Christian Pacifism - Christian Pacifism in Action

Christian Pacifism in Action

From the beginning of the First World War, Christian pacifist organizations emerged to support Christians in denominations other than the historic peace churches. The first was the interdenominational Fellowship of Reconciliation ("FoR"), founded in Britain but soon joined by sister organizations in other countries. Pacifist organizations serving specific denominations are more or less closely allied with the FoR: they include the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, Pax Christi (Roman Catholic), the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, the Methodist Peace Fellowship, and so forth. The Network of Christian Peace Organisations (NCPO) is a UK-based ecumenical peace network of 28 organizations. Some of these organizations do not take strictly pacifist positions, describing themselves instead as advocating nonviolence, and some either have members who would not consider themselves Christians or are explicitly interfaith. However, they share historical and philosophical roots in Christian pacifism.

In some cases Christian churches, even if not necessarily committed to Christian pacifism, have supported particular campaigns of nonviolent resistance, also often called civil resistance. Examples include the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (a grouping of churches in the southern United States) in supporting the US civil rights struggle in the 1960s; the Chilean Catholic Church's support for the civic action against authoritarian rule in Pinochet's Chile in the 1980s; and the Polish Catholic Church's support for the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s.

Walter Wink writes that "There are three general responses to evil: (1) passivity, (2) violent opposition, and (3) the third way of militant nonviolence articulated by Jesus. Human evolution has conditioned us for only the first two of these responses: fight or flight." This understanding typifies Walter Wink's book, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way.