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The World Task of Pacifism
It is a common thing to hear people of practically all schools of thought say that what is going on today is not a war in the ordinary sense of the term but a revolution. One of the leaders of the younger generation of pacifists said to me recently that for the most part our pacifist movement is not aware how profound and sweeping are the changes that are coming and that, as a consequence, we pacifists are still approaching our tasks with a narrow and provincial vision and on a petty scale.
On the other hand, Gerald Heard has said that the pacifist movement alone can qualify as the “receiver” for the bankrupt western world, which faces extinction unless pacifists are prepared to “take over” presently. I believe this to be a sober statement of fact. I shall try to explain why and how it is so.
On the other hand, Gerald Heard has said that the pacifist movement alone can qualify as the “receiver” for the bankrupt western world, which faces extinction unless pacifists are prepared to “take over” presently. I believe this to be a sober statement of fact. I shall try to explain why and how it is so.
33 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 6, 2016
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About the author
A.J. Muste
26 books8 followersAbraham Johannes Muste (sometimes credited as Abraham John Muste) was born in the Netherlands in 1885 and came to America at age six years. Grew up in Michigan. Ordained a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church in 1909. Graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 1913. A pacifist, he opposed U.S. entry into both world wars. Director of Brookwood Labor College in Massachusetts during the 1920s. Later executive director of the F.O.R. (Fellowship of Reconciliation). Had a long history of activism and leadership in progressive Christian and labor causes, civil rights, and war resistance. A strong proponent of nonviolent direct action. Died in 1967.
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January 24, 2021
Written in 1941, prior I believe to the US entering WWII, by labor, nonviolence and civil rights activist A J Muste, who's history and influence on all three fields is worth exploring separately. Relevant to this work, he had become the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist movement, in 1940. As pacifism/nonviolence is one of the core testimonies of Quakerism, it isn't surprising to see him contribute to the Pendle Hill pamphlets.
Responding to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin seemed to present challenges for many Quakers given the dialogue within several pamphlets released during this period-- and the absence of pamphlets during the height of the war.
He begins this short work by chastising secular mankind for putting the human above nature. "Out of Renaissance and reformation grew a great impulse for the liberation of the human spirit and its various cultural expressions... From this point, however, there was a tendency to set man at the center of the universe, a tendency to conceive of man as really the highest form of moral being ... Whenever man is thus cut off from the living source and end of his being, which is deep within and yet infinitely beyond himself, disaster overtakes him and his societies." (p. 6)
He is willing to group those who blindly follow these three dictators with those who follow political bosses, corporate CEOS and movie idols (this was before other entertainment forms and sports had risen to their current level of idolatry). He quotes Dostoevsky's character, "if there is no God, then I am God" as the summation of this secular fault. On the other side, in Muste's equation, are those who "bow the knee before God."
"And when men come to believe that, when they really believe there is no objective Good for which they can live; no law of reality to which high and low are truly subject; no One in all the universe more honest, more dependable, more capable of living in and building up a free society than they are themselves; then they cannot respect and trust themselves or one another." (p. 7)
Muste then spends time hypothesizing Europe after the war ends – regardless of the victors – and most importantly the very active role to be taken up by the religious pacifist movement toward positive social change. "Should the religious pacifist movement think of itself as a mass movement for achieving social change by nonviolence? It seems to me increasingly clear that we can no longer evade the responsibility and the challenge." (p. 15)
It's a good section of the pamphlet, challenging the individual to think about their own conflicts between declared values and actions. That need for resolve and courage to establish/maintain our integrity and virtue is not asked enough of ourselves, I fear. At least I don't ask it of myself sufficiently.
Muste provides a good prod and lays out four aspects of the "Gandhian movement" as a guide. Note this is before Gandhi's success and winning India's freedom from Britain. I summarize them here:
1. any movement which undertakes to give leadership or help in building a better world must give much attention to the ordering of the economic life. ...It must not only invent but it must experiment with schemes for a more decentralized human and cooperative way of living. (p. 23)
2. the expression of our basic philosophy of life in the economic sphere now rather than some day in the future when a new system is established. (p. 23)
3. manual work has important effects on the individual spirit and that corporate (group) manual activity is a powerful agent for unifying pacifist groups within and also for unifying them with their non-pacifist neighbors. (p. 25)
4. It is a political movement as well.
Muste says people will follow the movement is we speak truth AND in all of our actions live deliberately according to those truths.
So he defines a very active commitment to pacifism that is quite different than the quite, reserved, acquiescence the term takes so often today. Instead Muste inspiringly calls it is a "fidelity to conscience" that may cost the individual popularity or tangible losses, but "still has the power to win the respect of men who also have 'that of God' in in them." (p. 34)
That last quote is as little hard to interpret. Quakers often quote or paraphrase a George Fox's comment about finding that of God in all men. But Muste seems to be referring to respect from [fellow] Quakers, narrowing his audience and the suggestion that others outside the Society of Friends aren't able to share the respect of living a virtuous pacifist life. This is even more confusing for me when Muste dedicated much of the pamphlet to describing the power of Gandhian methods.
The awkward or confusing phrase of that one statement should not take away too much from the intent I think Muste intends with his provocation for active pacifism. His audience might have been fellow Quakers, but the message should bear value for all who wish for a more peaceful human experience. As he says, "To break out of the hard shell of the Self, which is all the time seeking to defend itself against its brothers and therefore commit aggression against them; to know in one's inmost being the unity of all men [being} in God; to express love at every moment and in every relationship, to be channels of this quiet, unobtrusive, persistent force which is always there, which ever goes on after 'the tumult and the shouting dies; the captains and the kings depart'; – this is the meaning of pacifism. (p. 36) [the quote is from Rudyard Kipling's poem Recessional.]
Responding to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin seemed to present challenges for many Quakers given the dialogue within several pamphlets released during this period-- and the absence of pamphlets during the height of the war.
He begins this short work by chastising secular mankind for putting the human above nature. "Out of Renaissance and reformation grew a great impulse for the liberation of the human spirit and its various cultural expressions... From this point, however, there was a tendency to set man at the center of the universe, a tendency to conceive of man as really the highest form of moral being ... Whenever man is thus cut off from the living source and end of his being, which is deep within and yet infinitely beyond himself, disaster overtakes him and his societies." (p. 6)
He is willing to group those who blindly follow these three dictators with those who follow political bosses, corporate CEOS and movie idols (this was before other entertainment forms and sports had risen to their current level of idolatry). He quotes Dostoevsky's character, "if there is no God, then I am God" as the summation of this secular fault. On the other side, in Muste's equation, are those who "bow the knee before God."
"And when men come to believe that, when they really believe there is no objective Good for which they can live; no law of reality to which high and low are truly subject; no One in all the universe more honest, more dependable, more capable of living in and building up a free society than they are themselves; then they cannot respect and trust themselves or one another." (p. 7)
Muste then spends time hypothesizing Europe after the war ends – regardless of the victors – and most importantly the very active role to be taken up by the religious pacifist movement toward positive social change. "Should the religious pacifist movement think of itself as a mass movement for achieving social change by nonviolence? It seems to me increasingly clear that we can no longer evade the responsibility and the challenge." (p. 15)
It's a good section of the pamphlet, challenging the individual to think about their own conflicts between declared values and actions. That need for resolve and courage to establish/maintain our integrity and virtue is not asked enough of ourselves, I fear. At least I don't ask it of myself sufficiently.
Muste provides a good prod and lays out four aspects of the "Gandhian movement" as a guide. Note this is before Gandhi's success and winning India's freedom from Britain. I summarize them here:
1. any movement which undertakes to give leadership or help in building a better world must give much attention to the ordering of the economic life. ...It must not only invent but it must experiment with schemes for a more decentralized human and cooperative way of living. (p. 23)
2. the expression of our basic philosophy of life in the economic sphere now rather than some day in the future when a new system is established. (p. 23)
3. manual work has important effects on the individual spirit and that corporate (group) manual activity is a powerful agent for unifying pacifist groups within and also for unifying them with their non-pacifist neighbors. (p. 25)
4. It is a political movement as well.
Muste says people will follow the movement is we speak truth AND in all of our actions live deliberately according to those truths.
So he defines a very active commitment to pacifism that is quite different than the quite, reserved, acquiescence the term takes so often today. Instead Muste inspiringly calls it is a "fidelity to conscience" that may cost the individual popularity or tangible losses, but "still has the power to win the respect of men who also have 'that of God' in in them." (p. 34)
That last quote is as little hard to interpret. Quakers often quote or paraphrase a George Fox's comment about finding that of God in all men. But Muste seems to be referring to respect from [fellow] Quakers, narrowing his audience and the suggestion that others outside the Society of Friends aren't able to share the respect of living a virtuous pacifist life. This is even more confusing for me when Muste dedicated much of the pamphlet to describing the power of Gandhian methods.
The awkward or confusing phrase of that one statement should not take away too much from the intent I think Muste intends with his provocation for active pacifism. His audience might have been fellow Quakers, but the message should bear value for all who wish for a more peaceful human experience. As he says, "To break out of the hard shell of the Self, which is all the time seeking to defend itself against its brothers and therefore commit aggression against them; to know in one's inmost being the unity of all men [being} in God; to express love at every moment and in every relationship, to be channels of this quiet, unobtrusive, persistent force which is always there, which ever goes on after 'the tumult and the shouting dies; the captains and the kings depart'; – this is the meaning of pacifism. (p. 36) [the quote is from Rudyard Kipling's poem Recessional.]
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