Loving Without Giving in Christian Responses to Terrorism & Tyranny

Ron Mock is Associate Professor of Political Science and Peace Studies at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. After finishing his law degree at the University of Michigan in 1982 and practicing law for a year, he was founding director of the Christian Conciliation Service of Southeastern Michigan. His experiences in interpersonal peacemaking led him to his undergraduate alma mater, George Fox University, where he joined the Center for Peace Learning in 1985. Mock has done research, taught, and worked on nonviolent resolution of conflict across the broad range of human interaction, from interpersonal disputes to international warfare. At the interpersonal level, he has been a mediator for over twenty years and currently serves as a board member of Your Community Mediators of Yamhill County, Oregon. As a resource for training in interpersonal conflict transformation, he edited The Role Play Book for the Mennonite Conciliation Service, the second edition of which was published in 1997. At the group level, he has worked with churches and other organizations to find ways to deal with difficult conflicts. At the level of conflict among nations and ethnic groups, he has done studies in Haiti, Central America, and Eastern Europe, and most recently has been a member of the International Quaker Working Party on Israel and Palestine. Although he is a pacifist, Mock has been an outspoken critic of opponents to war, impatient with what he calls their antiwar "jingoism." He has urged pacifists and others interested in nonviolent alternatives to war to take more seriously the challenges facing policy-makers charged with doing justice and protecting social order. Before public leaders are going to reject "tried and true" military means for achieving these goals, they will need to see that alternative nonviolent means are feasible, reliable, and more effective than armed violence. Thus, opponents of war need to commit much more of their lives and financial resources to experiments in practical nonviolence, and be willing to make the kinds of sacrifices, personally and as communities, that secular society invests in armed national defense. In Loving Without Giving In, Mock articulates a vision for the kind of cultural change needed among Christians committed to peaceful means of resolving conflict. He applies this vision to the problems of international terrorism and tyranny. Grounding his approach firmly in both Scripture and the best thinking of peace scholars around the world, Mock suggests more than a hundred practical steps believers could take to respond to terrorism and, at the same time, begin to transform their own assumptions and commitments in ways that can lead to a global rejection of the "myth of effective violence." Mock lives now in Dundee, Oregan with his wife Melanie and their son Benjamin Quan. He has a grown daughter in Ithaca, New York, and a son in Canberra, Australia. He is a member of Newberg Friends Church.Mock, Ron is the author of 'Loving Without Giving in Christian Responses to Terrorism & Tyranny', published 2004 under ISBN 9781931038249 and ISBN 1931038244.