Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Mennonites / Amish →
Linda & Titus Gehman Peachey
Some bits-and-pieces from around the web:
Susan Balzer writes about Mennonite war tax resisters for the Mennonite Weekly Review.
Some of the resisters mentioned: Tim Godshall, Willard and Mary Swartley, Ray Gingerich, Harold A. Penner, John and Janet Stoner, Albert and Mary Ellen Meyer, Don Kaufman, Titus and Linda Gehman Peachey, and Stan Bohn.
A Tax Tea Party Revolt will be the only recourse available in the wake of efforts to not provide equal treatment to all citizens under law …
This means gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people will not be filing taxes April 15th.
War tax resister NTodd Pritsky at Pax Americana takes note of the prosecution of a tax evader and wonders if this is going to be his eventual fate as well.
Pritsky is resisting both federal and state taxes (as a war tax resister, he is protesting state complicity in the military industrial complex and in the wars via the state national guard).
Fighting this battle on two fronts takes a lot of energy, and he’s not sure it’s worth it.
PeaceSigns is a publication of the U.S. Mennonite Church’s Peace & Justice Support Network. The latest issue focuses on war tax resistance, and includes:
is the deadline for filing
U.S. federal income
tax returns — “Tax Day” — which is also a traditional day of action and
publicity for American war tax resisters. Here is an overview of some from this
year:
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund sent out its Spring Report.
The fund distributed $9,988 to war tax resisters last year to reimburse them for any penalties and interest the IRS had managed to seize from them.
This is the thirty-third in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue through the middle-1980s.
War tax resistance grew to be a front-and-center concern of the General Conference Mennonite Church in the 1970s, but by the mid-1980s interest in the topic began to suddenly decline.
I noticed a similar thing when I looked at how war tax resistance rose and fell in the Society of Friends.
Perhaps the topic had been talked-out and people felt there was little more to add to the arguments that had already been made: everybody had the chance to learn about the issue and take their stand, and there wasn’t much left to talk about.
Or perhaps the topic had left the pages of The Mennonite for other publications — like God and Caesar (a specialty publication for war tax resisters put out by a Mennonite group), or the newsletter of the recently-founded National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
The energy Mennonites were putting into the fools’ errand of World Peace Tax Fund legislation was certainly a distraction.
Certainly there were Mennonites who would have contemplated conscientious war tax resistance or argued for it, but who were instead content to lobby Congress to give them a box to check.
John R. Dyck wrote in with concern about this lapse of interest:
Thank you for picking up this important issue [military taxes] again (see issue) at a time when many of our people hoped it was a thing of the past.
Must we look to other denominations or people than our own to take a bolder leadership position when it comes to dealing with governments?
We have almost fallen asleep in the quietness and relative peace in our country, and the fairly consistent drop of dollars into our coffers has been an effective tranquilizer.
One of the articles in that issue was Edith Adamson (of Conscience Canada) and Marian Franz (of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund) promoting the Peace Tax Fund law idea.
Such a law, they said “would remove the agonizing dilemma that forces conscientious objectors to either disregard their deepest beliefs or disobey the laws of their country.”
They claimed the proposed law would “rechannel[] some tax dollars away from the military and into human needs programs,” and would raise awareness of “nations’ misplaced priorities.”
The Tax Court of Canada, in a recent 28-page ruling, held that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not permit taxpayers to withhold the “military portion” of their taxes.
Jerilyn Prior, a Vancouver physician of Quaker faith who brought the case, had withheld 10.5 percent of her taxes and sent them instead to a peace fund.
The court concluded, “Even if the assessment were objectively and in reality an infringement upon the appellant’s freedom of conscience and religion… the Canadian tax system… would be a reasonable limit which must be imposed in a free and democratic society…”
taxes for peace fund
Titus and Linda Peachey are directing a Pennsylvania project supported by Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Peace Section.
Taxes for Peace is for those wishing to designate a portion of their tax dollars for a peaceful purpose.
The section is also offering a packet of information about military tax opposition.
This year’s Taxes for Peace fund supports the Lancaster County Peacework Alternatives Project, addressing peace and militarism issues in Lancaster County, where 50 companies held prime military contracts worth $150 million with U.S. military agencies in .
The Peacheys hope to raise public awareness of the nature and extent of militarism in the Lancaster area and to work with local churches and groups about the theological and ethical questions of militarism.
They also want to help defense employees deal with the ethical dilemmas posed by defense-related jobs and begin a dialogue with managers of local military-related industries.
Peace Section hopes that this one-year pilot project will serve as a model and inspiration for other peace groups interested in initiating similar projects in their communities.
In more than 40 people contributed $4,645.85 to the Taxes for Peace fund.
This money was forwarded to a project in Guatemala that aided victims of violence.
European Mennonites: “as important as conscription”
Tubingen, West Germany (MCC)—
Green party parliamentarian Petra Kelly called on governments to heed the example of Christian communities and churches during the opening address at the First International Conference of Military Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns held here .
In particular she lauded the decision of the General Conference Mennonite Church not to force its employees to pay war taxes against their conscience.
Over 80 people representing most Western European countries, Australia, Japan, Canada and the United States attended.
Most of those at the conference were tax resisters.
Some redirect the military part of their income tax to peace-making purposes, others live below a taxable income level, and others symbolically withhold some of their taxes.
In West Germany and the Netherlands, for example, many take a first step by redirecting 5.72 German marks or Dutch guilders as a sign of their opposition to the deployment of the 572 U.S. Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe.
They believe that the conscription of their money is as important as the conscription of young men in preparing for and fighting war.
Several participants shared their experiences with tax resistance.
Arthur Windsor, a white-haired and mild-mannered Quaker from Gloucester, England, told how he could not reconcile his faith in Christ with paying tax monies that built nuclear and traditional weapons for oppressive Third World regimes.
He smiled when he remembered the remark of the constable who came to take him to jail, “The law is not the same as justice.”
Work groups met on to discuss “Law and Conscience,” “Symbolic Actions and Publicity” and “International Cooperation.”
Susumu Ishitiani, a Quaker from Japan, preached the final sermon in the Stepahanus Church, which hosted the conference.
Sponsors of the event included the German Mennonite Peace Committee, the German Quaker Peace Committee and the German Branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Mennonite participants included Marian Franz, executive director of the U.S.-based National Campaign for a World Peace Tax fund, Wolfgang Krauss of the German Mennonite Peace Committee and Andre Gingerich of Mennonite Central Committee in West Germany.
In there had been something of a purge of gay Mennonites from leadership positions, after a resolution at the Saskatoon conference unambiguously condemned homosexuality.
Robert Hull wondered why Mennonite institutions were being so selective about which sins they were going to condemn in this manner:
I… pointed out that the GC triennial sessions at Fresno, Calif. in declared that “all war and all that contributes to war is a sin.”
Yet some GC congregations accept as members people who have served in the military and not publicly repented, who work in defense industries, who pay federal taxes.
A new video program on war tax resistance is available for free loan from the Mennonite Central Committee Resource Library… War Tax Resistance Seminar includes a lecture and panel discussion presented in in Lancaster County, Pa.
The General Assembly of the Mennonite Church (confusingly not the General Conference Mennonite Church) took place in .
According to The Mennonite:
“Nearly all 260 delegates representing 22 conferences in the United States and Canada encouraged the church’s governing body to find a way for church institutions to respond to the consciences of employees who object to paying that portion of their taxes destined for military use, even if such action involves civil disobedience.”
Marian Franz wrote in the edition that in her experience war tax resistance and work on peace tax fund lobbying was a good form of outreach for the anti-war message.
Excerpts:
In the national capitals.
When you in the local areas and we in Washington and Ottawa continue to press the issue of conscience, our single acts have widespread reverberations.
Often members of government and their legislative assistants feel compelled to examine their consciences.
In my experience, as we explain why people cannot pay the military portion of their taxes, the member of government or the aide feels compelled to explain why their conscience does not agree with ours (something we did not come there to ask) or to admit that our witness has caused them to listen to their conscience in a new way.
Among religious bodies.
The fact that a sincere expression of conscientious conviction is infectious is demonstrated by the burgeoning examples of conscientious statements among religious bodies.
In North America a new “peace church” is emerging that spans virtually every denomination, confession and constituency.
Most of the major church bodies and bishops’ conferences have made statements, many surprisingly forceful, against nuclear weapons and the spiraling arms race.
At the congregational and parish level, Bible study, prayer and discussion around the nuclear question is occurring across Canada and the United States.
Old distinctions between pacifists and just-war proponents are breaking down.
The threat of nuclear war has raised, for an increasing number of Christians, a crisis of conscience.
At the corporate level.
Until now in our history, conscientious objection was considered only an individual matter.
Conscientious objection to paying taxes for military force was a matter between the individual and God, the individual and conscience, the individual and the courts, the individual and revenue collection agencies.
Now another dimension has been added to the picture.
It is called corporate military tax resistance.
Even in the face of large maximum penalties ($25,000 fine for each person and/or 10 years in prison), religious bodies are beginning to ask if they as corporate entities can any longer in good conscience withhold taxes from the salaries of those employees who ask for reasons of conscience that they not be withheld.
To date such corporate action has been taken only by small groups in historic peace churches (e.g. the General Conference Mennonite Church; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a six-state region of Quakers; and the Friends World Committee on Consultation).
But that action is now under consideration by some of the largest denominations.
When we mention such corporate actions and considerations in Congressional offices, new interest is sparked.
Conscientious objection as a matter of individual conscience is one thing, but when it occurs on a corporate level it draws a different quality of attention.
At an international level.
The Canadian and U.S. Peace Tax Fund efforts are a small campaign as lobbies go.
Yet small seeds continue to sprout and blossom.
The exact wording of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill now appears in legislation introduced in the parliaments of several nations.
How could David Bassett, a Quaker physician from Ann Arbor, Mich., who drafted the U.S. peace tax legislation with law faculty, have dreamed that one day he would attend an international conference of peace tax campaigns?
After five years as executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund in the United States, I was thrilled to attend the first international conference of peace tax campaigns and war tax resisters in Tubingen .
One hundred participants from 15 countries gathered for the conference.
They came together at the invitation of five German groups, including the Deutsches Mennonitisches Friedens Komitee (German Mennonite Peace Committee).
In workshops, panel discussions, and plenary sessions many participants expressed openly and in moving ways the Christian basis for their beliefs and actions.
While the religious and political backgrounds of the participants varied, there was little diversity in their conviction of conscience.
All found it a clear violation of conscience to pay the military portion of their taxes.
All saw the connection between the 4 million people who starve each year and swollen military budgets.
All noted that what the world spends in just 10 days for military expenditures could not only feed all the hungry on earth for a year but also provide them with clean water, housing and education.
Even the setting for the conference was a reminder of why we had gathered.
From the Tubingen church where we met, we could see a hospital for brain-damaged people from World War Ⅱ, now under conversion into a training center for the triage method of treating the victims of the next war.
I was struck by how many of the participants had known the trauma of war firsthand.
The majority were Europeans and had lived under bombs and/or had grown up with family members missing because of World War Ⅱ.
Antje Spannenberg was one of the generation of children who had plagued their parents with the question, “How could you have allowed Hitler to come into and remain in power?
Why didn’t you stop him?”
Now Antje’s children are asking her, “How can you allow a world full of weapons so dreadful and dangerous?”
Ursula Windsor, a refugee from Nazi Germany now living in England and married to Britisher Arthur Windsor, admits, “I know if enough of us had resisted we could have stopped Hitler.
For some it would not have been difficult; for others, a great sacrifice.
Whether simple or difficult, there came a time when it was too late.”
Ursula knew that truth from experience.
“I have watched my favorite possessions being taken out of my home as the British Inland Revenue Service claimed them in lieu of taxes we have not paid because we believe that Jesus forbids us to pay for war.”
Her husband, Arthur, went to prison for three weeks.
On the day of Arthur’s release he was met at the prison gate by a member of the British Parliament who escorted him to the British House of Commons.
With Arthur in the gallery, the member of Parliament introduced the British Peace Tax Fund into Parliament.
On that day, for the first time, it received 10 minutes of official debate.
She also briefly profiled conference attendees Wolfgang Krauss of West Germany and Susumu Ishitani of Japan.
Military tax resistance.
Are there conscientious objectors to taxes for military purposes in other countries, and do some refuse to pay the military portion of their taxes to their governments?
Yes.
Some withhold all, some the military portion and some a symbolic portion from their taxes.
For some these actions are a political strategy; for many they are based on religious commitment.
Reports from the various countries echoed a refrain.
In the Netherlands 5.72 guilders is a symbolic amount withheld by many.
In Germany 5.72 Deutsche Marks is a symbolic amount.
The number represents the 572 Pershing Ⅱ and cruise missiles on European soil and expresses abhorrence for the fact that they shorten the nuclear fuse to six minutes.
Legislative efforts.
Has any country succeeded in passing peace tax legislation that would make it legal to have the military portion of their citizens’ taxes go into a separate fund?
Not yet.
Countries working for legislation are the Federal Republic of Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Finland, Australia and the United States.
Switzerland and Spain have no organized effort for legal recognition of conscientious objection to military taxes.
France has a fund in which tax-resisted dollars are collected, as does Italy.
The Peace Tax campaigns of Canada and Japan, rather than promoting peace tax legislation, are challenging their governments in the courts based on constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience (Canada) and constitutional stipulations that not more than 1 percent of the gross national product be used for military force (Japan).
Other judicial efforts.
Attempts to establish through the courts the legal right to redirect taxes from military purposes have been pursued in many countries.
Except in Italy, these efforts have been without success.
The standard response of governments to non-payment of the military portion of taxes (if they respond at all) includes trials, confiscation of property, fines and interest fees, and — in rare instances — prison.
The standard response of the courts to tax resisters who are brought to trial is that the issues raised present a “political question” that the courts cannot address or that constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and/or religion do not outweigh the duty of a citizen to pay taxes.
The greatest success and surprise story was that de facto recognition of conscientious objection to military taxes exists in Italy.
Fifty war tax resisters have been prosecuted in six legal cases and have been acquitted in every case.
They based their case on the fact that freedom of conscience is guaranteed in the Italian constitution.
Participants from Italy reported at Tubingen that four years ago they knew of only 20 who did not pay the military portion of their taxes for reasons of conscience.
That number is now 3,500 and growing.
War tax resisters are no longer prosecuted in Italy.
I listened with anticipation to the featured speaker, Petra Kelly, founder of the Green party, and member of the West German Bundestag (Parliament).
Referring to the Hitler years, she said, “Because we can recall the painful experiences of fascism in this country, especially when it comes to military violence, we cannot retreat into obedience by our citizens in relation to the state.
In the domain of conscience there is a higher duty.
The special status of human conscience and the fundamental right not to kill is set apart from other issues.
Therefore governments should make allowance for tax redirection that they would make in no other cases.”
Then came the surprise.
Kelly said that in searching for signs of some way out of the dark morass of military expenditures, she finds an example in the Mennonites.
She said, “An example for me is the [General Conference] Mennonite Church.
A group of members decided the following:
‘The employees of the church administration are given the power to be true to the high demands of Christ’s Law of Love, in that they can resist withholding taxes from employees that have requested it and therefore open up the possibility to resist for reasons of conscience to pay for the preparation of war.’ ”
She continued, “This example should give us all courage, but it is also a clear signal of that which happens in many Christian churches and can give us hope.”
I thought back to the long struggle of conscience that culminated in the conference decision cited by Kelly.
At the time we were not thinking of what the rest of the world would think of us, but only whether our action was consistent with obedience to Christ.
I certainly did not expect to hear it quoted three years later by a member of a foreign parliament, at a conference of 15 countries.
Conscience is contagious.
This is the thirty-sixth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we enter the 1990s.
In residents began refusing to pay taxes to the Israeli occupiers.
Tax money should go for roads, health and local services, they said.
But the occupiers were supplying none of these services.
Instead they used taxes to fund the military occupation.
Residents adopted the slogan “No taxation without representation.”
The authorities responded with nightly curfews, mass arrests and a strong troop presence in the town.
But residents still did not pay their taxes.
For six weeks in , Israeli troops sealed off the town.
They seized property and belongings from businessmen and families who had not paid taxes.
Tax officials went from house to house humiliating and beating people, according to a account in the Jerusalem Post.
Israeli tax officials confiscated without trial several million dollars worth of property.
The tax siege has now been lifted, but Beit Sahour residents still refuse to pay taxes.
I recently attended a meeting that focused on the question of paying the military portion (about 50 percent) of our [U.S.] federal income taxes.
I left the meeting troubled, not because there were varying viewpoints but because many people appeared unconcerned about the issue and failed to address what I believe are key questions on the matter.
The question for me is not whether we should honor our government or whether a government has the right to collect taxes.
The crux of the matter is to determine when Caesar’s demands conflict with our obedience to God.
I fear that if I were to give Caesar all that he demands in war taxes, I would fail to honor God in four important ways.
I fear that by paying the military portion of my income taxes I fail to trust God alone for my security.
Throughout history nations have tried to secure their well-being and safety through military solutions.
Again and again in the Bible God asks us to resist such solutions and to trust him instead:
War horses are useless for victory; their great strength cannot save.
The Lord watches over those who have reverence for him, those who trust in his constant love.
He saves them from death… We put our hope in the Lord; he is our protector and our help (Psalm 33:17–20).
If I work several months each year to pay my nation’s military dues, am I not giving legitimacy to the military establishment’s answers for my security?
If I am willing to invest so much of my time and energy in a military solution, can I honestly say that God is my protector?
I fear that by paying my war taxes I fail to give my primary loyalty to Christ’s worldwide church.
My war taxes would purchase planes, bombs, guns and military training to be used in Third World settings.
Although our country is not involved in any declared war, our military might is felt keenly in Central America, the Philippines and the Middle East.
In fact, in recent years the United States has adopted a policy of promoting “low-intensity conflict” in countries that threaten to move out from under our sphere of influence.
This means keeping warfare away from the American public eye and avoiding the involvement of American soldiers in the fighting.
Yet our brothers and sisters in Christ do die in the struggle.
Can I say that my first loyalty is to the worldwide kingdom of God if I comply with structures that do violence to my neighbors around the world?
I fear that by paying my war taxes I fail to follow Christ as he calls me to love all people, even my enemies.
In Matthew 5 Jesus no doubt surprised his listeners by challenging them to love not only their friends but all people, just as God does.
This has not been an easy teaching for the church.
Peter struggled with it when he was called to go to Cornelius, a gentile, and Paul reminded the early church often that the gospel was not only for Jews but also for gentiles.
Ephesians 2:14
points this out: “For Christ himself has brought us peace by making Jews and gentiles one people.
With his own body he broke down the wall that separated them and kept them enemies.”
Do we believe that this can also apply to Americans and Soviets, rich and poor, capitalist and communist?
Can I believe this and at the same time contribute to the forces that are designed to destroy these very people whom Christ called me to love?
I fear that by paying my war taxes I fail to respect God’s creation.
In today’s world, militarism not only threatens people but all of creation as well.
While militarism is not the only way we dishonor God’s creation, it is through nuclear weapons that we dare to threaten all that God has made.
Can I claim to truly honor God if I continue to help pay for such weapons?
I think these questions have special poignancy for us as Mennonites.
We claim to be conscientious objectors to war.
Yet in a low-intensity conflict or in a nuclear war it is almost irrelevant to say that we will not serve in the military.
These kinds of wars do not demand our bodies but our dollars and our consent.
Thus we cannot ignore this issue of war taxes.
I recognize that sincere people differ on this issue.
Some encourage elected leaders to reorder our nation’s priorities.
Some give away more of their income so that they owe less income tax.
Some live in community so that they can live on lower incomes.
Some withhold a symbolic amount of all of their military taxes.
Some support legislative efforts that would allow conscientious objectors to designate the military portion of their federal taxes to a peace tax fund.
What is important is not so much that we all agree but that we agonize together on these questions.
Let us pray for wisdom as we wrestle with what this issue means for our faith in God, our witness as a Christian church, our faithfulness to Christ and our reverence for God’s creation.
This was accompanied by a sidebar invitation for people to redirect their taxes through “the Taxes for Peace fund.”
It added that “In , $5750 in Taxes for Peace funds were divided between the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and Christian Peacemaker Teams; 1990 contributions will be divided the same way.”
Members of St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship recently passed a proposal to faithfully resist payments of the U.S. federal phone tax applied monthly to the fellowship’s phone bill.
The revenues will be redirected to Mennonite Central Committee.
“We wish to respect the convictions of our members and Anabaptist forebears and to be disciplined followers of Jesus Christ,” said Scott Neufeld, coordinator of St. Louis Mennonite Peace Witness.
Federal phone tax revenues, first collected in , contribute directly to the U.S. Armed Forces and other systems of war, Neufeld said.
Looking at our Anabaptist heritage and looking at our Scriptures in light of contemporary political realities, we do not have to be pressed to pray for peace while paying for war.
Our spiritual authority in Jesus Christ, as expressed by apostles and Anabaptist forebears, allows and empowers us to make the difficult decision to withhold war taxes.
Balthasar Hubmaier, writing about taxes paid to an unjust government, states, “…to come to the point, God will excuse us for nothing on the account of unjust superiors…” (Anabaptism in Outline, Klassen, p. 246).
The U.S. government has become unjust, and when a government is unjust, it has forfeited the right to expect my taxes.
As Christians and Anabaptists, we have a rich tradition of conscience.
In some ways we even have a tradition of anarchy.
Anarchy in the eyes of the world, that is, for we may claim a greater authority — God.…
The early Anabaptists — Menno Simons, Balthasar Hubmaier, Jacob Hutter and Peter Rideman — all spoke out on the proper attitude of a Christian toward government, on paying taxes used for war and on the production of weapons of violence.
For Anabaptist Christians the issue to pay or not to pay war taxes has a significant history.
Jacob Hutter wrote, “For how can we be innocent before our God if we do not go to war ourselves but give the money that others may go in our place?
We will not become partakers of the sin of others and dishonor and despise God” (“Plots and Excuses,” Klassen p. 252).
While this may refer to the practice of paying one’s way out of military service by supplying a replacement, it still holds true that aiding the carrying out of violence indirectly indicts the taxpayer as a participant in the violence enacted.
Similarly Peter Rideman asserts that one has a responsibility not only for what one produces but also for how those products are used by others.
Rideman states that Christians cannot build weapons of violence, even if they do not use those products themselves.
The one who produces weapons is responsible for the violence inflicted.
But the issue of our history as Christians and as Anabaptists concerning the issue of war tax resistance is made more difficult because of our reading of the biblical texts relating to government, particularly Matthew 22:21 (and other texts referring to government, e.g. Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2:14).
In any discussion of war tax resistance among Christians, the words of Jesus are almost always quoted, “…render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” However, if we look closely at the political and historical context of these biblical texts, we have to ask ourselves how we can apply Jesus’ response in Matthew 22:21 to ourselves in our political and historical situation.
Trick question: Ancient Palestine, in the time of Jesus, was a territory held captive under Roman rule.
Foreign powers hostile to Judaism had occupied Palestine, installed a puppet ruler, King Herod, and sought to form alliances with certain Jewish factions.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, reflected the thoughts and feelings of the majority of the poor and middle-class Jews, feelings of resentment and anger.
The Pharisees, who had been plotting to do away with Jesus on any grounds possible, were seeking to trick Jesus.
On the chance that Jesus might make some incriminating statements, the Pharisees sent their disciples to Jesus along with representatives from Herod.
That way, if Jesus said something self-incriminating to the religious people or to the political regime, he could be arrested.
As it was, neither truth nor justice were being sought by this group when they asked Jesus the question about paying the tax.
It was a trick question, and Jesus responded with a trick answer.
“And Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were greatly amazed at him” (Mark 12:17).
But what does his answer say to us?
What direction does it give to those who are not asking trick questions but whose motives are truth and justice?
We must take seriously that we do not live in a political situation anything like ancient Palestine.
We live in , has witnessed amazing revolutions of democratization.
Democracies seek to do away with the dichotomy between the government and the people.
In a democracy there is no Caesar.
Since we are not ruled by a monarch, we have no “caesar” over us.
If there is a caesar over us, so to speak, then we are caesar.
The U.S. Constitution begins by naming our caesar, “We the people.”…
We, as responsible citizens, are the political and moral authority of the United States.
If our nation blunders and falls, if it is unjust and violent, if it has misplaced priorities, then the blame is on us and not merely upon those we have elected to represent our concerns.
Living in a democracy, we actually pay taxes to ourselves.
We are responsible for setting the budgets.
We are responsible for policies.
One of our greatest problems is that we have surrendered democratic government to bureaucracy, allowing others to make decisions for us.
We are the caesar to whom we are to render our taxes, not some authority outside ourselves.
As such, it is up to us to decide what we will or will not render.
It is this freedom of conscience that makes democracy both attractive to those who live without it and a headache to those who must operate with it.
For this reason, Plato said, democracy is the best form of a bad government and the worst form of a good one.
A restraint of evil: Those of us who withhold a portion of our taxes are trying to reorient our national spending priorities by saying we will not pay for war or violence.
The portion we do not pay we give away to those who will use it for peace.
While we recognize that we are breaking a law of the people (willing to take responsibility and to be accountable for our actions), we are not breaking a law against caesar.
What we are trying to do is give ourselves what we need to function as a government, that is, to function as a restraint of evil and to be a supporter of good (1 Peter 2:14).
Menno Simons wrote that the task of government is to “do justice… to deliver the oppressed,… without tyranny… without force, violence and blood” (“Foundation of Christian Doctrine,” Complete Writings of Menno Simons, p. 193).
Government ceases to be legitimate when it ceases to be a force for order in both foreign and domestic realms, when it ceases to provide for the needs of all, and when it ceases to be a body of law for carrying out justice without violence and bloodshed.
Would we continue to give our tithes and offerings to a ministry that has been proven to be unethical, caught in scandalous dealings and clearly immoral?
If we held our government up to the same standards as we do televangelists and their ministries, the government would not be able to finance its bureaucracies.
Our government has been caught in one scandal after another, involved in or supporting one war after another.
And because we are caesar, we are responsible for this scandalous behavior.
Even though we have given away our democratic rights to bureaucratic powers, we still will bear God’s judgment.
The majority of our federal budget pays for the operations of the world’s largest military system, which prepares for war with scarce resources.
It finances low-intensity conflicts throughout the world by supplying and sponsoring surrogate armies.
It has yet to finish paying for past wars.
Thus we must come to terms with the reality that we are producing and indirectly using weapons of violence.
Living in a democracy, we are, as citizens, weapons producers by providing through our taxes the capital needed for the production of B1-Bs, MX “Peacekeepers,” Apache attack helicopters, bullets, rifles and on and on.
The Scriptures, which determine the right function of government, the witness of our Anabaptist forebears and our democratic freedoms force us to act in ways that affect the political process.
For many, tax resistance is a way to bring about a change in federal spending priorities.
But much more importantly, it is a way to make one’s life have integrity and to align one’s life with God’s gospel of shalom.
The edition announced a “Standing Up for Peace Contest” with $1,100 in prizes available to “young people ages 15–23” who “interview someone who has refused to fight in war, pay taxes for war, or build weapons for war and share the story through writing an essay or song, producing a video, or creating a work of art.”
The Mennonite Church General Board, after years of study and discussion, brought the military tax question to a vote, then tabled it.
a majority of General Assembly delegates voted to “support” the efforts of church board employees who do not wish their taxes deducted so that they may deal with the government in regard to military taxes.
At the General Board meetings in Kalona, Iowa, members tabled a motion to honor requests of employees who ask that their income tax not be withheld.
Gary Jewell, a student at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, Elkhart, Ind., handed out about $150 in $1 bills to passers-by in front of the downtown post office in Elkhart to express his opposition to U.S. military spending.
He gave away about half of what he and his wife, Jan Yoder, owe in federal income taxes.
The couple plans to give the rest to a charity like Mennonite Central Committee.
Stapled to each $1 bill was a statement by Jewell that read in part, “Today I choose to give my money away (call it a ‘peace dividend’) rather than to pay the remaining 60 percent of my federal income tax that goes toward present and past military expense.”
(The Elkhart Truth)
The edition included a sidebar with this quote:
“Until membership in the church means that a Christian chooses not to engage in violence for any reason and instead chooses to love, pray for, help and forgive all enemies; until membership in the church means that Christians may not be members of any military…; until membership in the church means that Christians cannot pay taxes for others to kill others; and until the church says these things in a fashion that the simplest soul can understand — until that time humanity can only look forward to more dark nights of slaughter on a scale unknown in history.
Unless the church unswervingly and unambiguously teaches what Jesus teaches on this matter, it will not be the divine leaven in the human dough that it was meant to be.”
―George Zabelka, who served as a Roman Catholic chaplain for those who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on and
The General Boards of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church issued their first joint statement as a merging body in .
It urged the U.S. to stand down from its Iraq war threats.
One of the seven points of the document calls congregations to confess “our own complicity and selfishness in utilizing more than our share of the world’s supply of oil and other resources… limited concern for longstanding injustices in the Middle East and… paying for the military buildup through our taxes.”
A regional report from the noted that in the Mennonite Conference of Eastern Canada, “A conference employee has requested that the conference not withhold his war taxes.
This issue will be brought to a future conference session.”
This is the thirty-seventh in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we hit 1991.
The issue brought the news
that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (of Quakers) had lost its court battle
against the
IRS:
On ,
U.S. District Judge
Norma Shapiro found that
PYM
is not protected by the Constitution. She wrote, however, that “it is ironic
that here in Pennsylvania, the woods to which Penn led the Religious Society
of Friends to enjoy the blessings of religious liberty, neither the
Constitution nor its Bill of Rights protects the policy of the Society not to
coerce or violate the consciences of its employees and members or to act as an
agent for our government in doing so.” The General Conference Mennonite
Church, which agreed in to not withhold
taxes from its employees who requested this, has not heard from the
IRS.
That issue also carried
a
note about the Northwest Peace Fund — an alternative fund for coordinating
war tax redirection sponsored by the Seattle Mennonite Church.
“We can’t stop war, but maybe we can stop paying for war,” says Steve
Ratzlaff, pastor at the church. The taxes that would be paid to the government
are put into the fund, and the interest earned on the money is given to peace
and justice organizations. If the Internal Revenue Service garnishees the
unpaid taxes, investors may draw the money out. The rationale behind the fund,
says Ratzlaff, is that “if enough people do it, it will become an economic
hardship for the government to collect the money.” It also allows people to
direct their money to “constructive rather than destructive programs,” he
says.
The edition again invited
readers to redirect their federal income taxes through the
Taxes for Peace Fund organized by the
MCC
U.S. Peace Section.
The funds collected in would be split among
the Peace Section itself, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and
Christian Peacemaker Teams. In ,
$3,700 had been redirected through the fund.
The relatively new Mennonite Conference of Eastern Canada
had been quickly confronted by the war tax withholding issue, and tried to
resolve it at its annual sessions. Here’s how The
Mennonite reported it:
Fred Martin: “I see this as a symbolic act that would witness to our hope in
the love of Jesus Christ.”
Next to the budget, the most debated item was the executive board’s
recommendation to “withhold no income tax from the salary of any conference
[MCEC]
employee who requests this on the basis of conscience” as well as to ask the
Canadian government to recognize conscientious objection to payment of
military taxes and to provide peaceful alternatives for use of such tax
dollars.
Fred Martin, who works with students and young adults for the conference, made
the request that led to the board’s recommendation. He said he wants to
motivate people to consider the issue. He called his act a symbolic one “that
would witness to our hope in the love of Jesus Christ.”
Several spoke in favor of the action. Doug Pritchard quoted the famous
Catholic activist Dorothy Day: “If we truly rendered unto God what is God’s,
there would be nothing left for Caesar.”
Sam Steiner said that governments listen more if they see you’re willing to
sacrifice for it. Wilmer Martin added that we need to support our members who
try to be true to their conscience.
Others opposed the idea. Victor Dorsch of Maple View Mennonite Church,
Wellesley, Ont., said that
such an action is not a positive peace witness. “Our tax dollars are also
going for abortions,” he said. Peter Epp of North Leamington
(Ont.) United Mennonite Church
was also against it and called for a secret ballot.
The moderator delayed further discussion until that evening’s session. In the
end, delegates voted down the original recommendation on tax withholding, 159
to 48. Margot Fieguth of Mississauga
(Ont.) Mennonite Fellowship
introduced an alternative resolution, which still called for the conference to
work for legislation to recognize conscientious objection to paying military
taxes and recommended hiring Martin on a contract basis so that the conference
was not liable. After more discussion delegates voted to table discussion
until the next delegate session.
A
followup, after the
MCEC
fall sessions in , read in part:
A new motion, passed almost unanimously, commits the conference “to work with
the federal government to enact legislation that recognizes conscientious
objection to military service and the payment of military taxes and to provide
peaceful alternatives.”
Originally the new motion also included a section offering contracts to
conference employees who want to redirect their taxes. That section was
removed after the conference executive learned that simply placing employees
on a contract basis — without changing job descriptions and
accountability — would not necessarily get the conference “off the hook” for
breaking income tax laws.
Don’t we already have provision for conscientious objection to war? asked
several delegates. Doug Pritchard, a peace worker with the conference, said
that such legislation was in effect during World War Ⅱ but is no longer. David
Janzen suggested that the guarantees of freedom of conscience and religion in
the Canadian Bill of Rights should be sufficient.
A
message from the General Conference’s General Board in reaction to the
Persian Gulf War went out in the
issue. It said, in part: “We repent that through our taxes we have contributed
to death and destruction… We call on Christians not to enter the military
forces and to protest or refuse the use of our taxes for military purposes.”
To avoid federal income taxes.
For 12 years I have paid no federal income taxes because I refuse to finance U.S. mass murder around the world.
How can I speak for peace while I pay for war?
Over 50 percent of every federal income tax dollar goes for war — past, present, or future.
I keep my easily traceable taxable income under the taxable level.
For a sighted, under-65-year-old single person that amount is $5,550 for .
Shrader was taken to task in a later issue by a letter
saying that his example of “[l]iving at basic sufficiency does nothing to help
the poor, many of whom are dependent upon tax dollars for their housing, food,
education, and health care.”
Titus Peachey
An article by Titus Peachey on The Blessing of Tax Resistance — imagining what would happen if war tax resistance were central to Mennonite practice — appeared in the issue:
Imagine the impossible or highly
improbable. Imagine that all Mennonite and
Brethren in Christ people refused to pay taxes for war.
Let’s not worry for the moment how this came about, except
to acknowledge that it grew out of our deep commitment
to Christ and the church.
Furthermore, let’s imagine that we cheerfully supported one another in this
refusal to pay taxes for war, so that no one need be alone in this act of
faith.
What would this do to our church? What would happen to our witness in the
world? How would God change us in the process?
We cannot know. I am convinced, however, that there are parallels to the
blessing that came when our young men chose insult and prison rather than
military service during World War Ⅰ. We still benefit from that witness.
Now it is our turn. How are we going to be faithful? What would we face as a
church if we decided that faithfulness meant the refusal to pay taxes for war?
Simple living: The first option is simple living, the legal approach.
The more-with-less approach to life would be the norm in our churches. Vast
numbers of our people would choose legal means of reducing the amount paid in
taxes for war. We would reduce our personal incomes, and give a higher
percentage of our money to the church. We would reduce our tax liability.
Our churches would encourage simpler housing and shared living arrangements.
We would help our young people avoid large, long-term mortgages. Living in
duplexes or other multiple-unit dwellings would reduce purchase and
maintenance costs and save on heat, utilities, appliances and tools. Many of
us would find inexpensive housing in low-income, multicultural neighborhoods,
maintaining a sense of stewardship so that our presence would not price others
out of the neighborhood.
As more of us moved into lower-cost housing, we would gain new skills at
cross-cultural living and relating. More of our churches would reflect the
diversity of God’s people. We would become a less segregated and exclusive
church. We would learn difficult lessons about conflict resolution, justice
and community.
More of us, in an effort to reduce expenses, would put energy into relating to
our neighbors and the community through the public school system. Alternately,
given our greater interest in tax deductions through charitable contributions,
our church schools could be more highly subsidized, less expensive and thus
more accessible to a broader spectrum of people.
A commitment to not paying taxes for war would increase resources available to
the church. It would be usual for people to give 20–50 percent of their
incomes to the church. Local congregations would have more resources to share
with the community. It would be routine for a congregation to hire one or two
people to work at community needs and concerns.
Our churches would also struggle deeply with the prevalent theology of success
and the god of materialism. The same theology that prevents us from paying
taxes for war would prohibit us from spending so much on ourselves. Our church
building and expansion programs would be reviewed in light of community and
world needs. We would become “economically non-conformed” to this world.
Refusing to pay taxes for war would expand our understanding of conscientious
objection to war. We would understand conscientious objection to include
issues related to employment, investments, taxes, and business relationships
as well as to military registration and conscription.
The U.S. Peace Tax
Fund Bill would receive all the financial support it needed. Congress members
from Mennonite or Brethren in Christ districts would frequently receive mail
and visits on the subject. Conscience against war would receive a better
hearing in the halls of government.
Tax resistance: The second option is tax resistance, the illegal
approach. A significant number of Mennonites would choose the path of tax
resistance by withholding the military portion or a symbolic amount of their
tax dollars from the
(U.S.) Internal
Revenue Service and Revenue Canada. It would be normal to find a group of
families in each congregation who seek counsel and support on this issue.
Mennonite institutions would honor employee requests not to withhold their
income tax dollars. Mennonite leaders would frequently find themselves in
IRS
offices and the courts, witnessing to their faith and conscience and the
convictions of our people.
As the public became aware of this expression of our faith, some would
perceive Mennonites as a threat. We could become the target of harassment and
community pressure. People would make nasty phone calls and vandalize us as a
result of our beliefs, particularly during times of crisis, such as the
Persian Gulf War.
Some of us would end up in jail, being used as examples to deter others from
continuing to practice tax resistance. Small Mennonite fellowships might form
in our prisons as a result of the life and witness of tax resisters.
These experiences would make it easier for us to identify with the image of a
“suffering church” that is found in Scripture, in our Anabaptist heritage and
in many parts of the world today. Our sense of unity and identity with the
worldwide church would become stronger.
We would not have to scratch our heads and wonder how to do peace education
with our youth. They would sense that our concern about Christ’s way of peace
is integral to our life and faith. They would wonder why we are going to court
and to jail, and would ask us many difficult questions over dinner and during
Sunday school.
Conclusion: Tax resistance is not the only path to the many things
mentioned above. Surely we as a church could commit ourselves to simple living
and a 10–20 percent tithe, without the burden (or the blessing) of the war tax
issue. Certainly there are other ways to grow in commitment to racial equality
or justice for the poor.
In my experience, however, war tax resistance remains one of the most relevant
ways to affirm life and peace in a world of militarized economies. For me it
has also served as the best discipline for simple living in a culture of
materialism and consumption.
Implementing this vision in our churches could lead to conflict and division.
It could also lead us to experience anew Christ’s reconciling Spirit among us.
It would not be easy. I am convinced, however, that a great blessing awaits
the church, when we agree to say yes to Christ’s way of peace by refusing to
pay taxes for war. When will it happen? What will become of us if it doesn’t?
Don Kaufman penned a letter for the edition. Excerpts:
Those who do not willingly pay find the costs of dissent high. Internal
Revenue Service penalties and fees total several hundred dollars when citizens
refuse to send their earnings to the Pentagon. This simply adds to the dilemma
of “drafted dollars” that violate conscience. With one hand citizens give
generously to life-building purposes that ease human suffering. With the other
hand they pay military taxes that effectively cancel the good they have done.
They pay to relieve suffering; they pay to increase it. They pray for peace;
they pay for war.
Today’s combat soldier is the taxpayer — the person who provides the money to
produce and deploy the push-button systems for mass annihilation.
He urged people to support a Peace Tax Fund bill.
This is the fortieth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we finish off the mid-1990s.
He established the Michael and Margarethe Sattler Foundation to distribute his
royalties from Mathematica to people in need. He thus kept his income below
the taxable level in order not to contribute tax money to the military.
Following his deeply-held personal and religious beliefs, Keiper lived in a
very simple manner. He wore simple clothes, ate simple food, and used a
bicycle as his primary means of transportation. He also felt that to be
consistent in not supporting the military, he should avoid paying taxes to the
government. For a while, this meant that he would accept almost no salary. But
in the end he worked out a scheme for donating all but a small percentage of
his salary to charity. In addition, Keiper set up a foundation, which he named
the Michael and Margarethe Sattler Foundation, after two early Mennonite
martyrs. As part of Keiper’s compensation, Wolfram Research then made
donations to this foundation. The foundation solicited proposals, and in turn
supported various colleges, giving them both funds and copies of Mathematica.
Charles Hurst’s and Maria Smith’s letter to the IRS
was reprinted in one issue. The letter announced that they were redirecting
about 40% of their taxes “to groups or projects that bring healing for our
world.”
A supplement designed for the triennial conference noted
that through the Commission on Home Ministries, “[p]eace and justice resources
have been sent to individuals and congregations on such subjects as military
draft registration, alternatives to paying war taxes in the United States and
Canada, and New Call to Peacemaking peace education resources.”
A
profile of attorney Sharon Heath in the edition briefly mentioned that shortly after joining a Mennonite
church “she decided to become a war tax resister by living below the taxable
income level.”
An
editorial by Gordon Houser in the edition urged that “In our daily affairs we must learn to stand
against the idol called Bomb” and then, somewhat vaguely, said “We will want to
ask ourselves how our tax dollars are being spent and how we should respond to
that.”
An
article by John K. Stoner in the same issue echoed this: “What does it mean
for our souls that we have become willing to call down fire from heaven and
have made the capacity to call down fire from heaven the centerpiece of our
national security doctrine? What does this do to every person who consents to
it, pays their taxes for it, and remains silent as generation after generation
of nuclear missiles and weapons are developed?”
These sort of sidewise-glances at war taxes seemed to be becoming common.
A
report on the triennial conference, for example, noted in passing:
“Meanwhile, violence occurs in our homes; people of color experience a
qualified acceptance in our churches; our tax dollars continue to support the
building of nuclear weapons.”
The triennial sessions also seemed to sidestep any official recognition of war
tax resistance, replacing this with support for a Peace Tax Fund law:
GC delegates
also passed a resolution calling one another to support the
(U.S.) Peace Tax
and the (Canadian) Peace Trust campaigns, which work to provide legal
alternatives to paying war taxes. This was the third consecutive
GC triennial
session to affirm a peace-tax resolution.
A
letter from Don Schrader appeared in the issue, in which he expanded on the theme of the hypocrisy
of praying for peace while paying for war, noted his own choice of a life of
voluntary simplicity, and concluded: “For 16 years I have paid no federal
income tax, and I am not silent. I say, Not with my money, not with my silence,
not in my name.”
The Council of Commissions met in . According to
a
report, the Commission on Home Ministries in its meeting “agreed that the
Student Aid Fund for Non-Registrants should also apply to students who cannot
get loans because they are war-tax resisters.”
In
a
editorial about baptism,
Gordon Houser made a point of casting the original theological debate about
infant baptism as in part a tax resistance issue:
Those early believers were called Anabaptists out of derision. At that time
the state church in Europe baptized infants, which not only placed them on
the church’s membership list but on the state’s tax rolls as well.
Refusing to baptize infants and baptizing adults was a political act at that
time, one that threatened the sovereignty of the state government. It served
as a form of tax refusal, since taxpayer lists came from church membership
rolls. It also served as a protest against the state’s authority to conscript
people to fight the Turks.
A
letter to the editor from David E. Ortman, printed in the
issue, explained how the
resistance landscape had changed for telephone tax resisters in the aftermath
of the breakup of the telephone service provider monopoly. It mentioned two
phone companies that had created official ways for resisters to have the
federal excise tax removed from their phone bills. The letter ended: “Now, if
church organizations only had as much courage or political muscle as phone
companies to avoid being tax collectors.”
In the edition,
Titus Peachey reported
on “[a]n informal survey of 17 Mennonite and Brethren in Christ institutions in
North America [that] has found that few have written policies related to war
taxes.”
But some do honor requests from employees not to withhold all of their federal
income taxes or the portion which would otherwise go for military-related
expenditures. Others have policies opposing Internal Revenue Service levies of
accounts of war tax resisters.
Most institutions surveyed had not fielded such requests within
.
The General Conference Mennonite Church has had a tax-withholding policy in
place and has implemented it
several times. The Mennonite Church General Board agreed in
to “honor the request of an employee who for
conscience’ sake requests that the military portion of his or her federal
income tax not be withheld.”
Mennonite Mutual Aid approved a
policy asking the Internal Revenue Service to lift levies related to war
taxes. “To the extent legally possible,
MMA supports
its members who are protesting the payment of war taxes by initially
requesting that
IRS
collection attempts or levies on MMA-controlled
assets be lifted,” the policy states.
Pennsylvania Mennonite Federal Credit Union in
adopted a similar position.
In a letter responding to an
IRS levy
on an employee’s wages, Mennonite Central Committee wrote: “We do not want to
do anything as an organization that would be an offense to the conscience and
beliefs of such individuals or that would suggest support for the world’s arms
race… We would therefore respectfully request that the levy… be withdrawn.”
Attention war tax resisters: Now you can avoid war taxes without
IRS
harassment. For free information, send SASE to:
Yoder’s Tax Information, 10630 Hiser’s Lane, Broadway,
VA 22815.
Given the Internal Revenue Service’s sullied reputation, this shouldn’t
surprise us, although it probably should offend us: After years of trying to
resolve the issue, Grace Montgomery, a Quaker war-tax resister from Stamford,
Conn., is calling for an
investigation after the
IRS
illegally cashed a photocopy of a check not even made out to the
IRS.
According to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund newsletter, Montgomery
each year places the military portion of her federal income tax in a Quaker
escrow account. The
IRS then
usually levies her bank account for the amount owed. But in
, the
IRS
cashed a photocopy of Montgomery’s check to the escrow account. Her bank
accepted it even though it was not genuine and was made out to “The Religious
Society of Friends.”
This is the forty-fifth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we finish off the first decade of the new millennium.
What belongs to God and what to Caesar? It’s a riddle that has to be puzzled
over again and again by Mennonites in the context of war tax resistance. In the
edition,
Titus Peachey took a swing
at the pitch: Given all that belongs to God, he asked, “can we who follow Jesus
willingly give our tax dollars for war and killing?”
In the edition,
Scott Key
answered Everett J. Thomas’s editorial statement — “There seems to be nothing
we can do but write letters and pray that [the war in Iraq] will stop.” — with
some more practical ideas, including boycotts of and divestment from military
contractors, and war tax resistance.
Susan Miller Balzer wrote in to applaud and supplement this:
Scott Key… lists some important ways to work against war and for peace. In
mentioning war tax resistance, he expresses a common misconception that
employees cannot prevent their employers from withholding federal taxes from
their paychecks.
However, it is possible to limit or stop withholding by increasing withholding allowances on the W-4 Form (or legally writing “Exempt” on the form if you did not owe federal income taxes last year and do not expect to owe in the coming year).
See the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee’s “practical” publications on the Web site nwtrcc.org on controlling federal tax withholding and on low income or simple living for helpful information on ways to keep from paying for war.
On the same Web site, click on the War Tax Boycott, Withhold from War/Pay for Peace to find ways to participate in this national effort to defund war.
The “draft” of federal tax money to pay for present, past and future wars is a
fundamental issue that our church should address as it works to replace
suffering, destruction and injustice with healing and hope. The military draft
affected only young men. The current “economic draft” affects young men and
women who enter the military to try to get out of poverty. The draft of tax
money affects people of all ages as long as they have a taxable income.
If everyone in just one congregation refused to pay for war and redirected
their refused taxes to an underfunded social service, imagine the
opportunities for witness and change that could occur.
Don
Kaufman was back in the
letters to the editor column:
If enough of us withhold from war and pay for peace, we can stop the harm.
War-tax resistance is not a passive or unethical tax avoidance but an act of
conscience that everyone can do. The cross of Jesus as nonviolence and
compassion is our model for hope and change.
Individuals shoulder great responsibility for warfare and for peace. At times
the most effective way to take responsibility is refusal to collaborate, as
Franz
Jaggerstatter did in Hitler’s Austria in
. How can we take a stand against a
government that leads its citizens into committing murder? The task is to be
reform-minded, to live in an ethical way, and progressively to make
unthinkable the coercion of conscience by the majority who put their faith in
military or violent solutions.
Like Jeremiah, let us
unmask the illusions of power by being servants of hope among the vulnerable
and wounded.
Stanley Bohn
encouraged people to engage in at least a small symbolic act of war tax
redirection, in the edition,
claiming important benefits from the gesture that go beyond its likely
practical results:
Will this action make Congress and the Bush administration change their funding priorities?
Unlikely, even if millions took part in this effort.
After all, war fuels our economy, is useful in getting national unity and political support, and it focuses on the evil of others, allowing us to raise our self-esteem.
As Chris Hedges wrote in his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, war provides us with purpose and a civil religion.
What happens to us: For some Christians, the motive for participating
in tax redirection may start as a protest against refugee making, the
slaughter of people as collateral damage, torture of prisoners, creating
mentally damaged veterans, ballooning war debt, ruined international
relations, and other disastrous consequences. But when we take a stand for our
Christian convictions, something else may happen.
We gain an understanding of Jesus’ way of being lumped with criminals when
choosing the community-building, caring, enemy-loving life at the heart of the
universe. We realize that Jesus did not live or teach a religion guided by
what is respectable, safe, stress-free, or that waits for a consensus. Jesus
calls us to a life that is unpredictable and vulnerable.
Tax redirection is not a criterion of who is a “real Christian” but is more
accepting life as a gift, being what we are here for, living what we see in
Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. When the
IRS
makes us pay a small percentage more than our lawful tax, we can experience
what we believe is more important than money, and the hold money has on us is
reduced.
Living this kind of trust in the Jesus way helps keep serious Christians from
attempting to be pure and withdraw from life’s realities. It keeps us engaged
in current issues and with those proposing different goals. We are engaged,
however, in the kind of peace Christians should expect when choosing an
alternative way to conquer evil.
The risk of taking a stand regardless of consequences brings an unexpected
peace. It is not a peace that makes us feel protected, free of fears, or
satisfied with ourselves. It is a peace from knowing one is on a venture of
trusting in the universe-guiding reality we see in Christ. It is an empowering
peace given us when we offer ourselves to the one who gave us this life,
trusting God for the outcome. It is an empowerment that keeps us open rather
than defensive and having to shut out the desperate cries of others. It is an
alternative to a consumer-oriented Christianity that brings an unintended
transformation that makes us vulnerable and powerful at the same time.
Possibilities after April 15: There is no telling if or how God might
use the April 15 tax-redirection event. Consequences may occur that we never
thought of, including what powers or gifts might be released in ourselves.
We should not expect the government to inform us how many participated. The
media may not be free to report it, even if it knew. If the amount we withheld
and diverted is seen by the
IRS as
worth taking action against us, we will likely receive threatening letters and
finally have those funds confiscated along with a penalty.
Yet significant tax redirection can mean some humanitarian agencies will get
more financial support, and starving people will be fed. Maybe some
legislators will hear the conscience dilemma of many taxpayers and join other
co-sponsors of
HR 1921, the
Freedom of Religion Peace Tax Fund, which would make legal the redirection of
taxes by conscientious objectors to war. And maybe a few thousand redirectors
will discover we are less bound by the expectations of others and are freer
than we thought we could be.
Most important, we may learn that choosing risky ways of living for others,
even civil disobedience, can bring spiritual healing. We won’t defund the war,
but we can be more confident of the Power that overcomes our fears and by
God’s grace enables us to be the humans God intended us to be.
One such redirection idea was announced in the edition:
“Turning toward peace.”
This Mennonite Central Committee
(U.S.) initiative
allowed Americans to “redirect[] war tax dollars to help children in
Afghanistan through
MCC’s
Global Family education sponsorship program.” Titus Peachey, director of peace
education for
MCC
(U.S.) was quoted:
According to Peachey, most who have chosen to withhold believe, “If we cannot
conscientiously participate in war with our bodies, we cannot pay for it
either. We need to give our money to causes that build up rather than destroy
the presence of God in each person,” he says.
Most inform their governments of their actions. “Given the presence of Western
military action in Afghanistan today, the opportunity to contribute to
peacemaking there is timely,” says Peachey. “Equally important is the way in
which withholding war taxes challenges our own systemic militarism.”
A joint letter from Susan Balzer, Deb & Wes Bergen, Anita & Stan Bohn, Ron Faust, Don Kaufman, H.A. Penner, Steve Ratzlaff, Mary Swartley, Willard Swartley, and Dan Leatherman appeared in the edition.
They were responding to an editorial that suggested the Mennonite Church had surrendered as a peace church and had come to be “at peace with war.”
There is a traditional, positive witness opportunity for conscientious
objectors to war of all ages. It may seem scary, but many find it almost
routine. It involves redirection of income-tax assessments used for killing
and refugee-making to ministries meeting human need.…
Our descendants and overseas Christians will wonder how Christians in a
superpower, with over 700 military bases around the world, fighting two wars
and considering a third with Iran, supporting covert wars in places such as
Colombia and Israel, could be so at peace with war.
“The church should consist of communities of loving defiance. Instead, it
consists largely of comfortable clubs of conformity,” writes Ron Sider in
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. If we teach it is wrong, why
do we support it financially?
Shame is the negative motivation. The positive is that Jesus promised his
spirit of truth would abide in us and enable us to live differently from the
world’s ways. If we love him, we are empowered to keep his commandments
(John 14:15–17).
War tax redirection is “alternative service” for dollars we earn, service that
provides hope and new possibilities for suffering people instead of endless
war.
The issue covered
John
Stoner’s “$10.40 for Peace” campaign.
This was another attempt to get timid people to take baby steps into war tax
resistance by resisting a small, token amount of their taxes. The campaign is
still going on today but has yet to
catch fire.
The article seemed to me to exaggerate the scariness of such resistance even as
it tried to assuage the fears of potential resisters. Excerpts:
Stoner says the group hears some concern from individuals about the possible
penalties and “heavy hand of the
IRS
coming down.”
Stoner’s response is threefold. First, “As disciples of Jesus, we shouldn’t
have so much fear,” he says. Second, the past experiences of individuals who
have withheld taxes for similar reasons have been minimal. Third, the tax
withholder can decide later to pay the full amount.
“The most important thing is to make that statement that calls for democratic
conversation about how federal money is spent,” Stoner said.
Others say this movement should take more risks and that
U.S. war spending
remains too large. However, if enough people join, the risks and penalties
would increase, Stoner said.
The article noted that Shane Claiborne had signed on as an endorser and would
be speaking at an upcoming public meeting on the campaign.
This is the twenty-third 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.
Here’s how Larry Cornies of the Gospel Herald
reported on the negotiations between the General Conference Mennonite Church
and the
IRS
(the Mennonite Church, with which Gospel Herald was
associated, was supporting the General Conference action but from a bit of a
distance):
Representatives of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Internal
Revenue Service failed to reach an 11th-hour
compromise at a meeting in Washington on
which would have averted a suit by the 63,000-member denomination against the
government agency.
IRS
officials at the meeting denied that there was any administrative solution to
the conference’s complaint that it must withhold the income taxes of its
employees, thereby acting as a tax collector for the state. The denomination
has argued, and will argue in a forthcoming judicial action, that the
IRS
requirement violates the concept of separation of church and state as embodied
in the First Amendment in the
U.S. Constitution.
“The 45-minute meeting was cordial, but unproductive,” said Vem Preheim,
general secretary for the conference. “We outlined our concerns about the
withholding issue as a historic peace church and described the problem which
the IRS
requirement poses for us.”
William Ball, the conference’s attorney in the matter, then formally asked
members of the
IRS’s
special working group on withholding issues whether there was any way to
exempt the General Conference from the problematic requirement.
Nancy Schuhmann, who chairs the special group, stated that the
IRS must
abide by its codes of operation and would not be able to offer an exemption on
tax withholding to the conference.
IRS
officials Susan Cunningham and Gail Libin were also present for the
discussions.
In light of the results of the
meeting, attorney Ball will complete the preparation of the conference
complaint and submit the brief to a
U.S. district court
after one last check to make sure all administrative possibilities have been
exhausted.
The General Conference’s General Board was authorized to initiate a judicial
action on the tax withholding question at an international gathering of the
conference membership at Estes Park,
Colo., in
.
More than a year earlier, on ,
delegates to a special midtriennium conference session instructed the General
Board to “use all legal, legislative, and administrative avenues for
achieving[”] conscientious objector exemption to the tax withholding
requirement.
John J. Hostetter, Jr. attacked
the new war tax resistance craze in a commentary titled “Render unto Caesar”:
In the , issue of the
Gospel Herald, the forms of protest on nuclear
weaponry advocated by
MCC,
Peace Section, include the following, “We call for acts of tax resistance to
be undertaken since our federal income taxes fuel the arms race. We suggest
giving funds denied for use in building nuclear weapons to groups working for
peace and disarmament, and to groups meeting human needs.”
Such statements are damaging and completely misleading. It gives the
impression to the uninformed that an option for taxpayers is withholding part
of their tax liability and sending it somewhere of their own choosing. Rather,
the choice is whether one pays his tax or whether he pays his tax plus penalty
and interest. The only other possibility at present is fraud for deliberately
not reporting income, which is even more serious.
Pick and choose from the budget? Most ethical and religious protestors
base their action on the notion that one can pick and choose in the budgetary
items of the government, as a shopper at a department store. It is implied
that taxes are a voluntary contribution to the government by its citizens and
therefore, if they don’t like the way the money is spent, they can withhold
the part of the contribution they don’t like.
The courts have long ago settled this also. There is a classic quotation from
Judge Learned Hand, “Over and over again courts have said that there is
nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as
possible. Everybody does so, rich and poor, and all do right, for nobody owes
any public duty to pay more than the law demands; taxes are enforced
exactions, not voluntary contributions.”
While one can so arrange his affairs to pay as little as possible within the
law, this does not imply the right to pay the part one likes and refuse the
rest any more than one can dictate how the groceryman uses the money paid for
groceries. Once the tax liability is assessed, it is no longer the taxpayer’s
money. Otherwise very few would pay any taxes since we all feel we have better
ways to spend money than the way the government spends it.
Some object to the defense budget, while others feel just as strongly about
the welfare program. Although far less than one tenth of one percent of church
people protest taxes to the point of refusing to voluntarily pay all of their
taxes without confiscation, yet probably a high percentage of Christians as
well as non-Christians would opt to send their tax money to a “Peace Fund”
were that option available. At present it is not. Perhaps in the future the
Congress may grant such an election in much the same way that taxpayers can
direct $1 of their taxes to the presidential election campaign. Even if such
were possible, it wouldn’t change the size of the budget for defense.
In the Waitzkin case of , the court said that
conscientious objectors couldn’t withhold 50 percent of their tax on the basis
of “war crimes” deduction. Neither religious beliefs nor international law
relieve citizens of tax liability. Tax is neutral on religious matters and is
imposed on all citizens, even though each may object to some specific
governmental expenditure on religious grounds.
Likewise in the McDade case, the “war crimes” deduction was disallowed. The
taxpayer’s belief that the government shouldn’t force its citizens to
participate in taking of lives didn’t relieve her of an obligation to pay tax.
In another case, the taxpayer’s deduction for “conscientious objection to
military expenditures” was denied and the negligence penalty imposed. Military
protest deduction wasn’t permitted under the code. Taxpayer lacked standing to
contest military expenditures of the government. (Reimer) In the Van Tol case,
the war tax credit was denied; sincerity of the taxpayer’s objection to war
didn’t excuse the tax liability.
The government gets the money. A few observations could be made. First,
such protestations, as sincere as they are, are not accomplishing what may be
the desire of the protest, in that the government ends up with more, not less,
money for undesirable purposes as a result of the protest. Not only will the
tax be collected, but penalty and interest as well. (The average increase is
$207 for penalty alone.)
Second, in the case of war or defense, not one cent less will be spent for
bullets, bombs, or battleships because of the protest. Tax money which we
might earmark for Cambodian Relief, as good as that might be, only means other
money out of the same treasury is used for what the Congress believes is
necessary for national defense, and if that is not enough, the government will
simply borrow what it needs. One who thinks that such a fund will change the
size of national defense has only a superficial method of salving his
conscience.
Third, Internal Revenue agents, with (against) whom I have worked, openly joke
at such protest tactics. Regardless of the agents’ own personal views on the
use of tax money, which all citizens agree leaves much to be desired, they as
public servants must go and collect the tax whether it is from an impoverished
taxpayer, a religious protestor, or a fraudulent evader. Thus all that is
accomplished is a reduction in efficiency and an increase in the cost of
collection in the tax system. The Revenue Service doesn’t make the laws;
Congress does. A much more valid approach is correspondence with those in
Congress responsible for the present law and who have the power to change it.
Certainly the revenue agents have no jurisdiction over setting up the national
budget.
Internal Revenue agents deserve our respect. They are, with some exceptions,
well trained and conscientious, doing a job necessary to insure compliance and
integrity in the tax system. (After all, Jesus selected one as one of his
disciples. While he wasn’t the star of the show, he certainly wasn’t the
villain either.)
It would be interesting to know what percentage of church people have ever
written to their congressman expressing their concern on militarism. The
percentage would probably increase if names and addresses of congressmen were
available on church bulletin boards with sample letters for those who want
some positive ways to express their concerns.
I cringe when reports come out in the paper of tax protestors who have been
convicted of tax evasion on religious grounds with a byline that they are
Mennonites, with the implied impression that this is a belief of such
churches. Mennonites do not believe that. Editors of newspapers and
periodicals should be corrected when it is implied. The vast majority of
Christians believe such a stance to be unscriptural teaching.
This prompted a series of letters to the editor in response:
Called Hotstetter’s commentary “a breath of fresh air” and said “the newer
viewpoint promoted so much presently is not the historical nor the
majority viewpoint of the Mennonite brotherhood.”
“I differ from his assessment that those in our churches who cannot in
Christian conscience pay war taxes are ‘simply being contrary.’ That seems
to me to be a judgment form the world rather than the Word. I believe
that, increasingly, those who have ears to hear will understand that,
while it may be contrary to the world, to resist payment of war taxes is
being faithful to the Word of God.”
The failure of the General Conference Mennonite Church to reach an agreement
with the Internal Revenue Service… should come as no surprise. Furthermore,
if the case goes to court the winner can be predicted with a considerable
degree of assurance. It will be Attorney Ball in collecting his fee. It is
to be hoped that our church does not emulate the unenviable position in
which that church now finds itself. It can hardly back down without
swallowing its pride and cannot push forward with any hope of success in the
untenable stance it is taking. The constituency should scream at using so
much funds on such a case.
The requirement of the service to withhold taxes and forward them to the
government is nothing new. It has been on the books for more than a
generation. If they had not signed the waiver on Social Security taxes, they
would have more of a leg to stand on. They can’t have it both ways.
Felt that even if Hostetter’s arguments were valid, “there is still the
conviction, scripturally based, that we must witness to Christ’s way of
peace. Our quiet support for the military as we pay our taxes each year is
not consistent with that witness.” Says Flickinger: “Christian war tax
resisters are basing their actions on Scripture, not on a desire to
attract persecution or publicity.”
The issue included an
editorial,
“As for taxes…”,
from Daniel Hertzler. There wasn’t much meat there. It talked around the
subject for the most part, though it did mention Hertzler’s own
dipping-his-toes-in: “For a time I resisted the telephone tax, but then I gave
up. Perhaps I was a little overly impressed by the threatening form letters
which began to come from the Internal Revenue Service. Also, tax refusal seemed
like a form of revolution. As an orderly Mennonite, revolution is not my
style.”
That prompted Art Landis to shoot back in the issue with
a letter to the editor
taking Hertzler to task for romanticizing earlier generations who “had no
compassion for the slave or the prisoner. I believe the state could have
constructed concentration camps and gas ovens next to their meetinghouses and
they would not have protested.”
Good statements can have a reverse and negative effect… The statement can
serve to immunize us and keep us from action. We have resolved our guilt by
preparing another statement. This statement calls for a radical change of
lifestyle. Guilt and inner conflict are not as easily laid aside as this
statement might indicate. Wrestling with the complex issues of peace does not
successfully reduce inner conflict. What would really happen if “the old self
that lives for self dies”? We call into judgment economic systems that keep
millions poor when we ourselves are very deeply rooted in that economic
system. We denounce wars, but no consensus can be reached regarding applying
the same biblical understanding to paying for the hardware of war as we have
for giving of our bodies for war.
[A]t Bowling Green when a brother expressed
his concern over the assembly’s failure to deal with the question of obedience
as it relates to payment of taxes for war. Even though long discussion
followed, business proceeded very much as usual…
The question that comes to my mind is whether we indeed should make statements
such as these when we know well enough that the very structures of our
institutions would be shattered if we attempted to live out the text of the
statement.
Responding to Seattle Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen’s call for a tax
revolt against the nuclear arms race, Lutheran pacifists have urged
co-religionists to join the protest, redirecting the money to the poor. “We
shall act on Bishop Hunthausen’s encouragement to resist a percentage of our
federal income tax that is symbolic of allocations made to the military,” said
the New York-based Lutheran Peace Fellowship, an independent intra-Lutheran
group which works with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
“We will no longer offer our tax dollars for a nuclear military that affronts
the lordship of Jesus. Instead, we choose to redirect resisted tax dollars to
the poor of our country and of our world.”
Conscientious tax resisters who were hoping the courts would find a place for
them in the U.S.
Constitution were disappointed (Levi Miller reporting):
Amish employers and employees cannot invoke their religious beliefs to avoid
paying Social Security and federal unemployment taxes, the Supreme Court ruled
on .
The unanimous decision overturned a western Pennsylvania judge’s ruling that
forcing the Amish to pay such taxes violates their freedom of religion.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said, “The design of the [Social Security]
system requires support by mandatory contributions from covered employers and
employees.”
The controversy arose when the internal Revenue Service informed Edwin Lee, an
Old Order Amish carpenter from Lawrence County,
Pa., that he owed some
$27,000 in back taxes. Lee had not paid any Social Security taxes for himself
or his employees since . He also had not
withheld such taxes.
It was noted in the ruling that Congress has already provided for a tax
exemption that covers self-employed Amish, such as farmers. The Amish believe
that the church and the family should take care of the elderly and do not
withdraw the government funds at old age.
John A. Hostetler, a professor at Temple University and member of the Plains
Mennonite Church, commented on the ruling by saying that although “it is a
blow for religious liberty in general, in the long run it is better for the
Amish to pay it. If they were exempt, it would create jealousy.”
Hostetler said he did not know how many of these small shops would be
involved. “It will mean more paperwork for them,” he concluded.
A follow-up by Phil Shenk explained the consequences for war tax resisters:
The U.S. Supreme
Court indirectly referred to the issue of war tax resistance and the World
Peace Tax Fund in its
ruling, denying an Amish employer exemption from paying and collecting Social
Security taxes.
The unanimous decision, plus the arguments employed by the court, may also
have diminished the prospects for success in the General Conference Mennonite
Church’s case asking for an employer’s exemption from collecting
federal-military income taxes for the government.
In the Amish case, Amishman Edwin Lee had refused to withhold Social Security
taxes from his Amish employees’ paychecks and failed to pay the employer’s
share of their Social Security taxes, claiming that doing so would violate his
and his employees’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion.
Lee said the Amish believe it is sinful not to provide for their elderly and
needy themselves and therefore are opposed to the national social security
system.
Unlike the celebrated case, in which the
Supreme Court granted the Amish an exemption from Wisconsin’s compulsory
school-attendance law based on their free exercise of religion rights, the
Supreme Court here held that the government’s interest should overrule the
religious rights of the individual because it would be difficult for the
Social Security system to accommodate the “myriad exceptions flowing from a
wide variety of religious beliefs.”
In ruling that Amishman Lee’s First Amendment religious rights must “yield to
the common good,” the Supreme Court raised the issue of conscientious
objectors’ refusal to pay taxes that go for what the court called “war-related
activities.” The court said it could not see any difference between Lee’s
refusal to pay Social Security taxes and the position of one who refuses to
pay war taxes.
“If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain
percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related
activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt
from paying that percentage of the income tax.”
The problem with this, the court said, is that “[t]he tax system could not
function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax
payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.”
In a very broad statement that implicitly referred to religious conscientious
objection to federal-military income taxes as well as Social Security taxes,
the court revealed its basic rule: “Because the broad public interest in
maintaining a sound tax system is of such a high order, religious belief in
conflict with the payment of taxes affords no basis for resisting the tax.”
The court did recognize that Congress has passed a constitutionally sound law
that exempts Amish who are self-employed from paying Social Security taxes.
But it held that taxes imposed on employers “must be uniformly applicable to
all, except as Congress provides explicitly otherwise.” Because Congress has
not exempted Amish employers or their employees from Social Security taxes,
the court refused to honor their religious rights over the interests of the
nation as a whole.
Before Congress, in the proposed World Peace Tax Fund legislation, is explicit
language that would “exempt” conscientious objectors from paying war taxes and
instead divert their taxes to peaceful governmental activities. If passed,
this might provide the authority the court has implied it needs before it will
honor the rights of war tax objectors.
A Mennonite lawyer, John Yoder, is working as one of several assistants to
Chief Justice Burger, the author of the opinion striking down Amishman Lee’s
free exercise of religion rights. Burger’s Mennonite aide is originally from
Hesston, Kan.
The decision was so gratuitously dismissive of conscientious tax refusal that
the General Conference Mennonite Church decided to
halt its legal action,
on :
In the light of a negative judgment rendered by the
U.S. Supreme Court
against an Amish employer on ,
the General Conference’s judicial action committee has recommended to the
denomination’s General Board that a planned suit against the
IRS on
the issue of tax withholding “be put on indefinite hold.” The committee’s
decision came at the end of a
conference call with William Ball, who has been preparing the case
on behalf of the church group over the past year. During the telephone
meeting, Ball indicated that, considering the Supreme Court ruling in the case
IRS vs. Lee,
the General Conference would almost certainly lose its case.
In a cover story in the issue
Donald B. Kraybill proposed some ideas on
what to do about the threat of nuclear war.
Idea #10 was “Refuse to pay some of your federal income taxes as a witness to
your faith. If you’re scared, try a small amount like $7.77. If that’s too
scary, at least send a letter describing the difficulty of praying for peace
and paying for war. Those who pay taxes without sending such a letter are
quietly condoning and supporting the nuclear arms buildup.”
Raymond Hunthausen’s war tax resistance, which had been alluded to earlier, was
covered in a brief note:
Seattle Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen announced that he will withhold half
of his income tax to protest “our nation’s
continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.”
“As Christians imbued with the spirit of peacemaking expressed by the Lord in
the Sermon on the Mount, we must find ways to make known our objections to the
present concentration on further nuclear arms buildup,” the archbishop told
300 peace activists attending a meeting at Notre Dame University.
In the issue, Ivan H.
Stoltzfus felt compelled to write in to explain
“Why I pay taxes.”
The standard set of bible verses were deployed to explain that worldly goods
are at the disposal of worldly governments; Rome’s government was no better
than ours, so Paul’s advice in Romans 13 still holds; besides, it’s impossible
to determine what percentage of your taxes are objectionable, so you might as
well pay the whole thing. Still, Stoltzfus wrote, if there were a Peace Tax
Fund law, he’d go along with it.
A senate of priests in Iowa has voted to support a Catholic lay minister who
refuses to pay his federal income taxes as a protest against the nuclear arms
race.
The resolution approved by the representative group of priests in the Dubuque
Catholic archdiocese says they commend Tom Cordaro and
St. Thomas Aquinas parish at
Ames for their courageous stand relative to the payment of taxes for military
and nuclear armaments.
Mr. Cordaro, 27, has held back most of his income taxes
because he believes it would be a
sin to contribute money for nuclear weapons. The parish council at
St. Thomas Aquinas has refused
to honor an order by the Internal Revenue Service to turn over Mr. Cordaro’s
wages to satisfy the $828 tax debt.
Dan E. Hoellwarth made another attempt to defang Romans 13 in the
issue. According to him, the
description of government in that chapter should be seen as prescriptive, not
descriptive, and is meant to restrict which sorts of governments Christians owe
allegiance to: “what if the leaders are not acting in accordance with Scripture?”
“Obviously we should pay taxes… However…”
The Catholic war tax resisters were back again in the
issue:
The Catholic peace advocate Daniel Berrigan says he will take the church’s
anti-nuclear arms movement seriously “when we have a few bishops in jail.[”]
Berrigan, who is appealing a 3–10 year prison sentence for breaking into a
Pennsylvania nuclear plant, spoke to some 200 students and faculty members at
Fordham University.
The Jesuit priest said this “unparalleled threat to our survival” has made
civil disobedience — such as demonstrations and withholding federal income
taxes — a necessary component of the anti-nuclear movement.
He said he was encouraged by the fact that the American church hierarchy no
longer engages in “cold-war” rhetoric, and that the peace movement has made
some strides. But he added that the church, like the rest of the anti-nuclear
movement, has only “moved the diameter of a dime” toward serious opposition to
the arms race.
A Methodist pastor and wife in Portland, Oregon, withheld $1500 from their
U.S. income taxes.
They turned $1,000 of the money into $5 bills and gave them to persons they
found in line at the state of Oregon employment service.
According to the United Methodist John and Pat Schwiebert “clipped [a note] to
each $5 bill explaining that the couple was withholding a portion of their tax
‘because we cannot in good conscience do nothing while income we have earned
is used by our government to plan and carry out the killing of human beings…’ ”
After nearly a year in Laos, we feel a bit of fire brewing in our bones.
Surely, we think, the church can offer an alternative and a “no” to the
militarism and violence that is increasingly manifested around the world.
Surely we have a responsibility to end such suffering. Yet, as we turn to our
church papers (which we read avidly even though they arrive 4 to 5 months
late) we find that much of the discussion on peacemaking, including war-tax
resistance, seems to focus on the interpretation of certain biblical passages.
While it is important that these passages shape our thoughts and direct our
lives, it seems that too much time is spent fine-tuning favorite arguments in
comfortable, safe settings, far removed from the cries of those who suffer. We
wonder, for example, how well our arguments would stand up if the bombing
which occurred in many areas of Laos had instead destroyed our own communities
in Kansas, Ohio, or Manitoba.
The oil lamps burned late into the night when we visited the village. The day
before a Lao woman, the mother of 11 children, was killed when her hoe struck
a small anti-personnel bomblet that had buried itself under a root in her
garden. The bomblet, one of hundreds which still litter the soil, had been
dropped 10 to 15 years ago… Looking at the depression left in the soil by the
explosion, the hoe fragment, and the saddened eyes of the 10-year-old
daughter, we wondered who would own this family’s grief… who would answer for
this woman’s death?
The answer, we fear, is no one. Indeed the United States has created a
military system which can kill in such a way that no one need feel guilty.
Certainly no one in America, army general or taxpayer, will be accused of
plotting the death of this peasant woman. No international court will bring
bomb manufacturing companies to trial. Even to know which pilot dropped that
particular bomblet some ten years ago would be impossible. Thus we have
created death without a murderer.
Are we really so clever? Have we finally outwitted God, who would come and
ask, “Where is Abel, your brother?” Indeed, if God should come and ask, would
he not find us all guilty?
Of course, we as historic peace churches have often tried to separate
ourselves from our nation’s militaristic policies, to be a people with a
different identity. To some extent we have succeeded. The very fact that
Mennonite Central Committee is allowed to be in Laos is in large measure due
to the fact that we, as Mennonites, did not fight as
U.S. soldiers in
Indochina.
Nevertheless, how clean are we? Are our self-perceptions of innocence
realistic? Or have we been lured into a giant game of guilt evasion whose
players include Pentagon officials and common folk alike? While we ourselves
have not worn a soldier’s uniform, have not our taxes and our silence helped
to build weapons systems and to pay the salaries of those who fight? Though we
have espoused love and peace, could any of us stand before that peasant
woman’s family and state with assurance that we did not contribute to the
making of the weapon that killed her?
Thus, the presence of the shattered family in Muong Kham or the “cave
dwellers” in Sam Neua is disquieting to our spirits — the links between our
tax money and their suffering are too strong to ignore. The option of war tax
resistance then seems not like a matter for debate, but the next logical step
for all Christians who would work for peace in the world.
Perhaps many of you will disagree with us that withholding taxes is a faithful
part of peacemaking. May we plead however that before final judgments are
made, you listen to the voices of those hurt by our violence? Standing close
to them, we need to respond with compassion. What will we say? What will we
do?
A letter to the editor
from Robin Lowery followed: “They [the Peacheys] seem to base their conclusion
on the experience of those they dialogued with rather than on what God our
Father says to us through the Bible,” Lowery wrote. “It is a dangerous thing to
base our faith on experience and feelings.” We shouldn’t expect governments to
live up to Christian principles. Our worldly life is only temporary; we are
guests here and live under worldly rules temporarily. “War is a horrible thing,
but even more terrible is the judgment waiting for those who would oppose God
and what he has put in place.”
A
letter to the editor
from the Peacheys complained that their original article had been severely
edited:
As edited by Gospel Herald, our article seemed to
imply that all true peacemakers will engage in war-tax resistance. Certainly
we were urging Christians to seriously consider making some type of witness
with their tax return. Our original article acknowledged, however, that this
could take many forms. Some people may choose to live with an income below the
taxable level while others may wish to enclose a letter of concern with their
tax return. Some may withhold a symbolic amount while others withhold all of
their taxes.
Yet, none of these actions can be the whole of peacemaking. Rather, as we
stressed in our original submission, peacemaking is a total way of life which
embraces our troublesome next-door neighbor as well as those whom our country
defines as “enemy.” Further, as we seek to prevent suffering caused by North
American militarism, we must also turn to those in our communities who have
been cut off from help by our nation’s preoccupation with defense “needs.”
Finally, all of our actions must spring from our Christian faith. We cannot
work for peace out of guilt or a desire for personal innocence. Instead, what
we do, we do joyfully as a positive witness to life, to wholeness, and to our
faith in God who loves all people, irrespective of human barriers.
And Titus Peachey also wrote a follow-up article. Here is
an excerpt
that touches on war tax resistance:
The U.S.
asks neither for our consent or direct physical participation to send
weapons around the world such as the cluster bombs which were dropped in
Laos. It requires only our dollars and our silence. Can we continue to
give our government what it needs to make wars, and then serve the victims
of its violence with a clear conscience? Can we still claim to be
nonresistant if that violence was committed in defense of our way of life
in another part of the world?
Some of us felt that the shovels provided to Lao farmers in Xieng
Khouang should be purchased with money which Mennonites withheld from
their taxes, thereby making the connection between our nation’s militarism
and the victims of war. While some of the shovels were indeed purchased
with the Taxes for Peace Fund, many people cited legal, theological, and
practical problems with taking such an action.
From our vantage point in Laos, we admittedly worry more about the
theological, human, and practical problems of inaction. Can we
find common ground for a strong, unified, Mennonite peace witness which
deals more directly with our nation’s defense budget, arms sales, and
military aid?
MCC
has spent over $10,000 to purchase and ship about 1,200 shovels to Laos, and
$4,000 of that amount was allocated from
MCC’s
“Taxes for Peace” fund. This “Taxes for Peace” fund was established in
to receive contributions from church members
who had voluntarily withheld portions of their taxes as a symbolic protest
against the government’s excessive spending for military purposes.
“Since people withheld this money so that it could be used for peace instead
of war, we feel it especially appropriate that these dollars be used to help
clear the land of Laos of bomblets made and dropped by Americans,” explains
John Stoner, executive secretary of
MCC
U.S. Peace Section.
What is the meaning of conscientious objection to war in Canada today, and how
does this relate to the support of Canadian military industries and armed
forces activities? That is the focus of a task force on tax support of
Canadian military activities. A short document spelling out proposed goals and
research tasks of this group was mailed to each of the conferences earlier
this year asking for more guidance or support, perhaps after discussion at
their annual meetings. The initial work of this task force is being
coordinated by the Peace and Social Concerns office of
MCC
(Canada).
War tax resisters continued to have tough luck in
U.S. courts, as
this showed:
A Rhode Island couple who have refused to pay their federal income taxes
as a way of demonstrating their
opposition to military spending have lost their fight with the
U.S. Internal
Revenue Service. The United States Tax Court in Washington has not only
ordered Kevin and Linda Regan to pay $4,138 in back taxes and $206 in interest
for , but it has also slapped
the couple with a $500 fine for having “wasted” the government’s time and
money on “frivolous” actions. Although the decision was reached
, the
IRS
office here only announced it .
Keith Johnson, an
IRS
public affairs officer, said the agency was publicizing the Tax Court decision
because the Regans had been the subject of a long
Providence Journal-Bulletin story
in which the couple attempted to
justify their nonpayment of taxes on religious and moral grounds. In the
interview, the Regans argued that the arms race contradicted the Christian
belief against the taking of human life. “What we were presented with were
taxpayers who were saying they could withhold tax payments on moral grounds,”
Mr. Johnson said. “This is an argument that neither the
IRS,
nor the courts, accept.”
Finally, a
letter to the editor
from Weldon Nisly emphasized the parallel between conscientious objection to
the draft and conscientious objection to military taxation:
May we all have the faith and courage to stand with these young men of
conscience facing draft registration. It is indeed a difficult moment and
decision they and their families face. But it is not just they who face the
demands of the powers in our country and time. We all face a parallel decision
in a direct way with the demand for tax money to finance the Pentagon’s
headlong plunge toward death and destruction of all God’s creation and
creatures. The painful question of faith we ail face is will we contribute to
and cooperate with that demand of the powers or will we choose to place our
trust in God alone?
This is the twenty-seventh 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.
From the issue:
Dutch Mennonite stages arms protest in his living room.
Dutch Mennonite theologian H.B. Kossen (standing, left) had a golden
opportunity to explain his views on nuclear weapons to the media recently
when a bailiff came to collect taxes he had withheld in protest against the
placing of American cruise missiles in Europe. The bailiff collected the
money by holding an auction at the Kossen apartment in Amsterdam.
Kossen and his supporters, including politicians and church leaders, used the
event to hold a press conference and communion service. Over 70 of the
supporters announced they would also begin withholding a symbolic portion of
their taxes.
Kossen, who was one of the main speakers at the
Mennonite World Conference assembly in
Wichita, Kans., teaches at the
University of Amsterdam and at the Mennonite seminary on the same campus.
His protest is part of a growing peace movement among Mennonites and others
in the Netherlands. It is estimated that one fifth of all the Dutch people
have participated in street demonstrations against the cruise missiles.
There was also lively and extended discussion about a report from the Tax
Withholding Task Force. This group had talked to representatives of
MCC’s
supporting denominations about whether
MCC
should honor the requests of four employees that it no longer continue to
forward to the government the military portion of their withheld federal
income taxes.
Phil Rich, who chaired the task force, reported that while there was much soul
searching and serious attention given to the request, none of the
denominations were ready to counsel
MCC
to honor the request for institutional involvement in illegal non-withholding.
Four board members [out of 37] voted to support the request of the four staff
persons. “Our history tells us that actions of minority people like this” lead
us to greater faithfulness, said Larry Kehler.
But the majority voted with Vice-Chairman Ross Nigh, who said, “We are bound
by the process we have begun. We went to the conferences who own
MCC
and without exception they recommended that
MCC
not honor the request of staff.”
The (U.S.) Peace
Section tried to soften the blow ():
Once again it is tax filing time. For those who object to their tax dollars
being used to fund the military, this is an agonizing time.
To help such people, Mennonite Central Committee
U.S. Peace Section
has just completed an information packet on military tax opposition, and
designated an alternative fund for those wishing to channel a portion of their
tax dollars to a peaceful purpose.
The free information packet includes descriptions of varying theological
positions on the war-tax issue, the federal
budget allocation of funds, a discussion of options available for war-tax
opposition, and information on Internal Revenue Service action as a result of
tax resistance.
The alternative fund will channel tax dollars to victims of political violence
in Guatemala. Human-rights abuses are again increasing in that Central
American country.
To obtain the information packet and more details on the alternative fund,
interested people should contact
MCC
U.S. Peace Section…
A modest proposal: Let the Christians of the world resolve to give more of
their wealth to God than to Caesar’s armies.
For those who consider tax resistance incompatible with their interpretation
of Scripture, we would suggest a strict observance of the biblical injunction
to tithe. Every year Christians, like other citizens, pay their federal taxes.
For most people, these taxes are deducted from their paychecks automatically,
so that the cash flow into the government coffers is regular and abundant.
While some may be disquieted by the fact that 57 percent of their taxes goes
to the military, most will remember the verse “Render unto Caesar…” and make
sure Caesar is paid.
Why is it, then, that the Mennonite Church cannot “Render unto God…” with
equal ease? The Bible, in fact, goes into considerable detail about how to
give our money to God, even giving us the standard of a 10 percent tithe. Yet
we are inexcusably lax in practicing this biblical injunction.
By recent estimates at the Ames (Iowa) Assembly of the Mennonite Church,
Mennonites contributed between 5 and 6 percent of their incomes to the church.
Can we rightfully claim that we pay our federal taxes because the Bible tells
us to, while failing to pay our tithe? Surely if being biblical were our
honest intention, we would make absolutely certain that God’s tax (the tithe)
was paid in full. What is God to think of us?
According to the Center for Defense Information, an average
U.S. family of
four, earning $25,000 a year, would normally pay $2,064 — or 8 percent of
their income to the military. Thus it appears likely that Mennonites pay more
to Caesar’s armies than to the church.
We think it is time to correct this situation. Each congregation should
appoint a tax collector whose duty it must be to collect 10 percent of each
member’s income every month. Provision should also be made to collect back
tithes and accumulated interest fees from the date of membership to the
present. Those who find it hard to pay could simply borrow from their federal
tax payments.
Certainly God must be honored with our tithes. If that means Internal Revenue
Service received only 50 to 60 percent of what is owed, perhaps we could
discuss the problem sometime during a Mennonite Church assembly.
On another matter, the committee struggled with the issues posed by
MCC
employees whose request not to have income taxes withheld was rejected after
long debate at the
MCC
annual meeting in . It was
decided at that time that, despite this decision,
MCC
should continue to affirm the integrity of those objecting to war taxes and
establish a committee that would study and create broader awareness of the
impact of militarism on refugees, hunger, and development.
But the mandate of that group, which is to begin meeting in
, was not clearly defined. Executive
Committee chairman Elmer Neufeld said there seems to be a “strong expectation”
from some that the special committee will continue to work specifically on the
taxwithholding issue.
Tax resisters give money to needy causes.
Ten Mennonites, Catholics, and Brethren gathered in front of the courthouse
in Kalamazoo, Mich., on
to voice their opposition to military spending. Instead of paying the
Internal Revenue Service the portion of their income taxes they claimed would
go into the U.S.
defense budget, they chose instead to give their combined withholdings
totaling $1,600 to five local social-service agencies.
Accompanied by guitar, the protesters sang “Peace” and “Down by the
Riverside." They then made personal statements and mailed their tax returns.
Winfred Stoltzfus (back to camera) declared that the taking of life violated
his religious beliefs and his medical training. “As medical students we are
taught to save life,” he said. “I cannot in good conscience continue to
voluntarily support and pay the federal taxes budgeted for war and death.”
Ellen Kinsenger-Roihi of Center City Housing (third from right) and Marcia
Jackson of Loaves and Fishes (extreme right) were present to receive checks
for their agencies. Three other checks were mailed during the demonstration
to Habitat for Humanity, Kalamazoo Diaeonal Conference, and Kalamazoo Youth
Ministry.
Flanking the banner are four of the tax resisters (left to right): Deanna
Brown, Terry Ciszek, Joanne Lehman, and Andrew Lehman.
Chicagoans protest “contra” aid with “die-in.”
Eight Chicago area Mennonites participated in a “die-in" and street witness
at the post office in Chicago on
to demonstrate their opposition to President Ronald Reagan’s request for $100
million in U.S.
aid to the “contra” rebels in Nicaragua. Here a protester hands a flower to a
police officer before being forcibly removed!
Kris Chupp and Dorothy Friesen joined 25 others who entered the post office
and dropped to the ground one by one to dramatize the reality faced by
Nicaraguans daily as a result of contra raids on that country. Orlando
Redekop placed flowers on the “dead” and told the people mailing their tax
forms the day before the deadline that their taxes are used to kill
Nicaraguans.
Other Mennonites joined the 300 demonstrators outside the post office who put
up posters depicting a bloody hand on a tax form.
No arrests were made. The “dead” were dragged from the building and heaped
outside the door. “I was heartened,” said Friesen, “that the officer accepted
the flower I gave him in the name of the dead women and children of
Nicaragua.”
The Mennonite participants are part of the National Pledge of Resistance
movement, whose members have committed themselves to resist
U.S. military
escalation in Central America.
Max E. Thierry gave some thought to the war tax resistance question in the
issue:
My first contact with the income tax issue was at Bethlehem
, where a part of the Mennonite Church decided
it wasn’t going to collect taxes for the government. I admired that position.
In I began to study economics, and it led to
the income tax. I have been studying the income tax issue for a year now and
have quit paying income tax or filing tax forms on moral and legal bases.
Mennonites are famous for nonresistance. I have come to believe that it’s easy
to say we’re nonresistant and we want peace throughout the world and at home.
Then we turn around and pay for the very acts we as Christians feel are wrong.
As Christians we say war is wrong, killing is wrong, and that Christ told us
to love our enemies. Is it love when we pay to have our enemies bombed and
killed? Is it love to kill unwanted babies and pay for it with money that we
earn by the fruits of our labor?
I suggest if we pay for it we are just as guilty of the crimes against
humanity as are the ones who actually do it. If a person pays another person
to kill someone he can be charged with murder and sent to jail under our legal
system. I believe God has a much higher standard for his people.
I can no longer pay for murder and justify it by Romans 13 because God has
instituted government. I will obey government if its laws are in harmony with
God’s laws. I will also obey government only if it follows the law that was
laid out for this country in the constitution.
What sets a Christian apart from the world anyway? We don’t act because we
might lose our money and power. It’s purely selfish reasons that we give for
going along. Christ died on the cross for not going along. Disciples were put
in jail for not going along. What is a Christian? One who says he loves his
neighbor and pays to have his enemies killed? I believe not.
The Internal Revenue Service has threatened to prosecute me and has fined me
$500 as a civil penalty (I have refused to pay it). They have tried to audit
me (I will not submit to their assumed authority) and they have threatened to
seize any property I own and levy my wages in payment of alleged taxes. They
will eventually do one or all of the above. Four years ago I had a “net worth”
of $20,000. Today it is around $1,000 as I have sold off most all that I had.
I will never be able to personally “own” a car or house since the
IRS
would take it.
I will lose my $25,000-a-year job as a direct result of my actions. I will
most likely end up in a federal prison for my beliefs in God and country.
The most-asked question is “Why?” My answer is, “Because it’s the right thing
to do.” Christ calls us to obedience and while I do not by any means say that
I am not prone to sin, I try to follow God’s calling in my life. By the
shedding of Christ’s blood on the cross he paid for all our sins, but that
doesn’t give us the right to ignore our sin for personal gain.
Finally, the announced the
availability of a “War Tax Resistance Seminar” video,
featuring speaker Willard Swartley and panelists Kenneth Covelens, Maynard
Shirk, Frank Albrecht (the last two were specifically identified as war tax
resisters).
This is the thirtieth 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 General Assembly
would hold a long-overdue vote on whether or not to support war tax resistance
as an institution. You’ll have to scroll down to see how that turned out.
A Japanese court has ruled against 22 military tax resisters, including
Mennonite pastor Michio Ohno. The ruling by the Tokyo District Court came
recently after nearly eight years of litigation. The case had its origin after
the bank accounts of Ohno and another person were attached by the government
because they didn’t pay their taxes. For reasons of conscience, the 22 object
to paying the portion of their taxes that is used for military purposes. The
negative ruling does not discourage them, however. “We believe it is this type
of lawsuit which, repeated a thousand times, will open the way to legalize
conscientious objection to military taxation in Japan,” said Ohno.
A “Taxes for Peace” fund is again being set up by Mennonite Central Committee
U.S. Peace Section.
It is for people who withhold war taxes to give money for a peaceful purpose.
It is a symbolic action and not a legal alternative to paying the tax.
’s fund will be divided between National
Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and Christian Peacemaker Teams. More information
about the fund is available from
MCC
U.S. Peace Section…
As the general assembly loomed, a series of letters to the editor concerning
war tax resistance hit the Gospel Herald pages in
:
Krabill felt that war tax resisters were twisting themselves in knots trying to explain away scriptural passages that on their clear facial reading counseled taxpaying.
Peachey explained why she thought war tax resistance was worth taking seriously (this is the same commentary as appeared in The Mennonite and that I excerpted here).
Nafziger thought that Krabill wasn’t discerning the clear obvious meaning of the bible so much as offering a distorted version of it in order to justify paying war taxes.
Do Mennonites need more time to study the tax withholding issue or more
courage? Will the Mennonite Church be known as a “historic peace church” 50
years from now? These and other questions came to mind as I read “General
Board Makes Cautious Preparation for Normal
”…
General Assembly actions in recent years have repeatedly affirmed tax
resistance, based on Christian conscience, as a valid part of our peace
witness. We see these actions not as liberal trends but rather a needed
return to New Testament teachings: to the life, nonviolent teachings, and
spirit of Jesus and to Anabaptist understandings of church and state
separation, roles, and loyalties.
Today military technologies are more important than personnel and therefore
the drafting of our dollars for war and preparation for war is a crucial
matter. The central issue in the earlier General Board recommendation, in my
perspective, was not tax resistance per se but whether the Mennonite Church
is ready to respect and support the consciences of those who request that
their taxes for military purposes not be withheld.
Recently, a young man named Jose was returning to his house in the
Philippines. Government soldiers, who later claimed Jose was out after
curfew, shot this defenseless youth, leaving him with a serious leg injury.
They refused him treatment for enough days that gangrene claimed his lower
leg. When we finally met Jose in the hospital, the lad needed to find blood
for his leg amputation.
Weekly, in our work with Mennonite Central Committee, we hear stories of
global brothers and sisters who are being maimed or killed with weapons of
war, many of them supplied by the American government. Therefore, when we
are faced with the turning over of our income to the Internal Revenue
Service for supplying these coffers of war, it feels to us that to do so
willingly would be the equivalent of signing the death warrant for innocent
friends.
We do not expect that everyone in the Mennonite Church will share these deep
convictions of ours. We believe that many Mennonites have wrestled with this
issue in honesty and prayer and have come to different conclusions from our
own.
Still, we are very saddened when we learn in Gospel
Herald that Mennonite Church General Board chose to back away from
recommending to General Assembly that the convictions of church
institutional employees who object to paying military taxes shall be honored
by their employers. The action leaves us feeling lonely.
What is the church telling us? Are our convictions out of place in our
church? Are we considered stubborn people who refuse to see the truth that
the church identifies? Is the church asking us to give up these deeply held
convictions? We don’t know. We sincerely value the counsel of the church
community. And yet somehow we can’t seem to shut off our (misguided?)
consciences on this matter.
Linda Peachey in “Agonizing Over War Taxes”… makes a good argument for
withholding war taxes. However, there is another angle from which to view
the issue of not paying war taxes. The primary Scripture cited in the debate
is Matthew 22:15–22 (and parallels). If we would apply a little historical
and political exegesis to this passage, we would have to ask ourselves how
we could apply Jesus’ response to ourselves.
For instance, we are not a nation or a people held captive under a foreign
ruler, such as Palestine was during the time of the Roman Empire. Also, we
are not presently ruled by a monarch; we realistically have no “caesar” over
us. If there is a caesar, so to speak, then we are caesar.
In the United States, our constitution begins by naming our caesar, “We the
people,” and Abraham Lincoln elaborated that phrase from our preamble by
claiming that our government essentially is and must remain a “government of
the people, by the people, for the people.”
In our form of democracy, we have no absolute authority set over us. What we
do have is public servants set under us. We, as responsible citizens, are
the authority of this nation. If our nation blunders and falls, the blame is
on us, not merely on those whom we have elected.
Those of us who withhold a portion of our tax are trying to re-orient our
national priorities. While what we do is considered to be illegal, we are
breaking a law of the people (willing to take responsibility for our
actions), but we are not breaking a law against caesar. What we are
trying to do is give to our government (ourselves) what it needs to function
as a force for order, a system for providing for the needs of all, and as a
body of law to carry out justice. (See Jacob Hutter’s and Menno Simons’
writings in Plots and Excuses and Foundations,
respectively.)
We do not all agree on the question of nonpayment of taxes for military
purposes… But shouldn’t we all be asking whether an agency of our church
should withhold taxes for employees who have a conscience against payment of
the military portion? Should a peace church agency side with the state
against the conscience of its own members? And is that consistent when the
church is on record supporting the conscientious action of its members in
nonpayment? It would seem appropriate for us to arrive at a plan whereby the
request of employees be respected and taxes for military purposes not be
withheld by church agencies.
We’ve known since childhood the stories of God’s people in the Old and New
Testaments who said to government and religious authorities, “I can’t do
that,” or “You can’t do that,” or “We can’t do that,” and then took the
awful consequences. Will we rouse from our easy “Christianity” and recognize
when the time has come for us to say such words — to obey God rather than
man and take the consequences?
As for the recommendation on military tax withholding, the board concluded
after consulting the district conferences that the recommendation had to be
rewritten. The sequence of events was as follows.
At Purdue , General Board was asked by General
Assembly to consult the church on the question of the conscientious objection
to the payment of military taxes, particularly the withholding of such taxes
by church institutions for persons who objected to paying them.
In , General Board approved a
statement for presentation to General Assembly at Normal
which included the recommendation that the
convictions of church institutional employees who object to paying military
taxes shall be honored by their employers.
During , district
conferences were contacted by General Board to seek their counsel on the
proposed statement. Responses were mixed. Three conferences supported the
proposal for presentation to General Assembly. Four conferences did not
support it. Eight supported the statement with modifications or cautions.
Executive Secretary James Lapp reported to the board that “I perceive in
general there is no broad consensus of support for the proposed stance of the
General Board.”
Accordingly the board saw it as necessary to prepare a drastically revised
proposal. Gone from this proposal was any reference to illegal action such as
a church institution refusing to collect military taxes from those
conscientiously opposed to paying them. Instead the statement which is to
appear in the “workbook” prepared for General Assembly delegates calls for
“study of the church/state issues raised by the collection of taxes by church
agencies” and for support of the Peace Tax Fund options being called for in
both the U.S. and
Canada.
Military taxes for church employees is a particularly difficult subject. This
issue has been knocking around for several years already. As I reported on
, the General Board at its last
meeting passed a much less decisive proposal than expected. This revision was
made after consultations with district conferences. If anyone wishes to press
for the church to take a radical position on this issue, it will be necessary
to make that point clear since the General Board received mixed signals in
consultations with the conferences.
The General Board had a last chance to tangle with the issue
:
The Mennonite Church General Board held a
prior to Normal
. No major issues were resolved in this brief
meeting. Much of the activity involved receiving reports and doing final work
on statements to be presented to General Assembly.
Among the reports being prepared for the assembly was one related to the
payment of war taxes. This followed an action of Purdue
which had called for the board to study this
issue and report to Normal . There had been a
change of stance after consultation with the district conferences.
In , the board had drafted a
proposal which included a recommendation to respect the consciences of
employees of church organizations who do not wish to have the military portion
of their income tax deducted from their paychecks. By
this proposal was withdrawn and the
emphasis was rather on study of the issue and support of the Peace Tax Fund.
On , the board made final revisions
on this statement for presentation to Normal .
And then the General Assembly met and pushed back against the Board’s
reluctance:
The conference delegations caucused several times during the debate about
war-tax resistance. Here Dave Miller makes a point to his fellow delegates
from Indiana-Michigan Conference.
Merger with a sister denomination and illegal support for war-tax resisters
became a distinct possibility following two crucial secret-ballot votes by the
Mennonite Church General Assembly delegates during Normal
. The merger vote was decisive — 86
percent — and there were no surprises. But the tax vote was close — 59
percent — and was the result of an unexpected turnaround on the General
Assembly floor.
Ruth Brunk Stoltzfus of Virginia Conference calls for more courage instead of
more study on the matter of tax-withholding.
The war-tax issue proved to be a much thornier and more complex matter. It all
started about 10 years ago when employees of Mennonite Church
agencies and schools began requesting that taxes not be
withheld from their paychecks so they could refuse to pay the
portion of their federal income taxes (about half) that is used by the
U.S.
government for military purposes. The
employees said they are conscientious objectors
to military taxes in the same way their fathers and
grandfathers were conscientious objectors to
military service in times of conscription.
The agencies and schools would break the law if they honored their employees’
request. Caught between their employees’ consciences and the government’s
requirements, the agencies and schools appealed to General Board for help.
What followed was years of study and discussion.
Finally, in , General Board members
voted to recommend to General Assembly that church agencies and schools be
permitted to honor the requests of employees who want to resist war taxes. The
General Board action then went to district conferences for their response. The
response was mixed and generally cautious, so General Board watered down the
recommendation at its meeting. By
the time of its meeting the day before the start of Normal
, however, General Board put some teeth back
into the document, but it was still a weakened form of the original version.
When General Assembly took up the issue, several delegates jumped up to scold
General Board for its indecisiveness. “General Board has backed off on this
issue, and that makes me sad and angry,” said Bob Hartzler of Allegheny
Conference. “General Board must exercise leadership on this and not just
gather consensus.” He then asked that the original recommendation be restored.
After more debate and two time-outs for district conference caucuses, the
delegates agreed to vote separately on the three sections of the revised
recommendation and then on the “heart” of the original version, as requested
by Hartzler. The three sections were approved by unanimous or near-unanimous
hand votes.
The revised document calls for (1) further study of the war-tax issue, (2)
financial and other support for the peace-tax fund options being proposed in
the U.S. Congress
and the Canadian Parliament, and (3) moral and financial support for war-tax
resisters.
Action on the heart of the original version, giving agencies and schools
permission to not withhold taxes when requested, was tabled until later in the
week. When the issue came up again,
GC general
secretary Vern Preheim was present to report on his denomination’s experience
since it took a similar action in . Though
the U.S. Internal
Revenue Service contacted the
GC leaders
early on to confirm the action and warn them about the consequences, to date
IRS
has not moved against the
GC Church.
The district conferences then caucused, and when debate resumed, many of the
speakers reported on the general feelings of their conference delegations. “We
stand in a long line of saints who have faced decisions like this, starting
with the women who illegally hid baby Moses,” said Weldon Nisly of Ohio
Conference. Del Glick of Indiana-Michigan Conference reported that several
people in his delegation had changed their minds and were now prepared to vote
yes. “We want to take a stand,” he said. “It will probably take more courage
to face our congregations than to face the government!” Brent Foster then
announced the support of Afro-American Mennonite Association.
Ron Schertz, a lawyer who is a board member of Mennonite Board of Missions,
offered one of the few opposing comments. He warned that approval of the
document would get in the way of
MBM’s
main mission and jeopardize its tax-exempt status.
When the votes were counted, the resurrected war-tax recommendation passed
142-100. Moderator-Elect George Brunk Ⅲ commented that the vote is not a
decisive mandate for General Board but that it does represent “some momentum
on this question.” He said General Board “will have to move with due caution”
and that “we’ll have to see if a greater sense of consensus emerges in the
coming biennium.”
Robert Hartzler of Allegheny Conference introduces an amendment that put
teeth back into the war-tax recommendation.
Special-interest activities abounded. Vigorous
discussion marked a session entitled “Should the
Church Be Caesar’s Tax Collector?”
This was followed by the General
Board meeting, at which the probably somewhat shocked Board would
have to determine how (or whether) to put the Assembly’s
mandate into practice. It seemed to reach the conclusion that since
it could not identify any employees who were currently
requesting the Church to stop withholding war taxes from
their salaries, they could safely
kick the can down the road a few years further:
Another major agenda item for General Board was follow-up work on the military
tax action by General Assembly at Normal . After years of study and debate, the General Assembly delegates
voted to permit denominational agencies and schools to honor — illegally — the
request of employees who, for conscience’ sake, don’t want taxes withheld from
their paychecks. This is so they can refuse to pay the portion that is used
for the military.
The General Assembly vote was close (59 percent) and no employees are
currently requesting non-withholding, so the General Board members agreed to
proceed with caution. But they also agreed that regardless of what the
agencies and schools do and regardless of whether General Board itself has
employees who request non-withholding, they would take a clear stand on
military taxes and submit another recommendation to the next General Assembly
sessions in .
Meanwhile, General Board will plan a major consultation on military taxes for
and prepare a study guide to be
ready by then. Conferences and congregations will then be encouraged to study
the issue and report to General Board.
This is the thirty-third 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.
By things had slowed to a crawl. It was only
a few years back that talk of war tax resistance had risen to a frenzy, and the
subject was a regular topic of debate in the Mennonite Church General Assembly.
Now: not so much.
The annual “Taxes for Peace” redirection fund update appeared in the
issue:
Mennonite Central Committee
U.S. Peace and
Justice Ministries invites contributions for the
Taxes for Peace fund. The fund, established
in , gives people who withhold war taxes a
way to give their money to peaceful purposes. Contributions will support the
creation of peace education materials and education about pastoral sexual
misconduct by the Women’s Concerns desk and Mennonite Conciliation Services.
Remnants of the old passion were preserved on videotape
():
Videos about war taxes available from Mennonite Central Committee. In “Paying
for Peace,” war tax resisters share why they resist paying war taxes and the
impact of that decision on their lives. “Compelled by Conscience” explains how
the Peace Tax Fund would allow people to designate the portion of their
federal taxes used for war to a fund for peacemaking programs. Contact
MCC…
MCC
occasional paper, “Silence and Courage: Income Taxes, War and Mennonites,
,” by Titus Peachey, explores the
connection between income taxes and war in both
U.S. and Canadian
history, with particular emphasis on the World War Ⅱ period. This is the
18th in the Mennonite Central Committee Occasional
Papers series. Available from
MCC…
That’s it for . I racked my brain for more
possible explanations for the sudden fall-off of war tax resistance content in
this period.
One possibility I didn’t consider before is that perhaps those who promoted war
tax resistance were at first an easy-to-ignore minority, but when they began to
organize and exert influence this prompted “the silent majority” (or perhaps
just a more-influential or more-politically-skillful minority) who were against
war tax resistance to begin to organize and throw their weight around too. Once
that group finally got organized and active, the war tax resisters lost the
advantage they had gained by being the first movers on the issue and ended up
getting thwarted.
I’m not convinced that’s the answer, but it’s another possibility, or maybe
part of the answer.
Magical and wishful thinking might also be a partial explanation for the
decline. There’s the Peace Tax Fund scheme, which has its own fantastic ideas
associated with it, and then there’s something like
this “dream”
Nancy Brubaker shared in the
issue:
The U.S. government
has sent Internal Revenue Service investigators to find out why so many people
no longer owe any military taxes. The Mennonites explain to the
IRS
about the fund they have created with the money they are saving by living more
simply. This money, they say, is to be used, not to defend the United States
against other nations, but to defend Mother Earth against human beings.
Already the money is being used to save endangered species of whales, to
educate people on the dangers of plastic, and to teach Christians how to put
on more sweaters when it is cold.
The Heartland Peace Tax Fund is offering grants of up to $500
(U.S.) to local
service agencies or to individuals. It invites application from organizations
or individuals who serve underprivileged people (especially those underserved
by governmental agencies), and from those who work for non-violence and for
community and environmental improvement. Application deadline is
. To receive an application, send a
self-addressed stamped envelope to Newton [Kansas] Area Peace Center…
I thought the follow-up report ()
contained a noteworthy example of reinforced helplessness. Note that the
article is describing a ceremony in which war tax resisters redirected taxes to
charitable causes right there and then but then the article goes on to
say that this is a demonstration of “what a national peace tax fund
could do if passed by Congress” (emphasis mine):
Three Heartland Peace Tax Fund grants of $250 each have been awarded by the
Newton (Kan.) Area Peace
Center. The recipients are the Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Association of
Harvey County, Offender Victim Ministries (both of Newton), and the Samaritan
Counseling Center of Hutchinson. The Heartland Peace Tax Fund was instituted a
year ago; these are its first grants. They demonstrate locally what a national
peace tax fund could do if passed by Congress — allow people conscientiously
opposed to war to direct their tax dollars to meeting human need, says Susan
Balzer, Hesston, who chairs the Peace Tax Group (a focus group of the Newton
Area Peace Center).
Peacemaking sounds like a natural, noble expression of the gospel which
Christians of many stripes will applaud. But its modern ring may have more to
do with assuring social and ecumenical acceptance than with a willingness to
make a costly and distinctive witness for the gospel. Many Christians may be
willing to extol the virtues of peacemaking, but few are willing to sit in
jail for refusing to pay taxes for warfare.
You need to be more supportive of the laws of this great nation. We
can’t accept people making selective payment of taxes. You should be
happy to pay for your defense.
Minnie Knight:
I give to God what is God’s. My loyalty belongs to the Lord. I want no
one killed in my name.
The Clinton administration was pushing a health industry overhaul at this
point, and there was lots of buzz about the possibility of “taxpayer-funded
abortions,” and so that and war tax resistance got tangled up in each other in
a couple of letters to the editor:
It is more than passing strange that Mennonite leadership has favored
withholding taxes for the military but now supports a health care program
which may pay for the murdering of pre-born babies. If we are opposed to
this abominable aspect of the Clinton health plan, why not say so in no
uncertain terms?
This took the point of view of a Canadian looking over the proposed
U.S. health
industry law:
Yes, I do resent seeing my tax dollars help pay for abortions. However, if
the criterion is that we should avoid paying taxes which fund death, then
all of us on both sides of the border must stop paying military taxes
immediately.
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.”
