by Torsten Schwanke
In Jesus' name, a bolder path begins,
Where peace confronts the world and all its sins.
Yoder, with Scripture’s echo in his tone,
Stands firm where pacifists have stood alone.
He writes against the power of sword and might,
To show the gospel’s call to cease from fight.
Not weak escape from evil’s harsh domain,
But truth that dares confront the world’s disdain.
For “pacifism” suffers much abuse,
Its meaning bent to serve a wrongful use.
Some brand it lazy, cowardly, and cold,
Afraid to act, and never brave or bold.
The popes themselves have voiced their sharp critique,
That peace at any price is poor and weak.
While pundits, stirred by terror’s fearsome rise,
Deem peace a cloak where darker treasons lie.
Yet Yoder shows—through calm and sacred word—
The gospel's ethic is not sword, but heard.
He does not praise a meek or fearful way,
But dares to teach what Christ himself did say.
For in the Cross, where perfect love was shown,
A power lives no empire's hand can own.
The pacifist, then, lives not to withdraw,
But sees in Christ the highest moral law.
Niebuhr, that realist, would still contend,
That peace dissolves where duties must not bend.
He speaks of sin, of structure, pride, and pain,
Of justice earned through military strain.
Yet Yoder holds that Jesus lived and died,
To end all violence, not let it slide.
A kingdom grows where humble hearts resist,
Not with clenched fist, but with the open wrist.
The task is hard, its outcome far from clear,
But conscience calls the Christian soul to hear.
That peace, though mocked, and labeled as unwise,
May yet unveil the truth that violence hides.
But deeper still than ethics Yoder goes,
To ask how peace affects the way one knows.
What lens we choose, what truths we let appear,
Are shaped by whether love or fear is near.
For knowledge grows not just in books or thought,
But in the lives by sacrifice well-taught.
If one would know as Christ himself has known,
One bears the cross, and walks the path alone.
The pacifist, though mocked as blind or naive,
May see through lies the violent minds believe.
For those who fight to conquer or defend,
May miss the truths that love alone can send.
To follow Christ is not to wield the blade,
But live the peace that He himself portrayed.
This way of knowing—costly, steep, and slow—
Demands a soul prepared to serve and grow.
Not neutral facts, nor logic’s cold design,
But hearts transformed reveal the truth divine.
For when we love our foes, and seek no harm,
Our eyes are opened to a deeper charm.
Thus pacifism, rightly understood,
Is not escape, but battle fought with good.
Its knowledge rests not on coercive force,
But on the Spirit’s quiet, guiding course.
So Yoder’s work, though many find it odd,
Presents a way of knowing shaped by God.
Not just belief, but vision made complete,
Where justice walks with mercy in the street.
And as this book unfolds its careful claim,
It asks not power, but peace, in Jesus' name.
Let readers judge, as conscience gives them light,
If truth must arm—or kneel beneath the fight.
Yet not all hands applaud this peaceful creed—
Some claim it fails in humankind’s great need.
For evil stalks, and terror shakes the land;
Shall love alone against such darkness stand?
“Too soft!” they cry. “Too blind to human wrong,
Too deaf to war’s redemptive, needed song.”
They scorn the saints who lay the sword aside,
And call them fools who let the strong decide.
Two popes have named it lazy, weak, untrue,
A dream that falls when harsh winds batter through.
They say true peace must sometimes draw the blade,
Lest deeper peace by silence be betrayed.
And from the right, fierce critics raise their voice,
As if in war alone we have no choice.
“The pacifist,” one writer claimed with spite,
“Stands with the terrorist, avoids the fight.”
Such words reveal a deep and searing fear:
That peace, unchecked, lets cruelty draw near.
But does this logic prove the cross was vain?
Was Calvary mere cowardice in pain?
Then came Niebuhr, sharp and deeply wise,
Who saw the world through realist-tinted eyes.
He scorned the dreamers who denied all sin,
And thought that love alone might surely win.
He called it heresy—that thin belief,
That perfect peace can cure all human grief.
He warned that evil must be faced with might,
And moral force must sometimes join the fight.
Yet still he saw a purer pacifist—
One not naïve, nor lost in moral mist.
The kind that bears, in private faith, the cross,
And leaves the world to reckon with its loss.
But such a faith, though noble in its stand,
Withdraws from justice, leaves the task unmanned.
To live in peace while others fight and bleed,
Seems, to some hearts, an abdicated creed.
Still Yoder asks, through Scripture's witness clear:
Did Christ not die for love, and not from fear?
Did not His peace, though mocked and crucified,
Expose the lies by which the strong abide?
Yet pacifism, as Yoder makes us see,
Is not one stream but flows diversely free.
Not all who shun the sword are of one mind,
For peace takes forms both tender and defined.
In Nevertheless, his work of subtle art,
He maps the paths by which peace finds its heart.
Not one, not five, but nearly thirty ways
That faithful lives pursue nonviolent days.
Some shun all war from conscience born in fire,
Refusing arms as sin and soul’s misfire.
Some seek in Jesus’ life the guiding norm,
Rejecting war as breaking sacred form.
Others withhold their hand for legal ends,
Or stand aside while others arm their friends.
Some vow to love and suffer, not to rule,
While others walk the halls of power—yet cool.
The mystic, silent, trusting in God’s hand,
Declines to fight, yet dares not make demand.
The activist resists with open voice,
Yet bears the blow and still affirms their choice.
Some find in Christ a call to disobey,
When laws demand that love be put away.
While others work through structures, slow and vast,
To turn the sword into a plow at last.
So many kinds, and each its own debate—
The term “pacifist” cannot bear full weight.
It is, as thinkers name, contested still,
A word that bends beneath the human will.
So Yoder does not give a single creed,
But shows the roots from which such lives proceed.
And though he does not name the final form,
He lifts the peace that bucks the worldly norm.
Though justice may at times require the sword,
Its norms are not the final, binding word.
The Christian soul must ever guard its path,
Lest righteous wrath disguise a deeper wrath.
What men call peace may yet be clothed in strife,
And virtue mask a world-conforming life.
Hershberger, kindred to Niebuhr in age,
Denied that Christ had called the warlike sage.
For him, the Master's voice was clear and still:
Renounce all arms, submit to heaven’s will.
Yet he, like Niebuhr, saw with sharpest eye
The pacifists whose hopes reached to the sky.
These, Social Gospel heirs with noble aim,
Saw sin in systems, not the heart’s dark flame.
For them, Christ's role was but to lead the way,
Not cleanse the soul nor wash its guilt away.
They dreamed of peace imposed by moral might,
Of justice won by noncoercive fight.
Yet even force with velvet-gloved pretense
Is still compulsion—still a form of fence.
To wrong, they answer not with meek retreat,
But with resistance cloaked in love's deceit.
Thus Hershberger, with solemn heart, denies
That such a creed can from the Lord arise.
It mimics Rome though draped in softer dress,
And shrinks the gospel’s call to something less.
He saw that pacifism, though it strive,
Could not in such a world of blood survive.
For it, like men, too often shares the curse—
A heart half-pure, yet captive still to worse.
Too lightly do they claim to shun the sword,
While wielding tools their Master hath abhorred.
But Wink, a different strain of soul and mind,
Saw not in pacifists a hope refined.
He charged their ways with quietude too deep,
A gospel bound in slumber and in sleep.
Not peace, but passiveness their creed imparts,
A faith that fails to stir rebellious hearts.
“Pacifism,” he wrote, “must now be slain,
Its name confused, its power brought to bane.
Where Christ bid men confront the powers that kill,
They turned the other cheek, but not the will.”
To Wink, true peace is courage wrapped in flame,
And nonviolence bears a bolder name.
Where pacifists submit and dare not fight,
The nonviolent strive with moral might.
So Gandhi, too, condemned the passive role,
That casts no light and bears no burning soul.
Better, he said, to strike with sword in hand,
Than bow in cowardice or meekly stand.
Yet even “nonviolence” wears a mask,
A name that shuns the heart’s authentic task.
For it denies, defines by what it lacks,
And hides the road from peace behind its tracks.
Kurlansky saw the flaw, the hollow name,
And sought a term that might restore the flame.
Could “pacifism,” scorned and left behind,
Be redefined to stir the soul and mind?
Might we reclaim that ancient, thorny word,
And let its true, bold meaning be inferred?
Not mere retreat, nor passiveness adorned,
But peace that risks, that loves, that stands, transformed.
A creed not weak, nor worldly in disguise,
But one that lifts the world with lifted eyes.
The term “pacifism” bears a gentle name,
It speaks not war, but peace its highest aim.
It more affirms than merely would oppose
The sword’s descent or violence’s blows.
Though some recoil or grasp its sense askew,
It holds not one, but many shades of view.
We press no creed that all must here embrace,
But offer one that time might yet grace.
A term not found in early lexicons,
Its roots are newer than the ancient dawns.
The Oxford tome in nineteen-four was bare,
No “pacifism” yet was noted there.
In nineteen-two, a peace-convening voice
Adopted “pacifisme” as the choice—
A Gallic word that bore a deeper plea,
“Make peace,” not merely “war’s futility.”
The word is rooted deep in “paci,” peace,
A quest for love where enmities may cease.
Devotion pure to peace it thus implies,
Not faint approval mouthed with wary eyes.
It claims that no just cause for violence stands
Above the call of peace with open hands.
Yet some, dismayed, would raise a sharp dissent:
“Is peace now god, with all our worship spent?”
We find such fears not easy to align,
For peace is not divine, though peace is sign.
To claim that God is peace, or love, or just,
Is not to idolize, betray His trust.
Reverse the phrase and sense begins to blur—
“Peace is our God” lacks shape, is speech obscure.
When saying God is peace, we point to Christ,
Whose life and death reveal what God has priced.
In Jesus’ path, God’s peace is seen and known,
A light that from the cross is clearly shown.
But “peace is God” would leave us lost and blind,
With neither tale nor truth to grasp or find.
So in the Christ, our starting point we lay,
For those who seek a peaceful, faithful way.
The Christian pacifist beholds in Him
A love that shines where worldly lights grow dim.
He taught no war, yet bore a swordless creed,
Where love’s compassion met each human need.
Four truths we find that root this holy stand,
Each witnessed in the life and guiding hand
Of Christ, and echoed in the Bible’s voice—
These four give cause for peace to be our choice.
When asked what law was greatest of them all,
Christ gave this word with clarity and call:
“Love God with all your soul and strength and mind,
And then your neighbor, as yourself, be kind.”
On these two hangs the law, the prophets too—
The sum of Scripture's purpose shining through.
The Gospels each this teaching do record,
And Paul affirms it in his written word.
The Law, he says, is thus fulfilled in love,
Which places self below, and God above.
John echoes too, with fervent, urgent voice:
To love is proof, to hate is to lose choice.
Three truths we glean from this profound decree:
First, love is all for those who would be free.
Then love for God and man is tightly bound—
No faith is true where hatred may be found.
And third, Christ saw in Scripture's ancient scroll
This double love the center and the soul.
No stranger's plight is one we may ignore—
The “neighbor” is the weak one at our door.
Not kin alone, nor tribe, nor friendly face,
But anyone in need of love and grace.
Christ’s reign is not like kingdoms born of might,
But ruled by love, not force, nor armored right.
He calls His own to serve, not to command,
To lift the lowly with a gentle hand.
Where empires crush beneath their iron heel,
Christ leads with grace, and bids the soul to heal.
No sword He drew, though crowds would make Him king,
No throne He claimed, no wealth did power bring.
He showed instead a new, subversive way—
Where love and peace are stronger than dismay.
His politics, though mocked by worldly pride,
Are just, and justly stand the test of tide.
The tyrant rules through fear and sharp decree,
But Christ reveals what love-born rule can be.
A realm where peace and righteousness embrace,
And justice flows with mercy’s patient grace.
Christ taught that humankind could live in peace,
That love might grow and cause all hate to cease.
He did not scoff at human hearts or minds,
But called us friends and loosed our inner binds.
He saw in us the image God had made,
Though marred by sin, not wholly yet decayed.
He spoke with hope—of neighbors doing good,
Of enemies forgiven as we should.
He healed the sick, restored the blind and lame,
And called us all to live and do the same.
Not through despair, nor through a bitter will,
But by the Spirit’s breath, serene and still.
He taught that love, though fragile, could endure,
Could make the world more just, more clean, more pure.
Though we are flawed, He saw in us the flame
Of peace and mercy none but God could name.
At last, the cross—where perfect peace was shown,
Where Christ bore wrath that He had never known.
No wrath from God, but from the world’s cruel pride,
Its powers, its fears, its hate—He did not hide.
He bore it all, and yet He did not break,
But gave His life for love and mercy’s sake.
The cross reveals what culture dares not see:
That violence reigns where love should truly be.
That structures built by man may stand as gods,
And call us to applaud with cruel nods.
But Christ unmasks these idols through His pain,
And shows the way through suffering to gain.
Not conquest cold, nor vengeance dark and deep,
But cross-shaped love that sows the peace we reap.
He hung, accused, yet uttered no rebuke—
His strength lay not in arms that men might duke.
But in the gift of self, the open hand,
The love that stills what fear can’t understand.
This love, once scorned, now stands the central sign
That peace is not defeat, but is divine.
And Christian faith, if faithful it would be,
Must walk this road, though lined with Calvary.
So pacifism, far from passive fear,
Is love’s bold voice, made calm, made strong, made clear.
In Christ we see the peace for which we long—
A truth made flesh, a love more vast than wrong.
“Love ye your foes,” the Savior gently cried,
“Pray for their peace, though they your strength deride.
For sons of God must mercy’s light reflect—
He shines on all, not only on the elect.
The rain He sends on just and wicked lands,
His kindness flows from never-failing hands.”
So spake the Christ upon the mount serene,
And linked God’s love to all we feel and glean.
“Think not I come the law to cast away;
I come to crown it with a brighter day.
The prophets’ fire, the sacred Law’s decree,
Fulfilled in me, now breathe in charity.”
The ancient texts, through many voices, show
God’s peace was planned from dawn of time to flow.
To Abram’s seed, the promise first was given—
A call to bless all families under heaven.
Though mercy clothed this covenant from the start,
It burned with love for foes deep in God’s heart.
Thus Christ, within that holy story’s line,
Proclaimed a peace both human and divine.
“Lend without hope, and give without regret,
Do good to those whose kindness you forget.
So shall you stand as children of the High,
Whose grace shines wide beneath the scornful sky.
Be merciful, as He is kind to all—
The good, the base, the grateful, and the small.”
Saint Paul would echo what his Lord had said,
That even foes God loved where they had bled.
While yet in sin, in dark estranged estate,
God's Son drew near to reconcile our fate.
Thus love, not wrath, fulfills the law’s demand—
No violence can what love commands withstand.
“Thou shalt not steal, nor murder,” Paul does write,
“Are all summed up in love’s unblinking light.”
Love is the law; it sets the captives free,
It binds the soul to perfect liberty.
So Christ proclaimed, and so His own believed,
That peace is not naïve, nor love deceived.
To kill in war, to wield the bloody sword,
Is to forsake the mandate of the Lord.
Yet Christ was not apolitical or mild—
They crowned Him “King,” though mocked and undefiled.
The Empire feared Him, not for wrath or spear,
But for a kingdom cast without a fear.
He challenged power not with rebel’s shout,
But servant's towel and love that casts out doubt.
“You see,” said He, “how Gentile rulers reign—
They lord their will and rule through whip and chain.
But not so here. The one who seeks the throne
Must bend the knee and serve, and stand alone.”
A politics He shaped, not of the sword,
But of a people faithful to the Lord.
Not Rome’s sharp rule, nor any empire’s boast,
But love that lifts the lowly from their post.
He called twelve men to walk His narrow road,
A mirror of old Israel’s holy code.
A movement born to heal, not to destroy,
To turn revenge to justice and to joy.
Though Satan offered power, Christ declined—
No realm by blood or conquest did He mind.
His kingdom stood against the claims of might,
A shining flame amid the Roman night.
Rather than wield the sword in sovereign might,
Christ formed a realm where love became the light.
A people shaped by God’s eternal word,
Not by the rule of empires or the sword.
This sacred band, by Jeremiah led,
Revived the path the ancient prophets tread.
His counsel helped the exiled stand apart,
Yet dwell in lands with undivided heart.
"Seek peace," he urged, "wherever you may roam,
Yet hold the Law and make God’s will your home."
Thus from the past, a model had been born—
A way to live, though scattered and forlorn.
In Jesus’ call, the prophets' truth was sealed:
That earthly thrones by swords are all revealed
As poor protectors of God's holy plan—
To bless the world through Abrahamic span.
Isaiah saw, and Micah did proclaim,
That nations would seek Zion in God’s name.
Their weapons turned to tools for sowing grain,
Their warlike ways exchanged for peace’s reign.
So Christ, in step with ancient sacred lore,
Sought not a throne but opened heaven’s door.
His charge: “Disciple nations in my grace,
Not by the sword, but through love’s bold embrace.”
The nations’ might was shown to be unwise—
A power that leads the faithful to demise.
The call was clear: reject coercive reign,
For love alone shall in the end remain.
And John, upon the isle where exiles trod,
Beheld a vision of the reign of God.
Two cities stood: one draped in blood and pride,
The other by the Lamb’s pure love supplied.
In Babylon, the kings in power trust;
In Zion, servants rise up from the dust.
The first brings death, the second, life anew—
A present choice for every soul in view.
The Lamb who reigns wears not a victor’s crown,
But bears the scars of love that laid Him down.
His kingdom grows not through the blade or rod,
But through the cross, the suffering path to God.
Yet still, Christ showed in word and deed and breath
An optimism bold in life and death.
“Follow me,” He said—not in some distant dream,
But here and now, with faith as living stream.
His sermon shone with hope divinely bright:
“You are the salt, the city on the height.
You bring the peace, the mercy, and the grace,
And bear My name in every time and place.”
Forgive, He said, and love your foe in strife;
Give all you have and walk the path of life.
Not idle words, nor hopes for future skies,
But calls to act while under earthly skies.
Though Scripture groans with tales of human wrong,
A thread of hope and trust runs deep and strong.
The Torah, voice of justice and shalom,
Invites all souls to make God's will their home.
Not weak in heart or mind are humankind,
But ever prone to wander, stray, and blind.
Though we are shaped to walk in righteous ways,
We trade God's peace for idols we appraise.
Thus chains are forged: in greed, in hate, in war,
Oppression reigns where love was meant to soar.
Yet still the call rings out with constant grace:
"Turn back to Me, and I will show My face."
Repent, believe—the kingdom now is near!
So Jesus spoke, and crowds bent close to hear.
He taught not change but Torah's truest core:
Return to God, and live as self no more.
The meek, the poor, the peacemakers, the kind—
These are the heirs of God’s eternal mind.
He dared to say, "Love even those who harm;
Let mercy, not revenge, be your alarm."
This was no dream, nor lofty hope alone,
But what he knew could root in flesh and bone.
He called us not to win through sword or might,
But live the truth: that love itself is fight.
Upon the cross he bore love’s holy strain,
Embraced the thorns, the mockery, the pain.
No hate he gave, though pierced by empire's rod—
His peace, his path, his cross, the way to God.
“Take up your cross,” he told each one who hears;
“Walk in my steps through hope and blood and tears.”
For power and throne, for priest and law’s pretense,
All struck him down, exposed their impotence.
Yet this, the cross, is not a silent grief—
But bold defiance in a world of thief.
It speaks not passively, but with loud breath:
“To love through hate is stronger than to death.”
His peace made war with every unjust throne,
And shook the halls of Caesar to the bone.
So when we follow, we too must embrace
A path of courage clothed in heaven’s grace.
Egypt of old in bondage made its name,
And rose in pride through Pharaoh’s ruthless game.
So too did Israel, shaped by prophet’s cries,
Forget the God who lifts the low to rise.
Their kings, like Egypt, mocked the prophet’s plea,
And silenced truth with swords of tyranny.
Yet still the prophets, voiceless, stood and spoke,
With fire that no regime could fully choke.
The Lamb was slain but now ascends the throne,
His blood-stained crown a sign he stands alone.
In Revelation’s scroll, his power shines—
Not through the sword, but through love’s faultless lines.
The martyrs reign who follow where he goes,
And with the Lamb, defy all earthly foes.
They conquer not by death they bring, but bear,
Through patient love, the world’s tormented stare.
So here we find the fourfold path of peace:
Love’s law, the call to Empire's slow release,
The trust that hearts can walk where Jesus led,
And cross-shaped lives that will not strike the dead.
This is the hope—the Gospel's ancient fire:
To live God’s peace, and lift the world up higher.
If pacifism guides our core belief,
Then all convictions echo with its chief.
And if this peace stems from the Christian way,
Then through our faith it finds its rightful stay.
Pacifist truth, in Christ’s pure light confessed,
Becomes theology at its behest.
Through lenses shaped by peace, our eyes discern
How themes of faith to nonviolence turn.
The Triune God—three Persons, yet but One—
Reveals His nature through the Father’s Son.
No will divided in the God we claim,
But one great love, in threefold, blazing flame.
To say that Jesus shares God’s very face,
Means all His traits in God we must embrace.
As Yoder writes, the Incarnate Word came down
To lift our dust and wear our mortal crown.
Not to correct the Son by Father's might,
But through the Son, God’s truth comes into light.
Christ’s nonviolence—steadfast, meek, and kind—
Reveals the heart of God, His truest mind.
If He is Lord, the Second in the Three,
Then peace is God's own will for you and me.
High Christology demands our firm consent:
That Christ’s pure path is God’s true testament.
Though Scripture gives a view both fierce and mild,
We see God best in Jesus, mercy’s child.
The Bible’s voice is complex, vast, and wide,
But Christ’s own life is where God's truths abide.
Old tales of wrath may shake us to the bone,
Yet Christ reveals the God of peace alone.
In Genesis, the world begins in peace,
Not born through war, but made that strife may cease.
No clash of gods, no blood to mold the clay—
Just speech and light to drive the dark away.
The bow once bent in wrath is now at rest,
God's promise sealed: in mercy we are blessed.
The Father, shown in Jesus’ tender grace,
Runs out to meet the prodigal’s disgrace.
This God is “Abba,” gentle, near, and just,
Who showers grace on all who simply trust.
As Christ declares, to love one’s enemy
Is to reflect God's deep divinity.
Paul, once a zealot bathed in holy fire,
Was struck and turned from wrath to pure desire.
He saw in Christ the peace that breaks the sword,
And spent his life to preach the risen Lord.
In Jesus, God’s own nature shines so bright:
A love that conquers hate, not through might.
Though wrath and fire the ancient scrolls portray,
A deeper love runs through the texts they say.
The God who marks the flood with deadly might
Also unstrings His bow and ends the fight.
A rainbow hangs—no longer war’s dark sign,
But grace that bends the wrath into a line.
Throughout the Law and Prophets’ sacred page,
Though judgment speaks, love still breaks through the rage.
God’s faithful heart, though wounded, seeks repair,
And draws the rebel with relentless care.
His covenant, though broken, stands anew—
A peace that waits, though pierced by what we do.
Then came the Christ, the Word made flesh and bone,
Who bore no sword, yet shook the earthly throne.
The Lamb who healed, who wept, who bore the tree,
Revealed God's heart through boundless clemency.
His cross, not sword, became the throne of grace—
His crown was thorns, yet love lit up His face.
He taught us: bless your foes, and not condemn,
For God sends rain and sun to all of them.
To turn the cheek, to walk the second mile,
To free the slave, to cleanse, to reconcile.
In such commands, the Father’s will is known—
A peace not begged but sovereignly shown.
And Paul, who once with zeal shed blood for law,
Was seized by grace, undone by what he saw.
The risen Christ, not cloaked in forceful flame,
But marked by scars, the Lamb who bore our shame.
This Jesus, Lord, unarmed and crucified,
Made known the God whose mercy turns the tide.
No wrathful king, but Abba on the hill—
Who bore the nails and loved His captors still.
So Paul declared, “While we were yet in sin,
God loved us first and drew His people in.”
This gospel, then, is not a cry for might,
But summons all to walk within God’s light.
So if we dare to claim the Christ as Lord,
We yield to peace and lay aside the sword.
For in His life, God’s nature stands revealed—
The wounds He bore, the grace He never sealed.
No wrathful throne, no tyrant’s iron rod,
But Jesus’ way unveils the heart of God.
To see the cross is not to seek revenge,
But love that breaks the chain we yearn to avenge.
If Christ is God, and Christ refused to kill,
Then God, in truth, upholds a higher will.
Not force, but faithful love that bears the weight
Of human sin, and ends the cycle's hate.
The deepest truths the Scriptures seek to teach
Are clearest where Christ's gentle hands can reach.
Through Him, the fog of violence clears away,
And God as Peace comes forth in full display.
From manger low to cross raised high in shame,
The path of peace and love remains the same.
Thus pacifism, far from naïve dream,
Flows from the gospel’s ever-living stream.
It is no fringe, no lesser, weaker creed—
But rooted in God’s very heart and deed.
A faith that claims the crucified as King
Must learn to pray for peace in everything.
So let the church take Christ as center stage,
Not Caesar’s sword nor vengeance cloaked in rage.
Let love disarm what fear would yet defend,
And find in peace the kingdom without end.
For when we walk the way our Savior trod,
We bear the mark of sons and daughters—God.
We find in peace our true and central aim,
To speak creation’s truth and bear its name.
God’s raising Christ from death reveals to all
The pacifistic way that breaks the Fall.
This act affirms the path that Christ had trod,
And shows the gentle heart and will of God.
Through love, He met the powers of the age,
With healing hands and not with wrathful rage.
To outcasts grace, to victims tender balm,
To violent rule, resistance bold and calm.
He formed a fellowship to stand apart,
With peaceful strength and deeply daring heart.
His words exposed the tyranny of kings
Who dressed their rule in falsely generous things.
Yet Christ would meet this harsh and cruel domain
With nonretaliation, love, and pain.
He taught that we must not return the blow,
But act with mercy even to our foe.
Thus pacifism, faithful to his voice,
Does not reflect a weak or passive choice.
But critics fail to see its rooted grace,
Its grounding in the Cross and Christ’s embrace.
Though Kelly brands it “evil,” he presumes
That empire’s cause the scent of good perfumes.
He thinks that war is right if flags are waved,
But fails to see the soul that peace has saved.
Not for its nation’s name, but for its sin,
Do pacifists oppose the war within.
To evil men, we owe resistance still,
But not through means that break the Savior’s will.
The spiral of revenge we seek to end,
By waging love where hatred would extend.
We recognize how deep the wound may lie,
How sin distorts the hand that lifts the sky.
No power, no prince, no general at war,
May claim to act for justice evermore.
The Cross alone reveals what justice means:
Not retribution born of brutal scenes,
But hope that evil, by love’s might undone,
Will see the dawn beneath a gentler sun.
To “overcome with good” was Paul’s great cry;
This, not the sword, brings peace before we die.
Niebuhr may call such hope naïve and vain,
But faith in God’s own love will still remain.
We trust not man, but grace that breaks the stone,
And lifts the sinner where he stands alone.
For God can heal what we would cast away,
And shape new hearts from ash and hardened clay.
Though politics may call the faithful near,
It need not trade its mercy for the spear.
The way of Christ engages worldly strife,
But does so by the laws of kingdom life.
No “balance” built on violence can be just;
In swords and bombs, we place misguided trust.
True politics, with Jesus as its guide,
Seeks mutual good and stands with none in pride.
It values peace, community, and grace,
And fights injustice in a gentler place.
The “rough” justice of man shall pass and fade;
The peace of Christ no empire ever made.
For Scripture stands behind this path of peace,
Its call to love and mercy shall not cease.
The prophets spoke of swords to plowshares turned,
Of justice kindled and of vengeance spurned.
The goal is not to let the wicked thrive,
But turn their hearts, that they may yet revive.
True justice heals both victim and the foe,
Restoring all to life, as rivers flow.
Not punishment, but healing, makes us whole,
And gives to each the freedom of the soul.
This justice walks the path of Christ’s own tread,
Where peace, not wrath, shall raise the living dead.
Though force may clash with peace’s quiet stream,
Coercion still may serve the pacifist dream.
But only when, as Gandhi’s thought makes clear,
It guards the soul and draws the conscience near.
Christ’s righteous wrath the moneychangers met,
And Pharisees with biting words he set.
While Wink shuns “pacifism” in his phrase,
He shares our path, our vision, and our praise.
We, too, believe Christ calls us to engage
With justice work upon the worldly stage.
No passive dream, this call to love and strive—
Our peace is strong, awake, and wide alive.
To build a peace where hate and war have reigned,
More than “nonviolence” must be explained.
“Pacifism” bears a fuller, bolder aim—
To show God’s reign where none shall kill or shame.
Its vision forms the lens through which we see
The world transformed by love’s great mystery.
Blind eyes and idols cloud what truth could show,
But vision shaped by Christ begins to grow.
So we, as pacifists, must seek to find
The roots of how we know in heart and mind.
Though long ignored, this task must now be faced:
What grounds our thought? What truths have we embraced?
All humans see the world through some belief—
A frame of values, joy, or silent grief.
Thus pacifism, central to our view,
Transforms the way we see what’s false or true.
It’s not a fringe, an add-on to the rest,
But core to all we claim to know as best.
The church too long dismissed this weighty theme,
But now we see it shapes our very dream.
The knowledge born of peace is deep and wise—
It draws from God, not power, pride, or lies.
And Yoder’s voice still echoes through the years,
His work a light where doubt and darkness veers.
The Politics of Jesus, wise and bold,
Speaks louder still as generations unfold.
He framed a view where peace would shape the mind,
Where epistemic truth is redefined.
His essays lead us forward on the way
To see, to know, to live what Christ would say.
We end this work with humble thanks and fire,
To push ahead, to learn, to reach up higher.
Though not complete, these pages plant the seed—
To think as though Christ lives in every deed.