The coronavirus pandemic presents us with acute versions of some of the basic political questions.
Politics
Know Justice, Know Peace
Adam Carrington
The opening remarks from Eric Hutchinson and Myles Werntz helpfully establish order and justice as central issues in today’s protests and the sixteenth century’s Peasants’ Revolt. Hutchinson declares justice a higher good than order, but order a prerequisite for...
No Justice, No Peace?
E. J. Hutchinson
In 1525, Martin Luther addressed the peasants of Swabia who were protesting (and rioting) in response to unjust government. Was his response reasonable, or did it sacrifice justice for order? Thinking through the issues involved is a valuable way to consider what our response might be to civil unrest today. Start here with Part 1 of our three-part series on the Peasants’ War and protests today.
The Anabaptist Vision of Politics
John Roth
John D. Roth reflects on why history’s meaning stems from the church, not the state.
The Hollow Lands, Part II
Andrew Wainer
“In the end, local solutions—multiplied by thousands—can become national solutions—if they are allowed to trickle up. It might be that the healing that will come will begin quietly, unspectacularly, when more people refuse to give up and move on even when that’s the reasonable thing to do; even in places the world doesn’t know exist: places like the hollows of these mountains.”
The Hollow Lands, Part I
Andrew Wainer
The escape to Joara was perhaps the first recorded instance of fugitives using Appalachia as a hiding place from hostile outside authority. For centuries more, the mountains would serve as a refuge for those fleeing authority – first native Americans, and then white colonial and American settlers. Almost five hundred years later, the Appalachian distrust of outside authority persists.
The Bruderhof and the State
John Huleatt
November 1933, Hesse, Germany. The Bruderhof, a community of about 125 men, women, and children recently established on a farm in the Rhön Mountains, had just learned of a new mandate from the National Socialist government: all citizens must vote in a referendum to...
Pick the Right Politics
Peter Mommsen
For those afflicted, it has all the compulsiveness of a guilty habit: repeatedly scanning news headlines; experiencing mood swings based on the latest polling data; responding to scandals, epidemics, or Wall Street gyrations by first wondering how it will affect the...
On Peacemaking
Robin Shaw
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Matthew 5:9) In 1994, over eight hundred thousand people were slaughtered in Rwanda. Members of the Tutsi tribe, together with those who sympathized with them, were brutally killed by members of the...
Against the Infinite Stimulus of Greed
Brad Littlejohn
I. Introduction In the clarion call of the Reformation, Luther writes, “man does not live for himself alone in this mortal body, in order to work on its account, but also for all men on earth; nay, he lives only for others and not for himself.” Because one of the...