Bethany now has its own You Tube channel. Click on the link: BethanyCenterforNonviolence

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You will find videos of bible studies including the current Seven Stories class which gives a basic grounding in understanding and interpreting the Bible nonviolently. Other videos include Jesus Yoga with more on the way.

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Our Bethany Center website is dedicated to sharing Jesus’ gospel of nonviolence.

We believe that this is a revelation of God in the world. God is nonviolent, always has been, and always will be.

You will find here an account of our activities as a community. Plus some response, as best as we are able, to the actual wars and violence in the world.

THE MEANING OF GAZA

The people of Gaza are the scapegoats of the scapegoats. This is perhaps the only way to say things that gets close to the deadly twisted dynamics of what is going on in Palestine, and to point the way conceivably to a human solution.

The Nazi Holocaust of the Jews in Europe represented the end term of at least a millennium of persecution of the Jewish people by Europe’s Christian populations. This in turn belongs to an understanding of the death of Jesus of Nazareth as atonement for sin demanded by a transcendent force identified as God’s justice. Christian populations displaced the terror of divine violence in this account onto the Jews blamed as scapegoats for this death. By the twentieth century the status of Jews as the culprits for any and every human wrong was confirmed in the minds of many Europeans, especially the Nazis, and thus a horrendous program of violence and extermination was directed against them. As the Second World War drew to a close the only possible resolution for many activist Jews was the establishment of a homeland, and at whatever cost, including the dispossession and destruction of the Palestinians. This is the character of Zionism, amounting itself to a displacement of a millennium of violence onto the Arab population of the land of Israel.

The situation in Gaza today represents the playing out of this truly horrific historical logic. The government of the U.S. is complicit in this displacement as a convenient means of controlling the Middle East and its huge wealth in oil, plus appropriating a phony political and military righteousness taking the side of the victims of the Holocaust, while creating a whole new race of historical victims. But at the same time as all this is happening Christian thought has changed. Jesus’ death is nothing to do with a supposed act of God’s punitive justice, but is itself a revelation of human scapegoating, together with a corresponding redemptive revelation of divine nonviolence.

In this complex of circumstances, as Christians we call for an immediate cease fire in Gaza, the end of violent Zionism, and the establishment of a new territory of Israel, consisting of Jews, Muslims and Christians, with a constitution of nonviolence, and reparations and neutral status guaranteed by the entire international community.

The Bethany community has been reflecting on the Christian response to War. The USA is currently supporting and promoting the wars taking place in Gaza (and other areas of the Middle East) and also in Ukraine and Russia. Both Republican and Democrat  parties are heavily invested in the war economy and have failed to offer any path forward to respond to the crisis in a meaningful way. People around the world feel hopeless and helpless. How do we as Christians respond? As a community we make a commitment to continue to create a safe space where we can speak openly and honestly about following the way of the Lamb in a world of Violence. 

REASONS FOR WAR’S UNJUSTIFIABILITY 

1. Its immense destructiveness, inevitably destroying civilians. In the past, although civilians were always vulnerable, armies fought each other in direct confrontation. Bombing and asymmetrical warfare directly in civilian areas was unknown. Sieges could have the same effect but this was comparatively rare. Now it is inevitable
2. Its expense.
3. Its profits for some.
4. The consequent manipulation of public opinion. War is always based on a lie: the absolute evil of the aggressor. Now, because so much is at stake, this lying is an industry.
5. War therefore corrupts humanity. Jesus taught us to love our enemies precisely to overcome this corruption.
6. We are at point of maximum convergence of these factors: destructiveness, involving whole populations and the earth itself, and the consequent permanent living of a lie.
7. The solution is not a moral or political stance, but a spiritual one, to be follower of the Lamb. Only this will give the strength to stand against the lie.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

-- Herman Goering

Pictures here of our youth who gathered at Bethany, Aug 27-28, to explore and understand the meaning of violence and the gospel of divine nonviolence. The world will belong to our kids in the not-too-distant future. It is part of our mission to help prepare them as best we can, with the best gifts we can give. If each of these young people will become an angel of peace in the special way appropriate to each then Bethany will have brought a little bit of heaven to earth!