Principal’s Message

The world in 2026 stands at a deeply alarming threshold of violence. The Russia-Ukraine war – the largest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War – grinds on with catastrophic human cost. The Israel-Gaza conflict has escalated into a regional confrontation. Sudan’s civil war has displaced over twelve million people and killed an estimated 150,000 civilians. Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and numerous other theatres of conflict add to a global landscape of suffering so pervasive that the International Committee of the Red Cross warns it threatens “the very foundations of our humanity.” Closer to home, India witnesses a steep and troubling rise in religious intolerance: documented incidents of violence against Christians surged from 139 in 2014 to 834 in 2024; over 1,318 hate speech events targeting religious minorities were recorded across 21 states in 2025; and Women, Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis, Tribals and ‘Sexual Minorities’ continue to face mob violence, custodial abuse, and the slow structural violence of discriminatory legislation. In such a world, a theological institution’s choice of “Shunning Violence and Nurturing Peace” as its annual theme is not a retreat into piety – it is a prophetic act of resistance, a deliberate alignment with the God who asks of every generation, as God asked of Cain: “Where is your brother?”

The biblical and theological tradition offers not a naïve dream of peace but a demanding vision of shalom – the Hebrew word for wholeness, flourishing, and right relationship with God, neighbour, and creation. Violence, in this framework, is not merely a political problem; it is a theological rupture, the deliberate destruction of what God intends for humanity. The prophets named it fearlessly: Isaiah envisioned swords beaten into ploughshares (Isa. 2:4); Micah demanded justice, kindness, and humility (Micah 6:8); Jeremiah warned against those who cry “peace, peace” when there is no peace (Jer. 6:14). Jesus, born into a world of Roman imperial violence and social exclusion, embodied a “third way”: neither passive surrender nor armed revolt, but the creative nonviolent love that blesses peacemakers as children of God (Matt. 5:9), commands love of enemy (Matt. 5:44), and disarms the cycle of retaliation even at the moment of his own arrest. The early church fathers carried this witness forward: Origen declared that Christians “have become children of peace for the sake of Jesus”; and Tertullian proclaimed that in disarming Peter at Gethsemane, the Lord disarmed every soldier thereafter. The Imago Dei – the image of God inscribed on every human being regardless of religion, caste, or ethnicity – remains the irreducible theological ground for opposing all violence: to violate another person is to desecrate a living icon of God.

Gurukul Lutheran Theological College & Research Institute adopts this theme for 2026-2027 as a call to formation, witness, and action at every level of its institutional life. Academically, the theme invites rigorous engagement with theologies of nonviolence, conflict transformation, and public ethics – with particular attention to Dalit theology, gender justice, ecojustice, interfaith solidarity, and the church’s responsibility in contexts of religious persecution. Liturgically, it calls for honest lament over the violence of our world, prayer that stands with the persecuted, and worship that models the reconciled humanity the church is called to embody. In community life, it demands that Gurukul itself become a demonstration of what it proclaims: a space where caste hierarchies, gender inequality, and regional prejudice are actively dismantled. In public witness, it compels the institution to speak prophetically naming violence wherever it occurs, standing in solidarity with the violated, and refusing the comfortable silence that theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called complicity. This is the peace the world cannot give (John 14:27) – not the peace of suppressed conflict or enforced conformity, but the shalom that springs from justice, the tranquillity that, as Augustine wrote, can only be the “tranquillity of order” where righteousness reigns. Gurukul goes forth this year as a school of peacemakers: those who, grounded in the resurrection hope that love has the final word over violence, dare to sow in James’s words – “in peace a harvest of righteousness” (James 3:18).