July 4 has always been a bit strange for me. I don’t love cookouts or fireworks, and I’m not one for patriotism. I’m finding that as this year’s holiday approaches, the strangeness has taken on new layers. To reflect on the USA is to reflect on its role in the world. Its action or inaction, its words or silence, in Gaza and Ukraine (and Sudan and Myanmar and many more). Its bombs in Iran.
I am grateful for a brand new piece from Stanley Haurwas and Andy Doyle. They reflect on the church’s identity and responsibilities in a time of war. Their essay is largely a response to the conflict with Iran, while Mordechai Beck offers a reflection on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Ahab-and-Jezebel scheme to conquer his enemies. These two pieces feel like they are just in time this week to help me process my nation’s relationship to peace and justice abroad.
Jon Mathieu Email me: Do you consider yourself patriotic? Why or why not? Click to schedule a Friday lunch chat with Jon Click to find Jon on (X/Twitter alternative) Bluesky
“Christianity demands more than private values or partisan identity. It requires a public witness. And in a time of war, that witness includes a refusal to allow the state to define righteousness on its terms.”
“In Netanyahu’s rhetoric, Bibi is the savior, the one who fulfills the messianic strain of complete victory over the dark forces of evil. In this view, the enemy is not Hamas but rather the Palestinians themselves, from whose guts Hamas is spawned.”
“He said that he’d been dead, that wherever he’d gone to wasn’t a reconstruction of unresolved memories and unfulfilled desires. It was whatever lies beyond us, or at least beyond him. … But what was I doing there?”
“Thomas Long has written a voluminous, sweeping, occasionally even thrilling book that will empower preachers to preach on and with the parables of Jesus.”
