MWR : Articles : War and peace issues

Articles : War and peace issues

Portrait of war’s addiction

Every realistic war movie can be viewed as an antiwar movie, though not necessarily because the filmmakers intend it to be. The Hurt Locker, best picture winner at the Academy Awards on March 7, betrays no agenda.

Life in Jerusalem gives peace insight

JERUSALEM — Before living and working in Jerusalem, Peter Miller, 24, thought solutions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were extremely complicated.

Peace and Pentecostalism

On my desk are two books by Paul Alexander, a young scholar from the Assemblies of God, both published in 2009. Written first was Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God, published by Cascadia Publishing House, Telford, Pa. It chronicles and laments the transition of the Assemblies of God from pacifism to militarism. The second is Signs and Wonders: Why Pentecostalism Is the World’s Fastest Growing Faith, published by Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. It explains the explosive worldwide growth of the Pentecostal movement.
Reject ‘just war’

Standing before the world defending America’s military misadventures, dismissing nonviolence and endorsing the just-war theory as the way to peace, President Obama — as he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December — undermined the examples of peacemakers throughout the ages.

Dutch urge witness on Afghan war

ELKHART, Ind., and NEWTON, Kan. — Leaders of the Dutch Mennonite Church sent a letter to Mennonite Church USA in December, expressing concern about President Barack Obama’s call for the U.S. military’s escalation of troops in Afghanistan.

Nothing like apartheid

I only got 10 minutes of church in this morning.
I was late because soldiers told me and a bewildered German girl, who was visiting Bethlehem from a kibbutz near Eilat,
that people like us could no longer ride with Palestinians on Bus 21.
We had to go to another checkpoint, but he could not tell us how to get there.
Taxed for war

Harold A. Penner found nuggets of hope and inspiration in the Nov. 30 MWR. His call is for greater honesty when making ethical decisions. The waste we condone with our Empire’s war taxes is horrendous. Our Christian heritage affirms allegiance to love, community and respect. But the “principalities and powers” exploit our individual and corporate resources.
Timeless word on war, peace

John Howard Yoder is one of the best-known Mennonite thinkers on peace.
Crosses of remembrance

FORT BENNING, Ga. — Members of Bluffton (Ohio) University’s peace club marched with more than 20,000 protestors Nov. 22 at the military training center formerly known as the School of the Americas.

‘Just wars’ and the peace prize

While it probably offended the Nobel committee to have a peace prize winner lecture the audience on the necessity of war, as President Obama did on Dec. 10 in Norway, peacemakers should be grateful for the opportunity to re-engage in this debate.