Christian Peace and Nonviolence

Overview

"These extraordinary documents, which bear witness to the Christian commitment to peace across time, clarify that nonviolence is not a mere exception. It is at the very heart of what it means to be a follower of Christ .. . . An essential teaching resource not only for thinking through nonviolence but also for understanding the very character of Christianity." From the Foreword by Stanley Hauerwas

From the Sermon on the Mount to the twenty-first century, this broadly ecumenical reader recounts the Christian message of peace and nonviolence. Through testimony by the confessors and martyrs of the early church, the voices of medieval figures like St. Benedict and St. Francis, as well as Erasmus, the Lollards, Anabaptists, and Quaker abolitionists, Christian Peace and Nonviolence presents a coherent story in which the peace message of Jesus is restored to its central place. Later sections highlight many of the great prophets of modern times, including Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, A. J. Muste, Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, Stanley Hauerwas, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Oscar Romero.

Comprehensive and compelling, Christian Peace and Nonviolence is not only a unique reference work, but a source of inspiration. A witness to the power of Christian nonviolence in history and in our own time as well.

Michael G. Long is associate professor of religious studies and peace and conflict studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of many books, including Marshaling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall (Amistad Press, 2011), and Resist! Christian Dissent for the 21st Century (Orbis, 2008). He lives in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.