Latter Day Satyagraha

Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.

Giving Thanks for a Committed Life, A prayer by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Help us never to let anyone or any condition pull us so low as to cause us to hate. Give us the strength to love our enemies and do good to those who despitefully use us and persecute us. We thank thee for thy Church, founded upon the Word, that challenges us to do more than sing and pray, but go out and work as though the very answer to our prayers depended on us and not upon thee. Then, finally, help us to realize that man was created to shine like the stars and live on through all eternity. Keep us, we pray, in perfect peace, help us to walk together, pray together, sing together, and live together until that day when all of God’s children will rejoice in one common band of humanity in the kingdom of our Lord and of our God, we pray. Amen.

.

Martin Luther King’s Nonviolence Step 4: Peacefully Negotiate

Talk with both sides. Go to the people in your community who are in trouble and who are deeply hurt by society’s ills. Also go to those people who are contributing to the breakdown of a peaceful society. Use humor, intelligence and grace to lead to solutions that benefit the greater good.

.

Where can I turn for peace?

I was ready to give up. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory: I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.” - Martin Luther King, Jr. in “Stride Towards Freedom”

1. Enos’ Prayer for his Enemies
2. A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief
3. The Prayer, as performed by Mormon Tabernacle Choir
4. The Lord’s Prayer
5. Hate: the Real Fall of Man
6. A Prayer of Forgiveness

.

What shall we do? – Mormon Change Theories

After having felt the influence of the Holy Ghost in Acts 2:37, the people surrounding the early apostles asked of them: ‘Men and Brethren, what shall we do?’ The response to that question depends very much on who at a certain given point in time is in authority to answer that very question. In different situations, there are different interpretations of the divine will and therefore depending on the interpretation the chosen course of action will vary. Appleby in The Ambivalence of the Sacred believes that theologies of redemption can have very dramatic social consequences.He perceives mainly three basic different models of Christian conflict transformation, all bespeaking of different interpretations of the divine will and different orientations to the world.

1. Glenn Beck is Calling for Nonviolence: Signed the Pledge Yet?
2. Book of Mormon Heroes
3. The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict
4. Jesus Wars – Then and Now (Meridian Magazine)
5. The 7 Habits of Highly Devilish People

..

The Keeper at the Gate – Mormon Peacebuilding

Patrick Mason believes that the primary case against a ‘general argument – that LDS can develop and promote a distinctive brand of Mormon peacebuilding that features a structural and cultural approach – is that from a faithful Mormon perspective, nothing remotely compares to the critical necessity of preaching the Gospel and bringing souls to Christ, before and above any other consideration’. I think that Mason is considerably downplaying the structural and cultural approaches already existing in LDS theology… read more

1. Sisters in Zion – Unite for Peace
2. Joseph Smith and Gandhi on Change
3. Our Primary Colors are One, Two, Three…
4. What Gandhi and King Benjamin had in Common

.

Join None of Them, for They are All Wrong – Mormon Ecumenism

From an LDS point of view, I think that our lack of engagement in the ecumenical movement is primarily doctrinal: being a Restoration Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes it is actually and exclusively representing the Kingdom of God on Earth. Everyone know the words of the two personages of the divinity speaking to Joseph Smith telling him to “join none of them”.

1. The Community of Christ – A Peace Church Alternative
2. A Comparison of LDS and Community of Christ Responses to 9/11 and… (Project Mayhem)
3. Come, Come, Ye Saints – Sacred Emigration
4. The Community of Christ is Not a Peace Church (SaintsHerald)