Books by Adin Ballou

Practical Christian Socialism (1854) was Adin Ballou''s most comprehensive exposition of his fundamental principles and their application to personal and community life, ranging from theology and political theory to marriage, child-rearing, and a surprisingly frank discussion of sexuality.In Practical Christianity, Ballou''s 655-page treatise has been edited to eliminate the cumbersome dialogue form in which it was originally written. All of the language is Ballou''s own, and nothing is omitted except a final section in which he compared Practical Christian Socialism to competing varieties of utopian socialism popular at the time.

Christian Non-Resistance (1846) is the major philosophical statement by the nineteenth-century theorist of nonviolence, Adin Ballou.Ballou argued that the Biblical injunction "resist not evil" should be understood as "resist not personal injury with personal injury." While prohibiting the injury of any person under any provocation whatsoever, Ballou taught that Christians have a duty to resist, oppose, or prevent evil by all uninjurious means, including the use of "uninjurious benevolent force." He believed that this would allow a community to adopt non-resistant principles while still maintaining public safety and order.Once dismissed as a relic of the naïve and sentimental optimism of pre-Civil War America, Christian Non-Resistance is now recognized as an important contribution to the theory of nonviolent resistance. Ballou''s combination of the utmost moral resistance to evil with the uninjurious physical restraint of evildoers provides a conceptually simple, flexible approach to the problem of resisting evil without becoming evil oneself.This edition contains the essay "Christian Non-Resistance in Extreme Cases" (1860), in which Ballou takes up a type of challenge often put to pacifists: "Suppose a robber attacks you in some lonely place on the highway? Suppose you and your family are attacked by a gang who design to commit rape, robbery and murder? How can the downtrodden peoples of the earth ever gain their liberty without fighting to the death against their tyrants?"

The eight key titles re-published in this set make important texts accessible once again, and provide a comprehensive overview of this influential Victorian phenomenon. Available as an eight-volume set or as individual volumes.