{"id":13319,"date":"2026-04-12T22:49:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T02:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=13319"},"modified":"2026-04-12T22:49:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T02:49:18","slug":"philip-gulley-on-why-war-doesnt-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2026\/04\/philip-gulley-on-why-war-doesnt-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Philip Gulley on why war doesn’t work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I first encountered Philip Gulley a couple of decades ago<\/a> in the book he co-wrote with James Mulholland titled If God Is Love: Why God Will Save Every Person<\/em>. In that book, Gulley and Mulholland set forth a Quakerly approach to universalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current U.S. war in Iran has prompted me to seek out other pacifists. This is not an easy time to be a pacifist. While I’m hearing quite a few people who are opposed to the war, I’m not hearing people who are opposed to all war \u2014 only to this war. Or maybe they’re just opposed to the current administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I was pleased to stumble across a blog post Philip Gulley wrote back in March in which he makes the case that all war is wrong<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…We have mastered the ability to number the war dead with great precision. 175 schoolgirls killed when we bombed the school in Iran. Thirteen American soldiers dead thus far, thousands of Iranians and Israelis, the numbers growing every day. We have perfected the science of counting bodies. What we do not count, what we conveniently forget are the parents, siblings, and friends whose lives are also shattered when their loved ones die. What we do not count are the lives haunted by grief, those yet unborn who will one day bear the scars of their ancestors\u2019 wars. And bearing those scars, are more likely to perpetuate and multiply the pain of war. We are never able to fully count the\u00a0eventual<\/em>\u00a0casualties of war….”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he adds a pacifist statement that is both Quakerly and Universalist:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Friends, resist with all your heart the temptation to love only some.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re a Universalist pacifist like me, you might find Gulley’s post worth reading in its entirety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first encountered Philip Gulley a couple of decades ago in the book he co-wrote with James Mulholland titled If God Is Love: Why God Will Save Every Person. In that book, Gulley and Mulholland set forth a Quakerly approach to universalism. The current U.S. war in Iran has prompted me to seek out other … Continue reading “Philip Gulley on why war doesn’t work”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,11],"tags":[350,1203,319],"class_list":["post-13319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-culture","category-theology","tag-pacifism","tag-philip-gulley","tag-universalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13320,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319\/revisions\/13320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}