Nonviolent civil disobedience is a powerful form of prayerful witness for peace and justice. It is a step often taken only after many other forms of witness have been pursued. It has played a very important role in making change in the United States and around the world. It is undertaken in a spirit of nonviolence, respect and a willingness to accept the consequences of this step. It is an act of conscience.
As part of the March 16, 2007 Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, 222 ministers and laypeople were led by conscience to make their call for peace visible by engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience by praying for peace on the sidewalk in front of the White House. This year we bring our call to the Congress.
As part of our powerful public prayer for peace, we are organizing nonviolent civil disobedience as a way to repent of our complicity in this violence and as a means of prophetically urging the nation and its leaders to end the U.S. occupation in Iraq.
In this spirit, people of faith will petition Congress to take concrete steps to end the U.S. war in Iraq by engaging in prayerful nonviolent civil disobedience. We invite those considering risking arrest to:
- Prepare to take this step through prayer, reflection and discernment.
- Take one of the nonviolent action training being organized in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, March 6 (6:30-9:30 p.m.) or Friday March 7 (8:00-11:00 a.m.) -- or in your own community before traveling to Washington.
- Attend the Final Legal Briefing/Scenario (either Thursday, March 6, 8:45-9:30 or Friday, March 7, 10:15-11:00 a.m.)
- Identify a support person and encourage them to come to the Final Legal Briefing.
Background on Nonviolent Civil Disobedience
Throughout history, people have responded to numerous social and political emergencies and transformed systems of institutionalized violence by engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience. Changes such as women's suffrage, establishing workers’ rights, ending legal racial segregation, protecting the environment, establishing a moratorium on nuclear testing and ending the Vietnam War were all the direct result of ordinary people taking action. These movements and many other movements have featured nonviolent civil disobedience as a way to sharpen for society the crucial choice for justice and peace. People of faith have played a perennial role in taking action on behalf of justice and peace.
Civil disobedience is a powerful tool for change because it consciously interferes with the operation of systematic violence and publicly withdraws consent from it.
It involves risking arrest in a principled and conscientious way either by breaking an unjust law or by breaking a law that directly or indirectly supports an unjust policy, condition or system. It acts on behalf of a higher law or principle, including the worth and dignity of all human persons.
In legal terms, this is known as a necessity defense: we are obliged to break a specific law to uphold a higher one (for example, the Nuremberg obligations of international law opposing torture, wars of aggression and crimes against humanity). The power of civil disobedience flows from a disciplined commitment to refrain from violence and a willingness to accept the legal and social consequences of one’s action.
In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such a creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” In the face of this growing emergency in Iraq, it is crucial that we as people of faith take action to make unmistakably clear the need for a new course in Iraq and in the world.
