Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
20th–21st century Quakers →
Colin W. Bell
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
On , U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signed a law that added a 7.5% surcharge to most income tax bills , and 10% for .
Johnson sold the tax as a necessary measure for the Vietnam War effort — “to give our fighting men the help they need in this hour of trial.”
Some may hear in this message a call to sacrifice.
In truth, it is a call to the sense of obligation felt by all Americans.
The inconveniences this demand imposes are small when measured against the contribution of a Marine on patrol in a sweltering jungle, or an airman flying through perilous skies, or a soldier 10 thousand miles from home, waiting to join his outfit on the line.
This surtax was the most explicit war tax the government had yet imposed.
When Quakers began filling out their income tax returns, even some who had been wobbly and skeptical about resisting the “mixed” taxes began to feel that to pay this tax was a step they were not prepared to take.
In the issue of Friends Journal, Colin W. Bell explained why this surtax had pushed him over the line:
Line 12B — Tax Surcharge
Every person who fills out an income tax return this year and finds he owes the government some money will face the above line in print, and its implications in his conscience.
The idea of a surcharge was first presented in a broadcast to the nation by the President.
It was set then in the context of Vietnam, and was to be continued “so long as the unusual expenditures associated with our efforts in Vietnam require higher revenues.”
As now levied, it remains a tax necessitated by the Vietnam war, whatever justifications may be advanced for it on economic or social grounds, as a curb on inflation and so on.
Mr. Johnson reiterated in his Budget message that “it is not the rise in regular budget outlays which requires a temporary tax increase, but the cost of Vietnam.”
I am miserably aware that a large portion of the regular federal income tax I pay is spent for past, present, or future wars.
I have not done a number of things others have felt impelled to do to witness against taxation for war.
A few people live calculatedly with incomes below the taxable level; a few refuse voluntary payment of all or part of the required taxes; some identify the non-reduction of the telephone tax with the Vietnam war and do not pay it of their own accord.
For me, this line about the tax surcharge is, in a quite literal sense, the point of no return!
I shall not fill it in or make voluntary payment.
I claim no logic for having arrived at this position at this time — but I do have a strong sense that this line on our tax form represents a specific and unavoidable challenge to those of us who live in comfort, or even affluence.
Each of us will have to reassess the validity of those arguments we have previously used to justify our tax payments.
Indeed, the individual answer will have to be found not at the level of argumentation, but at deep levels of inward conviction.
Is it easier, or more difficult, to resist tax conscription than conscription of the person?
Is it fair to make an analogy between the son’s moral dilemma concerning his body and the father’s concerning his money?
Most of us older Friends are law-abiding persons for whom the idea of practicing any sort of civil disobedience is deeply distressing.
We do, however, frequently recognize the purity of motive of some of our contemporaries who practice it; and we unite in finding inspiration in those who down the years have enriched the Quaker witness by obeying higher laws which brought them into conflict with the ordinances of their times.
Most of us accept the principle of taxation to pay for governmental services.
We want to bear our right and proper share of the tax obligation, and many would uncomplainingly accept heavier taxation for constructive purposes.
Our imaginations are lively enough to envisage possible consequences of tax refusal, and we are not blind to the fact of the government’s power to collect unpaid taxes and impose penalties which would in fact increase the total paid.
What, then, shall we do about “Line 12B — Tax Surcharge”?
Our bodies are not conscripted because they are not useful for war service.
The young must face that heaviest of all demands.
We are, however, contemplating a quite specific induction notice, though at an infinitely lower level of sacrifice — the call-up of our money for war service.
This year, in a most pointed way, we who fill out our tax forms cannot escape giving an answer of some sort to this draft of our resources.
It is an answer that, I believe, can be made only after those deep quakings of spirit which earned us the nickname we prize and would like to honor in our lives.
In the issue, Philip Dudley Woodbridge wrote in to explain why he was “refusing to pay part of the income tax due at this time as a symbol of my intention not to support wars — past, present, or future.… I will not support this mass murder and the possible destruction of mankind.”
At ’s New York Yearly Meeting, according to a report in the Journal,
Realizing that Friends often are called to different witness and that we have a corporate responsibility for each other, we decided that organizations of New York Yearly Meeting should support the witness of individual Friends by refusing to help the government collect (out of salaries due) taxes that these Friends have in conscience refused to pay.
The discussion of the issue of war taxes was long and difficult and required us to grapple with the realization that while breaking the law may seem to violate the consciences of some, refusing to break certain laws may violate those of others.
This situation creates a constant tension that cannot be resolved by each going his own way but only by all of us continuing to labor together in love.
In light of this, the Meeting finally agreed that its offices should not pay the telephone excise tax, which is earmarked for the Vietnam war.
Newton Garver later wrote in to give his impressions about the New York Yearly Meeting, and he included these remarks, which seem to partially contradict the above report:
It was urged that Yearly Meeting refuse to pay the federal excise tax on its telephone bills and also that the Yearly Meeting treasurer not withhold or pay to the government federal income taxes of those who are conscientiously opposed to paying them.
Eventually the first sort of corporate tax refused was approved [sic] and the second not.
The issue is a powerful one, and I have mixed feelings.
On the one hand I am gratified that the Yearly Meeting feels called on to offer resistance to the war machine.
On the other hand I was disappointed that there were so few qualms about the appropriateness of tax refusal for this purpose.
There were, of course, qualms about doing something illegal, but they seemed the same as the qualms about sending medical aid to all parts of Vietnam, whereas the situations are fundamentally different.
Prohibiting humanitarian aid is evil in itself whereas taxation is not — and both the income tax withholding and the telephone excise tax are, although introduced with wartime rhetoric, reasonably equitable and efficient forms of taxation.
Tax refusal inevitably hits at the manner of taxation and the lifeblood of government, as well as at the purposes for which the money is spent.
Tax refusal is therefore a desperate measure and also relatively unsatisfactory, the trouble being that it hits broadside and lacks the clear focus of acts like sailing Phoenix to Haiphong or reading the names of the war dead at the Capitol.
This does not mean that tax refusal is wrong.
Although I stopped refusing some months ago, feeling that I was refusing more and enjoying it less, I refused to pay the telephone excise tax for about two years.
Like many others, I was desperate to stand somehow against the all too civilized brutality of our government in Vietnam.
What troubled me at Yearly Meeting was that these tax refusal actions were presented as if they were clear and unassailable pacifist measures rather than steps of desperation.
Perhaps a confession of our desperation would have been more appropriate, but I do not know how others feel.
The issue printed some excerpts from the deliberations that had taken place during the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s proceedings.
Among these was this paragraph:
Twenty cents of every tax dollar is used in actual killing of our fellow man.
Friends recalled the statement by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting on the use of our bodies and our resources, which has never been rescinded.
That Minute, reading as follows, might well be our statement in : “It is the judgment of this Meeting that a tax levied for the purchasing of drums, colours, or for other warlike uses cannot be paid consistently with our Christian testimonies.”
What is important is that all Friends search their hearts to decide at what point they must take their stand.
In the issue, Kenneth H. Champney wrote in to ask for advice on how to deal with a tax-resisting employee.
“I believe in government, in laws, and in taxes to support constructive activity.
Yet it is evident that the Federal income tax is largely a war tax.
Last month, a young conscientious objector told me: ‘If you withhold my tax you will be forcing me to participate in killing.’
I could not withhold his tax, and so notified the Internal Revenue Service.
I would be interested in knowing the experience of others who have been in a position similar to mine.”
A report on the Pacific Yearly Meeting in the same issue included the brief note that “La Jolla Meeting leafleted the local draft board and refused to pay the telephone tax.”
The Missouri Valley Friends Conference also reported in a later issue that they “approved minutes on [such subjects as] withholding taxes for military purposes, and exploring the possibility of a peace tax beyond the One Percent More program.”
And the Green Pastures Quarterly Meeting “approved a minute that the United States’ continuation of the Vietnam war was morally wrong, that it questioned the moral rightness of paying taxes to support it, and that it gave ‘approval and loving support’ to those who conscientiously refused to pay such taxes.”
In one of two “called sessions” of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in , “Friends considered tax refusal as a possible form of corporate witness against the war in Vietnam.”
Friends suggested several techniques.
One was a refund claim, such as the one filed by American Friends Service Committee in the First District Court of Philadelphia against the Internal Revenue Service.
It is based on an alleged violation by IRS of the First Amendment in its imposition of an involuntary withholding tax.
In the AFSC case, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting will be a “friend of the court.”
The Meeting, awaiting the outcome of this suit, at the request of three of its employees, is holding in escrow in a savings account income taxes withheld from their salaries.
The Meeting also has refused to pay levies imposed by IRS on the salaries of employees who have not paid the telephone tax.
Young Friends pleaded for sharing and sacrifice instead of trying to find ingenious ways of evading the payment of income taxes.
“Americans would rather be dead than poor,” one of them said.
The meeting did not reach consensus, and agreed to meet again.
The caption to a photo from a “Called Meeting for Worship and Declarations of Freedom from Conscription” noted that “Eight individuals expressed their intentions to refuse the payment of war taxes.”
“Sneaky” resistance
A letter-to-the-editor in the issue from Lloyd C. Shank advocated “the ‘sneaky’ way” of tax resistance — comparing crafty tax evasion to the necessarily surreptitious illegality of the Underground Railroad.
“After all, the punishment for cheating is far less than for murdering.
And ‘cheating’ is only an oppressive government’s name for a good man’s refusal to murder.”
I believe… that often we are blinded to practical resistance by our over-conscientious concern with so-called deep ethical implications.
Jesus cleansed the temple — not a profound decision or deed (two angry boys might have done the same) — but a practical demonstration against religious hypocrisy and greed.
If Christ had consulted the religious community of hair-splitters, he never would have received a go-ahead.
He obeyed the Spirit: Simple, sweet, quick, effective.
Betty Stone did not agree.
She wrote in to contrast “the ‘sneaky’ way” with that of “the experts on effective nonviolent action:”
Jesus, who demands thoroughgoing honesty (“purity of spirit”) and Gandhi, who said, “truth is even more important than love.”
How far could Dr. King have gone had he lacked character and credibility?
Stone may have overplayed her hand when she then attacked the Underground Railroad analogy by attacking the Underground Railroad itself, saying that perhaps it “represented violent treatment of slaveholders… [that] led to secession and the Civil War.”
Instead, she felt, a more non-violent solution would have been one of “love in action” that was designed to transform the slaveholders — for instance “if large numbers of Friends had combined to compensate slave owners for slaves whom they aided to escape?
What if Friends had gone to the plantations and offered to do the work of the slaves who had escaped — to take their beatings and lynchings and to train the slaves by example in the use of transforming power in their own behalf?
Could Friends have popularized the principle of emancipation with just compensation?”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
War tax resistance was a frequent topic in the issues of Friends Journal in , though there was still no consensus about how to go about it, and there was a lot of hesitance among Quaker institutions about how strongly to endorse it.
The issue was another special issue devoted to the peace testimony, which might as well have been a special issue on war tax resistance for how frequently it was mentioned.
Clearly by this time, there was no talking about peace work without talking about war tax resistance.
an illustration by Duncan Harp, from the issue of Friends Journal
Editor Ruth Kilpack opened the issue.
She noted:
I see the billions of dollars (including taxes from my own earnings) being poured into the “defense” budget.
I hear of vastly increased crime and see the wanton waste everywhere, much of it the direct legacy of our last war; I remember the lives still festering in military hospitals, the suffering from the wounds of war both here and across the world.
But now, there is a handful of people who are beginning to take a new view of war and war-making, realizing that it takes place not only when the bombing and shelling begin, but in the will of the people who make — or allow — it to happen.
War-making must be paid for.
As it is said elsewhere in this issue, “we pray for peace, but we pay for war.”
When we once understand that, great change will come about.
And especially, as war becomes more and more impersonal, with computerized strategic commands and weapons, more people are increasingly going to ask, “Who is waging this war?
Are we ourselves responsible, since we pay for it?”
(As the old saying goes, “Your checkbook shows where your heart is.”)
Take Richard Catlett, for example, a Friend who — as I write at this very moment in — is beginning his jail sentence of two months at the Kansas City Municipal Rehabilitation Institute (for first offenders) in Kansas City, Missouri.
That will be followed by three years of probation.
Richard Catlett has been an antiwar activist , refusing to file his income tax return .
In , his health food store was closed for non-payment of taxes (it is now under his wife’s ownership), and now, at sixty-nine years of age, Richard Catlett is treated as a criminal.
Clearly, he is being held up as an example of what can happen to a trouble-maker who dares to go against the tax law.… Richard Catlett’s age gives added emphasis to the warning to those no longer young and foolhardy.
(Besides, the pockets of those in his age bracket are usually better filled, and not to be overlooked by IRS.)
Catlett’s case was covered in more depth later on in the same issue by means of lengthy quotes from a Colombia Missourian article (see “Local war protester leaves for jail term” in ♇ 5 January 2013) and the following section from a Wall Street Journal article:
Tax Report
A protester got loads of publicity that drew criminal charges for nonfiling.
The IRS selects tax protesters for criminal prosecution based on the amount of publicity they get.
Usually protesters who don’t seek the spotlight are pursued by civil actions; criminal is reserved for the publicity hound.
Richard Ralston Catlett is a notorious war and tax protester.
The sixty-eight-year-old Columbia, Missouri, health food store owner argued that criminal charges of failing to file returns should be dropped because the IRS was guilty of “selective prosecution.”
The government is barred from selecting people to prosecute on grounds of race, religion or the exercise of free speech, or other “impermissible grounds.”
Catlett claimed that basing a criminal prosecution on publicity isn’t permitted.
But an appeals court disagreed.
His exercise of free speech wasn’t involved here, the court noted.
The IRS seeks criminal prosecution against publicized protesters to promote compliance with tax laws, the court observed.
“The government is entitled to select those cases for prosecution which it believes will promote compliance,” the court declared.
For some decades now we have been hearing the Church call on governments to take steps toward disarmament.
And it would be difficult to think of a thing more urgent or more appropriate for churches to say to governments.
It is hardly necessary here to give another recitation of the monstrous and unconscionable dimensions of the world arms race, culminating in the ever-growing stockpiles of nuclear weapons and the refinement of systems to deliver their carnage.
The Church has done part of its duty when it has said that this is wrong.
But the time has come to say that the good words of the Church have not been, and are not, enough.
The risks, the disciplines, the sacrifices, and the steps in good faith which the Church has asked of governments in the task of disarmament must now be asked of the Church in the obligation of war tax resistance.
It is, at the root, a simple question of integrity.
We are praying for peace and paying for war.
Setting euphemisms aside, the billions of dollars conscripted by governments for military spending are war taxes, and Christians are paying these taxes.
Our bluff has been called.
In all candor it must be suggested that the storm of objection which arises in the Church at this idea borrows its thunder and lightning from the premiers, the presidents, the ambassadors, and the generals who make their arguments against disarmament.
War tax resistance will be called irresponsible, anarchist, unrealistic, suicidal, masochistic, naive, futile, negative and crazy.
But when the dust has settled, it will stand as the deceptively simple and painfully obvious Christian response to the world arms race.
A score or a hundred other good responses may be added to it.
We in the Church may rightly be called upon to do more than this, but we should not be expected to do less.
Let the Church take upon itself the risks of war tax resistance. For church councils to take the position that the arms race is wrong for governments and not to commit themselves and call upon their members to cease and desist from paying for the arms race is patently inconsistent.
This is probably a fundamental reason why the Church’s pleas for disarmament have met with so little positive response.
Not even governments can have high regard for people who say one thing and do another.
If governments today are confronted with the question whether they will continue the arms race, churches are confronted with the question whether they will continue to pay for it.
As specialists in the matter of stewardship of the Earth’s resources they have contributed precious little to the most urgent stewardship issue of the twentieth century if they go on paying for the arms race.
How much longer can the.
Church continue quoting to the government its carefully researched figures on military expenditures and social needs and then, apparently without embarrassment, go on serving up the dollars that fund the berserk priorities?
The arms race would fall flat on its face tomorrow if all of the Christians who lament it would stop paying for it.
It is not, of course, simple to stop paying for the arms race as a citizen of the United States, or anywhere else for that matter.
If you refuse to pay the portion of your income tax attributable to military spending, the government levies your bank account or wages and extracts the money that way.
If your income tax is withheld by your employer, you must devise some means to reduce that withholding, such as claiming a war tax deduction or extra dependents.
If, as an employer, you do not withhold an employee’s war taxes, you will find yourself in court, as has recently happened to the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors.
All of these actions are at some point punishable by fines or imprisonment, and none — in the final analysis — actually prevents the government from getting the money.
Nevertheless, it must be said that the Church has not tried tax resistance and found it ineffective; it has rather found it difficult and left it untried.
The Church has considered the risk too great.
Individuals fear social pressure, business losses, and government reprisals.
Congregations, synods, and church agencies equivocate over their role in collecting war taxes.
There is the risk of an undesirable response — contributions may drop off, tax-exempt status may be lost, officers may go to jail.
To oppose the vast power of the state by a deliberate act of civil disobedience is not a decision to be made lightly (an unnecessary observation, since there are no signs that Christians or the Church in the United States are about to do this lightly).
It would be inaccurate to give the impression that Christians, individually, and the Church, corporately, in the U.S. have done nothing about war tax resistance.
There have been notable, even heroic, exceptions to the general manifest lethargy.
The war tax resistance case of an individual Quaker was recently appealed on First Amendment grounds to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court refused to consider it.
A North American conference of the Mennonite Church is grappling with the question of its role in withholding war taxes from the wages of employees.
Among Brethren, Friends and Mennonites — sometimes called the Historic Peace Churches — there is a rising tide of concern about war taxes.
The Catholic Worker Movement and other prophetic voices in various denominations have long advocated war tax resistance, but they have truly been voices crying in the wilderness.
For all our concern about the arms race, we in the churches have done very little to resist paying for it.
That has seemed too risky.
But then, of course, disarmament also involves risks.
Could there be a moral equivalent of disarmament that did not involve risk?
In this matter of the world arms race, it is not a question of who can guarantee the desired result, but of who will take the risk for peace.
Let the Church take upon itself the discipline of war tax resistance.
Discipline is not a popular word today, but it should be amenable to rehabilitation at least among Christians, who call themselves disciples of Jesus.
How quickly does the search for a way turn into the search for an easy way!
And how readily do we lay upon others those tasks which require a discipline we are not prepared to accept ourselves!
War tax resistance will involve the discipline of interpreting the Scripture and listening to the Spirit.
In a day when the Bible is most noteworthy for the extent to which it is ignored in the Church, it is an anomaly to see the pious rush to Scripture and the joining of ranks behind Romans 13, when the question of tax resistance is raised.
In a day when the authority of the Church is disobeyed everywhere with impunity, it is a curiosity to see Christians zealous for the authority of the state.
In a day when giving to the Church is the last consideration in family budgeting, and impulse rules over law, it is a shock to observe the fanaticism with which Christians insist that Caesar must be given every cent he wants.
As the Church has grown in its discernment of what the Bible teaches about slavery and the role of women, so it must grow in its discernment of what the Bible teaches about the place and authority of governments and the payment of taxes.
War tax resistance means accepting the discipline of submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the nitty-gritty of history.
Call it civil disobedience if you wish, but recognize that in reality it is divine obedience.
It is a matter of yielding to a higher sovereignty.
Those who speak for a global world order to promote justice in today’s world invite nations to yield some of their sovereignty to the higher interests of the whole, and those persons know the obstinacy of nations toward that idea.
It may be that the greatest service the Church can do the world today is to raise a clear sign to nation-states that they are not sovereign.
War tax resistance might just be a cloud the size of a person’s hand announcing to the nations that the reign of God is coming near.
It is clear that Christians will not rise to this challenge without accepting difficult and largely unfamiliar disciplines.
But then, of course, disarmament also involves disciplines.
The idea that one nation can take initiatives to limit its war-making capacities is shocking.
To do so would represent a radical break with conventional wisdom.
How is it possible to do that without first convincing all the nations that it is a good idea?
Let the Church take upon itself the sacrifices of war tax resistance.
It is never altogether clear to me whether Christians who oppose war tax resistance find it too easy a course of action, or too difficult.
It is said that refusing to send the tax to IRS and allowing it to be collected by a bank levy is too easy — a convenient way of deceiving oneself into thinking that one has done something about the arms race.
And it is said that to refuse to pay the tax is too difficult.
It is to disobey the government and thereby to bring down upon one’s head the whole wrath of the state, society, family, business associates, and probably God as well.
Moreover, the same person will say both things.
Which does he or she believe?
In most cases, I think, the second.
The sacrifices involved in war tax resistance are fairly obvious.
They may be as small as accepting the scorn which is heaped upon one for using the term “war tax” when the government doesn’t identify any tax as a war tax, or as great as serving time in prison.
It may be the sacrifice of income or another method of removing oneself from income tax liability.
It can be said with some certainty that the sacrifices will increase as the number of war tax resisters increases, because the government will make reprisals against those who challenge its rush to Armageddon.
Yet, there is the possibility that the government will get the message and change its spending priorities or provide a legislative alternative for war tax objectors, or both.
In any case, for the foreseeable future, war tax resistance will be an action that is taken at some cost to the individual or the Church institution, with no assured compensation except the knowledge that it is the right thing to do.
But then, of course, disarmament also involves sacrifices.
The temporary loss of jobs, the fear of weakened defenses, and the scorn of the mighty are not easy hurdles to cross.
A moral equivalent will have to involve some sacrifices.
Let the Church take upon itself the action of war tax resistance.
The call of Christ is a call to action.
It is plain enough that the world cannot afford $400 billion per year for military expenditures, even if this were somehow morally defensible.
It is plain enough that the dollars which Christians give to the arms race are not available to do Christ’s work of peace and justice.
In these circumstances the first step in a positive direction is to withhold money from the military.
If we say that we must wait for this until everybody and (and particularly the government) thinks it is a good idea, then we shall wait forever.
Having withheld the money, the Church must apply it to the works of peace.
What this means is not altogether obvious at present, but there is reason to believe that a faithful Church can serve as steward for these resources as wisely as generals and presidents.
The dynamic interaction between individual Christians and the Church in its local and ecumenical forms will help to guide the use of resources withheld from the arms race.
This is a call to individual Christians and the Church corporately to make war tax resistance the fundamental expression of their condemnation of the world arms race.
Neither the individual nor the corporate body dare hide any longer behind the inaction of the other.
The stakes are too high and the choice is too clear for that, though we can have no illusions that this call will be readily embraced nor easily implemented by the Church.
But then, of course, we do not think that disarmament will be an easy step for governments to take either.
The Church has an obligation to act upon what it advocates, to deliver a moral equivalent of the disarmament it proposes.
If effectiveness is the criterion, it is certainly not obvious that talking about the macro accomplishes more than acting upon the micro.
A single action taken is worth more than a hundred merely discussed.
(When it comes to heating your home in winter, you will get more help from one friend who saws up a log than from a whole school of mathematicians who calculate the BTUs in a forest.)
To talk about a worthy goal is no more laudable than to take the first step toward it, and might be less so.
Michael Miller wrote an article for the same issue that noted that the National Guard is a U.S. military combat function that is largely paid for out of state budgets, not the federal budget.
He concluded:
I am now more fully aware how the military affects our daily lives and activities.
I also realize that not only is the objection to payment of war taxes a federal issue, but it is also a very real state issue.
State budgets contain rather large amounts in this respect.
As Friends, we must be constantly aware of the issues involved with our tax dollars.
The military has a great influence over our lives and our tax dollars, whether or not we recognize it.
We have a responsibility to make ourselves aware of the issues and how they influence our lives.
Alan Eccleston contributed an article on war tax resistance as a method of testifying for peace — aligning ones life with ones values.
This, he felt, could be done in a variety of ways:
We do not have to be prepared for jail to be a war tax resister.
We do not have to be ready, at this moment, to subject ourselves to harassment by the Internal Revenue Service.
We do, however, have to be truthful on our tax returns.
We do have to be clear about our belief in the peace testimony and our desire to align our lives with this belief.
And that is all!
If you are clear about that, you can withhold some amount of your tax.
It can be a token amount, if that is where you are, say five dollars or fifty dollars.
Or it can be the same percent of your tax as the military portion of the current budget, currently thirty-six percent excluding past debt and veterans benefits.
(An easy way to do this is to insert the amount under “Credits” as a “Quaker Peace Witness,” line forty-six.
Alternately, some people declare an extra deduction, but this is more complicated, since the deduction must be substantially larger than the amount you desire to withhold.)
It may bother you that three times or even ten times what you have chosen to withhold is going to be spent for war preparations.
But far better to take this small step than to turn away from the witness. Write your congresspersons and tell them of your concern.
Urge them to pass the World Peace Tax Fund which would acknowledge your constitutional right to practice your religious beliefs without harassment and penalty.
Alternatively, if the government owes you money fill out the (very short) Form #843 “Request for Refund,” asking that they refund the amount you wish for peace witness.
One can also anticipate the withholding problem by filling out a W-4 Form at your place of employment declaring (truthfully) an allowance for expected deductions that includes the amount of your peace witness.
Then what?
You can expect a series of computer notices stating that you calculated your tax incorrectly and you owe the amount shown on the notice.
This may also include an addition of seven percent annual interest on the amount owed.
(Currently IRS seems not to be adding on penalty charges but that is a possibility.)
You have a choice: you can ignore the notice; you can write or call IRS and discuss it; or you can pay the tax.
Sooner or later you will receive a printout that says “Final Notice.”
If you again fail to pay the amount owed, you will probably receive a call from someone at IRS who will try to convince you that the whole process has gone far enough and that your purpose is better served by paying the government.
IRS wants to collect.
That is their job; when they have done it, they are through with you.
They cannot, by law, be harsh or punitive.
There is no debtors’ prison in this country.
If you declare the intent of your witness on your tax form and by letter to Congress, you cannot be convicted of fraud; therefore, you are not risking criminal penalties.
In other words, the tax resister controls the process.
One can witness to peace so long as it can be done lovingly and, if it is to be a meaningful witness of peace, that is the only way it can be done.
However, if one’s family obligations or other matters are too pressing, or if one’s spiritual resources are being unduly strained, it is time to lay down this particular witness.
One can carry on the witness and still bring the process to a conclusion by letting the payment be taken from a bank account or peace escrow fund.
Another round of letters to Congress and the president will testify to your continuing concern even after the pressure of collection has been relieved.
In your witness, no matter how small the amount withheld or how short the duration, you will gain strength and courage and insight.
This brings new resources to your next witness.
It gives you knowledge and resources to share with others, which in turn helps their witness.
In sharing, you both are strengthened.
Thus, a personal witness becomes a “community of witness,” and the “community of witness” gains strength, courage, and insight in its mutual sharing.
This witness and this sharing of Christian love becomes its own witness to the testimony of peace — the testimony of love for God, for ourselves, for humankind.
(A letter from Dorothy Ann Ware in a later issue credited the Eccleston article for spurring her to “make a token Quaker Peace Witness by withholding a very small portion of my income tax.
So Step One has been taken…”)
The same issue reprinted a Minute from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting which encouraged Quakers “to give prayerful consideration… to the option of refusal of taxes for military purposes.”
Furthermore:
We reaffirm the Minute of the yearly meeting which states in part that “…Refusal to pay the military portion of taxes is an honorable testimony, fully in keeping with the history and practices of Friends… We warmly approve of people following their conscience, and openly approve civil disobedience in this matter under Divine compulsion.
We ask all to consider carefully the implications of paying taxes that relate to war-making… Specifically, we offer encouragement and support to people caught up in the problem of seizure, and of payment against their will.”
We request the Representative Meeting to arrange for the guidance of meetings and their members on the form of military tax resistance suitable for individuals in accordance with that degree of risk appropriate to individual circumstances, for advice on consequences, and for consideration of legal and support facilities that may be organized.
We also request Representative Meeting to provide for an Alternate Fund for sufferings, set up under the yearly meeting to receive tax payments refused, for those tax refusers who may wish to utilize this fund.
We recommend cooperation with the Historic Peace Churches and other religious groups in further consideration of non-payment on religious grounds of military taxes.
Following that, John E. Runnings wrote of his and his wife Louise’s war tax resistance, and decried the injustice of a “society that requires that Quakers, who renounce war and recognize no enemies, must pay as large a contribution to the support of the war machine as those who fully accept the malicious nature of other nationals and who are so frightened of their ill intent that no amount of extermination equipment is enough to assure security.”
The social reforms that we credit to George Fox’s influence did not come about by his waiting on the Spirit but rather by his responding to the Spirit.
If just one man could accomplish so much by responding to the Spirit, what would happen if several thousand modern Quakers were to respond to their spiritually-inspired revulsion to assisting in the building of the war machine?
If Quakers could be induced to discard their excuses for their financial support of the arms race and to withhold their Federal taxes, who knows how many thousands of like-minded people might be encouraged to follow suit?
And who knows but what this might bring a halt to the mad race to oblivion?
There was a brief update about Robert Anthony’s case.
Anthony hoped to use his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination (presumably in response to a government request for financial records or something of the sort).
The judge in the case asked if the government would grant Anthony immunity from prosecution for anything he disclosed, which would have cut off the Fifth Amendment avenue of resistance, but the government wasn’t prepared to do that, and that’s where the matter stood.
The issue included a notice that the Center on Law and Pacifism had “recently published a military tax refusal guide for radical religious pacifists entitled ‘People Pay for Peace’ ” but also noted that “the Center states that it is in ‘urgent and immediate need of operating funds.’ ”
A later issue gave some more information about the Center:
The Center was started after a former Washington constitutional lawyer and theologian, Bill Durland, met a handful of conscientious objectors who were appealing to the U.S. courts for their constitutional rights to deny income tax payments for the military.…
That was in .
The Center is now producing regular newsletters and has published a handbook on military tax refusal.
It has organized war-tax workshops for pacifists representing constituencies in the Northeast, South and Midwest.
One of its projects was the “People Pay for Peace” scheme, under which it was suggested that each individual deduct $2.40 from his/her income tax return to “spend for peace”: that sum being the per capita equivalent of the $193,000,000,000 which will be consumed in for war preparation in the United States.
This was a protest action against the fifty-three percent of the U.S. budget allocated to military purposes.
The Center on Law and Pacifism is a “do-it-yourself cooperative” which relies on both volunteer professional assistance and individual contributions.
Hmmm… my calculation for 53% of the federal budget in 1979 is more like $214,618,730,000… and per-capita (by U.S. population, anyway) that would be $953.63 per person.
If you use the $193 billion value, that’s still $857.57 per person.
Even if you use world population, you still get $44.08–$49.02 each.
Somebody’s confused… maybe it’s me.
Wendal Bull penned a letter-to-the-editor in the same issue about his experience as a war tax resister twenty years before.
Excerpt:
In I received a lump sum payment of an overdue debt.
This increased my income, which I normally keep below the taxable level, to a point quite some above that level.
I distributed the unexpected income to various anti-war organizations.
I anticipated pressure from IRS officers, so in the autumn, long before the tax would be due, I disposed of all my attachable properties.
This action, under the circumstances, I believe to be unlawful.
But it seemed to me a mere technicality, far outweighed by the sin of paying for war, or the sin of permitting collection of the tax for that purpose.
After disposing of all attachable properties, I wrote to IRS telling them I had taxable income in that year but chose not to calculate the amount of it because I had no intention of paying it.
In the same letter I explained my reasons for conscientious non-cooperation with Uncle Sam’s preparations for war in the name of “defense.”
My letter appeared in full or in generous excerpts in at least three daily papers and several other publications and I mailed copies to friends who might be interested.
I am not a publicity hound nor a notorious war resister.
The publicity did seem to effect a fairly prompt visit from the Revenue Boys.
They paid me three or four visits.
On one occasion two men came; one talked, the other may have had a concealed tape recorder, or was merely to witness and confirm the conversation.
After quizzing me for an hour or more they left courteously, whereupon I said I was sorry to be a bother to them.
At that the talker said, “You’re no trouble at all.
I brought a warrant for your arrest, but I’m not going to serve it.
It’s the guys who hire lawyers to fight us that give us trouble.”
If they had caught me in a lie, or giving inconsistent answers to their probing questions, I suspect the summons would have been served.
I was fully prepared to go to court and to be declared guilty of contempt for not producing records to show the sources of my income.
I had told the men I was in contempt of the entire war machine and all officers of the legal machinery who aimed to penalize citizens for non-cooperation with war preparations.
Later came two visits from a man who attempted to assess my income for that year, and the law required him to try to get my signature to his assessment.
I considered that a ridiculous waste of taxpayer’s money.
The man agreed with a smile.
Still later, there came several bills, one at a time, for the amount of the official assessment, plus interest, plus delinquency fee, plus warnings that the bill should be paid.
These I ignored, of course.
The head men knew I would not pay; and they knew they had not any intention of trying to force collection.
I have no idea who decided to quit sending me more bills.
I think the claim is still valid since the statute of limitations does not apply to federal taxes.
It is inconvenient to have no checking account, to own no real estate, to drive an old jalopy not worth attaching, and so on.
Some of us choose this alternative rather than to let the money be collected by distraint.
In the same issue, Keith Tingle shared his letter to the IRS, which he sent along with his tax return and a payment that was 33% short.
He stressed that he didn’t mind paying taxes — “a small price for the tremendous privilege of living in the United States with its heritage of freedom, equal protection, and toleration” — but that “I do not wish my labor and my money to finance either war or military preparedness.”
Stephen M. Gulick also wrote in.
“Because the military and the corporations need our money more than our bodies, war tax resistance becomes important — in all its forms from outright and total resistance to living on an income below the taxable level,” he wrote.
“Fundamentally, war tax resistance must lead us to look not only at warmaking and the preparation for war, but also at the economic, social, and political practices that, with the help of our money, nurture the roots of war.”
Colin Bell attended the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting:
“I think,” Colin said, “that as a Society we are standing at another moment like that, when our forebears took an absolutely unequivocal stance” and we don’t know what to do.
Are we looking for something easy, he wondered, suggesting that it probably should be tax resistance.
Accepting the title Historic Peace Church, he declared, makes it sound like a worthy option, rather than it being at the entire heart and core of Christendom.
A letter to the editor of the Peacemaker magazine from John Schuchardt is quoted in the issue:
I have recently received threatening letters from a terrorist group which asks that I contribute money for construction of dangerous weapons.
This group makes certain claims which in the past led me to send thousands of dollars to pay for its militaristic programs. The group claimed: 1) It was concerned with peace and freedom; 2) It would provide protection for me and my family; 3) It was my duty to make these payments; and 4) I was free from personal responsibility for how this money was spent in individual cases.
Last year, for the first time, I realized that these claims were fraudulent and I refused to make further payments…
That issue also noted that the Albany, New York, Meeting “joined the growing number of meetings which are calling on their members to ‘seriously consider’ war tax resistance…” That Meeting was also considering establishing its own alternative fund, and was hoping Congress would pass the World Peace Tax Fund bill.
This “seriously consider” language, along with the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s earlier-mentioned call for Quakers “to give prayerful consideration” to war tax resistance, is a far cry from the sort of bold leadership John K. Stoner was calling for.
But then again, Quaker Meetings were no longer the sorts of institutions to bandy about Books of Discipline and threaten “disorderly walkers” with disownment, or even to give them “tender dealing and advice in order to their convincement.”
Meetings had in general become much more humble about what sort of direction they should provide and what sort of obedience they could expect.
It is hard to imagine a Meeting from this period adopting a commandment along the lines of the Ohio Yearly Meeting’s discipline — “a tax levied for the purchasing of drums, colors, or for other warlike uses, cannot be paid consistently with our Christian testimony.”
The issue included a review of Donald Kaufman’s The Tax Dilemma: Praying For Peace, Paying for War, a book that defends war tax resistance from a Christian and Biblical perspective.
“What is the individual’s responsibility in the face of biblical teachings and the history of tax resistance since the early Christian centuries?
Some biblical passages have been used to justify the payment of any and all taxes.
But Kaufman warns us to consider these passages in their historical context and in the light of the primary New Testament message: love for God, oneself, one’s neighbor, and one’s enemy.”
That issue also included an obituary notice for Ashton Bryan Jones that noted “[h]is courage in the face of the harsh treatment that he endured in the struggle for social justice and against war taxes…”
The issue reported on the New England Yearly Meeting, which held a workshop on war tax resistance, and also agreed to establish a “New England Yearly Meeting Peace Tax Fund.”
Recognizing that each of us must find our own way in this matter, the new fund is seen not as a general call to Friends to resist paying war taxes but specifically to help and to hold in the Light those Friends who are moved to do so.
The fund will be administered by the Committee on Sufferings, which came into being last year to support Friends who are devoting a major portion of their time and energies to work for peace.
New Call to Peacemaking
The “New Call to Peacemaking” brought together representatives of the Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers in , and to try to strengthen their respective churches’ anti-war stands.
It continued to ripple through the pages of the Journal in .
Barbara Reynolds covered the Green Lake conference that drafted the New Call statement in the issue.
Among her observations:
In my own small group, I saw social action Friends struggling with Biblical language and coming to accept many scriptural passages as valid expressions of their own convictions.
And I saw a respected Mennonite, a longtime exponent of total Biblical nonresistance, courageously re-examining his position and corning out strongly in favor of a group statement encouraging non-payment of war taxes.
Elaine J. Crauder gave another report on the project in the issue.
Excerpts:
Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren are known as the Historic Peace Churches.
How do they witness against evil and do good?
Where does God fit into their witnessing?
Are they responding to the urgency of the present-day world situation, or are they truly “historic” peace churches, with no relevance to today’s complex world?
The New Call to Peacemaking (NCP) developed out of exactly these concerns: Where is the relevance and what is the source of our witnessing?
The answers were clear.
To seek God’s truth and to witness, in a loving way, by doing good (through peace education, cooperation in personal and professional relationships, living simply and investing only in clearly life-enhancing endeavors) and by resisting evil (working for disarmament and peace conversion, resisting war taxes and military conscription).
Crauder says she first started thinking about her support of war through her taxes in :
The 1040 Income Tax form didn’t have a space for war tax resisters.
Either I would have to lie about having dependents, or my taxes would be withheld. l didn’t feel that I had a choice.
It did not occur to me to claim a dependent and then support that person with the funds that thus wouldn’t go for war.
So, I did what was easiest — nothing — and paid my war taxes.
In , she says:
I started to think about my taxes again.
Maybe I could lie on my form.
It was definitely not right to work for peace and pay for the war machine.
I even went to one meeting of the war tax concerns committee.
But there were enough meetings that I had to go to, so I managed not to find the time to struggle with my war taxes.
Words of John Woolman seemed to fit my condition:
They had little or no share in civil government, and many of them declared they were through the power of God separated from the spirit in which wars were; and being afflicted by the rulers on account of their testimony, there was less likelihood of uniting in spirit with them in things inconsistent with the purity of Truth.
Woolman was referring to the early Quakers when he said it was less likely that they would be influenced by the civil government in questions of the truth.
It seemed to me that in Woolman’s time it was also easier to be clear about the truth — we are so much more dependent and tied to the government than they were.
Perhaps it is always easier to have a clear witness in hindsight.
I think Crauder has it a little backwards here.
Woolman was speaking of early Friends in England, who were being actively repressed by the government and banned from much of any exercise of political power, and contrasting them to the Quakers in Woolman’s own time and place (colonial Pennsylvania), where Quakers held political power, and were by far the dominant party in the colonial Assembly.
In Woolman’s time the government and the Society of Friends were as tightly linked as they ever have been.
Historical notes
In the issue, Walter Ludwig shared an interesting anecdote about Susan B. Anthony’s father, Daniel Anthony:
During the Mexican War he made the quasi tax-resisting gesture of tossing his purse on the table when the collector appeared, remarking, “I shall not voluntarily pay these taxes; if thee wants to rifle my pocketbook thee can do so.”
I hunted around for a source for this anecdote, and found one in Ida Husted Harper’s The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (1898), where she put it this way:
In early life he had steadfastly refused to pay the United States taxes because he would not give tribute to a government which believed in war.
When the collector came he would lay down his purse, saying, “I shall not voluntarily pay these taxes; if thee wants to rifle my pocket-book, thee can do so.”
But he lived to do all in his power to support the Union in its struggle for the abolition of slavery and, although too old to go to the front himself, his two sons enlisted at the very beginning of the war.
John Woolman was invoked in the issue as someone who “took as clear a stand on payment of taxes for military ends as he did on slavery.”
He was quoted as saying:
I all along believed that there were some upright-hearted men who paid such taxes but could not see that their example was a sufficient reason for me to do so, while I believed that the spirit of Truth required of me as an individual to suffer patiently the distress of goods rather than pay actively.
Bruce & Ruth Graves
The issue brought an update on the case of Bruce and Ruth Graves, who were pursuing a Supreme Court appeal in the hopes of legally validating their approach of claiming a “war tax credit” on their federal income tax returns.
They were trying to get people to write letters to the Supreme Court justices, in the hopes that they would find influential the opinions of laymen on such points as these:
1) petitioners right to First Amendment free exercise of religion and freedom of expression, 2) paramount interests of government not endangered by refusal of petitioners to pay tax, 3) petitioners should be able to re-channel war taxes into peace taxes (via World Peace Tax Fund Act, etc.), 4) IRS regulations should not take precedence over Constitutional rights of individuals, 5) threat of nuclear war must be stopped by exercise of Constitutional rights, 6) other pertinent points at the option of correspondent.
There was a further note on that case in the issue — largely a plea for support, without any otherwise significant news.
Included with this was a message from the Graveses with this plea: “How can Friends maintain the secular impact of the peace testimony expressed through conscientious objection when technology has replaced the soldier’s body with a war machine?
Does it not follow that technology then shifts the emphasis of conscientious objection toward reduction of armaments by resisting payment of war taxes?”
The issue brought the news that the Supreme Court had turned down the Graveses’ appeal.
“[W]hen asked whether the frustrations of losing the long court battle had ‘generated any thoughts of quitting,’ Ruth Graves replied, ‘Never.
If I were going to let myself be stopped by seemingly hopeless causes, I’d just die right now.”
World Peace Tax Fund
A note in the issue reported that some people who had “sent in cards or letters expressing support for the [World Peace Tax Fund] bill” had reported that they had “been subjected to IRS audits and other harassment.”
A letter from Judith F. Monroe in the issue expressed some concern about the World Peace Tax Fund plan.
Excerpts:
I fear the World Peace Tax could become a device to appease the consciences of those of us who are not willing to face the consequences of civil disobedience.…
…One important purpose of the tax is to shake the complacent into a realization of the madness of our current armaments race.
I don’t believe the casual matter of checking a block on a tax form will ever cause extensive introspection on the part of most people.
How will peace tax funds be handled?
Will such a tax require more complex tax laws, IRS investigators, and tax accountants?
How can we believe in the government’s ability to use such funds constructively?
I can envision the Department of Defense receiving peace grants.
After all, they’re the boys who fight for peace.
This may be an exaggeration.
The point is I do not feel we can trust any large bureaucracy with the task of peacemaking.
If the majority or at least a sizable minority do not opt for the peace tax, all that will happen is a larger percentage of their taxes will go to armaments to compensate for the monies diverted by the few who chose a peace tax.
Under such circumstances, the peace tax would accomplish little.
Evidence of some critical appraisal of the “peace tax” idea is also found in a note in the issue, which summarizes an address by Stanley Keeble to the June General Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland:
If this were permitted, would not government simply raise military estimates to compensate for expected shortfall?
Would not people not conscientiously opposed to military “defense,” take advantage of such legislation?
Would the procedure be destructive of democracy and majority rule?
Should not individuals rather reduce their earnings to a non-taxable level, or would that deprive useful projects of legitimate funds?
Other such questions were raised, relating to possible effects on national “defense” policy.
For his part, however, Stanley Keeble felt that it was important to “bring a peace decision right to the level of the individual,” and added that of fifteen replies so far received from monthly meetings on the subject of a Peace Tax Fund, only one was completely negative, two uncertain, and “the rest endorsed the proposal whilst acknowledging certain difficulties.”
There were occasional reports on the bill’s status in Congress scattered through the issues of the Journal.
One, in the issue, said:
Endorsed by the national bodies of the Unitarian-Universalist Association, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites, and the Religious Society of Friends, this bill provides the legal alternative for taxpayers morally opposed to war that the military portion of their taxes would go into the WPTF to be used for a national peace academy, retraining of workers displaced from military production, disarmament efforts, international exchanges and other peace-related purposes; alternatively for non-military government programs.
That issue also quoted the newsletter of the Canadian Friends Service Committee on the legislation, saying: “Thousands of letters and postcards were sent to members and many meetings held across the country as well as slide-tape shows, television and radio programs. Newspaper coverage was also good.
The U.S. government is beginning to act in response.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There were several references to tax resistance in the Friends Journal in , but many of them referred to some other time or country or religious denomination, and those that referred to American Quakers in the here-and-now lacked much urgency or enthusiasm.
Journal editor Vinton Deming marked the passing of Colin Bell in his opening editorial in the issue, and noted:
One spring at yearly meeting he spoke very movingly in support of young Friends faced with the draft.
He challenged some of us over draft age to consider that not only our young people were being drafted; our federal taxes were being conscripted for the war as well!
I visited him once at Davis House in Washington with a friend whose house was threatened with IRS seizure for unpaid war taxes.
Colin was keenly interested, shared a generous amount of time from his busy schedule, and was very supportive.
As we left he walked us to our car.
I still hear the cheerful sound of his words (and see the twinkle in his eye) as he leaned in the car window, shook our hands, and said, “Good bye, Friends.
Take care of your spirit!”
In a letter-to-the-editor in the issue, Carole Hope Depp split hairs over whether or not war tax resistance is civil disobedience — claiming that since the Constitution, the highest law in the land, protects freedom of religion, then a law that purports to force people to violate their religious scruples by paying for war must be void, and so those who resist it are not being disobedient at all.
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
In the issue, Paul Zorn took issue with “some traditional Quaker attiudes and institutions,” including war tax resistance, as representing “an attitude that somehow Quakers are different from the bulk of society, and that much of our institutional effort should go to maintaining that difference… [and] that maintaining certain aspects of our uniqueness is more important than finding a larger consensus in society.”
Excerpt:
…Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is resisting an IRS levy on salaries of two employees to recover unpaid federal taxes because those funds would be used for military purposes.
The more I have talked with individuals and attended large and small groups, both in my monthly meeting and in the yearly meeting’s Representative Meeting, the more troubled I am with the policy, although I realize it has been fashioned with much care and concern for the Spirit over 15 years or more.
As I understand it, a tax refusal contest with the federal government usually ends with the government getting the money.
The main result of refusing taxes is to make a public witness, and to ease a conscience that is troubled by voluntarily supporting the military.
I am troubled that part of the public witness consists of breaking the law and attempting to justify it, especially when tax refusal is as likely to reduce funds for low-cost housing, etc., as it is to reduce funds for the military.
Regarding voluntary support of the military, I think it is part of the irony, tragedy, or reality of modern life that despite our best efforts, institutions to which we belong act on our behalf in ways that we consider wrong, evil, or disastrous.
At the present time, we cannot effectively separate ourselves from all such institutions, and we would lose some of our humanity if we did.
He suggested that Friends consider “rethinking how much corporate energy we should put into tax refusal as an aspect of our peace testimony” and instead “trying to deal directly with some of the major problems of society rather than trying to insulate ourselves from them.”
The issue also described the war tax resistance of Sharon Bienert, who wrote letters to the IRS, agitated for a legal peace tax fund, and meanwhile split her resisted taxes between a Quaker-run peace tax fund and an escrow account.
That issue also mentioned that war tax resistance was “strongly supported” by the Lafayette, Indiana, Mennonite Fellowship.
Fellowship member Ken Nagele redirected a military-percentage of his income taxes to a low-income loan program; Mary Ann Zoeller redirected hers to Amnesty International; other families have donated income to the church to keep their income low and resist taxes that way.
That issue also brought news of a peace tax fund legalization campaign in Australia which “would allow conscientious objectors to pay 10 percent of their income taxes into a fund to be used for nonmilitary purposes” but which had only gained the support of eight of the 76 Australian Senators thus far.
In the issue, Carolyn Stevens reviewed two books published by the Friends World Committee for Consultation’s Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns: Handbook on Military Taxes & Conscience and Fear God & Honor the Emperor which were collaborative efforts edited by Linda Coffin, Peter Goldberger, Robert Hull, and J.E. McNeil.
The first of these books concerned “the history of military tax refusal among Friends and biblical teachings on the subject[,]… personal stories of military tax resisters, one about international war tax refusal campaigns, and another that chronicles efforts to enact Peace Tax Fund legislation.
The book concludes with a series of study questions and a resource list.”
The second “tackles the difficult question of how religious employers may be called to corporate witness of military tax refusal, either organizationally or in support of staff members who are conscientious objectors.
There is a survey of minutes, resolutions, and guidelines adopted by church bodies, Quaker and otherwise.
A chapter on legalities, co-authored by Peter Goldberger and J.E. McNeil, calmly raises and responds to difficulties, real and imagined, that employers face when supporting a witness against military taxes.
Robert Hull’s chapter on discernment blends a secular management perspective with traditional religious concerns.”
Stevens was enthusiastic about the first book (a “high level of sincerity and scholarship [that] gives us wonderful assistance”), less so about the second, which she described as “awkward,” “clumsy,” and “defensive” though “rich in necessary information.”
The issue brought an update on Canadian war tax resister Jerilynn Prior’s test case in which she was trying to get conscientious objection to military taxation legalized under the freedom of conscience portion of the (relatively) new Canadian Constitution.
She wasn’t having any luck in the courts.
The article claimed that “[m]ore than 500 Canadians withhold the portion of their federal taxes that would otherwise go toward military expenditures.
Many instead allocate the money to Conscience Canada’s Peace Tax Fund.”
Beit Sahour
The story of the nonviolent tax resistance campaign against the Israeli military occupation of Palestine in Beit Sahour got some coverage in the Journal.
Editor Vinton Deming wrote an article for the issue that was hopefully subtitled: “Nonviolent strategies may help to bring an end to the Israeli occupation.”
It was based on his conversations with Mubarak Awad and Nancy Nye.
Awad founded the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in and published a blueprint for nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation.
“At first, people thought we were a bit crazy, that perhaps I had come back from my time in the U.S. with some strange notions.
We started with just five people.
We would sometimes go to a public place and carry a sign that said ‘Down With the Occupation,’ or, ‘Don’t Pay Taxes.’
People at first would laugh and make fun of us.”
The Center later advocated a set of tactics, including “a boycott among the Arab population of all Israeli-made products; refusal to pay taxes or to work for Israelis; insistence that all mail be addressed to people by using the Palestinian language, not Hebrew; and the initiation of many self-help projects.”
Beit Sahour was an example of where Palestinians decided to try out some of these ideas in service of the intifada.
“People there,” said Mubarak, “to show their support for the uprising, decided they would refuse to pay taxes to Israeli authorities — no taxes at all.
The Israelis wanted to punish them so they came and confiscated the ID cards of a number of the business men.”
So what was the community’s response?
“Well,” Mubarak continues, “without your ID card you are stuck, you cannot go any place.
When people in the village heard about this, they said, ‘If they are going to take the ID cards of these businessmen, we are going to turn in our ID cards too.’
And they did.
So the Israelis called a curfew in the village and they said, ‘Here, please take your ID cards;’ they gave them all back!”
And the news of this incident spread to other communities?
“Yes,” Mubarak says, “everybody began thinking it was a good idea to do it.
You say, ‘OK, I’m not going to hurt the Israelis, but this is what I’m going to do.’
And people will get together and say, ‘Let’s do it.’
Palestinians are what I would call ‘trial and error’ in their approach.
Like, if this works, well, we’ll try it and continue to do it; if it doesn’t, it’s all right, we’ll do something else!”
