These were educated elites who not only believed in and prayed for peace but who also engaged in organized action to formulate proposals, raise awareness, and engage with public officials. Over the centuries peace organizations have ebbed and flowed, through waves of ideological ferment and popular mobilization, in response to changing threats of war and evolving prospects for peace. This discussion traces the early history of organized peace advocacy, from its origins among religious reformers in the United States and Britain, through its spread among democratic nationalists and cosmopolitan reformers in the latter half of the nineteenth century, to its growth in many countries and emergence as a significant international presence in the years before 1914. Peace advocacy emerged from multiple and sometimes conflicting sources. Pacifist religious sects, moral revivalism, free trade liberalism, social reform movements, democratic nationalism, internationalism, even industrial philanthropy and conservative monarchy – all contributed to an ever widening if not always consistent or coherent public discourse on peace.
The expanding networks of peace advocacy began to reach significant scale by the turn of the twentieth century, with strands of influence that included even Woodrow Wilson, a member of the American Peace Society (APS) whom Jane Addams considered a fellow pacifist (in the broad sense in which the term was understood at the time). But the impression of power proved illusory, as so often in the history of peace movements. The presumed unity of the friends of peace cloaked diverse and sometimes contradictory impulses. Wide differences existed over fundamental issues – absolute versus conditional pacifism, whether and how to reach wider audiences, the relative importance of moral enlightenment versus political action, how to reconcile nationalism and internationalism, the viability of arbitration and international law. Peace societies had the ear of a president, the wealth of Andrew Carnegie, and the backing of many political leaders and diplomats around the world, but they did not have the political clout or conceptual coherence to stem the looming threat of world war.
Peace and Pacifism in Early Christian World
