Dear St. Theresa parish,

I just finished reading Robert McAfee Brown’s Religion and Violence: A Primer for White Americans.  Written in 1978, Brown, a Presbyterian clergyman and professor of theology at Stanford, was one of a group of Protestant ministers who were invited to be observers at the Second Vatican Council.  His ability to synthesize religion and contemporary culture made of him a much demanded lecturer.  As old as this book is, I was surprised (and perhaps shouldn’t have been) at how we are still struggling with the same critical issues of capital punishment, weapons of mass destruction and civil rights. 

 

Brown focuses on the roots of violence, ranging from the Vietnam War to the dehumanizing structures of violence in the US.    A central thesis of the book is that violence is defined inadequately if it describes standard instances of overt hostile actions as in war or revolution.  Our understanding must be broadened to see it as the “violation of personhood,” whether or not physical harm is done, since it thereby transforms a person into a thing.  It is this personal, structural, and institutional covert violence that we often fail to identify, and I believe it to be at the heart of  the “Me Too” movement as well as much of the civic unrest and violence we have recently witnessed.  

I got my used copy of the book on Amazon, or try Abe Books.

Speaking of Brown, he was not without a sense of humor.   

The little lesson church history teaches us all: “The power of hell is strongest where the odor of sanctity fills the air.”

After a forty-minute sermon:

Have a blessed week,

Fr. Larry