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Typologies for pacifism are numerous, but the principle writers in this area
over the last fifty or so years include Lisa Cahill, Peter Brock, James F. Childress,
Theodore J. Koontz, Martin Ceadel, Duane L. Cady, David Clough and John H.
Yoder. Each has approached the concept rather differently to the others. Even the
occasional use of approximately similar categories sometimes will still involve
differing terminology. Another area of difference is the number of categories of
pacifism identified by each researcher. Cahill describes just two: scriptural and
empathetic. 11 Brock finds five: goal-directed, integrational, vocational, eschatological
and separational. 12 Childress details four: legalist-expressionist, consequentialist-
pragmatist-utilitarian, redemptive-witness and technological. 13 Koontz describes
three: abolitionism, non-violent resistance and, bizarrely, pacifism. 14 Ceadel finds
five: liberal, socialist, ecological, radical and feminist. 15 Clough, using a different
approach, describes the field using four bipolar axes giving eight named extremes
and sixteen possible classifications. 16 Cady defines nine forms, 17 and lastly Yoder
names 29. 18
Cahill's two forms, scriptural and empathetic, distinguish between the broad
category of all pacifisms claiming a Biblical justification (or, presumably, that of any
other holy book) and all those forms based on a personal, subjective, emotional
experience of the suffering of others. In both cases, the degree to which the
commitment to pacifism is manifested is not specified; the point at which a specific
form of pacifism of either type lies on the spectrum that ranges from absolute
pacifism to a minimal, consequentialist form of pacifism, simply does not feature in
this typology. The conditionality, if any, regarding the upholding of non-violence in the
face of different types and different levels of threat, is not involved.
Clough provides what is perhaps the most sophisticated typology, in which
11
Lisa Cahill, Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism and Just War Theory (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1992), 150.
12
Peter Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 472.
13
James F. Childress, “Contemporary Pacifism: Its Major Types and Possible Contributions to
Discourse About War,” in The American Search for Peace: Moral Reasoning, Religious Hope and
National Security, ed. George Weigel and John P. Langan (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University
Press, 1991), 109–36.
14
Theodore J. Koontz, “Christian Nonviolence,” in The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and
Secular Perspectives, ed. Terry Nardin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 169.
15
Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain,17.
16
Clough, “Understanding Pacifism,” 374.
17
Duane L. Cady, From Warism to Pacifism: A Moral Continuum (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2010), 63-78.
18
John H. Yoder, Nevertheless: A Meditation on the Varieties and Shortcomings of Religious Pacifism
(Scottdale: Herald Press, 1992), 33.