Brayton Shanley - The Many Sides of Peace: Christian Nonviolence, the Contemplative Life, and Sustainable Living

M any of us adherents of nonviolence fight an unusual battle over the word nonviolence . Because nonviolence is at the heart of our community belief system at Agape, we use the term frequently, leading to a challenge from some who are stymied by or resist this term. At our lectures and retreats, we often hear this remark: I dont want to follow a belief that is defined by being not something. Others say: Nonviolent love is redundant. Of course love is not violent. Is there any such thing as violent love? Furthermore, people tell us: I dont see the word nonviolence in the Bible. So why is it so important? Those who are familiar with the term nonviolence are often familiar with th Century social movements and noted nonviolent activists such as Gandhi or King. They understand nonviolence ultimately and perhaps narrowly, to mean civil disobedience and getting arrested.

Another frequent challenge to the philosophy: Nonviolence means doing nothing under attack. You pacifists are too passive. When making such remarks, I wonder if people are actually rejecting the challenge of nonviolence and therefore discrediting the term as an easy way out of recognizing its truth. Perhaps the term nonviolence is fatally limited in most peoples minds. I do, however, take these people and their challenges seriously, as I know for a fact, that most people who come to Agape attend our programs or join us at peace events and protests are genuine seekers of truth.

In our own imperfect way, we all search to know what is true. Because we want to embrace what is real, we seek to know the best way to live our lives and thus make possible the experience of what is both true and real for us. Almost desperately, we want to reject what is false and deluded. All of the World Religions and great philosophies assist us in pursuing this desire for a truth to know, to practice, and to live, while simultaneously rejecting what is illusory, fleeting, and partial. This journey of discovery, we imagine, will be of ultimate moral and spiritual benefitan endeavor worthy of our lifes time.

As it has come down through history, the term nonviolence, limited as it might be, is meant to represent such a search. If we pursue its origins, nonviolence is hybrid word, coined in English by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi sometime in the early th Century. A common term for violence and its many variations has always existed, but before Gandhi, there was no term for what is not violent. The most universal, interfaith and cross-cultural way of getting at the meaning of that which is not violent is the term love , a word that compels our attention. Who would reject the miraculous effects of love as not true. What human, what forms of life on the planet dont need love? Gandhi believed this love that is nonviolent possesses many-sidedness.

Yet, love also has too many self-centered meanings. A love that is nonviolent is ordered to an elevated place beyond just the things I love. To Jesus and his Christian followers, a love that rejects all violence is Agape, the first love, the love of God as it is Gods deepest nature to love. Creation is Agape, loved into existence for the purpose of creating love. For Hindus, Agape is called Ahimsa, a non-injurious way of being rooted in being. For the Buddha, unconditional compassion requires living without harming all that lives.

Such unarmed love inspires one to feed the enemy (Romans :), empowers followers to turn the other cheek (Matt :) even in violent conflict, and moves us to forgive the difficult x times (Matt. :). Agape is radically centered on the well-being of the other, the person as well as the other as represented by the earths natural world. Because Agape as a Greek term was not widely known in the West outside of very limited Christian circles, and because love over time has been reduced to self-gratifying love, the concept of ultimate love needed a modifier. The term nonviolent love restored love to again mean Agape, the unconditional love of the Divine.

Engrafted onto love, nonviolence becomes a rich and varied reality which is complex and many-sideda force, infinitely deep and inexhaustibly broad.

The First Side: God is Nonviolent Love

W hile travelling in India on a spiritual pilgrimage in the 1970 s, newly interested in Buddhist and Yoga practicesI met a Buddhist monk. During our conversation, I confided my growing conviction that nonviolence spoke powerfully to me. I explained my college anti-war activism and the profound effect that American pacifists and conscientious objectors had on me, especially in my struggle to avoid being drafted into the military at age during the Vietnam War. The formative influence of The Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr., ultimately led me to India to explore the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. The monk listened intently and eventually quietly commented: If you are so interested in nonviolence, you should follow Jesus Christ. Offered to a cradle Catholic, this seed sown bore its fruit in the formation of a Christian peace community, The Agape Community, ten years later.

Agape, the Greek word for the love of God, evolves into a nonviolent theology and religious philosophy. The early Christian theologians, Origen and Tertullian, living in the first centuries after Jesus, wrote of the uncompromising nonviolence of Jesus which anti-war followers later called pacifism. In the oldest spiritual tradition in Christianity, the New Testament, Jesus preaches, teaches and demonstrates love that is nonviolent.

James Fowler, Christian writer on the stages of faith development, considers a nonviolent faith to be the most mature expression of belief, calling it Universalizing Faith, which knows no religious boundaries.

As an ethical philosophy, nonviolence can be embraced as a nearly mathematical truth. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that violence only begets more intensified violence (Matt. :). Or, as the Quakers say: Nothing good can come of violence. To violate is to harm. Therefore, violence for any reason, never heals or truly reconciles national divisions which lead to war. Conversely, another equation balances these variables perfectlylove begets love that can only multiply loveeven in the face of violent hostilities. This call of unarmed love, found throughout the inspired scripture of the EastHinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism is epitomized by Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching who writes in Chapter : The best soldier is not war-like. The best fighter shows no anger; they win with peace, not with war.

In the monotheistic Islam, forgiveness is epitomized by the Koran, as God speaks of the merciful and compassionate one calling the faithful to council one another to be merciful. First and foremost, however, the ancients discovered nonviolence as endemic both to the search for God and the desire to know Truth.

The Second Side: Notice the Fear that Begins in the Mind

Throughout Agapes thirty year history, community members have periodically ministered to the desperate poor in our town of Ware, in local prisons and on death row, Georgia. For ten years, we helped a local family, a mother, father, their six children and several out-of-wedlock grandchildren. The mentally and emotionally handicapped dad is functionally unemployable. The mom, marginally employable, frequently assisted us at Agape, cleaning before retreats and preparing food for those attending, for a livable wage donation and whatever we could offer as a bonus.

Dirt poor and itinerant, in and out of homelessness, occasionally living in a trailer on squatters land with one or more of their sons and daughters at any given time, this family (two of whom were in an out of jail or running from some form of legal trouble) was virtually penniless. Any member of the family might call us while one or more of them were stranded at a bus depot and in need of emergency housing at Agape.