Enemy Love Suggested Reading
Prepared by Andrew DeCort, PhD
These books and articles deepen our understanding and energize our practice of loving our enemies.
Andrew DeCort, “Love Your Enemy,” originally published on andrew-decort.com on March 17, 2019. DeCort explores Jesus’s groundbreaking command to love our enemies in its cultural context and for today.
Andrew DeCort, “A Prayer for Enemies,” May 16, 2021 on www.andrew-decort.org.
Andrew DeCort, “Enemy-Love, Abuse, and Thomas Aquinas,” April 7, 2019 on www.andrew-decort.com.
James K.A. Smith, “Healing the Imagination: Art Lessons from James Baldwin,” in Image Journal, Issue 107. Smith explores how we see others and how this “imagination” shapes our world. (3 pages)
Aziz Abu Sarah, “Crossing Enemy Lines” in Strangers, Neighbors, Friends: Muslim-Christian-Jewish Reflections on Compassion and Peace (Cascade Books, 2018), 7-11. Aziz explores how he shifted from hating his enemies after his brother was murdered to practicing compassion. (4 pages)
Hyung Jin Kim Sun. Who Are Our Enemies and How Do We Love Them? Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2020. Sun presents a brief, concise argument for why followers of Jesus should love their enemies and practice peace across boundaries (70 pages).
Abuelaish, Izzeldin. I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2012.
The Brilliance. “Brother.” Originally released by Integrity Music, 2015.
Brooks, Arthur. Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. New York, NY: Broadside Books, 2019.
Cahill, Lisa. Love Your Enemies: Pacifism, Discipleship, and Just War. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994.
Chenoweth, Erica. Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021.
Clark, Kelly James, Aziz Abu Sarah, Nancy Fuchs. Strangers, Neighbors, Friends: Muslim-Christian-Jewish: Reflections on Compassion and Peace. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018, especially “A Clash of Civilizations” (pages 57-60).
Ellethy, Yaser. Islam, Context, Pluralism and Democracy: Classical and Modern Interpretations. Routledge, 2014.
Forest, Jim. Loving Our Enemies: Reflections on the Hardest Commandment. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2014.
George, Cherian. Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and Its Threat to Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1993.
Hettiarachchi, Radhika. Walking in Another’s Shoes: Exchange, Empathy, and Dialogue (2018), especially pages 7-12.
Keen, Sam. Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1986.
King Jr., Martin Luther. “Loving Your Enemies,” Strength to Love. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010.
Klassen, William. Love of Enemies: The Way to Peace. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984.
Lederach, John Paul. “Spirituality and Religious Peacebuilding.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding, eds Atalia Omer, R. Scott Appleby, and David Little (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Peterson, Jordan. “A Wing and a Prayer.”
Piper, John. Love Your Enemies: Jesus’s Love Command in the Synoptic Gospels and Early Christian Parenesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Ruthruff, Ron, “Loving and Forgiving Enemies.” Street Psalms “Word from Below,” February 2022.
Sacks, Jonathan “Letting Go of Hate,” Covenant & Conversation, August 28, 2012.
Sider, Ronald. If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019.
Smith, David Livingstone. Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2011.
Swartley, Willard M. (ed.). The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.
Thurman, Howard. “Love [of Enemies]” in Jesus and the Disinherited. Boston: Beacon Press, 1949, 79-98.
Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York, NY: Penguin, 2000.
Vaderhaar, Gerard. Enemies and How to Love Them. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013.