Just Policing?

The Christian response to war has been undergoing a major transition over the decades since World War II. The Pope has been accused of being a pacifist, while the peace churches have been issuing statements suggesting police style action in the face of terrorism.

Gerald Schlabach has been provoked by these changes to open up a fruitful field for work by the churches that has implications not only for their contribution to public policy but also for their relationship at the ecclesial level. In Just Policing Not War: an Alternative Response to World Violence (Liturgical Press, 2007) Gerald has offered some key essays on the fundamental issues at stake and assembled a group of discussants from the Catholic and Mennonite communities.

This is a significant contribution to consideration about the character of policing - ecclesiology meets public policy and in the shadows lurks the contribution of John Howard Yoder.