I grew up in Southern Manitoba (Canada). This was and still is Mennonite country. Mennonites are a Christian religious sect in the Anabaptist tradition taking our name from a dynamic Dutch leader named Menno Simmons, who was born in Friesland (note my last name) in 1496, and was part of what is often called the Radical Reformation with other leaders like Thomas Muntzer, Michael Sattler, Johannes (Hans) Denck, John Hans Hut, Balthaser Hubmaier, Caspar Schwenkfeld, Melchoir Hoffman and others.
My dad’s dad was a lay Mennonite pastor who served three rural German speaking churches; he dressed in all black, would not tolerate any musical instruments, was a pacifist and the whole nine yards.
All this to say, my heritage is radically committed to non-violence.
In the last few years my interaction with John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, Richard Hays, Craig Carter, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and Jesus Christ have been inviting me to look that role of violence and Christian responses to violence and its use.
I’ve heard many of the arguments, and I am sympathetic with the need for government and the responsibility of government to work for justice. In fact I believe that the pursuit of justice may be the number one goal of government.
I am also quite familiar with the “Just War” tradition and in addition to having questions as to how many wars have ever met the requirements of this tradition, I also find that in praxis the tradition seems to justify war more than lead nations to embody the way of the Cross.
I’ll just say it. I’m a pacifist. And I am a pacifist in the tradition of Christ’s nonviolence.
I believe that the way of Christ is the way of the cross and part of what the way of the cross often invites us to die peacefully without self-defense. A radical form of counter-life that essentially says to the exactor of death, I love you and our society too much to become another cog in the wheel of violence.
I am pro peace and am (I hope) willing to die for it, and am not (I hope) willing kill for it.
Peace, dwight
PS – I know that this is a very controversial subject in this country. I don’t share my stance to add to the controversy, I share it as part of my ongoing, though feeble attempt to offer myself as the gift that God has intended me to be to this world.
