervasive value: to kill.

War and Hell by Wayne Northey

War and hell are inextricably interlinked in Christian history and theology.  Below are some thoughts about both, with relation to a movie and a book.

I.  The Christian and War: Reflections on “Saving Private Ryan”

“War is hell”, observed Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman.  And Steven Spielberg dipped us right into its fiery midst in his 1998 summer release.

War is indeed hell.  Yet, in the long history of the Christian Church, apart from the earliest era, every war engaged in throughout Christendom has been supported by the Church on both sides of the conflict.  How in the name of Jesus can this be? What, for starters, of Christ’s express words?: “Love your enemies (Matt. 5, Luke 6).”  Further, how can Christians do an end run around Jesus’ explicit teaching by reverting to Old Testament endorsement of war when Jesus flatly said?: “So in everything [except war?], do to others [except your enemies? - see Matt. 5:43ff] what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets (Matt 7:12).”; and “... ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor [except your enemies?] as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matt 22:37-40).”   

The Mumbai Bombs by Wayne Northey

July 12, 2006
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Dear Editor:

    Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Peter MacKay predictably was the pot that called the kettle black in (otherwise legitimately) condemning the bombing horror in Mumbai this week.
            Last July Prime Minister Tony Blair likewise as hypocritically called the London bombings “barbaric attacks.” On September 1, 1939, President Roosevelt similarly wrote to the major powers that aerial bombing of civilians had “profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity” and was “inhuman barbarism.” He later as disingenuously referred to the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour as a “date, which will live in infamy.” President Bush joined the pharisaical chorus in designating the September 11, 2001 attackers “evildoers.” 

Rene Girard and Violence by Wayne Northey

Originally presented at South Langley Mennonite Brethren Church, April 29, 2001.

Love to God and love to neighbor are like two doors that open simultaneously, so that it is impossible to open the one without opening the other, and impossible to shut one without also shutting the other. –Søren Kierkegaard

Introduction

The Anglican apologist C.S. Lewis wrote of reading George Macdonald for the first time, and knowing he had just crossed a great frontier. About ten years ago, I was asked to review René Girard's Violence and the Sacred (1977), and felt a similar sense of having encountered a "great frontier". Evangelical author Donald Dayton wrote of so connecting to Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics that he fairly had to go out for regular walks during reading them to burn off the excess energy. Likewise, in engaging Thanksgiving weekend the recent anthology of Girard's works entitled The Girard Reader (1996) while accompanying my sons salmon fishing on the Chilliwack River, at times it was all I could do to restrain myself from overwhelming the roar of that river - and totally embarrassing my sons! - with wild cries of YEEESSS!!!

Emperor Bush, Pirate Bin Laden, Calvin College, and the Gospel by Wayne Northey

"The king asked the fellow, ‘What is your idea, in infesting the sea?’ And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, ‘The same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate: because you have a mighty navy, you’re called an emperor.’ (St. Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson, New York: Penguin Books, 1984, IV, 4, p. 139).”

In The Vancouver Sun, June 13, 2005, the headline read: “BUSH AS SCARY AS BIN LADEN: POLL.” The article began: “Canadians believe U.S. President George Bush is almost as great a threat to our national security as Osama bin Laden, according to an opinion poll obtained by the National Post.