How can Christian faith help us become less violent in everyday life?
Theology & Peace has always been interested in a deceptively simple-but-difficult question: what happens after we recognize the patterns of rivalry, scapegoating, and violence that René Girard helped us see?
Recognition matters. But real peace takes real practice.
Andrew McRae and January Jaxon, last year’s new additions to the T&P Board of Directors, have launched a podcast called Theology Kills in which they explore that next step from an unusually intimate angle. Rather than beginning primarily with political conflict or social systems, they ask how violence gets reproduced — or interrupted — within our own psychology and inner life.
Its first season is framed around the metaphor of creativity, but creativity quickly becomes a doorway into much larger questions.
What happens when shame leads us to turn violence against ourselves?
What if faith isn’t blind acceptance of doctrine, but a radical relaxing into a trustworthy Presence?
What if repentance is no relentless self-sacrifice but an invitation to creative adventure?
Moving easily between theological exposition and thoughtful conversations between the hosts, Theology Kills returns again and again to a conviction Theology & Peace shares: Christian theology shouldn’t simply help us describe violence more accurately. It should help us become less violent.
If mimetic theory helps us recognize how violence becomes contagious, Theology Kills asks what everyday practices might make life, joy, and peace contagious instead.
