Peace movement
The peace movement comprises organizations and campaigns that seek to prevent war, reduce militarism, and promote nonviolent conflict resolution.
Nonviolent resistance: Collective action that confronts power without physical violence, using methods such as strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience. Peace campaigns use nonviolent resistance to oppose war and challenge policies that sustain it.
Religious Society of Friends: A Christian movement, commonly called the Quakers, whose testimonies include peace and opposition to war. Quaker peace testimonies helped establish enduring religious opposition to military service and violence.
Bertha von Suttner: An Austrian pacifist and writer whose novel Lay Down Your Arms! criticized militarism and war. Her writing made antiwar arguments accessible, and she became a leading international peace advocate.
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: A British organization founded in 1958 to campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Its marches and public campaigns made nuclear disarmament a prominent cause in Britain.
Pacifism: The belief that war and, in some versions, all forms of violence are morally unacceptable. Some peace organizations are pacifist, while others oppose particular wars without rejecting all uses of force.
Civil disobedience: Deliberate, public violation of a law or order to protest injustice and invite political change. Peace activists have used it to resist conscription, nuclear weapons, and military operations.
William Penn: An English Quaker leader who founded Pennsylvania and advocated religious liberty and peaceful relations with Indigenous peoples. His writings and colonial experiment gave early expression to Quaker political ideals of peace.
Jane Addams: An American social reformer and pacifist who co-founded Hull House and helped organize the Women's Peace Party. She connected peace activism with social reform and international cooperation.
Vietnam War protests: A broad international wave of demonstrations and other opposition to the United States' war in Vietnam. These protests brought peace activism to mass audiences and challenged government war policy.
Just war theory: A tradition of ethical reasoning that sets conditions under which war may be morally justified and how it should be conducted. It accepts the possibility of justified war, unlike the movement's more consistently pacifist currents.