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Introduction

Few books stand the test of time as this one has. Perhaps the fact that it is still so relevant rests in the circumstances of its genesis – in the courageous life of its author. Since it first appeared in English in 1972, André Trocmé’s Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution has influenced a whole stream of New Testament thinkers and peace activists. Dozens of books about Christian ethics make reference to it, and proponents of nonviolence turn to it repeatedly for guidance. For example, significant portions of John Howard Yoder’s classic Politics of Jesus are based on Trocmé’s thesis. However, one cannot fully appreciate Trocmé’s ideas without some understanding of the man and of the amazing life story that forms the context for his message.

The Story of Le Chambon

André Trocmé was born into a French-German family in 1901, at the dawn of a turbulent period that would eventually catapult all Europe into armed conflict. As a young man, André’s youthful enthusiasm and impulsive deeds made him stand out. When the German army was rapidly marching into Northern France, he excitedly hung a French flag from the topmost branches of a towering tree near his house.

During the First World War, André saw first-hand the horrors and senselessness of that war. At the age of thirteen he simply could not accept that his German cousins, his mother being German, might fight against his own half brothers. The shock of this, along with the senseless death of his mother from a car accident just prior to the war, and his encounter with numerous pacifist theologians after the war, cemented his orientation as a pacifist. Moreover, as a young student, he realized that military armistices could not establish peace between nations or reconstruct the moral fabric of a society.

Years later he would be described by one writer as “a man of mystical fervor, aggressively loving, almost explosive in his rush to save lives.” But his path was not always so clear. As the specter of National Socialism began to haunt Europe, Trocmé, despite his aversion to violence, conceded that it might be necessary to plot against and assassinate Hitler. In the end he joined an altogether different kind of conspiracy, one that chronicler Philip Hallie called “a conspiracy of goodness.”

By the time Hitler’s war machine came to full force, Trocmé, now married and a father of four, was co-pastor of the French Reformed Church in Le Chambon sur Lignon. A farming village on a pine-studded plateau in the mountains of south-central France, Le Chambon seemed an unlikely breeding place for the radical resistance for which it would soon be famous. Yet it became a magnet to a stream of refugees that included both French and foreign Jews, providing shelter and safety from their persecutors.¹

Already before the first Jews arrived, others fleeing from Franco’s regime in Spain, and later from the Nazis, found this Protestant sanctuary, consisting of twelve villages, willing to bid them welcome. In the parish of Le Chambon, Trocmé and his fellow pastor, Edouard Theis, united the people in the effort to protect these fugitives, exhorting their parishioners to live not in fear of the state, but according to moral conviction. What eventually became a massive, organized network to protect and even educate Jewish children who had been taken out of internment camps, started at the grassroots with these first refugees. Villagers and farmers opened their homes to the refugees, sometimes to stay, sometimes to wait until accommodations could be arranged elsewhere or until they could be smuggled across the Swiss border. Besides the hospitality of individuals, by the middle of the occupation financial aid from outside the village was supporting seven larger houses of refuge. Several humanitarian organizations helped to established boardinghouses for refugee children as well as a student center.

So it came about that resisting authority became a normal part of daily life in Le Chambon. The students at the private school L’École Nouvelle Cévenole, which Trocmé and Theis had founded, refused to salute the flag or hang the picture of Pétain, the Vichy leader, in every classroom. On a national holiday, Trocmé’s parish ignored Pétain’s order to ring the church bells at noon. They would ring the bells only for God. A tight network also provided the refugees with false identification cards that allowed them to pass as non-Jewish. But though it was truly resistance, the fighters in this nonviolent underground were not fueled by anger or hatred. Some maintained connections with partisan fighters in the area, while throughout the rescue effort anonymous messages and phone calls trickled in at just the right time warning of the possibility of raids by the Vichy police. Because of the risk of discovery, town residents never talked in public about their deeds.

Trocmé, at considerable personal risk, was at the forefront of much of the village’s activity. On June 22, 1940, France surrendered to the Nazis and agreed to arrest and deport to Germany any refugees Hitler’s government might demand. The next day, during a Sunday service, Trocmé and Theis both preached about resistance.

Tremendous pressure will be put on us to submit passively to a totalitarian ideology. If they do not succeed in subjugating our souls, at least they will want to subjugate our bodies. The duty of Christians is to use the weapons of the Spirit to oppose the violence that they will try to put on our consciences. We appeal to all our brothers in Christ to refuse to cooperate with this violence…

Loving, forgiving, and doing good to our adversaries is our duty. Yet we must do this without giving up, and without being cowardly. We shall resist whenever our adversaries demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the gospel. We shall do so without fear, but also without pride and without hate.²

Their sermon, if daring, was also timely. The Vichy government lost no time in implementing the Nuremberg laws and immediately began arrests. Jews and other refugees were zealously herded into internment camps. But Trocmé, true to his preaching, was not about to admit defeat. With the approval of his church council, and at the request of the American Friends Service Committee, he began to search for ways to provide refuge in Le Chambon for the children rescued from the camps – a dangerous and illegal undertaking. There the recently founded École Nouvelle Cévenole, as well as the public school, stood ready to assimilate them. He also urged his congregation to continue to shelter fugitives of “the people of the Bible,” and encouraged them to stay firm.

In the summer of 1942, Minister Georges Lamirand, head of the Vichy government’s youth organization, showed up in Le Chambon and delivered a speech on the “New Social Order.” The speech over, he was immediately handed a letter by the local youth, protesting the recent roundup of nearly 13,000 Jews in Paris. They informed him in unequivocal terms that they intended to protect persecuted people whenever and however they could. Trocmé was clearly the source of this defiance, and soon after was warned of the dire consequences facing him if he did not turn in the names of all hidden Jews. Trocmé refused, saying, “We do not know what a Jew is; we only know people.” For three weeks the police scoured the village and its surrounding areas, but the rescue network was so tight that they came up with only two arrests.

In August, under surveillance and with rumors circulating that he might soon be arrested, Trocmé preached to an overflowing church on Deuteronomy 19, concerning the entitlement of the persecuted to shelter, “so that innocent blood will not be shed.” His own response was clear: “These people came here for help and for shelter. I am their shepherd. A shepherd does not forsake his flock.”

Eventually, though, Trocmé’s activities were brought to a halt. In February of 1943 he and Theis, his co-pastor, as well as the director of Le Chambon’s public school, were arrested and shipped to a French internment camp. Surprisingly, after four weeks of imprisonment all three men were freed, even though they refused to sign a declaration of obedience. However, Trocmé and Theis were warned that their lives were in danger, so the two men went into hiding for the next ten months but secretly stayed in contact with rescue efforts. Four months after their arrest, the German police finally raided Les Roches, the center for young adult refugees near Le Chambon. This hit close to home for Trocmé; his cousin Daniel, director of Les Roches, was arrested along with seventeen students. He was later murdered by the Nazis at Maidanek, just weeks before the concentration camp was liberated.

The great war finally played itself out. The fighting ended, and the need for secrecy passed. The people of Le Chambon and of the surrounding plateau had kept thousands of innocent lives from harm right to the end, despite repression and intimidation. Ultimately, the rescue network provided a haven or safe passage for an estimated 2,500 refugees, with a large percentage being Jews and children.³ And everything took place right under the noses of the Vichy police and, later, of the Gestapo themselves.

Missionary of Nonviolence

Trocmé, in the words of Marlin Miller, who helped translate this book, “was one of the rare Christian pacifists who refused to choose between impassioned action and intellectual clarity.” His efforts, which sprang from his clarity of purpose, would be devoted to peace and reconciliation for the remainder of his life. World War II over, Trocmé served from 1948 to 1960 as European secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, traveling and lecturing all over the world. His House of Reconciliation, an international peace center in Versailles, positioned him as one of the links in a chain that united such leaders of nonviolence as Martin Luther King, Jr., Toyohiko Kagawa, and Gandhi.

Driven by his faith, Trocmé and his wife, Magda, set out in 1956 to study the conflict in war-torn Algeria. For a short while there they volunteered their personal time in overcoming illiteracy. They also learned more about the plight of French resisters who refused to serve in the French army. This concerned Trocmé tremendously. He thus worked with the Mennonites to help found Eirene in Morocco, which has now become a worldwide service program for conscientious objectors and development workers.

In 1960, for what was to be the final decade of his life, Trocmé returned to pastoral ministry. Because of his absolute pacifist stand it was difficult for him to find a French church to lead. Finally, he was invited to become pastor of a large Reformed church in Geneva, Switzerland. Despite the bourgeois lives of his congregants, he motivated them to organize and support technical development work in northern Algeria. Shortly before his death, Yad Vashem awarded him and his wife, along with others in Le Chambon, the prestigious “Righteous Among the Nations” medal for the part they played in the rescue efforts.

Trocmé’s convictions and ideas grew out of his activities as a peacemaker. His writings were forged not in theoretical musings, but in the fiery events that had been his baptism into the world of nonviolent revolution.

Trocmé wrote much and often but only managed to publish two books. His first book, The Politics of Repentance (1953), proposed a strategy for peacemaking in situations of conflict. Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution (1961, French edition), is a systematic treatment of Christian nonviolence and the more influential of the two books.

When this book first appeared it broke the clutches of “Christian realism,” spearheaded by Reinhold Niebuhr, which was so dominant at the time. Trocmé offers a truly Christ-centered social ethic, one to be taken seriously not just by individuals but by the church. He understands from personal experience that Christ’s redemptive work extends far beyond the individual to encompass society and nations. His understanding of discipleship is revolutionary without succumbing to political ideology or sheer activism.⁴

There is nothing fancy about Trocmé’s approach. With prophetic intuition rather than weighty analysis, he renders interpretations that are both subtle and provocative. His core argument is simple: Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of God based on the Jubilee principles of the Old Testament. These principles call for a political, economic, and spiritual revolution in response to human need. Jesus intended nothing less that an actual revolution, with debts forgiven, slaves set free, and land returned to the poor.

It was this threat to vested interests that awakened the hostility toward Jesus that led to the cross. Jesus understood the kingdom of God in terms of God’s work in human history; every sphere of life was a domain for God’s rulership. But he saw, too, that such rulership would always cost a struggle. The first Christians, who were charged with seditiously “turning the world upside down,” understood their master well. They had caught this vision and begun to live it out.

Trocmé is careful to locate Jesus within the socio-cultural context of his day. He therefore expends a great deal of effort surveying various movements, social groups, and patterns of authority and influence that situate Jesus and help to delineate his unique mission. Jesus’ way transcended the alternatives of his day, while at the same time it grew out of intense interaction with his contemporaries. Jesus was no spiritual mystic. He had to overcome the temptations of employing violence, of escaping into the desert, and of compromise.

Yet, as Trocmé shows, Jesus refused both the way of violence and of spiritual quietism. He called for practical changes but rejected violence as a means of achieving social change. Instead he articulated and exemplified a way of life that obviates the kind of social order that produces injustice and poverty, and the violence inherent in them. Jesus’ nonviolence was not a philosophy or a tactic, but a matter of obedience to God.

Trocmé makes it clear that Jesus should be the center of the church’s life and practice, not nonviolence or revolution or justice. Jesus’ nonviolent revolution, and ours, is rooted in the cross. Jesus was ready to sacrifice his “cause,” the liberation of his people, for the sake of a single human being in need of healing. Human need – be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or social – was Jesus’ reason for being, and should be ours. Jesus’ sacrifice makes possible a new social order where human lives are dignified with justice, uplifted in compassion, and nurtured by peace.

Trocmé takes the liberty of interpreting certain passages of Scripture in fresh ways. Though somewhat imaginative at times, he puts forth insights that in the broader narrative of Jesus’ life make perfect sense. Historical and exegetical work have subsequently proven Trocmé, if not right, then at least on the right track. His work is constructive as well. By showing us how Christ continues to do his work here and now through his people, he broadens our understanding of Jesus’ mission, and makes plain what Jesus expected of his followers.

By any standard, Trocmé’s work deserves ongoing attention. This edition is new in several respects. First, the text has been edited to read more smoothly. Some material has been rearranged with new subtitles, certain sections deleted to eliminate repetition, and transitional phrases added that were not in the original English edition. New material has also been incorporated, particularly in chapters 14 and 15, which are from Trocmé’s book, The Politics of Repentance. Finally, references have been added to show how trends in current thought affirm Trocmé’s thesis.

Not much has changed since World War II, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Ours is still an age of bloodshed. We live by the hellish logic of revenge, just war, might makes right, and deterrent force, while inequality, oppression, and exploitation flourish. Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution refutes such logic. Trocmé answers our continued propensity toward violence with, as he terms it, “the algebra of God’s kingdom.” If only more Christians were courageous enough to follow Trocmé’s lead in obedience to Jesus’ call, the story of Le Chambon sur Lignon would not be so exceptional.

Charles E. Moore