By Wade Lee Hudson
As political violence permeated the United States and spread across the globe, in 1969 the influential political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote On Violence. This small, passionate book analyzed the nature and sources of violence, offered some prophetic speculations, and challenged many widespread assumptions — including some that I had embraced but now reject. This re-evaluation will lead me to rewrite some of the content on this site.
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In “Reconciliation,” the last chapter of Disciplines of the Spirit, the esteemed theologian, Howard Thurman, one of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s main mentors, presents a case for nonviolence as a way of life, not merely a tactic.
In the opening to the chapter, Thurman acknowledges that personal growth needs to develop within a structure and humans need to be cared for and understood “in general” as well as by others “in particular.” And he discusses “the need to be needed beyond the limits of her family.” In this way, with troubled souls, “the wildness (can be) gentled out of a personality at war with itself.”
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