Nonviolent Lutheranism Revisited

I just worked through this fabolous book, Engage for my Pace e Bene internship.
In recent news, yes, I got and received the Pace e Bene internship. The projects I am doing with them this semester include transcribing and writing some stories on nonviolence. I will also be reading material as I am interested in the spiritual aspects of nonviolence. When possible I hope to do some kind of nonviolent action and attend events as well. Working at Pace e Bene was probably the major thing that brought me back to Berkeley for the fall. I felt as though there was a lot more on mission, evangelism and emergent ministries at Luther that I do not get at PLTS. That and the friends in my class are off on their internships. God willing I will be on my internship next year. However this puts me at my internship when they return, making this no longer the social circle I have come to appreciate. I am discerning whether or not to continue my full year at PLTS or to put in more time at Luther. It was my passion for nonviolence that has brought me back to Berkeley, if only for one semester.

My intern supervisor told me to feel free to post things on the Pace e Bene blog as well. So I thought I would share with all of you my revisiting of lutheranism and nonviolence. I know this is something I have publically struggled through here so I thought it would be of an interest. Its shorter but the point is just to share some of my thoughts:

Non-Violent Lutheranism:

I just worked through our Engage book as the newer intern here. I am planning on dealing with nonviolence and spirituality a lot this semester. I thought I would share some of my initial thoughts that I have had:

I am Lutheran and I could not help but think of the notions of sin when I think of nonviolence. In my Lutheran tradition we claim that we sin every day and this is part of our humanity. But this does not mean that we should aspire to sin to receive God’s forgiveness either. In fact its best to aspire not to sin when possible. There are frequently cases of deliberating out the greater versus the lesser sin. I think that this is similar to notions of violence as well. We can not escape that we live in a violent culture, however we can try to find ways to live as nonviolently as possible. However we will never live completely nonviolently, yet I think we should aspire to live as nonviolently as possible. In this, following spiritual practices in some kind of way helps us with this nonviolent life.

On Pace e Bene blog:
www.paceebene.org/blog/betsy-dreier/nonviolent-lutheranism