The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America January-March 2018 - 26

resource revIew

Paul Dekar's Dangerous People
a review by Steve Jacobsen

paul r. dekar, Dangerous People: The Fellowship of Reconciliation
Building a nonviolent world of Freedom, Justice, and Peace, donning
Company Publishers, 2016; 83 pages.

n a time when the daily news is filled with reports and
threats of violence by dangerous people, paul dekar's new
book, Dangerous People, offers a refreshing review of the life of
the fellowship of reconciliation (for) and how its leaders'
vision of a new society-built through nonviolence and led by
a different kind of dangerous people-can make real changes.
The book was written for the for centennial and includes
many interesting photos and timelines for the organization.
Dangerous People follows dekar's earlier, more comprehensive history of FOR: Creating the Beloved Community: A Journey
with the Fellowship of Reconciliation published in 2005. It is also a
great companion to Albert J. raboteau's American Prophets: Seven
Religious Radicals and Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice
(2016). It's no coincidence that all of Raboteau's prophets had
significant links to FOR.
The International fellowship of reconciliation (Ifor) was
founded in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. Its united States
chapter (for) was founded in 1915. for was largely christian
in its early years, becoming broadly interfaith in the present.
for, through one of its early leaders, John nevin Sayre,
promoted pacifism as a way of life. Its community has always
lived with the tensions that this idealism encounters in the united States-perhaps best exemplified by the later withdrawal
of a noted member, reinhold niebuhr.

for has always supported conscientious objection to
military service, beginning in 1915 with the formation of the
group which would later become the American civil liberties
union (Aclu). Many of its "dangerous" members supported
various refugees in the 1930s and 1940s and have continued

"In a time when the daily news
is filled with reports and threats
of violence by dangerous
people, Paul Dekar's new book,
Dangerous People, offers a
refreshing review of the life of the
Fellowship of Reconciliation..."
to do so up through the Bosnian Student project in the 1990s.
for the older among us in the uS, for is best known
for its involvement in issues of racial justice. Its involvement
stems from the days of the interracial harlem Ashram in
the 1940s, when it regarded the "problem of racial justice as
America's number 1 problem in reconciliation." It goes from
there through the first integrated interstate bus rides (Journey
of reconciliation) in 1947 and through the civil rights struggles
of the 1950s and 1960s.
Throughout these times, for provided training and
support on the ground combined with successful attempts to

Left: These images of the book
Dangerous People (far left)
and of Paul Dekar (left) are
courtesy of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation (www.forusa.org).

Baptist Peacemaker

JAN-MAR 2018

http://www.forusa.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America January-March 2018