How to Have an Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace

Melissa Florer-Bixler is a writer and Mennonite pastor with degrees from Duke University and Princeton Theological Seminary. (The Mennonite tradition centers peace-making.)

Throughout this book, Florer-Bixler discusses what it means to love our enemies. She shows how loving our enemies does not mean staying silent in the face of injustice. Jesus certainly didn't. She rejects any kind of call for superficial “unity” or a shallow forgiveness without repentance. We are not called to passive acceptance of injustice. Because the Jesus way is about peacemaking, not peacekeeping - this is the way of liberation. She writes, “enemy-love offers to tear apart broken systems and rebuild a world with imaginative architecture that emerges from lives stayed on liberating love” (98).

I appreciated this book and definitely recommend it to others to read as well. It is well written and accessible.