October 11

Today marks the “birthday”—though he might prefer the term “continuation day”— of Thích Nhất Hạnh, in 1926. He was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, author, and founder of Plum Village. He was a close friend of Thomas Merton and he popularized meditation and Buddhist philosophy for Westerners. 

I do not consider him a saint I would follow, because I think his justification for the war in which he died uses some weaselly logic. But it seems important to note that today marks the death in battle, in 1531, of Huldrych Zwingli, a key theologian in the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland. He promoted his theology through public debate and expository preaching, and charted a path that diverged both from Catholicism and Lutheranism. 

Today is also the Feast Day of Phillip the Evangelist, a deacon of the early church in Jerusalem, who, among other deeds, baptized the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40.  

Reflection: 

I want to share, not for inspiration but for example, the words of Zwingli in promoting armed conflict between Catholics and Protestants: 

This is the kind of self-interested logic that Christians use when they promote violence: “We are not safe.” The advocates of violence always imagine themselves as under threat or as the victims, the David vs. the Goliath, and they imagine their victory will prove God’s hand is with them. European religious violence perpetuated a cultural trauma that we are still dealing with today both socially and theologically.

Right-wing Christians in America continue to believe, wrongly, that they are persecuted, and that they are justified in using violence to reassert their supremacy. But I want to emphasize that this, too, is a result of generational trauma and bad theology—and we already know how to fix it.

In sharp contrast to Zwingli, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: 

and

Prayer: Source of Life, give us the grace to understand that most human evil comes from a place of suffering. Help us to choose the path of nonviolence when others around us are clamoring for violence. Amen.