“A BRIEF HISTORY OF NONVIOLENCE”

“A BRIEF HISTORY OF NONVIOLENCE”

A Sermon for Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday

by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger

at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans

Sunday, January 20, 2008

I was once asked to lead a service at a UU church (that shall remain nameless) on the weekend before Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday; I said I would preach on some aspect of Dr. King’s life and work. The person arranging the service assured me that I didn’t have to feel obligated to do that, as they did not always do a service for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I find it sad that there are Unitarian Universalist churches that do not celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, or only do so occasionally. I am glad that our congregation has a regular practice of marking this important weekend; to me, it shows our commitment to the causes of racial justice and nonviolence.

This morning, in honor of Dr. King, I will attempt a brief history of nonviolence in the West. The nonviolence taught by Dr. King did not arise in a vacuum, but was instead arrived at through a direct line of transmission and inspiration, and it is important that we remember the antecedents to King’s work. The task I have set for myself is impossible to accomplish in the time allotted, but I hope that the whirlwind tour on which we’re about to embark will whet your appetite to learn more about the movements of what Gandhi called “the great eternal law of nonviolence.” (In order to keep this sermon a reasonable length, I will not today be treating the teachings of nonviolence that can be found in Eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Taoism.)

The first known teacher of nonviolence in the Western canon is, of course, Jesus of Nazareth. His famous dictum, “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your cloak, give your tunic as well” becomes all the more remarkable when one realizes that in Jesus’ day, the poor folks he was speaking to pretty much had only those 2 garments to their name. Thus, literally following Jesus’ admonition would leave someone naked. (Some commentators believe that this was the point, since the very public nakedness of the oppressed person would be a kind of public rebuke to the oppressor.)

It was not until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in the midst of war that Christianity would be transformed into a religion that could develop theories of “just war” and holy war. In the earliest days, devout Christians were resolutely pacifist; many went gladly to their deaths, taking the example of the first martyr, Stephen, whose saint’s day is December 26. (Touchingly, Stephen’s last words before he was stoned to death presaged the final words of Ed Johnson, an innocent black man murdered at the hands of a white lynch mob in Chattanooga in 1901: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”) Even though the institutional church all but abandoned non-violence, what Jesus taught had subversive implications in centuries to come.

In the mid-1800s, the nonviolence inherent in the teachings of Jesus inspired a native people in the face of oppressive colonialism. The Maori Parihaka movement of New Zealand was developed by chief Te Whiti as a Christian-based political strategy designed to hold the whenua (land) for the tangata (people). Instead of constructing a highly fortified village in which to defend themselves against the encroaching British (as did other tribes), Te Whiti created an open village of peace called Parihaka in the shadow of the sacred volcano Taranaki. Basically, the strategy consisted of unarmed struggle against the British occupiers by working the land (thus proving and consolidating ownership), while keeping the restive Maori toa (warriors) occupied in nonviolent agricultural work. Prescient of Martin Luther King’s tactics a century later, British jails soon filled with an endless stream of Maori, whose only crimes were fence-building and plowing. Eventually, even the British judges tired of the unrelenting tide of passive peaceful prisoners. Today, New Zealand is a nation with a dual culture and 2 official languages, and Parihaka is remembered by Maori and pakeha (whites) as the world’s first organized movement of nonviolent resistance.

Similarly, a religious movement to take back land appropriated by armed invaders arose among Native American peoples of the U.S. in the 19^th century. Called the Ghost Dance, it was unusual because, unlike previous struggles against the whites, the Ghost Dance united people of different tribes, and wove together different spiritual traditions; it was also nonviolent, requiring that followers be unarmed. It was believed by some that performing the Ghost Dance would provide immunity from white soldiers’ bullets. It did not, of course, and U.S. Army soldiers slaughtered the last of the peaceful men, women, children, and old people of the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee, South Dakota on December 29, 1890. Their spirits continue to inspire Native American activists today.

Although neither Unitarianism nor Universalism were part of the historic American “peace churches,” still, in the 19^th century Universalist minister Adin Ballou, minister to the Unitarian congregation in Hopedale, Massachusetts, wrote A Treatise on Christian Non-Resistance, which in later years influenced the work and writings of such notable preachers of nonviolence as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Howard Thurman, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mohandas K. Gandhi of India, later honored as “Mahatma” (or “great soul”) by his followers, was trained as a lawyer in England – where he no doubt learned in his reading British history of the Parihaka movement. Although himself a Hindu, like many a revolutionary before him he was drawn to the teachings of Jesus, and found inspiration. Called to the bar in 1891, he opened his practice in South Africa, where he experienced firsthand the ugly bigotry and systemic racism of the pre-apartheid government. In response, he blended several ancient Indian spiritual traditions into satyagraha, a program of systematic noncooperation with oppression and civil disobedience to unjust laws. Returning to India at the close of World War I, Gandhi organized nationwide satyagraha actions for independence, culminating in 1947 in the withdrawal of all British forces.

On December 1, 1955, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a new pastor in Montgomery, Alabama, when the arrest of a local activist, Mrs. Rosa Parks, drew him almost unwillingly into the second-wave of the civil rights movement. While in seminary, King had studied the Bible in the black church tradition, was mentored by Howard Thurman, and read works by liberals such as Ballou, Tolstoy, and Bonhoffer; he had been particularly inspired by Gandhi’s nonviolent fight for freedom in India, which had occurred less than 10 years before. Once propelled into the movement, King blended teachings from all these sources with organizational training from Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, and crafted a masterful strategy of prepared passive nonviolent resistance to gain civil rights. Never understood and thus never publicized by the white media, all marchers and demonstrators were required to undergo intense nonviolence training before participating in actions. King was killed in 1968, but the passage of civil rights legislation ensured a kind of victory after his death – although only the most naïve would claim his work is finished today.

Looking back over this brief history of nonviolence, we see that there are 5 things that all mass movements of passive resistance have in common:

1) They are grounded in both spirituality and politics, the material world and the ideal world;

2) They require an absolute determination to renounce the use of force, no matter the provocation, even when seemingly justified by the oppressor’s actions;

3) They are predicated on a disciplined community of participants, whose training is constantly reinforced, and not on spontaneous or individual actions;

4) There must be a willingness to pay whatever price necessary to gain freedom and justice – arrest, loss of reputation, prison, bodily injury, even death;

5) There must be an assumption of hopefulness, of eventual victory, depending on a higher power and that the oppressor’s own ideals and principles will win them over.

Another thing we can see from our brief look at the history of non-violence in the West is that some passive movements for peace and justice were only partially successful, and some were, materially at least, complete failures. Perhaps Gandhi was right, that we cannot say that nonviolence does not work since it has not yet been fully put into practice. (Interestingly, Gandhi felt the same way about Christianity, saying once that he had never yet met a Christian.)

What is the future of nonviolence today? Is there a future? Is there any place for passive resistance in today’s world? Could nonviolence be successful in places where armed struggle and reciprocal violence have failed? Would it work in Northern Ireland, in Darfur, in Israel, in Iraq? In the aftermath of September 11^th, some Americans expressed the opinion that calls for nonviolent ways for dealing with terrorism were unpatriotic. Is that true? Is violence the real “American way”? Is the history of nonviolence just a history -- the story of things that happened in the past, but are not happening now? Can nonviolence work if we cannot depend on the ideals and principles of those people who act violently, such as criminals and terrorists? Is nonviolence relevant in the 21^st century?

I don’t know if I’d say I’ve ever done sermons that end with “Here’s the final answer: you ought to do this, now go and do it” but if I have, this is not one of those. I do not have the answers to all these questions – I just have more questions. But on this weekend when we honor the work and life and words of a “drum major for justice” whose life was dedicated to nonviolence but who died from an assassin’s bullet, I think we should at least look at the history of nonviolence, and think about what its future might be, and what that means, if anything, to us and to our children. And then what we do about it is up to us. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!