"'The Substance of Things Hoped For, the Evidence of Things Unseen': The Louisville Fellowship of Reconciliation" studies that local chapter of the international s religious pacifist group during two periods: 1941 to 1945, when it was dissolved; and between its second founding in 1975 and 1995.

Using the papers of the Louisville Fellowship and other local activist groups, oral histories, church and synagogue archives, and religious and secular journals and newspapers, this dissertation examines the practices through which these pacifists put their theological and political beliefs into action: supporting conscientious objectors, demonstrations, non-violent civil disobedience, public education, and prayer services. Fellowship members took increasingly radical action in the 1980s, joining local and national progressive religious networks in practicing war tax resistance and offering sanctuary to Central American refugees.

Two major theses emerge from the narrative: Louisville Fellowship activists worked as "insider-outsiders" for peace, and race played a central role in their political organizing around issues of violence. Most Fellowship activists, lay and ordained, were pacifist members of churches that supported mainstream just war theology. They pushed their churches to take stands against war, turning to the Fellowship for material, emotional, and theological support. That support was challenged in the 1980s by the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, which had previously been a source of members and institutional backing.

Racial integration was a constant challenge to both versions of the Louisville Fellowship. During the Second World War, the all-Christian, all-white Fellowship supported conscientious objectors while debating their response to appeals from activists like Bayard Rustin to work for racial integration. In its second incarnation, the majority Christian, mostly white Louisville Fellowship struggled to attract African-American members who were more concerned with violence at the local level, than with the Fellowship's witness against nuclear arms spending and proxy wars. The dissertation concludes with the Louisville Fellowship's outreach to African-American communities through the Louisville Project for "domestic disarmament." That project serves as a case study of the difficulties of organizing at the local level for solutions to national problems like handgun violence and unemployment.