Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice

by Thomas Merton

In Faith and Violence , Thomas Merton offers concrete and pungent social criticisms grounded in prophetic faith about such issues as Vietnam, racism, violence, and war.

Genres: Theology, Spirituality, Christianity, Religion, Nonfiction, Catholic, Philosophy

300 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 1968

About the author

Thomas Merton, religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. In December 1941 he entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani and in May 1949 he was ordained to priesthood. He was a member of the convent of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.
Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through his study of mystic practice. His interfaith conversation, which preserved both Protestant and Catholic theological positions, helped to build mutual respect via their shared experiences at a period of heightened hostility. He is particularly known for having pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama XIV; Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki; Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He traveled extensively in the course of meeting with them and attending international conferences on religion. In addition, he wrote books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and how Christianity is related to them. This was highly unusual at the time in the United States, particularly within the religious orders.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure I can accurately convey my admiration of and respect for Thomas Merton using words. All I can say is that I love him as much as I love Madeleine L'Engle, and that's saying a lot for me. I have to thank Jane Brox, who introduced Merton to me through her wonderful book, Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives. I'd never heard of Merton, but Brox discusses his conversion to Catholicism and his decision to be a monk in context of leading a silent and contemplative lifestyle. But she also discusses Merton's writings and his struggles with censorship because of the topics Merton felt most passionately about (the Church censored all writing coming out of the monasteries, basically to make sure they were doctrinally sound but also to make sure they were well-written and wouldn't give the Church a bad name).
Brox writes, "By the 1960s, the Church went beyond questioning individual books. It specifically forbade [Merton] to write on matters of war and civil rights... The reasons given were that it was inappropriate for a monk to write on such subjects, that it was a distraction from his calling, and that it falsified the message of monasticism. Although he was forbidden to publish, Merton found ways of getting around the censors. He wrote articles for the Catholic Worker under the pen names Benedict Monk and Benedict Moore." According to Brox, Merton wrote to his friend, "As for writing: I don't feel that I can in conscience, at a time like this, go on writing just about things like meditation, though that has its point... I think I have to face the big issues." Brox continues to outline Merton's struggles--first separating his works into essays and letters, so he could get them out there then regretting his disobedience, claiming he had chosen to be a monk and had to accept the limitations.

Well, I can't help but be glad that Merton got his work out there some way, somehow, because I absolutely loved reading Faith and Violence. I have so many pages dogeared and so many notes, I practically wrote more than Merton himself.

The book (published in 1968) is separated into four parts: one about non-violent resistance, the second about Vietnam, the third about race, and the fourth about the latest Radical Christian Theology of Merton's day. The fourth part is furthest from the title in theme, but the first three books really highlight the relationship between the terms. Part One reminded me of The Kingdom of God Is Within You, not because Merton and Tolstoy have the same views about non-violent resistance (in fact, Merton doesn't even mention Tolstoy's book, which is somewhat surprising), but just because of some of the ideas and the ways the authors express them. Parts Two and Three are the most controversial, and Part Four is the most about ideas.

This review isn't really doing what I want it do (other than thanking Jane Brox), but it's hard to say much of anything with a book that I just agree with in most ways and that says so many things I've thought and felt and is still so relevant, sometimes chillingly so, a book that's brilliant and astute but also caring and sensitive. I'll end this strange review with a quote from each section. Merton's words will best show why I loved this book so much:

Part One, "Blessed Are the Meek": "The dread of being open to the ideas of others generally comes from our hidden insecurity about our own convictions. We fear that we may be 'convicted'--or perverted--by a pernicious doctrine. On the other hand, if we are mature and objective in our open-mindedness, we may find that in viewing things from a basically different perspective--that of our adversary--we discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideal more realistically."
Part Two, "A Note on The Psychological Causes of War": "We live in a society that tries to keep us dazzled with euphoria in a bright cloud of lively and joy-loving slogans. Yet nothing is more empty and more dead, nothing is more insultingly insincere and destructive than the vapid grins on the billboards and the moron beatitude in the magazines which assure us that we are all in bliss right now. I know of course that we are fools, but I do not think any of us are fools enough to believe that we are now in heaven... I think the constant realization that we are exhausting our vital spiritual energy in a waste of shame, the inescapable disgust at the idolatrous vulgarity of our commercial milieu...is one of the main sources of our universal desperation."

Part Three, "From Non-Violence to Black Power": "Black Power thus claims to be relevant not only to American black people but to people of all colors, everywhere, who are held down in tutelage and subservience by the big white powers--whether American, European, or Russian. It claims to be relevant also to the dissatisfied and disengaged within U.S. society (the hippies). It is part of a world movement of refusal and rejection of the value system we call western culture."

Part Four, "The Death of God and the End of History": "But today, with the enormous amplification of news and of opinion, we are suffering from more than acceptable distortions of perspective. Our supposed historical consciousness, over-informed and over-stimulated, is threatened with death by bloating, and we are overcome with a political elephantiasis which sometimes seems to make all actual forward motion useless if not impossible. But in addition to the sheer volume of information there is the even more portentous fact of falsification and misinformation by which those in power are often completely intent not only on misleading others but even on convincing themselves that their own lies are 'historical truth.'"

If these quotes don't make you want to read more, this book is not for you. My favorite essay is, by far, "Events and Pseudo-Events," but the last one I quoted above is up there as well. I strongly recommend this book for Merton's insights behind the scenes as monk, who as he said, received the news when it was no longer news and could examine and analyze events and society from an outsider's perspective, almost like a Nick Carroway, "within and without." An excellent book that I'm already thinking about rereading. And I will be reading more Merton!

[Jared Kassebaum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most modern readers of Merton will know him most for his contemplative spirituality and attempt to make peace and introductions with Buddhist monks of the east, but his contemporary readers would likely have been more aware of him through his essays on nonviolence and somewhat unique American Catholic opposition to the Vietnam War. This book collects many essays on nonviolence, some explicitly about Vietnam, some about the racial upheaval of the 60s, and some about nonviolence more broadly. I really enjoyed seeing his contemplative faith and his profound thoughts on Union with Christ provide a foundation for nonviolence and practically serve humanity. He says here and elsewhere that true contemplation of God's love and presence will lead to actions of love for fellow man and this is a beautiful collection of that thought. His essays on Father Delp's nonviolence in WWII and his Apologies to an Unbeliever stood out in particular to me. "The most pious prayer can become a blasphemy if he who offers it tolerates or helps to further conditions which are fatal to mankind."

[Beth Peninger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Merton authored this book in 1968 but, unfortunately, it is as relevant in 2017 as it was then. I say unfortunately because we haven't made much progress in the in-between years. Merton is an author on my to-read list. As the saying goes, "So many books, so little time." But I'm finally getting to him thanks to my friend's schooling!
I truly could not, can not, get over how applicable this book from Merton is today, in the year 2017. It's...disheartening. This is one of those titles where, if I were highlighting with yellow, the entire book would be yellow with only small sections of white - or unhighlighted - material/text. I searched for a portion that could serve as a summation quote of the title but there were simply too many to choose from. Drawing from the times he was living in and through in 1967 and 1968, Merton has at-the-ready examples from the Civil Rights Movement, the Detroit riots, the Vietnam war, and the nuclear threats of the - 1968 - day. He also draws from World War II which the world was only 22-23 years removed from at the time.
Merton makes compelling, biblical, arguments for non-violence as resistance to evil. Martin Luther King Jr, of course, serves as the most recent historical example of someone who was successful in leading a movement of change through non-violence. When we lost him we lost so very much. Merton, then although it is true today - perhaps more so, exposes the false beliefs of nationalism being equal to faith in Christ. The two are not the same and there is lengthy discussion about the differences and what being a nationalist actually looks like versus being a disciple of Christ. In part four of Merton's book he veers away from, in my opinion, the topic of the title and has several essays about faith in Christ in its various forms and manifestations.
Clearly this is a book for anyone who is a pacifist. But I would challenge all of my "gun-crazed, I bleed red-white-and-blue, Jesus is a Republican and an American" friends to read this book and allow themselves to be challenged by what Merton has to appropriately and rightly, and biblically, share.

[Brian Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some quotes to consider in 2020 -

We have a duty to live up to our heritage of open-mindedness. We must always be tolerant and fair and never simply revile others for their opinions. The way to silence error is by truth, not by various subtle forms of aggression. But we will always prefer violence to truth if our imaginations are at every moment over-stimulated by frenzied and dangerous fantasies.

Therefore on of the most important tasks of the moment is to recognize the great problem of the mental climate in which we live. Our minds are filled with images which call for violent and erratic reactions. We can hardly recover our senses long enough to think calmly and make reasoned commitments. We are swept by alternate fears and hopes which have no relation to deep moral truth. A protest which merely compounds these fears and hopes with a new store of violent images can hardly help us become men of peace. (p.44-45)

The problem is much more complex, much more tragic, than people have imagined. To begin with, it is something that extends beyond America. It affects the whole world. The race problem of America has been analyzed (by such writers as William Faulkner, for example) as a problem of deep guilt for the sin of slavery. The guilt of white America toward the Negro is simply another version of the guilt of the European colonizer toward all the other races of the world, whether in Asia, Africa, America or Polynesia. (p.134)

Gandhi long ago pointed out that western democracy was on trial…The problem of American Christianity is the same as the problem of Christianity everywhere else: Christianity is suffering a crisis of identity and authenticity, and is being judged by the ability of Christians themselves to abandon unauthentic, anachronistic images and securities, in order to find a new place in the world by a new evaluation of the world and a new commitment in it. (p.138)

In fact we (Christians) are learning that we are as other men are, that we are not a special kind of privileged being, that our faith does not exempt us from facing the mysterious realities of the world with the same limitations as everybody else, and with the same capacity for human failure. Our Christian calling does not make us superior to other men, does not entitle us to judge everyone and decide everything for everybody. We do not have answers to every social problem, and all conflicts have not been decided beforehand in favor of our side. Our job is to struggle along with everybody else and collaborate with them in the difficult, frustrating task of seeking a solution to common problems, which are entirely new and strange to us all. (p.142-143)

What did the radio say this evening? I don’t know. What was on TV? I have watched TV twice in my life. I am frankly not terribly interested in TV anyway. (p.150-151)

Does it not occur to us that if, in fact, we live in a society which is par excellence that of the simulacrum, we are the champion idolaters of all history? (p.152)

My thesis is now clear: in my opinion the root of our trouble is that our habits of thought and the drives that proceed from them are basically idolatrous and mythical. We are all the more inclined to idolatry because we imagine that we are of all generations the most enlightened, the most objective, the most scientific, the most progressive and the most humane. (p. 154)

The great question then is how do we communicate with the modern world? If in fact communication has been reduced to pseudo-communication, to the celebration of pseudo-events and the irate clashing of incompatible myth-systems, how are we to avoid falling into this predicament? How are we to avoid the common obsession with pseudo-events in order to construct what seems to us to be a credible idol?
It is a nasty question, but it needs to be considered, for in it is contained the mystery of the evil of our time.
I do not have an answer to the question, but I suspect the root of it is this: if we love our own ideology and our own opinion instead of loving our brother, we will seek only to glorify our ideas and our institutions and by that fact we will make real communication impossible. (p.163)

…Vietnam seems to teach another perilous lesson: we know how to escalate, but we apparently don’t know how to reverse the process and de-escalate. (p.166)

---the delusions on both sides reinforce and aggravate each other, and there is enough emotional violence packed into America today to blow the whole place sky high, no matter how reasonable some of us may still hope to be. (p.177)

As Christians, we must remember that in Christ there is no meaning to racial divisions. There is no white and black in Christ (p.179)

There is, however, such a thing as collective responsibility, and collective guilt. This is not quite the same as personal responsibility and personal guilt, because it does not usually follow from a direct fully conscious act of choice. (p.180)

…the challenge issued by the Death-of-God theology is not to be evaded. In order to disentangle Christian faith from the crisis and collapse of western culture, and open it to entirely new world perspectives, we have to be able to renounce the mighty spirit that has let himself be set up in the place of God: the Angel of the West. (p.198)

…Dr. Marty adds: “Nationalism can produce an ecstasy which few other idolatries can.” (p.203)

I think the existence of the Christian in the modern world is going to be more and more marginal. We are going to be “Diaspora” Christians in a frankly secular and non-believing society. This is not necessarily as tragic as it may sound, (p.209)

It should not disconcert anyone who knows, from the Bible and from the mystics that the silences of God are also messages with a definite import of their own. (p.211)

My own peculiar task in my Church and in my world has been that of the solitary explorer who, instead of jumping on all the latest bandwagons at once, is bound to search the existential depths of faith in its silences, its ambiguities, and in those certainties which lie deeper than the bottom of anxiety. In these depths there are no easy answers, no pat solutions to anything. It is a kind of submarine life in which faith sometimes mysteriously takes on the aspect of doubt when, in fact, one has to doubt and reject conventional and superstitious surrogates that have taken the place of faith. (p.213)

We would like to be quiet, but our restlessness will not allow it. Hence we believe that for us there can be no peace except in a life filled up with movement and activity, with speech, news, communication, recreation, distraction. We seek the meaning of our life in activity for its own sake, activity without objective, efficacy without fruit, scientism, the cult of unlimited power, the service of the machine as an end in itself. And in all these a certain dynamism is imagined. The life of frantic activity is invested with the noblest of qualities, as if it were the whole end and happiness of man: or rather as if the life of man had no inherent meaning whatever and had to be given a meaning from some external source, from a society engaged in a gigantic communal effort to raise man above himself. Man is indeed called to transcend himself. But do his own efforts suffice for this? (p.216)

Science and technology are indeed admirable in many respects and if they fulfill their promises they can do much for man. But they can never solve his deepest problems. On the contrary, without wisdom, without the intuition and freedom that enable man to return to the root of his being, science can only precipitate him still further into the centrifugal flight that flings him, in all his compact and uncomprehending isolation, into the darkness of outer space without purpose and without objective. (p.224)

…there is in fact no such division in Christianity. It is not a matter of either God or man, but of finding God by loving man, and discovering the true meaning of man in our love for God. Neither is possible without the other. (p.262)

[Adam Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: This books is a series of essays about protest, racism, violence and was the last book published before his death.

I decided to read Faith and Violence after reading Daniel Horan's book on Merton earlier this year. I probably should have just bought a used copy of the book (which is what I think is probably the best and certainly the cheapest option), but instead I used interlibrary loan. The book I received was a first edition hardcover. There is something interesting in reading a first edition  book that came out just over 50 years ago and which clearly had been read, but not by all that many people.

I didn't have time to read the whole book. It came about a week before I went on vacation and I was busy getting ready for vacation or I was actually on vacation. Almost all of the reading I did (about half the book) was in the car. I was primed to read it with a view toward modern use of Merton's ideas because of Horan's essays. And it felt like he was writing with a more contemporary approach toward activism and faith and social problems than some other contemporaries of the era. Part of what I appreciated about Horan's essays is that he both talked about how we can use Merton in contemporary thought and how Merton was a person of his time and limited in some ways by that historical position.

What I was most interested in is how much Merton approached social issues as systems not individual acts or the acts of unattached individuals. This is not just a book about violence "out there" but a discussion with other Christians about how we as Christians uphold violence. In the introduction he explicitly calls out Reinhold  Niebuhr's  "realism" as justifying the use of force and violence. Merton is calling for nonviolent resistance to injustice. Faith and Violence would have been published just before Martin Luther King Jr's assassination. That whole year, and really since 1963, the role of nonviolence resistance was being questioned in the civil rights movement. And in 1968, the resistance to the war in Vietnam was strengthening.

conversationMany who write about nonviolent resistance do so with the explicit understanding that injustice harms both the oppressed and the oppressor. Nonviolence is a means of love for the oppressor.

"The Christian can renounce the protection of the violence and risk being humble, therefore vulnerable, not because he trusts in the supposes efficacy of a gentle and persuasive tactic that will disarm hatred and tame cruelty, but because he believes that the hidden power of the Gospel is demanding to be manifested in and through his own poor person." (p15)

Earlier this year I read a biography of John Lewis and I previously have read a biography of Stokely Carmichael, their fundamental disagreement was about nonviolence. Lewis believed in it as a methodology and ideology, while Carmichael only saw it as a tactic. And once nonviolence was not achieving the goal at the speed he wanted, he dropped it as a tactic. It is very much in this conversation that Merton is writing. Lewis resigned from SNCC in late 1966 by early 1968, Lewis was working for RFK's presidential campaign, until RFK's own assassination.

Merton continues in that essay on to discussed the problem of doing the right thing for the wrong reason or by the wrong means. This is a continual problem with fighting injustice. There is a standard that those who fight injustice must hold themselves to that is different from those who uphold injustice.

Christian non-violence, therefore, is convinced that the manner in which the conflict for truth is wages will itself manifest or obscure the truth. To fight for truth by dishonest, violent, inhuman, or unreasonable means would simply betray the truth one is trying to vindicate. The absolute refusal of evil or suspect means is a necessary element in the witness of non-violence. As Pope Paul said before the United Nations Assembly: "Men cannot be brothers if they are not humble. no matter how justified it may appear, pride provokes tensions and struggles for prestige, domination, colonialism and egoism. In a word, pride shatters brotherhood." He went on to say that attempts to establish peace on the basis of violence were in fact a manifestation of human pride. "If you wish to be brothers, let the weapons fall from your hands. You cannot love with offensive weapons in your hands" (p23)

The book continues discussion of Black Power, Vietnam, and a fourth section that I did not get to. That fourth section may have been more integrated than I think, but the death of God, the book Honest to God, and "godless Christianity" all feel quite different from the earlier discussions of nonviolence, Black power and Vietnam.

I have seen several copies of Faith and Violence in used book stores for under $5. At some point I will probably come back to it, but I am regularly surprised about accessible many older books are.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/faith-and-violence/

[Yvonne Flint · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in the late 1960s, just prior to Merton's untimely death, these essays remain uncomfortably topical. Commercially motivated war and abysmal race relations continue and have evolved further today. His words on the language of faith in a modern world are inspiring to one weary of religious platitudes that support immoral action.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merton is writing this book in the 60's, but you would swear he's addressing the Church and the political situation in 2011. Merton explores the Christian response in the face of conflict, and specifically critiques the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement after Martin Luther King.

[Adam Gossman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reason I love and adore Thomas Merton!

[Gene Bales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent political and religious book. Essays still as relevant now as in 1968.

[Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

As part of a “theology of resistance,” Merton in this book “emphasizes reason and humane communication rather than force” but “admits the possibility of force in a limit-situation when everything else fails.”

Today, if we ask about “the real moral problems” of “modern warfare,” we must focus not on “rare instances of hand-to-hand combat, but in the remote planning and organization of technological destruction.” (p. 6) “But our antiquated theology myopically focused on individual violence alone fails to see this. It shudders at the phantasm of muggings and killings where a mess is made on our own doorstep, but blesses and canonizes the antiseptic violence of corporately organized murder because it is respectable, efficient, clean, and above all profitable.” (p. 7) “The problem of violence, then, is not the problem of a few rioters and rebels, but the problem of a whole social structure which is outwardly ordered and respectable, and inwardly ridden by psychopathic obsessions and delusions.” (p. 3)

For example: A “scientific and technological mentality” leads us to believe that “the problem of war turns into a problem of engineering. We forget that we are dealing with human beings instead of rocks, oil, steel, water, or coal. Hence the single failure of the bulldozer mentality in Vietnam. Yet apparently the only answer of the Pentagon is to get a bigger bulldozer.” (p. 45)

In an essay “Blessed Are the Meek” originally published in Fellowship, Merton says that non-violence may aim to “make a deal” or “to gain publicity and to show up the oppressor for what he is,” but beyond that, if non-violence is to “really make sense,” it must also seek to transform the oppressor by “opening his eyes to new values.” Ultimately, non-violence must not be used opportunistically, for example, “for a purely selfish or arbitrary end” or “to gain political advantage at the expense of the opponent’s violent mistakes.” Controlling material reality is a valid and necessary endeavor, but a “person-oriented” approach goes beyond that insofar as it “does not seek so much to control as to respond, and to awaken response.” Or, as he put it in another essay, "Non-Violence and the Christian Conscience": Non-violence seeks “one’s just rights without violating the rights of anyone else,” and furthermore aspires “not only for the good of the one who is unjustly oppressed, but also for the good of the oppressor.” (p. 37)

“Non-violence is not,” he underscores, “simply a way of proving one’s point and getting what one wants without being involved in behavior that one considers ugly and evil.”

He is also concerned that our communication is mostly just “snake-handling” for show. Being dramatic about politics is snake-handling. “’News’ is largely made up of this liturgy of pseudo-events and irrelevant witness.” (p. 159)

The end of the book becomes more theological. He's sympathetic to the "Death of God" theologians who were saying, not that God doesn't exist, but that the old ways of talking about God have to die and make room for new language and thought. He says “we are living in a world which is in many ways ‘post-Christian’ and acting as if we [Christians] were still running things, still in a position to solve all the world’s problems and tell everybody what to do next.” That most people don’t care about Christianity’s “official pronouncements” is “no disaster. It is really a liberation. We no longer have to take ourselves so abominably seriously as ‘Christians’ with a public and capital ‘C.’” (p. 142)

As a collection of essays, they are on closely related themes, but there isn't an overarching structure that makes a clear thesis and brings the reader from Point A to Point B. The themes are mostly timeless (and I mostly agree with his opinions), though the details he focuses on are from the Second World War through the Vietnam War (from an American perspective) and there isn't an obvious way to automatically "update" that wisdom for the 2020s. Today's reader has to do that work to keep the teachings relevant.

[Brandon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This topic seemed right up Merton's alley: not only is he often grouped among the "progressive" or "counter-cultural" Catholics of the '60s (alongside, for instance, Daniel and Philip Berrigan), but his delve into Buddhism and other East Asian philosophy and theology should bring in some strong thoughts on violence and non-violence.

What I expected to find was something in the mode of a treatise, a deep-delving discussion, with some sort of final proposal at the end: what should the Christian's relationship with violence be?

Unfortunately, this volume was mostly just a sheaf of various topical articles he had written over the years (at least, so it seemed per the style and occasional comments: there was no mention of prior publication information for any essay). They were grouped by topic: the pacifist resistors of World War II (Franz Jägerstätter, Simone Weil, Fr. Alfred Delp, etc.), the Vietnam War, the African-American civil rights clashes.

One can write a book of topical essays that are then brought together into an overarching theme; Merton attempts this in the introductory essay to each section. Yet, in the end, I never felt a clear grasp of his views. Early in the book, there is some good, strong discussion of non-violence, of how non-violence is a goal in and of itself, of how the non-violent resistor is aiming at supporting the truth, not any particular side. All well and good on its own, but certainly the resistors Merton discusses in this book were on a clear side. (Indeed, not being on a clear side was Simone Weil’s greatest regret: in keeping with her pure pacificism of the time, she supported the gifting of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, thinking that “stopping the war machine” was more important than the discomfort of a single nation.)

Merton clearly supports the resistors he discusses throughout the essays in this book, and he has some attempts at a theology of resistance. But I feel he never really squares his disinterested ideal of non-violence with the necessarily-partisan nature of resistance—at least, he does not do so in this book. (I haven’t read enough of his other writings to know if he covers the topic better elsewhere.) Instead, what we get is an argument for a completely disinterested non-violence, and then pages and pages on resistors, some of whom were not non-violent (Weil ended up joining the French Resistance, for instance). Even for those who were truly non-violent—like many in the civil rights clashes—their non-violent resistance certainly did not feel disinterested.

Given how topical many of the essays felt, I am particularly frustrated by a lack of context regarding when they were written and (possibly?) published. Some mentions are made of the stormy “summer of ‘63,” and there are frequent mentions to the (then-ongoing) Second Vatican Council. But I think greater context would have helped with a bit more understanding about these essays.

Though I would have liked such context, I could have overlooked it more if there were a better synthesis in this work. As it is, I simply feel unclear about Merton’s views. How does non-partial non-violence mesh with a theology of resistance? Is non-violence distinct from meekness? Is any kind of resistance a kind of violence in itself? How exactly does faith interact with violence (the titular theme of the book)?

Perhaps Merton’s other books explain his thought more clearly, but I think Faith and Violence is too disjointedly topical and too lacking in synthesis. It is simply an unsatisfying read.

(I had forgotten until I had finished this entire review that I did not finish the last quarter of the book, though I skimmed it: it's possible I overlooked some better synthesis at the end, but I don't think I did.)

[Jed Sanford · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Faith and Violence, Catholic monk Thomas Merton addresses and critiques the pervasive Christian attitude of condemning individual violence, while glossing over or condoning institutionalized or state-sponsored violence. In part 1, he explores the Christian practice of nonviolent resistance. In part 2, he delivers a Christian critique of the Vietnam War. In part 3, he gives a sympathetic assessment of the Black Power movement. In part 4, he gives a sympathetic, yet critical, assessment of the "Death of God" theology movement.
Faith and Violence reads more like a collection of various reflections grouped around certain themes than a single, well-structured book. And part 4, while interesting, does not really seem to fit with the theme of violence found in the other parts. Much of the book is spent discussing the current events of the 60s, and does not (at least directly) apply to the current day. However, throughout the book, there are moments of profound theological reflection and insight. It is a book worth reading for anyone interested in what Christianity has to say on the subjects of violence, racism, and modernity.

[Paul Hoehn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merton is a revelation to me. While some of the essays in this volume are too occasional, or too off the mark, to make them worthy of a general recommendation, Merton as a prophetic and passionate defender of contemplative life in the twentieth century gave voice to many of my own religious convictions and misgivings in a way I have never seen put down in print.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely prophetic in more ways than one

[haley whitaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Dang dang dang dang dang, Merton is scathingly prophetic at many points in here. I had no idea what to expect from this book, but every chapter stunned me in a different way.

[Tomek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may still be a Catholic if I had read books like this during my stint in Catholic school. Merton writes with a humility, patience, and poetic simplicity that belies his incredible insight and intellect. His writing clearly lays out a call to nonviolent action in the face of the dominant culture of violence in which many of us live. He then shows how it can be applied to several of the social issues of his day. While the section on the Vietnam War is somewhat dated, the core of the message can be applied to the wars that rage today. Extraordinarily prescient and progressive for his time, Merton's chapters on the Civil Rights and Black Power movements still ring true today with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It would be considered progressive today, much less almost 50 years ago. I'll close with a few quotes that resonated with me:

"The problem of violence, then, is the a problem of a few rioters, but the problem of a whole social structure which is outwardly ordered and respectable, but inwardly ridden by psychopathic obsessions and delusions...a mythology which simply legalizes the use of force by big criminals against little criminals whose small-scale criminality is largely caused by the large-scale injustice under which they live."

"The problem arises not when theology admits that force can be necessary, but when it does so in a way that implicitly favors the claims of the powerful and self-seeking establishment against the common good of mankind or against the rights of the oppressed."

"A non-violent victory, while far more difficult to achieve, stands a better chance of curing the illness instead of contracting it. The essential difference here is that non-violence seeks to win not by destroying or even humiliating the adversary, but by convincing him there is a higher...common good...to turn him from an adversary into a collaborator."

"We must frankly face the possibility that the non-violence of the European or American preaching Christian meekness may conceivably be adulterated by bourgeois feelings and an unconscious desire to preserve the status quo against violent upheaval."

"The non-violence of the weak simply submits to evil without resistance. Effective non-violence (the non-violence of the strong)_ is that which opposes evil with serious and positive resistance."

"I do believe that the Christian is obligated...to seek out effective and authentic ways of peace in the midst of violence. But merely to demand support and obedience to an established disorder which is violent through and through will not qualify."

"If we love our own ideology and our own opinion instead of loving our brother, we will seek only to glorify our ideas and our institutions and by the fact we will make real communication possible."

"Few of us have actively chosen to oppress and mistreat the Negro. But nevertheless we have all more or less acquiesced in and consented to a state of affairs in which the Negro is treated unjustly, and in which his unjust treatment is directly or indirectly to the advantage of people like ourselves..."

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of essays. The best are at the beginning and have eerie implications for modern-day events and culture. If it were that alone I would give it a 5/5. The remainder of the book is an interesting dive into the 1960s cultural events: Vietnam, Civil Rights Movement, and the secularization of religion. The first two were interesting but I am admittedly removed from the issues in the "God is dead" movement besides the hints of modern liberal theology.

Merton offers a healthy critique of the violent American culture on all sides and the unnecessary actions of war and revolt. His analysis of military technology is chilling — given how he seems to predict a time when warfare will largely consist of remote-controlled killing.

This book is worth the read for the first half alone.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful, radical, quiet meditations & discussions from one of the great American Catholic writers.

[I read this on the bus during my first semester at the U of M, and before philosophy class.:]

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was hard to get through, but he made some good points.

[Rick Lee Lee James · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's amazing how current this book feels even though it was written in the 1960's. A very good and very challenging read.

[Sarah Boyette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't prepared for how relevant this is to modern day struggles. It was written in the 1960s but is very relevant today. My second favorite of his works.