We live in that final time which offers humans the clearest choice in history: the kingdom or the holocaust, Jim Douglass writes. Either end is a lightning east to west: the nuclear holocaust a lightning fire, the kingdom of Reality a lightning spirit. We will choose lightning east to west today as either nuclear fire or the kingdom of God, as either despair and annihilation or transformation through nonviolence. If we look to Jesus and Gandhi, and what they point to, we can hope to choose the lightning fire of nonviolence.
Few figures in the twentieth century have been as inspirational as Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi. Interest in this extraordinary man has produced a massive amount of printed material, making Ananda M. Pandiri's comprehensive bibliography an invaluable reference tool for scholars and students. Pandiri has meticulously searched printed and electronic indexes, publisher's catalogs, and university libraries throughout India, Britain, and the U.S. to compile a complete bibliography of sources in the English language. This volume is organized and cross-referenced for easy use and access to a voluminous amount of information. Features include: -More than 4700 entries comprising books, pamphlets, seminars, government records, and other significant printed material -Complete bibliographic data of sources -Annotations detailing the content and scholarship of sources -Two exhaustive indexes-Title and Subject
Pilgrimage of Awakening is the first biography of the Rogers. Arriving in India after World War II afire with religious zeal, the Reverend Murray Rogers and his wife, Mary, are rocked by the collision of Eastern and Western values. The handsome young couple from England's upper crust, raised with nannies and educated at finishing schools and Cambridge, uproot their children to live a life in solidarity with India's poorest. They seize the challenge of life in Gandhi's Sevagram, then found their own small Christian ashram. Interacting with spiritual leaders on the religious world stage, Murray, the magnetic young Anglican priest, becomes a pioneer in interfaith dialogue. The couple embraces strands of Hinduism and Buddhism in their life pilgrimage across boundaries of culture and faith in India, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, and Canada. As they "rock the boat" institutionally, their spiritual pilgrimage and awakening sparks both controversy and awakening in countless others. Pilgrimage of Awakening is the intimate unfolding of their joyful and painful spiritual transformation within their small community as they raise their three children. Tensions of their dual callings to marriage and family and to dedicated religious life interweave to create a movingly human and sacred story.
Are the world's great religions ultimately all the same? Christianity and Pluralism is a collection of concise yet thoughtful essays by J. I. Packer and Ron Dart, interacting with and responding to the four traditional models used to answer the existence of multiple faiths (exclusive, inclusive, pluralist, and syncretist), but focusing particularly that form of syncretism which claims that all faiths find commonality through their mystical traditions. Written in response to key events in the history of the Anglican church, Packer and Dart's analysis gives us a perennially relevant model for how the church ought to respond to our own pluralistic culture with integrity and kindnessâ€"and how to uphold the distinctiveness of the gospel. Christians directly or indirectly engaging our pluralist world will find their ideas enriched by this short yet powerful book.
Among prominent leaders of the twentieth century, perhaps no one is more highly regarded than Mahatma Gandhi. He is revered by the vast majority of Hindus as the hero of Indian independence, and many people throughout the world consider him to be a modern saint.In this explosive, intriguing, and provocative investigation, Colonel G. B. Singh charges that the popular image of Gandhi is highly misleading. Despite his famous philosophy of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha), Colonel Singh''s analysis of the evidence leads him to conclude that Gandhi''s ideology was in fact rooted in racial animosity, first against blacks in South Africa and later against whites in India. The author also finds evidence of multiple cover-ups designed to hide Gandhi''s real history, including even collusion to cover up the murder of an American.This provocative thesis is sure to be controversial.
James Douglass's writings have been recognized as among the most challenging and inspiring explorations of nonviolence and Christian discipleship in the last century. Throughout his career, Douglass has argued forcefully for the integration of contemplation and resistance, theology and cultural critique, spirituality and prophetic involvement. His work has inspired many of the key figures in recent debates regarding just war, Christian nonviolence, and radical discipleship and continues to be highly relevant in our contemporary situation. In A Question of Being, the first book-length treatment published on Douglass's writings, Karin Holsinger Sherman provides an introduction to and engagement with this important body of work through an exploration into its contextual history, influences, and main themes. Moreover, the author argues that these themes work together to create an Òontology of nonviolence, an ontology that integrates the forces of resistance and contemplation so important to Douglass. The book begins by examining Douglass's biography and three broad historical trajectories that give context to his thought: the fusion of Christianity and American nationalism in the early Cold War period; the emergence of cultural critique in the late fifties and early sixties, and the Catholic pacifist tradition; and the post-1972 period of disillusionment. Holsinger Sherman then considers the lives and thought of Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, and Thomas Merton, as well as their unique intellectual and exemplary influence on Douglass's ideas. After explicating the themes of the cross and the kingdom as they developed chronologically in Douglass's writing career, this book draws together Douglass's thought to reveal an Òontology of nonviolence.Ó In her conclusion, Holsinger Sherman argues that this ontology of nonviolence is the key to understanding Douglass's integral theology of contemplation and resistance.
This book offers scholars who ground their research in compassion and pacifism a new framework for the socio-political analysis of current global events. By tackling a broad range of critical themes in various disciplines, the essays compose a critical narrative of the ways in which power and violence shape society, culture, and belief. In addition to the contemporary dynamics of international economics, political murder, and the rhetorical antagonism between Christianity and Islam, the book addresses cultural strife in the West, the societal effects of neoconservative hegemony in the United States and the world, and the overall question of religious credence in connection with political action. All such topics are discussed with a view toward providing solutions and policies that are informed by a comprehensive desire to resist violence and war, on the one hand, and to foment cohesion and harmony at the community level, on the other.
Thomas Merton was arguably the twentieth century's most widely published and widely read spiritual writer. This book explores Merton's prophetic writings and experience as they offer guidance for those seeking to experience God, to simplify their lives, to live more humanly, and to shape Christian community in the face of alienation, consumerism, noise, and technology. The book includes parts of three previously unpublished conference contributions by Merton on technology. Exploring Merton's thoughts on monastic renewal, prayer, radical simplicity, ecology, technology, war, peace and interfaith dialogue, Dekar reminds us why Merton was so influential and why he continues to be so.
