Abstract
Nonviolence has been part of the Christian tradition for 2,000 years. But the last seventy, more than ever before, have seen dedicated efforts to develop Christian theologies that locate nonviolence at the core of the Gospel message. While activist-theologians, like Martin Luther King Jr., were demonstrating that nonviolent direct action can transform societies, biblical theologians were discovering how central enemy-love is to the testimony of both Testaments. One of the most original and persuasive Christian ethicists at the forefront of this development was the Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder. Many Christians, including the authors of this book, were captivated by Yoder's vision and sought to take up his project of reimagining Christian theology and history from the perspective of a politically-engaged nonviolent witness to the Kingdom of God.
There was a real sense that we were living in a renaissance moment where nonviolent Christianity could emerge to challenge the presuppositions of Christian nationalism and the ontology of violence that underwrites modern nation-states. This is why, when the full extent of Yoder's serial sexual harassment and abuse came to light, it left many ethicists feeling unmoored. As David Cramer and Myles Werntz write in A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence, ‘If one of the leading twentieth century voices for Christian nonviolence was himself violent in heinous ways, is Christian nonviolence itself a sham?’ (p. ix).
This book attempts to show that Christian nonviolence is no sham, but also that this question hides a misguided assumption. This feeling of insecurity stems from a close association between Yoderian ethics and Christian nonviolence, one that neglects the many other strands of peace theology that contribute to contemporary Christian discourse and practice. While Christian peacemakers must reckon with the implications of Yoder's abuse and the ecclesial and academic institutional practices that allowed it to continue, we do so best when we take into account the full spectrum of Christian nonviolence. Yoder's own violence may shake our faith in Christian nonviolence, but we must remember that he is not the only representative of this vibrant and diverse tradition.
The book is a response to Yoder in at least three ways. On one level, it updates and replaces Yoder's book Nevertheless: Varieties of Religious Pacifism (Herald Press, revised edition, 1992), a typology of motivations for nonviolence whose twenty-nine categories make it as exhaustive as it is unwieldy. Second, the Field Guide situates the moral vision of Yoder's books as one variety among many, explaining how other works critique, predate, or exist beyond Yoder's ‘nonviolence of Christian discipleship’ (p. 7). Third, and most importantly, this book elevates voices for Christian nonviolence that are often sidelined in scholarly discussions which treat the Yoder-Hauerwas-McClendon school of thought as the principal interlocutor when discussing peace. For Cramer and Werntz, this school of thought has much to offer the moral conversation, but it is only one stream among eight on the current map of Christian nonviolence.
The task of the book is to summarize and compare these eight streams, giving readers a more circumspect picture of Christian nonviolence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Just as a forager's handbook helps intrepid explorers distinguish between different varieties of wild mushrooms, so this ‘field guide’ outlines the different varieties of Christian nonviolence that have been written about over the past seventy years. These varieties range from ‘Nonviolence of Christian Mysticism’ to ‘Liberationist Nonviolence’. While the book is far from encyclopedic by design, it nonetheless covers an impressive array of scholars and practitioners.
The Field Guide is especially valuable in its exploration of authors whose work is not typically associated with nonviolence. Henri Nouwen is more readily associated with spiritual writing, but he has two posthumous books on peace that deserve to be on ethicists’ bookshelves. Grace Jantzen is more commonly categorized as a feminist philosopher, but her book Violence to Eternity details a biblical alternative to mimetic violence against the marginalized. Richard Hays is known to many for his work on the word ‘of’, but his argument for New Testament pacifism is equally provocative. Cramer and Werntz go out of their way to include authors who do not have ‘pacifist’ in the first sentence of their Wikipedia pages, demonstrating in the process that much of the constructive work on Christian nonviolence can be found in books that are nominally about liberation, contemplation, or biblical interpretation.
To that end, the final chapter on ‘Christian Antiviolence’ is an especially welcome one. In this chapter, the authors survey recent efforts to think theologically about sexual and gender-based violence, from the work of Mennonite theologians Hilary Scarsella and Stephanie Krehbiel to Traci West's groundbreaking Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics (New York University Press, 1999). As these scholars argue, Christian peace theology has narrowly focused on war and capital punishment while virtually ignoring sexual violence. Foregrounding the voices of women and victim-survivors of interpersonal violence not only expands the scope of the Christian witness for peace but also challenges some prominent interpretations of the traditional tenets of Christianity as well as the dangerously misguided attitude toward suffering often taken in nonviolence literature. By including this movement as one of the eight streams of Christian nonviolence, Cramer and Werntz show that Christian nonviolence is not merely about putting away the sword but developing structures of prevention and accountability within institutions that have concealed violence for far too long.
As previously mentioned, this book is first and foremost a typology. But every typology is an argument. ‘Our thesis is this’, Cramer and Werntz write, ‘Christian nonviolence has never been monolithic but has always included merging and diverging streams; it is therefore best understood as a dynamic and contested tradition rather than a unified and settled position’ (p. 2). The book's most valuable contributions are the points where the authors explain how these streams are ‘merging and diverging’. Nonviolent theologies are so often contrasted with violent theologies that the subtle but significant disagreements among nonviolent thinkers get overlooked. The Field Guide helps correct this oversight, focusing more on the theological differences than the political ones. For example, comparing the Catholic authors Henri Nouwen and John Dear, Cramer and Werntz write, ‘In contrast to Nouwen, for whom nonviolence is the consequence of the mystical encounter, for Dear the nonviolent act is inextricable from meeting God’ (p. 54). By making explicit these differences and disagreements, the Field Guide has something to offer even to readers who are well-versed in the literature.
Though these ‘diverging’ points are of interest, the argument that undergirds the whole book is more on the ‘merging’ side. The eight different streams are not presented as incommensurable alternatives. Rather, what distinguishes them are differences of emphasis, of framing, and of starting point. Some of the varieties begin with Gandhian tactics and work their way toward liturgical theology, some begin with biblical imperatives and work their way toward social analysis, and others begin with the experiences of the marginalized and work their way toward a politics of reconciliation. While Cramer and Werntz refuse to blend all eight varieties together in a ‘Hegelian synthesis’ (p. 147), they nevertheless encourage readers to see all of these figures as participants in one tradition. Anyone trying to understand or enact Christian nonviolence, they insist, would be wise to appreciate the contributions of each school of thought and to blend insights from different approaches.
My main frustration with the book has to do with its brevity. While every field guide needs to be portable, constraining a book this comprehensive to 151 pages feels unnecessarily parsimonious, even in the middle of a global paper shortage. Readers may be unsatisfied as they breeze through the two paragraphs on Dorothy Day and the two paragraphs on Desmond Tutu. Nevertheless, if readers walk away from the Field Guide with more book recommendations than settled conclusions, this slim volume will have completed its task. It certainly serves as evidence that contemporary Christian nonviolence is neither a sham nor a solo show, but a harmonious chorus of voices beckoning us to reevaluate our reliance on structures that harm our neighbors and ourselves.