Joseph Kosek's Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy is the first serious work on the history of pacifism in America to appear in a number of years. It was a doctoral dissertation at Yale, but it does not suffer from the ailments of many doctoral dissertations. Instead of too much detail on too small a subject, Kosek gives his readers a reasonable amount of information on a substantial subject. The topics included are pacifism in America, the role of religion in American life, the importance of nonviolence in social change in America and around the world, and the role of key American and international figures in formulating a nonviolent theory and a process to achieve that change. Key figures include John Haynes Holmes, A. J. Muste, Sherwood Eddy, Kirby Page, Edmund Chaffee, John Nevin Sayre, Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Gregg, Mohandas Gandhi, Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, and Martin Luther King Jr. These are not all household names, even to those familiar with the subject. Gregg in particular emerges from relative obscurity. The organization that is front and center is the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a product of World War I. Organized in England, it arrived in the United States in 1915.

Not all introductions are created equal, but Kosek's opening pages are essential to understand what he is trying to achieve. His book is about a slice of American pacifism, the part that is Christian nonviolence that emerges in the era in American history from World War I through the civil rights movement. He includes the witness of the peace churches, the movement to end war in the 1920s and 1930s, conscientious objectors during World War II, the antinuclear protests in the 1940s and 1950s, the opponents of the Vietnam War, and the key events of the civil rights movement, but this is not a book about any of these things in particular. They are the settings in which he develops his thesis. He offers occasional information about organizational changes in the FOR, but his book is about ideas, not an institution. This book is an intellectual history, and if it is not the best, it gives the best a run for it.

The thesis is the history of a “radical religious vanguard” which chose Christian nonviolence as its guiding principle. Repulsed by the violence of World War I, these individuals gathered under the umbrella of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, although not all were members of it, to work out the meaning of Christian nonviolence in an America and a world continuously engaged in war. “Gathered” means they were all working on the idea of Christian nonviolence, not that they sat around a room and talked. Some of them did that, of course, but Kosek's main sources are books and articles, public speeches, publications of the FOR, and letters in many manuscript collections. Kosek is to be congratulated for the large number of manuscript collections, unpublished and published, that he found and used skillfully.

Kosek argues that none of the initiating parties to what became a decades-long discussion knew where it would lead, or who might join it. They generally eschewed dogma, “all war is evil,” and engaged in a dialogue, sometimes better called a debate, about the nature of Christian nonviolence and how it might be used in society. What did Christian nonviolence mean if it did not mean the end of war? New people joined the informal group along the way, including some of the most remarkable thinkers of the twentieth century. Unpredictable events, like Gandhi's actions in India and later the bus boycott in Montgomery, opened new avenues for reflection and debate. Kosek follows the chronology of the era but notes that ideas have lives of their own and appear and then lay dormant for a time only to reappear. No single individual emerges as the key person in this long discussion, although Kosek gives Gregg and Muste considerable space for their arguments and praise for their part in reaching a conclusion. And the conclusion is that by putting the “problem of violence at the center of its theory and practice,” the Christian nonviolent tradition “offers an alternative model of political action and an alternative history of the twentieth century” (1).

The book contains six chapters and a conclusion. Each chapter, beginning with those engaged in and after World War I, creates a series of conversations over the meaning of Christian nonviolence and how best to put that theory into practice. Chapter 1, “Love and War,” features Page, Holmes, Eddy, and Muste. Chapter 3 introduces Gandhi and Gregg. Niebuhr makes his appearance in chapter 4. Chapter 5 turns to the debate that occurred during World War II and bears the appropriate title, “Tragic Choices.” The sixth chapter turns the spotlight on the civil rights movement and bears the title, “The Age of Conscience.” The conclusion is more than a summary and is as important as the introduction. In it Kosek invites his readers to engage in the continuing dialogue.

This is a book that anyone seriously interested in American religious history in the twentieth century can engage at a number of points. Christian nonviolence is not a household concept and has many possible meanings. Putting a discussion of those in the text rather than in footnote 9 of the introduction might helped clarify the meaning of the term. Chapter 6 has an important title, but can be misleading. The 1940s through the1960s constituted “an age of conscience,” not “The Age of Conscience.” In the long course of American history, the 1830s through the 1850s was another “age of conscience.” These are minor things. Gentle reader, if you have even a remote interest in this topic, pick up this book and read.