Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
20th–21st century Quakers →
David A. & Sabrina Falls
This is the thirty-fourth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we enter the late 1980s.
The edition again announced the “Taxes for Peace” fund that had been established by the MCC Peace Section (U.S.) to coordinate war tax redirection.
In the fund would be redirecting taxes to “the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund… [which] seeks to enact the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill… to give those conscientiously opposed to war a way to pay 100 percent of their taxes, with the military percentage going to a separate fund for peace-enhancing programs.”
In about $4,000 was contributed to the U.S. Peace Section Taxes for Peace fund.
Those monies helped support the Lancaster County Peacework Alternatives project.
In other years peace-related projects in places such as Laos and Guatemala have received funds.
MCC U.S. Peace Section is also offering an information packet on military tax opposition that contains varying theological positions on the war tax issue, and materials about tax laws and legal concerns for the tax resister.
The General Board of Friends United Meeting has adopted a policy of not withholding the federal withholding tax of employees who are conscientious objectors to paying taxes used for military purposes.
The General Conference Mennonite Church adopted a similar policy in .
On the current staff, said general secretary Steven Main, are three conscientious objectors to paying war taxes.
The policy requires employees who want to participate in the witness of military tax refusal to first go through a “clearness process” with their Meeting or church community.
I was a conscientious objector to war in World War Ⅰ.
So I reported this to the military camp office, informing them I could not participate in regular military training.
I asked them to assign me to service in a base hospital designed for overseas patients.
They respected my claim of conscience and gave me an opportunity to serve face and stomach victims of war.
Later… they handed me an “honorable discharge” card.
I still have this card.
Can you now extend to me, as a person of 92 years, and to my spouse, the same sensitive respect for our claims of conscience?
We love our country and we respect our government.
And we do not hesitate to pay taxes for orderly affairs and services of government.
But we have become deeply troubled over the vastly disproportionate part of our federal income tax being allocated to the building up of a military force and arsenal.
This is entirely out of proportion to the huge debt and the staggering needs among the poor, the sick, the aged and the unemployed.
Our conscience can no longer endure this.
So we have decided to withhold 37 percent of federal income tax liability (namely, the 37 percent used in the present military build-up program).
We want to send this as a donation to the Commission on Home Ministries… [which reaches out] to the poor, the unemployed, the underprivileged and the many people hurt and adrift by wars…
In World War Ⅰ the government recognized my concern of conscience.
Can you grant us this kind of courtesy for our older years?
Six Mennonite pastors who have refused to pay some or all of their military taxes were interviewed in the issue of ACTS (Another Church Tries Something), published by the Commission on Home Ministries.
Donald Kaufman of Bethel College Church, North Newton, Kan., John Gaeddert of First Church, Halstead, Kan., S. Roy Kaufman of Science Ridge Church, Sterling, Ill., Ronald Krehbiel of Salem Church, Freeman, S.D., Mark Weidner of First Church, Bluffton, Ohio, and Dorothy Nickel Friesen of Manhattan (Kan.) Fellowship told of how they decided to resist war taxes, how they involved church members in the decision and how their action has affected others.
The New Call to Peacemaking initiative and the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns sponsored a gathering of leaders from the traditional peace churches in to discuss what to do about the dilemma of such churches withholding taxes for the government from the salaries of their employees who wanted to resist paying war taxes.
Paul Schrag wrote up an article on the meeting that was reprinted in the edition of The Mennonite.
Excerpts:
The question of how church organizations can help their employees follow their consciences — and how to deal with the risks involved for both employees and employers — were the issues that the 36 Mennonites, Brethren and Quakers struggled with.
The church leaders, organizational representatives and lawyers affirmed their support for individual military tax resisters and for efforts to seek a legislative solution by working toward passage of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress.
They agreed to organize a peace church leadership group to go to Washington sometime in the future to support the peace tax bill and to express concerns about tax withholding.
They also agreed to help each other by filing friend-of-the-court briefs if tax resisters are prosecuted and by sharing the cost of tax resistance penalties.
“You may think the world will little note nor long remember what has happened here,” said Marian Franz, director of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund.
“But I regard it as a historic meeting.
“The decision to end the human race does not belong to Caesar.
Therefore, tax dollars that wrestle that decision out of the hands of God do not either.”
Participants in the meeting included both military tax resisters and people who would not engage in tax resistance themselves but support those who do.
People from churches that have policies of breaking the law by not withholding the federal taxes of employees who oppose paying military taxes shared their experiences with people from churches considering adopting such a policy.
The General Conference Mennonite Church and two Quaker groups are in the first category.
The Mennonite Church is in the second.
MC leaders, including moderator James Lapp and moderator-elect George Brunk Ⅲ, came to the meeting to explore church policy options on military tax withholding.
MC general assembly delegates asked the church to develop a policy recommendation on the issue for consideration at Normal .
“This roots us in a larger movement,” Lapp said of the meeting.
“It gives us ideas and handles about how other people have addressed it.
We don’t have to start from ground zero.”
The MC General Board plans to formulate questions about tax withholding for congregations to discuss.
It will prepare a recommendation next year based on congregations’ responses.
Robert Hull, GC secretary for peace and justice, said it was frustrating that many members of historic peace churches are not willing to witness against financial participation in preparing for war, although they are opposed to physical participation in war.
Some said it was disappointing that so many people are unwilling to follow their consciences until the government, through the Peace Tax Fund, might allow them to do so legally.
One quoted Gandhi: “We have stooped so low that we fancy it our duty to do whatever the law requires.”
“Do we want our righteousness without a price?” asked Ray Gingerich, a professor at Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Va.
When a church or organization decides to honor employees’ requests not to withhold their federal income tax, it assumes serious risks.
Any “responsible person” who willfully fails to withhold an employee’s taxes theoretically could be punished with a prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.
An organization could be fined $500,000.
But such penalties have never been imposed on legitimate religious organizations, nor are they likely to be, said two lawyers at the meeting.
The usual Internal Revenue Service response to war tax resistance is to take the amount of tax owed, plus a 5 percent penalty and interest, from the employee’s bank account.
The IRS has not taken even this action against the four GC employees who are not having their taxes withheld.
All GC personnel who could be subject to penalties have agreed to accept the risk.
The Friends World Committee for Consultation, which has had a non-withholding policy , has had tax money seized, plus interest and penalties, from its resisters’ bank accounts.
The Friends United Meeting adopted a non-withholding policy .
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends will decide in whether it should have such a policy.
Charles Boyer of the Church of the Brethren said he would use the input from the meeting to work toward helping develop a denominational policy on tax resistance.
An even more basic issue than war tax resistance arose concerning tax-withholding laws.
Some compared the church’s tax-collecting role to that of the biblical publicans.
“I have a growing dis-ease that the church is a tax collector for the government, regardless of what the money is used for,” said Vern Preheim, GC general secretary.
Participants made suggestions for improvements on a draft of “A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers,” written by Hull, Linda Coffin of the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns and lawyers Peter Goldberger and J.E. McNeil, who both gave legal advice at the meeting.
The manual is expected to be available later this year.
That book’s availability would be announced in the edition.
Another concern I have with promotion of the Peace Tax Fund law is that in order to tempt legislators to support it, there is a tendency to defang war tax objection and make it less threatening to the government.
Take for example this description of Marian Franz’s testimony before a House committee reviewing the tax code:
“Franz said that the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill would alleviate a persistent burden on the IRS and permit these citizens [conscientious objectors] to pay their full share of tax without violation of religious conscience.”
All we want to do is pay our taxes and not cause any trouble for the IRS — is that really the best way to speak truth to power and challenge militarism?
The Internal Revenue Service filed two suits against a Quaker group in Pennsylvania because the organization refused to attach the wages of two employees who have withheld part of their income taxes as a conscientious protest against military spending, Religious News Service reported.
The lawsuits against the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends seek $16,836 in connection with federal taxes not paid by William V. Grassie and David A. Falls.
The Quakers sent a letter to the IRS saying neither Grassie nor Falls is “a tax evader but a conscientious taxpayer who is conscientiously refusing payment of the military portion of his taxes.”
This is the twenty-ninth 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.
In the Mennonite Church danced right up to the brink of committing to corporate war tax resistance, as other church bodies around them considered their own similar actions.
The traditionalists were increasingly restive, though.
For example, in the issue, a letter to the editor from Robert L. Beiler took the traditional Romans 13 line and then went on to pointedly ask why war tax resisting Mennonites don’t seem to make any noise about taxpayer-funded abortions — and anyway the United States is a great country and we should be happy to pay taxes here.
The issue reported on how another Christian group was dealing with war tax resisters in the fold:
The General Board of Friends United Meeting — a Quaker denomination based in Richmond, Ind. — has adopted a policy of not withholding the federal taxes of employees who are conscientious objectors to paying taxes used for military purposes.
This means the denomination is willing to violate Internal Revenue Service tax regulations in order to support the conscience of its employees.
The policy requires employees who desire to participate in the witness of military tax refusal to first participate in a “clearness process” with their local congregation.
They are encouraged to compute the military percentage of their income tax, using the figures of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and voluntarily deposit that sum in a special denominational account held for that purpose.
The remainder would be submitted to the IRS.
In taking this action.
Friends United Meeting is pursuing a long Quaker tradition of recognizing all outward warfare to be inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It joins one other denomination in taking this action — the General Conference Mennonite Church.
Friends United Meeting is also seeking legislative remedy through the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress.
This legislation would permit tax payers morally opposed to war to have the military part of their taxes allocated to peacemaking.
Leaders of two peace organization talk about military taxes — Julie Garber of Fellowship of Reconciliation and John Stoner of Mennnonite Central Committee U.S. Peace Section.
Representatives of several “traditional peace church” denominations met to try to swap ideas about how to cope with the war tax resistance issue (Paul Schrag reporting):
Praying for peace while paying for war is a contradiction that historic peace churches must oppose by speaking out and taking action, representatives of those churches agreed at a consultation in Richmond, Ind. For some people, war tax resistance — refusing to pay the portion of one’s taxes that goes to the military — is a moral imperative.
Their consciences will not allow them to help pay for machine guns and nuclear bombs.
The question of how church organizations can help their employees follow their consciences — and how to deal with the risks involved for both employees and employers — were the issues that nearly 40 Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers struggled with at the meeting.
The church leaders, agency representatives, and lawyers affirmed their support for individual military tax resisters and for efforts to seek a legislative solution by working toward passage of the Peace Tax Fund Bill in the U.S. Congress.
They agreed to organize a peace church leadership group to go to Washington sometime in the future to support the peace tax bill and to express concerns about tax withholding.
They also agreed to help each other by filing friend-of-the-court briefs if tax resisters are prosecuted and by sharing the cost of tax resistance penalties, if necessary.
“You may think the world will little note nor long remember what has happened here,” said Marian Franz, a Mennonite who is executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.
“But I regard it as a historic meeting.”
People from churches that have policies of breaking the law by not withholding the federal taxes of employees who oppose paying military taxes shared their experiences with people from churches considering adopting such a policy.
The General Conference Mennonite Church and two Quaker groups are in the first category.
The Mennonite Church is in the second.
Mennonite Church leaders, including Executive Secretary James Lapp and Moderator-Elect George Brunk Ⅲ, came to the meeting to explore church policy options on military tax withholding.
The General Assembly of the Mennonite Church asked the General Board to develop a recommendation on the issue for consideration at the next General Assembly in .
“This roots us in a larger movement,” Lapp said of the meeting.
“It gives us ideas and handles about how other people have addressed it.
We don’t have to start from ground zero.”
General Board plans to formulate questions about tax withholding for congregations to discuss.
It will prepare its recommendation based on congregations’ responses.
The meeting, held at Quaker Hill Conference Center, took place in an atmosphere of excitement generated by a gathering of people from different traditions who share a vision.
In the long and lively discussions, participants challenged each other and their churches to recommit themselves to active peacemaking and prophetic witnessing on the war tax issue.
Robert Hull, peace/justice secretary for the General Conference Mennonite Church, said it was frustrating that many members of historic peace churches are not willing to witness against financial participation in preparing for war although they are opposed to physical participation in war.
When a church or organization decides to honor employees’ requests not to withhold their federal income tax, it assumes serious risks.
Any “responsible person” who willfully fails to withhold an employee’s taxes theoretically could be punished with a prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.
An organization could be fined $500,000.
But such penalties have never been imposed on legitimate religious organizations, nor are they likely to be, said two lawyers at the meeting.
The usual Internal Revenue Service response to war tax resistance is to take the amount of tax owed, plus a 5 percent penalty and interest, from the employee’s bank account.
IRS has not taken even this action against the four GC employees who are not having their taxes withheld.
They pay the nonmilitary portion of their taxes themselves and deposit the 53 percent that would have gone to the military in a designated account.
IRS has not touched that account since it was established after GC delegates approved the policy in .
All GC personnel who could be subject to penalties have agreed to accept the risk.
The Friends World Committee for Consultation, which has had a nonwithholding policy , has had tax money seized, plus interest and penalties, from its resisters’ bank accounts.
The Friends United Meeting adopted a nonwithholding policy .
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends will decide in whether it should have such a policy.
Charles Boyer of the Church of the Brethren said he would use the input from the meeting to work toward helping his denomination develop a policy on tax resistance.
Participants made suggestions for improvements on a draft of “A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers” written by Hull, Linda Coffin of the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns, and lawyers Peter Goldberger and J.E. McNeil.
The manual is expected to be available .
The consultation was sponsored by the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns and New Call to Peacemaking.
The latter is a cooperative peace organization of the historic peace churches.
New Call to Peacemaking plans to sponsor a military tax withholding meeting for a wider range of church groups sometime in the future.
Whether or not military tax resistance “works,” participants agreed that people’s moral imperative to follow their consciences must be respected.
“No conscientious objector ever stopped a conflict,” said William Strong, a Quaker representative.
“But they had to explain what they did, and the vision was kept alive, and those ripples — you don’t know where they stop.
The Mennonite Church was playing catch up with their cousins the General Conference Mennonite Church when it came to deciding how to react to employees who were conscientious objectors to military taxation, but now it was their turn to begin the process.
From the issue:
As the result of a General Assembly mandate , Mennonite Church General Board has initiated a plan to consider church agency tax withholding.
The General Assembly action calls for General Board to bring to the assembly a proposal for how the church should respond to questions of conscientious objection to the payment of military taxes and the institutional withholding of the military portion of employees’ income taxes.
Steps in the consideration process, as approved at the board’s meeting, began in with participation in the interdenominational Employers Tax Withholding Consultation in Richmond, Ind. Then a working document, clarifying the issues and enumerating possible responses, will be prepared for General Board study.
Board members will devote a day to the issue prior to their regular meeting.
The discernment process will continue as revised copies of the working document are available for conference and congregational study .
A summary of conference responses will be included in the General Board docket in , when the board will develop a recommendation to be presented for General Assembly action in .
The issue noted that the “first major public event” of the Peace and Justice Center at Stirling Ave. Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ont. “was a… seminar to explore alternatives to paying taxes for military purposes.”
In a letter to the editor in the issue, Jurgen Brauer wrote that after reading Tolstoy he came to feel that “it is high time that the issue of tax withholding (or redirecting) becomes the major issue of the church.”
The “Taxes for Peace” fund gave its annual update
in the issue.
They’d decided to donate all of the taxes redirected through the fund to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund , and announced that they’d redirected about $4,000 to “the Lancaster County, Pa., Peacework Alternatives project.”
Poster on war tax resistance from Mennonite Central Committee.
The words on the poster are by John Stoner: “We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God.”
It is available from MCC at…
The General Board of the Mennonite Church met in :
Chris Longenecker tells General Board how she decided to ask her employer — Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions — to stop withholding the military portion of her taxes from her wages.
Eastern Board, like other Mennnonite Church institutions, is waiting for guidance on this issue from General Board before it honors a request like this.
Ed Metzler (left) and Jim Lapp lead the General Board discussion on war taxes.
In a decision that will lead to breaking the law if approved by the General Assembly , the General Board of the Mennonite Church has recommended that war taxes not be withheld from the paychecks of denominational employees who request that.
The 32-member board passed the recommendation unanimously, with a few abstentions.
The action, which came during the board’s meeting in Kitchener, Ont., was a long-awaited response to several people at church agencies and schools who, because of conscience, do not want to pay the portion of their taxes — about 50 percent in the United States — that goes to the military.
It was also a response to an impatient General Assembly that instructed General Board to take a stand on the issue.
“This has been an area we have been reluctant to move in,” said General Board executive secretary Jim Lapp in introducing the matter.
Ed Metzler, the denomination’s peace and social concerns secretary, said the main reasons for taking the non-withholding action are to allow individual expressions of conscience and to witness against militarism.
“But is this the best way to witness against militarism?” asked Tim Burkholder of Northwest Conference.
Other board members wondered if the church corporately should break the law to satisfy the consciences of a few individuals.
The board members, meeting at Pioneer Park Christian Fellowship, gathered a day earlier than usual to take up the war tax matter.
Metzler arranged for a variety of speakers to address the subject, including two persons who have requested non-withholding — Chris Longenecker of Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Carman Albrecht of Mennonite Central Committee Ontario.
John Stoner, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Peace Section, delivered a ringing “call for courage” based on the book of Revelation.
“It is unthinkable that John the Revelator would not see, in our time and place, the war tax demands of Western democratic militaristic capitalism as a challenge to our faithfulness to the witness of Jesus,” he said.
Bob Hull, peace/justice secretary for the General Conference Mennonite Church, explained the lengthy process that led to his denomination’s decision to honor requests for non-withholding.
It included a four-year effort to explore all legal channels — legislative, judicial, administrative — for avoiding the payment of war taxes.
Finally, at their convention in Bethlehem, Pa., 72 percent of the GC delegates voted to defy the law — the first denomination to do so.
(Several Quaker groups have since done the same.)
To date, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has not moved against the GC Church.
In the discussion that followed, several people argued that consistent conscientious objection to war should include a refusal to fight as well as to pay for fighting.
Others wondered why the Mennonite Church — and other denominations — agreed so easily to a law in the U.S. (and earlier in Canada) that required them to withhold taxes from employees’ wages, thus putting the church in the role of tax collector for the government.
For a while it looked like the board members might postpone action on the issue or pass the buck to the 22 conferences of the Mennonite Church.
But Moderator Ralph Lebold reminded them of their instructions from General Assembly, and Dean Swartzendruber of Iowa-Nebraska Conference urged the board to “decide here today.”
In the end, the decision was made after much deliberation and considerable rewriting of the proposed action.
In addition to honoring requests for non-withholding, it includes support for the Peace Tax Fund bill in the U.S. Congress that would provide conscientious objection to war taxes and a call for “serious attention” to the question of the church as tax collector.
The recommendation will now go to the conferences for review.
, General Board will take the responses from the conferences and shape a final recommendation for submission to the General Assembly.
The board members agreed that the recommendation will be introduced in person to the leaders of each conference by a denominational staff person.
Gospel Herald kept readers up on the news of other denominations struggling with the same issue ():
Philadelphia-area Quakers took a historic step recently to aid employees who were opposed to paying taxes for war purposes.
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, in its 308th annual session, agreed to withhold but not forward to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service the estimated military portion of its employees’ federal income taxes.
This money will be set aside in a special fund and paid to IRS with interest when there is assurance the money will not go for military spending.
Currently the organization has 42 employees, of which an average of seven are tax resisters at any time.
The decision to establish the set-aside fund for war tax resisters augments the decision to refuse cooperation with IRS levies on salaries of war tax resisters employed by the Yearly Meeting.
The policies could make the group liable for sizable fines and penalties for breaking federal law.
The Yearly Meeting also could incur liability for employees’ unpaid taxes.
And some Mennonite congregations were taking stands on their own (, Cindy Hines Kurfman reporting):
War-tax resistance is an important subject at Lafayette (Ind.) Mennonite Fellowship — important enough that members commit themselves to “support for those who, for reason of conscience, resist ‘war tax’ payment.”
To Ken Nagele, who began refusing to pay a portion of his taxes in , war-tax resistance originally meant not paying “the percentage associated with nuclear weapons.”
He now refuses to pay for “all current and past military spending,” but still pays the portion that benefits veterans in the belief that he is “helping those scarred by killing.”
Nagele uses a Friends Committee on National Legislation document each year to determine how much he will withhold.
This year the figure is 53.1 percent.
The refused portion will be deposited in the Near Eastside Community Federal Credit Union of Indianapolis.
This community-development credit union makes loans to low-income persons and small businesses in an economically depressed portion of the city.
Another member, Mary Ann Zoeller, is refusing to pay war taxes for the first time.
“As a Christian, I knew I could not, in good conscience, support the killing of others,” she says.
“Yet the existing tax laws require me to do just this, by asking me to pay taxes that finance military services.
Following Christ’s teachings of love of his persecutors, even to the loss of life, I have been led to question my support of our military.”
Zoeller sends the war-tax portion to Amnesty International, a human rights organization.
Alternative methods of war-tax resistance are also demonstrated by several families in the Lafayette congregation.
One family, whose income is below the taxable level, has written a letter to their tax commissioner since which explains their belief that paying for war is a sin.
Another couple keeps their payment to a minimum by following the example of their parents; live simply and give a large percentage of income to the church.
A Virginia congregation has decided to officially support its members who refuse to pay the military portion of their taxes.
Community Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va., has 20 members who illegally withhold some of their tax money as an act of conscientious objection to war taxes or are seriously considering it.
“The congregation’s decision grew out of the desire and concern of a few of us that our action be more than the isolated action of individual conscience,” said Orval Gingrich, one of the 20. The congregation is encouraging all its members to include letters of protest with their income tax returns and has notified Internal Revenue Service that it fully supports its members who don’t pay war taxes.
By it was time for another backlash letter to the editor.
Titus Martin hit the predictable Romans 13 notes and warned readers against relying on their consciences when conscience and scripture disagree.
As a compromise he suggested that readers use charitable deductions rather than civil disobedience to lower their taxes.
Even the Presbyterians were getting in on the tax resistance act, according to this news brief:
The document describes obedience to civil authority as normative for Christians but asks the denomination to set up a special fund to support Presbyterians who suffer financial losses because of a stance of resistance.
The paper argues that withholding taxes to protest U.S. military policy is proper under certain circumstances.
Such activists are entitled to emotional support from the church, the paper says.
The IRS went on the offensive against the Philadelphia Yearly meeting, which may have been frightening news for a Mennonite Church which was contemplating taking a similar stand ():
The Internal Revenue Service has filed two suits against a Quaker group in Pennsylvania because the organization has refused to attach the wages of two employees who have withheld part of their income taxes as a conscientious protest against military spending.
The lawsuits against the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends seek $17,000 in connection with federal taxes that were not paid by William Grassie and David Falls.
IRS said it takes such action against the employer of anyone who fails to pay taxes on the ground that salaries are property that can be levied by the government in such cases.
A new resource is available on the war-tax issue for Mennonite Church conferences — and others — that are currently considering whether church institutions should be instructed to not withhold taxes from the wages of employees who express conscientious objection to the military portion of their taxes.
Conferences are to submit their counsel to General Board in preparation for a proposal to General Assembly at Normal .
The resource is a just-published book called Fear God and Honor the Emperor: A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers.
Each purchaser of the book will be on a mailing list to receive future updates on the subject.
The book is available at a special price of $11 from Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries…
This is the thirty-fourth 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.
In the issue, Titus Peachey tried to rekindle the spark of moral urgency around the issue of war tax resistance:
As tax deadlines near in the United States and Canada, half a world away in Laos, farmers prepare for spring planting.
For northern Lao farmers, hoeing can be a deadly task because of cluster bombs, now buried, that were dropped by the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
alone, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) received news of 18 casualties in Xieng Khouang Province.
In North America, cluster bombs do not exact a toll of broken limbs and lives; rather, they appear in the guise of jobs, an expanding tax base, and protection of a way of life.
The MCC / Mines Advisory Group effort to remove bombs in Laos is not just a technical fix for the tragic consequences of war, but it is also an invitation to a spiritual journey along the paths of compassion, justice, and repentance.
The project challenges us to consider what Christ’s peace means when routine obedience to tax laws brings pain to others.
Sadly, tax dollars still fund cluster bombs.
The Human Rights Watch Arms Project estimates that some 34 million cluster bombs were dropped over Iraq and Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War.
Even a conservative estimate of a 5 percent dud rate means that some 1.7 million unexploded bomblets are strewn throughout Iraq and Kuwait.
According to the Human Rights Watch Arms Project, 1,600 civilians — Iraqi and Kuwaiti— have been killed and some 2,500 have been injured in cluster bomb accidents since the end of the war.
Taxes for peace
Each year,
MCC’s
Peace and Justice Ministries invites contributions to a special “Taxes for Peace” fund.
This fund allows people who withhold the portion of their taxes that would go for military purposes to contribute that money for a peaceful purpose.
While this is a symbolic action and not a legal alternative to paying the tax, many people find it a meaningful way to demonstrate their commitment to peace.
In the United States about 46 percent of federal income tax goes for military purposes; in Canada the figure is about 7.5 percent.
This year’s “Taxes for Peace” fund will support peace education and responses to militarism.
This will include publishing a revised edition of “Peace Education: Ideas That Work” and preparing materials to assist congregations in responding to military industries and recruitment in local communities.
Checks should be written to MCC and sent to MCC U.S. Peace and Justice Ministries…
In companies from Lancaster, Pa., to Downey, Calif., a new generation of cluster bombs is being produced.
Cluster bombs are also manufactured by other countries.
They have been used recently in the former Yugoslavia and by Russia in its battle with Chechnya.
Unlike land mines, whose export is currently banned, cluster bombs are still exported to other countries.
In , a Minnesota firm announced that Turkey had agreed to purchase 493 CBU-87 cluster bombs — a type that combines anti-armor, anti-personnel, and incendiary effects.
Human rights groups oppose the sale because of Turkey’s poor human rights record; the sale awaits approval from the U.S. State Department.
In the midst of complex political, military, and economic systems that create defense strategies and weapons such as cluster bombs, one of the church’s greatest temptations is silence and accommodation.
Lao villagers, who have lived with cluster bombs these past 20 to 30 years, are often silent also, lacking options.
They don’t have the technical expertise to address the problem.
Pressed with the demands of making a living from the soil, they have endured the outrage of cluster bombs so long that for many it has become “normal.”
In a similar way, North American Christians have become accustomed to beautifully landscaped industrial parks that produce weapons and to the annual ritual of paying a percentage of their income tax for war.
The MCC / MAG bomb removal project in Laos, along with our commitment to Christ’s peace, challenge us to imagine alternatives.
Simpler living and reduced incomes can lower tax liabilities.
Groups of people can combine withheld tax dollars and contribute to programs that support peace and life.
We can write letters of concern about the use of taxes for war and share them with legislators or submit them as letters to the editor of local newspapers.
We can also open conversation with local weapons manufacturers and discuss meaningful alternatives to the production of arms.
A question had begun to emerge in Mennonite circles about whether it was okay to accept unrepentant members of the military as bona fide Mennonites (this is how far the “nonresistant” doctrine had fallen by this time).
Lester Lind wrote a letter to the editor on this issue for the issue that touched on his war tax resistance:
I affirm conscientious objection to war that I learned in the Mennonite Church.
For me this includes nonpayment of that part of my taxes going for military purposes.
It seems to be stretching the boundaries to the breaking point to include those of us who cannot in clear conscience pay all our taxes and those who willingly serve in the military.
Another letter to the editor, this one from Dennis Brooks (), was ready to jettison entirely the idea that people who served the military were violating Christian doctrines by doing so:
Perhaps nonpayment of war taxes and other antimilitary strategies (as opposed to Jesus’s nonviolent strategies) are a result of Anabaptist culture rather than biblical theology.
I know some Christians who neither participate in war taxes or, for that matter, in an economy that requires war taxes a priori.
They are called priests, nuns, and monks in some churches.
In others they are missionaries.
Many have forsaken family, homes, lands, and generally all that is part of the American dream to pursue a life of active peacemaking.
Others invest their life in families and various careers and see no conflict with the teaching of Jesus.
We all make choices.
And Daniel Slabaugh chimed in () to say that the Mennonites might as well throw in the towel and start admitting soldiers, after all the compromising they’d been doing on their nonresistant testimony:
If honesty is a virtue, then Virginia Mennonite Conference [which apparently was considering welcoming members of the military into their congregations] should be affirmed in their attempt to live it.
The Mennonite Church has voluntarily and without protest financed (the ultimate form of approval) the American military since the beginning of the federal income tax.
To refuse membership in this church to a person who is committed to the military is therefore blatant hypocrisy.
However, the honesty of admitting that we no longer believe in “Love your neighbor as yourself” may have lost any redeeming quality.
This is another verification of the fact that when the goal of the church is numbers, then the first casualty is unpopular scriptural truth.
[P]eople stepped forward to announce their pledge to transform violence with nonviolent action in the coming year.
Pledges included withholding at least $20 from one’s income tax ($1 for every 1000 nuclear warheads in existence today)…
John Longhurst reported, in the issue, that there was some hope for a Peace Tax Fund law to be enacted in Canada, so long as the law would have no practical meaningfulness:
Winnipeg, Man. (MCC Canada) — Canadian church and peace groups have been told that the federal government is open to a proposal to allow taxpayers to legally divert their income taxes away from military spending.
That message was conveyed to a delegation comprised of representatives from the Conference of Mennonites in Canada, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Canada, Conscience Canada, the Quakers, and Nos Impots Pour la Paix during a recent meeting in Ottawa with officials from Finance Minister Paul Martin’s office.
According to Sylvain Segard, departmental assistant in the Finance Minister’s office, “the Minister is receptive” to the idea and is open to seeing “if something can be done” to accommodate the request within the current tax code.
The proposal marks a change in direction for the groups, which previously had called on the government to set up a Peace Tax Fund, an independent fund administered by a volunteer committee to which Canadians could redirect tax dollars.
Money would have been directed from this fund to government departments and agencies, as well as to nongovernmental projects chosen by the committee.
Different governments have consistently maintained that the creation of such a separate fund would be impossible since it would constrain the authority of the government to establish policy and set spending priorities.
The new proposal replaces the idea of the fund with a Peace Tax, which would be part of the income tax code.
“The government was never going to make the Peace Tax Fund legal since it created another tax-receiving body and, by putting control of the fund in the hands of a committee, impinged on Parliament’s ability to determine how taxes would be spent,” says Chris Derksen Hiebert of MCC’s Ottawa Office.
“The new proposal allows the government to maintain control of and receive redirected money.
In return, they would promise not to use redirected money for the military.”
According to the new proposal, taxpayers who wanted to direct the military portion of their taxes — 7 percent of federal spending in — could do so by checking a box on their income tax form.
Joy Newall of Conscience Canada acknowledges that the new direction is a compromise.
“We did it to get something we believe in: to have conscientious objector status recognized within the framework of the tax code,” she says.
What Conscience Canada gives up is the ability to tell the government where the money should go.
“The government will only guarantee that the money will not go to the military,” Newall explains.
Newall is hopeful that eventually the government will be open to letting taxpayers designate where they want their redirected taxes to go.
Possible programs and projects include foreign aid, research and training in nonviolent resolution of conflicts, and peace education.
“I think the government thinks that only a few people will actually take advantage of this opportunity,” she says.
“But I believe they will be hugely surprised by the large number of Canadians who will very happily divert their taxes away from military spending.”
Elwin Hermanson, Reform Party House Leader and a member of the Beachy, Sask., Mennonite Brethren Church, is sympathetic to the idea, as long is it “would not place a costly bureaucratic burden on the system.”
Copies of the Peace Tax proposal are available from the MCC Canada Ottawa Office…
The “A New Call to Peacemaking” initiative was still active, and held a conference on “Peacemaking in the Nuclear Family” in .
The group seems to have moved on from war tax resistance as a primary focus, but it still came up:
David and Sabrina Falls, Quakers from Richmond, Ind., told the story of their war tax resistance.
Jesus was active, they told the group.
Yet even when he was angry, he “employed love in the form of challenging words and nonviolent demonstrations, rather than violence.”
