In its work, PAX seeks to advance nonviolence and just peace. Nonviolence responds to violence and injustice through the power of love in action.
As such, nonviolence aims to create the conditions for revealing truths within conflict and to facilitate resolution and reconciliation. Love in action aims to overcome fear, deception, greed, hatred, and propensity to dominate that are at the basis of violence and injustice. It rejects avoidance, accommodation, or counter-violence as traditional strategies, as these do not resolve the issues at hand, but exacerbate them. This requires courage, creativity, mercy, community, and relentless persistence. Nonviolence challenges violence and injustice of the perpetrator while, at the same time, regarding the opponent as a human being.
Just peace is a Christian school of thought and set of practices for building sustainable peace. More than the absence of violence, Just Peace includes the presence of social, economic and political conditions that sustain peace and prevent conflict from turning or returning to violence. Just peace norms rely on three approaches for building a positive peace – principles and moral criteria, practical norms, and virtue ethics. As such, it can help Christians move beyond war.