pacifism
The church cannot bless war
A Christianity that affirms the state’s wars is not Christianity. It is idolatry.
AJ Muste’s Christian nonviolence
Once a household name among progressives, the activist and minister influenced generations that followed.
Harlem's experiment in interracial, pacifist community
The Harlem Ashram (1940-1948) was a grand experiment that didn't go very far. The interracial Christian commune at Fifth Avenue and 125th Street was modeled after ashrams, or Hindu religious centers, that Gandhi had established in India. Its founders were two white men, Ralph Templin and Jay Holmes Smith, who had been Methodist missionaries in India in the 1930s. There they became interested in Gandhi's synthesis of religion, politics, and nonviolent protest.
Templin and Smith were part of a cohort of American pacifists who saw Gandhi’s work as a potential model for political and religious activism in the United States.
When patriarchy trumps theology
If life is the most important thing in a political and theological belief system, then why would a person support the death penalty, back wars and oppose gun violence prevention?
America’s altar
Drawing on Harry S. Stout, Stanley Hauerwas argues that the Civil War became a total, unlimited war because the demand to participate assumed a sacral status.