I Didn't Move; You Did (Part 11): The Shifting View On Violence And War

In the first post of this series, I noted that my struggle with modern conservative evangelicalism is not with its theological orthodoxy. I still affirm doctrines that historically defined evangelical Christianity. The deeper question is whether our orthopraxy—the way we live out those beliefs—still resembles the commitments we once publicly embraced. 

I reviewed a number of evangelical statements, declarations, and manifestos spanning more than fifty years in order to look at the orthopraxy to which we were called: Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern (1973); Lausanne Covenant (1974); The Manila Manifesto (1989); The Amsterdam Declaration (2000); The Health Of Our Nation (2004); An Evangelical Manifesto (2008); The Capetown Commitment (2010); For the Health Of The Nation 2014; and the Seoul Statement (2024).

In the previous post, I addressed the public shift - revealed through votes and voices (or lack of them) - in responding to racism and discrimination.  In this post, we are looking at the conservative evangelical shift in regards to violence and war.

If there is one thing that distinguished the Kingdom Jesus announced from every kingdom of this world, it was this: Jesus refused to establish God's reign through coercion or violence.

He rebuked Peter for taking up the sword in His defense. He told Pilate that His kingdom was "not from this world," because if it were, His servants would fight. He taught His followers to love their enemies, pray for those who persecuted them, bless those who cursed them, and overcome evil with good.

Christians have disagreed about many things throughout history, including when governments may legitimately wage war. But historically, evangelicals consistently warned against glorifying violence, confusing nationalism with the Kingdom of God (I will address this in an upcoming post), or treating military power as God's preferred instrument for accomplishing His purposes.

That concern appears repeatedly in the major evangelical statements of the last fifty years.

• "we must challenge our misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might – a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad."
• "Among the evils we deplore are destructive violence, including institutionalized violence, political corruption, all forms of exploitation of people and of the earth..."
• "We urge governments to pursue thoroughly nonviolent paths to peace before resorting to military force. We believe that if governments are going to use military force, they must use it in the service of peace and not merely in their national interest. Military force must be guided by the classical just-war principles, which are designed to restrain violence by establishing the right conditions for and right conduct in fighting a war. In an age of nuclear and biological terrorism, such principles are more important than ever. We urge followers of Jesus to engage in practical peacemaking locally, nationally, and internationally. As followers of Jesus, we should, in our civic capacity, work to reduce conflict by promoting international understanding and engaging in non-violent conflict resolution."
• "We acknowledge with grief and shame the complicity of Christians in some of the most destructive contexts of ethnic violence and oppression, and the lamentable silence of large parts of the Church when such conflicts take place. Such contexts include the history and legacy of racism and black slavery; the holocaust against Jews; apartheid; ‘ethnic cleansing’; inter-Christian sectarian violence; decimation of indigenous populations; inter-religious, political and ethnic violence; Palestinian suffering; caste oppression; and tribal genocide…"
• "We urge governments to pursue domestic, foreign and security policies that encourage justice and peace by preventing conflict. We urge governments to thoroughly pursue nonviolent paths to peace. If governments use military force, they should deploy it justly in the service of sustainable peace and not to serve narrow national interests. Governments should at a minimum restrain violence by applying classical just war principles, which are designed to clarify the limited conditions under which military action is justifiable, and establish standards of right conduct in fighting a war...As such, we urge the Body of Christ to engage in sober, practical peacemaking, nonviolent conflict resolution and citizen diplomacy at local, national and international levels."
• "We repent of our failures to condemn and restrain violence by remaining silent, by promoting nationalism, or by unjustly supporting conflicts through deficient theological justification. We condemn those who use their influence in world affairs to promote avoidable conflicts and wars, merely to further their economic and political interests. We are saddened by the immense suffering their actions have caused. We believe that they will be held accountable before God on the day of judgement. We call all Christians to serve the vulnerable in contexts of war by pooling our resources and supporting the relief efforts of churches and humanitarian organizations that are situated near conflict zones..."

What is it looking like now in terms of what evangelicals are supporting, both with their votes and their words (or lack of them)? And I'm not just talking about full-blown war. I'm talking about creating a culture that is comfortable with violence and aggression as a means justified by an end.

Trump's second campaign contained some promising rhetoric against war. 

• In campaign rallies in 2024, Trump frequently told attendees his administration, "we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace."
• In an interview with Adin Ross in August of 2024, he said, "“And we had no wars under the Trump administration, and that’s a great thing, you know. That’s a really great thing. It was I think 82 years since that’s happened. And we won’t have wars again."
• He said in October of 2024, “You don’t have to send your kids out to war, have your kid blown up for a country that you’ve never heard of and that doesn’t want anything to do with you anyway. But I will not send you to fight and die in a foolish, never-ending foreign war.”
• Trump said, accepting his victory in the 2024 US presidential election,“They said: ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
• His Inauguration Address on January 2025 emphasized his legacy would be built on non-intervention, stating, "My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier".

But while he was saying this, he was already consistently inciting his followers to violence. This should not be surprising considering what happened during his first term. And in his second term, the promises of no new wars dissolved in the face of reality.

Clarifying Some Mass Shooting Statistics

I am not providing commentary on recent events or gun control. These are just facts I have found in the past couple days that I thought were interesting, and were just a little more nuanced than all the memes sliding through my Facebook feed. 

1. A mass shooting is defined by the FBI as a public attack (not in private homes or in drug or gang-related shootings.) Until 2012, an official mass shooting required four or more people to be shot. In 2013, a federal law reduced that figure to three. That’s one reasons stats for mass shootings have gone up in the past seven years. 

2. Depending what chart you look at, you will see large differences in “mass shootings” over the years. That’s because some include in-home violence and drug and gang related shootings. Obviously, those chart will show more mass shootings. Don’t assume people are trying to be dishonest when you read different stats. It’s just different metrics. Know the one you are reading.

3. Massshootingtracker.org offers an easy-to-understand compilation of death and injuries in mass shootings by year (they include all incidents, not just the FBI’s 'public attack'). 

4. There is no clear correlation in the US with mass shootings and a particular religion. The vast majority of shooters appear to be irreligious, or at least their religious affiliation is not reported.  

5. It's true - the United States has a proportionately lower rate of mass shootings than a number of countries that might surprise you – Norway, Switzerland, France, Finland, and Belgium, for example (there are a few more). That’s interesting, but it needs a context. Norway, for example, had one mass shooting in six years, but because it’s population is only five million, that one shooting pushed the proportion past us. Other than France, that kind of statistic holds true for the list I just gave.  So we are not as sweepingly bad as some say, but... that may largely be to the magic of statistics. 

6. The strong majority of mass shooters in schools (around 80%) come from homes of “parental absence, separation, divorce, infidelity, parental alcoholism or drug addiction, criminal behavior, domestic violence, and child abuse.” That’s probably the clearest sociological common denominator other than “male.” 

7. Very few shooters were diagnosed as mentally ill, but many had mental health issues. I'm not sure that necessarily sets them apart from the average population. 

8. If you factor in ALL mass shootings (3 or more in any scenario), there is racial proportionality of perpetrators. No one demographic stands out as more likely to be violent.  If you stick to the FBI’s stats, white dudes stand out as mass shooters. That's why you will here different arguments about the race of shooters - it all depends on the metric you use.

9. Watch for how many shooters have a history of domestic abuse. “Men who commit violence rehearse and perfect it against their families first," wrote Pamela Shifman and Salamishah Tillet in a New York Times op-ed in February. "Women and children are target practice, and the home is the training ground for these men’s later actions."  

10. “Red flag” laws like President Trump has suggested are an attempt to let concerned parties petition law enforcement to take away guns from people about whom they have credible concerns. Even the NRA is open to some form of this.  

11. No, mental illness is not the problem. 

12. There is no good reason to believe that  immersion in violent media and games turns non-shooters into shooters. Based on feedback I have received from students who play VR first-person shooter games, I am guessing this debate is far from over. 

13. I did not find anyone that suggested there is a cookie-cutter model to predict a shooter. I did not find anyone who said there is one sociological tweak that will solve the problem. 

14. If I had to summarize an impression after all my reading, it would be this: As far as I can tell, no one who was clean and sober, had a strong sense of their self-worth, and was embedded in a family and/or community in which they felt loved and valuable shows up on a list of shooters. 

Crime And The Statistics That Clarify (Or Distort) The Issue

I started looking into statistics about crime for two reasons.

First, someone casually mentioned recently that there is clearly no racist bias shown by police since more white people are killed by police than black people. Sure, that’s true, but it’s not an honest truth. There are a lot of other factors to consider which make it almost impossible not to take the accusation of bias seriously

Second, I started looking into gang demographics in the United States. It turns out that quantifying the size of gangs is a really inexact science (in once city, estimates by various organizations ranged from 20,000 to 80,000). One of the reasons is that gang membership is often calculated with a “guilty by association” model.

• Someone posts a picture on social media that includes a gang member. Police count all those in the picture as gang members.
• People wears colors or sports-related clothing associated with a gang, and they are counted as being part of a gang. 
• Some gangs claim local numbers (like area codes) as part of their brand; if someone innocently uses these numbers on clothing or vehicles, he is assumed to be in a gang.
• I read one account of a young lady who dated a gang member. She was counted by local law enforcement as being in the gang though she had nothing to do with it. When she broke up and began dating another guy, the police listed the new guy as a gang member. 

This got me thinking about crime statistics. As the popular phrase goes, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. So just for the sake of being better informed, I started diving into the numbers. Unfortunately, as I discovered, the statistics can sometimes be the thing that creates the problem. Here, with no further ado, are some things worth knowing about crime in the United States.

The Fall Of Thresholds And The Rise Of Slow-Motion, Ever-Evolving Riots

In a thought-provoking article in the New Yorker ("Thresholds of Violence"),  Malcolm Gladwell wrote the following:

"Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter set out to explain a paradox:“situations where outcomes do not seem intuitively consistent with the underlying individual preferences.” What explains a person or a group of people doing things that seem at odds with who they are or what they think is right? Granovetter took riots as one of his main examples, because a riot is a case of destructive violence that involves a great number of otherwise quite normal people who would not usually be disposed to violence.  

Most previous explanations had focussed on explaining how someone’s beliefs might be altered in the moment.... But Granovetter thought it was a mistake to focus on the decision-making processes of each rioter in isolation. In his view, a riot was not a collection of individuals, each of whom arrived independently at the decision to break windows. A riot was a social process, in which people did things in reaction to and in combination with those around them. Social processes are driven by our thresholds—which he defined as the number of people who need to be doing some activity before we agree to join them. 

In the elegant theoretical model Granovetter proposed, riots were started by people with a threshold of zero—instigators willing to throw a rock through a window at the slightest provocation. Then comes the person who will throw a rock if someone else goes first. He has a threshold of one. Next in is the person with the threshold of two. His qualms are overcome when he sees the instigator and the instigator’s accomplice. Next to him is someone with a threshold of three, who would never break windows and loot stores unless there were three people right in front of him who were already doing that—and so on up to the hundredth person, a righteous upstanding citizen who nonetheless could set his beliefs aside and grab a camera from the broken window of the electronics store if everyone around him was grabbing cameras from the electronics store... You can’t just look at an individual’s norms and motives. You need to look at the group.  

His argument has a second implication. We misleadingly use the word “copycat” to describe contagious behavior—implying that new participants in an epidemic act in a manner identical to the source of their infection. But rioters are not homogeneous. If a riot evolves as it spreads, starting with the hotheaded rock thrower and ending with the upstanding citizen, then rioters are a profoundly heterogeneous group.  

Finally, Granovetter’s model suggests that riots are sometimes more than spontaneous outbursts. If they evolve, it means they have depth and length and a history. Granovetter thought that the threshold hypothesis could be used to describe everything from elections to strikes, and even matters as prosaic as how people decide it’s time to leave a party.... what if the way to explain the school-shooting epidemic is to go back and use the Granovetterian model—to think of it as a slow-motion, ever-evolving riot, in which each new participant’s action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before?"

What Granovetter and Gladwell are talking about here strikes me as crucial in understanding trends or patterns that begin to emerge not just in those whose lives raise warning flags (they are on the radar because their lives have been sufficiently disturbing to warrant intervention), but those who by all appearances are "normal" to our best definition of the word.

Gladwell applies this very specifically to the rise in school shootings. I think we can rightly apply it further - which is what I attempt to do in The Fall Of Thresholds Fall And The Rise Of "Slow-Motion, Ever-Evolving Riots."

You can listen to this episode of our Etcetera podcast on Soundcloud or on various apps (such as Podcast Addict or Stitcher Radio). As always, we appreciate interaction with you! Feel free to comment on this blog or on Etcetera's Facebook page. 

Our Guns, Our Culture, And Our Hearts

Like everyone else, I am bothered by the prevalence of gun violence in the United States. Most conversations I have witnessed have devolved very quickly into emotional outbursts and meme-level talking points. This is my attempt to offer a meaningful addition to the conversation. Though I have attempted to do my homework, I don't expect you to substitute this for your own research. I welcome any thoughtful comments or links you would like to add to this conversation.

Let's begin with some statistics.

• The  United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) records that the Americas (North, Central and South combined) lead in murder rate by region (16.3 per 100,000); Asia holds the lowest rate (2.9 per 100,000). If you compare by countries, the U.S. itself is 93rd (though the list does note 14 countries where there is war or significant civil unrest). According to NationMaster, the United States is 10th in firearm deaths (though 2002 is the last year for which they have posted data).
• In a list of the top 50 most violent cities (population of over 300,000, not in a combat zone, and who actually submitted data), the U.S. contributes four: New Orleans (32nd), Detroit (28th) Baltimore (19th), and St. Louis (15th).
• Safearound.com lists the United States as 55th out of 160  countries in their safety index. Other lists aren't so generous, ranking our overall crime index the Unites States is 35th.  The United States is not unusually more prone to crime in general than other developed countries, according to a study out of of the University of California, Berkeley. Violent crime in American is simply more lethal because, well, guns.
• We have had a 40% drop in homicide rates in the past 15 years. In the early 2010’s we were lower than only one other time in U.S. history (the late 1950’s).  For some reasons, 1990 to 1997 were bad, and violent crime overall increased in both 2015 and 2016. Still, “The five-year and 10-year trends show an increase from 2012 (up 2.6 percent) and a decrease from 2007 (down 12.3 percent).” Why the fluctuation? Speculation abounds: longer prison sentences, economic changes, a cultural shift away from violence, an influx of immigrants (which, contrary to popular belief, usually correlates with a drop in violence and crime), and birthrates (the more 18-25 year olds, the more crime).

In the face of the reality of gun violence in the United States, there seem to be three primary solutions: limit access to guns, address unhealthy cultural dynamics, or change the people who use the guns. In the wake of the tragic Florida shooting, I've heard a lot of conversation about the first, but not so much about the other two. I don't think that's going to work. We should be talking about the weapons, sure, but we must also talk about the reasons people use them for such evil ends.

The Punisher

“All the things that I done, memories, they never hurt me. But the past, it's more than memories. It's the devil you sold your soul to. He's comin'. He's comin' to collect." —Frank Castle, The Punisher

Netflix’s The Punisher is one of the most violent TV shows I have seen. You can read review about the plot and the quality of the show elsewhere. I want to jump right in to a discussion that's been swirling around this show: the level of violence.

Plenty of reviews have suggested that the timing is bad considering the recent mass murders from which the United States is recovering. That's a valid question, but I think they are wrong -and I think this show might be more timely than ever precisely because it unveils the terrible nature of violence.

The Punisher features broken, hardened, nearly soulless men who have trafficked in the way of the gun. None of them are meant to garner our admiration. Even Frank, the punishing protagonist(?), leaves us scrambling if we want to justify who he has become and what he has done.

He has clearly separated people into two categories: ends and means (to use Kantian terms). Those he views as ends, valuable in and of themselves, he would give his life to save. That’s the part of Frank we really like – and why we want him on our side. I mean, the dude gets things done.

But then there's everyone else. Daredevil asked him once, “You never think for one second, "S***, I just killed a human being"? The Punisher responds, "That's being pretty generous." The people he kills aren’t people to him anymore. They are things, and they will likely give their life for him. There is a terribly uncomfortable episode where he tortures a man he is convinced is a criminal. The man is not. Frank does not seem to care once he finds this out. He does what he thinks needs to be done, and if he needs to treat you as a mere chemicals in a meat bag, he will.

That mindset is part of what tragically formed him into The Punisher and informs what he does now. Vanity Fair refers to Frank’s “compartmentalized view of the world”:

“It’s all right to kill bad people as long as you know that they’re bad. What the series neglects to examine, of course, is the fact that the Punisher is just as wicked as the villains he targets. Though he’s the victim of a corrupt system, he’s not working to take down that system, or even repair it; instead, he’s taking advantage of disorganization in order to wage a personal war on any individuals who threaten him.” 

The series might neglect to examine it, but maybe that's our job. Maybe the series need do no more than bring it into the light so we can see if for what it is. This is the nagging issue behind most of the superhero stories. They are vigilantes who share a common worldview in which they can do what they believe is justified outside the purview of the law. There is an interesting snippet of conversation from the Daredevil series that uncomfortably connects the dots in the MCU:

"You think, uh you think he's crazy?"
"Uh, the Punisher? No. I think he was inevitable."
"Inevitable? How so?"
"Maybe... maybe we created him. All of us. The moment that we let Daredevil, or the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, or whatever it is-"
"There's... there's no connection."
"Well, actually, I think it's a pretty straight line, Matt. Daredevil practiced vigilante justice in our backyard and we applauded him for it. I know that I did. And we never stopped to think that maybe... his actions could open the door for men like this. Men with guns. Men who think that the law belongs to them."

Frank is appalled when a terrorist claims that he and Frank are no different (“We both believe the system will fail to do what needs to be done, and we take matters into our own hands,” or something like that). They are different because the bomber targeted innocent people, right? But wait…Frank tortured an innocent guy just a couple episodes earlier because that guy’s life was just a means to Frank’s ends. Frank’s violence isn’t random, but that’s little comfort to those unjustly hurt by him. He is no terrorist to the general population, but there is very good reason for everyone to be a little nervous. A scene in Daredevil gave us a disturbing window into his way of thinking:

“"You know those, uh... those people? The ones I put down, the people I killed? I want you to know that I'd do it all again. This is a circus, all right? It's a charade, it's an act. It's bull**** about how crazy I am. I ain't crazy! I'm not crazy. Okay? I know what I did. I know who I am. And I do not need your help. I'm smack-dab in the middle of my right god**** mind, and any scumbag, any... any lowlife, any maggot piece of s*** that I put down, I did it... because I liked it! Hell, I loved it! I'm sitting here, I'm... I'm just itching. I'm itching to do it again. And you think... What, you think you're gonna send me to a nuthouse? Some doctor, they're gonna get me to stop from doing what I want to do? Well, that ain't happening! Not on my watch! You people, you call me the Punisher, ain't that right? The big bad Punisher. Well, here I am! You want it, you got it! I am the Punisher! I'm right here! You want it, I'll give it to you. And anybody who came here today to hear me whine, to hear me beg? Well, you can kiss my ass!"

I’ve seen a number of reviews saying this a bad time for a show with this level of violence. I don’t know. Perhaps what is portrayed could look appealing to someone whose heart has already been deeply calloused, but the average viewer will not see a glittering and appealing world of excitement and intrigue. They will see torture, blood, horrifying inhumanity, and a cycle of violence that escalates around and within those who engage in it. As a review at Variety noted: 

“But above all what “The Punisher” is cynical about is the use of force: This is a series where a man who was asked to senselessly kill by his government goes rogue and ends up hunting down members of that same government — because they made him kill people. The show is wary of guns, wary of blind patriotism, wary of unquestioned service; it sides only and always with veterans. (The affection that military veterans have for the character of the Punisher is a long-documented one. The character was originally a veteran of the Vietnam War when introduced in 1974; in the Netflix series, he’s a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) Bernthal’s Frank Castle seems to have wrapped himself in these forces because he doesn’t trust anyone else to have the power to wield them — and at the same time, because he is so broken by his own tragedy, he is a protagonist who commits violence while understanding how that violence creates trauma. It makes for a charged, destabilizing dynamic…” 

The end of the show hints at a turn toward peace if Frank is willing to enter into a community of the broken and healing. I doubt it will last. The Punisher does not mete out his savage punishment from a place of health. The hell inside become the hell outside. Hurt people hurt people, isn’t that how the saying goes? And if they don’t get fixed, broken people will break people. And if you give them a gun, they will do so quite efficiently.

I’ve long advocated for honest violence: if you are going to show it, don’t make it cool. Make it real. If you do it right, we will know that violence is the last thing for which we should hope. Show us the toll it takes on everyone involved.  If viewed as more than mere entertainment, The Punisher forces us to face these things:

“The Punisher forces us to philosophically question our own personal relationships with power, abuse, sadism, and terror. The series, drenched in shadows and hazy grays, explores what happens when vigilantism goes unchecked. Fans who have been following Castle’s story from the second season of Daredevil know that he’s killing because his family was killed; The Punisher, through its excessive violence, wants to test whether there’s a limit. It wants to ponder what could happen if everyone who’s ever been wronged started acting like Castle.” 

All You Need Is Kill/Edge of Tomorrow

All You Need Is Kill, Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s widely praised breakthrough novel, was nominated for Japan's Seiun Awards, published in Japanese and English, and adapted to manga beginning this past January. Warner Bros. is bringing it to a theater near you on June 6 as “Edge of Tomorrow,” featuring Tom Cruise as yet another unlikely Japanese warrior (for more info, see The Last Samurai – or maybe not).*

In Sakurazaka's imaginative literary world, the United Defense Force has been fighting Mimics, a nightmarish advance force sent by a race that wants to remake the earth into a habitat in which they can live. That means humanity has to die.

Keiji, a rookie warrior, sustains a horrible injury in his first battle. Rita Vratiski, a virtual goddess of destruction reverentially known as the Full Metal B****, finds him as he bleeds out. He manages to ask her if this is the end. ”Yeah, “ she tells him, “But I’ll stay with you until you die.” And die he does.

Then he wakes up. Through a convergence of unlikely events, he is fated for this to happen over and over again. Every time he dies, he loops back in time. He soon realizes he can train in such a way that he might be able to eventually win the battle – and perhaps the war – on behalf of humanity. He takes courage from the mindset of the samurai: “Strike down the enemy, and learn.” He shakes off his brooding nihilism, stops experimenting with ways to die, and chooses to fight.

The Drowned Cities

To help us enter into and better understand the entertainment shaping today's youth, I offer my latest review of books effecting a primarily YA audience. My goal is not to critique the art form as much as look at the worldview in the story.

This review will look at Paolo Bacigalupi's The Drowned Cities.  In addition to numerous awards for other books, The Drowned Cities has received the 2012 Kirkus Reviews Best of YA Books, a 2012 VOYA Perfect Ten Book, 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults, and  Junior Library Guild Selection.

Mr. Baigalupi writes what he calls 'accidental futures', where "human beings are selfish, short-sighted, and stupid, and thereby create worlds that everyone can agree are hell — but that no one can fix anymore." That's the world of The Drowned Cities. But even in the midst of this watery hell, a compelling story of honor, horror and hope emerges.

In the wake of a worldwide flooding, America's waterlogged cities became knows as the Drowned Cities, places where chaos and death await around every corner. Civil war decimates the land. Peacekeepers from China attempt to do for America what America has attempted to do for so many other nations. They fail. Now, the Deepwater Christians, Rust Saint devotees, Army of God, Freedom Militia, and United Patriot Front use politics and religion as an excuse to fight brutally  for power and land.