Peaceful Neighbor Quotes

“Fred Rogers richly deserves a place in the pantheon of pacifists who tried to shake the foundations of society and culture. To the day of his death, he was a radical Christian pacifist—fervently committed to the end of violence and the presence of social justice in its full glory. The time has come for us to pull him out of the shadows so we can celebrate him just as he was—a fierce peacemaker.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“To explain the importance of self-understanding in relation to anger and its origins, Rogers shared a story about engaging in puppet play during his early training in child development: "One four-year-old little boy would intervene and actually prevent my being able to do much work. I remember how angry that made me. I was angry because of the frustration of my work; but I was angry at another level because when I was a little boy I wasn't allowed to prevent adults' activities like that. It took quite a while to resolve that situation, and I came to realize that one of the most important aspects of working with children is developing the capacity to differentiate between the inner child of our own past and the child we're working with in the present.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“As a member of an inner-city church, Rogers once found himself writing some rambling thoughts about individuals who had damaged one of the church buildings. His thoughts, uncharacteristically scattered here, reveal his belief in the need for us to see ourselves as "hoodlums": "We, as the Church, should be glad when the 'hoodlums' of the neighborhood impose on us. How else do we fulfill our mission -- as suffering servants what do we do? Throw them out? Of course not. We repair the damage ourselves and solicit their help. When we realize that we're hoodlums too -- inside. (That's harder to do. It's easier to spot an outside hoodlum. They leave behind lots of property damage.) Once we see ourselves as hoodlums, we can find more compassion for our brother-hoodlums and be amazed over and over that God would take us all in.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“In recounting the verse for his mentor [William Orr], Rogers asked, "What is the one little word that will fell the prince of darkness, the word that will strike down evil?" Orr thought for a moment and then said, "One little word: forgive. 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.'" Rogers knew Orr was recounting the famous words of Jesus on the cross -- words of unearned love, sheer grace, for those who never thought to seek forgiveness for their cruel and violent actions.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“Rogers criticized his fellow ministers who focused on the sin and sins of humanity. "In fact," he wrote in 1975, "I'm weary of people who insist on trying to make other people feel bad about themselves. The more I look around me and within me the more I notice that those who feel best about themselves have the greatest capacity to feel good about others.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“And in a 2000 interview with Christianity Today, a magazine favored by conservative evangelicals, Rogers added, "When I think about heaven, it is a state in which we are so greatly loved that there is no fear and doubt and disillusionment and anxiety. It is where people do look at you with those eyes of Jesus" -- the eyes of an advocate who sees you as good, valuable, and lovable.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“Rogers would most likely be among the first to remind us that he was not "all things to all people" (1 Cor. 9:22). He was just himself, with all his strengths and weaknesses, all his advantages and limitations, and he was that way for reasons unique to his own personal history, many of which we will never know. But perhaps we would do well, when pinpointing his shortcomings, to recall that in his own prayer life Rogers often sought divine guidance and wisdom—and especially forgiveness for those times he fell short of unconditional love.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“Fred Rogers was not just a compassionate human being; he was a practicing Christian who firmly believed that human compassion has its ultimate source in a God whose love for all of creation never ends. For Rogers, we can and should be compassionate because God is compassionate toward us—always and everywhere. Again, context matters here, and when we place Rogers’s spiritual beliefs in their historical perspective—a time when Billy Graham’s judgmental God was wildly popular—we can clearly see just how prophetic Rogers’s compassion was. But it’s not enough even to say that he was a Christian prophet. Perhaps most of all, Fred Rogers was a Christian peacemaker. The compassion he expressed toward victims of violence and injustice was not for its own sake; it was ultimately for the sake of the peaceable reign of God. Rogers opposed all U.S. wars in his lifetime, as well as various barriers to individual and social peace, because he believed that the Prince of Peace beckons us to establish the peaceful reign of God here on earth—in our hearts, communities, and societies.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“By placing Rogers in context, then, we can finally see that his compassion was not a vague feeling of warmth and fuzziness, but that it had concrete implications for politics and economics, and perhaps most fascinating of all, that it was edgy and radical—subversive of our wider society and culture. Fred Rogers was thus not merely a compassionate human being. He was a compassionate prophet—not so much the type who rails, rants, and rages against the powers that be, but the type who quietly builds an alternative polis, where the violence and injustice of the wider society and culture are subverted.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“I guess you know how important I think people are,” he states, unqualifiedly, during the series. “When we start thinking about everything in the world, it’s the people who are the most important of all.” That means all people, not just those who are our friends and allies. And if this is true, we have no reason to kill our enemies, even ones who attack us.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“Rogers held that there is not one fact or piece of data that will ever make war (or even preparing for war) morally permissible.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“war is not nice because it’s such a waste, as Queen Sara puts it. It wastes precious resources that could otherwise be used for programs designed to help people flourish. For Rogers, tax dollars are for record players that can help children appreciate music; they’re not for weapons designed to slaughter the parents of children or, worse, the children themselves.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“Rogers’s belief that a ruler’s power, like King Friday’s, is ultimately dependent upon complicity or cooperation from those he or she rules, and that when the governed begin to withdraw their cooperation, as Lady Aberlin and Daniel Striped Tiger did, the power of the ruling authority begins to crumble.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers

“while he emphasized that peace is wonderful, Rogers was not altogether starry-eyed in this first week. In fact, he seemed quite the political realist in teaching us that peacemaking will be hard work. It will certainly require the most creative thoughts our moral imagination can muster. Like Daniel Striped Tiger, we will have to move beyond typical options and come up with creative strategies that surprise and shock the warmongers we seek to influence. Peacemaking will also no doubt be time-consuming. It will require us, as it did Lady Aberlin, to take time off from our regular work to create and carry out unique plans we would not normally even consider. And peacemaking will lead us into moments of doubt and uncertainty. Like Lady Aberlin and Mister Rogers, we will find ourselves wondering whether our ideas will really work.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers