Home » Peace & Politics (Page 10)
Category Archives: Peace & Politics
The author
Micael Grenholm, a Swedish charismactivist, apologist and author.
Stop the Guns, Heal the Victims, Forgive Adam Lanza
Once again, the United States has experienced a terrible school shooting. Small children were slaughtered by 20-year old Adam Lanza, whose mother had taught him to love weapons. We need to pray for the victims’ families and that these awful events will stop once and for all, in the US and elsewhere.
In the American debate, there seem to be two contradictory suggestions how to do this. Either, basically all people carry guns so that they can kill a gun murderer wherever s/he shows up. Or, basically no one carries guns so that people don’t become gun murderers in the first place. Even if the former would decrease school shootings, we know that the latter does as well (my country, Sweden, has a very strong gun control and has during this time never experienced a school shooting or another type of massacre). This of course clearly speaks in favour for gun control, since we get the sought result without spending billions on handing out killer tools to everyone.
But what debunks the violent solution even more is the fact that increased gun prevalence increases gun violence. Of course, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The US has most guns per person in the whole world (88 per 100), while having 5% of the world’s population it has 50% of the world’s guns, and they even got the “right to be armed” in their constitution! Yet they are not experiencing peace and security but rather the Wild West with numerous school shootings and massacres. Some are arguing that these would have happened even if guns were not available, but as mentioned gun prevalence increases gun violence, and it surely makes the attacks more deadly. Coincidentally, a Chinese madman attacked children at a school with a knife three days ago, the same day as the American school shooting. Although he stabbed 22 kids, none of them died. In the American case, 20 kids died.
(more…)
It’s Advent – Let’s Destroy Some Weapons!
The Triumphal Entry, African Style
Happy new year! This Advent Sunday, Christians around the world remember and celebrate when Jesus entered Jerusalem in order to transform into a cute baby and be born in Bethlehem. However, many tend to forget that this event is very political, affecting the way Christians should view war and peace.
As we know, Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey with his disciples accompanying him, shouting praises to Him, the son of David. When Pilate used to enter Jerusalem, he rode on a white war horse with soldiers accompanying him, shouting and singing praises to the emperor. For the earliest readers of the gospels, Jesus’ entry was a peace manifestation. In fact, the gospel writers clearly points out that it is fulfillment of the prophecy in Zechariah 9, which says:
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim
and the warhorses from Jerusalem,
and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
His rule will extend from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth. (Zech 9:9-10)
Simon Adahl, St Matthew and Prophetic Enemy Love
Simon Adahl
Yesterday I was having dinner with rock musician and revivalist Simon Adahl. He and his close friend Orjan Armgren are two down-to-earth, humble people that experience countless miracles. I literally mean countless. I have attended four of their meetings where they share testimonies non-stop for a couple of hours. Still, Simon had so much to tell that he invited me to his house so that he could share even more.
Here are a few examples of what they have experienced:
– Once, Simon passed by a man he’d never met and suddenly said “The answer is Estonia”. The man was stunned. He explained that minutes earlier, he had prayed to the Lord “Where should my aid relief go, Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania?”
– Another time he called a man and shouted prophetically in the phone “Yes, you are My evangelist!!” Right then, the man had aimed a knife at his artery to kill himself. Now, he ended those plans and returned to God.
– A non-Christian lady came over to Simon and shared some troubles she had. Simon then suddenly said that he saw her as a young girl, running on a grass field with a kite, filled with joy. Orjan, who also was there, said “I hear the song ‘This Little Light of Mine'”. The woman immediately went down on her knees shouting “I want to be saved!” It turned out that they had pointed out her favourite activity and favourite song during the happiest time in her life.
(more…)
Supernatural Protection in War
One of the most amazing events during World War Two was that a small Italian village called San Giovanni Rotondo never was bombed. The Allied forces tried to eliminate a German base there several times, but they never succeeded. The reason? All the pilots who flew near the village suddenly saw a monk who stretched out his hands towards them, signing that he wanted them to turn back.
General Bernardo Rosini of the United Air Command reported that
“Each time that the pilots returned from their missions, they spoke of this Friar that appeared in the sky and diverted their airplanes, making them turn back. Everyone was talking about these incredible stories. But since the episodes kept recurring, the Commanding General of USAF General Nathan F. Twining, who happened to be in Bari, decided to pilot himself a squadron of bombers to destroy a target near San Giovanni Rotondo.
“When he and his pilots were in the vicinity of the target, they saw the figure of a monk with upraised hands appear in the sky. The bombs got loose from the plains falling in open areas, and the planes made a sharp turn to return to base without the pilots intervening.
“Back on the ground, everybody asked everybody else about the happening and wanted to know who was that friar. The General was told about Padre Pio and decided to visit him with the pilots in that squadron. The pilots immediately recognized Padre Pio, and he told the general: “So you are the one that wanted to destroy everything.”
Blessing Israel=Ignoring Gaza?
Image from PCPJ
A week ago many Charismatic and evangelical Christians started to express their anger towards the increased rocket attacks from Hamas. They eagerly reported how many rockets were fired every day. They described the pain, fear and horror Israelis felt when they had to flee into bomb shelters (see the clip above). They mourned that four Israeli soldiers had been injured by the rockets.
However, no one I saw mentioned that while these rocket attacks to that point had killed no one, four civilian Palestinians were killed and thirty were injured in the counter attacks of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). There’s no doubt that we as Christians need to sound the alarm when the Israeli people is facing suffering and fear because of the violent terrorist attacks of Hamas. But that duty forces us to sound the alarm even more if the Palestinians is faceing more suffering and fear because of violent IDF attacks. (more…)
The Political Idolatry of the American Church
Ramone Romero is posting the most beautiful, heart-breaking and hopeful artwork and poems I’ve ever seen, on his blog Wheeping Jeremiahs. He expresses prophetic tears over the political idolatry of many American Christians. I’ll let some of his paintings and poems speak for themselves:
My children! My children!
Put down your flags!
I am not calling you to carry
the righteousness of any nation,
but to carry the Cross!
I am not calling you to defeat your enemies,
but to love them as I loved you.
“Do not listen to those who prophesy
in accordance with your flags,
for I have not sent them;
they are prophesying lies in My name
and are following a ‘Christ’ they have made
in their own image—an ‘anti-christ.’
“They do not listen to Me when I speak,
nor do they turn from their pride,
but instead continue to follow their passions.
They have become like brute beasts,
unreasoning creatures of instinct
who revile what they do not understand.
“Do not follow the beast,
but repent and return to the Lamb!” (more…)
Nonviolence Releases Spiritual Breakthrough
In response to my blog post on how following the Sermont on the Mount is a key to revival, my friend Drew Gordon Meakin wrote:
Great article! I thought of some instances that back up your point. 
In Acts 6:8-8:1 we see Stephen praying for his enemies while being stoned to death. Saul of Tarsus, the church’s greatest persecutor, was one of the people there that he was praying for. Saul later has a dramatic supernatural encounter and becomes the Apostle Paul. I fully believe Stephen’s selfless prayer while dying was a seed in Paul’s conversion.
Martin Luther King
The movie “End of the Spear” tells the true story of five missionaries reaching reaching out to the most violent tribe in Ecuador. All of them are killed, but they die loving their enemies, and this leads to a dramatic supernatural encounter which eventually leads to the whole tribe coming to Christ.
David Wilkerson’s loving words to the violent gang member, Nicky Cruz, who threatened his life, led to Nicky’s conversion which also was a precursor to the founding of the most successful “Spirit-filled” drug rehabilitation programs in the world and the largest church in New York.
Martin Luther King’s commitment to the peace teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, while advancing his cause, not only changed policies, but changed hearts and led to the greatest civil rights movement in history. (more…)
Revival on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7) is a revival sermon. It wasn’t delievered in a cathedral to a bunch of silent church-goers, but in the midst of a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit where mighty miracles were occuring. Matthew describes how people came from far away in order to be blessed by the miraculous power that was flowing out from the hands of Jesus (4:23-25). I imagine the scenery as in the clip above, but even better. Every single one got healed: those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed. Revival fires were blazing!
A faith healer preaching enemy love
But when Jesus starts to preach, He doesn’t talk about “the anointing”, “open heavens”, “glory invasion” or some other Charismatic cliche. He talks about Kingdom lifestyle and holiness: doing good deeds, loving enemies, giving to the needy, fasting, praying, not storing treasures on earth, not judging people, doing to others what you would have them do to you, and so on. As I’ve written in a previous blog post, it is unfortunately unusal in many parts of the church today that faith healers speak about enemy love and denouncing wealth, or that Christian activists conduct healing crusades.
This is a shame, because I am convinced that not only does the Sermon on the Mount contain instructions for living an activist life that makes the world a better place, it is also a key for Charismatic breakthrough. Immediately after Jesus has delivered His sermon, He heals a guy with leprosy (8:1-4), then a paralyzed boy (vv. 5-13), and after that a whole group of sick and possessed people (vv. 14-17). Directly after stating that the Father will give us good gifts when we ask for it, He tells us to do to others as we would have them do to us (7:9-12). The gifts of the Spirit are given by grace, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive for holiness. On the contrary, if we do not act according to the commands of Jesus, our spiritual house may fall “with a great crash” (7:24-27).
(more…)
Why Evangelicals Accuse Obama for Being Muslim, and Dismiss that Romney is a Mormon
In his excellent book The Myth of a Christian Nation, Greg Boyd clearly shows that neither the US nor any other state can be Christian:
As we have noted, many Christians believe that America is, or at least once was, a Christian nation. We have argued that this notion is inaccurate for the simple reason that Christian means “Christlike”, and there never was a time when America as a nation has acted Christlike. Indeed, we have argued that it’s impossible for any version of the kingdom of the world to be Christlike for the simple reason that they participate in a system of dominion that necessarily places its trust in the power of the sword.
I totally agree. The church and the state should be seperate since the Kingdom of God is “not of this world”, the cross cannot partner with the tank. No Christian values can be enforced on people because enforcement is contrary to Christian behaviour. Jesus said that unlike political rulers, Christians should be servants instead of exercising authority. (Mt 20:25-28).
Scary President
Thus, a Christian president is not necessarily a better president than a non-Christian. Rather, a Christian plumber is a better Christian than a Christian president. This is why I don’t see the victory of the Christian Barack Obama over the Mormon Mitt Romney as a giant triumph for the Kingdom of God or something like that. But I know that many American Christians think that church and state should be married and that God’s will is that the US should be a Christian nation. Thus, it is striking how many of them supported Mitt Romney in this election.
When Obama won the 2008 elections, lots of evangelicals tried to “prove” that he was a Muslim. Unlike the citizenship conspiracy theories, the Muslim accusation didn’t try to disprove the president juridically but morally – the underlying assumption was that a Muslim president is a bad president, who is unable to support Christian values (some even argued that he would implement sharia laws). Needless to say, the arguments for the Muslim Obama are horribly bad since he’s been a practioning Christian all his life, but still 20% of Americans believed it in the end of 2008.
Jesus for President!
One of the best and most inspiring books I’ve read concerning Kingdom Politics is Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. In it, they write about what it means to pledge allegiance to a slaughtered Lamb and to cultivate political imagination and creativity in a world filled with violence and hatred. Because of the American presidential election this year, Claiborne and Haw are going on a tour to campaign for Jesus. Below are some excerpts from interviews with Claiborne at Read the Spirit and Sojourners:
Shane Claiborne. Photo: Speaking of Faith
The whole idea of Jesus for President really started back before the 2004 election when we began thinking and talking seriously about making a faithful Christian witness to the State. For years, we had read books, studied this and eventually Chris Haw and I were led to create Jesus for President. It was released as a book for the 2008 election and now [2012] we’re back with a book and a DVD that was filmed in many of the places we stopped along the road with this message.
Even though we’ve been working on this for some years now, we realize that this message is even more relevant than when we began. This is post-Religious Right America and we are seeing a whole lot of evangelicals and political misfits who are trying to find their way to new decisions about faith and politics. The old evangelical and Religious Right messages just don’t work anymore for a lot of us. And I know that the questions we are raising today are really touching people’s hearts.
There are a lot of good things that have been stirring up conversations across the country. The Occupy movement raised people’s awareness that 1 percent of people in our world own way more than their share of the world’s stuff. Now, people are more aware than ever of the deep and growing disparity between the rich and the poor. You can’t read the Bible and not realize that situation matters to God.
Romney, Sandy and Haiti
Hurricane Sandy. Photo: NASA, public domain
Even though it is difficult to say if hurricane Sandy is a result of weather conditions or climate change, what we do know is that these sorts of natural disasters undoubtedly will increase becuase of global warming. Thus, many see the tragic irony in that the US presidential candidates have to cancel important meetings because of the storm while the climate change issue has been absent in their debates. Instead, the main topic has been how to make the richest country in the world even richer. But in the midst of their passionate discussion concerning economy, GDP, growth and the middle class, Sandy knocks on the door and forces them to stop ignoring nature for a while.
However, it’s a bit unfair to speak about both candidates as uninterested in climate change. Even if he has done far from enough, Obama thinks that the issue is important, he is increasing renewable energy and has participated in global climate negotiations. Romney, on the other hand, has a different approach:
How many Congolese children has your phone killed today?
My heart is bleeding for the Congolese people. For the last fifteen years, they have suffered from the deadliest conflict since World War Two. Over six million people have died, and every day 1500 more join them because of the malnutrition and epidemics that follows the war. Half of them are children below the age of five. Tens of thousands of women have been raped by soldiers, since sexual violence is used as a weapon. And right now, the conflict is escalating because of the formation of a new rebel group, called M23. Its leader, Bosco Ntaganda, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and his nickname is “the Terminator”.
Three things especially disturb me concerning this gigantic humanitarian crisis. Firstly, people talk and act like the genocide in Rwanda is over, when in fact it just jumped across the border to Congo. Some of the Hutu genocidaires formed a militia named FDLR that is still active in the Congo. The M23 are Tutsis, so these groups want to kill each other, while they fight the government of Rwanda and the government of Congo respectively. The international community was criticized for lack of action in 1994, still they allow six million more to die.
Secondly, 90% of these people are Christians. Not only the victims, but also the soldiers who kill and rape and steal. How could the church fail to the point that its members started to commit these awful atrocities against each other? What happened to peace? What happened to love?
Finally, this conflict is financed by the phone I am writing this text on. The same is true for many computers, cameras and other electronic devices. You see, the conflict is concentrated to the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu. These are extremely rich of minerals, many which are used in electronics. Rebel groups like FDLR and M23 take control over the mines and tax the workers to buy food and guns for their soldiers. This has been known for years, still the conflict mineral trade has continued to flourish.
Charismatic Pacifists in the Evangelical Free Church of Sweden
I was sitting together with around 3000 others in a big, old barn; listening to one of the best pacifist sermons I’ve ever heard. It was in August 2010, we were attending the Frizon festival – one of the biggest Christian youth event in Sweden (it doesn’t require much to be big in this country). The preacher, Jonas Eveborn, talked about how Jesus’ triumphal entrance to Jerusalem is a political contrast to how Pilate entered Jerusalem every Passover feast – while Pilate was riding a white war horse with armies and flags, Jesus rode a peaceful donkey with kids and palm leaves! Jonas went on contrasting the cross and the sword, and told us that he was convinced that Christians should not use violence.
After Jonas had given his message, the organisers of the meeting came forward and explained that the Evangelical Free Church – the church organising Frizon – had “a pacifist Baptist tradition” where “many had chosen not to do military service”. Then they invited those who wanted prayer to come forward – for salvation, for supernatural healing and for wisdom concerning Jesus’ peace message.
Holy Roller Mennonites
I discovered the Hopewell Network of Churches today, an interdenominational network which was birthed when Charismatic renewal hit some Mennonite churches. Though more denominations are included today, the network still enhance Anabaptist values – especially the pacifist stance – which makes this a unique and, in my opinion, more biblical type of Charismatic network. I love when they write:
We are charismatic in that we believe in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as a subsequent experience to salvation that is available to each believer. We believe all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are available for the believer today.
We have the expectation that the empowering ministry of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit will be embraced and taught in our churches. We desire to see believers in all our churches encouraged with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and taught how to exercise these gifts in their lives. We do not teach that the gift of tongues is the initial or only evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. There is flexibility in how these gifts are administered in the context of public services and the life of the church. Leaders are expected to lead people into a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit and to encourage the accompanying gifts.
We are Anabaptist in that we hold to many of the values of Anabaptism. We have the expectation that Anabaptist values will be supported and encouraged among the churches. The Anabaptist peace position, for instance, is the official position of the network in that we encourage forms of service other then the military. At the same time, we do honor individual conscience on this matter. It would be our expectation that every young person in a Hopewell Church has heard a clear teaching on the Anabaptist view as they make their life decisions about service.
We are evangelical in that we believe the primary focus of the church should be on the centrality of Jesus and his commission of reaching the harvest. We take a clear stand on the full authority and inspiration of Scripture.
Break the Law to Save the Climate!
The current global conference on sustainable development, Rio+20, is a fiasco. The draft text that’s being negotiated is extremely weak and lame, and at some points it’s even worse than the agreement at the first Rio conference on sustainable development 20 years ago. The NGOs represented at the conference say that ”the text as it stands is completely out of touch with reality”.
Boy, we’ve heard this story before, haven’t we? Many like to blame the UN at this point, but personally I think they do their job quite well – the leaders of Western countries, on the other hand, are out of control in their sinning behaviour. They cause the mess, and the poor countries will have to pay for it:
Charismactivism 