The Pax Christi: The Christian Peace Movement

Peace is a major ideal in christianity as this religion greatly revolves around peace and about bringing it to others, while although Christianity has caused conflicts in the past it does not deter from what Christianity's main ideal is about, spreading the word of God through peace. The word peace is hard to define as the word’s definition can change depending on it’s use and by who is using it, but commonly used definitions of peace used throughout would be “tranquility, harmony, or security” as these definitions can give a broader meaning to the word and covering a lot of bases. Christian ideals of peace can be found in the Just-War theory, the approach taken towards Pax Christi from Christianity and Christian Pacifism are some examples

This catholic peace movement aims to be a force of peace for Catholics within the churches and communities who are looking to bring peace and unity to a divided world. The movement has 3 main focuses on how they act spirituality, study and action, Spirituality being the religious theme of the movement, study being the research they do on their issues and publish them, and action being the event of carrying a movement to affirm one of their issues. While keeping true to these three the Australian section of Pax Christi gives main priority to education and research, conferences, grassroots activities, spiritual and theological reflections. Referring to the quote by Martin Luther King Jr. to the quote the movement focuses on human rights, human security, disarmament and demilitarization, world order and peace, this is relatable to the quote as these objectives have the aim of bringing peace to others who have experienced conflict and as well as actively sought to remove the possibilities of more conflicts occurring, and they do this as peacefully as possible. An example of their efforts in keeping the peace is their negotiations with the UN to abolish nuclear weapons which leads to a conference in 2017 between 9 states to prohibit nuclear weapons through a legally binding contract, a great act in

While pacifism within Christianity is no longer as a large priority in modern Christianity the pacifist stance is still quite large among Christians. The Christian Church greatly encourages avoiding conflict when possible and should conflict ensue they do it as morally and ethically justifiable as possible, this can apply to them whether it be a small fight or a large scale battle/war. In the New Testament peace is considered to be one of the foundational element of Christian communities, and the commandment contained in the bible “This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” - Mark 12:31 and as such they firmly hold onto their pacifist stance, initially refusing to participate in any form of military service or warfare but did eventually compromise to contribute towards non-combatant roles in the military and warfare. An example of Christian Pacifism contributing to peace would be the Religious Pacifist group “Quakers” who believed that war and conflict are against God’s wishes and so their group are dedicated to pacifism, and a have a controversial view which sees that using forces creates more problems than it solves which gets them accused of being willing to give to evil