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By Ray McAllister, PhD – Your church group has been asked to have a special prayer for a member who will be going away to serve in the military overseas. How should your church respond to this request?
Gibson's portrayal of Doss calls this generation of Seventh-day Adventists to rediscover and embrace the church's heritage of non-violence.
During my junior and senior years in college, I worked the night shift at a large Massachusetts state mental institution to pay my college expenses. I was officially in charge of the violent ward from 11 pm to 7 am and the only one on duty. It was a very choice job because it permitted me to study all night while being able to get adequate sleep following my daytime classes.
By William Cork – Thirty years ago next month I raised my hand, took the oath of office, and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant, Chaplain Candidate, in the US Army Reserve. That summer, as a student in the Chaplain Officer Basic Course at Fort Monmouth, NJ, I first heard the story of the four chaplains: George Fox, Alexander Goode, Clark Poling, and John Washington. Four men of different faiths, bound by love–love for God, love for their country, love for each other, and love for their soldiers.
Hacksaw Ridge, the $55 million Mel Gibson-directed World War II film that tells the story of Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Desmond Doss completed filming in December 2015 and is now in post-production with a targeted release date of early November 2016 in time for Oscar consideration.
Mel Gibson's $55,000,000 film will have Adventists re-exploring this part of their history and considering the future of conscientious objection.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa, and director and actor Mel Gibson is working on making a film based on the life of one of the soldiers, Seventh-day Adventist conscientious objector, Desmond T. Doss, who won a Congressional Medal of Honor for saving dozens of lives while refusing to carry a weapon.
By Kevin Straub – Christianity, if it looks to Christ as its norm, will have nothing to do with the affairs of national/international politics and the wielding of the sword. It will not be involved in any of the processes involved in the adjustments of the balances of earthly powers. This is not our work. However, it has come to be standard thinking in Christianity that it is a part of our work. The discussions of whether to enter into a war or to stay out of that war is not merely academic in today's Christianity; it is deemed the Christian's duty to engage in a politicized Christianity. Today's Christianity, since the time of Constantine, is not concerned solely with the gospel work, remaining an outside observer of the machinations of worldly powers, but as subscribers to the notion of "the just war," is necessarily fundamentally involved in the geopolitical movements and the questions of taking nation(s) into war or not.
By Michael Peabody – Despite serious public opposition to involvement in another quagmire in the Middle East, chances are the United States will soon be involved in the two-year-old civil war in Syria. While there are many questions regarding how this will help or hinder national foreign policy aims, few have considered how a shift in power could affect the religious freedom of the people of Syria.
As the constant state of conflict in the Middle East demonstrates, violence begets violence. In order to tackle our culture's problems with violence we need a generational shifting of ideas.