In march I read the book, Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons From The History Of a Dangerous Idea, by Mark Kurlansky. I think I had most recently heard it mentioned in a sermon by Rob Bell. I read it during my vacation is found it extremely interesting and well worth the time.
The book is not a propaganda tool for those in favor of non-violence. Instead, it’s mostly Kulansky looking through all of history and documenting the stories and history surrounding non-violence. He is fair to point out when it doesn’t seem to work, but he’s also quick to acknowledge that it’s vary rarely, if ever, been tried (true nonviolence that is).

Here’s just a few of the quotes and comments I found interesting…

“A bayonet is a tool with a worker on each end.”

After the war started in 1917 denouncing the war landed you in prison. 142 were sentenced to life and 17 to death (though the executions were not carried out). Many were so badly beaten and abused in prison to change their stance that at the end of the war only a third (about 4,000) still said they would not serve.

Woodrow Wilson who brought the US into war, later said, “Is there any man, women or child in America… who does not know that this was an industrial and commercial war?”

One of the most intriguing stories of collective nonviolence is that of Denmark during World War II. If there was ever an effort of an entire country to practice nonviolence it was Denmark…

“Denmark, regarding armed resistance as suicidal, submitted passively to German occupation. It became a point of national honor to work slowly, delat transportation, destroy equipment, and, above all, to protect anyone the Germans pursued. Youths openly demonstrated against German policies. Underground groups sabotaged trains and other infrastructure. Workers went out on strike around the nation.
The Danish Government had refused to enact any anti-Semitic measures, and on October 1, 1943, when the Germans announced their decision to deport Jews from Denmark, the Danes his almost the entire Jewish population of 6,500, including about 1,500 refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. The hidden Jews were then taken by boat to neutral Sweden. The Germans only succeeded in deporting four hundred to Theresienstadt. The Danish government relentlessly inquired on their behalf and at one point managed to send representatives to visit them. Because of this close attention by their government, no Danes were in the transports sent to Auschwitz. Fifty-one died of sickness. The rest of the Jewish population of Denmark survived. Compare this to France, which had one of the better records, where there was well-organized armed resistance but 26 percent of 350,000 Jews were lost; or the Netherlands, where three-quarters of a Jewish population of 140,000 were killed despite armed resistance; or Poland, where 90 percent of 3.3 million Jews were killed despite an armed Polish resistance and armed Jewish uprisings.”

I love the statement: “It became a point of national honor to work slowly,” because it acknowledges that nonviolent resistance causes us to step out of the norms and find ways outside of the current system to achieve our ends. When I mention anything that might put a wrench in the machine (boycotts, not driving, not consuming, not spending), people always seem to think it would create mass chaos, as if our very lives and breath came from that machine. Thank you Denmark for teaching me that my ultimate allegiance is to One greater then anything of this world.