Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Mennonites / Amish →
Steve Ratzlaff
The Fresno Community Alliance hosts an op-ed from Steve Ratzlaff on how many people against war suffer from an irrationally exaggerated form of risk aversion that keeps them from taking steps to align their lives with their values and adopting war tax resistance.
Excerpts:
Many of us are conscientiously opposed to supporting this military idol but continue to pay for it.
Why?
Because we are not willing to risk withholding our taxes that pay for war.
And so we continue to feed the War Machine with cold cash by the billions.
…[R]isk is not new to us.
So why then are we so reluctant to take minimal risk by refusing to pay for war, which we adamantly oppose?
I would venture to say that it is because the refusal to pay for war is illegal — an act of civil disobedience.
We are more stigmatized by breaking the law through the withholding of taxes for war than we are by the sheer horror and violence created by our complicity in supporting it.
We, who would vomit at the sight of burning flesh and blood on our hands, have no qualms paying taxes for somebody else to kill and burn.
All because we are so averse to risk-taking.
But times have changed.
Bold actions are needed in order to bring about change.
The military idol in this nation must be confronted.
We need to stand tall in the face of this sinister military idol that demands our money, our allegiance.
There is a new effort to speak to this issue emerging in religious circles that is welcoming people of all religious and secular persuasions to join them.
It is called the 1040 For Peace Campaign.
It involves withholding $10.40 from your taxes each year to protest the growing stranglehold that military spending has on our budget.
If you are interested, visit http://1040forpeace.org.
I’m not so sure withholding $10.40 counts as a “bold” action of the sort that will bring about change, but it’s a start.
PeaceSigns is a publication of the U.S. Mennonite Church’s Peace & Justice Support Network. The latest issue focuses on war tax resistance, and includes:
Their use of commas in the title ought to give you some idea as to their answer.
But you might also be interested in the 75 comments and questions in the ensuing back-and-forth.
This is the thirty-seventh in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we hit 1991.
The issue brought the news
that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (of Quakers) had lost its court battle
against the
IRS:
On ,
U.S. District Judge
Norma Shapiro found that
PYM
is not protected by the Constitution. She wrote, however, that “it is ironic
that here in Pennsylvania, the woods to which Penn led the Religious Society
of Friends to enjoy the blessings of religious liberty, neither the
Constitution nor its Bill of Rights protects the policy of the Society not to
coerce or violate the consciences of its employees and members or to act as an
agent for our government in doing so.” The General Conference Mennonite
Church, which agreed in to not withhold
taxes from its employees who requested this, has not heard from the
IRS.
That issue also carried
a
note about the Northwest Peace Fund — an alternative fund for coordinating
war tax redirection sponsored by the Seattle Mennonite Church.
“We can’t stop war, but maybe we can stop paying for war,” says Steve
Ratzlaff, pastor at the church. The taxes that would be paid to the government
are put into the fund, and the interest earned on the money is given to peace
and justice organizations. If the Internal Revenue Service garnishees the
unpaid taxes, investors may draw the money out. The rationale behind the fund,
says Ratzlaff, is that “if enough people do it, it will become an economic
hardship for the government to collect the money.” It also allows people to
direct their money to “constructive rather than destructive programs,” he
says.
The edition again invited
readers to redirect their federal income taxes through the
Taxes for Peace Fund organized by the
MCC
U.S. Peace Section.
The funds collected in would be split among
the Peace Section itself, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and
Christian Peacemaker Teams. In ,
$3,700 had been redirected through the fund.
The relatively new Mennonite Conference of Eastern Canada
had been quickly confronted by the war tax withholding issue, and tried to
resolve it at its annual sessions. Here’s how The
Mennonite reported it:
Fred Martin: “I see this as a symbolic act that would witness to our hope in
the love of Jesus Christ.”
Next to the budget, the most debated item was the executive board’s
recommendation to “withhold no income tax from the salary of any conference
[MCEC]
employee who requests this on the basis of conscience” as well as to ask the
Canadian government to recognize conscientious objection to payment of
military taxes and to provide peaceful alternatives for use of such tax
dollars.
Fred Martin, who works with students and young adults for the conference, made
the request that led to the board’s recommendation. He said he wants to
motivate people to consider the issue. He called his act a symbolic one “that
would witness to our hope in the love of Jesus Christ.”
Several spoke in favor of the action. Doug Pritchard quoted the famous
Catholic activist Dorothy Day: “If we truly rendered unto God what is God’s,
there would be nothing left for Caesar.”
Sam Steiner said that governments listen more if they see you’re willing to
sacrifice for it. Wilmer Martin added that we need to support our members who
try to be true to their conscience.
Others opposed the idea. Victor Dorsch of Maple View Mennonite Church,
Wellesley, Ont., said that
such an action is not a positive peace witness. “Our tax dollars are also
going for abortions,” he said. Peter Epp of North Leamington
(Ont.) United Mennonite Church
was also against it and called for a secret ballot.
The moderator delayed further discussion until that evening’s session. In the
end, delegates voted down the original recommendation on tax withholding, 159
to 48. Margot Fieguth of Mississauga
(Ont.) Mennonite Fellowship
introduced an alternative resolution, which still called for the conference to
work for legislation to recognize conscientious objection to paying military
taxes and recommended hiring Martin on a contract basis so that the conference
was not liable. After more discussion delegates voted to table discussion
until the next delegate session.
A
followup, after the
MCEC
fall sessions in , read in part:
A new motion, passed almost unanimously, commits the conference “to work with
the federal government to enact legislation that recognizes conscientious
objection to military service and the payment of military taxes and to provide
peaceful alternatives.”
Originally the new motion also included a section offering contracts to
conference employees who want to redirect their taxes. That section was
removed after the conference executive learned that simply placing employees
on a contract basis — without changing job descriptions and
accountability — would not necessarily get the conference “off the hook” for
breaking income tax laws.
Don’t we already have provision for conscientious objection to war? asked
several delegates. Doug Pritchard, a peace worker with the conference, said
that such legislation was in effect during World War Ⅱ but is no longer. David
Janzen suggested that the guarantees of freedom of conscience and religion in
the Canadian Bill of Rights should be sufficient.
A
message from the General Conference’s General Board in reaction to the
Persian Gulf War went out in the
issue. It said, in part: “We repent that through our taxes we have contributed
to death and destruction… We call on Christians not to enter the military
forces and to protest or refuse the use of our taxes for military purposes.”
To avoid federal income taxes.
For 12 years I have paid no federal income taxes because I refuse to finance U.S. mass murder around the world.
How can I speak for peace while I pay for war?
Over 50 percent of every federal income tax dollar goes for war — past, present, or future.
I keep my easily traceable taxable income under the taxable level.
For a sighted, under-65-year-old single person that amount is $5,550 for .
Shrader was taken to task in a later issue by a letter
saying that his example of “[l]iving at basic sufficiency does nothing to help
the poor, many of whom are dependent upon tax dollars for their housing, food,
education, and health care.”
Titus Peachey
An article by Titus Peachey on The Blessing of Tax Resistance — imagining what would happen if war tax resistance were central to Mennonite practice — appeared in the issue:
Imagine the impossible or highly
improbable. Imagine that all Mennonite and
Brethren in Christ people refused to pay taxes for war.
Let’s not worry for the moment how this came about, except
to acknowledge that it grew out of our deep commitment
to Christ and the church.
Furthermore, let’s imagine that we cheerfully supported one another in this
refusal to pay taxes for war, so that no one need be alone in this act of
faith.
What would this do to our church? What would happen to our witness in the
world? How would God change us in the process?
We cannot know. I am convinced, however, that there are parallels to the
blessing that came when our young men chose insult and prison rather than
military service during World War Ⅰ. We still benefit from that witness.
Now it is our turn. How are we going to be faithful? What would we face as a
church if we decided that faithfulness meant the refusal to pay taxes for war?
Simple living: The first option is simple living, the legal approach.
The more-with-less approach to life would be the norm in our churches. Vast
numbers of our people would choose legal means of reducing the amount paid in
taxes for war. We would reduce our personal incomes, and give a higher
percentage of our money to the church. We would reduce our tax liability.
Our churches would encourage simpler housing and shared living arrangements.
We would help our young people avoid large, long-term mortgages. Living in
duplexes or other multiple-unit dwellings would reduce purchase and
maintenance costs and save on heat, utilities, appliances and tools. Many of
us would find inexpensive housing in low-income, multicultural neighborhoods,
maintaining a sense of stewardship so that our presence would not price others
out of the neighborhood.
As more of us moved into lower-cost housing, we would gain new skills at
cross-cultural living and relating. More of our churches would reflect the
diversity of God’s people. We would become a less segregated and exclusive
church. We would learn difficult lessons about conflict resolution, justice
and community.
More of us, in an effort to reduce expenses, would put energy into relating to
our neighbors and the community through the public school system. Alternately,
given our greater interest in tax deductions through charitable contributions,
our church schools could be more highly subsidized, less expensive and thus
more accessible to a broader spectrum of people.
A commitment to not paying taxes for war would increase resources available to
the church. It would be usual for people to give 20–50 percent of their
incomes to the church. Local congregations would have more resources to share
with the community. It would be routine for a congregation to hire one or two
people to work at community needs and concerns.
Our churches would also struggle deeply with the prevalent theology of success
and the god of materialism. The same theology that prevents us from paying
taxes for war would prohibit us from spending so much on ourselves. Our church
building and expansion programs would be reviewed in light of community and
world needs. We would become “economically non-conformed” to this world.
Refusing to pay taxes for war would expand our understanding of conscientious
objection to war. We would understand conscientious objection to include
issues related to employment, investments, taxes, and business relationships
as well as to military registration and conscription.
The U.S. Peace Tax
Fund Bill would receive all the financial support it needed. Congress members
from Mennonite or Brethren in Christ districts would frequently receive mail
and visits on the subject. Conscience against war would receive a better
hearing in the halls of government.
Tax resistance: The second option is tax resistance, the illegal
approach. A significant number of Mennonites would choose the path of tax
resistance by withholding the military portion or a symbolic amount of their
tax dollars from the
(U.S.) Internal
Revenue Service and Revenue Canada. It would be normal to find a group of
families in each congregation who seek counsel and support on this issue.
Mennonite institutions would honor employee requests not to withhold their
income tax dollars. Mennonite leaders would frequently find themselves in
IRS
offices and the courts, witnessing to their faith and conscience and the
convictions of our people.
As the public became aware of this expression of our faith, some would
perceive Mennonites as a threat. We could become the target of harassment and
community pressure. People would make nasty phone calls and vandalize us as a
result of our beliefs, particularly during times of crisis, such as the
Persian Gulf War.
Some of us would end up in jail, being used as examples to deter others from
continuing to practice tax resistance. Small Mennonite fellowships might form
in our prisons as a result of the life and witness of tax resisters.
These experiences would make it easier for us to identify with the image of a
“suffering church” that is found in Scripture, in our Anabaptist heritage and
in many parts of the world today. Our sense of unity and identity with the
worldwide church would become stronger.
We would not have to scratch our heads and wonder how to do peace education
with our youth. They would sense that our concern about Christ’s way of peace
is integral to our life and faith. They would wonder why we are going to court
and to jail, and would ask us many difficult questions over dinner and during
Sunday school.
Conclusion: Tax resistance is not the only path to the many things
mentioned above. Surely we as a church could commit ourselves to simple living
and a 10–20 percent tithe, without the burden (or the blessing) of the war tax
issue. Certainly there are other ways to grow in commitment to racial equality
or justice for the poor.
In my experience, however, war tax resistance remains one of the most relevant
ways to affirm life and peace in a world of militarized economies. For me it
has also served as the best discipline for simple living in a culture of
materialism and consumption.
Implementing this vision in our churches could lead to conflict and division.
It could also lead us to experience anew Christ’s reconciling Spirit among us.
It would not be easy. I am convinced, however, that a great blessing awaits
the church, when we agree to say yes to Christ’s way of peace by refusing to
pay taxes for war. When will it happen? What will become of us if it doesn’t?
Don Kaufman penned a letter for the edition. Excerpts:
Those who do not willingly pay find the costs of dissent high. Internal
Revenue Service penalties and fees total several hundred dollars when citizens
refuse to send their earnings to the Pentagon. This simply adds to the dilemma
of “drafted dollars” that violate conscience. With one hand citizens give
generously to life-building purposes that ease human suffering. With the other
hand they pay military taxes that effectively cancel the good they have done.
They pay to relieve suffering; they pay to increase it. They pray for peace;
they pay for war.
Today’s combat soldier is the taxpayer — the person who provides the money to
produce and deploy the push-button systems for mass annihilation.
He urged people to support a Peace Tax Fund bill.
This is the forty-first in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we reach the end of the 1990s.
Peace Tax Fund bill advocate Marian Franz wrote about “The claims of God and Caesar” in the edition.
She began by highlighting how entwined tax issues are with the stories related in the gospels.
She then highlighted the spending priorities of the U.S. government — how much it spends on weapons while crucial needs remain underfunded — and on the related spending priorities of Mennonites:
John Stoner did an analysis that found that for every $9 Mennonites spend on their military taxes they give $5 to charitable causes.
She told of Dan Slabaugh, who in “was plowing his field, and at one point he knelt on the ground and promised God he would never again let a penny of his earned income go for military use.”
Slabaugh wrote his Senator about this, and that Senator, Mark Hatfield, went on to introduce a Peace Tax Fund Bill.
She also told of Claus Felbinger, a Hutterite martyr who had said that “When… the government requires of us what is contrary to our faith and conscience, such as swearing oaths and paying hangman’s dues and taxes for war, then we do not obey its commands.”
And she related (for the first time, I think, in The Mennonite, remarkably) the story of World War Ⅰ-era American Mennonite John Schrag, who was attacked by a mob for refusing to buy war bonds.
She then went on to plug the Peace Tax Fund bill, suggesting it would provide a way for conscientious objectors to pay their taxes and have “the military portion” safely disinfected of its militaristic taint.
She also said she found lobbying for the bill to be a useful way of introducing conscientious objection to military taxation to new audiences, such as religious groups outside of the traditional peace churches, and to politicians and bureaucrats.
The same issue included an article about war tax resistance by Steve Ratzlaff.
He asserted: “It isn’t possibly to pray for peace and pay for war unless you suffer from delusions or a split personality disorder… Yet 99 percent of Mennonites do that very thing.”
The problem lies in our split personality, in the mental gymnastics we use to excuse ourselves from the reality of our actions.
We have separated our actions from our belief by rationalizing that we don’t really have any choice; the government requires us to pay taxes.
That is true.
But the government required that we serve in the army before the Alternative Service Act was passed in .
We refused to serve in the armed forces then.
Once they accommodated us by granting us conscientious objector status, we gladly gave them our money so they could continue to kill in our names.
And they do kill, through aggressive military maneuvers and supporting almost every government in the world through the sale of arms.
We have separated our pocketbooks from our consciences.
Money has become the topic that is nobody’s business but our own.
As a result, we allow no one to hold us accountable for the way we spend it.
That includes our tax money as well.
We take the path of least resistance and pay the military portion of our taxes, even though that may violate our conscience.
We Mennonites are sick.
We are schizophrenic when it comes to taxes that go for war.
And our government is thankful for that.
It was a small price to give us the option of alternative service.
They really are more concerned that we continue to provide them with the cash needed to pay for their wars and military build-ups.
The unconditional support of the military that our government asks of us is obscene.
We have withdrawn support from welfare mothers and aid to dependent children while increasing corporate welfare to the military industry.
As a people of peace we cannot continue to pay for such irresponsibility in good conscience.
It is time for us to listen seriously to our consciences again and to refuse to pay for such atrocities.
We are a conscientious people that have lost our way and fallen ill.
It’s time to address our personality disorder and listen once again to Jesus’ call to be peacemakers, not war supporters.
This prompted several letters which were printed over the next few issues:
John F. Murray wrote
to say that he had determined the best course of action was not to reduce your income below the tax line, nor to withhold taxes due from the government, nor to support a Peace Tax Fund bill, but to donate generously to the church in order to take a large tax deduction.
Until the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill becomes reality, it would appear that the only ways to ensure that one’s tax dollars not go to military usage is to keep income below taxable levels or refuse to pay all taxes.
The government currently will first take taxes for military purposes regardless of whether one pays the military portion or not.
Thus by not paying the military portion, it appears one ultimately cuts money available for social programs rather than the military.
To stay below taxable levels, one may cut actual income below the taxable level or go beyond Ratzlaff’s suggestion that the military portion of income taxes be given to some organization such as Mennonite Central Committee and give all actual income above the taxable level to charitable purposes.
One wonders what our Mennonite agencies could do if the latter practice was followed by the large majority of their constituencies.
Steven J. Olshewsky followed up with a letter in which he pointed out the practical difficulties of using charitable giving as a way of reducing a taxable income to a tax-free income, among other things.
John M. Eby expressed his disappointment
that “[t]here apparently has been no new thinking on the subject of war taxes since the last time this was a burning issue.”
Caesar comes at us like a highwayman, willing and able to come in and take whatever Caesar determines to be his share.
Due to interest and penalties, those who make a show of resisting will end up rendering more than those who do not resist.
This is the first paradox of the war tax issue.
When there is little or no money available, Caesar quickly loses interest.
Those who choose to live on the lower fringe of Caesar’s economy are not expected to render.
However, if we all choose to live on that fringe, there will be no money to support the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.
No money for Mennonite Central Committee.
Little or no money for the panoply of camps, boards, schools, publications, etc., that are the visible representations of our attempts to do church.
We all recognize, at least in theory, that we cannot serve both God and mammon.
But we have yet to figure out how to serve God without at least some mammon.
I suppose this is the second paradox of the war tax issue.
I would like to register a legal way to avoid paying that I haven’t seen mentioned yet: live and earn your income abroad.
U.S. citizens can exclude up to $72,000 () of foreign earned income (they are taxed on worldwide income) as long as they meet the IRS requirements for the foreign country being their “tax home” or for being “bona fide residents” of the foreign country.
After over eight years of living in Panama, my wife, three children, and I have attained permanent residency status… but are also still U.S. citizens.
In these eight years of dairy farming in Panama, I have been required to pay U.S. self-employment taxes (Social Security) but have not needed to pay any U.S. income tax.
(And with an exclusion of up to $72,000, I do not anticipate needing to pay any.)
I’m liable for Panamanian income tax but, as a dairy farmer, have not yet needed to pay any.
This is the forty-fifth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we finish off the first decade of the new millennium.
What belongs to God and what to Caesar? It’s a riddle that has to be puzzled
over again and again by Mennonites in the context of war tax resistance. In the
edition,
Titus Peachey took a swing
at the pitch: Given all that belongs to God, he asked, “can we who follow Jesus
willingly give our tax dollars for war and killing?”
In the edition,
Scott Key
answered Everett J. Thomas’s editorial statement — “There seems to be nothing
we can do but write letters and pray that [the war in Iraq] will stop.” — with
some more practical ideas, including boycotts of and divestment from military
contractors, and war tax resistance.
Susan Miller Balzer wrote in to applaud and supplement this:
Scott Key… lists some important ways to work against war and for peace. In
mentioning war tax resistance, he expresses a common misconception that
employees cannot prevent their employers from withholding federal taxes from
their paychecks.
However, it is possible to limit or stop withholding by increasing withholding allowances on the W-4 Form (or legally writing “Exempt” on the form if you did not owe federal income taxes last year and do not expect to owe in the coming year).
See the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee’s “practical” publications on the Web site nwtrcc.org on controlling federal tax withholding and on low income or simple living for helpful information on ways to keep from paying for war.
On the same Web site, click on the War Tax Boycott, Withhold from War/Pay for Peace to find ways to participate in this national effort to defund war.
The “draft” of federal tax money to pay for present, past and future wars is a
fundamental issue that our church should address as it works to replace
suffering, destruction and injustice with healing and hope. The military draft
affected only young men. The current “economic draft” affects young men and
women who enter the military to try to get out of poverty. The draft of tax
money affects people of all ages as long as they have a taxable income.
If everyone in just one congregation refused to pay for war and redirected
their refused taxes to an underfunded social service, imagine the
opportunities for witness and change that could occur.
Don
Kaufman was back in the
letters to the editor column:
If enough of us withhold from war and pay for peace, we can stop the harm.
War-tax resistance is not a passive or unethical tax avoidance but an act of
conscience that everyone can do. The cross of Jesus as nonviolence and
compassion is our model for hope and change.
Individuals shoulder great responsibility for warfare and for peace. At times
the most effective way to take responsibility is refusal to collaborate, as
Franz
Jaggerstatter did in Hitler’s Austria in
. How can we take a stand against a
government that leads its citizens into committing murder? The task is to be
reform-minded, to live in an ethical way, and progressively to make
unthinkable the coercion of conscience by the majority who put their faith in
military or violent solutions.
Like Jeremiah, let us
unmask the illusions of power by being servants of hope among the vulnerable
and wounded.
Stanley Bohn
encouraged people to engage in at least a small symbolic act of war tax
redirection, in the edition,
claiming important benefits from the gesture that go beyond its likely
practical results:
Will this action make Congress and the Bush administration change their funding priorities?
Unlikely, even if millions took part in this effort.
After all, war fuels our economy, is useful in getting national unity and political support, and it focuses on the evil of others, allowing us to raise our self-esteem.
As Chris Hedges wrote in his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, war provides us with purpose and a civil religion.
What happens to us: For some Christians, the motive for participating
in tax redirection may start as a protest against refugee making, the
slaughter of people as collateral damage, torture of prisoners, creating
mentally damaged veterans, ballooning war debt, ruined international
relations, and other disastrous consequences. But when we take a stand for our
Christian convictions, something else may happen.
We gain an understanding of Jesus’ way of being lumped with criminals when
choosing the community-building, caring, enemy-loving life at the heart of the
universe. We realize that Jesus did not live or teach a religion guided by
what is respectable, safe, stress-free, or that waits for a consensus. Jesus
calls us to a life that is unpredictable and vulnerable.
Tax redirection is not a criterion of who is a “real Christian” but is more
accepting life as a gift, being what we are here for, living what we see in
Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. When the
IRS
makes us pay a small percentage more than our lawful tax, we can experience
what we believe is more important than money, and the hold money has on us is
reduced.
Living this kind of trust in the Jesus way helps keep serious Christians from
attempting to be pure and withdraw from life’s realities. It keeps us engaged
in current issues and with those proposing different goals. We are engaged,
however, in the kind of peace Christians should expect when choosing an
alternative way to conquer evil.
The risk of taking a stand regardless of consequences brings an unexpected
peace. It is not a peace that makes us feel protected, free of fears, or
satisfied with ourselves. It is a peace from knowing one is on a venture of
trusting in the universe-guiding reality we see in Christ. It is an empowering
peace given us when we offer ourselves to the one who gave us this life,
trusting God for the outcome. It is an empowerment that keeps us open rather
than defensive and having to shut out the desperate cries of others. It is an
alternative to a consumer-oriented Christianity that brings an unintended
transformation that makes us vulnerable and powerful at the same time.
Possibilities after April 15: There is no telling if or how God might
use the April 15 tax-redirection event. Consequences may occur that we never
thought of, including what powers or gifts might be released in ourselves.
We should not expect the government to inform us how many participated. The
media may not be free to report it, even if it knew. If the amount we withheld
and diverted is seen by the
IRS as
worth taking action against us, we will likely receive threatening letters and
finally have those funds confiscated along with a penalty.
Yet significant tax redirection can mean some humanitarian agencies will get
more financial support, and starving people will be fed. Maybe some
legislators will hear the conscience dilemma of many taxpayers and join other
co-sponsors of
HR 1921, the
Freedom of Religion Peace Tax Fund, which would make legal the redirection of
taxes by conscientious objectors to war. And maybe a few thousand redirectors
will discover we are less bound by the expectations of others and are freer
than we thought we could be.
Most important, we may learn that choosing risky ways of living for others,
even civil disobedience, can bring spiritual healing. We won’t defund the war,
but we can be more confident of the Power that overcomes our fears and by
God’s grace enables us to be the humans God intended us to be.
One such redirection idea was announced in the edition:
“Turning toward peace.”
This Mennonite Central Committee
(U.S.) initiative
allowed Americans to “redirect[] war tax dollars to help children in
Afghanistan through
MCC’s
Global Family education sponsorship program.” Titus Peachey, director of peace
education for
MCC
(U.S.) was quoted:
According to Peachey, most who have chosen to withhold believe, “If we cannot
conscientiously participate in war with our bodies, we cannot pay for it
either. We need to give our money to causes that build up rather than destroy
the presence of God in each person,” he says.
Most inform their governments of their actions. “Given the presence of Western
military action in Afghanistan today, the opportunity to contribute to
peacemaking there is timely,” says Peachey. “Equally important is the way in
which withholding war taxes challenges our own systemic militarism.”
A joint letter from Susan Balzer, Deb & Wes Bergen, Anita & Stan Bohn, Ron Faust, Don Kaufman, H.A. Penner, Steve Ratzlaff, Mary Swartley, Willard Swartley, and Dan Leatherman appeared in the edition.
They were responding to an editorial that suggested the Mennonite Church had surrendered as a peace church and had come to be “at peace with war.”
There is a traditional, positive witness opportunity for conscientious
objectors to war of all ages. It may seem scary, but many find it almost
routine. It involves redirection of income-tax assessments used for killing
and refugee-making to ministries meeting human need.…
Our descendants and overseas Christians will wonder how Christians in a
superpower, with over 700 military bases around the world, fighting two wars
and considering a third with Iran, supporting covert wars in places such as
Colombia and Israel, could be so at peace with war.
“The church should consist of communities of loving defiance. Instead, it
consists largely of comfortable clubs of conformity,” writes Ron Sider in
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. If we teach it is wrong, why
do we support it financially?
Shame is the negative motivation. The positive is that Jesus promised his
spirit of truth would abide in us and enable us to live differently from the
world’s ways. If we love him, we are empowered to keep his commandments
(John 14:15–17).
War tax redirection is “alternative service” for dollars we earn, service that
provides hope and new possibilities for suffering people instead of endless
war.
The issue covered
John
Stoner’s “$10.40 for Peace” campaign.
This was another attempt to get timid people to take baby steps into war tax
resistance by resisting a small, token amount of their taxes. The campaign is
still going on today but has yet to
catch fire.
The article seemed to me to exaggerate the scariness of such resistance even as
it tried to assuage the fears of potential resisters. Excerpts:
Stoner says the group hears some concern from individuals about the possible
penalties and “heavy hand of the
IRS
coming down.”
Stoner’s response is threefold. First, “As disciples of Jesus, we shouldn’t
have so much fear,” he says. Second, the past experiences of individuals who
have withheld taxes for similar reasons have been minimal. Third, the tax
withholder can decide later to pay the full amount.
“The most important thing is to make that statement that calls for democratic
conversation about how federal money is spent,” Stoner said.
Others say this movement should take more risks and that
U.S. war spending
remains too large. However, if enough people join, the risks and penalties
would increase, Stoner said.
The article noted that Shane Claiborne had signed on as an endorser and would
be speaking at an upcoming public meeting on the campaign.
