Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780231144186)

In response to the massive bloodshed that defined the twentieth century, American religious radicals developed a modern form of nonviolent protest, one that combined Christian principles with new uses of mass media. Greatly influenced by the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi, these "acts of conscience" included sit-ins, boycotts, labor strikes, and conscientious objection to war.

Beginning with World War I and ending with the ascendance of Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph Kip Kosek traces the impact of A. J. Muste, Richard Gregg, and other radical Christian pacifists on American democratic theory and practice. These dissenters found little hope in the secular ideologies of Wilsonian Progressivism, revolutionary Marxism, and Cold War liberalism, all of which embraced organized killing at one time or another. The example of Jesus, they believed, demonstrated the immorality and futility of such violence under any circumstance and for any cause. Yet the theories of Christian nonviolence are anything but fixed. For decades, followers have actively reinterpreted the nonviolent tradition, keeping pace with developments in politics, technology, and culture.

Tracing the rise of militant nonviolence across a century of industrial conflict, imperialism, racial terror, and international warfare, Kosek recovers radical Christians' remarkable stance against the use of deadly force, even during World War II and other seemingly just causes. His research sheds new light on an interracial and transnational movement that posed a fundamental, and still relevant, challenge to the American political and religious mainstream.

Author: Joseph Kip Kosek
ISBN-10: 0231144180
ISBN-13: 9780231144186
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 02/04/2009
Pages: 376
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.30w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 02/27/2009 pg. 17
Commonweal 05/22/2009 pg. 26
Choice 07/01/2009
Christian Century 01/12/2010 pg. 36