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Life and Death

  • 2 May 2011
    A death blow or shot in the arm for al-Qaida?

    US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's call on the Taliban and al-Qaida to renounce violence in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden is a statement from the heart of a world power which feels a renewed sense of vigour in the light of what is being called a "policy success". But it does not strike one as arising from a very thoughtful, perceptive or accurate view of the world.

  • 2 May 2011
    Rejoice? Bin Laden and the cycle of violence

    This morning I woke to an orgy of media-fed delight about a violent death. According to Irenaeus, the second century Bishop of Lugdunum, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.” According to at least one politician I listened to on the radio, what pleases God most is an enemy brutally murdered.

  • 2 May 2011
    The murder of Osama bin Laden: The end of the beginning of the 'clash of civilisations'?

    Osama Bin Laden may be dead, but if Americans and Europeans now think that they can begin to relax over the prospect of ‘international terror’, they are very mistaken, says Michael Marten. US policy in particular is catastrophically misaligned in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia. The 'clash of civilisations' thesis is also gravely misleading, and religion (not least Islam) is not implicated in all this in the way simplistic analyses presume.

  • 2 May 2011
    Protecting civilians is too important to be left to the military

    Civilian protection requires simple, straightforward dialogue and negotiation with the people who can control whether other people are safe or not. It also works, say Tim Wallis of Nonviolent Peaceforce. As soon as we bring guns, tanks and air support into the picture, we are talking about something which more often than not does not work, and often makes things worse.

  • 2 May 2011
    Christians do not rejoice in any death, says Vatican over bin Laden

    The Vatican has said that a Christian “never rejoices” in the face of someone’s death, even if that person has committed heinous crimes.

  • 27 Apr 2011
    European drugs to be used in two US executions

    Drugs supplied by European pharmaceutical companies are to be used to execute two US prisoners on the 3rd and 6th of May.

  • 23 Apr 2011
    Christians and Muslims respond to outbreaks of violence in Nigeria

    At least ten churches have been burned in Nigeria, where violence has broken out following the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan.

  • 23 Apr 2011
    Good Friday: The execution of God

    Next to efforts to explain Christian trinitarian language for God, it is sermonising on the message of the cross and the meaning of the resurrection that I often find most painful at this time of year.

  • 23 Apr 2011
    What sense does it make to say 'Christ died for us'?

    How, we may ask on Good Friday, can wholeness, deliverance and healing possibly flow from a state execution resulting in the unjust violent death of a good person - one in whom his friends and followers felt they had met divine love at its most tangible and engaging? Simon Barrow explores the troubling mystery at the core of Christian belief, and looks at ways theology can address it intellectually, humanly and practically.

  • 19 Apr 2011
    World church bodies remember Armenian Genocide this Easter

    For the first time since 1915, April 24 falls on Easter Sunday in the Armenian church calendar - also Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.