AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Underhill on Pacifism

I was picking up some kitchen debris this afternoon and came upon a photocopy of Evelyn Underhill’s “The Church and War,” a tract that Underhill wrote in 1940 as a pithy account of her pacifism. I’m linking to the full text here, but I’m sore tempted to whip up a marked-up, formatted, handsome little edition both for ease of reproduction and as practice and a resource for the Disseminary roll-out.

At a time when the demons of the moment threaten to obscure long-run thinking about what kinds of lives we ought to live, it’s helpful to remember some fondly-remembered theological voices before us have spoken so forcefully and truly about the need to refuse destructive violence. “. . . [T]he Church cannot acquiesce in war. For war, however camouflaged or excused, must always mean the effort of one group of men to achieve their purpose — get something which they want, or prevent something happening which they do not want — by inflicting destruction and death on another group of men.”