A Gospel Embrace: Contemplation and Nonviolent Resistance
Jesus was a singular figure in history—a teacher, prophet, and embodiment of the Divine. He offered a path to individual salvation through grace and prayer, a way represented today by the contemplative stream of Christianity. But he also offered something more dangerous: a revolutionary program of nonviolent resistance to empire, practiced by the early Christians and echoed through history by prophetic Christian minorities—those who have embraced strategic, principled nonviolence in the face of systemic evil.
His impact did not arise solely from divine identity. Jesus stood in a long lineage of Jewish prophets who imagined, for the first time in history, a vision of liberation where the enslaved could exit empire, cross the wilderness, and birth a new society within the shell of the old. This idea—that a promised land could emerge amidst Pharaoh’s rule—would echo through Enlightenment revolutions and democratic uprisings across the globe.
But unlike secular revolutionaries who sought merely to replace one king with another, Jesus pointed to the roots: to the structures and systems that bear the fruit of institutional sin. He experimented with radical asceticism, wandered with prophetic disciples, and was shaped by desert mystics who mirrored in first-century Judaism similar traditions found among the Sadhus of India, the Bhakti saints, and countless other holy figures who surrender all to the Divine.
This inner path—of prayer, ego-death, and mystical union—is a revelation in itself: that the promised land is not only a political reality, but also a psychological and spiritual one. Beneath the false self and reactive emotional programs (as Thomas Keating put it) lies our “original blessing.” Or, as Richard Rohr reminds us again and again, the Imago Dei—the divine indwelling—is already within.
Our Earth, once assumed to be infinite in its bounty, now groans under the weight of extractive systems that for the first time in history hit their limits of total expansion. Climate change is just the tip of the iceberg. We are entering the sixth mass extinction. Ecosystems are collapsing. The coral reefs are dying, the forests are being cut, and over the last 80 years half of bird and over half of fish populations have been wiped out. The canary is indeed dying in the coal mine. A third of the planet may soon experience drought annually. And still, the dominant culture accelerates forward, driven by a propaganda machine of individualism and consumerism.
Even astronauts, peering back at Earth as a blue marble suspended in darkness, speak of a revelation: that Eden is not a myth but a fragile truth we’ve exiled ourselves from.
Contemplation—whether through the Christian mystics, Buddhist mindfulness, or Indigenous ceremony—reveals this loss. And it invites us into the paschal mystery: a cycle of life, death, and resurrection that Jesus lived, not only as theology, but as cosmic pattern.
What if the streams of contemplation and nonviolent resistance merged? What if our movements toward personal healing were also movements toward systemic transformation? To live the Gospel fully is to embrace both.
Paul Engler has spent more than two decades as an organizer and social movement trainer. He is founder of the Center for the Working Poor, cofounder of the Momentum Training, and codirector of the Whirlwind Institute.
The Center for Action and Contemplation’s mission is to introduce Christian contemplative wisdom and practices that support transformation and inspire loving action. In this issue of the Mendicant, we are honored to share with you articles from five members of CAC’s community about what loving action looks like in their lives. Download a PDF of this issue.