Belajar Teater lewat Proses Penggarapan

Belajar Teater lewat Proses Penggarapan 

BELAJAR teater tidak cukup dengan teori-teori dan latihan dasar semata. Seorang guru atau siswa dalam proses belajar-mengajar sebaiknya mulai berhadapan dengan naskah dan pementasan agar proses pembelajaran bisa lebih matang. Seorang drmawati kondang di Bali, Cok Sawitri, memberikan pelajaran praktis bagaimana proses belajar-mengajar bisa dilakukan dengan langsung berhadapan dengan naskah.

Pengajaran praktis ini berasumsi di sekolah banyak siswa, baik laki-laki maupun perempuan hingga tak ada kendala kekurangan pemain teater. Dan, pelatih/pembina/guru memiliki pengetahuan tentang teater, sudah pernah bermain drama atau minimal pernah menonton drama. Langkah-langkah praktisnya adalah, pertama pelatih memilih naskah kemudian dipelajari.

Kedua, perencanaan setting. Perencanaan setting harus dipikirkan karena setting yang ruwet justru akan menyusahkan. Disarankan naskah yang dipilih adalah naskah dengan desain setting yang sederhana. Ketiga, meneliti mana peran utama dan peran pambantu. Peran utama dibagi dalam peran antagonis dan protagonis. Jadi peran utama itu tidak selalu mewakili kebaikan, juga tidak keburukan, tetapi adalah peran yang memegang paling banyak alur cerita naskah.

Setelah identifikasi jumlah pendukung dalam naskah itu dan kebutuhan setting tergambar, barulah dilakukan pengumpulan para siswa atau siswi calon pemain. Naskah yang sudah dipelajari oleh pelatih/guru disinopsiskan secara sederhana dan dibagikan kepada siswa. Lalu guru menceritakan naskah apa yang akan mereka mainkan, peran-peran di dalamnya.

Lalu ada tahap reading. Dalam tahap ini naskah dibagikan ke semua siswa-siswi. Semua yang terlibat diwajibkan membaca naskah secara keseluruhan. Reading adalah tahap di mana semua siswa/siswi harus memahami semua karakter, dan difungsikan sebagai bedah naskah. Dalam teater, jangan selalu berpatokan peran tokoh perempuan harus dibawakan perempuan, dan tokoh laki-laki harus dimainkan lelaki.

Ketika reading, semua pemain dicoba untuk memasuki peran dengan perlahan. Bersamaan dengan reading ada olah vokal, dan akan diketahui kualitas vokal para pemain. Lalu pelatihan irama, artikulasi, tekanan, dsb. Reading bisa berlangsung 3 - 5 kali, hingga naskah secara keseluruhan benar-benar dibaca. Pada tiap pertemuan supaya tidak jenuh bisa diselingi latihan cara berjalan.

Cara berjalan dalam teori berteater yang lebih luas disebut pemahaman panggung, mulai memahami panggung seperti apa. Dibuat desain panggung yang menghadap penonton seperti biasa (umum) yang mudah dipahami anak-anak. Yang paling penting, cara melangkah dan berjalan dibuat sedemikian rupa hingga siswa paham mana posisi tampak muka dan belakang, tampak samping kanan kiri. Pada saat ini, siswa mulai menyadari bahwa badan meraka adalah hal yang akan ditonton.

Pada saat ini, mulai dilatih ekspresi-ekspresi dasar. Ekspresi dasar misalnya menangis, semua orang akan punya ekspresi yang sama, juga tertawa, tersenyum, dan sebagainya. Kemudian belajar pula sinergi badan, gerakan kaki dan tangan. Misalnya tak boleh ada badan yang melengkung. Juga ketika melakukan dialog, misalnya tangan tak boleh bergerak-gerak tanpa tujuan, kaki bergoyang-goyang, dan sebagainya.

Kemudian langkah selanjutnya adalah audisi, pemilihan dengan melihat dari proses, siapa yang cocok jadi pemeran utama atau pemeran pembantu. Selebihnya siswa-siswi yang ada bisa dilatih untuk menjadi crew stage (kru panggung), yang mendukung misalnya untuk menyiapkan properti, pergantian atau setting. Dan, semuanya akan mamahami mengapa mereka diposisikan demikian. Tetapi, proses latihan tetap harus dilaksanakan bersama.

Terus, pembelajaran dilakukan dengan proses menghapal bagian-bagian dialog, mulai per adegan atau pembabakan, sekaligus mulai latihan blocking. Saat hapalan pertama kali, meski masih memegang naskah, blocking telah didesain dari awal. Bila nanti latihan sudah berjalan, blocking dapat diserahkan kepada pemain untuk improvisasi. Konsep blocking adalah keseimbangan panggung, muka belakang, cara berputar di depan panggung, dan seterusnya.

Selanjutnya adalah tahap seni peran. Tahap ini adalah bagaimana seseorang memasuki peran yang ada dalam naskah sesuai kebutuhan. Misalnya kalau perannya jahat, pemain harus mengidentifikasi bagaimana biasanya orang bersikap jahat. Di sisi lain, siswa yang bertugas di properti mulai membayangkan setting.

Misalnya jika adegan dalam rumah, maka properti apa yang harus disiapkan. Dalam seni peran ini akan nampak sinergi antara dialog, gerakan dan properti. Juga mulai pemahaman tempo dalam dialog dan tempo permainan. Tempo dialog adalah dialog yang mengandung plot (sebab-akibat) ada yang dalam irama cepat, ada yang perlahan. Kemudian ekspresi marah, ekspresi gembira dan sebagainya juga bisa mendorong cepat-lambatnya tempo, tergantung pilihan interpretasi naskah.

Langkah selanjutnya pelatih/guru mulai berjarak untuk melihat struktur dramatik naskah yang dimainkan. Struktur dramatik adalah bagaimana membuat naskah-naskah mengalir dari satu adegan ke adegan lain. Bagaimana jika happy ending, sad ending, mencari klimaks di mana, dan sebagainya. Klimaks bisa tersembunyi dalam adegan, dalam dialog, pun dalam instruksi yang ada dalam teks sampingan (neben-text).

Setelah itu, harus dicoba latihan penuh, artinya dicoba drama dimainkan utuh dari awal sampai akhir. Lalu dilakukan 2-3 kali pembenahan hingga terpenuhi kebutuhan memainkan naskah yang benar. Pertama, seni peran mulai nampak nyata, blocking dan pemanggungan tertata, tempo permainan dan penghayatan yang sudah nampak.

Tahap berikutnya adalah geladi kotor. Tahap ini dilakukan saat di mana harus sudah dipikirkan kostum dan perlengkapan lainnya. Jika hingga tahap ini terdapat pemain yang tidak juga bisa memasuki kadar permainan yang diinginkan, maka harus diingat, bahwa sejak audisi awal banyak sekali pemain-pemain yang telah melalui reading, bisa menjadi pemain cadangan. Lalu terakhir sampailah ada tahap geladi bersih dan evaluasi keseluruhan.

Lama keseluruhan latihan sebuah pementasan drama tergantung dari naskah. Naskah dengan jumlah dialog sekitar 150 bisa mencapai 4 hingga 5 minggu dengan 2 hingga 3 kali pertemuan setiap minggu dengan masing-masing latihan selama 2 jam efektif. (ole)

MOHANDAS GANDHI: A HINDU AND MORE

MOHANDAS GANDHI: A HINDU AND MORE

Mohandas Gandhi was a Hindu who throughout all of his life associated with, learned from, and showed deep respect for people  who embraced the diverse religions of India, including Islam, Jainism, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. Moreover, through his education in England and his association with the British who occupied his countrry, he came into contact with many currents of Western thought and practice. He had an experimental cast of mind: weighing, testing, trying ideas in practice. He ahd an experimental cast of mid: weighing, testing, trying ideas in practice, and judging them simply in terms of whether they imrpved the life of humanity. Consequently, he devoloped for himself a constantly evolving but passionately held set of beliefs and principles that guided his behaviour as he took  on structures of domination and oppression. It was his own personal synthesis rooted in what he found to be universal. Nonetheless, his belief system and mindset were predominantly Hindu. As put it:

I must tell you in all humility that Hinduism, as I know it, entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being, and I find solace in the Bhagavadgita and Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount.

To enter the mindset of another religion is no simple task. Hinduism is in some ways particularly challenging because it is not a creedal religion. Many would say it is more a culture, a lifestyle, than a religion. The tenets of the religion seamlessly weave themselves into everyday living. For example, the attitude toward the unity of all living beings plays out in many simple  daily ways. In the words of Ravindra Kumar:

[A] farmer of any country will not be seen allowing monkeys, birds and other wild animals to eat and uproot his blossoming crop. Probably, you won’t find anywhere except in India, people giving food to ants and other birds with great affection. It is India alone where parents never inspire their  children to drop eggs of birds out of their nests...practically you can well understand the uniqueness of Indian non-violence.

            Understanding another religion reguires, as Gandhi described it, a “passing over,” a letting oneself see the world through the other person’s religious eyes. As C. F. Andrews explains:

There are few things perhaps more difficult to accomplish than to put oneself in sympathetic touch with a religion which is not one’s own by birth-inheritance... there is strangeness about every mood and tone of worship, as well as in the words of the sacred texts of Scripture and the revealed doctrines held to be orthodox.

            An easy way of realizing this is to consider the instance of a Hindu... being told about the Holy communion Service, with its consecrated elements of bread and wine representing the Body and Blood of Christ.

            Fortunately, Gandhi meets us halfway, having already “passed over”  to understand not only Christianity but also the broader zeitgeist of Western civilization. To enter into Gandhian thought and praxis is to enter into a body of work that is already a synthesis of Hindu and Western thought.

GANDHI’S BELIEFS

Mohandas Gandhi grew up as a Hindu, but it was not until his early adult years that he was able to fully and richly appropriate it. He seriously considered other paths, in particular Christianity, before realizing that he had all that he wanted or needed in Hinduism.

Gandhi’s Childhoad Years

Gandhi’s mother’s example of faith and devotion, in particular, stayed vividly in his memory. She was a member of the Vaishnava sect, which was heavily influenced by both Buddhism and Jainism and thus palced a major emphasis on warmth of heart and compassion for all living things. According to his autobiography:

She was deeply religious. She would not think of taking her temple—was one of her daily duties... she would taje the hardest vows and keep them waiting flinching.  To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her.

            Gandhi’s father, a prime minister in Porbandar, one of the small proncely states of Kathiawad, kept a very open household in terms of religion. Gandhi remembered men of many religious traditons—Jain, Muslim, and Parsi—being welcomed into their home. All were respected as seekers after truth, all in their own ways. The Jain tradition was particularly strong in the area, and its emphasis on ahimsa (doing no harm) and the many-sidedness of truth became very important to Gandhi later in life. The only religion that he learned to think poorly of during his youth was Christianity because of the missionaries, who stood on the street corner near his school deriding the missionaries the beliefs and the gods of Hinduism. In his experience, converts to Christianity immediately took up meat eating and the drinking of liquor. So he came to associate Christianity with “beef and brandy.”

            The trappings and glitter of the temple held little appeal for Gandhi. What did capture his heart and stir his ideals were certain plays and songs. He read a tale about the folk hero Sharavana and admired the hero’s devotion to his parents. He saw a live performance of a play about King Harischandra, an Indian Job who refused to lie even through subjection to many afflictions. As Geoffrey Ashe notes:

It captured him. He went to it  several times, reenacted scenes himself, indentifed with Harischandra, and wished he could go throughthe same trials... The ideal  of Absolute Truth, and Absolute Duty corresponding to it, came to him with the charm, the excitement, the mad logic of a fairy tale.

            During this period, the final lines of a poem by the Gujurati poet Shamal Bhatt ran through his head constantly:

            For a bowl of water give a goodly meal;

            For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal;

            For a simple penny pay thou back with gold;

            If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold.

            Thus the words and actions of the wise regard;

            Every little service tenfold they reward.

But the truly noble know all men as one,

And return with gladness good for evil done.

The message of “return good for evil” is clearly stated and embraced by Gandhi years he read the Sermon on the Mount or Tolstoy. Even though religion did not have much appeal to him in these growing up years, the stories and poems conveying the values of Hinduism surely did.

Gandhi’s Years in England

Gandhi arrived in England in 1988 at age nineteen to study law. Leaving India was determined by his caste to be grounds for excommunication. His family allowed him to go only after his mother had secured an oath from him to refrain from wine, women, and meat. He kept the vow but, in his first months in england, went every hungry. His search for a decent vegetarian meal led him into the company of Vegetarian Society, where he met an interesting array of mavericks who launched him, through their beliefs and the readings they gave him, on a spiritual quest. Reading Henry Salt’s A Plea for Vegetarianism, for example, gave him a fresh understanding of and appreciation for his country’s tradition of vegetarianism.

            During his second year in England he met two Theosophists, bachelor brothers, who were reading Sir Edwin Arnold’s translation of Bhagavad Gita, and they invited him to read it with them. Certain verses in the second chapter struck him strongly:

            If one ponders on objects of the sense, there springs

Atrraction; from attraction grows desire,

Desire flams to fierce passion, passion breeds

Recklessness; then the memory—all betrayed—

Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind,

Till purpose, mind, and man are all Undone. (2:62—63)

            Gandhi wrote:

           

The book struck me as one of priceless worth, the impression has ever since been growing on me with the result that I regard it today as the book par excellence for the knowledge of Truth.

Another book by Sir Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia, and a personal meeting with Madame  Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant of the Theosophists, who highly valued the Gita and the learning of the East, prompted in him an interest to read books on Hinduism. At the same time, a vegetarian friend urged him to read the Bible. He plowed through the books of the Old Testament even though the chapters after Genesis put him to sleep. When read the New Terstament, however, it was a totally different story:

The New Testament produced  a different impression, especially the Sermon on the Mount which went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. The verses, “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whoseever shall smite thee away thy coat let him have thy cloak too,” delighted me beyond measure and put me in mind of Shamal Bhatt’s “For a bowl of water give a goodly meal,” etc. My young mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, The Light of Asia and the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly.

At this point in his life Gandhi had to postpone reading any more religious books to study deligently for his examinations, but he told himself that he would come back to the study of all the major religions as soon as he could. That time would not come until he found himself in South Africa.

The South African Years

            Gandhi passed his examinations returned to India in 1891 after two and a half eventual years. He could not find steady, lucrative employement, however, so when he recieved an invitation in 1893 from a Muslim trader in Natal, South Africa, who was in need of the services of an Indian lawyer trained in england, he jumped at the opportunity.

            In South Africa he made friends with many Christians, especially evangelicals and Quakers. They invited him ti services, entertained him in their homes, bombarded him with books, and engaged him in argumentation. He found the life and message of Jesus very attractive but he resisted person could be saved all in one go by calling on someone else for salvation. As a Hindu, Gandhi believed that individuals need to struggle to find their own unique way, doing good and dying well, to liberate themselves from the karma of past lives and to eventually enter into oneness with the divine. Given his sense that all human beings are called to be one with divinity, Gandhi did not understand how Jesus could be the only son of God.  Neither could he recognize the Sermon on the Mount in the history and practice of the Christian Church. He did not feel conversant enough with his own Hindu traditions to be able to engage his friends comfortably in disputations. Therefore, in 1891 in Bombay right after returning from England.

            That friend was a poet-jeweler named Raychand, a Jain, only slightly older than Gandhi. A superb businessman, Raychand, upon closing business for the day, would always turn to his spiritual diary and his religious books. He was intensely focused on seeing God face to face. Gandhi wrote of him:

During the two years I remained in close with him I felt in him every moment the spirit of vairagya (renunciation)... There was a strange power in his eyes; they were extremely bright and free from any sign of impatience or anxiety... These qualities can exist only in a man of self-control.

Gandhi asked Raychand a variety of questions ranging from the nature of the soul and God to the meaning of salvation and the nature of the scriptures. In all there are twenty-seven questions, twenty questions about Hinduism and the rest about Christianity. Raychand’s answer to the first question concerning the nature of the spirit is three times as long as any other. It begins:

Q....

In addition to this long letter, Raychand sent Gandhi three ancient Hindu texts that belonged to the Hindu system of Advaita Vendata, a system codified in the ninth century by the famous philosopher Shankara but originating in the ancient Upanishads of the pre-Christian era.

The works that Raycahand sent fully engaged Gandhi’s attention. He paid special attention to the practical issues concerning how one can achieve moksha (liberation) in this life, the moral and intellectual training required for climbing the seven stages of yogic exercises leading to the goal. Page after page of the Hindu texts emphasize personal exertion and reason-much different from the Vaishnava tradition that places the cause of liberation in the initiative of a loving God and his avatar Krishna. In the Hindu system of Advaita Vedanta, nonattachment and asceticism are the keys to moksha.

Gandhi found the letter and the readings very helpful. His belief in Hinduism recieved a solid intellectual foundation, and he began to make Hinduism his own on a more reflective level. What he found particularly important in Raychand’s teaching was his stress on action........to be continue

Gandhi and Jesus-The Saving Power Nonviolence

Introduction

Studying Gandhi’s and reflection on his life’s work have changed the way I understand Jesus. When I read the New Testament I am thrilled and emblodened by the filled-with-compassion, brave, nonviolent Jesus I find there. Gandhi not only had a similiar appreciation of Jesus but in his world actively working for the poor, taking on power structures and enduring violence without succumbing to violence oneself, his way of “satyagraha,” which means “firmly holding to the truth” in the midst of conflict while reaching out with nonviolent, suffering love. When I read the Sermon on the Mount I hear Jesus proclaiming the same truth, the same “way” : neither fight nor flight, but a thrid way of assertive, creative, nonviolent love even for our “enemies.” When I see a crucifix I can only do what Gandhi did in the famous scene caught on film when he happened upon a simple crucifix while visiting the Vatican—bow and be grateful to Jesus for showing us the way and the power of suffering love.

            I know I am not alone in finding inspiration from Gandhi to find in Jesus what the world, caught as it is in an iron spiral of violence, desperately needs. Andre Trocme, for example, the leader of the church in Chambon, France, that nonviolently resisted the Nazis and proctected the lives of thousands oh hunted Jewish people, wrote:

The coming of Mahatma Gandhi, whose life and teaching surprisingly resemble those of Jesus, revived the whole issue of nonviolence just when majority theology thought it had already answered the question negatively.... Gandhi   showed that the Sermon on the Mount can be politically effective.

            Reading contemporary scripture scholarship has only confirmed for me this understanding of Jesus’ life and teaching. There is great convergence of testimony  from scripture scholars, as we shall see later in this book, that Jesus embodied and taught a way of nonviolent love of enemies and, in a time of violent Roman occupation of his country, gathered followers to live out the way. As one eminent scripture scholar, Norbert Lohfink, put it:  “Jesus was nonviolent to the core.”

            It is a mystery to me that more Christian have not embraced the nonviolent Jesus. It is a mistery to me that the Christian churches, in particular the Catholic Church, are not, at this point in history, clearly proclaiming, with a strong and united voice, the way of nonviolent discipleship. Given the clear witness of Gandhi and the astonishing achievements of organized nonviolent action  in the sixty years  since  his death, the liberation of countrry after country, from Poland, East Germany, ang the Ukraine to South Africa, the Phillippines, and Czechoslovakia, and given the powerful witness of Gandhian adherents such as Martin Luther King, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and Nelson Mandela—why is it not more obvious to Christians that the Sermon on the Mount is the way forward? Given the united testimony of contemporary scripture scholarship, why do we still hang back from following the way of the nonviolent Jesus?

            I believe there are three major reasons: first, we are enmeshed  in a culture that believes in the myth of redemptive violence; second, we are deeply imbued with a spirit of retributive justice and as a result find it hard to hear the biblical message of restorative justice; third, some of our fundamental Christian tenets, of our “systematic theology,” were conceptualized with a mindset that accepted violence as a given for humans.

            The myth of redemptive violence in which our culture is enmeshed is the belief that, when one is really up against it, only might can bring deliverance. When push comes to shove, most people belive, the only logical thing is to push back. One has every right to defend one’s self, one’s property, one’s family, one’s nation. End of story. The way to maintain power is to carry a big stick and not be afraid to use it when you have to. Otherwise you just invite attack. This is undoubtedly the conventional wisdom and the way of the world. The only problem is—it is not the gospel.

            The political and ethical stance of many of us Christian is more often shaped by yhe concept of retributive justice than by than the biblical teaching of restorative jaustice. “To do justice” in the retributive justice scheme means to appropriately punish those who have  done wrong to society. The symbol of this kind of justice is the ancient symbol of the female figure holding the scales. Justice not done until the scales are once again in balance. Because of this ingrained value we in our culture are fascinated with the issues of determining guilt, tracking down criminals, and administering justice—understood as appropiate punishment. This carries into popular entertaiment. Witness the high ratings for television shows such as CSI and Law and Order. We just can’t get enough stories about finding and punishing the guilty. CSI and Law and Order multiply themselves into CSI Miami and CSI New York and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

In cultures that emphasize a retributive understanding of justice, determining who is guilty and exacting appropriate punishment are important functions of society. Those who find and punish the guilty—the police, the private investigators, the evidence technicians, the prosecutors, the judges—are legitimately held up as important proctectors of society’s wll-being. This retributive mindset spreads into everyday life. As Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker note:

The assignation of blame has reached the status of a vocation for some in the media, and the two-fold process of determining fault and meting out punishment occupies families, schools, businesses and more... Who started this fight? Who called the first name? Whose idea was this?

            This is a far cry from the biblical teaching on restorative justice. Throughout the Bible, especially in Paul, justice is what God is doing for his people, justice is God delivering them from their sin. God pursues, woos, threatens, raises up prophets, works mighty deeds, reaches into people’s hearts to save them from themselves. Justice is active. The point of the pursuit of justice is not punishment but change of heart and reconciliation between people and between people and their  God. The Biblical  symbol of justice is the river, not the woman with the scales. The deep belief in retribution, the assumption that justice means retribution, keeps people from hearing the clear teaching of Jesus on loving one’s enemies. Forgiveness, for a retributive mindset, is not the act a  magna anima, a magnanimous person, but oermissiveness or being “soft on crime.“  In the words of Christopher D. Marshall:

If... justice is understood in essentially retributive terms, then acts of mercy or forgiveness will be seen as, at best, a forgoing of the legitimate claims of justice, or at worst, a distinct  injustice. But if justice is understood in more relational and restorative terms—making things right and repairing relationship—then justice is actually consummated in forgiveness and reconciliation.

The church in the West, influenced through the centuries by the Latin fathers such as Tertullian, a lawyer, and Cyprian, adopted the narrower legal view of justice. In so doing the church watered down its faith to what can be adjudicated as “reasonable” by the world at large. The saying attributed to Jhon Paul II, “If you want peace, work for justice, “can be totally misunderstood if interpreted to mean retributive justice and not restorative justice. The largesse and mercy that Jesus demonstrated may be less spontaneously understood by the world, but it is in fact the wisdom that the world needs. Nonviolence is in the end more reasonable than the world’s belief in violence. No longer is the church the “contrast society” it was in the first three centuries—embracing the gospel of nonviolence. The church instead attemps to influence society by engaging it in debates relying on reason and “natural law” concept alone, leaving aside the revolutionary belief in nonviolence.

Finally, some of the basics of our Christian theology have been artculated out of a violent worldview. For example, our ecclesiology, or concept of the church, reflects an understanding of how to exert power that more closely resembles the hierarchical, top-down structure of the Roman Empire than it does the nonviolence , servant-of- the-servants teaching of the gospels. No item in Christian theology is more rooted in a violent world-view than the most commonly held articulation of “what it means to be saved”—the satisfaction theory of salvation. The theory that God the Father demanded the sacrifice of his Son to make satisfaction for humankind’s sin. If our very own tenets of Christian theology, the way we communicate our faith to one anither, are rooted in violence, it is that much harder to hear the teaching on nonviolence.

The purposes of thuis bool are therefore threefold: first, to share my understanding and appreciation for Gandhi’s way of satyagraha; second, in the light of Gandhi’s satyagraha, present the thinking of four Christian theologians whohave embraced and make credible a nonviolence Jesus; third, refomulate “what it means to be saved”  by making, not violent sacrifice, but nonviolent power, the root metaphor. If our systematic theology, the way we explain the truths of our faith to one another, is soaked in violence, then our ethics or moral theology will surely be soaked in and unreflectively supportive of violence—as has been the case for centuries. Our ethics or moral theology may shift  to the degree that our fundamental systematic theology shifts. This is, therefore, a work of systematic theology, an attempt to express one of basic truths of our faith, salvation, in a way that opens us to hearing the call to nonviolence discipleship.