Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
20th–21st century Quakers →
Edith Carlton & Gordon Mervin Browne
Johan, at Can you believe?, writes about the life of Quaker war tax resister Gordon Browne, who died late .
Excerpt:
Within and beyond his ministry at FWCC, Gordon never abandoned the high ideals that first led him to worship and serve with Friends.
I think he had a zeal deep in his bones for the essentials of prophetic Christian discipleship.
It was obvious to him that Friends should urgently, persistently stand up for racial justice, including in our own institutions, and he frequently voiced this concern in his home yearly meeting, New England.
He and Edith advocated and practiced military tax resistance, even to the point of suing the Internal Revenue Service.
To some, this concern about military taxes may have seemed secondary or even quixotic; to Gordon it was a direct consequence of being a follower of Jesus.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was a resurgence of war tax resistance news in the
Friends Journal in ,
including an interesting series of articles on the voluntary simplicity / low
income lifestyle as a tax resistance tactic, and the beginning chapters of
the tale of Quaker war tax resister Priscilla Adams.
A note in the issue plugged the
“Conscience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account”:
Established in by the Nonviolent Action
Community of Cascadia, the account allows war tax resisters to set aside
refused military taxes in a secure fund. Deposits may be retrieved at any
time (to replace assets seized by the
IRS,
for example), and interest from the account is used to promote war tax
resistance and support peace and social justice activism. Depositors’ funds
are reinvested in socially responsible institutions assisting low-income
communities and minorities. The CMTC Escrow Account is the largest and most
geographically diverse war tax redirection fund in the United States.
War tax resistance is an act of civil disobedience, and resisters potentially
face fines, levies, and seizure of assets. However, the escrow account itself
is a trust fund, and as such is confidential and entirely legal. Depositor
records are not available to the
IRS,
and individual deposits are considered to be anonymous portions of a larger
fund invested in fully insured institutions. Participants receive records of
their transactions, annual statements, and a free subscription to
NACC’s quarterly war tax resistance magazine.
(I wouldn’t rely on any of that as solid legal advice. My understanding is
that the
IRS
sometimes treats “warehouse banks” like these as illegal operations that they
can seize wholesale under the theory that they’re being operated for money
laundering or tax evasion purposes.)
In a letter in the issue, William Kriebel
called out Quakers on their careless or politically-correct use of of language;
in particular he claimed: “There are no ‘war taxes.’ All income tax money goes
into the treasury without earmarking for the military. Taxation is a legitimate
power of any government. Our points of protest really are the decisions
(budget-making, appropriation) to use money out of the common fund for military
purposes.”
An article on the Quaker Council for European Affairs in the same issue noted
in passing that “conscientious objection to war taxes” was one of the “studies
for publication” that the organization had produced. Another article in that
issue noted that the National Association of Evangelicals had endorsed the
Peace Tax Fund bill:
“At first this was just a lonely struggle for the peace churches,” said
Marian Franz, director of the campaign, “then we got the support of the
mainline churches, which represent over 12 million people. Now we have
support from more conservative religious organizations, who, until recently,
had seemed to be unlikely allies.” Marian attributes the recently attained,
broad base of support to a change in tactics from an issue of conscientious
objection to an issue of religious liberties. Marian explained that “having
this broad base of support means that members of Congress, even conservative
members, take the issue more seriously.”
On , there was a benefit premiere
showing of An Act of Conscience, a documentary on
the Kehler/Corner house seizure and subsequent occupation. There was some
tangential Quaker involvement in the benefit (it was sponsored by several
organizations, including a regional AFSC office, and some Massachusetts
Quakers took part in the occupation), and the benefit screening was covered
in a note in the issue.
In the lead editorial in the issue,
editor Vinton Deming paid tribute to Eleanor Webb:
Eleanor Webb, who died , was clerk
of the Journal board when I was appointed
editor-manager in .… It was Eleanor… who
stood firmly in support of staff who resisted paying the military portion of
their federal taxes.
One of the feature articles in the issue
was written by David R. Bassett and told his story as “The Founder of the
Peace Tax Fund Movement.” Excerpts:
marks the 25th year since the
introduction of the Peace Tax Fund Bill in the
U.S. Congress. I
have been involved in the initiation of this legislation, a laborer in the
centuries-long effort to establish on earth the type of peaceful world
envisioned by Jesus and George Fox. I firmly believe that, on some
significant day in the future, some nation will for the first time pass a
Peace Tax Fund Bill, thereby establishing legal recognition of the right of
conscientious objection to the payment of military taxes. Once this is
accomplished, other nations will follow suit. I consider this goal as one of
the crucial and route-determining “trail-signs” on the path to that time and
place where the world will realize that ahimsa (soulforce)
is the preferred way to resolve conflict and to govern communities, and where
conscientious objection to war and other forms of violence will be considered
the norm.
[My] orientation as a conscientious objector to war and of preventing
preventable suffering impelled Miyoko and me, beginning in
, to wrestle with the fact
that each year we were paying (through our federal taxes) to support the
Viemam War and the military system generally. In fact, some 50 percent of
those tax moneys went to support
U.S. military
systems! One of my most graphic memories of that time was, while working many
nights at Queens Hospital in Honolulu, hearing
U.S. Air Force jet
tankers, fully laden with jet fuel, flying over the heavily populated part of
Honolulu on their way to Indochina.
Conscientious objection to payment of military taxes
In , with the Vietnam War continuing, we
moved to Ann Arbor to work at the University of Michigan. We became members
of the Ann Arbor Meeting and found there a number of people who were actively
grappling with the issue of whether to continue to pay the military portion
of federal taxes for a war that we opposed. I came to realize that any
nation’s military programs are made possible the, monetary resources that, in
the analysis, are extracted from the nation’s citizens by taxation. It also
became clear to me that one who was conscientiously opposed to military
systems must not allow his or her funds to be used for this purpose.
Surveying the pervasive role of our military system not only in our foreign
policies, but in its effects on our economy, our environment, and on the
nation’s culture and spirit, I carne to feel that this issue was central to
our times. Conscientious objection to payment of military taxes is as
important to be established as was the ending of slavery and of apartheid and
the establishment of women’s right to vote. At the same time, I held then,
and still hold, the view that the federal government is capable of carrying
out many beneficial and constructive programs and that I am willing, indeed
obligated, to pay my full share of taxes to support those programs.
I came to know that it would not be enough simply to focus on reductions in
military spending by influencing legislators and electing new ones (though
this was obviously necessary). The challenge was to extend the right of
conscientious objection to war to include not only one’s physical body, but
also one’s economic resources. I knew further that there had been repeated
resistance in the
U.S. courts to
such change and concluded that, while civil disobedience in this area
(i.e., war tax resistance) would continue to be essential, the
principal focus of attention should be to change the tax laws.
During the year , there was for me
a struggle with my conscience, not in regard to what I believe on this issue
but whether to take some action and what that action should be. Should I live
below a taxable income level? move to Canada? engage in war tax resistance?
take our civil disobedience actions into the judicial system? or attempt to
change the federal tax laws? Miyoko and I knew that to embark on any of these
actions would require great amounts of time and energy; that each course
would require some changes and risks, not all of which we could anticipate at
the outset; and that none were assured of “success.” I knew that to commit
the time necessary to move this issue forward might conflict with my hopes of
making progress in academic medicine and in research into the causes of
atherosclerosis. We gradually came to the view that it seemed wisest to try
to resist paying the military portion of our taxes and to begin to
take steps to bring about legislative change.
It was the quiet voice of conscience that kept nagging me almost every day, as
I found one or another reason not to take some action. Finally, in the
, I phoned Professor
Joseph Sax at the University of Michigan Law School and outlined to him the
basic idea: the need to change the federal tax laws so as to have Congress
grant legal recognition to the right of conscientious objection to
the payment of military taxes, while enabling the taxpayer to pay the full
amount of his or her tax with assurance that those tax monies would
not be used for military expenditures. Professor Sax sketched out how this
might be accomplished. Over a period of eight to nine months, with the
assistance of Michael Hall, we began the process of drafting what became the
World Peace Tax Fund Bill.
Other Ann Arbor Friends, Joe and Fran Eliot and Bob and Margaret Blood, had
been considering drafting a bill. A brief written for them by Thomas Towe (a
Quaker law student) proved a helpful resource. It was not hard to draw
together a working committee of seven or eight people during
to work on
this legislation and to take the initial steps in deciding how to bring the
bill to Congress, how to publicize it, and how to raise funds. We were
encouraged when Ann Arbor’s Interfaith Council for Peace decided to support
the legislative effort and appointed two very effective members to meet with
us on a regular basis.
The World Peace Tax Fund Bill was first introduced in the
U.S. Congress on
, with Representative Ronald
V. Dellums as the lead sponsor, with nine other cosponsors. The Peace Tax
Fund office moved from Ann Arbor to the Florida Avenue Meetinghouse in
Washington,
D.C., in
. The bill was first introduced in
the Senate in , with Senator Mark Hatfield
as its sponsor. In the bill was renamed the
U.S. Peace Tax
Fund Bill. A dedicated staff, led for the past 14 years by Marian Franz, has
coordinated the lobbying effort. The orientation and the gifts that she
brings to her work are evident in her book, Questions That Refuse To Go Away.
A sidebar noted resources available from the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and also made note of the international conferences at which similar plans proposed in other countries are discussed.
The same issue also contains Clare Hanrahan’s article “Wholesome Poverty: A Revolutionary Adventure.”
Unfortunately, in the archived PDF, some of the opening paragraph is obscured by an insert card.
The article appears to begin with Hanrahan saying that she initially adopted a lower-income simple-living lifestyle in order to resist war taxes, but then came to believe that frugality and thrift and anti-consumerism and simplicity had a larger role to play in the pursuit of “a just and sustainable global community.”
It continues:
When I must work for wages, I do so as an independent contractor so that I can maintain control over tax withholdings.
I redirect a fair percentage of cash wages and many hours of volunteer time to support life-affirming projects at home and abroad.
Self-employment suits my temperament and has enabled me to develop skills and to pursue interests I may never have had the time for in a conventional career.
I’ve tried to be resilient and open to any honest labor.
If I’m asked what I do for a living, each day I can provide a different answer.
One day I might be gathering and saving seeds for next year’s garden or harvesting wild herbs for a winter tea; another day might be spent in household repair, community organizing, or researching and writing a grant for a nonprofit organization.
I’ve learned the wisdom in giving due time each day to labor of the mind and of the body and to quiet reflection that feeds the spirit.
I value my free time and open schedule far more than any accumulation of cash or property, security, or prestige.
The freedom to choose how I will be with each moment is a gift and a challenge that I count as my greatest wealth.
Living on the edge, more or less, over the years I have honed the skills and nurtured an attitude of wholesome poverty.
Meeting basic needs without a substantial cash flow has been least stressful when I’ve lived within a stable community where interdependence and cooperative values are practiced.
But during my nomadic years I learned to trust in the kindness of strangers and the serendipity of life.
I came to value the gifts of the pilgrim spirit and to recognize the importance of the itinerant wayfarer in the lives of the comfortably settled.
I’ve lived and traveled aboard small sail boats, in a tipi, in rural cabins, and in derelict inner-city housing, trading cleanup and repair for rent.
I’ve made do in the back of an old school bus and afloat on a homemade houseboat on a Mississippi backwater.
I’ve worked in a cooperative shelter for displaced women and children, with room and board as compensation, and I’ve battered for home and garden space by exchanging pet and plant care.
My primary transportation is the slow way.
As a pedestrian, a bicyclist, and a bus rider, I keep a less frantic pace, and the more personal contact with those I encounter enriches the journey.
I can borrow a car or catch a lift from a friend if necessary, and by paying my fair share of the cost, the cooperative way serves each of us.
Nutritious food is available in surprising abundance if one is willing to look to unconventional channels:
I’ve participated in grassroots distribution networks of urban gleanings, intercepting the produce, grains, and other surplus foods otherwise lost.
Best of all, I’ve learned to grow my own food in community gardens and backyard plots whenever I had the opportunity.
As a worker-member at the local coop I claimed a significant reduction on food purchases, and by eliminating meat from my diet, the cost of my sustenance is affordable and sustainable.
Insurance against old age, disability, accident, or disease has never been an affordable option, nor one in which I place my faith.
Catastrophic illness or accident or the incapacities of age could happen to anyone.
Yet time and again, I’ve been sustained through economic precarity with help that comes at just the right moment.
This has happened so often that I live with a trust that keeps fear at bay.
I have learned to lean into the present moment, focused on the work before me, while keeping a well-honed sense of the adventure of it all and a very real faith in the unfolding process.
The inherent goodness of the universe has been made visible through the most unlikely of allies, and the travelers I’ve met along the way have been the wisest of teachers.
Peace Pilgrim, writing in her pamphlet, Steps Toward Inner Peace, recalled a visit to a city that had been her home:
In the poorer sections I am tolerated.
In the wealthier sections some glances seem a bit startled, and some are disdainful.
On both sides of us as we walk are displayed the things that we can buy if we are willing to stay in the orderly lines, day after day, year after year…
Thousands of things are displayed — and yet the most valuable things are missing.
Freedom is not displayed, nor health, nor happiness, nor peace of mind.
To obtain these, my friends, you too may need to escape from the orderly lines and risk being looked upon disdainfully.
Stepping outside the tyranny of “orderly lines” and daring to risk the uncertainties of disaffiliation can make of our very lives a revolution.
The way to the just and sustainable global community that we seek will open before us as we walk.
Another article in the same issue took the “voluntary simplicity” idea and ran with it.
Starting with Jesus’s one-sentence summary of his teachings — love your neighbor as much as you love yourself — the authors took this to mean “taking our fair share of global resources and no more.”
This starts with refusing war taxes because militarism is directly destructive of “our global neighbors.”
But that’s just step one of a six-step process.
Step two would be to imagine the world’s resources shared equally, which, the authors assert, means “an annual ‘fair share’ of just over $3,000 per person.”
But because the world is not using its resources in an environmentally sustainable way, step #3 is to reduce this fair share some more, to a more sustainable level: $1,800 per person per year.
But since that much money would go further in a place like the United States, where it’s relatively easier to live off the cast-offs of the wealthy, level #4 “challenges us to live on even less than level three, since we have an easier time doing so in a society with a relatively affluent public infrastructure.”
We’re not done yet.
Level #5 considers the non-monetary wealth most Americans enjoy because of the relatively high levels of medical care and education they have had access to.
“With such advantages (and others), we ought to be able to live on less resources than folks who lack education and have chronic medical problems.”
Finally, level #6 is for those who are not hampered by disabilities, encouraging them to sacrifice yet more so as to leave more for those who have to struggle harder.
Challenging? Certainly.
Even the authors only seem to have made it half way to step #2, limiting their income as a couple to $12,000 a year.
Some other choices they made were to “keep the majority of our savings in the form of non-interest-bearing loans” so as to avoid the sin of usury, and to “give away each year an amount equal to what we spend on ourselves.”
(A letter-to-the-editor in the issue criticized this radical simplicity, saying it smacked of “intelligent, able-bodied adults who consciously decide to let others subsidize” the benefits of society.
In particular: “In reducing their income to avoid paying taxes to support the military, this couple also avoids paying taxes that support the other half of the federal budget.
So, there goes their support for many of the roads they use, for medical research they might avail themselves of through that subsidized doctor, for other federally supported scientific and social research, for national parks, and so forth.
The authors are obviously well educated.
Their education was probably supported by local, state, and federal subsidies.
One wonders if they are repaying society for the educational benefit they’ve received.”)
Another brief note in the issue reported on the results of a “penny poll” that had been “conducted by Christian Peacemaker Teams in Elkhart, Ind.” and had indicated that those polled implicitly supported huge reductions in military spending.
A letter-to-the-editor from Marjorie Schier and Suzanne Day of the “Philadelphia Yearly Meeting War Tax Concerns Support Committee” published in the issue summarized the war tax issue as they saw it:
Resisting taxes
When a draft call finds some conscientious objectors unable to participate in war, the government not only has provided them alternatives, but also has proceeded to draft others who will participate.
It is individual conscience that makes the difference, not how the government allocates the recruits.
Some Friends have been unable to enlist, and some cannot voluntarily send dollars in federal tax for military uses.
Interacting with the federal government through tax resistance as witness for peace is more than symbolic; it can be earnest, meaningful religious conscience in action.
However, it does not change how the government allocates its resources, and efforts to witness for changed priorities are also significant.
Many Friends and others work for passage of the Peace Tax Fund Bill by the U.S. Congress because it would not only provide a legal opportunity for pacifists to pay their full federal tax without supporting war, but also give the government an indication of the numbers of citizens exercising this option.
Yes, the federal tax on telephone service is refused by many pacifists (with
a note of explanation accompanying the refusal and redirection of the money
for constructive purposes) because that tax was specifically reinstated to
support the war in Vietnam. Federal bookkeeping does not distinguish certain
tax streams for specific purposes, and has not since John Woolman wrestled
with this same issue. Nevertheless, many Friends are prompted to take a stand
for peace via taxes and thereby find a forum for disclosing that witness with
meetings, governmental representatives, families, and neighbors.
An obituary notice for Abram Bresel Goldstein in that same issue noted that
“[t]hough he worked briefly for the Internal Revenue Service, Abram left that
position during the Korean War to avoid aiding the collection of taxes for
war.”
On , NWTRCC and
the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sponsored
a seminar on “Corporate Conscience and War Taxes” at the Moorestown, New
Jersey, Meeting (according to a calendar listing in the
issue).
Priscilla Adams
The war tax resistance of Quaker Priscilla Adams became a cause célèbre that
played out over in the
Friends Journal starting in
. I’ll break with my chronological examination of the Journal for a while to follow this thread.
The issue introduces Adams and her
legal case:
Priscilla Adams, a war tax resister and member of Haddonfield
(N.J.) Meeting, is
challenging the
IRS
in court under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Her case is the
first of its kind to test conscientious war tax resistance since the passage
of the RFRA in . Priscilla and her lawyer,
Peter Goldberger, will challenge two points covered by the act: the
government’s use of penalties against war tax resisters for their stands of
conscience; and the lack of a government accommodation for conscientious
objectors to paying for war (like a Peace Tax Fund). The RFRA states that in
conflicts between the government and religious freedom, the government must
show compelling state interest and then use the least restrictive means
necessary. In this case, Priscilla is challenging the government’s lack of
recognition of conscience in response to the
IRS
assessing her taxes and penalties. She and Peter are arguing that under RFRA,
the IRS
should waive penalties for religious war tax resisters as long as they
recognize other forms of reasonable cause for noncompliance with the tax law.
They also are stating that the RFRA requires the enactment of something like a
peace tax fund for religious war tax resisters who are willing to accept a
reasonable accommodation, such as earmarking tax monies for non-warlike
purposes in the federal government. The case has completed its earliest
procedural stages and will be heard in United States Tax Court. Though no
date has been set, lawyers expect a trial date
. Priscilla has participated in
several clearness committees and is receiving guidance and support from
Haddonfield Meeting, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee,
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s War Tax Concerns Support Committee, the
National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and family and friends.
The issue gave an update:
Priscilla Adams… will appeal the court’s decision rejecting her right to
refuse to pay taxes. The case went before the Philadelphia Tax Court, where
Adams presented an extensive outline of Quaker history and beliefs related to
war tax objections. The court’s decision states, “Religious Freedom
Restoration Act of does not exempt Quaker
from federal income taxes, despite taxpayer’s religious opposition to
military expenditures.” , Rosa Packard of Purchase
(N.Y.) Meeting and
Gordon and Edith Browne of Plainfield
(Vt.) Meeting also have filed
complaints in federal district courts seeking to protect their conscientious
acts of war tax refusal.
The issue mentioned her appeal:
Tax resister Priscilla Lippincott Adams… faced the Federal Court of Appeals
on . Her case against the
IRS for
penalizing her for her religious objections to paying the military through
taxes was dismissed in … The court
had the choice of hearing oral arguments or making a decision based on the
written briefs. In a positive turn, the judges heard oral arguments. Adams
said her lawyer, Peter Goldberger, passionately presented her case, “just
like a lawyer on T.V.”
The three judges will now make a decision, a process that could take anywhere
from six weeks to six months.
From there, to the Supreme Court, according to a
press release that formed the
basis for a
Journal news brief:
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the
U.S. Supreme Court
in support of its member, Priscilla Adams… who petitioned the high court in
, following unsuccessful efforts
in lower courts to obtain government accommodation for her conscientious
objection to paying war taxes by allowing her to pay federal taxes without
paying for military expenditures. Her employer, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,
supports religious witness by not forwarding the military portion of a
conscientious objector’s taxes to the
IRS. A
Peace Tax Fund, where tax dollars of conscientious objectors would be directed
exclusively to nonmilitary programs, is one possible solution to the dilemma
for adherents to nonviolence; a bill to establish a Peace Tax Fund has been
introduced in every Congress .
…Lower courts addressed the issue of accommodating war tax resistance only by
declaring that the government has a compelling interest in collecting taxes;
the courts have not dealt with the arguments that accommodation of
conscientious objection would be possible within the context of mandatory
participation in taxation. The Supreme Court has not heard any case that
raises these religious liberty questions under the
law.
By then it was too late, though. The issue noted that Adams’s Supreme Court appeal had been turned down:
On , the
U.S. Supreme Court
declined to hear appeals by Gordon and Edith Browne and Priscilla Lippincott
Adams to lower-court rulings that allowed the Internal Revenue Service to
impose late fees and interest for their conscientious refusal to pay the
military portion of their federal tax. The issue in this case was not paying
the tax when forced to do so by the
IRS,
but whether a “religious hardship” existed that should enable them to pay
without any penalties and interest. The lower-court rulings reaffirmed a
statement of the Supreme Court in that “The
tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge [it]
because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious
belief.” The Justice Department lawyers said that “Voluntary compliance with
the tax laws is the least restrictive means of furthering the government’s
compelling interest in collecting taxes.”… “We’re very disappointed that the
Supreme Court will not be taking the opportunity to reinforce religious
freedom and freedom of conscience,” said Marian Franz, executive director of
the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. “Congress seems like the most
appropriate place where this human right can be protected.”
Adams wasn’t going to give up though. Whether or not the government was going
to deign to make her war tax resistance legal, she was going to resist, and
the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was willing to help her. From the
issue:
The United States Department of Justice, Tax Division, is suing Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting for refusing to forward wages of an employee to the Internal
Revenue Service. The employee, Priscilla Adams, resists paying taxes for war
and the military on the basis of religious conscience. The lawsuit, filed in
, is a move to attain funds from
PYM
as recompense for taxes owed by Priscilla Adams, plus a 50-percent penalty
for not garnishing her wages as instructed by the
IRS in
. If the
IRS
succeeds,
PYM
would owe approximately $60,000.
On ,
PYM’s
Interim Meeting decided to respond to the lawsuit and defend its position in
court.
PYM
stated that to garnish Priscilla Adams’s wages would infringe upon her
religious beliefs, and
PYM
should not “be required to act as a collection agent for the government when
doing so will require it to violate key tenets of the Quaker faith.”
Thomas Jeavons,
PYM
general secretary, commented in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “About 50 percent
of our taxes pay for weapons and warfare… We have long sought the creation of
a Peace Tax Fund, a government fund for nonmilitary use, where taxes of
[those who regard paying for war as a violation of religious conscience]
could go. Legislation for this has been in Congress for many years. It should
be passed now.”
The issue spelled out the
Meeting’s legal argument:
On , Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting filed its answer to a Justice Department lawsuit that asks a $20,000
penalty to be imposed on them and seeks to make them the collection agent for
the government. The yearly meeting’s response makes dear its intention to
stand by its essential religious principles, and publicly defend the free
exercise of religion on all possible grounds, including constitutional and
statutory religious freedom defenses. The
IRS
contends that
PYM
must garnish the salary of one of its employees and members who refuses — in
keeping with longstanding Quaker convictions — to pay taxes that support war
and preparations for war. While the
IRS
could easily take other courses to collect the back taxes it claims are due,
instead the federal government is trying to force a church to collect these
funds for it, an action that would require this Quaker organization to
violate its own essential religious convictions regarding freedom of
conscience.
PYM
has refused to do so. The answer to the suit says that the government “asks
the court to assist it in violating the most fundamental religious principles
of an established church… Although those principles and the yearly meeting’s
reasons for its actions have been painstakingly explained to the [government]…
the complaint purports to set forth the history of this matter without even
mentioning
PYM’s
efforts at communication and conciliation. Further, the complaint labels the
Yearly Meeting’s religiously mandated actions as a ‘failure’ to submit to
government coercion, and brands the [Quaker] theological scruples as
‘unreasonable’ and deserving of harsh penalties.” The news release from
PYM
adds, “Quakers have long been known for their religious pacifism, opposition
to war, and support of religious freedom and freedom of conscience.
PYM
regrets that being true to its faith has now brought us into conflict with
the government. The Quaker organization sees itself as defending freedom of
religion and freedom of conscience — and not just for itself, but for all
those who desire to be both good citizens and people of faith. While
PYM
regrets the need to resort to legal action, it looks forward to a full airing
of the issues involved in a public forum where both the sound reasons and
religious principles that guide this Quaker organization’s actions may be
upheld.
PYM’s
defense will rest on the constitutional right to freedom of religion
generally, and particularly as upheld and restated in the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act of .”
The issue reported on how far
they’d gotten with that argument:
On , A federal judge ruled that
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting must comply with a levy on the wages of war tax
refuser Priscilla Adams, but rejected a 50 percent penalty desired by the
Internal Revenue Service.
U.S. District
Judge Stewart Dalzell agreed with the Quaker argument that complying with the
levy “substantially burdens its exercise of religion,” because, as
PYM
General Secretary Thomas Jeavons earlier testified, the organization
“considers it a sacred duty to support the conscientious actions of its
individual members, especially in such historic witnesses as the Peace
Testimony.” Judge Stewan Dalzell also agreed that the
PYM
defense “raised novel and important questions,” thus demonstrating in this
instance that the previous refusal of
PYM
to comply was not a frivolous activity. But he disagreed that the
IRS had
practical alternative means to collect taxes from Priscilla Adams. The
government should not be required “to engage in a time-consuming, and
possibly fruitless, scavenger hunt for other assets.” In
, the Third
U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals had already rejected Priscilla Adams’s claim that the government
could devise a means for earmarking taxes for nonmilitary expenditures,
stating that there were “particularly difficult problems with administration
should exceptions on religious grounds be carved out by the courts.”
That issue also noted:
Film students from Brooklyn Friends School are directing and producing a
video documentary about Quaker peace activist Priscilla Adams. The students
came to Friends Center in Philadelphia to interview her about how her
religious beliefs led her to refuse payment of taxes in order to avoid
contributing to military funding. The students also interviewed George Lakey,
head of Training for Change, and Gene Hillman, adult religious education
coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. This documentary film may be an
entry for Bridge Film Festival, which is open to middle and upper school
students at Quaker schools worldwide.
The issue noted that the film had
been made — a 16-minute short titled A Need to Witness. And hey, look — it’s on-line:
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
War tax resistance was largely found in infrequent mentions in the back pages of the Friends Journal in .
an ad in the issue of Friends Journal holds out the hope that the end of the dilemma of Quakers paying for war is just a quick law away
The issue noted a new information sheet that had been put together by “National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, New Call to Peacemaking, Church of the Brethren, Mennonite Central Committee, and the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting” called Stages of Conscientious Objection to Military Taxes that listed “five steps to ending one’s own contribution to the war machine.”
(Here is the edition of the sheet.)
That same issue included a review of a murder mystery, Quaker Testimony by Irene Allen, whose victim was “a young woman being evicted from her home for nonpayment of taxes.”
On , Quaker war tax resister Gordon Browne addressed a letter to the judge hearing his and his wife’s case in which they were encouraging the court to find that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act required the government to make concessions for religiously-motivated conscientious objectors to military taxation.
This letter, and an accompanying article by Browne, did not appear in the Journal until
After years as military tax refusers, during which we experienced the usual seizures of assets by the Internal Revenue Service, Edith Browne and I felt that the passage of the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act might provide us some relief.
Past court decisions had made clear that exemptions from such taxes on the grounds of conscientious objection to participation in war or in preparation for war would be denied.
The new act, however, suggested that we might be exempted from the interest and penalties routinely added to whatever the IRS claimed we owed.
We filed for refunds, therefore, for the interest and penalties for the years , and, when the refunds were denied, brought suit in Federal District Court in Vermont for their recovery.
Though we had filed our case independently of any others, we soon learned that Priscilla Adams in Pennsylvania and Rosa Packard in New York, both, like us, Quakers, had filed similar suits in their areas.
In responding to the three suits, the attorneys for the IRS linked them, responding, for example, to our suit by alleging to the court that we had followed a practice in our tax refusal which was Rosa Packard’s method, not ours.
The government moved for dismissal without a hearing, and our case was dismissed, as Priscilla Adams’ case had been earlier in Tax Court and as Rosa Packard’s was subsequently in District Court.
Feeling that we had not been heard, we have filed an appeal.
A relative novice in legal proceedings, I was struck by the fact that the legitimate requirement of objectivity in dealing with legal matters risks the depersonalization of the search for justice, which is, after all, about human beings, both as individuals and in community.
With our case decided in Vermont (the Appeals Court is in New York), I felt a strong need to write to our Vermont judge as a person.
I did so but have received no response.
For those who might be interested, I offer below what my letter said.
I omit the judge’s name and address, lest some generous Friends be tempted to write to him on our behalf.
I did not write with the purpose of applying political pressure but to try to establish a personal link.
Edith Browne and I are not familiar with legal practices, our present case asking the refund of penalties and interest charged by the Internal Revenue Service being the first case we have ever been involved in.
It is my understanding, however, that having accepted the government’s motion to dismiss our petition, you are no longer involved in the case, and it will not be improper for me to write to you about it.
Naturally, we were disappointed with your decision and are appealing it to another court, in part because we felt the decision distorted what we have done and said and partly because we feel certain that it was the intention of the authors of the First Amendment to the Constitution and of the recent Restoration of Religious Freedom Act to make room in our national community for views such as ours.
That certainty is a source of great pride to us.
We know that there are many places in the world where a claim such as ours not only would have no status but might place the claimants themselves in danger.
We have been in such places for varying lengths of time: in Greece under the fascist colonels; in Turkey when it was under martial law because of terrorist bombings; in Colombia when it was under martial law because of assassinations of members of the judiciary; in South Africa under apartheid, where even to visit our coreligionists in Soweto without government permission made us and our friends liable to arrest.
We are grateful for the individual freedoms we citizens of the United States enjoy.
To us, one of the most important of these is freedom of conscience, provided for in the “exercise” section of the First Amendment.
The founders of our nation knew about its need from painful experience in the religious wars and persecutions that were so often a curse in Europe.
Further, they had seen the effort to import such ills to the New World.
Four members of our own religious denomination, Quakers, were hanged on Boston Common and 14 more were waiting in prison for such treatment when Charles Ⅱ ordered the Puritan authorities to end such executions.
That did not prevent, however, their continuing to exile Quakers and others who held differing religious views from theirs or, in the case of many Quakers, to whip them out of the colony at the tail of a cart, or to bore hot irons through the tongues of those who had tried to preach in public, or to cut off their ears.
All of those things were done to Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
That history is not pretty, but it made our forebears sensitive to the rights of conscience.
For more than 30 years, Edith and I, seeking to fulfill both our civic responsibilities and our understanding of God’s will for us, have paid our full tax, sending that part intended for the Department of Defense to life-affirming and life-supporting organizations.
We cannot in conscience pay for war or its preparation.
During that long period, the IRS has seized our assets to pay that part we sent elsewhere and imposed, in addition, interest and penalties.
This has meant that we annualy paid some of our taxes twice, once to life-supporting organizations and again to the IRS when our funds were seized.
We knew no way out of this situation, except to suffer it.
When the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act was passed we thought that, at last, we might be spared those penalties and that interest, which, to us, seemed to be saying, in denial of our finest American traditions of religious freedom, “Every conscience has its price.
How much is yours?”
In your opinion, you suggested, as Patrick Leahy has in correspondence with me when I have sought his help in providing legislative relief, that consideration of matters of conscience in regard to taxes would result in chaos.
We are not aware of chaos resulting from the legislative provisions for conscientious objectors to conscription of their bodies.
Wise legislators seemed to us to provide for conscientious objectors to conscription of their resources through the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act.
And if it is chaos we fear, what chaos is worse than that resulting from war?
I did not write this letter intending to argue our case, though I guess, perhaps, I have.
I really do mean to leave that to the lawyers.
Rather, I wrote to ask who will defend liberty of conscience if individuals like us and the courts do not.
There are always those among us who would impose their religious views on everyone else if they could, just as there are those who would insist that religion provides no legitimate exceptions in consideration of public policy.
It has been the genius of our system to try to provide a balance between those extremes that infringes on the freedoms of no one.
I enclose two [several] pages from the Book of Faith and Practice of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends.
It is the volume that describes the experience of Friends and the practices arising from those experiences to which most Friends subscribe.
I hope you will find them interesting and informative.
I particularly call your attention to the story of William Rotch of Nantucket.
Like him, if we are in error, we are to be pitied, but, also, like him, we can do no other than we are.
A history of the Atlanta, Georgia, Meeting during the Vietnam War that appeared in the issue mentioned that the Meeting had “refused to pay the ten percent war tax imposed on telephone bills.”
That issue also noted that the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund was still doggedly gnawing away at the federal bureaucracy, this time meeting “with tax policy officials at the Department of the Treasury” to try to persuade them that the law would be in their interests and that they should override IRS objections to the bill.
In the course of a book review in the same issue, Errol Hess remembered his “struggles with my own complicity in the [Vietnam] war by virtue of paying taxes that supported it; [and] my decision to go into the underground economy, to live cheaply, to refuse to comply with the IRS as I’d refused to comply with my draft board.”
The Baltimore Yearly Meeting met in .
A report in the Journal noted: “Frank and Elizabeth Massey’s testimony against war taxes led to an ‘opportunity’ on the doorstep of the yearly meeting office with an Internal Revenue Service agent, an explanation of its basis in faith.
We continue to struggle with how best to provide practical support to these leadings.”
The issue included this note about questionable tactics by IRS collection agents:
The Internal Revenue Service cashed a photocopy of a check from a Quaker war-tax resister.
Grace Montgomery of Stamford-Greenwich (Conn.) Meeting has tried to resolve this issue for several years.
Montgomery places the military portion of her federal income tax in a Friends escrow account.
The IRS then usually levies her bank account for the amount owed.
But in the IRS cashed a photocopy of Montgomery’s check to the escrow account.
Her bank accepted it even though it was not genuine and was made out to “The Religious Society of Friends.”
(From The Mennonite, )
An obituary notice for Richard M. Johnson in the same issue noted that “Dick found himself philosophically opposed to the idea of paying income and war taxes, and he and [his wife] Cynthia chose to resign their jobs and live out their lives on a nontaxable income as subsistence homesteaders.
They moved to Monroe, Maine, along with three of their four children, where they helped establish a community land trust.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
The issues of Friends Journal had a few mentions of war tax resistance and an extensive debate about the wisdom of supporting the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund act.
The issue mentioned that J.E. McNeil had been named the head of the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors, and that her legal experience had included “cases involving war tax refusers and conscientious objectors to military service.”
The issue included an article about the Monteverde community in Costa Rica, which was founded by American Quakers who fled the United States in part to avoid paying military taxes there.
Excerpts:
Many Friends know about Monteverde, the Quaker community established in Costa Rica in .
“They came here to be free to practice religion in the way they felt was important.”
They wanted no military taxes.
They wanted to send their children to Quaker schools and to bring them up with a good sense of priorities, away from materialism and militarism.
Some came out of a sense of adventure.
Four of them had just spent time in prison for their beliefs.
They wrote: “We hope to discover through Divine Guidance a way of life which would seek the good of each member of the community and live in a way that will naturally lead to peace rather than war.”
[At the trial of four Quaker conscientious objectors to draft registration], the judge said, “If you are not willing to defend this country, you should leave.”
They decided to do just that but had to wait until their jail sentences were over.
One couple in the meeting had visited Costa Rica, and several families had already been thinking of moving there.
Besides being a fairly prosperous and democratic country, and not very crowded, Costa Rica abolished its army in .
Forty-one people from the meeting eventually moved there, including the teacher of the meeting’s private school.
“We were looking for a peaceful place to raise our families without being involved in the military preparedness of the United States,” recalls Marvin Rockwell.
Marvin Rockwell ran the Flor Mar Pension, a simple hostel-like bed-and-breakfast with a pleasant restaurant serving delicious food.
He says he was never disappointed in the hopes he had when he moved to Costa Rica.
“Costa Ricans are a friendly, helpful people.”
He smiles, “And I do not feel bad at all paying taxes in Costa Rica.
The largest item in the tax budget is for education.”
In the same issue, Chuck Hosking (in the course of a larger article on ethical investing), said: “If I hadn’t had to start an IRA to lower my income below the taxable minimum (to avoid financing U.S. militarism), I would have put these retirement savings in the same place we’ve put most of our contingency savings — into no-interest loans to American Friends Service Committee and Right Sharing of World Resources.”
In there was a “Religion & Social Issues Forum” titled “Building a Culture of Peace” at the Pendle Hill Quaker conference center.
Among the speakers at the conference was Gordon Browne, who “told of his experiences as a ‘military tax refuser’ for over thirty years” during “a session on how Friends can make a personal difference today.”
The issue commented on the Rosa Packard legal case:
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a Quaker appeal of Internal Revenue Service penalties on religious practice.
Rosa Packard, a Greenwich, Conn., Quaker, had challenged the authority of the IRS to penalize her for religiously based non-payment of war-related federal income raxes.
For the last 18 years Packard has filed her income tax return, notifying the IRS by an attached letter that her core religious beliefs prevent her from paying a tax if any part of the money collected from her is used to fund war or preparation for war.
Every year she has placed the full amount of her taxes, as her letter to the IRS states, in trust for the government in an escrow account maintained by Purchase (N.Y.) Quarterly Meeting.
In Packard requested that the federal government waive the discretionary penalties imposed by the IRS for late payment and failure to pay estimated taxes.
Packard appealed the lower court’s dismissal of this request to the Supreme Court.
An obituary notice for Richard R. Catlett in the same issue noted that “Richard was a founding member of Columbia Meeting and an active war rax resister, for which he was imprisoned briefly about 25 years ago.
In his war tax resistance, he was supported by both Illinois Yearly Meeting and Columbia Meeting, which held an open meeting for worship at the prison where he was held.”
The “Peace Tax Fund” debate
The last issue of had included an op-ed by Spencer Coxe in which he cast a skeptical eye on the Peace Tax Fund idea (see ♇ ).
Boiled down, his complaints were these:
The Peace Tax Fund bill would ostensibly allow conscientious objectors to earmark their taxes for non-military government spending, but this will not in fact make any practical difference whatsoever in how Congress spends tax money.
Conscientious objectors could have more practical effect on actual military spending through such mundane political activities as lobbying, demonstrating, attempting to influence elections, and the like; and attempts to get a Peace Tax Fund bill passed distract from this.
The idea behind the Peace Tax Fund concept — that individual taxpayers can override the spending priorities of their elected representatives with their own conscientious imperatives — is corrosive of democracy, which requires people to compromise and accept the decisions of their representatives rather than engaging in a free-for-all.
If it were enacted, the Peace Tax Fund would make conscientious objectors to military taxation legal, and therefore mundane and unworthy of attention.
In contrast to the war tax resister of today, whose sacrifices evoke admiration and controversy and government inconvenience, the Peace Tax Fund payer would just be another citizen checking a box on a form — which would “[channel] a potentially effective resistance movement into a harmless backwater.”
I have less faith in the democratic process and in democracy in general than does Coxe, but his criticisms are sound, and, from my perspective, way overdue.
A sentimental, blinkered, panglossian take on the Peace Tax Fund bill had become part of the Quaker canon, and, disturbingly, had crowded out other discussion of the dilemma of paying for war with your taxes.
But now that the criticisms had finally been aired, how would the scheme’s supporters respond?
Voiciferously, as future letters columns showed:
Edward F. Snyder partially conceded the point.
“The aim [of the Bill] is not to reduce the military budget… The main purpose of the bill is to honor and respect the conscientious objections of those citizens who are opposed to war in any form, including the financing through their tax dollars…” He compared it to draftees who do “alternative service” rather than serving in the military.
“If I thought the primary purpose of the Peace Tax Fund were to reduce the military budget as Spencer Coxe does, I’d be hard pressed to give the proposal the time of day, and for many of the reasons he cites.
There are many more direct and effective ways to challenge military spending and the policies on which it rests.”
But he believes that since this isn’t the purpose, the bill is still worthwhile.
He also thinks that the fact that war is such a clear violation of a bedrock conscientious value, and because it is such a large part of the budget, it holds a unique place, and carving out an exemption for conscientious objectors here will not necessarily open the floodgates for vast numbers of objectors to every little this and that in the budget.
Joe Volk wrote an extensive op-ed in response (which, alas, is partially obscured in the PDF I have).
He said that he had shared Coxe’s letter with the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Policy Committee (Volk was the FCNL executive secretary) as a way of provoking a discussion as to whether that group ought to change its policy of supporting the Peace Tax Fund bill (they decided to continue supporting it).
Volk shares Snyder’s views that the slippery slope is not so slippery in this case, and that one can support the bill without believing that it would reduce military spending (“On the contrary, another argument for the Peace Tax Fund is that it would not alter Congress’s control of the purse strings” and “Of course, federal funds are fungible.
Thus, whatever the Peace Tax Fund pays for simply frees other funds for the military.”)
Volk asserted that were the Peace Tax Fund passed into law, rather than defanging conscientious objectors, it might free them from their current troubles in tax court to take up more productive struggles.
Besides “the absence of the Peace Tax Fund does not seem to be generating the waves of protest and tension that Spencer Coxe fears we would lose were it enacted.”
He also felt that rather than being corrosive of democracy, it was supportive of that essential element of democratic legitimacy that requires respect for minority opinions.
And besides, Congress is carving out deductions and exemptions and other things all the time — it seems petty to pick out our own concern as the only one that’s corrosive of this manifestly imperfect democracy.
Volk concluded:
My wife, Beth, and I have refused to pay our war taxes voluntarily .
We want to pay our entire tax bill, but we won’t pay for weapons and the salaries of the people who use them.
Having seen so much war and its effects, we could not voluntarily pay that portion of our tax that goes for war.
So, we pay only that portion of our tax bill that does not pay for war.
Every few years the IRS levies our bank account, wages, or savings.
They take the principle, interest, and penalties on what we have refused to pay.
We end up paying more to the government than had we paid the war tax.
Once they took and auctioned our car.
We no longer park it at our residence.
We have never been able to own real estate; it would be confiscated.
In the U.S. owning real estate has been a principal way for poor and middle-class people to accumulate wealth.
Many of our friends could borrow on their land and property to put their children through school.
We have not had that option.
We are not complaining.
We are happy following our conscience on this matter.
We consider that these consequences of our war tax refusal are aspects of the voluntary self-suffering that nonviolent action uses to reveal truth to ourselves and to others.
But we think the government should recognize our conscientious objection to paying war taxes so that we voluntarily can pay our entire tax bill.
Today, we feel that we are being punished for our religious beliefs, a violation of the U.S. Constitution and of our human rights.
Recognition of our claim to conscientious objection will not cut the military budget, will not end war, will not bring the Kingdom of Heaven.
It will allow us to practice our faith without being punished for it.
That’s a fairly radical idea still.
It’s a dangerous thing too, but it can work without leading to anarchy.
Richard N. Reichley thought that Coxe was missing the point — that the Peace Tax Fund was not meant to put a dent in the military complex, but to permit certain taxpayers to follow their consciences.
It might, he suggested, help spread the idea of conscientious objection to military spending: “Once the Peace Tax Fund Bill is passed, every taxpayer will know that it is law.
IRS instructions will include the option to file as a conscientious objector.
Perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised to learn how many Americans do not want to pay for war.”
Silas Weeks shared his frustrating experience with war tax resistance: “Eventually, the IRS invades our bank account and recovers [the] amount, plus interest and penalties.
We end up paying more tax than we would otherwise have to, plus our income is reduced by whatever we have put in the local [alternative] fund.”
He says that while “[i]t is extremely unlikely that the U.S. Congress will ever establish a legal peace tax alternative” it is “an improper judgment of others” to insist, as he says Coxe did, “that effort on behalf of a Peace Tax Fund wastes time and is a balm to individual conscience.”
Bruce Hawkins thought the Peace Tax Fund was not meant as an ultimate goal but as “an organizational and educational tool” for outreach and lobbying, and one that helps keep pacifist ideas on the agendas of legislators.
“Don’t think for a moment that any of us will heave a sigh of relief and cease all political activity if the Peace Tax Fund passes!
We would continue in the same political activity that we are in now, including support of sensible candidates for office.
And we would encourage everyone we know to consider using the fund.
One of our next goals would be to get enough people to use it so that it would make a difference.
It will only be ‘low-key’ if we let it be low-key.”
Ben Tousley thought that while paying into a Peace Tax Fund might indeed have no practical effect on the military budget, the same could be said for many respected acts of “witnessing” — these things aren’t meant to be immediately, directly effective, but to have an eventual “transforming effect on both individuals and the larger society.”
Rosa Covington Packard echoed the idea that the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill was never meant “to influence the military budget” but instead “to acknowledge the inalienable right of conscientious objection to paying taxes for war and preparations for war and to accommodate it as a matter of religious freedom.”
She also asserted that those who would take advantage of the Peace Tax Fund were not thereby engaging in a risk-free and invisible act:
When the bill passes, the option will be described in the tax forms everyone receives.
Reports of numbers of conscientious objectors and amounts of taxes redirected to nonmilitary purposes will be published in the Congressional Record.
The conscientious objector will affirm a statement of belief and ille it with his or her tax form.
Even if conscientious objectors to paying for war are given legal status and accommodated, they will continue to suffer many forms of discrimination from the public and the military.
Making slavery illegal did not end racial discrimination.
Recognizing and accommodating conscientious objection to paying for war will not end religious discrimination.
Conscientious objectors were among the first to go to the gas chambers under Hitler.
When we study the Holocaust, we mourn the atrocities against Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies — and “others” — our memories of the victims of war rarely even name conscientious objectors.
Risk free indeed!
We who choose a visible legal status may be more vulnerable to hostility.
Finally: “Without visible legal status, without acknowledgment that it is indeed legal to act upon our beliefs, our ‘democracy’ will continue to confuse and seduce each generation into thinking that war is honorable or necessary and that there are no other options.”
Mary Moulton addressed only the idea that the Peace Tax Fund would “ease the conscience of pacifists and [thereby] deflect them from hard work.”
She said: “This prediction certainly would not apply to any of the peace activists I have known over the years.”
Samuel R. Tyson wrote in with his own set of objections:
Conscientious objection laws discriminate in favor of members of historical “peace churches” which has the effect of adding a religious bias to the law.
Such laws also (because they require objectors to convincingly testify to their conscientious beliefs) discriminate against people with less verbal or reasoning capabilities (a class bias).
Such laws also, for the same reason, favor people with a paper trail in the “historically dominant white paper-based culture” which leads to a racial bias.
He concluded: “A Peace Tax Fund will make it easier for the few, without a full explanation in tax forms. Do we really want another federal bureaucracy to sit in judgment on conscience?”
Coxe wrote back, and in a letter that appeared in the issue.
Excerpts:
The letters convince me that I overlooked two considerations, first that passage of the bill would signal a reaffirmation of our country’s respect for religious dissent (though in symbolic fashion), and second, that legislation would relieve the personal distress of pacifists.
I am surprised that no correspondent pointed out that logically my position is an attack on the legal recognition of conscientious refusal of military service.
As a matter of fact, I have come to the conviction (in my old age) that the pacifist movement might be strengthened if the government offered no alternative to military service except prison.
Then the issue raised by the resister would be the government’s claimed power to conscript.
In my view, conscription is the basic evil.
The government’s recognition of religious objection to military service blunts resistance to conscription.
Those who during the Viemam War said “Hell no we won’t go” were on the right track and did more co bring the war to an end than did the COs.
Debate aside, the issue noted that the Radnor, Pennsylvania, Meeting had approved a minute endorsing the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill, and considered this a way by which the Meeting “expresses its commitment to our historic Peace Testimony.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
In mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal were few and far between.
In the issue, Cliff Marrs (a British Quaker) gave his interpretation of the “Render Unto Caesar…” koan from the Bible, and in particular what guidance it offers to those war tax resisters who take advice from scripture.
His point-of-view:
The idea that Jesus was circumscribing a political realm that was Caesar’s domain, and a sacred realm that belonged to God, is anachronistic.
Jesus, and his Jewish listeners, “regarded God as the Creator, and the whole universe as God’s domain — including politics — and would not have distinguished between the political and the religious.”
The tax in question “functioned as a kind of rent that assumed that all land belonged ultimately to the Roman Empire,” while core Jewish scripture makes it clear that Israel belongs to God.
The fact that Jesus had to ask someone else for a coin to use to illustrate his point may be significant — perhaps he did not carry such a coin because its use of a graven image that represented a member of the Roman ruling class as a divinity was idolatrous, or perhaps he had rejected Roman money and so (by the logic of his epigram) its taxes as well.
Maybe he was suggesting that it’s not sufficient to refuse to pay Roman taxes, but you ought to reject Roman money as well: give it back to Caesar and be done with it.
Would Jesus, who cared for the poor, really promote a regressive poll tax?
Paul’s unmistakable pay-your-taxes command in Romans 13 isn’t necessarily an interpretation of Jesus’s instructions, or even good advice in general, but was just a pragmatic, common-sense instruction to Christians living in Rome.
Since Jesus was ultimately charged with promoting resistance to Roman taxes prior to his execution, this seems to indicate that at least some of his listeners interpreted his message that way.
In short, biblically-oriented tax resisters should not be frightened off by the “Render Unto Caesar…” episode, as its interpretation is not so simple as its vulgar usage may suggest.
An obituary notice for Edith Carlton Browne in the same issue noted that “[s]he and [her husband] Gordon became military tax resisters in , and she continued that witness throughout her life.”
Another obituary, for Lorraine Ketchum Cleveland, said that “[i]n she became a war-tax refuser in a case that eventually went to the Supreme Court (Cleveland, Cadwallader, and the AFSC vs. U.S.A.).
Lorraine continued throughout her life to deduct from her federal taxes that portion that would be used for war, and sent it to a worthy cause.”
The issue mentioned the tax resistance of Robert Purvis, who refused to pay his Pennsylvania state taxes in protest against the state’s denial of equal voting rights to black citizens around , and then refused to pay “that portion of his property tax that went to support the schools” in when his children were refused admission to the whites-only classrooms. Purvis wrote:
I have borne this outrage ever since the innovation upon the usual practice of admitting all the children of the township into the public schools, and at considerable expense, have been obliged to obtain the services of private teachers to instruct my children, while my school tax is greater, with a single exception, than that of any other citizen of the township.
It is true, (and the outrage is made but the more glaring and insulting): I was informed by a pious Quaker director, with sanctifying grace, imparting, doubtless, an unctuous glow to his saintly prejudices, that a school in the village of Mechanicsville was appropriated for “thine.”
The miserable shanty, with all its appurtenances, on the very line of the township, to which this benighted follower of George Fox alluded, is, as you know, the most flimsy and ridiculous sham which any tool of a skin-hating aristocracy have resorted to, to cover or protect his servility.
An article in the issue mentioned in passing that “Quakers withdrew almost as a single body from the Pennsylvania legislature in rather than vote taxes for war.”
An obituary notice for Wally Nelson (not, I believe, a Quaker, but the obituary says he “demonstrated the values and commitment of a Friend; by his loving manner and unwavering integrity, he shaped an ideal for Friends to aspire to”) mentions his war tax resistance activities:
In , he cofounded Peacemakers, a national organization dedicated to active nonviolence as a way of life.
In , he and his wife, Juanita Nelson, began their lifelong practice of refusing to pay taxes used for armaments and killing.… During , the couple was among the founders of the Valley Community Land Trust, Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters, and the Greenfield Farmers Market.
He was well known as a regular market vendor in downtown Greenfield and as a participant in the annual war tax protest in front of the Greenfield Post Office on tax day.
The issue noted that the Northern Yearly Meeting had “approved a minute expressing support for the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill and for those who are conscientiously opposed to war taxes.”
At this point, those Quakers who cannot pay for military and weapons are subject to great sacrifice.
Some have refused employment that would result in a taxable level of income.
Others have exposed themselves to confiscation of their homes and other possessions.
We seek a legal mechanism whereby we may pay taxes and be responsible citizens without funding human death and suffering.
We view adoption of [the Bill] as providing religious freedom to many of our Society currently suffering for their faithfulness to their Quaker beliefs.
Add that all up and we get:
one abstract discussion of whether war tax resistance conflicts with Jesus’s teachings
three mentions of American war tax resisters recently deceased
one mention of a tax resister from
one mention of American Quaker war tax resistance from
one contemporary American Quaker Meeting advocating the latest Peace Tax Fund scheme and alluding to the acts of contemporary Quaker war tax resisters
Which is to say: next to nothing about actual real-life American Quakers doing actual, honest-to-goodness war tax resistance in .
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
Mentions of war tax resistance and differing approaches to the dilemma of paying war taxes continued to appear in some of the issues of the Friends Journal in .
The issue included a review of the book A Persistent Voice: Marian Franz and Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation.
It was a collection of essays by and about Franz and about Peace Tax Fund activism, with some supplemental material about the U.S. versions of Peace Tax Fund scheme legislation that Franz had championed.
The issue included Harrison & Marilyn Roper telling the story of their war tax resistance.
Excerpts:
In the contradiction of “praying for peace and paying for war” overwhelmed us.
We needed to try to live under the taxable level (supplemented by tax-free investments) so that we no longer would be supporting monetarily what we deplored spiritually.
In an open letter to fellow Friends at Haverford (Pa.) Meeting… we wrote:
Along with raising our family and “just living,” we have been trying in our own ways to contribute to a more just and peaceful society.
While doing this, we have both had jobs and paid federal taxes.
For the last three years we have not paid that portion of our federal income tax (approximately one-third) that goes to the Pentagon.
However, IRS has eventually taken the funds, with penalties and interest, by placing a lien on Harry’s salary at West Chester State College.
Thus, we are purchasers and part owners (along with you) of numerous H-bombs and other weapons of death.
We ask ourselves if the potential damage we are doing is not more than outweighing any benefits to society we might be making.
They wrote that they were hoping for the passage of Peace Tax Fund legislation with which they “could have continued in our present occupations and continued to pay our income taxes.”
But meanwhile, they decided to simplify their lives and reorient their finances with a goal to getting under the tax line.
They shared some of the details of how they went about this:
After our younger son had graduated from high school, we were able, at ages 49 and 47, to move to northern Maine and live a simpler life.
Louis Green… taught us what we needed to know about tax-free municipal bonds and helped us invest the cushion we received from selling our home in Haverford and buying a very low-cost one in Houlton, Maine.
Our older son was about to enter his senior year at University of Maine and we would be able to pay the much-reduced in-state tuition.
We… installed an on-grid photovoltaic electrical system and have solar pre-heating of hot water.
We also live within walking distance of stores, which reduces our need to travel and helps us live in an environmentally friendly manner.
Our home is heated by wood from dead and diseased trees that we harvest ourselves from our woodlot.
…a wonderful new life of volunteering, composing, conducting, and living closer to nature opened up.… Despite all the details of our peace witness through federal tax avoidance being aired on the front page of our Houlton paper soon after our arrival, in we were honored with the “Good Samaritans of Houlton” award for our volunteer work and in we each received a Paul Harris Award from the local Rotary Club for our peace efforts.…
For those who share our concern about not paying for war or preparations for war, tax-free municipal bonds are the legal tickets.
Those who purchase them are financing voter-approved and life-enhancing projects in our country such as better sewers, schools, and hospitals.
The modest interest on these state and/or municipal bonds is not taxable by the federal government.
We file a 1040 every year, but most years we owe nothing or very little.
If we think we may “go over,” we give more money away that year to tax-exempt organizations.…
Thanks to understanding parents, most of our inheritance has been in the form of tax-free municipal bonds.
When a bond comes due, we always reinvest the capital by purchasing another tax-free municipal bond at face value (i.e. at par) so that there is no capital gain when the bond comes due or is called.
Although we do not know how long we will live or what dire situations might eat up our principal, we do hope to be able to continue to live very simply on the interest from our tax-free municipal bonds and pass on some of the capital to our children and grandchildren… We really love the kind of life we’re living; we didn’t make this commitment in order to be miserable.
And we sleep better at night knowing that we are not paying for war as we pray for peace.
That issue also reprinted a “declaration of conscience” that came out of a group associated with the Quakers from the New York Yearly Meeting who had been working to try to get legal accommodation for conscientious objection to military spending.
Excerpts:
The government of the United States violates freedom of conscience rights by forcing us to pay for war.
…In paying federal income taxes we contribute personally and directly to such expenditure, in violation of our consciences.
We have responded in various ways.
Some of us have taken steps to reduce or eliminate our income tax liability.
Some have paid under protest.
Some have withheld all or part of the taxes due, redirecting the sums involved to nonviolent and humanitarian purposes, or have deposited the money in escrow for any nonmilitary governmental use.
Some have challenged federal agencies in the courts.
Some have petitioned and campaigned for legislative accommodation.
We stress that we are willing to contribute our full share to the expenses of civil society.
We simply seek to ensure that the taxes we pay are not used to finance warmaking or preparations for war.
As a result of this conscientious objection we have variously suffered financial hardships, administrative and court fines, garnishment of wages, seizures of bank accounts or other property, deductions from our social security pension payments, and even imprisonment.
However, the substance of our remonstrance is that we are all ultimately compelled to pay taxes used for military purposes, and that we have a continuing liability to do so in the future.
We have thus been obliged, and are being obliged, in direct violation of our consciences, to be complicit in the funding and waging of war.
…Written expressions of conscientious objection to military taxation are classified as “frivolous” by the government and subject to punitive fines amounting to thousands of dollars.
Our freedom of conscience claims have never been fully reviewed at any level of administrative or judicial consideration, nor are we aware of any case in which this has occurred.
Accompanying this was a sidebar from Elizabeth Boardman in which she shared “the following queries [which] are in use at local meetings in College Park Quartely Meeting:”
What deeply held spiritual values or concerns make the issue of war tax resistance difficult for me to consider?
How can we as Friends, regardless of our perspective, overcome our reticence to discuss the issues with one another?
What are the personal or family needs I would need to address before I could become a tax resister?
Do I feel a need to further engage the war machine by not paying my war taxes in some form, either fully or symbolically?
What are my major fears and joys about challenging the government in this way?
What are the personal or family needs I would need to address before I could become a tax resister?
How can I engage my beloved spiritual community in supporting me as I take my next step on this complex issue?
Naomi Paz Greenberg, in a letter-to-the-editor that responded to critics of war tax resistance whose writings had been published in earlier issues (I’ve included other excerpts from this letter in Picket Line entries covering those writings, on and ), wrote, in response to people who believe that “conscientious war tax resistance is borne to bring about consequences”:
I knew for all of my adult life that I should not be paying taxes for war, and for most of that time I knew that I did not have the courage to bear this witness.
The energy that supports my commitment now has little to do with consequences.
I am simply unable to cooperate in murder, in war crimes.
As soon as I was able to make that commitment, I began to understand that I will probably pay more rather than less as a consequence of my refusal to pay for war.
It matters very little to me whether the hundreds or the thousands of dollars that I may someday “owe” remain pure and pacifistic or not.
As a U.S. citizen I have been taught that this is a government of, by, and for the people, so in some sense every dollar in the government’s coffers is my responsibility and not one of those dollars should be spent to kill another human being.
This is what direct experience of God teaches me.
Paul Sheldon noted, in a letter-to-the-editor in the issue, that he had “made a donation to the non-partisan Disabled American Veterans organization” and included a letter in which he had “mentioned that this particular contribution was the redirection of war tax money that I had publicly refused to pay the U.S. government (as a pacifist tax resister).”
A letter-to-the-editor from Peg Morton in the issue forcefully encouraged Friends to resist their war taxes: “It is beyond a doubt, in my opinion, that it is time — now!
— to withdraw from paying the United States federal government the war taxes it demands… to voluntarily pay war taxes to our current federal government is an immoral act.… When policies and actions of a government become immoral, it becomes immoral to support them.”
An obituary notice for Gordon Mervin Browne in the issue noted that “they [Gordon and his wife Edith Carlton Browne] were military tax resisters in .”
A book review in the issue summarized the use of tax resistance in the First Intifada this way:
[Maxine] Kaufman-Lacusta [author of Refusing to be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation] looks in depth at a tax strike in the West Bank village of Beit Sahour during the First Intifada (), a time of popular activism.
This strike was based on the fact that taxes collected by Israelis were not being used to serve the needs of the Palestinian population, but to finance the occupation itself.
Elias Rishmawi, a major player in Beit Sahour, said that the villagers “found out that Israel was profiting dramatically from occupying the Palestinian land — from direct taxes, indirect taxes, taxes on the workers inside Israel, taxes on imports, taxes on people leaving the country, using Palestinian land, using Palestinian resources.”
Palestinians viewed the strike, which they ended in , as a success because a strong and violent reaction from the Israeli government failed to suppress it.
At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).
Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about the current period of Quaker war tax resistance — what I’m calling “the second forgetting.”
The Second Forgetting ()
After an enthusiasm for war tax resistance that had grown to a near-mania by there was an astonishing and swift drop in interest in the subject.
I can’t with any great confidence say why this might be, but here are some theories:
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting end of the Cold War made people more optimistic about the chances of avoiding nuclear war and ushering in a more peaceful international order.
Even hawkish politicians were crowing about the “peace dividend” that would come from reduced military spending as a result.
War tax resistance may have slackened because peace work in general was seen as less urgent.
The “peace tax fund” idea had gained traction in Quaker circles.
Some Quakers who were concerned about their taxes paying for war may have chosen to refrain from taking action in the hopes that such a law would eventually give them an easy-out, or in the misapprehension that the absence of such a law made the Quaker taxpayer’s dilemma really a problem for the legislature and not for the Quaker.
It may have been simple demographics:
Those Quakers who were so confident in their war tax resistance stand that they were willing to start resisting when very few Friends were, and who as a result were the leaders and pioneers of the war tax resistance Renaissance, were reaching the ends of their lives at this point.
The younger resisters who joined up during the Renaissance may have been less self-sustaining, less confident, and less persuasive — following a trend more than they were following a compelling conscientious leading.
(This was a worry among Friends as far back as , when John Churchman wrote “Such build on a sandy foundation who refuse paying that which is called the provincial or king’s tax, only because some others scruple paying it whom they esteem.”)
In the Friends Journal, feeling it had reached the end of its legal appeals, threw in the towel and paid the IRS levy on the salary of its editor, Vint Deming.
Two German Quakers were prosecuted for war tax resistance, and their court hearing was attended by some forty Quakers.
Meanwhile in the U.S., the “peace tax fund” legislation got its first and only congressional hearing.
Several Quakers attended and a few testified in favor of the bill.
In a stage dramatization based on the IRS seizure of the home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler & Betsy Corner was part of the program at the Friends General Conference Gathering.
The Canada Yearly Meeting, after years of debate, adopted a policy of refusing to withhold taxes from the salary of war tax resisting employees.
In U.S. President Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which seemed to offer some hope for a new court challenge against the government’s insistence on taxing religious conscientious objectors to pay for military spending.
In Quaker Priscilla Adams began a case using this argument; Quakers Rosa Packard and Edith & Gordon Brown filed similar suits soon after.
These suits didn’t make any headway.
In , Adams filed a final appeal to the Supreme Court, with the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting contributing a friend-of-the-court brief on her behalf, but the Court turned down the case.
By this time, sad to say, a superstitious, blinkered, panglossian take on the “peace tax fund” has become the norm, and on the rare occasions when war taxes are even discussed (for example, in the Friends Journal), it is taken for granted that should Congress pass such a law, American Quakers will finally be freed from having to worry about paying for war (and implied, in the spirit of the “forgetting,” is the sentiment “and until then, well, what can we do?”).
Statements from Quaker meetings about war tax resistance are increasingly endorsing the “peace tax fund” idea not in addition to supporting war tax resistance, but in lieu of it.
As dawns, most of the mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal are found in the obituary column.
War tax resistance is presented as something that noble and honored Friends used to do; only rarely as something they are currently doing.
Nadine Hoover wrote an earnest plea for Quakers to adopt war tax resistance as a corporate testimony in , but it seems to have fallen with a thud and produced little effect or even debate.
In there were still some Quakers trying increasingly desperate legal arguments to try to get the courts to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation.
Dan Jenkins tried a Ninth Amendment argument, which is the constitutional equivalent of a hail mary pass (the court would not only reject the case, but found it so far-fetched that they also upheld a frivolous filing penalty).
That case is notable, though, for the amount of support he got from the New York Yearly Meeting.
They used a clearness committee to help Jenkins work through his stand and his process.
The Purchase Quarterly Meeting provided some financial backing for his legal challenge.
The Yearly Meeting filed an amicus brief in the case.
Alas, this meeting too seems since to have been thoroughly infected by the magical thinking surrounding the “peace tax fund” idea, and the most active Friends there now sound almost as though they think of war tax resistance less as a logical expression of the peace testimony and more as a pressure tactic to use in the hopes of getting Congress to pass such legislation.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had held out as long as they felt able to in the Priscilla Adams case, finally writing a check to the IRS for the amount it demanded.
(They would continue to resist withholding and levies for years not covered by the exhausted legal suit.)
Martin Kelly, who would become the Friends Journal editor in , wrote bitterly of this in :
We talk big and write pretty epistles, but few individuals engage in witnesses that involve any danger of real sacrifice. …
When the IRS threatened to put liens on Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to force resistant staffers to pay, the general secretary and clerk said all sorts of sympathetic words of anguish (which they probably even meant), then docked the employee’s pay anyway.
There have been times when clear-eyed Christians didn’t mind losing their liberty or property in service to the gospel.
Early Friends called our emulation of Christ’s sacrifice the Lamb’s War, but even seven years of real war in the ancient land of Babylonia itself hasn’t brought back the old fire.
Our meetinghouses sit quaint, with ownership deeds untouched, even as we wring our hands wondering why most remain half-empty on First Day morning.
In the midst of this terrible decline, the Friends Journal devoted a fourth special issue to the problem of war taxes in .
One thing it shows is a divergence of tactics between Quakers in the New York Yearly Meeting (who were concentrating on legal challenges) and those in the Pacific Yearly Meeting, who were trying to spread the practice of war tax resistance by asking Quakers to take baby steps like refusing tiny symbolic amounts of tax or paying “under protest” (but who struggled even to meet these exceptionally modest goals).
In the Pacific Yearly Meeting did announce a policy pledging $100 in matching funds to any monthly meeting in its demesne that reimbursed war tax resisting Quakers for penalties & interest the IRS had been able to seize from them.
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting reaffirmed its policy of resisting withholding and levies on the salary of its war tax resisting employees.
But when it did so it noted that “very few Friends actively practice war tax resistance.”
, the Meeting would report that it no longer had any war tax resisting employees, and so its policy, while still in effect, had gone into suspended animation.
The Britain Yearly Meeting issued a booklet on The Quaker Peace Testimony in .
It mentions war tax resistance only once, in a list of historical examples of Quaker peace work, but does not allude to it as a current practice that is available to modern Quakers.
It encourages Friends with concerns about paying war taxes to get in contact with Conscience, a non-Quaker group, rather than suggesting that they get guidance from their own meetings or from Quaker traditions.
When British Quakers released the fifth edition of Quaker Faith and Practice in , it included some inspirational quotes from war tax resisting Quakers of yesteryear, and reaffirmed its statement on the subject from :
We are convinced by the Spirit of God to say without any hesitation whatsoever that we must support the right of conscientious objection to paying taxes for war purposes…
We ask Meeting for Sufferings to explore further and with urgency the role our religious society should corporately take in this concern and then to take such action as it sees necessary on our behalf.
But the fact that they reaffirmed this wording betrays that in , despite the “urgency,” the Meeting for Sufferings had not come up with a sufficient corporate response.
So that’s where we are today.
There are still Quaker war tax resisters, certainly, but there is no groundswell of Quaker war tax resistance, and the obituary column is still where you are most likely to find a mention of a Quaker war tax resister in the Friends Journal, which is an ominous sign.
The resurgence of war tax resistance during the Cold War perhaps would be better described as a fad than, as I hopefully did, as a renaissance.
But whether a renaissance or a fad, it represents hope that the current forgetting won’t be forever, but that Quakers may again reclaim their place at the head of the conscientious tax resistance movement.
When they do so, they will be able to draw on the experiences of Quakers from the previous eras in order to sharpen the persuasiveness of their messages and discover the best and most appropriate techniques.
And they will surely be led out of this wilderness by a few self-motivated Friends who kept the faith through the forgetting period.
Philadelphia (AP) — A Quaker who refuses to pay part of her taxes in protest of the government’s military activities is standing fast despite a Supreme Court rejection of her appeal.
“I’m deeply saddened that they aren’t going to hear the case, but they needed to look at other ways that I could pay taxes without contributing to war efforts,” Priscilla Adams said after ’s court’s action.
“I will continue to refuse to pay until the government stops using my money for the purpose of killing people,” she said.
The nation’s highest court turned away appeals by Ms. Adams and two other members of the Religious Society of Friends who said the Internal Revenue Service violates their religious freedom by charging fees and interest for delays in paying the portion of their federal tax that funds the military.
Ms. Adams, of Burlington, N.J., owes the federal government thousands of dollars in back taxes and interest.
She withheld a portion of federal income taxes paid for five years in the 1980s and ’90s and was assessed late fees and interest.
Gordon and Edith Browne, Quakers who own homes in New Hampshire and Vermont, also refused to pay a portion of their taxes.
The Brownes sued the IRS in federal court in Vermont; Ms. Adams sued in U.S. Tax Court.
Both lawsuits unsuccessfully sought refunds for the fees and interest the Quakers were forced to pay.
Their appeals did not contest having to pay 100 percent of their tax bill when the IRS forces their hand.
Instead, the Quakers cited a “religious hardship” and argued they should be able to pay the back taxes without any penalties or interest.
The justices let stand rulings that had gone against the Quakers, allowing the IRS to impose late fees and interest in addition to back taxes.
Ms. Adams said she will not pay the taxes, even if her beliefs land her in prison.
“They could create a peaceful tax pool that would collect taxes that would only go to non-war activities, but they chose to not listen to reason,” she said.
Her resolve is not uncommon, according to Quakers and members of the War Resisters League, a New York-based pacifist group.
They say the rulings against Ms. Adams and the Brownes will do little to deter those who do not pay.
“If people hadn’t refused to respond to the draft, there wouldn’t be conscientious objection statutes like there are now,” said Ruth Benn, the league’s director.
“Someone has to have the courage to stand up for what they believe in.
Until that happens, there won’t be any opportunity for change.”
Peggy Morscheck, director of the Quaker Information Center in Philadelphia, said only a “very small” percentage of the nation’s 92,000 Quakers withhold portions of their taxes.
“There are many, many ways to act on the peace testimony, and a lot of folks do not feel they can bear witness to that testimony through war-tax resistance,” Morscheck said.
