My sermon from this past week, which will be on-line by Thursday, focused on recent Knoxville shootings and the broader culture of violence in which we live. While researching my sermon I spent sometime with the works of Adin Ballou. Ballou was a minister who served Universalist and Unitarian congregations in the mid-19th century, an active abolitionist and early theorist of non-violence. Reading some of his shorter pieces and excerpts of his longer ones reminded me of just what a profound thinker Ballou was. Unlike the more abstract Leo Tolstoy, Ballou actually spent a lot of time thinking about how a society might be organized along non-violent lines and how the mentally unstable and others prone to violence met be rendered harmless in such a society. For those interested in exploring his thought I recommend his book Christian Non-Resistance, especially Chapter 1, and the tracts "The Superiority of Moral over Political Power" and "Christian Non-Resistance in Extreme Cases."

The Friends of Adin Ballou is an organization devoted to keeping his legacy and thought alive. Friends of Adin Ballou holds an annual lecture. This year’s talk was by activist and scholar Michael True and places Ballou within the broader context of non-violent theorists.