Most Americans can recite the names of famous generals and historic battles. Some can also name champions of nonviolence like Martin Luther King Jr., or recall the struggles for peace and justice that run like a thread through U.S. history. But little attention is paid to the intellectual tradition of nonviolence. Ira Chernus surveys the evolution of this powerful idea from the Colonial Era up to today, focusing on representative movements (Anabaptists, Quakers, Anarchists, Progressives) and key individuals (Thoreau, Reinhold Niebuhr, Dorothy Day, A.J. Muste, King, Barbara Deming), including non-Americans like Mohandas Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh, who have helped form the idea of nonviolence in the United States. American Nonviolence offers an essential guide for both students and activists. -- Provided by publisher
Most Americans can recite the names of famous generals and historic battles. Some can also name champions of nonviolence like Martin Luther King Jr., or recall the struggles for peace and justice that run like a thread through U.S. history. But little attention is paid to the intellectual tradition of nonviolence. Ira Chernus surveys the evolution of this powerful idea from the Colonial Era up to today, focusing on representative movements (Anabaptists, Quakers, Anarchists, Progressives) and key individuals (Thoreau, Reinhold Niebuhr, Dorothy Day, A.J. Muste, King, Barbara Deming), including non-Americans like Mohandas Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh, who have helped form the idea of nonviolence in the United States. American Nonviolence offers an essential guide for both students and activists. -- Provided by publisher
It includes classics such as Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," William James's "The Moral Equivalent of War," and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham City Jail." A section is devoted to what the Lynds call "New Catholicism" and includes selections by Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Jim and Shelley Douglass.
A persuasive account of the philosophy and power of nonviolence organizing, and a resource for building and sustaining effective social movements. Despite the rich history of nonviolent philosophy, many people today are unfamiliar with the basic principles and practices of nonviolence––even as these concepts have guided so many direct-action movements to overturn forms of racial apartheid, military and police violence, and dictatorships around the world. Revolutionary Nonviolence is a crucial resource on the long history of nonviolent philosophy through the teachings of Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., one of the great practitioners of revolution through deliberate and sustained nonviolence. His ongoing work demonstrates how we can overcome violence and oppression through organized direct action, presenting a powerful roadmap for a new generation of activists. Rev. Lawson’s work as a theologian, pastor, and social-change activist has inspired hope and liberation for more than sixty years. To hear and see him speak is to experience the power of the prophetic tradition in the African American and social gospel. In Revolutionary Nonviolence, Michael K. Honey and Kent Wong reflect on Rev. Lawson's talks and dialogues, from his speeches at the Nashville sit-in movement in 1960 to his lectures in the current UCLA curriculum. This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to Rev. Lawson's teachings on how to center nonviolence in successfully organizing for change.
In response to the massive bloodshed that defined the twentieth century, American religious radicals developed a modern form of nonviolent protest, one that combined Christian principles with new uses of mass media. Greatly influenced by the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi, these "acts of conscience" included sit-ins, boycotts, labor strikes, and conscientious objection to war. Beginning with World War I and ending with the ascendance of Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph Kip Kosek traces the impact of A. J. Muste, Richard Gregg, and other radical Christian pacifists on American democratic theory and practice. These dissenters found little hope in the secular ideologies of Wilsonian Progressivism, revolutionary Marxism, and Cold War liberalism, all of which embraced organized killing at one time or another. The example of Jesus, they believed, demonstrated the immorality and futility of such violence under any circumstance and for any cause. Yet the theories of Christian nonviolence are anything but fixed. For decades, followers have actively reinterpreted the nonviolent tradition, keeping pace with developments in politics, technology, and culture. Tracing the rise of militant nonviolence across a century of industrial conflict, imperialism, racial terror, and international warfare, Kosek recovers radical Christians' remarkable stance against the use of deadly force, even during World War II and other seemingly just causes. His research sheds new light on an interracial and transnational movement that posed a fundamental, and still relevant, challenge to the American political and religious mainstream.
Several well known scholars present social and psychological perspectives on nonviolence. Contents: Toward a Theory of the Psychology of Nonviolence, V.K. Kool; Psychological Obstacles to Peace, Michael Wessells; Nuclear War Fears Across the Life Cycle, Stephen McConnell, Barry Duncan, Debra Merrifield; What Moves the Peace Movement: Psychosocial Factors in Historical Perspective, Milton Schwebel; The Differential Psychological Effects of Positive and Negative Approaches to Peace, Richard V. Wagner; Moral Exclusion and Nonviolence: The Japanese American Internment, Donna Nagata; A Social Psychology of Rules of War, Jeffrey Mann; Children as Peacemakers, Jill Alexander, Stephen McConnell; Resiliency and its Relationship to Productivity and Nonviolence, Joanne Joseph; Transforming Myths of War to Create a Legacy of Peace, Michael Britton; Nonviolence: An Empirical Study in India, Manisha Sen; Peace Psychology, Herbert Blumberg; Gandhi's Concept of Love, Ian M. Harris; Nonviolence in the 21st Century, Kenneth E. Boulding; Feminist Debates about Nonviolence, Lynn M. Woehrle; The Center for Nonviolence, Richard L. Johnson; Protective Accompaniment, Patrick G. Coy; Hannah Arendt on Nonviolence and Political Action, Gail M. Presbey; Teaching Human Rights in the Social Sciences, Joseph Wronka; and Exercises in Nonviolent Action, Theodore Herman.
The radical message of Jesus is that there is only one alternative to the common method of confronting violence with more violence. The Only Alternative: Christian Nonviolent Peacemakers in America explores the spiritually active practice of compassionate nonviolence. Here is a journey through the lives of seven courageous American peacemakers who have embodied Christian nonviolence and dedicated their lives to addressing the suffering caused by racial discrimination, slavery, poverty, militarism, nuclear weapons, prisons, environmental degradation, and the psychology of fear and hatred. Here are highlights from the inspirational ideas and actions of Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Rufus Jones, Thomas Kelly, Jim Douglass, and Kathy Kelly. They remind us that to be Christian is to use the power of love to transform spiritual, economic, and social violence. The great turning from violence to nonviolence is the story of Christianity in America. There has never been a more urgent time for this revolutionary teaching to be heard, understood, and lived. "It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence . . ." --Martin Luther King Jr. Human beings are now facing the stark choice between survival and destruction amid myriad forms of violence. The nonviolent peacemakers within this book can inspire the peacemaker within each of us to cultivate a direct relationship with God and love through contemplation, meditation, writing, and compassionate action based in the life and teachings of Jesus.
This book, The State of the American Mind: Stupor and Pathetic Docility Volume One begins to unravel some of the most obvious, perplexing, embarrassing and enduring problems and contradictions of American history and sociology, viz., how could the American revolution that started with the most ringing and most inspiring Declarations of human equality in world history end up establishing the most vicious, exploitative society the world ever knew Black chattel slavery and only ten percent white enfranchisement, etc. Further, how could men of such great wisdom and intellect like George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and others who were Enlightenment scholars and clearly knew that slavery was despicable and evil, because they had variously experienced white servitude and slavery themselves, collude to establish and institutionalize the horrible system of Negro chattel slavery in America; and also disenfranchised over 90 percent of people of their own race actions that racism could not explain. The structural/institutional slavery system they established, and the resultant consequent racism hobbles America today as it did in the past, and forced Eric Holder, the Attorney General to declare that, America is a nation of cowards, when it comes to race discussions. Thus, this book starts with serious critical discussions of race in America and reveals what no textbook has ever done, viz., that most early American whites and Blacks were slaves an uncomfortable fact that would shock most Americans because it contradicts the orthodoxy or the dominant narrative that only Blacks were brought here in chains. Further, the book also shows the year Black slavery started something almost, all textbooks got wrong. It also shows who, was the fi rst Black slave in America something no textbook ever mentions. It also shows when and how racism started in America and many other very sensitive and embarrassing but necessary issues that America avoids but must be frankly discussed for America to move forward. This book therefore shatters the two dominant themes of Americas history and sociology that Blacks were brought into America in chains as slaves while whites came to America in search of freedom, as Harvard educated President Obama famously told us in his race speech. Thus, the crowning lesson of this book, in addition to discussing some critical policy issues like education, health care, etc., is that it discovers the centripetal force of the American society that eluded contemporary Americans because American bosses have laboriously concealed the facts from the public the scary but clearly healthy uniting fact that most Americans are united by their common ancestry, their universal history and experience of servitude, bond-indentures and slavery. Nothing is more universal, more common and more shared in American history and sociology than the fact that most of our ancestors, black and white, were servants, bond-indentures and slaves who were dominated and super-exploited by few overlords. Colonial America was the preferred dumping ground for British, outcasts, rejects, criminals, masterless class, vagabonds, bond-indentures, slaves, etc., until 1776 when Australia replaced America as the British dump for its rejects and surplus citizens. Thus, that America was a nation founded by British rejects and losers is inherently more rational than the prevailing orthodoxy or the Obama theory of Americas founders that they were great honorable men who journeyed across the ocean for freedom because of the obvious reason that good, powerful achieving citizens do not normally emigrate to new uncharted lands.
The new millennium finds humanity situated at critical crossroads. While there are many hopeful signs of cross-cultural engagement and democratic dialogue, it is equally the case that the challenges of warfare and injustice continue to plague nations and communities around the globe. Against this backdrop, there exists a powerful mechanism for transforming crises into opportunities: the philosophy and practice of nonviolence. The expert authors brought together in this volume collectively deploy the essential teachings of nonviolence across a spectrum of contemporary issues. From considering the principles of the French Revolution and encouraging peace through natural resource management to exploring multiculturism and teaching peace in the elementary classroom, this work is broad in scope yet detailed in its approach to the fundamental principles of nonviolence.
