The regenerated do not go to war, nor engage in strife. They are children of peace who have beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning forks, and know no war. Menno Simons

Christian nationalism is impoverished as it seeks a kingdom without a cross. It pursues a victory without mercy. It acclaims God's love of power rather than the power of God's love. N. T. Wright

The Christian, like God, must love all men, not only the friends but also the enemies, not only the faithful but also the unbelieving. For all are God's creation, and to despise any is to despise the creator. St. Clement of Alexandria

Inner silence, calming the agitations of our hearts and minds...is essentially an expression of the love of truth. To be dispassionate, not to let one's own needs or prejudices or emotions color one's actions, is essentially to put truth before everything else. Dan Seeger

"The might will be cast from their thrones, and the lowly will be lifted up. The hungry will be filled with good things, and the rich will be sent away empty." That's not Karl Marx. That's the Gospel of Luke. Shane Claiborne

Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains and proceedings, contrary to universal righteousness, are supported; and hence oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soul. John Woolman (1720-1772)

The Narrow Way is the wide embrace. What makes it narrow is that few choose it because it is so wide. We prefer the broad way of exclusivism. Andrew Klager

Some folks want a Christianity that saves their souls but leaves their power untouched. But Jesus didn't die to protect your social advantages, he came to deliver us from all powers and usher in a new age. Drew G. I. Hart

A prayer from the Diocese of Birmingham.

Are you alert to practices here and throughout the world which discriminate against people on the basis of who or what they are or because of their beliefs? Bear witness to the humanity of all people... Advices and Queries 33 – Britain Yearly Meeting

“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war.” Haile Selassie

As the sea gull lays in the wind current, so I lay myself into the spirit of God. Howard Thurman

"Raising the flags" in 1930s Berlin. A warning.

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. Hannah Arendt

...my deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch. Henri Nouwen - Beyond the Mirror

Happy Birthday Bill Fay (1943-2025). "Christ or Hitler? Christ or Vorster, Christ or all the Caesars to come? Sooner or later, that's the choice you're gonna have to make." Bill Fay - Pictures of Adolf Again

The narrow way is the wide embrace. The grace we purport to preach is only as deep as our welcome of the most vulnerable and marginalized to belong and be loved. Bradley Jersak

God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything. Bede Griffiths

All of us need to find a way into silence which allows us to deepen our awareness of the divine and to find the inward source of our strength. (From) Advices & Queries 3 - Britain Yearly Meeting

Silence is an opportunity for seeking communion with the sacred. Quakers do not worship the silence, but that to which the silence leads... Here Quakers have found communion deep and strong as any bread and wine. Tom Rothschild - 2007

Do you welcome the diversity of culture, language and expressions of faith in our yearly meeting and in the world community of Friends? Seek to increase your understanding and to gain from this rich heritage and wide range of spiritual insights.

Falsehood and affliction are so closely linked that Christ conquered the world simply because he, being the Truth, continued to be the Truth in the very depth of extreme affliction. Simone Weil

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience. Thomas Merton

Liturgies of empire are meant to distract us from paying attention to the suffering of our neighbor and to create scapegoats. Wess Daniels

The real gospel proclaims to people everywhere and at all times that Jesus Christ, as the Father's Son and the anointed One, has made his way into their sin and shame and broken inner worlds with divine forgiveness and love. The real gospel directs everyone to discover that most astonishing reality

Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks Compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. St. Teresa of Avila

Christ will come at the end of the times in order to annul everything evil, and to reconcile again all beings, that there may be an end of all impurities. St. Irenaeus of Lyons

The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring... Parker J. Palmer

The gospel of Jesus is... a story of God's presence in Jesus' solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair. James H. Cone

This looks like a really great course if you are interested in peace church perspectives on the Bible.

In being the image of God, we owe no allegiance to anything but the infinite Love in whose image we are made.

100% of immigrants were created in the image of God.

If you are trying to build an empire, the Sermon on the Mount makes for poor policy. So if you want to exploit Christianity for imperial myths, you have to marginalize Jesus.

God is at home; it is we who have gone for a walk. Meister Eckhart

The Beatitudes - Mathew 5:3-10.

We are camping near Tywyn in Wales for a week.

The prophet is not an outsider throwing rocks, nor an insider who defends the status quo; but one who lives precariously with two perspectives held tightly together in a loving and creative tension: the faithful insider and the critical outsider. Richard Rohr.

The love of our neighbour is the only door out of the dungeon of self. George MacDonald.

Jesus wasn't crucified for his moderation, civility, or respectability.

Jesus deliberately used a Samaritan, someone from a despised ethnic group, to challenge racial and cultural biases. Loving our neighbor means breaking down barriers.

The Light pierces with total honesty into our behaviours, words and attitudes. Margery Post Abbott

In a true community we will not choose our companions... Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives! Parker J Palmer, 1977

To put one's hope in Jesus, then, is to believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Jesus' way of peace, justice, mercy and compassion will ultimately prevail over the empire's ways of violence, exploitation, oppression and fear. Rachel Held Evans

The cross is the eternal reminder that evil always goes too far, and because it goes too far it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Raphael Warnock

The gospel of a God found in broken flesh, humility, and measureless charity has...instilled in us a longing for transcendent love so deep that-if once yielded to-it will never grant us rest anywhere but in Christ. David Bentley Hart

Whoever has received God’s new covenant, that is, whoever has had the law written into his heart by the Holy Spirit is truly righteous. Whoever thinks that he can observe the law by means of the Book ascribes to the dead letter what belongs to the living Spirit. Hans Denck

Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and bearing one with another, and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another; but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand. Isaac Penington, 1667

Everyday prophets are already part of our communities. We all might be such people. Everyday prophets are at once ordinary and radical, both humble and bold. They act out of a weave of mercy and justice, valuing each being on this earth. Might we cherish those among us who are so faithful.

As truly as God is our Father, so truly God is our Mother. Julian of Norwich

Christ was so one with us that when he died, we died, for he did not die for himself but for us, and he did not die alone, but we died in him as those whom he had bound to himself inseparably by his incarnation. Thomas F. Torrance