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

When protest becomes desperate and seemingly extreme, then perhaps one reason for this is that the ones protesting have given up hope of a fair hearing, and therefore seek only to shock or to horrify. On the other hand, perhaps the public is too eager to be shocked and horrified and to refuse a fair hearing.

The human race today is like an alcoholic who knows that drink will destroy him and yet he always has good reasons why he must continue to drink. Such is man and his fatal addiction to war. He is not capable of seeing a realistic alternative to massive violence. He does not really want peace, in the sense that he is not capable of making an efficacious decision in favor of peace rather than war when threatened.

[We have] the most serious obligation to face the inadequacy of familiar attitudes and to get reeducated. Each of us has to unlearn an ingrained tendency toward destructive thinking. Each of us has to get rid of a systematic moral myopia which excuses acts of barbarism when justified by appeals to patriotism. Every time we renounce reason and patience to solve a conflict by violence, we sidestep this obligation.

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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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.