Today I want to share a talk that a friend of mine delivered the Sunday before Memorial Day in 2017. He used Apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s General Conference address, “Perfect Love Casteth Out Fear,” to counter the endless bombardment of propaganda that takes place at this time. My friend told the truth about the pro-state, pro-military lies that inundate us, preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and focused on the Gospel’s demand that we renounce violence and fear as means to achieving our social, political, or economic ends. In turn he also talks about the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the US military, the idolatry of worship weapons as if they can keep you safe, missionary work, serving our enemies, loving those who hate us, and the way to build Zion.
Tag: killing is blasphemy against Christ
Nonviolence in Early Christianity, Part 1
Some of the oldest and most affirmed truths in all of Christendom are that Jesus Christ commands us to love our enemies, to renounce violence, and to reject all other worldly loyalties – be they nation, empire, or people – for the Church, the Gospel, and Jesus Christ Himself. These truths can been in the writings of the earliest surviving Christian leaders and writers. What follows below is the first part in an effort to share a small sampling of these statements which I have tried to place within a rough chronological order. Hopefully they will help the reader, whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Pentecostal, Christian Scientist, Latter-day Saint, etc. to understand the role of what we now call nonviolence, civil disobedience, rejection of world powers -what we today call the State – and loving and serving your enemy as central beliefs in the long history of true Christianity, ancient and modern.