In that sense, you are correct, each church speaks for itself. But, they do hold a common heritage. And what I am trying to show is that just as the acceptance of violence for any reason is a diversion from what the early church immediately following Jesus practiced and what Jesus himself taught, it is also a diversion from what the much more unified early churches and leaders in our particular movement modeled and taught.

I do not in any way intend to say that it represents the views of my current church. In fact, I assume the opposite.

But, it is worth noting that in both the church universal and the restoration churches views such as pacifism are not “crazy, out there, wild ideas,” but actually are more consistent with the origins of both.

Also, I disagree that Campbell and others would be troubled by speaking into the life of church today. I think you may misunderstand the basis of unity that these leaders encouraged.

The Restoration church plea is to constantly be evaluating what we believe and teach with what Jesus and the early church in the NT believed and taught. For nearly all of the pioneers of this movement, this common place of authority (the NT) taught a vision of pacifism.

But, for illustration sake, let’s take another example: BAPTISM. There was significant division over the proper methods and proper candidates for baptism in their time (just as there is today). In seeking to find unity, the early leaders did not ask people to simply put up with each others divergent views and learn to get along. Instead they believed we needed a common ground or default reference point. They believed we should give up our many traditions and reach back to the NT and practice what the early church did.

So, they re-examined infant baptism and the method of sprinkling (as opposed to immersion) and restored the original NT practice of a sentient and accountable believer being immersed. The idea was not to have unity among many churches and people believing many different things about baptism, but to create unity in finding common belief in the original form. It didn’t mean believe whatever you want, so much as let’s agree to believe this since it is what the people closest to Jesus believed.

In this way, the vast majority of early leaders also sought to “restore” a position of non-violence in regards to their culture surrounded by war (Mexican-American War, Civil War, etc.).

How interesting that our churches today have clung to the “restoration” of baptism (in regards to methods and proper candidates), but not the “restoration” of a pacifist vision of the kingdom of God. These early fathers may not have wished to speak for every church on every issue, but they did wish to establish common reference points (the NT practice) for us to have unity around. Certainly the quotes in this post represent their desire of a spirit of non-violence as one of them.

Any understanding of the Restoration movement as a group that encouraged each church to simply believe whatever it wished is a faulty understanding. This movement is not so much about total personal and ecclesiastical autonomy, but an agreement to “return” or “restore” an original practice that becomes the basis of unity apart from other human constructs. Their thought was that with no common ground, true unity cannot be established, at least practically speaking. Unity is formed around a commonly accepted basis for truth-namely, the New Testament church.

And hardly anything is easier to defend in the NT and the early church than non-violence. I would submit that we have a much, much more comprehensive teachings and patterns of non-violence in the NT than we do even of method and candidate requirements for baptism. Certainly these early leaders considered it important. Yet, today the former is considered aberrant and the latter is commonly embraced… strange…

Now, I am sure that most people do not understand these roots or principles that are a part of this movement today; even those in my own body. And that is, in my opinion, a great shame. We have lost our distinctiveness as a movement and diluted ourselves into a general community or independent church with no roots whatsoever. We have only ourselves to blame for not continuing to teach these principles that were obviously so important to the early leaders.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that my particular church MUST believe these things about non-violence, but I think the history of this movement should be taken into consideration.

When you say “my church”, it makes it feel like you are referencing the church in which you currently attend and serve. I understand that you mean “Movement”, but the word church fuzzes up the thought for some.

Thanks for your kind attitude in all of this.

Thanks for taking time to read a bit and leave a comment with your thoughts. I think it is really great to have this conversation.

In response to your comment, I think I totally understand your feelings on this issue becoming more real now that you have a small son. My own daughter isn’t very old, and I feel the same protective nature about her that I assume you do with your son. It does seem to make this topic more personal.

I met a guy who is living full-time in Nicaragua the other day. He committed to a lifestyle of total non-violence before he moved down there. And he told me last week that it was very easy to talk about this topic theoretically while living here, but since living in Nicaragua he has been robbed at gun point and had his house broken into and his wife beaten to the face. He said he never realized how difficult this lifestyle could be, until he moved there and experienced true danger.

However, he is still committed to total non-violence. It isn’t easy, but he is choosing to trust God.

You are not the first person (by far) to bring up the worst case-scenario of non-violence with the idea of your house being broken into and your family threatened. And I’m going to do a post in a few weeks addressing that very thing. But, I will at least respond now with my hope that I would not seek to kill the intruder were he/she to break into my home and threaten my family. I can imagine that it would be probably more stress than I have ever been under, and so I cannot say for sure what I would do. But, I am convinced that God’s ideal for me would not be to kill the other person.

However, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do anything… I think the life of non-violence that Jesus taught and modeled, requires a bit more creativity (as Jesus showed great creativity in dealing with conflict), but does not mean that we passively allow things to happen to us. I would DO SOMETHING. But, I hope that I would not rely on violence.

Anyway, we are jumping the gun (get it? hahahaha…) a bit here. I’ll save some for a future post. If you haven’t read the whole series, start at the beginning. We are building on a concepts post by post.

Nice to hear from you. Hope the wife and kid are doing great and that you all are getting to sleep now and then. =)

I don’t discount ANYTHING Jesus had done in His life here. . .(including tossing the people selling sacrifices in the church. . .out of love.) I believe that His desire is to save everyone–not just Jews and “good” Gentiles, hence His constant instructions of love. The only way to change a society is by changing their hearts. . .and I agree that the most powerful means to that change is through love as empowered by the HS, whether it be TOUGH love by standing up for the truth and righteousness, or gentle love.

Anyway. . .just my thoughts.