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The Bible in Dispute:
Violence and Non-Violence in the Text and the World
Re-visioning a Different Culture: Towards A Culture of Peace
Session 5:
1. Violence and Religion
Richard Kearney, the Irish philosopher, has written with painful honesty of his Irish identity and
roots. “I come from a country – Ireland – where people having been killing each other for
centuries in the name of God.”1 Many will be disturbed by Kearney’s statement and want to
protest, even deny, that the name of God had anything to do with it. But it is extremely difficult
in modern Irish history to dissociate God and atrocity. It is a good test question to ask: how do
we feel, not think, but feel about Kearney’s statement? What is the emotional reaction to it?
We have emerged from the bloodiest century in recorded human history. Millions have died in
war, violence and genocide. As the First World War is reappraised, there is greater recognition of
the senseless slaughter of young men, most of them drawn from the lower classes, as they would
have been described in the rigid class divisions of that time. Glorification of the Great War, as it
has been described, is an obscenity. As we move away from the 20th Century there is a deglorification of war entering critical consciousness. Any remembering needs to be remembering
in sorrow. Such remembering also includes the emerging history of Chairman Mao’s disastrous
agricultural and industrial project of the mid-twentieth Century, which claimed over forty million
lives.
There was, of course, no comparison and scale, but 20th Century Ireland was also a killing field
where god and guns were responsible for killing thousands of people. Most of the victims, as in
every conflict, were non-combatants. There was no heroic blood sacrifice about the killing of
twenty-six children in the 1916 Rising, or any holiness about the rape and sexual abuse of
children in religious Ireland over the 20th Century. If cherishing “…all the children of the nation
1
Richard Kearney, in Violence and Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Discussion, Emmanuel Clapsis, ed.
(Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 2007), p.47.
equally” was intended to refer literally to children, then the systematic rape, abuse and violence
against children in Ireland has been anything but cherishing.
In a variety of ways violence has been endemic in Irish culture as has God, but which god?
Religious legitimation has been provided for political violence and child violence, not to forget
violence against women. There are secular humanists and atheists who find the primary
justification for their world view here. So much religious violence, or religiously motivated
violence, is, for them, the death of God. For some it is the big stick with which to beat irrational
people of faith. While some of this is understandable, the question of religion and violence is
more complex and the big stick response may even be naive. It certainly is historically naïve to
ignore that much of the bloody killing and atrocity of the 20th Century was carried out by secular
humanist and atheistic regimes. Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao were not motivated by piety or religion.
They were not even religious cranks!
It would be equally naïve to pretend that religion has not been involved with violence. Europeans
from Ireland to the Balkans have invoked God in their wars and in their national remembering.
There have been strange practices which defy rationality. Before the American bomber left with
its atomic payload for Hiroshima, it was blessed by the Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, in what
seems to be a strange act of ecumenism. Seven decades later, Catholic and Protestant cannot
officially share the Eucharist together. We are still repeatedly told that this is part of the pain of
our ecumenical journey. But in the light of a consistent blessing of war and violence our equally
consistent refusal to share Eucharist and put up with the pain might well suggest a form of
religious or theological masochism. Our inability to remember together Christ, the victim of
imperial violence, State execution and military might, and yet ecumenically bless weapons of
mass destruction, is serious theological nonsense, to put it mildly. Some Christians invite
atheism.
The Ulster Covenant of 1912 and the Easter Proclamation of 1916 are looked upon as the
foundational documents of Northern Ireland and the Republic. Both documents have god and
guns at the heart of them. God authorised the gun in politics and the god of the Covenant and
Proclamation is a militarised god. At the beginning of the 20th Century there was no doubt or
uncertainty about this. It was not something the churches seriously questioned. The main
Protestant Church leaders even signed the Covenant with its pledge to use “…any means
necessary” to defeat the Home Rule conspiracy. Traditional Church theology of atonement and
Eucharist was at the heart of the Easter Rising and the 36th Ulster Division’s understanding of its
loses at the Battle of the Somme. Blood sacrifice was rooted in traditional Catholic Eucharistic
theology and Protestant Evangelical Atonement theology. Again the churches did not question
the use of core and cherished theologies to legitimise death for a cause, Ireland, Ulster or Britain,
as blood sacrifice. The language is still used when dying in war, or violence; dying in action, or
for a cause, is described as supreme sacrifice. It is the language of commemoration, Loyalist,
Republican and State remembering, and the language used every time the body of a soldier is
brought home from Afghanistan. War, violence and dying, are given a religious veneer which is
used to justify it, provide the highest moral basis for killing and being killed. It justifies the
actions of the organisation or the State, gives to individuals, who have tragically lost their lives,
heroic status, even something of scared status. It can even be described in such religious
language as to see the dying in battle, or violence, as the way to salvation. All of this is in a
Christian context and it was the same theology of those Muslims who flew the planes into the
twin towers on 9/11. The supreme or blood sacrifice guarantees salvation or paradise in the next
world.
This is not the place to explore a theology of salvation, often perceived in terms that are much
too narrow. It does raise questions about the role of religion and violence, and it is not enough
for Christians or Muslims to protest that God is being hijacked and religion is being used and
abused. The establishment religious voices were not raising objections to god and guns in 1912,
1914 and 1916, Covenant, War and Rising, to name but three examples. The militarisation of
god that these three, and other historical events, proclaim may well be the greatest heresy in the
history of heresies, and one that needs radical rejection and deconstruction.
2. A Christology of Non-Violence and Peace-building
Across two millennia of Christian history many Christologies have been developed. For
Christian faith Christology is essential because it is about making sense of Jesus. Who is he and
what does he mean for those attracted to him? The classical creeds represent particular answers
to these questions and what they tried to say has endured as the classical Christologies. They are
not without problems, such as trying to make sense of the thought forms and language used,
some of which makes little sense this far removed from the Christological formulations. The
context and situation of these ‘classical’ centuries is another problem. The creeds belong to the
Christendom era, with the emperor presiding over councils and shaping imperial images of God
and Jesus.
The Christian Testament itself has diverse Christologies, much more diverse than the formal
creeds which represent a time of centralisation and uniformity, as well as defined orthodoxy. The
earliest and foundational documents of the Christian faith have more flexibility and pluralism
within them. This may also mean more creativity and freedom. The old problem is still present,
which is: how do we interpret texts from contexts very different from the present? There is no
way around this. In the beginning was the word and in the beginning was interpretation. And so
it remains.
Who Jesus is for us is the perennial question. It is core to Christianity, not because the faith is a
Jesus cult but because faith is God centred and Jesus is for Christians their ultimate clue to God
and way to God. God is our salvation and it is in Jesus that Christians claim to have found the
way. This has not stopped some people turning Jesus into a cult figure, even an object of
worship. At the end of the day Christian faith is faith in God through Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
So the Trinity is the core experiential metaphor for Christians, not a dogmatic or metaphysical
abstraction, but experiential reality.
The Christ-centredness of this ultimately God- centred faith has meant that Christians have
developed Christologies in different ways through-out history. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s question
has always got to be answered. Who is Jesus Christ for us today?
God has found a place in national constitutions, written as in the German and Irish constitutions,
or unwritten as in the British. There is something almost unique in the Irish constitution of 1937
in that Christ is invoked as well as God. But who is the God in a national constitution? And who
is the Christ in the Irish Constitution? The language used suggests a 1916 Christ, a volunteer, a
warrior Jesus. The Preamble reads: “Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine
Lord, Jesus Christ, who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial”. On the one hand this is
high Christology, on the other, it is physical force Christology. There follows a reference to
“…their heroic and unremitting struggle”. De Valera did consult with the Catholic and Protestant
Church leaders and none objected to the Christology of the Constitution. The Catholic
Archbishop of Dublin wanted an exclusive reference to the Catholic Church in a later Article,
and for many the eventual inclusion of the three larger Protestant churches, the Religious Society
of Friends, and the Jewish congregations in Article 44, was tantamount to heresy. Sectarianism
has long been an Irish disease and has often contaminated Christologies. Apart from whether
God or Christ should have a place in national constitutions, who was the Christ of the 1937
Constitution and was he even Christian?
When religion is used to justify national causes and legitimise violence in the national cause,
serious ethical questions are raised. When the death of Jesus is interpreted as a blood sacrifice
and then inspires our blood sacrifice in war and civil violence, as in the Easter Rising and the
Battle of the Somme, there are serious ethical and theological questions to be asked. Faith may
need to critically reappraise its language, symbols and liturgies.
In the history of Christology non-violent and peace-building Christologies have been developed.
They are present in the Christian Testament, especially and perhaps paradoxically in the
Christology of the non-violent “Lamb who was slain,” core to the book of Revelation. The
Historic Peace Churches, such as the Mennonites and the Quakers, or Religious Society of
Friends, have with consistency maintained non-violent and peace Christologies. These
Christologies have never become the dominant voice of Western Christendom. In fact, they have
been anti-Christendom Christologies, consciously aware of the ‘Constantinian error.’ But they do
have a claim to being Christian Testament Christologies, to trace their roots to Christological
models found in the Christian Testament and prominent in the first two – three centuries of
Christian praxis. Too much military hard-ware surrounded the 4th to 5th Centuries Church
councils to allow the creeds to affirm non-violent Christologies and go beyond a warrior Jesus.
The Christological battles of these centuries and councils were Jesus wars in which many people
did tragically lose their lives.
Christologies of non-violence and peace were present from the first generations of the Jesus
Movement, and if Jesus is the story that forms the Church, then the Church has the responsibility
to live out its normative and formative story of Christ’s active non-violence and peace-building.
These Christologies find diverse expressions in the Gospels.

Jesus' Healings as Reconciliation
Jesus’ healings were acts of reconciliation and were common place in Mark’s Gospel. In Mark
there are many stories of healing and exorcism. Our modernist, scientifically shaped minds,
privileging empiricism and rationalism, may want to back off from such stories, or ignore them
as too embarrassing. Yet there is more than meets the eye and our reading and interpretative
strategies may need to be challenged. These stories of healings and exorcism are set in the
context of the violent, Roman Empire. It has long been recognised that imperial occupation,
colonisation and the violent oppression that accompanies these situations has a detrimental effect
on people’s health and well-being. What Mark depicts in the Gospel are accurate snapshots that
have been repeated through-out history, and that is of people becoming trapped in acute
psychotic breakdown. Such illness is common among occupied and oppressed people. The story
of the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac, in Mark 5 vv 1-10, is a classic example. The man is
healed, restored to family and community and there is an experience of reconciliation.
The story is told using many expressions of Roman militarism and vocabulary, “legion” being
the most obvious example. Literalism misses the point. The foreground to the story is Roman
occupation and oppression causing acute psychotic breakdown, a common plight. Healings and
exorcisms such as this run contrary to the destructive, imperial domination system. The empire is
subverted, violence is rejected and reconciliation and wholeness are realised.
 Jesus' Controversial Dinner Parties
Jesus’ controversial dinner parties are another distinctive Christological strand. These parties
distinguished the Jesus Movement from other reform movements within Judaism at that time.
Other groups had dinner parties but the distinctive characteristics, and what upset many, was the
radically inclusive guest list. Another movement was led by the Pharisees, who were not bad
people. They were good, pious and devout, and longed for a future free of Roman oppression.
But the heart of their practice was ritual purity and this excluded certain people from their
hospitality lists. Purity and separatism go together, which for the Pharisees represented the
holiness of life God required.
Inclusive hospitality was an important sign of the reign of God, the latter being a way of
speaking of God’s alternative Empire. To be at the dinner party was not just to be included, but
to be accepted, forgiven and in friendship with God’s self. The empire, as all domination systems
and superpowers do, divides and rules. The purity conscious and separatists exclude. Jesus
refuses to do this. He will not exclude, marginalise, or right off, anyone as unclean. Not
surpisingly, he got a reputation as “glutton and wine drinker.” Give a dog a bad name! He
deserved it too, because his activity undermined the established religious tradition, it turned the
prominent holiness idea upside down. God’s Kingdom, dinner feast, includes all, embraces all
and the ‘all’ included the enemy (Psalm 23 v 5). Jesus’ dinner parties were a radical and visible
dramatisation of God’s embrace of everyone, including enemies, which a Hebrew poet (Psalm
23) had imagined centuries before.

Jesus’ Practice of Active Non-Violence
The non-violent Christology emerges fully in the Sermon on the Mount. At the heart of the
Sermon are the Beatitudes, the great reversals of human history, especially of imperial history,
the history written by the winners and conquerors. In Matthew 5 Jesus taught and practiced nonviolent resistance to evil, radical love of enemies and indiscriminate love. Since this Gospel, like
the others, was written to a faith community towards the end of the 1st Century, this was the story
which was to form the Church, still in the context of imperial rule. The way of God is being
articulated for the faith community as taught and practiced by Jesus and interpreted by the
Gospel writer. The Gospels are not ‘once upon a time stories’ but models of practice and life
styles for faithful people energised by God.
In traditional theological language the Christology of Matthew 5 might be called low Christology
in contrast to the perceived high Christology of John 1 or the later creeds. But if the Beatitudes
are about the great reversal, not least of values, then the Matthean Christology at this point is
also a great reversal. It is a very high Christology of active non-violence and indiscriminate love.
This is the high watermark of Christological ethics and the reminder that Christology and ethics
go together, and that Christology with meaning is ethical.
The core of active non-violence is met again in the conflict stories of Mark’s Gospel. There are
many such stories and they are often stories of conflict with traditional religious authority and
leadership. The empire is in the foreground as well. All of this is especially so in the story of
Jesus’ trial and death. One of the biggest ironies of all is that the cross, having become in
Christendom a sign of conquest, providing authority for war and violence, and with its language
of blood sacrifice, is in fact, Jesus’ active non-violent response to a violent and brutal imperial
system. This is perhaps the most ironic and tragic reversal of all. For the first three centuries the
cross was not used as a Christian symbol. It was only when Christendom became a reality, when
the Church was so wedded to the State, involved with the State’s wars and armies that the cross
became a core symbol and doubled as a sword. It still is on war memorials.
Yet the cross was an act of State violence, in the face of which Jesus neither spoke nor acted
violently. The cross was where the State executed people, eliminated its perceived enemies. How
strange that it should become the central Christian symbol. It was not a symbol for the early
generations of Christians, though it did matter to them. Why else so much space given to the
Passion Narratives in the Gospels? But they saw it as something very different. It was a
demonstration of God’s merciful love, active non-violence and forgiveness of enemies. It was
life enhancing, not death inducing. It was the inspiration to overcome violence by active,
resistant non-violence and to live in suffering love, if needs be. It was not an inspiration or
legitimation for violence through the destruction of others, or for one’s own violent blood
sacrifice. There was, and is, nothing passive about the Passion Narratives. Jesus resisted the evil
of violence by active non-violent love, inclusion, embrace and active reconciliation. The
Christology of the cross is the rejection of violence and blood sacrifice.
This is the story of Jesus that forms the Church, or it is supposed to be, but it is not the story that
has formed religion and its role in an Irish culture of violence. That story needs to be
deconstructed, and new, but in reality very old, Christologies reconstructed.