The Little Friar

Apparently President Obama now fears future American presidents will wage perpetual covert drone wars.  On the surface of it, such fears are well-grounded.  President Obama himself has embraced controversial covert counterterrorism programs began by George W. Bush:  The rendition and harsh interrogation (including torture) of terrorist suspects, and the use of drones to kill terrorist suspects outside of traditional battlefields. Two days after taking the oath of office Obama signed an Executive Order , which revoked the Bush-era directives authorizing torture, and reemphasized international conventions and federal laws prohibiting torture.  The following day, Obama authorized two CIA drone strikes in Northwest Pakistan, which, combined, killed an estimated one militant and 10 civilians, including between four and five children. Whereas Bush authorized approximately 50 drone strikes that killed 296 terrorists and 195 civilians in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, ...

I've never really understood why citizens of the United States love firearms.  Even in the aftermath of the most-recent mass shooting in Orlando, there seems to be no widespread desire to enforce tighter gun laws or abolish private ownership of firearms.  As a Christian committed to Jesus and his way of nonviolence, I still find it very difficult to believe that Americans generally can't see that fewer guns in the hands of the general public would lead to fewer shootings.  Granted, if a person tips over the edge so much that all s/he wants to do is slaughter, that person is likely to find a way to do so by whatever means available:  Gun, knife, homemade bombs, intentional hit and runs, and so on.  But guns and rifles are quite easily available to the average American, and so mass shootings seem to be more common in the United States than in other Westernized countries -- though there are notable exceptions, as the recent killing sprees in Norway and France prove...

By now, nearly everyone is aware of the horrible violence perpetrated against the congregation at Emanuel AME Church in historic Charleston, South Carolina.  I've seen a few responses to this evil on Facebook that bear some push-back. 1.  This was not an act of " senseless violence ".  Calling the violence "senseless" implies that the shooter has no moral agency.  What occurred on Wednesday night was not "senseless violence" -- it was a cold, calculated, act of racial hatred.  (While I love Anderson Cooper and watch his news program nearly every day, he's really dropped the ball here.) 2.  Some have suggested that the shooter "obviously" suffers from some " mental illness ".  Thing is, mental illness doesn't make us kill one another .  Mental illness demands to be treated with compassion.  When we call this event "senseless violence" or attribute some "mental illness" to the shooter, we blur the ...

In the debates about pacifism within the Christian tradition, many Christians have justified the use of violence and killing by making an appeal to Jesus' temple action, the time when Jesus flipped the tables of the moneychangers and dove sellers and drove people from the temple courts with a whip. I agree with the many other Christians who think that this is a horrible argument.  It's quite a stretch to go from Jesus' temple action to killing people.  Of course if Jesus, say, stabbed somebody to death in the temple then we might have something to talk about.  But that's not what happened.  To be sure, the word "violence" could be used to describe Jesus' actions, but that's a far cry from giving us a warrant to kill. And yet, there is something much less talked about and debated regarding Jesus' temple action. One of those activist communities must be left to ask, after the recent riots in Baltimore, is if it's ever okay to bre...

Today, my tears are shed for Baltimore.  My tears are shed for all those communities who have known such violence and destruction that accompany that violence.  There are so many of them. This morning, Baltimore is part of a tragic American pattern: I weep as Jesus himself wept, and for the same reason: And when Jesus drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, " Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!   But now they are hidden from your eyes.  For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.  And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation" (Luke 19.41-44). Why did Jesus weep?  Jerusalem had failed to learn "the things that make for peace".  And because Jerusalem had failed to re...

The images tonight are heart-breaking . Baltimore is in chaos , after the funeral today of Freddie Gray.  Gray, of course, died while in police custody on April 19.  Since that time, questions and video have arisen that have led to questions about the context of Gray's death.  Gray's death is another in a long string of deaths of African-Americans and other minorities under questionable circumstances. There's no doubt to my mind that there's a national crisis.  And we have to understand that this crisis isn't created in recent history.  It's a cycle of abuse and oppression, a cultural legacy of racism and violence that names one of America's deepest sins. And like those in the minority communities, I'm skeptical that those of us with the cultural power to change things are really listening, and working for institutional changes that bring reconciliation and forgiveness for that national sin. I've seen so many question whether these riots ...

Recently, I posted an article that highlighted the return of firing squads (in Utah) to all the ways Americans can now officially be killed by the state for "punishment" for crimes committed.  That article discusses " a bill that would allow the state to execute prisoners on death row by firing squad in the event the appropriate drugs for a lethal injection cannot be obtained".   In my response to the article, I said: "Man's inhumanity to man", as Robert Burns put it, is the very gist of those curses from Genesis. I'm hardly surprised at the anger and the violence, because we humans have always been good at this sort of thing. ISIS learned it from us, to be honest . (America created so many crises in the Middle East since the 50s that those chickens were bound to come home to roost.) Cain killed Abel. We kill one another. Whether it's the atrocities committed by Americans (anyone who thinks we haven't, I only respond wi...

1.  God is the God of peace.  The Father, as the "source of good" ( fons bonorum ), is the source of peace; the Son, of course, is the Prince of Peace; and the Spirit, as the "bond of love" ( vinculum caritatis ) between the Father and the Son, is the Spirit of peace.  To re-phrase 1 John 1.5:  God is non-violent, and in him there is no violence at all. 2.  Is this a tendentious use of scripture?  Not at all.  Christian theology is Trinitarian precisely because it is Christocentric -- and it is incontestable that "God is Christ-like, and in him there is no un-Christ-likeness at all" (John V. Taylor).  Jesus preached and practiced non-violence -- no ifs, ands, or buts.  And Jesus is the imago Dei . 3.  And the "awkward" New Testament texts?  The "sword" in Matthew 10.34 is clearly a metaphor for the conflict that the mission of Jesus provoked; while the "sword" in Luke 22.36 is "grimly ironical (IH Marshall).  ...

This is the tweet in question: Now, I realize that seems "harsh" and even, to some ears, very "unpatriotic".  I'm certain there are other things I "could say" in potentially "better ways".  But, that's what I said because that's what I meant.  There's a connection to be made here between the violence of yesterday's explosive revelation of exactly the type, means and ends of the American CIA's use of torture in the so-called "War on Terror".  The demonic brutality depicted in that report is just that -- demonic brutality .  CIA leadership and the political administrations that suppoted them are guilty of Nazi-style brutality ( Verschärfte Vernehmung , anyone?).  (If you think I'm exaggerating, that the logic and practices of American torture are substantially different from the Nazi practices, try a re-reading of Kogon's Theory and Practice of Hell .)   Make no doubt about it, this is news of how fallen an...

Over the past weeks and months, I've heard a tiresome response from certain brothers and sisters, used when I highlight the American sin of racism, and how that sin is destroying fellow children of God, those made in God's image in Christ:  "More Black Americans kill one another than White Americans who kill Black.  So, surely violence isn't racist". So, repeat after me:   Racism  is institutionalized White-on-Black violence, even if that violence is internalized by Blacks.  In 1619, the first twenty Africans were brought over as labor for the new colonies.  Within one generation the white majority had defined black people as permanent slaves and non-human property.  This created a social order in which black people were only valuable for their ability to support a white dominated society that was economically prospering off of the stolen land of Native Americans and the stolen labor of African Americans.  Consequently, a system of White-on-Black ...

1.   Four words of Jesus that many Christians don't seem to get: "εγω δε λεγω υμιν ..." (Sermon on the Mount). 2.  " What about you?" he asked them.  "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "Is this another one of your trick questions?" Jesus said, "No, straight up." Peter said, risked, "Hmm ... Don't you mean 'Who is my neighbor?'" God-smacked, Jesus said, "Er, yes, I guess I do" (Mark 8.29ff., Original Autograph) 3.   Some Pharisees and Herodians said to Jesus, "Tell us:  is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"  But Jesus knew it was a trick question and replied, "Why are you playing mind games with me?  Bring me a coin, and let me look at it."  They handed him one.  He flipped it, and said, "Heads I win, tails you lose."  (Mark 12.15f., Original Autograph) 4.  " One Christian is no Christian", said Church Father, Tertullian.   I respond:  Just the one?  ...

I remember September 11, 2001.  That Tuesday, at 8.45am, I was standing in line in an airport.  I, along with countless others, watched in horror as acts of murder were committed in front of us, on television screens.  Because I was traveling, I was wearing a clergy collar.  Within minutes, strangers began asking questions.  I was called upon for answers on God's behalf.  So I don't minimize the grief.   But I do disagree with the national myth that pervades around this day.  There was nothing unique about September 11th.  The world didn't fundamentally change.  It was business -- violent business  -- as usual.   In the hours and days that followed that followed 9am, Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was called upon again and again for a dabar Yahweh  -- the word of The Lord.   The following Sunday, the Lectionary Gospel text was from Luke 15.  Jesus' story of the Lost Sheep.   Many pastors stuck with the assig...

I'm not linking to the grainy video of Janay Palmer being violently assaulted by her husband, Ray Rice.  I don't care one whit about football, so this post isn't about the NFL's having banned him indefinitely (though I think this is a start).  I can't understand what leads her to stay with an abuser.   No, this post isn't about just  them.  It's about women, day in and day out, everywhere, who try to conceal their abuse under sunglasses.  Who are beaten, bruised, hurt, bloody.  I know many.  And I won't share their details.  Because those details are too intimate.   I'm simply writing this to say how important these women are for the Church.  These are difficult experiences to share and absorb but the silence has to be broken if women are to feel empowered to speak about and escape abusive and violent situations.  And the hearts of men must also be sensitized and converted by these testimonies.  I'm simply writing this to ...

Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action against TV, Movie & Video Game Violence  is a first-rate expose of the overwhelming contemporary scientific evidence about the destructive effects of media violence on our children.  We may want to deny it, but Grossman and DeGaetano bear witness.  But they also provide us with tools -- real life and workable tools! -- to change all the violent media diets that have been changing our kids for the past two generations.  And no one is more qualified than Grossman to lay out those effects.  His On Killing  and On Combat  are meticulously researched classics.  So when I ordered this book I was expecting much of the same.  But I was blown away!   Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill  provides  indisputable, scientifically demonstrable facts that media violence is psychologically, emotionally and even  physiologically  doing damage to our children.  Every parent must read ...