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Now is the time for the people of MCC around the world to unite under the banner of God’s love and to resist powers that oppress and marginalize God’s people. It is crucial HOW we stand up to evil, and that we not add to the increasing levels of violence in our world.
Nonviolence is not passive, and it is not easy. It is courageously following the path of Jesus’ love to oppose power over others in favor of a new Kin-dom of God characterized by radically inclusive, mutually-cooperative love and care for one another.
The goal of nonviolence is to withdraw our participation from an evil system: it is a long-term strategy to produce change. Nonviolence rejects the mentality that "the ends justify the means."
Below are Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Six Principles of Nonviolence*:
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Principle one: Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. It is active nonviolent resistance to evil. It is aggressive spiritually, mentally and emotionally.
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Principle two: Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding. The result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation. The purpose of nonviolence is the creation of the Beloved Community.
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Principle three: Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people. Nonviolence recognizes that evildoers are also victims and are not evil people. The nonviolent resister seeks to defeat evil, not people.
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Principle four: Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform. At MCC, we are all about transformation! Nonviolence accepts suffering without retaliation. Unearned suffering is redemptive and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities.
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Principle five: Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate. Nonviolence resists violence of the spirit as well as the body. Nonviolent love is spontaneous, unmotivated, unselfish and creative.
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Principle six: Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice. The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win. Nonviolence believes that God is a God of justice.
MCC faith communities know the power of music to move our souls, and so we encourage the singing of our faith as part of our nonviolent resistance. Songs elevate our courage, bond us together, forge our discipline and shield us from hate. As one veteran of the 1960s civil rights struggles for racially equality in the United States said: “The songs protected us from danger and the songs kept us sane.”
We can take joy in knowing that we are never alone and that we are connected to all our siblings through our ethic and practice of God’s nonviolent love. Let us renew the call to beat our swords into plowshares; to never repay evil for evil, but to show a more excellent way.
* To learn more about nonviolent resistance, see www.nonviolent-conflict.org
and www.thekingcenter.org
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