Heretical Christmas Carols > > Home

Courageous Nonviolence

Posted Tuesday, December 11, 2007 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Military Issues
The latest issue of CT (Dec 2007) includes an interesting article by Ron Sider on one way to "do" nonviolence. He begins the article by discussing the massive bloodshed in the past 100 hundred years, but then also telling about the various nonviolent movements that have seen success (Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Solidarity in Poland, peaceful overthrow of dictator of Philippines). He advocates the sending out of Christian Peacemaker Teams, who go into war torn areas and help to restore peace. These kind of teams have been going out for at least a decade, and one team member was killed in Iraq in 2005 after he was kidnapped by insurgants. This is an interesting idea, and perhaps it will actually work. But one discontinuity that came to mind seems to be a serious one. The nonviolent movements which have worked (assuming they actually did work in the manner he describes them, of course) were from the inside. These teams are people from the outside. Now this might not make a difference, but it seems that the key to the nonviolent movements is that they were on the inside and were able to lead others into their own worldview. Can an outsider change the way people think about these issues? Possible, but considerably less likely, it seems to me. I don't have any constructive advice to offer in Sider's place, but I'm just skeptical about his idea.