Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → religious groups and the religious perspective → Catholic churches

Today’s chuckleworthy decree comes from The Catholic Church:

The Catholic Church of England and Wales launched a passionate defense of one of society’s most reviled features — taxes.

In a 40-page booklet entitled “Taxation for the Common Good,” the Church argued that instead of an unfair penalty, taxation should be seen as a way all people can play a moral part in public life.

“Taxes are very much based on the principles of solidarity, which is based on the commandment to love your neighbor,” former Bishop Howard Tripp, Chairman of the Church’s Committee for Public Life, told Reuters.

“This document is suggesting taxes are a way to play our part and it is something we should be pleased to do… It’s all part of our duty to our neighbor, stemming from our duty as social animals,” he said.…

He said tax dodgers were not helping themselves or their community:

“If a person felt bound not to pay some tax to a certain cause they disagree with then they must follow their conscience, but I would urge them to look at other ways to deal with that problem, such as lobbying members of parliament.”

Word on the street is that the Pope is going to issue a “doctrinal pronouncement” decrying tax evasion. The news reports are pretty vague, but suggest that the Pope is equating taxes with spending on the public good, and saying that by evading the former you’re shortchanging the latter. It may be worth watching for the release of his second encyclical to see if it’s any more nuanced than this.

From the San Francisco Call ():

The Vyborg manifesto and contemporary news accounts about it can be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

Men Who Signed Appeal to People to Refuse Taxes on Trial Today

ST. PETERSBURG, . — The trial of 169 members of the first duma who signed the Viborg manifesto , calling upon the citizens of Russia to stand up for their rights, for popular representation and for an imperial parliament, will begin tomorrow before the court of appeals. The former duma members are charged with high treason and with the promulgation of an appeal to the people to refuse to pay taxes or serve in the army or navy.

The verdict of guilty is anticipated, as the gist of the accusation is established by the text of the manifesto, and only a technical defense can be interposed. But there is no reason to anticipate the infliction of the maximum penalty, which is death. The majority of the defendants have abandoned all hope of acquittal, but are looking forward to a light sentence, such as a year’s imprisonment or some similar punishment.

The prominence of the accused, however, among whom are Professor Serge Mourmtseff, former president of the lower house; Petrankevitch and many other liberal leaders, and the total ineffectiveness of the Viborg appeal may induce the government to further leniency.

Seven of the leading lawyers of Russia, headed by Vassili Maklakoff, leader of the constitutional democrats in the second duma, and M. Talako, will appear for the defense. The trial is expected to last 10 days.

And this comes from the edition of the New York Sun:

PRIESTS MISLEAD PEASANTS.

Circulating Fictitious Viborg Manifesto About Duma Dissolution.

St. Petersburg, . — The priests of the Orthodox Church are enthusiastically following the Government’s behest to suppress “political error” among the masses. A message from Niegin in the province of Tchernigoff announces that a new ikon has been placed in the Glinfkaia hermitage, representing pictorially the great day of judgment. In the foreground are sinners burning in hell fire, the central figure being easily recognized as a likeness of Count Tolstoi.

Many priests are also helping to circulate a fictitious Viborg manifesto dated , when the former members of the Duma really met. It has 181 signatures, which is the exact number who signed the genuine Viborg manifesto; but instead of its contents being a summons to refuse to pay taxation for recruits, the bogus manifesto declares that the Jews and false masters (that is, the educated people who agitate radical politics) broke up the Duma and defeated the peasants’ hope for land. For this reason, says the manifesto, they must be slaughtered.

Today in the U.S., war tax resisters are about the only sizable group of conscientious tax resisters (that is, people who resist in a spirit of conscientious objection to what the tax money is spent on — as opposed to people who resist because they think they have the legal or moral right not to have their money taken from them, and those who resist not because of any ideology but just because they think they can get away with it and the material benefit is worth the risk).

But this may be changing. This year I’ve been noticing a lot more mention of tax resistance in two other battles: the battle for legal recognition of same-sex marriage and the battle against (government funded) abortion.

In the same-sex marriage case, it’s less a conscientious objection position than one that says the resister won’t pay the “dues of citizenship” for what amounts to second-class citizenship. But that’s close enough for me.

In the abortion case, the rhetoric is much more similar to that of the war tax resistance movement. Indeed, a Catholic anti-abortion tax resistance pamphlet I recently discovered on-line has a subtitle — “Are You Praying for Life But Paying for Death?” — that echoes a motto frequently heard in war tax resistance circles.

The rest of the pamphlet also seems very familiar to me, based on war tax resistance arguments (particularly Christian ones) I’ve read. There’s the attempt to thread the needle between Romans 13 and Acts 5, a discussion of how taxpaying makes a taxpayer complicit and why this makes conscientious objection a moral duty, and finally some advice on practical steps the reader can take.

Myself, I’m of the “the more, the merrier” school on this. The more people with diverse ideologies and concerns begin to consider tax resistance as an option, the more the idea can take root that in general it’s inappropriate to force people to pay for other people’s priorities.

Before Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen decided to begin resisting taxes himself in protest against U.S. nuclear weapons policy, he delivered a speech on at the Pacific Northwest Synod Convention of the Lutheran Church in which he foreshadowed his decision.

I’ve had a hard time finding the text of this speech, but finally excavated a copy. Here it is, for the first time on-line:

I am grateful for having been invited to speak to you on disarmament because it forces me to a kind of personal disarmament. This is a subject I have thought about and prayed over for many years. I can recall vividly hearing the news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. I was deeply shocked. I could not then put into words the shock I felt from the news that a city of hundreds of thousands of people had been devastated by a single bomb. Hiroshima challenged my faith as a Christian in a way I am only now beginning to understand. That awful event and its successor at Nagasaki sank into my soul, as they have in fact sunk into the souls of all of us, whether we recognize it or not.

I am sorry to say that I did not speak out against the evil of nuclear weapons until many years later. I was especially challenged on the issue by an article I read in by Jesuit Father Richard McSorley, titled “It’s a Sin to Build a Nuclear Weapon.” Father McSorley wrote:

The taproot of violence in our society today is our intention to use nuclear weapons. Once we have agreed to that, all other evil is minor in comparison. Until we squarely face the question of our consent to use nuclear weapons, any hope of large scale improvement of public morality is doomed to failure.

I agree. Our willingness to destroy life everywhere on this earth, for the sake of our security as Americans, is at the root of many other terrible events in our country.

I was also challenged to speak out against nuclear armament by the nearby construction of the Trident submarine base and by the first-strike nuclear doctrine which Trident represents. The nuclear warheads fired from one Trident submarine will be able to destroy as many as 408 separate areas, each with a bomb five times more powerful than the one used at Hiroshima. One Trident submarine has the destructive equivalent of 2,040 Hiroshima bombs. Trident and other new weapons systems such as the MX an cruise missile have such extraordinary accuracy and explosive power that they can only be understood as a build-up to a first-strike capability. First-strike nuclear weapons are immoral and criminal. They benefit only arms corporations and the insane dreams of those who wish to “win” a nuclear holocaust.

“Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.”

I was also moved to speak out against Tri­dent because it is being based here. We must take spe­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what is in our own back yard. And when crimes are being pre­pared in our name, we must speak plainly. I say with a deep con­scious­ness of these words that Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.

Father McSorley’s article and the local basing of Trident are what awakened me to a new sense of the Gospel call to peacemaking in the nuclear age. They brought back the shock of Hiroshima. Since that re-awakening five years ago, I have tried to respond in both a more prayerful and more vocal way than I did in . I feel the need to respond by prayer because our present crisis goes far deeper than politics. I have heard many perceptive political analyses of the nuclear situation, but their common element is despair. It is no wonder. The nuclear arms race can sum up in a few final moments the violence of tens of thousands of years, raised to an almost infinite power — a demonic reversal of the Creator’s power of giving life. But politics is itself powerless to overcome the demonic in its midst. It needs another dimension. I am convinced that a way out of this terrible crisis can be discovered by our deepening in faith and prayer so that we learn to rely not on missiles for our security but on the loving care of that One who gives and sustains life. We need to return to the Gospel with open hearts to learn once again what it is to have faith.

We are told there by Our Lord: “Blessed are the peacemakers. They shall be called children of God.” The Gospel calls us to be peacemakers, to practice a divine way of reconciliation. But the next beatitude in Matthew’s sequence implies that peacemaking may also be blessed because the persecution which it provokes is the further way into the kingdom: “Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of right. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

To understand today the Gospel call to peacemaking, and its consequence, persecution, I want to refer especially to these words of Our Lord in Mark:

If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let that person renounce self and take up the cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save one’s own life will lose it; but anyone who loses one’s life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. (Mark 8:34-35)

Scripture scholars tell us that these words lie at the very heart of Mark’s Gospel, in the watershed passage on the meaning of faith in Christ. The point of Jesus’ teaching here is inescapable: As his followers, we cannot avoid the cross given to each one of us. I am sorry to have to remind myself and each one of you that by “the cross” Jesus was referring to the means by which the Roman Empire executed those whom it considered revolutionaries. Jesus’ first call in the Gospel is to love of God and one’s neighbor. But when He gives flesh to that commandment by the more specific call to the cross, I am afraid that like most of you I prefer to think in abstract terms, not in the specific context in which Our Lord lived and died. Jesus’ call to the cross was a call to love God and one’s neighbor in so direct a way that the authorities in power could only regard it as subversive and revolutionary. “Taking up the cross,” “losing one’s life,” meant being willing to die at the hands of political authorities for the truth of the Gospel, for that Love of God in which we are all one.

As followers of Christ, we need to take up our cross in the nuclear age. I believe that one obvious meaning of the cross is unilateral disarmament. Jesus’ acceptance of the cross rather than the sword raised in his defense is the Gospel’s statement of unilateral disarmament. We are called to follow. Our security as people of faith lies not in demonic weapons which threaten all life on earth. Our security is in a loving, caring God. We must dismantle our weapons of terror and place our reliance on God.

I am told by some that unilateral disarmament in the face of atheistic communism is insane. I find myself observing that nuclear armament by anyone is itself atheistic, and anything but sane. I am also told that the choice of unilateral disarmament is a political impossibility in this country. If so, perhaps the reason is that we have forgotten what it would be like to act out of faith. But I speak here of that choice not as a political platform — it might not win elections — but as a moral imperative for followers of Christ. A choice has been put before us; Anyone who wants to save one’s own life by nuclear arms will lose it; but anyone who loses one’s life by giving up those arms for Jesus’ sake, and for the sake of the Gospel of love, will save it.

Giving up the weapons would mean giving up more than our means of global terror. It would mean giving up the reason for such terror — our privileged place in the world.

To ask one’s country to re­lin­quish its security in arms is to en­cour­age risk — a more rea­son­a­ble risk than con­stant nu­cle­ar es­ca­la­tion, but a risk never­the­less. I am struck by how much more ter­rified we Americans often are by talk of disarmament than by the march to nuclear war. We whose nuclear arms terrify millions around the globe are terrified by the thought of being without them. The thought of our nation without such power feels naked. Propaganda and a particular way of live have clothed us to death. To relinquish our hold on global destruction feels like risking everything, and it is risking everything — but in a direction opposite to the way in which we now risk everything. Nuclear arms protect privilege and exploitation. Giving them up would mean our having to give up economic power over other peoples. Peace and justice go together. On the path we now follow, our economic policies toward other countries require nuclear weapons. Giving up the weapons would mean giving up more than our means of global terror. It would mean giving up the reason for such terror — our privileged place in the world.

How can such a process, of taking up the cross of nonviolence, happen in a country where our government seems paralyzed by arms corporations? In a country where many of the citizens, perhaps most of the citizens, are numbed into passivity by the very magnitude and complexity of the issue while being horrified by the prospect of nuclear holocaust? Clearly some action is demanded — some form of nonviolent resistance. Some people may choose to write to their elected representatives at the national and state level, others may choose to take part in marches, demonstrations or similar forms of protest. Obviously there are many ways that action can be taken.

We have to refuse to give incense — in our day, tax dollars — to our nuclear idol. On April 15 we can vote for unilateral disarmament with our lives.

I would like to share a vi­sion of still an­oth­er ac­tion that could be taken: sim­ply this — a siz­a­ble num­ber of peo­ple in the State of Wash­ing­ton, 5,000, 10,000, ½ mil­lion peo­ple ref­using to pay 50% of their taxes in non­vi­o­lent re­sist­ance to nuclear murder and suicide. I think that would be a definite step toward disarmament. Our paralyzed political process needs that catalyst of nonviolent action based on faith. We have to refuse to give incense — in our day, tax dollars — to our nuclear idol. On April 15 we can vote for unilateral disarmament with our lives. Form 1040 is the place where the Pentagon enters all of our lives, and asks our unthinking cooperation with the idol of nuclear destruction. I think the teaching of Jesus tells us to render to a nuclear-armed Caesar what that Caesar deserves — tax resistance. And to begin to render to God alone that complete trust which we now give, through our tax dollars, to a demonic form of power. Some would call what I am urging “civil disobedience.” I prefer to see it as obedience to God.

I must say in all honesty that my vision of a sizable number of tax resisters is not yet one which I have tried to realize in the most obvious way — by becoming one of the number. I have never refused to pay war taxes. And I recognize that there will never be such a number unless there are first a few to give the example. But I share the vision with you as a part of my own struggle to realize the implications of the Gospel of Peace given us by Our Lord. It is not the way of the cross which is in question in the nuclear age but our willingness to follow it.

I fully realize that many will disagree with my position on unilateral disarmament and tax resistance. I also realize that one can argue endlessly about specific tactics, but no matter how we differ on specific tactics, one thing at least is certain. We must demand over and over again that our political leaders make peace and disarmament, and not war and increased armaments, their first priority. We must demand that time and effort and money be placed first of all toward efforts to let everyone know that the United States is not primarily interested in being the strongest military nation on earth but in being the strongest peace advocate. We must challenge every politician who talks endlessly about building up our arms and never about efforts for peace. We must ask our people to question their government when it concentrates its efforts on shipping arms to countries which need food, when it accords the military an open checkbook while claiming that the assistance to the poor must be slashed in the name of balancing the budget, when it devotes most of its time and energy and money to developing war strategy and not peace strategy.

Creativity is always in short supply. This means that it must be used for the most valuable purposes. Yet it seems evident that most of our creative efforts are not going into peace but into war. We have too many people who begin with the premise that little can be done to arrange for a decrease in arms spending since the Soviet Union is bent on bankrupting itself on armaments no matter what we do. We have too few people who are willing to explore every possible path to decreasing armaments.

In our Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, I have recommended to our people that we all turn more intently to the Lord this year in response to the escalation of nuclear arms, and that we do so especially by fasting and prayer on Monday of each week. That is the way, I believe, to depend on a power far greater than the hydrogen bomb. I believe that only by turning our lives around in the most fundamental ways, submitting ourselves to the infinite love of God, will we be given the vision and strength to take up the cross of nonviolence.

The nuclear arms race can be stopped. Nuclear weapons can be abolished. That I believe with all my heart and faith, my sisters and brothers. The key to that nuclear-free world is the cross at the center of the Gospel, and our response to it. The terrible responsibility which you and I have in this nuclear age is that we profess a faith whose God has transformed death into life in the person of Jesus Christ. We must make that faith real. Life itself depends on it. Our faith sees the transformation of death, through the cross of suffering love, as an ongoing process. That process is our way into hope of a new world. Jesus made it clear that the cross and empty tomb didn’t end with Him. Thank God they didn’t. We are living in a time when new miracles are needed, when a history threatened by overwhelming death needs resurrection by Almighty God. God alone is our salvation, through the acceptance in each of our lives of a nonviolent cross of suffering love. Let us call on the Holy Spirit to move us all into that nonviolent action which will take us to our own cross, and to the new earth beyond.

Randall Terry, a prominent American anti-abortion activist, has penned an op-ed for Catholic Online in which he makes the case that Catholics should read in the last Pope’s Evangelium Vitae a call for Catholics to refuse to fund abortions with their tax dollars.

As we pour our hearts and souls into the battle to keep the slaughter of the innocent by abortion out of any health care bill, the discussion has emerged as to whether it is an ethically viable option to refuse to pay part or all of our federal taxes.

Some well meaning souls have already — perhaps without much thought — repeated our Lord’s oft quoted statement: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.”

The simple question is this: does this statement of our Lord apply in a situation like the present? If we know that Caesar is going to use the money to kill our neighbor — one of God’s children — are we required, by God Himself, to give the money to our political leaders?

I think the answer is self-evidently, “No!”

Following the trend of other recent conservative tax resistance promoters, Terry sticks to the passive voice and the hypothetical: going right up to the line at which he might have to say “and so I’m going to stop paying my taxes” and then turning around and beating a safe retreat.

Meanwhile, the present pontiff released Caritas in Veritate, which put in a plug for individual hypothetication (or “fiscal subsidiarity”):

One possible approach to development aid [for poor countries in the current economic crisis] would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they pay to the State. Provided it does not degenerate into the promotion of special interests, this can help to stimulate forms of welfare solidarity from below, with obvious benefits in the area of solidarity for development as well.

The cynic in me can’t help but notice that in those countries I know of that have “fiscal subsidiarity” as part of their income tax filing schemes, the Catholic Church is an explicit line-item beneficiary.

David Little, who has been resisting taxes in Canada in conscientious objection to the funding of abortion, was sentenced to 66 days in jail for refusing to pay the fines that came along with a failure to file conviction a few years ago.

Little had appealed his case unsuccessfully up the judicial ladder, with the Supreme Court turning down his last appeal in January.

“I don’t want to co-operate with an entity that takes my money and pays gynecological assassins to kill my brothers and sisters,” Little said. “I’m prepared to die in jail, if necessary. I can no longer cope with the hypocrisy of praying for life… and paying for death.”

He may indeed face more jail time, as he is under court order to file his tax returns and has insisted he will not do so.

A retired local Catholic Bishop attended Little’s sentencing and endorsed his tax resistance, stating that he hoped the case would encourage more Catholics to resist.

From the Spokane Daily Chronicle:

Priest Refuses Tax Payment

Cleveland, Ohio (AP) — The superintendent of schools in the Cleveland Catholic Diocese said that he was willing to withhold tax payments, even if it meant “that I am to be prosecuted,” to protest a federal court ban on state aid to parochial schools.

Msgr. William Novicky in a statement compared the situation that Catholic parents now face with the civil rights movement.

“Blacks rallied behind such leaders as Dr. Martin Luther King, who declared if a law is unjust and unfair it should be disobeyed in the pursuit of freedom,” Msgr. Novicky said. “Blacks were beaten, hosed, chased by dogs and were jailed, but they persisted.

“And the courts took note of the black man’s struggle.”

Msgr. Novicky said he abhors violence or destruction of property, but is “prepared to suffer the consequences” of withholding taxes.

He said refusing to pay taxes strikes at the “double burden of taxation every parent must pay who has a child in a nonpublic school.”

, after the Supreme Court declared a voucher plan unconstitutional, Novicky had another idea. He recommended that his school board eliminate tuition and instead run the school on money collected from donations to the church. Such donations are tax deductible, while, under the law Novicky opposed, tuition to private religious schools is not.

From the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review:

The Reverend Hunthausen: “After much prayer, thought”

Seattle archbishop will withhold tax

Seattle (AP) — Seattle’s Roman Catholic archbishop says he will withhold half of his personal income tax to protest “our nation’s continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.”

In announcing his decision , Rev. Raymond G. Hunthausen acknowledged that some people will support him while others “will be puzzled, uncomprehending, resentful and even angry.”

The archbishop said he reached his position “after much prayer, thought and personal struggle.”

The amount of income tax he withholds will be deposited in a fund to be used for charitable, peaceful purposes, he said.

“I believe that the present issue is as serious as any the world has faced,” he said in a pastoral letter to the people of the Seattle archdiocese. “The very existence of humanity is at stake.”

The prelate’s action was not unexpected. In a speech at Pacific Lutheran University, he had suggested the possibility of tax withholding as a protest against nuclear arms escalation.

In that speech, Hunthausen said he would “share a vision of yet another action… of a sizable number of people in the state of Washington — 5,000 or 10,000 or half a million people — refusing to pay 50 percent of their taxes in non-violent resistance to nuclear murder and suicide.”

The stand propelled the archbishop into a national role in the peace movement.

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese said she did not know the amount of tax that would be due from the archbishop on , the deadline for filing federal income tax returns.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, persons who refuse to pay taxes on constitutional, religious or moral grounds “can anticipate strict civil and criminal enforcement of the laws.” Conviction can mean fines up to $10,000 and up to five years in prison.

In the pastoral letter, Hunthausen said he could not “support or acquiesce to a nuclear arms buildup which I consider a grave moral evil.”

He cautioned: “I am not suggesting that all who agree with my peace and disarmament views should imitate my action… I prefer that each individual come to his or her own decision on what should be done to meet the nuclear arms challenge.”

The archbishop disputed the charge by some that it would be immoral to disobey the law of the state for a good end. He said that in certain circumstances, civil disobedience may be an obligation of conscience.

An Ellensburg Daily Record article based on a United Press International dispatch added some more details:

[Hunthausen] said in a statement to the archdiocese, “I am not attacking my country. I love my country.…”

Father Michael Ryan, chancellor of the archdiocese, said the archbishop pays income tax on his personal salary, which he would not disclose.

In his letter… Hunthausen said…

“I urge all of you to pray and to fast, to study and to discuss and then to decide what you shall do to combat the evil of the nuclear arms race.”

Dick Wighman, public affairs spokesman for the IRS in Seattle, described Hunthausen’s decision as an “ineffective action.”

“All tax money goes into the general fund and is divided in proportion to different programs. You are withholding from aid to schools, roads, from all programs,” he said.

A Spokesman-Review follow-up by reporter Jim Camden read:

Bishop holds nuke share of his taxes

Admitting that the $450 or so in taxes he won’t pay is mainly symbolic, Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen said that tax protest is a response to the arms race.

But it is not the response, he said.

Hunthausen, in Spokane for a speech at Gonzaga University, said in an interview that his personal protest — withholding half of his federal income taxes — will not become official until , the tax deadline.

He has not heard from the Internal Revenue Service, and IRS officials say he won’t until after the deadline passes.

His tax forms have not been completed, but he expects to have about the same tax liability as , about $900 for a salary of $9,000. Half of that, about $450, is what he said he will refuse to pay in protest over the nuclear arms race.

“The 50 percent figure is somewhat arbitrary,” Hunthausen said.

The federal government estimates that 29 percent of its budget will go for defense related spending. Critics of the military content, however, that because of differences in accounting procedures between various federal programs, military spending accounts for nearly 60 percent of the tax dollar.

About one third of all defense spending goes for nuclear arms research, development and deployment, some military analysts have estimated.

Hunthausen said he was prepared to take the consequences of his action. He has studied other tax protests by religious groups, but has not discussed his decision with an attorney.

The maximum penalties for failure to pay income taxes are fines of up to $10,000 and jail terms of up to five years.

But an IRS official in Seattle said she knew of no one in the Pacific Northwest who has been jailed for a tax protest.

A tax protest would not work for everyone concerned about nuclear arms proliferation, Hunthausen said.

Since he is self-employed, he has control over his payroll deductions that the average worker does not.

But Hunthausen said he isn’t advocating that everyone follow his action.

“I’m trying to arouse people,” said the archbishop, who called the nuclear arms buildup a “grave moral evil.”

His announcement has aroused many people in his congregation. Hunthausen said he was currently “getting more register of support than resistance” from people in his archdiocese.

“I’m asking people to find their own personal way.”

If they agree that such weapons are needed, then their personal way would be to pay their taxes and support the arms race, he said.

Those who want an end to the arms race might consider prayer, fasting or writing their Congressional delegates, he said.

Hunthausen also said he is not encouraging those who wish to avoid paying taxes to use such action for their own personal gain. He plans to deposit the unpaid portion of his taxes in a charitable fund that promotes peace.

To those who would say it is dangerous for the United States to unilaterally drop out of the arms race, Hunthausen says such action requires “a dimension of faith.”

“We’re putting our faith in this weaponry. We just don’t seem to let God into the equation.”

Hunthausen said that dropping the country’s nuclear weapons may be risky, but continuing to build weapons that can destroy hundreds of thousands of people is even riskier.

Some bits and pieces from here and there.

Today, a few more data points about the tax resistance of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen. First, a short article by Robert McClory from an issue of In These Times dated .

Seattle Catholic Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen took a leap of faith in a speech before 600 delegates to the Pacific Lutheran convention at Tacoma, Wash. “I think the teaching of Jesus tells us to render to a nuclear arms Caesar what that Caesar deserves: tax resistance!” he said. “We have to refuse to give our incense… to the nuclear idol… I believe one obvious meaning of the cross is unilateral disarmament.”

Within a few days, Hunthausen, a relatively unknown church leader in a relatively obscure section of the country, had become a prominent national figure. To many it seemed incredible that a Catholic bishop would urge people to disobey the law. Yet the reaction in letters and newspaper editorials across the land was anything but condemnatory. He was consistently praised for “saying what had to be said” and for “sticking his neck cut an behalf of the future of the world.”

In fact, Hunthausen, 60, a balding, bespectacled, scholarly looking man, hadn’t meant to stick his neck out too far. Personally, he was struggling with a decision on whether or not to withhold half his taxes as a protest, he explained to reporters, adding, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

But as a crescendo of support built up , Hunthausen was emboldened to go all the way. In a speech at Notre Dame University, he said yes, he intends to withhold his taxes, and yes, he is prepared to go to jail if the Internal Revenue Service decides to move against him. “Our nuclear war preparations are the global crucifixion of Jesus…” he said.

Hunthausen’s radicalization has been going on for at least . A native of Anaconda, Mont., he was ordained a priest in and remained a dutiful churchman in the Helena, Mont., diocese until appointed archbishop of Seattle in . It was near Seattle — on Puget Sound — that the U.S. Navy was constructing a base for Trident submarines, renowned for their first-strike nuclear capability. The new archbishop became acquainted with Jim Douglass, a young, anti-Trident activist associated with the Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action.

In when Douglass was involved in a public fast protesting the Navy base, he asked the archbishop for support. Hunthausen replied by sending a letter and 50 pages of background material to all his priests, urging them to speak out about the Trident and its significance. In the following years, he personally joined in demonstrations, praised Douglass and his colleagues and talked openly about the demands of the gospel in a nuclear age.

Yet when he spoke his boldest words , they were directly related to that with which he was most familiar. “We must take special responsibility for what is in our own backyard,” he said. “And when crimes are being prepared in our name, we must speak plainly. I say with a deep consciousness of those words that Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound!”

Hunthausen’s leadership on this issue seems to have pushed other bishops in the United States into adopting a tougher stance on nuclear weapons. The Catholic Herald (of Britain) in 1983 noted that, on a 238 to 9 vote, a conference of U.S. Bishops released a pastoral letter calling for a halt to nuclear weapons production. Excerpts from the article:

All American Catholics will be challenged by the US bishops’ war and peace pastoral, and many could be led by it to try changing US defence policies or even to civil resistance, said Auxiliary Bishop Thomas. He added that some Catholics influenced by the letter may well be led to forms of civil resistance to US policy such as the tax resistance undertaken by Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle. The letter does not counsel such resistance, he emphasised, but it is an option open to those who find themselves opposed in conscience.

Through successive drafts of the pastoral the Reagan administration showed an unprecedented interest in the outcome of a church document, lobbying persistently through Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger and William Clark, national security adviser.

The D.C. Gazette reported in :

A group of religious leaders in Washington state is supporting the proposal of a Washington Roman Catholic Archbishop who urged people to refuse to pay their income taxes to protest US spending on nuclear arms. In , Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle urged US citizens to refuse to pay fifty percent of the federal income tax they owe to protest what he calls the “demonic” nuclear arms race. Now leaders of the Lutheran, United Methodist and United Presbyterian Churches, as well as officials of the United Church of Christ, have joined Hunthausen and vowed to stand publicly with him. In a letter endorsing his proposal, the church leaders are urging clergy elsewhere in the nation to give a similarly call to action. The Internal Revenue Service, in the meantime, says that disputes with government programs on moral and religious grounds do not give people the right to withhold taxes.

Colman McCarthy used Hunthausen’s action as the hook for an op-ed:

Rendering a “nuclear arms Caesar” his due

Washington — Is the Internal Revenue Service preparing a jail cell for Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle? He told the IRS that for reasons of conscience (“I think the teaching of Jesus tells us to render to a nuclear-arms Caesar what that Caesar deserves, tax resistance”), he would be passing up the festivities of April 15.

Until , doubts had persisted that Hunthausen would actually follow through on his statement of : that he was tired of praying for peace while paying for war and that he planned to refuse to pay half of his taxes to protest his government’s militarism.

The archbishop’s resistance — which represents courage, enlightenment, and fidelity to the basics of his religion — gives the IRS two choices, both bleak.

If it jails him, the attending publicity assures that Hunthausen’s style of protest would be pushed further to the front of the surging peace movement. A year ago, the nuclear freeze was seen as the idea of a few fringe radicals. But then came the New England town meetings and the freeze is now moderation itself.

From behind bars, Hunthausen, a fatherly book-loving man, would lend immeasurable substance to conscientious tax resistance. The IRS itself would likely be hit with a large levy of public ridicule: It jails a humble clergyman whose stated income is between $9,000 and $10,000 but it can’t track down legions of high-salaried tax cheats who help defraud the government of an estimated $80 billion a year.

The IRS is aware of another economic reality. The cost of prosecution and jailing would be much greater than the small sum that the bishop owes. It is known that within the IRS peer pressure exists among the agents to dog cases that promise large payments. Nailing a near-impoverished churchman, while highrolling white-collar cheats evade the tax laws, is not the way to earn a place in the T-Man Hall of Fame.

The IRS hasn’t forgotten the last time it was scorned and laughed at when taking on a peace bishop in a tax resistance case. In the late 1970s, agents in Richmond, Va., spent several months pursuing the taxes of a priest working under Bishop Walter Sullivan. The prelate recalls that the agency eventually spent about $10,000 to get about $9.

Should the IRS ignore Hunthausen, it will give publicity to a fact it would rather keep little known: that few tax resisters are ever jailed. The growing literature on the subject — from “People Pay for Peace: A Military Tax Refusal Guide” published by the Center on Law and Pacifism in Colorado Springs, Colo., to the newsletters of the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign in Bellport, N.Y. — reports that judges do not look on tax resisters as criminals acting out of greed but as honest and intelligent citizens seeking to demilitarize their government.

Hunthausen bears this out. He has stated publicly that the money he withholds from the IRS will be given to such groups as the National Peace Academy, a Pro-life chapter and a charitable organization.

While the top minds of the IRS squirm as they choose a proper penance for the archbishop, Hunthausen has been warding off attacks in his hometown. A reader of the Seattle Times rants. “What breakdown in Catholic structure, what failure in Catholic leadership, has allowed the archbishop of the great city of Seattle to make such a fool of himself?” Another mouthed the unofficial motto of the Pentagon: “We just cannot sit back and let the Russians build nuclear warheads and we do nothing.”

The challenge of Hunthausen is to resist being jailed not by the IRS but by the arguments of unreflecting critics like these. The context of the debate on nuclear weapons can’t be limited to the political. Nor can it be only a technological debate between hardware experts. The moral context comes first, Hunthausen is correctly arguing: “I say with deep sorrow that our nuclear war preparations are the global crucifixion of Jesus.”

The supporters of Hunthausen also need to be reflective. His stance should to be honored as something deeper than mere theological chic. The truth is that since Hunthausen announced his tax resistance last summer not one bomb has been dismantled and not one dollar diverted from the arms race. Hunthausen’s protest needs to be seen as a mild startup of moral pressure on the government, not a grand finale.

As did Mary McGrory:

Fiscal disobedience

Washington — Raymond Hunthausen has observed by withholding 50 percent of his income tax and publicly proclaiming it. He does not care for the way the Reagan administration would spend his money.

Hunthausen is not your run-of-the mill tax rebel, of which there is a growing number in the country, for a number of reasons. He is the Catholic archbishop of the archdiocese of Seattle. He suggested to Christians last spring that they withhold 50 percent of their taxes to protest increased spending on the arms race.

None of his flock, which is in the heart of the military-industrial complex, has publicly followed his example. But His Eminence practiced what he preached and with his Form 1040-ES-1982 he enclosed a check for $125, which is half the amount due. When asked at a Seattle Press Club meeting if he was ready to go to jail for tax evasion, he said he was.

He observed that the IRS had other ways of getting his money — perhaps confiscating his savings account or garnisheeing his salary, which amounts to $9,000 — a sum that probably wouldn’t cover a day’s supply of paper clips at the Pentagon.

Washington state’s economy is much tied to defense and nuclear enterprises: it has several nuclear power plants, Trident submarine bases and builds Boeing planes. But since the archbishop made his startling suggestion of civil disobedience, he has received mail that has been predominantly favorable.

Paul Weyrich, a right-wing spokesman, calls Hunthausen “a radical of long standing.” To the administration, of course, the archbishop represents a political threat that even the support of the extension of tuition tax credits to parochial schools and the support of the church’s stand on abortion do not begin to meet.

“I think the teachings of Jesus tell us to render to a nuclear-arms Caesar what Caesar deserves — tax resistance,” Hunthausen told his congregation. He is one of many Catholic prelates who have taken a militant stand on the question. Remembering Vietnam, the White House had expected the solid support of the hierarchy in its anti-Communist crusade. But on both Central America and the “peace through strength” nuclear buildup, the prelates have proved a disappointment.

Hunthausen sent the other half of the $250 he owes the IRS to an escrow account for the World Peace Tax Fund, something that is not yet in existence but will be if a bill sponsored by Sen Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., is ever passed. It provides for conscientious military tax objectors to put the “military tax portion” of their returns into the Peace Fund.

But it is not law yet, and His Eminence could go to jail if the IRS decided to make an example of him. It poses something of a dilemma. No administration would want to send a red hat to the slammer. But about 75 percent of the American people share his views about the arms race, and they could, if frustrated, start following his lead. Prosecution could be as dicey as nabbing the thousands who have failed to register for the draft.

Hunthausen supports the nuclear freeze, Ground Zero Week and the new “no first use” of nuclear weapons initiative. He is one of the interdenominational group of Seattle clergymen who have engaged in extensive dialogue with members of the Washington state legislature in the hope of persuading it to pass a freeze resolution.

Many Americans share the archbishop’s views, although not his courage. The fear of the sound of the tax collector’s step on the stair runs deep. The terror of the IRS audit stays their rebellion. Some take the coward’s way of dodging taxes, which is to give money to organized charities, some of whose blunt policies they find odious. For instance, if you contribute to Amnesty International, you know they will turn in oppressive countries and help make the Reagan administration a little self-conscious on the subject of human rights. Closer to home, if you give to a scholarship, you counter in a small way Reagan’s assault on college student loans. It’s the wimp’s tax revolt — and deductible, of course.

The income tax forms are voluminous. But nowhere on them is a place where a person such as Archbishop Hunthausen could specify what he did not want his money used for. There is no way, for instance, where you could tell the IRS you would rather see a food stamp recipient have a vodka on you than to have your money go to a manufacturer of poison gas. There’s no “preference” blank where you can write in: “Do not spend one dime finding a home for the MX — take care of orphans.”

Only one small box is set aside for choice. It asks you if you want $1 to go to a fund for presidential election campaigns. It is not enough.

The archbishop is using his tax return as a weapon in the battle against nuclear war. He is telling Ronald Reagan that until he listens to what the country is trying to tell him about nuclear morality, he will get only half his allowance.

Here are a couple more dispatches from the Poll Tax rebellion in Britain a few decades back. First, this from the Catholic Herald of :

Catholic MP leads “poll tax” assault

by Brian Dooley

Catholic MP John Battle revealed to the Catholic Herald this week he is set to embark on a campaign of “creative resistance” against the poll tax, which could involve refusing to pay.

Mr Battle, the Labour MP for Leeds West, said he would support local people who refused to pay the tax in their efforts, and would join with them in refusing to pay the tax voluntarily if they asked him to. Mr Battle’s stand against the poll tax follows last week’s declaration by Jesuit head Michael Campbell-Johnson that politicians should side with the poor (Catholic Herald, ). “In the end, the government can get the money out of you by deducting it from your income but there’s a lot of scope to resist this law”, he said.

Mr Battle elaborated on his plans at a “Poll tax — no way!” meeting on , organised by the Independent Labour Party.

“There is a lot of space to fight this tax from the ground upwards”, he said. Mr Battle spoke too at the meeting about the Housing Bill which is set to become an act within weeks. “This should also be resisted. The government can simply take over whole sections of cities from local authority control, and we’re just not going to accept it. Tenants are going to refuse to co-operate with government officials”, he said.

“Like with the poll tax, the law can be made to look an ass. There’s still a long way to go before they start taking the money for the poll tax — it was blasted through the House of Lords by wheeling in peers, despite the opposition in the House of Commons. It’s unfair and it’s certainly not a fait accompli that it will be enforced”, he stressed.

Mr Battle was applauded for his stand by fellow Catholic MP Denis Canavan, the Labour MP for Falkirk West, who has already been fined £50 for refusing to register for the poll tax. The tax is due to be introduced in Scotland in , a year before it is implemented in England and Wales.

“We’ve tried every means to stop it, but the only way to defeat it is if enough people like John Battle stand up and refuse to pay”, he told the Catholic Herald.

Mr Canavan has refused to pay the fine he has received, and said the money will have to be taken from him against his will.

However, Mr Battle suggested that a firm undertaking not to pay the tax was not necessary at the stage. “What I don’t think I should do as a public official is to encourage people to get into a situation where I’m all right but they’re not”, he said. He believes the bureaucracy involved in the bill will provide ample opportunity for resistance.

“There is a line in the bill at the moment, for instance, which concerns registering for payment of the tax. It says ‘if no-one lives at this address, please fill in that no-one lives here’. It’s ridiculous”, he said.

John Battle’s campaign has drawn criticism from other Labour MPs, however. Catholic Keith Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East, voiced his concern to the Catholic Herald.

“The only way to beat this poll tax is by a united campaign which must come from a decision taken by the Party at a national level. Without that large scale sort of action, people are not really in a position to take individual action”, he said.

Vaz turned out not to be right about that. The Party floundered around, trying to milk the controversy, while individuals organized at the grassroots level in a civil disobedience campaign independent from Party leadership that proved to be successful in defeating the tax.

Here’s an article from the same paper :

Halifax priest fined for poll tax refusal

by Rita Wall

A Halifax priest has said he will go to jail rather than pay the poll tax in a public stance which mirrors the mounting national opposition to the planned reform of local government finance.

Fr Peter Sheridan of St Bernard’s Presbytery in Boothtown, Halifax, is one of the first poll tax protestors to be fined for his opposition to the tax. Calderdale Council fined him £50 for refusing to complete a community charge registration form. He now faces a further £200 fine and ultimately a possible jail sentence.

“It’s an unfair and unjust tax and will place a burden on millions of people who can ill afford to pay it,” said Fr Sheridan. “This is like a reversal of the Robin Hood trend where the poor are being robbed to help the rich. It’s ridiculous.”

Having worked with the Catholic Housing Aid Society (CHAS), Fr Sheridan stressed that “this tax will cause homelessness, and will weigh heavily on the already vulnerable in our society including the elderly, the handicapped and the poor.”

Having talked to the local media and the national radio, Fr Sheridan is hopeful that other religious will follow his example in refusing to pay. “This is a totally unChristian tax, and the government has most certainly failed the people of Britain here,” he said.

“As yet the Church in England has not taken a public stance against this tax”, said Sr Deirdre Duffy, of the St Joseph of Peace Order who is active in the social justice field. “However, at a grassroots level there are many like Fr Peter Sheridan who are opposed to this tax which will cause many to suffer,” Sr Duffy said.

The poll tax will tax poor and rich alike at a consistent level, with no means test, and will most certainly contribute to the rising poverty and homelessness in Britain, Sr Duffy said. “There is also a considerable amount of confusion among religious about what orders will have to pay the tax,” she said. “There are some orders who have property and will be liable for a noncommunity tax, which works out higher than a poll tax, and many orders are exempt but they have not received exemption forms,” Sr Duffy said.

The Christian churches in Scotland have been united in their stance against the Poll Tax, taking part in many public demonstrations against its imposition in Scotland.

“Catholic social teaching stresses that those who are better off should be responsible for those who are less well off,” said Sr Kilpatrick of the Peace and Justice Commission in Glasgow. “We have been opposed to this tax from the start”.

There has been great opposition to the tax in Scotland not only because it discriminates against the poor, but also because it was introduced into Scotland first, and “it was using Scotland as a ‘guinea-pig’ trial for this tax, and is coming from a government which is not supported in Scotland,” said Sr Kilpatrick.

“We are also opposed to the centralisation of this tax, which militates against the autonomy of the local authorities who are being bypassed and will not control the allocation of the local tax money,” Sr Kilpatrick said.

The churches in Scotland have opposed the poll tax on economical, political and cultural grounds in Scotland “and we are determined to keep up our stance against it,” she said.

“Hopefully we can now join with those who are protesting in Britain so that we can protect those who will directly suffer as a result of this unfair tax,” said Sr Kilpatrick.

From the Catholic Herald, :

Prize author refuses to pay Church tax

Cologne: Following the announcement that German author Heinrich Boell had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano, said that the Catholic writer is not paying his Church dues.

Boell, the newspaper said, is “a leftist Catholic who by no means shies away from disturbing and painful controversies, such as for example the refusal to pay church tax.”

The 55-year-old Cologne author, who is the president of PEN International, the prestigious literary association, has been waging a three-year battle against what he calls the “finalisation of belief.” As in many other European countries, the German government here turns about 10 per cent of a taxpayer’s income tax over to his church. The only legal way to avoid this deduction is for a taxpayer to make an official declaration of leaving his church, thus cutting oneself off from the sacraments and church burial.

“I can’t leave the Church and I do not want to pay,” Boell told the authorities of his diocese. “Seize my property or throw me out of the Church.”

Boell sent the address of his publisher — who last year brought out the author’s bestseller “Group Picture With a Woman” — to the tax office, explaining: “There is nothing to seize in my home. Only books and my bed are there.”

Boell was quoted by the news magazine Der Spiegel as explaining that he is protesting the tax to show that in the Church there “exists a kind of pimp alternative: pay or get out. And I am showing the people that one can defend oneself against that.” When he started his anti-Church tax protest three years ago, Boell said he would not pay until the German supreme court decided on the constitutionality of the issue.

In , the court ruled against Boell on the grounds that he did not have to pay if he left the Church.

Up to now, the Church has given Boell an “unusual delay” in paying his Church tax. , however, the Cologne archdiocese turned the case over to the tax office, pointing out that the Church has nothing to do with seizing Boell’s property. Boell announced he is willing to pay a fine — “I can afford that little luxury” — though the tax office seems as slow to seize his property as the Church was to collect.

Böll finally did leave the church . The German Catholic Church tax is still a going concern, and was in the news again :

Catholic bishops place tax resisters under a ban

The German bishops have decided on penalties for leaving the church: those who pay no church tax are, in fact excommunicated. The shepherds respond with a cutting edge on a touchy subject.

The question is as old as Christianity itself Even the Apostles Peter and Paul have gotten entangled in the issue. And if the catechism is right, then this issue will again become quite important at the latest after death: who is actually in the church? Who is a member of the community of believers — and who has to stay outside?

This question is currently under German Catholics as controversial as it has ever been. For several years, some scholars represented the view that one could also be a Catholic without having to pay church tax. It should be possible, to withdraw from the church as a public corporation, thus avoiding the tax — and still continue to sense oneself to be a believer and to be a member of the church.

Salvation, they argue, depends not on a monthly payment, and a notice of resignation to the registrar’s office was a bureaucratic contact with the state, which had no consequences for life in the faith community of Christ.

A sensitive debate for the Catholic bishops, after all, as it touches on the self-understanding of each believer, and at the same time it represents the present system of church tax as a principle. After months of negotiations, they have therefore now passed a law that will put an end to the debate.

The “general decree” that the German bishops’ conference released on puts, now clearly states: Those who want to be Catholic must be either entirely Catholic or not at all. The church cannot be split into a worldly apparatus and a spiritual community of faith, both belong together.

Whoever comes out of the church can be no Catholic. They lose the rights of membership of the Church, until they return again.

To quote the two A4 pages long document that the Pope has personally approved and which came into force on : “The declaration of resignation from the church before the competent civil authority shall be considered as a public act of a deliberate and willful alienation from the church and is a grave offense against the Christian community.”

Whoever resigns acts contrary, “to the obligation to preserve association with the Church”, and “to the duty to make their financial contribution to the church which she needs to fulfill her tasks.”

Accordingly, Christians expect certain sanctions (“legal consequences”): Whoever does not pay church tax can no longer receive communion, be confirmed or go to confession. They can no longer be God-parents nor belong to any public church group.

For a church wedding, they can get a special permit under the condition that they promise “the preservation of the faith and the Catholic education of the children”. Finally, it says: “If the person who has left the church does not show any sign of remorse at death, the church funeral can be denied.” In summary, the consequences of resignation from the church are like excommunication.

The decree of the bishops is a special rule which applies only in Germany. The German church tax system is in fact an exception, as in most other countries, the Catholic Church regulates the contributions of its members differently. The German church tax was introduced in , as compensation for the nationalisation of church property (secularization).

With their decision, the bishops are trying to get out of the defensive position in which they found themselves in, thanks to a theologian: The Freiburg Professor Hartmut Zapp wanted to set a precedent in .

Zapp resigned from the church, but declared that he still continued to feel that he was a member of the Catholic Church. He could appeal to certain Vatican legal texts that make leaving the church not dependent on government agencies, but solely on the interior attitude of the believer.

In addition, Rome has always took the position that no matter what a believer declares to any German registry office — as long as they say nothing about resignation from the church, they are treated as a member. From a purely theological viewpoint, leaving the church is not possible in any case. Those who have been baptised belong irrevocably to the Catholic community.

The subject puts the Bishops’ Conference into a quandary. They must fight against resignations from the church, but no matter what it does, they will inevitably be suspected of being only tough about their tax revenue. Simultaneously critics accuse the bishops of ignoring the will of the Vatican. Accordingly the negotiating position of the German bishops was difficult, who on this issue wanted to matters absolutely clear.

The paper now presented represents a compromise with Rome. The German bishops have prevailed with their desire that participation in Catholic life is virtually impossible after a resignation. But they symbolically have not used the word “excommunication” — even though the “legal consequences” decided on for resignation mean virtually the same thing.

Catholics, who want to save on taxes, but still want to keep up organ music at the wedding or incense at the funeral will be faced with a clear choice. They must reckon for themselves and decide if they really wish to and can do without church life completely. “Let your yes be a ‘yes’, and your no be a ‘no’ ” as it says in the Bible.

Yet the bishops should be aware that they are taking a high risk. The risk of being considered cruel and relentless, as happy with penalties and greedy for money. So they unintentionally increase the risk that some undecided or those who have already resigned will make the final break. And the centuries-old debate about who actually belongs to the church and who does not answer their individual manner: I do not belong.

There is some more information on the controversy at this link.

Here are a couple of curious overlapping articles about a tax resisting American Catholic church during the Vietnam War period, both published on :

Fort Wayne Church Refuses To Pay Tax

Fort Wayne, Ind. (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service has threatened to seize assets of St. Mary’s Catholic Church if the parish carries through its refusal to pay a 10 per cent telephone tax to protest the Vietnam war.

The church holds folk guitar masses every Sunday and includes several blacks, longhaired youths, and poor people among its congregation.

Lawrence Williamson, president of the 22-member parish council, said the governing body voted 19 to 1 last week to withhold the tax from its monthly bill of $100 to $150.

The tax was initiated during World War Ⅱ and reimposed during the Vietnam war. Legal penalty for non-payment is one year imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.

Harold Kenner, a tax supervisor for the IRS’s Fort Wayne office, said if the church refuses to pay the tax and a penalty, the IRS has the authority to attach and auction assets.

“This was one specific thing we could do to protest the war,” Williamson said. “All our earlier marching and vigils and letter writing were simply acts of faith.

“We know they (IRS) ultimately will collect, but our conscience wouldn’t let us pay any longer… we hope they take an old school building,” he added.

Church Refuses To Pay Tax In War Protest

Fort Wayne, Ind. (AP) — An inner city parish that attracts hippies and disaffected catholics has voted to withhold its 10 per cent telephone tax to protest the Vietnam War.

The Internal Revenue Service says it will collect the tax and a penalty from St. Mary’s Catholic Church. The church’s limited assets will be attached, if necessary.

“This was one specific thing we could do to protest the war,” says Lawrence Williamson, president of the 22-member parish council that approved the withholding. “All our earlier marching and vigils and letter writing were simply acts of faith.

The tax first was imposed during World War Ⅱ and reimposed during the Vietnam War. Nonpayment means withholding 10 per cent of the parish’s monthly telephone bill of $100 to $150.

Williamson says the protest is the first of its kind in Fort Wayne and possibly the first in Indiana.

The parish council, which includes the sympathetic pastor, the Rev. Thomas O’Connor, voted 19 to 1 last week to withhold the “war tax.” The council is the church’s sole governing body.

Williamson says most of the 800 parishioners agreed with the council. Only a few elderly persons were panicked at the possible one-year’s jail sentence and $10,000 fine that are on the books but have never been imposed.

The old German Church is in an integrated downtown area. It tries to make religion relevant, Williamson says, and holds folk guitar masses every Sunday. Many of its worshipers are black, many are young and long-haired, many are poor.

Harold Kenner, a tax supervisor for the IRS office in Fort Wayne, sees headaches instead of symbolism in the church’s decision.

He says the telephone tax is no more earmarked for Vietnam war expenses than the income tax and the gesture is misplaced.

I’m impressed at the lengths to which the unnamed writer or writers went to make it clear that these church-going people are not ordinary decent church-going people like you — they’re hippies, and “disaffected” people, and blacks, and longhaired youths, and poor people!

Some international tax resistance news:

United States

  • J.D. Tuccille, at Reason, takes a look at Americans who stay outside of the banking system and otherwise engage in the “underground economy.”
  • The Pope came to visit, and gave a shout-out to Catholic Worker activist and war tax resister Dorothy Day in his address to Congress. It’s been amusing watching politicians and activists from just about every ideological niche try to claim the Pope as one of their own… it reminds me of the old saw about the blind men and the elephant. Or maybe it’s similar to how so many different ideologies, practices, and beliefs all claim to be interpretations of the real teachings of Jesus — nowadays we all get to interpret the Pope in our own way too… Is the Pope Catholic? Perhaps with a lower-case “c”.
  • New York restaurants are using “sales suppression” software to underreport receipts for tax purposes, to the anguish of the local taxfeeders. This, according to the opponents of the practice, means the restaurants “can offer lower food and beverage prices, and afford higher rents, than honest restaurants can.” Perish the thought.

Catalonia

  • A coalition of nationalist parties won the recent Catalan election, which they were billing as a referendum on independence. They have vowed to begin to separate from Spain within the next couple of years. Part of this independence campaign has already begun, with a number of municipalities, businesses, and individuals paying their federal taxes to the state government of Catalonia. “The key element that will permit us to exercise and maintain our independence will be the collection of all of the taxes by the government of Catalonia,” according to planning documents of the coalition. The state currently forwards those taxes on to the central government, so this form of tax resistance is largely a symbolic gesture. But the new government hopes to make this currently somewhat-illicit process official and then, eventually, to cut off the central government. In case of conflict with the central government over how taxes are to be paid, they may launch a blockade of the federal tax offices so as to encourage people to file with the Catalan tax authorities instead.

India

Ireland

Pakistan

  • Merchants across Pakistan have been conducting strikes to protest a new withholding tax on bank transactions. “If the government does not accept our demands,” said Naeem Mir, one of the strike leaders, “we will observe a series of shutter-down strikes… in the four provinces and in each and every small and big city in protest against the cruel taxation measures of the so-called business-friendly government.” The new taxes are being blamed on IMF-required austerity and on the expenses of Pakistan’s version of the “war on terror.”

Greece

Italy

  • Fifty condominium owners in Prino, Italy, have organized to stop paying the “IMU” municipal property tax in response to the city’s neglect of public spaces, including a filthy public square with a broken fountain that’s become a rubbish heap, poor upkeep of drainage that leads to flooding, and bad traffic management. A letter announcing the strike, signed by all fifty, was sent to the mayor and other city officials.

In , Ronald Freund’s book What One Person Can Do To Help Prevent Nuclear War was published by Twenty-Third Publications, a Catholic-oriented publisher. Chapter three was titled “God and Caesar” and concerned taxes as one point of leverage individuals have.

Freund gives a brief overview of the history of conscientious tax resistance that seems to me to understate it, though it’s possible that in less evidence was easily available.

[I]t was not until the Vietnam War that tax resistance became a significant form of Christian witness against war. One of the early Vietnam-era tax resisters was William Faw, a minister of the Church of the Brethren, one of the historic peace churches.

Faw had not come to my attention before, but Freund tells his story as follows:

William Faw: “Here I Stand; I Cannot Do Other”

William Faw was born in in Nigeria where his parents were missionaries for the Brethren Church. His father took a post teaching at Bethany Seminary, and the family moved to Chicago where Bill grew up. He went to college in Indiana and then attended the seminary until his graduation in .

While at school Faw was compelled to confront the issue of the draft. “Both my parents were pacifists so I had decided early on that I would either be a resister or a conscientious objector; I could not accept a student or ministerial deferment in good conscience,” explains Faw. Despite his religious background it still required a two-year battle with the draft board to obtain his CO status. By the time he received CO status he had a family and was never required to perform alternative service.

He received his first assignment in at the Douglas Park Church of the Brethren, a poor, multiracial community on the West Side of Chicago. It was during this period that Bill Faw became a tax resister. Faw explains that decision, saying, “I was a self-employed pastor and my wife was not working so we had control over our tax payments. Since my wife was also a pacifist, we felt that it was necessary to protest the Vietnam War. The question was, ‘How can we do this together?’ We spoke with several other Brethren who had been refusing taxes and listened to political leaders who opposed the war. By early we decided to refuse to pay our taxes in full knowledge that it could lead to criminal punishment.”

When the time came to file their income tax return, the Faws sent the IRS a long letter explaining why there was no check enclosed. Other resisters had engaged in resistance by refusing even to file a return, but Faw believed that a religious witness should be made in an open and public manner. The Faws’ letter made clear the personal struggle which accompanied their decision:

We refuse to willingly contribute to a “war machine” which is engaged in the very brutal war in Vietnam… In the past we felt that the ambiguities of tax paying outweighed the war-tax issue. That is, our government’s expenditures for foreign aid, law enforcement, programs in health, education, and welfare, agriculture, urban redevelopment, and poverty fighting are worthy of support… Events have occurred which lead us to reconsider our responsibilities as citizens. We feel we can be true to our national citizenship only if we oppose a so-called “non-war” that has not been constitutionally declared. We feel that we can be true to our international citizenship as spelled out at the Nuremberg Trials only if we disassociate ourselves from and actively protest our unjust, illegal, morally deplorable, aggressive offensive against human beings in Vietnam.

But most basically we feel that we can be true to our Christian discipleship only if we oppose… the seizure of God’s prerogative by the United States in attempting to become the philosophical, theological, executive, legislative, judicial, and policing agency for the entire world; only if we oppose the exploiting of American “racism” by A-bombing, napalming, scatterbombing Asians; only if we oppose the mode of “evangelistic effort” our nation is making in Vietnam to show the Buddhists what being a “Christian” nation means…

Thus we are led to withhold our income tax and to seek constructive alternative ways of sharing our income… In God’s name, and under his judgment, we pray that we might choose the best path to make our witness.

…As a result, they chose to donate the tax money to the Canadian Friends Service Committee for the relief of war victims. They were well aware that some of those victims who would be helped by their money were North Vietnamese and Viet Cong; they believed this action to be consistent with Jesus’ command to “love your enemy.”

The Faws refused to pay their income taxes for the next five years, donating the funds to various international relief agencies. The Internal Revenue Service sent an agent to attempt to obtain the taxes directly. When this failed the IRS placed a levy on the Faws’ bank account and was able to collect the back taxes. The Faws were not threatened with criminal penalties.

Freund says the Faws were also resisting their phone tax, but returned to being taxpayers in the wake of the Paris Peace Accords. However, as of the writing of the book, they were planning to become resisters again by refusing a percentage of their income tax:

The continuing military buildup, especially nuclear weapons, has led us to resume tax resistance… We are being lulled into accepting more and more. Johnson tried to give us guns and butter, but Reagan’s policy of sacrificing butter for guns represents a barbaric reversal of priorities.

Freund asked about the practical effectiveness of individual tax resistance.

…Faw conceded that it would be far more powerful if institutions were to openly advocate and practice tax resistance. “If one church did it, even a small one like the Brethren, the Mennonites, or the Quakers, it would have a tremendous impact on some of the liberal mainline denominations,” Faw believes. However, even the New Call To Peacemaking, a grassroots movement within the historic peace churches begun in , of which Faw was the local chairman for two years, has failed to adopt a position of total resistance to war taxes. This has been a source of frustration for Bill Faw, but he nevertheless believes in the importance of individual witness, “I would still do it even if no one else did. There comes a point, with Vietnam or the arms race, where you say, ‘I’m not going to participate in that, no matter what the cost.’ It’s kind of like Martin Luther saying, ‘Here I stand; I cannot do other.’ ”

Freund then briefly described “A Simple Methodology” for Christians who were considering war tax resistance, covering the options of 1) paying taxes under protest, 2) voluntary poverty, 3) refusal to pay. He then tried to discern what sort of guidance might be found in the Bible, considering the difficult “Render unto Caesar” and “the powers that be are ordained of God” sections in particular.

Then he returns to the problem of the lack of institutional support for war tax resistance among Christian churches:

War Taxes: Where the Churches Are

Bill Faw and tax attorney William Durland express frustration that the churches, as national institutions, have not taken clear positions in support of tax resistance. Durland, who counsels tax resisters, says, “Some church body will have to declare that it stands by the Gospel and not by the IRS. This could have a chain reaction effect and lead to a coalition of churches to make it work.”

What holds them back? According to Faw, many Brethren have expressed “concern for the biblical ambiguities regarding taxes, concern over the maintenance of a certain respectability, and fear of the consequences.” Durland is somewhat more cynical, “The Pope speaks out against war and then honors the Italian Army.”

What is the position of the churches? The historic peace churches, representing 400,000 members in the United States, have been discussing the issue since . In , the Church of the Brethren recommended that, “Although the Brethren cannot agree as to whether tax withholding is proper, they can all recognize the propriety of using the means of dissent which the social order itself recognizes… We recommend that all who feel concern be encouraged to express their protests through letters accompanying their tax returns, whether accompanied by payment or not.” Many employees of these churches have not been satisfied with this position and have urged church agencies to refuse to withhold their federal taxes, a violation of the law. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), responded by challenging the constitutionality of withholding as an infringement on the right of religious expression. In the Supreme Court ruled in AFSC v. U.S. that a lower court ruling in favor of the AFSC was invalid and ordered AFSC to continue to withhold. The AFSC has complied with that order since. Pressure from employees of the Mennonite Church to refuse to withhold led to the following resolution adopted in , “We request the General Board to engage in a serious and vigorous search to pursue all legal, legislative, and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption from the legal requirement that the conference withhold income taxes from its employees.”

The New Call to Peacemaking (NCP), a more radical caucus within the three peace churches, has gone somewhat further. In and again in the NCP called upon members of the historic peace churches “to seriously consider refusal to pay the military portion of their federal taxes, as a response to Christ’s call to radical discipleship.” However, attempts to go further and adopt a position which called “paying for war a sin parallel to the sin of fighting war” was rejected. As one pastor at the meeting said, “We are calling my congregation into deep water when they haven’t even gotten their toes wet.”

The mainline Protestant denominations have reacted cautiously or ignored the issue. There is a growing movement within the Unitarian Universalist Association to take a position in favor of tax resistance. One of the leaders of this effort is Rev. Philip Zwerling of the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles. He says, “Nowhere is military madness more manifest than in the nuclear arms race… and on one day of the year — April 15 — we break down and pay for it all… Is it not moral schizophrenia to blithely pick up the tab for the military mania that we speak out against? It’s time to put our money where our mouth is.” However, for all the strength of this statement, the denomination as a whole has not adopted this position.

At the General Conference of the United Methodist Church a resolution was adopted calling for support of those “who conscientiously object to the payment of taxes for military purposes.” Here, too, the group stopped short of calling on church agencies themselves to engage in tax resistance.

Although large numbers of Roman Catholics are engaged in various forms of tax resistance, the church has taken no official position. According to Father Bryan Hehir, Associate Secretary for International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Catholic Conference, “We have no policy on tax resistance… and I have not adopted a position intellectually on it.” Activist and author Father Daniel Berrigan thinks this position is becoming increasingly untenable, “More and more the question of paying federal taxes is going to become a question of conscience. The government is stealing money and turning it into blood money. We’re going to be pushed into a corner on whether we can recognize… our Christianity.”

Freund then recapped the example of (Catholic) Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen. Excerpts:

Addressing the Pacific Northwest Synod of the Lutheran Church in America… Hunthausen surprised his audience by suggesting what form their action might take, “I would like to share a vision of an action which could be taken: simply this — a sizable number of people in the State of Washington, 5,000, 10,000, a half million people refusing to pay 50 percent of their taxes in nonviolent resistance to nuclear murder and suicide… Form 1040 is the place where the Pentagon enters all of our lives, and asks our unthinking cooperation with the idol of nuclear destruction. I think the teaching of Jesus tells us to render to a nuclear-armed Caesar what that Caesar deserves — tax resistance.”

Reaction in the community was mixed, but leaders of eight other Christian denominations in Seattle announced their general support for the stand of the Archbishop… However, they stopped short of endorsing tax resistance, saying they would “encourage discussion of tax resistance” and offer support to “those who refuse to pay taxes in protest of the arms race.”

At the time of his speech the Archbishop openly stated that he himself had not yet refused to pay taxes, but that it was troubling his conscience. Several months later he acted. In a pastoral letter published in the Seattle archdiocesan newspaper, Hunthausen declared, “After much prayer, thought, and personal struggle, I have decided to withhold 50 percent of my income taxes as a means of protesting our nation’s continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy… I am saying by my action that in conscience I cannot support or acquiesce in a nuclear arms buildup which I consider a grave moral evil.”

…However, Pacific Northwest United Methodist Bishop Melvin Talbert said that “while the city’s ecumenical leadership is supportive of Hunthausen, none has indicated that he or she is prepared to follow suit with similar personal acts of tax resistance.”

Freund ends the chapter with a nod to the World Peace Tax Fund Bill idea, taking it at face value and noting that “[c]hurch support is broad.”

This is the tenth 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.

“Gospel Herald” logo, circa 1967

After the flood of letters and articles when John Howard Yoder came out as a Mennonite war tax resister in , there was a lull — maybe even an “enough, already” — that lasted .

There were a couple of additional sideways-glances at the war tax problem in . This one is found in the issue, and follows the pre-Yoder practice of cautiously attributing such sentiments to non-Mennonites (Baptists in this case):

John W. Bradbury, editor of The Watchman-Examiner, writes:

National defense puts a great burden on each citizen not only in heavy taxation but in the individual conscience. Consider the following. At a super-military establishment in Maryland a team of scientists devote themselves to the perfection of germ warfare. Of course, they are also developing ways of discovering methods against biological warfare attack by an enemy. These scientists work on their assigned projects, of course, with the hope that the life-destroying methods will not be used.

Their frightening possibilities include the inducing of pulmonary anthrax, which dogs the lung sacs and is 99 per cent fatal. Another is the poison secreted by bacterium which produces food poisoning. Nerve gases are being sought that can contract muscles, paralyze, prostrate, and kill the victim. This is no compliment for the kind of world in which we live!

The argument for it is that this sort of thing is forced on us by a relentless enemy. It, however, gives a Christian taxpayer some qualms of conscience when he finds out he is paying the cost of all this. Just how much evil are we Christians supporting by our taxes these days?

An unsigned editorial in the edition included, in passing, this portrayal of one variety of Christian tax resisters:

…what is sometimes called Anarchistic Christian pacifism. This kind of pacifist renounces and repudiates the state completely. The state is evil. There dare be no coercion. These have advocated the refusal to pay taxes or support the government in any way.

John E. Lapp, who had also written an earlier article on why he does not vote in government elections, wrote, in “How Should I Witness to the State?” (), that he does feel he must participate in the government by willingly paying taxes:

The only time when I am permitted to say that I must disobey is when the laws of the land conflict with the higher laws of God. Then I am moved to say, “[I] must obey God rather than men.”

My third way of witness to the government is to pay my taxes honestly and promptly. Some persons find it impossible to pay all of their income taxes; they withhold that portion which is specifically earmarked for military purposes. I can, I do respect my brother, whether he is a member of my church or of another communion, if he cannot conscientiously pay this part of his taxes and withholds it. However, as I read, “Discharge your obligations to all men; pay tax and toll, reverence and respect, to those to whom they are due. Leave no claim outstanding against you, except that of mutual love,” I am moved to pay my taxes without raising the question.

Lapp’s earlier essay on voting (which also touched on taxes somewhat) prompted a letter to the editor from Willis G. Horst () in which he tried to resurface war tax resistance as a proper Christian action:

In “Why I Do Not Vote in Political Elections”… we are urged to pay our taxes cheerfully to such a benevolent state as ours. But of all the uses to which our tax money is put, the war machine, which takes by far the largest percentage, is not mentioned. Many of us are convinced that in the present situation our Caesar is using this money for purposes beyond the legitimate use of his authority. What is our obligation? What about the statement in the same article pointing out that the [early] Anabaptists felt that “The Christian does not need to render to the state the oath, nor military service, nor war taxes”? Shall we continue to pay such taxes “cheerfully”?

A note in the issue informed readers of some war tax resisters who had organized outside of a Christian church context:

Fifteen Cornell University professors who are opposed to the war in Vietnam paid only 50 percent of their federal income taxes this year because they said half the nation’s annual budget is now being spent on the war. They said their protest was aimed at the war and not at the government’s right to collect taxes.

By and large, while Gospel Herald writers (of the Mennonite Church) were much more opposed to World War Ⅰ Liberty Bonds than writers from The Mennonite (of the General Conference Mennonite Church), and even at times showed a little skepticism towards the “Civilian Bonds” program of World War Ⅱ where little or none could be seen in the latter magazine, during the Cold War and Vietnam War periods, Gospel Herald was lagging behind its cousin in its enthusiasm for war tax resistance.

But in , the General Conference of the Mennonite Church met (confusingly, this is not the General Conference Mennonite Church). Coverage in Gospel Herald noted that “The conference asked the Committee on Peace and Social concerns to give priority to a study of war taxes and give guidance on the matter of paying taxes designated explicitly for war purposes.” and reprinted the text of that resolution:

Resolved, (1) That we seek to be more faithful in witnessing as vigorously against the evils of war by our own and all governments as we are in witnessing concerning our own conscientious objector interests, and (2) That we ask the committee to aid us in making a fresh study of the biblical teaching concerning the payment of taxes collected explicitly for war purposes and such other similar involvements in the war effort that they may find among us inconsistent with our profession as a peace church committed to Christ’s way and to suggest such remedial measures that will underscore our conviction and witness.

Joe Evans hoped to give the Mennonite Church a kickstart, in a letter to the editor published in the issue:

I think it is time that the Mennonite Church came out of its shell. It is our Vietcong brothers and sisters who are being killed daily. Let us not forget our American boys who are exposed to the filth of war daily.

We as a church which hates everything bad in the world must unite and give Christ to the double standard world. We must use everything that is peaceful to do it. This means our church boys must be firm conscientious objectors. Also the church must use peaceful demonstrations and boycotts, giving our taxes to a charity in lieu of the government. We must also pray constantly for a strength that will see us through. Christ gave His all; so why are we afraid to witness to everyone we meet and show the world that true love is the answer?

An editorial in the issue, signed “D.” (presumably John M. Drescher), began to ease the Church out of that shell:

Dare We Pay Taxes for War?

One tenth of the entire gross national product of the United States goes for defense. This means $1,400 for the average family of four each year. It means that we are spending $20 for defense for every $10 spent for public education and $12 for defense for every $20 spent for groceries.

According to the New York Times the production of military arms is "the single biggest manufacturing industry in the world. And the United States has been the principal source of arms for the whole world. In the recent Israeli-Arab conflict, both sides were using American-made Patton and Sherman tanks. The awful fact concerning reports made about American aid to other countries is that military aid figures are included with other forms of aid, giving the impression that the United States is liberal in its non-military aid, such as food, peace corps, and other resources. The aid given by the United States other than military is at present below the average given by other industrialized nations. This is to say that approximately .4 of one percent of the aid given by the United States to other countries is nonmilitary, which is a small part indeed.

Huntley and Brinkley in the Times report said that the total personal income tax paid into the federal treasury during the year was $62 billion. However, the U.S. channeled $70 billion through the Pentagon during the same time. This means that according to how you look at it, every dollar of your income tax money, and more, went for military purposes. What the Defense Department spends each year to “protect” the United States would produce the means to blow up the world several times over.

Estimated defense budget for is $73 billion. But it now appears that five or six billion may have to be added to the estimate for . Yet there is less debate in Congress on this gigantic military budget than on programs proposed in housing, education, economic opportunity, and overseas aid, all of which lumped together are insignificant in comparison. Apparently even congressmen dare not speak out on the military expenditure lest they be labeled doves or communist sympathizers.

According to a recent speech by Ira Moomaw, veteran Far East missionary and author of the book, Vietnam Summons, we are doing well in Vietnam military. “We have dropped 90 pounds of bombs and napalm for each inhabitant in the entire country and have spent $10,500 for every Vietnamese family North and South in conducting the war.”

Describing the effects of a napalm bombing which Moomaw and his wife witnessed, he said: “There could come a time when the survivors may envy the dead.”

According to Charles Bartlett and Edward Weintal in Facing the Brink (Charles Scribner’s Sons), “the irony of the epic struggle in Vietnam is the little-known fact that in , when President Eisenhower was deciding whether to intervene with American military power to save the besieged French forces at Dien Bien Phu, the most vehement protest came from the Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson. One observer recalls that the Texan pounded on the president’s desk to underline his refusal to support any move that might commit American troops to Asian jungles.

Raising any kind of new tax to fight the Vietnam war will certainly find considerable reaction. In the discussion of the report of the Committee on Peace and Social Concerns at Mennonite General Conference, delegates asked for direction on the matter of paying taxes designated for war purposes.

A resolution was passed which calls for “the committee to aid us in making a fresh study of the biblical teaching concerning the payment of taxes collected explicitly for war purposes and such other similar involvements in the war effort that they may find among us inconsistent with our profession as a peace church committed to Christ’s way and to suggest such remedial measures that will underscore our conviction and witness.”

I think such guidance is needed promptly. What should we do in our witness against war? Is withholding tax money a Christian witness? What should we do if a tax is required which is primarily or solely for the support of the war machine? The answer certainly is not an easy one. One must wonder what would happen by way of witness against the wrongness of war if 10,000 or more Mennonites would protest war by refusing to pay a percentage of income tax and give the amount withheld to causes which feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and bring the gospel to our needy world.

Some in our brotherhood seem bothered that we are speaking so much to the Vietnam concern. Certainly we must continually say all war, not just the Vietnam war, is wrong and we must be alert to other close and equally serious sins. Yet it happens that this war is being carried on at present and now is the time to speak. And where the government has made the manufacture of military arms such a major business then certainly a peace church should have something to say about the futility and sin of this approach.

Another article noted that even the dreaded Papists had taken the lead on this issue:

Twenty-three Roman Catholic priests in Kansas City, Mo., have indicated their opposition to President Johnson’s proposed 10 percent surtax because “we could not in conscience pay a tax earmarked for deeper involvement in the (Vietnam) war.”

The clerics expressed their view in identical letters sent to the two Missouri senators, Stuart Symington and Edward V. Long, both Democrats.

The letters were circulated for signatures by two members of the “junior clergy” (priests ordained less than five years), but signatures of several chancery officials and department heads, assistant heads, and pastors were included. All but one of the 23 priests are from the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

“While realizing the difficult decision facing you in the vote on the proposed 10 percent surtax,” the letters stated, “we feel it imperative to voice publicly our disapproval of the tax… The upheavals our nation has faced in recent weeks have emphasized the need for such a grave response on our part at such a critical moment.”

The priests disavowed “the policy of escalation of killing” and supported “the escalation of our domestic and foreign commitment for the improvement of life.” Their letters added:

“Our reliance on violence to force the enemy to the peace table has been reflected in the same policies in Negro communities to obtain their objectives. The 11 percent rise in crime during the past year has shown how well the lesson has been learned by all our communities.”

A series of letters-to-the editor followed through :

Dwight E. Roth
“I am convinced that if we as a peace group pay taxes for war, we are indeed hypocritical. In actuality, the Mennonite position is — we shall not fight, but we shall support fighting through taxation. Thus the only difference between peaceful (?) U.S. and the U.S. war machine is a physical difference; certainly it is not a moral or spiritual difference. We are not there bodily, but in truth and spirit we are willing to support evil destruction.”
Raymond Byler
Byler criticized war tax resistance and suggested the alternatives of either total withdrawal from the war economy or of continued engagement along with substantial charitable deductions.
Prentice L. Hartsburg
Hartsburg took the position that the Render-unto-Caesar answer trumps any Mennonite revulsion towards war. Besides, he wrote, the government also does objectionable things during peacetime; should that mean we shouldn’t pay taxes then too?
Marlene Y. Kropf
Kroft appreciated the new attention being paid to the war tax issue.
S.C. Brubacher
Brubacher took the traditional hard line on the Render-unto-Caesar and Tribute Penny verses, deprecating war tax resistance in the process.
Daniel J. Miller
Miller suggested paying under protest as a compromise.