Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice

Rating:
Summary: An essential testament by a 20th century prophetic voice
Review: "Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice" is an excellent collection of essays by Thomas Merton. The essays in this book reflect a turbulent era: the late 1960s (Merton's preface is dated 1967).

Merton has a progressive, open-minded Christian vision. He writes about nonviolence, the Vietnam War, the Black Power movement, and "Death-of-God" theology. Interesting specific pieces include articles on the prison meditations of Jesuit Alfred Delp (who was persecuted by the Nazis), on Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh ("my brother"), and on the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" ("a book of decisive importance"). Particularly powerful is his critique of "American Christian rightism," which, he writes, is "a mystique of violence, of apocalyptic threats, of hatred, and of judgment" (in "Religion and Race in the United States").

This is a book that every Christian (and many of other belief systems) should read. Merton is an excellent writer, and his ideas remain compelling.

Rating:
Summary: An essential testament by a 20th century prophetic voice
Review: "Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice" is an excellent collection of essays by Thomas Merton. The essays in this book reflect a turbulent era: the late 1960s (Merton's preface is dated 1967).

Merton has a progressive, open-minded Christian vision. He writes about nonviolence, the Vietnam War, the Black Power movement, and "Death-of-God" theology. Interesting specific pieces include articles on the prison meditations of Jesuit Alfred Delp (who was persecuted by the Nazis), on Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh ("my brother"), and on the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" ("a book of decisive importance"). Particularly powerful is his critique of "American Christian rightism," which, he writes, is "a mystique of violence, of apocalyptic threats, of hatred, and of judgment" (in "Religion and Race in the United States").

This is a book that every Christian (and many of other belief systems) should read. Merton is an excellent writer, and his ideas remain compelling.

Rating:
Summary: , Abusive Behavior in the name of the State?
Review: A good Lutheran friend recommended this book many years ago during a conversation in which he noted "evil must stop with the individual." After reading this collection of essays I better understood his point, especially given his profession in law enforcement - that is to say, as a representative of "the State," and thus "Caesar." As Merton makes clear,
violence, requires paticipants throughout all levels of a community.

The themes which run throughout Merton's essays read like the front page of any metropolitain newspaper today or 80 years ago. Only, unlike the front page, Merton gently, and at other times without restraint, hammers the reader's established moral compass, challenging the conscience. Cognative dissonance, propaganda, ideology and smiling lies, are examined in relation to the individual's choice to either (often standing alone), refuse, or to participate, in brutal control, supression, degradation or ahnihilation of others.

Orwell offers in the novel 1984 that the future of humanity might possibly be an ever present boot, and inherent pain, upon the face of the individual. Anthony Burgess, in A Clockwork Orange, provides a scenario in which this future is all too gladly embraced. Thomas Merton warns that the foot in that boot might very well be our own. At one point he asks the reader to consider: "What will our answer be when pain comes to examine us?"
Though Merton has been criticized of late in some circles for having not privately lived by the letter of the law in regard to monastic life and its inherent obligations, his perspective as to what makes evil tick, and challenge to not become a willing, if not active participant, should not be dismissed. No disciple has ever been without blemish. More than a few readers may find themselves telling others about this book - perhaps more now than when first published in the 1960's.

Rating:
Summary: , Abusive Behavior in the name of the State?
Review: A good Lutheran friend recommended this book many years ago during a conversation in which he noted "evil must stop with the individual." After reading this collection of essays I better understood his point, especially given his profession in law enforcement - that is to say, as a representative of "the State," and thus "Caesar." As Merton makes clear,
violence, requires paticipants throughout all levels of a community.

The themes which run throughout Merton's essays read like the front page of any metropolitain newspaper today or 80 years ago. Only, unlike the front page, Merton gently, and at other times without restraint, hammers the reader's established moral compass, challenging the conscience. Cognative dissonance, propaganda, ideology and smiling lies, are examined in relation to the individual's choice to either (often standing alone), refuse, or to participate, in brutal control, supression, degradation or ahnihilation of others.

Orwell offers in the novel 1984 that the future of humanity might possibly be an ever present boot, and inherent pain, upon the face of the individual. Anthony Burgess, in A Clockwork Orange, provides a scenario in which this future is all too gladly embraced. Thomas Merton warns that the foot in that boot might very well be our own. At one point he asks the reader to consider: "What will our answer be when pain comes to examine us?"
Though Merton has been criticized of late in some circles for having not privately lived by the letter of the law in regard to monastic life and its inherent obligations, his perspective as to what makes evil tick, and challenge to not become a willing, if not active participant, should not be dismissed. No disciple has ever been without blemish. More than a few readers may find themselves telling others about this book - perhaps more now than when first published in the 1960's.