Whoever can reconcile this, Resist not evil," with "Resist evil by force"; again, "Give also thy other cheek," with "Strike again"; also, "Love thine enemies, " with "Spoil them, make a prey of them, pursue them with fire and sword"; or "Pray for those that persecute you, " with "Persecute them by fines, imprisonment, and death itself." Whoever can find a means to reconcile those things, may be supposed also to have found a way to reconcile God with the Devil, Christ with Anti-Christ, light with darkness, and good with evil. The theologian whose teaching helped the most was Walter Rauschenbusch. I return to him again and again. With him, as with [E. Stanley Jones], the Kingdom of God is central. [Jesus]' teachings are meant to be lived in the here and now. While God's love is both within us and beyond us, it is for this life that we pray "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth..." Rauschenbusch, out of his experience as a pastor in Hell's Kitchen in New York City, had the burning passion of the prophets for justice as he witnessed how an evil social order destroyed people's lives. "It is an essential doctrine of Christianity that the world is fundamentally good and practically bad, for it was made by God, but is now controlled by sin. If a man wants to be a Christian, he must stand over against things as they are and condemn them in the name of that higher conception of life which Jesus revealed.... Humanity is waiting for a revolutionary Christianity which will call the world evil and change it..." Rauschenbusch called war "the most sinful thing there is." When World War I broke out, he put black crepe on the lapel of his coat and vowed to keep it there until the war was finished. In his oft-quoted prayer of wrath against war, he prayed, "O thou strong Father of all nations, draw all thy great family together with an increasing sense of our common blood and destiny, that peace may come on earth at last, and thy sun may shed its light rejoicing on a holy brotherhood of peoples." The '60s were also years of growing efforts in the Philippines for liberation from social injustice and oppression. I joined my students in demonstrations, vigils and rallies against these evils. By now [Martin Luther King, Jr.] stood alongside [Gandhi] as an exemplar of how to effect nonviolent social change. Strategies of nonviolence developed in their effectiveness. I especially recall a 45-day vigil on the steps of the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Manila. Farmers, students, nuns, priests, ministers joined together in protesting the cruelty and unjust practices of the landlords. Leafleting, negotiations between demonstrators and department officials ( with a group of nuns called "the staring squad" monitoring the proceedings) , speeches, religious services - all combined to result eventually in a nonviolent victory for the tenants and small farmers. Some felt such tactics took too long, and began to advocate violence as the shortcut to the promised land. Yet, hadn't Mao's violent revolution, the model for so many, taken a quarter of a century? Some said, "After all means have failed, then violence will be necessary." But the point was that all means had not yet been tried. Only a small beginning had been made. Certainly the idea of nonviolent revolution would not be as effective as the practice of a violent one. Any kind of revolution, violent or nonviolent, will exact a high cost and take much time. Why not the willingness to put as much discipline and persistence into a nonviolent struggle as a violent one? For the end is predetermined by the means. If we would truly build a new society, then we should not emulate the violence of the old."
