Tag Archive for: Peace

The Jihad of Jesus (Part 3): Jesus as the Supreme Example

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Dave Andrews | Monday, 4 May 2015

This series of articles is based on Dave’s upcoming book release, The Jihad of Jesus, which is being published by Wipf & Stock. Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

Jesus of Nazareth, whom we know as Jesus the Masih, ‘Messiah’ or the ‘Christ’ demonstrates a life of radical non-violent sacrificial compassion as the only way of life that can save us from destroying ourselves and our societies.[i]

As Ahmad Shawqi says: “Kindness, chivalry and humility were born the day Jesus was born. Like the light of the dawn flowing through the universe, so did the sign of Jesus flow. He filled the world with light, making the earthshine with its brightness. No threat, no tyranny, no revenge, no sword, no raids, no bloodshed did he use to call to the new faith.”[ii]

Many Christians, Muslims and Jews use the retaliation advocated in the Hebrew Bible to justify their eye-for-an-eye reactive violence. After all Moses himself said, “if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” (Exod. 21:23–4). But as Mahatma Gandhi has been often reported to have famously said: “An eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth would lead to a world of the blind and toothless.”

Jesus argued for a totally different approach to that taken in the Mosaic Law. Jesus explicitly, specifically and repeatedly contradicted the Mosaic Law that legitimated retaliation. He said: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist (or retaliate against) an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matt. 5:38–9). Jesus told his disciples you should always be ready to die for your faith, but never kill for your faith (Matt. 16: 24).

When I asked my dear friend and Jewish Rabbi, Zalman Kastel, what he personally found most confronting in the teaching of Jesus, he quickly replied, without any hesitation, that it was his commitment to unflinching nonviolence in the face of violence, which was based on his commitment to love everyone — friend and foe alike — with no exceptions.

Jesus said,

But to you who are listening I say, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-use you. To him who strikes you on one cheek offer the other cheek also. If anyone takes away your cloak, do not stop him taking your tunic, too. Give to everyone who asks you; if anyone takes away your belongings, do not demand them back again. As you would like men to act towards you, so do you act towards them. If you love those who love you, what special grace is there in that? Even sinners love those who love them. If you are kind to those who are kind to you, what special grace is there in that? Even sinners love those who love them. If you are kind to those who are kind to you, what special grace is there in that? Even sinners do that. If you lend to those from whom you wish to get, what special grace is in that? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to get as much back again. But you must love your enemies; and do good to them; and lend with no hope of getting anything in return. Your reward will be great and you will be the sons of the Most High, because he is kind both to the thankless and to the wicked. Be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful. (Luke 6:27–38)

John the Baptist introduced Jesus at the beginning of his ministry as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29). We know the word ‘Lamb’ is not meant to be taken literally. After all, Jesus was a man not a lamb. However, the word ‘Lamb’ is used to describe the kind of ‘Man’ he was. He was a ‘Lamb’ of a ‘Man’ — pure, simple and peaceable — not deceitful, duplicitous and dangerous like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Jesus, the ‘Lamb of God,’ sought to develop grassroots communities of ‘flocks of sheep’. (John 10:11–16). ‘Sheep’ was a seemingly innocuous but essentially counter-cultural term that Jesus used to describe people who lived with ‘wolves’ (those who preyed on other people) but, who refused to become wolves themselves, even if it meant that the wolves might rip the flock to pieces because of their refusal to join the pack and prey on others.

Jesus said: “I want you to live your lives as sheep, even in the midst of wolves. Be shrewd. But always be harmless,” (Matt. 10:16). “Always treat other people as you would like them to treat you,” he said (Matt. 7:12). “Even do good to those who do evil to you. Love those who hate you and bless those who curse you.” (Matt. 5:44). “Don’t ever be afraid,” he said to his flocks, “of those who can kill the body, but can’t kill your soul,” (Matt. 10:28).

And Jesus, ‘the Lamb of God’, practiced what he preached. He may have been ‘the light of the world’. But the world didn’t want him. “The people loved the darkness rather than the light; because their deeds were evil, and didn’t want anybody to expose them,” (John 3:19–20). So the people decided to scapegoat him. And, as Jesus predicted, they eventually seized him, and he allowed them to lead him away like a sacrificial lamb and slaughter him.[iii]

Jesus said: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). The idea of someone being willing to sacrifice himself on behalf of his friends can be as powerful a metaphor in the twenty-first century as it was in the first century. There is much about the way the Jews might understand this metaphor that non-Jews find difficult to understand. But the idea that Jesus was willing to sacrifice his life for his friends is a powerful story. That, even now, touches people with love, in the deep, dark, hidden recesses of their soul, where they feel most abandoned and most alone.

Gale Webbe, in The Night and Nothing, said, “There are many ways to deal with evil. All of them are facets of the truth that the only ultimate way to conquer evil is to let it be smothered within a willing, living, human being. When it is absorbed there, like a spear into one’s heart, it loses its power and goes no further.”[iv] As M. Scott Peck says in The People Of The Lie, “The healing of evil can only be accomplished by love. A willing sacrifice is required. The healer must sacrificially absorb the evil.”[v]

On the cross Jesus absorbed the evil. He took it into his heart as assuredly as the spear that was thrust into his side. And, it went no further. He cried out “Father. Forgive them. For they know not what they do,” (Luke 23:24). There was no reaction. No demand for revenge or retaliation. There was only grace. And so the cycle of violence stopped right there and then, with him, forever.

According to Khalid Muhammad Khalid, Jesus was the supreme example. He said Jesus “was his message. He was the supreme example he left. He was the love which knows no hatred, the peace which knows no restlessness, the salvation which knows no perishing.”[vi]

[i] It was never Jesus’ intention to start a religion — still less a monopolistic religion that saw itself in competition with other religions for people’s allegiance. Jesus said he simply came ‘to bring life and life in all its fullness’ (see John 10:10). Thus he would affirm all that is life-affirming and confront all that is life-negating in the world’s religions — especially in the religion that now bears his name.

Jesus criticised people of all religions — including his own — for promoting domineering leadership (Mark 10:42-43); acting as closed groups that are not open to others (Matt. 5:47); and practising empty rituals which embody no practical compassion. (Matt.6:7)

Jesus appreciated God was bigger than his religion, and worked in the lives of people of other religions — like Naaman the Syrian, who was healed of leprosy, when many Jews weren’t (Luke 4.16–30). Jesus appreciated that people of other religions could not only have great faith, but could also have greater faith than many people of his own religion — like the Syrophoenician Woman, whose feisty faith he was confronted with (Mark 7:24–30). And Jesus appreciated that people of other religions could be better examples of true religion than even the leaders of his own religion — like the ‘Good Samaritan’ (Luke 10.29–37).

The way Jesus related as a Jew to a Samaritan woman at the well (Jn. 4:4-42) is the way people of different religions, like Christians and Muslims, should relate to each other:

  1. Recognise how much we owe to Jews who came before us. (Jn. 4:22)
  2. Acknowledge particularities — distinct rituals of worship (Jn. 4;19–21)
  3. Affirm universalities — all true believers worship in truth (Jn. 4:23)
  4. Never denigrate others — ‘don’t call down fire’ on them (Lk. 9:54–5)
  5. Take a conciliatory approach — ‘if not against you, for you’ (Lk. 9:50)
  6. Always accept hospitality — share food and drink together (Jn. 4:7)
  7. Practice respectful dialogue — explore the significance of Isa/Jesus as the Masih/Messiah — but not necessarily expect others to change religion (Jn. 4)

Jesus didn’t call his followers to convert others, but to witness to others. Jesus said ‘you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ (Acts 1:8) And he suggested that the best way for anyone to witness was by working whole-heartedly for the common good. Jesus said: ‘let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works and praise your Father in heaven.’ (Matt. 5:16)

[ii] Ahmad Shawqi, Al Shawqiyyat (vol. 2; Cairo: Matba’ah Misr / Matba’ah Lajnah Al Ta’lif Wal Tarjamah, 1939), 12.

[iii] Matt 20:17–19

[iv] G. Webbe, The Night and Nothing (New York: Seabury Press, 1964), 109.

[v] M. Scott Peck, The People Of The Lie (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 269.

[vi] Khalid Muhammad Khalid, Ma’an ‘ala-l-Tariq: Muhammad wa-i-Masih (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Haditha, 1958), 188–9.

Dave Andrews and his wife Ange have lived and worked in intentional communities with marginalised groups of people in Australia, Afghanistan and India for forty years.  Dave is a founder of the Waiters Union; an educator for TEAR Australia; a teacher at Christian Heritage College; an elder emeritus for Servants To Asia’s Urban Poor; and a member of AMARAH (Australian Muslim Advocates for the Rights of All Humanity).

The Jihad of Jesus (Part 2): Jihad as Nonviolent Struggle

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Dave Andrews | Monday, 4 May 2015

This series of articles is based on Dave’s upcoming book release, The Jihad of Jesus, which is being published by Wipf & Stock. Read Part 1 of this series.

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan says, “God is Peace”. He says “the very word Islam (from the Arabic silm) means peace.” So, “according to the Prophet, peace is a prerequisite of Islam”. He says “a Muslim is one from whose hands people are safe”.[i] And this could be true, for all Muslims and Christians and Jews, if all Muslims and Christians and Jews would only allow ourselves to be born again in the spirit of the Bismillah.

The Bismillah stands for the Arabic phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, commonly translated, “In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate”. According to Ibn Qayyum, rahman describes the quality of limitless grace with which God embraces the whole of the world and all of those who dwell in it, while rahim describes the general embracing grace of God as it interacts with us in the particular circumstances of our lives, always proactive, always prevenient, always responsive.[ii]

In the light of the Bismillah, Abdul Ghaffar Khan says, we need to remember that if we do have conflict with one another, the ‘weapon of the Prophet’ we should use is sabr or ‘patience’. “If you exercise patience, victory will be yours. No power on earth can stand against it.” He says we need to be mindful that the Qur’an says, “there is no compulsion in religion”; “forgive and be indulgent”; “render not vain your almsgiving by injury;” “whoso-ever kills one — for other than manslaughter — it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.”[iii]

This is completely contrary to the extremist’s idea that for Muslims to be ‘true’ Muslims they need to conduct a jihad, characterised as a ‘resolute, offensive, violent struggle’[iv] by ‘suicide bombing’[v] to eliminate everything non-Muslim from society.[vi]

In his classic book Reconstructing Jihad Amid Competing International Norms, Halim Rane argues we need to wrest the concept of jihad from the control of the extremists and deconstruct and reconstruct our interpretation of jihad in the light of the Qur’an. Rane says if we are to interpret the Qur’an correctly, each verse needs to be interpreted in terms of the text, the language, the meaning it had for the people at the time it was written, and the meaning it has for people reading it in today’s world, in the light of the Bismillah, in the context of the maqasid or ‘overall general objective’ of Islam.[vii]

Quoting Kamali, Rane says the ‘overall general objective’ of Islam is based “in textual injunctions of the Qur’an and the Sunnah” which, he says, are focused on “wisdom, mercy, justice and equity” and directed to “the benefit of mankind”, which, he says, includes “welfare, freedom, dignity and fraternity”.[viii]

One verse which needs to be carefully (re)interpreted in terms of the text, the language, the meaning it had for the people at the time it was written, and the meaning it has for people reading it in today’s world, in the light of the Bismillah, in the context of the ‘general objective’ of ‘wisdom, mercy, justice and equity’ of Islam, is the (in)famous ‘sword verse’ which instructs Muslims to ‘slay’ Christians: ordering them “to slay those who ascribe divinity to aught but God, wherever you may come upon them”, (9:5).[ix]

Rane says “this verse along with Quran 9:29 (which says ‘fight those from among the People of the Book who believe neither in God, nor in the Last Day, nor hold as unlawful what God and his Messenger have declared to be unlawful, nor follow the true religion, until they… agree to submit’) has been quoted throughout Muslim history to justify aggression and aggressive wars against non-Muslims because of their ‘unbelief’’.” Rane says “these verses are among those most commonly quoted by al Qaeda leaders and published on the Internet for recruitment.”[x]

Asad … explains that this verse should be read in conjunction with those that precede it. [In 9:5 it says “As for those who have honoured the treaty you made with them, and have not supported anyone against you: fulfill your agreement with them to the end of their term. God loves those who are righteous.”] Of central importance is that these verses were revealed in the context of ‘warfare already in progress with people who (had) become guilty of a breach of treaty obligation and of aggression.’ … That non-Muslims are to be fought because of their unbelief rather than their act of aggression is doubtful given that [verse 9:5 continues, ‘if they repent, and take to prayer regularly and pay alms, then let them go their way. God is forgiving and merciful,’ and] verse 9:6 commands the Muslims to give protection and security to those among the enemy who seek it. If their unbelief was the basis of fighting against them, this provision would be nonsensical.[xi]

Rane says, “In the context of conflict, the pursuit of peace is paramount to the extent that the Qur’an instructs Muslims; ‘Do not allow your oaths in the name of God to become an obstacle to virtue and God-consciousness and the promotion of peace between people’ (2: 224) … peace should not be rejected, even from a non-Muslim encountered in war (4:94).”[xii]

Rane insists peace not war is the purpose of Islam, and jihad is the path to peace. Rane asserts that in the Qur’an the word for ‘war’ is not jihad but qital, and that the word jihad means ‘struggle’ not ‘war’. He says that there 6,000 verses in the Qur’an, and out of those 6,000 verses, only 35 verses refer to jihad; and out of those 35 verses, 20 times jihad is used ambiguously, 11 times jihad is used unambiguously in terms of peace, and 4 times jihad is used unambiguously in terms of war.[xiii]

Where the word jihad is used ambiguously or unambiguously in the context of war, Rane says, the Qur’an imposes strict ‘rules of engagement’ to temper the use of violence with “wisdom, mercy, justice and equity” in the hope of minimizing “force, suffering, ignominy and enmity” and maximizing “welfare, freedom, dignity and fraternity”. Rane says that according to the Qur’an, the conduct of jihad in war would need to take eight ‘rules for engagement’ into account.

  1. Killing — except in self-defense — is considered a grievous sin.[xiv]
  2. War is only permitted for self-defense and self-determination.[xv]
  3. All wars of aggression are forbidden.[xvi]
  4. If you are not specifically attacked by enemies you should not to attack them, even if they are your enemies.[xvii]
  5. Muslims should never, ever use difference of religion with non-Muslims as an excuse for a war of aggression.[xviii]
  6. In war, Muslims should protect all places of worship, not only mosques, but also churches and synagogues.[xix]
  7. In war, Muslims should protect “helpless men, women and children”,[xx] “even the accidental harm of the innocent is a ‘grievous wrong’ for which those responsible are ‘guilty’.”[xxi]
  8. If peace is offered by your attacker, it should not be rejected, even if the sincerity of the offer is dubious, as God always wants his people to ‘give peace a chance’.[xxii]

Similarly, in Christianity, Ambrose and Augustine developed a set of criteria to call those in power — who make war — to temper the use of violence with ‘wisdom, mercy, justice and equity’. They argued that in order for a war to be conducted according to the principles of justice it would need to meet eight specific conditions.

  1. It would need to be motivated by a ‘just’ cause — and the only cause considered to be ‘just’ was to stop the killing of large numbers of people.
  2. It would need to be administered by a ‘just’ authority — duly constituted authorities had to proceed carefully according to due process before taking action.
  3. It would always need to be a last resort — after all means of negotiation, mediation, arbitration and nonviolent sanctions had been exhausted.
  4. It would need to be for a ‘just’ purpose — to secure the welfare, safety and security of all parties in the dispute, including the enemy.
  5. It would need to be a reasonable risk — not a futile gesture, but a realistic venture, with a reasonable hope of success.
  6. It would need to be cost effective — the outcomes of victory would outweigh the human costs of battle.
  7. That any government intending to go to war should announce their intentions, articulating the conditions that would need to be met to avert it, in order to avoid going to war if at all possible.
  8. That, if the war were to go ahead, that not only the ends, but also the means would need to be ‘just’ — noncombatants must be protected; once combatants surrender, they too must be protected from slaughter; and all prisoners must be protected from torture.

According to these criteria, none of our current wars are ‘just wars’, they are just ‘wars’.

If we are to struggle for justice with integrity, dignity and grace we need to reject all the calls to a violent jihad of Not-So-Holy so-called ‘Holy Wars’ and embrace the nonviolent jihad of the whole-hearted strong-but-gentle struggle for justice against injustice.

Qader Muheideen says “the purpose of jihad ultimately is to put an end to ‘structural violence’,”[xxiii] and we must choose means consistent with that end. Muheideen says for jihadists to end violence we have to choose nonviolent means.[xxiv] He says there are eight cogent Islamic reasons to reframe jihad as a nonviolent struggle:

  1. For Islam, the problem of violence is an integral part of the Islamic moral sphere.
  2. Any violence used must be governed by the ‘rules of engagement’ in the Qur’an.
  3. If any violence used in modern warfare and/or terror campaigns cannot discriminate between combatants and noncombatants, it is quite unacceptable to Islam.
  4. Modern technologies of destruction used in modern warfare and/or terror campaigns, like drones and bombs, render discrimination virtually impossible.
  5. So in the modern world, fighting today’s battles, Muslims cannot use violence.
  6. Islam teaches Muslims to fight for justice against injustice in the light of the truth that human lives are genuinely sacred and taking human lives is a grievous sin.
  7. In order to be true to Islam, Muslims must use nonviolent strategies and tactics in the struggle, such as submission to the will of Allah and civil disobedience.
  8. Islam is a strong resource for a nonviolent struggle because of its tradition of personal discipline, social responsibility, robust perseverance and self-sacrifice.[xxv]

Added to these philosophical/theological reasons are two practical/historical reasons:

  1. The use of nonviolent means is more likely to bring about nonviolent ends, like a democratic society with accountable administration and unarmed opposition.[xxvi]
  2. And the use of nonviolent means and ends are more likely to get the support and approval of the international community ‘amid competing international norms’.[xxvii]

[i] Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, The Prophet of Peace (New Delhi: Penguin, 2009), xi.

[ii] Bismillah al rahman al Rahim, http://wahiduddin.net/words/bismillah.htm.

[iii] Eknath Easwaren, A Man To Match His Mountains (Petuluma: Nilgiri Press, 1984), 117, 209.

[iv] Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 2003), 63–9.

[v] http://www.rrg.sg/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15%3Aour-message&catid=2%3Aour-message&Itemid=6&limitstart=2

[vi] Qutb, Milestones, 130, 134.

[vii] Halim Rane, Reconstructing Jihad Amid Competing International Norms (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 165.

[viii] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 168–170.

[ix] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 186.

[x] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 186.

[xi] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 186–7.

[xii] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 193.

[xiii] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 141–2.

[xiv] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 178.

[xv] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 178.

[xvi] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 181.

[xvii] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 190.

[xviii] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 184.

[xix] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 179.

[xx] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 183.

[xxi] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 189.

[xxii] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 193.

[xxiii] Chaiwat Satha-Anand (Qader Muheideen), “The Nonviolent Crescent” in Islam And Nonviolence (ed. Glenn Paige, Chaiwat Satha-Anand and Sarah Gilliatt; Honolulu: Center For Global Nonviolence Planning Project, 1993), 10.

[xxiv] Satha-Anand (Muheideen) “The Nonviolent Crescent,” 11.

[xxv] Satha-Anand (Muheideen) “The Nonviolent Crescent,” 23.

[xxvi] Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare; New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

[xxvii] Rane, Reconstructing Jihad, 114–126.

Dave Andrews and his wife Ange have lived and worked in intentional communities with marginalised groups of people in Australia, Afghanistan and India for forty years.  Dave is a founder of the Waiters Union; an educator for TEAR Australia; a teacher at Christian Heritage College; an elder emeritus for Servants To Asia’s Urban Poor; and a member of AMARAH (Australian Muslim Advocates for the Rights of All Humanity).

The Jihad of Jesus (Part 1): A Reflection for Christians and Muslims to Consider

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Dave Andrews | Monday, 4 May 2015

This series of articles is based on Dave’s upcoming book release, The Jihad of Jesus, which is being published by Wipf & Stock.

Over the last few years I’ve been involved in some really meaningful Christian-Muslim dialogue. We have talked about there being one God, not many; that God being the God of Abraham; the God of Abraham being a God of compassion; and Jesus — or Isa — as Muslims call him — being the one who embodies that Spirit of compassion best.

My approach to talking with my friends about Jesus has been based on Jesus’ own approach to talking with his friends, whom he called to be with him, without imposing any theological prerequisites, creating a safe space for dialogue and debate about his identity as a prophet, trusting that the ‘Spirit’ could and would lead them into all truth.

Many conversations between Christians and Muslims about Jesus deteriorate from dialogue into debate and from debate into dispute, generating more heat than light on the subject. Often this occurs because both sides want to impose their own particular view of Jesus on the other and are unable and/or unwilling to respect the other person’s particular point of view.

In order to avoid such unproductive disputations, I have conducted my conversations with Muslims and written the following reflections based on those views of Jesus that both the Qur’an and the Injil or the Gospel, as recorded in the Gospels in the New Testament, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, have in common.

While I acknowledge the significant differences Christians and Muslims have about Jesus, I have intentionally tried to focus on those beliefs about Jesus that Christians and Muslims have in common as the place for us to start our conversations, treating ‘common ground’ — not as suspect compromise — but as ‘sacred ground’ — on which we can stand and speak to one another.

Given the significance of jihad as a focus of conflict between Christians and Muslims, my Muslim friends suggested I write a book about Jesus and jihad and what Jesus’ approach to jihad might be. It was suggested I call the book The Jihad of Jesus. It was hoped the provocative title would get a lot of attention, and we could introduce Christians and Muslims to a deconstruction of the extremist’s concept of jihad as a holy war and a reconstruction of the Qur’anic concept of jihad as a sacred nonviolent struggle for justice — in the light of the radical practical peaceful example of Jesus.

In The Jihad Of Jesus I argue that we are caught up in a cycle of so-called ‘holy wars’, but though this inter-communal conflict is endemic, it is not inevitable. Depending on our understanding, our religions can be either a source of escalating conflict, or a resource for overcoming inter-communal conflict; and for our religions to be a resource for overcoming conflict, we need to understand the heart of all true religion as open-hearted compassionate spirituality. In the light of an open-hearted compassionate spirituality, we can reclaim ‘jihad’ from extremists who have (mis)appropriated it as call to ‘holy war’, and reframe it, in truly Qur’anic terms, as a ‘sacred nonviolent struggle for justice’; and we can reconsider Jesus, as he is in the Gospels, not as a poster boy for Christians fighting crusades against Muslims, but as ‘a strong-but-gentle Messianic figure’ who can bring Christians and Muslims together. And, as the book shows, many Christians and Muslims have found Isa (Jesus) and the Bismillah (celebrating the mercy, and grace of God) as common ground on which to base their work for the common good.

The choice Christians and Muslims need to make is: will we continue to commit to a ‘clash of civilizations’ — or join ‘Jesus And The Nonviolent Jihad For Love And Justice’?

Dave Andrews and his wife Ange have lived and worked in intentional communities with marginalised groups of people in Australia, Afghanistan and India for forty years.  Dave is a founder of the Waiters Union; an educator for TEAR Australia; a teacher at Christian Heritage College; an elder emeritus for Servants To Asia’s Urban Poor; and a member of AMARAH (Australian Muslim Advocates for the Rights of All Humanity).

Atonement, Justice, and Peace: A Baptist-Anabaptist Conversation

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Darrin W Snyder Belousek & Respondents | Tuesday, 16th June 2015

On May 31 last year, Dr Darrin Belousek joined members of the Anabaptist Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) and guests for a day-conference exploring themes presented in his book Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church.

Dr Belousek’s talks, based on various parts of his book, explored the subject of atonement, in particular the controversial subject of penal substitutionary atonement. His talks were each followed by short responses by Baptist and Anabaptist scholars—Dr Graeme Chatfield, Dr Anthony Petersen, Matthew Anslow, and Dr David Starling.

The talks, including the responses, are linked below. The responses, having been edited in light of the conversations that occurred at the symposium, have also been compiled and published in the most recent issue of the Pacific Journal of Baptist Research.

Three additional talks have also been included, which were given by Dr Belousek at a gathering the day after the conference. Here Belousek explores issues broader than penal substitution, including reconciliation (1), economic and criminal justice (2), and peace and war (3). To download the files, it may be necessary to right-click the download links.

ATONEMENT, JUSTICE, AND PEACE CONFERENCE

Lecture 1—Jesus’ Death and Christian Tradition: Ancient Creeds and Trinitarian Theology
Response: Dr Graeme Chatfield—PhD (Bristol, UK); Baptist Minister; former lecturer in Church History at Morling College; Visiting Adjunct Professor in Church History and Historical Theology at TCMI Institute (Austria & Eastern Europe); Associate Dean, Australian College of Theology.

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Lecture 2—Jesus’ Death and the Old Testament: Atoning Sacrifice and the Suffering Servant
Response: Dr Anthony Petersen—Lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew at Morling College; Baptist Minister; PhD (Queen’s University Belfast); Author of Behold Your King: The Hope for the House of David in the Book of Zechariah.

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Lecture 3—Jesus’ Death and the Synoptic Gospels: New Exodus and New Covenant
Response: Matthew Anslow—Educator for TEAR Australia; undertaking PhD on Jesus’ prophetic vocation in Matthew’s Gospel (Charles Sturt University/United Theological College); Anabaptist; editor of On The Road.

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Lecture 4—Jesus’ Death and the Pauline Epistles: ‘Mercy Seat’ and Place-Taking
Response: Dr David Starling—Lecturer in New Testament and Theology at Morling College; PhD (University of Sydney, thesis published as Not My People: Gentiles as Exiles in Pauline Hermeneutics); Baptist Minister.

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ADDITIONAL TALKS

Talk 1—Shame For Us: The Cross of Christ in the Drama of Reconciliation

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Talk 2—What is Just?: Repayment in Kind, the King of God and the Cross of Christ

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Talk 3—All Things New: Christ, Cross, and Creation

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Dr Darrin W Snyder Belousek is Lecturer in Philosophy and Religion at Ohio Northern University and in Religion at Bluffton University. He has published many articles, both scholarly and popular, in diverse areas: theology, consistent ethic of life, war and peace, social justice, ethics and economics, science and religion, and philosophy of science (subject of his Doctoral Thesis; he also has a degree in physics). He has recently published, Good News: The Advent of Salvation in the Gospel of Luke. A Mennonite, he has served for seven years in mission assignments through voluntary service and international teaching.