The Christian Narrative of Nonviolent Struggle against Structures of Violence (or Sin)

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 29 Sep 2025

Prof. Antonino Drago – TRANSCEND Media Service

24 Sep 2025 – Gandhi extended the ancient teaching of Jainism (ahimsa) to the ability to fight nonviolently against every negative structure in society. In order to find inspiration for the nonviolent struggle in the millennia-old tradition of Hindu sacred texts, he reinterpreted the Bagavad Gita: he reversed the meaning of the war Arjuna faced into a nonviolent struggle with himself and others; he called it “The Gospel of selfless action.” (Desai M., The Gita According to Gandhi, Ahmedabad: Vivek, 1946).

We nonviolent people are interested in knowing if there are other religious traditions that, with specific religious teachings, anticipated the spiritual meaning of nonviolent struggle.

For Christians, what is the way to address conflicts without “reacting to evil without doing evil” (Mt 5:39; Rom 12:17)?

An answer comes from a correct interpretation of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5).

Lanza del Vasto (LdV) offered a fundamental suggestion regarding them: the Beatitudes must be read in sequence, one after the other (“Pière pour Gandhi”, in L’Arche avait une vigne pour voilure, Paris: Denoel, 1978). Thus, they express a crescendo, from intimate or personal reaction (living poverty, weeping, remaining meek, thirsting for justice) to action in society (having mercy, engaging in social commitment, making peace, fighting for social justice). The reward for these commitments also grows in parallel: from those of merely intimate or personal consolation (feeling in heaven, being consoled, receiving one’s land, having the satisfaction of justice) to spiritual growth in social relationships (receiving mercy, seeing God in people, being called son of God, realizing Trinitarian life here).

(Note, however, that this sequence is clear if 1) we exchange the second with the third; 2) in the sixth Beatitude we remedy to the lack of some missed words: “Blessed are those whose hearts are pure [instead: … those who engage in social life by purifying their hearts] for they will see God [in the persons]” and 3) we improve the last Beatitude: “Blessed are those who fight injustice to the point of personal sacrifice, for with them the life of the Trinity on earth is represented”).

The “reactions to evil without resorting to evil” are rewarded by the Holy Spirit as He leverages human reactions to reverse evils into transcendent goods, that is, into what the corresponding Beatitudes promise.

Another fundamental suggestion of LdV is that when evil becomes structural in society, it materializes in one of four “man-made” scourges: Poverty, Sedition, War, and Servitude (Lanza del Vasto, Make Straight the Way of the Lord, New York: Knopf, 1974, p. 185). Thus, at the beginning each beatitude indicates a painful reaction not so much to a generic evil, but above all to evil that has become structural, to one of these four scourges. Thus we discover that the text of the beatitudes must be completed with an implicit part: each of them must declare at the beginning which scourge it is reacting to. For this reason, it is necessary to preface each beatitude, for example the second: “Against War, blessed are the meek…” But there are four scourges and the Beatitudes are eight. In fact, the Beatitudes are reactions to the scourges listed twice; the first four Beatitudes indicate the personal reactions, the second four the cintervention in society. Therefore, the Beatitudes as a whole are a precise policy of nonviolent action against all the major instances of structured evil in society.

All of the above was incomprehensible before the 20th century, when nonviolence was discovered and, in its wake, Gandhi achieved “three historic (political) miracles: a national liberation without bloodshed, a social revolution without revolt, and the stopping of a war” (Lanza del Vasto, Les quatre Fléaux, Denoël, Parigi, 1959; chap. 5, §§. 34, 46). To these we can today add the historic miracle of the nonviolent revolutions of the peoples of Eastern Europe occurred in 1989 and afterward; they freed humanity from the harsh antagonism of the Two Blocs and their Cold War, which threatened a colossal war of extermination.

From all this, we derive a new text of the Beatitudes that is fully meaningful and very relevant to present social life.

New Text of the Beatitudes

Against Poverty, blessed are those who are poor by the Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Against Sedition, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Against War, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Against Servitude, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.

Against Poverty, blessed are those who yield to mercy, for they will receive mercy.

Against Sedition, blessed are those who engage in social work with a pure heart, for they will see God in the persons.

Against War, blessed are those who make peace within their neighbors, for they will be called son of God.

Against Servitude, blessed are those who fight for social justice even to the point of personal sacrifice, for through them the Trinitarian life of God on earth is represented.

But what does the interior life of those who fight nonviolently, as indicated by each Beatitude, consist of? A long popular tradition, born in the late Middle Ages, has represented it in painting and sculpture (to my knowledge, the first image of it is a sculpture in the cathedral of Compostela atop the central column of the Portico of Paradise (1211); the most famous is that of the Trinity by Masaccio in Santa Maria Novella in Florence (1427)). It was a nonviolent struggle with which the Son resolved the conflict of humanity’s with God; i.e., the maximum structural violence, the original sin; this struggle entailed his incarnation, his fight (against both the religious power of Judaism of the time, authoritarian and formalist, and that of the political domination of the Roman Empire), his crucifixion and his resurrection. The aforementioned image says that the entire event was supported by the will of the Father (who supports the cross) and was assisted by the Holy Spirit (who had planned it all). In short, this image says that humanity’s conflict with God was resolved by the Son, who introduced this conflict, now become a fulfilled experience, into the life of God himself.

We note that the resolution of the conflict, yes, comes through death on the cross, but it is ultimately achieved through resurrection; without the latter one, the Christian faith is foolish. The fact that he was resurrected after death is the promise of the Holy Spirit: whoever fights nonviolently against a structural sin (or violence), as Jesus did, will win in Heaven and possibly also on Earth.

Therefore, the Christian God presents himself as the God who essentially makes peace in conflicts. It is in this precise sense that the Christian God is love, not in a generic sense.

But when we must fight even overwhelming structures with nonviolence, that is, solely with the strength of the spirit, where can we find the spiritual strength to be the David before the Goliath of a structure of violence that perhaps imposes itself as absolute in society?

Christianity’s answer is: communion. But what is communion, ultimately? Theological tradition holds that a faithful experiences a communion with Jesus through a “transubstantiation” (that is, the transformation) of bread and wine into Jesus. This term indicates a material transformation of material objects (bread and wine), which the priest produces outside of any human relationship. However, it has not yet been explained by any philosophical or metaphysical doctrine.

But nonviolent people cannot be very interested in what material substances (bread and wine) do in communion, whether or not they undergo a process of alchemical or nuclear transmutation; we nonviolent people have another interpretation to suggest: what is important is that people committing themselves with all their innermost being to a potentially overwhelming nonviolent struggle, transform themselves to the fullest extent of their spiritual capacity. Then communion is uniting with him through a sharing of concrete elements, bread and wine, so as to act together; that is, it is identifying ourselves as closely as possible with Christ who fights structural sin, so as to become deeply Christian, that is, true followers of Christ. Thus, communion is the greatest help the Son of God could give to a Christian who fights nonviolently, even at the risk of death, against structural sin.

In the past, some nonviolent people have discovered ideas that roughly characterize the non-violent transformation that must be accomplished within a conflict: (aside from the Aufhebung in Hegel’s misleading, because metaphysical, dialectic,) Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “daring peace”; the ability to “add a free adjoint” to the conflict’s situation, according to Aldo Capitini; seeking the point of conciliation between two apparently parallel lines, even if it is placed at infinity (Lanza del Vasto); and Johan Galtung’s notion of “transcending”.

It is also interesting what a great Christian reformer, Martin Luther, said about this (sermon of 1520, the year of his excommunication):

…there is a widespread use of this sacrament, without any understanding of its meaning, nor any correspondent practice of it… Many people [who take communion] do not want to show solidarity, do not want to help the poor, bear others’ sins, care for the miserable, suffer with the suffering, pray for others, nor even want to defend the truth and promote the improvement of the Church… They know nothing else to do, with this sacrament, than to fear and honor, with their little prayers and devotions, Christ present in the bread and wine…

Jesus preferred these forms of bread and wine to express as fully as possible the unity and communion accomplished in this sacrament; for there is no union more intimate, profound, and undivided than the union of food with the one who is nourished by it, inasmuch as food penetrates and transforms nature itself and becomes one with the one who feeds on it. Other ways of joining, such as with nails, glue, rope, or the like, do not create an indivisible unity.

Some practice their art and subtlety to discover where the bread remains when it is transformed into the flesh of Christ, and the wine into his blood, and even how in such a small particle of bread and wine the whole of Christ, his flesh and his blood, can be contained. But it matters nothing that you do not see it. Suffice it to know that it is a divine sign, in which the flesh and blood of Christ are truly contained; the how and where you has to leave to Him…

In the same way, we too, in the sacrament, are united with Christ and incorporated with his saints to such an extent that he takes on our roles, [so that] he does or does not do for us, as if he were what we are; and that what happens to us, [happens] also to him and more than to us; so that we too may take his part, as if we were what he is… So profound and total is the communion of Christ and all the saints with us…

But beware! With this formidable help, i.e. the greatest a God can give, a Christian should be the first to throw him into the nonviolent struggle against the scourges that afflict a people! If he fails to do so, he remains “a half-baptized pagan…; either he follows his baptism or becomes doubly guilty” (ibid., chap. V, §. 24).

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Prof. Antonino Drago: University “Federico II” of Naples, Italy and a member of the TRANSCEND Network. Allied of Ark Community, he teaches at the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU. Master degree in physics (University of Pisa 1961), a follower of the Community of the Ark of Gandhi’s Italian disciple, Lanza del Vasto, a conscientious objector, a participant in the Italian campaigns for conscientious objection (1964-1972) and the campaign for refusing to pay taxes to finance military expenditure (1983-2000). Owing to his long experience in these activities and his writings on these subjects, he was asked by the University of Pisa to teach Nonviolent Popular Defense in the curriculum of “Science for Peace” (from 2001 to 2012) and also Peacebuilding and Peacekeeping (2009-2013. Then by the University of Florence to teach History and Techniques of Nonviolence in the curriculum of “Operations of Peace” (2004-2010). Drago was the first president of the Italian Ministerial Committee for Promoting Unarmed and Nonviolent Civil Defense (2004-2005). drago@unina.it.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 29 Sep 2025.

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