Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire (1996), p. 217
Context: According to a University of South Carolina study, violence in America rose 42 percent during the Vietnam War. This is hardly surprising. Our leaders are lawless, so why not we? If the government threatens other countries with the bomb, why not threaten one another with handguns? If our leaders are raping the planet, why not our neighbors? Our leaders create a climate of fear and violence. Why do they appear shocked when Americans kill, rob, and maim one another?
Philip Berrigan:
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Famous Philip Berrigan Quotes
“The state, conceived in violence, and backed by violence, will never achieve true peace.”
Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire (1996), p. 202
Context: The Biblical view of the law, the courts, and the state is profoundly radical. The Bible looks upon the state as a kind of rebellious artifice; it is spurious, a human creation in rebellion against God.
In the Old Testament, when the first state is proposed in the person of Saul, the first King of Israel, God tells the prophet Samuel that this project spells rejection of God. The state and its legislature are in rebellion against, or rejection of, God. Its courts are a human fabrication, cannot promote justice and peace; they are founded in violence, and legalize violence.
The state holds together through police power, against the citizenry.
The state, conceived in violence, and backed by violence, will never achieve true peace.
Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire (1996), p. 202
Context: The Biblical view of the law, the courts, and the state is profoundly radical. The Bible looks upon the state as a kind of rebellious artifice; it is spurious, a human creation in rebellion against God.
In the Old Testament, when the first state is proposed in the person of Saul, the first King of Israel, God tells the prophet Samuel that this project spells rejection of God. The state and its legislature are in rebellion against, or rejection of, God. Its courts are a human fabrication, cannot promote justice and peace; they are founded in violence, and legalize violence.
The state holds together through police power, against the citizenry.
The state, conceived in violence, and backed by violence, will never achieve true peace.
“The church is a major bureaucracy, and major bureaucracies are disobedient to the gospel.”
Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire (1996), p. 38
Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire (1996), p. 204
