The Roots of War Resistance: Pacifism from the Early Church to Tolstoy (review)

Abstract

138Quaker History standing and reconciliation. In his apt introduction, Douglas Steere calls attention to Leonard Kenworthy's subsequent career with Unesco and at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he held a professorship in social studies and international education. Haverford CollegeJohn R. Cary The Roots of War Resistance: Pacifism from the Early Church to Tolstoy. By Peter Brock. Nyack, N.Y.: Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1981. 81 pp. Paper, $4.95. Short though this book is, it is not a broad, interpretive commentary on the history of pacifism. Nor is it the author's own creed on pacifism. It is rather an abbreviated but detailed account in narrative form by a professional historian of the history of pacifism within the Christian tradition from the Roman Empire to about 1914. In effect the book is a summarization of two monumental works by Brock for which he is respected, his Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (1972) and his Pacifism in the United States (1968), and it relies principally on those works for documentation. Unfortunately this book has no index, although it does have a list of suggested readings. Brock describes not so much trends as the specifics of each pacifist movement , such as the Waldenses, Czech Brethren, American non-violent abolitionists , Quakers, and Tolstoyans. He briefly narrates their origin and decline, names their leaders, describes their way of life, and states their methods of refusing to cooperate in war. His presentation is reaUstic and vivid. It moves rapidly. Brock writes with sympathy for pacifists even when he reports their frequent inconsistencies, defections, and backslidings. The book is fruitful in its comparison of one period of history widi another, of one pacifist sect with another, and of sectarian pacifists with non-sectarian pacifists. Again and again some of the same agonizing questions keep arising either expUcitly or implicitly in this narrative. Can pacifists flourish anywhere where individual liberty has not become a tradition? Brock indicates that pacifists were crushed at various times in Russia, Germany, France. Can pacifist groups survive as pacifists where the immediate need to protect their communities from violence seems overwhelming, as in mid-18th century Pennsylvania on the French and Indian frontier, or in the West Indies at about the same time when invasion by foreign powers constantly threatened? Quakers survived as pacifists in Pennsylvania but only by paying die price of withdrawing from poUtics, and diey did not survive in die West Indies. The question also arises, can pacifists make an impact on the world without mixing with it? And if they do mix with the world, how does that affect them? Mennonites in the Netherlands, as they became wealthy and sophisticated, lost their pacifism. In considering the period subsequent to that covered by this book, a fundamental question arises with the introduction in 1945 of weapons which have the ability to destroy mankind; has the relation of pacifists to the world fundamentally changed? State University CollegeCarleton Mabee New Paltz, N.Y.Professor Emeritus of History ...