THE FORCE OF NONVIOLENCE

“Some people draw a comforting distinction between 'force' and 'violence.' . . . I refuse to cloud the issue by such word play. . . . The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence. . . . Call an elephant a rabbit only if it gives you comfort to feel that you are about to be trampled to death by a rabbit.”

Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, founding president of Zambia

Someone once remarked to Gandhi that he seemed to be a saint masquerading as a politician. Gandhi considered this description of himself and his work for a moment, and then he corrected the individual. “No,” he said, “I'm a politician masquerading as a saint.” Whatever the case, Gandhi brought together spirituality and politics like no one before him. He plucked the idea of nonviolence from the world's religious traditions and proceeded to use it as a force for massive social protest. He showed the twentieth century that radical social change was possible without resorting to violence, and he inspired individuals across the world to take up the cause. Without employing the weapons of war, they overthrew repressive social systems, from Soviet tyranny in Poland to Marcos' regime in the Philippines to segregation here at home. They fought a war without arms, a war of conscience. But make no mistake—it was still a war. Gandhi's God may not have known how to wield a bayonet or a bazooka, but he or she knew how to wield force to maximum advantage and did so with great effect.

“Nonviolence is not necessarily pacifism,” explains Dr. Arun Gandhi, director of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. Dr. Gandhi is the grandson of the great leader of Indian independence. “Pacifism suggests that we do not retaliate in any way at all, but nonviolence is a very active philosophy. It means that we nonviolently stand up against injustice, and it means that we sacrifice our lives if necessary.”

“If you want to make omelets,” Vladimir Lenin is famous for saying, “then you have to break some eggs.” Well, Gandhi broke a lot of eggs in his day, but he resolutely refused to use violent means to achieve his ends. He proved that there are many forces in this world more powerful than the barrel of a gun. Yet he was quite militant in his intention to eject the British from India, and he did not hesitate to provoke conflict. For some pacifists, that was going too far. “Gandhi's program is not one of . . . peace,” one of the great Mennonite pacifists, Guy Hershberger, was quoted as saying. “It is a form of warfare.”

Peace has always had a strained relationship with nonviolence. The focus of nonviolent resistance, from Gandhi to King to Walesa to Mandela, has really been on change, on the evolution and transformation of an unjust society. And all of those individuals have been concerned with that transformation over and above the maintenance of any state of peace or quiet social harmony. “Look at Martin Luther King. He was going throughout the South during the civil rights movement getting arrested,” says Jim Garrison, cofounder and president of the State of the World Forum. “Look at Jesus. Jesus said to love one another, but he was so confrontational with the Orthodox leaders that they killed him. They wouldn't have killed him if he was just sitting there in the temple saying, 'Let's sit here and pray.' ”

Evolutionary biologists like to tell us that, in nature, external stress is what forces an organism to change and adapt to new conditions of life. “Stress is the only thing that creates evolution in living systems,” biologist and author Elisabet Sahtouris emphasizes. And much the same could be said of human culture. Gandhi may not have been a biologist, but he applied this principle well, and the power of his movement increased the stress on the British colonialists to the point that it became intolerable for them to continue their unjust occupation.

Gandhi's revolution was not just a social revolution. It was a revolution in the way that we understand the nature of power and force. Gandhi used tremendous force—what he called soul force—but he did so nonviolently, and it raised a host of new questions for political theorists to consider. Questions like: What are the limits of the principle of nonviolence? Would it work in all situations or just in particular circumstances? Is it possible to govern according to nonviolent principles? In South Africa, where nonviolence was used so effectively to win the moral high ground, anti-apartheid activists underwent some profound soul-searching around these questions during the course of their struggle. “There are some remarkable people who believe that no one is ever justified in using violence, even against the most horrendous evil,” explained Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1986. “Such absolute pacifists believe that the Gospel of the Cross effectively rules out anyone taking up the sword, however just the cause. I admire such persons deeply, but sadly confess that I am made of less stern stuff. . . . Nonviolence as a means toward ending an unjust system presupposes that oppressors show a minimum level of morality.” Many contemporary scholars of politics and nonviolence continue to debate the issues raised by Gandhi, Tutu, and others, perhaps the most well-known being Gene Sharp. Sharp is the founder and senior scholar at the Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an organization dedicated to studying and promoting the strategic use of nonviolence worldwide. His magnum opus, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, has been consulted by activist groups around the world looking for help in their struggles against tyranny. If Gandhi and King were the Christ-figures in the nonviolence movement, Sharp is its Augustine, analyzing the strategic use of nonviolence with more depth and thought than perhaps anyone else in history. In his work, he has reflected at length on how power is exercised in society.

“It is widely recognized,” Sharp writes, “that conflicts are common in society [and] that important issues of both principle and human welfare are often at stake in these conflicts.” In World War II, for example, most would agree that there were quite important issues of both “principle and human welfare” at stake. We were fighting, in other words, for a good cause. Sharp goes on to say that “the exercise of power of some kind is unavoidable in such situations unless one is to abdicate responsibility for influencing the outcome of those conflicts.” Indeed, if we had not exercised power in World War II, we might all be speaking German today, or maybe Japanese. If we do not exercise power in the world, then we surrender influence over the world to those who do. Sharp points out that “ultimately such power involves and at times depends upon the application of some kind of sanction or means of struggle.” Now here is the important question: Does that “sanction or means of struggle” inevitably imply some form of violence? It is a question not just for politicians. It is a question our religious traditions have been struggling with for millennia.

IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY “KILL”

“Oh Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire . . . help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land. . . . We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love.”

Mark Twain

“I think that to someone who has spiritually awakened, it's self-evident that God is a pacifist, no matter what tradition they awaken in,” declares Christian monk Brother Wayne Teasdale. “If they have awakened to that deep experiential level that puts them in touch with transformation, they realize that non-harming is an essential element of mature spiritual life and is an element of enlightenment itself.”

Scholars tell us that Teasdale is accurate about the cross-cultural nature of pacifism in our religious traditions. Every tradition has teachings that discourage war and violence. And every tradition encourages peace. The only problem is that most traditions also have exception clauses that render both injunctions null and void.

For example, at the foundation of the Western traditions is the classic statement of spiritual pacifism, “Thou shalt not kill,” enshrined in one of the most ancient and revered scriptures—the Ten Commandments. It is a crystal-clear imperative delivered high on the slopes of Mt. Sinai to one of the most influential figures in Judeo-Christianity. And it is a fundamental tenet of not one but three of the world's major religions. Nevertheless, if we took it upon ourselves to ask some Jewish rabbis, Christian ministers, or Islamic clerics about the discrepancy between this religious principle and actual political practice, we would likely get a very philosophical response about exceptions to this absolute rule. “Thou shalt not kill, except . . . when x, y, and z.” And God's pure pacifistic intentions for human behavior, so black and white in the stone tablets of Moses, soon would begin to take on a few subtler shades of gray.

Eventually we would hear about scriptures that contradict or balance the sixth commandment, scriptures that tell us when war and violence are appropriate. In order “for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign. . . . Secondly, a just cause. . . . Thirdly . . . a rightful intention,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas in his thirteenth-century masterpiece Summa Theologica, establishing the basis on which Christians could rightfully go to war.

Self-defense, we might learn, is often considered justification for the use of violence, even deadly violence. “To those against whom war is made, permission is given [to fight], because they are wronged . . . Allah is most powerful for their aid,” the Qur'an instructs Muslims. Additionally, the Jewish Talmud has very simple and practical advice regarding self-defense: “If a man comes to kill you,” it tells us, “forestall it by killing him.”

Look hard enough, and sooner or later we would find a number of other exclusions that void the sixth commandment: protecting one's family, defending one's tribe or religious faith, saving innocent lives, preventing a more deadly conflict in the future. After a while, “Thou shalt not kill” will start to look less like a commandment and more like a thirty-five-hundred-year-old legal contract, constantly renegotiated and filled with all kinds of loopholes, side clauses, and legalistic phrasing. Granted, we would probably have to speak to a lot of people before “protecting oil fields in the Middle East” would show up as one of those side clauses. But the Reverend Edmund Browning, the former head of the Episcopal Church, was confronted with just this issue on the eve of the first Gulf War. Browning received a phone call that night from President George Bush, Sr., who requested his prayers and support as the war was about to begin. Bush was calling on Browning as the top religious leader in Bush's Episcopalian tradition, and Browning had to ask himself the question: Does removing Saddam Hussein from Kuwait fall within the boundaries of the long-established Christian notion of a “just war”? His answer was “no.” And he offered the president of the United States his prayers but withheld his support, saying that a war to continue America's dependence on cheap oil was not justifiable within the context of their mutual Christian faith. Billy Graham spent that evening at the White House instead of Browning, as Operation Desert Storm was launched.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” proclaimed Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. In Judaism, “shalom” is the common greeting, which simply means “peace.” And in Islam, Allah is often referred to as “the source of peace.” There are endless such examples. Yet, taken as a whole, the practical and theological legacy of Western religion is not really one of peace or of violence. If anything, it is a legacy of profound ambiguity. Marc Gopin, director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Virginia, concurs. “I think it's hard to say 'yes' to the question, 'Is God a pacifist?' All the Western religious traditions suggest some serious contradictions in that regard. There are competing voices. A variety of texts suggest that God is very committed to violence—commandments to engage in revenge against enemies, capital punishment for all sorts of crimes. These would all indicate that God is not a pacifist. And yet there are also strictures and rebukes for those who commit acts of violence.” Many theologians will draw a distinction between God's nature (Is God a pacifist?) and what he or she intends of human beings (Does God want us to be pacifists?), but in both cases, ambiguity prevails. “Does God want us to be pacifists? Well, I see a lot of evidence for that,” says Gopin. “But I see counter evidence too.”

Nowhere is this ambiguity more perfectly encapsulated than in what Sufi scripture calls the ninety-nine names of God. These represent the many attributes of divinity, the numerous ways in which God can manifest. Pacifism may be on that list somewhere—for example, As-Salam, the sixth name, means God as the bestower of peace, and Al-Latif, number thirty-one, is God as the most gentle and kind. But two or three out of ninety-nine don't exactly carry the day, especially when the list also includes names like the eighty-first—God as the avenger, the lord of retribution.