Item 1695 - The holy obligation of peacemaking

2 p. of textual records

This item is a 2 page article by Henri Nouwen entitled ‘The Holy Obligation of Peacemaking’ published in The Lutheran, Vol. 24, No. 4, February 1986, pp. 14 – 15. This item is identified as Part II of a three part series previously published in the New Oxford Review. Nouwen begins by describing his childhood experience in Holland of the holocaust and the questions he had about why people didn’t act. He then writes of his own struggle now with the growth of the nuclear position of the United States. Nouwen reminds himself that now, as an educated, mature adult he can never say ‘I didn’t know what was going on’. Nouwen then writes of his awareness that the nation he now lives in, the United States, is now a nuclear nation that threatens other nations. ‘It is obvious that all who believe that God is a God of life, especially we who proclaim that Jesus Christ came to live among us to overcome the powers of death, must say a clear and unambiguous ‘no’. Nouwen concludes by stating that ‘resistance is no longer an option…non resistance makes us accomplices to a nuclear holocaust…’

Item is 2 of a series of 3 articles. See also Published works series, items 1694 and 1696.
Item is reprinted from the Oxford Review c. 1985.

Published in The Lutheran 24, no. 4 (February 19, 1986): 14-15.
A revised and longer version of this material is to be found in: Nouwen, Henri, The Road to Peace, ed. John Dear, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y., 1998 and Nouwen, Henri, Peacework, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y., 2005.

Added by L Joson, 13 November 2017
Revised by L Joson, 22 June 2018