That conversation between Coates and Klein was both brilliant and fascinating, and one of the most sustained dialogues on nonviolence I have read in our current political discourse. I think they are both right that our imagination for what the state is and does must change, and that our assumptions about the state’s monopoly of violence and our deep attachment to the myths and pedagogical purposes of war (even the way war functions as a kind of school of virtue) must give way. For me, Christians are particularly prepared to both proclaim and embody an alternative to the violence of the state. Of course my mind jumps immediately to Hauerwas and The Peaceable Kingdom but I also can’t recommend enough Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics by Ted Smith at Emory University. Thanks for this latest selection, Michael. Very very good (as always!).
That conversation between Coates and Klein was both brilliant and fascinating, and one of the most sustained dialogues on nonviolence I have read in our current political discourse. I think they are both right that our imagination for what the state is and does must change, and that our assumptions about the state’s monopoly of violence and our deep attachment to the myths and pedagogical purposes of war (even the way war functions as a kind of school of virtue) must give way. For me, Christians are particularly prepared to both proclaim and embody an alternative to the violence of the state. Of course my mind jumps immediately to Hauerwas and The Peaceable Kingdom but I also can’t recommend enough Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics by Ted Smith at Emory University. Thanks for this latest selection, Michael. Very very good (as always!).