Preaching Peace

Occasional Articles

As with the Introductory Articles, we will add other articles as time permits or as our readers request. If you have a suggestion for anything, please let us know.

Michael Hardin

Is the Apocalypse Inevitable?: Native American Prophecy and the Mimetic Theory presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008

Michael's Essay for a Celebration Volume honoring Rene Girard

Michael's Response to Willard Swartley's Covenent of Peace at the November Colloquium and Violence Meeting

Does Peace Make A Difference? - Michael's essay in response to Rick Warren's P.E.A.C.E. plan (which somehow never mentions peace).

An Analysis of Rick Warren - Michael's response to "The Purpose Driven Life."

"The God of Pat Robertson" - a response to Pat Robertson's words to the people of Dover, PA.

"A response to Charles Stanley's "A Nation at War"

"Must God be violent? A Diagnosis and Prescription for Modern Christianity"

The Scapegoat: Christologies in Conflict - A Study in Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Biblical Testaments as a Marriage of Convenience: Rene Girard and Biblical Interpretation

Finding Our Way Home: A Brief Note On The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture

"Does The Passion of the Christ Preach the Gospel?"

A sermon for the holiday devoted to Dr. Martin Luther King. (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

GRASPING GOD: Philippians 2: 1-11 in the Light of Mimetic Theory

Essay on Brethren Life & Thought

Essay on Mimesis and Dominion

"EcoSpirituality"
Or What Happens When You Sit Down With A French Literary Critic

Jeff Krantz

Mighty One or Crucified Messiah? Competing Christologies and the Chiastic Structure of Mark's Gospel

There's No Such Thing as the Rapture - A sermon preached at the Church of the Advent, Westbury (requires Acrobat Reader)

Holy Scripture and the Consecration of Gene Robinson - a response to the request of the Windsor Report for a Scriptural rationale. (requires Adobe's Acrobat Reader)

Worship - The Redemption of Desire by Jeff Krantz

Myth and Film - a piece written for the City of Angels Film Festival

The Stations of the Cross - Rewritten by Jeff Krantz

A Dramatic Presentation of the Stations of the Cross for Youth by Barb Fabijan-Waddell

Escaping the Power of "My" - A NonViolent Approach to Stewardship

Preaching Peace in Hollywood: The Theologies of Terminator, Lord of the Rings, and the Matrix

V for Vendetta - The Name Says It All A review of the movie.

Essays, Sermons and Liturgical Pieces by Friends of Preaching Peace

Mark Heim's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement

Kate Layzer's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement (and inspiration for Mark Heim's hymn!)

Alan Cork, "Transformation" in L'Arche: A Mimetic Account presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008

"The Wisdom of God's Peace" a sermon by Jim Amstutz, co-pastor of Michael's church.

Girard's Christology - Per Bjornar Grande

Violence, Anarchy and Scripture: Jacques Ellul and Rene Girard - Matthew Patillo

Comparing Plato's Understanding of Mimesis to Girard's - Per Bjorner Grande

C. Frank Terhune, an Easter Sermon: "God's Big But" (no kidding!)

Gerald Biesecker-Mast's paper from Theologia Pacis on Pacifist Gospel Epstimology.

An essay by the Rev. John Hill on Mimetic Theory and Catechesis

V for Vendetta - The Name Says It All

Please don’t read this if you’re concerned about having the movie spoiled for you. (Though you’ll be able to predict most of the story. It is classic myth in the mimetic sense.) I still recommend that our readers see the movie. It paints a terrifying picture of the kind of totalitarianism that can result from the rhetoric we hear in our own day. It is only the solution that needs to be rejected.

I want so much to speak well of V for Vendetta. I liked it. It is beautifully crafted as a movie, and it makes as good an argument for redemptive violence as you can imagine. But in the end, it does not renounce violence as a means. Gene Shalit said it well when he summarized the movie’s philosophy, “Evil means are okay when they’re used against evil, to end evil.” (That’s the best I can remember.)

This is, perhaps, the most insidious way of telling the myth of redemptive violence. The Violent One is a monster created by the System. The Violent One recognizes the error in his hatred by way of “love.” The Violent One finally ends his own violence in an orgy of destruction, but the only victims are the Monster Makers (and their henchmen). By the end of the movie, we want so badly to buy into the idea that this time, this one time, violence might actually bring an end to violence.

It seems so plausible. The final scene of destruction is a destruction of a “symbol,” a building, nobody gets killed in the last scene. The masses approach the armies of the System with no weapons. The armies do not fire on them. Maybe by beheading the monster (the other orgy of blood in the penultimate scene) peace can be made with the rest of the body of the beast.

But the myth of violence remains. The masses do not approach weaponless because they choose to renounce violence, it is only because they lack access. The armies of the System do not hold their fire because of the innocence of the masses, but only because they lack leadership.

If it were not for (overly) bloody massacre that precedes this scene (It is only here that the movie moves from great movie to gory video game.) violent confrontation would have resulted. The huge numbers of the masses would probably have resulted in the deaths of the soldiers, but victory would have been bloody. In the end, violence “ends” because of violence.

It is regrettable that this movie is considered one in the genre with the Matrix trilogy. In the trilogy, the Gospel gradually emerges as the hero first recognizes his power and then relinquishes it as a means of bringing peace. In the final movie, it is the Gospel that reigns. Of course, behind the movies lies the work of a Christian author, (Sophia Stewart) one who knows the Gospel from below, from the slave perspective (her grandmother was a slave) and who sought to tell the Gospel in modern dress. In the end, the authors of V for Vendetta are no less enamored of the saving power of violence than the villains of their movie.