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The Nightmare of God: The Book of Revelation
Written during the 1970s and early 1980s at the height of Daniel Berrigan's work to stop the Vietnam war and nuclear weapons, The Nightmare of God offers a stunning commentary on the book of Revelation as a textbook of nonviolent resistance to empire. It begins in jail, where Berrigan sits after a 1976 protest at the Pentagon. As he takes us through the book of Revelation, Berrigan suggests that apocalyptic language and imagery are used to name Death (and its empires and wars) as anti-Christ, and challenges us to do the same today, to name every empire and war as anti-Christ, anti-humanity, anti-creation. Written with poetic insight and prophetic passion, Berrigan urges us to resist the culture of war as the early Christian heroes and martyrs did, so that we can end the suffering, heal humanity and join our place to worship the God of peace. Tom Lewis-Borbely's photo etchings complement the literary images. Daniel Berrigan describes Tom's art as healing "the ancient killing split between ethics and imagination."
- GenresTheology
130 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
About the author
Daniel Berrigan
159 books54 followersDaniel Joseph Berrigan (May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016) was an American Jesuit priest, college professor, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
June 30, 2024
Daniel Berrigan, dead now some eight years. When I was in High School there was a report on late night news that the local Veterans of Foreign Wars was distressed that Dan's play The Catonsville Nine could be found in a local Boston High School Library. They wanted it removed.
Censorship in the seventies. It was like catnip for a cat. I ran down to my local library - having some overdue fines which had not been paid I spent the next two days reading Dan's play. My eyes were opened and I never turned back. Here the Christian Faith, and scriptures were presented in stark relief. Dan and others had broken into a Draft Office in Maryland during the Viet Nam war and had burned the draft files of young men who were to be called up to war. Dan and his people were literally saving lives, and as a Catholic Priest they were doing it in the name of Jesus Christ.
This was part of my call to ministry. An event in which no adult had sat down with me and lead me through some spiritual exercise. If anything - the adults were definitely not involved. One might take the gospel of Jesus Christ seriously, one might read the New Testament as if it had an authority that went beyond the corruption of this world.
In The Nightmare of God: The Book of Revelation Dan does it again. He reads this book and its author imprisoned on the Island of Patmos as a fellow traveler. Allowing the book to read us and our times. There is a biblical integrity here not to be found in the likes of Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth or Jenkin's and LaHaye's Left Behind Series. These people have gone over to the beast. They did such a good job describing the beast that they can't see the beast even when he shows up as their candidate.
I need to review this again, because of how important Dan's earlier work was in my own call.
Years later I would attend a Spring retreat at Kirkridge where Dan was the annual retreat leader. That year he worked his blessing on the last week in Jesus' life as told in the Gospel of Mark. This would later lead to a spiritual action on Good Friday where a community did the stations of the cross all the way down 42nd Street in New York - each station prophetically connecting our collective sin with a site in the city. Jesus is stripped of his clothes outside of a porn theater. Pontius Pilate publishes the edict that Jesus will be crucified outside of a local yellow journalistic newspaper. A final station was added to the traditional stations - The Riverside Research Institute where Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was being worked on, and where the Manhattan Project had been born.
Censorship in the seventies. It was like catnip for a cat. I ran down to my local library - having some overdue fines which had not been paid I spent the next two days reading Dan's play. My eyes were opened and I never turned back. Here the Christian Faith, and scriptures were presented in stark relief. Dan and others had broken into a Draft Office in Maryland during the Viet Nam war and had burned the draft files of young men who were to be called up to war. Dan and his people were literally saving lives, and as a Catholic Priest they were doing it in the name of Jesus Christ.
This was part of my call to ministry. An event in which no adult had sat down with me and lead me through some spiritual exercise. If anything - the adults were definitely not involved. One might take the gospel of Jesus Christ seriously, one might read the New Testament as if it had an authority that went beyond the corruption of this world.
In The Nightmare of God: The Book of Revelation Dan does it again. He reads this book and its author imprisoned on the Island of Patmos as a fellow traveler. Allowing the book to read us and our times. There is a biblical integrity here not to be found in the likes of Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth or Jenkin's and LaHaye's Left Behind Series. These people have gone over to the beast. They did such a good job describing the beast that they can't see the beast even when he shows up as their candidate.
I need to review this again, because of how important Dan's earlier work was in my own call.
Years later I would attend a Spring retreat at Kirkridge where Dan was the annual retreat leader. That year he worked his blessing on the last week in Jesus' life as told in the Gospel of Mark. This would later lead to a spiritual action on Good Friday where a community did the stations of the cross all the way down 42nd Street in New York - each station prophetically connecting our collective sin with a site in the city. Jesus is stripped of his clothes outside of a porn theater. Pontius Pilate publishes the edict that Jesus will be crucified outside of a local yellow journalistic newspaper. A final station was added to the traditional stations - The Riverside Research Institute where Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was being worked on, and where the Manhattan Project had been born.
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