I was recently asked on Twitter how I deal with the problem of biblical violence, that is, the problem of God appearing to command and commend violent actions that appear to be evil. I responded with four points and while regular readers of this blog will likely recognize all four in my past writing, I […]
violence
Is Islam more violent than Christianity? Is the Qur’an more violent than the Bible? Who decides?
The other day I tweeted a link to my 2014 review of God’s Not Dead. One fellow responded by saying that I was “nit-picking.” But alas, he then noted that Twitter is not a good medium to explain why. How ironic, I noted, that Twitter is sufficient to make a charge of nit-picking but not sufficient […]
Reckoning with the Peaceable Kingdom: A Review of Disarming the Church
Eric A. Seibert. Disarming the Church: Why Christians Must Forsake Violence to Follow Jesus and Change the World. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018.) Carl Norden was a devout Christian. So when he developed the Norden bombsight, it was with the intent of increasing the accuracy of aerial bombing to the end of decreasing the resulting collateral damage wrought […]
Sports, violence, and irrational secularists
Let’s approach the matter of religion and violence from a slightly different angle. I lived in London, England for a couple years. One day I was strolling down the sidewalk when I noticed the street had been blocked off at an intersection and a couple dozen bobbies were standing around nervously. Curious, I went up […]
Does religion cause violence?
A commenter named Logic Ninja just posted a comment that made a couple points in the discussion thread to my article “Haha. Imagine that.” The second point concerned the linking of religion and violence. Logic Ninja wrote: “If there were no religion, do you think there’d be MORE war, or LESS? If you answered “more,” […]
Violent readings of the Bible and Defending the Indefensible
This past weekend I attended a conference on atheism and Christianity sponsored by Concordia University’s Canadian Centre for Scholarship and the Christian Faith. It was a very good conference with those in attendance flying in from as far away as Los Angeles, Harvard University, and our plenary speaker (Richard Swinburne) from London. One of the sessions […]
83. God’s Story: A Conversation with Mark Roncace
When I was growing up in the church, my earliest encounters with the Bible came in the terms of the Sunday school flannelgraph, a rather primitive technology in which Bible stories were acted out with pieces of fabric stuck to a felt board. At that time, the Bible seemed like a disjointed set of isolated stories, each […]
Those who ignore the causes of Palestinian violence…
This morning the following tweet appeared on my Twitter feed (as retweeted by Michael Brown): First, let me begin by noting that while ISIS apparently posted the pictures, I take it the focus of Cantor’s comments is not so much ISIS as the Palestinians since (1) the Palestinians are on the frontline of this abhorrent incitement […]
“Putting down wolves” and other chilling rhetoric
A few days ago film director and provocateur Michael Moore foolishly jammed a stick in the wasp’s nest by saying that all snipers are cowards (take that Chris Kyle). The comment is equal parts false and incendiary. But what most intrigues me are the responses that Moore’s comment elicited. Consider, for example, Don Mann’s response […]
Does religion make conflict worse?
David Evans offered a helpful comment in response to my article “If we all reasoned like the atheistic ideologue.” After noting that Christians also make crass statements (a point I certainly wouldn’t dispute!), Evans offers the following observation: “I would be inclined to say that though most conflicts have more than one cause, certain religions […]
Victor Stenger, religion and violence
Victor Stenger, retired particle physicist and new atheist polemicist, passed away suddenly on August 27th at the age of 79. While I rarely agreed with Dr. Stenger, I enjoyed reading his writings and found them to be engaging and provocative. So how to recognize the man’s passing? When a comedian dies, you honor her by […]
The beheading of Goliath and the beheading of Syrian soldiers
Last week the world gaped in horror at a photo posted to Instagram by Jihadist Khaled Sharrouf. The photo depicts Sharrouf’s seven year old son proudly holding up the decapitated head of a Syrian soldier. The moral judgment was unequivocal. “Appalling!” “Disgusting!” “Evil!” This moral revulsion provides an opportune time to turn to one of the […]
Let’s talk about violence: Discussions on the Bible
Every year when I teaching atonement in systematic theology class, I start by re-introducing students to the hymns of their youth: songs like “Nothing but the Blood”: Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus! We pause and take in the imagery […]
The Bible and Violence: A Bibliography
The other day I got into a conversation with a fellow Christian about the Joshua genocide. Like many Christians, he had a sense that there was something problematic here, but had never paused to wrestle with it. When I told him there was a lively and diverse conversation within the church over so-called “texts of terror” […]
