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Inglorious Pastors – very clever. I really appreciate Greg Boyd's voice. I appreciate his consistent willingness to speak out against and confront militarism in the American church. Nobody wins any popularity contests with that stance.

Thanks for posting this! An essential conversation that has too often been avoided in missional church conversations is the church's complicity in state sanctioned violence. We are ready to declare the end of Christendom, but if we are to be honest, this calls for a radical examination of how nationalism and militarism were well rooted in the church of Christendom. Boyd and Campolo are important and courageous voices – but it cannot remain with a few charismatic leaders.

For an excellent start on this see Darrell Guder's Continuing Conversion of the Church.

Dave

It's a touchy subject Sarah, but we have to talk about it.

Dave, I think it was coming. Non-violence is central to the Kingdom of God. We need to rethink our typical approaches to what it means to be followers, especially in terms of violence.

As much as I appreciate the viewpoints expressed, and even agree with them in certain way, I have to say that I can’t get around the fact that this shipwrecks hard against the rock of Scripture.nn”God is utterly opposed to violence.”nnHow can this possibly be said, unless we simply discard a LOT of Scripture. God floods the world, wiping out almost the entire race. God hardens Pharoah’s heart, slaughters the first-born of Egypt, and then wipes out Pharoah’s army. God slaughter’s thousands of Israelites in the wilderness. God orders the genocide against the Caananites, et. al. The prophets are full of God promising death, slaughter, and violence on all sorts of kings and peoples.nnThe New Testament is only slightly better. But Christ talks about those cast into the outer darkness, into the fires of hell, where the worm never dies, gnashing of teeth. Paul repeatedly condemns unbelievers to suffering and wrath. And Revelation is a veritable sea of blood and death as history draws to a close.nnDoes the God revealed in Jesus seem a lot more evolved than the Old Testament Jehovah? Sure. Can apocalyptic imagery account for the violence in Revelation? Ok? Can some of Jesus’s hell talk be metaphorical? Well, perhaps.nnBut let’s be intellectually honest. There’s simply too much of it. God’s wrath and vengeance and violence are actually described quite a bit more than his love. And easy test: open your Bible at random 100 times, and note the passage you turn to. I’ll put money you get more wrath and promises of destruction than love. It’s just how it is.nnNow we can talk about evolving narratives, and whether the Bible is God’s view of people, or people’s view of God, and all the rest. But unless we’re largely willing to say that a great deal of the Bible portrays God in a completely false manner, I just can’t find a way to be intellectually honest in a claim that beyond question the God revealed in it is absolutely opposed to violence.nnIs there help for me? Because I’d much prefer the Rob Bell/Greg Boyd God to the Mark Driscoll one. But the Driscoll God just really appears more often in the text.