Christian Nonviolence Research Articles

Introduction: Falling Between Two Schools

Abstract This introductory article situates research into Islamic notions of pacifism and nonviolence by considering interpretive challenges that include the history of Eurocentrism and the challenge of interdisciplinarity. It argues that both academic Philosophers and Religious Studies specialists confront a range of disciplinary challenges in interpreting and explaining Islamic nonviolence and pacifism. Moreover, the paper argues that the neglect of Islamic nonviolence in the modern Western academy is also the result of residual Eurocentrism, reflected in the fact that Christian nonviolence is better known and more widely studied in the Anglo-American world than Islamic nonviolence. This introductory article proposes that paying attention to disciplinary silos and Eurocentric biases can help explain the neglect of Islamic pacifism. This neglect is a contingent result of historical, cultural, and disciplinary factors; and there is no valid reason to exclude Islamic nonviolence from academic study.

Review of David C. Cramer and Myles Werntz, A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence: Key Thinkers, Activists, and Movements for the Gospel of Peace

A review of David C. Cramer and Myles Werntz, _A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence: Key Thinkers, Activists, and Movements for the Gospel of Peace.

Book Review: A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence: Key Thinkers, Activists, and Movements for the Gospel of Peace by David C. Cramer and Myles Werntz

Book Review: <i>A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence: Key Thinkers, Activists, and Movements for the Gospel of Peace</i> by David C. Cramer and Myles Werntz

Jacques Ellul: A Companion to His Major Works

Jacques Ellul: A Companion to His Major Works

Działalność pastora Jamesa Lawsona w Nashville 1958-1960 („nonviolent workshop”, sit-ins) – studium przypadku walki o zmiany społeczno-polityczne

In Nashville in 1958 Reverend James Lawson and Reverend Kelly Miller Smith (NCLC) started organising „nonviolent workshop”. Lawson began teaching and train local residents in the techniques of the Gandhi philosophy of direct nonviolent protest. On February 14 and 28, 1960, African American students launched their first full-scale sit-ins. Throughout the spring, students conducted numerous sit-ins and boycott. They suffered physical abuse, arrests, but held to the concept of Christian nonviolence. On April 19, after bombing damaged the home of Z. Alexander Looby (defense counsel for the students), thousand of black and some white Americans marched to Nashville’s City Hall. On May 10, 1960, Nashville became the first major city to begin desegregating its public facilities. The Nashville movement had been planned over several months, and served as a model for future demonstrations against segregation.

Christians as Levites: Rethinking Early Christian Attitudes toward War and Bloodshed via Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine

AbstractThis article seeks to break the scholarly deadlock regarding attitudes toward war and bloodshed held by early Christian thinkers. I argue that, whereas previous studies have attempted to fit early Christian stances into one or another “unitary-ethic” framework, the historical-textual data can be best accounted for by positing that many early Christian writers held to a “dual-ethic” orientation. In the latter, certain actions would be viewed as forbidden for Christians but as legitimate for non-Christians in the Roman Empire. Moreover, this dual-ethic stance can be further illuminated by viewing it in connection with the portrayal in the Hebrew Bible of the relation between Levites and the other Israelite tribes. This framing enables us to gain a clearer understanding not only of writers like Origen and Tertullian, who upheld Christian nonviolence while simultaneously praising Roman imperial military activities, but also of writers such as Augustine, whose theological-ethical framework indicates a strong assumption of a dual-ethic stance in his patristic predecessors.

Mourning for forgiveness

This article proposes a new understanding of unconditional forgiveness as a human moral act, based on brief considerations of Scripture and atonement theology, as well as attention to forgiveness as a public and pastoral practice. The article seeks to define unconditional forgiveness as a specific and limited discipline of Christian non-violence, and as a pastoral and spiritual practice of Christian mourning.

Broadening the Ecclesiocentric Claim

Much discussion surrounding Christian nonviolence in the late twentieth century has centered around the ecclesiocentric version popularized by Stanley Hauerwas. In this essay, I assess the manner in which virtue is connected to internal church practices for Hauerwas, such that displaying nonviolence external to the church risks losing the formative nature of church life. Using examples from contemporary proponents, I argue that when internal church practices, such as prayer, economic sharing, and interpersonal reconciliation are performed publically, they form their practitioners in the virtues which Hauerwas values, but in a way which transposes nonviolence into a public key.

The Black Peoples Unity Movement and Friends: The Brief Emergence of an Interracial Black Power Movement in Camden, New Jersey, 1968

Abstract This article examines the interracial alliances forged in 1968 in Camden, New Jersey, between Black and white clergy, the urban Black Peoples Unity Movement (BPUM), and the suburban Friends of the Black Peoples Unity Movement (FBPUM). This coalition complicates the histories of Black Power militancy and Christian nonviolence by highlighting points of intersection and cooperation during the long civil rights movement in a secondary city. Even though militant rhetoric pervaded the movement in Camden, activists organized across race and despite ideology. This finding is compelling because the prevailing research demonstrates that other cities, even those nearby, could not sustain interracial cooperation after the widespread dissemination of Black Power politics in the mid-1960s. Camden’s story, while seemingly unique, is potentially suggestive of a larger, less visible aspect of the movement. In the wake of urban renewal, a shifting economy, and lack of adequate homes and schools, Black militants and nonmilitant Black and white Christians alternately compromised and reconfigured their own values to promote the shared goal of equality in their community.

A Faith Not Worth Fighting For: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Nonviolence. Edited by TrippYork and Justin BronsonBarringer. The Peaceable Kingdom Series. Telford, PA: Cascadia Publishing House, 2012. Pp. xi + 243. $28.00.

A Faith Not Worth Fighting For: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Nonviolence. Edited by TrippYork and Justin BronsonBarringer. The Peaceable Kingdom Series. Telford, PA: Cascadia Publishing House, 2012. Pp. xi + 243. $28.00.

Michael G. Long (ed), Review Christian Peace and Nonviolence, A Documentary History

Michael G. Long (ed), Review Christian Peace and Nonviolence, A Documentary History

Christian peace and nonviolence: a documentary history

Christian peace and nonviolence: a documentary history

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy

Kingdom to Commune: Protestant Pacifist Culture Between World War I and the Vietnam Era and Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy

Review of: "Kingdom to Commune: Protestant Pacifist Culture Between World War I and the Vietnam Era" by Patricia Applebaum, and "Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy" by Joseph Kip Kosek.

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy – By Joseph Kip Kosek

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy – By Joseph Kip Kosek

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy (review)

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy (review)

Sites of violence, sites of grace: Christian nonviolence and the traumatized self

Sites of violence, sites of grace: Christian nonviolence and the traumatized self

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy. By Joseph Kip Kosek. Columbian Studies in Contemporary American History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. xii + 352 pp. $50.00 cloth.

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy. By Joseph Kip Kosek. Columbian Studies in Contemporary American History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. xii + 352 pp. $50.00 cloth.

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy (review)

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy (review)

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy

Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy