In 1962, the blurb for the first English edition of War and the Gospel warned that ‘the problem of war is as old as the Christian faith, but it has assumed a greater urgency in our own time’. This remains grimly true after 60 years. In the decade after World War 2, Jean Lasserre made a clear and vigorous case for an exegetical grounding of our attitudes towards war in the modern world. He states that ‘Christian theology should start from the Scriptures, not from preconceived ideas’. With the super-powers of the United States and the USSR at each other’s throats and the threat of nuclear Armageddon on the horizon, Jean Lasserre penned this sober investigation into how Christians should think about war and violence. He begins with the pacifism of Jesus, his teachings and his examples in the New Testament. Questions are raised as to when it is morally obligatory to disobey the state, and whether lethal force can be justified in prisons and by our police forces, a topic that has seen renewed relevance during the first quarter of the twenty-first century. War and the Gospel remains a serious discussion of issues that are, sadly, evergreen.

Reproduction of the original: The War and the Gospel by Henry Wace

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The War and the Gospel: Sermons and Addresses During the Present War" by Henry Wace. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

In this book, Caryn A. Reeder examines the gendered language and imagery of war and peace in the Gospel of Luke. Peace is represented with the blessing of fertility, pregnancy, and newborn infants. Pregnant and nursing women, women and children in general, and feminized Jerusalem also represent the horrors of war in the Gospel - abandoned, crushed to the ground, subject to woe and distress, to the point that barren wombs and dry breasts become a blessing. Reeder argues that the representation of peace with pregnant women and newborn infants, the most vulnerable in the population, indicates that victory belongs to God. This message is clarified by the encouragement of surrender and flight from besieged Jerusalem, rather than an active defense. Notably, there are no men to defend Jerusalem in Luke's warnings of war. The Gospel undermines the masculinization of war commonly found in Greco-Roman texts by redirecting the means of making peace from the violence of victory to the unmanly act of surrender.

This book interprets Mark's gospel in light of the Roman-Jewish War of 66–70 CE. Locating the authorship of Mark's gospel in rural Galilee or southern Syria after the fall of Jerusalem and the temple, and after Vespasian's enthronement as the new emperor, Kimondo argues that Mark's first hearers—people who lived through and had knowledge of the important events of the war—may have evaluated Mark's story of Jesus as a contrast to Roman imperial values. He makes an intriguing case that Jesus’ proclamation as the Messiah in the villages of Caesarea Philippi set up a deliberate contrast between Jesus’s teaching and Vespasian's proclamation of himself as the world’s divine ruler. He suggests that Mark's hearers may have interpreted Jesus' liberative campaign in Galilee as a deliberate contrast to Vespasian's destructive military campaigns in the area. Jesus's teachings about wealth, power, and status while on the way to Jerusalem may have been heard as contrasts to Roman imperial values; hence, the entire story of Jesus may have been interpreted an anti-imperial narrative.

Addresses the problem of the disruption of peace with war against Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke.

Star Wars is one of the most beloved movie series of all time, and in this book John McDowell explores the many spiritual themes that weave throughout the six films. From the Force to the dark side, the issues discussed in the films have a moral and spiritual complexity that, if paid attention to, can help us better understand our place in the world and our relation to others and to God. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, did not intend for his films to be mere entertainment, McDowell argues. Rather, he hoped his films would be used as a vehicle for moral education.

Most accounts of Canada and the First World War either ignore or merely mention in passing the churches' experience. Such neglect does not do justice to the remarkable influence of the wartime churches nor to the religious identity of the young Dominion. The churches' support for the war was often wholehearted, but just as often nuanced and critical, shaped by either the classic just war paradigm or pacifism's outright rejection of violence. The war heightened issues of Canadianization, attitudes to violence, and ministry to the bereaved and the disillusioned. It also exacerbated ethnic tensions within and between denominations, and challenged notions of national and imperial identity. The authors of this volume provide a detailed summary of various Christian traditions and the war, both synthesizing and furthering previous research. In addition to examining the experience of Roman Catholics (English and French speaking), Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Quakers, there are chapters on precedents formed during the South African War, the work of military chaplains, and the roles of church women on the home front.

The monastic life, traditionally considered as an area of withdrawal from the world, is here shown to be shaped by metaphors of war, and to be actively engaged with battle in the world outside.