May 27, 2025 | Dr. M.D. Kinoti
Dr. M.D. Kinoti—adjunct faculty in the Leadership department—explores the deep and often underutilized connection between Christian faith and peacemaking. Drawing from his book Making Peace with Fire: Harnessing Conflict to Transform Your Relationships, Dr. Kinoti challenges listeners to recover the Bible’s rich and coherent message on relationship, reconciliation, and conflict resolution, emphasizing that peacemaking is not a peripheral concern but central to the Christian life and witness. He highlights the urgent need for more theological reflection and writing on peacebuilding from a diverse array Christian traditions, including Baptist, Methodist, and others. The conversation also calls for greater interfaith dialogue and scholarship around peace, inviting contributions from other religious communities as well.
" Fire is very useful. We depend the warmth it gives, we depend on it to cook, we depend on it to smelt or purify materials. But fire left unattended can burn and destroy. . . It's the same with conflict. . . When we control it… Share on X "C.S. Lewis says that you've never met a mortal man, you've never met any ordinary human being, that everybody is created in the image of God. And of course we see that in the Scriptures, but how do I use that? How do I relate… Share on X "The Bible does not give us room to walk away and blame other people. Look at Adam and Eve. God does not just allow Adam to walk away. or Cain and Abel, or any other character in the Scriptures. Even Jesus himself doesn't really… Share on X "The idea of dissociating the issue from the person, and something that I learned from my professors and my mentors from a pastoral perspective, is that even as you cancel people, you have to help them see their role in the… Share on X "Sometimes when we have some intense conflicts, when we have some engagement with someone else that helps us to clarify where we are, often what I have found is that it helps me to grow in some way. I get to understand that person… Share on X " There is a challenge for us to engage peacebuilding and peacemaking a lot more from our faith than we have typically done. Our Scriptures and our God are peacemaking and relational. God and the book that he's given us, the Bible,… Share on X