|
|
Article: "In my extremity I turned to Gandhi": American pacifists, Christianity, and Gandhian nonviolence, 1915-1941 (1).
- Article from:
- Church History
- Article date:
- June 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 American Society of Church History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
American pacifists first heard of Mohandas Gandhi and his struggles in South Africa and India after World War I. Although they admired his opposition to violence, they were ambivalent about nonviolent resistance as a method of social change. As heirs to the Social Gospel, they feared that boycotts and civil disobedience lacked the spirit of love and goodwill that made social redemption possible. Moreover, American pacifists viewed Gandhi through their own cultural lens, a view that was often distorted by Orientalist ideas about Asia and Asians. (2) It was only in the 1930s, when Reinhold Niebuhr and other Christian realists charged that pacifism was impotent in the face of ...