Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Six Principles of Nonviolence

As Martin [Luther] King points out so very well, when Jesus said to love thy enemy [Matthew 5:44], he was not talking about friendship love, nor was he talking about romantic love. [1] He was not talking about deep liking and appreciation. He was talking about what the Quakers and William Penn pledged to the Native Americans during colonial times: ... See more

Nonviolence takes another approach. Practitioners of nonviolence seek to become their truest selves by slowly learning to love all beings, confident that all are kin and that we are called to embody this kinship concretely, especially in the midst of our most difficult and challenging conflicts.... Nonviolence is committed to challenging and resist... See more

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up

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Active nonviolence calls us:

1. To learn to recognize and respect “the sacred” in every person, including in ourselves, and in every piece of Creation....


2. To accept oneself deeply, “who I am” with all my gifts and richness, with all my limitations, errors, failings and weaknesses, and to realize that I am accepted by God....


3. To recognize that what I rese

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