Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 7642 Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 Dorothy Day pointed out, war may be judged by these criteria too, for the works of war are the exact opposite of the works of mercy. Feed the hungry? No, destroy their crops! Give drink to the thirsty? No, poison their wells! Shelter the homeless? No, bomb their village! The weapons of Christian nonviolence include the spiritual works of mercy; again, the works of war are the exact opposite. Instruct the ignorant? No, lie to them! Counsel the doubtful? No, draft them or imprison them! Console the bereaved? Give them more deaths to grieve! Forgive injuries? Not on your life! Make them pay, ten times over! Authentic nonviolence must be revolution- ary because the social, political, economic order we live under violates the human person in fundamental ways – body, mind, and spirit. The present order is more accurately called dis- order. It kills and maims the body by war and by withholding the means to life from the poor. It violates human intelligence because it thrives on lies – truth is always war’s first casualty. And it violates the human conscience, which instinc- tively shrinks in horror from killing our own. As documented by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, the West Point psychology professor who pioneered the conditioning technique known as killology, overcoming our natural aversion to homicide is a prime task of military training. Wars can be fought only by stilling the voice of conscience. By contrast, nonviolence operates in trans- parency, openness, and truth. Nonviolence recognizes the humanity of the opponent and appeals to “that of God in everyone,” as the Quakers put it – that which the Creator breathed into our first parents and which we all share, even the boss, the landlord, the racist, the oppressor, the warmonger. In struggle, the nonviolent activist does not seek victory but reconciliation, the redemption of the oppo- nent, never his humiliation or annihilation. Therefore, the nonviolent activist always allows the opponent a way to retreat with dignity, an honorable way out of any conflict. The principal weapon of nonviolence is dialogue. Genuine dialogue assumes the good faith of partners and avoids invidious language and ad hominem argument. Dialogue may be suspended at an impasse, but resumption is always a goal. The nonviolent armory includes protest, public dissent, noncooperation, and active resistance, but always with the purpose of re-establishing dialogue. Civil disobedience is the last weapon to be used, not the first, and should be undertaken after careful discernment under spiritual direction. A Spiritual Discipline Christian nonviolence is a way of life, not a tactic. Those who make the principles of non­ violence their own find that they change their way of working, of giving orders and taking them, of teaching, of preaching and ministering, of relating to spouses, children, elders, strangers, and friends as well as opponents. Often adopt- ing nonviolence is part of a conversion process. The nonviolent activist is a man or woman of spiritual discipline, who has peace within, for one cannot give what one does not have. In order to practice Christian nonviolence we have to prepare ourselves through study – nonviolence doesn’t come naturally for most of us. Thomas Merton, the well-known author and Trappist monk, pointed to the superficiality of much of what he saw coming out of the peace movement of the 1960s: lack of clarity in the use of terms, shoddy thinking, and gratuitous assertion. If anything, the years since his death have seen worse. We Christians need to recover what our ancestors in the faith knew about peacemaking. And we need a revolution of the heart. To purify our wills we need to pray. To tame our lusts we need self-control, discipline, and fasting in one way or another. Only then can