The refusal to participate in the state becomes, in Tolstoi's thought, a species of
nonresistance to evil by force: a "public" and pragmatic expression of a private, spiritual virtue.
Sections of the Mennonite community were already making a transition from
nonresistance to active nonviolence at a time when Vatican II was giving only cautiously worded praise to nonviolence.
Thus, it is precisely this initial condemnation of war that later crystallized into his belief in the
nonresistance to evil.
Compared with the
nonresistance scenario, the scenario conveying the victim as physically resisting the rape was perceived as clearly depicting this resistance.
Hauerwas wants to free the American church from its bondage to idolatrous self-constructions--otherwise known as civil religion--and restore to its mission the countercultural practices of forgiveness and reconciliation, hospitality to strangers, and nonviolence, as well as
nonresistance to death and suffering brought on by forces of evil.
This intelligentsia now suffers from its own version of the Vichy syndrome, the amnesia from which French society (including the left-wing intelligentsia) suffered for many years, whose purpose was to disguise from itself the extent of its own complicity with, or
nonresistance to, the Nazi occupation.
On the matter of coercion he held to a strict
nonresistance that separated true Christians from the use of force and the holding of magisterial office.
Nonresistance had come under fire from Reinhold Niebuhr, who dismissed it as irresponsible, and from Christian pacifists, who believed that evil structures such as racism should be resisted through nonviolent direct action.
Despite all this, acceptance, in one guise or another, has a certain appeal which may lie in its promotion of a kind of
nonresistance to that which we cannot change.
Specifically, these are radical discipleship, belief in authority of scripture, a rejection of violence and adoption of
nonresistance, and a call for separation of church and state.
where individuals relish the driving clash of two football giants, the idea of
nonresistance in a competitive situation is abhorred.
Though he had been attracted to Tolstoyan principles, such as the simple life and
nonresistance to evil, Chekhov came to reject these doctrines.
