A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

by Brian Zahnd

They don’t see the need to get the serious business of peacemaking mixed up with a religious figure—especially when the religion he inspired has so often been associated with violence and war. On the other hand, it too often seems that those who are most committed to the person of Jesus Christ see little need to get Jesus mixed up in the real-world work of peacemaking (which they view as slightly suspicious anyhow). Certainly the evangelical view of real-world peacemaking has been something like this: “Doesn’t Jesus have more important work to do?” According to this view, Christianity is mostly about the spiritual work of saving souls for an afterlife in heaven, and Jesus’s ideas about peace can be put on hold until the age to come. So the argument goes. But I think otherwise. Jesus Christ and the historical events of his crucifixion and resurrection are not to be separated from the ideas he preached about a kingdom of peace. Or let me say it this way: I believe in the Nazarene who one writer called “that preacher of peace.”