Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Mennonites / Amish →
Anna & James C. Juhnke
This is the twelfth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue our trek into the 1960s.
When 60–75% of the national budget and a similar percentage of every tax dollar goes for an armament program there is cause for protest.
Even an outgoing general-president warned about the power of the industrial-military complex in our society.
The amount Christians pay for things they know are absolutely evil is frightening.
In The Christian Evangel estimated (conservatively so) that the 8,800 Amish Mennonites of Elkhart County (Indiana) were annually paying three million dollars toward future wars just by paying taxes!
We have long excused ourselves, saying that we were giving to Caesar what belongs to him.
Really, does all that belong to Caesar?
Does it become his simply by request?
Isn’t Caesar taking more than belongs to him, in fact, taking from that which belongs to God?
We believe in obeying the state, but only when such obedience is not in conflict with our commitment to God.
Likewise we believe in paying taxes, but only when such taxes do not do violence to Christian priorities.
In the days when the state asked primarily for men to go to war, we were conscientious objectors.
But now the primary tool of war is money.
Can we still be conscientious objectors now?
We must protest: 1) individually through our congressional representatives; 2) collectively through our official church channels; 3) by supporting the proposed Civilian Income Tax Act; 4) by refusing to pay the military portion of the tax, directing it for charitable and welfare uses through other channels.
What a wonderful thing it would be for the cause of Christ if folks would be willing to go to jail again for what they believed?
Who will lead the way?
In late the Committee for Nonviolent Action began in a “San Francisco to Moscow” Walk for Peace.
They had reached Pennsylvania by , and The Mennonite gave them some coverage that month.
Among the things they noted:
The walkers ask individuals to oppose militarism and the continuation of the arms race by considering non-cooperation with government policies when they conflict with individual conscience.
They urge concerned persons to seriously consider refusal to work in military (“defense”) industries, serve in the armed forces, and pay taxes which support military programs.
A guest editorial in the issue urged people to maximize their tax-deductible charitable contributions as a way of avoiding paying tax for military purposes.
Along the way, the author explicitly called out the “civilian bonds” dodge Mennonites had used during World War Ⅱ:
During World War Ⅱ the Canadian Government did provide what was called a Sticker Bond.
The conscientious objector, if he desired that his money be used for other than war purposes, could request that a sticker be attached to his bond.
While this may have eased his conscience, it was purely a bookkeeping matter as far as the government was concerned.
James C. Juhnke, then an undergrad at Bethel College (where he’s now a professor), wrote a piece on “Youth & Taxes” that appeared in the .
It starts with this charming bit of sixtiesism:
Maybe I’m wrong.
But sometimes I get to thinking that we young people shouldn’t be so dependent upon our elders to do all the decision-making for our society.
And just between us young people, the reason we ought to do our own thinking is because older people tend to lose their fire.… But we are different.
We are young.
We can afford to do some bold and dangerous thinking.
Here’s the bold and dangerous thinking Juhnke has in mind:
For a starter, I suggest that we lead the way for our older generation with some creative thinking on the issue of paying taxes to the government.
War isn’t what it used to be when our parents were young.
They used to talk quite seriously about winning a war.
And in a gruesome sort of way, I suppose we were on the “winning” side in World Wars Ⅰ and Ⅱ.
But the next global war won’t produce any winners.
Another thing has changed.
Today we are all involved in a fantastic peacetime war effort.
The defense expenditures of our government amount to over fifty billion dollars annually, a sum we can’t even comprehend.
The principle of military conscription in peacetime has been accepted.
Around 75 per cent of the government’s budget goes for military purposes.
Nuclear submarines, atomic-warhead missiles, anti-missile missiles, fallout shelters are becoming accepted parts of the American way of life.
We are living in a military age.
Now what we should consider is that we are going to be paying for all this.
Some of us have earned enough money to pay federal income tax.
The rest of us will be paying in the future.
And our parents have poured thousands of dollars into the government treasury, three-fourths of which is used for military purposes.
We believe that participation in war is wrong, and we refuse to serve in the armed forces because of our conviction.
If participation in war is wrong, what about paying taxes?
Aren’t we participating in war when we pay for it?
As Christians we know that we are responsible to God for our money and possessions.
We have dedicated ourselves and our lives to God.
We are obligated to use our money for constructive, Christian purposes.
Most of our money is used to purchase things we need and want.
We give up ten dollars and get a pair of shoes in return.
We pay 75 cents and receive the privilege of hearing a concert or seeing a play.
Paying taxes is a little like making a purchase.
Only this time for our money we get war preparations.
But not only do we not want war preparations, but we have serious questions about whether a Christian should be a partner in such a transaction.
Let’s not kid ourselves that we are not responsible for our tax money.
No miracle happens as my money travels from my home to Washington, D.C. to transfer responsibility for what I did from myself to the government.
I know that 75 per cent of what I sent in will be used for military purposes.
And I know that it would not have been used in this way if I wouldn’t have sent it.
But didn’t Jesus tell us to “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”?
Right.
And if we are serious about this question we will turn to the Bible for answers.
However, let’s not expect to find immediate and easy “proof-text” answers there.
In this instance, for example, only the first half of the quotation was given.
We also are to give “to God that which is God’s.”
The problem for us, then, is to decide what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God.
We probably are agreed that Caesar and God are not equals and that God’s claims are the most important for us.
What, then is to be given to Caesar?
Are we ready to say that the government should be given everything it asks of us?
Would we enter military service if the government demanded it of us?
Would we pay a special war tax which went exclusively for military purposes?
(There have been instances in Holland and Prussia where Mennonites did this.)
Or do we pay only when less than 50 per cent is used for military purposes?
Toward I attended the Inter-Collegiate Peace Fellowship Conference of Mennonite Colleges.
We discussed the relationship of so-called “radical” peace action projects to the church.
We talked about peace marches, nuclear testing protests, defense plant pickets, refusal to pay taxes, and similar forms of peace action.
I was amazed by the general agreement that the Mennonite church should seriously study these “radical” peace projects with a view toward possible participation in similar forms of witness to the government.
Here is a good program idea for your youth group.
Why not initiate a study and discussion of the problem of the Christian and taxes?
Find out if anyone in your church or community has done any thinking about this.
Write to the Board of Christian Service and the Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section to see what they have done in this area.
Try to find out exactly what percentage of tax money actually does go for military purposes and what alternatives are available.
Plan a Bible study to learn what the biblical position is with regard to taxes.
Maybe you could set up a program in the form of a debate with two people taking the affirmative (“Paying taxes is a compromise of Christian principles”) and two people on the negative (“Paying taxes is not a compromise of Christian principles”).
At any rate, let’s start thinking about issues like these.
We’ve too often wasted all our enthusiasm on activities and problems that are here today and gone tomorrow.
Answers to the taxes problem won’t come easily.
But we’re not out to tackle easy problems. We want issues that are worth our consideration.
Let’s get busy soon though.
The world, the church, and the older generation, need our contribution.
In a letter published in the issue, Mardy Rich Stone applauded Juhnke’s article.
Excerpts:
I cannot understand why Mennonites, historically outspoken on pacifism, do not take a stand against the payment of military taxes.
Christ said, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” Do Mennonites believe we are to give Caesar whatever he asks?
This I cannot accept.
Many people say that one cannot escape paying military taxes.
Military sources for revenue are numerous — gasoline tax, luxury tax, etc. Perhaps one cannot be perfect, but should this stop one from doing the best possible?
I know of only a few individuals who have refused to pay taxes — and they were the subject of criticism by fellow church members.
The least one can do is support them.
Executive secretaries of the General Conference Mennonite Church were asked to write up answers to some of the questions that were asked at that year’s conference.
Leo Driedger of the Board of Christian Service answered this question: “Some years ago a request was made for guidance on the matter of the use of income tax for military purposes.
Has anything been done?”
Driedger’s reply:
Two years of work by the Peace and Social Concerns Committee has resulted in much discussion.
Contracts [sic] with the Friends and Church of the Brethren were made.
We encouraged the Friends’ bill presented to the United States government asking for an alternative.
Gathering of material resulted in a classification of different approaches by our members as follows: being jailed for nonpayment, evasion of payment, adjustment of income so no need to pay, working for an alternative, payment under written protest, evasion of reporting, payment with uneasy conscience, 30 per cent charity contributions to reduce tax, and payment without question.
Articles and reports of some of these positions appeared in conference papers.
We encouraged the Institute of Mennonite Studies, Church and Society Conference, and the Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section to study income taxes.
The Peace Section held a full meeting to discuss the historical, biblical, and present day concern on taxes.
There is no consensus so far.
Individuals are encouraged to act according to their consciences.
Irlanda Jerez, merchant from the Mercado Oriental in Managua, Nicaragua, and leader of the tax resistance movement there (see ♇ ), was arrested by masked police .
She had just spoken at a press conference to announce a protest march in the Nicaraguan capital.
Her current whereabouts are unknown.
The Nicaraguan government has been under increasing pressure both from grassroots civil disobedience and from international condemnation of its killings of demonstrators and its use of pro-government paramilitary groups to attack the opposition.
This is the fifteenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was
reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we
continue our trek through the 1960s.
Over the past several years, war tax resistance in The
Mennonite has gone from “of course not — render unto Caesar after all”
to “maybe we should look into this” to “hey everybody, let’s start resisting!”
A backlash was inevitable. Here’s an example
from the edition. It
complained both that war tax resistance is foolish because the American
military and its “defense of the free world” is necessary, and that promoters
of war tax resistance were becoming too pushy. Excerpt:
I refer to the letter in the
issue
[see ’s post]
suggesting that Mennonites and others should refuse to pay income taxes used
for military purposes.… I am afraid that this program amounts to an attempt to
force certain Mennonite beliefs on other people whether they wish to accept
them or not… I am afraid that, having the right to practice our beliefs as we
see fit, we are showing a growing tendency to be pretty insistent that others
be made to do as we see fit also.
Another letter,
in the edition, criticized
tax resistance for providing an illusion of aloofness. Excerpt:
Paying taxes is one vital link the individual has with society and I question
whether we as individuals and Mennonites can afford to sever this link. To do
so I fear would be a giant step backwards toward isolationism and the delusion
inherent in such a philosophy that we are thereby free from responsibility for
what our nation does… If one would refuse to pay taxes as a form of protest
(symbolic) without deluding himself about his guilt and involvement (thus a
protest even against himself) I could see a case for it.
Another letter in the
edition was skeptical about the plans for a peace tax fund law. Excerpt:
It is good to hear an effort is being made to allow us to pay an alternate
tax, but won’t this remove the potency of a resounding “No” just as the law
permitting alternative service did? This points out the necessity of opposing
the evil as a whole, not just opposing a contributing factor. If my taxes are
used 100 percent for peace, my neighbors’ will go 100 percent for war or
defense. The government will get defense funds one way or another. Therefore
we should start at the top, to change the policy of the leaders — we can never
stop this mad arms race by cutting off our little contribution. Of course, if
refusing to pay taxes for defense spending will spotlight the issue enough to
change the policy, we should use it, but only after we have used all legal
methods and resources, such as writing to our congressman and lobbying.
The edition brought this news:
Brewster B. Kneen is apparently an American citizen living in London at 114
Ferme Park Road. In a letter published to the Internal Revenue Service he
indicates that he is withholding the $72.22 balance on his
income tax in protest against the United
States involvement in Vietnam. He also says, “I am sending a check for the
amount of the tax due, $72.22, to the Catholic
Worker [which published the letter], to be used either in its own work
against the war in Vietnam or for the relief of human suffering, or to be sent
by the Catholic Worker to a Catholic relief agency
working in Vietnam. (I am a Protestant, but know of no Protestant church body
calling for an end to the war.)”
This is the earliest mention of the Vietnam War in particular that I found in
discussions of war tax resistance in The Mennonite.
Kneen’s action was also mentioned
in the edition:
Brewster Kneen, a Christian pacifist, used another means of witness. He
refused to pay $72.22 in taxes he owed .
Instead he sent a letter to the Director of Internal Revenue in Brooklyn.
“The war in Vietnam,” he wrote, “is a blatant contradiction of the ideals of
freedom… our country was founded upon… As a Christian and an American, I must
dissociate myself from this criminal behavior… I see no alternative to
withholding my tax due as a form of resistance and protest.” He sent his
$72.22 to a relief group instead.
The issue included an
article by Vincent Harding titled
“Vietnam: What Shall We Do?”
Harding gave a list of eleven suggestions, one of which concerned taxes:
7. Should we not consider refusing to pay income taxes on the grounds of our
Christian convictions concerning war, and our specific concerns about this
war? This money could be sent to relief and peace-making organizations also. I
think the time has come for serious discussion and action on this.
Since modern armies require vast funds to operate, nonpayment of income tax is
a particularly apt form of peace witness in the present situation. I, for one,
would be willing to be imprisoned for nonpayment of taxes (tribute), as were
the early Christians. The Friends, in England and in America, about the time
of the Revolution, refused to pay war taxes, and that is what the income tax
is, in essence, at present. Eighty percent of it goes for war. This we must
protest! Let us instead send at least as much as we “owe” the government to be
used in the work of peace and reconciliation.
“The peace and social concerns committee in consultation with the executive
committee of the General Conference Mennonite Church” prepared
a
“statement for its congregations” which was presented at the Mennonite
World Congress in . It was also
“adopted by the Council of Boards”.
The statement called for a variety of actions aimed at the Vietnam War in
particular, one of which was war tax resistance:
We urge congregations to counsel together about the proposed surcharge of 6
percent on income tax and the already imposed 70 percent of the 10 percent
federal excise tax on telephone use. Since these are clearly levied to support
the war in Vietnam, should not the Christian object to payment of these taxes
on the same grounds as he conscientiously objects to military service?
In view of the gravity of the
U.S. actions in
Vietnam and the kind of witness called for at this time, we urge congregations
and groups within congregations to retest the validity of a law requiring
conscientious objectors to pay a war tax. We urge that this form of witness be
made to communicate as clearly as possible, and that those refusing to pay a
war tax contribute an equivalent amount to peacemaking agencies such as
MCC
and in this way communicate that they seek no personal gain by their
objection.
We also ask congregations to adopt a resolution of willingness to support,
emotionally and financially if jobs and funds are threatened, those whose
conscience leads them to refuse to pay the tax increases for war purposes
because of obedience to Christ.
James Juhnke returned (see
♇ for his earlier piece) in the
issue to discuss
“Our almost unused political power.”
He asked why Mennonites had been successful in their political battles to
obtain and maintain exemptions or civilian-run alternative service for
conscientious objectors in the military draft. He concluded: “the core of
Mennonite power… lay in their threat of civil disobedience. The Mennonites
promised that ‘thousands of conscientious objectors’ would violate the law and
accept imprisonment rather than… induction into the armed services. This threat
was credible.… Mennonites in were reaping
political rewards from the sacrifices of their fathers and grandfathers in
. Because Mennonites in the First World War
had been willing to take the awful step of civil disobedience, their
descendants during the Vietnam war were spared the necessity of proving all
over again to the government their sincerity of conviction.”
Juhnke suggested that Mennonites apply the same sort of pressure to change the
government’s war policy in Vietnam. Excerpt:
If the Mennonite witness in Washington regarding the Vietnam war is to achieve
the same intensity and urgency as the Mennonite witness regarding the draft,
we will need both qualified men and effective instruments of power. A
Washington-based staff of politically-experienced Mennonite leaders should be
charged specifically with the duty of using Mennonite influence for a decision
to deescalate the Vietnam war. And this lobby should be equipped with the kind
of political leverage which our threat of civil disobedience gives us on the
draft issue.
A parallel act would be the declaration by hundreds of Mennonites that they
would refuse to pay the proposed 10 percent surcharge on the income tax, a
measure resulting directly from the war. Armed with such a threat, the
Mennonite lobbyist would have political power far out of proportion to his
small constituency.
This is the twenty-fifth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today I’m going to try to cover 1978.
I say “try” because there was a frenzy of war tax resistance activity reported in The Mennonite .
Maybe I can try to sort it thematically…
A New Call to Peacemaking
“A New Call to Peacemaking” was an initiative coordinated by Mennonite, Quaker, and Brethren activists that began in and would eventually culminate in a statement urging people, Christians in particular, to refuse to pay taxes for war.
The Mennonite General Conference’s Peace Section,
U.S. division, met
and its executive secretary, John K. Stoner, reported that the Call
“has
gained widespread support.”
Invited to the meeting are 300 persons — Brethren, Friends, and Mennonites.
Named the New Call to Peacemaking, this coalition of historic peace churches
believes that “the time has come for all Christians and people of all faiths
to renounce war on religious and moral grounds.”
During the last year twenty-six regional New Call to Peacemaking meetings, involving more than 1500 persons, took a new look at the teachings of their churches.
They gave special attention to war and violence which they continue to see as denials of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Not surprisingly the groups agreed to urge upon all governments “effective
steps toward international disarmament.” However, none of the regional
meetings expressed the hope that politicians, soldiers, and diplomats would
put an end to war. Rather, the thought was that people at the grass-roots
level must demand a change in the system. Further, the idea was often
expressed that tax resistance and civil disobedience are necessary tactics in
convincing governments that a new order can bring security in place of the
present insecurity.
A New Call to Peacemaking conference which convened at Old Chatham, New York, last April, asked itself rhetorically, “Are we going to pray for peace, and pay for war?” A similar conference in Wichita, Kansas, gave its encouragement to “individuals who feel called to resist the payment of the military portion of their federal taxes.”
When the national conference convenes in Green Lake it will be receiving
requests from the regional meetings for a strong position on tax resistance
proposals. It will also be asked to give guidance to individuals and church
organizations on approaches to tax resistance. Theological, economic, and
social justice issues are also on the agenda.
“Citizens should organize themselves and act without waiting for government, especially the major powers, to take positive action,” says Robert Johansen in a paper being studied by the Green Lake delegates.
In another document prepared for the Green Lake meeting, Lois Barrett, a
Mennonite journalist from Wichita, Kansas, notes that the peace churches have
long “recognized refusal to pay war taxes as one of many valid witnesses
against war.”
In the Church of the Brethren recommended “that all who feel the concern be encouraged to express their protest and testimonies through letters accompanying their tax returns, whether accompanied by payment or not.” In the General Conference Mennonite Church said, “We stand by those who feel called to resist the payment of that portion of taxes being used for military purposes.”
The number of persons within the peace churches actually withholding a portion
of their taxes is still thought to be small, but it is growing. The Internal
Revenue Service will not release figures on the number of tax resisters in the
United States.
Members of the Green Lake planning group include John K. Stoner, Mennonite Central Committee, Akron, Pennsylvania; Lorton Heusel, Friends United Meeting, Richmond, Indiana; and Chuck Boyer, Church of the Brethren, Elgin, Illinois.
Coordinator for the New Call to Peacemaking is Robert J. Rumsey, Plainfield, Indiana.
After the gathering, The Mennonite seemed surprised at how tame and nonconfrontational it ended up being (they titled their article “Peacemakers shy away from shocking anyone”).
Excerpts:
The Green Lake conference is part of a cooperative effort by the historic peace groups to do five things — stir up rededication to the Christian peace witness, clarify the biblical basis for it, extend a call to the larger church to see peacemaking as a gospel imperative, propose actions the U.S. Government can take for peacemaking, and determine contemporary positive strategy for peace and justice.
Planning for the consultation began in and has included 26 regional meetings in 16 different areas of the United States.
Over 1500 people were involved in these meetings.
[Church of the Brethren theologian and professor Dale] Brown said one new way of expressing a peace witness was to protest the country’s military expenditures by withholding income taxes.
Tax resistance, he reflected, is an important symbol because it involves our pocketbooks and enlarges the peace witness beyond what 17- and 18-year-old youth do in response to conscription.
[T]he findings committee created a final document satisfying the diverse peaceniks.
For the conservative the final statement was too radical; for the activists it was too limp.
There are two main thrusts to the document — actions that are directed inward
among the peace churches to enhance the integrity of the peace witness, and
actions that are directed outward to enlarge the visibility of the peace
witness.
At the end of the national New Call to Peacemaking conference delegates urged all Friends (Quakers), Mennonites, and Brethren to firmly oppose militarism and to become personally involved in the struggle for justice for the oppressed.
Included in the final paper approved is a call to the 400,000 members of the three peace church
traditions “to seriously consider refusal to pay the military portion of their
federal taxes as a response to Christ’s call to radical discipleship.” This
statement is as strong as the 300 delegates could jointly affirm.
Other parts of the war tax statement are equally muted.
In the first draft of the paper, church and conference agencies were asked to “honor” the requests of employees who do not want the military portion of their taxes remitted to the government.
In the final draft, however, “honor” is changed to “enter into dialogue with.” Several evangelical Quakers were especially antagonistic to even including a reference to war tax resistance in the final document.
Yet tax resistance received new encouragement from the conference.
About 60 persons attended a Saturday afternoon workshop which detailed tax resistance strategies.
Studying the War Tax Issue and Christian Civil Responsibility
The Mennonite General Conference had been asked to stop withholding taxes from the paycheck of one of its conscientiously objecting employees.
This led to a long debate over the advisability of such a policy that caused arguments about war tax resistance to echo throughout the Conference in .
A special General Conference delegate session was scheduled to convene in just to respond to this single issue.
In preparation for that session, congregations had been encouraged to put some
serious effort into understanding the subject, and some studies were written up
to help guide these investigations.
A Christian’s response to civil authority will be given concentrated emphasis by the General Conference during .
The study is an outcome of a resolution at the triennial conference in Bluffton, Ohio, .
That resolution called for a thorough study of civil disobedience which is intended to state an official position of the General Conference with respect to that portion of income taxes which are used for funding military expenditures, and in general, to research the whole question of obedience-disobedience to civil authority.
Responsibility for the study has been given to the peace and social concerns
committee of the Commission on Home Ministries. They, however, requested that
a special obedience-civil disobedience committee be formed to give general
direction and leadership. This latter group consists of Palmer Becker, Ted
Stuckey, John Gaeddert, Harold Regier, Perry Yoder, and Heinz Janzen.
To date three major aspects of the study have been planned — an attitudinal survey, an invitational consultation in , and a study guide to be ready by .
Included in the survey are twenty-eight questions with responses varying from
“strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” chosen to provide an inventory of
congregational attitudes towards the authority of the church, and of the
state. It will also indicate attitudes to particular issues such as abortion,
capital punishment, and payment of taxes for military purposes. A copy of the
questionnaire will be sent to every congregation to be duplicated locally.
A second major happening is scheduled for at Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana.
An invitational consultation will bring together about thirty participants, including persons not committed to civil disobedience.
The gathering will include administrative personnel from the General Conference, lawyers, biblical scholars, as well as representatives from Mennonite Central Committee and the Mennonite Church.
It is expected that the study guide will evolve from the proceedings of the
consultation. Five of the thirteen lessons in the guide will focus on
peacemaking in a technological society. What sort of peacemaking should
Mennonites be about in an age of nuclear warfare and worldwide arms shipments?
The remaining eight lessons will center about the meaning of civil
disobedience. Was it practiced in the Bible? Is nonpayment of taxes a case in
point?
The study process will culminate in the special midtriennium conference scheduled for .
That gathering will be an official decision-making conference to which congregational delegates will come.
At that point a decision on the meaning and practice of civil disobedience will be made.
After the conference the questionnaire
will again be used to determine whether the churchwide discussion on
obedience-civil disobedience has generated any changes in attitudes.
A few more details came after the Commission on Home Ministries met in , and, according to The Mennonite:
Perry Yoder, part-time CHM staff member, outlined the process planned for dealing with the war tax or civil responsibility issue raised at the Bluffton conference.
Because of this issue’s “divisive and emotional potential in the conference,” a survey instrument has been designed to get congregational input; a consultation at the seminary will work toward a study guide, and congregations will be encouraged to use the study in preparation for a special General Conference delegate session at Minneapolis, called solely for the purpose of responding to the Bluffton resolution on tax withholding.
Another article said this study guide would be “available [and] will look at present militarism in North America, previous acts of dissent by Mennonites, and biblical texts on dissent, payment of taxes, and corporate action.”
During the first session on , board members locked onto the planning for the midtriennium conference on war taxes and civil responsibility.
Uneasiness about the process erupted quickly.
The structure of the invitational consultation on the issue was strongly faulted, as was the conference itself.
Board member Ken Bauman, pastor of First Mennonite Church in Berne, Indiana,
galvanized his colleagues with his allegations. “The consultation is not
structured for dialogue — it is monologue. The way it has been set up upsets
me deeply.” Later he declared that the Commission on Home Ministries should
not serve as the launching pad for the study and the planning leading to the
conference in . “Why ask
CHM?
The image of
CHM
is stacked. It should be the responsibility of the General Board.”
His assessment was the beginning of a fruitful debate which occupied several more sessions of the General Board, one session of CHM and hallway discussions.
The debate crystallized about several key questions. What is wrong with the
study process initiated by the obedience-civil disobedience committee of
CHM?
Is the issue of war taxes so divisive that a schism in the General Conference
is inevitable? Is the delegate
conference viable?
By , perhaps symbolically, the hard-hitting process of charge and countercharge had evolved into understanding and affirmation of the original plans.
On paper, little had changed, but in the minds of those who spoke for the “unheard,” — the “conservatives,” the “common person,” and the Canadians — there was a restoration of confidence in the process.
Tenseness was dissipated.
The mood became one of working together.
The consultation will meet at Mennonite
Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana. About twenty-five persons are invited.
These include theologians and biblical scholars, attorneys, administrative
staff of the General Conference, several
MCC
staff, and representatives from the Mennonite Church and the Mennonite
Brethren Church. The proceedings of the consultation are to serve as the basis
for a study guide on civil disobedience.
The committee planning the consultation and the midtriennium conference was called in to justify its ideas.
One member, Perry Yoder, observed, “Getting people to participate is very difficult.
People are very tense about this.”
“We thought the trust level would be quite high,” said another member, Harold
Regier. “Requests for speakers were made on the basis of scholarship and the
purpose is biblical. It is not a matter of pro or con.”
“We don’t know where the scholars will come out,” declared Don Steelberg, chairperson of CHM. (A complete list of scholars invited is not yet available — some are still considering the invitation.)
It was noted that since the concern on abortion had been handled insensitively
at the Bluffton conference, there was fear that the same thing would happen
with the issue of war taxes. So why should those who oppose withholding war
taxes bother to participate? They won’t be heard anyway.
Another fear was that the Canadians would also stay away. “My gut reaction is that it is a U.S. issue,” said board member Loretta Fast.
She was challenged on that.
“Don’t Canadians also pay military taxes?” queried Ben Sprunger.
“Yes,” replied another Canadian board member, Jake Klassen, “but we have not gone through the trauma and frustrations of the Vietnam War."
Hence, if both the Canadians and those opposed to withholding war taxes stayed
away from the delegate
conference, the gathering would be a farce. The conference would not be viable
if large blocs of delegates simply weren’t there.
For a brief time the board lost nerve.
Should the conference be canceled?
However, chairman Elmer Neufeld injected reality by reflecting, “The issue is not going to go away.
So, what is the next step?"
Over the board
recovered confidence in itself, in the planning already done, in the
possibility of bringing the dissenters into dialogue, despite differences in
theology and nationality, and in the voice of the discerning church. “I came
to the Mennonite church because of discerning congregations. If we cannot
discern in a process like this, then we have missed the boat,” reflected Don
Steelberg.
That was the next step.
They reminded themselves that the Anabaptist movement grew out of several
forms of civil disobedience.
They decided to adjust some of the personnel for the consultation.
They decided to promote serious study of the civil responsibility issue among congregations so that delegates would be conversant with it.
They decided to book the Leamington Hotel in Minneapolis as the place for the midtriennium conference.
The General Board also affirmed the action of its executive committee when they refused to pay a tax levy from the Internal Revenue Service.
The personal income taxes are owed by Heinz Janzen (general secretary) and his wife, Dorothea Janzen.
Under U.S. tax laws an ordained minister is self-employed, is not subject to normal payroll deductions, and hence, Heinz has refused to pay the military portion of his income tax.
Normally the
IRS
simply confiscates the amount owed from the bank account of the person
protesting. But with the levy the
IRS is
attempting to collect directly from the General Conference as employer. The
General Board agreed with the executive committee that the Janzen case is
civil disobedience by individuals, and not by an incorporated body, the
General Conference.
Editor Bernie Wiebe, himself based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, wrote an editorial for the edition expressing his unease about the direction Canada was taking, at how blasé his fellow-Canadian Mennonites were about it, and at how comparatively little concern there seemed to be there about the war tax issue that was roiling the Conference:
I am uneasy because I don’t hear my brothers and sisters protest against Ottawa.
Somehow we manage to wash our hands and keep pointing at the Pentagon…
At Bluffton, the majority voted for a midtriennium conference on the war-tax
issue. Every discussion I have since heard on this subject turns to the fear
that the Canadian third of the General Conference may refuse to participate;
after all, that’s a
U.S. question.
The conference was meant to bring in experts on the question who could help better inform the upcoming debate.
Participants in the General Conference Mennonite Church invitational consultation on civil responsibility have been named and the schedule outlined.
The consultation will convene
at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, Elkhart, Indiana.
Beginning , Ted Stuckey and Reg Toews, representing the business administration arms of the General Conference and Mennonite Central Committee respectively, will present information on the administrative dimensions of the war tax question.
The question, Is there a biblical case for civil disobedience? will be the
focus of scholarly input Friday morning. Millard Lind, professor at AMBS,
will speak from an Old Testament perspective; confirmation from the scholar
asked to provide a New Testament analysis is still pending.
A more specific look at the issue of war taxes is scheduled for .
Is civil disobedience called for in this specific case?
David Schroeder, professor at Canadian Mennonite Bible College, Winnipeg, and Kenneth Bauman, pastor of First Mennonite Church in Berne, Indiana, will speak to the question.
Erland Waltner, president of Mennonite Biblical Seminary, will respond.
Corporate action and individual conscience is the theme for
. Speaking to this are J.
Lawrence Burkholder, president of Goshen (Indiana) College, and William
Keeney, professor at Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas. Another person has
yet to confirm acceptance. Peter Ediger, pastor of the Arvada Mennonite
Church, will respond.
Elvin Kraybill, legal counsel for Mennonite Central Committee, will talk about legal questions related to civil disobedience.
Responding to his presentation are Duane Heffelbower, a member of the Division of Administration of the General Conference, and Ruth Stoltzfus, an attorney living in Linville, Virginia.
In addition to the formal input, various church leaders and administrative
staff will contribute to the consultation. These people are Heinz Janzen,
general secretary of the General Conference; Harold Regier and Perry Yoder,
cosecretaries of peace and social concerns of the General Conference; John
Gaeddert, executive secretary of the Commission on Education; William Snyder,
executive secretary of
MCC;
Urbane Peachey, executive secretary for
MCC
Peace Section; Hubert Schwartzentruber, secretary for peace and social
concerns of the Mennonite Church; Ed Enns, executive secretary of the
Congregational Resources Board of the Canadian Conference; Peter Janzen,
pastor, representing the Canadian Conference.
Six persons will form the findings committee.
They are John Sprunger, pastor, Indian Valley Mennonite Church, Harleysville, Pennsylvania; Palmer Becker, executive secretary of the Commission on Home Ministries; Elmer Neufeld, president of the General Conference; Hugo Jantz, chairperson of MCC (Canada); John Stoner, executive secretary for MCC Peace Section (U.S.); and Larry Kehler, pastor of the Charleswood Mennonite Church, Winnipeg.
Kehler is also the writer for the study guide which is to be published by fall.
[T]he issue was how Mennonite institutions should respond to those employees who request that the military portion of their income taxes not be withheld by the employer.
Several Mennonite organizations are facing the issue. The General Conference
is seeking the will of its 60,000 members in answering such a request from one
of its employees, Cornelia Lehn. The consultation in Elkhart was one part of
the discerning process leading to a delegate assembly, and a decision in
.
Bible scholars, theologians, pastors, administrators, attorneys — twenty-nine persons in all — presented papers, exchanged insights, and probed the issue.
Much of their analysis will be incorporated into a study guide to be published by .
There was general agreement that militarism and the nuclear arms buildup are a
massive threat to human existence. “We are in pre-Holocaust days,” asserted
John Stoner, director of Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section.
How does one change the direction of society?
How does one influence government policy so that it is prohuman?
Some individuals claim that the witness of taxes withheld from the military could do much to change American priorities.
Is civil disobedience biblical?
Is there a biblical case for civil disobedience?
Seminary professor and Old Testament scholar Millard Lind said the question was wrong.
He declared the question assumes that the government provides the norm for the person of faith, and asks whether there may be a religious basis for sometimes disobeying it.
On the contrary, he counseled, the biblical accounts emphasize the absolute
sovereignty of the God of Israel. Biblical thought challenges the sovereignty
of the civil authorities, calling it rebellion. Not only individuals, but
above all, the state, with its self-interest and empire building, are against
the rule and order of Yahweh.
Is civil disobedience called for in the specific instance of taxes spent for military purposes?
Two papers were presented on this question, one by David Schroeder of Canadian Mennonite Bible College, Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the second by Kenneth Bauman, pastor of First Mennonite Church in Berne, Indiana.
“It is clear,” said Schroeder, “that the New Testament speaks for civil
disobedience, but it is difficult to determine the form.” Interpreting the
will of God must be done in the community of believers. The Scripture must not
only be searched to know the will of God, but also to bind ourselves to doing
it.
He observed that the issue of taxes for military purposes is often seen in isolation from other options.
He counseled that the church needs to look at all avenues which would lead to peace, and then choose those options which would be effective at the individual and corporate levels.
A noticeable reaction of surprise was evident after Schroeder indicated that
as a Canadian member of the General Conference he would abstain from voting at
the mid-triennium conference in .
“Those (Americans) who must take the consequences of tax withholding must take the responsibility,” he opined.
When questioned on this Schroeder said he held the position because he would not, as a Canadian national, be able to effectively support an American practicing tax resistance.
Later in the conference, however, he appeared to modify his position.
Bauman’s paper was a careful overview of the tax situation in the time of
Christ, of Jesus’ stance relative to the authorities, and of Anabaptist
practice.
He indicated that Jesus’ political stance was not with the ecclesiastical nor with the social establishment.
Nor did Jesus identify himself as a radical social revolutionary.
Rather, Christ was a representative of the kingdom of God with a prophetic call to repentance, faith, and righteous living which transforms society through the transformation of the individual.
“It is amazing,” he reflected, “to see the early church and the Apostles show
such respect and subordination to a political system that crucified their Lord
and killed their leaders.”
When asked at what point he would practice civil disobedience, Bauman said, “For me it would be more than taxation; it would be when government becomes an object of worship.”
Mennonite practice he noted has been to pay taxes. Only the Hutterites have a
consistent pattern of resisting taxes.
Kings and prophets
In a humorous manner, J. Lawrence Burkholder, president of Goshen College, illuminated the tension between individual conscience and management responsibility.
“The Bible is stacked against managers,” he remarked. The managers (kings)
were always getting critiques from the prophets. Burkholder confessed that
before becoming a college president (a “king”) he had often been prophetic in
his utterances.
But now as a manager he values continuity, order, and making life possible.
Decisions often have ambiguity built into them.
Further, although individuals are free to order their lives as they wish, a corporation incarnates the many wills of its supporters into a limited function.
Is it right to expect a corporation to respond in the same way as an individual?
Burkholder did conclude though that a corporation must be willing to die for
the sake of principle. For a Mennonite school he suggested such a case would
be required ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps).
In his paper on the same topic, William Keeney of Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, warned that biblical and Anabaptist history illustrate that the voice of the majority is not necessarily the voice of God.
He also noted that for many people there is a double ethical standard, one for the Christian, and one for the state.
Keeney said Christians should have a bias in favor of loyalty to the prophets, and to the way of the cross and costly discipleship.
From this he concluded that corporate action needs to respect the individual conscience.
In his response to the above papers, Peter Ediger, pastor of the Arvada
(Colorado) Mennonite Church, cried out, “I would hope that management could be
prophetic. Can leadership in institutions not give evidence of faithfulness to
God? Why do we see this question (tax withholding) as a threat to our
institutions? We need more faith in the powers of resurrection. Do we foster
fear or faith? Spread the rumor that the Lord is going to do wonderful
things.”
The attorneys present provided a legal framework, as distinct from a biblical rationale, for approaching the issue of not withholding taxes used for military purposes.
The General Conference could, if it wished, simply stop remitting taxes and wait for the government to take action.
A long process of litigation might ensue in which the church could argue that
using the corporate body to collect taxes violates the conscience of tax
objectors, and also violates the principle of separation of church and state
because the church is held hostage by the state, under penalty of fines or
imprisonment of its officers. The attorneys also observed that the
IRS
(Internal Revenue Service) could decide to avoid litigation and its attendant
publicity, and simply go to the individual to collect.
In essence the attorneys said there were ways of working on the issue through legal, legislative, and administrative channels.
Findings
A findings committee — Palmer Becker, Hugo Jantz, Elmer Neufeld, John Stoner, Larry Kehler — drafted a statement.
After hours of discussion and subsequent changes the persons at the consultation agreed that the statement fairly represented their thinking.
Some excerpts:
“Our Christian obedience has to find new and creative responses to the
proliferation of military weaponry and technology…
“Christians respect the governing authorities… which leads to a broad
range of activities in support of the public good. Nevertheless, at times
our call of prior obedience to God’s sovereignty leads us to disobey the
claims of the state…
“We… have differing convictions about refusing to pay taxes for the
military.
“Let us be open to the possibility that the Spirit of God may lead some of
us in a direction that is both prophetic and full of risks.
“We agree that a way should be sought which will facilitate the expression
of the convictions of conference employees who request that their taxes
not be withheld.
“We need to seek the counsel of and work with other Mennnonite groups and
denominations, particularly the historic peace churches, in developing the
most appropriate response to this issue.”
Two multi-part articles and two additional stand-alone articles stretched
across multiple issues of The Mennonite and also
served to summarize some of the points of debate:
“The North American military” by Harold Fransen (part 1 and part 2)
These articles begin with an unflattering look at U.S. military personnel, suggesting that even if you put the violence of war off to one side, the drunkenness, ignorance, and sexual immorality found among those in uniform is enough not to recommend the institution to Mennonites.
The first part ends: “If we have come to the realization that we can not go to war, maybe the time has come to… say that no one can go to war on our behalf either.
As we fill out out income tax forms this year, so that the military can do the job which we refuse to do, let us remember what effect it has on the lives that are bound up in its powerful grip, and be in prayer as we move toward the General Conference’s midtriennium session to deal with this issue.”
Part two looked at this issue from the Canadian perspective, noting that
Canada was deeply involved in the international arms trade and was boosting its
own military spending. “Can we any longer brush off war taxes as a
U.S. issue?”
“Is this our modern pilgrims’ progress”
This article summarized the recent history of the General Conference in grappling with the issue that would come to a head at the session:
If the conference delegates decide that nonpayment of military taxes is justified the decision is binding on the administrators of the General Conference.
Impetus for such an assembly began in when employee Cornelia Lehn requested the General Conference
business office not to remit the military tax portion of her paycheck to the
IRS.
Prior to 1974 the issue of “war taxes” had been discussed, and as early as
, delegates at the triennial sessions in
Fresno, California, passed a statement protesting the use of tax monies for
war purposes. The delegates also said, “We stand by those who feel called to
resist the payment of that portion of taxes being used for military purposes.”
However, the General Board did not think that directive from the delegates
authorized them to stop remitting Lehn’s military taxes. Her request was
refused.
Three years later… [at] the next conference… delegates called for education regarding militarism, reaffirmed the 1971 statement, and agreed that serious work be done on the possibility of allowing General Conference employees to follow their consciences on payment or nonpayment of military taxes.
Educational materials have included the periodical God and
Caesar and two study guides, The Rule of the
Sword and The Rule of the Lamb. In addition
to these efforts two major consultations were convened in
and in
. At these consultations scholarly
papers were presented on militarism, biblical considerations for payment or
nonpayment of military taxes, and Anabaptist history and theology related to
war tax concerns.
Despite the protracted input the General Board could not reach a consensus on the issue.
Consequently the problem was brought to delegates at the triennial… [where] the delegate body committed itself to serious congregational study of civil disobedience and war tax resistance during .
The delegates also decided to discuss the issue in detail at a midtriennium conference in .
In an effort to implement the Bluffton
resolution an eight-member civil responsibility committee was formed. Several
actions were taken by it to encourage serious study.
an attitude survey on church
and government was conducted. Approximately 2,500 responses were received,
including 463 from a select sampling in 31 churches. A scholarly consultation
was held in . One of the key ideas
which came out of this consultation was whether those who feel strongly about
not paying military taxes should be encouraged to form a separate corporation
within the General Conference. To assist churches in their study of the issue
two study guides were published. The Rule of the
Sword deals primarily with facts and concerns related to militarism.
The Rule of the Lamb centers about the sovereignty
of God and biblical texts on taxes and civil authority.
Each of the more than 300 congregations in the General Conference is being encouraged to prepare a statement to bring to the conference.
It is evident from the sale of the study guides that a minority of congregations are actually making an effort to study the issue, although all congregations have received sample copies of the guides.
Many Canadian churches feel the issue is strictly an American problem, and there is a considerable diversity of conviction and thought among American congregations.
Some congregations do not intend to send delegates.
What this means for the Minneapolis conference is difficult to assess, except
for one feature. There will be a lot of stirring debate. After
will there be some
resolution of the withholding question? No one is predicting the outcome.
“Countdown to Minneapolis”
This article tried to put the debate into a larger context of what it meant for the congregations in the General Conference to be deliberating together in this way.
It also seemed to be trying to drum up more attendance; there seemed to be some worry that Canadian Mennonites, and more conservative congregations, might just not turn up.
“Our Christian civil responsibility”
This article, by Larry Kehler (author of The Rule of the Lamb), attempted to put all of the pieces together for readers ahead of the conference.
Excerpts:
General Conference churches have the opportunity of either growing through the process of working on the war-tax question or of stagnating and splintering.
I am somewhat more confident now than I was even six months ago that we will mature through this experience, and in the process perhaps reassert some of our Conference’s flagging leadership in the field of peace.
Perhaps it is only because I have been talking to more optimistic persons.
But I do have the impression that General Conference people are more ready now to participate in the struggle for an answer than they were even as late as last winter.
The easy answer of letting this debate be the occasion for some congregations to sever their ties with the General Conference seems to be more of a “cop-out” than a reasonable response to a difficult question.
Will your congregation have delegates at the midtriennium sessions in Minneapolis?
If it won’t, both the conference and the congregation will be the poorer for it.
You see, the question is not only how we will respond to the issue of tax-withholding as a witness against war, but how we go about dealing with questions on which we have not yet achieved clarity or unanimity.
The process we go through may well be much more vital to us than the answer we finally come up with, and that is not to diminish the seriousness of the problem of militarism.
Coming to Minneapolis without advance preparation, however, could be almost as
destructive as not coming at all. Each congregation should do some serious
struggling within its own setting on the various dimensions which this issue
is raising for us.
The war-tax issue offers the General Conference one of its best opportunities in many years to work seriously at Bible interpretation on a question about which we have widely differing views.
How do we make decisions when we disagree?
The tax texts
What does the New Testament say about taxes?
Here are the four primary passages:
Mark 12:13–17
is a description of the Pharisees and Herodians trying to entrap Jesus with
the question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Jesus responds by
taking a coin and showing them Caesar’s image on it and saying, “Render to
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
Luke 23:1–5 recalls the accusations made against Jesus before Pilate.
Among them is the charge that he has forbidden his people “to give tribute to Caesar.” In response to Pilate’s question about his kingship over the Jews, Jesus replies ambiguously, “You have said so.”
Matthew 17:24–27
talks about the temple tax. Some Bible interpreters feel that the tax question
is a secondary issue in this passage. The writer’s main purpose in telling
this incident, some scholars say, is to underscore Jesus’ sonship.
Romans 13:6–7 urges followers of Christ to be subject to the governing authorities and to pay taxes where they are due.
A straightforward reading of these passages has led many persons to conclude
that taxes are to be paid regardless of the use to which they might be put.
“How can you argue against such clear, simple statements?” they ask people who
suggest that there may be more to these comments than can be seen on the
surface.
It is the tension between these two approaches to the Bible which lies at the heart of the problem which the General Conference is now facing in its attempt to come up with a biblical response to the “war tax issue.” How do we interpret and understand the Bible?
Is the easiest reading of a biblical passage always to be taken as the most likely intention of the writer?
Some Bible scholars say that it is sometimes quite deceiving to accept the easiest reading.
Others wonder if that sort of remark doesn’t simply underscore the Bible’s assertion that some truths will confound the wise and yet be very clear to more down-to-earth and average persons.
Well, maybe.
But doesn’t it cheapen the Bible if we think that a book which has come to us from another millennium and a decidedly different culture can be read on the surface — much like one reads a twentieth-century pop-psychology book — and applied to situations in our day without adaptation?
Can any statement in the Bible be taken by itself without first testing it
against the background from which it came and against related statements
elsewhere in the Bible?
Modern, easy-to-read paraphrases of the Scriptures and our general attitude toward the Bible have led us to believe that “hermeneutics” (the interpretation of the Bible’s message) is not a difficult task.
In some cases it isn’t, but in others it is.
In places the Bible is so inscrutable that we can seemingly never be quite sure about its full intention.
So we have to launch out in faith on some questions, hoping that more clarity will come as we proceed.
We may discover as we go that we have started off in the wrong direction.
Then we need the humility to admit our error and change our direction.
The major agenda item at the midtriennium sessions in Minneapolis may turn out
not to be “war taxes” at all. This issue may be God’s way of prodding us into
becoming more of a “hermeneutic community”…
The tax texts need to be studied intensely at the congregational level, each participant bringing an open mind and heart to the discussion.
If clarity and unanimity do not come immediately let us not be discouraged.
Other groups have had similar difficulties before us.
That is all the more reason why we should continue to struggle with this question.
The summary statement prepared by the people who attended the
war tax conference contained this paragraph:
“After considering the New Testament texts which speak about the Christian’s
payment of taxes, most of us are agreed that we do not have a clear word on
the subject of paying taxes used for war. The New Testament statements on
paying taxes (Mark 12:17 and Romans 13:6–7)
contain either ambiguity in meaning or qualifications on the texts that call
the discerning community to decide in light of the life and teachings of
Jesus.”
For Canadians too
The war tax issue is a U.S. issue and should be decided by them.
Right?
Wrong! It’s an issue for the entire General Conference.
But Canadians wouldn’t be taking any of the risks if the U.S. Government should bear down and hand out some jail sentences or fines for the Conference’s not withholding its employees’ income taxes.
Too much emphasis has been put on the possibility of fines or jail terms.
These consequences might come, but they’re not likely. The fear of a
confrontation with the law has taken the focus off the main point of this
whole exercise. The purpose is to give a firm, clear, and prophetic witness
against the diabolic buildup of the machines of war, which is occurring at an
ever-increasing pace in the United States and in many other nations. Are we
going to sit back and allow this escalation to continue without at least
giving our governments some sort of message that we cannot any longer go along
with this race toward self-destruction?
The arms race and the manufacture of war goods is very much part of the Canadian scene too… I have not yet been able to discover any tax resisters in Canada, but this does not mean that militarism is not a front-burner issue in Canada.
It is, and it should be.
I don’t know why there aren’t tax resisters in Canada. There are certainly
other forms of objection to the military buildup. “Project Ploughshares” is an
interchurch witness against militarism. Mennonites are actively involved in
its program of research and information-sharing. Thus, even though tax
resistance isn’t part of the Canadian experience now, Canadian Mennonites
shouldn’t withdraw from the General Conference discussion. They can
legitimately be fully involved on the basis of principle.
If the General Conference is going to say, “Yes,” to those of its employees who don’t want their income tax withheld, that should be the decision of the entire Conference, not just a portion of it.
The decision, whichever way it goes, will carry much more weight, I believe, if all the congregations in the Conference have participated in it.
Canadian involvement is important.
Some have indicated that the present set of options offered to the
delegates — that is to vote either yes or no on the withholding question — is
not sufficient. Other alternatives must be developed. If not, the Conference
may become polarized, and it might even split.
The question therefore is: How can the General Conference, as an international body, make a clear-cut witness against militarism without splintering the Conference?
Some U.S. Mennonites have stated that Canadian participation is crucial to the process.
After the conference in Bluffton in it
appeared that there would be minimal Canadian involvement at Minneapolis.
There is still no guarantee that participation from Canada will be adequate,
but good efforts are being made to encourage Canadian churches to send
delegates.
The General Board of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada at its last meeting went on record urging Canadian participation.
It will communicate this concern to the churches.
Several congregations are making special efforts to prepare for the convention.
Bethel Mennonite Church, Winnipeg, Manitoba, held a weekend seminar on this topic.
Grace Mennonite Church, Regina, Saskatchewan, arranged a similar event.
The Winnipeg meeting was covered in a later issue.
About fifty people met and came up with a set of recommendations as they prepared to select their delegates to the conference.
Sharon Sawatzky of the Canadian Conference staff in Winnipeg prepared a Canadian supplement for the study booklet The Rule of the Sword by Charlie Lord.
Copies of the supplement have been sent to all Canadian congregations who have ordered the five-lesson study booklet on militarism.
Faith and Life Press, Newton, reports that to date (I write this on
) more orders for the study
materials (The Rule of the Sword and
The Rule of the Lamb) have been received from Canada
than from the United States.
The prophets and the managers
The tension created by the war tax question in the General Conference is heightened by people’s disparate understandings of what it means to be good stewards of our church-related institutions.
Some have seen it as a tension between the “prophets” and the “managers.”
Who shapes the direction and philosophies of our churches and their agencies?
Is it the people who have a “prophetic” vision of biblical responsibility? Is
it the administrators who have been charged with “managing” these
organizations and creating as few waves as possible? Both? Partially? Neither?
Questions related to this apparent tension are included in the study guide The Rule of the Lamb…
J. Lawrence Burkholder, who is himself the “manager” of a major Mennonite
institution (Goshen College), has frankly described the predicament in which
leaders of institutions find themselves.
Here is a summary of his observations…
An efficient and well-trained corps of managers has emerged to run the
Mennonites’ growing number of institutions. The “constituency” of each of
these institutions insists that it is to be run in a businesslike, fiscally
responsible, and basically conservative way. Actions which might jeopardize
the welfare of an institution are not likely to be looked upon with much
favor.
The war tax issue, said Burkholder, is a problem of personal ethics as opposed to corporate ethics.
Our way of understanding the Bible is based on a one-to-one decision-making process, where the individual can respond quickly and simply to a situation.
A corporation’s response to an ethical question, on the other hand, involves
many wills. A number of “publics” make demands on the institution to decide
the issue their way. This does not mean, the Goshen College president
emphasized, that moral demands cannot be made of corporations. Nor should it
be said that all institutions are alike.
Corporations tend toward the status quo.
They emphasize different values than “prophetic” Christians.
Corporations tend to take a positive view of the broader culture in which they operate, they recognize the ambiguity of the situations in which they are making their decisions, and they look less judgmentally on people than do the “prophets.”
On the other hand, prophets have the luxury, according to Burkholder, of being
able to speak abstractly, of idealizing certain things from the past, and of
talking about perfection and ideals in an imperfect society.
Managers of church-related institutions have a clear line of accountability to their constituency, he said, “but who holds the prophets responsible?” Prophets are usually judged to be true or false in retrospect.
A prophet, therefore, doesn’t have to take responsibility for actions, words, and decisions in the same way that a manager does. “Sometimes,” said Burkholder, “present-day prophets come off ‘cheap.’ ”
He emphasized that Mennonites should continue to identify with the prophetic
tradition. They should be aware, though, that this means they will have to be
willing to remain somewhat on the edge of society.
“We will also need to develop a theology of corporate life,” he added. “We already have a theology of fellowship, but we don’t have a theology of the institution.”
Debate in the Letters Column
There was plenty of debate about the propriety of war tax resistance itself in the letters-to-the-editor column, sometimes explicitly prompted by the debate over withholding and the upcoming conference, other times more general.
John K. Stoner said that if the Conference were to fail to endorse war tax
resistance, “I would like to be able to have the confidence that they made
their decision in full awareness and with truly informed knowledge of the
dimensions of the nuclear abyss into which we are staring. At this point I
do not find it possible to have that confidence.” In short, they seemed to
be unaware of just how bad things had gotten.
I do not wish to imply that tax resistance or some other form of civil disobedience is the only kind of response which faithful Christians should be making to the unprecedented evil of the nuclear arms race. (It is my judgment that the situation confronts us with more than adequate grounds for civil disobedience.) However, I do wish to imply that those who counsel against tax refusal and civil disobedience would be much more convincing if they were leading out in other visible kinds of response to the nuclear crisis.
Carl M. Lehman wrote in to again remind readers that there was no such
thing as a “war tax” and that such nomenclature comes from “a less than
completely honest persistence in using labels to create a straw man to
attack.”
Money is only a convenient medium of exchange and not a real necessity to conduct war…
I have no quarrel with the person who simply wants to refuse to pay
taxes as a protest technique. As an attention-calling device it may very
well be effective. It is not exactly the kind of role I would feel led
to play, but I would not want to condemn anyone who felt they must use
such a tactic. I would, however, strongly protest any attempt to make
such a tactic mandatory for all Mennonites, and this is exactly what is
being attempted. Not mandatory, of course, in the sense that it would be
a test of membership, but mandatory in the sense of a normal commitment
expectation for a nonresistant Christian.
I maintain that tax resistance is a deviation from our heritage of faith.
The fact that it is a deviation in no sense makes it wrong and certainly does not mean that we pay no heed.
It does, however, very much suggest that the burden of proof is on the deviant, and that the deviant ought not to equate obedience to God with conformity by others.
John Swarr called on Mennonites to repent for war and in true repentance
to “change our ways.” He disagreed with Lehman’s dismissal of the moral
import of money. “Money is indeed a medium of exchange, but as Christian
stewards of God’s gifts we must be concerned about the things for which
that money is invested, donated, or paid.” He also disagreed that war tax
resistance was a deviation from Mennonite tradition, pointing to examples
from history in which Anabaptists took the issue seriously and came down
on both sides.
Karl Detrich took a hard Romans 13
line on the question, saying that the question of whether Christians
should or should not pay taxes had long ago been closed by that chapter.
While the New Testament also contains examples of civil disobedience, “in
each case these men were following the dictates of a higher law, namely,
that we should have no other gods besides our Lord.”
Jesus tells us that in the last days there will be, among other tribulations, wars and rumors of war.
Rather than going against the teaching of God’s word in a vain effort to forestall the inevitable, should we not give our time and energies to the worship of God and the proclamation of his gospel, so that we can do our part to hasten the day of his coming?
Paul W. Andreas saw simple living as a key to avoiding war taxes, and
resisting war taxes as a key to avoiding despair:
The submission to evil (no government has been free of it) produces despair.
I believe that love of my fellow humans is fundamental to not only
Mennonite faith but to Christ’s message. If I am compelled to violate
that message by hiring killers and providing weapons, I despair. For me,
no charitable contribution undoes the evil I unleash by paying taxes
that are used for such ends. Fortunately the practitioner of the simple
life can reduce his wage and thus avoid the income tax used for evil.
James Newcomer, in the course of taking Mennonites to task for the
“red-baiting” he’d found in their midst, took some time out to praise war
tax resistance:
I am deeply moved… by the witness of Peter Ediger at Rocky Flats, Colorado, and by many others who through war tax resistance and protest are trying to focus their own understanding of the modern Christian experience at the risk of losing middle-class luxuries and future security.
Miscellany
And if that weren’t enough, there were several other news items that discussed war tax resistance without relating directly to the upcoming conference or the specific debate to be dealt with there.
For example:
“A weekend seminar on war tax resistance” organized by Philadelphia Mennonites at which “[s]pecific strategies for implementing war tax resistance were discussed,” and the usual biblical verses were hashed out.
A four-point resolution on peacemaking called the Eastern District to: (1) serious Bible study on peace and a General Conference resolution on “The Way of Peace” (2) involvement in disapproval (through congressional representatives) of national actions promoting war, poverty, and terror; (3) support of those who feel led to withhold portions of their taxes; and (4) a midyear assembly to promote peacemaking.
After vigorous discussion, point three was stricken from the resolution
and point two was amended to include encouragement for righteous actions.
The amended resolution was adopted.
The Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section (U.S.) met. But in spite of all that was going on around them, it merely “reaffirmed its recommendation to Mennonite institutions ‘to study the conflict between Christian obligations and legal obligations in the collection of federal taxes…’ ” When they would meet again “a resolution on militarism, the future of New Call to Peacemaking, and the question of alternatives to the payment of taxes for military purposes” would be on the agenda. At that meeting, they took a stronger stand:
We support those who resist the payment of taxes for military purposes and call upon all members of the church to seriously consider refusal to pay the military portion of their federal taxes.
While Mennonite church institutions continue to struggle with an administrative response to the issue of “war tax” withholding, individual Mennonites are voicing their convictions through refusing to pay the portion of their taxes designated for military use.
About $4,000 has been received by the Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section’s “Taxes
for Peace” fund, contributed by Mennonite war tax refusers.
Nonpayment of taxes violates national laws, but tax refusers are convinced that paying taxes is disobedience to God when slightly over half of that tax money is allocated for the past, present, and future military expenditures of the United States.
Most of these tax refusers paid only 47 to 50 percent of taxes owed to
the Internal Revenue Service
(IRS),
forwarding the remaining amount to
MCC
and other Mennonite agencies. Statements to
IRS
clarified that the withheld tax money was not for personal profit but
rather for meeting human needs, promoting peace and reconciliation, and
supporting life instead of death.
James Klassen, Newton, Kansas, who claimed a Nuremburg Principle tax deduction in an amount sufficient to result in a 50 percent refund of the amount of taxes due, recently received the refund in full and forwarded the check to MCC. (The Nuremburg Principles, unanimously affirmed by the United Nations after World War Ⅱ, specify that crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are crimes under national law.)
“This is the first time we have deliberately broken the law of our
country,” say tax refusers James and Anna Juhnke, North Newton, Kansas.
“It is not an easy decision. We love our land and we respect the
authority of the government. We want to show our respect by making our
civil disobedience a public act and by accepting the penalties which may
result from our action.”
“As a Christian who accepts the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament as normative for life and ethics, I am a ‘conscientious objector’ to participation in war and to the resolution of human conflict by violence,” concludes Marlin Miller of Goshen, Indiana. “It is my conviction that the financial support of war and military expenditures cannot be reconciled with this stance any more than actual military service itself.”
They and other Christians feel that Christ’s calling to a life of love,
nonviolence and reconciliation supersedes demands of the state.
Thirty-three persons and families thus far have identified themselves as “war tax resisters” after God and Caesar in its issue provided the opportunity for people to do so.
The respondents represent eleven denominations as well as those with no church affiliation.
One recent case of a non-ordained employee at a Mennonite institution
hoping to resist paying war taxes involved Esther Lanting, a teacher at
Western Mennonite School
(WMS),
Salem, Oregon, who on
wrote a letter to the
WMS
board requesting that her income tax not be withheld from her check.
On , Lanting was invited to meet with the board to explain her reasons.
The board decided to seek the counsel of the conference executive committee, and secure study papers on the tax issue.
Finally, on , after
extended study, the peace and social concerns committee of the conference
recommended that the
WMS
board grant Lanting’s request and discontinue withholding her taxes.
On , the WMS board considered the committee’s recommendation.
By a vote of six to two they decided not to follow the recommendation, but to continue withholding all tax as legally required.
At this same board meeting three other WMS teachers or staff members acted as follows: Ray Nussbaum submitted a letter requesting that the board stop withholding his tax; Floyd Schrock made a verbal request that his tax not be withheld; and Cindy Mullet asked that the board decrease her salary to the level where she will owe no tax.
The board granted Cindy Mullet’s request for a reduction in salary. The
board is willing to reconsider the issue if more faculty members should
make the same request to have the board refrain from withholding taxes.
MCC has taken no official position on the refusal to pay taxes for military use, but MCC Peace Section (U.S.) adopted a statement in which in part recommended “that Mennonite and Brethren in Christ continue to work toward reduction of military spending, not resting content with special provisions exempting us from payment of taxes for military purposes.” It affirms “those in our midst who feel compelled by Christian conscience to refuse payment of all or some federal tax because of the large percentage of such taxes used for military purposes.”
In concluding his war tax talk Yoder said church members are generally more ready to disregard what the church has to say than what the government says.
Issuing a direct challenge to those who believe war tax resistance is wrong he counseled, “It would be more credible if those who are in favor of paying all their taxes would show through some other action what they are doing to love our national enemies.”
This is the forty-third in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we reach 2002.
The finally did a good job
of telling the story of John Schrag:
Mennonite John Schrag faces a mob during World War Ⅰ
by James C. Juhnke
When World War Ⅰ broke out, Mennonites discovered they were considered
enemies by their neighbors and business associates. Their German origins,
even if generations removed, their German language and culture, and their
pacifism made them suspect. In some communities, patriotic citizen groups
harassed “slackers” by throwing yellow paint on houses and meetinghouses,
committing arson, tarring and feathering pacifists and threatening death by
hanging. In this story, Swiss Volhynian Mennonite John Schrag finds himself
in the hands of such a patriotic mob.
The John Schrag espionage case was the dramatic climax to the dilemma of
Kansas Mennonites in World War Ⅰ. Schrag was chosen to be the symbol and the
bearer of the American community’s mistrust and hatred of German-speaking
pacifists in the tense days of .
Schrag was a believer in those simple and durable virtues that made Mennonites
highly prized citizens on the Kansas frontier. He was 13 years old when his
family emigrated from Volhynia, Russia, to central Kansas in
. In his teens, he helped his father build a
grain mill on the banks of the Little Arkansas River in Harvey County. From
his father he learned the value of hard work, the love of the soil and the
wisdom of careful investment.
From the Mennonite faith and tradition Schrag knew that God generously rewards
his faithful laboring servants. Schrag’s rise as a prosperous farmer with a
large family and extensive landholdings was as natural as the economic and
social success of the Mennonite community in the first decades after arrival
in the new country.
The Mennonite role as outstanding and valuable citizens received an
unforgettable jolt when the United States entered World War Ⅰ in
. It suddenly became a requirement of
acceptable American citizenship to support the war and to hate Germany. The
Mennonites failed on both counts. They could not support the war because their
religious faith taught them nonresistance, a doctrine whose practical
expression included a claim for exemption from military service. They could
not hate Germany because Mennonites themselves were of German background and
loved the German language and culture as preserved in their homes, schools and
churches.
Their sympathies in the European war had been demonstrated in their
collections of money for the German Red Cross. Mennonites could not be
acceptable citizens in America during World War Ⅰ unless they gave up their
German culture and their doctrine of nonresistance.
The war bond drives became the test of loyal citizenship in the local
community. Faced alternatively with persuasion and intimidation by local
Loyalty Leagues, many Mennonites reconciled their nonresistance with the
purchase of the bonds. After all, reasoned Henry Peter Krehbiel, member of the
Western District Committee on Exemptions, a war bond is a kind of tax, and
Jesus told us to pay our taxes. But John Schrag was not convinced. Buying
bonds was supporting the war, and he would not support the war. That was that.
Five carloads of men: On ,
a group of patriotic citizens in Burrton,
Kan., decided that the time
was ripe for a showdown. “We was out to convert these slackers into patriots,”
said one of them later. Five carloads of men drove 11 miles to the Schrag farm
to get him to join the Armistice Day festivities in Burrton. Schrag’s boys,
sensing trouble, refused to say where their father was, but the Burrton men
found him after ransacking the farmstead and forcing their way into the house.
Schrag offered neither argument nor resistance.
He went along in the hope that a measure of cooperation would help avoid
physical violence.
In Burrton, a crowd quickly gathered as the citizens confronted Schrag with
their real reason for bringing him to town. He must buy war bonds now or face
the consequences. Schrag offered to contribute $200 to the Red Cross and the
Salvation Army, but this was not sufficient.
They demanded that he salute the American flag and carry the flag through town
at the head of a parade. But Schrag quietly and firmly refused to cooperate.
The flag thrust into his hand fell to the ground. Someone shouted, “He stepped
on the flag.” The crowd became an enraged mob.
Yellow paint: They sprinkled and poured yellow paint on their victim,
rubbing it into his scalp and beard until he resembled “a big cheese or yellow
squash or pumpkin after the autumnal ripening.” They led him to the city jail.
Someone ran for a rope to hang him, but Tom Roberts, the head of the local
Anti-Horse-Thief Association, courageously stood before the jail door,
brandished a gun and said, “If you take this man out of jail, you take him
over my dead body.” Temporarily frustrated, the indignant citizens made plans
to return that night, force the jail open and hang this so-called traitor.
Meanwhile, Schrag was placed in a chair on a raised platform in the jail, so
passersby could view the humiliated man through the window in the jail door.
One repentant member of the mob later testified to Schrag’s calmness
throughout the ordeal: “If ever a man looked like Christ, he did.”
Schrag was finally rescued from the Burrton crusaders for American democracy
by the Harvey County sheriff, who came that evening to take him to the county
jail in Newton for cleaning and safe-keeping. Before he was released, Schrag
was informed that he was to be tried in court for violation of the Espionage
Act. It was against the law to desecrate the flag of the United States.
Local newspaper accounts of the incident failed to defend the rights of the
victim. The weekly Burrton Graphic on
saw in the event “a pungent and durable reminder that loyalty is a necessary
prerequisite to life in this community. We must all be Americans.”
The Hutchinson News article said that “a petition
is being circulated to have him [Schrag] deported to Germany, his native land.
This country is fast becoming an unhealthy place for ‘slackers’ of any kind.”
The Newton Evening Kansan-Republican suggested that
if a federal court would find Schrag guilty, “it would undoubtedly mean the
confiscation of his property and his deportation.” On the week of his hearing
in Wichita, the editor of the Burrton Graphic
published a list: “Some Things Residents of Burrton Should Be Thankful For.”
In the list was “that we as a people are more tolerant of others’ foibles.”
Desecration of the flag: The case against Schrag was heard in the
Wichita federal courtroom by
U.S. Commissioner
C. Shearman on .
Five Burrton citizens presented 50 typewritten pages of evidence to prove
Schrag’s disloyalty and desecration of the flag. For his defense, Schrag
retained the services of a Jewish lawyer named Schulz. Commissioner Shearman
took the case under advisement and promised that the decision would be made
shortly.
The decision, handed down on ,
was that Schrag was not guilty and should not be bound over for federal trial.
But Commissioner Shearman did say that “Schrag could not have gone closer to a
violation of the Espionage Act if he had had 100 lawyers at his side to advise
him.”
Schrag in fact had not willfully desecrated the flag. Nothing in the Espionage
Act required one to salute the flag. Schrag’s words that supposedly slandered
the flag had been spoken in German, so none of the monolingual plaintiffs
could prove any guilt.
The Newton Evening Kansan-Republican, frustrated by
the acquittal of this “bull-headed” man, suggested that the case “should
certainly make plain to any thinking person the viciousness that exists in the
encouragement of the German language as a means of communication in America…
The melting pot cannot exercise its proper functions when such things are
allowed.”
The Mennonite newspapers in central Kansas, intimidated into silence, did not
come to Schrag’s defense and did not even mention the incident or the hearing
as an item of news. After the commissioner’s decision, however, C.E. Krehbiel,
editor of Der Herold, wrote an editorial,
“Mob Power,” that clearly referred to the Schrag case, although it mentioned
no specific names or events. In cases of mob violence, wrote Krehbiel, either
the mob or the abused person is guilty. If the court of justice decides that
the victim is innocent, the only conclusion is that the mob is guilty. Readers
were to make their own applications.
Schrag’s attorney encouraged him to bring charges against his persecutors, but
Schrag declined. Such an action would have violated the Mennonite principles
of nonresistance.
Nevertheless, in the months after the Schrag affair, the nonresistant
German-Mennonites had no scruples against clamping an economic boycott on the
town of Burrton. The boycott was not organized systematically, but it was
effective in disrupting the trade of Burrton businessmen who were dependent on
the commerce of German-Mennonite farmers. The legacy of tension and hatred
generated by the event would be remembered for decades to come.
American Melting pot: The experience of the Mennonites in World War Ⅰ
hardly had a salutary effect on the processes of the American melting pot. In
the years after the war, the Mennonites were driven to a defensive
retrenchment, to a renewed awareness of their distinctiveness as Mennonites.
Though the Mennonites gradually abandoned their German language and some
German cultural traits, the war experiences forced them to a reconsideration
and reaffirmation of the doctrine of nonresistance. As long as Mennonites held
to that doctrine, they would be a thorn in the flesh of American nationalists.
The witness of John Schrag and of other Mennonites who refused to compromise
their doctrine of nonresistance during wartime can serve as a reminder of the
Anabaptist heritage of steadfastness in the face of persecution.
While reading The Earth Is The Lord’s… John Ruth’s massive history of Lancaster Conference, I discovered that this same question confronted my ancestors during the Civil War.
As their neighbors joined local militias “to preserve the Union,” many Pennsylvania Mennonites were forced to answer questions about their loyalty.
In the end, Congress passed a bill that allowed “the conscientious” to pay a commutation fee of $300 and thereby avoid the military draft.
“Mennonites, who preferred to pay anything called a tax rather than
participating in their government’s military activities, were more content
with this arrangement than were the Quakers, many of whom saw it as a moral
compromise,” writes Ruth.
That solution is the pattern that exists to this day. While we do not fight,
at least half our federal taxes support a vast military machine that no longer
needs our bodies. It needs our money to pay for high-tech weapons and for the
training for those who guide those weapons.
This reality leaves us directly supporting our country’s military with our
dollars and means that in spite of our convictions and beliefs, in practice
Mennonites are not much different from those who loudly support the current
military buildup.
This Memorial Day, we can remember and pray for neighbors who publicly mourn
the loss of a family member. We can also pray for those who were killed by our
country, which for years has used and continues to use our tax dollars to kill
in our name.
Don Schrader penned letters to the editor for the
and
editions
to describe how his simple-living, non-voting lifestyle meets his goal of tax
refusal. Excerpt:
In I lived well on $3,845 for my total
expenses: rent, food, phone, stamps,
etc. I have no
right to more than I need while others have less than they need. I love to
live simply. I write down every penny I spend for everything every day. I
always pay cash; I refuse to buy on credit and to pay interest. I enjoy
learning new ways to stretch dollars, to live healthily and responsibly on
less.
The most radical, nonviolent action that people of conscience can take in this
society is to pledge publicly to live simply, to own no car, and to pay no
federal income tax for war for the rest of their lives.
What would happen if Christians en masse decided to no
longer pay the portion of their taxes that go to war? What if Christians
mounted a mass resistance movement as an expression of our loyalty to Jesus
Christ and his way of peace? Several years ago
PBS
aired a series called A Force More Powerful. This
documentary tracked six nonviolent social-change movements in
,
including the
U.S. civil rights
struggle, the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa and the movement in
India to end British rule.
The common thread in these successful nonviolent movements was masses of
people choosing not to cooperate with forces of evil and oppression.
Oppressive powers depend for survival on the cooperation of the masses. When
that cooperation is withdrawn, these structures eventually crumble.
Ten years ago, when Linda Shelly accepted her first salaried job, she did not
want all the money. What she did made her a recipient of a Journey Award,
given by Mennonite Mutual Aid to highlight good
stewardship.
After working with Mennonite Central Committee
in Bolivia and Honduras, Shelly returned to the United States to be
MCC’s
director of Latin American and Caribbean programs. But her wages
were problematic. Shelly did not want her tax dollars to
support the
U.S. military. She
also wanted to share her money, after years of benefiting from the
generosity of Latin Americans who had so few
resources. So Shelly accepted a lower salary to
reduce her lax liability. She also loaned money to
friends, then instead of receiving taxable interest income,
shared it with people in need, both locally and internationally.
This is the eleventh in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was
reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal
of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
Passive nonresistance was starting to look insufficiently peaceful by
, when the world around the Mennonite Church
was becoming more influenced by anti-war activism.
In the issue, Arnold W.
Cressman told Mennonites they were
missing the boat:
Some time ago, I saw Joan Baez, popular folk singer, interviewed on
TV. In this broadcast
she was saying all the things about peace that we Mennonites should be saying.
I was ashamed because we are not saying them, at least not loudly enough that
people notice.
By contrast the TV
program reviewing the Mennonites was called “A Peaceful Revolution.” That was
to say that radical changes are happening among the Mennonites; they are
getting more and more like status quo Americans and Canadians. But they are no
threat to anybody. The thing that was bad about the program was that it made
us look too good. While there were serious attempts by several to say the
disturbing things we think we believe about peace, yet the film makers
apparently were not impressed. They could not find enough living evidence of
this radical discipleship we talk about to make it a dominant theme in the
film. So, much of the good talk was cut out.
It is time to build conviction about peace that produces both words and
action. If peace has come to mean for us a sort of washed-out, do-nothing
nonresistance, then we had better take another look in the Bible. If we think
our Anabaptist, New Testament, peace position has nothing to do with war
taxes, racism, poverty, and nationalism, if the festering social problems are
not included in our concern, if it is thought that we should passively nod
“yes” to the status quo, then we had better be jolted to think again. If we
don’t, then serious Mennonite young people growing up in the generation of
Joan Baez will go somewhere else to buy their brand of peace.
They want an aggressive product. They will not sit in a corner and wait for
someone to hit one cheek so that they can piously turn the other also. The
world doesn’t hit people who sit in a corner. It hits people who are out
meddling with the corrupt but comfortable status quo — as Jesus did.
Please permit a delayed response to the editorial,
“Dare We Pay Taxes for War?” in
Gospel Herald, which just arrived. (Wish we could
afford airmailed Gospel Heralds!) My response from
Vietnam to the question posed so well is that Christians dare not pay
war taxes. Our government has gone far beyond the New Testament mandate to
maintain order, reward, and punish in her involvement in Vietnam. But we
Mennonites need to go beyond the negative symbolism of refusing to pay war
taxes. We need perhaps to begin to at least give a tithe. We need to establish
our credibility as responsible protesters of nationalism and militarism by
getting much more deeply involved in the problems that are feeding the fires
of conflict at home and abroad. We have accepted very materialistic values and
quasi-Christian ethics from our environment that compromise our witness to the
world who pass us off as “unrealistic” and “irresponsible.” The way of love
and suffering will never be understood by our fellowmen until more radical
demonstrations of it are seen by those of us who say we are committed to the
New Testament ethic of love.
In its issue,
Gospel Herald reprinted James Juhnke’s essay on “Our
Almost Unused Political Power” (see ♇ 19
July 2018 for the essay as it appeared in The
Mennonite). In response, in
a letter to the editor
printed in the issue,
David L. Groh wrote:
[W]hen our representatives went to Washington to ask for a change in the
proposed draft law, they used a threat — [“]that ‘thousands of conscientious
objectors’ would violate the law and accept imprisonment rather than…
induction into the armed services.” The fact that these representatives were
willing to make this statement speaks highly of their confidence in our
draft-age young men.
There was one crucial point to which I wish Mr. Juhnke would have spoken. What
would he suggest should be used as our next threat of civil disobedience, to
get across the point of deescalation in Vietnam? Withholding the defense
spending part of income tax? Boycotting of industries vital to defense?
Disinvestment in certain strategic industries? Any of these would require the
cooperation of the older generation. Could our representatives be as confident
that such a threat would have the same possibility of being carried out as
they were when speaking for our youth?
Allan Eitzen also suggested a large-scale Mennonite war tax resistance
campaign, in a
letter to the editor:
The study of more vital peacemaking scheduled for the Sunday schools during
the second quarter of this year is a good and timely beginning, and I would
propose that somewhere in this study serious consideration should be given to
the possible effect of a large-scale practice of withholding portions of
individual income tax as a tangible objection to the war policy in Vietnam.
The optional participation in such a program by those who feel so inclined
would not keep the Department of Internal Revenue from extracting the withheld
amounts from the financial accounts of participants, but the general
inconvenience to government arising from a widespread practice of this kind
would certainly show more clearly how deeply our convictions are held.
When we consider that the Allied prosecution during the Nuremberg war-crimes
trials after World War Ⅱ was based largely on the principle that individual
conscience takes precedence over unjust national laws, it seems appropriate
that we should reexamine our stand against war to see if it has become too
ineffectual.
Last we heard from John E. Lapp (see ♇ 7
September 2018) he was writing about how he could respect war tax
resisters, but he himself felt called “to pay my taxes honestly and promptly…
without raising the question” of paying for war. In
“The Gospel from Words to Deeds”
(), he seems to have begun to
relax into some form of war tax resistance:
We need to fulfill our responsibility toward the state.
Romans 13 and
1 Peter 2.
This means obedience to the laws of the state. When we cannot comply with the
laws, we must be submissive to the penalties. We will pay our taxes
cheerfully, “[rendering] to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God
the things that are God’s,” but we will also express our convictions on war
taxes, and in times when it is necessary may even withhold the payment of
those taxes which are clearly for war purposes.
A
letter to the editor
from Ruth Burkholder deplored the trend that was developing, saying that the
lawlessness of tax resistance was wrong, and two wrongs don’t make a right.
After all, “Jesus paid His taxes as a law-abiding citizen and you know the
Romans used that tax money for war.”
A editorial by “D.” (presumably
editor John M. Drescher), entitled
“Peacemaker Questions”,
boldly overturned what had been the established orthodox reading of bible
verses regarding civic responsibility, and thereby created more space for
scriptural support for such stands as war tax resistance. Excerpts:
A… statement which to some settles all responsibility is
“the government is ordained of God.”
This certainly cannot mean that we hold God responsible for every crooked and
corrupt political figure who attains a place of power. We cannot charge God
with putting Nero, Hitler, or Stalin in power. It may well be that people
often get the leaders they deserve, but we must not blame God for our sins.
We, as a denomination, say that it is clear what our response is in relation
to war. But many feel the question should not be raised in regard to the
payment of war taxes. Such persons point to Jesus as an example in His paying
taxes to the government of Rome which also supported an army.
But certain considerations should be kept in mind. This statement of Jesus
means that we are expected to make a judgment as to what properly belongs to
Caesar and to God. We stop short in rendering unto Caesar when it comes to
going to war. But what is our response when the government goes beyond
its New Testament mandate to maintain order, reward the good, and punish the evildoer?
How should we respond when our best judgment and Christian conviction says
Caesar is unfaithful to his mandate?
Defenders of the traditional interpretations of these verses were quick to
respond. In a
letter to the editor,
Wallace Kauffman took Drescher to task for contradicting Paul’s assertion that
the world’s political leaders are established as such by God, in part as God’s
tool for inflicting His wrath on the deserving. The Neros and Hitlers and such
are ordained by God, he insisted, just like Paul says. We shouldn’t
second-guess God’s choices in this regard, no matter how unpleasant they seem
to us. And let there be no doubt: “we are commanded to pay taxes.”
A
letter to the editor
from Allan W. Smith also disagreed with Drescher’s take. “Had we not better take
the Bible at its word?” he asked. For that matter, he felt, why should
Christians get upset about the use of their taxes only during wartime; doesn’t
the government use tax money in immoral ways all the time? Must we withdraw our
money from banks because it might be “invested in a brewery or munitions
plant”?
Once we begin to restate long-standing Scriptures to suit our times and
popular causes, we are, I fear, opening the door to final anarchy.
An article in the issue — “Allegiance and Where Will the Line Be Drawn?”
by Merrit Birky — stood out to me in part because of how matter-of-factly
Birky used the term “pacifist” rather than “nonresistant” to describe Christian
conscientious objection to war. Contrast this with writers from the World War Ⅱ
era (see ♇ 3 September 2018) who were
careful to distinguish Mennonite nonresistance from secular pacifism.
When does the Christian with a firm belief in love as exemplified by Christ
refuse to support his country? When and where does he draw the line and say,
“I cannot compromise my moral obligations any longer”? When are the demands of
my country in conflict with the commands of my God? Can the pacifist, in clear
conscience, pay taxes and tax increases, with the present national policy?
When does he say,
“I must obey God rather than man”?
How does one interpret, “Render unto Caesar…,” in a democracy, when the
government is the responsibility of its people? Christian stewardship must
demand that one strive to see that a government of the people is just. What
does it mean for the Christian to witness to the government and to his
community?
Should he draw the line and refuse to contribute along with his fellow
Americans $26 billion a year for the Vietnam war, a war that kills more
civilians than military, a war that many non-Christians consider immoral and
wrong? Can the Christian support a country in which about 78 cents out of each
tax dollar goes to the military machinery?…
Can [the New Testament Christian] pray for peace and pay for war?
When is his conscience violated? When does he become a conscientious
objector?…
…Are those who contribute to this war immoral? I mean the pacifist taxpayer?…
The brought news from the
Mennonite Church’s cousin, the General Conference Mennonite Church, which had
passed a Resolution on Nationalism in .
That resolution included the following text:
We… exhort the members of the North American brotherhood to discuss together
how they can express concretely in action their concerns on these current
issues where conflicting loyalties are acute and we may tend to a national
idolatry. We suggest the following as possible subjects:
Search our consciences on the question of paying taxes for military
purposes; support generously international mission and service programs;
urge churches to support those who by reason of conscience refuse to pay
the percentage of taxes for military purposes.
In a
“Conference of Historic Peace Churches”
was held. Maynard Shelly reported on the conference, and conveyed the sense
that the peace churches had missed an opportunity to show their mettle as the
anti-Vietnam-War and civil rights movements were happening around them:
Spurred on by the youth delegates to the consultation, a group at New Windsor
prepared a brief statement calling for “creative and Christian responses to
people living in our ghettos” and for “counseling on the draft and nonpayment
of war taxes for those who need it.”
What also seemed to be coming through was the implication that the peace
witness may well be a minority position even within the peace churches who
themselves are minority groups already.
