Book Review by Kathy Kelly

Jesus’ early followers likely faced grave dangers for gathering in the name of one whose teachings about love of enemies put them at odds with many groups, including hierarchs and warlords running the Roman Empire. The original community of disciples persisted in their distinctive beliefs, evolving into a remarkably strengthened movement. How did they find sufficient courage to uphold Jesus’ message even integrating into their communities people they had been taught should be shunned? Equally and perhaps more challenging, earliest Christian communities learned to include people who despised and persecuted them, people who would generally be considered inhumane enemies.

As communities matured into havens embracing radical love of enemies, Christianity spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire.

Now, as in ancient times, those who wield imperial power benefit from exacerbating hostilities between people. Dehumanizing hatred leads to heinous crimes – crimes against humanity and crimes that collectively punish children. Since October 7, 2023, we’ve watched in horror as thousands of children have suffered and died during fighting between Israel and Palestine. Twenty years earlier, on October 7, 2003, the United States government assured the world it must bomb Afghanistan and later Iraq in retaliation fo the terrorist attack on 9/11.

But where does war lead us?

Young people in Afghanistan, bearing the brunt of war and colonialized exploitation throughout their lives, steadily testified to visitors, from 2010-2020, that “blood doesn’t wash away blood.”

Desroches details many instances when people throughout history insisted on caring for and about their so-called enemies, sometimes at the expense of their own lives.

In a particularly challenging account, he tells the story of “The White Rose” student resistance movement, five of whom were beheaded by the Nazi regime.

Hans and Sophie Scholl were German teenagers who had become ardent members of the Hitler youth. Their parents were dismayed by the children’s enthused participation in Nazi rallies. Patiently and steadily, Robert Scholl, their father, warned his children not to believe all adults. He helped them see how bizarre it was for them to consider their Jewish friends and neighbours as enemies. Robert Scholl’s persistence began to have an effect. The children themselves grew disturbed by examples of antisemitism aimed at their own classmates. Having reached a point at which they could no longer cooperate with the Nazis, they swiftly matured into brave resisters willing to join free youth groups that had been banned. Ultimately, the Gestapo arrested the Scholl children and, three days later, sent them to the guillotine to be executed. The same fate awaited three other members of “The White Rose.” Desroches notes their “great spiritual strength, even in the face of their own execution.”

Rather than coax one another into demonizing people whom we are told we must fear and despise, Desroches believes in collaborating with so-called enemies, such as Russia or China. Facing ecological collapse, possible future pandemics, and the capacity for nuclear annihilation, our very survival depends on recognizing our shared humanity.

“What could be easier,” Desroches asks, “than to order someone else – the young – to kill and die for you? What could be more realistic, courageous and fair than to risk your own life as the ‘prime minister’ – the first servant – in motivating a nonviolent resistance and non-cooperation in case of invasion or aggression?”

The realism Desroches invokes calls for strengthening our capacities for love of enemy through regular prayer, contemplation and reflection. The exemplary lives he celebrates uphold the life-risking proposition that words can be stronger than munitions as we strive to be, in Albert Camus’s words, “neither victims nor executioners.”

Kathy Kelly has lived alongside ordinary people who couldn’t escape wars waged by the U.S. and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. She served three sentences in U.S. federal prisons following nonviolent civil disobedience actions and, as a war tax resister, refused all payment of federal taxes from 1980 to 2020. She co-ordinated Voices in the Wilderness which organized 70 delegations to deliver medicines and medical relief supplies to Iraqis in defiance of economic sanctions against Iraq (1996-2003). She herself visited Iraq 27 times and has also made over two dozen trips to Afghanistan from 2010-2019.