Century illustration
“We must stop the violence in this country,” someone said to me recently. “I couldn’t agree with you more,” I replied. “This is a gospel imperative.” I could have added that if we are going to answer that imperative, we will have to recognize the multidimensional reality of violence as it exists in our country and across the globe.
Peace studies pioneer Johan Galtung characterizes violence as an “insult to life.” Theologically, it is anything that harms or devalues the life God has granted us. Galtung further explains that violence is carried out in at least three interrelated ways: directly, structurally, and culturally.
Direct violence refers to an event—war, famine, an aggressive physical act—that poses an immediate threat to life. The “stratum of direct violence,” Galtung says, is reflected in “cruelty perpetrated by human beings against each other and against other forms of life and nature in general.”
