Pacifism

Pacifism. Pacifism is the principled rejection of war. European peace advocates coined the word in 1901 to describe the goal of replacing national wars with international law and organization. During World War I the term was narrowed to mean an individual's total renunciation of war and social violence. This essay refers primarily to the latter, more restrictive use of the term.

Pacifism has roots in Buddhism and the Janist tradition of Hinduism, but its modern and Western forms have Christian origins, notably the Anabaptist sects of the Protestant Reformation such as the Mennonites, Society of Friends (Quakers), and Brethren. For some Anabaptists, a corollary of pacifism was withdrawal from the political life of the state, which was based on military force. Pacifism in that sense may be called nonresistance. Pacifism also has led individuals to active social involvement through pacifist groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR, 1915), American Friends Service Committee (1917), and Mennonite Central Committee (1920).

One expression of pacifism has been conscientious objection to military service, the principle of the War Resisters League (1923). U.S. and British law during World War I exempted conscientious objectors (COs) whose pacifism was religious and applied to all wars. It did not exempt COs who were not sectarian or who objected (like many socialists) only to that particular war or (like anarchists) to conscription itself. In World War II the U.S. government liberalized its administration of conscription without essentially changing the law. Subsequently, however, judicial decisions eroded the religious requirement for CO status, and the Vietnam War brought considerable public support for the right of selective objection. By that time the Roman Catholic church sanctioned conscientious objection and western European countries typically offered their enlistees alternative service.

Another expression of pacifism has been peacemaking. The carnage of World War I deeply moved a number of men and women who came to pacifism from a Progressive, often a Social Gospel, orientation. Pacifists like Jane Addams, Emily Green Balch, Dorothy Detzer, Frederick Libby, A.J. Muste, Kirby Page, and Nevin Sayre played leading roles in peace movements working for internationalism, challenging U.S. intervention in World War II, and protesting the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. Nonresistant sects, notably Mennonites and Brethren, also developed active forms of pacifism such as humanitarian service for war victims.

A third expression of pacifism has been nonviolent direct action for justice. Struck by the conjunction of injustice and war during World War I, Progressive pacifists came to see working for justice as a corollary of peace‐seeking. Inspired by Mohandas Gandhi, some American pacifists experimented with nonviolent direct action. In race relations, for example, the FOR and Congress of Racial Equality (1943) counseled Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders. Nonviolent direct action also shaped the Vietnam War protests and the campaign against nuclear weapons.

Still an essentially individual witness to principle, pacifism has become secular as well as religious, inspiring a range of collective action from humanitarian service and political activism to nonviolent direct action.
See also Anarchism; Antinuclear Protest Movements; Antiwar Movements; Civil Rights Movement; Mennonites and Amish; Peace Movements; Socialism.

Bibliography

Peter Brock , Pacifism in the United States from the Colonial Era to the First World War, 1968.
Peter Brock , Twentieth‐Century Pacifism, 1979.
Harvey Dyck, ed., The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective, 1996.
Anne Klejment and and Nancy L. Roberts , American Catholic Pacifism: The Influence of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement, 1996.

E. Charles Chatfield