Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” → Mennonites / Amish → John Howard Yoder

I keep a few little google-birds flying about keeping an eye on the internet and coming back to chirp at me when they overhear from the eaves someone discussing tax resistance. And so yesterday I dropped in on Mere Discipleship Discussion to listen in on a few people who are trying to be disciples of Christ as they discuss whether taxpaying or tax resistance is more appropriate for such a disciple.

Tony Arnold started things off by quoting from a recent news article about phone tax resistance and then asking:

How many laws and taxes are legacies about which citizens have no idea of their motive and use — taxes and laws that may impinge on the moral and ethical beliefs of an individual? Moreover, when does a disciple render unto Caesar and when does he or she cross over into civil disobedience as part of moral conviction?

Arnold then quoted some of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s thoughts on that question, and then concluded by asking:

[D]oes a disciple who is morally opposed to the war have a valid reason, even an obligation, to participate in the civil disobedience of withholding taxes? … ¶ One thing that bothers me is that I would love to express my displeasure by participating in not paying the Federal Excise Tax on my phone bill. However, I do fear reprisal by the IRS. Am I a moral coward putting my fear ahead of my discipleship?

Commenters wrestled with the question, weighing the legendary (if usually merely legendary) ruthlessness of the IRS, the humble real-world effects of withholding a few dollars from a multi-billion dollar war machine, and what sort of guidance the Bible provides on the issue.

On one hand, one commentator wrote, “Now that we know that this action [war tax resistance] is available to take, can a disciple be justified in not taking it?” And on the other hand, wrote the same commentator later, Paul (in Romans 13) counsels obedience to government, with the reasoning that the powers-that-be wouldn’t be in power if God didn’t want it that way, and besides, the real king worth worrying about is the King of Kings:

I hate to pay taxes as much as anyone, but if I withhold the telephone tax because it goes to pay for war, then should I begin to withhold other taxes because they pay for other activities that a disciple would consider against the spirit of Christ?

[Lee] Camp^* says: “God can and does in his sovereignty use even the rebellious powers, often manifested by emperors and kings and governments, for his purposes” (81). If we believe this, then when we obey the government (which God put in place), and that government uses our tax money for evil, God’s plan will still be achieved.

If we disagree with a tax or any other law, we can contact our representatives and petition that the law be changed. It doesn’t get fast results, and it may get no result, but it is legal and it obeys what Jesus and Paul said about it.

This is where I discovered the conversation, and I couldn’t resist putting in my two cents and trying to solve their dilemma (or aggravate it, depending on your perspective): “There is a way to both avoid paying for the war and to avoid risking the wrath of the IRS. You can live under the tax line. It’s not that hard; I’ve been doing it since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.”

This was met by much more enthusiasm than usually meets my attempts to butt in on blogs where I’ve never before made an appearance. The author of the original post wrote of my suggestion:

That is very radical and very much a disciple response.… ¶ The great thing is this does not have to be a resistance choice, it is what we are called to do anyway. You avoid greed, materialism, power, supporting corporations whose investments might cause one moral dilemmas, etc.

He then expanded on this at his own blog (Thoughts of Man), but concluded that he did not think he was ready to take such a step yet as it seemed too frightening to him.

I feel a little out of my depth here as a non-believer, but I appreciated the sincerity and depth of concern shown by the people who took up this issue on Mere Discipleship Discussion, and by the honest and personal way they wrestled with it, and so I wanted to bring attention to it here.

^* Lee Camp is the author of the book Mere Discipleship, from which the aforementioned blog gets its name. He is much inspired by the Mennonite theologian and tax resister John Howard Yoder, though Camp himself is from the Church of Christ I believe.

This is the thirteenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we continue our trek into the 1960s.

The 15 January 1963 issue included an article by Leo Driedger titled “The Taxes that Go to War”. We met Driedger in our last episode as he was answering a query about the General Conference Mennonite Church’s guidance regarding war taxes on behalf of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee.

In this new article, Driedger begins by methodically explaining how much of the federal budget is military spending, and how the government gets that money to spend. Then he explores the options for avoiding complicity:

Some think we should work out some alternative to paying taxes. In the past some Mennonites paid for other people to go to war in their place. We thought this was wrong so we sought alternative service. But we are still paying for war with our taxes. In order to discuss our taxes intelligently we need to know where we are paying taxes, and how it is spent.

Can we escape paying taxes for military use? It is hard to be consistent. To illustrate, let us examine the excise taxes. Most of us do not buy alcohol and tobacco which eliminates half of the excise tax problem. The other half we pay on such items as gas and oil, telephone, transportation tickets, and sugar (which we can hardly do without). Not to pay any excise tax on anything would result in doing without a lot of things we think are necessary. Furthermore, we might find ourselves spending much time trying to decide when we are or aren’t paying excise taxes. Would this be good stewardship of time?

The twenty-six per cent that the government receives from corporate income taxes could be largely evaded if we did not buy stocks and bonds in corporations. Many of our people however invest in stocks, although a large percentage don’t. But we would still be involved in a small way in that our money in savings accounts in banks and loans we make involved the investment of some money in corporations and these pay taxes. True, our involvement here is small.

Most of the government’s money comes from personal income taxes. In the United States a single person can earn $600 and a childless couple $1200 per year before they have to pay income tax. In Canada this is $1000 and $2000 respectively. We would find it hard to live on so little, although I know of one Mennonite who has done this for years. Reducing our income that much would leave little for tithes to the church. Is this good stewardship of our money?

For some a large family solves the problem. In the United States tax exemptions permit a man to earn at least $6,000 before he has to pay taxes. Not too many, however, are following that solution.

The Christian also has the positive option of giving thirty per cent of his income to the church and tax-deductible charities. Many of us should consider this possibility seriously. I know of some Christians who give that much and more to the church every year.

Each year a number of Mennonites include a letter of protest with their tax returns. They often ask for an alternative. Some members of the Society of Friends have actually worked on a bill to present to the government asking for the opportunity to pay their taxes to UNICEF, a welfare organ of the United Nations. Securing an alternative will be difficult. Quite a few actually refuse to pay, and are imprisoned; others don’t pay and get away with it. This is a complex problem, for even if we were granted an alternative on personal income tax, there is still the other forty-five per cent corporation and excise taxes which are not covered.

The Gospels (Mark 12:17, Matt. 22:21, Luke 10:25 [sic.]) cite the well-known saying of Christ: “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.” Did Christ mean we should pay our tax money to the government and ask no further questions? Although the coin had the inscription of Caesar on it, did Christ not mean that all we have and own is God’s, whose purpose is much greater? Did he mean that taxes for roads, health, welfare, should be paid to Caesar to administer these, but not money for war because this does not serve mankind and God? Or did Christ actually mean that His disciples should help pay for Roman conquest and military persecution?

Can we work out a perfect plan that will provide an alternative to military taxation? That seems nigh impossible if we still want to be a part of society. But, aware of our involvement, do we confess to it and seek truly to make the best witness we can against this evil use of our tax money? Without giving any glib answer I leave a few questions for discussion:

1. Is it wrong to pay our taxes to government even though we know seventy per cent of this goes for the preparation of war?
2. What does the Bible say about this question of involvement?
3. Is it really possible to withdraw from any involvement, by either paying our taxes and forgetting about it, or attempting to do without those things that involve payment of taxes? Is this the best witness we can make?
4. Is there some way in which we can make a Christian witness against programs of military spending? How?
5. Should we invest our time and efforts in working for an alternative to paying taxes as we have done in military service?

A letter from Walter M. Philipp printed in the 19 February 1963 issue took Driedger to task, saying his article was an example of those “which are poorly written, factually incorrect, and show lack of intelligence.” For starters, he took issue with Driedger’s account of how bank deposits or the purchase of stocks & bonds make individuals complicit in corporate income taxes.

Would not the purchase of products manufactured by corporations tie in more to one’s responsibility for corporate income tax, inasmuch as sales produce the income that is taxed, and a definable proportion of the sales dollar goes for income tax?

Then he asks, “why did [Driedger] not mention investment in municipal bonds, from which the income is tax exempt?”

Municipal bonds do provide funds for some very peaceful, humane, and worthwhile purposes. Why did he not mention the tax credit applicable to dividend income, the lower tax rate on capital gains, or the lower tax rate applicable to corporation income?

These are just a few examples that contributed to making a poor article.

But interestingly, the criticism is entirely about the technical details. I didn’t notice any letters attacking the substance of the idea that Mennonites should examine how their taxes make them complicit in military spending and that they need to do something about it.

John Howard Yoder, the controversial and influential Mennonite theologian, chimed in on the subject in the 26 February 1963 issue:

Why I Don’t Pay All My Income Tax

A personal testimony

As I grew, in my late teens and early twenties, into my earliest understandings of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, one of the deeply significant aspects of this discipleship which I sought to understand was what my teachers called nonresistance. I came to understand this word as pointing to one of the ways in which personal fellowship with Jesus Christ through His Spirit will normally work itself out in the life of the believer.

Two things stood out in this understanding of discipleship in nonresistance. First of all, to follow Christ on this path involved being enough different from the surrounding world to be considered unlikable or undesirable by certain powerful people and groups in the world. As a result of this opposition, the way of nonresistance may be called the way of the cross; it involves suffering.

Secondly this position should be a witness. A witness should show the world that the way it operates, through an interplay of selfishness against selfishness and violence against violence, is subject to the condemnation of God and destined, even in this age, to ultimate judgment.

One other thing my teachers told me was that, according to God’s will, the assignment of civil government is to keep the peace. The Apostle Paul instructs Christians to offer “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings… for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life…” (1 Tim. 2:1f., RSV). Obviously, we pray for a “quiet and peaceable life” not because we wish to be left alone but in order that the church may carry on her ministry, so that all men should find salvation and “come to the knowledge of the truth” (verse 4). The church’s task is to bring men to know the truth; just as clearly, the place of the state in God’s purposes is that disorder be kept to a minimum and peace maintained.

Now when I went out into life with these convictions I was increasingly struck by the fact that there was precious little in my own experience or that of the church that I knew to correspond to this description.

The governments under which I lived were making a major contribution to the terror which threatens all the nations of the world. They were taking the greatest initiative in poisoning the outer atmosphere of the globe and the inmost springs of heredity with nuclear tests. Statesmen were making their bids for election primarily on the basis of how “firm” they were prepared to be in threatening the other half of the world with nuclear destruction.

Not only Christians, but even intelligent unbelievers in other parts of the world, asked me what testimony was being given in America by nonresistant Christians, and at the cost of what suffering, in order to proclaim the judgment of God upon this development of weapons which can be used only to break and not to defend the peace. It is a growing conviction of many that it is an insufficient answer to say that many young men of nonresistant conviction refuse military service and render some other useful service to society in its place. The position of the conscientious objector is right for the young man to whom it applies.

But in the western nations where military authorities have found a convenient way of shunting such objectors into inconspicuous alternative service, the Christian testimony to the state requires more than this if it is to be an adequate testimony against war. Alternative service says clearly that the Christian cannot wage war, and that he does desire to serve his fellow men in a useful way. It does not say that the task of the state is to make peace. And for the great bulk of Christians of nonresistant conviction, conscientious objection and alternative civilian service involve no suffering and little sacrifice.

These were my thoughts when I was reminded that there is one point at which almost every citizen, or at least every family, once a year does make a personal contribution to the moral and financial support of the military monster. This gesture of support is carried out each spring when almost every wage earner forwards to the federal government a share of his earnings, more than half of which will not be used to keep the peace.

For a number of years, I had not chance to exercise responsibility over this use of a share of my income, since my employer withheld the amount involved from my earnings. In the spring of 1962, for the first time, it fell to my personal responsibility and initiative to forward to the United States government’s Internal Revenue Service an additional amount, going beyond what had been withheld. This additional amount due was significantly less than the proportion of my total taxes which I knew were being used for non-peaceful purposes.

I therefore submitted to the Director of Internal Revenue a full and conscientious report of my income, but wrote that I could not take the moral responsibility of forwarding to the government funds which I knew would be used for a purpose contrary to that which government is supposed to be serving. I told him that I had no intention of profiting personally from my “tax objection.” I was therefore forwarding an equivalent payment to the Mennonite Central Committee for use in overseas war sufferers’ relief.

In the course of time, I received an answer to this letter in the form of a conversation with a local Internal Revenue Service inspector. In a very polite and gentlemanly way he informed me that he could not consider this as acceptable in lieu of payment to the Director of Internal Revenue. He therefore drew from my bank account the amount which I had not forwarded in the routine way.

This much is my story; what remains is to ward off mistaken interpretation of what I did and what I meant.

The point is not to keep the government from getting the money. Not only would this be legally impossible; the New Testament is clear that the Christian will respond to any kind of coercion, legal or illegal, by giving not only his shirt but also his coat. (See Matt. 5:40.) Since it was clear that the Internal Revenue Service inspector was disposed to take upon himself the responsibility for forcefully collecting the funds, as a “second mile” gesture I told him where he could find the money with the least difficulty.

The idea is not to avoid involvement in the evils of this fallen world, to “keep my hands clean” morally. Involvement in one form or another is avoided by no one, and I would not be avoiding it if I had no taxes to pay. My concern is not to be morally immaculate by making absolutely no contribution to the war effort, but to give a testimony to government concerning its own obligation before God.

This is not tax evasion. I filed at the proper time a full and conscientiously accurate report on my income, and when further information came to light I amended my report accordingly. There is no intention to defraud and no liability to criminal prosecution.

This is not obstructionism. Numerous Christian and non-Christian pacifists express their disapproval of militarism by such symbolic gestures as illegally entering a missile base, sailing a boat into a restricted part of the Pacific just before bomb tests, or in other ways seeking dramatically to catch the attention of the public or of government administrators with their objection.

The action I am describing here differs from theirs in a number of ways. In the first place, I made clear, not only in my letter to the Director of Internal Revenue, but also in my conversation with the local inspector, that I now have and wish to maintain a healthy respect for the legitimate functions of government and for the persons who carry them out. I do not express my objection by getting in the way of some military sentinel or civilian truck driver whom I thus put in the embarrassing position of either being disobedient to his superiors or harming me, nor by becoming a problem for some judge who has no choice but to apply the law.

I witness rather by writing and talking calmly to responsible civil servants who are my most direct contact with the process of government.

The only cost of this witness was paid in the form of a gift for relief. The actual amount of tax collected was increased by only a few cents’ interest covering the time elapsed between April 15 and the date of collection. If the equivalent amount I had given for relief had been accepted by Internal Revenue Service in lieu of tax payment, I would have considered it as such in the next year’s reporting. However, since that payment was not accepted, I shall report it as a deductible contribution.

The way present tax laws operate, this approach would cost the most (in the form of relief contributions) to those who are most able to bear it because of their greater income. This is significant in contrast to the fact that the brunt of the sacrifice involved in being a conscientious objector, especially in time of war, is laid upon teenagers who are not chosen with a view to their being most qualified to bear it. If action something like my own were taken by a significant number of mature Mennonite wage earners, this would be the first time in the history of our nation that the testimony to nonresistance was given primarily through the initiative of and at a certain cost to the most mature and responsible people in the church.

One question remains, which both the Internal Revenue Service inspector and my Christian brethren have already asked:

Does not the New Testament instruct us to pay our taxes? Certainly it does; and I want to pay my taxes, and to pay them willingly as far as the functions of the United States government resemble what Jesus and Paul and Peter were talking about. The lesson of the entire New Testament is that Christians should be subject to political authority because in the providence of God the function of these authorities is to maintain peace. This is what I, in accordance with the instruction of the New Testament, am asking the American government to do.

I am in fact even willing to pay for a certain amount of waste and fraud and incompetence, as well as for welfare services going beyond what Jesus and the apostles had in mind. But the one thing I am not prepared to support voluntarily is something which Jesus and Paul did not have in mind because it did not exist in the time of the New Testament.

The government of Rome was not spending more than half of its resources on preparations to destroy the rest of the world. The authority which Jesus and Paul recognized was an authority within a given empire, an authority which in spite of its violence and corruption and the fraudulent procedures of its tax collectors did effectively maintain peace within the entire known world at the time the New Testament was written.

We know very little, nor does the New Testament attempt to inform us, about significant political powers outside the Roman Empire. But we can say with certainly that there were no such powers, in any way comparable in importance to Rome itself, which Rome was preparing to destroy. There is thus in this teaching of the New Testament no easy discharge from the duty to test which of the demands of “Caesar” are really “the things that are Caesar’s” and when what he asks for is not his rightful due.

It is not my purpose at present to agitate for others to follow my example. I am rather asking counsel from, my Christian brethren concerning the way I have been led. At the same time I am asking whether others have found more appropriate ways to render a worthwhile testimony against their nation’s trust in the sword.

A Mrs. M. Wiebe took Yoder up on that challenge, in a letter published in the 26 March 1963 issue. She was “appalled at the hypocrisy expressed in [Yoder’s] article.” Excerpt:

What virtue is there in not paying your income tax willingly instead forcing the Revenue Inspector to collect it himself from the author’s bank account? … To quote: “I am willing to pay for a certain amount of waste, fraud and incompetence” but not for something that did not exist in the time of the New Testament. Don’t fraud and corruption lead to war? He describes Rome as a government that didn’t spend as much on war as our government and that Rome “maintained peace” certainly it maintained peace but how? With terrible brutality and with the sword. The Romans had a horrible slave system. Their birthday parties were illumined with flaming crosses of burning Christians. It was a totally pagan government. That’s the kind of a government to which Jesus and Paul paid willing taxes. They had more important things to do than to picket the government and complain about the taxes.

Don’t we as Mennonites have anything more important to think about than how we can draw attention to ourselves by being very odd so that others might notice how pious we are?

Other than that, I don’t see much evidence that Yoder’s article raised much controversy or discussion.

A letter from Don Kaufman, published in the 5 March 1963 issue, promoted a new “Civilian Income Tax Act” being drawn up by the Pacific Yearly Meeting of Friends. This was one of the early attempts at “peace tax fund” legislation. These plans would frustrate and bedevil the conversation about war tax resistance to the present day, and would eventually almost completely displace discussion of war tax resistance itself. In this way the peace tax fund plans are similar to the “civilian bonds” of World War Ⅱ — they allow ostensibly conscientious people to continue to pay for war by giving their payments a pleasant name.

This is the fourteenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we continue our trek through the 1960s.

A letter to the editor from Don Kaufman in the 18 February 1964 edition worried that “we have allowed conscientious objection to war to become meaningless by default” in the modern age when war is fought more by machinery than by troops. He made note of John Howard Yoder’s essay on war tax resistance (see yesterday’s post), and said “it would be interesting to know how many individuals in Mennonite congregations would qualify as authentic C.O.’s if examined on the basis of the U.S. position “which has through its courts held several times that any substantial contribution for war by an individual is legal proof that he is not a genuine objector to war.”

If Christians courageously refused to have their income tax money used for military purposes they would discover that it costs a person something to be a conscientious objector to war, even in the United States of America.

Judging by or record as a Mennonite Church it would appear that we are confused about what it means “to obey God rather than men.” For example, in our personal life we oppose war (as most Mennonites have throughout their history), but with the money which we earn we support it (as most Mennonites have throughout their history). Who can honestly say that this is consistent with “the Way of the Cross”? I suppose the majority of Christians in our day consider it either presumptuous or scandalous when a person refuses to pay war taxes. And yet if, as Ernest Bromley has observed, the taxpayer now plays the part the soldier used to play, then it becomes imperative that we examine more carefully what it means to pay taxes. When paying taxes, are we really being faithful citizens of God’s kingdom of love?

A letter in the 17 March 1964 edition responded that tax resistance, like conscientious objection to military service, probably would have little effect on the government’s ability to wage war.

Further, it is a naive mistake to believe that because a person has not served in the army or paid taxes used for defense, he has not participated in or contributed to what used to be called the war effort. The maintaining and developing of our defense system is tightly interwoven with our “peaceful” economy. The company that makes light bulbs also makes jet engines and electronics equipment for the government. The airplane that takes our Mennonite leaders to meetings and conferences around the world is likely to have been made by the same company that furnishes the Air Force with B‒52’s loaded and ready on the alert pad.

I believe that we support our government indirectly merely by participating in the economy of the country, and that it is now our duty to try to affect policy making, not merely by the indirect methods of “ban the bomb” and alternative service (and perhaps taxes) but by constructive, dynamic participation in government itself.

Melvin D. Schmidt continued this conversation in the 21 April 1964 edition. Excerpt:

[D]oes not an ethical decision sometimes involve simply saying “no” to evil as we understand it? “We mean to do good if possible, but in no case do we intend to do harm” (Milton Mayer). This seems to be central in the tax refuser’s philosophy, and it may be a lot more realistic and a lot less sentimental than the noble alternative of “dynamic participation in government itself” — whatever that phrase means.

The National Council of Churches convened a conference on church & state issues in early February, 1964. A Mennonite attendee noted:

In the plenary sessions most discussion centered around the question of civil disobedience. Can the church ever encourage Christians to refuse payment of income tax?…

The 21 April 1964 issue reported on the jailing the previous year of Quaker war tax resister Arthur Evans on contempt of court charges for refusing to file an income tax return.

Finally, the 29 December 1964 edition reprinted “A Call to Income Tax Protest” by four members of the Church of the Brethren: Dale Aukerman, John Forbes, Merle Crouse, and Jerry Royer. Here is the text of that Call:

The per capita military expenditure of the United States rose from less than $8 in 1938 to $268 in 1958. The Government has been spending less than one million dollars yearly on the problems of disarmament, in contrast to $47 billion on arms, a ratio of one to forty-seven thousand.

C.P. Snow, the eminent British physicist and novelist, has indicated that by 1966 some twelve countries, including China, might have nuclear weapons at their disposal. He warns that, unless much progress is made toward disarmament, “within ten years from now some of those bombs are going off. We know, with the certainty of statistical proof, that if enough of these weapons are made by enough different states, some of them are going to blow up — through accident, or folly, or madness.”

This letter, primarily to members and friends of the Church of the Brethren, is an appeal that we consider anew as Christians whether we can without protest go on handing over our income tax money when 75 percent of it is used in a way that makes more likely a general destruction of human life on the earth.

Hans de Boer has written, “He who sees a wrong and does not raise an outcry makes himself guilty of the wrong.” We may feel uneasy about that word outcry. The effectiveness of protests does not necessarily increase with their loudness. But to the essential meaning we can perhaps agree: When we see wrong, we should give a strong No. Our lives should be an agape Yes to God and men and a radical No to evil. Jesus Christ is God’s Yes to us and His No to sin; and we are called in Him to embody that Yes and No.

American Christianity no longer tends to be a chain of narrow negativisms, but rather a blur of cushiony positives. This shift has affected American pacifism. The lament is still often heard that pacifism is understood too negatively. We might do better to regret that pacifism has become so mildly and acceptably positive. Alternative service is a highly significant long-range witness. Its sorry failing is that in America it has so little potency any more as a No. Draft refusal in France is a jabbing barb in the national conscience. But America is quite content and even in a way reassured about its moral idealism to have handfuls of 1‒W’s working here and there.

With every lost year thrusting us much closer to the point of no possible disarmament return in the nuclear race it is imperative that we give a far more drastic No to nuclear madness than we have been giving by alternative service. From Nazareth’s synagogue through the last week in Jerusalem Jesus proclaimed and lived a jolting emphatic No to the folly of His countrymen. When a building filled with people has caught fire, drastic measures are in order.

Refusal to pay federal income tax for war (matched by a self-imposed alternative tax for peacemaking) has a potency for jarring the public conscience which draft refusal has lost. For ICBM’s our money is far more necessary than our manpower. Subservient brainpower is always there. Along with it the government needs more and more money and can get along with fewer yielded bodies. When we deprive the government of our tax dollars (even though the amounts and numbers involved be small), we prick the central vital nerve of the military Leviathan, because money — not manpower — is the crucial basis of its present spread.

In earlier periods the draft refusal No of the historic peace churches had considerable impact. But we in these churches have been slow to see that this No does not at present any more than begin to express the intensity of the No we should be declaring against nuclear war. It is past time for us to turn from our suburban coziness and discover together new Golden Rules to set forth in. We should be engaging in more than tax protest but in the deepening crisis, tax protest would seem clearly to join draft refusal as part of the Christian’s minimal No to mass annihilation.

Considerations.

1. George Macleod of the Iona Community has pointed out, “This is the first age in all Christian history where the majority of Christians have no conscience at all, no principle, nothing to go on, except fear and political consideration.” And we who can lay claim to having some conscience, haven’t we become pretty insensitive? Remember the horror you felt in those early August days of 1945. There is little of it left. Years of living with the ghastly prospects and the all-pervasive deceit of the mass media have lulled us. The Church of Christ desperately needs horror at what the ultimate nuclear act would mean for man, at what it would be under God.
2. If we continue right on complacently paying federal income tax, with seventy-five cents out of every dollar going for the Pentagon “answer,” aren’t we lacking in horror, in conscience?
3. In colonial times and during the Revolutionary War there was much tax refusal by Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren. An irate critic of the Church of the Brethren charged, “They not only refused to take up arms to repel the savage marauders and prevent the inhuman slaughter of women and children, but they refused in the most positive manner to pay a dollar to support those who were willing to take up arms to defend their home and their firesides, until wrung from them by the stern mandates of the law. They did the same when the Revolution broke out. They might at least have furnished money. But no; not a dollar!” It is not certain whether this writer referred to taxes or only to the substitutionary sum paid in lieu of the militia draft. In either case the Brethren then had an alert ethical sensitivity about turning over their money for war.
4. “But the New Testament says we should pay taxes.” It does indeed. But if we hold that, just as it says that we are to obey the state, there are times when we must obey God rather than the state, may there not be times when, lest we go against God, we must not give to Caesar? Is the exhortation to pay taxes any more an absolute rule than the exhortation to obey the state? Was it right in the Civil War when conscientious objectors paid the sum the Government demanded of them for the outfitting of substitutes? Was Thoreau wrong in refusing to pay the special tax levied for fighting the Mexican War? May there not be at least some situations where tax refusal is justified, and if some, then isn’t the present surely one? [There were typesetting errors in this paragraph that I have tried to correct, but I’m not confident I got it right. ―♇]
5. It is true that a portion of national taxes has always gone for war. Taxes have been a part of the Christian’s involvement in the good and evil of society. Christians are not to flee from taxes or tainting involvement. But when the $8 has jumped to $268 and the ratio for arms and for disarmament is forty-seven thousand to one, when preparation for colossal evil has become the central endeavor and expenditure of the state, pressing us further and further along a course leading to the extermination of mankind, isn’t there then for the Christian a freedom and an imperative to say No with all that he is and has?
6. “But what else can you do?” say most pacifists. “The Government will get your money anyway.” That attitude seems suspiciously similar to the one the big majority of people hold about the draft. Even those whose taxes are withheld can still protest. No one need be complacent. To take a stand, in the monetary context, against the nuclear blasphemy is a possibility for us all. And even if the Government prosecutes (which it usually does not) and takes the tax objector’s money (if he has any), the crucial thing is that the lulled masses hear an incisive Christian No.
7. “But tax refusal is too extreme. People just won’t understand.” Most won’t maybe; but instances of tax refusal will hardly make them blinder about war than they already are. The prospects are dim for enough people coming to enough common sense to prevent World War Ⅲ. Yet it is heartening to see how in England the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has been rapidly gaining wide popular and political support. A great many formerly indifferent people are getting their eyes opened. This can happen in America too, especially if we reach the phase when the arms race begins to force severe alterations in our opulent pattern of living. If we can find ways of bringing to people’s attention that the nuclear race is a ghastly dead end, there are many who will listen. If we bob right along in the whole affluent military-geared rush of society, income taxes and all, can we be expressing a No that will really be noticed?
8. And if you say for yourself, “Tax refusal is too extreme,” — why? Are you doing more than indicating an emotional disinclination? What reasoned Christian case can you make for paying federal income tax in present circumstances?

Possibilities for protest.

1. Some have changed work so as to get out of the withholding tax setup. This is nearly out of the question for most in the setup. Clearly, tax protest is not to be the axis of our lives — nor is peacemaking. But Jesus Christ, our axis and our peace, can guide us into more forceful witness to His Yes and His No.
2. Persons of a given area whose taxes are withheld could go together to hand in their returns and protest against the use of their money. Where such group action is not feasible, the individual can send a letter of protest along with the return and give his protest circulation otherwise. A person in religious or service work whose tax is being withheld could discuss with his organization what might be done.
3. Many pacifists keep (or find) their income at a level where they do not need to pay income tax. This tax avoidance is good in respect to not supporting war; but it usually has little effectiveness as a clear protest.
4. If a person’s taxes are not automatically withheld (in full), then, whether income be taxable or not, the most forceful stand lies in not filing a return and in making this refusal a focus of one’s broader public No against nuclear war.
5. Most tax objectors figure that through various indirect taxes they pay their share toward the constructive fraction of governmental activity. If one pays a fourth of the income tax stipulated, 75 percent of that fourth goes for war.
6. As a symbol of the Yes that overarches this urgent No the tax objector will certainly want to give a corresponding voluntary payment, plus no less, say than 20 percent, to some peacemaking program, preferably non-sectarian, like a phase of UN activity or the work of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. This emphasis on giving for peace rather than for war can be crucial in enabling others to see what really is at stake. The Brethren Service Commission and representatives of the Mennonites and Quakers have begun working for federal legislation allowing an alternative tax. A Quaker group has drafted “A Proposed Bill” under which it would be national policy in working for enduring peace, and in recognizing freedom of conscience, to provide a proper means by which Federal income taxes of individuals having sincere convictions against military preparations may be designated for the United National International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). (Single copies available free from Peace Committee, Pacific Yearly Meeting of Friends, Box 61, Claremont, California.) Such legislation will almost certainly not be passed unless there are far more objectors than now. The present anti-permissive atmosphere does in fact afford better acoustics for the imperative No.
7. It could be asked, If such a bill becomes law, would you definitely feel that you should take advantage of it and pay the alternative tax? If so, on what basis can you now decline to take the stand which many must take for such legislation to come?
8. Isolated tax objectors have at times made a notable witness. But so much more can be done by groups of Christians acting in concert. If we are called to act, we are called to act together. Consider what an impact there might be if twenty — or fifty — Brethren ministers and many others would join in a declaration on why they believe they must refuse lo hand over their money for nuclear war and are giving it for peacemaking. Might not such a declaration prove to be the most resounding Brethren word against war in a long time?

Irlanda Jerez, leader of the tax strike among mer­chants in Ni­ca­ra­gua’s Mer­ca­do Ori­en­tal, was seized by masked police officers a few days ago, held in­com­muni­cado, and swiftly given a three-year sen­tence on what strike me as trumped-up charges un­re­lat­ed to the pro­tests.

Calls for more wide­spread tax refusal and for a general strike are growing louder. Yes­ter­day there was a pro­test at the offices of COSEP [Supreme Private Business Council], a sort of private sector business union that rep­re­sents various in­dus­try and chamber of com­merce groups. The group, while nom­i­nal­ly opposing the Ortega/Murillo crack­downs and pro­moting protests, has been drag­ging its heels when it comes to chal­lenging the regime with stronger action. It is under pres­sure from citizens who want it to be bolder.

This is the seventeenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we enter the 1970s.

The 20 January 1970 edition noted: “Tentative plans are being made for a professor from Bethel College… to work with a seminar group for six to ten weeks in a study program for six hours of college credit. The topic for study is ‘The Draft, Income Tax, and Defense Spending.’ ” More details could be found in the 21 April edition. “The seminar will emphasize a total learning experience through study, action, and group living.” Tax refusal was one of the topics on the agenda.

A meandering letter from Theodore Janzen dated 5 January and published in the 17 February 1970 edition complained of dancing in public schools, trashy sex talk in The Mennonite, and “the Mennonite hippie problem” on the way to having this to say about war tax resistance:

Sure, I am against war and at the same time I pay my taxes. Contradictions! You bet! I’m not going to fight the great white father in Washington. If I did nobody would help, and everybody would laugh and tell me, “You never had it so good!” That’s what happens when I have a crop failure; nobody helps.

But then read the Bible. Give unto Caesar which is Caesar’s, unto God which is God’s.

Right now, I am more concerned about the dancing than the war…

The 28 July 1970 edition included a brief item about the American Friends Service Committee’s lawsuit asking “for the return of funds which were paid to the government in lieu of federal income taxes collected from employees conscientiously opposed to war.” (See ♇ 15 July 2013 for more about this case.)

The 1 September 1970 issue covered a mutual aid fund to help “financially support those whose conscience leads them to break the law.” The Mennonite Central Committee’s Peace Section was spearheading this new “Mennonites Engaged in Nonviolent Noncooperative Obedience (MENNO)” fund.

The purpose of the MENNO fund is to help with the following:

Legal costs because of conscientious civil disobedience (tax refusal, noncooperation with draft, refusal of induction) related to militarism, civil rights, and religious freedom.

Aid to dependents and families of persons engaging in conscientious civil disobedience.

Fines and bail for persons engaging in acts of conscientious civil disobedience.

Grants or loans for personal items (college debts) to persons engaged in conscientious civil disobedience.

The 27 October 1970 edition included a long essay by Phil Kliewer entitled “Did the cat get Menno’s dove?” that took Mennonites to task for becoming too blasé in their opposition to violence and war. Some excerpts:

People tell me that the government recognized us by legislating the alternative service program and respected us for our good use of it.

That is all very fine, except that the recognition and respect has not gone much further than this. Were we only looking for recognition and respect?

A few of our people are saying no to violence, and sacrificing family life, wealth, social relations, or personal freedoms. They have refused to render unto Caesar what belongs to God, in the form of war tax resistance and draft resistance.

Just a few of these Mennonites are: Dan Clark, who has just recently turned in his draft card, and is awaiting court procedures; Dennis Koehn, who is awaiting jail sentence; John Howard Yoder, whose bank account has been frozen for tax resistance…

What is creative, radical, nonviolent commitment? Can it work? To answer these two questions, perhaps we can take a look at recent history.

During the midnineteenth century Franz Josef of Austria tried to subordinate Hungary. The people of Hungary refused to recognize Austria, and boycotted Austrian goods. When the Austrian tax collectors came around, they were treated very kindly, but given no tax money. Austrian police confiscated property, but could not persuade the Hungarian auctioneers to sell it. When they brought in their own auctioneers, no one would bid, and to bring in bidders was not worth the trouble. The Austrian government then declared boycotting illegal, but the persistent Hungarians refused to recognize this and soon the jails were overflowing.

Austria then offered partial government, but the Hungarians insisted on full claims. After trying a compulsory military service, which was destined to fall flat, Austria gave up. Throughout, the Hungarians remained nonviolent but unswayed. Their creative, radical, nonviolent commitment was effective.

In 1927, the Bombay provincial government raised the tax rate to 60 percent, for the people of Bardoli. Vallabhai Patel led a tax-resistance movement to nonviolently prevent this economic injustice from actually taking place. This took a lot of planning. Sixteen camps were put up in the district, where 250 volunteer leaders printed daily bulletins and trained the eighty-eight thousand peasants to withstand the punishment they received. The government tried flattery, bribes, fines, flogging, imprisonment, confiscation, and other means to persuade the peasants to comply, but the peasants, with their nonviolent methods, eventually persuaded the government to comply to their wishes. Again, creative, radical, nonviolent commitment won out.

The 10 November 1970 edition carried two articles that came out of the Western District Conference meeting of the General Conference Mennonite Church the previous month:

Should Christians pay war taxes?

Government should be God’s servant for man’s good. Its role is to maintain order and to preserve life. Christians should appreciate and support the worthy functions which government performs. They should willingly pay generous proportions of their incomes for taxes which finance education and other functions which are for man’s good.

But when government is not God’s servant for man’s good, Christians should seek to be a correcting force. Christians are not called to submit to every demand of every state. When Paul instructs the Roman Christians (Rom. 13:7) to give “tax to whom tax is due, toll to whom toll, respect to whom respect, and honor to whom honor,” he is saying that we are to discriminate and give to each only his due, refusing to give to Caesar what belongs to God.

Mennonites throughout history have refused when a government demanded that they go to war. Our conscientious objectors today carry on this vital tradition. But how can we, in clear conscience, pay someone else to do for us that evil which we refuse to do ourselves?

In earlier days men were the primary tools of war. But now the primary tool of war is money. Military technology needs only a few men. This is making conscientious objection to military service less and less meaningful. Conscientious objection to killing will have to take new and different forms if it is to retain its vital significance.

James Stauffer, missionary to Vietnam under the Eastern Mennonite Board, wrote recently in the Mennonite Weekly Review: “The time has come for the peace churches to request a plan whereby our tax dollars could be channeled directly to some constructive cause. Campus protests, street demonstrations, draft card burnings have not been effective in stopping the war. But choking off the funds that feed the military-industrial complex could bring results.”

Sixty to 70 percent of our income tax dollar is spent in payment for past and present wars, or in preparation for future wars. The average Western District congregation of two hundred persons, in 1968, paid $65,000 in war taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. Western District members paid $4,250,000 to buy guns, napalm, and hand grenades. We pay two and one-half times more in war taxes than we give to our church and its outreach. What is the meaning of Christmas bundles given to refugees when we bought the bombs that destroyed their homes?

Let us ponder the words of our late President Eisenhower, who was not a pacifist: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”

Is paying war taxes responsible Christian stewardship? Ought we not as brothers of those who are hungry and cold, refuse to give up our resources for destruction, and give our war tax money to authorities who will use it as God’s servant for man’s good?

We move that the Western District Conference ask the Peace and Social Concerns Committee to:

1. Provide information to local congregations and individuals on the following ways in which Christians have through word and deed sought to witness against the destructive functions of government made possible by war taxes:
   1. Pay the income tax, but include a letter of protest to the Internal Revenue Service explaining why payment of these taxes makes us violate the law of love that Christ gave us to follow. The letter can urge the government to use tax money only for peaceful and constructive purposes either through the United Sates Government or through the United Nations. We can send copies of this letter to our Congressmen and our President, among others.
   2. Refuse to pay that portion of our income tax which goes for war and contribute the same amount to some constructive service agency, such as Church World Service or UNICEF of the United Nations. We will not make obstacle nor withhold any information which IRS might need to collect these taxes.
   3. Refuse to pay the federal telephone tax which was instituted in 1966 to pay for an escalated war in Vietnam. A brochure is available and titled, “Hang Up On War.”
   4. Reduce or share our incomes so that they will be below the income-tax level, and, thereby, we will avoid payment of war taxes by legal and sacrificial means. This method also diminishes the amount of indirect taxes we pay by a higher level of consumption, and puts us nearer to the world average standard of living.
2. Petition appropriate legislatures or in some way seek to create an alternative peace tax to which conscientious objectors to war (of any age) could pay the military portion of their income tax. This alternative fund would be comparable to alternative service and would be used for such projects as promote world peace by nonmilitary means.
3. Help Mennonite agencies and employers to investigate alternative structures of operation so that they will not be required to withhold income tax from their employees’ pay. John Howard Yoder, president of the Goshen Biblical Seminary has said: “There is something very questionable about the willingness with which Mennonite church agencies, by withholding their employees’ income, serve as arms of the federal government for tax collection which thereby relieves the individual of any conscious choice concerning the bulk of his tax money… We would object to the states collecting taxes to support the church, yet without compunction we let church agencies collect to support the state (and the military).”
4. We also ask the Peace and Social Concerns Committee to help employees whose income tax is already withheld to find appropriate ways of making a witness against the payment of war taxes.

Recommended reading: What Belongs to Caesar? by Donald D. Kaufman, Scottdale: Herald Press, 1969.

The above statement was prepared by Ardean L. Goertzen Max Ediger, Howard Snider, David H. Janzen, Dennis Koehn, Stan Senner; and recommended for adoption by the Peace and Social Concerns Committee to the Western District Conference of the General Conference Mennonite Church which adopted it at its annual meeting at Hillsboro, Kansas, October 24, 1970.

Western District takes stand on war taxes

Should Christians pay war taxes?

That’s a hard question. One Mennonite body studied a soft answer to this question, and made it softer after forty-five minutes of cautious debate.

The Western District Conference meeting in Hillsboro, Kansas, in October, was told that its members “pay two and one-half times more in war taxes than we give to our church and its outreach.”

Another question: “What is the meaning of Christmas bundles to refugees when we bought the bombs that destroyed their homes?”

And Western District members through their war taxes have bought quite a few bombs, guns, napalm, and grenades. One estimate set the figure at $4,250,000 per year.

“I heartily endorse the idea of protesting taxes,” said Curt Siemens, Buhler, Kansas, as the topic of nonpayment of war taxes was introduced.

But along with other delegates, he was concerned about the practical consequences of nonpayment of war taxes since the government could deprive a family of its livelihood as a penalty. Then, how would the church and the conference raise the funds to support its missions and schools?

Others saw the demands of Christian obedience as prior to the practical questions.

“What is the meaning of asking these kinds of practical questions about raising our budgets and educating our children, yet we make pious speeches about wanting to be biblical and obedient?” asked Peter Ediger, Arvada, Colorado. “What is the meaning of seeking first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you?”

Several persons testified that they had withheld a portion of their taxes as a protest to war or would do so if given encouragement.

“I can’t see eye to eye with those who don’t want to pay taxes,” said one delegate. “All I say is, ‘Go ahead. Why don’t you do it?’ ”

“That’s just the point,” replied Wendell Rempel, Newton, Kansas. “What is going to be our relationship to those who take that step?”

At this point, the Western District Conference waffled.

The resolution presented for adoption said, “We move that the Western District Conference recognize nonpayment of war taxes as a valid Christian witness” and thus asked for a program of education and actions based on the assumption that tax refusal was a “valid Christian witness.”

This was seen by some delegates that “everyone ought to [withhold his war taxes] as a Christian.”

Said Marvin Zehr, Moundridge, Kansas, “It may give encouragement, but it will also cast judgment. Even if I do it, I don’t know if I want to cast judgment on someone else,”

So the conference considered a motion that struck the words “valid Christian witness” from the resolution’s enabling clause. Delegates voted 93 to 63 to drop these words. The resolution thus weakened was then quickly passed by a voice vote.

The resolution thus adopted still calls for a broad program of education and action. It asks the Western District’s Peace and Social Concerns Committee to provide information on the ways of tax refusal which have been used by various individuals. Such methods include the filing of a letter of protest with full payment of income tax or withholding a portion of income tax and contributing it to a service agency. Withholding the telephone tax or reducing one’s income below the taxable level were also methods in which more information was requested.

The Peace and Social Concerns Committee was further requested to petition government agencies for an alternative peace tax for conscientious objectors. And Mennonite agencies and employers may expect to receive counsel about their role in collecting income taxes.

The resolution quoted John Howard Yoder as saying, “There is something very questionable about the willingness with which Mennonite church agencies, by withholding their employees’ income, serve as arms of the federal government for tax collection which thereby relieves the individual of any conscious choice concerning the bulk of his tax money.”

The statement saw the tax refusal as a natural extension of the traditional position of conscientious objection to war.

“Mennonites throughout history have refused when a government demanded that they go to war,” it said. “Our conscientious objectors today carry on this vital tradition. But how can we, in clear conscience, pay someone else to do for us that evil which we refuse to do ourselves?”

James Stauffer, missionary to Vietnam under the Eastern Mennonite Board, was quoted as saying, “The time has come for peace churches to request a plan whereby our tax dollars could be channeled directly to some constructive cause. Campus protests, street demonstrators, draft card burnings have not been effective in stopping the war. But choking off the funds that feed the military-industrial complex could bring results.”

The resolution as presented to the Western District Conference was prepared by six interested individuals: Ardean L. Goertzen, Max Ediger, Howard Snider, David H. Janzen, Dennis Koehn, and Stan Senner.

The Western District statement adopted on October 24 represents the first time that any Mennonite body has taken a public position on war taxes.

At the annual assembly of the Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section in November another such resolution was tabled, asking the assembly “to make a declaration to be taken to Vietnam pledging Mennonite support to end the war through tax refusal, draft resistance, and other forms of civil disobedience.” An article about the assembly framed the debate in a generation-gap way, with younger, more radical students pushing, and older delegates reluctant to go along. In any case, “[a]fter the statement was debated with considerable emotion, the activists changed the document from one representing the Mennonite church as a group to a statement to be signed by individuals.”

A letter from Wanda (Steven) Schmidt to President Nixon lambasting the Vietnam War appeared in the 8 December 1970 edition. It included these thoughts:

I am against war and will not give you my children. Nor will I pay my federal income tax as sixty-five cents out of every dollar goes for defense. Nor will I pay the U.S. tax on my telephone as it goes entirely for Vietnamese War expenditures.

This is the nineteenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we are up to 1972, a year in which there was an enormous amount of material about war tax resistance in the magazine.

In January a weekend workshop was held for “people who seriously question the morality of paying all that Caesar demands.” The General Conference Mennonite Central District Peace and Service Committee was one of the sponsors. From the 1 February 1972 edition:

Workshop questions morality of war taxes

Christian response to war taxes was discussed by about 100 participants in a workshop January 14–15 in Elkhart, Indiana.

The weekend was sponsored by the Elkhart Peace Fellowship, the General Conference Mennonite Central District peace and service committee, and other regional church peace and service committees.

Michael Friedmann of the Elkhart Peace Fellowship said many of the participants felt the war tax question involved a shift in life style to reduce involvement in the military-industrial complex.

Al Meyer, a research physicist at Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana, suggested to the group that one does not start by changing the laws to provide legal alternatives, to payment of war taxes, but by refusing to pay taxes. We need to give a clear witness, he said.

Mr. Meyer did not oppose payment of war taxes because he was opposed to government as such, but because he did not give his total allegiance to government. He felt it was his responsibility to refuse to pay the immoral demands of government.

“No alternative will be provided by the federal government until a significant number of citizens refuse war taxes,” he said.

Art Gish, author of The new left and Christian radicalism, said draft resistance led logically to war tax resistance.

“If I won’t give the government my warm body, I shouldn’t give it my cold cash,” he said.

On Saturday, John Howard Yoder, president of Goshen Biblical Seminary, discussed the purposes of resisting tax payments. He felt the point is to make a clear moral witness. The goal should not be absolute resistance in keeping the government from getting the money. He said he would not give his money voluntarily, but would let the Internal Revenue Service know where they could find it.

Other participants felt tax refusal could be both witness to war and part of a larger movement to shift national priorities.

Mr. Gish discussed legal and illegal tax resistance. Goshen attorney Greg Hartzler emphasized that those who break tax laws should make their religious motivations clear if they want to avoid a severe sentence.

The workshop also discussed communities which are carrying the spirit of voluntary service into a total life style and are freer to develop a clear witness on the tax question.

Another topic was the World Peace Tax Fund, which a group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is attempting to establish through a bill which it hopes will be introduced in Congress in March. The bill would enable those who can demonstrate conscientious objection to war to put that portion of their taxes which would go to war into the fund. The fund would be used for such purposes as disarmament efforts, international exchanges, and international health.

Don Kaufman asked some “Crucial Questions on war taxes” in the 18 January 1972 edition:

1. Is there a significant difference between fighting a war as a soldier and supporting it with taxes? “…why should the pacifist refuse service in the army if he does not refuse to pay taxes?” (Richard Gregg) Why should any person, on receipt of the government’s demand for money to kill, hurry as fast as he can to comply? Why pay voluntarily?
2. What is the biblical or Christian basis for paying or not paying war taxes? What responsibility does an individual have for wars which are fought and financed by a government to which he makes tax payments? To whom is the Christian really responsible?
3. When faced with a “war tax” situation, what should Christians do? Should Christians “…take their obligations toward government more seriously than their church obligations”? (Milton J. Harder) Unless followers of Jesus dissent from paying war taxes, how are government leaders to know that Christians are opposed to making war on other peoples whom God has created? What are the ways whereby we can keep dear our commitment to God and his love as revealed in Jesus, the Christ?
4. Can a Christian obedient to God as the supreme Lord of his life continue simultaneously to “Pray for peace” and “Pay for war”? “How do you interpret Christ’s answer about the coin in relation to war tax payment? (See Mark 12:17.) Must Christians pay to have persons killed? What is Caesar’s? What is God’s?” (William Keeney) At what point does a government become satanic or demonic in that it demands what is God’s?
5. Should Christians who object to paying war taxes wait with their protest until the whole Christian community agrees to do so?
6. For the Christian who is opposed to war taxes, is it enough to simply refuse voluntarily payment of the money requested by IRS or should he put forth serious effort to prevent the government from obtaining the money?
7. Isn’t the question of military taxation a reflection of the most formidable problem which every person or religious group must face in our time: Nationalism?

Ted Koontz of Harvard Divinity school attended the Mennonite Graduate Fellowship’s annual winter conference and “presented an analysis of reasons for war tax refusal for use in dialog with those who believe the war in Indochina is unjust but continue to pay war taxes.” (According to an article in the 18 January 1972 edition.)

The Commission on Home Ministries met in February, and tax resistance came up:

The commission asked William Snyder, executive secretary of the Mennonite Central Committee, if MCC is discussing with other religious groups continuing the pacifist position beyond current “popular” opinions, and if MCC is pressing for an alternative fund for war taxes in light of the changing nature of warfare with finances as the primary resource.

Meetings to discuss war tax resistance were scheduled at three Mennonite churches in Kansas and Pennsylvania in February and March, according to an announcement in the 22 February 1972 edition. One of those meetings was covered as follows in the 21 March 1972 edition:

Western District discusses tax refusal, automated war

About fifty persons shared ways of protesting the use of their taxes for war February 25 at a meeting in Buhler, Kansas, sponsored by the Western District peace and social concerns committee.

After watching the slide set, The automated air war, produced by the American Friends Service Committee, participants discussed ways they are avoiding contribution to the war: refusing the telephone tax, refusing to pay income tax, investing in corporations which do not produce war materials, voluntary service, keeping income below the taxable level, and retirement.

Money and the weapons it buys, not the bodies of draft-age men, have become the primary resource for waging war, the group agreed. But individuals differed on the best way to influence government against war.

The Internal Revenue Service will attach bank accounts or auction personal property to collect delinquent income tax or telephone tax, and some persons questioned the effectiveness of refusal to pay when the government collects the money later with interest. Or are we simply called to be faithful? some asked.

Willard Unruh said, “It’s not the money that’s important; it’s the opportunity to express my opinion. I sent copies to Senators Dole and Pearson of my letter to the IRS. They both responded.”

Jonah Reimer suggested establishing a fund in Kansas into which persons refusing federal taxes could put an equivalent amount. “It would be an excellent way to witness,” he said.

The group also discussed attempts to place before Congress a bill to establish a government fund into which conscientious objectors to war could place their tax money, which would not be used for military purposes. Such a fund, however, would not necessarily reduce the amount of money going to the military.

Some persons objected to the fund, analogous to legal alternative service for conscientious objectors, saying that such a legal alternative would give approval to the evil of the military-industrial complex.

One man said, “Mennonites want special privileges. They want to come out of the war with a clear conscience. But we should want that clear conscience for everybody.”

“An increasing number of Mennonites are asking what it means to render to Caesar what belongs to him and in particular to render to God what belongs to him,” said Wesley Mast, Philadelphia, convener for the seminars. “Since war is increasingly becoming a matter of bombs and buttons rather than people, we need to ask what form Christian obedience takes.”

The other two meetings were covered in the 18 April edition. Excerpts:

Wesley Mast, Philadelphia, said, “The degree of openness on an issue as explosive as war taxes was amazing. We wrestled together first of all with the message of the Scriptures. Would Paul, for example, admonish us today to pay taxes, as he did the Roman Christians? Would he do the same to Christians in World War Ⅱ under Hitler? We noted that the times had already changed in the early church from the ‘good’ government in Romans 13 to the ‘beastly’ government in Revelation 13.”

The seminars also discussed the nature of the present war. Mr. Mast said the seminar participants heard that since World War Ⅱ the need for foot soldiers has declined 50 percent. Present war is becoming automated. “When they no longer need our bodies, how do we declare our protest?”

Another issue concerned tax dollars. “When over half of our taxes are used for outright murder, how can we go on sinning by supporting that which God forbids?”

With regard to brotherhood, “should the few who cannot conscientiously pay for war wait until others come along? How do we discern the Spirit’s leading in this and not make decisions on an individualistic basis?”

Howard Charles, Goshen Biblical Seminary, was resource teacher on biblical passages dealing with taxes. Other input was given by Melvin Gingerich and Grant Stoltzfus on examples of tax refusal from history. Mr. Mast presented options in payment and nonpayment of taxes. Walton Hackman broke down the present use of tax dollars, 75 percent of which go for war-related purposes.

“Mennonite collegians will meet March 2–5 to rap about the kind of lifestyle they want to adopt,” hiply noted an article in the 29 February 1972 edition. Among the topics on the agenda: “how to avoid complicity with militarism through paying taxes.”

“Shall we pay war taxes?” asked David L. Habegger in a lengthy article in the 14 March 1972 issue:

The continuation of the war in Southeast Asia calls upon us in the United States to review again our payment of taxes that go to support the war. In 1967, the Council of Commissions meeting in Newton, Kansas, urged churches to consider the non-payment of a portion of their taxes. One of the district conferences passed a resolution chiding the council for being unbiblical. This response should have called for a mutual study of the question and this can still be done. It is the intention of the writer that this article should be a contribution toward the continuation of dialog on this topic.

The record of Jesus’ pronouncement on the paying of taxes is recorded in all three of the Synoptic Gospels (Matt. 22:15–22; Mark 12:13–17, Luke 20:20–26). This indicates the importance of this account to the early church.

The account tells of Pharisees’ and Herodians’ coming to ask a question of Jesus. They came the day after the cleansing of the temple. Their purpose was to discredit Jesus in the eyes of the people. Jesus had shown up the leaders of the temple and they were anxious to get back at him. This question is one of several that they used. Here the cooperation between the Pharisees and Herodians is strange. The Pharisees were opposed to the occupation by the Roman authorities, while the Herodians were enriching themselves by cooperating. They united because they both wanted Jesus out of the way.

The question of paying taxes brought different answers from these two groups. The Pharisees were nationalistic and were against any foreign occupation. They saw the payment of taxes as a symbol of their subjection to a heathen foreign power. They also hated using the coins with an imprint of Caesar’s likeness as it went against their interpretation of the second commandment. The Herodians were willing to see the taxes paid for they had improved their livelihood by their cooperation.

Thus the question would appear to be a legitimate one. Who was right? They recognized that Jesus was impartial to people and that if they could appeal to his sense of justice they might get him to make a judgment. On the surface their query seemed innocent enough. But they were laying a trap for Jesus.

The question was two-pronged. Jesus could be caught if he answered either “yes” or “no.” A “yes” would have disowned the people’s nationalistic hopes and given approval to the hated tax burden. The total taxes paid amounted to as much as 35 to 40 percent of their income. A “no” to the question would have made him liable to the charge of sedition and he could be reported to the Roman authorities. So either answer was one that was looked upon as a means of hurting Jesus and either discrediting him or doing away with him. Luke says clearly that they wanted to deliver Jesus up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor (Lk. 20:20).

Mark says at the outset that the intent of the questioners was to entrap Jesus. We are also told that Jesus was aware of their hypocrisy, their seeming sincerity in asking a question with a hidden intent to trap him. On the basis of this information, to expect Jesus to reply with either a yes or a no would be to assume that Jesus was caught in their trap. The amazement of the questioners after Jesus’ reply indicates that Jesus did not give the kind of answer they expected.

Turning to the crucial issue, the Pharisees asked if it was lawful to give taxes to Caesar. The idiomatic rendering of this is “pay taxes.” Jesus replied that they should “pay back” to Caesar that which was his. Did Jesus see taxes as a return for benefits received? He probably did, but without sanctioning all that Caesar was doing. For it was Caesar who had provided for the making of the coin. But the paying back to Caesar statement does not stand alone and we cannot treat it as such. To it is added the phrase that we are to pay back to God what belongs to God. These two phrases need to be interpreted together. And there are several ways in which this can be done. What did Jesus mean?

First, some see the realm of Caesar and the realm of God as two side-by-side but separate and distinct realms, each having its own concerns and existence. The Christian lives in both realms and has a dualistic ethic. When it comes to killing, a Christian as a citizen of God’s kingdom will not kill. But as a citizen of this world he will be obedient to Caesar and take up arms. Many Christians see no inconsistency in reading the words of Jesus to mean this is the way they should live.

To some of us it is quite obvious that this is not the way Jesus taught us to live. We do not see him giving Caesar equal authority with God. Jesus warned that no man can serve two masters. So we reject the position that would say we should pay to Caesar regardless of the uses he makes of our money.

A second view is that the Kingdom of God is above the kingdoms of this world. God’s realm is holy and the worldly realm is sinful. According to this model, one would seek to live as much as possible within God’s realm. It might be necessary to be involved in the world to some extent but one would take no responsibility, such as voting or holding office. One would pay taxes to Caesar but would not see the money as purchasing any services. This has been the view of some Mennonites in the past. They asked nothing from the world and gave what was demanded except where it involved their personal lives. They let the governing authorities take full responsibility before God for the use of the taxes they paid. This position we also reject as an inadequate interpretation.

A third point of view sees the whole creation as belonging to God, with God acting in and through all men. Within the world are a number of states having separate existence but not autonomous existence for they are all under the judgment of God. What the rulers do, they are to do as ministers of God and it should always be according to God’s purposes. Their authority is a derived authority. Because the rulers of the states are not autonomous, they frequently seek to wield more power than given by God and so become demonic. Thus Caesar is not to be obeyed regardless of what he asks. We see fine examples of this in both the Old and New Testaments. When Caesar asks for more than God has set for him, the Christian must definitely refuse to grant it to him. Then the words, “We must obey God rather than men” are appropriate.

Knowing Jesus’ life of total obedience to the will of his Father, we have no doubt in saying that Jesus saw governing authorities as ruling under God. He told Pilate, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11). The Christians who received the revelation of Jesus Christ were told that those who are faithful unto death to their convictions would receive the crown of life (Rev. 2:10). It is to this third model that we look for guidance.

The words, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” does say explicitly that there is an amount that is due a government. But we also hold that it says there are limits to what Caesar should ask. Jesus was not being asked about the payment of all taxes. A variety of taxes were levied by Caesar and the one Jesus was asked about was the annual poll tax that each male above fourteen years of age had to pay with the specific coin Jesus called for.

We need to see Jesus’ words as providing a generalization rather than a universal prescription. In moving from a general statement to a particular situation, we must always move carefully. Let me illustrate: we are told a person who is a guest should eat what is set before him (Luke 10:7). However, if a person is diabetic, it would not be right for him to eat food that would be harmful to his system. While we can say that Jesus supported the payment of taxes, we cannot thereby say that he favored the payment of every particular tax that a government might levy. We can all think of programs (such as the destruction of elderly and handicapped persons) which we would not be willing to support with our taxes. If that is the case, then we need to look seriously at what our taxes are doing in making war possible.

Living under a government that says it is responsible to the concerns of its citizens, we have an opportunity to witness by bringing our concerns to the government. A first step should be to write those who represent us and make the laws for our country. Stating our position in this manner is being a faithful witness. If the tax money is being used for purposes that are utterly contrary to what we understand to be the will of God, then we ought to consider the act of refusing to pay the tax. The purpose of this action is the desire to be faithful to the will of God as we know it and to help the rulers become aware of how they are overstepping the bounds of true ministers of God.

Paul in his letter to the Romans exhorts Christians to be obedient to the authorities. But he has already stated the principle that Christians should not be conformed to this world (12:1). Or as Phillips has translated it, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its mold.” This calls for discernment on the part of the church. Can we as Christians continue to pray for peace while we pay for war?

The 28 March 1972 edition profiled two small Mennonite intentional communities in Kansas: the Fairview Mennonite House and The Bridge. The article noted:

[The Bridge] began forming at a Western District war tax workshop. David and Joanne Janzen, Randy and Janeal Krehbiel, and Steve and Wanda Schmidt were ready to stop paying taxes for war and to join into a brotherhood of shared income “to make our whole lives count for peace.”

Both intentional communities are a part of the voluntary service program of the General Conference Mennonite Church and follow the same financial pattern of self-support as the majority of other voluntary service units. All income is turned over directly to the voluntary service office in Newton, which reimburses the unit for such items as food, housing, travel, and medical expenses. Each individual receives $25 a month personal allowance.

Although critics of the intentional communities have accused them of using the voluntary service program as a tax dodge, members of the communities felt strong ties with their Anabaptist heritage and wanted to channel their resources to and through the church. But there are no apologies for not paying taxes. “We’re witnessing to the fact that the federal government is not using our money responsibly in its huge military expenditures,” said Ken [Janzen].

A member of the Love, Joy, Peace Community (Washington, D.C.) wrote a letter in response in which he wrote (in part):

The problem of war taxes is one which both Fairview House and The Bridge are addressing. It’s good to see people more concerned with “rendering to God what is his” (our whole lives), rather than being obsessed with Caesar and his temporal demands! We have long been passive, instead of active peacemakers. We pray for peace while we pay for war.

On 2 May 1972, eight Boston Mennonites wrote in to say they’d started resisting:

Decision to withhold taxes

Dear Editor: As members of the Mennonite congregation of Boston, we are writing this letter to make public our decision to withhold a portion of our federal taxes, either income or telephone taxes. This decision came out of discussions with the entire congregation. We are doing this because our Christian consciences and our Mennonite backgrounds tell us the war in Southeast Asia is counter to the teachings of Christ. We have chosen to withhold our taxes because part of the responsibility for the war resides with those who willingly support it financially, regardless of what they believe.

Realizing this act will undoubtedly have a very small effect indeed on governmental policy, we hope it will in some way influence others into taking concrete actions which will demonstrate Christian love. Our friends and our families cannot help but react to our decision to withhold taxes.

The desired effect of our actions is not, however, the sole reason why we have chosen this form of protest. As conscientious objector status has become more automatic for Mennonites, refusal to pay war taxes has provided an additional way to demonstrate one’s Christian beliefs. Because we have only rough guesses as to the effects of our act, we accept as a matter of faith that this act will at least be a significant event in our Christian lives.

While we know the government will eventually collect our taxes, our intention to send an equal amount of money to the Mennonite Central Committee for Vietnam relief is a further Christian witness. It offers our alternative to war.

Jerry and Janet Friesen Regier,
Weldon and Rebecca Pries,
Ted and Gayle Gerber Koontz,
Dorothy and Gordon D. Kaufman.

The 9 May 1972 edition carried this news:

MCC notes increase in tax-refusal donations

An increasing number of people are sending war tax monies to Mennonite Central Committee, instead of paying them to the United States Government for military use, said Calvin Britsch, MCC assistant treasurer.

Contributions of tax money are of two kinds, Mr. Britsch said. More people are refusing to pay the federal tax levied on the use of telephones. This 10 percent tax is seen as a direct source for military expenditures. People who refuse this tax simply subtract the 10 percent from their telephone bill and send it instead to MCC.

We also receive contributions from people who refuse part of their federal income tax, Mr. Britsch said. Several people, for example, have withheld and have sent in as a contribution ten or 15 percent of their income tax in a symbolic protest against the Vietnam war and the whole United States military machine. Others who have had less than the total tax withheld send that remainder to MCC rather than to the Internal Revenue Service. We often get letters with tax refusal contributions explaining the individuals belief that, as a Christian, one cannot voluntarily, or without protest, pay money to be used for the destruction of human life.

Tax refusal contributions, unless otherwise designated, are usually applied to the MCC Peace Section budget, Mr. Britsch said.

The General Conference had asked the Commission on Home Ministries and the Commission on Overseas Mission to come up with some sort of repentance action, focused on the Vietnam War. They settled on a coordinated day of repentance, with other Mennonite and Brethren churches also joining in with a day of fasting and prayer. Included with the letter from the commissions announcing this was a confession of complicity, which said in part:

We recognize that though we cannot completely disassociate ourselves from the destruction and suffering the people of the United States are inflicting upon others, we continue to seek ways “to perform deeds worthy of (our) repentance.”…

As a church we have opposed war and worked for peace through programs of relief and service. Yet we share responsibility for the destruction in this way through our silence, through our profiting from a military economy, through our patronage of corporations with substantial defense contracts, and through our payment of the portion of telephone and IRS taxes used for war purposes. Much of this involvement is unintentional and may even be done without knowledge of the implications.

Ron Boese shared his letter to the IRS in the 13 June 1972 edition. Excerpts:

To pay income tax means to help buy the guns, airplanes, and bombs which continue daily to kill the men, women and children of Indochina. To pay this tax means to help build the nuclear weaponry which threatens the possibility of any joyful human life. To pay this tax is to help retire the mortgage of the atomic bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So, instead of trusting my money to the federal government, I have directed my financial resources to organizations and individuals working for peace and justice.

Claus Felbinger, writing about the Anabaptist church in 1560, said, “We are gladly and willingly subject to the government for the Lord’s sake, and in all just matters we will in no way oppose it. When, however, the government requires of us what is contrary to our faith and conscience — as swearing oaths and paying hangman’s dues of taxes for war — then we do not obey its command.” Living in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition, I feel that, rather than pay taxes, I must hear and respond to the cries of those who fall victim to the American war-making power.

I hope that you people working for the Internal Revenue Service will understand and accept my decision to follow conscience. I hope that you will also consider the contribution which your work of collecting war taxes makes to the suffering of our fellow human beings.

Accompanying this was a maudlin poem by another author, called “Confession” that began “I killed a man today / Or was it a woman or a child?” and went on to explain that his taxes paid someone to kill, in spite of all the other things he did to express his dislike for killing. But he was writing a letter to the IRS to tell them why he wouldn’t be paying “that part of income tax which is used for killing.”

The 13 June 1972 “Central District Reporter,” a sort of supplemental insert in the magazine, reported this from the district’s Peace and Service Committee:

Parents too have stopped being passive about peace. If son will not register, father will not pay the tax which keeps the army and any war going. All ages are learning more and more that there is no one way to give witness to convictions.

A 23 June 1972 letter to the editor from Jacob and Irene Pauls discussed their decision to redirect 64% of their federal income tax (“clearly designated for war”) from the government to the Mennonite Central Committee. They wrote: “The state has chosen an enemy, but we have no enemy. We do not accept the premise that the state can choose an enemy for us and force us to help annihilate the state’s enemy.”

From the 27 June 1972 edition:

A 9 August 1972 letter to the editor from Joan Veston Enz and former acting editor Jacob J. Enz argued for the “sanctity of life” pro-life position in the abortion debate, and also mentioned war tax resistance in passing:

There are some points at which it is necessary “to make a one-sided emotional commitment to one value” (our militaristic brethren in the church feel we do this on the war question — especially when we begin to urge withholding part of our income tax).

What was billed as a “‘Lamb’s war’ camp meeting” took place in August 1972. Sixty or seventy mostly youngish people, mostly but not all Mennonites, met to discuss “a life of sacrifice and aggressive peacemaking” as part of “a nonviolent army under the direction of God.” War tax resistance was one of the topics discussed, and the verse “gonna lay down my telephone tax, down by the riverside” was spliced in to the popular spiritual during an evening sing-along.

A 19 October 1972 letter to the editor from Robert W. Guth on the subject of war taxes again told the story of the excommunication of Christian Funk for paying taxes to the Continental Congress during the American revolutionary war, and of Andrew Ziegler’s “I would as soon go to war as pay the three pounds and ten shillings” response.

Preliminary results from the first Church Member Profile survey were revealed in a 7 November 1972 article. Excerpt:

In the United states… only 11 percent were uncertain about their position, should they be subject to the draft. Seventy-one percent would choose alternative service, an option acceptable to both the government and the church’s teaching in recent history.

However, 33 percent were uncertain about refusal to pay that proportion of their income taxes designated for the military. Fifty-five percent opposed nonpayment of war taxes.

The Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section held an assembly in November 1972. Some excerpts from the coverage of the assembly in The Mennonite:

Bill Londeree, a member of Koinonia Partners, Americus, Georgia, emphasized the personal response to affluence and militarism.

The Methodist Church, he said, has $40 million in investments in the top twenty-nine defense contractors — and sends out the antiwar slide presentation, “The automated air war.” Members of the Mennonite Church paid $87 million last year in war taxes and call themselves a “peace church.”

“This is schizophrenia of the first order,” Mr. Londeree said. “The greatest need is for examination of our own lives. Jesus’ first statement to us all is a call to repentance, to metanoia. This does not mean feeling sorry, but is a command to change.”

The assembly spent much of its time in small groups discussing the presentations and related topics, such as life style, the ideology of growth, war taxes, international economic relations, economic needs of church-related institutions, strategies for social change, new value orientations, and investments.

There was also coverage of war tax resistance in The Mennonite that was unconnected, or largely so, with the tussle over withholding from Conference employees.

A 2 March 1977 letter to the editor declared the writer “fascinated by the views on tax payment… when Jesus made a fairly clear statement on that subject almost 2,000 years ago.” In his mind, Americans’ high earnings relative to those of citizens of other countries are due to the actions of the American government, so “in a way our earnings are Caesar’s to start with.”

Carl Lehman penned a third in his series of patiently exasperated essays arguing against war tax resistance. He reiterates his assertion that there are no “war taxes” — no tax whose proceeds are devoted solely to military expenses. And he says that the common practice of refusing to pay a percentage of your income tax that is equivalent to the percent of the federal budget devoted to military expenses doesn’t make much sense when you hold it up to scrutiny. There’s little to suggest that withholding some number of dollars from the government is going to mean even a dime less will be spent on the military. Bothering IRS agents, who don’t set government spending policy, is pointlessly annoying. Furthermore he wanted it known that Mennonites like him who oppose war tax resistance are also being conscientious, and should not be asked to violate their consciences.

Marge Roberts responded. For her, war tax resistance was at its core an outreach tool:

[T]he center of my using this method of resisting is the opportunity present to witness to many individuals and groups about my feelings around peace issues. My tax resistance brings my convictions into the awareness of a much wider forum of my fellows than just the IRS; many facets of my life are touched and opened to people not otherwise thinking of how much we allow ourselves to be used by the government to do evil.

She gave several examples: her employers at a Lutheran church who ultimately decided to stop withholding taxes from her salary, a real estate agent who learned of a federal tax lien against her, the officers of a bank who refused her a loan because of that lien, IRS agents who came to seize her car.

Eric Coursey was even more fed up than Lehman. Just look at the darned Bible, he wrote. He gave the by-now-familiar tour of Romans 13, Matthew 17, Matthew 22, and so forth, and accused those who weren’t willing to go along with his interpretation of those verses of preferring modern cultural trends to the Word of God.

Harold R. Regier, the Commission on Home Ministries secretary for peace and social concerns, had an op-ed in the 17 May 1977 edition on the social responsibilities of Christians. At first he struck a tone that harmonized with Coursey’s complaint: “Too often we buckle under the heresy some call ‘civil religion.’ Social, political, and economic values determine the shape of our faith. The world presses us into its mold.” But rather than counseling obedience, as Coursey did, he counseled “prophetic witness,” and gave this example:

On November 19, 1976, the judgment of a U.S. tax court ruled that the levying of taxes for war purposes does not interfere with the individual’s free exercise of religion. If religion means only to worship together in a building or only to relate your personal self to God, then paying military taxes is no violation of religion. But if our religion moves us from the pew to see our neighbors as part of God’s world, then that court couldn’t be more wrong.

Some overdue skepticism about the World Peace Tax Fund act started to surface in the pages of The Mennonite in 1977 too. This brief note comes from the 13 September edition:

Objections to the World Peace Tax Fund Act were stated in the first prize essay of the C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest. Winner Phil M. Shenk, student at Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Virginia, points out that the fund would not reduce the military budget and may lull the consciences of nonresistant persons, diluting “the church’s prophetic voice against the world’s ungodly love for war.” The fund is a proposal in the U.S. Congress in which conscientious objectors could designate their federal income, estate, and gift taxes for a special fund devoted to nonmilitary purposes.

An article by Shenk followed, in the 13 December edition:

Mennonite church bodies are officially recognizing the World Peace Tax Fund (WPTF) as an attractive option for a peace witness. Yet, is the WPTF a biblically faithful response to a war-mongering world? Does it fit the nature of Christ’s gospel?

The WPTF would change the Internal Revenue Code, allowing conscientious objectors to channel the military portion of their federal income, estate, and gift taxes to a special fund devoted to “nonmilitary purposes.” But here, as in conscription, does the legitimization of objection to war strengthen the protest or does it mortally wound personal conviction and severely weaken social impact?

The church confronts a world at odds with its values. The world values its military budgets. The polaric opposite of this value system is found in the love of Christ which prioritizes life. Because of Christ’s spirit of love, the church’s whole mission must call the world to change its doom-full directions away from death into life. This is a call to salvation, and, Andre Trocme declares, it is a “doctrine applicable to a society, as well as to an individual.”

The character of this salvation is found in the suffering-servant nature of the Savior. Christ did not withdraw in the face of suffering. He purposefully rejected the temptation to create an insulated life and instead faithfully extended his life and values among people who finally killed him for it. Today we call this agape or self-giving love. Agape finds its sole justification in the revelation of God as interpreted in Scripture.

The WPTF concept, on the other hand, appears to rely heavily on the state-decreed right of the individual to the free exercise of religion. By offering the opportunity to avoid financial participation in war, the state claims to respect the consciences of those persons opposing war. But what exactly is being respected here? Does this conscience have only to do with individual personal values, or does its sphere of influence penetrate the social realm as well? The latter is a political challenge.

The WPTF obviously would strengthen official respect for the personal consciences of those persons opposed to financial participation in war. But what impact would the WPTF have on the social consciences of persons opposed to war? Might it not tend to dilute the church’s prophetic voice against the world’s ungodly love for war?

The early church was seduced by the Roman emperor Constantine’s legalization of the church. Its strength was sapped; its faith made tolerant by tolerance. Official recognition of the church was fourth-century doublespeak for subsuming it within the state’s umbrella of political support, itemization, and diluted plurality.

The Mennonite church has been aptly characterized as the “quiet in the land,” and more recently, the “silent in the suburbs.” We would do well to critically look at how special legal exemptions in the past have influenced our convictions against war. Special niches tend to foster reclusive passivity.

The objection could be raised that the WPTF is an act of positive involvement instead of an act of withdrawal. It diverts tax monies into peace-promoting activities. Just as doing voluntary service is seen as more constructive than sitting in jail, the legal alternative in the WPTF is taken to be more responsible than tax resistance. But is this really true? I think not.

The church’s faithful response would include both positive action and negative protest. What if the draft-age persons illegally refused to comply with the draft while nondraftable brothers and sisters voluntarily furthered peace positively in voluntary service? Is this not a more balanced peace agenda for the church? Similarly, though the war tax issue hits all wage earners, the current high standard of living allows the church to do both again — protest by refusing to pay war taxes and at the same time promote peace positively by giving time and money to peace projects.

It is vain thinking to proffer the WPTF as a way to reduce the military budget. The military will get its money anyway, as long as the majority of people are oblivious of the inhumanness and ungodliness of killing. It is imperative that the strongest most diligent efforts of protest be maintained, even when confronted with an unbelieving and hostile generation. Though affirmed years ago, Tertullian’s words still ring true: “The blood of martyrs is seed.”

What resources then does the church have to protest with? I cannot improve on John Howard Yoder when he says that at times “the most effective way to take responsibility is to refuse to collaborate… This refusal is not a withdrawal from society. It is rather a major negative intervention within the process of social change, a refusal to use unworthy means even for what seems to be a worthy end.”

Thus, as an alternative to the WPTF, I submit simple yet active tax resistance as the best, most faithful way in which the church can witness to society on war taxes. True, the money will be eventually taken by the Internal Revenue Service and the military, yet not without sparking some public interest and provoking numerous forums in which to voice one’s concern.

Worldly priorities must be objected to in word and deed. If the objecting deeds are performed legally, they register little if any protest. If consciously illegal, they register an unequivocal refusal to agree with the world’s values. The latter gets the attention of the state, the former does not.

Simple tax resistance would free the church to spend its energies calling the whole world to salvation rather than saving just itself.

The church’s “in-ness” but “not-of-ness” demands that it be actively concerned about the nonchurched world. Christ as Lord is subject to no other authority. Because of this, the church’s most crucial task is to prophetically and faithfully enact and promote Christ’s values in life without regard for political limitations or definitions. The politics of Jesus are not those of compromise, but those of dogged, active, and consistent faithfulness.

Finally, the 20 December 1977 edition included a brief note about Margaret and Weldon Nisly who were withholding the federal excise tax on their phone service and sending the money to charity.

This is the twenty-seventh in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we enter the 1980s.

The 8 January edition began with an article about the global military build-up and possible Christian responses to it. Tax resistance was one example:

During the first and second world wars the Mennonite “presence” to the world was the shock of refusal to bear arms. That’s not an issue now; most military service is voluntary. What are we refusing now?

Not many are doing it, but some Mennonites in the U.S. are refusing to pay the portion of their income tax which will be used for military expenditures. For instance, Cornelia Lehn, director of children’s education for the General Conference, has shared this witness: “Finally I decided to give half of my income to relief and other church work and thus force the Internal Revenue Service to return that portion of my tax which they had already slated for military purposes…

“I realize that this is not the perfect answer… It is, however, the best answer I know at this time. Finally I could no longer acquiesce and be part of something so diabolical as war. I had to take a stand against it…

“I wish that my church, which believes in the way of peace, would as a body no longer gather money to help the government make war. I wish all the members of our church would stand up in horror and refuse to allow it to happen. Then the conference officers would be in a position to say to the government: ‘We will not give you our sons and daughters and we will not give you our money to kill others. Allow us to serve our country in the way of peace.’ ”

Is Cornelia Lehn speaking as a prophet? Does she have a word from the Lord to help us respond in a meaningful way to demonic forces?

Peter Ediger writes with prophetic urgency about what people like Cornelia Lehn are doing: “Do we know that there are hundreds and thousands of people out there waiting for a word from the church, waiting for some action from the church? Have we some sense of the explosive evangelistic potential of this kind of action? Do you know that the day of the police state is not only coming but that it is here in its roots, and the issue will not go away?”

Whether we follow Cornelia Lehn’s example or not, we would do well to have her sense of urgency about our own allegiance to the Prince of Peace and ask God for help in making our own faith relevant to our times.

The Commission on Home Ministries met in February. Military conscription was prominent on the agenda (President Carter had recently revived military draft registration), but war tax resistance seems to have been pushed aside except for a brief mention:

Chairperson Don Steelberg asked, “How can we who are older support those facing this decision?”

[Robert] Hull replied, “If we counsel them to say no to registration then we should say no to paying war taxes.”

This was part of a “council of commissions” gathering. Another report on that gathering mentioned the “Smoketown Consultation” rebellion of conservative Mennonites the year before. Three of these dissenters were at the council, and one, Albert Epp, reportedly “said the preparatory materials for the war tax conference in Minneapolis last year were slanted in favor of war tax resistance.”

The West Coast Mennonite Central Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation co-sponsored a February “first annual” workshop on war tax resistance.

Local tax resisters told their stories.

Gray-haired Helen, a Friend, donates the amount of her military tax to organizations working on justice. Diane works at a state institution for the mentally retarded and realized that military taxes take money away from human needs.

All hope for a mass movement by citizens but stressed the consistent commitment necessary. They write letters of explanation to the Internal Revenue Service, editors of newspapers, their churches, members of Congress, the President. They educate employers and bank officials of the possibility of their wages being garnisheed or a lien put on an account.

The IRS is sensitive to “principled tax refusal,” said Irwin Hagenauer [sic], retired social worker who now serves as volunteer resource person to those who would refuse war tax. He gives advice on every method, from W-4 exemptions to war-crime deductions.

The 4 March edition carried an article by Weldon Schloneger on Biblical Authority that discussed the difficulty of interpreting even straightforward-sounding biblical passages in context, and urged charity toward other Christians with differing interpretations. Among those verses he describes are Matthew 5:44 (“Love your enemies”) and Matthew 22:21 (“Render unto Caesar”) and he mentions how war tax resisters and their opponents each accept the authority of these verses, but interpret them differently.

On 8 March, a hundred people from the traditional peace churches came together to discuss whether the abolition of war was feasible. War tax resister John Howard Yoder addressed the gathering, which came up with a set of questions to bring back to their churches, including this one: “have we recognized that while we lament the arms race we continue to pay for it through our taxes?”

The 18 March edition included another poem trying to drive home the point about taxpaying and complicity: “I fueled the fire / Pumped gas in the the furnaces at Buchenwald / Its flames have lingered within us, smoldering / Today I paid my taxes, that’s all” and so forth.

Conscription was again the topic when 400 Mennonite conscientious objectors met in late March to condemn the revival of the draft. Again, in passing, the question came up: “How can the too-old-to-draft people expect draft-age people to not serve in the military if they pay war taxes?”

The 29 April 1980 edition included the article “Tax form for pacifists” by Colman McCarthy. It started by pointing out taxpayer complicity with military spending, and “the hollowness of denouncing increases in the defense budget and ‘the wicked Pentagon’ [when c]itizens pay for both.” The article took a detour into wishful thinking about the World Peace Tax Fund bill before finally returning home:

Without this kind of legislative relief conscientious objectors are left with three options: violate their moral values by financing the military, violate the tax laws by not paying, or earn so little income that it is not taxable.

Traditionally courts have had little patience with tax resisters. Often judges mistakenly see those citizens as evaders, when actually they are pacifists who want to put their money where their convictions are.

According to William Samuel of the [National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund], cases of conscientious tax resistance have not only been increasing in recent years, but they have also been going on to higher courts of appeal. In May 1979 at Richmond the 4^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments from three citizens claiming First and Ninth amendment rights not to pay taxes for military spending.

While Congress and the courts mull over the issue a few individuals are acting on their own. Only blocks from the White House, Collective Impressions Printshop has been refusing for the past two years to send its federal withholding tax to the IRS. Instead this corporation submits the money to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

The defiance of these pacifists unloosens only the smallest of screws in the U.S.’s vast military machine. The arms-control agency politely returns the checks and eventually the IRS seizes the group’s bank account. But it doesn’t seize its moral integrity or squash the option for dissent that is so crucial.

That issue also included an interview with Harold R. Regier and Hubert Schwartzentruber, until recently the peace and social concerns secretaries for the Mennonite General Conference and the Mennonite Church respectively. The former, when asked what the highlights of his term had been, mentioned the 1971 General Conference resolution that had announced church support for war tax resisters, and also God and Caesar:

This little newsletter of information and dialogue about war taxes brought together a community of people struggling with the question of supporting with our money what we could not participate in personally. We discovered increasing numbers of people responsive to the dilemma of being Christian peacemakers and their support of war with tax monies. Working on the war tax issue as a new frontier for Anabaptist discipleship was perhaps the single most exciting highlight of my eight years as PSC secretary.

A special Commission on Home Ministries supplement, dated 20 May 1980, listed “some ideas we are testing” which included this one:

Just as our forefathers clarified important church-state issues in objecting to war participation, we may be able to make a significant contribution for freedom of religion and against state religion in the area of paying taxes to support war. An outside-our-conference-budget fund could finance test cases in the U.S. and Canada to clarify the church-state issues involved in paying taxes used for war. A creative proposal could be tested with legislators, such as one just surfacing: persons contributing “sabbatical service,” a VS term every seventh year to work for the good of others, should be allowed to designate their taxes for constructive purposes.

This idea apparently came out of a discussion between Robert Hull of the CHM Peace and Social Concerns group and a young conscientious objector facing a trial on tax charges.

The task force that had been assigned to try to find some legal avenue for the General Conference to stop withholding taxes from its conscientious objecting employees seems to have come up with its first concrete action plan:

Tax exemption resolution to be presented

A resolution seeking approval to initiate a judicial action to exempt the General Conference from withholding taxes from the income of its employees will be presented to delegates attending the denomination’s triennial meeting in Estes Park, Colorado, July 12–19.

At a special meeting of church delegates in Minneapolis in February 1979 the highest governing board of the church was instructed to vigorously search for “all legal, legislative, and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption” from withholding taxes. Implicit in the initiative is the view that if it is wrong for pacifists to countenance the drafting of their bodies, it is also wrong to agree to the drafting of that portion of income taxes which go to the military.

The judicial action would be based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the church from laws causing it to violate its principles. The estimated cost of a judicial action is $75,000 to $130,000. It would likely require several years to reach a final decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Delegates will be asked to authorize an annual church offering to fund this action and also a stepped-up drive to gain congressional support for the World Peace Tax Fund act.

That resolution would pass “easily” Monday evening at the conference, 1,156 to 353 with seven abstentions.

In the 19 August issue, John Stoner of the Mennonite Peace Section (U.S.) encouraged those readers who were war tax resisters to redirect their taxes to a draft resisters’ mutual aid fund.

The New Call to Peace­making in­i­ti­a­tive had another na­tion­al con­fer­ence in Octo­ber. The article an­nounc­ing the up­com­ing meeting in­clud­ed this news:

The Church of the Brethren has af­firmed “open, non­e­va­sive with­hold­ing of war taxes as a le­git­i­mate wit­ness to our con­sci­en­tious in­ten­tion to fol­low the call of dis­ci­ple­ship to Jesus Christ.”

A later article about the meeting noted:

With respect to the pay­ment of taxes used for war pur­pos­es, the New Call re­stat­ed its 1978 com­mit­ment to urge Christ­ian peace­makers to “con­sid­er with­hold­ing from the In­ter­nal Rev­e­nue Ser­vice all tax monies which con­tri­bute to any war effort.”

The statement of find­ings rec­om­mend­ed the fol­low­ing as al­ter­na­tives to the pay­ment of war taxes: (1) ac­tive work for the adop­tion of the World Peace Tax Fund bill which, if passed by the U.S. Congress, would serve as a legal alternative to payment of war taxes just as conscientious objector status is a legal alternative to military service, and (2) individuals are urged to consider prayerfully all moral ways of reducing their tax liabilities, including sizable contributions to tax-exempt organizations, reduction of personal income, and simplification of lifestyles.

In the 7 October edition, Peter Farrar shared a letter he wrote to his senator saying that he was going beyond draft resistance “to sever all personal connection with the federal government of the United States”:

I will no longer vote in federal elections, pay federal taxes, nor use federal services, and I will do everything in my power, privately and in the press, to influence others to join me.

The magazine also covered the November annual conference of the Center on Law and Pacifism. Among the things discussed:

Ed Pearson gave an update on an “escrow fund” originated in November 1979, to which people can send the part of their taxes they refuse to pay… The government is notified that the money will be released when the World Peace Tax Fund Bill, pending in congress, is passed. Similar efforts are under way in Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Holland, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand.

William Sloane Coffin, Jr. addressed the World Conference on Religion for Peace (Canada) in November. In The Mennonite’s description of his remarks is this note:

Perhaps the time has come for civil disobedience, suggested Coffin, citing tax resistance as a strategy which the church should lead out in.

Finally, “The Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes” met again in November.

The Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes will undertake a major effort to inform and educate members of its congregations and meetings on the implications of the payment of taxes used for military purposes.

The committee has commissioned the preparation of a packet of study materials on the biblical basis of war taxes, the World Peace Tax Fund (WPTF) bill currently pending in the U.S. Congress, and suggestions for personal and political action.

Meeting at the General Conference Mennonite Church (GCMC) headquarters here on November 14 and 15, the task force also heard a report that William Ball, noted constitutional law attorney from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has indicated interest in representing the GCMC in its proposed judicial action on the withholding of taxes from its employees.

Among other attorneys being considered to carry the case are Alan Hunt of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; William Rich of Topeka, Kansas; and Harrop Freeman of Ithaca, New York. The selection of a legal representative will be finalized early in 1981.

Preparation of the tax study materials will be coordinated by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Peace Section in Akron, Pennsylvania, in consultation with the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund in Washington, D.C., and representatives of the historic peace churches. These groups include the General Conference Mennonite Church, Mennonite Church, Mennonite Brethren Church, Brethren in Christ, Church of the Brethren, Friends General Conference, Friends United Meeting, and Evangelical Friends Alliance.

Several members of the task force voiced concerns over the lack of understanding on the part of lay people within these congregations and meetings of the magnitude of the nuclear and military threat, of which the U.S. is a major participant.

The decision to prepare study materials came in response to the need for greater awareness of the sizable contribution which each taxpayer makes to the “morally bankrupt” process of gigantic military expenditures.

“Our congregations need to be educated to understand the issues and the policies of our [U.S.] administration,” said Alan Eccleston of the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund.

Eccleston noted that the WPTF bill has entered a critical phase; during the 1980 elections, 5 of its 35 sponsors were lost. Efforts to see the legislation through Congress must be redoubled, or the bill will soon have to be abandoned and energies channeled in other directions, he said.

Regarding the legal action to seek an injunction against the Internal Revenue Service concerning the collection of taxes from General Conference employees, Vern Preheim, general secretary of the GCMC, indicated that other historic peace churches have been invited to join in in the suit in some way. Responses from other church groups however, are still in process.

The General Board of the GCMC was empowered to undertake the court challenge at the triennial meeting of conference delegates at Estes Park, Colorado last July.

At the November 14–15 meetings, task force members seemed to differ significantly in terms of their interests in war tax issues. Committee members such as Eccleston and Robert Hull, secretary for peace and justice for GCMC, were concerned about the future of the peace witness in comprehensive terms, and specifically as it related to the war tax issue. Others, such as Duane Heffelbower, an attorney from Reedley, California, were interested in the tax question in more professionally restricted terms. Heffelbower stated that he could face disbarment if he became an active tax resister; therefore, the passage of the WPTF is an attractive option because it involves no risk to his profession.

Other task force participants included Heinz Janzen, Hillsboro, Kansas (chairperson); Delton Franz, North Newton, Kansas; Paul Gingrich, Elkhart, Indiana; Janet Reedy, Elkhart, Indiana; John Stoner and Ron Flickinger of Akron, Pennsylvania; and James Thomas, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

The entire task force will meet again on 13–14 March 1981 in Chicago.

This is the 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.

1963 began with a bombshell. John Howard Yoder, who would become a very influential Mennonite ethicist and political philosopher (but who at the time was just finishing off his doctorate and working as part-time instructor), dropped his essay “Why I Don’t Pay My Taxes” in Gospel Herald readers’ laps.

The Mennonite reprinted the essay, and I reproduced it here when I was going through the back issues of that magazine (see ♇ 17 July 18) so I won’t do so again today.

In Gospel Herald, the essay, which appeared in the 22 January 1963 issue, was preceded by this editorial disclaimer:

In A Declaration of Christian Faith and Commitment with Respect to Peace, War, and Nonresistance, which was adopted by General Conference in 1951 as the official statement of the church on the question, we find this sentence: “Though we recognize fully that God has set the state in its place of power and ministry, we cannot take part in those of its functions or respond to any of its demands which involve us in the use of force or frustrate Christian love; but we acknowledge our obligation to witness to the powers-that-be of the righteousness which God requires of all men, even in government, and beyond this to continue in earnest intercession to God on their behalf.”

The statement on The Christian Witness to the State adopted by General Conference in 1961 contains this sentence: “The evils of war, particularly in this nuclear age, must ever be pressed upon the consciences of statesmen.”

The article by John H. Yoder which follows is the testimony of a brother who has come to the conviction that for him a necessary witness to the state is not to pay voluntarily all of one’s federal income tax (although in no way obstructing its forcible collection by the state), since so much of this tax goes for war purposes.

Neither General Conference nor the Peace Problems Committee have said that the Christian witness against war must include this procedure. To some, no doubt, it will seem that the procedure taken is contrary to New Testament teaching. To this position, however, Bro. Yoder has an answer which he believes is right.

Believing that his answer deserves prayerful consideration by all who disagree, as well as by any who might be sympathetic, the Peace Problems Committee is submitting it for publication. Both the author and the committee will welcome further discussion of the question in the same spirit with which it is here presented.

The Peace Problems Committee:
Guy F. Hershberger, Secretary.

(At the suggestion of the editor of the Peace and War Page, the following statement is made in the form of a purely personal testimony, such as was presented to the Peace Problems Committee of the General Conference of the Mennonite Church in November. The writer bears no responsibility to represent the Mennonite Church as an organization or the Peace Problems Committee in the position he has taken nor in the reporting of it.)

It’s worth noting that Yoder defined his war tax resistance largely in terms of “witness” rather than conscientious objection: “The idea,” he wrote, “is not to avoid involvement in the evils of this fallen world, to ‘keep my hands clean’ morally… My concern is not to be morally immaculate by making absolutely no contribution to the war effort, but to give a testimony to government concerning its own obligation before God.”

Yoder’s essay provoked a great deal of response, as you might expect.

A letter to the editor from Daniel Hertzler (5 February 1963) brought up a theme that would echo through much of the subsequent discussion in Mennonite circles: that war tax resistance was a way for conscientiously objecting adults to put some skin in the game, rather than merely advise conscripted youth what they ought to do:

I was much impressed by the article, “Why I Don’t Pay All My Income Tax,” by John H. Yoder… It seems to me the author shows a good attitude toward the government and toward his brothers in the church. He is not arrogant toward the government as are some nonviolent resisters, and he presents his case to the brotherhood for discussion. I hope this issue is taken seriously and discussed thoroughly.

One statement which impressed me most, and which I underlined…[:] “If action something like my own were taken by a significant number of mature Mennonite wage earners, this would be the first time in the history of our nation that the testimony to nonresistance was given primarily through the initiative of and at a certain cost to the most mature and responsible people in the church.”

Many times leaders in the church are concerned because young people seem to give an uncertain and wavering testimony. Part of the answer may be that they have not seen persons who are a little older giving a clear-cut and decisive testimony.

A letter to the editor from Abraham Gehman, Jr. (19 February 1963) thought Yoder’s stance was unwisely confrontational and smacked of craving for martyrdom:

I applaud John H. Yoder’s efforts to do something about the present world situation… In response to his concern, I regret that I have not found a more appropriate testimony against the nation’s trust in the sword. With all respect to his convictions, I do, however, differ with his solution to this problem.

In principle, our government is doing nothing different from governments throughout history, including those of Bible times; that is, to defend itself by whatever means is necessary…

The author is concerned with alternate service not being a positive witness. I assume that if enough of us would refuse to pay a portion of our income tax, the government would work out an alternate program. Would the author then try, and keep on trying, until the government has finally had enough?

The time may come soon enough when we must take a positive stand against our government. Until that time, the cause of peace is not strengthened by goading the government into making martyrs out of us.

A letter to the editor from Ray Slabaugh (26 February 1963) threw cold water on the idea that Paul only counseled Christians to pay all their taxes because Rome was at the time an empire at peace:

Mr Yoder says, or seems to say, the reason Paul or Jesus recognized governmental authority was because Rome was at peace. Rome was at peace only to the extent that it had crushed the opposition. It held its people in subjection much like communism. Whether Jesus would have lived in America today or in the Roman Empire as He did, His message would still be the same, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Regardless of what our government uses the income tax money for (and I don’t think our nation is planning to blow up the other half of the world), it is still our obligation to pay our taxes. We can never change the attitudes of our statesmen or government by means like this.

A brief 5 March 1963 letter to the editor from Rebecca Longenecker promoted charitable giving as a way of lowering war taxes, and noted that “[t]he local Internal Revenue inspector treated me very kindly when I was called to his office concerning my charity deductions. Isn’t this another way of giving a positive peace testimony?”

Lloy A. Kniss was more thoroughly critical of Yoder’s ideas. In a 19 March 1963 letter to the editor, he wrote that war tax resistance is thoroughly unscriptural and that Christians have no reason to inquire about how their taxes are used after they gladly pay them. Furthermore, he felt, we should assume good motives on the part of our government and not be in a rush to see its huge military budget and armaments stockpiles as evidence of eagerness for war. There are wheels within wheels and all that.

He also identified a weakness in Yoder’s argument for war tax resistance, one that persists in many similar arguments today — arguments that use conscientious objection premises (paying taxes for war would involve me in bloodshed in a way I cannot condone) to justify a “witnessing” action (I refuse to pay as a symbol to government of my disapproval, even though I know the government will collect the money eventually):

…[W]e have no New Testament teachings providing for the church to dictate or suggest to the state ways of bringing about reforms in methods of administering justice or in the kinds of weapons not to use in war. The Christian’s primary responsibility is not to improve or reform the world, but to preach the Gospel…

Another concept expressed in the article which seems incorrect is that by paying taxes we are making a contribution to the war effort. On the surface it seems plausible to interpret it that way, but the Bible teaches us that the tax money is Caesar’s and not ours. So what is Caesar’s we give to him to use as he sees fit, for it is his and we are not responsible or guilty of contributing to the war. Refusing to pay tax is not a real testimony of a non-resistant Christian. Also Rom. 13 tells us that “he” bears not the sword in vain. We know that God intends that he should use it. It does not seem to be in order for Christians to tell him he should not use a two-edged sword, or a fiery sword, or whatever else might be very destructive or horrible. Certainly the Christian shrinks from seeing such cruelty, but where have we Scriptural basis for dictating to the government on these things? Burning people alive at the stake was also very cruel and repulsive to think of, and throwing Christians alive to the wild animals was no better, but the New Testament does not instruct Christians to testify against those things which existed there then.

There are also some points in the article which do not stand the test of sanctified reason. If I felt that paying my income tax is wrong for me as a Christian, I would certainly not pay it, and instead of making it easy for the revenue officers to get it, I would refuse to pay and go to prison if necessary. Is it Scriptural to assume that we should yield to coercion in matters of right or wrong? The second-mile teaching refers to personal injury or offense — not to matters of conscience.

We must credit our government with the sincere desire to prevent war as its motive for increasing armaments. We must believe that our government holds no aggressive intentions. When we recommend to the government to cease making or testing bombs, we may be encouraging the opposite from what we intended to. I would rather pray God to direct our rulers as He sees best. In a case like this I believe we can do more good by praying than by protesting, for do we know what is best after all? I want to make it clear that all preparations for war, and all making of weapons is repulsive to me as a Christian; as much so as to the author of the article in question, but to promote reform in this area is out of my province.

The author says, “Involvement in one form or another [in the war effort] is avoided by no one.” This conclusion, it seems to me, is based on legalism. If one innocently raises corn, as he naturally does, to feed the hungry and to make a living, then it is not his responsibility if somewhere the corn he raises contributes to any government war effort. I would suggest that the motive in one’s act is what decides his innocence or guilt in this kind of situation. Of course, if a person holds all his scrap iron until there is a war on and the prices go up, and then sells it for greater profit, we conclude that here he is plainly guilty.

The New Testament injunction to pay our taxes is not conditioned on how the money will be used by the government. The teachings of the Bible were not given as applying only to local situations at that time. One of the features of Scripture is that it is never out of date. I believe we ought to interpret all Scriptures in that light.

The author of the article states that the object is not to keep the government from getting the money, and also in the same article he seems to imply that it is wrong for us to pay taxes that we know are used for military purposes. This appears to be a contradiction, unless he would propose a passive attitude toward wrong by “making it easy” for the revenue man to get the money. I believe our brother would not favor taking such a passive weak attitude toward sin.

By a general analysis of the article, it would seem to favor interference by the church in state affairs. Again, one can see in it the promotion of simple worldly pacifism. Furthermore, the emphasis that is placed on objection to nuclear weapons seems to betray a lining up with popular sentiment in the world today, rather than Bible-based conviction against taking life. The principle is the same whether one life is taken, or a thousand. It reminds one of the difference between a white lie and a big lie; or a petty theft and a bank robbery. The wrong is the same in both kinds of cases, but the antisocial aspect of the latter is worse than that of the former.

A letter to the editor from A.M. Moyer (26 March 1963) mapped out the reluctant and waffling middle-ground:

It is debatable… how much a Christian should do to bring about persecution. Perhaps we should do more than we now do; I don’t know. It’s too easy to become passive and unconcerned about it. But doesn’t persecution come to the genuine Christian without his “going out of the way” to get it? It is this “self-effort” to deliberately try to bring persecution that I feel will only result in stirring up antagonism. This, in turn, will leave a poor — rather than a positive — witness. I don’t think we should try to avoid persecution, but neither do I think we should try to create it.

I don’t quite see the individual Christian’s responsibility for our nation’s actions in the same light as Bro. Yoder does. To voluntarily pay our taxes doesn’t necessarily mean that we approve of the government’s use of that money. For example, when we pay a bill to the man who delivers coal to us, we don’t ask him what he will do with the money. We are not responsible, since it no longer is our money, nor can we decide how it ought to be spent.

In the same way, I feel we are not responsible for our nation’s use of money to the degree that Bro. Yoder implies. There is one technical difference, however; since we are American citizens and thereby indirectly a part of our democratic form of government, we are not completely free from all responsibility in this matter. I think we as Christians ought to “voice our opinions” (convictions) against the unwise spending of money in America for destructive and defensive measures. However, could this not be done through personal letters to congressmen and other government officials, who have more say in these decisions than ourselves, rather than by Bro. Yoder’s method of temporarily withholding some tax money (apologies to Bro. Yoder)? Besides, I feel as though we owe a certain amount of tax money to our government in return for the many freedoms and privileges we enjoy because of it.

I realize that Bro. Yoder fully intended that the government should have the whole amount of tax due, but it was a matter of time and means, of how and when he felt he could give the best possible peace witness. Though I would not do the same myself, I respect anyone daring to be different for a reason; one has to wonder how different our Bible might be if persons such as Daniel had not dared to be different for conscience’ sake. I do not condemn Bro. Yoder at all, but I seriously wonder what would happen if every Mennonite Christian (or a high percentage of them) would do likewise. I personally could not conscientiously withhold some due tax from the government, because I feel that I am obligated to pay it, both as a Christian and as an American citizen.

…Bro. Yoder mentions the difference between the Roman government and our own… However… there must have been some things about the Roman government of which Christ did not approve. And He apparently paid His taxes with no comment to government officials as to His objections to their possible use.

…I admire Bro. Yoder for living up to his personal conviction, even though in this instance it differs from my own. And I do appreciate the main result of the article — that it makes us aware of the high percentage of tax money which is used for purposes contrary to New Testament teachings, and therefore contrary to our Christian convictions. We dare not ignore this contradiction! It ought to concern every Christian; but what to do about it remains a basically personal problem, which each must solve as the Lord directs him.

A letter to the editor from Amos W. Weaver (2 April 1963) began by explaining why the author does not vote in elections, feeling that such a vote would give his stamp of approval for the eventual immoral actions of those he voted for. But he felt the same logic does not apply to taxation:

But I can and do pay my taxes with a clear conscience and would have a guilty conscience if I did not. When Jesus said, “Render… unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,” He gave no qualifications nor suggested any exceptions even though He must have been well aware of Caesar’s (and the Caesars in general) dissolute, profligate living and his cruel and wanton disregard for life. The taxes paid to the Caesars were used for wars of conquest, oppression, wanton destruction of life, and for luxuriant and sensual living. But he did represent law and order in general and so, in God’s economy for a sinful society, deserved support.

In Rom. 12 Paul, though the inspiration of the Spirit, plainly teaches against violence or taking vengeance by the believer, declaring that God will repay the evildoer and punish him. Then in the following chapter Paul continues by showing how God is taking vengeance and punishing the evildoer with the sword, in the hands of God-ordained government whose agents are declared to be, in this area of justice, God’s ministers, or servants.

Paul, through the Spirit, then most plainly tells us to pay tribute because of that very thing, suppressing evil with the sword, a thing the believer may not do but is commanded to pay the government for doing.

Paul calls for our full support of the official sword even though he well knew that official sword often took innocent lives, destroyed wantonly at times, beheaded John the Baptist, nailed Christ to the cross, and the Spirit knew would someday remove Paul’s head, destroy nearly all of the apostles and hundreds and thousands of faithful men of God in the centuries to come. Then he adds, by way of further emphasis, “Render therefore to all their dues.”

This strange paradox would plague Mennonites as it plagued other Christian conscientious objectors. History clearly showed governments persecuting, torturing, crucifying, beheading the early disciples of Christ, and yet Paul insisted “the governing authorities… have been instituted by God… [R]ulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad… [D]o what is good, and you will receive [the ruler’s] approval, for he is God’s servant for your good… for the authorities are ministers of God”. The most sensible solution to this Gordian Knot seems to me to lie in just recognizing that Paul was talking rot, but that’s a hard pill for a Christian to swallow. Paul was mistaken. Just say those three words and move on.

There was also some additional content around this time that was not directly in response to the Yoder article. Among these were news of war tax resisters from other Christian sects, such as this note about Arthur Evans (7 May 1963):

A Colorado Quaker who long has refused voluntary payment of that portion of his federal taxes earmarked for military spending plans the same course of action this year. Dr. Arthur Evans, a Denver physician, for 20 years has donated the amount of money equal to his tax burden of military spending to a charity and has sent the receipt to the Internal Revenue Service. And every year the IRS attaches his bank account, collects the amount due, and adds a 6 per cent interest charge.

Last year, because the IRS was “using the information I was voluntarily giving for evil purposes,” Dr. Evans did not file any federal return. To make up for his tax liability, the physician sent the IRS five checks for $200 each — payable to the United Nations, the Peace Corps, and the AID program. Dr. Evans contends he is meeting his obligations by contributing to organizations such as the United Nations, which are supported at least in part by the U.S. government. The IRS, in returning the checks, stated “they have no connection with any tax liability and cannot be accepted by this office.” The Quaker, who terms military spending as a “Doomsday Machine,” continues to pay his state income taxes because they have no military spending connection.

…and this one about Karel F. Botermans (14 May 1963):

Karel F. Botermans, minister of San Anselmo’s Unitarian Universalist church, has declined to pay 61 per cent of his federal income tax on the grounds that it would go for “carefully planned machinery to kill millions of human beings.” The Dutch-born pastor, a leader in the Netherlands underground during the Nazi occupation, sent the remaining 39 per cent of his tax to the Internal Revenue Service. He also mailed copies of his protest letter to President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. In his message he asserted the belief that “I have international law on my side.” He referred to the Nürnberg trials, “where it was stated by our Allied judges that, in actions of genocide, every person in that society involved in those actions is to be held responsible.” Mr. Botermans said, “It is obvious that our ‘defense program’ is a preparation for genocide attempt, one which might be far more devastating than the Nazis ever dreamed of.” The pacifist clergyman pointed out he would gladly pay the withheld 61 per cent of his tax if the U.S. pledged to spend the money for other methods of settling international differences.

An article meant to refute the Biblical case for conscientious objection to war taxes appeared in the 18 June 1963 edition. The article, “Taxes and the New Testament” by William Klassen, seemed in context to be a rebuttal to Yoder’s article, but an editorial note said that “It was written before the author read the Yoder article and is not to be considered a reply to it.” But even Klassen’s article, though generally skeptical of Christian arguments for war tax resistance, offered an escape route for prophets who wanted to push the boundaries of Christian behavior in that direction:

It would seem… that any protest against income taxes in the United States on the basis of the proportion of taxes going into the military effort or the size of these taxes per se cannot appeal to the New Testament. Although one might adduce certain arguments for the nonpayment of taxes, the concern for the eventual use of this money finds no support in Jesus’ teaching. His followers pay taxes.

Nevertheless, it is possible that if He had lived today, He might have taken a different approach. We must endeavor to find the will of Christ for today, but it is difficult to deviate from the letter when the evidence in the New Testament is rather clear.

Yet we have done it in other areas. For example, the New Testament warns against drunkenness, but nowhere prohibits the drinking of wine. Does this perhaps mean that since Jesus drank and made wine, we should do so also? Generally we do not say so. Rather, we feel that we must go beyond the written word and allow ourselves to be impelled by the Spirit of Christ. Whether we always have the mind of Christ under such circumstances remains an open question. We do, however, engage in a search for God’s will without simply repeating the written word.

In the case of taxes we may ask: Would our witness as Christians be more consistent if we at least lodged a protest with the government about the use of tax money? Should we refuse payment, thus bringing an element of coercion into the situation? Should we request that our taxes be designated for such causes as the Peace Corps or foreign aid or the United Nations? Or should we continue to pay taxes, appealing to the New Testament as our guide in this?

It is clear that any attempt to arrive at consensus on this matter to the extent that we might be able to move ahead in anything like a united front would be a Herculean task. When our base no longer is a simple literalistic Biblicism, then we need a much more thorough period of instruction before we can have any kind of consensus. One of the immediate steps could be to sensitize our conscience on the matter by analyzing the real issues before us.

Perhaps a study should also be made of the Amish protest to Social Security. Did their concern, that the church cares for its own, really get a hearing or did they simply perpetuate their reputation for solidly resisting all change? Seen from the standpoint of the New Testament, witnessing has little value apart from the degree to which it communicates the lordship of Christ.

This is the fourteenth 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.

War tax resistance really picked up steam in the Mennonite Church in 1972, as the coverage in Gospel Herald shows.

In January a “workshop on war taxes” was held “at the Hively Mennonite Church, Elkhart, Ind. Resource persons are Al Meyer, John Howard Yoder, David Habegger, Art Gise, and Carl Landes…” Gospel Herald’s report on the conference noted:

Christian response to war taxes was discussed by about 100 participants in a workshop Jan. 14, 15 in Elkhart, Ind.

The weekend was sponsored by the Elkhart Peace Fellowship, the General Conference Mennonite Central District Peace and Service Committee, and other regional church peace and service committees.

Michael Friedmann of the Elkhart Peace Fellowship said many of the participants felt the war tax question involved a shift in life-style to reduce involvement in the military-industrial complex.

Al Meyer, a research physicist at Goshen College, Goshen, Ind., suggested to the group that one does not start by changing the laws to provide legal alternatives to payment of war taxes, but by refusing to pay taxes. We need to give a clear witness, he said.

Meyer did not oppose payment of war taxes because he was opposed to government as such, but because he did not give his total allegiance to government. He felt it was his responsibility to refuse to pay the immoral demands of government.

“No alternative will be provided by the federal government until a significant number of citizens refuse war taxes,” he said.

Another conference was announced in the 15 February 1972 issue:

“Jesus and the 1040 Form" Seminar

The annual tax collection time is at hand. How do you respond to the 1040 and other tax forms? An increasing number of Mennonites are asking what it means to render to Caesar what belongs to him and in particular to render to God what belongs to Him.

Two seminars are planned to study this question: Saturday, Mar. 4, 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m., Akron Mennonite Church; Sunday, Mar. 5, 2:30–8:30 p.m. Bally Mennonite Church.

The purpose will be (1) to learn what the Bible says for and against paying taxes, (2) to share with and support each other as the Spirit leads, and (3) to examine what choices are available in nonpayment of taxes used for war purposes. The schedule allows for considerable discussion time. Howard Charles, Goshen Biblical Seminary, will be the resource person.…

War Tax Meeting Set

A meeting for people who are disturbed by American policy in Southeast Asia and who question payment of war taxes is planned for 7:00 p.m., Feb. 25 at Hebron Mennonite Church, Buhler, Kan. The meeting, sponsored by the Western District Peace and Social Concerns Committee of the General Mennonite Church, will be a time to exchange ideas and tell of actions already taken.

Afterwards, Gospel Herald reported:

Two seminars on taxes, “Jesus and the 1040 Form” seminars, were held Mar. 4 and 5 at the Akron Mennonite Church and the Bally Mennonite Church, respectively. Approximately 70 persons participated. Howard Charles, Goshen Biblical Seminary, was the resource teacher on biblical passages dealing with taxes. Other input was given by Melvin Gingerich and Grant Stoltzfus on examples of tax refusal from history. Wesley Mast presented options in payment and nonpayment of taxes. Walton Hackman gave a breakdown of the present use of tax dollars, 75 percent of which go toward war-related purposes.

War taxes also would come up at another Mennonite forum, as announced in the 22 February 1972 issue:

On the Swiss Farm at Bluffton College, Bluffton, Ohio, Mennonite collegians will meet. Mar. 2–5, to “rap” about the kind of life-style they want to adopt. Intentional communities, ways to avoid American materialism and consumerism, how to avoid complicity with militarism through paying taxes that support past, present, and future wars, and the role of women will be ingredients in the discussions of the conference.

War tax resistance had arrived in Switzerland, according to a short article in the 21 March 1972 issue:

Rudolf Gnaegi, Swiss defense minister, has announced that 32 Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy will be prosecuted if they persist in their refusal to perform military service or to pay “defense taxes.”

In Switzerland, all males over 20 — including the clergy — are subject to military service and annual retraining service periods. Conscientious objection is not recognized. Those who refuse to serve in the military are liable to prison terms.

The 32 clergymen, all from French-speaking cantons, announced in a joint letter to the Defense Ministry that they would not report for military service nor pay taxes earmarked for defense because they felt the Army served only “economic and financial interests.”

The letter charged further that whenever the Army was used in the country, it was used “against workers, peasants, and young people.”

Mr. Gnaegi, chief of the Military Department, told newsmen it was “incredible” that “in a free and evolving society like Switzerland’s,” clergymen should refuse completely “to share the difficult task of national defense.”

A “Mennonite Church Council on Faith, Life, and Strategy” was held in March 1972. War taxes hit the agenda:

A second issue brought to the Council was that of payment of war taxes. After extensive discussion, the Council agreed to ask Walton Hackman, secretary-elect of MCC Peace Section, to serve as resource person in further discussion of the issue in the September meeting of the Council. Meanwhile, Council members will take their homework seriously by continued study in preparation for carrying the question to the church.

In “What Belongs to Caesar” (4 April 1972), Robert E. Dickinson explained how he had come around to the war tax resistance position:

Although I was a conscientious objector to war in the Second World War, I have justified the paying of war taxes to myself with the quote from Jesus, “Render unto Caesar…” As violence has escalated in our world I have become increasingly uneasy with this concept. With the reading of What Belongs to Caesar? a discussion on the Christians’ response to the payment of war taxes by Donald D. Kaufman, I realized that Christ’s statement was not to be taken too literally but needed to be placed in context.

It has become increasingly clear to me that my own reasons for paying war taxes was one of protecting property and job, neither of which are ultimate Christian values. The now well-documented illegality of the war as substantiated by the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the fact that the individual citizen is to be held responsible for his acts as established in the Nuremberg Trials are further factors in my decision. As an architect I do not wish to emulate the German architect, Albert Speer, who sold his soul to the state for professional advancement.

It seems to me that Christians who refuse to serve in the military but at the same time pay for war put themselves in the unenviable position of paying someone else to fight their wars for them. With God’s leading I will do my best not to do this.

On 20 April 1972 issue, Marvin & Rachel Miller wrote to President Nixon, explaining that they were going to pay all of their taxes, but would be “donating an amount equal as nearly as possible to our war taxes into an alternate fund.”

Meanwhile, other Mennonites were refusing to pay their war taxes while redirecting them to alternative funds. The telephone excise tax was a popular target for anti-war activists. This account comes from the 25 April 1972 edition:

An increasing number of people are sending war tax monies to Mennonite Central Committee, instead of paying them to the United States Government for military use, said Calvin Britsch, MCC assistant treasurer. Contributions of tax money are of two kinds, Britsch said. More people are refusing to pay the federal tax levied on the use of telephones. This 10 percent tax is seen as a direct source for military expenditures. People who refuse this tax simply subtract the 10 percent from their telephone bill and send it instead to MCC.

Ron Meyer tried to relax the hold that the traditional Render-unto-Caesar interpretation had on many Mennonites, in his 23 May 1972 article “Reflections on Paying War Taxes.” This was also the first mention I found in Gospel Herald of peace-tax-fund legislation:

[Render-unto-Caesar summary omitted] When He answers, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” he doesn’t make a solid commitment one way or the other.

Instead, Jesus makes it apparent that His follower should decide what of his belongs to the government and what to God. He does not tell the Christian that his tax money should be given without thought to the government, an interpretation that seems to be quite prevalent today.

In contrast to this interpretation, some American Christians now are questioning the morality of voluntarily paying taxes which support the U.S. government’s military policies.

The income tax is the main source of revenue for warfare: 60 to 75 percent of it is used for military purposes. The 800-member Goshen College Mennonite Church determined that the amount of money its members “gave” for military purposes through the income tax was almost twice as much as church giving in that congregation. Though Christ’s work cannot be measured by dollars alone, the thought of paying twice as much for war as for the church and its mission of peace is disturbing.

It is almost impossible not to support the war in Vietnam, however indirectly, if one lives in U.S. today. Even a small purchase may be supporting a company which has been awarded government contracts for war materials. If one does refuse to pay war taxes, the government will take the amount from his bank account or personal possessions. The question then arises, “Why resist the tax if you end up supporting the war effort anyway?”

Tax resisters answer this by saying that one’s intention must be more than just trying to “keep his hands clean.” The real purpose of war tax resistance is to provide a witness against the war and the ways in which tax money is being used for military purposes.

There are various approaches to war tax resistance for one who decides upon this type of peace witness. Many tax resisters refuse to pay the 10 percent telephone tax that is to be used expressly for war. The telephone company usually regards this as a matter between the government and the individual (if notified of the reason for the refusal) and will not cut off phone service. IRS may take the money from a bank account or send men to the home. Telephone tax resisters have found that talking to IRS men gives them an excellent chance to witness.

Because of the tax-withholding policy of most employers, nonpayment of income taxes is more difficult. In this case, if there is any extra tax due each year, the resister may refuse to pay this as a token gesture. Letters of protest sent in with tax forms are also indicative of the taxpayer’s stance for peace.

Some resisters earn less than the taxable income level for their number of dependents. This level starts at $1724.99 per year for no dependents. Those resisting in this way pay no income tax at all.

If one is self-employed, it is a relatively simple matter not to pay the 60 to 75 percent of the income tax used for war. The tax resister simply deducts this percentage from the amount he must give. This is not to say that the government won’t take the amount eventually from the individual’s personal property.

An alternative to the war tax system, presently under discussion by various groups, is the World Peace Tax Fund. This proposal, drawn up by a group of University of Michigan law students, suggests that an individual’s tax money that would go for war purposes could be channeled into a world peace fund if he so wished. This is similar to the Selective Service Conscientious Objector provision in which an alternative to compulsory military service is provided. If this proposal is put through Congress, it will provide a peace witness that is within the law. Its inherent danger is that people may become less bothered by the killing if they aren’t paying for it.

Total noncooperation with the Internal Revenue Service, similar to noncooperation with the Selective Service, is not extensive, since IRS is set up for peaceful purposes as well as channeling money for war.

The consequences of war tax resistance have not proven severe so far, yet the decision is weighty, since legally one could be fined and imprisoned for tax evasion.

Most Christian tax resisters hold that if one decides to take this stand, he must remember that his real object cannot be to “keep his hands clean.” He must be led by a desire to witness for peace and against violence and war. Even a simple refusal to pay a telephone tax may influence someone to follow Christ’s way of peace.

There are many Christians who are sincerely opposed to resisting the government in the ways that have been discussed here. And there are many also who feel that by paying war taxes, they are giving to Caesar what is God’s. Whatever a believer’s decision about the war tax issue, it should be carefully and prayerfully considered with the way of Christ firmly in mind.

The Gospel Herald editor, “D.” (John M. Drescher) endorsed this in a 20 June 1972 editorial: “When approximately 70 percent of the tax dollar is going to war, a foremost frontier of faith may well be the kind of witness we bear in refusing to finance killing.”

He followed this up with a second editorial in the 27 June 1972 issue — “Taxes for War”:

Approximately 70 percent of income taxes go to pay for war and all of the 10 percent telephone tax goes to pay for war. What is the responsibility of those who believe that war is contrary to the Spirit and teaching of Christ? Should we not seek an alternative in paying taxes when the government’s primary need is for our money, just as hard as we sought an alternative service when the government needed our bodies?

Those who understand what is happening in the automated war and have a concern for life are asking questions like the above with growing seriousness.

Some simply dismiss the whole question by saying, “Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and to God the things which are God’s.” Could this be a cop out? Might Christ not be laying upon us the obligation to decide what is Caesar’s and what is God’s? Or was He saying that we will need to decide whether we are Caesar’s person or God’s person? Isn’t it strange that, over the years, many of those who used this Scripture to say that we should pay our taxes without question, did not render unto God even what was required under the Old Testament? As a church we are even today much more obedient in rendering to Caesar what he demands than to God what is His.

Look at it this way. Suppose Caesar should demand a 10 percent telephone tax to wipe out Jews or Indians or blacks in the United States. What would be our reaction? Would we willingly and without question render it to Caesar? How would that be different than demanding a 10 percent tax to wipe out Vietnamese? What would we say if it were levied to bomb Lancaster, Goshen, or Hesston? Or to bring it closer. Suppose Caesar would level a 10 percent tax to pay for the extermination of Mennonites. Would we encourage everyone to “render unto Caesar what he asks for”? Would such a 10 percent tax be any different than paying a 10 percent tax for killing Vietnamese? If so, what is the difference?

Since Caesar receives all his rights from God, does not he forfeit these rights when he violates them? What is our duty to use money to restrain injustice and to advance right?

For additional study help and discussion, order and study the paperback, What Belongs to Caesar, by Donald D. Kaufman, Herald Press. As a church, we are at the point where we must somehow come to grips with what we will do about giving our money to support war.

Dealing with a problem of this proportion will be costly. It may demand a different life-style, the loss of property and institutions. We can be assured, however, that the way of obedience, even though it leads through the wilderness and death, is the way of Christ. Out of death we believe there is always a resurrection. And how our world needs resurrection life!

Don Blosser’s declaration of war tax resistance can be found in the 27 June 1972 issue:

Sixteen years ago, the country told me I had to join the army. I told them I was a Christian and I could not do it. Now, the country tells me I must give it money so it can pay other people to fight and kill. Once again, I must say I cannot, because I am a Christian. A very large portion of the taxes we pay, as well as a number of special taxes, go directly to help fight the war. I have told the government that because Jesus said I should not kill, I cannot pay these, and that instead I give that amount to the church to use in helping people our country makes homeless.

At least one speaker brought up war tax resistance at “Mission 72” (1 July 1972):

One speaker took the open mike to make a statement on the war in Vietnam. He felt that the government is not leveling with us. Therefore, we should find some way to disengage ourselves as a people — perhaps through nonpayment of certain taxes.

The 18 July 1972 issue brought news of how war tax resistance was spreading among Unitarian Universalists:

Refuse Payment of “Phone Tax”

Resolutions urging Unitarian Universalists to refuse payment of the telephone excise tax, and calling for strong gun control laws were approved by delegates to the 11^th annual Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly.

Action on the controversial issues was taken by 678 delegates, the smallest number of delegates in the history of the Association.

Stating that the telephone excise tax “was levied specifically by Congress in 1966 to finance the war in Vietnam,” the resolution calls on “all Unitarian Universalists to refuse payment of the telephone excise tax” and urges the UU Association “to refuse such payments also.”

Legal counsel for the 375,000-member Association told delegates that refusal to pay the tax is considered a criminal offense carrying a one-year jail sentence or $10,000 fine or both.

Some feedback from Gospel Herald readers followed:

Art Smoker, 18 July 1972

I want to commend your courage in writing the editorial, “Taxes for War” (June 27 issue). Your words seem clearly to be in the spirit of Jesus. Asking the question, “Suppose Caesar would level a 10 percent tax to pay for the extermination of Mennonites. Would we encourage everyone to ‘render unto Caesar what he asks for’?” brings the argument for nonpayment of war taxes home with blunt but true force.

We are personally searching for the Christian way with regard to the payment of our taxes. Your editorial shed additional light to our pilgrimage.

John Swarr, 1 August 1972

Thanks for your two editorials recently (“We Merely Pay to Kill” and “Taxes for War”). They, along with Maynard Shirk’s “Plea from Saigon” and Don Blosser’s "But, Daddy,” point out our silent complicity in financing the destruction, rather than Jesus’ call to love, of our Vietnamese neighbors. Our silence indicates the complacent neglect of our individual responsibility as Christians and our corporate responsibility as the church to be God’s reconciling community in this world.

We cannot be silent or complacent in our militarized society and still name Jesus our Lord! Paul said, "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). It appears that our renewal has not yet occurred. Our churches have not become God’s liberated zones. As an ex-VS-er I recently learned that MCC paid about $1,500 in federal telephone tax during 1971 alone, a tax that "Vietnam and only the Vietnam operation makes this bill (federal phone tax) necessary,” according to Rep. Wilbur Mills of the House Ways and Means Committee (Congressional Record of Feb. 23, 1966).

Our other church agencies and our churches are no different from MCC in this respect. As John A. Lapp wrote in the MCC Peace Section Newsletter, Apr. 15, 1972, “Each institution has wittingly or unwittingly developed its program not simply because this is what the Lord or the brotherhood wants us to do but also because this is what IRS allows us to do” (italics mine). Yes, Brother Drescher, we do not have to worry about rendering to Caesar his due, for he collects by force. But God only receives voluntary service, which we continually cut short because of submission to government or some other reason. Our fruits indicate what kind of trees we Mennonites are — comfortable, quiet, complacent.

As Jesus’ disciples we must say no to paying for others or machines to destroy our neighbors, just as the Mennonite Church has said no to participating actively in such destruction, as Jesus said no to Peter fighting enemies with a sword. As we say no individually we must encourage our churches and agencies to also say no to war taxes as corporate bodies, even if it costs something such as the tax exemption privilege, or property, or social status. Being “renewed of mind” in witnessing to Jesus’ way of reconciling love for all people. For as disciples we can value nothing more.

Alvin Hooley, 1 August 1972

In the name of Christianity, let’s keep balanced on this idea of withholding “war taxes.”

Every person that works in any industry or food production, helps to produce commodities that are used by the army. So why not talk about laying off from work so many days or withholding so many head of cattle? Even if we did that the army would still get its share of what did go on the market. And if we hold back part of our taxes, the army will get what it needs out of what we do pay.

In the days when Paul lived, Rome was just as corrupt as America has been, and still Paul says in Romans 13 that we should pay to “all their dues.”

Alcohol is a much worse killer than war is, why not start doing something about it?

Paul R. Metzler, 8 August 1972

Remembering Paul was living under one of the most cruel and bloody governments of all time and he knew that much of the tax money went to pay the Roman army, which not only put wicked people to death but many, many Christians as well, yet admonished the Roman Christians, “Pay your tax” without any strings attached. In the editorial, “Taxes for War,” (June 27) you quote, “Render to Caesar…” and you say, “Might Christ not be laying upon us the obligation to decide what is Caesar’s and what is God’s?” You are not suggesting that each of us should decide for himself how much tax he ought to pay and what he wants his tax money used for, are you? That is getting pretty far out it seems to me.

I think Paul is telling us in Romans 13 that the government as ordered by God is responsible, (1) to provide for our needs, v. 3, (2) to protect us, v. 4, and we in turn shall pay the government the taxes that are laid upon us, with no strings attached as to how they should use our money. The government is not accountable to us but to God and He will hold them responsible for their actions. Romans 12:19.

Marlene K. Kropf, 8 August 1972

May I express appreciation for the good articles in the June 27 issue of Gospel Herald which dealt with our response to war. I was especially glad for the editorial, “Taxes for War,” and for the “Testimony on Taxes.” My husband and I have been part of a group in our congregation which studied Donald D. Kaufman’s book, What Belongs to Caesar? and as a result we and others have been seeking to live an altered life-style which will proclaim our commitment to Christ’s way of love. We too have felt that the way of obedience may be costly. Reading such testimonies in the Gospel Herald gives us courage to continue to learn what discipleship in this area means.

Lester Troyer, 8 August 1972

Covered the usual Romans 13 / 1 Peter 2 argument against war tax resistance, while bemoaning the lack of church giving.

Steven W. Mason, 8 August 1972

I am glad to hear that you are concerned about war taxes. I’m sure that a lot of people share this same concern. However, I must say that your concern is probably little more than the academic cloak worn by the average “pious Christian." Why do I say this? There is a very simple answer to the problem of war taxes for the person who is truly concerned. I’m not talking about the “Oh, isn’t that a shame” set. I’m talking about those who see the sadness and weep. Those who lock themselves in their rooms and beat on their mattresses in anguish. The answer is simply don’t earn enough money to have to pay taxes. It is the only legal recourse we have at the present time.

Some say they cannot live on that amount of money, and I say hogwash! Who is your God? Did He tell you that you need a six-room house? Did He tell you that you need a new car, a television, or an air conditioner? Did He even tell you that you need electricity, running water, or a living-room rug? My God didn’t. My God said, “Love Me more than you love anything in this world. Love your neighbor more than you love yourself.

Remember the rich man who would not give up his riches to follow Christ. I say that every one of us is rich, and anyone who cannot part with his riches cannot love the Lord, for we cannot serve two gods.

We can continue with our present stewardship (pittance that it is) and still not have to pay taxes. I am not suggesting that we quit working, but I am suggesting that we refuse salaries which cause us to have to pay taxes. A married couple can now earn $2,300 and be exempt from taxes. A family with children, even more.

I don’t expect very many people to take this seriously, for God only opens the eyes of a few However, I want to express my love to those of you who will think I am a little crazy.

John M. Ebby, 12 September 1972

Responding to Steven W. Mason’s letter:

After reading D.D. Kauffman’s book What Belongs to Caesar?, listening to and reading testimonies from tax protesters, and thinking about the subject, I had arrived at about the same conclusions that Bro. Mason presents. I suppose it is to my discredit that I am unwilling to act on these conclusions as he apparently has done.

It has been said that the entire science of economics is summarized in the statement, “There is no such thing as free lunch.” And I would like to suggest that our tax liabilities represent that which we owe unto Caesar in return for the material blessings and luxuries that we enjoy under Caesar’s system. Remember that the Pharisees, who were admonished to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” had confessed their involvement in the Roman economic system by their possession of Caesar’s coinage.

As Bro. Mason has so ably pointed out, it is within our power to arrange our affairs in such a way that Caesar is also willing to reduce our tax liability if we are willing to give the money unto God. Unfortunately, it costs us 100 cents to give a dollar unto God through the church, and only 20 cents if we elect to pay the tax and keep the dollar for ourselves.

The 8 August 1972 issue brought news that the Central Conference of American Rabbis had decided to resist the phone tax corporately:

Rabbis Refuse Phone “War” Tax

In protest against the war in Vietnam, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) has instructed its executive vice-president to withhold payment of the federal telephone excise tax which, it said, supports the Vietnam war.

The CCAR said it is the first Jewish organization to approve this act of civil disobedience in protest of the Vietnam war. The action was taken after consultation with lawyers.

At the same time, the Reform rabbis urged in a resolution the movement’s sister institutions — the Hebrew Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations — to follow a similar course of action.

Individual members of the conference were called upon “as an act of personal moral responsibility” to withhold the telephone tax. The CCAR has protested the Vietnam war since 1964.

A report on the August 1972 “Lamb’s War” camp meeting noted that a war tax resistance break-out group had formed.

A pseudonymous “Letter to My Home Church” reprinted in the 5 September 1972 issue mentioned how uncomfortable the churchgoer was with the casual taxpaying and patriotism encountered in the (also pseudonymous) congregation:

I have heard comments from you people like “I’m glad to pay my taxes for the privilege of living in a ‘free’ country.”

Oh yes, Cherrydale has certainly become patriotic. We pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to IRS each year knowing that 60 percent goes to pay for killing. The killers rest at ease knowing that they have allowed us an alternative. We can be conscientious objectors.

There were objections to the “peace tax fund” legislation idea almost from the very beginning, as Richard Malishchak’s “Some Thoughts on Peace Taxes” (31 October 1972) shows. He makes a good effort at rebutting those objections, but it’s interesting to note how few of his defenses still apply to the pathetically watered-down Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act that promoters are pushing today:

Should it be legal to pay for peace?

Some Thoughts on Peace Taxes

by Richard Malishchak
From The Reporter for Conscience Sake

The World Peace Tax Fund Act, which was introduced several months ago in the House of Representatives, has spawned controversy, strangely enough, among the very people and groups who are most in sympathy with the desired goals of the Act.

The Tax Fund Act would permit taxpayers to claim status as Conscientious Objectors to taxation for military purposes. Small segments of the peace movement which have no interest in tax resistance/objection have naturally been cool to the proposed legislation. But doubts have been raised even in the tax resistance movement. The national War Tax Resistance office is deciding this month whether to throw their support behind the Tax Fund Act, and local WTR groups have been encouraging reader responses in their newsletters.

Being a human creation, the World Peace Tax Fund Act is flawed. Some of the doubts expressed about the Act do have merit. Yes, there is the danger that individuals would use a Conscientious Objector tax provision simply to soothe their own consciences, while taxes for military expenditures are collected from other people and the killing continues. But has war tax resistance done any better on this point? The tax resistance movement has yet to demonstrate that resistance alone is an effective tool. The money is frequently collected anyway from the resister and used in the general fund, and the resister is liable to become an unwilling war-taxpayer. Nor is a large-scale prison witness, large enough to effect a change in national consciousness by itself, a realistic possibility.

As important as acts of individual witness are, the military budget remains monstrous. Ironically the military budget is likely to increase in the coming fiscal year (see the July Tax Talk from WTR, 339 Lafayette St., New York 10012).

It may also be true that legal channels for tax objection would siphon off some potential resisters into the “system.” But would this number be significant in relation to the new objectors who would otherwise shy away from “illegitimate” protest?

Furthermore, if the government is still getting the money to buy death and suffering, what is the difference whether an individual protester is called a “resister” or an “objector”? There is naturally a palpable personal difference between the witness of the objector and that of the resister. But the World Peace Tax Fund Act is no threat at all to those who would continue to choose resistance. Those who resist war taxation, like those who resist the draft, are in the vanguard of the peace movement and so must be especially careful to avoid the snare of moral elitism, a “more-resistant-than-thou” attitude that may obscure the common goal.

In the case of taxes, the common goal would seem to be to spend more on life and less on death. And in addition to its overall importance, the Tax Fund Act contains two especially significant provisions toward this end.

First of all, the bill would provide for positive peace expenditures: the objector’s allotted “peace taxes” would not go into the general fund but into the World Peace Tax Fund and from there into designated peaceful activities.

Second, the Secretary of the Treasury would be obligated to inform every taxpayer, on the tax return instruction booklet, of the existence of the Peace Tax Fund and the qualifications for participation. This provision could be momentous. Combined with a vigorous tax counseling network, which is already beginning, it could become an effective consciousness-raising instrument.

In recent years, for example, the percentage of Conscientious Objectors recognized by the Selective Service System has been between one and two percent of the total number of registrants. The vast majority of these men became Conscientious Objectors or recognized they were Conscientious Objectors after being confronted with an actual choice between morally opposite courses of action. Most taxpayers, however, write their annual check to IRS or claim their refund with a minimum of decision-making.

If informed every year by the government in the official IRS publication that paying war taxes is not an inevitability, would one or two out of every 100 taxpayers choose to pay for peace instead? If yes, the impact would be far beyond what tax resistance alone can achieve.

Admittedly a hopeful answer to this question assumes a basic “good will” on the part of most Americans, and that lack of information is the best ally of the war makers. Yet how many of today’s draft Conscientious Objectors knew that they were Conscientious Objectors before they registered for the draft or before they became “draft-eligible”? Not even a local draft board would deny a Conscientious Objector claim on the grounds that the registrant was not born a Conscientious Objector. In the words of Joan Baez’ new album, which she dedicates in part to war tax refusal, more and more people must be encouraged to “come from the shadows.” This is exactly what a Conscientious Objector tax provision would do. (A recent Detroit poll, incidentally, showed support for the war tax refusal of Jane Hart, wife of the Michigan Senator, by 55 percent of the survey sample.)

If the Tax Fund Act does not cut the military budget directly, it would at least be likely to help produce an awareness of government expenditures that will cause people to think about, and consciously choose, to buy either peace or war, rather than passively “permitting” the government to buy war on their behalf. This public awareness of where their dollars are going is, in turn, bound to be reflected in the actions of voter-conscious legislators. If the people truly want peace, it will be easier for them to have it.

The World Peace Tax Fund Act is an important piece of legislation. It will need all the help it can get, first to be taken seriously by “old guard” Congressmen, and later to be pushed through the wall of opposition that will form. Draft resisters, military Conscientious Objectors, draft Conscientious Objectors, and tax resisters must begin to form the wedge of support behind this bill. No one else will.

In “Thankful for What, When You Have All You Need?” (12 December 1972), Atlee Beechy wrote, “We may not be able to do too much about our governments’ (U.S. and Canada) priorities but we should be able to make a frontal attack on our priorities as Christians. Is it my responsibility that my tax dollars go for military purposes?”

Finally, a report on the 12 December 1972 MCC Peace Assembly noted that there was a break-out group to discuss war tax resistance. And “Stan Hostetter publicly declared his objection to war taxes and presented a check to the MCC Peace Section in lieu of tax payments which would be used for war.”

This is the fifteenth 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.

War tax resistance in the Mennonite Church was finally running on all cylinders by 1973, thanks in part to Gospel Herald editor John Drescher, who had proven himself to be sympathetic to the cause. In October, Daniel Hertzler would take over the helm, but he too had had good things to say about war tax resistance in the past.

The 9 January 1973 issue reminded readers about the Funkite schism among early American Mennonites, which was prompted in part by Funk’s willingness to pay taxes to the rebellious Continental Congress, which was frowned upon by the orthodox Mennonite community. This was billed in Gospel Herald as “War Taxes in 1777”.

An article about Christians for Peace in the 30 January 1973 issue quoted David Bailey, the group’s co-chairman, as saying, “When over 60 percent of our income-tax dollar goes for defense and wars (past, present, and future), do we not need to ask whether the time has not come for questioning this kind of investment in death rather than life, even though our government declares this is an investment in peace.”

Readers also learned of an 11 February 1973 “Evanston Peace Series” meeting on “War Taxes and Christian Civil Disobedience.”

The 20 February 1973 issue carried the news that the United Methodists were getting in on the act:

Backs Minister’s Refusal

The head of the Wilmington District of the United Methodist Church has pledged his support to a minister who is refusing to pay 60 percent of his 1972 federal income tax.

The Rev. Howell O. Wilkins, superintendent of the district, said he did not know what supporting the Rev. Ronald P. Arms would mean, “but I’ll support him.”

Mr. Arms, associate pastor of the 3,100-member Aldersgate Church in suburban Fairfax, has said he will not pay that part of his income tax which he figures goes to “buy bombs and other weapons of destruction.”

The clergyman, the son of missionaries to Chile, has the “respect” of his bishop in his action. Bishop James K. Mathews of Washington, whose area includes Wilmington, told a reporter he had considered the same form of war protest.

Taxes that Mennonites were redirecting via the Mennonite Central Committee had risen to $4,000 in 1972, and so the MCC decided to establish a special fund for that purpose, according to a note in the 27 February 1973 issue:

During the past year the Peace Section of the Mennonite Central Committee received $4,000 in contributions made in lieu of tax payments. This was something of a new phenomenon. The contributions were unsolicited; they were made by individuals whose consciences would not allow them to pay taxes which were used for war purposes. Since a substantial number of individuals from the MCC constituency are looking for an alternative way to use tax monies otherwise collected for war purposes, the Peace Section took action at its November meeting to establish a Taxes-for-Peace Fund to which such contributions could be made. It should be clearly understood that contributions made to this fund will not satisfy the Internal Revenue Service.

In a 6 March 1973 letter to the editor, Titus Lehman mentioned his own aspirations to reduce his war taxes and urged other Mennonites to make more noise about their own war tax resistance or avoidance efforts in order to prod others.

Some anonymous Goshen College students coordinated to make charitable donations, purposefully to reduce their war tax burden. The 20 March 1973 issue had the story:

Gifts, Not Taxes, Chosen by Three

Recognizing a choice, three young persons currently living in Goshen and with an average income of $4000 have contributed a total of $5000 to Goshen College.

They have decided to give their earnings away rather than keep them and pay federal taxes, much of which goes for the military.

Their gifts, received by the college over an eight-month period, were designated for the specially created Agape Student Grant Fund.

The three donors wish to remain anonymous and don’t talk much about their generosity for several reasons. An important one is: a lot of Christians want to give more money, but can’t. However, they give in other substantial ways, and are blessed by God.

One of them said, “We don’t want others to feel they re not in the kingdom business if they can’t give dollars.”

A second reason is: “If people see our names, they will see only us. They may miss the value of taking Jesus Christ literally in the realm of giving and sharing.”

A decade after his “Why I Don’t Pay My Taxes” bombshell (see ♇ 6 September 2018), John Howard Yoder was back in the 22 May 1973 issue:

Do We Believe in Sharing Our Decisions?

by John H. Yoder

Recently it was my privilege to observe a brotherly conversation about the meaning of discipleship for Mennonites, which was a significant landmark for me. It was the kind of event I would wish to see happen more often.

First of all, what happened was that a number of Mennonite brothers and sisters sharing the life of an urban congregation, persons capable of earning their living and finding their place in middle-class society in a comfortable way, met together to see how to be more faithful.

Instead of being satisfied with the pattern of accommodating themselves to the models of comfort and dignity set before us by the media and the neighbors and the examples of many other urban Mennonites, they have been studying together for a considerable length of time searching for more adequate and more contemporary ways of being disciples of Jesus Christ in the modern world.

These persons sought this faithfulness within the brotherhood and within the interpretation of the meaning of discipleship which they derived from the New Testament and Anabaptist history, rather than assuming that they would find better guidance from some other source, some faddish movement, or some new slogan. Yet they followed the vision of costly nonconformed discipleship to new conclusions, derived from a new reading of where our society is going. The particular conclusion to which they came was that as nonresistant Christians in a society dominated by the Vietnam war they should not willingly pay all of the taxes being levied by the American government for the prosecution of that war.

The war tax issue has been passed around inconclusively by Mennonite committees ever since the 1967 General Conference. The concern of a committed circle of people within one congregation can perhaps get definite when churchwide specialists cannot.

My concern at this point is, however, not to deal with that issue for its own sake, but only to recognize gratefully the commitment and concern which lay behind the process of search which led to such an independent and potentially costly conclusion.

The second thing for which I am deeply grateful is that this group of brothers and sisters did not take their new sense of leading off into a new church or a separate movement. They rather shared it with a wider circle of their brothers and sisters; first of all in the local congregation and then in the district conference. They did not revel in their nonconformity or in their lonely heroism. They rather asked whether the wider brotherhood could support what they were doing or could correct them. They sought to make their witness a brotherhood witness and opened themselves to brotherhood counsel.

Third, I was gratefully impressed by the fact that the district conference, when it received this request for comment, took it seriously. It was not simply negated without a hearing, although certainly a great majority of the people in conference disagreed with it. It was not simply set aside through procedural artifices on the grounds that it had been raised too late in the conference or that other things were more pressing. Nor was some dishonest superficial affirmation passed without testing the matter critically. Instead the conference chose to call a special session to be devoted specifically to the study of this matter as soon as the program could be prepared. It was this special session that I was privileged to attend.

Fourth, I am grateful that in the preparation and implementation of this planned special session the primary desire was to be open to the guidance of God through His Spirit and the Word and the brethren, rather than to bargain out some compromise or to battle toward a one-sided conclusion. There was no cheap balancing of “faithfulness” against “relevance” or of the old against the new. There was an effort to listen both to the voice of Scripture and to “the voice of [our] brother’s blood” (Gen. 4:10). Those who feel they should withhold a portion of tax monies were not self-righteous about having found a convincing way to do this. Those who are not sure there is such a thing as an identifiable “war tax” did not for that reason refuse conversation. There was a readiness on all sides to admit that the problem is bigger than any solutions we have ready for it.

Fifth, I was gratified by the number of people who, without being convinced at all of the rightness of this proposal or even its urgency as an issue, were willing for the sake of the brotherhood to give an extra day and to stretch their imaginations and their charity to hear their concerned brothers. They gave evidence to a commitment in principle to listen, and of openness to take risks if convinced, which made the search together more than an intellectual game and much more than a counting of votes for and against established positions.

That meeting did not finish dealing with the question. More will still need to be done. Perhaps this first session could have done better if there had been other kinds of preparation or other kinds of process: this is not for me to say. It certainly could have done worse.

I also started noticing periodic articles promoting Peace Tax Fund legislation or giving status on the prospects for such legislation in Congress around this time. I won’t be reproducing most of those in this series of posts.

A “Report from Portland” in the 30 October 1973 issue read in part:

…Several families discontinued paying the telephone tax as a response to the group’s study of war taxes…

I have already alluded to another issue which matters to us a great deal. Many of us came to Portland as conscientious objectors serving in the city’s hospitals, and we continue to be concerned about our response to our government. As a congregation we have struggled with the issue of paying war taxes. To us there seems to be an inconsistency between refusing to give our bodies to the cause of war, but being willing to give our income for that same warfare. We were instrumental in bringing together the congregations of our district for a discussion of war taxes.

Typically, our own responses to this issue have varied: a few in our church have refused to pay a portion of their income taxes designated for military purposes; others refused to pay the telephone tax levied for the Vietnam War; some write letters of protest and concern to government officials; and still others believe all taxes should be paid, no matter what the purpose. Whatever our responses, we continue to be aware that church must raise her voice against violence and slaughter in our world.

We’ll see whether or how coverage of war tax resistance changes in Gospel Herald now that Daniel Hertzler has taken up the editorial reins. Hertzler had given a positive review to John Howard Yoder’s war tax resistance announcement back in 1963, so I don’t expect any radical about-faces.

This is the nineteenth 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.

The Mennonite Church Peace Section (U.S.) met on 3 January 1978. I found this cryptically-worded note in a Gospel Herald report about the meeting:

The arms race and war tax questions remains a vital one. Its focus seems to be shifting from tax withholding to the issue of civil disobedience for conscience and God’s sake.

The 24 January 1978 issue reported on war tax resistance ferment in the General Conference Mennonite Church (a cousin to Gospel Herald’s own Mennonite Church):

A Christian’s response to civil authority will be given concentrated emphasis by the General Conference Mennonite Church during the next year. The study is an outcome of a resolution at the triennial conference in Bluffton, Ohio, July 22 to Aug. 3, 1977. That resolution called for a thorough study of civil disobedience leading to a special conference early in 1979, which is intended to state an official position of the General Conference with respect to that portion of income taxes which are used for funding military expenditures, and in general, to research the whole question of obedience-disobedience to civil authority.

Responsibility for the study has been given to the peace and social concerns committee of the Commission on Home Ministries. They, however, requested that a special obedience-civil disobedience committee be formed to give general direction and leadership.

To date three major aspects of the study have been planned — an attitudinal survey, an invitational consultation in June, and a study guide to be ready by the fall quarter.

Included in the survey are 28 questions chosen to provide an inventory of congregational attitudes toward the authority of the church and of the state. It will also indicate attitudes to particular issues such as abortion, capital punishment, and payment of taxes for military purposes. A copy of the questionnaire will be sent to every congregation. If the congregation decides to use the survey it will be duplicated locally to save on costs. After the 1979 conference the same questionnaire will again be used to determine whether the churchwide discussion on obedience-civil disobedience has generated any changes in attitudes.

A second major happening is scheduled for June 1–4 at Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind. An invitational consultation will bring together about 30 participants, including persons not committed to civil disobedience. The gathering will include administrative personnel from the General Conference, lawyers, biblical scholars, as well as representatives from Mennonite General Committee and the Mennonite Church.

It is expected that the study guide will evolve from the proceedings of the consultation. Five of the 13 lessons in the guide will focus on peacemaking in a technological society. What sort of peacemaking should Mennonites be about in an age of nuclear warfare and worldwide arms shipments? The remaining eight lessons will center in the meaning of civil disobedience. Was it practiced in the Bible? Is nonpayment of taxes a case in point?

The study process will culminate in the special midtriennium conference scheduled for February 1979. That gathering will be an official decision-making conference to which congregational delegates will come. At that point a decision on the meaning and practice of civil disobedience will be made.

There was a followup in the 7 March 1978 issue. From the coverage, I get the impression that the Mennonite Church was playing spectator and taking a wait-and-see attitude:

War taxes a key issue at GC meetings

If debate among members of the General Board of the General Conference Mennonite Church is the litmus test of what it means to be a discerning church, then the denomination is pointed toward an exciting future. The two issues, war taxes and fundraising, were the preeminent concerns during meetings in Newton, Kan., Feb. 10–14.

Although thorough reports were heard by the 16-member board on all aspects of programming — overseas mission, education, home ministries — and dozens of decisions were made, the two keynote issues were civil disobedience and how to communicate the need for increased giving.

During the first session on Friday, Board members locked onto the planning for the midtriennium conference on war taxes and civil responsibility. Uneasiness about the process erupted quickly. The structure of the June 1–4 invitational consultation on the issue was strongly faulted, as was the conference itself.

Board member Ken Bauman, pastor of First Mennonite Church in Berne, Ind., galvanized his colleagues with his allegations. “The consultation is not structured for dialogue — it is monologue. The way it has been set up upsets me deeply.” Later he declared that the Commission on Home Ministries should not serve as the launching pad for the study and the planning leading to the conference in 1979. “Why ask CHM? The image of CHM is stacked. It should be the responsibility of the General Board.”

His assessment was the beginning of a fruitful debate which occupied several more sessions of the General Board, one session of CHM, hallway discussions, and coffee confabs.

The debate crystallized about several key questions. What is wrong with the study process initiated by the obedience-civil disobedience committee of CHM? Is the issue of war taxes so divisive that a schism in the General Conference is inevitable? Is the February 1979 delegate conference viable?

By Feb. 14, perhaps symbolically, the hard-hitting process of charge and counter-charge had evolved into understanding and affirmation of the original plans. On paper little had changed, but in the minds of those who spoke for the “unheard” — the “conservatives,” the “common person,” and the Canadians — there was a restoration of confidence in the process. Tenseness was dissipated.

The June consultation will meet at Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind. About 25 persons are invited. These include theologians and biblical scholars, attorneys, administrative staff of the General Conference, several MCC staff, and representatives from the Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Brethren Church. The proceedings of the consultation are to serve as the basis for a study guide on civil disobedience.

Mennonite pastor Wally Fahrer spoke at a New Call to Peacemaking meeting in February:

Asked about his personal goals for the peacemaking initiative, the pastor listed: 1) a more radical community in all three denominations that will break down barriers in talking about peace with other Christians and non-Christians, 2) a radical change in our attitudes toward material things, and 3) a unified position on the problem of war taxes.

Fahrer has recently finished work on a four-unit war tax Bible study guide. He anticipates its publication late this spring by Ohio and Eastern Conference.

The Lancaster Conference had its own war tax study guides in the works, as shown in these excerpts from the 9 May and 20 June 1978 issues:

Mennonites and War Taxes is a 28-page booklet by Walter Klaassen which traces the history of the war tax issue in Anabaptism and suggests how Mennonites might relate to that history. It was first published by the Lancaster Conference Mennonite Historical Society but is now published by the Commission on Education of the General Conference Mennonite Church. Copies of the booklet may be ordered from Faith and Life Press…

“Honoring God with My Tax Dollars” is an excellent little pamphlet that deals with some big questions. Produced in 1973 (and revised in 1976) by the Peace Committee of Lancaster Mennonite Conference, this piece was prepared as “a study guide to be used in congregational or group discussion settings.” A bibliography of related resources is included at the end. Available at no cost from Lancaster Mennonite Conference…

The U.S. Peace Section met again in May 1978. This time the Gospel Herald coverage was more coherent:

The world arms race, nuclear threat, and militarism were the backdrop for a discussion of war tax resistance. The Section reaffirmed its 1975 recommendation to Mennonite institutions “to study the conflict between Christian obligations and legal obligations in the collection of federal taxes, especially when employees request that war taxes not be withheld from their wages, and that institutions be encouraged to honor such requests.”

Some disappointment was expressed that, with a few exceptions, constituent conferences and congregations of MCC have not wrestled with the war tax question.

A cross-organizational consultation on how Christians ought to behave in relation to the governments they live under was held in June 1978:

Consultation on civil responsibility issues call for obedience

Five themes — the nuclear menace, taxes for military purposes, the lessons of biblical and Anabaptist history, faithfulness, and effective witness — dominated a consultation on civil responsibility in Elkhart, Ind., June 1–4. In its sharpest focus the issue was how Mennonite institutions should respond to those employees who request that the military portion of their income taxes not be withheld by the employer. Under current law employers must deduct income tax from payrolls and remit the tax to the government.

Several Mennonite organizations are facing the issue. The General Conference is seeking the will of its 60,000 members in answering such a request from one of its employees, Cornelia Lehn. The consultation in Elkhart was one part of the discerning process leading to a delegate assembly, and a decision in February 1979.

Bible scholars, theologians, pastors, administrators, attorneys — twenty-nine persons in all — presented papers, exchanged insights, and probed the issue. Much of their analysis will be incorporated into a study guide to be published by September.

A findings committee — Palmer Becker, Hugo Jantz, Elmer Neufeld, John Stoner, Larry Kehler — drafted a statement. After hours of discussion and subsequent changes the persons at the consultation agreed that the statement fairly represented their thinking.

Some excerpts from the statement are listed below:

• “Our Christian obedience has to find new and creative responses to the proliferation of military weaponry and technology…
• “Christians respect the governing authorities… which leads to a broad range of activities in support of the public good. Nevertheless, at times our call of prior obedience to God’s sovereignty leads us to disobey the claims of the state…
• “We… have differing convictions about refusing to pay taxes for the military.
• “Let us be open to the possibility that the Spirit of God may lead some of us in a direction that is both prophetic and full of risks.
• “We agree that a way should be sought which will facilitate the expression of the convictions of conference employees who request that their taxes not be withheld.
• “We need to seek the counsel of and work with other Mennonite groups and denominations, particularly the Historic Peace Churches, in developing the most appropriate response to this issue.”

A follow-up was published in the 4 July 1978 issue:

War tax issue discussed at Elkhart

While delegates from nearly every government in the world met at the United Nations to debate whether they should continue the arms race, some 30 Mennonites representing North American conferences met at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries to debate whether they should continue to pay for it. Most Mennonite delegates likely knew something of the U.N. Special Session on Disarmament although probably none at the U.N. knew about the Mennonite meeting. The two groups had in common a deep concern about the crushing momentum of the arms race which places in jeopardy the very survival of the human race.

The Consultation on Civil Responsibility was initiated by the General Conference Mennonite Church with the support of the Mennonite Church and MCC Peace Section (U.S.) for discussion of paying taxes used for military purposes. Christians living in nations with nuclear weapons face a crisis of faith and morals. Such Christians live amidst wealth that is heavily generated and protected by military/economic systems whose focus is the perfecting of weapons for massive, indiscriminate global destruction. How can the church give a faithful and credible witness that its trust is not in these powers of death but in the life-giving power of Jesus Christ?

Mennonite Central Committee was represented at the consultation by four staff persons — William Snyder, Reg Toews, Urbane Peachey, and John Stoner. MCC’s interest in the war tax question grows out of (1) Peace Section’s assignment to explore issues related to the historic Mennonite and Brethren in Christ testimony of peace and nonresistance, (2) MCC’s administrative problem with war tax withholding, and (3) the relationship between the arms race and world hunger. Janet Reedy of Elkhart, Ind., attended in a dual role as a member of MCC Peace Section (U.S.) and as a representative from the Mennonite Church.

The issue came up again when the Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries met later in June:

The question of tax collection came up as a part of the report from Peace and Social Concerns secretary, Hubert Schwartzentruber. In increasing numbers, workers in church institutions have asked that their federal income taxes not be deducted from their paychecks so that they may refuse voluntary payment of the part of their taxes that goes for military purposes.

The Board reacted to this possibility with caution. For one thing, to fail to collect taxes is a federal offense. All persons responsible for such refusal are liable to prosecution, from the lowest to the highest in terms of responsibility. Also there was expressed a strong opinion in favor of positive instead of negative witness for peace, a position separated from civil disobedience on the one hand and civil religion on the other.

The question of tax withholding was designated for further study.

Wilmer Martin matter-of-factly put forward the traditional Christians-pay-their-taxes viewpoint in a fourth of July meditation on patriotism:

We readily pay our taxes. In paying our taxes, we not only pay for the many services we receive from the government, but we also pay to help care for the needy among us and beyond our borders. In willingly paying our taxes, we still have the opportunity to be critical and communicate our concerns about how the money is being used such as in military spending. We remember it is through paying our taxes that good is promoted and evil restrained.

And in an interview with John Howard Yoder in the same issue, he complained that the church had been lagging on coming to a sensible consensus about war taxes:

Where is our Mennonite peace testimony in danger?

We are not any clearer than before on the old problems such as separatism, civil disobedience, and tax resistance. We have made no progress in fashioning creative responses to these issues. They are talked about but there is no united action.

War tax resisters in Japan were back in the news as well. Michio Ohno spoke at the July 1978 Mennonite World Conference, Peace Interest Group, giving his talk a provocative title:

Micio [sic] Ohno of Japan spoke of his experiences as a war tax resister as he presented a paper, “A Form of Aggressive Peace Witness.”

A follow-up article gave more details:

Japanese pacifists witness aggressively

Over 80 Japanese citizens did not pay all or part of this year’s income taxes or asked for refunds, says Michio Ohno, Japanese minister who spoke on war tax resistance in Japan at the MCC-sponsored Peace Interest Group at Mennonite World Conference. Ohno is chairman of the Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Evangelical Cooperative Conference.

Ohno was introduced to pacifism while studying at the Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind., in 1964 to 1965. He was pastor of a church in Kyodan for six years and for the past year has taught English and led Bible studies in his home.

Ohno says he became involved with war tax resistance in 1974 when he owed the U.S. [sic] $4.40 in taxes. “I was troubled by the table on the back of the income tax form which stated that 6.5 percent of the tax money had been used for the military’s so-called “Self-Defense Forces” during the previous year.

“Shortly before, I had read in The Mennonite periodical about the World Peace Tax Fund Bill, a U.S. legislative measure, which if approved would allow conscientious objectors to rechannel their tax money to nonmilitary purposes. This idea impressed me because I knew that as a pacifist, I could not pay for war and war preparation.

“The next day I visited Gan Sakakibara, one of Japan’s leading Anabaptist scholars, to discuss this. I remembered his answer to a high school boy who had once asked him why Christians were not persecuted like the early Anabaptists had been.”

He answered, “That is because we are not true Christians. We are not good or bad. We are not the medicine or the poison. If we were, we would be persecuted.”

Ohno said he visited the tax office and explained why he could not pay the tax. “I told them I didn’t mind if they took my possessions.”

A group of people favoring conscientious objection to war taxes began meeting in Sakakibara s home.

When a civil lawyer sued the state for repayment of his tax money, believing that conscientious objection to war taxes was legal, he was invited to speak to the group. The lawyer’s visit resulted in the formation of Conscientious Objection to Military Tax (COMIT), a citizens’ group of 250 members including Mennonites, Quakers, Catholics, Buddhists, and nonbelievers. COMIT now holds summer study seminars and publishes “The Plowshare,” a bimonthly paper.

The 80 people who have not paid their taxes for this year have received notices demanding payment, but none has been arrested and no property has been seized. Additionally, 120,000 members of the General Conference of Trade Unions in Japan have asked for a tax refund to express their desire for peace.

“A huge olive tree grows up from a tiny pit,” he concluded. “We are sowing olive pits and tending seedlings. Someday there will be a stout olive tree, and one of the big branches, I hope, will be conscientious tax objection.”

The “New Call to Peacemaking” initiative was ramping up, with Mennonite participation:

War taxes peacemakers’ concern

During the last year, 26 regional New Call to Peacemaking meetings, involving more than 1,500 persons, took a new look at the teachings of their churches with special attention to violence, war, and peace.

The Wichita, Kan., group gave its encouragement to “individuals who feel called to resist the payment of the military portion of their federal taxes. The Wichita meeting also asked its churches and agencies to discontinue collecting taxes from its employees so that “they can have the option to follow their consciences in war tax resistance.”

When the national New Call to Peacemaking conference convenes in Green Lake, Wis., Oct. 5–8, it will be receiving requests from the regional meetings for a strong position on tax resistance proposals. It will also be asked to give guidance to individuals and church organizations on approaches to tax resistance.

The Green Lake Conference, which will be attended by some 300 members of the three sponsoring Peace Churches (Brethren, Friends, and Mennonites), will look at theological issues as well as matters of economic and social justice, including respect for human rights.

A follow-up appeared in the 26 September 1978 issue:

The New Call to Peacemaking conference is just around the corner. It is scheduled for Oct. 5–8 at Green Lake, Wis. Invited to the meeting are 300 Brethren, Friends, and Mennonites. Leaders of the conference have called for effective steps toward international disarmament and support for the United Nations,” saying that “mutual trust and cooperation are the only bases for long-term national and international security.” Citizen action, refusal to pay war tax, and other measures will be considered as ways of undercutting war. The Green Lake meeting, according to Dale Brown, Brethren theologian who will open the conference, will issue a call to the peace churches and those who sympathize with their aims to take new risks.

Two films on television commercials and a slide/cassette set on war taxes have recently been added to MBCM Audiovisuals, the rental library of Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries… “Conscience and War Taxes” is an excellent 20-minute color slide set/cassette presentation produced by the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund. It traces the history of the U.S. income tax, gives information on the military budget, and examines some of the economic consequences of military spending. The World Peace Tax Fund is discussed as a legal alternative to paying for war which could provide more than two billion dollars for funding peaceful solutions to world problems and at the same time provide more jobs for peaceful pursuits than are currently provided by war-related industries. The “Conscience and War taxes” slide set, cassette tape, and a resource packet can be obtained from MBCM Audiovisuals…

Later, the magazine gave a report of how the “New Call to Peacemaking” conference went:

“New Call to Peacemaking generated 26 regional meetings in 16 different areas of the U.S. during the ten months from September 1977 to June 1978,” reported Maynard Shelly to the conference in a summary paper, “A Declaration of Peace.” The records showed that more than 1,500 people were involved in those meetings and they generated 170 pages of reports, statements, and resolutions.

When asked what he expected to come out of this conference, before the sessions began, Peter Ediger, of Arvada, Colo., said, “Words, plenty of words.”

A number of delegates, for instance, were calling for “dramatic action,” whatever that might have been. As it turned out, because of the task orientation of the conference, the “action” was a statement agreed upon by the assembled, which covered the waterfront, but probably pleased only a few.

One of the central themes which stirred the most emotions turned out to be war-tax resistance. This was an issue the Mennonites felt strongly about. Those presenting the issue wished for action that would have given them a context for action. As in the case of the “dramatic action,” so much desired by some, this desire was also frustrated.

A follow-up asked “Which way for the ‘New Call’?”:

Organizers and conference leaders had projected the Green Lake meetings to be a working conference. The meetings were set up to assure some kind of action and/or product. Finally, after much careful shifting on the part of the findings committee, and public discussions that were sometimes hotter than illuminating, the conferees agreed to approve a revised statement of the findings committee. This heavy emphasis on task fulfillment almost restricted the creative work of the conference too much, according to some observers. But, of course, the conferees had been informed of the nature of the conference beforehand.

The findings statement was accepted by most participants, yet could count on ownership by few. Besides the document, inspiration, fellowship, and sharing that went on, there was little to show for everyone’s efforts. Nevertheless, “We see this not as the end of our journey but as the beginning stage of a continuing pilgrimage,” read the statement.

A world alternative to taxes for the military was endorsed and encouraged. And while the “children of the sixties” worried about war taxes, the younger set was most concerned about conscription, which seems to be looming over the horizon.

A 29 August 1978 article mentioned a “24-hour prayer vigil at the IRS building to protest taxes for military purposes. Leaflets distributed by those present stated, ‘It is time to cease paying for war while praying for peace.’ ” Protesters met with IRS officials to discuss their concerns.

In a midbiennium report on the Mennonite Publishing House (26 September 1978) I found this quote:

“We’re releasing a new focal pamphlet in December titled The Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace and Paying for War. Peace is central to our theology, not an option added on.”

The 10 October 1978 issue gave a preview of the upcoming General Conference Mennonite Church midtriennium meeting which they had convened especially to hash out the war tax withholding issue:

Controversial issue stirs sister denomination, civil responsibility

The program for the midtriennium conference of the General Conference Mennonite Church (GCMC) has been finalized.

As an official meeting of the denomination delegates will discuss the nature of a Christian’s civil responsibility, particularly the question of a Christian peace position in a militaristic society. For some participants the question is whether the withholding of payment of the military portion of their income taxes is justified. If so, then several employees of the GCMC would like the denomination to stop remitting the military portion of their taxes to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

For two days, Feb. 9–10, 1979, the issue will be debated in the Leamington Hotel in Minneapolis, Minn. If the conference delegates decide that nonpayment of military taxes is justified the decision is binding on the administrators of the GCMC.

Impetus for such an assembly began in December 1974 when GCMC employee Cornelia Lehn requested the General Conference business office not to remit the military tax portion of her paycheck to the IRS. Prior to 1974, the issue of “war taxes” had been discussed, and as early as 1971, delegates at the triennial sessions in Fresno, Calif., passed a statement protesting the use of tax monies for war purposes. The delegates also said, “We stand by those who feel called to resist the payment of that portion of taxes being used for military purposes.” However, the General Board of the GCMC did not think that directive from the delegates authorized them to stop remitting Lehn’s military taxes. Her request was refused.

Three years later, St. Catharines, Ontario, was the location for the next conference. There delegates called for education regarding militarism, reaffirmed the 1971 statement, and agreed that serious work be done on the possibility of allowing GCMC employees to follow their consciences on payment or nonpayment of military taxes.

Educational materials have included the periodical God and Caesar and two study guides. The Rule of the Sword and The Rule of the Lamb. In addition to these efforts two major consultations were convened in November 1975 and in June 1978. At these consultations scholarly papers were presented on militarism, biblical considerations for payment or nonpayment of military taxes, and Anabaptist history and theology related to war tax concerns.

Despite the protracted input, the General Board could not reach a consensus on the issue. Consequently the problem was brought to delegates at the July 1977 triennial conference in Bluffton, Ohio. At this juncture the delegate body committed itself to serious congregational study of civil disobedience and war tax resistance during the following 18 months. The delegates also decided to discuss the issue in detail at a midtriennium conference in 1979.

In an effort to implement the 1977 Bluffton resolution an eight-member civil responsibility committee was formed. Several actions were taken by it to encourage serious study. Early in 1978 an attitude survey on church and government was conducted. Approximately 2,500 responses were received, including 463 from a select sampling in 31 churches. A scholarly consultation was held in June 1978. One of the key ideas which came out of this consultation was whether those who feel strongly about not paying military taxes should be encouraged to form a separate corporation within the General Conference. To assist churches in their study of the issue two study guides were published. The Rule of the Sword deals primarily with facts and concerns related to militarism. The Rule of the Lamb centers in the sovereignty of God and biblical texts on taxes and civil authority.

Each of the more than 300 congregations in the GCMC is being encouraged to prepare a statement to bring to the 1979 conference. It is evident from the sale of the study guides that a minority of congregations are actually making an effort to study the issue, although all congregations have received sample copies of the guides. Many Canadian churches feel the issue is strictly an American problem, and there is a considerable diversity of conviction and thought among American congregations. Some congregations do not intend to send delegates.

What this means for the Minneapolis conference is difficult to assess, except for one feature. There will be a lot of stirring debate. After eight years of searching will there be some resolution of the withholding question? No one is predicting the outcome.

D.R. Yoder was getting fed up with all of this, and wrote an article to decry the war tax resistance “propaganda” he was reading in Gospel Herald (14 November 1978):

Exposition, not news.

My job is managing public communications for a large organization. In simple terms, I’m a propagandist — one who, according to my dictionary, spreads ideas, facts, or allegations deliberately to further a cause.

Interestingly, the root of this widely misunderstood word is in a division of the Catholic Church established to propagate the faith, i.e., to ensure that the church membership continue to be convinced of the church’s teachings and that others might become so convinced. Church-owned periodicals, such as this one, can thus rightly (and proudly) be said to be propagandistic.

As a propagandist, I am writing to point out some of the things I see in the current reporting by the Mennonite press of the war-tax-resistance movement. Not surprisingly, the reason I am writing is because I do not agree that resistance, nonviolent coercion or force, etc., are highly ethical strategies for Christians or that, specifically, war-tax resistance is an effective tactic in achieving peace.

Please understand that, while I personally think that war-tax resistance is getting considerably more than equitable coverage in the Mennonite press, that is not my point of concern. Rather, it is the aspects of that coverage that I believe Mennonites should question. These are:

First, source. The articles seem overwhelmingly to originate in the several information offices of Mennonite boards and agencies. Like me, the authors are propagandists who, it can be assumed, for whatever reasons, are producing releases representing their own biases or those of the persons employing them.

Second, style. The articles on tax resistance are written as news stories, not as expository pieces which are the common vehicle for the expression of both majority and minority opinions in the Mennonite press.

The last concern, and closely related to the second, is perspective. By adopting the news-reporting style, the tax-resisting position is presented as a given, accepted method of Christian witness. This style boldly assumes that not paying one’s taxes is widely held among Mennonites as Christ’s way, as well as that tax resistance is a rational means of bringing peace to the world.

Am I suggesting that Mennonite papers quit giving space to the tax-resistance movement? Definitely not. Nor, even that such coverage be necessarily reduced. For, despite my personal feelings, I am interested in the faith of my brothers and sisters who feel Christ is calling them to resist taxation.

Rather, I’m suggesting that coverage continue, but in the form of exposition, advocacy, and response; that brothers and sisters who are tax resisters be invited, even urged, to present the scriptural and other bases of their convictions and actions. And the same goes for other practitioners of nonviolent direct action: marching, sitting-in, disruption.

While the rest of us are waiting for these articles to emerge, brother editor, I would not want to be guilty of demanding that this or any other subject be suppressed. But, I know at least a few of us wonder sometimes if demonstrations and acts of resistance are really the most newsworthy events going on in the Mennonite subdivision of Christ’s kingdom.

In December the U.S. Peace Section met, and considered adding a full-time volunteer staff person to work on promoting World Peace Tax Fund legislation.

Hubert Schwartzentruber finished out the year with a commentary in which he wrote:

It is no secret that our nuclear capabilities have brought the whole world to the brink of suicide and murder. Yet only a few people are blowing the trumpets of warning. There is still strong resistance by most Christians even to think of becoming war tax resisters. There seems to be little urgency to adopt a lifestyle which would model peace for all the peoples of the earth. The courage to confront the principalities and powers seems to be lacking.

Was it true that the growing war tax resistance movement in the Mennonite Church was beginning to lose its momentum?

This is the twenty-sixth 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.

The debate about whether or not to pay war taxes, and about whether Mennonite institutions should be more accommodating of the requests of their employees not to have war taxes deducted from their salaries, continued in 1985, and edged ever closer to the Mennonite Church itself.

Ron Kennel explained his war tax resistance in the 8 January 1985 issue:

For over ten years I have openly withheld a portion of my federal income taxes because I’m a conscientious objector to participation in war. This action has sometimes resulted in face-to-face conversations with Internal Revenue Service representatives. I have on several occasions written to legislators on issues of peace and justice or facilitated similar communication by our congregation.

As I see that Christians have contributed to the injustices, my faith compels me to speak. There are many professing Christians who are in public office who make government policy. There are many professing Christians whose votes helped to put them into office and whose tax dollars by the millions pay for the administration of their policies. Because of this I want to invite my Christian brothers and sisters to let the Prince of Peace train their consciences and to take these trained consciences to work whether in the private or public sector.

The Mennonite Central Committee held its annual meeting in January:

The board discussed a request by several staff members that MCC not withhold their income taxes, to allow them to withhold a portion of their taxes as a protest of the dollars used for military purposes.

They agreed that the executive committee should appoint a task group to consult broadly within the MCC constituency to review historical positions on this matter, to examine alternative responses, and to bring a recommendation to the executive committee and annual meeting on alternative courses of action.

This approach “moves from a simple decision of whether MCC should withhold taxes to stepping back and reflecting on the overall situation before recommending any one solution for the MCC board to accept or reject,” it was said.

Members noted that the Mennonite Church and the Conference of Mennonites in Canada are studying this issue, that the General Conference Mennonite Church has completed such a study, and that efforts will be made to learn from those studies.

The “Conversations on Faith Ⅱ” seminar, “The church’s relationship to the political order”, was held in March 1985, and war tax resistance was one of the topics discussed:

Friday evening — Case Study 3: Conscientious objection to military taxes — a case presentation, by John and Sandra Drescher Lehman and Paul Gingrich.
— A panel— James R. Hess, Stephen Dintaman, and Bob Detweiler.

A report from the conference read in part:

The other case was conscientious objection to military taxes. John and Sandy Drescher Lehman of Richmond, Va., told how they followed their conscience and decided a few years ago to withhold the part of their income taxes that they figure goes for the military.

The complication now, though, is that they have become employees of Mennonite Board of Missions in their role as codirectors of the Richmond Discipleship Voluntary Service program. “What should an institution do when its employees ask that we stop withholding taxes from their paychecks?” asked MBM president Paul Gingrich.

A panel of four attempted to answer the question, including Robert Hull, a soldier-turned-tax-resister who is peace and justice secretary of the General Conference Mennonite Church. He explained how his denomination, with the instruction of its members, is now breaking the law by not withholding taxes from the paychecks of seven of its employees who have requested that.

The tensest moment of the conference came when James Hess, a Lancaster Conference bishop who served on the war taxes panel, was asked whether he would have paid all his taxes in Nazi Germany even though some of it went to kill six million Jews. He hinted that the Jews may have brought judgment on themselves for their crucifixion of Jesus. This caused a minor uproar and led to a public apology the next morning by Hess. He said that his statement was speculative, trying to defend the sovereignty of God, and quoted from Jacques Ellul that everything man does is within the global plan of God.

Energetic war tax resistance foe D.R. Yoder couldn’t stand to see his position dragged through the mud like this, so he responded in a 21 May 1985 letter to the editor:

I would not in any way seek to defend the position reportedly taken by James Hess during the recent Conversations on Faith Ⅱ linking the Jewish Holocaust with Christ’s crucifixion… Such notions are the misguided, though not necessarily unnatural, projections of his fundamentalism.

It is hardly fair, however, that the person who posed what seems the quite irresponsible as well as irrelevant question which provoked Hess’s intemperate response is not also identified in the report. For this questioner should be asked whether he/she paid (or would have paid) taxes to the United States or Canada during World War Ⅱ.

If the questioner would not have paid, given the assumptions of tax resistance theory, would not he/she also have been guilty of contributing to the prolongation of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and others, just as he/she charges a taxpaying German citizen Hess would have been?

If, on the other hand, the questioner would have paid his/her federal taxes, again given the assumptions of tax resistant theory, wouldn’t that be embracing the “just” war position? For how else is the “financing” of one set of military activity, but refusing to “finance” another, to be interpreted?

We Mennonites are already rushing pell-mell along the broad way, having sanctified “just” resistance, “just” legal suits, “just” civil disruption, and even the “just” destruction of public and private property. It doesn’t take a very astute reading of the winds a-blowing to expect conferences in the very near future to consider the inherent “justice” of “defensive” wars and of wars of “liberation.”

War tax resisters Ray and Wilma Gingerich shared their letter to the IRS in the 23 April 1985 issue:

A letter to our IRS officer

Here are excerpts of a letter we sent to our regional Internal Revenue Service officer recently. An ongoing conviction of ours is that our most significant witness in the political-ethical arena is to the church itself. This is a matter of policy in our local “Christians for Peace” organization. Whenever we plan an “action,” we do it deliberately with the church “looking over our shoulders.”

Dear Mr. Smith:

According to your records we now owe the IRS $1491.92 in accumulated taxes, interest, and penalties for the fiscal years of 1981, 1982, and 1983. What you fail to recognize is:

1. That the monies withheld represent the military portion of our income taxes. (We have not withheld veterans’ benefits.)
2. That the amounts withheld have already been paid to church institutions engaged in nonviolent justice-and-peace activities. (We are not seeking to evade carrying our fair share of the public burden for a peaceable and life-giving society.)
3. That we are acting out of our religious convictions fostered in the tradition of the historic peace witness of the Mennonite Church.

You are asking us to do what in good faith we cannot do — to violate our consciences and our understanding of obedience to Jesus Christ by paying for murder.

I, Wilma, am a nurse dedicated to making lives whole, not to destroying them. I find preparation to kill and destroy abhorrent and inconsistent with what my whole life as a mother, as a nurse, as a human being, as a follower of Jesus Christ is about.

I, Ray, am a professor of church history and ethics. In my teaching and in everyday life I seek to underscore that if we are to become persons and create communities of noble character and life-giving quality, we must live lives consistent with our beliefs.

To you as a law-enforcer, and to our congressmen and senators as law-makers, we ask: What is being done to our people and to our nation by enforcing the practice of violence upon those whose conscience and religious convictions are opposed to violence? Why do you insist that pacifist citizens act contrary to their conscience by coercing them to pay for weapons of death? Would it not be a healthier, stronger nation if these people were granted freedom of religion and allowed to practice economic nonviolence by channeling their funds into constructive, nonviolent, humanitarian aid?

To Mennonites war is murder. For Mennonites, and for all Christians who take seriously the lordship of Jesus in their daily living, there is no government that can override the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. For Mennonites, therefore, and for all pacifist Christians, the payment of military taxes has always posed a dilemma. Some, psychically numbed by continued rationalization, comply with the state’s demands for death money. Others choose the way of noncompliance, following the example of Jesus Christ that leads to persecution — military tax penalties, confiscation of property, and imprisonment.

Finally, Mr. Smith, allow us to address you personally. What role will you have in all of this? All of us are in the system. And all of us are morally obligated to say “no” to death and “yes” to life. You undoubtedly have thought about these questions many times. We would count it a privilege to meet with you to discuss these grave matters in a more personal way.

There were some letters to the editor in response to this wave of articles on the topic. Joe Cross wrote that he was generally against war tax resistance, but didn’t say anything particularly notable. Curt Ashburn didn’t care for the put-down of taxpayers in the Gingeriches’ letter (“psychically numbed by continued rationalization”) and felt that they should keep such “witness” in the family rather than dragging IRS agents into it. He also asked if the Gingeriches refused to pay taxes to support state-funded abortion, police violence, capital punishment, and so forth or if they thought war was somehow special?

The 7 May 1985 issue brought this news brief:

Churches increase involvement in question of tax resistance

Exploring new territory in religious opposition to nuclear arms, a number of major religious denominations have begun to contemplate whether they should throw their support behind the growing movement to resist payment of taxes in protest of the arms race. While increasing numbers of individuals within the churches have joined the ranks of “war tax” resisters, only a handful of denominations have encouraged or lent support to such resistance. However, as peace activists within the churches have demanded tougher antiwar stands at the highest church levels, denominations have begun to wrestle with the biblical, theological, and historical questions raised by war tax resistance. The churches are using the examination as a basis for deciding whether to take, as corporate bodies, any of a variety of actions — both legal and illegal — in support of the movement. What is moving churches is the growing realization that they have been “praying for peace while paying for war,” said Marian Franz, a Mennonite who is executive director of the Washington-based National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. “For many people, the arms race has just gone too far. And they’re saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m involved in it.’ ” While several mainline denominations have begun to study the issue, the strongest support for war tax resistance has come from the historic peace churches, particularly Quaker and Mennonite bodies. In an unprecedented move, the 60,000-member General Conference Mennonite Church voted, in August 1983, not to withhold federal taxes from the paychecks of employees who are tax refusers. This is punishable by fines and imprisonment.

The Mennonite Church General Assembly was held, 9–14 August 1985, and war tax resistance was on the agenda:

Seminars on singleness and sexuality, marriage and sexuality, and silent devotions were also well attended, indicating a rising concern among Mennonites for personal growth and self-understanding. On the other hand, seminars on such topics as war taxes, Central America, and church-state relations received relatively less attention.

But apparently it didn’t get much time (at least according to this 17 September 1985 letter to the editor from Don Schrader):

I heard that the conference moderator gave only six minutes of floor time to deal with the question of the church withholding federal income tax from the paychecks of church workers who conscientiously resist war taxes.

Perhaps to some, war tax resistance is more personally uncomfortable than homosexuality! Remember that for any government to exploit and massacre, two things are required from the majority of its citizens — silence and paying taxes.

The cover story of the 1 October 1985 issue — “Paying a Price for Peace” by Jim Bishop — concerned Mennonite responses to the war tax issue:

Praying for peace while paying for war? It’s an irony that Ray and Wilma Gingerich and James and Leanna Rhodes of the Harrisonburg, Virginia, area refuse to accept.

Ray and Wilma are in their early 50s. He teaches theology and ethics at Eastern Mennonite College; she is completing a master’s degree in community health nursing at the University of Virginia and works part time at Virginia Mennonite Home. Their four sons of college age or older no longer live at home. One might think it’s time to slow down, settle in, go with the flow.

Not so. The Gingerichs are wrestling with an issue they believe is increasingly urgent for Christians — how to respond to the fact that over 50 percent of all income tax monies go to pay for past and present wars and to prepare for future wars. As one response, they began in 1977 to withhold the portion of their federal income tax that pays for war.

“We deduct an estimated amount for veterans’ benefits, then send a check for the amount we are withholding to Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section or some other church agency,” Ray explained. “We don’t try to hide anything. The Internal Revenue Service receives a letter that outlines our position along with a photocopy of the check being sent to the church agency.”

For the past three years, the couple has also withheld the federal excise tax from their monthly telephone statement. This tax began during the Vietnam War as a “quick source of revenue” for that conflict, Ray pointed out.

Slightly different tack.

Several miles southwest of Gingerich’s Harrisonburg home, in the rolling countryside of western Rockingham County near Dayton, James and Leanna Rhodes are taking a slightly different tack to the military tax issue.

The couple, in their mid-30s, is making a conscious effort to live at a nontaxable income level. For them, it means trying to raise their family of six children on $12,000–$13,000 a year.

It’s easier said than done, the couple admitted, but several things are in their favor.

The family rents the large frame house where they’re living. They care for dairy heifers and beef cattle for their landlord. The old station wagon they drive is registered in Leanna’s mother’s name so the IRS can’t put a lien on it.

James works for his brother in a new and used farm machinery business. Leanna, a nurse, works on and off for Homecall, a local home health care agency.

The family has no accessible bank account or other personal property that the government could claim to satisfy unpaid military taxes. This leaves the IRS only one option — to go after Rhodeses themselves.

Rhodeses have refused to pay the portion of their federal income tax for military purposes for three years in which they earned slightly over their nontaxable limit. They have been audited and warned of collection procedures, but nothing has come of it.

Like Gingerichs, Rhodeses refuse to pay the federal excise tax portion of their monthly phone bill.

Acquiring peace convictions.

The families didn’t acquire their peace convictions overnight or in isolation. Gingerichs point to a stint of mission work in Luxembourg, 1961–1968, as a time when they were confronted with the realities of war.

“We heard stories and saw photos from Vietnam that never made it into the North American press,” Ray recalled. “We also met people who lived through the experiences of Nazi Germany and realized that much of what happened in World War Ⅱ was largely the result of good people following orders.”

In 1968 Gingerich enrolled at Goshen Biblical Seminary, where he was challenged by the teachings of John Howard Yoder, a tax resister himself. When the family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, for Ray to pursue a doctorate at Vanderbilt University, the couple began attending a United Methodist church that was deeply involved in urban ministry.

“I got my theology at Goshen Seminary but we saw how it could be lived out at that church in Nashville,” Ray said. “Our time there made us realize that peacemaking is a Christian mandate — not just a Mennonite ideology!”

Family peace initiatives have not been restricted to Ray and Wilma. When President Jimmy Carter reinstated the military draft in 1980, sons Andre and Pierre both decided not to register.

“Here’s a case of children and parents teaching each other,” Wilma said. “We had been through a lot of painful and joyful growth experiences together. To them, not to register was the logical way to live out the convictions we shared.

“As the cost for not paying our military taxes increased we could only move ahead. To do otherwise would have been a betrayal of our sons and their convictions.”

More than lip service.

Although James and Leanna had long felt a commitment to blend personal faith and active social concern, their awareness of the need to give more than lip service to their beliefs was heightened during 1975–1979 when they helped to start a Mennonite church in San Francisco.

In that setting James got involved with a number of peace causes and groups, including counseling military personnel who wanted to claim conscientious objector status.

“That was a fantastic experience,” James said of their time in the Bay Area. “I was impressed by the aggressive and committed efforts of many peace activists, even though many may have acted from purely humanitarian motives.”

Both couples are quick to draw on their understanding of Jesus’ teachings and example to support their actions.

“The gospel addresses our relationship to other human beings,” Ray said. “Salvation is a personal response but it is also communal. It means ‘wholemaking.’ War and preparation for war is the epitome of death and destruction.”

“I hold to an evangelical faith that includes the message of peace and nonresistance,” James added. “I believe that Jesus can save us from militarism, hateful attitudes, and a spirit of revenge in the same way he delivers us from other sins.”

“Our church has failed to see the logical progression from the conscientious objector stance and Mennonites’ refusal to buy war bonds in the 1940s to the war tax resistance stance of the 1980s,” Ray stated.

Added Wilma: “Our peace witness dare not be limited to nonconscription. Why put most of the burden on 18-to-20-year-olds to take a CO stand while we middle-aged men and women go on paying for war? At the same time we expect our young people to believe that participation in war is wrong.”

Stance is costly.

Both Gingerichs and Rhodeses have paid a price for their stance.

For the Gingerich family, it has included repeated threats from the Selective Service System and a lien placed on all their personal property.

James Rhodes earned tuition money to attend Eastern Mennonite College and Seminary by working as an artificial inseminator for dairy farms up and down the Shenandoah Valley. He later lost that job as a result of local pressure, but he “feels no animosity” toward those who called for his ouster.

James noted that the harshest criticism has come from other Mennonites at a time when interest in Christian peacemaking and nonresistance is gaining momentum in a number of mainline denominations.

Both couples indicated they have had “valuable and redemptive” talks with IRS officials. According to James, these encounters “allow us to move from systems to individuals and open the door to exchange viewpoints.”

“A certain amount of understanding has developed,” he added. “The IRS people seem to empathize with our position and apparently don’t know what to do with us.”

Gingerichs have journeyed to Charlottesville, Virginia, to meet with IRS officials and have encountered “extremely personable people… there’s a feeling of mutual respect.”

The two families commend each other’s positions, but cited the need for other people who are involved in varied forms of tax resistance to “become more visible.” They are active in a local “Christians for Peace” group that has about a dozen members.

“I often feel like we are pretty much going it alone,” said Wilma. “We long for the day when the focus shifts from our having to defend our position to the real question of how pacifist Mennonite Christians can go on paying for war and claim to be followers of Christ. We need greater accountability to each other in the church.”

“There’s a need to develop an open forum and network for people who are at different places on the war tax issue to get together and learn from and encourage each other,” Ray said. Added Leanna: “I would feel a lot more secure in our position if we knew for certain that a dozen Mennonites in this community would be willing to take a public stand with us if at some point we’d be taken to court.”

The couples emphasized that their methods of war tax resistance are not the only valid approaches, and both expressed a desire for more dialogue and sense of solidarity with the larger Mennonite Church.

Whatever course one pursues for the cause of peace, it is important to do it “with a sense of joy,” Ray noted. “Lose your sense of exuberance and it becomes an overwhelming burden. At that point one must back off to gain fresh perspective.”

Witness will continue. Ray and Wilma expect to continue withholding that percentage of their federal income taxes that goes for direct military purposes and to continue talking and working with individuals and within their professions to keep the issue alive.

James and Leanna, meanwhile, “feel comfortable” with their simple living approach, recognizing that it doesn’t allow them to confront government officials and others as directly as Gingerichs have.

“When our children get older, we’ll need to adjust our strategy,” James said. “For now, our fear of what could happen to us has gone from near paranoia to a real sense of peace and freedom.

“Our response, however small, is at least a symbolic effort to say ‘no,’ to refuse to contribute toward the ultimate destruction of God’s people and his beautiful creation.”

Jep & Joyce Hostetler responded in a 22 October 1985 letter to the editor:

“Paying a Price for Peace”… is one of the most encouraging articles you’ve published recently. It is encouraging to see two families who take their faith in Jesus Christ very seriously. In my mind, they are acting out the very core of the gospel message to love, to be peacemakers, and — above all — to be obedient.

On the other hand the article can cause one to be depressed because of the lack of support and criticisms Rhodeses and Gingerichs have received from fellow Mennonites. Mennonites, of all people, should be cheering these families on, even if they are not in complete agreement with their tax witness.

Joyce and I have also withheld portions of our federal income tax payment, making it necessary for the Internal Revenue Service to put liens on our checking account. It is a lonely feeling. To me, any action that lessens another human being, lessens me. It is sin for me to sit in the safety of a protected home and claim no responsibility for what my money buys. To tell someone we love them and apologize for the fact that nearly half our tax dollar is being spent in preparation to kill them, is the ultimate lie and irony. I cannot love you if I am preparing to kill you.

On the other hand, Harry Shenk wasn’t as thrilled. He started off with the traditional Render-unto-Caesar line that Jesus had never discouraged paying taxes to militaristic Rome, and then ended on this curious note:

Jesus never challenged the state on these practices, nor did he indicate that paying taxes implied responsibility for these heinous crimes.

I don’t think Jesus paid any war tax. I think he probably lived below a taxable level, and I affirm anyone who chooses this path. I also pay no war tax. Our tax checks are not divided into portions by the Internal Revenue Service, but are thrown together into a central fund, against which huge government checks are drawn. I simply decide in my heart which huge government check I want my money to be a part of. For me, it’s food stamps and interstate highways.

This news brief could be found in the 26 November 1985 edition:

Scottish Presbyterian leader calls for peace army and war tax resistance

The former moderator of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), Lord MacLeod of Fuinary, has called for the creation of a peace army committed to withholding the 13 percent of income taxes which the British government spends on defense.

MacLeod hopes such an army will be able to persuade the government to allow people to give an equivalent amount of their taxes to starving countries instead. Even if the government refuses to go along with the idea, he said, taxpayers should still withhold the money and spend it on famine relief.

War, MacLeod said, is no longer “a disciplined conflict between nations”; instead it has become “mutual mass murder of women and children between hemispheres. The church must go radical about war.”

The Mennonite Central Committee held an executive committee meeting in December 1985 and shot down the proposal to stop withholding war taxes from the paychecks of objecting employees:

The committee also heard a report from a task force established after several staff members asked MCC not to withhold their federal income taxes. This was to allow them to keep a portion of their taxes as a protest of taxes used for military purposes.

Committee member Phil Rich reported that the task force had met with leaders from eight Mennonite denominations over the past year to seek counsel on how to respond to the tax-withholding issue. None of the denominations counseled MCC to honor the staff members’ request.

The Executive Committee voted 7-1, with three abstentions, to accept the task force’s recommendation that the staff members’ request be denied. The recommendation will go to the MCC annual meeting for final action.

Staff member H.A. Penner expressed appreciation for MCC’s serious attention to the issue, but asked if the process might be only half done. “Have we listened to persons on the other end of our bombs and our guns? Are we listening to the church in Central America, the Philippines, and South Africa? What would they say?”

This is the thirty-sixth and last 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.

Today I’m going to try to sum up what we’ve learned along the way. (Similar disclaimers apply to those I mentioned when I did this exercise for back issues of The Mennonite.)

First, the background: the (Old) Mennonite Church was a major Mennonite branch in the United States and Canada, distinct from the General Conference Mennonite Church (whose house organ, The Mennonite, I went over with a fine-toothed comb earlier this year), and from other Mennonite, Amish, and Brethren groups. It has roots in America that go back into the late 17^th century, but began to coalesce as a distinct organization in the late 18^th century.

The original publication of this Church was called The Herald of Truth. Another publication, Gospel Witness, began publishing in 1905, and the two merged into Gospel Herald in 1908. At least in the early years, editors of these magazines had a great deal of authority in shaping and reinforcing Mennonite doctrine.

1864–65

The Herald of Truth began publishing in the middle of the American Civil War. This is helpful for us, as it is during war time that Mennonite doctrine about abetting war and bloodshed is most likely to come to the forefront and be made explicit.

As best as I can determine, the orthodox Mennonite practice during the American Civil War was neither to serve in the military nor to purchase a substitute to serve in one’s place if one were drafted, but instead, to take advantage of the (Northern) government’s policy that allowed draftees to be exempt from service on the payment of a $500 “commutation fee.” Mennonite congregations were urged to organize fund drives among their membership to pay the commutation fees of Mennonite draftees who could not themselves afford such a sum.

This policy is in contrast to that of the Quakers, who discouraged members from paying such commutation fees and instead counseled them to refuse military service outright and accept the consequences. (Some Quakers did exactly that, though others bucked the orthodoxy to serve in non-combatant roles or pay the fees.)

Mennonites were also discouraged from raising money to use as encouragement for non-Mennonites in their area to enlist (a technique meant to cause the local enlistment quota to be met and thereby stop the government from drafting others). This was considered to be too close to “hiring substitutes” and therefore also forbidden.

1866–1900

Those stands formed the baseline from which Mennonite war tax resistance would later develop. But at the time, it was accepted as a given that Mennonites should pay all of their taxes without question or complaint. Indeed this was often put forward as one of the reasons why governments should tolerate Mennonite conscientious objection to military service — after all, they’re good taxpayers.

This doctrine was supported by the “two kingdoms” interpretation of the Render-unto-Caesar episode and the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s letters to the Romans. In that interpretation, Christians were to be primarily loyal to the Kingdom of God, but were to mostly leave worldly kingdoms to do their own thing. The kingdoms of the world were not meant to be reformed or to become Christian exemplars; instead, they were meant to wield the sword in a good old fashioned, eye-for-an-eye sort of way. Christians could and should pay their taxes to such governments without blinking an eye, as the governments had every right to exact tribute on their terms from their subjects, and what they did with the money afterwards was their own problem, not that of the Christian taxpayers.

For this reason, for instance, many Mennonites would not vote — thinking it not to be their concern to try to direct the government in any way.

1901–1916

While I never saw any articles in the Mennonite Church magazines at this time promoting tax resistance, I did notice that some of the articles promoting taxpaying seemed to be doing so with an implied audience of pro-resistance heretics in mind. So there may have been an underground current of tax resistance already running at this time.

1917–19

World War Ⅰ brought the next big test for Mennonites. In my study of back issues of The Mennonite, it seemed that the General Conference Mennonite Church was utterly unconcerned about the implications of buying “Liberty Loan” war bonds. This puzzled me, as I knew from some earlier research that there were many examples of American Mennonites who were persecuted for refusing to buy such bonds.

I was eager to learn whether the Mennonite Church had been different in this regard, and from what I read in Gospel Herald, indeed it was.

Gospel Herald readers were counseled in no uncertain terms that they were not to purchase Liberty Bonds or in any other voluntary way to assist in supporting the war effort (which would include, for instance, even donations to the Red Cross). However, they were to continue to pay all of their taxes as usual, and should not resist if attempts were made to confiscate their property.

Mennonites were under a great deal of pressure (frequently amounting to violent coercion) to buy war bonds. As a result, there were a variety of attempts to find a way that Mennonites could demonstrate their contributions to the common cause in a way that would appease their oppressors without irritating their consciences. Some gave to relief efforts, and others tried to find some form of government bond (e.g. “Farm Loan Bonds”) that would not be so tainted by war. These had mixed success: the former had the disadvantage of being donations rather than loans, so it was harder for Mennonites to give in sufficient quantity to appease the mob; the latter was often frustrated — the Farm Loan Bonds never materialized, but some Mennonite groups were able to loan money directly to certain local banks in lieu of purchasing Liberty Bonds in a way that apparently was somewhat satisfying all around.

In Canada, Mennonites took the easy way out, purchasing their government’s war bonds, but with a provision that their contributions would be spent “for relief work only.” It was not specified how such an intention was supposed to be put into practice.

For the first time in this period I read a Mennonite suggesting that paying war taxes is problematical, and that perhaps a conscientious Mennonite ought to take legal steps (reducing income, buying fewer goods and services subject to excise taxes) to avoid them.

1920–40

Little changed in the period between the World Wars. When I saw mention of war taxes, it was usually in the context of reinforcing the doctrine that Mennonites should pay any tax demanded under the “two kingdoms” principle.

1941–45

During World War Ⅱ, Mennonites were again challenged by the pressure to buy war bonds. This time the Mennonite Church did not hold up so well, though by all accounts the pressure was much less severe (I don’t know of any examples of mob violence being directed against Mennonites who refused to buy war bonds during this period).

Instead of whole-heartedly refusing to participate in funding the war by purchasing government bonds, the Mennonite Church went through a long and largely pointless process of trying to get their hands on government bonds that weren’t labeled “war” bonds so that Mennonites could purchase those instead. This so-called “Civilian Bonds” program was a total fiasco, and resulted in Mennonites pouring millions of dollars into the U.S. war effort while at the same time congratulating themselves on witnessing to their “testimony of nonsupport of war.”

That said, during this period some of the rigidly pro-obedience-to-government interpretations of Romans 13 and the Render-unto-Caesar story began to be questioned. Writers might drop the hint that paying war taxes was not something Mennonites ought to do cheerfully, but that they must do regrettably.

A secular (or at least non-sectarian) philosophy of pacifism began to assert itself in Mennonite circles, and traditionalist Mennonites were at pains to distinguish the Mennonite doctrine of “nonresistance” from this seductive impostor

1946–59

In the post-war period I start to notice writers urgently defending the traditionalist line on Romans 13 and Render-unto-Caesar when it comes to taxpaying — so hints that there were war tax resisters emerging among Mennonites came before they were permitted to speak for themselves in the pages of Gospel Herald.

In 1950 the magazine begins to mention war tax resisters from outside of the Mennonite community, for instance from the Peacemakers group and the Society of Friends (Quakers). These mentions are typically neutral, neither condemning nor recommending war tax resistance, but they indicate a curiosity about the practice. Beginning in the mid-1950s I also began to see periodic mentions of how much “of the taxpayer’s dollar” was being spent on the military. The combination of these suggested an atmospheric shift in favor of war tax resistance, but it took a long time before Mennonite authors endorsed war tax resistance or Mennonite war tax resisters were mentioned.

Mennonites may have been given a bit of a nudge by hearing about the tax resistance campaign waged by some Amish people who objected to the social security program. That campaign was covered in a series of Gospel Herald articles from 1959–64 and ultimately resulted in the government making some concessions to their conscientious scruples.

1959–62 · 1963

In 1959 the dam burst. The Church of the Brethren and Mennonite Central Committee each formally addressed the problem of paying war taxes — which is to say that each considered that it was a problem, which is a far cry from the former Romans 13 orthodoxy which held that Christians should pay all of their taxes without concern or complaint.

There was a great deal of concern expressed, and one author tried to find a suitable legal path for conscientious objectors to military taxation by means of legal charitable deductions. But it wasn’t until 1963 that an actual war tax resisting Mennonite surfaced in the Gospel Herald.

When John Howard Yoder’s “Why I Don’t Pay My Taxes” was published, Gospel Herald was aware that it was crossing the rubicon. It preceded the essay with a lengthy disclaimer pointing out that it was a heterodox opinion but one that “deserves prayerful consideration.” At that point, the debate came out into the open, as did other war tax resisters.

There was tension from the beginning between arguments for war tax resistance as a form of conscientious objection — that is, not wanting to participate in warfare by paying for it — and as a form of “witness” — that is, civil disobedience as a way of demonstrating to the government the seriousness of one’s concern. Yoder’s influential essay was firmly in the “witness” camp, and much Mennonite war tax resistance — particularly what involved refusing and redirecting what was uncritically called “the military portion” of one’s income tax — is most-easily interpreted as a “witnessing” sort of resistance.

1963–67 · 1968 · 1969–70 · 1971

After the initial flurry of interest excited by Yoder’s essay and the reactions to it, there was a lull in coverage of war tax resistance that lasted through the rest of the mid-1960s.

In mid-1967, though, the Mennonite Church met in General Conference and asked its Committee on Peace and Social Concerns to investigate how Mennonites ought to deal, in an acceptably Biblical way, with “the payment of taxes collected explicitly for war purposes and such other similar involvements in the war effort that they may find among us inconsistent with our profession as a peace church committed to Christ’s way and to suggest such remedial measures that will underscore our conviction and witness.”

An editorial titled “Dare We Pay Taxes for War?” followed shortly after, and the debate was reopened, but on much more favorable terms for the pro-resistance faction.

As the Vietnam War became more obviously awful, and the anti-war and civil rights movements erupted all around them, Mennonites began to be worried that they were missing the boat — that their timidity had kept them from making their vision of a peaceful and inclusive Christian community harmonize with what should have been a favorable moment for such a message. Ought they to become more assertive with their message of peace and brotherhood? To become activists?

Mennonite war tax resistance advocates became more bold, some asserting not only that war tax resistance was an acceptable Mennonite practice but that paying war taxes ought not to be — or going so far as to promote coordinated mass tax resistance on the part of Mennonites as a whole.

Don Kaufman gave respectable theological and historical cover to war tax resistance promoters with his 1970 book What Belongs to Caesar? At this point, the traditionalist arguments for taxpaying take on the aspect of tired clichés, and even the traditionalists tend to concede that paying taxes for war is something regretful even as they insist the Bible commands Christians to go along with it.

1972

Mennonite Church-related colleges, subcommittees, and other institutions were increasingly taking up war tax resistance as a topic of discussion (or even instruction). The Gospel Herald editor came out in favor of war tax resistance in an editorial.

The dream of some sort of government-certified way for conscientious objectors to pay their taxes without paying for war — the equivalent of World War Ⅱ’s “Civilian Bonds” — congealed in the form of the World Peace Tax Fund Act. Early concerns about its value were soon stifled, and it would continue to attract attention from ostensible “people of conscience” throughout the years that followed.

In 1972 the Mennonite Central Committee created a “Taxes for Peace” war tax redirection fund, so to some extent war tax resistance was being formally endorsed and organized by a Mennonite body.

1973 · 1974 · 1975 · 1976–77 · 1978 · 1979 · 1980 · 1981 · 1982

War tax resistance spread to other religious groups and to other countries (including, notably, a briefly-popular war tax resistance movement started by an Anabaptist pastor in Japan) during the 1970s.

Now with support from Gospel Herald editors, the pendulum had swung so far in war tax resisters’ favor that conservative foes were reduced to arguing “if you refuse to pay taxes for war, you should refuse to pay taxes for abortion and other bad things too.”

The magazine formally entered the lobbying game when it included pre-printed cards in one issue that U.S. readers could send to their Congressional representatives to urge them to support the World Peace Tax Fund legislation. Peace Tax Fund lobbying would become a Mennonite Church project, with paid staffers working alongside (or as part of) the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.

War tax resisters from the Mennonite Church, General Conference Mennonite Church, and Church of the Brethren began to coordinate their efforts, and then, through the “A New Call to Peacemaking” initiative and in other forms, they began to coordinate with Quakers and other Christian war tax resisters.

While there were many examples of Mennonite war tax resisters during this period, and while sympathy for the war tax resistance opinion seems to have become the dominant opinion in the pages of Gospel Herald, I don’t get the impression that the majority of Mennonites are actually practicing war tax resistance.

Whereas the Mennonite Church was way out ahead of the General Conference Mennonite Church when it came to conscientious objection to purchasing Liberty Bonds during World War Ⅰ, in this period they are largely playing catch-up to their General Conference cousins when it comes to war tax resistance.

In 1979 the Mennonite Church issued a statement “on militarism and taxation” that encouraged Mennonites to reduce their tax burden through simple living and charitable deductions, that endorsed some sort of legislation that would allow conscientious objectors to pay their taxes without paying for the military, that urged “careful biblical study” about taxpaying, that “recognize[d] as a valid witness the conscientious refusal to pay a portion of taxes required for war and military efforts,” and that encouraged Mennonite institutions “to seek relief” from the requirement that they withhold taxes from the salaries of objecting employees.

Conservatives regrouped, began to organize, and in the “Smoketown Consultation” of 1979, issued a statement condemning tax resistance among other modern innovations. Conservative criticisms of war tax resistance began to become more sophisticated and more critics of war tax resistance started coming out of the closet.

By 1980, Mennonite Church bodies were under increasing pressure to take a stand one way or the other, and some did decide to endorse, to participate in, or, alternatively, to refuse to endorse war tax resistance.

The board of directors of the Mennonite Church voted to support the General Conference Mennonite Church in its lawsuit in which it was trying to free itself from the requirement that it withhold taxes from its war tax resisting employees. This is the case even though the board was not willing to take any such action regarding its own employees. That lawsuit died in infancy, leaving compliance or civil disobedience as the last tenable options for Mennonite employers.

1983 · 1984 · 1985

When the General Conference Mennonite Church met in its 1983 triennial, the (Old) Mennonite Church was also meeting nearby, taking baby steps toward the eventual unification of the two groups. But while the General Conference voted to begin a corporate civil disobedience action by refusing to withhold taxes from its conscientiously objecting employees, the Mennonite Church more meekly called for “continued study and discernment on the issue of war taxes” while affirming both conscientious tax resistance and conscientious tax paying as valid Mennonite behavior and begging the government for a Peace Tax Fund law.

Another General Assembly of the Mennonite Church was held in 1985, and war tax resistance was again back-burnered.

1986 · 1987

The momentum of war tax resistance was already flagging by the time the Mennonite Church general assembly met in 1987 to again take up the issue that the General Conference Mennonite Church had taken the lead on.

They again put in a good word for Peace Tax Fund legislation, again urged Mennonites to “prayerfully examine” the issue of war tax withholding and to “continue to support” conscientious objectors to war taxes. But there was no real meat on those bones. They asked their board of directors to come up with a recommendation for what to do about withholding taxes from the salaries of objecting employees. The assembly moderator spoke aloud a sentiment that I think was implicit in a lot of the noncommittal buck-passing: “Personally, I think the Peace Tax Fund is a way out of this.”

1988 · 1989

The process of deciding what to do about the withholding question bordered on the ridiculous. First, as noted above, the general assembly asked the board to present them with a considered recommendation at their next (1989) assembly. The board conferred with other denominations who were wrestling with the same issue, and then took testimony at a General Board meeting in 1987 before voting (unanimously!) to recommend that war taxes not be withheld from the paychecks of conscientiously objecting employees. Sounds like a done deal, right?

Not so fast. When the general board met just before the 1989 assembly, they abruptly did an about-face, blaming this on the lukewarm-support their recommendation had gotten from district conferences. They replaced their recommendation with one that removed any suggestion of refusing to withhold taxes, and instead called for more “study of the… issues” and, of course, more hope that a Peace Tax Fund bill would make the problem go away. In other words: the same old same old.

But then when the General Assembly met, they surprised everyone by losing patience with this nonsense and calling the board’s original recommendation back for a vote — it passed with 59% of the delegates’ support.

Now it’s a done deal, right? Nope. When the general board met again soon after the assembly, rather than implementing the Assembly’s vote, they decided that “they would take a clear stand on military taxes and submit another recommendation to the next General Assembly sessions in 1991”!

1991 · 1992 · 1993–94 · 1995 · 1996–97

In 1990 the general board tabled a motion to put the Assembly’s mandate into practice, instead deciding to wait until the conclusion of a “congregational study process.” When the general board met again later that year, after that study process was complete, the new excuse was that “[b]oard members noted a lack of clarity on what the [General Assembly’s] decision meant.” At the board’s first meeting the following year, they finally agreed to honor requests from conscientiously objecting employees who did not want war taxes withheld from their paychecks, but only subject “to development of acceptable policies for implementation approved by the board.”

I saw no indication in Gospel Herald that any such policies were ever presented to the board for approval. My guess is that the stonewalling tactics worked and the Mennonite Church never implemented the will of its General Assembly delegates. When the General Assembly met next, at least as far as I can tell from the Gospel Herald coverage, the topic did not come up.

The foot-draggers had won. By this time the war tax resistance tide was clearly receding. Peace Tax Fund talk and attempts to get people to engage in safe, symbolic mini-resistance acts was swamping what conversation remained about whole-hearted conscientious objection to military taxation. The Gospel Herald editorial page shifted gears again, from promoting war tax resistance to a more standoffish on-the-one-hand / on-the-other-hand vagueness — and would eventually say of war tax resisters that “we generally dismiss [them] as too zealous.”

By 1995 things had gotten so bad that not only was paying war taxes no longer seen as particularly worrisome, but even serving the military as a uniformed soldier was seen as something a Mennonite Church member in good standing could do.

Gospel Herald merged with The Mennonite in early 1998.