Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” → Mennonites / Amish → Edgar Metzler

This is the twenty-eighth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal of the (Old) Mennonite Church.

When I hit 1987 in the archives it seemed to me that I started seeing a lot more mentions of how “our tax dollars” were financing this or that government-sponsored horror, but much less followup from there about how such a thing might lead one to resist paying. Maybe that was seen as an obvious corollary by then, or maybe some people had abandoned the idea of war tax resistance as impractical and had just become resigned to complaining. It’s hard to tell from the record.

That’s not to say there wasn’t war tax resistance content. Plenty of it. The “Taxes for Peace” war tax redirection fund, run by the Mennonite Central Committee’s (U.S.) Peace Section, announced it’s annual drive in the 17 February 1987 issue. The fund would be redirecting money to the Lancaster County (Pa.) Peacework Alternatives Project, and announced that they had redirected $4,600 to a project to aid victims of violence in Guatemala the previous year.

A curious story, “The parable of the taxpayers” by John F. Murray appeared in the 27 March 1987. It was a sort of updating of the “parable of the talents” from the Bible. It included a character who was a war tax resister but the parable chided him for hiding his money away from the tax collector rather than spending it on good churchly stuff. Perhaps this indicates that this was one stereotype of war tax resisters — as miserly sorts — that was prevalent in Mennonite circles.

The emerging war tax resistance movement in Japan took the offensive in 1987, according to this 27 March article:

A Mennonite pastor is among 22 Japanese tax resisters who have sued the government for what they say was an “unconstitutional” collection of their taxes in 1980. The 22 are all members of Conscientious Objection to Military Tax (COMIT), and 12 of them are Christians — including Michio Ohno, a Mennonite pastor in Tokyo. The 1980 government action involved the seizing of the bank accounts of Ohno and two others. The 22 charge that Japan’s so-called Self-Defense Forces is a violation of the post-World War Ⅱ constitution, which forbids the country to have an army, navy, and air force. So, they charge, the collection of taxes for the military is also unconstitutional.

John K. Stoner promoted war tax resistance just before (U.S.) tax day:

To pay or not to pay war taxes

Nine to five

by John K. Stoner

Members of the Mennonite Church in the United States contribute $9 to the federal government for military purposes for every $5 they contribute to the local church for the cause of Christ.

Nine to five is the proportion of military support to local church support. Nine to five is also a traditional eight-hour workday. The fruit of our labor is paying for the arms race.

The nine-to-five calculation is based on 1984 figures from the current Mennonite Yearbook, p. 190. The contributions given by U.S. Mennonite Church members through the congregational treasury in 1984 totaled $57,269,704. This figure does not include individual gifts that were not channeled through the congregation. The estimated military tax paid by the same people in 1984 was $105,800,000.

Stanley Kropf, churchwide agency finance secretary, estimates that the pretax income of Mennonite Church members in 1984 was $1,602,600,000. I have calculated a 12 percent tax rate paid on that income, with 55 percent of the taxes going to past and present military costs, including a portion of interest on the federal debt attributable to inflationary military spending. I believe that these figures are correct within a margin of 5–10 percent.

No great concern?

Maybe it isn’t a matter of great concern. Some say that the government is responsible for what it does with tax monies. We are not accountable.

Bernard Offen, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, thinks differently. His letter of war-tax protest came across my desk recently, and I share it as a stimulus to reflection on our war taxes in 1987:

The guards at Auschwitz herded my father to the left and me to the right. I was a child. I never saw him again.

He was a good man. He was loyal, obedient, law-abiding. He paid his taxes. He was a Jew. He paid his taxes. He died in the concentration camp. He had paid his taxes.

My father didn’t know he was paying for barbed wire. For tattoo equipment. For concrete. For whips. For dogs. For cattle cars. For Zyklon B gas. For gas ovens. For his destruction. For the destruction of 6,000,000 Jews. For the destruction of 6,000,000 Jews. For the destruction, ultimately, of 50,000,000 people in World War Ⅱ.

In Auschwitz I was tattoo #B‒7815. In the United States I am an American citizen, taxpayer #370‒32‒6858. I am paying for a nuclear arms race. A nuclear arms race that is both homicidal and suicidal. It could end life for 5,000,000,000 people, five billion Jews. For now the whole world is Jewish and nuclear devices are the gas ovens for the planet. There is no longer a selection process such as I experienced at Auschwitz.

We are now one.

I am an American. I am loyal, obedient, law-abiding. I am afraid of the Internal Revenue Service. Who knows what power they have to charge me penalties and interest? To seize my property? To imprison me? After soul-searching and God-wrestling for several years, I have concluded that I am more afraid of what my government may do to me, mine, and the world with the money if I pay it… if I pay it.

I do believe in taxes for health, education, and the welfare of the public. While I do not agree with all the actions of my government, to go along with the nuclear arms race is suicidal. It threatens my life. It threatens the life of my family. It threatens the world.

I remember my father. I have learned from Auschwitz. I will not willingly contribute to the production of nuclear devices. They are more lethal than the gas Zyklon B, the gas that killed my father and countless others.

I am withholding 25 percent of my tax and forwarding it to a peace tax fund.

Offen gives permission to reproduce or publish his letter and says he may be contacted at Sonoma County Taxes for Peace, Box 563, Santa Rosa, CA 95402.

No simple answer. What is the answer to the war-tax dilemma? I offer no simple one. I simply identify a challenge to our faith which will not go away. And I think it is helpful to have some idea of how much money, and in what proportion, we are giving to the death machine.

St. Augustine said, “Hope has two sisters: Anger and courage.” Beautiful women, these, in an age of despair.

That prompted a 5 May 1987 letter to the editor from Lester L. Lind:

Thank you for printing the article by John Stoner, “Nine to Five”… It is good but uncomfortable for us to be reminded of our involvement in military and war-related activity. I wonder how much longer the Mennonite Church can remain so silent and still carry the distinction of being a peace church. In a democracy, silence gives consent. In light of Scripture, our history, and the present reality that Stoner points out, how can we Mennonites give our consent to spending so much for war?

Withholding federal income tax for conscience’ sake is still a lonely and often misunderstood act, even within the church. True, there are individuals and small segments of the Mennonite Church who have taken positions similar to the Stoners. But I long and pray for the time when such actions of civil disobedience will be strongly supported and encouraged by the majority of Mennonites.

A war tax redirection ceremony and tax day protest was covered in the 15 April 1987 issue:

The existence of a mutual aid fund for war tax resisters was made known to readers of the 28 April 1987 issue:

“Even if you are not a war tax resister, you can help those who are,” say a group of Christians who operate the Tax Resisters Penalty Fund. Based in North Manchester, Ind., it helps resisters when they suffer financial loss through the seizure of penalties and interest by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The fund, started in 1982 as a project of the local chapter of Fellowship of Reconciliation, is currently trying to broaden its base of support because of the increasing number of requests for assistance. More information is available from the North Manchester Fellowship of Reconciliation…

While war tax resistance seemed mostly a U.S. phenomenon during the Vietnam War era (and this led to some chagrin when Canadian Mennonites felt like they were being dragged into disputes about it), Canadians were also getting in on the act by this time (19 May 1987):

Canadian war-tax resisters hold first national conference

Conscience Canada, a Victoria, B.C.-based organization objecting to Canadian military taxes, held its first national conference recently. Several participants reported that they sent the military portion of their taxes to Peace Tax Fund — a trust account administered by Conscience Canada which is not approved by the government.

Member of Parliament James Manley told the participants how they could be more effective in lobbying their MPs. Motions favoring peace tax legislation were introduced in the House of Commons by Manley in 1983 and 1985 and by MP Simon De Jong in 1986.

Reporting on war-tax resistance in the United States, Robert Hull, a Mennonite who chairs the Washington, D.C.-based National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, said his group has enlisted 55 representatives and four senators as sponsors of peace tax legislation in the U.S. Congress.

“Conscience Canada is part of a movement in 17 countries, from Finland and Spain to Australia and New Zealand,” said Edith Adamson, the organization’s coordinator.

And the 18 August 1987 issue noted:

Study packet on militarism in Canada from Mennonite Central Committee Canada. It includes pamphlets, articles, and a fact sheet. The packet helps Canadians struggling to discern a faithful Christian response to militarism, including the issue of whether or not to pay war taxes. It is available for a suggested donation of $3 from Information Services at MCC Canada…

David Charles wrote a commentary for the 9 June 1987 issue in which he went on at length about the horror of nuclear war and said “Some have even come to recognize our complicity in the situation through silence and the payment of war taxes.” And: “Our continued silence to a government that is not merely content to collect tax but is mortgaging the entire country to pursue a ridiculous ambition is conveying a message of acceptance.” But his suggested response was hilariously pathetic:

We can write on the bottom of our tax returns that our money is to be used to build peace, not more arms.

In the 30 June 1987 issue, Edgar Metzler wrestled with “Following Christ in a militaristic world” and tried to nudge the Mennonite Church toward a bold decision:

For an increasing number of Christians the conscription of their taxes for military purposes is becoming a problem of conscience as clear as the conscription of their bodies for military service. The question will not fade away. Are the excuses offered by Nazi collaborators or Iran-contra conspirators that someone else is making the decisions that much different than washing our hands of responsibility for how the state uses the resources God has given us?

Challenge and action.

The study suggested by MCC and the militarism resolution — “Growing in Stewardship and Witness in a Militaristic World” — which will be considered by the General Assembly at Purdue 87 arose directly out of the struggle of conscience about war taxes by some members of the church. The proposed resolution is intended to alert us to the broad scope of this challenge and suggest appropriate actions.

The decision, bold or not, would be adopted at the Mennonite Church General Assembly on 9 July 1987: “Growing in stewardship and witness in a militaristic world” Here are some excerpts that concern taxes:

Let us expand our support for proposed Peace Tax Fund legislation in both the United States and Canada, recognizing that legal recognition of conscientious objection to payment of taxes destined for military use will require the same patient persistence which resulted in legal recognition of conscientious objection to military service.

Let us prayerfully examine the practice of church organizations withholding and transmitting income taxes of church employees who themselves are conscientiously unable to pay taxes for military use. As part of that effort, we will participate in a conference planned for February 1988 for Mennonite, Brethren, and Quaker employers to share their experiences relating to tax withholding and conscience and to develop a strategy for relief of this ethical dilemma.

Let us continue to support those whose conscience prevents them from paying taxes destined for military use or from registering with the U.S. Selective Service System.

A report from the conference, carried in the 28 July 1987 issue, carried the ominous quote “Personally, I think the Peace Tax Fund is a way out of this” as a way of excusing why the Mennonite Church seemed to be waffling rather than taking any committed stand:

A statement on “Growing in Stewardship and Witness in a Militaristic World” was approved more quickly. It offers suggestions to congregations for ways to counter the increasingly pervasive “evil” of militarism in North America and around the world.

Ed Metzler, who presented the statement, said one of the best ways Mennonites can oppose militarism today is by supporting the campaign for “Peace Tax Fund” legislation in both the United States and Canada. Metzler, who is peace and social concerns secretary at Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries, said this would permit conscientious objection to war taxes in the same way that Mennonites and others won the right to conscientious objection to war. He called to the podium the executive director of the campaign in the U.S. — Marian Franz, a Mennonite. “Conscience is contagious,” she said, “and peace concerns are spreading far beyond the historic peace churches.”

Approval of the statement did not end the discussion on militarism. Especially after Mennonite Board of Missions president Paul Gingrich reminded the delegates that his agency is still waiting to hear what it is supposed to do about employees who request that taxes not be withheld from their paychecks so that they can resist war taxes. “I wish this body would act on this,” he said.

Metzler agreed, pointing out that the Mennonite Church General Board “ducked the issue” by calling for a general statement on militarism. “We wish the issue would go away,” he said, “but it won’t.” Moderator-Elect Lebold defended General Board inaction, noting that the church is deeply divided on the subject. “Personally, I think the Peace Tax Fund is a way out of this,” he said.

Nondelegate Ray Gingerich, an Eastern Mennonite College professor who is a war tax resister, challenged the notion of having to wait on the government to make legal a matter of conscience. Many delegates seemed to agree, and by majority vote, they instructed General Board to take immediate action on tax withholding and give a clear answer to MBM and other agencies seeking guidance.

The 21 July 1987 issue carried an interview with Thomas L. Shaffer (a Catholic law professor). Excerpt:

Q:

Are you a pacifist?

A:

Well, I think so. It is an odd question for a 53-year-old person because nobody’s asking me to wreak violence on anybody else. We are all very fortunate to have that little dialogue about paying over the coin to Caesar because otherwise we 53-year-olds, if we thought of being pacifists, would have to think of financing nuclear weapons. I guess that little dialogue lets us out, or at least in some people’s minds it does. But I figure that by now the taxes I paid have bought a lot of destructive weaponry, if I am paying my share.

The Church of the Brethren (Anabaptist cousins of the Mennonites) also held their annual conference. The 4 August 1987 issue reported:

An agenda item on “taxation for war” prompted little debate, since a study committee said the church has written enough about war-tax resistance, and that it is time for members to study seriously what has been written.

That issue also carried this news:

Church asks forgiveness of antiwar activist defrocked 25 years ago

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has publicly asked the forgiveness of an 81-year-old Cincinnati minister who was defrocked by a regional church body 25 years ago for his antiwar activism. Maurice McCrackin, pastor of the nondenominational Community Church of Cincinnati, was deposed from the ministry by the Cincinnati Presbytery in 1961 after he refused to pay the portion of his income taxes that would go for military spending. Meeting in Biloxi, Miss., the denomination’s highest governing body, the General Assembly, formally confessed error in removing McCrackin from the ministry and endorsed an action taken in May by the Presbytery of Cincinnati restoring him to clergy status.

The attempts to get the Mennonite Church to take risks on behalf of war tax resisters got the goat of of Elmer S. Yoder, who wrote the following for the 20 October 1987 issue — again suggesting the Peace Tax Fund as a way of sidelining the problem:

Whose conscience is to be respected?

The concluding appeal by a delegate at Purdue 87 to “respect the individual conscience” in regard to church institutions not withholding “war taxes” failed to address a key question. The appeal sounded simple and persuasive, on the surface, but it is much more complex and far-reaching. Whose conscience is to be respected? The conscience of the individual employee of an institution or the collective conscience of a board of directors, or perhaps even General Assembly?

The corporation is a legal entity and owes its continued existence to statutory provisions. The centralized management of the corporation can and does express the collective conscience of the institution. Our major church institutions are incorporated and directed by boards. The directors have been charged with the optimum operation of the institutions. The institutions (corporations) are faced with options different from those of an individual in respect to a refusal to pay the tax in question.

An individual refusing to pay what he considers is the war tax would be confronted by an agency of the government. The result might be the placing of some financial restrictions upon him, or additional legal action, such as seizure of property, or in extreme cases, imprisonment. Noncompliance by a church corporation would almost certainly result in governmental measures amounting to a substantial loss of freedom. This loss could well include its legal base to perform the objectives and purposes included in its charter and given by the Mennonite Church.

An individual Christian respecting the conscience of a war-tax resister suffers no detrimental consequences legally. A trustee of a church institution is in a completely different situation. By consenting with fellow trustees not to withhold the tax in question, he and the trustees are inviting various restrictions on the institution via legal action.

Legal alternatives of not withholding the war tax have been researched thoroughly by the General Conference Mennonite Church, without finding any legal recourse. This means that trustees of church institutions would engage in civil disobedience by not withholding from any employee’s salary the part of the tax he protests, but in addition, would push the institution into a morass of legal restrictions and extended court procedures that would severely hamper the operation of the institution or drain its resources through protracted legal fees.

This is not a plea to act only on the basis of potential consequences. The call to faithfulness supersedes consequences. But faithfulness in great diversity of understanding, such as the war tax issue and the legal consequences, is difficult to achieve. It is not in the interests of brotherhood to create or foster an institutional versus individual conflict, but neither is it proper or ethical to evade the issue of an institutional conscience. In church institutions that conscience is molded by the larger brotherhood and those directly charged for the operation of the institutions — the trustees.

Nearly 100 years ago, the Mennonite Church began forming institutions (corporations) to carry out more effectively its tasks of nurture, education, and evangelism. The institutions have served well and have contributed in many ways to the mission of the Mennonite Church. Shall this servant role of the institutions continue? Trustees of the institutions can, by openly defying the law over an issue on which such a diversity of opinion exists within the Mennonite Church, shackle the institutions, rather than performing as stewards.

Perhaps the time is coming, in the United States, when the church may again need to preach, to teach, and to evangelize without the legal entity of the corporation. Perhaps there again will be the time for the fabled school with the professor on one end of a log and the student on the other. The church corporation, which makes possible educating larger numbers, would be conspicuously absent, because of legal ramifications. But, in my opinion, that time is not yet.

Perhaps, rather than urging a course of action which would eventually eliminate faculty and staff positions in the institutions, the energies and efforts devoted to this should be channeled into making possible a legal alternative, such as the Peace Tax Fund. Devoting one’s energies to making it possible for larger numbers to step out and take advantage of the Peace Tax Fund certainly would be preferred to potentially reducing the church institutions into ineffectiveness.

The “New Call to Peacemaking” initiative was still active, but seemed to be deemphasizing war tax resistance. It is not until the penultimate paragraph of this 20 October 1987 story that war tax issues are mentioned:

Some of New Call’s limited resources do go to renewing the vision within the historic peace churches. In February a conference will be cosponsored with the Quaker War Tax Concerns Committee on the challenge to church organizations from employees requesting their federal taxes not be withheld so they can exercise their conscience in relation to war taxes.

This letter to the editor, from Edgar Metzler, appeared in the 3 November 1987 issue:

Thank you for sharing Ike Glick’s courageous decision of conscience to resign from a company that might be involved in military contracts (Oct. 13). All of us in North America are inextricably involved in an economy addicted to huge military expenditures. Ike’s conscience challenges especially all of us who think that the taxes we pay to build weapons of war are something for which we have no responsibility. Our stewardship teachings tell us it is God’s money. How we use that resource surely must be a matter of conscience as much as the way we use our God-given talents in our occupations.

This is the twenty-ninth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal of the (Old) Mennonite Church.

In 1988 the Mennonite Church danced right up to the brink of committing to corporate war tax resistance, as other church bodies around them considered their own similar actions.

The traditionalists were increasingly restive, though. For example, in the 12 January 1988 issue, a letter to the editor from Robert L. Beiler took the traditional Romans 13 line and then went on to pointedly ask why war tax resisting Mennonites don’t seem to make any noise about taxpayer-funded abortions — and anyway the United States is a great country and we should be happy to pay taxes here.

The 19 January 1988 issue reported on how another Christian group was dealing with war tax resisters in the fold:

Quaker denomination supports staff war-tax witness

The General Board of Friends United Meeting — a Quaker denomination based in Richmond, Ind. — has adopted a policy of not withholding the federal taxes of employees who are conscientious objectors to paying taxes used for military purposes. This means the denomination is willing to violate Internal Revenue Service tax regulations in order to support the conscience of its employees.

The policy requires employees who desire to participate in the witness of military tax refusal to first participate in a “clearness process” with their local congregation. They are encouraged to compute the military percentage of their income tax, using the figures of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and voluntarily deposit that sum in a special denominational account held for that purpose. The remainder would be submitted to the IRS.

In taking this action. Friends United Meeting is pursuing a long Quaker tradition of recognizing all outward warfare to be inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It joins one other denomination in taking this action — the General Conference Mennonite Church. Friends United Meeting is also seeking legislative remedy through the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress. This legislation would permit tax payers morally opposed to war to have the military part of their taxes allocated to peacemaking.

Representatives of several “traditional peace church” denominations met to try to swap ideas about how to cope with the war tax resistance issue (Paul Schrag reporting):

Historic peace churches tackle thorny issue of tax withholding

Praying for peace while paying for war is a contradiction that historic peace churches must oppose by speaking out and taking action, representatives of those churches agreed at a consultation Feb. 15–17 in Richmond, Ind. For some people, war tax resistance — refusing to pay the portion of one’s taxes that goes to the military — is a moral imperative. Their consciences will not allow them to help pay for machine guns and nuclear bombs.

The question of how church organizations can help their employees follow their consciences — and how to deal with the risks involved for both employees and employers — were the issues that nearly 40 Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers struggled with at the meeting.

The church leaders, agency representatives, and lawyers affirmed their support for individual military tax resisters and for efforts to seek a legislative solution by working toward passage of the Peace Tax Fund Bill in the U.S. Congress.

They agreed to organize a peace church leadership group to go to Washington sometime in the future to support the peace tax bill and to express concerns about tax withholding. They also agreed to help each other by filing friend-of-the-court briefs if tax resisters are prosecuted and by sharing the cost of tax resistance penalties, if necessary.

“You may think the world will little note nor long remember what has happened here,” said Marian Franz, a Mennonite who is executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. “But I regard it as a historic meeting.”

People from churches that have policies of breaking the law by not withholding the federal taxes of employees who oppose paying military taxes shared their experiences with people from churches considering adopting such a policy. The General Conference Mennonite Church and two Quaker groups are in the first category. The Mennonite Church is in the second.

Mennonite Church leaders, including Executive Secretary James Lapp and Moderator-Elect George Brunk Ⅲ, came to the meeting to explore church policy options on military tax withholding. The General Assembly of the Mennonite Church asked the General Board last July to develop a recommendation on the issue for consideration at the next General Assembly in 1989.

“This roots us in a larger movement,” Lapp said of the meeting. “It gives us ideas and handles about how other people have addressed it. We don’t have to start from ground zero.” General Board plans to formulate questions about tax withholding for congregations to discuss. It will prepare its 1989 recommendation based on congregations’ responses.

The meeting, held at Quaker Hill Conference Center, took place in an atmosphere of excitement generated by a gathering of people from different traditions who share a vision. In the long and lively discussions, participants challenged each other and their churches to recommit themselves to active peacemaking and prophetic witnessing on the war tax issue.

Robert Hull, peace/justice secretary for the General Conference Mennonite Church, said it was frustrating that many members of historic peace churches are not willing to witness against financial participation in preparing for war although they are opposed to physical participation in war.

When a church or organization decides to honor employees’ requests not to withhold their federal income tax, it assumes serious risks. Any “responsible person” who willfully fails to withhold an employee’s taxes theoretically could be punished with a prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. An organization could be fined $500,000.

But such penalties have never been imposed on legitimate religious organizations, nor are they likely to be, said two lawyers at the meeting. The usual Internal Revenue Service response to war tax resistance is to take the amount of tax owed, plus a 5 percent penalty and interest, from the employee’s bank account.

IRS has not taken even this action against the four GC employees who are not having their taxes withheld. They pay the nonmilitary portion of their taxes themselves and deposit the 53 percent that would have gone to the military in a designated account. IRS has not touched that account since it was established after GC delegates approved the policy in 1983. All GC personnel who could be subject to penalties have agreed to accept the risk.

The Friends World Committee for Consultation, which has had a nonwithholding policy since 1982, has had tax money seized, plus interest and penalties, from its resisters’ bank accounts. The Friends United Meeting adopted a nonwithholding policy last October. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends will decide in March whether it should have such a policy. Charles Boyer of the Church of the Brethren said he would use the input from the meeting to work toward helping his denomination develop a policy on tax resistance.

Participants made suggestions for improvements on a draft of “A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers” written by Hull, Linda Coffin of the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns, and lawyers Peter Goldberger and J.E. McNeil. The manual is expected to be available later this year.

The consultation was sponsored by the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns and New Call to Peacemaking. The latter is a cooperative peace organization of the historic peace churches. New Call to Peacemaking plans to sponsor a military tax withholding meeting for a wider range of church groups sometime in the future.

Whether or not military tax resistance “works,” participants agreed that people’s moral imperative to follow their consciences must be respected. “No conscientious objector ever stopped a conflict,” said William Strong, a Quaker representative. “But they had to explain what they did, and the vision was kept alive, and those ripples — you don’t know where they stop.

The Mennonite Church was playing catch up with their cousins the General Conference Mennonite Church when it came to deciding how to react to employees who were conscientious objectors to military taxation, but now it was their turn to begin the process. From the 1 March 1988 issue:

General Board considers issue of church agency tax withholding

As the result of a General Assembly mandate last July at Purdue 87, Mennonite Church General Board has initiated a plan to consider church agency tax withholding. The General Assembly action calls for General Board to bring to the 1989 assembly a proposal for how the church should respond to questions of conscientious objection to the payment of military taxes and the institutional withholding of the military portion of employees’ income taxes.

Steps in the consideration process, as approved at the board’s November meeting, began in February with participation in the interdenominational Employers Tax Withholding Consultation in Richmond, Ind. Then a working document, clarifying the issues and enumerating possible responses, will be prepared for General Board study.

Board members will devote a day to the issue prior to their regular April meeting. The discernment process will continue as revised copies of the working document are available for conference and congregational study between April 1988 and March 1989.

A summary of conference responses will be included in the General Board docket in April 1989, when the board will develop a recommendation to be presented for General Assembly action in August 1989.

The 29 March 1988 issue noted that the “first major public event” of the Peace and Justice Center at Stirling Ave. Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ont. “was a… seminar to explore alternatives to paying taxes for military purposes.”

In a letter to the editor in the 22 March 1988 issue, Jurgen Brauer wrote that after reading Tolstoy he came to feel that “it is high time that the issue of tax withholding (or redirecting) becomes the major issue of the church.”

The “Taxes for Peace” fund gave its annual update in the 29 March 1988 issue. They’d decided to donate all of the taxes redirected through the fund to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund that year, and announced that the previous year they’d redirected about $4,000 to “the Lancaster County, Pa., Peacework Alternatives project.”

A note in the 5 April 1988 issue:

Poster on war tax resistance from Mennonite Central Committee. The words on the poster are by John Stoner: “We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God.” It is available from MCC at…

The General Board of the Mennonite Church met in April 1988:

General Board takes step in non-withholding of war taxes

In a decision that will lead to breaking the law if approved by the General Assembly next year, the General Board of the Mennonite Church has recommended that war taxes not be withheld from the paychecks of denominational employees who request that. The 32-member board passed the recommendation unanimously, with a few abstentions.

The action, which came during the board’s Apr. 6–9 meeting in Kitchener, Ont., was a long-awaited response to several people at church agencies and schools who, because of conscience, do not want to pay the portion of their taxes — about 50 percent in the United States — that goes to the military. It was also a response to an impatient 1987 General Assembly that instructed General Board to take a stand on the issue.

“This has been an area we have been reluctant to move in,” said General Board executive secretary Jim Lapp in introducing the matter. Ed Metzler, the denomination’s peace and social concerns secretary, said the main reasons for taking the non-withholding action are to allow individual expressions of conscience and to witness against militarism. “But is this the best way to witness against militarism?” asked Tim Burkholder of Northwest Conference. Other board members wondered if the church corporately should break the law to satisfy the consciences of a few individuals.

The board members, meeting at Pioneer Park Christian Fellowship, gathered a day earlier than usual to take up the war tax matter. Metzler arranged for a variety of speakers to address the subject, including two persons who have requested non-withholding — Chris Longenecker of Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Carman Albrecht of Mennonite Central Committee Ontario.

John Stoner, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Peace Section, delivered a ringing “call for courage” based on the book of Revelation. “It is unthinkable that John the Revelator would not see, in our time and place, the war tax demands of Western democratic militaristic capitalism as a challenge to our faithfulness to the witness of Jesus,” he said.

Bob Hull, peace/justice secretary for the General Conference Mennonite Church, explained the lengthy process that led to his denomination’s 1983 decision to honor requests for non-withholding. It included a four-year effort to explore all legal channels — legislative, judicial, administrative — for avoiding the payment of war taxes. Finally, at their convention in Bethlehem, Pa., 72 percent of the GC delegates voted to defy the law — the first denomination to do so. (Several Quaker groups have since done the same.) To date, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has not moved against the GC Church.

In the discussion that followed, several people argued that consistent conscientious objection to war should include a refusal to fight as well as to pay for fighting. Others wondered why the Mennonite Church — and other denominations — agreed so easily to a 1943 law in the U.S. (and earlier in Canada) that required them to withhold taxes from employees’ wages, thus putting the church in the role of tax collector for the government.

For a while it looked like the board members might postpone action on the issue or pass the buck to the 22 conferences of the Mennonite Church. But Moderator Ralph Lebold reminded them of their instructions from General Assembly, and Dean Swartzendruber of Iowa-Nebraska Conference urged the board to “decide here today.”

In the end, the decision was made after much deliberation and considerable rewriting of the proposed action. In addition to honoring requests for non-withholding, it includes support for the Peace Tax Fund bill in the U.S. Congress that would provide conscientious objection to war taxes and a call for “serious attention” to the question of the church as tax collector.

The recommendation will now go to the conferences for review. A year from now, General Board will take the responses from the conferences and shape a final recommendation for submission to the 1989 General Assembly. The board members agreed that the recommendation will be introduced in person to the leaders of each conference by a denominational staff person.

Gospel Herald kept readers up on the news of other denominations struggling with the same issue (26 April 1988):

Quakers agree to aid workers who refuse to pay “military” taxes

Philadelphia-area Quakers took a historic step recently to aid employees who were opposed to paying taxes for war purposes. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, in its 308^th annual session, agreed to withhold but not forward to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service the estimated military portion of its employees’ federal income taxes. This money will be set aside in a special fund and paid to IRS with interest when there is assurance the money will not go for military spending.

Currently the organization has 42 employees, of which an average of seven are tax resisters at any time. The decision to establish the set-aside fund for war tax resisters augments the 1975 decision to refuse cooperation with IRS levies on salaries of war tax resisters employed by the Yearly Meeting. The policies could make the group liable for sizable fines and penalties for breaking federal law. The Yearly Meeting also could incur liability for employees’ unpaid taxes.

And some Mennonite congregations were taking stands on their own (31 May 1988, Cindy Hines Kurfman reporting):

Indiana congregation supports its members who don’t pay “war taxes”

War-tax resistance is an important subject at Lafayette (Ind.) Mennonite Fellowship — important enough that members commit themselves to “support for those who, for reason of conscience, resist ‘war tax’ payment.”

To Ken Nagele, who began refusing to pay a portion of his taxes in 1982, war-tax resistance originally meant not paying “the percentage associated with nuclear weapons.” He now refuses to pay for “all current and past military spending,” but still pays the portion that benefits veterans in the belief that he is “helping those scarred by killing.”

Nagele uses a Friends Committee on National Legislation document each year to determine how much he will withhold. This year the figure is 53.1 percent. The refused portion will be deposited in the Near Eastside Community Federal Credit Union of Indianapolis. This community-development credit union makes loans to low-income persons and small businesses in an economically depressed portion of the city.

Another member, Mary Ann Zoeller, is refusing to pay war taxes for the first time. “As a Christian, I knew I could not, in good conscience, support the killing of others,” she says. “Yet the existing tax laws require me to do just this, by asking me to pay taxes that finance military services. Following Christ’s teachings of love of his persecutors, even to the loss of life, I have been led to question my support of our military.” Zoeller sends the war-tax portion to Amnesty International, a human rights organization.

Alternative methods of war-tax resistance are also demonstrated by several families in the Lafayette congregation. One family, whose income is below the taxable level, has written a letter to their tax commissioner since 1980 which explains their belief that paying for war is a sin. Another couple keeps their payment to a minimum by following the example of their parents; live simply and give a large percentage of income to the church.

Another example (7 June 1988):

A Virginia congregation has decided to officially support its members who refuse to pay the military portion of their taxes. Community Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va., has 20 members who illegally withhold some of their tax money as an act of conscientious objection to war taxes or are seriously considering it. “The congregation’s decision grew out of the desire and concern of a few of us that our action be more than the isolated action of individual conscience,” said Orval Gingrich, one of the 20. The congregation is encouraging all its members to include letters of protest with their income tax returns and has notified Internal Revenue Service that it fully supports its members who don’t pay war taxes.

By June 1988 it was time for another backlash letter to the editor. Titus Martin hit the predictable Romans 13 notes and warned readers against relying on their consciences when conscience and scripture disagree. As a compromise he suggested that readers use charitable deductions rather than civil disobedience to lower their taxes.

Even the Presbyterians were getting in on the tax resistance act, according to this 19 July 1988 news brief:

The document describes obedience to civil authority as normative for Christians but asks the denomination to set up a special fund to support Presbyterians who suffer financial losses because of a stance of resistance. The paper argues that withholding taxes to protest U.S. military policy is proper under certain circumstances. Such activists are entitled to emotional support from the church, the paper says.

The IRS went on the offensive against the Philadelphia Yearly meeting, which may have been frightening news for a Mennonite Church which was contemplating taking a similar stand (18 October 1988):

Employees’ tax protest prompts IRS lawsuit against Quakers

The Internal Revenue Service has filed two suits against a Quaker group in Pennsylvania because the organization has refused to attach the wages of two employees who have withheld part of their income taxes as a conscientious protest against military spending. The lawsuits against the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends seek $17,000 in connection with federal taxes that were not paid by William Grassie and David Falls. IRS said it takes such action against the employer of anyone who fails to pay taxes on the ground that salaries are property that can be levied by the government in such cases.

Finally, a note in the 20 December 1988 issue read:

A new resource is available on the war-tax issue for Mennonite Church conferences — and others — that are currently considering whether church institutions should be instructed to not withhold taxes from the wages of employees who express conscientious objection to the military portion of their taxes. Conferences are to submit their counsel to General Board before April in preparation for a proposal to General Assembly at Normal 89. The resource is a just-published book called Fear God and Honor the Emperor: A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers. Each purchaser of the book will be on a mailing list to receive future updates on the subject. The book is available at a special price of $11 from Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries…