1350 B.C.E. Hebrew midwives, in the first recorded act of civil disobedience, refuse to obey Pharaoh’s order to kill male Hebrew babies. After years of slavery in Egypt the Hebrew people leave in the Exodus, an experience of liberation central to Jewish and Christian understanding of God acting in history.

750 B.C.E. Amos is called from his job as a shepherd to denounce Israel and its neighbors for their reliance on military might, the social injustice, and shallow, meaningless religious ritual. (Amos 5, 8)

600-520 As a teenager, Jeremiah is called to be a prophet, and like Isaiah and Micah, he criticizes the injustices of the day and pleads for the Children of Israel to make the pursuit of love and justice central to their lives.

167 The Book of Daniel depicts two instances of civil disobedience against the king’s edicts; being willing to face death rather than sin. (Daniel 3, 6)

26 C.E. Thousands of Jews protest symbols of the Roman empire which Jews consider to be idolatrous. When threatened with death, they offer their necks to the sword but will not budge. Pilate removes the offensive emblems.

33 Jesus lives a life of nonviolence and compassion for all without regard to age, social status, race, or gender.

40-80 Paul and the apostles preach the Christian gospel of justice, nonviolence, and reconciliation. As Paul writes, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed... Live in harmony with one another. Do not repay evil for evil. If your enemies are hungry, feed them." (Romans 12)

50 -200 Pacifism is typical among early Christian communities, with members being encouraged to make a vow of nonviolence or required to leave the military. Church leaders opposed to killing, even by the government, include Arnobius, Basil the Great, Cyprian, Irenaus, Justin, Origen, and Tertullian.

340s Martin of Tours, a Roman army officer, renounces violence when he becomes a “soldier of Christ.” Martin Luther, Martin Niemoller, and Martin Luther King, Jr. are all named after him.

1200 St. Francis of Assisi turns his back on wealth as a youth; lives a life of nonviolence and concern for others and for all creation. To this day animals are often blessed in churches on his birthday.

1200s Thousands of women join women’s communities called Beguines that develop creative religious and economic forms and offer leadership opportunities to women.

1520s Bartolome de las Casas, a West Indian landowner and priest, is outraged by the brutality of the Spaniards toward the Indians. He writes reports and makes several trips back to Europe in a life-long effort to convince the king and religious leaders to treat Indians fairly.

1520s Challenging the empty religious practices of his day, Martin Luther re-emphasizes that God is revealed in the cross and in love -- both Christ’s and the Christian’s. In the final decades of his life, Luther gives increasing emphasis to the importance of responding to the needs of the poor by the Christian.

1537 The “Historic Peace Churches” which oppose war for conscience sake, are founded, including Mennonites, in 1537; Society of Friends, known as Quakers, 1652; and Brethren, 1708.

1644 11 African American servants in New Amsterdam file a petition for freedom, the first recorded legal protest in what Europeans call the "New World."

1681 William Penn's Letter to the Delaware Indians leads to treaties that keep the peace between whites and Indians for two generations.

1758 John Woolman persuades the large Philadelphia Friends Meeting to condemn slave-holding by Quakers. He later writes "A Plea for the Poor," calling for an end to injustice and greed which he sees as the root of conflict.

1765-75 American colonists conduct three nonviolent resistance campaigns against British rule; they result in a condition of independence by 1775, a year before war is declared in 1776.

1780 Quakers start the first antislavery society in the United States.

1840s The Underground Railroad helps slaves escape to the northern U.S. or Canada led by “conductors” such as Harriet Tubman who led 19 groups to safety, despite her epilepsy and her own vulnerability as an escaped slave.

1846 Henry David Thoreau is jailed for refusing to pay taxes to support the Mexican-American War. He writes a powerful essay, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” which influences Tolstoy, Gandhi and generations of peacemakers.

1848 Lucretia Mott, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, organize the first women's rights convention.

1850 Hungarian patriots engage in nonviolent resistance to Austrian rule and eventually are able to regain self-governance for Hungary.

1854 Elihu Burritt advocates organized civil disobedience -- not just individual belief and activity -- to end the power of governments to make war.

1867 2000 Chinese workers hired to build railroads in Western United States organize a week-long strike protesting inhumane and racist conditions.

1871 1000 women in Paris block cannons and stand between Prussian and Parisian troops, preventing war.

1873 Women celebrate the first "Mother's Day" originally a peace holiday as proposed by Julia Ward Howe.

1865-1881 Indigenous Maori leaders Tohu Kakahi and Te Whiti o Rongoma establish the peace community of Parihaka Pa as a base to preach and practice unity and passive resistance to land confiscation by European settlers in New Zealand.

1891 Ida B. Wells starts her lifelong anti-lynching campaign by establishing her own newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech, to draw attention to brutal lynch mob murders of African Americans.

1898-1902 Thousands protest the brutal Spanish-American War; leaders include Mark Twain, author of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The War Prayer and other works on the folly of war.

1900s Beginning as early as the 1700s, the U.S. labor movement strives to secure economic justice, workers' dignity, and better working conditions. Among the nonviolent methods used are strikes, picket lines, and worker organizing.

1901-05 Finns nonviolently resist Russian oppression, forcing them to repeal a law imposing a military draft.

1905 Mohandas Gandhi begins his first major nonviolent resistance campaign in Johannesburg, South Africa.

1909 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is formed to fight prejudice and discrimination; W.E.B.duBois, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Terrell are among the founding members.

1914 The Fellowship of Reconciliation is founded as World War I begins by a German Lutheran pastor and an English Quaker, pledging "to keep the bonds of Christian love unbroken across the frontier."

1914-1918 Conscientious objectors to World War I number more than 4,000 in the United States. Although torture and brutality are common in prison and several men die, by their courage they make non-participation in war as a matter of conscience easier for future conscientious objectors.

1919-47 Mohandas Gandhi leads the struggle for Indian independence from British rule through nonviolent means such as the 1930 "Salt March" across India to the ocean where protesters gather salt in violation of British law, evading oppressive British taxes.

Badshah Khan, a leader of the Pathans, a people with a strong warrior tradition, organizes a "nonviolent army," which numbers as many as 100,000 people, to oppose British rule and resolve conflicts. In the process he explodes three myths: that nonviolence can be followed only by those who are gentle; that it cannot work against ruthless repression; and that it has no place in Islam.

1920 After 75 years of struggle, the U.S. women’s suffrage movement achieves a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote.

1923 20,000 women silk workers in Shanghai, China go on strike demanding a 10-hour work day.

1923 French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr valley is ended after noncooperation by German citizens makes the occupation too costly, both economically and politically, despite severe repression.

1927 The Filipino Federation of Labor, the League of United Latin American Citizens (1928), and the Japanese American Citizens League (1930), are organized in the face of rising discrimination in U.S. society.

1930s Toyohiko Kagawa leads a movement in Japan to help the poor and to oppose growing militarism.

1933 The Catholic Worker is founded by Dorothy Day, a reporter, and Peter Maurin, a self-taught French peasant. The movement and the Catholic Worker newspaper emphasize hospitality to the poor, pacifism, and voluntary poverty. Catholic Worker houses are organized in dozens of cities in the U.S. and elsewhere.

1934 20,000 students participate in a one-day anti-war strike in the U.S.

1933-34 A group of pastors including Martin Niemoller -- a veteran of the German Navy in World War I -- forms the "Pastor's Emergency League." It support pastors who are part-Jewish or lose their salaries because of the Nazis.

1934 An official convention of Lutheran and other delegates unanimously passes the Barmen Declaration asserting the gospel's independence of Nazi authority. The declaration leads to the founding of the Confessing Church, which, despite its limitations, became the most effective anti-Nazi group in Germany.

1940-45 Finland saves all but six of its Jewish citizens from Nazi death camps through nonmilitary means.

6,500 of 7000 Danish Jews escape to Sweden, most of the rest are hidden, aided by the people and tips from within the German occupation force.

A rail worker strike in Holland almost shuts down traffic from November 1944 until liberation in May 1945 despite extreme privation to the people -- as is portrayed in the Diary of Anne Frank.

Public resistance in Norway undermines Nazi plans; for example, teachers refuse to teach Nazi propaganda. Romania at first persecutes Jews, then refuses to give up a single Jew to the death camps.

Thousands of Bulgarians march in demonstrations, hide Jews, and send countless letters protesting anti-Jewish measures. Bishop Kiril threatens to lead civil disobedience and lie down on the tracks in front of trains. All Bulgarian Jews are saved from Nazi death camps.

After the war, German generals admit their complete inability to cope with such nonviolent strategies.

1941 Lutheran Peace Fellowship is founded to provide worship and advocacy resources, a newsletter and other publications, workshops, support for fellowship, and a place to explore faith responses to issues of peace and justice. Its first major project is helping to support Lutheran conscientious objectors in work camps.

1942 German students form the White Rose resistance movement against the Nazi regime. They distribute thousands of leaflets which expose the nature of the Nazis and its treatment of Jews and urge “obstruction of the war machine by passive resistance,” including sabotage. Several of its leaders are arrested and beheaded by the Nazis in 1943.

1943 Lutheran youth leader, pastor, and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is jailed for his efforts on behalf of German Jews. He had refused an offer to live and teach safely in the United States and returned to Germany in 1935 to lead an underground seminary and work in the resistance. He is hanged by the Nazis in 1945.

1944 The Central American dictators Jorge Ubico (in Guatemala) and Maximiliano Martinez (in El Salvador) are ousted as a result of nonviolent civilian revolts and general strikes. Between 1931 and 1961, eleven Latin American presidents leave office as a result of civil strikes.

1945 Claude Eatherly pilots the plane that drops the first atomic bomb used in wartime. He later comes to regret his involvement in the bombing of Hiroshima and speaks widely about the horrors of modern weapons and war.

1945 The United Nations is founded to resolve disputes before they result in war. Since then, the UN has developed agencies and programs on arms control, human rights, the environment, hunger and development, indigenous peoples, peacekeeping, refugees, children, and women, to name a few.

1950s A priest and several students in the Basque region of Spain begin a cooperative factory. It grows into Mondragon, a network of 170-worker-owned-and-operated cooperatives with 21,000 well-paid jobs, a bank, chain of stores, and technical schools. They develop many creative democratic processes emulated elsewhere.

1955 500,000 women in Indonesia demonstrate for women's rights on International Women's Day.

1955 Rosa Parks is arrested after refusing to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus where blacks were required to ride. The black community launches the Montgomery bus boycott, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After a year of hardship the boycott succeeds, revitalizing the civil rights struggle in the United States.

1957 Despite threats to their lives, Daisy Bates, Elizabeth Eckford, and seven other young students become the first African Americans to attend the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

1958 Ken Caulkin, a founder of the Student Peace Union, is run down by a truck and seriously injured in a protest against the first Atlas missile base being built in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

1959 The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is organized by Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker and other black leaders. It becomes the most influential African American civil rights organization.

1959 Septima Clark sets up Freedom Schools all over the South to teach black history and to train African Americans as voters and community leaders.

1960 Four black students “sit in” at a Woolworth lunch counter to protest the rule that only whites can eat there. The nonviolent tactic of "sit-ins" spreads in campaigns to desegregate restrooms, movie theaters, restaurants, and libraries.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed to mobilize young people and to bring together black and white youth using nonviolent direct action methods like “sit-ins.”

1961 Young black and white Freedom Riders protest discrimination on buses. A bus is burned in Alabama, riders are attacked in Birmingham, and spend 40 to 60 days in jail in Jackson, Mississippi. Six months later, the U.S. government bans segregation on buses, trains, and transport facilities.

1961 Amnesty International is founded to document and protest torture and capital punishment. It gains over a million members within 20 years, with many high school and college chapters.

1963 The March on Washington is the largest demonstration to date, bringing more than 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech.

1963 Limited nuclear test ban treaty is signed by President Kennedy after six years of demonstrations by peace groups and growing concern by the public about the health hazards of nuclear testing.

1964 The Freedom Summer project recruits 700 young people to help register voters in Mississippi. Although three volunteers -- Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney -- disappear as training begins and are later found murdered, almost all of the volunteers continue their work.

1964-73 Draft card burning marks growing resistance to the U.S. war in Vietnam; millions of people join in demonstrations, draft counseling, tax resistance, civil disobedience, street theatre, and other forms of protest.

1964 500,000 pupils stay home from school in New York City to protest racial segregation.

1965 The United Farm Workers union launches a grape boycott led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to allow farmworkers to organize for decent pay and working conditions. They weren't allowed unions like other workers at the time. Thousands of individuals, schools, and churches support the boycott.

1965 Because of the enthusiasm and activism of many African Americans -- like Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper who simply wanted to vote -- the Voting Rights Act is passed by Congress.

1968 Philip and Dan Berrigan and seven other Catholic priests and lay people destroy 378 draft files in the Catonsville, Maryland draft board and await arrest. The protest sparks dozens of similar acts of civil disobedience, and their action and court room statements form the basis of Dan's eloquent drama, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.

1965 The growing Liberation Theology movement in Latin America emphasizes solidarity with the poor and oppressed; Helder Camara, Gustavo Gutierrez, Juan Segundo, Jon Sobrino, and later Elsa Tamez are among its leaders.

1969 Greenpeace adopts nonviolent direct action methods to dramatize its message to protect the environment. Its creative tactics included sailing boats into nuclear testing and whaling areas and hanging banners from bridges.

1970 The killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University sparks strikes and protests at thousands of colleges. More than a million people join Vietnam protests for the first time. A few days later, two African American students are killed at Jackson State College.

1970 The first Earth Day is held in cities around the United States to focus public attention on environment issues.

1971 At the age of 90, Jeanette Rankin leads 8000 woman on a march to the Pentagon against the Vietnam War. 1000 veterans protest the war; many throw their medals onto the Capitol steps.

1972 The Trail of Broken Treaties march occupies the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington, DC to dramatize Native American needs.

1973 Art Simon, a Lutheran pastor in NY City, organizes Bread for the World to educate, organize and lobby on hunger issues. It soon has 45,000 individual and congregation members. It lobbies the U.S. Congress to pass the Right to Food Resolution in 1976, the Africa Relief and Recovery Act in 1984 and still works to expand funds for U.S. hunger programs.

1975 Groups defending the rights of indigenous peoples are organized around the world to protest logging or stealing of their land, and other abuses. More than 1000 such groups are formed by the mid-1980s.

1976 60,000 join Peace People demonstrations in Belfast and Dublin. Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts at nonviolent reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

1977 "Mothers of the Plaza" buy a newspaper ad in Argentina to publish the names of mothers and pictures of 230 "disappeared," that is, people kidnapped, tortured, and/or killed by the military.

1977 The Nestle boycott leads to a UN World Health Organization agreement restricting promotion and sale of infant formula in poor countries. Infant formula is less healthy than breast-feeding due to a lack of clean water and its high cost.

1979 A Gay Rights March draws 100,000 demonstrators to Washington, DC to protest discrimination of homosexuals.

1980 Adolfo Perez Esquivel receives the Nobel Peace Prize for the work of Servicio Paz y Justicia; a group he had founded to intervene on behalf of human rights victims all over Latin America.

1980 Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador is murdered while celebrating mass. He had increasingly come to identify with the poor, and to urge soldiers not to participate in violence.

1980 Solidarity movement is founded in Poland. Repressed by the government, within in a few years it is widely declared dead even by many Western correspondents. In 1989 it wins every available seat in Parliament and now governs the nation; its victory comes without a single violent act despite the killing of 100 of its members.

1980s Witness for Peace sends thousands of Americans to Nicaragua in a 'shield of love' to help stop violence by U.S. backed "contra" guerrillas... 80,000 U.S. citizens sign a "Pledge of Resistance” promising to commit civil disobedience if the U.S. invades, helping avert U.S. military action ... 300 churches offer Sanctuary to protect Central American refugees from deportation.

1981 Protests against U.S. cruise missiles based at Greenham Common in England begin. At its peak, more than 8,000 women live in tents outside the base, demonstrating and committing civil disobedience. In one protest, 30,000 people encircle the base.

1982 750,000 people gather in NY City for the largest disarmament protest in U.S. history. During the 1980s a wide variety of nonviolent methods are used from demonstrations to peace quilts, nuclear freeze petitions to street theatre. More than 37,000 people are arrested for civil disobedience actions protesting the threat to use nuclear weapons. University Peace Studies programs grow from two colleges in 1972 to over 300 by 1987.

1982 Sister Helen Prejean becomes a pen pal to a prisoner on death row. She later writes a powerful memoir on her experience, Dead Man Walking, which is made into an award-winning movie.

1984 The book I, Rigoberta Menchu details the struggle of Guatemalan women in the face of the U.S.-supported military government that killed and tortured more than 100,000 people. Rigoberta Menchu receives the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.

1984 Linda Stout, a tenant farmer's daughter, creates Piedmont Peace Project to organize rural poor for jobs, services, peace, and low-income empowerment; she later writes Bridging the Class Divide.

1986 Nonviolent People Power in the Philippines brings down the oppressive Marcos dictatorship. After a long period of protests, demonstrations of tens of thousands of people are able to prevent a military response from succeeding. Its success inspires movements in Asia, South Africa, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere.

1986 Palestinian Intifada, or "resistance" begins, using mostly nonviolent means to protest Israeli military occupation.

1987 3,000 people gather on Mother's Day at the Nevada Test Site to protest preparations for nuclear war; the U.S. detonated 1000 nuclear explosions 1945-1990, more than all other nations combined.

1988 Black and white church leaders in South Africa unite to condemn apartheid in an Emergency Convocation and call churches to active nonviolent resistance .

1988 Well-known Palestinian nonviolent activist Mubarak Awad is expelled from Israel, despite pleas from President Reagan and the U.S. ambassador who says, "You need more Awads in Jerusalem, not fewer."

1989 Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and East Germany all win freedom from Soviet control by nonviolent means. Nonviolent independence movements within the Soviet Union are launched in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Moldavia, and the Ukraine.

1989 Romanian secret police attempt to arrest Rev. Laszlo Tokes; his parishioners jam the streets, light candles, and refuse to move. The crowd grows to 50,000 in the city center. Violent suppression by the government sparks the revolution that overthrows the dictator Ceausescu.

1989 The Chinese government crushes a nonviolent student protest at Tiananmen Square but not before images are televised around the world such as an unarmed young man stopping a column of tanks.

1989 Student protests lead 20% of U.S. universities to fully withdraw investments from corporations with ties to South Africa; almost 60% respond to some extent to the divestment campaign.

1990 Disabled demonstrators at the U.S. Capitol building demand passage of a bill guaranteeing their civil rights. 60 people highlight their demands by crawling out of their wheelchairs and up the Capitol steps.

1990 King Birendra of Nepal yields to protests that topple his government and grants multi-party democracy, a parliamentary system, and freedom of speech, religion, press, and assembly.

1990s Lutheran Bishop Medardo Ernesto Gomez is a leader in the rebuilding of El Salvador after its bloody civil war. "Sister Parish" links with churches in the United States are important sources of support in El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere, and also help educate U.S. citizens.

1990-1991 Demonstrations in 20 cities protest U.S. buildup to war against Iraq; polls show the majority of Americans support nonviolent resolution of the conflict. Erik Larson is among 2000 young soldiers seeking conscientious objector status. After the war, support grows for a Code of Conduct to end U.S. arms sales to dictators who amass weapons to invade neighbors or repress their people.

1991 Russian demonstrators in the tens of thousands surround the Moscow White House (their parliament building) to protect President Boris Yeltsin from a coup that fails despite command of four million soldiers and thousands of tanks and aircraft.

1992 Demonstrations and educational events around the world turn the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus into a classroom on the plight of native peoples and the effects of colonialism.

1992 60,000 people attend an anti-war rock concert in Belgrade, Serbia to protest war in the former Yugoslavia; in Stara Moravica, a solidarity action is held in support of 83 young people who refuse to serve in the military. Meanwhile, among the victims of Serbian shelling in Sarajevo, Bosnia, daily nonviolent demonstrations and cultural protests take place.

1994 Nelson Mandela is elected the first black President of South Africa, just four years after he is released from jail.

1995 Million Man March by African Americans in Washington, DC highlights the constructive efforts of black men and challenges them to fight racism in their communities back home.

1995 The human rights activist in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, is released from six years of detention; her political party had won an overwhelming victory in 1989 but wasn’t allowed to take office. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

1996 Unmet needs of children is the focus of the Stand for Children march in Washington, DC led by Marion Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund and local organizers and advocacy groups.

1998-99 Many churches, schools, and groups pass resolutions endorsing the Nobel Appeal for Peace “For the Children of the World.” The United Nations designates the years 2001-2010 as the “Decade for a Culture of Peace & Nonviolence.” Seventy million people sign a pledge of nonviolence by 2001!