Jesus, the most active resister, nonviolence and Venezuela

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." - Edmund Burke Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) 

Procession of the Nazarene in Venezuela Ave. on April 16

 On Holy Thursday in Caracas Venezuelan students continued in their religious themed protests with a "Venezuelan Via Crucis" and attending a Mass for Peace officiated by Cardinal Jorge Urosa Sabino in the Caracas Cathedral. On Wednesday scores of Venezuelan youth marched through the streets of Venezuela "barefooted for the suffering of the country."

March of the barefoot for suffering Venezuela on April 16, 2014

 At the same time over twitter The King Center on the 93rd day of its 100 Days of Nonviolence campaign quoted Edmund Burke over twitter adding the affirmation "I will be nonviolent even if it is not easy."


Easter is a time for reflection, prayer, penance and celebration for Christians. According to the Christian tradition Holy Thursday is when Jesus Christ gathered his disciples for the last supper and later that same night in the Garden of Gethsemane he was betrayed by Judas and arrested.

Father John Dear offers two reflections on the significance of the events in the Garden of Gethsemane through the optics of the nonviolent Christ who is found in the Sermon on the Mount and in his reaction to Judas's betrayal and Peter's defense. As Judas handed him over to those who would take him to his death Jesus told him: "Friend, do what you have come for." When Peter attacked one of the servants of the high priest, who had come to arrest Jesus, cutting his ear off with a sword the Nazarene chastised him: "Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." Father Dear's insight that in the Garden for the first time in the scriptures the disciples engage in two acts of violence: Judas's betrayal and Peter's violent defense:

Under the cover of night, in the first act of violence by a disciple, Judas kisses Jesus and betrays him, and the soldiers move in for the arrest. In the second act of violence by a disciple of Jesus, Peter himself takes out a sword, strikes at a soldier, and cuts off his ear. Jesus will have none of it. "Put back your sword, for those who take up the sword will surely perish by the sword." These are the last words of Jesus to the church before he was executed, and it’s the first time they recognize the depth of his nonviolence. What do they do? They all run away.

Mohandas Gandhi regularly read the Sermon on the Mount and said "If I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, ‘O yes, I am a Christian.'  However, the behavior of many who call themselves Christians led to the following observation from the Indian independence leader: "It is a first class human tragedy that people of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus, whom they describe as the Prince of Peace, show little of that belief in actual practice."

How many of us follow Christ's command to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us? When we say the Lord's prayer do we understand and internalize that "If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions."

In a speech the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave in St. Augustine in 1964 he described both this kind of love and the impracticability of violence:     

 "Its difficult advice and in some quarters it isn't too popular to say it...Let us recognize that violence is not the answer. I must say to you tonight that violence is impractical...We have another method that is much more powerful and much more effective than the weapon of violence...Hate isn't our weapon either...I am not talking now about a weak love it would be nonsense for an oppressed people to love their oppressor in an affectionate sense I'm not talking about that too many people confuse the meaning of love when they go to criticizing the love ethic. ...I am talking about a love that is so strong that it becomes a demanding love. A love that is so strong that it organizes itself into a mass movement and says somehow I am my brothers keeper and he is so wrong that I am willing to suffer and die to get him right and to see that he is on the wrong road."

In 2011 a young Serb activist explained people power within a strategic framework but at the same time the attitude of this activist also speaks volumes. Nonviolent resistance is not easy because it transforms the natural outrage over injustice, tyranny and brutality into nonviolent power driven by love.

Today in places like Cuba and Venezuela courageous men and women are picking up their cross in the struggle for liberation and justice while at the same time rejecting hatred and embracing nonviolence.  True reconciliation is based on principles and justice if it is to be a real and lasting peace. Nonviolent resistance is the means to achieve it without committing new injustices.

A Reflection On Nonviolence On Good Friday : Jesus’ Third Way

And behold, one of those who accompanied Jesus put his hand to his sword, drew it, and struck the high priest's servant, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Matthew 26.51-52

"You have learnt how it was said: 'Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.' But I say to you, Offer the wicked man no resistance. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; if a man takes you to law and would have your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone orders you to go one mile, go two miles with him." Matthew 5.38-41

"It is a first-class human tragedy that peoples of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus, whom they describe as the Prince of Peace, show little of that belief in actual practice. - Mohandas Gandhi


Thankfully, Gandhi was mistaken and some of the people who believe in the message of Jesus of Nazareth demonstrate that belief in actual practice as did a group of Catholic Monks in Algeria in 1996 now made known to the world in the film Of Gods and Men. Others continue to do so today around the world. What better day than Good Friday to reflect on those who took up the cross and followed Christ?

A sermon delivered by the Rev. Roger Scott Powers at Light Street Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, on Sunday, February 20, 2011.
Matthew 5:38-48
A Lutheran pastor/theologian in Nazi Germany. A Catholic laywoman and journalist in New York City. A black Baptist preacher in the American South. A Trappist monk in Kentucky. These four individuals – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Merton – came from very different backgrounds and lived in very different social contexts. And yet, they were all drawn to the way of nonviolence. Indeed, they became four of the most influential advocates of Christian nonviolence in the twentieth century.
What brought them to this place? What did these four apostles of nonviolence have in common? Quite simply, it was the Sermon on the Mount.

The German Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was profoundly influenced by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In a letter to his brother Karl-Friedrich, in 1935, he wrote: “I believe I know that inwardly I shall be really clear and honest only when I have begun to take seriously the Sermon on the Mount. Here is set the only source of power capable of exploding the whole enchantment and specter [of Hitler and his rule] so that only a few burnt-out fragments are left remaining from the fireworks. The restoration of the church will surely come from a sort of new monasticism which has in common with the old only the uncompromising attitude of a life lived according to the Sermon on the Mount in the following of Christ. I believe it is now time to call people to this.” Bonhoeffer elaborated on his views on the Sermon on the Mount in his book The Cost of Discipleship, published in 1937.

For Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, the Sermon on the Mount was nothing less than a “manifesto” calling Christians to be peacemakers.

Similarly, for Martin Luther King, Jr., the Sermon on the Mount provided the basic philosophy that guided the civil rights movement. In Stride Toward Freedom, King’s account of the Montgomery bus boycott, he wrote: “From the beginning a basic philosophy guided the movement. This guiding principle has since been referred to variously as nonviolent resistance, noncooperation, and passive resistance. But in the first days of the protest none of these expressions was mentioned; the phrase most often heard was “Christian love.” It was the Sermon on the Mount, rather than a doctrine of passive resistance, that initially inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love.”

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton, too, found Christian nonviolence to be rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, specifically in the beatitudes. In his 1967 essay “Blessed are the Meek: The Christian Roots of Non-Violence,” Merton wrote: “The great historical event, the coming of the Kingdom, is made clear and is ‘realized’ in proportion as Christians themselves live the life of the Kingdom in the circumstances of their own place and time. . . . The chief place in which this new mode of life is set forth in detail is the Sermon on the Mount. At the very beginning of this great inaugural discourse, the Lord numbers the beatitudes, which are the theological foundation of Christian nonviolence: Blessed are the poor . . . blessed are the meek (Matthew 5:3-4). . . . the meekness and humility which Christ extolled in the Sermon on the Mount . . . are the basis of true Christian nonviolence.”
In this morning’s reading from the Sermon on the Mount, we hear Jesus’ teachings about loving one’s enemies and turning the other cheek. Most Christians tend to ignore these words of Jesus, dismissing them as too impractical and idealistic to be taken seriously. Indeed, Gandhi once quipped that “the only people on earth who do not see Christ and his teachings as nonviolent are Christians.” It’s true! We tend to think of turning the other cheek as a weak and wimpy response to violence. It sounds too passive, as if we who follow Jesus are supposed to live as human doormats, allowing others to walk all over us.
I want to argue, this morning, that Jesus’ teachings about loving one’s enemies and turning the other cheek have nothing to do with being passive in the face of injustice or acquiescing to evil. Rather, they have everything to do with standing up to evil and injustice, offering a “third way” to respond to conflict other than fighting back violently or running away.

But wait a minute, doesn’t this passage begin with Jesus saying ”Do not resist an evildoer”? What about that? Well, according to Biblical scholar Walter Wink, that translation from the original Greek is misleading. The Greek word translated ‘resist’ is antistenai, which literally means to stand against. But it usually refers to warfare, where two opposing armies “stand against” each other. Antistenai refers not simply to resistance but to violent resistance. So, Jesus is speaking against violent resistance to evil. We should oppose evil, but not on its own terms. A far better translation of this verse is the Scholars Version: ”Don’t react violently against the one who is evil.”
Instead, Jesus says, “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” In each of these scenarios, Jesus is offering an alternative to the usual responses to conflict of fight or flight – either hitting back or running away. Jesus’ “third way,” as Walter Wink outlines it, involves standing one’s ground, seizing the moral initiative, and finding a creative alternative to violence. It means recognizing one’s own power, asserting one’s own humanity and dignity as a person, refusing to submit to or to accept the inferior position, breaking the cycle of humiliation. It means being willing to suffer rather than retaliate and to undergo the penalty of breaking unjust laws, thereby exposing the injustice of the system and depriving the oppressor of a situation where a show of force is effective.
Someone striking you on the right cheek, Wink points out, would have used his right hand to do so, since the left hand was used in Jesus’ day only for unclean tasks. So, Jesus is referring to someone slapping you with the back of his hand, which was a way of admonishing inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves. Romans did the same to Jews. It was a way of putting someone of inferior status in his or her place. Under such circumstances, for an inferior to retaliate against a superior would have been suicidal, Wink says. But by turning the other cheek, they could rob their oppressors of the power to humiliate them. By turning the other cheek they would be saying, in effect, “Try again. Hitting me with the back of your hand did not achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status (gender, race, age, wealth) does not alter that fact. You cannot demean me.”
This puts the superior in a difficult position. What does he do? Does he hit the other cheek? If so, how? You can’t backhand it with your right hand. And if you use your right fist, you make yourself an equal, acknowledging the other as a peer. But the whole point of the backhanded slap was to reinforce the inequality between you. By turning the other cheek, the person of inferior status has refused to submit, seized the moral initiative, asserted his or her human dignity, and thrown the superior off-balance. That is Jesus’ third way of nonviolent engagement.
In Jesus’ second example, a debtor falling ever deeper into poverty is unable to pay his debt and so his creditor takes him to court to exact payment by legal means. All the debtor has left are his woolen outer garment, which would serve as his blanket at night, and his linen undergarment or tunic shirt. Once the creditor takes his coat, all the poor man has left is the shirt on his back. By giving the creditor his shirt as well, the debtor stands before everyone stark naked, as if to say, “Here, take everything! Now you have everything except my body. Will you take that next?” There was less shame in being naked than in viewing or causing the nakedness. So by stripping naked, the debtor turns the tables on the creditor, shaming him, and also protesting against the whole economic system that caused the poor man’s indebtedness in the first place.
A third example of Jesus’ third way is “going the second mile.” Here Jesus is referring to the right of a Roman soldier to force a civilian to carry his pack for one mile, but no further. By carrying the soldier’s pack a second mile a civilian would again be seizing the moral initiative, asserting his human dignity, and throwing the soldier off-balance.
Some people are willing to concede that Jesus’ nonviolent ethic might work at the individual level – person-to-person – but they argue that it would not work in social conflicts between groups of people, and certainly not on a national or international scale. But this argument doesn’t hold water given the long history of nonviolent social movements. Think of the movement to abolish slavery, the women’s suffrage movement, the labor movement, and the civil rights movement. The history of nonviolent struggle is long, but it’s largely forgotten. Remember the Indian Independence Movement led by Gandhi against the British. Remember the nonviolent “people power” revolution in the Philippines that brought down the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. Remember the pro-democracy movements in Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia that ousted communist regimes in 1989. Remember the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa that brought an end to white minority rule.
The recent revolution in Egypt is the latest example of the extraordinary power of nonviolent action. Yes, there was some violence in Cairo, much of it apparently instigated by agent provocateurs and security forces. But most of the time, the Egyptian crowds in Tahir Square were peaceful. They did not take up arms against the government. They did not riot in the streets. They engaged in peaceful, orderly protest. And in just 18 days they were able to topple a dictator who had been in power for 30 years! It is astounding!
Jesus’ “third way” of nonviolent action may not work in all circumstances, but the historical record shows that it is a powerful means of engaging in conflict, and can be used successfully in struggles for justice, human rights, and self-determination.
Perhaps you’ve seen this bumper sticker: “When Jesus said love your enemies, I’m pretty sure he meant don’t kill them.” Indeed! Jesus’ “third way” of nonviolent action offers us a means of confronting our enemies without killing them, without resorting to violence. Would that more Christians would recognize this and embrace Jesus’ “third way” of nonviolence.
Coretta Scott King says that: “At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we have an historic opportunity for a great global healing and renewal. If we will accept the challenge of nonviolent activism with faith, courage, and determination, we can bring this great vision of a world united in peace and harmony from a distant ideal into a glowing reality.” May it be so. Amen.

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Rev. Roger Scott Powers, is co-moderator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship National Committee and pastor of Light Street Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland.

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy; But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those whose persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Matthew 5.43-46

Gandhi's 140th Birthday and the International Day of Non-violence

Gandhi's 140th Birthday and the International Day of Non-violence

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born 140 years ago on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, a coastal town in present-day Gujarat, India. Around the world in the birthplaces of western civilization both Italy and Greece.Gandhi's birth is being observed and the significance of his non-violent philosophy satyagraha is being analyzed. Around the world from Reykjavik and on the other side of the globe in the most peaceful country in the world New Zealand many nations will take part in observing the International Day of Nonviolence. This observance in New Zealand will begin a world march that will last 90 days from October 2, 2009 ending on January 2, 2010 in Argentina.

They will be observing Gandhi's impact on civilization and continuing his work to advocate for nonviolence and global disarmament. Furthermore Pax Christi International a catholic nongovernmental organization based on the gospel and inspired by faith dedicated to establishing peace, respect for human rights, and justice are observing Gandhi's birthday with prayer and looking deeply into Christian theology and the nonviolent example set by Jesus Christ.



Within Cuba's prisons there are individuals who follow Gandhi's teachings such as Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and their courage and example terrify the dictatorship because even they recognize the power of nonviolence.