The purpose of this paper is to attempt to make a judgment concerning the effectiveness of the selected political actions of certain religious peace groups during the inter-war years. Information was obtained from the Portland State University Library, the Multnomah County Library, the Methodist Episcopal Church of Oregon office, the national offices of the American Friends Service Committee, the National Council of Churches, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Conversations with people who had been involved with the peace movement included Roland Bainton, Jerome Davis, G. Bernhard Fedde, Carlin Kapper-Johnson, and Mark Chamberlin. Periodicals that provided much of the information about events and opinion during the twenties and thirties were: the New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation, Harper’s Magazine, and The World Tomorrow. A number of books concerning the peace movement were especially useful; those books were: Boeckel’s Turn Toward Peace, Bowman’s The Church of the Brethren and War, 1708-1941, Curti’s Peace or War, Pickett’s For More Than Bread, and Vining’s Friend of Life.
Information from those sources showed that the religious pacifists were able to influence the course of events relating to the Mexican Crisis of 1927, the Washington Disarmament Conference, the Peace Pact to Outlaw War, the Russian famine relief effort, and the status of conscientious objectors. In some way the final outcome of each of these issues was affected by the actions of religious pacifists: a possible war with Mexico was avoided, disarmament was attempted, war was outlawed, many lives were saved in Russia, and conscientious objectors were given a legal status that was better than what they had had during the First World War.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-2415 |
| Date | 01 January 1971 |
| Creators | Nance, Ancil K. |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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