Martin Luther King and Nonviolence

 

This past November when some members of Parishioners for Peace and Justice traveled to Georgia to participate in the School of the Americas protest we decided to take the opportunity to stop at the King Center in Atlanta.  What better way to begin a weekend where one of the underlying themes was nonviolence?  While at the center we took special notice of Martin Luther King's Six Principles of Nonviolence. 

 

With so much violence, war, and human rights abuses occurring in the world today it is helps to remind ourselves of King's message of nonviolence.  Inspired by Gandhi and of course Jesus, King used this message to counter violence during the civil rights movement and in his campaign against the Vietnam War.

 

 

Six Principles of Nonviolence

 

Principle 1:  Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.

 

Principle 2:  Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.

 

Principle 3: Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice not people.

 

Principle 4:  Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform.

 

Principle 5:  Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.

 

Principle 6:  Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

 

Www.thekingcenter.org

Other Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice,

 is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

 

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

 

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

 

 

                                                                1/18/09 Issue 3