Making Peace with the Cross

Re-imagines the cross from a Mennonite-feminist perspective, to address contemporary questions of suffering and trauma.

This book re-images the cross from a Mennonite-feminist perspective, refusing to glorify violence or suffering as redemptive, but by placing the cross within the context of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, it speaks in new ways to pressing contemporary questions of suffering and trauma as it empowers the work of compassion and peacebuilding.

Loewen takes up the task of recontextualizing the cross within the broader narrative of Jesus' life and ministry, crucifixion, death, and resurrection.

In doing so, she illuminates an expansive understanding of redemption.

Many contemporary progressive Christians don't know what to do with the cross. Tired of it being used to promote a violent or masochistic path to salvation, many advocate avoiding the cross altogether, emptying it of its redemptive significance. But what if the cross can be reclaimed to signify compassion, empowerment, and peace?

Using a Mennonite-feminist perspective which weaves together Anabaptist peace church and feminist understandings of traumatic suffering, peace ethics, and power, this book explores each stage of the narrative of Jesus. What emerges from this unique conversation is a peaceable reclaiming of the cross as a moment of Divine embrace, reflected all the way from Jesus’ compassionate ministry to the cross as a symbol of all of the ways people are crucified today, calling the community of redemptive compassion to ‘empty’ the crosses and tombs of our context. Making Peace with the Cross ultimately shows that it is not violence or suffering that redeems, but a participatory ethic of compassion.