Quotes from Walter Wink

I cannot really be open to the call of God in a situation of oppression if the one thing I have excluded as an option is my own suffering and death.

The command to love our enemies reminds us that our first task towards oppressors is pastoral: to help them recover their humanity. Quite possibly the struggle, and the oppression that gave it rise, have dehumanised the oppressed as well, causing them to demonise their enemies. It is not enough to become politically free; we must also become human. Nonviolence presents a change for all parties to rise above their present condition and become more of what God created them to be.

Personal redemption cannot take place apart from the redemption of our social structures.

The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures.

Divine judgment is intended not to destroy but to awaken people to the devastating truth about their lives.

There is nothing, from DNA to the United Nations, that does not have God at its core. Everything has a spiritual aspect. Everything is answerable to God. As

Loving confrontation can free both the oppressed from docility and the oppressor from sin.

History belongs to the intercessors

History belongs to the intercessors - those who believe and pray the future into being.

Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present.

never adopt a strategy that you would not want your opponents to use against you