Peace and Conflict

Lesson One: War and Peace

What does the peice by Pastor Niemoller mean?

Timeline Of 20th And 21st Century Wars

Military conflict took place during every year of the 20th Century. There were only short periods of time that the world was free of war. The total number of deaths caused by war during the 20th Century has been estimated at 187 million and is probably higher.

What does this map show?

Wars in the World

(30 Countries and 265 between militias-guerrillas, terrorist-separatist-anarchic groups involved) Hot Spots: Burkina Faso (etnic clashes), Central African Republic (often there are armed clashes between muslims and christians), Democrati Republic of Congo (war against rebel groups), Egypt (war against islamic militants of Islamic State branch), Libya (civil war), Mali (clashes between

Lesson Two: Just War

Just War - introduction

The Just War theory specifies conditions for judging if it is just to go to war, and conditions for how the war should be fought. Although it was extensively developed by Christian theologians, it can be used by people of every faith and none.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of a just war. There were theories about a justified or noble war before the birth of Christ, but it was his reported teachings and a powerful influence, particularly on the Emperor Constantine, which set the standard which had to be kept or bluntly modified. “I say unto you, love your own image,” Matthew writes, “bless them that curse you, be good to them that hate you and persecute you”. In the fifth century, the mighty St Augustus prised the Christian church away from Christ’s reported teachings and the idea of a Just War took root to be formalised and given power by St Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, and by other Christian commentators even up to this day. But after a century, our century, of almost unimaginably violent conflict, does the term a Just War have any meaning at all? The historian AJP Taylor wrote that "the medieval pursuit of the just war is a pursuit as elusive as the Holy Grail. For it is almost universally true that in war each side thinks itself in the right, and there is no arbiter except victory to decide between them". So is the Christian idea of the Just War simply a way of justifying aggression or is it a moral position to take?With Professor John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of Westminster and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy; Dr Niall Ferguson, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Jesus College, Oxford and author of The Pity of War.

Lesson Three: Holy War

Holy wars

Modern people often regard the idea of a holy war as a contradiction. Killing thousands of people and causing wholesale destruction seems to be as far from holiness as one can get. But religion and war have gone hand in hand for a long time.

Lesson Four: Pacifism

Mahatma Gandhi | Biography, Accomplishments, & Facts

Mahatma Gandhi, byname of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, (born October 2, 1869, Porbandar, India-died January 30, 1948, Delhi), Indian lawyer, politician, social activist, and writer who became the leader of the nationalist movement against the British rule of India. As such, he came to be considered the father of his country.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

German theologian and resister

Quakers

Quakers are members of a group with Christian roots that began in England in the 1650s. The formal title of the movement is the Society of Friends or the Religious Society of Friends. There are about 210,000 Quakers across the world. In Britain there are 17,000 Quakers, and 400 Quaker meetings for worship each week.

Quakers and World War I

Since declaring its commitment to peace in 1660, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) has opposed all wars. World War I was no different and many Quakers resisted the call to arms. Some volunteered for the Friends Ambulance Unit or the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, providing relief from suffering at the front.