OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #152, NOVEMBER 15, 2023

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #152, NOVEMBER 15, 2023 

CHRISTIANITY, RACE, NATIONALISM, US EMPIRE, War and Peace
Dick.  Books on Christian Nationalism
Pope Francis’s book Against War: Building a Culture of Peace 

White Christian Nationalism and Empire (and v. democracy)

More attention is needed to the role of religions in the growth of US militarism and empire.  Mainstream church membership has declined, but the association of religion with right wing ideology has apparently increased.   Here are some books:

Bradley Onishi.  Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism.  Related: 
Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry.  The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy. 
Lerone Martin.   The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism. 
 Robert Jones.   The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.
Robert Morgan, Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right

 

Religions are also a major source of peacemaking.  The following event has passed, but information about it is relevant to the subject of this number of WWW: Religion, War, and Peace.  I have supported and greatly benefited from The Catholic Worker movement and its magazine for several decades.  I am also a grateful member of World Beyond War and recommend all of founder David Swanson’s books.

Against War: Building a Culture of Peace by Pope Francis

In June 2023, World BEYOND War held a weekly discussion each of four weeks of a new book by Pope Francis called Against War: Building a Culture of Peace. The discussions were facilitated by Marie Dennis.   About the Book (from WBW):  From the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has made concern and action for peace and nonviolence one of his signature themes. From his travels to Iraq and other war-torn regions to his prophetic homilies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he has called the world to pursue a different path. Now, with the recent crisis in the Ukraine, his powerful voice is more prophetic and necessary than ever.   Pope Francis:  "Faced with the images of death that come to us from Ukraine, it is difficult to hope. Yet there are seeds of hope. There are millions who do not aspire to war, who do not justify war . . . . Millions of young people who are asking us to do everything possible and seemingly impossible to stop the war, to stop all wars. It is in thinking first of all of them, of young people and children that we must repeat together: Never again war! And together we must commit ourselves to building a world that is more peaceful because it is more just, where it is peace that triumphs and not the folly of war; justice, and not the injustice of war; mutual forgiveness, and not the hatred that divides and makes us see the other, the person who is different from us, as an enemy."

Here is an excerpt from a review of the book by World BEYOND War Executive Director David Swanson.  About Marie Dennis:  Marie Dennis is senior advisor to the secretary general of Pax Christi International, the global Catholic peace movement, and program chair of Pax Christi’s Catholic Nonviolence Initiative. She was co-president of Pax Christi International from 2007 to 2019 and is a Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace.  She is author or co-author of seven books, editor of Choosing Peace: The Catholic Church Returns to Gospel Nonviolence (Orbis Books, 2017) and co-editor of Advancing Nonviolence in the Church and the World (Pax Christi International 2020).