Other Cheek

Cordell Strug served as a small town pastor in rural Minnesota from 1982-2010. He reflects,'The last decade of my service fell at the beginning of the third Christian millennium, during the increasingly pointless and seemingly endless wars America was fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. I might say I wasn't called to analyze, let alone denounce, American society or its government, week by week, but to proclaim the gift and task of the gospel within that society. But there was one time that forced a confrontation with the fact and the force of war: Memorial Day Weekend, especially in the years when the Iraq war was going sour. I thought it might be of some historical interest to gather up a number of the sermons I gave on the Sunday of that weekend over the years, to see what a person like me, with the calling I had, found to say about war and peace in that time. I have added some reflections on growing up as a Christian in America after WWII and through the Vietnam War years, as well as some thoughts on how things seem to me looking back.'