Violence to Peace, and personal introspection

I heard Andy Alexis Baker speak in my Environmental Ethics and Theologies class this spring. He opened my eyes to a different way of seeing God’s plan for the planet and everyone in it. That death itself is straying from the Kingdom of God, which provides an interesting reason for taking on vegetarian and/or vegan practices. That even death in nature between predator and pray was not in God’s original plan. I take it with a grain of salt when I consider the way the natural world works, but it was an interesting perspective to add to my arsenal.

In this piece, Andy extrapolates on his experience in prison and transforming into a Christian, Pacifist and eventual scholar who edited John Howard Yoder’s work. But more poignantly, he delves into his own pain with sexual assault and how the pain of sexual victimization has shaped his understanding of what JHY’s actions meant to the women and community he was such a powerful voice and leader for.