Christina’s Reviews > Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice > Status Update

merton is now discussing how nonviolence, although it directly appeals to the gospel, is regarded as unchristian while reliance on force and cooperation with massive programs of violence is seen as the obvious and elementary Christian duty in America.

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Christian nonviolence refuses to treat other human beings as objects to be manipulated in order to control the course of events and make the future conform to certain rather rigidly determined expectations. Instead, it makes no demands. It does not seek to control so much as to respond and to awaken response in the other.

The chief difference between non-violence and violence is that the latter depends entirely on its own calculations. The former depends entirely on God and His word [fear not, little flock, for the Father has prepared for you a kingdom. Luke 12:32].

"Christian nonviolence is convinced that the manor in which the conflict for truth is wage will itself manifest or obscure the truth. To fight for truth by dishonest, violent, inhuman, or other 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 nonviolence."

Nonviolence is perhaps the most exacting of all forms of struggle, not only because it demands first of all that one be ready to suffer evil and even face the threat of death without violent retaliation, but because it excludes mere transient self-interest, even political, from its considerations. . .The nonviolent resistor is not fighting simply for his truth or his peer conscience . . .He is fighting for everybody.