Some Books on Christian Pacifism

Ron Sider's If Jesus is Lord is for me a very exciting book. Sider has made a name for himself over the years as the "liberal" Evangelical, so I suppose that his reputation will not be changed by this book, in which Sider makes the case for Christian pacifism.

Of course, I don't consider that a liberal or conservative position, but a Biblical one. I come to Sider's book already convinced, and so I'm enjoying the book as is Sider page by page deals with every relevant Biblical passage as he seeks to answer the question, does Jesus ever condone killing?

Previous to this I have read Preston Sprinkle's Fight: A Christian Case for Non-violence (another fine book), and Sider's bibliography provides some other titles for a Christian Pacifism reading list. Among these are:

•  Lisa Sowle Cahill's Love Your Enemies: Disciplship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory
• John Driver's How Christians Made Peace with War
• Stanley Hauerwas' The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics
• Richard B. Hayes' The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics

And though Sider doesn't mention it, there is also Brian Zahnd's A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey to the Gospel of Peace.

In the coming year I hope to read more on the general subject of Christian ethics (Hays), as well as Zahnd and Hauerwas from the list above. For now, let me leave you with a quote from Stanley Hauerwas' introduction to Sider's book.

But once the Bible is read as testimony to the risen Christ, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion tht Christ has made it possible for a people to exist who cand have survived without killing.

And then this from page 107of Sider's book:

N. t. Wright is surely right to assert that Jesus's gospel of the kingdom "is the story of God's kingdom being launched on earth as in heaven, generally a new state of affairs in which the power of evil has been decisively defeated, the new creation has been decisively launched, and Jesus's followers have been commissioned and equipped to put that victory and that inaugurated new world into practice." [Sider is quoting from Wright's fine book, Surprised by Hope]