1. Religion, Peace and Conflict
Pacifism
Religion, Peace and Conflict

2. Religion, Peace and Conflict
Topics of Discussion
1. PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS
What is Pacifism?
Varieties of Pacifism
2. RELIGIOUS ASPECTS
Christian Pacifism
Early Church
Christian Pacifists
Peace Churches
Religion, Peace and Conflict

3. Religion, Peace and Conflict
1. What is Pacifism?
The word (but not the idea) is only a century old, being first used in 1902 at the 10th International Peace Conference.
‘Pacifism’ includes a spectrum of views, and is probably as difficult to define as ‘religion’
There are several different sorts of pacifism, but they all include the idea that war and violence are unjustifiable, and that conflicts should be settled in a peaceful way.
Doesn’t everyone want peace?
War a means rather than an end
‘War is a continuation of diplomacy by other means’ Von Clausewitz, Carl Philip Gottlieb ( ), Prussian general and theorist of war.
Religion, Peace and Conflict

4. What are pacifists opposed to?
All War?
Offensive wars?
Killing? (Albert Schweitzer)
Violence/use of force? (Tolstoy, Gandhi)
Use of force by citizens (‘private’ passivism) or state?
Religion, Peace and Conflict

5. Religion, Peace and Conflict
4 Motives for Pacifism
People are pacifists for one or some of these reasons:
Religious
Secular (e.g. humanism)
Ideological/political (war oppresses the working classes)
Pragmatic (practical belief that war is wasteful and ineffective)
Religion, Peace and Conflict
BBC Religion and Ethics website

6. Religion, Peace and Conflict
4 Forms of Pacifism
Absolute pacifism
An absolute pacifist believes that it is never right to take part in war, even in self-defence. They think that the value of human life is so high that nothing can justify killing a person deliberately.
To stick to this principle consistently is hard. It views it as unethical to use violence to rescue an innocent person who is being attacked and may be killed, and this is not a comfortable moral position.
May be difficult to reconcile this view with taking life in other contexts (e.g. capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion).
Conditional pacifism (pragmatism)
Conditional pacifists are against war and violence in principle, but they accept that there may be circumstances when war will be less bad than the alternative.
Conditional pacifists usually base their moral code on Utilitarian principles - it's the bad consequences that make it wrong to resort to war or violence.
Selective pacifism
Other pacifists believe that it is a matter of degree, and only oppose wars involving weapons of mass destruction - nuclear or chemical and biological weapons - either because of the uniquely devastating consequences of such weapons, or because a war that uses such weapons is not 'winnable'.
Active pacifism
Pacifism is not ‘passive-ism’
Pacifists are heavily involved in political activity to promote peace, and to argue against particular wars.
During a war many pacifists will refuse to fight, but some will take part in activities that seek to reduce the harm of war; e.g. by driving ambulances, but other pacifists will refuse to take part in any activity that might support the war.
Religion, Peace and Conflict

7. Pacifism in the 20th Century
Pacifism became widespread as a reaction to the scale of killing in the First World War and the use of universal male conscription, and gained further support after the creation of nuclear weapons.
In World War 1 those who refused to fight were known as 'conscientious objectors'. They numbered about 16,000.
Some pacifists were prepared to work in non-combat roles as medical orderlies, stretcher-bearers, ambulance drivers, cooks or labourers, while others refused to do anything that might help the war effort. Over 500 of these were imprisoned under harsh conditions.
There were two major pacifist organisations in World War 1: the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the No-Conscription Fellowship (both founded in 1914). In 1923 a Christian Pacifist MP was elected to parliament. In the middle 1930s the Peace Pledge Union gained wide support.
Pacifism gained great publicity from a 1933 student debate in the Oxford University Union that voted for a resolution that 'this House will in no circumstances fight for King and Country'.
In World War 2, there were 59,000 British conscientious objectors, who received rather better treatment than in the previous war.
However, the Holocaust, and other industrial scale abuses of human rights, caused many to think that there could be cases when war was the least-bad course of action.
Religion, Peace and Conflict
BBC Religion and Ethics website

8. Religion, Peace and Conflict
Death toll to mid-20th C.
WWI
15 million
Russian Civil War
9 million
Soviet Union, Stalin's regime
20 million
WWII
55 million
Chinese Civil War
2.5 million
Religion, Peace and Conflict

9. Religion, Peace and Conflict
2. Christian Pacifism
Topics
Jesus
Early Church
The Pacifist tradition
Famous Pacifists
The Peace Churches
Conclusion
Religion, Peace and Conflict

10. Religion, Peace and Conflict
The teachings of Jesus
Jesus seen as pacifist and peacemaker
N.T. a pacifist manifesto (break with O.T.)
Non-retaliation and forgiveness of enemies
Sermon on the Mount
‘But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also... Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you ‘ (Matt.5)
‘All those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword’ (Matt )
‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ (Matt.7) (The Golden Rule)
‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23.24)
St Stephen, first Christian martyr (d.35 AD) ‘Lord, charge not this sin against them’ (Acts 7.60)
The Sermon on the Mount Carl Heinrich Bloch ( )
Religion, Peace and Conflict

11. The Early Church (1-2nd C.)
Justin Martyr (d.165)
‘We, who formerly used to murder one another now (as Christians) refrain even from making war on our enemies’
Athenagoras of Athens (d.190)
‘We have rejected such spectacles as the Coliseum. How then, when we do not even look on killing, can we put other people to death?’
Paulinus of Nola (d.431)
‘Whoever serves as a soldier with a sword is the servant of death’
Religion, Peace and Conflict
Justin Martyr

12. Religion, Peace and Conflict
Development (3-4th C.)
Conversion of Constantine in AD 312 integrates Christianity into the state
Christians no longer a persecuted community
‘Conquer in Christ’s name’
Face new political and ethical dilemmas
Should we defend the state?
Should Christians serve in the Roman army?
Barbarian invasions (e.g. Attila, 5th C.)
Constantine the Great, York
Religion, Peace and Conflict

13. Religion, Peace and Conflict
Parting of the Ways
Religion, Peace and Conflict

14. Religion, Peace and Conflict
The Pacifists
St Martin of Tours
b. Hungary (d.356)
Roman soldier, refused to fight Gauls
Bishop of Tours, medieval cult
Gave cloak to beggar
Patron Saint of US Army Quartermasters Core
Religion, Peace and Conflict

15. Christian Pacifists down the Ages
St Francis of Assisi (d.1220)
Founders of the ‘Peace Churches’
Leo Tolstoy (d.1910) War and Peace, The Kingdom of God ..)
Martin Luther King Jr. (d.1968)
Baptist minister, civil rights leader and winner of Nobel Peace Prize
Religion, Peace and Conflict

16. Religion, Peace and Conflict
Peace Churches
Religion, Peace and Conflict

17. The Church of the Brethren
German Baptists, founded 1708
c.200,000 members mainly in USA
Based on New Testament and especially ‘Sermon on the Mount’
Simple lifestyle and dress
‘All war is sin’ (1935 Annual Conference)
Religion, Peace and Conflict

18. Religion, Peace and Conflict
Mennonites
Founder Menno Simons (d.1561)
1.5 million members worldwide
Persecuted but refused to use force in self defence
Opposed slavery and American War of Independence
Prominent in disaster relief
Religion, Peace and Conflict

19. Religion, Peace and Conflict
Quakers
Founded 17th Century
c. 350,000 worldwide
Christian, but also universalist
‘inner light’ and ‘testimonies’ rather than creeds (a religion?)
‘Peace Testimony’
Opposed to violence
Conscientious objectors
Withhold taxes
Nobel Peace Prize, 1947
George Fox (d.1691)
Religion, Peace and Conflict
William Penn (d.1718)

20. Other anti-war Churches
Community of Christ
Churches of Christ
Jehovah’s witnesses
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Seventh-Day Adventists
Christadelphians
Religion, Peace and Conflict

21. Religion, Peace and Conflict
Conclusion
Pacifism includes a broad spectrum of views and needs careful definition
From its foundation there has been a strong pacifist element in Christianity
Other Christians believe that war may be justifiable as a last resort (‘just war’)
Homework: How many people have died in religious wars involving Christianity?
Religion, Peace and Conflict