based on this not-so-final draft of my review for the Pittsburgh MM newsletter? Fortunately, I suspect more editing suggestions are on the way.Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed and
The Politics of RepentanceWe live in a world that not only accepts the ultimate efficacy of violent solutions, but which invites violent entertainment into its homes routinely. Whether one is raised as a non-violent witness or comes to be one as an adult, it is inevitable that one will face the varieties of "what if?" that both the casually and thoughtfully violent believe invalidate the testimony of nonviolence. We need be ready, following Peter, to "always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for" our witness; at the same time, being only human, we need to know, or simply be reminded, that our convictions have borne fruit in the past. Two books in the meeting-house library go a long way to fulfilling these needs.
Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed , by Phillip Hallie, a philosopher and researcher into the "roots of human cruelty," is "the story of the village of Le Chambon and how goodness happened there." In his literary tapestry of the the Chambonnais witness, Hallie uses the lives and thoughts of André and Magda Trocmé as the warp that ties together the many disparate threads of the weft - the individual and collective contributions of Reverend Édouard Theis, the Huguenot and Darbyste villagers, the AFSC mission in southern France, and even those French and German officers who responded to "that of God" within them. Together, these compose but one picture of the peaceful campaign waged against radical, dehumanizing evil in the Haute-Loire uplands of WWII France. By war's end, between 2500 and 5000 men, women, and children, but mostly Jewish children, were saved from the Nazis and Vichy French by the villagers of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon."
If Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, found in section "H" of the library, serves to inspire, André Trocmé's
The Politics of Repentance, shelved a quarter turn to the right in "I," provides a set of philosophical, moral and religious reasons for non-violent resistance. To put it succinctly, for the Christian pastor Trocmé, "the secret of the universe is that your life has an absolute value," and the secret to peace is that "your neighbor is as real as you are and deserves quite as much consideration." Making explicit the essential truth that undergirds Martin Niemöller's famous poem, Trocmé held, according to Hallie, "that 'decent' people who stay inactive out of cowardice or indifference when around them human beings are being humiliated and destroyed are the most dangerous people in the world." The tension that exists between the absolute need to respond to evil directed at others and the need to respect all human life runs through both these books; however, while Hallie often uses emotive prose to highlight this tension, in
The Politics of Repentance Trocmé deals with it with dispassion in a series of lectures (the book itself is collection of his contributions to
The Robert Treat Paine Lectures for 1951) on, among other topics, "The Highest Good," "Sacrifice," "Society-as-it-ought-to-be vs. Society-as-it-is," "What is Truth?" and "God's Time and Man's."
Trocmé was no friend of relativism, either moral or otherwise. A Huguenot pastor, some of his views will not sit well with Friends. But he devoted his life to peace, and in the most concrete manner imaginable. He and his wife Magda both were awarded the Médaille des Justes by the government of Israel; indeed, eventually, the Yad Vashem honored as "Righteous Gentiles" all the residents of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the surrounding area. Friends may debate the value of such awards. One thing, I think, is not debatable. Friends should know this story and be familiar with this man's thought. In this violent world of relative truths, all those who benefited from the witness of the Trocmés, Theis, and community of La Chambon, know an absolute truth, as do their generations: They know absolutely the answer to this question - "What if the Chambonnais had not done as they did?"