There is no question anymore that the Christian church of the first 3 centuries regarded itself as a nonviolent community. It makes perfect sense. Since their Master faithfully modeled the nonviolent love of friend and enemy that he taught, they tried to do likewise. And by and large they succeeded, despite terrible persecutions from Rome, under much of whose brutal domination Christianity was a capital offense until about 300 C.E.

The first Christians tried to be faithful to Jesus' commandments to "put away the sword," "do good to those who persecute you," "pray for those who despitefully use you," "love your neighbor as yourself," "turn the other cheek," "love your enemies" and "love as I have loved you." They regarded the human body as God's temple here on earth, and, knowing that violence to a temple was desecration and therefore forbidden, they refused to kill, and therefore also refused to join and kill for Rome's military. Martyrdom was a preferred option rather than even using violent means for defence. And the church flourished in spite of it! The Roman Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity as a valid religion around 313 C.E. and the persecutions stopped. The church gradually evolved into the state-church, and before long Christians were endorsing the un-Christ-like use of homicidal violence in war. And Christianity has never been the same since.

The dark history of Constantinian Christianity's abuse of power and wealth is difficult to relate. Christians started joining the military in large numbers, and by 416 C.E. it was unlawful to be in the Roman army unless one was a Christian! The police and soldier-enforced tortures of "heretics" by the church and the massacres of non-Christians in the Crusades was soon followed by massacres of fellow Christians. The Inquisitions were next, with church-administered torture and murder of Jews and heretics. Bloody Reformation wars between Catholics and Protestants were fought with the blessings of the pope, Luther, Calvin and King Henry VIII of England. In the Middle Ages, the organized church started actively persecuting, torturing and murdering millions of women who were feared as female intellectuals, midwives and "witches."

The use of atomic bombs against the civilian targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was perhaps the low point in Christendom's history of un-Christ-like cruelty and inhumanity to man. It is a little known fact that ground zero for bomb 2 was the largest Christian church in the Orient. The Nagasaki Urakami Cathedral's community, which Imperial Japan could not annihilate over a period of 200 years, was vaporized in 9 nanoseconds by fellow Christians. And "christian" America still refuses to repent of this or any of its other warcrimes that happen routinely in war.

And then there was the Jewish Holocaust. First largely Christian Germans silenced and then eliminated the "unproductive" -- mentally ill, gypsies, homosexuals, trade unionists, liberals, communists and then the Jews -- and the churches consented by their silence. The holocaust atrocities occurred in part because the German churches had, for centuries, ignored Christ's commandment to "love as I have loved you." What most church leaders and their followers in Germany did not "get" (and is also true of mainline churches today) was that the "neighbor/enemy" who is to be loved unconditionally includes the outcast Jew, the homosexual, the foreigner. Germany needed, but didn't have, a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, who understood, and could teach, the nonviolent activism of Jesus, and who was willing to lead and suffer for the cause. Instead, Germany had Martin Luther's legacy -- and his rabid antisemitism -- which resulted in German Christianity's complicity in the horrors. Hitler needed the church's neutrality for the genocide to go smoothly, and he got it.

Nobody knows what would have happened if massive nonviolent resistance had been used early on in the the rise of Naziism, before it was too late, but it is likely that if German Christianity had operated out of a peace church tradition instead of the "two kingdoms" tradition and there had been a willingness to risk suffering by standing up against the state and for the "neighbor/enemy," their sons would not have had the stomach for atrocities. In other words, if the church had been preaching the full gospel of nonviolent love, the war in Europe might have been averted. Looking back even further in history, it is probable that if the WWI Allied victors who imposed the brutal terms of the treaty of Versailles had had any Christ-like compassion towards Germany, Hitler could not have risen to power.

Nazism could not have flourished if the German churches had been peace churches. The movements of Gandhi and King and Jesus, as well as a multitude of other examples of successful nonviolent resistances throughout history, are proof that nonviolence can work, but it is only for the faithful and the courageous. Far more courage is needed by unarmed nonviolent resisters who may be forced to jail or to their deaths, than is asked of modern patriotic warriors who do battle using high-tech weaponry that almost guarantees their safety.

Is post-Auschwitz Christianity still ignoring Christ's teachings on nonviolence? Knowing that essentially no mainstream seminaries teach courses on Christian nonviolence, the Just War Theory or the morality of war, I would have to say yes. Seeing the silence of the churches in the face of massive Iraqi civilian suffering since the Gulf War, I would have to say yes. The nonviolent gospel message of Jesus was again not preached, and the blood of the 1,000,000 Iraqi dead are on our hands. The killing was at the hands of Christians and the vast majority of victims were innocent civilians -- mostly children. Numerous American war crime atrocities against Iraqis occurred in that war, but none were prosecuted.

Are we, like the church after Constantine, so entwined in the power, wealth, prestige and privilege granted by our secular rulers that we don't even recognize the betrayal of Jesus? Are we so frightened of losing the good graces (e.g. tax-free status) of our secular rulers that we are willing to participate in, or bless, the homicide? Are we so afraid of losing church members that we cannot proclaim the radical Gospel that sometimes asks sacrifice and suffering? Are we so certain of our own righteousness that we are unwilling to leave judgment up to God? Is our violent hatred of "the other" so ingrained that we don't recognize it as un-Christ-like -- or even demonic?

When will American Christianity recognize and repent of the immorality of militarism, racism, and excess luxury wealth in the face of grinding poverty all around it? When will we start believing that mercy is what Christians are supposed to be all about? When will we start reversing injustice nonviolently -- what Jesus taught and what the world must do for real peace? The churches must be the ones to start, for we can hardly expect the world to do justice if we in the churches do not.

The implications for the Christianity are complex, and solutions won't come easily. Leadership on nonviolence issues will apparently have to come from the laity. But if we stop the betrayal and begin again to teach what Jesus taught -- and live that way -- unexpected things will happen. People who have given up on a "hypocritical" church rejoin. Some of the answers for our violent times may suddenly come clear. Apathetic church members may be re-energized by this forgotten message of peace. And the unchurched will eventually notice.

Christian nonviolence seems to not interest those whose faith systems are based mainly on personal salvation, "believing in" (as opposed to "imitating") Christ, and "glory to God" religiosity, all of which are valid practices. But the modern "non-peace" churches obviously don't trust the Sermon on the Mount either. Most don't know that Jesus commanded the love of friends and enemies. Most churches even seem agnostic about the Last Judgement passage in Mt. 25: that mercy offered (or not) to the least of God's children is mercy offered (or not) to Jesus, with radical consequences for the unmerciful. When we are apathetic about human suffering, we fail Christ.

The Gospel is supposed to be good news to the poor, the children of God who are the most oppressed and who suffer the most in wartime and in peace. But before peace can come, the oppressed need to see real justice from their rulers and Christ-like love from the churches; otherwise there will be no peace.

The earliest Christians who knew Jesus and the apostles understood nonviolent love, lived it, and Christianity thrived. How a message of such clarity in the New Testament could be a nonissue in the modern churches is a wonder, but it has indeed been ignored for 1700 years.

Do we have the courage to confess and repent of our faithlessness to the clear nonviolent teachings of Jesus? Do we have the courage to start anew and live and love the way Christ and his earliest disciples lived and loved? Can we adopt the Peace Plan of God as revealed in the Sermon on the Mount? Can we start living lives of Christ-like/Agape love -- the love that is unconditional, merciful, forgiving, nonjudgmental, non-retaliatory, sacrificial and nonviolent?

The survival of an errant church demands it.

© Gary G. Kohls, MD, 1306 E.8th St., Duluth, MN 55805 Ph/fax (218) 728-9756, email: gkohls@cpinternet.com, Midwest Coordinator for Every Church A Peace Church (http://www.ecapc.org).