{"id":379,"date":"2006-12-29T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-29T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html"},"modified":"2006-12-29T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-29T12:00:00","slug":"voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html","title":{"rendered":"Voice of the Day: Merton on Protest"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div>\n<p><span>The important thing about protest is not so much the  short-range possibility of changing the direction of policies, but the longer  range aim of helping everyone gain an entirely new attitude toward war.  Far  from doing this, much current protest simply reinforces the old positions by  driving the adversary back into the familiar and secure mythology of force.   Hence the strong &#8220;patriotic&#8221; reaction against protests in the United States.   How can one protest against war without implicitly and indirectly contributing  to the war mentality?<\/p>\n<p><\/span><b>&#8211; <span>Thomas Merton, <\/span><\/b><span>in <span style=\"font-style: italic\">New Seeds of Contemplation<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sojo.net\/index.cfm?action=sojomail.subscribe&amp;source=web_beliefnet_blog\">+ Sign up to receive our quote of the day via e-mail<\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;padding-bottom:0.25em\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The important thing about protest is not so much the short-range possibility of changing the direction of policies, but the longer range aim of helping everyone gain an entirely new attitude toward war. Far from doing this, much current protest simply reinforces the old positions by driving the adversary back into the familiar and secure&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Voice of the Day: Merton on Protest - God&#039;s Politics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Voice of the Day: Merton on Protest - God&#039;s Politics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The important thing about protest is not so much the short-range possibility of changing the direction of policies, but the longer range aim of helping everyone gain an entirely new attitude toward war. Far from doing this, much current protest simply reinforces the old positions by driving the adversary back into the familiar and secure&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God&#039;s Politics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-29T12:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"God&#039;s Politics\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Voice of the Day: Merton on Protest - God&#039;s Politics","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Voice of the Day: Merton on Protest - God&#039;s Politics","og_description":"The important thing about protest is not so much the short-range possibility of changing the direction of policies, but the longer range aim of helping everyone gain an entirely new attitude toward war. Far from doing this, much current protest simply reinforces the old positions by driving the adversary back into the familiar and secure&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html","og_site_name":"God&#039;s Politics","article_published_time":"2006-12-29T12:00:00+00:00","author":"God's Politics","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html","name":"Voice of the Day: Merton on Protest - God&#039;s Politics","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-12-29T12:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2006-12-29T12:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#\/schema\/person\/19c93dd9f2f493f929f7efba4ad46a65"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/12\/voice-of-the-day-merton-on-pro.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Voice of the Day: Merton on Protest"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/","name":"God&#039;s Politics","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#\/schema\/person\/19c93dd9f2f493f929f7efba4ad46a65","name":"God's Politics","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fac\/fac28617c05da947253e4433013eeec8x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fac\/fac28617c05da947253e4433013eeec8x96.jpg","caption":"God's Politics"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/author\/rrodrickbeiler"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}