‘In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist: in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifism is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.’ The words of US radical pacifist AJ Muste, who lived an astounding life of commitment, in 1928.
This powerful statement about pacifism and nonviolence comes from Muste’s classic September 1928 essay, ‘Pacifism and class war’. A radical Christian pacifist, Muste warned against the assumption that ‘violence is…
‘In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist: in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifism is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.’ – AJ Muste, 1928
This insight is a foundation stone for the tradition of revolutionary nonviolence that Peace News comes out of and, in decades past, has contributed to.
In his classic 1928 essay, ‘Pacifism and class war’, US Christian pacifist AJ Muste warned against the assumption that ‘…
Abraham Johannes Muste, known to the public as ‘AJ Muste’, was a remarkable and in some ways enigmatic figure bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Born in Holland on 8 January 1885, Muste was brought to the US as a child of six and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by a Republican family in the strict Calvinist traditions of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1909, he was ordained a minister in that church, and married Anna Huizenga, with whom he was to share the next 40 years…
