ACCLAIM FOR
Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution
Glen Stassen, Fuller Theological Seminary
In a time when the church is being seduced by the concentration of power and violence, this book gives us the ethic we need to remain faithful. Almost all the major themes on which John Howard Yoder later based his classic Politics of Jesus are here – in briefer and highly readable form.
Andy Crouch, Re:generation Quarterly
Trocmé brings a ground-breaking historical clarity to Jesus’ life and teachings. The result is a vision for Jesus’ followers that is unsettling, exhilarating, and – most amazing of all – possible.
John Dear, author, Jesus the Rebel
Gandhi once said that Jesus was the greatest practitioner of nonviolence in history and that the only people who do not know that Jesus was nonviolent are Christians. Now more than ever, we need to study and imitate the nonviolent Jesus. This classic text by a legendary Christian peacemaker is a must for anyone who is concerned not only about the world’s wars and violence, but who wants to know what Jesus would do. It is a great source of inspiration and encouragement.
Donald Kraybill, author, The Upside-Down Kingdom
The revised edition is a welcome refinement to a classic study…Trocmé has the prophetic gift of bypassing doctrinal fluff and cutting to the heart of Jesus’ message: a stark call for repentance, love and socio-economic change. A prophet for the 21st century, Trocmé speaks in plain and simple words we can understand but may not want to hear. Read him with caution: this book may change your life.
Ched Myers, author, Who Will Roll Away the Stone?
Trocmé pioneered territory where many of us now dwell, and opened doors we seek still to pass through…It is wonderful that a new generation might come to know this book: it represents a continuing light in our darkness.
Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution
ANDRÉ TROCMÉ
Edited by Charles E. Moore
PLOUGH PUBLISHING HOUSE
Published by Plough Publishing House
Walden, New York
Robertsbridge, England
Elsmore, Australia
Copyright © 2014, 2003 by Plough Publishing House
All Rights Reserved
André Trocmé’s book Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution was first published in English in 1973 by Herald Press, Scottdale, PA 15683, translated from the French by Michael H. Shank and Marlin E. Miller. This revised and expanded edition incorporates material from The Politics of Repentance by André Trocmé, used by permission of Fellowship Publications, Nyack, NY 10960.
Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Cover art © Daniel Bonnel, www.ImagesOnChrist.com.
Print ISBN: 978-0-87486-927-9
Pdf ISBN: 978-0-87486-594-3
Epub ISBN: 978-0-87486-592-9
Mobi ISBN: 978-0-87486-593-6
Introduction
Few books stand the test of time as this one has. Perhaps the fact that it is still so relevant rests in the circumstances of its genesis – in the courageous life of its author. Since it first appeared in English in 1972, André Trocmé’s Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution has influenced a whole stream of New Testament thinkers and peace activists. Dozens of books about Christian ethics make reference to it, and proponents of nonviolence turn to it repeatedly for guidance. For example, significant portions of John Howard Yoder’s classic Politics of Jesus are based on Trocmé’s thesis. However, one cannot fully appreciate Trocmé’s ideas without some understanding of the man and of the amazing life story that forms the context for his message.
The Story of Le Chambon
André Trocmé was born into a French-German family in 1901, at the dawn of a turbulent period that would eventually catapult all Europe into armed conflict. As a young man, André’s youthful enthusiasm and impulsive deeds made him stand out. When the German army was rapidly marching into Northern France, he excitedly hung a French flag from the topmost branches of a towering tree near his house.
During the First World War, André saw first-hand the horrors and senselessness of that war. At the age of thirteen he simply could not accept that his German cousins, his mother being German, might fight against his own half brothers. The shock of this, along with the senseless death of his mother from a car accident just prior to the war, and his encounter with numerous pacifist theologians after the war, cemented his orientation as a pacifist. Moreover, as a young student, he realized that military armistices could not establish peace between nations or reconstruct the moral fabric of a society.
Years later he would be described by one writer as “a man of mystical fervor, aggressively loving, almost explosive in his rush to save lives.” But his path was not always so clear. As the specter of National Socialism began to haunt Europe, Trocmé, despite his aversion to violence, conceded that it might be necessary to plot against and assassinate Hitler. In the end he joined an altogether different kind of conspiracy, one that chronicler Philip Hallie called “a conspiracy of goodness.”
By the time Hitler’s war machine came to full force, Trocmé, now married and a father of four, was co-pastor of the French Reformed Church in Le Chambon sur Lignon. A farming village on a pine-studded plateau in the mountains of south-central France, Le Chambon seemed an unlikely breeding place for the radical resistance for which it would soon be famous. Yet it became a magnet to a stream of refugees that included both French and foreign Jews, providing shelter and safety from their persecutors.1
Already before the first Jews arrived, others fleeing from Franco’s regime in Spain, and later from the Nazis, found this Protestant sanctuary, consisting of twelve villages, willing to bid them welcome. In the parish of Le Chambon, Trocmé and his fellow pastor, Edouard Theis, united the people in the effort to protect these fugitives, exhorting their parishioners to live not in fear of the state, but according to moral conviction. What eventually became a massive, organized network to protect and even educate Jewish children who had been taken out of internment camps, started at the grassroots with these first refugees. Villagers and farmers opened their homes to the refugees, sometimes to stay, sometimes to wait until accommodations could be arranged elsewhere or until they could be smuggled across the Swiss border. Besides the hospitality of individuals, by the middle of the occupation financial aid from outside the village was supporting seven larger houses of refuge. Several humanitarian organizations helped to established boardinghouses for refugee children as well as a student center.
So it came about that resisting authority became a normal part of daily life in Le Chambon. The students at the private school L’École Nouvelle Cévenole, which Trocmé and Theis had founded, refused to salute the flag or hang the picture of Pétain, the Vichy leader, in every classroom. On a national holiday, Trocmé’s parish ignored Pétain’s order to ring the church bells at noon. They would ring the bells only for God. A tight network also provided the refugees with false identification cards that allowed them to pass as non-Jewish. But though it was truly resistance, the fighters in this nonviolent underground were not fueled by anger or hatred. Some maintained connections with partisan fighters in the area, while throughout the rescue effort