Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Mennonites / Amish →
Don & Eleanor Kaufman
A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out.
It includes a run-down of the latest news on the war tax resistance front, a report from the 25th anniversary gathering, and an article by Don Kaufman that focuses on the history of war tax resistance among American Mennonites.
An update on the legal taxable income baseline for and on how much income is exempt from IRS levies, a note about how some banks are charging exorbitant processing fees when they submit to a levy, and some other news about tax policy and enforcement changes.
News about a celebration of the Wally Nelson Centenary to be held in Massachusetts, brief notices of a few books that have been published recently by war tax resisters, some information on the activities of War Resisters International, and another call to order some fundraising message scarves while the weather cooperates.
Information about resources available to people promoting war tax resistance and/or the war tax boycott.
News, including an update about Steev Hise’s tax resistance film project, the new NWTRCC “Speaker’s Bureau”, a request for nominations for people to fill two seats on the NWTRCC administrative committee that will open in , and a call to begin a discussion on whether or not it would be a good idea for NWTRCC to endorse the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act.
An update from a new war tax resister, John Parrish who, along with his wife Kate, dipped their toes into the tax resistance pool with a token $50 resistance.
They were surprised and alarmed when the IRS shark came for the toes and took the whole leg — assessing a $5,000 “frivolous filing” penalty on John and then another one on Kate!
With the help of the folks at NWTRCC, their Congressman, and “the IRS Legislative Advocates” they managed to get the fines removed.
John tells the story.
Some bits-and-pieces from around the web:
Susan Balzer writes about Mennonite war tax resisters for the Mennonite Weekly Review.
Some of the resisters mentioned: Tim Godshall, Willard and Mary Swartley, Ray Gingerich, Harold A. Penner, John and Janet Stoner, Albert and Mary Ellen Meyer, Don Kaufman, Titus and Linda Gehman Peachey, and Stan Bohn.
A Tax Tea Party Revolt will be the only recourse available in the wake of efforts to not provide equal treatment to all citizens under law …
This means gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people will not be filing taxes April 15th.
War tax resister NTodd Pritsky at Pax Americana takes note of the prosecution of a tax evader and wonders if this is going to be his eventual fate as well.
Pritsky is resisting both federal and state taxes (as a war tax resister, he is protesting state complicity in the military industrial complex and in the wars via the state national guard).
Fighting this battle on two fronts takes a lot of energy, and he’s not sure it’s worth it.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
By , references to war tax resistance in the Friends Journal had become more casual and matter-of-fact, but also less urgent and less thorough.
ad in the Friends Journal
In the issue, the pseudonymous history columnist for the Journal, “Now and Then,” examined the tradition of tax and tithe resistance in the Society of Friends:
Render Unto Caesar
For some years Friends have been aware of an anomaly in their traditional response to military requisitions.
When they have been conscripted for military service, they have officially and in large numbers refused to go.
Many governments have made provision for this expression of conscience.
This has taken the form of allowing the payment for a substitute by the conscript, or some form of alternative service.
Many Friends have accepted the latter.
But when our money is demanded, particularly as part of a more general tax, although we know its ultimate purpose is for war, only sporadically have Friends objected.
Without recounting again all the data in our history in this matter, I inquire here why this curious contradictory situation has come to exist.
Young men stubbornly refuse actual direct participation in war and do so with the sympathy of their parents, but the latter usually have contributed in money to the very cause to which their sons refused to contribute their bodies.
And governments have usually provided no alternative to military payments.
A recent Yearly Meeting memorandum lists several of the reasons (excuses?) why Friends have abstained from refusing war taxes.
Many of these reasons simply are practical considerations.
But the first one on the list is the gospel phrase: “Render unto Caesar…”
The context of these words of Jesus is precisely that of a general Federal tax.
They are therefore not taken out of context when applied to modern Federal taxation.
Compared with them, there is nothing in the Gospels so explicitly quotable for or against military service.
In former times… as well as today, this text has been repeatedly referred to by Friends in extenuation of their complicity by means of tax payment in the waging of war.
Why is this?
Does it mean that Friends follow Jesus most readily when he seems to have left specific instructions, while where he is less specific they arrive at the stance of war resister in spite of this contrast?
Undoubtedly, elsewhere in Quakerism we see evidence of Biblical literalism alongside of an almost contradictory dependence on the Spirit.
Or is the contrast between submitting to war taxes and refusal of war service due to the fact that the latter problem for a long time rarely arose, at least in England?
While militia dues were refused as early as , compulsory military service scarcely began there until our own time.
Another Quaker financial refusal was early and widespread.
That was of tithes levied on agricultural produce for “priests’ wages.”
No single ground of resistance and persecution was so durable in our history.
The money was for support of the official “hireling” ministers.
Why was tax money to support war-making not equally obnoxious?
I wonder whether today “Render unto Caesar” can, as a saying of Jesus, bear the weight that we give it when without twinge of conscience we pay taxes of which so large a share finances war.
At one time Friends — or at least some Friends — did refuse taxes levied exclusively for war costs.
They distinguished them from what they called “mixed taxes.”
It is not like Jesus to legislate on explicit social problems — and if he did, are we to take his words as rules for our own late generation?
His followers did not always or in other respects blindly obey the government.
When Caesar ordered pagan sacrifice in the following centuries, Christians would not offer even the token pinch of incense.
In those days, Christians also refused participation in war.
Under some circumstances, obedience to “the powers that be” seemed commendable; under others, Christians knew they must obey God rather than man.
Indeed, neither historical scholarship nor grammar leaves the intention of the Gospel saying quite so sweeping in its bearing.
According to Luke, Jesus was accused of forbidding to give tribute to Caesar.
Some modern students of the Gospels suspect that behind their present portrait lies a much more politically nonconformist Jewish subject of Rome.
The saying I quoted ends “…and unto God the things that are God’s.” Was not this the real thrust of original injunction?
Perhaps Jesus never really answered the question, “Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not?
Shall we give or shall we not give?”
And the apparent command to give tribute to Caesar may be only an analogy or a conditional clause, vindicating the major obedience — obedience to God.
In the same issue, David Nagle wrote in with his own lesson from history.
He brought up the case of Joshua Maule, who at the time of the American Civil War was resisting a tax that was very similar to the recently-enacted Vietnam War income tax surcharge.
Maule had written:
On this ground [the Scriptures] we believe the testimony stands and our discipline is established, which is clear against “paying taxes for the express purpose of war.”
For war destroys that which is God’s, and invades the things which have not been committed to Caesar.
And when the civil government commands us to co-operate in this work, either by personal service or payment of money for that express purpose, if we render unto God the things that are His, we should decline all voluntary payment of money demanded for the direct support of war, and be willing to suffer and bear whatever may be permitted to come upon us; rendering ourselves into the hands of the Lord, and trusting in him.
Nagle wrote: “I was impressed by the resemblance of this situation to ours today.
The only significant difference seems to be that in the backsliders were in the minority and today few Friends have the courage to refuse to pay a tax intended expressly for the war effort, such as the present ten percent surtax.
I ask that Friends give this concern the solemn consideration it deserves and seek the will of the Lord in regard to future actions.”
Also in that issue, Robert E. Dickinson wrote a curious piece, accompanied by photos, on “My Tax Refusal Furniture” — “a set of furnishings that easily could be moved or disposed of” that Dickinson designed and built after he was served an IRS seizure notice for “my property, including my furniture.”
When the authorities are at the door, the furniture can be demounted to flat slabs of plywood for ease in moving and storage.
The issue quoted from a statement issued by Hanover Monthly Meeting when it decided to start resisting the phone tax — “with regret but under compulsion of conscience” — and from statements issued by Alura and Donald Dodd, who had decided to pay their taxes into an escrow account rather than to the federal government.
In the issue, in an article mostly devoted to the Christian obligation of tithing, the issue of tax resistance sneaked in:
I suspect that the observance of tithing has fallen off partially as a result of the churches’ betrayal of their own stewardship.
They have diverted to the needs of their own buildings and grounds that which should have been held in trust for all.
They have faithfully received and have paid into the storehouses (or banks) but have stood guard to make sure that nothing but the interest flowed out.
They have tied strings to their giving, withholding from those who do not meet with their approval and forgetting that God, whose stewards they should be, causes the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust alike.
Tithes, it seems to me, should not be given or withheld in an effort to bring pressure upon God or to coerce the workings of the Spirit.
If we have lost faith that our own religious body is not administering its trust with true compassion for our troubled world, we may be well advised, not to renounce tithing, but to seek another storehouse — perhaps a church in the ghetto — where the Spirit may be less hedged about with anxiety and paternalistic caution.
And here, I believe, is the relationship — and the difference — between paying taxes and tithing.
We should continue to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, including obedience and respect as well as taxes, for so long as they are his due and his requirements are not in conflict with those of God.
If the government turns away from righteousness, forsakes justice and mercy, and puts our taxes to ungodly uses instead of caring for all of its people, I believe we have the right to refuse and to reallocate to constructive causes that percentage of our income which is assessed as tax.
On the other hand, our allegiance to God is paramount.
Under any and all circumstances we are required to render unto God that which is God’s including our tithes.
However, just as we may need to consider withdrawing our financial support from a government that is not doing what a government is supposed to do, we may wish to consider reallocating our tithes if our own religious body fails to be responsive to the Spirit of Christ which is the foundation of our faith.
A report on the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s annual sessions in the same issue mentioned, but only in passing, that there had been “three called sessions on tax refusal and the Black Manifesto” over the past year.
A report on the General Conference for Friends in the issue reprinted a “query” that had been proposed by the “discussion group on tax refusal and tax avoidance”:
Have Friends considered their implication in the immoral war system through the payment of telephone excise and Federal income taxes, which are largely used for military purposes, and have they sought ways in which to make clear their testimony against such immorality by refusing, when possible, payment of such taxes and/or avoiding tax payments by changing their life style to live below or at a lower level of tax liability, bearing in mind that the spirit in which such action is taken is crucial and that divine guidance should undergird the individual’s response?
An article on individual spiritual growth in the issue casually included tax resistance as one of the issues a spiritual seeker might be expected to confront:
What do you do when you come to a stumbling point or dead end in your search?
(Examples: Defining or identifying God, refusing to pay taxes, accepting the label “religious,” surrendering autonomy to a group, praying privately, and teaching one’s beliefs about religion to one’s children.)
That issue also reprinted a sarcastic notice from the Fifteenth Street (New York) Preparative Meeting’s newsletter:
Special offer for complacent Friends!
The Peace and Social Action Program of New York Yearly Meeting is offering for sale two copies (paperback) of the Journal of John Woolman.
These copies are unique in that all the radical passages have been removed by mechanical excision.
They were cut to prepare a pamphlet of Woolman excerpts called, “John Woolman on Seeds of War and Violence in our Possessions, Consumption, Taxpaying, and Lifestyles.”
The special clearance price, only $19.95 a copy.
Which is a bargain, considering that it saves you the trouble of removing these passages yourself!
The issue noted that the Saint Louis Monthly Meeting was administering an escrow account to accept money from Friends who were refusing to pay the Federal excise tax on phone service.
Don Kaufman’s book “What Belongs to Caesar?” was reviewed in the issue.
The reviewer was sympathetic to the book’s thesis — that war tax resistance and Christianity are compatible — but thought the book “would be even more valuable if the author had felt as free to quote from the Bible as he was to quote from other books and articles.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
War tax resistance was a frequent topic in the issues of Friends Journal in , though there was still no consensus about how to go about it, and there was a lot of hesitance among Quaker institutions about how strongly to endorse it.
The issue was another special issue devoted to the peace testimony, which might as well have been a special issue on war tax resistance for how frequently it was mentioned.
Clearly by this time, there was no talking about peace work without talking about war tax resistance.
an illustration by Duncan Harp, from the issue of Friends Journal
Editor Ruth Kilpack opened the issue.
She noted:
I see the billions of dollars (including taxes from my own earnings) being poured into the “defense” budget.
I hear of vastly increased crime and see the wanton waste everywhere, much of it the direct legacy of our last war; I remember the lives still festering in military hospitals, the suffering from the wounds of war both here and across the world.
But now, there is a handful of people who are beginning to take a new view of war and war-making, realizing that it takes place not only when the bombing and shelling begin, but in the will of the people who make — or allow — it to happen.
War-making must be paid for.
As it is said elsewhere in this issue, “we pray for peace, but we pay for war.”
When we once understand that, great change will come about.
And especially, as war becomes more and more impersonal, with computerized strategic commands and weapons, more people are increasingly going to ask, “Who is waging this war?
Are we ourselves responsible, since we pay for it?”
(As the old saying goes, “Your checkbook shows where your heart is.”)
Take Richard Catlett, for example, a Friend who — as I write at this very moment in — is beginning his jail sentence of two months at the Kansas City Municipal Rehabilitation Institute (for first offenders) in Kansas City, Missouri.
That will be followed by three years of probation.
Richard Catlett has been an antiwar activist , refusing to file his income tax return .
In , his health food store was closed for non-payment of taxes (it is now under his wife’s ownership), and now, at sixty-nine years of age, Richard Catlett is treated as a criminal.
Clearly, he is being held up as an example of what can happen to a trouble-maker who dares to go against the tax law.… Richard Catlett’s age gives added emphasis to the warning to those no longer young and foolhardy.
(Besides, the pockets of those in his age bracket are usually better filled, and not to be overlooked by IRS.)
Catlett’s case was covered in more depth later on in the same issue by means of lengthy quotes from a Colombia Missourian article (see “Local war protester leaves for jail term” in ♇ 5 January 2013) and the following section from a Wall Street Journal article:
Tax Report
A protester got loads of publicity that drew criminal charges for nonfiling.
The IRS selects tax protesters for criminal prosecution based on the amount of publicity they get.
Usually protesters who don’t seek the spotlight are pursued by civil actions; criminal is reserved for the publicity hound.
Richard Ralston Catlett is a notorious war and tax protester.
The sixty-eight-year-old Columbia, Missouri, health food store owner argued that criminal charges of failing to file returns should be dropped because the IRS was guilty of “selective prosecution.”
The government is barred from selecting people to prosecute on grounds of race, religion or the exercise of free speech, or other “impermissible grounds.”
Catlett claimed that basing a criminal prosecution on publicity isn’t permitted.
But an appeals court disagreed.
His exercise of free speech wasn’t involved here, the court noted.
The IRS seeks criminal prosecution against publicized protesters to promote compliance with tax laws, the court observed.
“The government is entitled to select those cases for prosecution which it believes will promote compliance,” the court declared.
For some decades now we have been hearing the Church call on governments to take steps toward disarmament.
And it would be difficult to think of a thing more urgent or more appropriate for churches to say to governments.
It is hardly necessary here to give another recitation of the monstrous and unconscionable dimensions of the world arms race, culminating in the ever-growing stockpiles of nuclear weapons and the refinement of systems to deliver their carnage.
The Church has done part of its duty when it has said that this is wrong.
But the time has come to say that the good words of the Church have not been, and are not, enough.
The risks, the disciplines, the sacrifices, and the steps in good faith which the Church has asked of governments in the task of disarmament must now be asked of the Church in the obligation of war tax resistance.
It is, at the root, a simple question of integrity.
We are praying for peace and paying for war.
Setting euphemisms aside, the billions of dollars conscripted by governments for military spending are war taxes, and Christians are paying these taxes.
Our bluff has been called.
In all candor it must be suggested that the storm of objection which arises in the Church at this idea borrows its thunder and lightning from the premiers, the presidents, the ambassadors, and the generals who make their arguments against disarmament.
War tax resistance will be called irresponsible, anarchist, unrealistic, suicidal, masochistic, naive, futile, negative and crazy.
But when the dust has settled, it will stand as the deceptively simple and painfully obvious Christian response to the world arms race.
A score or a hundred other good responses may be added to it.
We in the Church may rightly be called upon to do more than this, but we should not be expected to do less.
Let the Church take upon itself the risks of war tax resistance. For church councils to take the position that the arms race is wrong for governments and not to commit themselves and call upon their members to cease and desist from paying for the arms race is patently inconsistent.
This is probably a fundamental reason why the Church’s pleas for disarmament have met with so little positive response.
Not even governments can have high regard for people who say one thing and do another.
If governments today are confronted with the question whether they will continue the arms race, churches are confronted with the question whether they will continue to pay for it.
As specialists in the matter of stewardship of the Earth’s resources they have contributed precious little to the most urgent stewardship issue of the twentieth century if they go on paying for the arms race.
How much longer can the.
Church continue quoting to the government its carefully researched figures on military expenditures and social needs and then, apparently without embarrassment, go on serving up the dollars that fund the berserk priorities?
The arms race would fall flat on its face tomorrow if all of the Christians who lament it would stop paying for it.
It is not, of course, simple to stop paying for the arms race as a citizen of the United States, or anywhere else for that matter.
If you refuse to pay the portion of your income tax attributable to military spending, the government levies your bank account or wages and extracts the money that way.
If your income tax is withheld by your employer, you must devise some means to reduce that withholding, such as claiming a war tax deduction or extra dependents.
If, as an employer, you do not withhold an employee’s war taxes, you will find yourself in court, as has recently happened to the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors.
All of these actions are at some point punishable by fines or imprisonment, and none — in the final analysis — actually prevents the government from getting the money.
Nevertheless, it must be said that the Church has not tried tax resistance and found it ineffective; it has rather found it difficult and left it untried.
The Church has considered the risk too great.
Individuals fear social pressure, business losses, and government reprisals.
Congregations, synods, and church agencies equivocate over their role in collecting war taxes.
There is the risk of an undesirable response — contributions may drop off, tax-exempt status may be lost, officers may go to jail.
To oppose the vast power of the state by a deliberate act of civil disobedience is not a decision to be made lightly (an unnecessary observation, since there are no signs that Christians or the Church in the United States are about to do this lightly).
It would be inaccurate to give the impression that Christians, individually, and the Church, corporately, in the U.S. have done nothing about war tax resistance.
There have been notable, even heroic, exceptions to the general manifest lethargy.
The war tax resistance case of an individual Quaker was recently appealed on First Amendment grounds to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court refused to consider it.
A North American conference of the Mennonite Church is grappling with the question of its role in withholding war taxes from the wages of employees.
Among Brethren, Friends and Mennonites — sometimes called the Historic Peace Churches — there is a rising tide of concern about war taxes.
The Catholic Worker Movement and other prophetic voices in various denominations have long advocated war tax resistance, but they have truly been voices crying in the wilderness.
For all our concern about the arms race, we in the churches have done very little to resist paying for it.
That has seemed too risky.
But then, of course, disarmament also involves risks.
Could there be a moral equivalent of disarmament that did not involve risk?
In this matter of the world arms race, it is not a question of who can guarantee the desired result, but of who will take the risk for peace.
Let the Church take upon itself the discipline of war tax resistance.
Discipline is not a popular word today, but it should be amenable to rehabilitation at least among Christians, who call themselves disciples of Jesus.
How quickly does the search for a way turn into the search for an easy way!
And how readily do we lay upon others those tasks which require a discipline we are not prepared to accept ourselves!
War tax resistance will involve the discipline of interpreting the Scripture and listening to the Spirit.
In a day when the Bible is most noteworthy for the extent to which it is ignored in the Church, it is an anomaly to see the pious rush to Scripture and the joining of ranks behind Romans 13, when the question of tax resistance is raised.
In a day when the authority of the Church is disobeyed everywhere with impunity, it is a curiosity to see Christians zealous for the authority of the state.
In a day when giving to the Church is the last consideration in family budgeting, and impulse rules over law, it is a shock to observe the fanaticism with which Christians insist that Caesar must be given every cent he wants.
As the Church has grown in its discernment of what the Bible teaches about slavery and the role of women, so it must grow in its discernment of what the Bible teaches about the place and authority of governments and the payment of taxes.
War tax resistance means accepting the discipline of submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the nitty-gritty of history.
Call it civil disobedience if you wish, but recognize that in reality it is divine obedience.
It is a matter of yielding to a higher sovereignty.
Those who speak for a global world order to promote justice in today’s world invite nations to yield some of their sovereignty to the higher interests of the whole, and those persons know the obstinacy of nations toward that idea.
It may be that the greatest service the Church can do the world today is to raise a clear sign to nation-states that they are not sovereign.
War tax resistance might just be a cloud the size of a person’s hand announcing to the nations that the reign of God is coming near.
It is clear that Christians will not rise to this challenge without accepting difficult and largely unfamiliar disciplines.
But then, of course, disarmament also involves disciplines.
The idea that one nation can take initiatives to limit its war-making capacities is shocking.
To do so would represent a radical break with conventional wisdom.
How is it possible to do that without first convincing all the nations that it is a good idea?
Let the Church take upon itself the sacrifices of war tax resistance.
It is never altogether clear to me whether Christians who oppose war tax resistance find it too easy a course of action, or too difficult.
It is said that refusing to send the tax to IRS and allowing it to be collected by a bank levy is too easy — a convenient way of deceiving oneself into thinking that one has done something about the arms race.
And it is said that to refuse to pay the tax is too difficult.
It is to disobey the government and thereby to bring down upon one’s head the whole wrath of the state, society, family, business associates, and probably God as well.
Moreover, the same person will say both things.
Which does he or she believe?
In most cases, I think, the second.
The sacrifices involved in war tax resistance are fairly obvious.
They may be as small as accepting the scorn which is heaped upon one for using the term “war tax” when the government doesn’t identify any tax as a war tax, or as great as serving time in prison.
It may be the sacrifice of income or another method of removing oneself from income tax liability.
It can be said with some certainty that the sacrifices will increase as the number of war tax resisters increases, because the government will make reprisals against those who challenge its rush to Armageddon.
Yet, there is the possibility that the government will get the message and change its spending priorities or provide a legislative alternative for war tax objectors, or both.
In any case, for the foreseeable future, war tax resistance will be an action that is taken at some cost to the individual or the Church institution, with no assured compensation except the knowledge that it is the right thing to do.
But then, of course, disarmament also involves sacrifices.
The temporary loss of jobs, the fear of weakened defenses, and the scorn of the mighty are not easy hurdles to cross.
A moral equivalent will have to involve some sacrifices.
Let the Church take upon itself the action of war tax resistance.
The call of Christ is a call to action.
It is plain enough that the world cannot afford $400 billion per year for military expenditures, even if this were somehow morally defensible.
It is plain enough that the dollars which Christians give to the arms race are not available to do Christ’s work of peace and justice.
In these circumstances the first step in a positive direction is to withhold money from the military.
If we say that we must wait for this until everybody and (and particularly the government) thinks it is a good idea, then we shall wait forever.
Having withheld the money, the Church must apply it to the works of peace.
What this means is not altogether obvious at present, but there is reason to believe that a faithful Church can serve as steward for these resources as wisely as generals and presidents.
The dynamic interaction between individual Christians and the Church in its local and ecumenical forms will help to guide the use of resources withheld from the arms race.
This is a call to individual Christians and the Church corporately to make war tax resistance the fundamental expression of their condemnation of the world arms race.
Neither the individual nor the corporate body dare hide any longer behind the inaction of the other.
The stakes are too high and the choice is too clear for that, though we can have no illusions that this call will be readily embraced nor easily implemented by the Church.
But then, of course, we do not think that disarmament will be an easy step for governments to take either.
The Church has an obligation to act upon what it advocates, to deliver a moral equivalent of the disarmament it proposes.
If effectiveness is the criterion, it is certainly not obvious that talking about the macro accomplishes more than acting upon the micro.
A single action taken is worth more than a hundred merely discussed.
(When it comes to heating your home in winter, you will get more help from one friend who saws up a log than from a whole school of mathematicians who calculate the BTUs in a forest.)
To talk about a worthy goal is no more laudable than to take the first step toward it, and might be less so.
Michael Miller wrote an article for the same issue that noted that the National Guard is a U.S. military combat function that is largely paid for out of state budgets, not the federal budget.
He concluded:
I am now more fully aware how the military affects our daily lives and activities.
I also realize that not only is the objection to payment of war taxes a federal issue, but it is also a very real state issue.
State budgets contain rather large amounts in this respect.
As Friends, we must be constantly aware of the issues involved with our tax dollars.
The military has a great influence over our lives and our tax dollars, whether or not we recognize it.
We have a responsibility to make ourselves aware of the issues and how they influence our lives.
Alan Eccleston contributed an article on war tax resistance as a method of testifying for peace — aligning ones life with ones values.
This, he felt, could be done in a variety of ways:
We do not have to be prepared for jail to be a war tax resister.
We do not have to be ready, at this moment, to subject ourselves to harassment by the Internal Revenue Service.
We do, however, have to be truthful on our tax returns.
We do have to be clear about our belief in the peace testimony and our desire to align our lives with this belief.
And that is all!
If you are clear about that, you can withhold some amount of your tax.
It can be a token amount, if that is where you are, say five dollars or fifty dollars.
Or it can be the same percent of your tax as the military portion of the current budget, currently thirty-six percent excluding past debt and veterans benefits.
(An easy way to do this is to insert the amount under “Credits” as a “Quaker Peace Witness,” line forty-six.
Alternately, some people declare an extra deduction, but this is more complicated, since the deduction must be substantially larger than the amount you desire to withhold.)
It may bother you that three times or even ten times what you have chosen to withhold is going to be spent for war preparations.
But far better to take this small step than to turn away from the witness. Write your congresspersons and tell them of your concern.
Urge them to pass the World Peace Tax Fund which would acknowledge your constitutional right to practice your religious beliefs without harassment and penalty.
Alternatively, if the government owes you money fill out the (very short) Form #843 “Request for Refund,” asking that they refund the amount you wish for peace witness.
One can also anticipate the withholding problem by filling out a W-4 Form at your place of employment declaring (truthfully) an allowance for expected deductions that includes the amount of your peace witness.
Then what?
You can expect a series of computer notices stating that you calculated your tax incorrectly and you owe the amount shown on the notice.
This may also include an addition of seven percent annual interest on the amount owed.
(Currently IRS seems not to be adding on penalty charges but that is a possibility.)
You have a choice: you can ignore the notice; you can write or call IRS and discuss it; or you can pay the tax.
Sooner or later you will receive a printout that says “Final Notice.”
If you again fail to pay the amount owed, you will probably receive a call from someone at IRS who will try to convince you that the whole process has gone far enough and that your purpose is better served by paying the government.
IRS wants to collect.
That is their job; when they have done it, they are through with you.
They cannot, by law, be harsh or punitive.
There is no debtors’ prison in this country.
If you declare the intent of your witness on your tax form and by letter to Congress, you cannot be convicted of fraud; therefore, you are not risking criminal penalties.
In other words, the tax resister controls the process.
One can witness to peace so long as it can be done lovingly and, if it is to be a meaningful witness of peace, that is the only way it can be done.
However, if one’s family obligations or other matters are too pressing, or if one’s spiritual resources are being unduly strained, it is time to lay down this particular witness.
One can carry on the witness and still bring the process to a conclusion by letting the payment be taken from a bank account or peace escrow fund.
Another round of letters to Congress and the president will testify to your continuing concern even after the pressure of collection has been relieved.
In your witness, no matter how small the amount withheld or how short the duration, you will gain strength and courage and insight.
This brings new resources to your next witness.
It gives you knowledge and resources to share with others, which in turn helps their witness.
In sharing, you both are strengthened.
Thus, a personal witness becomes a “community of witness,” and the “community of witness” gains strength, courage, and insight in its mutual sharing.
This witness and this sharing of Christian love becomes its own witness to the testimony of peace — the testimony of love for God, for ourselves, for humankind.
(A letter from Dorothy Ann Ware in a later issue credited the Eccleston article for spurring her to “make a token Quaker Peace Witness by withholding a very small portion of my income tax.
So Step One has been taken…”)
The same issue reprinted a Minute from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting which encouraged Quakers “to give prayerful consideration… to the option of refusal of taxes for military purposes.”
Furthermore:
We reaffirm the Minute of the yearly meeting which states in part that “…Refusal to pay the military portion of taxes is an honorable testimony, fully in keeping with the history and practices of Friends… We warmly approve of people following their conscience, and openly approve civil disobedience in this matter under Divine compulsion.
We ask all to consider carefully the implications of paying taxes that relate to war-making… Specifically, we offer encouragement and support to people caught up in the problem of seizure, and of payment against their will.”
We request the Representative Meeting to arrange for the guidance of meetings and their members on the form of military tax resistance suitable for individuals in accordance with that degree of risk appropriate to individual circumstances, for advice on consequences, and for consideration of legal and support facilities that may be organized.
We also request Representative Meeting to provide for an Alternate Fund for sufferings, set up under the yearly meeting to receive tax payments refused, for those tax refusers who may wish to utilize this fund.
We recommend cooperation with the Historic Peace Churches and other religious groups in further consideration of non-payment on religious grounds of military taxes.
Following that, John E. Runnings wrote of his and his wife Louise’s war tax resistance, and decried the injustice of a “society that requires that Quakers, who renounce war and recognize no enemies, must pay as large a contribution to the support of the war machine as those who fully accept the malicious nature of other nationals and who are so frightened of their ill intent that no amount of extermination equipment is enough to assure security.”
The social reforms that we credit to George Fox’s influence did not come about by his waiting on the Spirit but rather by his responding to the Spirit.
If just one man could accomplish so much by responding to the Spirit, what would happen if several thousand modern Quakers were to respond to their spiritually-inspired revulsion to assisting in the building of the war machine?
If Quakers could be induced to discard their excuses for their financial support of the arms race and to withhold their Federal taxes, who knows how many thousands of like-minded people might be encouraged to follow suit?
And who knows but what this might bring a halt to the mad race to oblivion?
There was a brief update about Robert Anthony’s case.
Anthony hoped to use his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination (presumably in response to a government request for financial records or something of the sort).
The judge in the case asked if the government would grant Anthony immunity from prosecution for anything he disclosed, which would have cut off the Fifth Amendment avenue of resistance, but the government wasn’t prepared to do that, and that’s where the matter stood.
The issue included a notice that the Center on Law and Pacifism had “recently published a military tax refusal guide for radical religious pacifists entitled ‘People Pay for Peace’ ” but also noted that “the Center states that it is in ‘urgent and immediate need of operating funds.’ ”
A later issue gave some more information about the Center:
The Center was started after a former Washington constitutional lawyer and theologian, Bill Durland, met a handful of conscientious objectors who were appealing to the U.S. courts for their constitutional rights to deny income tax payments for the military.…
That was in .
The Center is now producing regular newsletters and has published a handbook on military tax refusal.
It has organized war-tax workshops for pacifists representing constituencies in the Northeast, South and Midwest.
One of its projects was the “People Pay for Peace” scheme, under which it was suggested that each individual deduct $2.40 from his/her income tax return to “spend for peace”: that sum being the per capita equivalent of the $193,000,000,000 which will be consumed in for war preparation in the United States.
This was a protest action against the fifty-three percent of the U.S. budget allocated to military purposes.
The Center on Law and Pacifism is a “do-it-yourself cooperative” which relies on both volunteer professional assistance and individual contributions.
Hmmm… my calculation for 53% of the federal budget in 1979 is more like $214,618,730,000… and per-capita (by U.S. population, anyway) that would be $953.63 per person.
If you use the $193 billion value, that’s still $857.57 per person.
Even if you use world population, you still get $44.08–$49.02 each.
Somebody’s confused… maybe it’s me.
Wendal Bull penned a letter-to-the-editor in the same issue about his experience as a war tax resister twenty years before.
Excerpt:
In I received a lump sum payment of an overdue debt.
This increased my income, which I normally keep below the taxable level, to a point quite some above that level.
I distributed the unexpected income to various anti-war organizations.
I anticipated pressure from IRS officers, so in the autumn, long before the tax would be due, I disposed of all my attachable properties.
This action, under the circumstances, I believe to be unlawful.
But it seemed to me a mere technicality, far outweighed by the sin of paying for war, or the sin of permitting collection of the tax for that purpose.
After disposing of all attachable properties, I wrote to IRS telling them I had taxable income in that year but chose not to calculate the amount of it because I had no intention of paying it.
In the same letter I explained my reasons for conscientious non-cooperation with Uncle Sam’s preparations for war in the name of “defense.”
My letter appeared in full or in generous excerpts in at least three daily papers and several other publications and I mailed copies to friends who might be interested.
I am not a publicity hound nor a notorious war resister.
The publicity did seem to effect a fairly prompt visit from the Revenue Boys.
They paid me three or four visits.
On one occasion two men came; one talked, the other may have had a concealed tape recorder, or was merely to witness and confirm the conversation.
After quizzing me for an hour or more they left courteously, whereupon I said I was sorry to be a bother to them.
At that the talker said, “You’re no trouble at all.
I brought a warrant for your arrest, but I’m not going to serve it.
It’s the guys who hire lawyers to fight us that give us trouble.”
If they had caught me in a lie, or giving inconsistent answers to their probing questions, I suspect the summons would have been served.
I was fully prepared to go to court and to be declared guilty of contempt for not producing records to show the sources of my income.
I had told the men I was in contempt of the entire war machine and all officers of the legal machinery who aimed to penalize citizens for non-cooperation with war preparations.
Later came two visits from a man who attempted to assess my income for that year, and the law required him to try to get my signature to his assessment.
I considered that a ridiculous waste of taxpayer’s money.
The man agreed with a smile.
Still later, there came several bills, one at a time, for the amount of the official assessment, plus interest, plus delinquency fee, plus warnings that the bill should be paid.
These I ignored, of course.
The head men knew I would not pay; and they knew they had not any intention of trying to force collection.
I have no idea who decided to quit sending me more bills.
I think the claim is still valid since the statute of limitations does not apply to federal taxes.
It is inconvenient to have no checking account, to own no real estate, to drive an old jalopy not worth attaching, and so on.
Some of us choose this alternative rather than to let the money be collected by distraint.
In the same issue, Keith Tingle shared his letter to the IRS, which he sent along with his tax return and a payment that was 33% short.
He stressed that he didn’t mind paying taxes — “a small price for the tremendous privilege of living in the United States with its heritage of freedom, equal protection, and toleration” — but that “I do not wish my labor and my money to finance either war or military preparedness.”
Stephen M. Gulick also wrote in.
“Because the military and the corporations need our money more than our bodies, war tax resistance becomes important — in all its forms from outright and total resistance to living on an income below the taxable level,” he wrote.
“Fundamentally, war tax resistance must lead us to look not only at warmaking and the preparation for war, but also at the economic, social, and political practices that, with the help of our money, nurture the roots of war.”
Colin Bell attended the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting:
“I think,” Colin said, “that as a Society we are standing at another moment like that, when our forebears took an absolutely unequivocal stance” and we don’t know what to do.
Are we looking for something easy, he wondered, suggesting that it probably should be tax resistance.
Accepting the title Historic Peace Church, he declared, makes it sound like a worthy option, rather than it being at the entire heart and core of Christendom.
A letter to the editor of the Peacemaker magazine from John Schuchardt is quoted in the issue:
I have recently received threatening letters from a terrorist group which asks that I contribute money for construction of dangerous weapons.
This group makes certain claims which in the past led me to send thousands of dollars to pay for its militaristic programs. The group claimed: 1) It was concerned with peace and freedom; 2) It would provide protection for me and my family; 3) It was my duty to make these payments; and 4) I was free from personal responsibility for how this money was spent in individual cases.
Last year, for the first time, I realized that these claims were fraudulent and I refused to make further payments…
That issue also noted that the Albany, New York, Meeting “joined the growing number of meetings which are calling on their members to ‘seriously consider’ war tax resistance…” That Meeting was also considering establishing its own alternative fund, and was hoping Congress would pass the World Peace Tax Fund bill.
This “seriously consider” language, along with the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s earlier-mentioned call for Quakers “to give prayerful consideration” to war tax resistance, is a far cry from the sort of bold leadership John K. Stoner was calling for.
But then again, Quaker Meetings were no longer the sorts of institutions to bandy about Books of Discipline and threaten “disorderly walkers” with disownment, or even to give them “tender dealing and advice in order to their convincement.”
Meetings had in general become much more humble about what sort of direction they should provide and what sort of obedience they could expect.
It is hard to imagine a Meeting from this period adopting a commandment along the lines of the Ohio Yearly Meeting’s discipline — “a tax levied for the purchasing of drums, colors, or for other warlike uses, cannot be paid consistently with our Christian testimony.”
The issue included a review of Donald Kaufman’s The Tax Dilemma: Praying For Peace, Paying for War, a book that defends war tax resistance from a Christian and Biblical perspective.
“What is the individual’s responsibility in the face of biblical teachings and the history of tax resistance since the early Christian centuries?
Some biblical passages have been used to justify the payment of any and all taxes.
But Kaufman warns us to consider these passages in their historical context and in the light of the primary New Testament message: love for God, oneself, one’s neighbor, and one’s enemy.”
That issue also included an obituary notice for Ashton Bryan Jones that noted “[h]is courage in the face of the harsh treatment that he endured in the struggle for social justice and against war taxes…”
The issue reported on the New England Yearly Meeting, which held a workshop on war tax resistance, and also agreed to establish a “New England Yearly Meeting Peace Tax Fund.”
Recognizing that each of us must find our own way in this matter, the new fund is seen not as a general call to Friends to resist paying war taxes but specifically to help and to hold in the Light those Friends who are moved to do so.
The fund will be administered by the Committee on Sufferings, which came into being last year to support Friends who are devoting a major portion of their time and energies to work for peace.
New Call to Peacemaking
The “New Call to Peacemaking” brought together representatives of the Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers in , and to try to strengthen their respective churches’ anti-war stands.
It continued to ripple through the pages of the Journal in .
Barbara Reynolds covered the Green Lake conference that drafted the New Call statement in the issue.
Among her observations:
In my own small group, I saw social action Friends struggling with Biblical language and coming to accept many scriptural passages as valid expressions of their own convictions.
And I saw a respected Mennonite, a longtime exponent of total Biblical nonresistance, courageously re-examining his position and corning out strongly in favor of a group statement encouraging non-payment of war taxes.
Elaine J. Crauder gave another report on the project in the issue.
Excerpts:
Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren are known as the Historic Peace Churches.
How do they witness against evil and do good?
Where does God fit into their witnessing?
Are they responding to the urgency of the present-day world situation, or are they truly “historic” peace churches, with no relevance to today’s complex world?
The New Call to Peacemaking (NCP) developed out of exactly these concerns: Where is the relevance and what is the source of our witnessing?
The answers were clear.
To seek God’s truth and to witness, in a loving way, by doing good (through peace education, cooperation in personal and professional relationships, living simply and investing only in clearly life-enhancing endeavors) and by resisting evil (working for disarmament and peace conversion, resisting war taxes and military conscription).
Crauder says she first started thinking about her support of war through her taxes in :
The 1040 Income Tax form didn’t have a space for war tax resisters.
Either I would have to lie about having dependents, or my taxes would be withheld. l didn’t feel that I had a choice.
It did not occur to me to claim a dependent and then support that person with the funds that thus wouldn’t go for war.
So, I did what was easiest — nothing — and paid my war taxes.
In , she says:
I started to think about my taxes again.
Maybe I could lie on my form.
It was definitely not right to work for peace and pay for the war machine.
I even went to one meeting of the war tax concerns committee.
But there were enough meetings that I had to go to, so I managed not to find the time to struggle with my war taxes.
Words of John Woolman seemed to fit my condition:
They had little or no share in civil government, and many of them declared they were through the power of God separated from the spirit in which wars were; and being afflicted by the rulers on account of their testimony, there was less likelihood of uniting in spirit with them in things inconsistent with the purity of Truth.
Woolman was referring to the early Quakers when he said it was less likely that they would be influenced by the civil government in questions of the truth.
It seemed to me that in Woolman’s time it was also easier to be clear about the truth — we are so much more dependent and tied to the government than they were.
Perhaps it is always easier to have a clear witness in hindsight.
I think Crauder has it a little backwards here.
Woolman was speaking of early Friends in England, who were being actively repressed by the government and banned from much of any exercise of political power, and contrasting them to the Quakers in Woolman’s own time and place (colonial Pennsylvania), where Quakers held political power, and were by far the dominant party in the colonial Assembly.
In Woolman’s time the government and the Society of Friends were as tightly linked as they ever have been.
Historical notes
In the issue, Walter Ludwig shared an interesting anecdote about Susan B. Anthony’s father, Daniel Anthony:
During the Mexican War he made the quasi tax-resisting gesture of tossing his purse on the table when the collector appeared, remarking, “I shall not voluntarily pay these taxes; if thee wants to rifle my pocketbook thee can do so.”
I hunted around for a source for this anecdote, and found one in Ida Husted Harper’s The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (1898), where she put it this way:
In early life he had steadfastly refused to pay the United States taxes because he would not give tribute to a government which believed in war.
When the collector came he would lay down his purse, saying, “I shall not voluntarily pay these taxes; if thee wants to rifle my pocket-book, thee can do so.”
But he lived to do all in his power to support the Union in its struggle for the abolition of slavery and, although too old to go to the front himself, his two sons enlisted at the very beginning of the war.
John Woolman was invoked in the issue as someone who “took as clear a stand on payment of taxes for military ends as he did on slavery.”
He was quoted as saying:
I all along believed that there were some upright-hearted men who paid such taxes but could not see that their example was a sufficient reason for me to do so, while I believed that the spirit of Truth required of me as an individual to suffer patiently the distress of goods rather than pay actively.
Bruce & Ruth Graves
The issue brought an update on the case of Bruce and Ruth Graves, who were pursuing a Supreme Court appeal in the hopes of legally validating their approach of claiming a “war tax credit” on their federal income tax returns.
They were trying to get people to write letters to the Supreme Court justices, in the hopes that they would find influential the opinions of laymen on such points as these:
1) petitioners right to First Amendment free exercise of religion and freedom of expression, 2) paramount interests of government not endangered by refusal of petitioners to pay tax, 3) petitioners should be able to re-channel war taxes into peace taxes (via World Peace Tax Fund Act, etc.), 4) IRS regulations should not take precedence over Constitutional rights of individuals, 5) threat of nuclear war must be stopped by exercise of Constitutional rights, 6) other pertinent points at the option of correspondent.
There was a further note on that case in the issue — largely a plea for support, without any otherwise significant news.
Included with this was a message from the Graveses with this plea: “How can Friends maintain the secular impact of the peace testimony expressed through conscientious objection when technology has replaced the soldier’s body with a war machine?
Does it not follow that technology then shifts the emphasis of conscientious objection toward reduction of armaments by resisting payment of war taxes?”
The issue brought the news that the Supreme Court had turned down the Graveses’ appeal.
“[W]hen asked whether the frustrations of losing the long court battle had ‘generated any thoughts of quitting,’ Ruth Graves replied, ‘Never.
If I were going to let myself be stopped by seemingly hopeless causes, I’d just die right now.”
World Peace Tax Fund
A note in the issue reported that some people who had “sent in cards or letters expressing support for the [World Peace Tax Fund] bill” had reported that they had “been subjected to IRS audits and other harassment.”
A letter from Judith F. Monroe in the issue expressed some concern about the World Peace Tax Fund plan.
Excerpts:
I fear the World Peace Tax could become a device to appease the consciences of those of us who are not willing to face the consequences of civil disobedience.…
…One important purpose of the tax is to shake the complacent into a realization of the madness of our current armaments race.
I don’t believe the casual matter of checking a block on a tax form will ever cause extensive introspection on the part of most people.
How will peace tax funds be handled?
Will such a tax require more complex tax laws, IRS investigators, and tax accountants?
How can we believe in the government’s ability to use such funds constructively?
I can envision the Department of Defense receiving peace grants.
After all, they’re the boys who fight for peace.
This may be an exaggeration.
The point is I do not feel we can trust any large bureaucracy with the task of peacemaking.
If the majority or at least a sizable minority do not opt for the peace tax, all that will happen is a larger percentage of their taxes will go to armaments to compensate for the monies diverted by the few who chose a peace tax.
Under such circumstances, the peace tax would accomplish little.
Evidence of some critical appraisal of the “peace tax” idea is also found in a note in the issue, which summarizes an address by Stanley Keeble to the June General Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland:
If this were permitted, would not government simply raise military estimates to compensate for expected shortfall?
Would not people not conscientiously opposed to military “defense,” take advantage of such legislation?
Would the procedure be destructive of democracy and majority rule?
Should not individuals rather reduce their earnings to a non-taxable level, or would that deprive useful projects of legitimate funds?
Other such questions were raised, relating to possible effects on national “defense” policy.
For his part, however, Stanley Keeble felt that it was important to “bring a peace decision right to the level of the individual,” and added that of fifteen replies so far received from monthly meetings on the subject of a Peace Tax Fund, only one was completely negative, two uncertain, and “the rest endorsed the proposal whilst acknowledging certain difficulties.”
There were occasional reports on the bill’s status in Congress scattered through the issues of the Journal.
One, in the issue, said:
Endorsed by the national bodies of the Unitarian-Universalist Association, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites, and the Religious Society of Friends, this bill provides the legal alternative for taxpayers morally opposed to war that the military portion of their taxes would go into the WPTF to be used for a national peace academy, retraining of workers displaced from military production, disarmament efforts, international exchanges and other peace-related purposes; alternatively for non-military government programs.
That issue also quoted the newsletter of the Canadian Friends Service Committee on the legislation, saying: “Thousands of letters and postcards were sent to members and many meetings held across the country as well as slide-tape shows, television and radio programs. Newspaper coverage was also good.
The U.S. government is beginning to act in response.”
This is the tenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was
reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we
finish off the 1950s.
In general, except for a brief flurry of mostly noncommittal articles in the
late 1940s, The Mennonite seemed to steer clear of
the topic of war tax resistance thereafter, with a few exceptions.
In the issue, Lloyd L.
Ramseyer wrote of
“The
Sin of Just Being Good” — that is of “people who are content to just be
good without concerning themselves very much with the evil about them.” One way
this might display itself?
Do we sometimes shift the responsibility to others, saying this is no business
of mine? May it be that we sometimes even employ others to do what we think it
is wrong for us to do ourselves, and then seem to feel that it is not our
affair?… If three-fourths of my tax dollar goes for war, can I have a
conscience clear of it?
An article on “Taxes” in the issue gave some very middle-of-the-road advice:
In the classic passage, Matthew 22:17–22,
Jesus states that He expected His followers to pay taxes.
“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the
things that are God’s.”
Very briefly, we want to say four things:
Christians ought to be honest in filing tax returns…
Christians should not pay too much tax…
Christians ought to take advantage of deductions and through contributions…
Christians ought to study best ways to give as to tax…
There was not even a hint of a suggestion that a Christian ought to be
concerned about what use Caesar puts the tax to, or might have to draw a line
somewhere and refuse. The “Render Unto Caesar” episode is portrayed as though
when Jesus was asked whether Jews ought to pay taxes to Caesar or not, he had
simply replied “yes” but in a more wordy way than necessary.
(“When they heard this, they marvelled…”
perhaps this is just a mistranslation for “they yawned and checked their
wristwatches.”)
The time of year has come again when the citizens of our country will have to
pay income tax. The question is sometimes raised, should Christians pay this
tax? A large percentage of the income tax money goes for war purposes. A
Christian obeying the new commandment of Jesus to love his neighbor as himself
cannot possibly be in accord with hatred, strife, and bloodshed resulting from
war. What then shall we do about it? Refuse to pay and come in conflict with
the laws of our country?
Jesus our Lord has given us a very clear teaching on this subject in
Matthew 17:24–27.
The collector of the tribute money asked Peter if Jesus paid tribute. Peter
answered, “yes.” Jesus preventing Peter from telling him the incident, asks
Peter “of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own
children, or of strangers?” Peter said of strangers. Jesus answered, “then are
the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we offend them, go to the sea, cast a
hook, and take the first fish thou catchest, open his mouth and take out the
coin therein and give it to the tribute collector.”
The Roman tribute money was used mostly for military purposes. The Roman
Empire was then ruling the major part of the then known world. It required
large armies to subdue and occupy these many nations. The money consumed for
military purposes was a large sum. Jesus asked Peter to pay for both of them.
Tax was again the subject of an article in the issue, but this time the message is much changed:
Daniel Graber Pastor, Silver Street Church, Goshen, Ind.
Dear Quiet of the Land;
PAX… VOLUNTARY SERVICE… 1‒W… What does it all mean? Yes, it means a positive
witness for peace; but in a vision the other night I heard 1000 angels
shouting, “Awake! Awake! Ye Quiet of the Land!”
And then the angel Gabriel went on to explain: “Ah, yes, you Mennonites are
righteous, peace-loving, law-abiding citizens of your land; but what are you
doing at this time so near the death of your Lord? Does not your Christian
conscience move you at more points than that of nonresistance to war and your
interest in finding a peaceful alternative?
“You who proclaim to the world that you are Christ’s disciples would now also
deny thy Lord! Ah, yes, my Lord did boldly say, ‘Render therefore to Caesar
the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s’; but are
you living under the Roman Empire where you have no political freedom? No, you
are citizens in a free republic, a land founded with an appreciation for your
conscience. Did you not hear the words of John Milton: ‘The passage “render to
Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” does not say “Give Caesar
thy conscience.”’
“You, the Quiet of the Land, are ordering a huge portion of that which
crucifies your Lord when you pay your federal taxes. Did you
know, fine Mennonites, that you are ordering
H-Bombs which will
destroy cities of a million men, women, and children?… Did you
know you are ordering massive retaliation which will destroy most of
mankind and cause more mass suffering than our world has ever known?…
Did you know you are ordering nuclear bomb tests which poison
the atmosphere for a hundred generations yet unborn?… Did you
know you are ordering the top secret horror weapon, by paying in
advance for it, to be delivered any day now?”
As Gabriel finished, the chorus of angels replied from the background; “No!
Gabriel, No! Most Mennonites did not order these horrible weapons. They were
ordered for them unawares — yet we must admit they did give silent
consent. Most of them didn’t realize that Washington sent all of them a
bill for these macabre instruments of suicide and moral degradation in the
name of democracy.”
That bill for the coming year amounts to $43,300,000,000 for Defense, or 60
per cent of the total estimated expenditures of the national government. Over
half of the total budget is raised from individual income taxes, Mennonites
included.
In 20 per cent of the budget went to the War
and Navy Departments to defray the cost of national security. In
this item went down to 14 per cent of the
budget. Possibly these figures do not mean very much now, but taken in
comparison to the present amount, it is ten times less than the 43 billion
dollars now at our doorstep.
At what point, my dear friends, does one cease to add a pinch of incense and
begin to engage in idolatrous worship, and thus deny our Lord? The cost of the
Federal Government operation in the budget
was $55 per person, even then more than what many people gave to the church.
The budget will cost about $455 per person.
If you wish to put this into the Mennonite picture, here is an up-to-date
report.
In Elkhart County, Indiana, where the population is 84,512
( Census), there are over 8,800 Amish and
Mennonites (Mennonite Encyclopedia). Elkhart County will pay
$43,642,912 as their share of the cost of federal government spending. It is
assumed that Mennonites of Elkhart County will pay at least their share, which
amounts to more than 10.4 per cent, or $4,538,862 plus.
If we could believe that even 40 per cent of the budget would be legitimately
used for democracy, it means that the Mennonites of Elkhart County alone are
putting into preparation for future wars close to three million
dollars a year. That amount of money would be sufficient to operate the
entire
MCC
program for more than a year, or to build several new Mennonite Biblical
Seminaries, or a number of hospitals, old people’s homes, colleges, high
schools, etc.
From the soldiers of the cross we hear these testimonies concerning taxes.
John Woolman, who refused payment in : “To
refuse active payment at such a time might be construed to be an act of
disloyalty, and appeared likely to displease the rulers, not only here but in
England; still there was a scruple so fixed on the minds of many Friends that
nothing moved it.”
Bishop Andrew Ziegler, a Mennonite, in the Revolutionary War period; “I would
as soon go to war as to pay the three pounds and ten shillings.”
A.J. Muste (Secretary Emeritus of the Fellowship of Reconciliation): “The two
decisive powers of government with respect to war are the power to conscript
and the power to tax. In regard to the second I have come to the conviction
that I am at least conscience bound to challenge the right of the government
to tax me for waging war, and in particular for the production of atomic and
bacterial weapons.”
Ernest and Marion Bromley (Sharonville, Ohio): “We regard it as the
prerogative of every individual to refuse to aid this government or any other
government either to prepare for or to engage in war. The time has come when
men ought no longer to depend solely upon their spoken witness against war.
They ought to prepare themselves for outright resistance by a thorough-going
dissociation with the war-making system. No testimony for peace can afford to
become a timid shadow. No matter what one may say against our armaments, if he
is still paying for armaments, it seems to be talking peace and preparing for
war.”
“Awake! Awake! Ye Quiet of the Land!” Think before you begin
paying Defense dollars. Convert them to
Peace and the Church today.
Christians have responded to the challenge of this issue in various ways. A
few have refused to pay the proportion of their tax that is used for military
purposes. Some have voluntarily limited their income to the low level that is
tax-exempt…
The issue included Don and
Eleanor Kaufman’s letter to the
IRS:
As Mennonite Christians filed their income tax returns for
, more than one was disquieted to
realize that tithing Christians were not giving nearly as much to further
God’s kingdom as they were paying for military preparation for war! Two
Mennonites decided to give voice to this concern in the following letter.
U.S. Treasury
Department Internal Revenue Service Washington 25,
D.C.
Gentlemen:
In filing income tax returns for we believe
it is necessary to clarify our concerns. Like others who have been perplexed
by the irresponsible use of tax money for military purposes, we are earnestly
seeking for a constructive way in which to be honest with what we understand
about the issue. Personally, we are unable to acquiesce easily to the present
military expenditures of our government which we believe, are irrelevant to
the problem they are trying to solve. One cannot change ideologies or correct
evil by destroying those in whom these forces reside.
In an effort to reduce our cooperation in a warmaking system to a minimum, we
seriously considered refusing payment of that portion used for military
expenditures (which we understand is about 73 per cent of federal taxes).
Since we object on religious grounds to participation in war and military
preparation in any form, we believe, like Milton Mayer, that we are denied the
free exercise of our religion (guaranteed by the First Amendment to the
Constitution) when forced to pay income taxes used for military purposes.
If money represents a part of a person’s life, as we believe it does, then it
logically follows that a Christian will have ambivalent feelings about
professing peace and good will while at the same time supporting explicitly
destructive forces within a government. As there are provisions for
conscientious objection to military service, there should also be provisions
for conscientious objection to making
H-bombs or paying for
the making of them.
Consequently, in the interests of our government and all people, we are
looking for some alternative whereby it would be possible to channel that
portion of tax money to those causes which contribute to the welfare of
people — those legitimate functions which are constructive and not destructive
of human value.
We hope that the United States government will accept our offer to pay the
equivalent or more of the military tax to some mutually agreeable agency,
organization, or institution, like
CROP,
MCC,
Church World Service, or the United Nations (UNESCO,
Technical and Economic Assistance Program,
etc.), which is
committed to a peaceful program for all men. We feel that a voluntary
arrangement something like Edith Green’s bill
H.R. 12310 is
necessary if we are to make possible the conditions of a lasting and abiding
peace.
(This was the earliest of the “peace tax fund” legislative proposals. It set up
a fund to be used to give aid developing nations, and would have allowed
taxpayers to get up to a 2% deduction on their taxes by donating to the fund.)
As Christians, we are not seeking exemption from the payment of taxes, but we
are searching for a right to determine how those taxes are used, especially
those which we contribute personally. It is clear to us that a Christian has a
responsibility to government, significantly because in a democracy he is a
real part of the government. Because the Christian knows something of the
value and importance of community he will do everything he can to contribute
to the stability and welfare of government on all levels.
Yet if this person realizes the destructive character and devastating results
of all military preparation, he will consider it his patriotic duty to do what
he can to avoid collective disaster. We believe responsible citizenship
implies that there is no blanket endorsement for what a government does. Its
actions must be tested and if they are found to be outside of the purpose of
God they are to be challenged.
We hope you will feel with us the urgent need to recognize the priority which
God always deserves in every human decision. We would appreciate your
thoughtful response to this crucial issue.
Akron– Concern for payment of war taxes has been
expressed by the General Brotherhood Board of the Church of the Brethren.
Board Executive Secretary W. Howard Row writes, “The concern is real and the
problems to implement (an alternative to payment of war taxes) are great.
However, probably no greater than that of securing an alternative to military
service.” In a resolution shared with
MCC
and similar organizations the General Brotherhood Board states: Because there
is a growing interest among Brethren and others in finding a positive
alternative to the payment of that portion of federal income taxes that go for
war preparations, the General Brotherhood Board voted that explorations be
made with the appropriate agencies of government to the end that an acceptable
constructive alternative be provided for all those persons who, by reason of
religious training and belief, conscientiously object to the payment of that
portion of income taxes going for military defense. These explorations might
be made in concert with one or the more of the other organizations with which
we are associated or if necessary by Brethren alone.”
A similar reaction was recently expressed by two Mennonites. Mr. and Mrs. Don
Kaufman (Moundridge, Kan.) who
are under appointment as
MCC
workers in Indonesia [and who] assert in a letter to the
U.S. Treasury
Department: [quote from above letter omitted]
On the
MCC
Executive Committee met, and, according to
a
later article on the meeting, “[r]eferred to Peace Section the invitation
from the Church of the Brethren to study whether there might be a positive
alternative provided by the
U.S. government for
persons conscientiously opposed to paying that portion of income taxes going
for military defense.”
The
Mennonite Central Committee annual report for
included a report from this “Peace
Section.” They noted that “throughout our constituency… [c]oncern is evident in
discussions about possible participation in various protest actions and about
the propriety of paying income taxes that are used so largely for war
purposes…”
Our next episode will pick up as the tumultuous 1960s begin.
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 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:
Is it wrong to pay our taxes to government even though we know seventy per cent of this goes for the preparation of war?
What does the Bible say about this question of involvement?
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?
Is there some way in which we can make a Christian witness against programs of military spending?
How?
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 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 issue:
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 , 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 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 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 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 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 ’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 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.
[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 .
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 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 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 to $268 in .
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 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.
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 .
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.
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?
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.
“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.
―♇]
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?
“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.
“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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
This is the eighteenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we hit 1971.
A dam seems to have burst in , and any reluctance The Mennonite had about covering war tax resistance washed away.
In the concern was front and center, and readers could not help but be confronted by a variety of opinions on the subject.
A letter from John S. Swarr insisted that Jesus “commands us, as His followers, to bring peace and reconciliation in a world of strife and violence by committing our lives to unconditional love for our fellowmen.
Such a discipleship manifests itself in a radically different life style than that of the rest of the world.”
He asked, in this regard, “Can we, as Christians, responsible for all our neighbors, continue to pay taxes for the means of destruction which are used against our distant (only in physical distance) brothers?
This responsibility is our own, not Caesar’s.”
Christian love shown to a brother will not manifest itself in bombs and napalm, paid for with our money and silently allowed to be used.
It will, rather, manifest itself in actions of love, help, and concern.
It may result in our refusal to pay war taxes or cooperate with the draft, but at any rate it will mean avoiding nationalism for “No man can serve two masters.”
(That edition also announced the resignation of the editor.
The announcement was carefully vague, but subsequent letters to the editor hinted that there was something of a rebellion afoot against the “anti-American propaganda… all politics and sociology” that had replaced anodyne bible studies in the magazine’s pages.
The resignation takes effect in .
We’ll see if it makes a difference in the coverage of war tax resistance.)
A hundred people met to discuss war tax resistance at Bethel College Mennonite Church in at a meeting sponsored by the Western District Conference (which had recently passed a resolution in support of war tax resistance) and the Commission on Home Ministries of the General Conference Mennonite Church.
Don Kaufman gave some thoughts about Christian obedience to state authority, and Bob Calvert from the secular “War Tax Resistance” group spoke about the upcoming “spring offensive” anti-war actions.
Here are some excerpts about other parts of the conference from the report on the workshop in The Mennonite:
A Quaker physician from Denver, Arthur Evans, spoke of his experiences with the Internal Revenue Service spanning more than twenty-five years.
During World War Ⅱ, Evans’ conscience stirred him to withhold part of his taxes.
He said, “The trouble we’re now at is because we as a nation tried to overcome evil with the same methods that we decried of Hitler.
The thought occurred to me was that if I were a Jew in Germany, would I have paid taxes to Hitler to pay for my own crematorium?
Am I not a Jew in the United States perhaps paying taxes to create my own crematorium right now?
This is the burning question in my mind.”
Evans was sent to jail for not turning over to IRS some records which pertained to his income taxes.
He felt that doing so “would have been the first step in a crime against humanity.”
He acted partly upon the principle established in the Nuremberg war crimes trials that individuals have to decide what laws of their nation are just and what laws are unjust.
“I maintain that as I tried to follow my conscience this was the only way I could grow and this is the only way human beings can grow — as they are willing to follow conscience.
You deny conscience here, you deny conscience there, you won’t grow in what it means to be a human being.”
While spending ninety days in jail for contempt, he received letters from over a hundred and fifty individuals whom he did not know who supported his actions.
“None of us knows how we strengthen the community by following our own conscience.
I felt a power from the prayers and the loving concern of people who saw me suffering in jail,” he said.
The group discussed methods of withholding or reducing their taxes, but wanted to go beyond simply voicing their beliefs about war.
Participants felt a need to establish a simpler life-style that was a fuller response to the causes of violence.
Discussion centered around setting up voluntary service-type group arrangements and channeling earnings through the church’s voluntary service program.
To strengthen their own witness, participants in the workshop drew up a statement which they all signed.
That statement read:
We the undersigned have agreed together to find ways to end our financial support of America’s military efforts.
We have come from various denominations, occupations, age groups, and parts of the country.
As seekers, we have participated in a Workshop on War Taxes, held at the Bethel College Mennonite Chuch, , sponsored by committees for the Western District and the General Conference Mennonite Church.
Together, our consciences were prodded.
We have heard Christ call us to be peacemakers.
We have examined together the biblical teachings on the matter of paying taxes for war.
We have looked at the historical witness and examples of Anabaptist founders, and men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
We have tried to take seriously Christ’s call to love our enemies as He loves all men.
We have seen our guilt in our past payment of blood-money and are now looking for ways to end this involvement.
More vitally, we are seeking ways to make our money serve real human needs.
We realize this may lead to many types of action.
We approve and support all open, conscientious efforts to end war through Christian stewardship.
Specific actions could include any or all of the following: refusal of federal income tax payment, refusal to pay that part which goes for military purposes, refusal of the telephone excise tax, written protest accompanying income-tax returns, witnessing to the consciences of officials and employers who collect and enforce the tax laws, and increasing charitable giving.
We encourage the creation of voluntary-service-style communities which practice a lower level of consumption and present a Christian alternative to the present materialistic and militaristic character of American life.
We plead with the congregations and conferences of which we are members to follow Christ, their consciences, and the needs of their brothers in responding to our concern.
As a witness to our deranged national priorities and how they might be straightened out, I and others will make a public donation during of the money we have withheld from war, and will give it to a local group working for real human needs.
I hope you can see your way to join us.
David Janzen, a pastor and a philosophy instructor at Eastern Mennonite College, wrote an article on the Vietnam War that he’d originally hoped to place in the New York Times.
Instead, The Mennonite picked it up for its edition.
Excerpt:
Our consciences are sorely troubled concerning our tax money, which continues to make this unjust war possible.
The time is ripe for action.
Enough is enough.
Let us not commit violence.
No destruction of property.
No aggression against human beings.
We want to honor our nation.
We can only do so by correcting our mistakes.
The vital point is tax money.
Let us invite a million sensitive Americans to take a stand for conscience’ sake.
Let us tell the government, that unless it starts serious negotiations that lead to peace by , we will withhold our income tax and pay it into a Tax Conscience Fund.
We must organize people with conscience scruples.
I would suggest that concerned groups in universities, churches, and other organizations start registering people for united action.
A federal organization could coordinate the program.
Conscientious individuals would commit themselves to pay their total income tax, or the approximately 80 percent of it that is spent for war, into a tax conscience fund.
The money could be paid into special accounts at local banks.
We would make it available for rehabilitation of the war areas as soon as the war has ended.
A letter to the editor dissented from the recent flood of pro-resistance articles and letters:
Personally, I do not believe that there is such a thing as a war tax in existence.
If there were it would have had to be declared as such by Congress, as they pass all taxes.
This has not been done.
All expenses are paid out of one treasury.
It may be true that there are some Congressmen and politicians who have said that a certain tax is necessary to pay for the war.
This was their excuse for voting for it or working for its passage.
But that does not make it a war tax.
Nor do I believe that there is any individual who with any degree of accuracy can tell us what percent of our taxes goes for war purposes.
Not all the money voted for the Pentagon goes for war… [For instance t]he Coast Guard spends much of its time in saving lives at sea, which has nothing to do with war…
…[I]f I believe war is wrong it becomes my obligation to do what I can to stop it.
My refusing to pay taxes does not stop it, for most people are still paying their tax.
If I disobey a law, especially publicly, I lose my influence over my non-Christian neighbor that I am supposedly trying to win to Christ.
The articles on the war tax workshop and Rensberger’s discussion of loyalty to God vs. country are especially thought-provoking.
Is there interest in having workshops on these subjects in many areas of the conference on the local level?
Would leaders be available from the war tax workshop, the conference, or seminary to help with such workshops where hundreds of lay people could discuss and think together about a united commitment that may make some impact on communities and government?
Another letter in the same issue reported on a silent vigil held before the offices of Bell Telephone Company in Newton Kansas on :
They came to turn over money which they had not been paying on their telephone bill to a community youth organization called Someplace.
They came as concerned Christians to tell others that they were not paying the federal tax portion of their telephone bill because the tax had been levied specifically for war purposes.
Approximately ninety persons accepted a hand-out sheet explaining the federal telephone tax and explaining why many Christians no longer pay that portion.
Seventy-eight dollars was given to Someplace and it is expected that as more Christians hear about this alternative, more money will be turned over to various community organizations.
There is a question of where to get more specific information on war taxes.
Jacob Friesen tells how he is withholding the excise tax on his telephone bill and writing a letter each month to the President with copies going also to his senator and congressional representative.
“I have chosen each month to vote ‘no’ on war.”
Probably, no other living person has spent as much time in Civilian Public Service as I have.
During that time, and since, I associated with many young men who struggled with their conscience.
I argued with some, but only with those who wanted to argue, and usually, it was with some who had conscientiously chosen either noncombatant or full military service.
I also knew quite intimately a few who struggled with an attempt at total separation from all war effort, including nonregistration.
This was at a time when the nation was solidly supporting World War Ⅱ.
Today, the Vietnam war is not popular and the climate for vigorous opposition is utterly different from what it was then.
I deeply respected the convictions of the absolutist then as I do now and have never cared to debate their point of view, even though it did not coincide with mine.
It does seem to me, however, that there has been growing confusion about the payment of taxes during wartime.
There is no doubt a sense in which nonpayment finds it place, in the continuum from all-out participation to suicidal protest.
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt had some sympathetic appreciation for conscientious objectors.
While visiting one of the camps, she was reported to have remarked that short of living on a desert island, it was impossible to live without being involved in the war to some degree.
Because there is truth in this, it is most difficult to talk about a clearly right or a clearly wrong position.
However, if we believe the way of war is inherently wrong our conscience will push us as far away from participation as possible, consistent with other considerations, human and divine, that we cannot conscientiously ignore.
Just where does nonpayment of taxes belong on this continuum?
We need to distinguish between refusing to participate in war as an immoral act, on the one hand, and the moral compulsion to do what we can to stop an immoral war on the other.
Part of the confusion concerning nonpayment of taxes has to do with failure to distinguish clearly between these two somewhat different moral considerations.
Nonpayment of taxes is not getting much serious consideration from our traditional Mennonite nonresistant believer, because it does not relate with his views on participation as an immoral act.
The “give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” edict of Jesus makes it difficult for him to see a clear immoral act in paying taxes, even though he knows that a large portion is needed for war purposes.
The case becomes clearer for the person whose conscience is also concerned with a moral compulsion to do something about stopping the war.
Today, many of us believe we need to be as much concerned about our moral obligation as citizens of our country to do what we can to stop our country’s immoral war as we are about participation in the immoral act of war.
Is payment of taxes an immoral act? We have already pointed out that, traditionally, Mennonites did not consider payment of taxes immoral, in part, at least, because of Jesus’ edict.
However, when taxes are labeled “war taxes” as the telephone excise tax is, many begin to have second thoughts.
When mustaches were popular among military men, Mennonites shunned mustaches.
Guilt by association becomes a real consideration.
What everyone ought to know is that these taxes all go into the same general treasury.
The “war tax” label on the telephone excise tax has significance only in that it helped ease it through Congress, and none, whatsoever, as to its use.
The use of tax money for war purposes is an entirely separate matter, and is determined by appropriations for this purpose by Congress.
So long as Congress appropriates what the Pentagon asks for with overwhelming majorities, nonpayment of taxes will have absolutely nothing to do with the amount of money available for war purposes.
But, unfortunately, it does have something to do with the availability of funds for less popular but terribly important poverty programs as well as health and education programs. Those who do not pay their taxes must realize that the net effect, if any, is not at all what they have in mind.
Is nonpayment effective politically? Many of those who do not pay taxes are probably more concerned about the political impact this might have, and hope it will help turn our country away from war.
Certainly, this would seem like much more solid ground.
The sheer drama of civil disobedience for the sake of conscience makes an impact that cannot be ignored.
Even though much of the reaction may be negative, this is not necessarily bad.
Jesus’ crucifixion was the result of negative reaction, too.
The point is, let us be clear about what we are doing and why we are doing it.
Apart from the attention-getting quality of nonpayment of taxes, the technique, however, is subject to serious questions.
It is essentially a pitch to the Bureau of Internal Revenue and to the telephone company, neither of which has anything to do with determining policy concerning Vietnam.
Witnessing to Internal Revenue about such matters is about as effective as writing a letter to a computer.
The telephone company has trouble enough giving good telephone service, without being harassed about something for which it has no responsibility and for which it has no competence.
We do all have a direct line to the White House and to Congress.
Here are the people who can do something about it.
If we believe, as literally millions of Americans are now believing, that our presence in Vietnam is a tragic mistake, these are the people to talk to.
I suspect Jesus was more of a tax economist than are some of His spokesmen when He got a bit vague about payment of taxes.
Departing editor Maynard Shelly, in the , reflected on the classic Anabaptist work Martyrs Mirror and on the urge to persecute those who don’t go along with institutions.
He concluded:
I dare you to turn to the Martyrs Mirror and read military service and war taxes where the old book says baptism.
All of a sudden, those words put down on paper in will be more up to date than the news in tomorrow morning’s newspaper.
Raymond Regier wrote a letter in response to Lehman’s article.
Some of his thoughts:
It is extremely difficult to live as we are used to living and not pay taxes, taxes which finance both warfare and many beneficial things.
But just because nonpayment is difficult, because it has not traditionally been done by Mennonites, does not say that the payment of taxes is not an integral part of the waging of modern war.
Modern warfare and especially Vietnamization require sophisticated technology and an enormous sum of money, perhaps even more than it needs drafted manpower.
Is a man any less responsible for the way his money is used than he is for the way his body is used?
The “give unto Caesar” quote, it seems to me, is tragically misused to give the appearance of avoiding complicity in our nation’s war making.
Can anyone seriously imagine that Jesus would be paying taxes to finance our Vietnam war or our nuclear deterrent?
Or that He would be earning enough to pay taxes at all?…
If one is interested in a direct line to the White House and Congress, wouldn’t an announcement by the letter writer that taxes have been withheld lend credibility to the intensity of his feelings and the seriousness with which he regards the matter?
The General Conference considered a statement on “The Way of Peace” at its meeting in Fresno that included a war tax resistance plank.
The version that appeared in the edition of The Mennonite was somewhat mangled, but I found a better version:
The levying of war taxes is another form of conscription which, along with the conscription of manpower, makes war possible.
We are accountable to God for the use of our financial resources and should protest the use of our taxes in the promotion and waging of war.
We stand by those who feel called to resist the payment of that portion of taxes being used for military purposes.
The Conference ratified the statement, with 73.4% of delegates voting in favor of it, though the war tax resistance plank, and another having to do with resistance to the Selective Service system, were the most controversial.
The statement updated previous statements on peace put out by the conference in and .
It was printed up in “a twenty-page illustrated booklet” and distributed to the various churches in the Conference.
The edition included a note about a creative form of tax resistance using a method I haven’t seen before:
In some ways, the government can be involved in redirecting taxes that are withheld in protest of military policies.
An Old Mennonite pastor preferred to use a portion of his taxes for relief work rather than to support the United States military.
His protest took on a positive, creative form.
He wrote two checks to pay his income tax.
One check covered that proportion of his tax dollar which supports government actions that he approves.
This he made out to the federal government.
The portion which would have gone to war was made out to the Mennonite Central Committee.
He sent both checks to the Internal Revenue Service with a letter explaining his actions and requesting that the IRS forward the second check on to MCC headquarters.
A stamped, addressed envelope was enclosed.
The government complied.
Tax Talk, a war-tax-resistance bulletin, commented on the method used: “This action effectively reached three levels.
First, symbolically, it shows nonsupport of war.
Secondly, it personally involves people in the IRS in a protest and in a positive attempt to help those whose lives our tax dollars have helped totally disrupt, while removing tax dollars (at least for the moment) from contributing to that destruction.”
Although the Internal Revenue Service forwarded the check, they soon attached the pastor’s bank account to reclaim that part of the tax which he refused to directly pay.
The Arvada Mennonite Church, Arvada, Colo., has notified Mountain Bell Telephone Company that the congregation has agreed “to cease voluntary payment of the 10 percent federal telephone tax levied against the citizens of this country for the support of the war in Vietnam.”
The money which would have been spent on the federal tax will be contributed to the Mennonite Central Committee for alleviation of suffering in Vietnam.
In its letter to the telephone company, the congregation said, “The decision to refrain from willingly paying a specifically legislated war tax is an expression of the sorrow and protest of the church over the suffering and loss of life in Vietnam, both American and Vietnamese, and the unwillingness of the United States to allow the citizens of that country engaged in civil strife to determine their own destiny and fashion their own future in relation to the world community of nations.”
The letter said the church did not intend “to defraud our nation which we love, or by secret means to deprive it of its claim upon citizens for support in its just and God-given duties.
Rather we openly seek to make this expression a call for justice and peace.”
In such cases, the telephone company does not terminate service or collect the tax, but notifies the Internal Revenue Service.
The Internal Revenue Service eventually takes the required amount plus interest from the bank account of the individual or organization refusing the tax.
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 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 edition:
Christian response to war taxes was discussed by about 100 participants in a
workshop 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 , 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 . 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.
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?
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?
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?
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?
Should Christians who object to paying war taxes wait with their protest
until the whole Christian community agrees to do so?
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?
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 edition.)
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
and
, according to
an
announcement in the
edition. One of those meetings was covered as follows in the
edition:
About fifty persons shared ways of protesting the use of their taxes for war
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 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
to rap about the kind of lifestyle they want to adopt,” hiply noted
an
article in the edition.
Among the topics on the agenda: “how to avoid complicity with militarism
through paying taxes.”
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
, 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 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.
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.
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.
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
, 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 “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
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 edition:
War tax resistance means sale of car. David Janzen, Newton, Kansas, at right,
talks with Internal Revenue Service officials in Wichita as they open and
record sealed bids for Mr. Janzen’s station wagon. The automobile was
confiscated in for nonpayment of $31.32
of telephone excise tax which would have been used to carry on the war in
Indochina. The officials read bids for one cent to $501, but refused to read
bids for “one napalmed baby” and other “units of suffering” submitted by other
war tax resisters and supporters. “All we’re interested in is the money,” said
the IRS
officer. “We’re interested in what the money buys,” replied Mr. Janzen. The
intentional community of which he is a member bought back the station wagon.
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 . 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 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 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.
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.
This is the twentieth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was
reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we
reach 1973.
The Paris Peace Accord is about to be signed, beginning the eventual withdrawal
of U.S. troops from
Vietnam. Will the growing war tax resistance movement in the General Conference
Mennonite Church be able to sustain its momentum as anti-war urgency slackens?
Of all the varieties of tax resistance, the pay-taxes-but-complain method seems
the least likely to satisfy or impress. But some people do seem to like it. For
example, a letter from Sem and Mabel Sutter to the Commissioner of the
IRS,
dated explained that they
were paying “the two-thirds of our federal
income tax which is budgeted for military purposes… under protest.” Because
“the money is already in your hands in the form of withholding tax, we have no
recourse but to pay it, while stating that it violates our conscience to do
so.” The typical complaints about “the wholesale destruction of human life” and
the opportunity costs of military spending followed, along with a patient
explanation of the Mennonite point of view on “resistance to war.” Finally the
letter concluded that “until such time as legislative provision is made for
conscientious objection to war tax, we shall pay our tax under protest.”
The issue included
a
letter from Steven G. Schmidt. Similarly anguished about the Vietnam War,
he suggested something a bit stronger than paying-under-protest:
I would like to suggest one further action to people who follow Christ and to
people who believe in God. Income tax money is due soon. Most of that money
will go to disrupt and destroy lives. Perhaps church people would serve God
best by sending this money to nonmilitary agencies or to local charities or
the church. I, for one, pledge my support to you — and I know others who do,
too. Let me know if we can help you in any way, for it takes courage to follow
conscience.
As Joshua put it (24:15), “Choose ye this day whom you will serve… as for me
and my house, we shall serve the Lord.” We at our house have come to believe
that putting the money that would have gone to
IRS into
life-giving investments is serving the Lord.
A letter from David Janzen, dated , hoped to keep the war tax resistance momentum going as the
anti-war movement’s urgency was being deflated by the withdrawal of the United
States from the Vietnam War:
Dear [The Mennonite editor] Larry [Kehler]: I have
been asked by a number of friends, “Now that the war is over in Vietnam, will
you end your war tax resistance?” Since most of my friends read
The Mennonite, I wanted to share my answer here,
hoping it may be helpful to others.
No, I will not pay the telephone excise tax (now 9 percent); I will do my best
to owe no income tax and will refuse to pay whatever I do owe.
I am glad that the United States has finally agreed to withdraw all troops
from Vietnam and exchange prisoners with Hanoi, but… the war is not over and
U.S. complicity in
it has not ended. Our bombers in Indochina have not been brought home, rather
they are raining destruction on Cambodia and Laos in in unprecedented levels.
The victims of these bombs are not my enemies. Why should they suffer for the
sins of their rulers, or mine?
Furthermore, the President has requested a $4.7 billion increase in the
Pentagon’s budget, and this in supposed peace time. What is the purpose of all
this war spending that consumes 60 cents of every income tax dollar? It is, it
seems to me, getting ready to put down with massive violence, the next threat
to the American empire, or worse, to win the nuclear showdown of World War Ⅲ.
By contributing to this kind of terror politics, I do not demonstrate God’s
nature nor bring his peace. So, for the foreseeable future, I plan to reinvest
my war taxes into works of mercy.
If anyone wants information on how to refuse taxes for war, even if you are in
a withholding situation, write me or War Tax Resistance, 912
E.
31st
St., Kansas City, Missouri
64109.
I haven’t really looked into the question of whether Canadians are doing more
good than evil by paying their taxes. C.J. Hinke of 918 Center
St. South in Whitby, Ontario,
is apparently the only open tax resister in Canada, and would be glad to share
his reasons with inquirers.
Walton Hackman, executive secretary of the Mennonite Central Committee’s “Peace
Section” noted that war tax redirection to support that Section’s work had
increased:
During the past year the
MCC
Peace Section has received $4,000 in contributions made in lieu of tax
payments. This was a new phenomenon. In previous years only several hundred
dollars were contributed in this way. 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
meeting to establish a
taxes-for-peace fund to which such contributions could be made.
Some of the funds contributed last year were contributions made in lieu of the
10 percent (now 9 percent) telephone excise tax which, according to Wilbur
Mills, chairman of the United States House ways and means committee, is a tax
needed to pay for the Vietnam war. Other funds contributed in lieu of tax
payments came from individuals who withheld part of their federal income tax.
Contrary to what many people hoped, the end of United States military action
in Vietnam does not mean a reduction in military spending. The proposed budget
increase for the Pentagon next year is $4,200,000,000.
Those who have made contributions to the Peace Section in lieu of tax payments
during past years are not, as some might suspect, the young activists, but
include businessmen, medical doctors, teachers, farmers, and administrators
representing a good cross section of the Mennonite brotherhood.
Young people, especially students who are not in earning situations of paying
taxes, contributed very little in lieu of tax payments. Most of the
contributions came from people over thirty.
The taxes-for-peace fund, as it is being called, is being established for
persons whose conscience against war and killings will not allow them to pay
the portion of their taxes that goes for war purposes. It should be
clearly understood, that contributions made to this fund will not satisfy the
Internal Revenue Service. It will, however, provide individuals with a
receipt proving that their intentions were not to defraud, but that their
withholding some portion of their tax monies was a matter of conscientious
objection to war and militarism.
The monies contributed to the fund will be used for the work of the Peace
Section and will be a small effort toward waging peace rather than war.
With the need for manpower in the armed forces greatly reduced and with the
use of more sophisticated remote-controlled technical weapons, it is
increasingly difficult to express one’s conscientious objection to war.
Mennonites have traditionally withheld their bodies as a protest against war.
Now few bodies are needed and many more dollars are needed for the development
and maintenance of expensive war machinery.
Contributions to the taxes-for-peace fund may be one tangible way in which
conscientious objectors can positively express peace through their tax
dollars.
A
letter by Gus Konkel, dated , shows the first sign of backlash for some time. Excerpt:
It seems to me the whole question about war taxes is a prime example of utter
question begging. In the final analysis all the taxes go in and out of the
same pot. Tagging a name to any particular tax doesn’t really mean anything. I
don’t ever expect to live under a government that has no defense system, be it
capitalist or communist. How directly I support that defense system through
the tax dollar doesn’t seem to me to be of any great import one way or the
other.
American Telephone and Telegraph reports that 22,000 people refused to pay the telephone excise tax in protest against the Vietnam War in , up from 17,000 in and 12,000 in .
The Internal Revenue Service wants AT&T to disconnect all those phones, but AT&T says tax problems are IRS’ business.
Apparently IRS wants as little to do with 22,000 prosecutions as AT&T wants to do with the $200,000 a month it would cost to disconnect protesters’ phones.
The edition reported on three
anonymous donors, young people from Goshen, Indiana, “with an average income of
$4,000” had together donated $5,000 to a fund for financially-needy Goshen
College students. “They have decided to give away their earnings,”
the
article reported, “rather than keep them and pay federal taxes, much of
which goes for war.”
The edition gave a second
example of a Mennonite organization practicing war tax resistance corporately
(see ♇ for the first example):
Faith Mennonite Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has recently voted to
withhold payments of the 9 percent federal excise tax on its telephone bill
“in protest against the Vietnam War and
U.S. militarism.”
The church council had discussed the issue in
and
and had recommended that the tax issue
be brought up at the annual business meeting
. On
, the issue was debated during the
Sunday school hour and voted on at the annual meeting in the afternoon.
“There was not complete consensus in our case,” said Pastor Donald Kaufman.
“But a significant group feels that this is an important Christian witness.”
Congregational moderator Richard Westby drafted a letter to Northwestern Bell
to be sent with each month’s phone payment. The letter reads in part:
“The Faith Church has traditionally opposed war and continues to pay for war
(although tax withholding does not have a long tradition within our history.)
This contradiction between profession and practice within our congregation is
now being changed so that we are more consistent in our faith. We are opposed
to war and do not want our tax payments to support, endorse, or pay for
U.S. war efforts.
“As a church organization, we realize that we have a responsibility to our
country and government for services rendered. We support our government except
when it contradicts Christian morality and conscience… We feel obligated to
challenge our government’s reckless and immoral military deeds. By our small
action we join with many other moral people in strongly urging our government
to change its priorities and reduce its dependence upon the military. Without
money, modern warfare could not be fought…”
The telephone tax, formerly 10 percent, was restored by President Lyndon B.
Johnson in , during the escalation of the
Vietnam War. Beginning this year, it will be decreased 1 percent annually
until it disappears in .
The edition carried
a
brief news item about the the strange
AFSC
lawsuit in which they were trying to have the withholding taxes they had
already paid for their conscientiously-objecting employees refunded to them.
(See ♇ for more about that suit.)
The edition included a
tribute to Mennonite professor Benny Bargen,
who had died . It touched
briefly on his war tax resistance, saying: “His opposition to war had led him
to request that his salary be held at a level that would not require him to pay
taxes.”
This is the twenty-third in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
brings us up to 1976.
The question of whether the Mennonite General Conference should stop
withholding taxes from the paychecks of conscientiously objecting employees
continued to bedevil the Conference and its various committees and commissions
in . After the American Friends Service
Committee won a District Court ruling about withholding from its objecting
employees, the General Conference was pressed to adopt such a policy. But that
ruling was swiftly overturned by the Supreme Court, and so the Conference
seemed to lose its nerve.
In the executive committee of
the General Conference’s Commission
on Home Ministries decided to put on its agenda for their full-commission
meeting in a “recommendation
that the General Conference not withhold the military portion of income taxes
from the paychecks of those employees who do not wish to pay war taxes
voluntarily. This would mean that such employees, rather than the conference,
could be responsible for the decision of whether to pay war taxes to the
government.”
That proposed recommendation
was
approved at the meeting, “but referred for further study by the Division of
Administration and the General Board.”
A article covered the slow
progress of the proposal through the Conference bureaucracy:
Should General Conference employees have the right not to have war taxes
withheld by the conference from their paychecks?
For the time being, the answer is still no, pending further study and the
securing of more legal counsel.
The peace and social concerns reference council of the Commission on Home
Ministries raised the issue of war-tax withholding by the conference. The
reference council recommended that the General Conference central offices
allow persons the right not to have taxes withheld (in line with research done
last summer by a law student), that other Mennonite institutions be invited to
participate in similar action, and that congregations and individuals be
invited to consider war tax resistance.
“Freedom of religion includes freedom from the church forced by the state to
act as a tax collection agent, particularly when taxes are used for purposes
which are in conflict with the kingdom,” said the reference council statement.
“The Anabaptist concept of separation of church and state would also suggest
that the church not perform this kind of state function.”
The Commission on Home Ministries, in its annual session in
, approved the recommendation
with some reservations. The Division of Administration had even more
reservations about the recommendation.
DA
members questioned the legal findings of last summer and asked for further
consultation with a tax attorney with more experience in this area.
Specifically they wanted to know the cost of possible litigation, whether a
revenue ruling should be requested from the Internal Revenue Service, possible
civil and criminal sanctions against the General Conference, the effect on the
conference’s tax-exempt status, and the chances of success in the event of
litigation.
“Conscience is a personal thing, and we’re not together on what we want to do
with this,” said
DA
chairman Howard Baumgartner of Berne, Indiana. “CHM
is asking that the business manager be put on the spot. What if his conscience
doesn’t permit him to break this law? My conscience tells me to pay my tax.”
In the closing minutes of its sessions, the General Board, acting on the
recommendation of the
DA,
asked the
DA to
do further study on the legal aspects of failure to withhold taxes and to
bring back some information at the General Board’s
meeting.
“I’m not willing to face the legal consequences until we’re fairly united on
this,” said conference president Elmer Neufeld of Bluffton, Ohio.
At present, the General Conference central offices withhold all state and
federal income taxes from the paychecks of nonordained employees. Such persons
cannot choose whether to pay or not to pay any war taxes they owe because the
government already has the money, or most of it.
Editor Larry Kehler, in the
issue called this a “red flag”:
Although some leaders from other denominations may be beginning to notice and
listen to the Anabaptist-Mennonite point of view as an attractive option, the
Mennonites may be losing their testimony as a peace church. One committee at
the Council of Commissions stated, for example, in its opinion there was no
“corporate conscience” within the General Conference against the payment of
war taxes.
And Peter J. Ediger summed things up in his prose-poem fashion:
It came to pass that an employee of the General Conference Mennonite Church
requested that taxes for the military not be withheld from her paycheck.
And officers of the conference said, “What shall we do?”
And the Commission on Home Ministries was asked to study the matter
and make a recommendation.
And the commission hired a student of law to research the options;
and the commission joined with other Mennonite groups in calling for a study conference on war tax questions.
And from the research and the conference came a clear recommendation
that the General Conference allow persons the right
not to have war taxes withheld.
And when this recommendation was brought to the Commission on Home Ministries
there was a consensus of support and agreement to recommend its adoption to the General Board.
And the recommendation was brought to the Division of Administration.
And lo, their response was as follows:
“Motion that the request of CHM for right not to have taxes withheld
from salaries of employees who submit such request be refused…”
and listing six recommendations asking for more legal counsel.
And so the conflicting recommendations were brought to the General Board.
And the General Board was occupied with many weighty matters.
The agenda was long and the time for discernment was short
and war taxes was the last item on the agenda
and five minutes was left for this item
and no action was taken.
And the conference goes on with business as usual
continuing collection of money for making of war
seeking its guidance more from the law of the land
and less from the law of the Lord.
Do we really want the laws and lawyers of our society
to define the perimeters of our discipleship?
The
General Board executive committee met in
and “allotted two hours at the
full board session in … for discussion of
whether the conference should honor an employee’s request that federal income
taxes not be deducted from her paycheck. Theological input on the payment of
war taxes was also requested.”
The way this was put in
an
announcement just before the board meeting was: “The Division of
Administration… wants to continue its policy of not honoring employees’
requests that the portion of their federal taxes which goes for war not be
taking out of their paychecks.”
The board met and… kicked the can further down the road.
After almost three hours of discussion by the General Board of the General
Conference, a decision is still pending on whether the conference should honor
an employee’s request that the portion of her income taxes that goes for war
not be taken out of her pay.
The board had set aside two hours at the end of its midyear meeting
in Washington, Illinois, to
consider the issue of war tax withholding. Marlin Miller of Goshen Biblical
Seminary had been invited to give biblical input, and Division of
Administration members Howard Baumgartner and Elvin Souder, both attorneys, to
give legal recommendations.
The issue was whether the General Conference business office should violate
U.S. law by
refusing to take from an employee’s paycheck the portion (almost half) of her
federal income taxes which would go for military purposes. Such action would
allow the employee to refuse to pay such taxes and would make her personally
liable for nonpayment of tax.
The law at present requires employers to withhold income and Social Security
taxes from employees’ salaries — except in the case of ordained employees, who
may legally consider themselves self-employed and are thus personally
responsible for making, or not making, quarterly tax payments. A number of
ordained employees at the General Conference offices are already refusing war
taxes in this manner.
Nonordained employees have no way of refusing war taxes except by falsifying
their tax returns or the number of exemptions they claim.
The General Board did not vote on a normal motion on the war tax matter, but
straw poll showed a slight majority in favor of allowing all employees the
right to refuse war taxes, in spite of the possible consequences to the
conference or its officers for breaking the law. But the board was not willing
to act officially until it reached greater consensus.
“We are facing an issue of our own integrity as a people and as a church,”
said board member Peter Ediger of Arvada, Colorado. “It is a situation not
unlike that of our grandfathers in World War Ⅰ. Because some of them had the
courage to say no, laws were enacted to permit conscientious objection to
military service. And it is an evangelism issue. Our world desperately needs
the good news that there is an alternative to violence and war. We can do this
with the kind of integrity that perhaps no other corporate group in our world
can.”
Some like Irene Dunn of Normal, Illinois, were not ready to decide personally
about payment of war taxes, but wanted to allow General Conference employees
freedom of conscience concerning war taxes.
Others wanted to postpone the issue. “It’s my feeling we should take a
recommendation to the triennial conference,” said board president Elmer
Neufeld of Bluffton, Ohio.
In the end the decision was postponed — probably until the
board session.
Marlin Miller, himself a tax refuser for seven years, told the board that the
legality of refusing war taxes was not the highest morality. “If we are clear
on the moral principles, we will find a way to deal with the legal matters,”
he said.
His biblical study focused on Mark 12:13–17
(in which Jesus tells those who are trying to trick him, “Render to Caesar the
things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”) and
Romans 13.
There is no unambiguous word in the New Testament on whether the Christian
should pay all taxes he said. But likewise, there is no clear statement in the
New Testament on not going to military service. “Taxes are due to the
governing authorities, but there is still a need for moral discrimination,”
Mr. Miller said.
Howard Baumgartner told the board that, if it decided to allow an employee not
to pay her war taxes, it might want to test the constitutionality of the
withholding law in the
U.S. courts. An
earlier similar case from the American Friends Service Committee had been
thrown out on technical grounds without testing the tax law itself.
Elmer Neufeld, president of the General Conference, sent
a
letter to all General Conference pastors on the subject:
Should the conference withhold taxes for war?
Some time ago I reviewed a number of the court-martial records of the
Mennonite men in the United States in World War Ⅰ who were tried for refusing
to participate in military service. These were our fathers and fathers’
fathers who had committed their lives to the way of the cross and who held
with the saints of all ages that there is a law of God which stands above the
human laws of the nation.
There was no legal provision for conscientious objection to military service
and war, so they simply took their stand in humble obedience to Christ and
accepted the consequences. Gerhard M. Baergen… guilty. Abraham Goertz… guilty.
Russell A. Lantz… guilty. John T. Neufeld… guilty. Carl A. Schmidt… guilty.
Walter Sprunger… guilty. And so on.
It is through the sacrifice of these sturdy men of conscience that the United
States came to provide a legal alternative to military service and war for
those with scruples against participation. It is through their sacrifice that
many of us were able to use this legal alternative in World War Ⅱ and again in
the Korean and Vietnam wars.
Now we face a new situation. For the first time
, except for a brief lull
following World War Ⅱ, our churches in the United States no longer face the
conscription of young men for military service. For this many have worked and
for this we are grateful. However, it is clear that conscription for military
service was not terminated because the United States has come to rely less on
military power. In fact, the United States has come to be militarily the most
powerful nation in the world and is exporting more armaments than any other
nation in the world. All of this is possible with well-paid volunteer armed
forces and a heavily financed industrial military complex. The military
complex is able to get along without our young men as draftees, but it insists
on having our finances to support its multibillion dollar operation.
More and more there are those among us whose consciences no longer allow them
freely to support this military machine. Though they realize that Christians
have usually paid their taxes through the centuries, even to strongly
militaristic governments, they believe that the vast sums required today are
too much, that it is once more time to withstand the military powers that
threaten to destroy all of humankind, that Caesar is demanding not only what
belongs to Caesar, but also what belongs to God.
I was deeply impressed as we went about the circle of General Board members
and staff [at the meeting] that
almost all had struggled with this issue of conscience and that most had in
some way protested the vast sums being required for military purposes. Though
it is appropriate for us as a people to counsel together whether it is right
in the sight of God to keep paying these war taxes, this is also an issue on
which individuals and families will make their own decisions — and we will not
all make the same decisions.
However, as a conference we face a more complex question. Not only must our
individual members and families decide what to do about war taxes, but the
conference as an employer must collect taxes, including taxes for war, for the
government. We are collecting taxes not only from those who are willing to pay
the whole amount to the government, but also from those who have Christian
convictions against supporting the military in this way. Cornelia Lehn is one
such person. (See below.) A number of ordained ministers working for the
conference are self-employed for tax purposes and thus can make their protest
in whatever way seems appropriate. But for others this is not possible.
So the issue before the General Board in
was whether the General
Conference as an employer should continue to withhold federal income tax
money, even from those employees who have conscientious objection to this, and
send that money to the government.
The Commission on Home Ministries recommends that the conference should no
longer withhold taxes from those employees who have convictions against such
payments. On the other hand, the Division of Administration has serious
concerns about the consequences for the conference in violating the laws of
the land.
The General Board in its meeting
had a long and intensive discussion, with representatives of the Commission on
Home Ministries and the Division of Administration and with counsel on
biblical principles from Marlin Miller, president of Goshen Biblical Seminary,
as well as Erland Waltner, president of Mennonite Biblical Seminary.
A larger and larger majority of General Board members have serious
reservations about serving as a tax collector from those employees who have
Christian convictions against the payment of such taxes. At the same time we
were sensitive that we were being called to make a decision not only for
ourselves but for the whole conference and that we have not yet had adequate
dialog with our congregations about this issue.
What is the will of God for the General Conference in this issue? What is your
counsel for the General Board? We did not act because it was clear that we had
not come to consensus, but the issue will continue to face us and we will
continue to struggle for the right decision.
One possible course of action is for the General Board in its
meeting to formulate a recommendation
to be sent to the congregations for study and for corporate consideration at
the triennial sessions of the General Conference in
.
I want to touch on a related question: Is this one of those conference issues
which is of concern only to the United States and not to Canada? Will our
brothers and sisters in Canada feel like washing their hands of this issue? Or
is this one of those cases when one part of the body is in trouble and the
whole body struggles together? May it in fact be possible that the Canadians
can help those of us in the American churches see ourselves a bit more
objectively?
Can we possibly come to the place, in the words of the Acts of the Apostles,
that it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us together that we should
decide this issue in a certain way? Surely if we search together in openness
and honesty and in a spirit of prayer, God will not forsake his people.
A letter from Conference employee Cornelia Lehn was also enclosed in Neufeld’s
letter:
I work for the General Conference Mennonite Church at 722 Main
St., Newton, Kansas. Each month
a certain percentage of my salary is deducted for income tax purposes before I
receive it. The business office is legally requested to do so for all
employees except for those who have been ordained to the ministry.
We are told that approximately 50 percent of the income tax deducted goes to
buy armaments. When I first started working here, this did not bother me too
much, even though I believed strongly in nonresistance. After all, did not
Jesus himself pay taxes
(Mt. 17:24-27)?
Why then should I refuse to do so?
The whole question of personal responsibility began to tear at my heart and
mind, however. We held the people condemned at Nuremberg responsible for their
deeds, although they had just “obeyed the government.” We held Captain Calley
responsible for his deeds at My Lai, though he, too, thought he had obeyed the
government. Why should I not be held responsible to obeying the government
when it was asking me to do an evil thing? Though Jesus paid taxes, the spirit
of his teachings is to do good, not evil, to our fellow human beings. I became
convinced that allowing my money to be used for armaments could not be God’s
will and that if it was used in that way I must bear at least part of the
responsibility.
The big question then was how to get out of being involved in this crime. I
could not refuse to pay a portion of my tax, since the whole tax was already
withheld. I asked our conference office not to withhold from my paycheck that
portion of the income tax that goes for war, but they could not grant that
request. I considered the options, such as reducing my paycheck to the point
where I would not need to pay any taxes or reducing it to the point where I
would need to pay only half the taxes I do now.
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, of course, that this is not the perfect answer. Of the 50 percent
that IRS
still has of my income tax, half will again be used to meet the military
budget. It is, however, the best answer I know at this time. Finally I could
no longer acquiesce and be a 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.”
Don
Kaufman wrote in to the magazine on to praise Neufeld’s letter and to say that the dialogue about the
issue had been beneficial to the community, but also to criticize the church
for its timidity in the face of the law:
[A]s Christians we seem to be far more accountable to the government than we
are to the church. I have sometimes wondered why it is that we are more
willing to allow the secular authorities to shape us and to “keep us in line”
than we are to receive guidance from our brothers and sisters in Christ. The
major exceptions to this in the General Conference Mennonite Church appear to
be the intentional communities of faith like Fairview Mennonite House and the
New Creation Fellowship, where economic discernment is more obviously a part
of the Christin commitment.
War tax resistance came up in other contexts in The
Mennonite in as well.
An letter from Mabel Amstutz
Sutter and Sem Christian Sutter of Chicago to the Internal Revenue Service
was reprinted (this was essentially the same pay-under-protest letter as was
printed in a 1973 edition).
An
letter from Jacob T. Friesen
also announced a pay-under-protest lack-of-resistance strategy.
The edition noted
that Michio Ohno’s war tax resistance group in Japan, Conscientious Objection
to Military Tax, had launched a new
publication — Plowshare. “The fifth and latest issue
of the four-page paper includes an account of the first Japanese tax resister
whose bank account has been seized by the government, an article on whether
military forces are really effective in national defense, an article on poverty
as a reason for enlisting in the military, and a guide for filing tax returns.”
Also mentioned in that edition was a letter from someone in Colorado to the
MCC
that read in part: “Enclosed find a check for $40 for world hunger. Rather than
paying income taxes, we are sending this check so that we may help to build
peace and support causes that help our troubled world.”
[I]f I were to take a gun and shoot someone, that would be sinful. I would be
punished for my evil actions. If I were to pay someone else $500 to take a gun
and shoot the person, I would still be considered sinful and would still be
liable for punishment. But when I give that $500 to the government and have
them hire the person to do the shooting, it becomes good and I am no longer
evil. It is only when I refuse to kill by proxy through nonpayment of war
taxes that many people (Christians among them) once again see me as evil.
Once again the principalities and powers have moved the consequences of evil
away from us, so that we do not see the direct connection between what I do
and the resulting evil and suffering which is caused. We are lulled into
thinking we are righteous, when in actual fact, we are participating in the
works of the devil.
He traced the history of the three denominations’ struggles over whether
Christians can pay for war when they refuse to participate in it. Some early
church leaders in America advocated not offending the government and thus
paying all taxes. In other groups, especially among Friends, members were
disciplined for supporting war in any way.
“Jesus took direct action in the temple with the money-changers.” Yes, and I’m
sure he is grieved at some of the activities with which we crowd real worship
out of our places of worship — but I don’t read of his organizing a
protest march on Herod’s palace.
We read so much these days about withholding war taxes, but I’m not convinced
this is right — and not because there is anything right about war! Paul lived
in a time when taxes were used to support a system that fed innocent people to
lions in full view of a bloodthirsty crowd of spectators, yet he advised
Christians in his day to submit to the authorities — no word about withholding
taxes.
A
statement from the
MCC
Peace Section was submitted as testimony when the
U.S. House of
Representatives’ ways & means committee considered the “World Peace Tax
Fund Act.” It read in part:
The debate among us as Mennonites is on the question of whether we must, in
order to faithfully follow the way of peace taught by our Lord Jesus Christ,
break the law by refusing to pay part or all of our federal taxes since a high
proportion is used for war.
We do not want to break any laws, but some of us feel compelled to do so on
the tax matter because of a growing conviction that in our modern time we are
not living out our conscientious objection to war if we pay federal taxes used
for military purposes. We urge you to provide a way for us and for many others
of similar convictions to obey both the law and our convictions by enacting
the World Peace Tax Fund Act.
This is the twenty-sixth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
I’m going to try to cover 1979.
Preparing for the Minneapolis Conference
In , there was a special
general session of the Mennonite General Conference especially to discuss war
tax resistance, and in particular, to decide whether the Conference would
support its tax-resisting employees by refusing to withhold taxes from their
paychecks.
In our last episode, the heat was
rising, with opinion pieces and study guides and letters to the editor
addressing the issue. Now, with the session approaching and the decision
imminent, things really began to boil.
The issue hosted
a
long letter to the editor from Albert H. Epp (dated
) in which he accused
The Mennonite and the Commission on Home Ministries
of putting their thumbs on the scale in favor of war tax resistance. Excerpts:
Some of us… are part of the “silent majority” that feels inundated by the
tax-resistance mail arriving almost daily.
The Kauffman-Harder profile () stated, “A
member of our churches ought not to pay the proportion of his income taxes
that goes for military purposes.” Only 15 percent of our denomination agreed;
and no more than 8 percent among the Mennonite Brethren and Brethren in
Christ. Even fewer actually withheld tax. Eighty-five percent disagreed!
Now Minneapolis looms ahead. Many of us feel we are being swept helplessly
downstream toward an ill-advised showdown. I was one of the 453 delegates at
Bluffton () who voted “no” on resolution 11.
But it carried. There seems to be a wide gap between delegate-action at
conference and constituency-opinion at home. How did “the few” persuade “the
many” to agree to a February session that will cost about $100,000?
We are witnessing one of the strongest attempts at shaping conference-opinion
in 20 years, and possibly our entire history. Long-held views on civil
responsibility are being challenged by brethren who are crusading for tax
resistance and civil disobedience. Neither Scripture nor history are normative
in the ways they used to be. “We have something new,” we are told, “in the
present nuclear threat.”
Behind this ideological shift stands our Commission on Home Ministries. Three
years ago
CHM
began publishing a war-tax newsletter, God and
Caesar. In the fifth issue they report on a two-day war tax conference
they conducted at Kitchener, Ontario. “The evidence suggests that most
Anabaptists did pay all their taxes willingly…,” the report avers; but
CHM
leaders pledged themselves “to raise consciousness about war tax and
militarism issues…” Highly significant is the fact that two scholars. Miller
and Swartley, emerged at that session as men willing to say that the Scripture
does not give us a clear command to pay taxes used for military purposes.
It is my impression that Mennonite stalwarts of recent decades, H.S. Bender,
Guy F. Hershberger, Erland Waltner, and John C. Wenger, to name just a few,
all taught the full-paying of taxes on scriptural grounds. Their general view
agreed with Paul, who taught the paying of taxes in Romans 13
and was fully aware that Rome had crucified Christ, had subjugated many
nations, and was now ruled by the despot Nero.
H.S. Bender, writing on “Taxation” in ,
claims that “few if any Mennonites” were presently refusing to pay the portion
of income tax calculated to go for military purposes, which he estimated to be
about two-thirds of the total.
Guy F. Hershberger, in his classic on nonresistance, discusses the answer of
Jesus in Matthew 22:
“…the situation here is almost precisely like that in Romans 13.
Jesus’ questioners were not men who would be interested in service
in the Roman army. If anything, they would be interested in a military
rebellion against the Roman authority. There Jesus says, ‘Give to Caesar that
which is Caesar’s.’ That is, do not rebel against him, not even to the extent
of refusing to pay the tax.”
The current tax-resistance movement requires a major shift in biblical
interpretation. This is something new.
It appears to me that today’s tax-resisters are hard put to proof-text their
views. Swartley admitted to Kitchener ()
“…there is no New Testament text which either explicitly or clearly implicitly
tells us not to pay taxes.” Yet some go from text to text progressively
untying the knots of normal interpretation. But the knot of
Romans 13.
will not easily yield.
Donald Kaufman (What Belongs to Caesar, page 48) chides Oscar Cullmann for “his lack of moral discernment” when he insists that disciples of Jesus pay tax, no matter to what government.
John Howard Yoder, well-known for his personal tax-withholding procedure, nevertheless, in his oft-reprinted masterpiece The Politics of Jesus (page 211), approvingly quotes C.E.B. Cranfield, “taxes and revenue, perhaps honor, are due to Caesar, but fear is due to God.”
In sketching the limits of subordination, Yoder stops short of using Romans 13 for tax resistance.
Not so Larry Kehler in The Rule of the Lamb.
Using his stature as editor-writer, Kehler seems to infer that Paul supports our tax resistance.
The truth of the matter is that for every scholar who teaches tax resistance from Romans 13, there might be 50 competent professors who teach otherwise.
A tax protest based on Romans 13 is an exegesis not easy to defend.
The method of promoting the new idea also deserves comment. Basic to good
human relations is the concept that issues are best discussed without the
injection of personalities. When Cornelia Lehn’s speech at the Bluffton
conference was programmed into the civil-disobedience debate by conference
officials, it almost gave the appearance of being a psychological pressure
tactic to sway votes. After all, who can speak against womanhood? Who can deny
that Nellie’s stand is courageous? But someone has to venture the tough
question “Is it fair to ask thousands of Mennonites to approve civil
disobedience because of one person’s convictions?”
Is it possible that
CHM
has moved ahead too quickly on this issue — even out of earshot? Take their
suggestion that the General Board no longer honor tax-withholding laws for
some employees (The
Mennonite, 2 November 1976, page 648). On
the constituents turned back
Resolution 12 (yes — 336, no — 1,190) on this issue. Bluffton delegates later
gave the mandate for a midtriennium conference, but even this decision process
was interlaced with
CHM
influence. The delegates, caught in the euphoria of the moment, unable to
confer with churches at home, approved the surprise resolution. Most
surprising of all, Larry Kehler, as recent as , wrote, “I have not
yet been able to discover any tax resisters in Canada…” Little wonder
CHM’s
promotion is so voluminous.
When churches in the Midwest ask
CHM
for a clarification of issues, men are readily available to give excellent
thought-out defenses for tax resistance and civil disobedience. But no one
seems willing and/ or permitted to present the traditional biblical-Anabaptist
stance and say, “That’s my view.” So we, the silent majority, feel like people
with no representation. While we collect thousands of dollars for conference
coffers, no one pleads our case — the case of the majority.
Any protest, it seems to me, needs keen discernment. Picketing a tax office,
withholding income tax, or balking at withholding laws may all be misdirected
efforts. The Internal Revenue Service is only a collecting agency. Do we
punish the newspaper boy, refusing to pay when we dislike an editorial? No, we
phone the editor. Why not spend our energy on the decision makers?
A hope seems to flicker in some minds that a domino reaction, “me too, me
too,” will bring out an avalanche of Mennonite tax resisters. Then, some aver,
a frustrated government might negotiate. However, worse things may accrue.
Attorney J. Elwin Kraybill says that evading tax is a felony (26
USC 7201) and can
result in a fine (maximum $10,000) and/or prison (maximum 5 years). At the
least most Mennonites would be subjected to the harassment of an annual audit.
At the worst they could be accused of spawning anarchy — a trend already
evidenced in teachers’ strikes and police strikes.
I wonder if tax resistance won’t trap us in a blind alley — in a stance too
negative. Why curse the darkness? Let’s plant a light. In past decades our
conscientious objector position was transformed by creative service in refugee
camps, mental hospitals, and mission schools. Today we again need positive
solutions. Could Mennonite Central Committee possibly establish a research
center with departments like peace, pollution, and world hunger? When our
scholars really tackle these complex problems, our governments will knock at
our door. In retrospect, I was proud when President John F. Kennedy turned to
MCC
for advice on the Peace Corps.
I am a Mennonite, both by birth and by choice. I deeply appreciate our
Anabaptist theology. As a pastor I can affirm with my parish
CHM’s
conviction of (1) the limited nature of Caesar’s power; and (2) the lethal
character of its weaponry. However, we do not feel it biblical or Anabaptist
to rob government of its right to taxation, or even some national defense.
Where government abuses this right we wish to exhaust every legal channel of
protest before we engage in illegal maneuvers.
In my congregation one brother is reducing his income; another has enclosed a
protest letter with his tax return. Many of us have increased contributions to
reduce taxable income. But not one, to my knowledge, is refusing to pay taxes.
As one brother put it, “Can we be harsh on Uncle Sam while our financial
stewardship level is so low in Mennonite circles?”
A final word. I tested this letter with my Board of Deacons. All seven
present, to the man, encouraged me to send it. Editor, thanks for letting us
speak.
Richard K. MacMaster addressed the history of war tax resistance among
American Mennonites in an article that appeared in the
issue:
I read with great interest your articles about the forthcoming discussion of
war taxes at Minneapolis.
I’ve had a great concern to write some few lines on one small aspect of this
large question, but generally put it off as a nit-picking historical footnote.
Observing that “historical perspective” will play a role in the consultation
, I thought I should take
time to clarify what might possibly lead to misunderstanding.
A number of recent discussions on the war tax issue have stated that
Mennonites and Brethren paid their taxes in obedience to the biblical
injunction of “taxes to whom taxes are due.” The reader might reasonably
conclude that, unlike Friends, neither Brethren nor Mennonites were troubled
in conscience about payment of taxes levied for any purpose. The point would
be too insignificant to raise in even some nitpicking scholarly review, if it
did not have consequences for our understanding of our own heritage in regard
to a current issue of great importance.
In Peter Brock published his monumental
Pacifism in the United States from the Colonial Era to the
First World War. The scope of his subject precluded his searching into
every manuscript collection that might bear some relation to it, and he relied
heavily on printed sources. The limited number of published works on Mennonite
history is reflected in his footnotes and bibliography. Walter Klaassen leaned
heavily on Brock for his interpretation of the American scene, since his own
scholarly work has been in the European Anabaptist sources. There is a danger
in this process that, in spite of passing through the hands of two very
distinguished modern scholars, the material is no better than the sources
available to Mennonite historians 50 or 75 years ago.
The danger of allowing this recycled history to determine our understanding of
our own heritage is compounded by the fact that Brock made assumptions that
went beyond his somewhat limited sources in describing the position held by
Mennonites on key issues, notably on the payment of taxes. The first mention
of any Mennonite attitude on this question involved Mennonite settlers in the
Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in . Brock noted that they “were able to obtain exemption by the
payment of militia fines, against which — unlike the Quakers — they had no
deep-seated scruples of conscience,” but that they petitioned in
(sic) for relief from militia fines,
“not because of any fundamental objection to this alternative to service
(for was it not merely rendering Caesar his due?), but on account of
their poverty as frontiersmen eking out a bare subsistence.” He cited as his
only source Harry A. Brunk’s History of Mennonites in
Virginia, but Brunk does not make any of the statements I have quoted;
he is quite clear in his statement that conscience was involved.
Virginia Mennonites petitioned the authorities in Williamsburg for relief from
militia fines in and again in
. No copy of these petitions is known to be
extant and we know of the contents only from the brief minutes entered in the
Journal of the House of Burgesses. Since the
Virginia lawmakers exempted Quakers from payment of militia fines for the
first time in , it is not surprising that
Mennonites sought the same privilege, which was granted them by the House of
Burgesses in .
Their motives in petitioning for exemption were explained in a Mennonite
petition of , which asked that the earlier
privilege be restored. Militia bills passed during the Revolutionary War had
taken it away and enrolled conscientious objectors in the militia, once again
making them subject to fines. This petition, signed by 73 “members of the
Menonist Church in behalf of themselves and their religious Brethren,”
declared that their forefathers had come “to America to Seek Religious
Liberty; this they have enjoyed, except by the Infliction of penalties for not
bearing Arms which for some time lay heavy on them. But on a representation,
and their situation being made known to the Honorable the Legislature, they
were indulged with an exemption from said penalties until some few years past,
when by a revisal of the Militia Law they were again enrolled and are now
subject to the penalties aforesaid.” (The original petition is in the Virginia
State Library.)
This petition and one offered the previous
year by Rockingham County Mennonites and Brethren did not succeed in changing
the law, and the payment of fines was the subject of occasional petitions from
all three of the peace churches. What is significant about the
Virginia petition is its statement that
payment of militia fines violated the liberty of conscience that Mennonites
otherwise enjoyed and that this was true under the king as well as during and
after the Revolution. It would appear to me impossible to square this
contemporary Mennonite document with the interpretation that Mennonites paid
militia fines as merely rendering Caesar his due!
The conscientious objection to payment of a fine or equivalent to militia duty
in Virginia on the eve of the Revolution might help us in understanding the
position of Pennsylvania Mennonites. There was no compulsory militia law in
Pennsylvania prior to , so no question of
fines or other equivalent would have arisen as early as it did in Virginia.
In Pennsylvania authorities requested
voluntary contributions from those who scrupled against bearing arms and the
Continental Congress itself made a similar appeal. Records of the county
committees entrusted with collecting this money suggest that it had a mixed
reception. Objections were heard very early, however, against levying
contributions from conscientious objectors on a purely voluntary basis. In
the Pennsylvania Assembly debated
imposing a set amount as a special tax on non-associators. They read petitions
from the Quakers and from the Mennonites and some members of the Church of the
Brethren. The meaning of these petitions seems perfectly clear. A well-known
military historian understood them to mean that “not a few Quakers and
Mennonites joined to oppose not only the Association but any tax levied in
lieu thereof.” (Arthur J. Alexander, “Pennsylvania Magazine of History
and Biography, ⅬⅩⅨ, , page 16.)
This would follow logically from the position taken by Virginia Mennonites,
who were closely related to the Pennsylvania congregations.
When a Militia Law was enacted in in
Pennsylvania, no provision was made for the exemption of conscientious
objectors, and a special tax was imposed on them in lieu of military service.
It was this tax that was under discussion among Franconia Mennonites when a
majority of the preachers opposed Christian Funk’s contention that it ought to
be paid. I am well aware that Pennsylvania Mennonites felt uneasy with the new
revolutionary regime and declined sending a formal petition to the legislature
in since it would involve addressing them as
“the representatives of the freemen of Pennsylvania.” Hostility to the new
government may well have colored the attitude of Funk’s opponents, but it does
not explain why they opposed payment of this particular tax and not
of all taxes levied by the new state. There is no hint in any
official document, newspaper, letter, or other contemporary source that any
Mennonite in Pennsylvania refused payment of any other tax. Surely there would
be some notice taken by someone of tax resistance, particularly if it were on
the quasi-political ground that the new government had no legitimate
authority. On the other hand, reluctance to pay a tax levied in lieu of
military service would square with the Virginia documents, the obvious
sense of the petition, and the minutes of
the Church of the Brethren annual meetings that refer to persons with
conscientious objection against paying for substitutes and paying the tax
(singular).
I do not know that this leads us very far on our present quest. But it is
sufficient, I hope, to indicate that Mennonites have expressed “deep-seated
scruples of conscience” and “fundamental objection to this alternative to
military service.”
The edition included this
op-ed from Harold R. Regier:
The sovereign Lord and the sovereign nation will be in tension at Minneapolis
when the General
Conference, in official session, will be “In Search of Christian Civil
Responsibility.”
Will we be ready at Minneapolis to decide issues related to paying those taxes
required of the state used for death-threatening militarism and weapons
building? Much depends on how adequately congregations study and discuss
The Rule of the Sword and The
Rule of the Lamb prior to Minneapolis. Much depends on adequate
congregational representation. And much depends on an openness to hear each
other and the leading of God’s Spirit.
What are specific questions we must answer at Minneapolis?
What is the biblical teaching on civil responsibility and civil
disobedience? Are Christians ever called to civil disobedience?
If civil disobedience may at times be a Christian response to government,
what conditions or principles guide that response? Is the payment of taxes
used for war purposes one such condition?
If “war tax” resistance is a Christian response to a government’s
militarism and to the nuclear arms race, to what extent and in what ways
should that response be encouraged and initiated? Is conscientious
objection to paying for war in today’s context equivalent to conscientious
objection to physical participation in war in the past?
Should General Conference and other Mennonite institutions honor
employees’ requests that the portion of taxes used for military purposes
not be withheld from their paychecks? Should Mennonite employers even go
beyond this and refuse to be “war tax” collectors for the state for any of
its employees?
Is the bottom line for the Minneapolis conference the question of tax
withholding? Not necessarily. Other options for faithfulness and witness may
be discovered. Our search for Christian civil responsibility must be
open-ended rather than locked into the consideration of only one kind of
action. However, the withholding question is a very important one on which we
are committed to making a clear decision.
The withholding question is significant, but not because this is the only
alternative for the employee. There are other ways to have less tax withheld.
Possibilities include refiling a tax form to include allowances for expected
(“war tax”) deductions, forming an alternative employing agency, or
contributing up to 50 percent of salary to charitable causes. The withholding
issue’s greatest significance lies with the questions of corporate
responsibility and the issue of church as an agent of the state.
I would suggest five reasons for the conference to consider honoring requests
from persons asking that their taxes not be withheld. (1) Honoring these
requests would eliminate the discrimination between ordained and nonordained
employees. In the
U.S., ordained
employees are considered “self-employed” by the tax department and are exempt
from withholding regulations. Nonordained persons have to follow a more
difficult procedure to enable resistance. Currently at least four ordained
employees of the General Conference offices are not voluntarily paying the
military portion of their taxes. (2) Honoring nonwithholding requests would
represent a corporate peace witness rather than leaving such witness and
action solely to the individual. (3) A corporate conference voice and action
would make a much stronger witness for peace and justice than lone voices here
and there. (4) Nonwithholding would be one appropriate way to initiate a test
of the constitutionality of requiring church agencies to collect taxes for the
state. (5) This corporate action builds on our Anabaptist theology of peace
and takes seriously the way our financial resources contribute to warmaking.
My hope for Minneapolis is that the General Conference Mennonite Church will
act to do something together about our nations’ militarism. This
could be corporate action regarding withholding “war taxes.” This could be a
commitment to a large-scale symbolic resistance to “war tax” payment
(e.g. “each” Mennonite withholding $10 and
explaining why). As a conference we could send a strong message to our
governments regarding militarism and the taxation which supports it. We could
issue a “war tax” statement to be shared with the larger church (other
denominations) as well as to our governments. We could make a stronger effort
to promote the World Peace Tax Fund Act in the
U.S. and instigate
other alternatives in Canada.
These are only suggestions. Delegates need to think of other options.
Minneapolis will be a failure if we conclude that “everyone do what is right
in their own eyes.” Minneapolis will be a success if we take some large or
small step toward corporate responsibility and action.
He began by noting the paucity of charity by American Mennonites is devoted to “the crucial urgency of tragic situations in the Third World” compared to how much is spent domestically.
“It appears our dedication somehow is absorbed in our words which seem to psychologically liberate us to expand lavishly on the home front.”
While I respect individual conviction, I am cool toward the effectiveness or the witness of withholding taxes.
(In recent months I have been going over old magazines and clipping articles related to war taxes.
There has been a rash of articles on this subject every 6–10 years in the past decades.)
In , the U.S. federal budget increased 48 percent for defense, space, and foreign affairs (probably not even keeping up with inflation).
The human-resources part of the budget jumped 378 percent during the same decade.
Not all these programs are effective, yet they represent an attempt to cope with areas of great need.
When we criticize government expenditures, let us remember that we Mennonites have been increasing our budgets in North American institutional and church developments rather than for that part of the “one in Christ” where poverty is indescribably great.
In short: “Until we have done what we ought we should not say too much to other segments of society.”
Furthermore, Shelly felt that there was an overemphasis on war as a source of violence.
Alcohol, reckless driving, and abortion, were also examples of violence that deserved at least as much attention.
Finally, the way to peace, he felt, was not through civil disobedience or
protest or peace witnessing, but simply through spreading the gospel and
getting more people to adopt Christian values. For example: “during the
massacre in Uganda almost all Christians refused to shoulder guns.” So
Mennonites should stop arguing about taxes and rededicate themselves to
missionary work.
Kenneth G. Bauman penned an op-ed for the edition, from the point of view of
“some of us”.
Bauman thought the Bible offered little or no support for war tax resistance.
Jesus did not counsel it, even when pitched a softball. Paul explicitly
said Christians should pay their taxes to Rome and the Roman Empire wasn’t
exactly peaceful. Those examples of civil disobedience found in the Bible never
touch on war taxes or on conscientious objection to government spending.
Mennonites, he felt, shouldn’t just skip over this on the way to making their
own independent moral judgments about war taxes.
Bauman also challenged the view articulated in Richard K. MacMaster’s essay
that war tax resistance had strong footing in historical Mennonite practice:
A good historical development of this issue is found in Walter Klaassen’s
pamphlet Mennonites and War Taxes. A summary is
found on pages 40–41 in The Rule of the Lamb. The
only groups that refused taxation were the Hutterites and the Franconia
Conference in Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War. The issue was
probably not “war taxes” but rather who was the legitimate government, the
British or the United States? Recent Mennonite scholars hold the traditional view.
Check the writings of Guy Hershberger in War, Peace, and Nonresistance (page 369),
Harold S. Bender’s “Taxation” in The Mennonite Encyclopedia,
and Robert Kreider’s “Anabaptists and the State” in The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision.
Kreider states, “The Anabaptists agreed unanimously
that the Christian owes obedience to the civil authorities insofar as the
prior claims of God are not violated in those duties. The Christian gives this
obedience freely and not grudgingly. He pays taxes, tithes, interest, and
customs as required by the magistracy. No evidence can be found to
substantiate the frequently made accusation that the Anabaptists refused to
pay these obligations” (page 190).
The new threat of nuclear war, Bauman thought, was not a reason to rethink this
established wisdom. After all, the murder of one person and the obliteration of
millions are both terrible sins: “Is the biblical teaching on the sacredness of
life on a sliding scale or is even one person’s life sacred?”
Some of us respect the individual conscience as we want our conscience to be
respected, but we are not convinced that those who believe in withholding
taxes have seriously considered all the options. Several alternatives are (1)
filing suit against the government to recover taxes, (2) setting up a
subsidiary corporation, and (3) greater efforts toward a World Peace Tax Fund.
We are grieved that in this hour when we need a united witness against
militarism, with selective service a real possibility (which will also include
women), we are divided. We object to our peace position being questioned
because we do not see withholding taxes as being biblical or
Anabaptist-Mennonite.
Some of us are waiting for open dialogue on the tax issue. The other side has
not been formally presented in the General Board, nor was it given adequate
representation at the Consultation on Civil Responsibility at Elkhart, nor has
it been given a fair presentation in The Mennonite.
We question whether the midtriennium conference will change the situation.
Marie J. Janzen, in a letter
to the editor, wrote that she thought Bauman was “attempt[ing] to find a letter of the law that would justify us not to refuse taxes.”
It is true, for instance, that Peter was referring to the Jewish leaders and
not to the state when he said we must obey God rather than men, but the
principle would be the same in either case, wouldn’t it?
It seems to me that the Christian gospel speaks to the needs of each age, and
different things need to be done in different ages. There would have been no
need to warn early Christians to drive carefully lest someone’s life might be
taken in an accident. But today there certainly is. When Jesus said to his
disciples that they would do greater things than he had done, didn’t he imply
that there would be a need for greater things in later ages than there was in
the time of the early church? The common person at that time had no rights, no
influence on government. In a democracy we Christians have responsibilities
the early Christians did not have. I don’t have to pay income tax; I don’t
know whether I would have the courage to refuse if I did. But I certainly
admire the ones who do refuse to pay taxes for conscience’ sake.
…Of course, there may be other alternatives which are more effective than the
refusal to pay taxes. For instance, as my sister suggested, if we would deluge
the government with letters and with telephone calls and insist that this arms
race must stop — or at least that they give us the right to have a peace
tax — that might do more good.
On the other hand, David A. Somner wrote in to praise what he called Bauman’s “clear, biblical, historically accurate” statement.
A
letter from Gary Martin, written on but not published until , thought that the war tax issue was overshadowing the fact
that Mennonites had lost their way and were neglecting some of the foundations
of their faith and practice. This was followed by a letter from Don Kaufman,
in which he related an anecdote from a repentant soldier and thought it “could
be instructive for us too as we wrestle with the implications of the Christian
gospel concerning war taxes.”
A letter from David C. Janzen, dated , published in the
edition, said that “[b]ased on our congregational meeting on the issue, it
would appear that the [war tax] protesters are a small but very vocal
minority.” He thought the conference was a waste of time trying to relitigate
an issue that had been decided by Jesus way back when.
A letter from Eugene Klassen, dated but also not published until , also took the line that the Bible was black-and-white about
taxpaying: “Romans 13
clearly tells us to pay taxes to whom taxes are due. Yet we allow the use of
our conference time, money, and publications to debate both sides of the
issue.”
Drumroll please. The conference was held, and all of these years of kicking the
can down the road and avoiding a decision came to an end as a general assembly
of the Mennonite General Conference, after lengthy study and debate, concluded:
Moved that we request the General Board of our conference to engage in a
serious and vigorous search to use all legal, legislative, and administrative
avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption from the legal
requirements that the General Conference withhold income taxes from the wages
of its employees. If no relief can be found within a three-year period, they
shall again bring the question to the attention of the conference.
So… the can kicked another three years further down the road. Well, what were
you expecting?
Seven hundred persons came to the bitter cold and deep snow of Minneapolis,
, “in search of Christian
civil responsibility.”
…Would our General Conference grant an employee’s request to no longer
withhold from her salary that portion of the income tax which goes toward
military expenditures?
Many predicted a collision course. Minneapolis would be a showdown.
The drama has happened. And the unexpected far outdid the expected.
only a few
hundred people had registered. Polarized positions surfaced in many
congregations. There was talk of maneuvering, boycott, and schism.
The annual Council of Commissions met at Minneapolis on
to do the usual review and
projection of
GC program and
budget. Hardly a session went by without reference of concern about the
midtriennium.
By it became obvious that
God’s Spirit was again among us in unusual ways.
In faith, space had been reserved for 500 people. Over 700 came.
We found the issue is not “yes-no” “either-or” regarding war taxes. It
includes our lifestyle. Do we live in ways that share Christ’s salvation,
love, and justice to all. This is not just for a few brave radicals.
Each of us needs to choose again and again to let our light shine.
We found the issue is not Cornelia Lehn and civil disobedience. It is
obedience to Jesus in today’s world.
We found the issue is of deep concern to our youth. About 100 persons present
were under 25. And they spoke up. Their generation most directly faces the
nuclear shadow. If we want to leave them a heritage of peace we must address
our faith to this global threat.
The main resolution (above) passed 1,218 to 134.
The following issue expanded on that first draft of history. It included the
details that delegates from 176 churches were represented at the midtriennium,
that the 700 attendees included “almost 500 delegates and more than 200
visitors” who at one point broke up into “78 small groups”, and further noted:
Following the… conference the General Board set up a six-person task force to
implement the decision of the delegates. The persons for this committee have
been appointed and upon acceptance their names will be released.
A
later article named them as Delton Franz, Duane Heffelbower, Bob Hull,
Heinz Janzen, Ernie Regehr, and Ben Sprunger, and noted that “[t]he task force
had its first meeting in Columbus,
Ohio.” Later
Stanley Perisho, Chuck Boyer, Winifred Beachy, Janet Reedy, and Gordon Zook
were added to the list.
Though the conference officially started , most people arrived
in time to watch a group
from the Mennonite Collegiate Institute in Gretna, Manitoba, present
The Blowing and the Bending, a musical drama
highlighting the themes of wartime intolerance for conscientious objectors and
Mennonite struggles with the war spirit.
Some of the themes played out in the small groups and by the symposium were
the following:
the gospel is first, pacifism is secondary.
it is important to be legal.
it is better to be faithful.
a witness for peace has to have the integrity of an appropriate
lifestyle.
the government is more willing to accept conscientious objectors than the
church.
there are other social and political issues which need to be spoken
to.
a corporate witness is/is not the route to go.
militarism today is a qualitatively different problem than anything
civilization has had to face before.
the response to militarism is a theological and faith issue.
When one delegate called for a show of hands to indicate who had done some
protest against nuclear proliferation and militarism about 20 percent of the
assembly said they had.
Though most of the delegates who spoke during the afternoon plenary session
admitted they were troubled by worldwide military expenditures over one
billion dollars daily, they nevertheless said the church as a corporate body
should not engage in illegal activities in its witness against war
preparations. Instead speakers urged alternatives.
A sentiment often expressed, however, was that the church, while avoiding
illegal actions, should actively support its members who engage in civil
disobedience on the basis of conscience.
Roy Vogt, economics professor from Winnipeg, Manitoba, berated the assembly
for loading the responsibility for witness upon isolated individuals. “It is
morally reprehensible,” he said, “to give only moral support. We must provide
financial and legal support for those prophets who have arisen from our
middle-class ranks.”
In contrast to the social activists at the conference Dan Dalke, pastor from
Bluffton, Ohio, castigated the social activists for making pacifism a
religion. “We will never create a Utopia,” he said. “Jesus didn’t come to
clean up social issues. Our job is to evangelize the world. A peace witness is
secondary.”
Some of the statements were personal. A businessman confessed that while he
could easily withhold paying military taxes on the basis of conscience, he was
frightened. “I am scared of being different, of being embarrassed, of being
alienated from my community. Unless I get support from the Mennonite church I
will keep on paying taxes.”
Alvin Beachy of Newton, Kansas, said the church seemed to be shifting from a
quest to being faithful to the gospel to being legal before the government.
By the small groups were
into serious wrestling with these open-ended statements: (1) The biblical
teaching on obedience to God and its relation to civil responsibility is… (2)
Civil disobedience may be a faithful Christian response when… (3) With respect
to whether the General Conference should withhold the taxes of employees who
would rather practice war-tax refusal, we urge that… (4) With respect to the
threat of militarism in North America, we feel that the General Conference as
a Christian body should now…
By the groups were supposed to have
their consensus ready for the findings committee. Many of the statements came
later in the evening, and the findings committee of six began to sift through
the material. They spent a good part of the night at it, got up again
, had it typed (three
pages, single spaced), and by 800 copies were being distributed.
Action on the floor did not, however, center on the findings committee
statement. Immediately after the Bible lecture a ballot was distributed to the delegates. It
asked for a “yes” or “no” vote on this question: “Shall the General Conference
Mennonite Church refuse to withhold from salaries and refuse to remit to the
U.S. Internal
Revenue Service a portion of the federal tax due in those cases in which this
is requested by employees on the grounds of conscience, even though such
action on the part of the conference is against the law?”
There was a flurry of action on why the midtriennium conference organizers had
brought this question to the assembly so early in the day. Conference
president Elmer Neufeld replied that the intention was to bring the question
to the delegates in a clear and forthright manner. The General Board executive
committee had decided to present the main question of the midtriennium in
ballot form as a way of helping the decision-making process. After some
discussion on the procedure Kenneth Bauman of Berne, Indiana, moved the
ballot. It was seconded and discussion began.
Shortly after the midmorning break David Habegger of Wichita, Kansas, brought
in a substitute motion. It stated: “Moved that we request, the General Board
of our conference to engage in a serious and vigorous search to use all legal,
legislative, and administrative avenues for achieving conscientious objection
exemption from the
U.S. legal
requirement that the conference withhold income taxes from the wages of its
employees. If no relief can be found within a three-year period they shall
proceed to a constitutional test of the First Amendment by whatever means
appear most appropriate at the time, including the option of honoring
employees’ requests that their tax not be withheld.”
This sparked a miniprocedural debate. Was a substitute motion the same as an
amendment? Checking their judgment against Robert’s Rules
of Order, the three-man procedural committee said it was. There was
some objection to the ruling.
It was a key ruling. From the tenor of discussion, and from the statements
which 75 churches brought to the midtriennium, it was apparent that most
GC
congregations were not willing to vote “yes” on the first motion. If the first
motion had come to a vote the decision would likely have been against those in
favor of not paying war taxes.
Hence the substitute motion was debated first. In short order it was also
amended by Herman Andres of Newton, Kansas. The amendment carried by a vote of
906-to-458. The amendment changed the second sentence to read: “If no relief
can be found within the three-year period they shall again bring the question
to the conference.” The vote was taken just prior to the
break.
Gordon Kaufman, professor at Harvard Divinity School in Boston, probably made
the key speech of the morning, thereby paving the way for delegates to be
sympathetic to the substitute motion.
Kaufman said he was puzzled by all the concern about legality. He commented,
“The early church was illegal. The Anabaptists were illegal. Illegality is not
a Christian question. We talk as if we are concerned about a massive
illegality. We are not asked to sign pledge cards. The question is are we
willing to test the law that asks the church to collect taxes? We need to test
the law of separation of church and state, and freedom of religion. In this
country it is a matter of civil responsibility to test the law.”
After a rushed noon break — “Here they come,” said one restaurateur — the
final session of two hours began. A vote was taken on the substitute motion
and it passed by a plurality of nine-to-one, 1,218-to-134 votes.
A miracle had happened. It was essentially a consensus. Longtime peace
advocate Henry Fast of Newton, Kansas, called it “an historic moment.”
At this point people made editorial comments about the findings statement. As
a summary of what people at the conference thought it attempted to cover the
spectrum of conviction. Most comments were affirmative and on a voice vote the
conference adopted it. It noted that the world is “caught in a tragic system
of threat and counter-threat, violence and counterviolence.”
“We want to be obedient citizens, but even more we want to be obedient to
Jesus Christ… We are convinced that citizens of Christ’s kingdom must choose
ways to speak and act against this suicidal race to universal destruction.”
During the afternoon session various people made capsule comments and appeals.
One of the appeals was to take an offering to assist those who are resisting
the payment of war taxes.…
The offering realized $3,030.
The magazine helpfully tallied the delegates by district.
Curiously, I thought, the Eastern District was the most well-represented, with
81% of their votes represented by either delegates or proxies. I saw some
evidence in our last episode that the
Eastern District might be particularly conservative on this issue. The least
well-represented of the United States districts was the Pacific, with only 46%
of its voters represented. Canada turned up to a greater extent than some had
worried, with 57% of voters from the Conference of Mennonites in Canada voting.
The edition gave a summary
of the report of the findings committee. Excerpts:
Never in our history have so many engaged their energies so extensively in
preparation for a conference decision.
We want to be obedient citizens, but even more we want to be obedient to Jesus
Christ. In this quest we are aware that the Bible and our people’s experience
do not give us fully explicit answers on the tax issue. At this moment,
therefore, these are our best discernments.
As Christians we must speak and act. We hope that Mennonites will support sons
and daughters in their leadings to witness for Christ — even in such acts as
refusing to pay taxes destined for war. This means prayerful, moral, and
financial support. Our tradition has been to be a quiet people. We yearn to
act and to witness in sensitive ways which exhaust every acceptable legal
process available to the constituency.
We encourage the General Board to work at developing alternative possibilities
for the handling of tax withholding and to work in collaboration with other
church bodies and institutions in seeking to extricate itself from the role of
being a tax-collecting agency.
It is easy to call governments and conference offices to faithfulness. Perhaps
the most urgent call proceeding from this conference is a call to each
other — to individual church members, to families, and to congregations — a
call to renewed faithfulness. What are we prepared to do in revising our style
of life as affluent witnessing against the powers of darkness in this world?
How does my life vocation fulfill the claims of Christ for this age?
We yearn for unity in our churches. We want to proceed together in our
pilgrimage of obedience but don’t want to tarry long in fear and indecision.
We want to affirm those individuals whose consciences are sensitive on issues
not fully shared by all.
Reactions continued to reverberate through the letters-to-the-editor column and
op-eds:
Mary Gerber,
on told the Mennonites who
weren’t resisting taxes that they were in the right and shouldn’t feel
guilty about it.
[S]everal of the church statements and many individuals expressed a
feeling of guilt that they were not following in the steps of those
“prophets” who were refusing to pay a portion of their tax. In order to
compensate for their personal unwillingness to break the law they
enthusiastically offered to provide moral and financial support for those
who did.
…[P]aying someone else to perform what is also my moral duty is
blatant hypocrisy.
If we… honestly wish to follow Christ in all, we will respond as he did
in similar circumstances. We will love and correct that brother, not aid
and abet him.
Ralph A. Ewert,
on , suggested that people
(in the U.S.
anyway) who did not want to pay a percentage of their income taxes should
figure out how much they would have to donate to charity in order to reduce
their taxable income enough to eliminate that much tax and then donate
away.
Mark Penner,
on related the temple
tax and render-unto-Caesar episodes from the Bible as slam-dunk reasons to
oppose tax resistance, as though nobody had thought of that before.
Jack L. Mace,
on found that the Bible
suggested a possible new if counterintuitive technique of tax witness:
While I would like to stop warring uses of my taxes by refusing to pay,
and giving instead to peaceful purposes, I know the
IRS
will collect the money — in spades — and my witness will be just to the
collectors and their supervisors. The government will not prosecute such
tax resistance, because that would draw too much public attention.
I want to witness to the policy enactment levels of government. My study
of the issue brought me to the words of Jesus in
Matthew 5:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil, but if anyone
strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone
would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if
anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”
These words speak of positive responses to negative problems, and of a
method to make a tax witness virtually impossible to be ignored by even
the most recalcitrant legislator; a “second mile theology of witness.”
Taking these words seriously led me to decide that with a letter of
protest to the
IRS
I will pay my full taxes. Then I will send an amount hopefully equal to
the “war taxes” to my senators and/or representative in a check made out
to the government along with a letter of witness.
I will try to find a way to give the money so that disposition on the
congressional floors might be expected — if that be possible — but even
if the legislators send the check back they have had to come to grips
with its existence and its accompanying witness. The returned check would
then call for another letter containing the check, which again could not
be ignored.
The letter will contain a brief statement of my conscientious objection
to killing and its implications to the use of my tax dollars for war.
Then it will turn to the disposition of the check. Explaining
respectfully that since they are acting against my will as a provider for
the military machine with my tax dollars, I will ask as diligent action
on my behalf for the use of the money enclosed for the
proliferation of peace. The money is to be used by the government within
the framework of not doing violence to my conscience. I will list some
uses of the money which would violate my conscience, and why — being
careful not to suggest specific uses I would desire. The whole idea is to
get legislators to dialogue with their conscience on this issue.
I will actually split the check, sending at least two letters. Our new
Kansas senator, Nancy Kassebaum, needs to be made aware of our faith
early on. On the other hand, Robert Dole is one of the most recalcitrant
senators at the point of military spending. He had the temerity to come
to our Mid-Kansas
MCC
relief sale in his campaign last year and speak on the “need” for
increased military spending. It may even be advantageous for my
congressman, Dan Glickman, to receive a letter with part of the money. He
is a Democrat, and with Dole and Kassebaum being Republicans he might
just act as political conscience to the others. In each case of a split
check, all recipients will be told that there are others and the total
amount of the checks written.
After sharing this idea on the conference floor, there was sufficient
informal response between sessions that I decided to share more in this
letter and to invite anyone else who wishes to join me in this effort. It
would be desirable to make a coordinated effort so that the letters
arrive within a relatively short time for the greatest impact. It might
even be good to split up the amount into quarterly payments to be sent at
strategic times throughout the congressional year.
If you are interested in dialogue on this idea or if you plan to try it
with me, I would appreciate hearing from you and receiving your input.
Stanley E. Kaufman,
on expressed his disappointment
at the timidity of the “too-reluctant” Minneapolis resolution. He urged
The Mennonite to publish frequent updates on the
work of the task force searching for a “legal alternative” along with
suggestions for how people could help that work, and that people who do
independent outreach to officials keep The
Mennonite informed of their actions. He also said that while the
institutional church dithers, “each of us individuals [should]
consider stronger forms of witness”.
Direct tax resistance should not be forgotten for three years but should
be actively debated in our congregations and experimented with in our
lives. One of the biggest barriers to this is not knowing who and how
many others are currently engaged in tax resistance. I am refusing to pay
voluntarily my telephone tax (being a student, I have no income), but I’m
finding even this relatively simple stance rather difficult because I
feel I’m standing alone. I suggest that The
Mennonite could provide a forum — perhaps through a special
column — in which all those resisting taxes could find each other and
communicate experiences they’ve had, arguments they’ve encountered,
statements of the bases of their actions,
etc.
In our efforts to be faithful to God in this matter — to attempt to
change U.S.
military policy through tax witness — we need to be “wise as serpents and
harmless as doves.” We need to refine our strategies, improve our
communication, and support each other’s involvements.
It appeared that our over-politeness got in our way to deal effectively
with the issue at hand. It appeared as though the issue at hand was put
on the back burner to simmer to give us Mennonites more time. More time
for what? It will give a few people more time to pursue other legal
alternatives to the specific tax issue. It will also give many of us
grass-roots people in the church more time to remain silent and not be
directly faced with a Mennonite stand on the issue. It is those long,
noncommitted silent periods which trouble me… A firm and committed voice
by the Mennonite people needs to be heard in our world now.
Gaynette Friesen,
on , wrote that though “we
still have nearly 2½ years to resolve ourselves, hopefully as a unified
body, to the question of war taxes,” that’s no reason to slack off.
The edition gave another update on
the activities of the “task force”:
Two meetings of the task force on taxes have been held. The task force has
been expanded to include representation from the Church of the Brethren, the
Friends, and the Mennonite Church. This group of 11 is expected by the
participating churches to establish the legal, legislative, and administrative
agenda of a corporate discipleship response to military taxes.
The Minneapolis resolution mandated the task force to seek “all legal,
legislative, and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector
exemption” for the GCMC
from the withholding of federal income taxes from its employees. (About 46
percent of U.S.
federal taxes are used for the military.)
At their second meeting () the
task force members rejected administrative avenues. Within the scope of
U.S. Internal
Revenue Service or Revenue Canada regulations this would involve extending
ordination, commissioning, or licensing status to all employees of church
institutions. It was a consensus of the task force that this would be an
administrative loophole. It would not develop a conscientious objector
position in response to military taxes.
However, both the judicial and legislative options will be pursued
simultaneously. Plans for the legislative option are the more developed.
For the legislative route to work, says Delton Franz, director of the
Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section office in Washington,
D.C., the
problem of conscience and taxes will have to be defined carefully. Currently a
paper focusing on the reasons the General Conference has a major problem of
conscience with collecting taxes from its employees is being drafted. After it
has been reviewed and okayed it will be sent along with cover letters by
leaders of the historic peace churches to congresspersons representing major
constituency concentrations and those on key subcommittees. Later on church
members will also be asked to write letters. It is important, says Franz, to
define the problem of conscience in such a way that it will motivate
congresspersons to work vigorously for the bill.
Another follow-up to these initiatives will be a visit to Washington of the
most influential peace church leaders to solicit support from selected members
of Congress and to obtain a sponsor for an exemption bill.
In preparation for the next meeting of the task force in November law firms
are being contacted for advice on optimum judicial procedures should the task
force decide to initiate a case as plaintiff. However, there is doubt that a
judicial process would be productive.
There is a possibility that a parallel task force will emerge in Canada. Ernie
Regehr, director of Project Ploughshares, Waterloo, Ontario, notes the
necessity of defining the question of militarism in Canadian terms for
Canadians. Regehr is attempting to gather a Canadian task force.
This mirrored a growing enthusiasm for the Peace Tax Fund legislation in many
organizations and congregations of the General Conference. This would
ultimately allow Mennonites to pass their well-worn buck all the way to
Washington,
D.C., and let
Congress take the blame for further delays.
New Call to Peacemaking
The New Call to Peacemaking initiative continued in .
Tax resistance was on the agenda at the follow-up meeting for churches in the central United States in .
Bruce Chrisman
In , a hundred participants,
mostly Mennonites, but also Quakers, Brethren “plus several Catholics and a
Presbyterian” came to
the fourth Mid-America New Call to Peacemaking.
“Conscription of Youth and Wealth” was the theme, and tax resistance was
again high on the agenda:
In the workshop on conscription of wealth Bob Hull, secretary for peace
and social concerns of the General Conference, suggested some
alternatives to paying war taxes. Others offered their own suggestions.
It was decided that resisting war taxes is a complicated affair and that
each person should decide according to their conscience. Several
expressed the desire to pay taxes for education, welfare, and other
social services, and wished there was an alternative such as the World
Peace Tax Fund. [Richard] McSorley, who has had contacts on Capitol Hill,
responded by saying that until there is a large grass-roots movement of
tax resistance the
WPTF
doesn’t stand a chance.
The latter half of the workshop included sharing by Bruce Chrisman,
Carbondale, Illinois, who is involved in a federal criminal case, one of
two in the
U.S.
involving tax resistance. His case is significant because it will provide
a precedent either for or against tax refusal on the basis of conscience
and religious convictions.
In Chrisman received draft counseling
from James Dunn, pastor of the Champaign-Urbana (Illinois) Mennonite
Church. He made a covenant with God to only pay taxes for humanitarian
purposes. Since that time he has paid no federal income taxes. It wasn’t
until this year, however, that the government prosecuted him, charging
that he willfully failed to disclose his gross income in
. “Willful” is the key term, because
Chrisman claims he conscientiously chose not to disclose his income. He
feels the government has purposely waited to build its case.
“The government wants to establish a precedent in order to prosecute
other tax resisters.” But Chrisman is confident. “We’re going to win and
establish a precedent the other way,” he said. He believes he has a
strong case. Part of that strength comes from his affiliation with the
General Conference Mennonite Church. He read from a statement from the
triennium which opposes war taxes and
supports those who resist paying them. “That’s a beautiful statement!” he
exclaimed, explaining that it has important legal implications for his
case.
In a moving conclusion to his talk Chrisman said that when he first
appeared in court this year
he was “scared to death.” “Today,” he said, “I have no fear in me. God
has given me an inner peace. I know I’m doing what he wants me to do.” No
one disagreed.
Chrisman would lose his court case.
On he was convicted
of failure to file (he filed, but the government contended the
information on the filing was not sufficient to make it legal).
During the pretrial hearings Judge J. Waldo Ackerman allowed Robert
Hull, secretary for peace and social concerns of the General
Conference, and Peter Ediger, director of Mennonite Voluntary
Service, to testify about Mennonite witness against war and
conscription of persons and money for war purposes. But the
testimony was disallowed at the trial.
Chrisman would ultimately be sentenced
to pay the taxes and court costs, to do a year of Mennonite Voluntary
Service, and to probation. He spun this as a victory of sorts:
“I’m amazed… I feel very good about the sentence. The alternative
service is probably the first sentence of its kind for a tax case. I
think it reflects the testimony in the trial and its influence on
the judge.”
Chrisman’s attorney filed an appeal of the conviction, which
was heard in , with the Mennonite General Conference filing an amicus curiae in Chrisman’s behalf.
Miscellany
A letter to the editor from Jacob T. Friesen described how he withheld a symbolic $13 from his income taxes “to gain attention and create opportunity to ‘dialogue for peace.’ ”
The issue told of the Manitoba Alliance Against Abortion, whose bank accounts had been frozen by the Canadian tax agency to pay for the taxes the organization’s president, Joe Borowski, had been refusing to pay for several years. The organization disputed that the funds belonged to the organization’s president and could thereby be seized, saying that the funds were meant for a legal battle against legal abortion. A letter-writing campaign by supporters of the group was credited for pressuring the government to abandon the seizure.
Chris Dueck, in the edition, called Mennonites out for complaining about Caesar’s war taxes while hoarding Caesar’s currency. “For us to refuse payment of taxes is to say ‘we want to keep the money we get through your military-economic policies, but we don’t want any of the guilt.’ The war tax issue is shedding guilt without shedding the selfish heart.”
In the edition, Gordon Houser looked into the New Creation Fellowship intentional community — which “was born out of the concern of a small group of people about the sad state of our society [and] a common involvement in simple living, war tax resistance, and prison reform.”
In , twenty people “from the General Conference Mennonite Church, the Mennonite Church, the Conservative Conference, and the Beachy Amish” met “to air trends within the Mennonite church and to share concerns.” Among those concerns, as expressed in a jointly-framed statement:
According to the direct command to pay taxes (Romans 13:6,7)
and according to the specific word of Christ on the payment of taxes to
“Caesar” (Matthew 22:15–22)
we believe we are under obligation to pay taxes levied by the law. We
regard taxation as the power of the state to collect monies needed for
its budget and not as voluntary contributions by citizens.
The Minneapolis conference
was given credit
for encouraging peace-minded clergy to come together and discuss the arms
race and peace advocacy.
William Stringfellow addressed the Church of the Brethren Symposium and suggested that the contemporary urban church should renounce its tax-exempt status. “since present tax privileges curtail the church’s freedom to speak out on important matters and keep it from engaging in tax resistance.”
[G]ood citizenship does not imply that we should obey our government
without regard for Christian conscience. Rather, good citizenship leads
us to work as a church and human community towards the establishment of
God’s kingdom on earth… We believe that Christ’s strength is in his
weakness and that the present aggressive stance of the world’s military
powers runs counter to our call to be peacemakers.
In the issue, Ferd Wiens
attacked “what may be called a ‘peace” cult” of
Mennonite flagellants
who, in his view, had turned the doctrine of nonresistance on its head to
make it a doctrine of civil disobedience — calling out promoters of war tax
resistance in particular.
Walter Regier agreed, writing that “[e]mphasis on world peace through demonstrations and nonpayment of taxes simply brings confusion into our ranks” and distracts from “more important issues that we face in our day… like abortion, homosexuality, and divorce”.
The U.S. branch
of
Pax
Christi (a Catholic peace movement) invited some of their Mennonite
counterparts to their annual convention in
.
Mennonites Bob Hull and Don Kaufman of Newton, Kansas, led a workshop on
tax resistance and the World Peace Tax Fund Act. Interest in this was
strong. About 40 persons, including some tax resisters, participated.
Hull is peace and social concerns director for the General Conference;
Kaufman is author of The Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace, Paying for War.
In a private meeting with Sister Mary Evelyn Jegen, executive secretary
of Pax Christi
USA,
and Gordon Zahn, a Catholic conscientious objector in World War Ⅱ, Hull,
Kaufman, and William Keeney explained the General Conference resolution
on war taxes. Keeney, North Newton, Kansas, is director of the Consortium
on Peace Research, Education, and Development.
Although Pax Christi
USA,
supports the World Peace Tax Fund it has not responded to its members who
engage in war tax withholding and are requesting official support from
Pax Christi.
Albert H. Epp
felt that civil disobedience and other sorts of confrontation with
government “can ensnare a people in activities that make them obnoxious to
the general citizenry. It is ‘good’ deeds that earn respect and give us a
right to speak.” For this reason “It seems improper for Christians to start
at the point of urging illegal tax-resistance rather than first declaring a
church-wide month of prayer for a national crisis.”
In my congregation we took a poll on ideal ways to influence government.
We prefer to exhaust all legal means to achieve peace before we engage in
illegal maneuvers. Only 5 percent approved of refusing to pay one’s tax
as a protest. But in terms of practical, positive solutions, we found
that 65 percent approved the World Peace Tax Fund alternative; 85 percent
approved writing the President and Congress; 85 percent approved using
the ballot box to elect responsive leaders; and 89 percent approved
increased giving to decrease taxes.
But David Graber
responded that in his opinion “the demand to lay down our tax dollars
is a similar call to idolatry” as those that prompted the civil
disobedience of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. “Thank God for
Christians today who refuse to cooperate with our government’s demands
in Jesus’ name. Where is Epp’s recognition of their witness?”
And Mark S. Lawson added that the blessings of government that Epp
felt we should all be humbly grateful for weren’t all that. For
example: “My country forces me to cut my income below the taxable
level so I can obey both the laws of God and man. Religious liberty is
only for those who support the killing in wars financed by their tax
money.” He seconded the idea that only through “widespread tax
refusal” could pacifists pressure Congress into creating an
alternative for conscientious taxpayers.
C.B. Friesen
was more appreciative of Epp’s take. He trotted out the usual
Render Unto Caesar ⇒ Romans 13 ⇒ 1 Peter 2
biblical justification for submission to civil government and said
that those who counsel war tax resistance “mostly benefit their egos”
in service of their “own philosophies and pet theories”.
The Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section (U.S.)
met at . They
“formally supported the passage of the World Peace Tax Fund bill” but
“decided against sponsoring a vigorous campaign to promote Mennonite
participation in a war tax resistance campaign. Section members felt such a
resolution would not reflect the will of their constituent bodies.” So they
instead adopted the kick-the-can routine, passing “a resolution that the
section ‘is prepared to consider at its meeting a decision to promote participation in a war tax
resistance campaign.’ ” There seemed to be some acknowledgment of flaws in
the Peace Tax Fund bill:
The section said in resolution “that it is conscience that the
WPTF
legislation might not in itself force a significant reduction in military
spending, but it recognizes that it would provide funds for peacemaking
efforts and would be a witness against military spending.”
This is the thirty-fourth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we enter the late 1980s.
The edition again announced the “Taxes for Peace” fund that had been established by the MCC Peace Section (U.S.) to coordinate war tax redirection.
In the fund would be redirecting taxes to “the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund… [which] seeks to enact the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill… to give those conscientiously opposed to war a way to pay 100 percent of their taxes, with the military percentage going to a separate fund for peace-enhancing programs.”
In about $4,000 was contributed to the U.S. Peace Section Taxes for Peace fund.
Those monies helped support the Lancaster County Peacework Alternatives project.
In other years peace-related projects in places such as Laos and Guatemala have received funds.
MCC U.S. Peace Section is also offering an information packet on military tax opposition that contains varying theological positions on the war tax issue, and materials about tax laws and legal concerns for the tax resister.
The General Board of Friends United Meeting has adopted a policy of not withholding the federal withholding tax of employees who are conscientious objectors to paying taxes used for military purposes.
The General Conference Mennonite Church adopted a similar policy in .
On the current staff, said general secretary Steven Main, are three conscientious objectors to paying war taxes.
The policy requires employees who want to participate in the witness of military tax refusal to first go through a “clearness process” with their Meeting or church community.
I was a conscientious objector to war in World War Ⅰ.
So I reported this to the military camp office, informing them I could not participate in regular military training.
I asked them to assign me to service in a base hospital designed for overseas patients.
They respected my claim of conscience and gave me an opportunity to serve face and stomach victims of war.
Later… they handed me an “honorable discharge” card.
I still have this card.
Can you now extend to me, as a person of 92 years, and to my spouse, the same sensitive respect for our claims of conscience?
We love our country and we respect our government.
And we do not hesitate to pay taxes for orderly affairs and services of government.
But we have become deeply troubled over the vastly disproportionate part of our federal income tax being allocated to the building up of a military force and arsenal.
This is entirely out of proportion to the huge debt and the staggering needs among the poor, the sick, the aged and the unemployed.
Our conscience can no longer endure this.
So we have decided to withhold 37 percent of federal income tax liability (namely, the 37 percent used in the present military build-up program).
We want to send this as a donation to the Commission on Home Ministries… [which reaches out] to the poor, the unemployed, the underprivileged and the many people hurt and adrift by wars…
In World War Ⅰ the government recognized my concern of conscience.
Can you grant us this kind of courtesy for our older years?
Six Mennonite pastors who have refused to pay some or all of their military taxes were interviewed in the issue of ACTS (Another Church Tries Something), published by the Commission on Home Ministries.
Donald Kaufman of Bethel College Church, North Newton, Kan., John Gaeddert of First Church, Halstead, Kan., S. Roy Kaufman of Science Ridge Church, Sterling, Ill., Ronald Krehbiel of Salem Church, Freeman, S.D., Mark Weidner of First Church, Bluffton, Ohio, and Dorothy Nickel Friesen of Manhattan (Kan.) Fellowship told of how they decided to resist war taxes, how they involved church members in the decision and how their action has affected others.
The New Call to Peacemaking initiative and the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns sponsored a gathering of leaders from the traditional peace churches in to discuss what to do about the dilemma of such churches withholding taxes for the government from the salaries of their employees who wanted to resist paying war taxes.
Paul Schrag wrote up an article on the meeting that was reprinted in the edition of The Mennonite.
Excerpts:
The question of how church organizations can help their employees follow their consciences — and how to deal with the risks involved for both employees and employers — were the issues that the 36 Mennonites, Brethren and Quakers struggled with.
The church leaders, organizational representatives and lawyers affirmed their support for individual military tax resisters and for efforts to seek a legislative solution by working toward passage of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress.
They agreed to organize a peace church leadership group to go to Washington sometime in the future to support the peace tax bill and to express concerns about tax withholding.
They also agreed to help each other by filing friend-of-the-court briefs if tax resisters are prosecuted and by sharing the cost of tax resistance penalties.
“You may think the world will little note nor long remember what has happened here,” said Marian Franz, director of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund.
“But I regard it as a historic meeting.
“The decision to end the human race does not belong to Caesar.
Therefore, tax dollars that wrestle that decision out of the hands of God do not either.”
Participants in the meeting included both military tax resisters and people who would not engage in tax resistance themselves but support those who do.
People from churches that have policies of breaking the law by not withholding the federal taxes of employees who oppose paying military taxes shared their experiences with people from churches considering adopting such a policy.
The General Conference Mennonite Church and two Quaker groups are in the first category.
The Mennonite Church is in the second.
MC leaders, including moderator James Lapp and moderator-elect George Brunk Ⅲ, came to the meeting to explore church policy options on military tax withholding.
MC general assembly delegates asked the church to develop a policy recommendation on the issue for consideration at Normal .
“This roots us in a larger movement,” Lapp said of the meeting.
“It gives us ideas and handles about how other people have addressed it.
We don’t have to start from ground zero.”
The MC General Board plans to formulate questions about tax withholding for congregations to discuss.
It will prepare a recommendation next year based on congregations’ responses.
Robert Hull, GC secretary for peace and justice, said it was frustrating that many members of historic peace churches are not willing to witness against financial participation in preparing for war, although they are opposed to physical participation in war.
Some said it was disappointing that so many people are unwilling to follow their consciences until the government, through the Peace Tax Fund, might allow them to do so legally.
One quoted Gandhi: “We have stooped so low that we fancy it our duty to do whatever the law requires.”
“Do we want our righteousness without a price?” asked Ray Gingerich, a professor at Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Va.
When a church or organization decides to honor employees’ requests not to withhold their federal income tax, it assumes serious risks.
Any “responsible person” who willfully fails to withhold an employee’s taxes theoretically could be punished with a prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.
An organization could be fined $500,000.
But such penalties have never been imposed on legitimate religious organizations, nor are they likely to be, said two lawyers at the meeting.
The usual Internal Revenue Service response to war tax resistance is to take the amount of tax owed, plus a 5 percent penalty and interest, from the employee’s bank account.
The IRS has not taken even this action against the four GC employees who are not having their taxes withheld.
All GC personnel who could be subject to penalties have agreed to accept the risk.
The Friends World Committee for Consultation, which has had a non-withholding policy , has had tax money seized, plus interest and penalties, from its resisters’ bank accounts.
The Friends United Meeting adopted a non-withholding policy .
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends will decide in whether it should have such a policy.
Charles Boyer of the Church of the Brethren said he would use the input from the meeting to work toward helping develop a denominational policy on tax resistance.
An even more basic issue than war tax resistance arose concerning tax-withholding laws.
Some compared the church’s tax-collecting role to that of the biblical publicans.
“I have a growing dis-ease that the church is a tax collector for the government, regardless of what the money is used for,” said Vern Preheim, GC general secretary.
Participants made suggestions for improvements on a draft of “A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers,” written by Hull, Linda Coffin of the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns and lawyers Peter Goldberger and J.E. McNeil, who both gave legal advice at the meeting.
The manual is expected to be available later this year.
That book’s availability would be announced in the edition.
Another concern I have with promotion of the Peace Tax Fund law is that in order to tempt legislators to support it, there is a tendency to defang war tax objection and make it less threatening to the government.
Take for example this description of Marian Franz’s testimony before a House committee reviewing the tax code:
“Franz said that the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill would alleviate a persistent burden on the IRS and permit these citizens [conscientious objectors] to pay their full share of tax without violation of religious conscience.”
All we want to do is pay our taxes and not cause any trouble for the IRS — is that really the best way to speak truth to power and challenge militarism?
The Internal Revenue Service filed two suits against a Quaker group in Pennsylvania because the organization refused to attach the wages of two employees who have withheld part of their income taxes as a conscientious protest against military spending, Religious News Service reported.
The lawsuits against the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends seek $16,836 in connection with federal taxes not paid by William V. Grassie and David A. Falls.
The Quakers sent a letter to the IRS saying neither Grassie nor Falls is “a tax evader but a conscientious taxpayer who is conscientiously refusing payment of the military portion of his taxes.”
This is the thirty-seventh in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we hit 1991.
The issue brought the news
that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (of Quakers) had lost its court battle
against the
IRS:
On ,
U.S. District Judge
Norma Shapiro found that
PYM
is not protected by the Constitution. She wrote, however, that “it is ironic
that here in Pennsylvania, the woods to which Penn led the Religious Society
of Friends to enjoy the blessings of religious liberty, neither the
Constitution nor its Bill of Rights protects the policy of the Society not to
coerce or violate the consciences of its employees and members or to act as an
agent for our government in doing so.” The General Conference Mennonite
Church, which agreed in to not withhold
taxes from its employees who requested this, has not heard from the
IRS.
That issue also carried
a
note about the Northwest Peace Fund — an alternative fund for coordinating
war tax redirection sponsored by the Seattle Mennonite Church.
“We can’t stop war, but maybe we can stop paying for war,” says Steve
Ratzlaff, pastor at the church. The taxes that would be paid to the government
are put into the fund, and the interest earned on the money is given to peace
and justice organizations. If the Internal Revenue Service garnishees the
unpaid taxes, investors may draw the money out. The rationale behind the fund,
says Ratzlaff, is that “if enough people do it, it will become an economic
hardship for the government to collect the money.” It also allows people to
direct their money to “constructive rather than destructive programs,” he
says.
The edition again invited
readers to redirect their federal income taxes through the
Taxes for Peace Fund organized by the
MCC
U.S. Peace Section.
The funds collected in would be split among
the Peace Section itself, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and
Christian Peacemaker Teams. In ,
$3,700 had been redirected through the fund.
The relatively new Mennonite Conference of Eastern Canada
had been quickly confronted by the war tax withholding issue, and tried to
resolve it at its annual sessions. Here’s how The
Mennonite reported it:
Fred Martin: “I see this as a symbolic act that would witness to our hope in
the love of Jesus Christ.”
Next to the budget, the most debated item was the executive board’s
recommendation to “withhold no income tax from the salary of any conference
[MCEC]
employee who requests this on the basis of conscience” as well as to ask the
Canadian government to recognize conscientious objection to payment of
military taxes and to provide peaceful alternatives for use of such tax
dollars.
Fred Martin, who works with students and young adults for the conference, made
the request that led to the board’s recommendation. He said he wants to
motivate people to consider the issue. He called his act a symbolic one “that
would witness to our hope in the love of Jesus Christ.”
Several spoke in favor of the action. Doug Pritchard quoted the famous
Catholic activist Dorothy Day: “If we truly rendered unto God what is God’s,
there would be nothing left for Caesar.”
Sam Steiner said that governments listen more if they see you’re willing to
sacrifice for it. Wilmer Martin added that we need to support our members who
try to be true to their conscience.
Others opposed the idea. Victor Dorsch of Maple View Mennonite Church,
Wellesley, Ont., said that
such an action is not a positive peace witness. “Our tax dollars are also
going for abortions,” he said. Peter Epp of North Leamington
(Ont.) United Mennonite Church
was also against it and called for a secret ballot.
The moderator delayed further discussion until that evening’s session. In the
end, delegates voted down the original recommendation on tax withholding, 159
to 48. Margot Fieguth of Mississauga
(Ont.) Mennonite Fellowship
introduced an alternative resolution, which still called for the conference to
work for legislation to recognize conscientious objection to paying military
taxes and recommended hiring Martin on a contract basis so that the conference
was not liable. After more discussion delegates voted to table discussion
until the next delegate session.
A
followup, after the
MCEC
fall sessions in , read in part:
A new motion, passed almost unanimously, commits the conference “to work with
the federal government to enact legislation that recognizes conscientious
objection to military service and the payment of military taxes and to provide
peaceful alternatives.”
Originally the new motion also included a section offering contracts to
conference employees who want to redirect their taxes. That section was
removed after the conference executive learned that simply placing employees
on a contract basis — without changing job descriptions and
accountability — would not necessarily get the conference “off the hook” for
breaking income tax laws.
Don’t we already have provision for conscientious objection to war? asked
several delegates. Doug Pritchard, a peace worker with the conference, said
that such legislation was in effect during World War Ⅱ but is no longer. David
Janzen suggested that the guarantees of freedom of conscience and religion in
the Canadian Bill of Rights should be sufficient.
A
message from the General Conference’s General Board in reaction to the
Persian Gulf War went out in the
issue. It said, in part: “We repent that through our taxes we have contributed
to death and destruction… We call on Christians not to enter the military
forces and to protest or refuse the use of our taxes for military purposes.”
To avoid federal income taxes.
For 12 years I have paid no federal income taxes because I refuse to finance U.S. mass murder around the world.
How can I speak for peace while I pay for war?
Over 50 percent of every federal income tax dollar goes for war — past, present, or future.
I keep my easily traceable taxable income under the taxable level.
For a sighted, under-65-year-old single person that amount is $5,550 for .
Shrader was taken to task in a later issue by a letter
saying that his example of “[l]iving at basic sufficiency does nothing to help
the poor, many of whom are dependent upon tax dollars for their housing, food,
education, and health care.”
Titus Peachey
An article by Titus Peachey on The Blessing of Tax Resistance — imagining what would happen if war tax resistance were central to Mennonite practice — appeared in the issue:
Imagine the impossible or highly
improbable. Imagine that all Mennonite and
Brethren in Christ people refused to pay taxes for war.
Let’s not worry for the moment how this came about, except
to acknowledge that it grew out of our deep commitment
to Christ and the church.
Furthermore, let’s imagine that we cheerfully supported one another in this
refusal to pay taxes for war, so that no one need be alone in this act of
faith.
What would this do to our church? What would happen to our witness in the
world? How would God change us in the process?
We cannot know. I am convinced, however, that there are parallels to the
blessing that came when our young men chose insult and prison rather than
military service during World War Ⅰ. We still benefit from that witness.
Now it is our turn. How are we going to be faithful? What would we face as a
church if we decided that faithfulness meant the refusal to pay taxes for war?
Simple living: The first option is simple living, the legal approach.
The more-with-less approach to life would be the norm in our churches. Vast
numbers of our people would choose legal means of reducing the amount paid in
taxes for war. We would reduce our personal incomes, and give a higher
percentage of our money to the church. We would reduce our tax liability.
Our churches would encourage simpler housing and shared living arrangements.
We would help our young people avoid large, long-term mortgages. Living in
duplexes or other multiple-unit dwellings would reduce purchase and
maintenance costs and save on heat, utilities, appliances and tools. Many of
us would find inexpensive housing in low-income, multicultural neighborhoods,
maintaining a sense of stewardship so that our presence would not price others
out of the neighborhood.
As more of us moved into lower-cost housing, we would gain new skills at
cross-cultural living and relating. More of our churches would reflect the
diversity of God’s people. We would become a less segregated and exclusive
church. We would learn difficult lessons about conflict resolution, justice
and community.
More of us, in an effort to reduce expenses, would put energy into relating to
our neighbors and the community through the public school system. Alternately,
given our greater interest in tax deductions through charitable contributions,
our church schools could be more highly subsidized, less expensive and thus
more accessible to a broader spectrum of people.
A commitment to not paying taxes for war would increase resources available to
the church. It would be usual for people to give 20–50 percent of their
incomes to the church. Local congregations would have more resources to share
with the community. It would be routine for a congregation to hire one or two
people to work at community needs and concerns.
Our churches would also struggle deeply with the prevalent theology of success
and the god of materialism. The same theology that prevents us from paying
taxes for war would prohibit us from spending so much on ourselves. Our church
building and expansion programs would be reviewed in light of community and
world needs. We would become “economically non-conformed” to this world.
Refusing to pay taxes for war would expand our understanding of conscientious
objection to war. We would understand conscientious objection to include
issues related to employment, investments, taxes, and business relationships
as well as to military registration and conscription.
The U.S. Peace Tax
Fund Bill would receive all the financial support it needed. Congress members
from Mennonite or Brethren in Christ districts would frequently receive mail
and visits on the subject. Conscience against war would receive a better
hearing in the halls of government.
Tax resistance: The second option is tax resistance, the illegal
approach. A significant number of Mennonites would choose the path of tax
resistance by withholding the military portion or a symbolic amount of their
tax dollars from the
(U.S.) Internal
Revenue Service and Revenue Canada. It would be normal to find a group of
families in each congregation who seek counsel and support on this issue.
Mennonite institutions would honor employee requests not to withhold their
income tax dollars. Mennonite leaders would frequently find themselves in
IRS
offices and the courts, witnessing to their faith and conscience and the
convictions of our people.
As the public became aware of this expression of our faith, some would
perceive Mennonites as a threat. We could become the target of harassment and
community pressure. People would make nasty phone calls and vandalize us as a
result of our beliefs, particularly during times of crisis, such as the
Persian Gulf War.
Some of us would end up in jail, being used as examples to deter others from
continuing to practice tax resistance. Small Mennonite fellowships might form
in our prisons as a result of the life and witness of tax resisters.
These experiences would make it easier for us to identify with the image of a
“suffering church” that is found in Scripture, in our Anabaptist heritage and
in many parts of the world today. Our sense of unity and identity with the
worldwide church would become stronger.
We would not have to scratch our heads and wonder how to do peace education
with our youth. They would sense that our concern about Christ’s way of peace
is integral to our life and faith. They would wonder why we are going to court
and to jail, and would ask us many difficult questions over dinner and during
Sunday school.
Conclusion: Tax resistance is not the only path to the many things
mentioned above. Surely we as a church could commit ourselves to simple living
and a 10–20 percent tithe, without the burden (or the blessing) of the war tax
issue. Certainly there are other ways to grow in commitment to racial equality
or justice for the poor.
In my experience, however, war tax resistance remains one of the most relevant
ways to affirm life and peace in a world of militarized economies. For me it
has also served as the best discipline for simple living in a culture of
materialism and consumption.
Implementing this vision in our churches could lead to conflict and division.
It could also lead us to experience anew Christ’s reconciling Spirit among us.
It would not be easy. I am convinced, however, that a great blessing awaits
the church, when we agree to say yes to Christ’s way of peace by refusing to
pay taxes for war. When will it happen? What will become of us if it doesn’t?
Don Kaufman penned a letter for the edition. Excerpts:
Those who do not willingly pay find the costs of dissent high. Internal
Revenue Service penalties and fees total several hundred dollars when citizens
refuse to send their earnings to the Pentagon. This simply adds to the dilemma
of “drafted dollars” that violate conscience. With one hand citizens give
generously to life-building purposes that ease human suffering. With the other
hand they pay military taxes that effectively cancel the good they have done.
They pay to relieve suffering; they pay to increase it. They pray for peace;
they pay for war.
Today’s combat soldier is the taxpayer — the person who provides the money to
produce and deploy the push-button systems for mass annihilation.
He urged people to support a Peace Tax Fund bill.
This is the thirty-eighth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we work through the rest of the early 1990s.
Taxes for Life
The edition brought news of
a symbolic, dip-your-toes-in-first sort of tax resistance being organized by
Christian Peacemaker Teams:
Taxes for Life
encourages church members to divert from their
income tax returns at least $3.03, which
represents a penny per $1 billion of the
U.S. military
budget ($303.5 billion). As a symbolic effort, the project seeks to draw
public attention to the unfulfilled student needs in poor communities for
books and educational materials. Send symbolic tax refusals to
CPT…
These will be gathered at the
CPT
conference in Richmond, Va.
. One-fourth of the total will
be donated publicly to local impoverished schools. The rest will be sent back
with conference participants for similar public donations to their local
school districts.
The edition followed this up
with a brief note about a “Taxes for Life Liturgy and Study Plan,” put out by
CPT,
“which helps encourage symbolic tax resistance to the
U.S. defense
budget”.
John K. Stoner described the program in greater detail in the
edition:
My phone rang. The voice said, “Could I speak to John or Janet Stoner?”
“I’m John Stoner.”
“I’m calling from the Internal Revenue Service about the letter you sent
indicating that you are withholding part of your income tax payment.”
He and I talked for about 10 minutes as I explained why Janet and I had said
“no” to paying the full amount of our income tax. The man could not understand
why anyone would invite the collection pressures of the
IRS by
withholding some taxes. But by the time the conversation was over he was
closer to understanding that this was for us a matter of faith and a question
of the practice of our religion.
It was a
Mark
13:9 kind of experience, being called before the authorities, “before
governors and kings,” because of Jesus, as a testimony to them. By the
sound of Mark
13, Jesus expected this kind of thing to happen regularly to his
followers. Mark 13 is a good text to remember when everybody around you quotes
Romans
13.
War tax keeps coming up and won’t go away because the cry of children abused
and traumatized by war doesn’t go away.
Every discussion about peacemaking must face the question of how taxes are
collected and spent. The taxpayer’s “age of innocence” ended a year ago when
Americans watched their tax dollars at work in Iraq. There our taxes killed
between 100,000 and 200,000 people in one month and left a nation of 17
million people strangled — its water polluted, its hospitals without
electricity, its homes dark, its classrooms cold. Malnutrition, disease and
destitution continue.
Americans, your
IRS 1040
form and mine paid the bill. Our withheld wages and enclosed checks purchased
yesterday’s nightmares and tomorrow’s psychological traumas for these
childhood victims of war. We also paid for the deaths of their fathers and
relatives by the thousands.
Jobs: Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of unemployed, homeless, sick
and impoverished people in the United States are not helped toward health and
self-sufficiency by the federal government, which says that the funds for
education, vaccinations, basic health care, public transportation and jobs are
not available.
Who is responsible for this? We are. It is impossible for us Christian
taxpayers to sidestep our share of the responsibility. But do we have any
choice in the matter? Of course we do.
God calls us to plead for the end of the destructive social institution of war
by refusing to pay for it. We are called to this as clearly as our forebears
were called to abolish slavery.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams organization is promoting symbolic war tax
refusal as a way to make a clear witness in the matter of war taxes. Taxes for
Life is a plan to have taxpayers redirect to education an amount equivalent to
1 penny for every $1 billion in the military budget. For this is $3.03, which can be mailed to
Christian Peacemaker Teams… Listen to your conscience when you pay your taxes
this year. Write a letter of witness to the
IRS with
copies to Congress, your pastor and local newspaper. Redirect some taxes to
education through
CPT.
If the
IRS
calls, tell them that it makes you nervous to break their law and that you do
not enjoy being harassed by the collectors. Then say you are far more
apprehensive, however, about breaking God’s law. Explain that you are afraid
to harden your heart to the cry of the victims.
Then leave the outcome with God.
Miscellaneous
The edition included some
letters concerning war taxes.
Don & Eleanor Kaufman shared their letter to the
IRS
decrying government militarism and begging for a Peace Tax Fund option. And
Charlene Epp and Duncan Smith shared their letter, in which they announced
that they were holding back a symbolic $57 of their taxes in protest.
Ryan Ahlgrim
wrote a piece for the issue
opposing war tax resistance. His main reasons: 1) to the extent resisting
taxes affects agency budgets, it does so erratically and not in a way that
affects military spending in particular; 2) it flies in the face of
representative democracy, in which we agree to permit a majority of
representatives to decide how to spend our taxes; 3) the nation still needs a
military because Jesus hasn’t yet brought peace to the world.
(Stanley Bohn penned a rebuttal for the edition, and Doug Pritchard had another in the edition.)
Beyond networking and sharing strategies, every two years the conference
participants contribute to projects promoting peace. Two years ago they gave
$15,000 to the Innu people to help their fight against low-level military
flights over their hunting lands in central Labrador in Canada. This year they
plan to donate money to Peace Brigades International for their efforts to
de-escalate the conflict in Sri Lanka.
In a MCC supplement, Mike Hofkamp reflected on U.S. support for violent military action in the Philippines, and wrote:
What does “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s mean?” I find comfort in
the interpretation of Peter Rideman, an early Anabaptist. Rideman notes the
passage says “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” not render unto Caesar
whatever and however much Caesar wants. This is a simplistic interpretation
but is truth ever sophisticated? When my government supports war against
civilians… Caesar is asking too much and war tax resistance is a faithful
Christian responsibility.
And yet, I wonder if tax resistance really goes deep enough. During the
Persian Gulf war I attended a peace rally… A loud, angry, pro-war demonstrator
entered our group and shouted at us, “You hypocrites! You chant ‘no blood for
oil’ but how many of you drove cars to get here?” Truth comes from strange
places.
Does our participation in North American economic structures give the military
its reason for being? How long will it be before our government leaders again
declare war to “protect our way of life?”
Perhaps the most authentic war tax resistance is to live below a taxable
income. Doing so would require experimenting with alternative economic
structures based on community, sharing, and conservation. If not, aren’t we
living a lifestyle that at its very core demands the wars we say we oppose?
A
list of peace “commitments” in that
MCC
supplement was very cagey around the subject of war tax resistance, hinting at
it but in a deniable way:
We will strive to show by our lives that war is an unacceptable way to solve
human conflict. This calls us to refuse to support war, or to participate in
military service. When war or war preparations lead to the conscription of
ourselves, our money, or our property, we will seek alternative ways to serve
humanity and our countries in the spirit of Christ. We support ministries of
conciliation which search for peaceful resolution of conflicts. Recognizing
the subtle ways in which our loyalties and resources can be conscripted in
modern industrial states, we will strive to continually examine our complicity
in systems which treat others as enemies.
This is the thirty-ninth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we hit 1994.
War tax resistance mentions have slowed to a trickle. It’s hard to be certain
whether this reflects a waning of interest in Mennonite circles generally, or
just a change in editorial focus, but in any case the contrast is stark
between the passion and the quantity of discussion about war tax resistance
just and as we hit
.
Almost all of the war tax resistance material was crammed into a single tax
day issue that year.
Four Mennonites follow their consciences by telling the Canadian and
U.S. governments
they cannot pay for war with their taxes.
Larry Penner
When the Persian Gulf War broke out in , Ed
Olfert protested. “I needed to have a little bit of voice to say that this is
stupid and has to end,” he says. “This is my tax money at work, killing women
and children.”
Ed had considered tax resistance before. He decided to withhold about 9
percent of his tax payment, a percentage that Conscience Canada, a tax
resisters’ group, suggests to represent the amount of taxes that goes to the
military.
Along with withholding, Ed sent letters to government and Revenue Canada
officials voicing his protest. But in the end the effort brought mostly
frustration.
As a self-employed farmer, the amount he withheld was minimal, under $100.
When Revenue Canada officials contacted him, they didn’t know about his
protest. “I wondered if the letters I sent even arrived,” Ed says.
“There was a fear of what I was doing.” ―Ed Olfert
At his church, Superb Mennonite Church in
Kerrobert,
Sask., Ed found
little sympathy. “There was a fear of what I was
doing,” he says. “There was a drawing away, as if people
wondered, ‘Is this what the Mennonite church is moving
toward, that we all have to do this?’ ”
Actually, Mennonite tax resisters are few
and scattered. More support legislative change
that would allow people of conscience to
designate their tax dollars for
nonmilitary ends. Such legislation has
been proposed in both Canada and the United States.
Those who do resist paying taxes find the need to resist more imperative as
technology moves warfare farther from conscription and closer to the
pocketbook. While the draft in the United States has remained inactive
, 28 percent of the
federal budget went to
current military efforts and another 18.7 percent to payments on past military
efforts, according to the Friends Committee on National Legislation. And
although Canada has not conscripted its citizens since World War Ⅱ,
Conscience Canada reports that $12 billion, or 7.5 percent of the federal
budget, went to military spending in
. The Persian
Gulf War proved that with modern technology, full-scale war can be fought
without conscription, but not without dollars.
“Our constitution guarantees freedom of conscience, but if we’re not allowed
to exercise our conscience, it doesn’t mean much.” ―Menno Klassen
Hypocritical: For resister Menno Klassen of
Winnipeg, resisting warfare through his taxes
has become more imperative as he has grown older.
Excused from war as a conscientious
objector to World War Ⅱ, Menno says it would be
hypocritical now to pay to send someone in his
place. “Our constitution guarantees
freedom of conscience, but if we’re not allowed to
exercise our conscience, it doesn’t mean much,” he says.
Like Ed, Menno has received mixed reactions from his
congregation, Fort Garry Mennonite Fellowship in Winnipeg.
“I must admit I don’t receive much support from the church, even though my
church is one of the more tolerant in Winnipeg,” he says. “People [in the
church] are busy with family and inward looking. It’s a family affair.”
In Ontario, Jane Pritchard has found some support. Like Ed, her conscience
condemned the Gulf War, “the first war fought by my country since I became
politically aware.”
“Once I’d done it I didn’t see how I could convince myself to pay before.”
―Jane Pritchard
A physician, Jane faced a higher tax payment. She withheld just
over $1,000. For her the act was a liberation. “Once I’d
done it I didn’t see how I could convince myself to pay
before.” Jane has found support for her decision in
her Bible study group at Toronto United Mennonite Church.
When Revenue Canada called Jane in, she expected the worst.
She was not disappointed.
She was shown into a stark room with nothing but two chairs, a desk, a light and a computer terminal.
“It was like something out of [the book] 1984,” she says.
The Revenue Canada representative kept saying she owed this portion of her taxes.
He didn’t ask why she didn’t pay but said Revenue Canada had to do something.
He did not say what.
Sympathy: At some point partway through the interview, Jane realized
her interviewer was more nervous than she was. When he did not respond to her
questions of what Revenue Canada would do, she suggested possibilities.
“Garnishee my wages?” He nodded yes. “From where?” He did not know. “Raid my
bank account?” Again he nodded. She left feeling sympathy for her inquisitor,
a sympathetic young man caught in a system.
Don Kaufman of Newton, Kan.,
knows that many Internal Revenue Service officers are sympathetic people
caught in a system. He has resisted military tax for 36 years. He recalls one
IRS
representative who said he hoped the government would make it possible for tax
resisters to resist without breaking the law.
“If there were a provision for conscience in giving money for war as there
is in giving body to war, tax resisters wouldn’t have to feel guilty for
following their conscience.” ―Don Kaufman
Partly because
IRS
officials are bound by regulations, Don’s
protest has shifted its emphasis over the years.
“Initially I wrote more to the
IRS,
now I write more to Congress. The
IRS
is just carrying out Congress’ orders,” Don says. “If
there were a provision for conscience in giving money
for war as there is in giving body to war, tax resisters
wouldn’t have to feel guilty for following their
conscience.”
In his many years of resistance, Don has seen interest
in tax resistance wax and wane. But, he says, it has never died
out. The history of war tax resistance in North America dates to the first
settlers from Europe, many of whom left their home country in part to avoid
paying taxes for war. But when the personal income tax was introduced in both
the United States and Canada, funds raised went to pay for war.
Don believes a change will come. “It may be like women’s suffrage, it may take
60 to 80 years before there is a change, but if people keep working and don’t
give up too easily, there will be a change,” he says.
Until the law changes, Don will continue to resist. “It’s enough of a threat
to who I am as a person that I don’t want to give it up. If I quit, I become
schizophrenic at that point — I’m not being honest with who I am. I want my
life to be integrated.”
A sidebar concerned two other Mennonite tax resisters:
Waiting for the tax collector
Pat and Earl Hostetter Martin have been resisting taxes since they returned
from Mennonite Central Committee work in Vietnam in
. As students in Palo Alto,
Calif., they began by
withholding 10 percent of their telephone tax, a sum that totaled about $10
after three years.
For this, Internal Revenue Service representatives drove down from San
Francisco twice and questioned their landlord while Pat and Earl were at work.
Then they received a notice threatening a lien on their property and ordering
an appearance at the
IRS
office. But before the appearance, the
IRS
found the Martins’ bank account and took the money.
“Honest to our conscience”: Earl and Pat Hostetter Martin with their son
Hans
In the Martins went to Akron,
Pa., to serve as
co-secretaries for East Asia for
MCC.
They withheld about 30 percent of their taxes, a figure
representing the amount of tax money going for
current military expenditures.
“After being in Vietnam and having seen a lot of
friends who had suffered because of
U.S. weapons,
we decided we couldn’t pay,” Pat says.
The couple has resisted paying taxes ever since.
At first the
IRS
froze their personal checking account for a couple of
weeks to collect. Pat called it an odd blessing. “You get caught
with checks out and you have to go back to stores and explain. But that also
gave us an opportunity to explain why we are tax resisters.”
the couple began moving its bank
account frequently to keep the
IRS from
finding the money. They now owe between $2,000 and $3,000.
When the
IRS
tried to garnishee the couple’s wages at
MCC,
MCC’s
response was to ask the
IRS to
reconsider, to try to find the money some other way.
MCC,
like most Mennonite organizations, does withhold income tax from employees’
paychecks for the government. The General Conference Mennonite Church is the
only major Mennonite organization that will grant employees’ requests to not
have federal taxes withheld from their paychecks so that employees may resist
taxes.
Last year the Martins were in Vietnam . While they were gone the
IRS
attached a lien to all their property: house, car, real estate. Anything they
own could now be sold to pay the debt.
The couple is part of a Lancaster group of resisters called “Taxes for Life.”
The group meets monthly to support each other. “Anyone who chooses tax
resistance should have a support group because it can be scary,” says Pat. “We
agree to stand behind each other and keep ourselves honest to our conscience.”
In recent years I have joined with Don Kaufman and 20 others in the Newton,
Kan., area to form a support
group concerned with the military use of our taxes. Our refused tax dollars
and contributions build up a “Heartland Peace Tax Fund,” which in
granted $750 to local human needs
agencies and $150 to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund in Washington.
In St. Louis, Bill Ramsey
(staffer for the regional American Friends Service Committee office) spent 30
days in jail in for his prophetic witness.
As a condition of probation, he was ordered by the federal judge to pay his
military taxes, due
. Bill has done as ordered, sending
personal checks to seven life-affirming agencies and asking them to certify to
the court that he has done so. It is unlikely that the federal judge will
agree that Bill Ramsey has paid his taxes in this way. Bill is preparing
himself spiritually for more prison time. But his point is made: We Americans
and Canadians are robbing from the human needs so evident in our societies to
build and sell weapons.
The witness of some among us to this truth goes on. Whether they continue to
stand alone depends upon whether more of us come to incarnate the peacemaking
of Jesus Christ in our own witness.
The edition had
a
brief follow-up that noted the Heartland Peace Tax Fund’s grants for
.
This is the forty-fifth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we finish off the first decade of the new millennium.
What belongs to God and what to Caesar? It’s a riddle that has to be puzzled
over again and again by Mennonites in the context of war tax resistance. In the
edition,
Titus Peachey took a swing
at the pitch: Given all that belongs to God, he asked, “can we who follow Jesus
willingly give our tax dollars for war and killing?”
In the edition,
Scott Key
answered Everett J. Thomas’s editorial statement — “There seems to be nothing
we can do but write letters and pray that [the war in Iraq] will stop.” — with
some more practical ideas, including boycotts of and divestment from military
contractors, and war tax resistance.
Susan Miller Balzer wrote in to applaud and supplement this:
Scott Key… lists some important ways to work against war and for peace. In
mentioning war tax resistance, he expresses a common misconception that
employees cannot prevent their employers from withholding federal taxes from
their paychecks.
However, it is possible to limit or stop withholding by increasing withholding allowances on the W-4 Form (or legally writing “Exempt” on the form if you did not owe federal income taxes last year and do not expect to owe in the coming year).
See the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee’s “practical” publications on the Web site nwtrcc.org on controlling federal tax withholding and on low income or simple living for helpful information on ways to keep from paying for war.
On the same Web site, click on the War Tax Boycott, Withhold from War/Pay for Peace to find ways to participate in this national effort to defund war.
The “draft” of federal tax money to pay for present, past and future wars is a
fundamental issue that our church should address as it works to replace
suffering, destruction and injustice with healing and hope. The military draft
affected only young men. The current “economic draft” affects young men and
women who enter the military to try to get out of poverty. The draft of tax
money affects people of all ages as long as they have a taxable income.
If everyone in just one congregation refused to pay for war and redirected
their refused taxes to an underfunded social service, imagine the
opportunities for witness and change that could occur.
Don
Kaufman was back in the
letters to the editor column:
If enough of us withhold from war and pay for peace, we can stop the harm.
War-tax resistance is not a passive or unethical tax avoidance but an act of
conscience that everyone can do. The cross of Jesus as nonviolence and
compassion is our model for hope and change.
Individuals shoulder great responsibility for warfare and for peace. At times
the most effective way to take responsibility is refusal to collaborate, as
Franz
Jaggerstatter did in Hitler’s Austria in
. How can we take a stand against a
government that leads its citizens into committing murder? The task is to be
reform-minded, to live in an ethical way, and progressively to make
unthinkable the coercion of conscience by the majority who put their faith in
military or violent solutions.
Like Jeremiah, let us
unmask the illusions of power by being servants of hope among the vulnerable
and wounded.
Stanley Bohn
encouraged people to engage in at least a small symbolic act of war tax
redirection, in the edition,
claiming important benefits from the gesture that go beyond its likely
practical results:
Will this action make Congress and the Bush administration change their funding priorities?
Unlikely, even if millions took part in this effort.
After all, war fuels our economy, is useful in getting national unity and political support, and it focuses on the evil of others, allowing us to raise our self-esteem.
As Chris Hedges wrote in his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, war provides us with purpose and a civil religion.
What happens to us: For some Christians, the motive for participating
in tax redirection may start as a protest against refugee making, the
slaughter of people as collateral damage, torture of prisoners, creating
mentally damaged veterans, ballooning war debt, ruined international
relations, and other disastrous consequences. But when we take a stand for our
Christian convictions, something else may happen.
We gain an understanding of Jesus’ way of being lumped with criminals when
choosing the community-building, caring, enemy-loving life at the heart of the
universe. We realize that Jesus did not live or teach a religion guided by
what is respectable, safe, stress-free, or that waits for a consensus. Jesus
calls us to a life that is unpredictable and vulnerable.
Tax redirection is not a criterion of who is a “real Christian” but is more
accepting life as a gift, being what we are here for, living what we see in
Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. When the
IRS
makes us pay a small percentage more than our lawful tax, we can experience
what we believe is more important than money, and the hold money has on us is
reduced.
Living this kind of trust in the Jesus way helps keep serious Christians from
attempting to be pure and withdraw from life’s realities. It keeps us engaged
in current issues and with those proposing different goals. We are engaged,
however, in the kind of peace Christians should expect when choosing an
alternative way to conquer evil.
The risk of taking a stand regardless of consequences brings an unexpected
peace. It is not a peace that makes us feel protected, free of fears, or
satisfied with ourselves. It is a peace from knowing one is on a venture of
trusting in the universe-guiding reality we see in Christ. It is an empowering
peace given us when we offer ourselves to the one who gave us this life,
trusting God for the outcome. It is an empowerment that keeps us open rather
than defensive and having to shut out the desperate cries of others. It is an
alternative to a consumer-oriented Christianity that brings an unintended
transformation that makes us vulnerable and powerful at the same time.
Possibilities after April 15: There is no telling if or how God might
use the April 15 tax-redirection event. Consequences may occur that we never
thought of, including what powers or gifts might be released in ourselves.
We should not expect the government to inform us how many participated. The
media may not be free to report it, even if it knew. If the amount we withheld
and diverted is seen by the
IRS as
worth taking action against us, we will likely receive threatening letters and
finally have those funds confiscated along with a penalty.
Yet significant tax redirection can mean some humanitarian agencies will get
more financial support, and starving people will be fed. Maybe some
legislators will hear the conscience dilemma of many taxpayers and join other
co-sponsors of
HR 1921, the
Freedom of Religion Peace Tax Fund, which would make legal the redirection of
taxes by conscientious objectors to war. And maybe a few thousand redirectors
will discover we are less bound by the expectations of others and are freer
than we thought we could be.
Most important, we may learn that choosing risky ways of living for others,
even civil disobedience, can bring spiritual healing. We won’t defund the war,
but we can be more confident of the Power that overcomes our fears and by
God’s grace enables us to be the humans God intended us to be.
One such redirection idea was announced in the edition:
“Turning toward peace.”
This Mennonite Central Committee
(U.S.) initiative
allowed Americans to “redirect[] war tax dollars to help children in
Afghanistan through
MCC’s
Global Family education sponsorship program.” Titus Peachey, director of peace
education for
MCC
(U.S.) was quoted:
According to Peachey, most who have chosen to withhold believe, “If we cannot
conscientiously participate in war with our bodies, we cannot pay for it
either. We need to give our money to causes that build up rather than destroy
the presence of God in each person,” he says.
Most inform their governments of their actions. “Given the presence of Western
military action in Afghanistan today, the opportunity to contribute to
peacemaking there is timely,” says Peachey. “Equally important is the way in
which withholding war taxes challenges our own systemic militarism.”
A joint letter from Susan Balzer, Deb & Wes Bergen, Anita & Stan Bohn, Ron Faust, Don Kaufman, H.A. Penner, Steve Ratzlaff, Mary Swartley, Willard Swartley, and Dan Leatherman appeared in the edition.
They were responding to an editorial that suggested the Mennonite Church had surrendered as a peace church and had come to be “at peace with war.”
There is a traditional, positive witness opportunity for conscientious
objectors to war of all ages. It may seem scary, but many find it almost
routine. It involves redirection of income-tax assessments used for killing
and refugee-making to ministries meeting human need.…
Our descendants and overseas Christians will wonder how Christians in a
superpower, with over 700 military bases around the world, fighting two wars
and considering a third with Iran, supporting covert wars in places such as
Colombia and Israel, could be so at peace with war.
“The church should consist of communities of loving defiance. Instead, it
consists largely of comfortable clubs of conformity,” writes Ron Sider in
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. If we teach it is wrong, why
do we support it financially?
Shame is the negative motivation. The positive is that Jesus promised his
spirit of truth would abide in us and enable us to live differently from the
world’s ways. If we love him, we are empowered to keep his commandments
(John 14:15–17).
War tax redirection is “alternative service” for dollars we earn, service that
provides hope and new possibilities for suffering people instead of endless
war.
The issue covered
John
Stoner’s “$10.40 for Peace” campaign.
This was another attempt to get timid people to take baby steps into war tax
resistance by resisting a small, token amount of their taxes. The campaign is
still going on today but has yet to
catch fire.
The article seemed to me to exaggerate the scariness of such resistance even as
it tried to assuage the fears of potential resisters. Excerpts:
Stoner says the group hears some concern from individuals about the possible
penalties and “heavy hand of the
IRS
coming down.”
Stoner’s response is threefold. First, “As disciples of Jesus, we shouldn’t
have so much fear,” he says. Second, the past experiences of individuals who
have withheld taxes for similar reasons have been minimal. Third, the tax
withholder can decide later to pay the full amount.
“The most important thing is to make that statement that calls for democratic
conversation about how federal money is spent,” Stoner said.
Others say this movement should take more risks and that
U.S. war spending
remains too large. However, if enough people join, the risks and penalties
would increase, Stoner said.
The article noted that Shane Claiborne had signed on as an endorser and would
be speaking at an upcoming public meeting on the campaign.
This is the forty-eighth and last in a series of posts about war tax resistance
as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today I’m going to try to sum up what we’ve seen.
Disclaimers first:
I relied on some naïve text searching through the
optical-character-recognition versions of archived documents that were not
always well-scanned or legible, so I probably missed some things.
I wasn’t able to review complete copies from
.
The Mennonite was published by an arm of the
General Conference Mennonite Church (now Mennonite Church
USA)
and so was biased towards the viewpoint and activities of that branch,
and so these findings should not necessarily be extrapolated to
Mennonites as a whole. (I’m sure you’re looking forward to my upcoming deep
dive in to the Gospel Herald, organ of the
Mennonite Church.)
I ignored a lot of “Peace Tax Fund” legislation boosting. If you consider
that to also be a form of war tax resistance, you shouldn’t be misled by
how little of it I’ve included in my excerpts.
My concentration on war tax resistance can make it seem like the magazine
must have been full of talk of peace, love, and understanding and kind of a
liberal peaceniky sort of place. But Mennonites are by and large a pretty
conservative breed. To get the full flavor of the war tax resistance
conversation in the pages of The Mennonite it may
be useful to imagine the articles I’ve excerpted salted in a context full
of anti-Papism, anti-Masonicism, temperance, rants about gambling and
dancing and the movies, disgust at homosexuality, and fervent anti-abortion
views.
The General Conference Mennonite Church began to coalesce in Iowa in
. It was a mix of
more-or-less assimilated second-or-later generation American Mennonites of
Swiss and South German descent, and more recent Swiss and Russian Mennonite
immigrants, largely from the Midwestern United States, Pennsylvania, Ontario,
and Manitoba. (I’m summarizing a bigger story told in
An Introduction to Mennonite History,
, edited by Cornelius J. Dyck, who also wrote
the chapter on the General Conference Mennonite Church.)
The Mennonite began publishing in
as a publication of the Eastern District of
the Conference, and became the official
paper of the Conference itself (official English language paper, anyway; there
was also a German language one — Der
Bote — which I haven’t reviewed). I found very little evidence in the
early decades of its publication of any scruples about paying war taxes or
buying war bonds. If taxes were scrutinized at all, a quick glance at the
“Render unto Caesar” anecdote was enough to make stillborn any doubts.
(The “Render unto Caesar” verses would get a dead-horse beating throughout the
years of the publication that I read, with little consensus on the riddle’s
real meaning even from within the camps of opponents or proponents of
war tax resistance.)
As World War Ⅰ comes on and war taxes rise along with ostensibly voluntary
contributions to the war in the form of “Liberty Bonds,” there is almost no
push-back to be seen in the pages of The Mennonite,
even as American Mennonites in other branches are indeed suffering for their
refusal to participate in the Bond drives.
Indeed, reports of Liberty Bond sales are reported matter-of-factly or even
enthusiastically in The Mennonite, and Mennonite
institutions unashamedly report that they have accepted donations in the form
of such bonds. The Eastern District went on record both reaffirming its peace
and non-resistance policies and recommending that its members stock up
on bonds.
It isn’t until that I see a mention of
Mennonites refusing to buy war bonds (and that’s in the context of an editorial
mocking such Mennonites for their peculiar scruples).
In the period between the world wars a little more nuanced discussion began to
take place, but still the typical opinion was that Jesus said “Render Unto
Caesar” and that’s all you need to know.
While there was some backwards-looking hand-wringing about the Mennonite
enthusiasm for buying war bonds that had occurred during World War Ⅰ, I saw
little sign that anyone was willing to step boldly out from that foundation and
discourage Mennonites from buying war bonds in the future or from paying war
taxes in the present.
As World War Ⅱ approached, latent Mennonite guilt about war bonds clashed with
Mennonite reluctance to go up against public opinion and actually resist paying
for war. This eventually led to “Civilian Bonds” in the United States and
“Victory Loan Bonds with a sticker attached” (the sticker ostensibly indicated
that the subscribed funds were meant to be spent exclusively on relief work) in
Canada. These fig leaves allowed Mennonites to buy war bonds without buying
“War Bonds” and thus to assuage their consciences somewhat while keeping them
in the good graces of the support-the-troops crowd.
It’s not even the case that Mennonite conscientious objection to military
service was particularly well practiced at this time, though Mennonite
organizations continued to pay lip service to nonresistance and peace. One
report said that only 27% of General Conference Mennonite men who had been
conscripted had been classified as conscientious objectors.
However, this time around there is a lot more evidence to be found in the pages
of The Mennonite that Mennonites were seeking
alternatives to the phony let’s-pretend bonds. Some instead purchased “Peace
Certificates,” “Relief Certificates,” and other methods of supporting
non-military relief work in lieu of bonds. But the orthodox opinion in
The Mennonite was still all in favor of the fig-leaf
war bonds. Readers were meant to understand that purchasing such bonds
represented a sort of “witness of conscience against war financing” even while
they were also, ahem, a source of war financing.
After the war, when it was safer, The Mennonite
permitted outsiders — a Dutch Mennonite, Ernest Bromley and others in the
“Peacemakers” movement — to broach the topic of war tax resistance in its
pages. When Jacob J. Enz took over as acting editor for
he took
the opportunity to strongly hint, frequently, that Mennonites should reconsider
their unconcerned attitude toward taxes. By the issue was finally out in the open enough that actual
General Conference Mennonites were debating it front-and-center.
Continued murmurs about war tax resistance continued through
, and Mennonite and
Brethren institutions responded by considering how they should adopt
corporately to these concerns.
A letter to the
IRS
from Don Kaufman, who would be prominent in discussions of this issue for
decades to come, appeared in a issue, and a
first stab at “Peace Tax Fund” legislation was proposed in order to give
Mennonites a similar fig leaf to the “Civilian Bonds” of World War Ⅱ.
By paying war taxes was seen
as a definite problem that had to be addressed. People reached out to the
government, to various boards and committees, and tried also to come up with
individual solutions — such as income-reduction, charitable contributions, and
refusal to pay some portion of the tax due.
For the first time also, a backlash emerged of people who still held to the old
orthodoxy that one ought to unconcernedly render unto Caesar what Caesar
demands. They at times patiently, and at times with exasperation, tried to talk
Mennonites out of this newfangled foolishness, and their campaign would
continue for the next few decades.
The idea that one could refuse to pay “the military portion” of one’s tax
(usually defined as a portion equivalent to the portion of the national budget
spent on warstuffs) caught on in this period, and became a mostly-unquestioned
article of faith. The anti-resistance skeptics didn’t see any logic to it, but
the resisters largely regarded it as self-evident.
The hope of a Peace Tax Fund law also became a rarely-questioned dogma among
Mennonites who were troubled by paying taxes for war.
If asked why war tax resistance could be such a crucial issue of Mennonite
faith today when Mennonites of the past seemed not to be so troubled, war tax
resisters might respond in two ways: 1) they might find a few exemplars in
Anabaptist history who could be shown to have indeed had sympathy with war tax
resistance or something close to it, or 2) they could assert that the nuclear
age, in which expensive technology was more threatening to the peace than
masses of soldiers, had changed the rules of the game such that the only
meaningful conscientious objection was one that included war tax resistance.
The Mennonite began to put concern about paying taxes
for war at the forefront by , and it became
commonplace to assert that Mennonites should at the least be troubled
by paying taxes that support such a gargantuan military establishment, even if
they didn’t feel they could go all the way to resistance.
Influential Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder came out as a war tax
resister in the pages of a issue. Four
members of the Church of the Brethren issued “A Call to Income Tax Protest”
that appeared in a issue.
The Vietnam War started becoming more of a focal point than the nuclear sword
of Damocles by . In
the Peace and Social Concerns Committee
of the General Conference issued a statement, which was adopted by the
Conference’s Council of Boards and presented at the Mennonite World Conference
and that asked Mennonites to “counsel together” about a new war tax surcharge
and ask if “the Christian [should] object to payment of these taxes on the same
grounds as he conscientiously objects to military service”. It also asked
congregations to support war tax resisters among them.
The first corporate backlash resulted, with the Eastern District Conference
passing a resolution censuring the Council of Boards for suggesting such an
“unscriptural” thing. Still, the same resolution did back-handedly acknowledge
the tension between Mennonite beliefs and taxpaying when it recommended that
Mennonites take full advantage of charitable deductions to lower their tax
bill.
In , 673 delegates to the General Conference
triennial were polled about Vietnam-oriented activism. Only 27% agreed that
war tax resistance was appropriate (51% disagreed). In an additional survey
conducted at the “youth conference,” 51% agreed, so there was some generation
gap stuff at work here too.
In the Mennonite Central Committee’s Peace
Section created a mutual aid fund to help conscientious objectors, and
explicitly listed conscientious objectors to military taxation as among those
who were eligible.
also, the Western District Conference
passed a resolution in favor of war tax resistance, indicating a West/East
split to rival the young/old split.
Phone tax resistance also started to catch on around this time.
A hundred people met to discuss war tax resistance at Bethel College Mennonite
Church in in a conference sponsored by the
Western District Conference and the Commission on Home Ministries (a subgroup
of the General Conference). Mennonite, Quaker, and secular war tax resisters
spoke, and participants signed a joint pledge.
In 73.4% of the delegates to the General
Conference triennial ratified a statement saying that “The levying of war taxes
is another form of conscription… We stand by those who feel called to resist
the payment of that portion of taxes being used for military purposes.”
That year also, a Mennonite church in Arvada, Colorado decided to stop paying
the tax on its phone — the first example I saw of a Mennonite institution
refusing to pay taxes.
There was another 100-person-strong war tax conference in
, this time in the heartland. Another
50-person conference on the subject was held in Kansas. Mennonite intentional
communities began to develop with war tax resistance as an explicit focus.
Mennonite bodies began coordinating war tax redirection efforts.
Nonetheless, results from a Church Member Profile survey showed that 55% of
those Mennonites surveyed opposed war tax resistance.
As the Vietnam War wound down, Mennonite war tax resistance continued. Even
those who weren’t brave enough to resist were eager to stand up and say that at
least they were paying under protest. Redirection of war taxes to
Mennonite institutions and projects increased.
In a second Mennonite church began resisting
its phone tax corporately. “The World Peace Tax Fund Act” was introduced into
Congress, raising hopes that a legislative solution might make the problem go
away for Mennonite taxpayers.
In a Christian war tax resistance group
kindled in Japan for the first time thanks to Mennonite pastor Michio Ohno.
Sixty people would attend its first meeting and for a short while there would be an enthusiastic response in
Japan to the movement, with eighty or more people in Japan refusing to pay war
taxes.
The Mennonite General Conference triennial sessions in
“ask[ed] all General Conference members to
question prayerfully whether they want to pay war taxes voluntarily” and
pledged that the General Conference itself would work to provide its employees
with (vaguely-specified) support in war tax resistance.
In another 100+-person
conference on war tax concerns was held, this time in an Ontario Mennonite
Church.
The Commission on Home Ministries created a war tax redirection fund, and
started a newsletter for war tax resisters, but stopped short of refusing to
withhold taxes from its resisting employees’ paychecks.
That question — whether Mennonite institutions should honor their employees’
requests not to have war taxes withheld from their paychecks and submitted to
the government — began to really bubble in .
An encouraging (but short-lived) court decision gave some hope that such
institutions could legally get away with refusing such withholding, and then
the idea became hard to shake.
Several years’ of bureaucratic pass-the-buck followed:
The Commission on Home Ministries’ Peace and Social Concerns Reference
Council recommended that the General Conference stop withholding such
taxes.
The Commission on Home Ministries’ executive committee put that on its
agenda and approved it “but referred [it] for further study by the Division
of Administration and the General Board.”
The Division of Administration wasn’t enthusiastic, thinking that many
possible consequences hadn’t been fully considered. So the General Board
asked the Division of Administration to come back to them later with their
ideas.
When the General Board met again, they decided to wait to decide until
their next meeting.
At the next meeting, the Council on Commissions asked the Commission on
Home Ministries to prepare a study process in advance of the next triennial
conference so everyone would get a chance to vote on it. And the General
Board agreed that the Conference triennium should decide as a body.
The triennium decided to commit itself to 18 months of “serious study” on
the matter, followed by a special midtriennium conference at which they
would decide once and for all.
Educational materials were prepared and distributed, and an invitational
consultation on civil responsibility was held to help prepare people for
the responsibility that had been put upon them.
The midtriennial conference was held, and they decided “to engage in a
serious and vigorous search to use all legal, legislative, and
administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption
from” withholding, and to come back for another try if they couldn’t figure
anything like that out within three years.
The General Conference established a board to implement this, which later
expanded to be a multi-sectarian task force on war tax issues.
The task force quickly ruled out administrative avenues as being frankly
unavailable and began to explore legislative ones (Peace Tax Fund
schemes).
That seeming just as unlikely, “a resolution seeking approval to initiate a
judicial action to exempt the General Conference from withholding taxes
from the income of its employees” was prepared for the next triennial,
which passed it 1,156:353.
None of this was in the abstract. A General Conference employee named Cornelia
Lehn asked for war taxes not to be withheld from her paycheck, and her request
caused everything to go haywire for a good long while in the General Conference
bureaucracy. On the one hand, not much got accomplished for many years, but on
the other hand, the dust Lehn kicked up rained down as ink that filled several
columns of The Mennonite for many an edition, and the
buck-passing by the Mennonite bureaucracy meant that everybody got a chance to
get their hands dirty trying to figure out their position on the issue. All of
the heat and light at the midtriennium also kindled a nonsectarian Christian
war tax resistance group in the city where it was held. Lehn gets a lot of
credit for keeping war tax resistance at the forefront of Mennonite
deliberation for years, simply by making her request, explaining herself, and
holding firm.
The “A New Call to Peacemaking” initiative began in
and would for several years advance the cause
of war tax resistance particularly in the “traditional peace churches”
(Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers).
Meanwhile more Mennonite institutions were refusing their phone taxes, new
Mennonite intentional communities were forming with tax resistance as part of
their charters, other religious denominations and secular groups were jumping
on the war tax resistance bandwagon, Mennonite conservatives were becoming more
and more frustrated with liberal innovations like war tax resistance, and hopes
for the World Peace Tax Fund legislation continued to drain support from war
tax resistance proper.
Robert Hull began in to circulate plans for
a “Sabbatical Service” program in which conscientious objectors would devote
one year in seven to volunteer service, and in exchange the government would
grant them conscientious objector to military taxation status. This was
elaborated at length, but never seemed to get off of the drawing boards and
into an implementation or a legislative proposal.
Individual Mennonites created a vast variety of symbolic withholding ideas,
choosing particular small amounts to withhold based on numerological symbolism
or on correspondences with the amounts or percentages of federal budget
spending on offensive items. In general it seems that there was very little
consensus about how to resist war taxation among those who had decided
that resistance was appropriate, instead a thousand different techniques
bloomed.
The IRS
began responding to certain varieties of tax protest by issuing “frivolous
filing” penalties. This increased the fear and uncertainty around the decision
of whether or not (or how) to resist. Secular and Mennonite institutions
responded by creating mutual aid insurance funds to help penalized resisters,
such as the “War Tax Witness Relief Fund” established by the
MCC
(U.S.) Peace Section
in .
A conservative backlash to the advance of war tax resistance (and other
innovations), largely in the conservative Eastern District, led to the
“Smoketown Consultation” which would eventually lead to a rupture in which the
Alliance of Mennonite Evangelical Congregations split off from the General
Conference to go on their own. (Today the issue of same-sex marriage is
causing a similar exodus of conservative congregations.)
Having been given the green light by the assembled delegates at its last
triennial, the General Conference prepared to file a lawsuit against the
IRS to
assert its right to stop withholding taxes from the salaries of conscientiously
objecting employees. They began by meeting with the
IRS to
try to work out an 11th-hour administrative
compromise, but had no luck. Then they began to assemble witnesses and
co-plaintiffs with standing. But then the
U.S. Supreme Court
handed down its decision in
U.S. v. Lee — a
case in which a man from the Old Order Amish conscientiously objected to
participation in government social insurance programs. That unanimous ruling
firmly indicated that the Supreme Court had zero tolerance for arguments about
conscientious objection to taxation (“The tax system could not function if
denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax payments
were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.”). The General
Conference decided to put its suit on the back burner.
Having been blocked in its search for administrative and judicial remedies,
and with the legislative remedy (some sort of Peace Tax Fund law) languishing
in the back-alleys of Congress, the board of the General Conference prepared to
tell its congregations that the ball was back in their court as to how to
proceed: should the Conference throw in the towel and continue to withhold
taxes from objecting employees, or should it refuse in outright civil
disobedience? The Conference would decide, as a body, at the Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania triennial in . A
70% majority of delegates there opted for corporate civil disobedience.
Seven employees registered their objection with the Conference, which on
stopped withholding
federal income taxes from their paychecks. (By the number of such employees had dropped to five; by
, to four; by
, to three.) The
IRS
doesn’t seem to have taken any action against the Conference for this, though
there is some indication that the employees in question paid all but “symbolic”
amounts of the tax themselves.
The Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes narrowed its focus to the
legislative avenue, going all-in to lobby for the World Peace Tax Fund bill.
A small group of Canadian Mennonite war tax resisters began to emerge in the
early 1980s. One, Jerilyn Prior, tried to get a court to grant her the right
to conscientious objection to military taxation, to no avail. There were also
reports of Mennonite war tax resistance from the Netherlands. The First
International Conference of Military Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns was
held in West Germany in , with
support from Mennonites there.
Meanwhile, the war tax resistance bug was spreading through other Christian
denominations, including those not found under the “traditional peace churches”
banner. This put additional pressure on the Mennonites, who had to ask
themselves if they still qualified as a peace church when other churches seemed
at times more willing to take the lead on such conscientious objection and
activism.
In the Mennonite Central Committee decided
not to follow in the General Conference’s footsteps and stop
withholding taxes from its objecting employees’ paychecks. None of the
individual conferences they consulted with were supportive of them opting for
civil disobedience. This is somewhat surprising, given the 70% support for
civil disobedience at the triennial,
and may suggest that was the high-water mark
for war tax resistance in the General Conference.
The Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church opted to
begin the process of merging in , and
simultaneously the Mennonite Church decided to also adopt the policy of
refusing to withhold taxes from its objecting employees. (The vote though was
narrower than the vote of the General
Conference delegates — 59% in favor this time — and the General Board of the
Church would later stall on implementing the decision.)
The urgency of the war tax resistance question had deflated by the
. Christian Peacemaker Teams tried
to breathe some life back into it through a “Taxes for Life” symbolic
redirection campaign, beginning in .
The years when hardly an issue would come out that didn’t have some
war tax resistance content in it were behind us. Now in some years there might
be a single tax-season issue that profiled some steadfast Mennonite war tax
resisters, and in other years the topic would hardly be mentioned at all, or
would only be mentioned in passing. The
triennial endorsed Peace Tax Fund campaigns but did not issue any shows of
support for war tax resistance.
The Commission on Home Ministries decided in
to extend its Student Aid Fund for Non-Registrants so that it would also cover
students who were denied loans because of their war tax resistance.
An informal study of 17 Mennonite and Brethren in Christ institutions found
that few had official policies concerning war taxes, and that even of those who
did have a policy of honoring requests from employees not to have taxes
withheld from their paychecks — “[m]ost institutions surveyed had not fielded
such requests within the past 10 years.”
Some Mennonite institutions adopted the policy of gently pushing back against
IRS
attempts to levy the salaries of resisting employees, for instance by writing
the agency a letter explaining their reluctance to participate in violating
their employee’s conscientious act.
Mennonites continued to evolve new ways of reducing, refusing, or resisting
paying for war with their taxes as the new millennium dawned. But the new
“Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund” bill got most of the press. Editorial
mentions of war tax resistance became increasingly vague and noncommittal.
The stories of individual Mennonite tax resisters of the past and present were
occasionally told in the pages of The Mennonite in
the early years of the 21st century, but the idea
that this was a subject of fiery debate and collective concern in the Church
was gone. Instead readers learned of individual prophets, protesters, eccentric
heretics, or hopeless idealists (depending on your perspective).
Desperate war tax resistance evangelists increasingly were reduced to begging
people to withhold tiny symbolic amounts from their taxes, such as in the
“$10.40 for Peace” campaign.
Most distressingly, as the War on Iraq raged, Mennonite discussion of war tax
resistance seemed to diminish even further (at least in The
Mennonite). Had the Mennonite Church come to be “at peace with war” as
one editorialist put it? One sober assessment of “How are we doing as a peace
church?” in concluded that “[E]ach year
our church members pay for cruise missiles, smart bombs, and unmanned
drones — with barely the slightest tinge of conscience, let alone a whimper of
protest.”
In the Mennonite Central Committee
(U.S.) announced a
war tax redirection effort — “Turning toward peace” — with a goal of helping
aid programs in Afghanistan, and this program would continue to operate for
several years.
It’s an extraordinary arc. War tax resistance built slowly and steadily until
it had become a frenzy of debate, activity, and corporate commitment, and then
astonishingly rapidly it mostly dissolved.
It’s hard to know quite what to make of this, or of
the similar “forgetting” that took place
in the Society of Friends around the same time. To a cynic, this might just
look like a craze — with war tax resisters being the Cabbage Patch Kids of the
historic peace churches.
Some other possible explanations that occur to me:
The end of the Vietnam War and then the Cold War took the wind out of the
sails of the peace movement in general, dampening the general interest in
war tax resistance that the Mennonite war tax resistance movement was
drafting off of.
The drive to pass “Peace Tax Fund” legislation displaced interest in war
tax resistance among people who shared a concern about taxpayer complicity.
Potential tax resisters or war tax resistance advocates devoted themselves
instead to letter-writing, lobbying, and fundraising for this doomed and
increasingly counterproductive legislative effort.
Those who were sympathetic to the arguments for war tax resistance quickly
converted to some form of resistance by the peak of Mennonite war tax
resistance activity in or so. Once these
low-hanging-fruit had been collected, it was an uphill battle to get anyone
else interested because they did not find the arguments as compelling, and
so outreach and evangelism stalled.
The “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s was in part inspired by conservative
anger at high taxes and conservative politicians’ promises to lower taxes.
This might have made the more liberal Mennonites, from which war tax
resisters were drawing most of their support, less eager to be associated
with a tax-resisting cause.
Some resisters may have had exaggerated hopes for what war tax resistance
would accomplish, and as those hopes faded with time and experience, so did
enthusiasm for war tax resistance.
This is the twelfth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was
reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal
of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
By , war tax resistance had come out in the
open in Gospel Herald as a practice that had support
in the Mennonite Church community, though not without reservations from
conservative hold-outs. But that year, coverage of the issue became
inexplicably muted and the magazine returned to its earlier, more reserved
practice of mostly reporting on war tax resistance from a distance, as the
sort of thing other groups did.
For example, the issue included
this note
about a Church of the Brethren congregation:
The Wilmington, Del. Church
of the Brethren will refuse to pay the federal excise tax on telephones as a
protest against the Vietnam War.
The church council voted 8-6 to stop payment in accordance with a proposal
submitted by the congregation’s witness commission.
The Reverend Allen T. Hansell, pastor, said he has been withholding the 10 per
cent tax from his own telephone bill payments since
.
When the proposal was endorsed by the council, individual members were asked
to consider withholding their personal phone bills’ tax.
Robert Cain, Jr., chairman of
the Witness Committee, said he had been told by Church of the Brethren
headquarters, Elgin, Ill.,
that withholding of the tax has been considered by other congregations, but no
action had been taken before the Wilmington church’s decision.
The church council sent a letter to President Richard M. Nixon outlining its
action and urging him “to use all resources and power available to you as
president of the United States to achieve world peace.”
Mr. Cain said the church is not against paying taxes to the government, but
when the federal government restored the telephone excise tax in
, it was felt it was a tax “directly imposed
to help pay for the war in Vietnam.”
Richard and Carol Morse, a Quaker couple recently returned from three months
working in a Vietnam rehabilitation center, have notified President Nixon they
won’t pay taxes .
“After what we have seen in Vietnam,” the Morses told Mr. Nixon in a letter,
“we feel that you are insulting the American people by asking them to support
such destruction.”
As a result of their experiences with amputees at the center the couple
stated: “We can no longer let it be assumed that we condone the violent
destruction of Vietnam by our voluntary payment of taxes.”
Mr. and Mrs. Morse said Vietnam is “a refugee country,” and noted that “their
whole social system has been turned upside down.”
Things began to pick up again in . In the
issue, Warren M. Wenger
warned Mennonites
that they were in danger of letting history pass by and leave them behind:
Today there appears to be some confusion, on our part, as to how to relate to
the popular peace movement, when to some degree they “have stolen our
thunder.” Shall we now change our practice, of payment of taxes and
registering for the draft and applying for Ⅰ-0 classification, a position
which previously had us branded as “radicals” and now is only “moderate”? The
true “radical” position now involves nonpayment of “war” taxes,
nonregistration, migration, and other developing resistance.
The traditional Mennonite solution, which included payment of taxes and
registration, made us quite unpopular in “normal” war years. Vietnam, however,
is not a “normal” war and the likely occurrence of other similar wars is
always present. We cannot afford to close our eyes and hope the problem will
go away. We need to carefully think through the present dilemma, and in the
light of God’s Word, guided by the ever-present Holy Spirit, find the way
through our problems. We are all aware that no solution for a problem
is ever a permanent one. Change is always present. Each generation must do as
we are doing, search the Scriptures, seek and accept the leading of God s
Spirit, search our own hearts and minds for the way to construct a useful
life, which brings glory to His name, life to His church, and light to the
world.
An early “peace tax fund”-like proposal surfaced in a
article
(“War Taxes Questioned”),
which also tried to attack the traditional always-pay-your-taxes interpretation
of the Render-unto-Caesar riddle from several angles:
James K. Stauffer, veteran Mennonite missionary in Vietnam, questions
Mennonite payment of war taxes…
Stauffer comments, “It’s about time for ‘our people’ — the Mennonite
brotherhood — to give a consistent testimony against war. Let’s get at
the root of all evil — money, or more particularly, taxes! The other day 35
B‒52s dropped 1,000 tons of bombs on
suspected enemy positions in Cambodia. One wonders how many Mennonite
tax-dollars helped make that mission successful!
“During World War Ⅱ our government agreed to the Civilian Public Service
program. Our men were permitted to engage in work of national importance. 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,
etc., have not
been effective in stopping the war. But choking off the funds that feed the
military-industrial complex could bring results.
“The contribution by members of the peace churches to the gigantic 73 billion
defense budget is infinitesimal, but there would no doubt be many Christians
in other denominations who would welcome the idea.
“By now the ‘render to Caesar…’ statement is haunting us. Perhaps we get hung
up on the letter of the law and ignore the Spirit. Remember, the letter kills,
but the Spirit gives life! Permit a few comments on this text.
“Jesus spoke these words in peace-time. The famous Pax
Romana was a reality. While Rome conquered like a barbarian, she ruled
those she conquered like a humane statesman (I.S.B.E., p. 2600).
“Our President is a professing Christian. Caesar was not. Our full and
unquestioning support of his methods and policies gives to the world a
distorted image of Christianity.
“Jesus did not define exactly what or how much belongs to Caesar. He sent
the Holy Spirit to guide us in determining where to draw the line. Each
generation needs to assess the existing political situation.
“As a brotherhood professing discipleship, we believe that all of life is
sacred. Our strength, abilities, time, and money belong to God. We refuse
to give our bodies to the war god; why should we give our money?
“Some say that the taxpayer is not responsible for the way the government
uses his money. This would perhaps have some validity if a reasonable
amount was being appropriated for defense. But when most of it goes for
military purposes at the expense of desperate social and domestic needs,
something is radically wrong.
“Furthermore, placing the responsibility on government is the same
argument used by many Christians who justify their participation in the
armed forces. So, let’s be consistent in both areas!”
Stauffer’s arguments prompted a rebuttal from Anna Mae Nolt arguing that there
was nothing especially objectionable about war taxes, as more people (Americans
anyway) were being killed on the highways than in Vietnam and yet nobody was
arguing we should refuse to pay taxes for highways. Besides, if you don’t want
to pay taxes you can always move to some other country.
Discussions at Mission ’70 indicated widespread concern among Mennonites
regarding the relative validity of the various ways young men related to the
Selective Service System and the pros and cons involved in paying taxes used
for military purposes.
It was moved and carried to urge the Peace and Social Concerns Committee to
direct more study on the congregational and family levels which can lead
people to a clearer and more forthright understanding, conviction, and action
on matters relating to peace, the draft, and taxes used for military purposes.
Most people seem to think their only responsibility is to pray for the
president and pay taxes. I just can’t buy that any more. I feel that as a
Christian I have a very strong responsibility to witness to the government
concerning what seems to be a gross immorality. So when people are interested
in the same goals as I (i.e. ending a war),
and they use acceptable means of achieving that goal, I will support them.
This witness to the government might well include prayer, but it might also
include not paying taxes which finance the immorality.
The Mennonite attitude toward war and military service rests deeply in their
obedience to the Jesus’ way of life as one of love and reconciliation. A
corollary conviction is that this way of life includes separation from the
evils of the world, a life conformed to Christ and nonconformed to the
patterns of violence and the instruments of carnal warfare. Conscientious
objection to evil, to war and militarism is one of the characteristics of a
dynamic nonconformity.
The pattern of conscientious objection familiar to modern Mennonites emerged
comparatively recently in modern history. With the rise of democratic
governments, armies were expanded by the use of various conscription
techniques. Democracy and conscription grew up together although thee was
constant tension between them. The conscientious objector was and is a citizen
who for reasons of conscience could not become part of an organization bent on
killing — the military. He refuses to serve the military, not out of an
irresponsible citizenship, but rather to suggest an alternate and better way
of solving human problems.
Since the first conscript armies of the eighteenth century, the character of
warfare has changed enormously. In the United States
the military constituted a very
small percentage of the population. Military action consumed an even smaller
part of the time in service. Military concerns involved only a small sector of
political and economic life. An effective and useful witness against war was
to refuse to serve in the military.
Now, however, there are over 3,000,000 Americans in the Armed Forces. Nearly
40 million living American males have served in the Armed Forces. Compulsory
service is sometimes extended for draftees to five or six years. Yet in spite
of expanded armies fewer and fewer persons are involved in actual combat. War
has become a technique fought with tanks, planes, flamethrowers, napalm plus
bombs, and chemicals, to kill unseen enemies. War is no longer the plaything
of the generals nor even of the tehnologists but of an entire society which
provides the know-how and the wherewithal to wage war. We live in an age when
war is total; it involves the economic, scientific, political, ideological,
educational, and religious resources of the entire society. In the United
States we live in what Fred Cook calls a “warfare state” where it is nearly
impossible to escape the effects and impact of war.
In such a situation is there any validity to conscientious objection to
military service. Or are there other forms of conscientious objection which
will symbolically witness to the way of Christ and against the way of war?
Donald Kaufman does not treat the entire problem of militarism, the warfare
state, or even conscientious objection. He poses the fundamental question
posed by the Pharisees to Jesus in Matthew 22 and then deals with one specific
issue — the question of war taxes.
Kaufman has mastered a vast amount of material regarding the history of
taxation, the biblical passages involving the tax question, and the arguments
and practices of those who do not pay war taxes. Howard Charles of Goshen
Biblical Seminary writes a stimulating introduction to the volume. A valuable
dimension of this book is the comprehensive bibliography which includes an
excellent compilation of periodical articles.
Beginning with the basic issue, Kaufman explores the meaning of taxation in
the biblical world. There taxes upheld a vast religious establishment as well
as the civil authorities. In the “ancient city,” however, it was difficult to
distinguish the religious from the civil, for the king was more than a
political leader. Caesar was worshiped. Caesar claimed to be lord. Exorbitant
taxation was rarely protested save by the Jews who objected to taxes which
implied that Caesar was Lord rather than Yahweh.
It is this context which make so difficult the exegesis of biblical passages
involving political structures. Kaufman effectively interprets
Matthew 17:24–27,
Mark 12,
Romans 13, and
1 Peter 2.
Perhaps the crucial insight of this analysis is that both Jesus and the New
Testament writers suggest principles and perimeters, rather than legal dicta
with fixed answers in which and by which Christians make decisions. Government
and taxes can be good and bad, depending on purposes and motives for taxation.
Payment of taxes can be for conscience’ sake and non-payment of taxes can be
for conscience’ sake.
Arguments against paying war taxes are less well known than arguments for
paying war taxes. But arguments against paying war taxes are the same as
arguments for not participating in the military. For Christians, these
arguments rest on obedience to God rather than man, on the commitment to love
rather than hate, on the duty to give rather than to take, on supporting that
which makes peace and opposing that which hurts, kills, and destroys.
There have always been tax resisters. There have always been Christian who for
conscience’ sake have refused to pay certain taxes. Early Christians refused
to pay compulsory taxes to Caesar’s pagan temples. Medieval monks reduced
their income so they would not have to pay taxes to evil kings. The radical
sectarians, including some of the early Anabaptists, felt taxes were a moral
issue, and that some were not to be paid. The Hutterites criticized their
fellow Anabaptists for paying war taxes even though they refused to bear arms.
The early Quakers, through William Penn, told the queen of England that their
conscience would not allow “a tribute to carry on any war, nor ought true
Christians to pay i.” The Mennonites in Eastern Pennsylvania split during the
Revolutionary War, one reason being the issue of war taxes. They joined,
however, with their Dunkard neighbors to petition the Pennsylvania Assembly
stating, “We find no freedom in giving, or doing, or assisting in any thing by
which men’s lives are destroyed or hurt.”
Since then, Mennonites have generally paid war taxes. They even hired
substitute soldiers so they would not need to fight during the Civil War.
However, Mennonites were clear in opposing any voluntary campaigns to sell and
buy war bonds. In recent years the war tax question has become more alive in
the brotherhood. When President Lyndon Johnson said the telephone excise tax
and the Income Surtax were necessary to fight the war in Vietnam, the mask on
taxes was removed. Thus some taxes are clearly designated to fight a war
without having to analyze the allocations of the national budget.
Donald Kaufman methodically and analytically forces the reader to confront the
question, “Can I pray for peace and pay for war?” What really belongs to
Caesar? If one believes in the stewardship of money, is the use of money for
war good stewardship? Money can destroy life. Money through taxes is without a
doubt “the central vital nerve of the military Leviathan.” What then do we do
with Pastor John Franz who during World War Ⅰ told his Montana community,
“Using our money to make it possible for others to be killed would be just as
wrong as going in the army and killing a man ourselves”?
What Belongs to Caesar? introduces a profound ethical question for the Christian church.
More study will be necessary by each church agency.
It will be easy to “let the sleeping dog lie.”
But no one concerned about the evil of war and how to love the enemy can afford to ignore this book.
The genius of this little volume of 97 pages is that it does not clutter the
arguments over war taxes by focusing on the anxieties of the present moment.
Rather Kaufman sticks closely to a biblical and historical analysis. In so
doing he is really asking the Christian conscientious objector if he is
exercising his conscience regarding war at the right place on the right
issues. This is the question confronting the Mennnonite brotherhood. Is now
the time to expand the scope of conscientious objection to include taxes which
buy guns as well as persons who fire guns?
A
letter to the editor
from John H. Herr put him on record opposing war tax resistance, because after
all Jesus told Peter to pay a tax to a warlike government (I assume this refers
to the temple tax episode in the Gospel of Matthew).
Since most of us are Christian citizens of the most militarily involved and
overextended nation in the world the war tax problem should be of special
concern to us who are members of the historic peace churches. But as American
involvement in wars and military solutions grows and grows it is encouraging
to note in Christian circles an awareness of the problem and a growing
uneasiness on the propriety of paying taxes when they are used mainly for war
and war-related purposes. However, there is a bewildering confusion of
responses to that ethical problem.
The key question is then: Can the Scriptures provide us with the means of testing whether or not payment of such taxes constitutes a form of idolatry of a war god and as such be contrary to our commitment to a way of love?
In this context the present study by Donald D. Kaufman’s What Belongs to Caesar? is especially appropriate.
The 100-page presentation followed by 28 pages of Bible references, footnotes,
and an index has all the marks of diligent and careful scholarship. Maybe
you’d expect a book of this nature to be a crusading weapon charged with an
emotional stance for a particular view of the Christian’s relation to the
state and on nonpayment of taxes, but it isn’t. In his first chapter Don
Kaufman carefully examines the history of taxation from ancient times till
today. In chapter two he takes a new look at biblical passages often used to
justify absolute, unquestioning obedience to governmental demands, and urges
us to reexamine them in the context of their full chapter, or better yet, seen
in the total context of the Bible. In this way the write proves that, for
instance, Romans 13:1 and following is not a passage in which every
governmental action is given carte blanche. In no situation should a person be
required to disobey his conscience by submitting to government. Without
becoming a violent rebel the Christian can refuse to do what he regards as
wrong, but he must patiently endure the consequences. To resist with respect
is to render a service to the state by reminding it of its true function. In
chapter three Kaufman squarely plants the argument against the paying of war
taxes under the Christian’s obligation to obey God rather than man.
The records of Anabaptists, Mennonites, and Hutterites are examined in chapter
four, as are the Quaker and Mennonite practices in Colonial America. This
chapter ends with a variety of statements by recent and current church leaders
on the issues of tax objection. In his concluding chapter Kaufman asks anew:
“What Belongs to Caesar?” and why we who refuse our warm bodies to the war
machine so willingly surrender our cold cash to the same. How long, Kaufman
asks, will the Christian pray for peace and pay for war. The answer depends on
you.
No one can give careful attention to this book without having the issues
clarified. It is hoped that this book, developed jointly by the Mennonite
Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church will be widely read,
seriously discussed, and that out of it will come conduct that will
consistently embody the gospel of love we profess.
From here, the pushback became much more defensive. Instead of just saying that
Christians should pay their taxes cheerfully and without question because the
money belongs to Caesar and Caesar bears the responsibility for how it is used,
critics acknowledged the tension between the Christian love-your-neighbor
mandate and Caesar’s kill-the-foreigners bloodthirstiness, but tried to suggest
alternatives to civil disobedience. For example:
Shelly promoted charitable giving as an alternative. “[O]ur norm for
giving is not a government. But, at a time when we are concerned about
certain uses of our tax dollar, it would seem that our first consideration
would be to reduce that tax dollar to the lowest possible point.”
Blosser also suggested charitable giving as a way to lower taxes, saying
in part that it would be more effective than resisting and then having
taxes seized along with interest and penalties seized. “In the end, who
has paid the lesser tax and served to help the most people?”
Stoltzfus suggested income reduction, giving the example of a man who
“turned over his business to God, paying himself a small salary. In this
way the profits were channeled directly into the Lord’s work.”
This is the sixteenth 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.
, Duane A. and
Esther W. Diller sent
a letter
“to the District Director of the Internal Revenue Service… and the
IRS
Collecting Agent… with copies to President Richard M. Nixon; Senator Bob
Packwood; Mr. William Holdner,
CPA;
Marcus Smucker, pastor; Senator Mark Hatfield; Mennonite Central Committee
Peace Section; and the editor of Gospel Herald” that might be seen as a sort of
model for Mennonite war tax resisters:
We welcome this opportunity to contribute personally to the welfare of our
people in this country. For all the benefits we enjoy because of orderly
government, we are very thankful. To pay for all we receive would require much
more than this tax. Yet, this payment brings to sharp focus a question of
loyalties. Let us share something of that with you.
Ancient seers like Isaiah envisioned a kingdom in which “they shall beat their
swords into plowshares… and learn war no more.” Jesus came to model life in
that kingdom. He is now the Lord of that kingdom and its advance guard, the
church. We who belong to His kingdom seek to obey Him in our life together.
One point where obedience to Jesus can conflict with obedience to our
government is here in the payment of this income tax. We want to live in
brother-servant relationships with other persons, just as modeled for us by
Jesus. Yet we are part of a people that total just 6 percent of the world
population but consume 40 percent of the earth’s resources. We are able to
enforce this inequality upon nearly one billion hungry people by spending
lavishly to support the most awesome military machine in human history. In
contrast to Isaiah’s hope, we spend billions for “swords” and pennies for
“plowshares.” We note with dismay, that 30 percent of our personal income tax
payment is designated for current military production. Even this is misleading
because the new unified budget includes large amounts from trust funds over
which the federal government is merely caretaker. Considering the income tax
alone, current military production is actually 48 percent. Adding the costs of
veterans’ benefits and past wars’ debts, one finds we spend the majority of
this tax for militarism. Now we hear the Pentagon Budget Team requesting a
record-breaking $91 billion military budget for next year; this during a
generation of peace!
Frankly, we are torn by the inconsistency of professing to follow Jesus Christ
while we obediently pay a tax used chiefly for military-oriented production.
It seems we must choose who is really Lord! Somehow, we must begin to
implement our call to be a life-conserving force. And in this instance, our
loyalty to Jesus Christ overrides our loyalty to this government.
With a local community of Christian disciples, we have felt led by the Holy
Spirit to express our obedience to Jesus Christ by refusing to pay voluntarily
the 30 percent designated for current military production in our federal
budget. We are paying that 30 percent to the Mennonite Central Committee,
Peace Section Taxes-for-Peace Fund, where it is used to meet needs of persons
suffering because of our militarism.
In view of the constitutional protection of our religious liberties, we
earnestly request that you consider our conscience in this matter by
accounting this alternate payment to fulfill our
income tax obligation. If you account it so,
we, of course, will not deduct it as a charitable contribution on next year’s
return.
With the help of our most trustworthy accountant, Mr. William Holdner, we have
scrupulously computed the tax due. We have no intention to defraud or mislead
you in any way.
We would very much welcome discussion in our home with anyone from
IRS.
This would help us to understand better any problems our action may cause you
in your role as collector of the tax. We will cooperate in any way we
conscientiously can to help you resolve any problems. We very much appreciated
your visit last year, Mr. Pilch, and invite you again anytime you feel it
would be helpful. It is not our purpose to make your life difficult.
Thank you for helping us with this matter.
The deliberate way in which this tax resistance was conducted impressed Norm
Teague, who responded in
a letter to the editor:
The fact that this letter was sent to the powers that be in Washington,
advising them where the 30 percent was going, and sending receipt (if I
understand correctly) shows a step in faith which, it seems to me, we should
be taking as a church.
J.C. Wegner tried to summarize the debate about war tax resistance in the
issue, but gave short shrift,
I thought, to some pro-resistance arguments like (most obviously) the analogy
between conscientious objection to military taxation and conscientious
objection to military service. This was perhaps due to the insistence by some
earlier and influential Mennonite proponents of war tax resistance that their
stand was primarily an act of “witness.”
A Summary of Contrasting Ethical Judgments And a Suggested Stance
Toward Those Who Differ with Us
Nonresistant Payment
Civil Disobedience
Even though Rome was the № 1 military power in the first century,
the New Testament commands the payment of taxes. “Revolutionary
Subordination.”
Governments normally operate from self-interest, not from the will of
God in Christ.
Realistically, tax resistance is futile; the government usually takes
court action to claim the legal tax.
The basic witness of Christians is to be devoted to the building of
Christ’s new humanity, His new covenant people, the church — not a
futile attempt to Christianize a secular state.
A twentieth-century democracy is not fully comparable to the
first-century Roman Empire.
Sufficient pressure from concerned citizens can sometimes modify
governmental policy.
Compelling the state to collect taxes by force can be a witness to
radical Christian discipleship.
Even though the government per se does not recognize
the lordship of Christ, Christian disciples should still witness to the
government of Christ’s lordship and His ethic of love.
Both groups desire to be faithful.
A Christian Stance Toward Differing Disciples
All believers should give their moral support to those Christians whose ethic
they themselves may not feel led to follow: draft resistance, the
non-voluntary payment of tax money used for non-Christian program, and the
like.
Those refusing the voluntary payment of what they consider “blood money”
should not judge those disciples who meekly and regretfully pay their taxes in
accord with their understanding of New Testament directives.
Might the Gordian Knot Be Cut?
As the editor of the Gospel Herald has pointed out,
a bill to create a World Peace Tax Fund has been introduced… If in God’s
providence this good bill should ever become law, Christ’s sons of peace could
then designate that portion of their tax dollars, which is normally used to
pay for wars, to said World Peace Tax Fund — for research, and for
peace-related activities, not for destroying men’s lives.
Until that time, let us give sacrificially for the advance of Christ’s program
on all fronts, let us pray for divine discernment to know His holy will, and
let us cultivate warm agape love one for another.
The Internal Revenue Service
(IRS)
has collected $1.94 from the bank account of a church in Minneapolis because
its pastor and his wife refused to pay the telephone excise tax in
.
Donald D. Kaufman, pastor of Faith Mennonite Church, and his wife, Eleanor,
withheld payment of the tax “in protest against the Vietnam War and
U.S. militarism.”
, the tax has been used to pay the
costs of the Vietnam War. It has been 10 percent of phone bills but starting
this year it is being decreased one percent annually until it is abolished in
. The
IRS
levied the amount against the church’s bank account since the phone used by
the Kaufmans is in the name of the church.
In a recent letter to Congressmen, President Nixon, and other officials, Mr.
and Mrs. Kaufman urged reduction of military expenditures, saying there was no
justification for a military budget of $88 billion in “an era of peace.”
They also called for support of the proposed World Peace Tax Fund Act…
Max Ediger advocated a more confrontational approach, in his
article on
“Freedom”:
Hitler was able to kill over six million Jews because the German people
followed his leading despite the fact that many of them thought it was wrong.
The United States government dumped tons of bombs on Southeast Asia because
all those Americans who were revolted by this action continued to pay their
taxes rather than be imprisoned.
Finally, a pair of articles
( and )
noted that the American Friends Service Committee had lost its war tax
resistance Supreme Court case by an eight-to-one vote.
This is the eighteenth 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 returned us to the new
war tax resistance movement in Japan:
Conscientious Objection to Military Tax, a Japanese war tax-resistance
organization, has published five issues of a four-page publication called
Plowshare.
The latest issue includes an account of Ishihara Shoichi of Shimizu City, a
newspaper dealer who withheld the 6.39 percent of the tax for his shop that
would have gone for military expense in the national budget. While he was
appealing to the tax tribunal, saying that the levying of military tax was
unconstitutional, his bank account was seized. This was the first legal action
against any of the dozen people who have withheld their tax money.
The periodical also includes a report of a speech by Professor Kobayashi Naoki
of Tokyo University, in which he says that “military forces do not defend the
land or the people. What the former Imperial Army really shielded was a
handful of military executives and the imperial family. The present
Self-Defense Forces are deficient for a nuclear warfare or even a conventional
war.”
Another article by Otomo Michio attacks poverty as one of the reasons people
enlist in the military.
Other information includes a guide for filing tax returns and publication
notice of an 80-page booklet “A Shoot of the Olive” on the history of tax
resistance, philosophical and biblical questions, how to file tax returns, and
how to appeal.
The publication, in Japanese with an English summary, is available from Michio
Ohno, 2‒35‒18 Asahigaoka, Hino, Tokyo 191, Japan.
A compilation of Mennonite responses to world hunger, printed in the
issue, included
this one:
“Enclosed find a check for $40 for world hunger. Rather than paying income
taxes, we are sending this check so that we may help to build peace and
support causes that help our troubled world.” (A letter from Colorado to
MCC)
A packet of resources on war taxes has been published by the Commission on
Home Ministries of the General Conference Mennonite Church. The majority of
articles in the packet are speeches given at the inter-Mennonite and Brethren
in Christ war tax conference… in Kitchener, Ontario. Also included are a
report of legal research by Ruth Stoltzfus on institutional withholding of the
portion of income taxes going for war purposes, brochures explaining the World
Peace Tax Fund Act now before the
U.S. Congress, and
statements about war taxes adopted by the Mennonite Central Committee Peace
Section and the Church of the Brethren annual conference. The packet is
available for $1.50 from the Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section…
In the issue
Sem and Mabel Sutter
shared the letter they sent when they paid their taxes under protest.
More than 150 persons from Iowa peace churches met on
at William Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, to consider the theme
“Peacemaking: Living Heritage and Living Challenge.” The main purpose of the
conference, sponsored by Mennonites, Quakers, and Church of the Brethren, was
to introduce materials and ideas that congregations could use in promoting
peace.
Donald D. Kaufman, of Newton,
Kan., gave the keynote address:
“Our Taxes Buy Wars? The Peace Church Heritage.” He traced the history of the
three denominations’ struggles over whether Christians can pay for war when
they refuse to participate in it.
Some early church leaders in America advocated not offending the government,
and thus paying all taxes. In others groups, especially among Friends, members
were disciplined for supporting war in any way. The decision not to support
war was not easy, and it was often accompanied by persecution.
[Disciples] will stand up for the rights of all people. My father and others
have refused to pay war taxes, willing to pay a fine instead when
IRS came
to collect.
A television segment about Mennonites hit British television, and the
issue
described it this way:
The Mennonite segment begins in Europe with episodes from Martyrs
Mirror, then switches to modern Mennonite events… [such as] a Sunday
school debate on church-state issues with such topics as war taxes, Vietnam,
and growing up as a conscientious objector in a public school.
The delegates took action on two statements presented by the Bishop Board, one
on “Funeral Practices” and another on “The Christian Conscience and Tax
Dollars.”
More controversial was the statement on taxes which included two proposals: 1)
increased giving to the church with the resultant increased tax deductions; 2)
seeking an alternative tax provision similar to alternative military service.
The second statement included a reference to the World Peace Tax Fund, which
made some persons uncomfortable and so this was eliminated from the text. The
statement was passed with some negative votes. In addition to those who felt
the statement went too far were several who thought it was simply not radical
enough in dealing with the “problem of wealth.” “It amazes me,” said one,
“that though we can make money, we have trouble getting rid of it.”
Paying war taxes seems to be a problem for some. In Romans 13, after giving
some of the duties of the “powers that be” including the use of the sword, it
follows, “for this cause pay ye tribute.” To be consistent, those that
withhold war taxes must withhold all other taxes, including local, that are
not spent right. I do not believe at any time we have to break one Scripture
to keep another one.
The war tax issue generated the most lively discussion. Cornelia Lehn, a
Foundation Series writer, gently forced the issue when she asked headquarters
not to withhold that portion of income tax she felt helps the government
prepare for war. An amendment to the resolution, “A call for congregational
study on civil disobedience and war tax issues,” would have permitted
headquarters to honor her request. But the conference turned down the
amendment 1,190 to 336. The issue will continue under study for the next 18
months.
Phil M. Shenk, student at Eastern Mennonite College, has been awarded first
prize in the C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical contest with an oratorical essay
entitled “The World Peace Tax Fund and Faithfulness.” He challenges the fund
as a means of faithfulness. He says the fund would not reduce the military
budget and may lull the consciences of nonresistant persons. … The C. Henry
Smith Trust, named for a leader of another generation, makes prize money
available, and the Peace Section of
MCC
arranges for the judging of entries.
Shenk’s essay was reprinted in the issue (it is given there in roughly the same form as it appeared in The Mennonite — see ♇ 28 July 2018 for the text).
Elmer Borntrager threw some cold water on things in an off-handed way when
he wrote
in the issue:
In answer to a question regarding the paying of taxes, Jesus said to the
Pharisees, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caeser’s; and
unto God the things that are God’s”… There have been some questions raised as
to the propriety of paying war taxes by those of us who do not believe in war.
I suppose there is no easy answer to this question, but it seems the majority
of the people of the non-resistant faith quite literally pay all the taxes
required by Caesar.…
This is the twentieth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was
reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal
of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
In , the Mennonite Church had the luxury of
being by-standers as the General Conference Mennonite Church wrestled with the
war tax issue, and in particular about whether to continue to withhold income
taxes from the salaries of their employees who were conscientious objectors to
military taxation (the Mennonite Church would get its own chance to wrestle
with these issues a bit later on), at a special mid-triennium conference on the
issue. Meanwhile, disgruntled conservative Mennonites met at the Smoketown
Consultation, Peace Tax Fund advocates ramped up their campaign, and the New
Call to Peacemaking pushed the Peace Churches to step up their game.
As a result, there was a plethora of war tax resistance-related content in
Gospel Herald that year.
“The federal income tax is the chief link connecting each individual’s daily labor with the tremendous buildup for war,” Donald D. Kaufman observes in his new book, The Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace, Paying for War (Herald Press: ).
“Preoccupied as some citizens are with paying too much tax, I suggest that the crucial issue has to do with the purpose for which tax monies are used,” Kaufman maintains.
“While a young person can be exempted from personally serving in the Armed
Forces, no one is easily exempted from making contributions to the military
leviathan.” In his book, Kaufman considers issue of the two kingdoms. After a
brief examination of the biblical background, he traces the history of
conscientious objection to war taxes. He discusses a dozen viable options
which concerned Christians can use “to register our faithfulness to Jesus
Christ as Lord and our opposition to corporate war making by the state within
which we live.”
[W]hat words can we say to our brother in his new responsibilities? Lawrence
Burkholder in the consultation on
taxes and war initiated an intriguing discussion on the manager (or the
administrator) and the prophet and corporate responsibility. He observed that
with only a few incidental references, "the Bible is almost solidly against
those who assumed responsibility for institutional life" (a distressing word
for a biblical scholar on his inauguration).
Ray Horst reported that two staff members have said they would want to
consider a personal response on war taxes should Mennonite Board of Missions
seek alternatives to such withholdings. The directors acted to continue
discussions with other Mennonite groups and Mennonite Church agencies on the
war tax question.
There has been much discussion about the appropriateness of paying for war as
we pray for peace. Some have sought ways in which they can refuse to pay
federal income taxes and thus give a concrete witness against the militarism
which plagues the
U.S. and many other
countries of the world — even, alas, poor countries.
The focus on income taxes may obscure the fact that there are many other
federal taxes which are also used to support the national defense
establishment. In fact, in the personal income tax provided only about one half of the
non-trust fund U.S.
federal revenue. The other half came from a variety of sources such as the
corporation income tax, excise taxes (on many items such as telephone service,
air travel, automobile tires, gasoline, and especially alcohol and tobacco),
estate and gift taxes, and customs duties.
Can we avoid paying these taxes? Not completely, but we can reduce the amount
we pay by the simple device of not buying at all the things which are harmful
and by reducing our expenditures for all other items by holding down our
standard of living. The United States tax law is very generous in allowing
deductions for making contributions to churches and charitable institutions.
(The Canadian law is less generous.) Up to 50 percent of income may be
deducted.
These charitable gifts will first of all reduce sharply the amount of federal
income tax we pay — in some cases even avoiding the tax completely. But in the
second place, since the gift to charity will reduce our remaining disposable
income we will have reduced our standard of living and thus will have to pay
less of the hidden taxes which also support the defense establishment. The
corporation income tax, for example, is one third the size of the personal
income tax.
Although the check to pay the corporation income tax is sent to the government
by the corporation, rest assured the corporation will, if they possibly can,
pass on the tax to the consumer in the form of higher prices for the things
the corporation sells. If we don’t buy the product, we aren’t paying this tax.
Reducing our standard of living as a means of avoiding federal taxes has an
important additional benefit. It is a powerful witness that we are disturbed
by the disparities in wealth and income throughout the world. Our lives should
demonstrate that we can get along without buying the multitude of things an
affluent America deems important.
A report on an protest at Titan Ⅱ missile base
noted that “Also scheduled for the same day will be a nonviolent protest at the
Wichita offices of the Internal Revenue Service, designed to draw attention to
tax money being used for military expenditures…” And
a separate report on a protest at Rocky Flats said that
“On ,
tax resisters made statements about their refusal to pay for war in a press
conference outside the
IRS
office.”
The issue brought news of the
Quaker war tax resisters Bruce & Ruth Graves’ court battle:
A Quaker couple from Ypsilanti, Michigan, attempted to claim a “war tax”
credit on federal income tax returns, but has lost an unusual case before the
U.S. Supreme Court,
the Associated Press reports. The court left intact lower court rulings that
Bruce and Ruth Graves, as conscientious objectors, may not claim such a
credit. The couple had sought a refund of the portion of their taxes used for
war materials.
, the Graves have converted the
“foreign tax credit” on their federal tax forms to a “war tax credit” and
entered only 50 percent to the income tax otherwise due. Each year they have
asked a refund but not received it. So after failing to get the couple to sign
corrected tax statements, the government initiated action to collect the
“deficiency” even though it had already collected the correct amount. The
appeal argued that the government’ s action violated the Graves’
constitutional right to freedom of religion.
Catholic priest John M. Garvey also fought the law and the law won, a bit. The
Gospel
Herald had the scoop:
Father John M. Garvey gave up his car for Lent. Actually, the Internal Revenue
Service hauled it away on Ash Wednesday. It now sits amid big, drab army
trucks behind a fence topped with barbed wire 20 miles away in Mobridge,
S.D. It is there
because the Roman Catholic priest has not paid income taxes as a protest
against military spending and the federal government’s treatment of Indian
people.
Without a car on the South Dakota prairie, the priest has been walking more,
hitchhiking, and riding buses. “It’s been inconvenient,” he said, and when he
does he gets some puzzled looks. “But it’s no big dramatic thing. I’m not
standing out there shivering to death.”
John K. Stoner, in the issue,
imagined
the conversation
between a taxpayer and his or her Maker in the aftermath of a nuclear
holocaust:
There was a blinding flash of light, an explosion like the bursting of a
million bombs, and in an instant everything was burning in a huge ball of
fire.
The first time it was the Flood.
But next time the fire… It was the End.
Afterward a prominent evangelical leader was being quizzed by his Maker.
“You say you were taken by surprise. But didn’t you know it might happen?”
“Well, yes, Sir. I guess I did, Sir. But You see, Sir, they…”
“Wasn’t anybody talking about the fantastic risks involved? But not risks
really. It was a certainty. As predictable as death and taxes.”
“Well, Sir, I can see it now. But hindsight is always better…”
“What do you mean, hindsight? Couldn’t you discern the signs of the times?”
“Well, Sir, we were kind of busy…”
“Doing what?”
“Well, Sir, some of us were searching for remnants of Noah’s Ark. We thought
if we found it maybe they would believe in You…”
“But surely you weren’t all hunting Noah’s Ark?”
“Well, Sir, not exactly. But a lot of people who weren’t hunting it were
watching movies about the search. And then we were busy defending the Bible.”
“Why didn’t you know it was going to happen? Surely there were people warning
you. In fact, I had assigned a few Myself to sound the alarm.”
“Well, Sir, You see, Sir, those people… I don’t know quite how to say this…
er… they didn’t believe the way we… er… I mean I…”
“Did you think you could go on building three more bombs a day forever and not
blow things up?
“Well, Sir, You see, I thought You would look after those things. I didn’t
think it would happen unless You wanted.
“Women nursing infant babies? Children swinging on the side porch, playing in
the lawn sprinkler? An old man reading his Bible? Millions of people, burned
up?”
“Well, sir, in retrospect it does look rather overwhelming. I’m not sure it
was really fair. But then, things were getting rather bad, what with
communism, homosexuality, welfare, big government, pollution…”
“And capitalism, national security, the good life, nuclear deterrence.”
“Well, Sir, I hadn’t thought of those things as…”
“Why not?”
“Well, Sir, You see, the people who talked about those things were not… er…
Bible believing. As an example, they talked about resisting war taxes, even
though the Bible says, ‘Render unto Caesar…’. Things like that…”
“You paid your taxes?”
“Well, Sir, yes, Sir, I did.”
“Every penny?”
“I think so, Sir.”
“Are you saying that I am responsible for this fire and your tax dollars were
not?”
“Well, Sir, I… er…”
“Next!”
Allan W. Smith responded in a
letter to the editor,
saying that Christians should beware of inadvertently putting themselves under
an Antichrist who promises worldly peace at the expense of abandoning Biblical
truth:
In Stoner’s depiction of the scene of judgment day, it is to be observed that
Jesus dictum, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,” is
contradicted. It is not to be supposed that Jesus and Paul, who both told
people to pay their taxes, were ignorant of the way that Rome got and held its
power. Taxes are, after all, not freewill gifts to the state, and we may well
be grieved with the way the state uses them. However, we must all live by our
Word-enlightened consciences.
A proposed Mennonite Church statement on militarism and conscription,
originally drafted by MBCM
staff members Hubert Schwartzentruber and Gordon Zook in consultation with
several other persons, was presented. The Board gave the statement extensive
discussion and some refinement, and unanimously approved the document for
submission as a recommendation from MBCM
to the General Board for presentation to the
Mennonite Church General Assembly. The statement contains sections on peace
and obedience, use of material resources, Christian service and conscription,
and militarism and taxation.
That article also noted that the Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries
met and approved a “task force to represent the Mennonite Church in cooperation
with the General Conference Mennonite Church committee on conscientious
objection and tax exemption.”
Sensing the radical nature of his comments on the theme, “The Way of Peace,”
Schwartzentruber said that he could be taken to jail if he put into action his
beliefs on such issues as war taxes and conscription. If he had to go to jail,
he said, it would be easier to go with brothers and sisters in the faith.
Peacemaking is the way of Jesus, but it has to be the work of the church and
not of individuals alone, he said.
Representatives of the Mennonite Church gathered in Waterloo,
, and
war tax resistance was on the agenda
but was overshadowed by other concerns about draft registration:
Debate over the proposed statement on militarism and conscription was centered
in two subpoints. One counseled Mennonites not to comply with any military
registration law that might be passed by the
U.S. Congress if
the Department of Defense and not civilians would be responsible for the
registration program. The other point counseled administrators of church
schools not to comply with any legislation which might be passed that would
require them to provide information about their students for purposes of
registration.
Noting that passage of any such registration bill is very much in doubt,
Linden Wenger, Harrisonburg,
Va., told fellow delegates,
“It seems to me we’re being a bit premature in making an issue of these two
items.” Wenger also said that he “will not hinge my decision” on whether to
support compliance with a registration law on whether it is administered by
civilian or military personnel.
Other delegates, including John E. Lapp of Souderton,
Pa., responded that it
was important that the items in question not be deleted.
In the amended statement which was finally approved, the two items were
combined and weakened slightly, but were retained. A subpoint urging “careful
biblical study” on the issue of war tax payment was added. In addition, the
statement was upgraded from “guidelines” to a full statement of position.
The eventual statement on militarism and conscription that came out of the
Waterloo conference on was
reprinted in Gospel Herald. It included the following
section:
We recognize that today’s militarism expresses itself more and more through
expensive and highly technical weaponry and that such equipment is dependent
upon financial resources conscripted from citizens through taxation.
Therefore,
We encourage our members to pursue a lifestyle which minimizes such tax
liability through reduction of taxable income and/or increase of tax
deductible contributions for the advancement of the gospel and the relief
of human suffering.
We endorse efforts in support of legislation which would provide
alternative uses for taxes, paid by conscientious objectors to war, which
would otherwise be devoted to military purposes.
We encourage our congregations to engage in careful biblical study
regarding Christian responsibility to civil authorities including issues
of conscience in relation to payment of taxes.
We recognize as a valid witness the conscientious refusal to pay a portion
of taxes required for war and military efforts. Such refusal, however, may
not be pursued in a spirit of lawlessness nor for personal advantage but
may be an occasion for constructive response to human need.
We encourage our congregations and institutions to seek relief from the
current legal requirement of collecting taxes through the withholding of
income taxes of employees, especially those taxes which may be used for
war purposes. In this effort we endorse cooperation with the General
Conference Mennonite Church in the current search for judicial,
legislative, and administrative alternatives to the collection of
military-related taxes. In the meantime if congregational or institutional
employers are led to noncompliance with the requirement to withhold such
taxes, we pledge our support for those representatives of the church who
may be called to account for such a witness.
On ,
Robert C. Johansen
(“president of the Institute for World Order”) spoke at Goshen College and
boosted war tax resistance:
Johansen encouraged his listeners to become part of a “new breed of
abolitionists,” to take a more active stance, even if this included refusing
to pay war taxes and refusing to be drafted. He reminded his audience that
those in opposition to slavery had also defied the law in order to bring about
change.
Gordon Zook, in the issue,
wrote that the whole economy was distorted towards militarism, and took a
sort of sideways look at tax resistance in that context:
One current issue of obedience is the militaristic mentality which keeps
producing new weapons systems at the expense of basic human needs. So much of
North American “abundance” results from the distorted values and priorities of
our militaristic economy. Many are wondering, how to repent of such
involvements including questions of responsibility for the use of tax
revenues.
In the same issue, John K. Stoner was back to urge
conscientious objection to nuclear deterrence
which necessarily meant action before the nuclear war, not just
options to be held in reserve for after the war started:
Mennonites who believe that the Bible teaches conscientious objection to
military service should also be conscientious objectors to the concept and
practice of nuclear deterrence. We have expressed conscientious objection to
military service by refusing military service, whether by refusing to put on
the military uniform, going to prison, doing alternate service, or emigrating.
We should express our Conscientious objection to the concept and practice of
nuclear deterrence by publicly rejecting the myth of nuclear deterrence,
denouncing the idolatry of nuclear weapons, refusing to pay war taxes, and
identifying with resistance to the nuclear madness.
Mennonites should do this because the concept and practice of nuclear
deterrence is a form of military service in which the entire population has
been conscripted. The concept of nuclear deterrence epitomizes the spirit of
war. The practice of nuclear deterrence is to war what lust is to adultery,
and whoever engages freely in lust should not consider himself innocent of
adultery. As E.I. Watkin has said, it cannot “be morally right to threaten
immoral conduct.” To plan and prepare for the annihilation of millions of
people is a culpable act in the extreme, and whoever does not deliberately and
explicitly repudiate the concept and practice of nuclear deterrence
participates in the act.
The U.S. branch of
the international Roman Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi
USA,
initiated informal contacts with General Conference Mennonite peace
spokespersons .
Rural Benedictine College at Atchison,
Kan., provided the setting for
the sixth annual convention of Pax Christi
USA,
at which Mennonites Bob Hull and Don Kaufman of Newton,
Kan., led a workshop on tax
resistance and the World Peace Tax Fund Act. Interest in this was strong.
About 40 persons, including some tax resisters, participated. In a private
meeting with Sister Man Evelyn Jegen, executive secretary of Pax Christi
USA, and
Gordon Zahn, a Catholic conscientious objector in World War Ⅱ, Hull, Kaufman,
and William Keeney of Bethel College, North Newton,
Kan., explained the General
Conference Mennonite Church resolution on war taxes. Mennonite Central
Committee Peace Section’s Christian Peacemaker Registration form received
active interest at the convention, particularly during a workshop on
“Militarism in Education.” The possible resumption of registration and perhaps
the draft in the
U.S. is stimulating
regional Pax Christi groups to promote conscientious objection to war by
Catholic youth.
Resolutions concerning the
Iranian-U.S. crisis,
SALT
Ⅱ, and the proposed World Peace Tax Fund were passed at the fall meeting of
Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section
(U.S.),
Nov.
30–Dec. 1 at Akron,
Pa.
Section members also agreed to postpone a decision on a resolution to support
war tax resistance campaign until they could have further dialogue with
constituent members…
The World Peace Tax Fund
(WPTF) bill
now before Congress also received an endorsement from the Peace section group.
The bill would provide a legal means for conscientious objectors to channel
the portion of their tax dollar which now goes for the military budget to be
used in a special fund for projects to promote world peace.
The section said in resolution “that it is conscious that the
WPTF
legislation might not in itself force a significant reduction in military
spending, but it recognizes that it would provide funds for peacemaking
efforts and would be a witness against military spending. The section
continues to support other forms of witness against military spending,
including persons who refuse to pay war taxes.”
Although Peace Section has given staff time to the promotion of a better
understanding of
WPTF in its
constituency, it had not before been a formal sponsor of the bill.
Peace Section has also established a bureau of Christian speakers available to
address congregations and other groups concerning
WPTF.
Federal court convicts Mennonite in Illinois war tax resistance case
Bruce Chrisman, 30-year-old General Conference Mennonite, was convicted on
by U.S. District
Court in Springfield, Ill.,
of federal income tax evasion.
Chrisman, who lives in Ava in southern Illinois, was charged with failing to
file a tax return in . Actually Chrisman did
file a return in and other years for which
the government said he failed to file. But the returns did not contain the
financial data the Internal Revenue Service contends constitutes a legal tax
return.
Chrisman attached letters to his returns saying he objected on religious and
moral grounds to paying taxes that support the
U.S. military. His
defense lawyers said the government had to prove that he “willfully” failed to
file a return — that he knew what the statute required and purposefully
decided not to comply.
At a three-day criminal trial Chrisman said, “The returns I filed with the
IRS were
in accordance with the dictates of my conscience and religious beliefs and the
IRS
code.”
He testified that his father never hit him and that “guns, even cap guns, were
never allowed in our home.”
The prosecuting attorney read Romans 13, Luke 20:20–26, and Matthew 17:24–27
and asked Chrisman, “Don’t you believe in the Bible? Doesn’t it state here you
should pay taxes?”
Chrisman said, “The government is not the supreme authority in my life, but
Jesus Christ is.”
In the closing arguments to the jury the prosecution said Chrisman’s “joy” and
“peaceful composure” exposed his lack of deeply held religious beliefs.
James Dunn, Mennonite pastor in Urbana,
Ill., observed the trial. He
said evidence of Chrisman’s character and of his pacifism were not allowed as
testimony by the judge, J. Waldo Ackerman.
During the pretrial hearings, Ackerman allowed Robert Hull, secretary for
peace and social concerns of the General Conference Mennonite Church, and
Peter Ediger, director of Mennonite Voluntary Service, to testify about
Mennonite witness against war and conscription of persons and money for war
purposes. But the testimony was disallowed at the trial.
One of Chrisman’s attorneys, Jeffrey Weiss, in addressing the 12-member jury,
argued that Chrisman’s religious beliefs and his conscientious objector status
during the Vietnam War should exempt him from paying that portion of his
federal income tax that supports the military. “He did not try to hide behind
the shield of religion to rip off the government but honestly believes he is
exercising his constitutional rights to religion.” he said.
Chrisman, married, with a two-year-old daughter, faces up to one year in
prison and a $10,000 fine The verdict will be appealed to the
U.S. Court of
Appeals in Chicago.
A pair of articles advertised seminar on war tax resistance that would be held
at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center in
:
Does Caesar ask for only what belongs to him?
Should there be a Mennonite consensus on paying or not paying war taxes? These
and related questions will be the agenda for a seminar at Laurelville Church
Center, .
The seminar is entitled “War Taxes: to Pay or Not to Pay?” It is jointly
sponsored by the Church Center and Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section.
Persons on both sides of the issue are encouraged to participate. More
information is available from Laurelville Mennonite Church Center…
“War Taxes: To Pay or Not to Pay?”
is the title of a seminar cosponsored by
MCC
Peace Section and Laurelville Mennonite Church Center. Persons on all sides of
the issue are encouraged to participate as such questions will be raised as:
What belongs to Caesar and what to God? What are these taxes buying? What are
the alternatives? More information is available from Laurelville Mennonite
Church Center…
The GCMC Mid-Triennium
This was the first Gospel Herald report from the
General Conference Mennonite Church special mid-triennium conference on war
taxes:
Debate was vigorous and heated as more than 500 delegates from the General
Conference Mennonite Church and some 200 visitors met
to discuss how Christians should respond to the nuclear threat and to massive
expenditures for defense. War tax resistance, or the refusal to pay for the
military portion of the federal budget, was among possible responses discussed
at the meeting, held in Minneapolis.
A few delegates present at the first day of the conference said the church
should not act as tax collector for the state through withholding taxes from
employees’ paychecks. But most of the delegates present the first day said
that while they were troubled by worldwide military expenditures of over one
billion dollars daily, the church as a corporate body should not engage in
illegal activity in its witness against war preparations. Instead, speakers
urged alternatives such as pressuring congressional representatives to reduce
defense expenditures, eliminate the arms trade, and to increase aid and trade
to Third World countries. A few observed that Mennonites contribute to the
disparity in living standards around the world through their affluent
lifestyle.
A sentiment often expressed, however, was that the church, while avoiding
illegal actions, should actively support its members who engage in civil
disobedience on the basis of conscience.
Roy Vogt, economics professor from Winnipeg, Manitoba, berated the assembly
for loading the responsibility for witness upon isolated individuals. “It is
morally reprehensible,” he said, “to give only moral support. We must provide
financial and legal support for those prophets who have arisen from our
middle-class ranks.”
In contrast to the social activists at the conference are Mennonites like Dan
Dalke, pastor from Bluffton, Ohio, who castigated the social activists for
making pacifism a religion. “We will never create a Utopia,” he said. “Jesus
didn’t come to clean up social issues. Our job is to evangelize the world. A
peace witness is secondary.”
Some of the statements were personal. A businessman confessed that while he
could easily withhold paying military taxes on the basis of conscience, he was
frightened. “I am scared of being different, of being embarrassed, of being
alienated from my community. Unless I get support from the Mennonite church, I
will keep paying taxes.”
Alvin Beachy of Newton, Kan.,
said the church seemed to be shifting from a quest to being faithful to the
gospel to being legal before the government. Echoing this view, J.R.
Burkholder of Goshen, Ind.,
said, “The question is not who is most faithful, but what does it mean to be
faithful?”
A follow-up article in the
issue filled in some blanks:
General Conference Mennonites voted
to launch a vigorous campaign to exempt the church from acting as a tax
collector for the state.
Five-hundred delegates, representing 60,000 Mennonites in Canada and the
U.S. passed the
resolution by a nine to one margin. Charged with responsibility to implement
the decision is the highest policy-making body of the General Conference
Mennonite Church, the General Board.
Heinz Janzen, executive secretary for the denomination, said the decision will
increase political activism among Mennonites, a group which has traditionally
kept distant from legislative activities.
Delegates met
in a special conference to discern the will of God for Christians in their
response to militarism and the worldwide arms race.
Some Mennonites are practicing war tax resistance — the refusal to pay the
military portion of federal income tax. This was a central focus of debate
during because one of the
employees of the General Conference has asked the church to stop withholding
war taxes from her wages. In , Cornelia Lehn,
who is director of children’s education, made the request on grounds of
conscience. Her request was refused by the General Board because it would be
illegal for an employer to not act as a tax collector for the Internal Revenue
Service.
Although delegates to this convention affirmed that decision, they instructed
the General Board to vigorously search for legal avenues to exempt the church
from collecting taxes. In that way individuals employed by the church would be
free to follow their own conscience.
The campaign to obtain legal conscientious objection to war taxes will last
three years. If fruitless the question is to be brought back to another
meeting of the church.
Activists in the church were not completely satisfied with the decision. They
would prefer that Cornelia Lehn’s request be granted. These delegates spoke
for an early First Amendment test of the constitutionality of the church being
compelled to act as a tax collector.
Nevertheless, Donovan Smucker, vice-president of the General Conference and
from Kitchener, Ont., said of
the decision, “Something wonderful is happening. We are beginning to bring our
witness to the political order.”
Vernon Lohrenz, a delegate from South Dakota, observed, “We must proceed in
faith, and not in fear. If this is the right thing to do, God will take care
of us.”
From the discussions on taxation, it seemed the issue will not easily be
resolved.
Implementing the decision of the General Conference Mennonite Church “war tax”
conference in Minneapolis has
not been easy.
The Minneapolis resolution mandated a task force on taxes to seek “all legal,
legislative, and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector
exemption” for the General Conference Mennonite Church from the withholding of
federal income taxes from its employees. (About 46 percent of
U.S.
federal taxes are used for the military.)
Two meetings of the task force have been held. The task force has been
expanded to include representation from the Church of the Brethren, the
Friends, and the Mennonite Church. This group of 11 is expected by the
participating churches to establish the legal, legislative, and administrative
agenda of a corporate discipleship response to military taxes.
At their second meeting () the
task force members rejected administrative avenues. Within the scope of
U.S. Internal
Revenue Service or Revenue Canada regulations, this would involve extending
ordination, commissioning, or licensing status to all employees of church
institutions. It was a consensus of the task force that this would be an
administrative loophole. It would not develop a conscientious objector
position in response to military taxes.
However, both the judicial and legislative options will be pursued
simultaneously. Plans for the legislative option are the more developed.
For the legislative route to work, says Delton Franz, director of the
Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section office in Washington,
D.C., the
problem of conscience and taxes will have to be defined carefully. Currently a
paper focusing on the reasons the General Conference has a major problem of
conscience with collecting taxes from its employees is being drafted. After it
has been reviewed, it will be sent along with cover letters by leaders of the
historic peace churches to members of Congress who represent major
constituency concentrations or sit on key subcommittees. Later on, church
members will also be asked to write letters. It is important, says Franz, to
define the problem of conscience in such a way that it will motivate Senators
and Representatives to work vigorously for the bill.
Another follow-up to these initiatives will be a visit to Washington of the
most influential peace church leaders to solicit support from selected members
of Congress and to obtain a sponsor for an exemption bill.
There is a possibility that a parallel task force will emerge in Canada. Ernie
Regehr, director of Project Ploughshares, Waterloo,
Ont., notes the necessity of
defining the question of militarism in Canadian terms for Canadians; for
example, arms export revenues. Regehr in attempting to gather a Canadian task
force. Heinz Janzen, general secretary of the General Conference Mennonite
Church, is convener of the war tax expanded task force. Mennonite Church
members are Winifred Beechy, secretary for peace and social concerns under the
Board of Congregational Ministries; Janet Reedy, member of the Mennonite
Church committee on tax concerns; and Gordon Zook, executive secretary of the
Board of Congregational Ministries.
A New Call to Peacemaking
The “New Call to Peacemaking” campaign continued.
Another conference
was announced for :
workshops will deal with conflict
resolution, tax resistance and the World Peace Tax Fund, economic conversion
and the arms race, and resources for peace education.
Campaign organizers assert that interest in the “issue of conscience and war
taxes” has been growing recently. It was given a “high priority” by the New
Call to Peacemaking national conference in Wisconsin.
Results of the conference
(which had apparently been pushed back a few weeks) were reported by Winifred
N. Beechy:
More war-tax opposition
A group of 30 to 40 church people met on , at City Church
of the Brethren, Goshen, Ind.,
to consider the moral dilemma faced by Christians who are opposed to war as a
method of settling disputes but who involuntarily contribute to war by payment
of taxes.
Participants in the one-day seminar came from 12 area congregations and
represented four denominations. The focus of the meeting was on that portion
of the federal income tax which goes to support the military and weapons
production. This group felt that the increasing militarization of our society,
the escalation of the arms race, and production of highly technological
weapons of destruction posed the problem of priorities and stewardship, and
the contradiction of “paying for war while praying for peace.”
Willard Swartley, professor of New Testament at Associated Mennonite Biblical
Seminaries in Elkhart, spoke on “Biblical imperatives,” emphasizing the
Christian’s mandate for responsible use of the earth’s resources. Cliff Kindy
of Goshen then outlined what we pay for war, giving a breakdown of the federal
budget with percentages of expenditures going to current and past military and
war-related items. He computed current military spending as roughly 25 to 30
percent, while a more comprehensive figure, taking into account veterans’
expenses and interest on the war-related portion of the national debt, reaches
as high as 50 percent of the national budget. Kindy also estimated that
members of Mennonite and Church of the Brethren churches in Elkhart County pay
more for war taxes than they contribute to their churches.
A survey of the history of war tax resistance among the historic peace
churches since the Reformation was presented by Leonard Gross, archivist of
the Mennonite Church. Current responses to the problem of war taxes were given
by a number of people. Janet Reedy of Elkhart and Jim Sweigart of Goshen
discussed possible options such as refusal to pay that portion of the income
tax which goes to support war, payment made with an accompanying letter or
protest, or voluntarily limiting income below the level of tax liability.
Following the presentations the group broke up into three workshops for
further discussion. From these emerged a consensus on the need for a
continuing support group such as this. Participants expect to draft a
statement which can be presented to their respective congregations for
consideration.
The seminar was planned by a New Call to Peacemaking Committee made up of
members from six Church of the Brethren and Mennonite Churches in Goshen, with
Virgil Brenneman from The Assembly (Mennonite) serving as chairman.
Bruce Chrisman told a New Call to Peacemaking Workshop of his war tax resistance.
The workshop on national service and voluntary service discussed a proposal by
members of Rainbow Boulevard Mennonite Church, Kansas City,
Kan., regarding a legal tax
alternative which would involve cooperating with a national service plan.
In the workshop on conscription of wealth Bob Hull, secretary for peace and
social concerns of the General Conference Mennonite Church, suggested
alternatives to paying war taxes. Others offered their own suggestions.
Several persons expressed the desire to pay taxes only for nonmilitary
programs, and said they wished there was legal provision for this, such as the
World Peace Tax Fund. McSorley, who has had contacts on Capitol Hill,
responded by saying that until there is a large grass-roots movement of tax
resistance the
WPTF doesn’t
stand a chance.
The latter half of the workshop included sharing by Bruce Chrisman,
Carbondale, Ill., who is
involved in a federal criminal case, one of two in the
U.S. involving tax
resistance. His case is significant because it will provide a precedent either
for or against tax refusal on the basis of conscience and religious
convictions.
In Chrisman received draft counseling from
James Dunn, pastor of the Champaign-Urbana
(Ill.) Mennonite Church. He
made a covenant with God to only pay taxes for humanitarian purposes. Since
that time he has paid no federal income taxes.
It wasn’t until this year, however, that the government prosecuted him,
charging that he willfully failed to disclose his gross income in
. “Willful” is the key term, because Chrisman
claims he conscientiously chose not to disclose his income. He feels the
government has purposely waited to build its case.
In the conclusion to his talk Chrisman said that when he first appeared in
court on
this year he was “scared to death.” “Today,” he said, “I have no fear in me.
God has given me an inner peace. I know I’m doing what He wants me to do.”
The Smoketown Consultation
The Gospel Herald covered
“the Smoketown Consultation”
of , in which conservative
Mennonites organized against innovations like war tax resistance. It noted that
“All 25 persons invited were white males,” but also reproduced the statement
that came out of the conference.
Several letters to the editor reacted to this news:
“I… wondered about the inclusion of the specific war tax issue. Were
individuals who sincerely hold to an alternate point of view asked to take
part in the discussion? Again, I am not questioning the conclusions of the
group so much as to ask whether any ‘by-invitation-only’ meeting can speak
for the church with any more integrity than can existing boards and
commissions of the church.”
“It is very easy to pick a Scripture verse to use to prove or disprove
almost anything. The group at one point (Statement #2) speaks about total
commitment to Jesus Christ but then uses quotations from the Apostle Paul
(Statement #5) to validify payment of all taxes. If Jesus Christ is
central, let’s use His example and specific words to guide us! I can
imagine the Pentagon people jumping for joy upon hearing such a statement
about taxes. I’m sure they are glad for this voluntary assurance (from
‘peace church’ members) that money will continue to roll in so that the
military can increase its nuclear arsenal. Because of the apparent
unquestioning payment of taxes by German Christians, Hitler was able to
annihilate millions of persons. We
(U.S.) will be
able to do it with nuclear weapons Neat, eh?”
“At Smoketown Ⅱ, when we assume the sisters of the church will take the
opportunity to share their thoughts, we suggest that a fuller range of
statements be reported. Issues, the unavoidable places where doctrine
meets practical decisions, should be identified and addressed to give
definition to the positive reaffirmation of the authority of Scripture and
a renewed zeal for personal and church evangelism. And, for the grass
roots, a minority report on the nonpayment of war taxes could be
included.”
Verburg didn’t think much of all this talk about war taxes, saying that
the peace witness was about more than opposition to military, so the war
tax emphasis was sign of an imbalance. “We are not the flower children of
the sixties. We are Jesus people and there is a big difference.”
[Gordon] Zook [executive secretary of the Board of Congregational Ministries]
noted the difference between the Smoketown statement “that we should pay all
taxes” and the statement on peacemaking passed by the General Assembly at
Waterloo. The Waterloo statement recognizes the withholding of war taxes as a
valid option. Which statement represents the church? he asked.
Peace Tax Fund Legislation
The edition included an
article by Dan Slabaugh laying out the case for the World Peace Tax Fund bill.
An editor’s note in that issue mentioned that “The
U.S. copies of the
issue of the
Gospel Herald carried a center insert with cards that
may be used by readers to encourage
U.S. lawmakers to
support the World Peace Tax Fund. The following article provides the author’s
rationale for support of the Fund legislation. Readers who care to are
encouraged to make use of these cards or to write their own leaders on its
behalf.”
Any collection of taxes for military purposes has created problems of
conscience for those committed to the peaceful resolution of conflict. Many
members of the “historic peace churches” have viewed war taxes as a denial of
religious freedom since such payments forced them to engage in personal sin.
The question has been put this way: “How can I, as a follower of the Prince of
Peace, willingly provide the government with money that’s needed to pay for
war?”
The most recent war tax in the United States, aside from the income tax, has
been the federal telephone tax. This levy was initiated originally to support
the Vietnam War, but is still continuing for a few more years. Many people
have refused to pay this tax to the federal government. Instead, they have
been sending the equivalent amount to the [“]Special Fund for Tax Resisters”
of Mennonite Central Committee’s Peace Section, or to similar designated
organizations.
To a smaller percentage of individuals the payment of the federal income tax
(approximately 50 percent of which they know goes to support wars and military
activity) also has been considered a matter of personal sin. They therefore
have informed the government that in good conscience they cannot voluntarily
pay that portion of their tax. In some cases persons have deposited the amount
in a local bank where the Internal Revenue Service comes and “steals” it from
them. By so doing these persons are freeing themselves of personal
responsibility for the money’s eventual use and also providing a visible
protest against the evil.
To most of these law-abiding, peace-loving people continual confrontation with
their own government has been an unhappy prospect. So nearly a decade ago a
small group of Christians at Ann Arbor, Michigan — with considerable faith in
the American legislative process — came to believe that it might be possible
to draft a bill and eventually convince the federal government to legalize
“peace” for those citizens so inclined.
A faculty member and a few graduate students at the University of Michigan’s
Law School drafted such a proposal. It provides, for the individual requesting
it, a setting aside of that percentage of the federal income tax which the
U.S. Attorney
General would determine to be earmarked for military purposes. This amount
would then be placed in a trust fund to be administered by a board of trustees
to fund peaceful activities, as approved by the
U.S. Congress.
This legislation, which has become known as the World Peace Tax Fund bill, was
introduced into the
U.S. House of
Representatives by Ronald Dellums of California in
. In the
National Council for a
WPTF was
invited to present its case in the House Ways and Means Committee. The bill
was introduced into the Senate in by Senator
Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon. In the last Congress it had 25 sponsors in the
House of Representatives and the three in the Senate (The legislation was not
enacted and so must be reintroduced to be considered by the present Congress.)
The World Peace Tax Fund bill is often misunderstood. It does not call for any
tax relief or special favors benefiting anyone financially. The bill, if
passed, probably will not affect the
U.S. government’s
military activities. In all likelihood it will not cut the military budget, or
of itself, stop wars. And it will not diminish the need to continue peace
teaching or peace activities.
But it will allow a citizen to legally refrain from contributing to the cost
of war and violence. It will provide a fund to finance peace programs and
support efforts to eliminate the causes of violent conflict.
The biggest obstacle to getting this bill passed in the
U.S. Congress is
the large number of people who say they are committed to peace, but who
seemingly feel no responsibility regarding the government’s use of their tax
money. As a result, legislators tell us that they can’t see the payment of war
taxes as much of a problem because they get very few letters expressing
concern about the matter.
To a large degree, Congress is “problem-oriented.” An alert young Congressman
told us personally that “this bill probably will not be passed until enough of
you refuse to pay war taxes — even if it means going to jail. In other words,”
he was saying, “create a problem that Congress must deal with.”
I am convinced that the conscientious objector provision of the Selective
Service act of never would have been
included had it not been for the “problem” created by
C.O.’s who
refused induction during World War Ⅰ. As the
U.S. was mobilizing
for World War Ⅱ the government did not want another “problem” on its hands, so
it agreed to make provisions for the C.O.’s — not
necessarily out of concern for religious liberty, but in order to keep the
boat from rocking too much.
We should remember that God’s prophets and even His own Son were seen as
“problems” in terms of natural human tendencies toward power, selfishness and
greed. Few of us like to “cause problems” for others. We like to work at
solving them — and be successful in our efforts. But in matters of conscience,
we haven’t been called to be successful, we have been called to be faithful.
“Conscience and War Taxes” is the title of a slide set produced by the
National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund. A resources packet accompanies
the 78 color slides, 20-minute cassette. “Conscience and War Taxes” can be
obtained from MBCM Audiovisuals…
The first issue the class tackled was the payment of war taxes. In
U.S.
Rep. Edward Mezvinsky
was invited to church for Sunday lunch and a discussion of the war tax issue.
“He sidestepped every issue,” said Jim Yoder. Mezvinsky promised to vote for
the World Peace Tax Fund Act if it ever made it to the floor of the House, but
declined to help the bill out of committee.
“He spent most of his time expounding upon his efforts to kill the
B-1 bomber,” recalled Nyle.
When the Fourth of July rolled around that Bicentennial year, the class
sponsored an alternate celebration for the church. Guy Hershberger was asked
to chair the meeting. He interviewed some of the local
“veterans” — conscientious objectors Henry Miller, Henry Brenneman, and Sol
Ropp — who had been badly mistreated by the
U.S. Army during
World War Ⅱ. He also discussed the war tax issue.
Later in the year the class presented a proposal to the congregation, asking
the church to lend moral support to people who did not pay the portion of
their taxes going for war. After initial misunderstandings and further
discussion, the congregation approved the proposal.
Nyle [Kauffman] and Jim were the only class members making enough to have to
worry about paying any taxes at all in . Both
withheld 33 percent of their estimated tax and sent a check for the amount to
Mennonite Central Committee.
This is the twenty-second 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.
was marked by heated debate in the pages of
Gospel Herald about war tax resistance, while
Mennonite Church institutions continued to struggle with whether or how to take
a stand.
The issue reported on
Mennonite war tax redirection:
Mennonite Central Committee
U.S. Peace
Section’s Taxes for Peace Fund experienced a substantial increase in
contributions during 1980. The amount of $10,400 was contributed in
, compared to $6,200 in
.
The Taxes for Peace Fund was established in late
. “Persons whose consciences forbid them to
yield money on request to the government’s death-by-technology militarism are
contributing the military portion of their income tax instead to the
life-supporting work of
MCC
U.S. Peace
Section,” says John K. Stoner, executive secretary of the section.
During , the
U.S. budgeted $138
billion for current military spending. Thirty-two percent of the income tax
paid by every American during contributed to
raising this money. An additional 15 percent went to veterans benefits and the
portion of the national debt related to past wars. Thus, nearly half of the
federal budget, raised almost entirely by individual and corporate income
taxes, is military related.
A recent preliminary census taken by
U.S. Peace Section
found that over 200 Mennonite families and individuals are refusing to pay a
portion of their income taxes and are instead contributing that money to
organizations working for peace.
Withholding a portion of one’s income tax is only one of many ways to witness
against military spending. Some Mennonites are using other methods, such as
reducing income below taxable level, increasing charitable contributions,
refusing to pay the federal telephone tax, and actively supporting the World
Peace Tax Fund.
The Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries was distributing
a war tax study packet
by this time, according to the issue:
A revised and updated War Tax Packet covering a variety of issues
related to the question of payment of taxes for military purposes is
available. The packet contains articles by Willard Swartley, Marlin Miller,
David Schroeder, Donald Kaufman, John Stoner, and William Durland; the stories
of some persons’ own experiences; several brochures and other reprints; an
issue of God and Caesar newsletter; a list of peace
organizations; and a bibliography. Copies of the War Tax Packet are $2.00 and
may be requested from MBCM… or
MCC…
If the church wants to speak to the peace and justice issues of our day with
credibility, we will need to live out more radically our status as God’s
children. We must really be, in fact, the peacemakers we are called to be.
This goes for the church in all parts of the world, but most importantly, it
is for all of us who are citizens of a nation which insists on being number
one in the world.
After hearing my views on peace, a student leader in Spain asked me what I
intended to do about paying taxes to support the armament race. I personally
do not see how Christians can proclaim the gospel of peace with integrity
while intentionally supporting America’s desire to be the number one military
power. This contradiction is compounded when we realize that, in the eyes of
the rest of the world, the United States is the great bastion of evangelical
Christianity.
Things really began to heat up starting in the issue, which featured this commentary (I corrected the
numbering of items 5–7, where the numbers were missing from the original, but
there was some ambiguity so I might have gotten it wrong):
Editor’s Note: The question of war taxes has been a subject of
discussion among Mennonites for years. It does not appear any nearer solution
than before. Should we then cease discussing it? On the contrary, the issue
is so important that we should listen to all who have insights, especially
those who not only speak, but practice their convictions.
This is a blunt article, but I believe it is written with love. Can we
receive it as such? See also the author’s personal note at the end of his
article.
Introduction For years I have struggled with the knowledge that there
are in our Mennonite Church many pastors, educators, theologians, seminary
professors, and writers who have condoned, justified, and rationalized the
payment of war taxes, even placating those whose tender consciences were
bothering them every April 15.
Many times I have argued with the Spirit when confronted with the request that
I witness against this inconsistency. I had good excuses too! Except for a
year of junior college Bible at Eastern Mennonite College, my academic
training has been in engineering and natural science. I can’t read Greek or
Hebrew! How then could a non-seminary, practically illiterate nobody have
any influence? These little dialogues were nearly weekly experiences
(some more detailed), while driving the car, alone in the field, reading
Scripture in sermon preparation, even in silent prayer.
Finally on , while husking
corn, a terrible dread came over me. I stopped the husker right there in the
middle of the field and shouted: “Okay God, if You want me to make a fool of
myself. I’ll do it, I will, I will.” (No one heard me above the noise of the
John Deere, else they might have questioned my sanity.) What a relief and joy
I felt! I think I sang all the hymns I knew by heart the rest of the day!
It was my day off at the hospital, but that evening I was just “too tired” to
“start anything,” and for two weeks I was just “too busy.” Always when I come
home at 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. I fall asleep
the minute I get to bed. Then one night I was wide awake! After an hour of
tossing I finally got up, picked up my Bible and came down to the kitchen,
dropped it on the table rather disgustedly, got a drink of water, and sat
down. The Bible had fallen open and the first words I read were Ezekiel 3:20,
21. That did it for me! (Don’t bother to tell me that is not the
proper way to read the Bible. I already know that; I’m just telling
you what happened to me.)
I thought I should share these experiences with you so that you may know the
motivation for this communication.
Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us reason together concerning the
payment of war taxes!
The United States Internal Revenue Service has stated: “The
IRS
can only collect income taxes because of the voluntary
cooperation of the citizens.” Let no one say that they voluntarily
pay income taxes, because they have no choice. That is not true!
The payment of war taxes is viewed by the government as voluntary
cooperation; the final endorsement of their policies.
If you choose not to pay voluntarily, and make no
other deduction arrangements, then the
IRS
will eventually try to collect in some other way. We have never paid war
taxes and are now giving our entire farm to the church so that we will pay
no income tax. It is costing us something. The burden of proof is upon you
who approve of war taxes because it costs you nothing.
Now I know that many of our people are not in a position to do as we
are doing, so I have with many others been working for seven or eight
years to get the World Peaee Tax Fund passed. The only reason it
has not passed and will not pass is because of lack of concern. United
States senators and representatives have told us many times that except
for the few of you, “There is no evidence that anyone else has any problem
paying war taxes; so why are you bothering us with this bill?”
A highly educated theologian of our denomination said to me, “You can’t
hang a guilt trip on me about war taxes, because we aren’t in a war.”
Doesn’t everyone understand that this is a “Pay now, go later plan”? I
doubt that we will ever again pay for a war during a war. When the atomic
destruction comes it will be no consolation for the victims to remember
that these atomic bombs were paid for by peace-loving Mennonites, not some
terrible heathen Russians! If I should live to see that total destruction
(may God spare me that) I will know that my own brothers and sisters in
the faith have helped make it possible!
It has been pointed out to me that Menno Simons said “we should pay our
taxes” as justification for paying war taxes today. Based on Menno’s life
and teachings, how can anyone even suggest that he would voluntarily pay
our war taxes? I don’t know how it would be possible to dishonor the man
more than to hang that on him, when he was hunted like a criminal for
things a whole lot less contradictory to Jesus’ life and teaching than
voluntarily paying for killing!
In Luke 13:10–17,
the ruler of the synagogue was correct in calling attention to the laws of
the Sabbath. Sabbath observance was a good rule of conduct to obey, but
when it interfered with meeting human need, Jesus demonstrated that
meeting human need took precedence over Sabbath observance.
Now, suppose for the sake of comparison, I allow you to take
Romans 13:1–7
as universally applicable for today’s world. Now you have the same
difference that existed between Jesus and the Pharisees, namely literal
observance of the law versus human good and well being. You are opting for
the former (as the Pharisees did), but Jesus opted for the latter.
Even verses 8, 9, 10 of the same chapter
make it impossible to obey verse 7 if “their dues” are whatever they ask,
because today the payment of war taxes and loving my neighbor as
myself are mutually exclusive!
Certainly Jesus would not view preparation to kill someone as
the proper way to express God’s love.
Some of you say, “The Bible specifically says, ‘Pay your taxes,’ so
that’s what I do and what the government does with it is not my
responsibility.” That was the position of the church during Hitler’s
extermination of the Jews, a position which some of you have criticized
very severely even though to “be faithful” then was much more disastrous
than to be so now. Personal responsibility is such a consistent principle
throughout the Holy Scriptures that I should not need to belabor the
point. Even the worldly legal system has affirmed personal responsibility
regardless of government demands!
If you really behaved in such a simplistic literalism, then you ought
to advocate hatred of parents, because Jesus Himself said that if you
don’t hate your father and mother you can’t be His disciple. Since this is
completely opposite to all His teachings, we know that He said that for
comparison, for emphasis. In the same way, I wished to pay all my taxes
(and always had) until doing so became completely contrary to the life of
Christ!
Some of you argue, “The government will get the money anyway,” or
“Withholding my war taxes won’t stop the arms race.” The exact same
reasoning should put you into a military uniform! I could have reasoned
(as many did) that if I didn’t go into the military, they would just get
someone else to take my place. The day that I was drafted into Civilian
Public Service, I didn’t really notice any lessening of hostilities! I
didn’t take conscientious objector position because I thought it would be
successful (nor is that why I am writing this). The words I want
to hear from my Lord are: “Thou hast been faithful.”
Our citizens are told that all our “defense” (?) budget is to protect
our life and property. (Even if I were in favor of that, I wouldn’t
approve exceeding that by at least 25 times for the personal profit of
special interests.) Some years ago a Mennonite bishop wrote in the
Gospel Herald, “We shouldn’t criticize our
government because they protect our property.” The logical honest
extension of that is: “There is nothing more important than our property.”
What could be more contrary to the essence of the gospel, or the faith of
the Anabaptist martyrs? Didn’t Jesus specifically teach in
Luke 9:24
that if your overriding concern is to save your life, then you
will lose it? Certainly you can already see the beginning of the
financial destruction of our country because of the irresponsible and
insane spending of the military! How pathetic that the Mennonite Church,
because of our worldview, our concept of discipleship, and our persecution
history, could have been in the strength of the Holy Spirit, a powerful
mover toward peace and sanity, but instead has become a farce
instead of a force! History (if there will be any) will say of us
as Jesus said of the Pharisees: “They say, but they do
not.”
Is it any less a sin to kill someone than to ignore human need? If not,
then it seems very appropriate to paraphrase 1 John 3:17
for today. “If any of you have this world’s goods and voluntarily allow
some of it to be used to prepare to kill your brothers and sisters and to
destroy all that God has made, how is it possible for the love
and spirit of the God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to
dwell in a heart like that?”
What a horrifying possibility that any one might some day tell Jesus,
“Haven’t we held many evangelistic meetings, preached many great sermons,
written wonderful books, healed the sick, spoken in tongues, sang your
praises with great fervor?” and Jesus will have to say to you, “Depart
from me, ye workers of destruction!”
Have you ever considered this question: What effect will my being an
accomplice to the American military have on our worldwide witness to God’s
love and His saving power?
If I were an unbeliever in some Third World country and knew that
“Christian America” is the only country that ever dropped an atomic bomb
on a civilian population, and that “Christian America” supports and arms
42 repressive dictatorships in order to maintain the highest standard of
living on earth for themselves, and that they sell six times more weapons
of violence and destruction than any other country, and that the church
justifies all that, I am sure that I would never want to become a
Christian or have anything to do with such a God!
I fully expect that you will be able to put me down with theological
arguments, or discredit me with a self-righteous application of Scripture
taken out of context to justify and rationalize your position; but, at least,
ask yourself this pragmatic question: If everyone did as I do,
regarding war taxes, what difference would it make? If everyone (or
even all so-called pacifists) would respectfully decline to pay for war, what
difference would that make?
Why are Mennonites unable to take an official position against paying for war?
Is it because we really don’t know what the truth is? Is it because we never
had it so good and we don’t want to risk anything? Is it because we have
become so acculturated, so affluent that we don’t want martyrs anymore. Do we
much prefer millionaires now?
It is my firm conviction that, as far as God is concerned, the day that I pay
war taxes I effectively discredit all that I have ever said, written, or given
for the cause of peace!
The forces of evil do not care what you say, or how you pray as
long as you pay!
A personal note, please: None of us is “off limits” to Satan’s deception! I
therefore remind you of your responsibility to tell me if you believe that I
have been misled in my search for the path of obedience!
Daniel Slabaugh is pastor of Ann Arbor
(Mich.) Mennonite Church. He
is a laboratory supervisor at
St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and
has a farm as a hobby.
I have only one point of disagreement with Mr. Slabaugh; that is the matter
of paying our war taxes voluntarily. I pay taxes, but not voluntarily. I
happily pay the portion of my taxes which go for human services and running
the government (even if some is wasted), but I do not happily pay the
portion that goes for military support. We have a Quaker friend who once
“arranged” not to pay his war taxes and the
IRS
showed their “appreciation” by “arranging” for him to spend several months
in prison. Some years ago, we refused to pay our telephone surcharge tax but
later found that our checking account had been debited for that amount,
which they claimed we owed. We then refused to pay that tax by having our
telephone removed.
I would like to “arrange” not to pay war taxes, but the consequences for
exercising that “freedom” would be too harsh for me at this Hme. I,
therefore, pay my war taxes “under protest,” and may God have mercy.
I thought this was a pretty extraordinary example of tying yourself in
knots to justify continuing to pay war taxes:
Does a Christian have to pay all of his taxes? I don’t believe that he can
be taxed on what he does not have; and I don’t see any compelling reason
why a Christian should have to accumulate things just so as to pay
more taxes. In fact, a Christian who in his work gathers a great amount of
money to himself probably is doing more harm in participating in whatever
is bringing him the money than is being done by whatever portion of the
money is going to taxes.
But, what happens if we withhold part of the taxes on our incomes? If we do
not pay all of the taxes, people who are employed by defense contractors
and defense-related industries as well as military personnel may be thrown
out of work. Unemployment will be a hardship to these people; it will be
suffering caused by the actions of nonresistant Christians.
I should think that the appropriate method to be used by nonresistant
Christians to close the defense plants would be to convert such a large
part of the population to the discipleship of Christ that there would not
be enough people remaining to man the defense plants. The fact that this is
not now the case may very well be the fault of Christians, past and
present, and not the fault of the defense workers.
Of course, the easy answer is to cause suffering to someone we don’t like
so as to alleviate the suffering of someone we do; or to see the problem in
terms of things (money and bombs) rather than people. We
Christians are not to seek vengeance on the defense workers because of
their production of bombs, but it seems easier to overcome evil with evil
than to attempt to overcome evil with good. In this evil world we would
like to keep just a little evil for our own use, just for self-defense.
We in our human fear forget that man has no more power to destroy himself
than he has power, of himself, to draw his next breath. So we abandon the
methods of Jesus Christ and allow Satan to win the decisive battle and so
rob us of our share in the assured victory of Christ.
Took the traditional Render-unto-Caesar / Romans 13 line, asserting that
U.S. currency
belongs to the
U.S.
government, which can reclaim from Christians it at will.
I found myself cheering enthusiastically when the article by Pastor
Slabaugh on the payment of war taxes appeared… I hope there will be more
and more freedom in church papers to deal with this up and coming concern.
Considerations of conscientious war-tax resistance point up some larger
problems that we as the Mennonite Church live with but don’t necessarily
resolve. These problems have to do not with the ample biblical teaching
supportive of noncompliance with war support, but rather, with the lack of
practical models as well as awareness of support resources and groups.
These facilities would greatly enhance our ability to work out responsible
individual witness stances. Several kinds of practical questions seem to
emerge.
In the first place, what ranges of governmental receptiveness (especially
IRS
receptiveness) have been encountered by members of our faith and what
constructive follow-up responses have we Mennonites explored after we are
categorized as tax-evaders? Second, and more specifically, what kinds of
deduction possibilities have been attempted and upon what rationale?
Third, how may we relate the quality of committed Anabaptist peace
perspectives to the degree we withhold tax dollars? Finally, what types of
congregational support models have emerged and what growth has occurred in
each process?
I seem to hear the Apostle Peter speaking across a vast expanse of time
and firmly addressing not only a failing government but a growing church
as well with a burning perspective — “One should obey God more than men”
(Acts 5:29).
Yes. Now how does it happen within the war-tax arena in practical terms?
There is much discussion about the war tax. Maybe we should also give some
thought to the balance of our tax money. We can name the education tax, the
research tax, welfare tax, road tax, regulatory tax, as a few. We can also
identify the abortion tax, tobacco subsidy tax (although maybe this isn’t a
concern since we accept the fact that a lot of grain goes to the liquor
industry), the waste and fraud tax, and of course the congressman salary
tax that pays the people that vote for the war tax. On the local scene we
have others, including the state, county, and city police tax. I wonder if
paying the tax for local law enforcement could be understood to say that we
recognize that the state needs to carry a stick. Is it possible that it’s
the church’s responsibility to decide how big that stick should be? All
this gets somewhat complicated and confusing. It would be much simpler if
taxes were just taxes.
I thought Fretz’s commentary was a good demonstration of how much the
terms of the debate had shifted, even from the point of view of the
pro-taxpaying faction:
Nonresistant Christians pay taxes
Jesus’ kingdom is one of testimony to truth, saving truth, truth that
changes lives, truth that builds character. Caesar’s kingdom was one that
used the sword to restrain evil and even to crucify the innocent.
And yet Jesus had told inquirers to show Him the coin used for paying
taxes to Caesar.
Then He asked them, “Whose portrait is this? and whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied. Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is
Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Jesus did not discuss what percent of the tax money was spent for soldiers
or for war, even though He knew this. There was no implication in His
teaching that taxes paid to Caesar should be called “war taxes” or that
nonresistant Christians should try to avoid payment of such taxes because
they knew they would be used for military purposes.
In reference to payment of specific taxes for support of the military
enterprise such as were imposed by the Continental government in the time
of the Revolution, one can understand that nonresistant Christians found
themselves unable to pay them and especially so since it was
revolutionaries who were asking for them — to subsidize their rebellion.
Then, too, one can understand the attitude of the nonresistant Hutterites
in Moravia who were asked to pay a special war tax to support the war
against the Turks in the 1500s. Peter Riedemann, their leader, said: “For
war, killing, and bloodshed (where it is demanded especially for that) we
give nothing but not out of wickedness or arbitrariness, but out of the
fear of God (1 Tim. 5)
that we may not be partakers in strange sins” (“Taxation,”
The Mennonite Encyclopedia,
p. 688).
I do not agree with Daniel Slabaugh that the federal income tax is a war
tax, per se. His entire article is based on calling it
that… However, it is a good thing to give one’s farm to the church (and so
reduce one’s payment of a tax that is partly used for military purposes).
But should such gifts be given to the church only to reduce payment of
federal income tax? Would not a more scriptural reason be to help the
church in its mission of testifying to the truth?
When I was a young man of 18, I was graciously healed from a critical
attack of pneumonia, and I decided to devote my life to full-time service
to the Lord, wherever and whenever He would want me to serve. For fifty
years I have served in mission work or Christian school teaching on an
income basis that took care of my needs (Phil. 4:19),
but often exempted me from payment of federal income tax, especially if I
was faithful in support of the Lord’s work and diligent to claim other
exemptions and deductions.
But I do not call federal income tax a war tax, nor think I should promote
nonpayment of it on this basis. Should others want to follow my example of
devoting their lives and income to the Lord’s work I would encourage them
to do so, not primarily to avoid payment of federal income tax, but in
order to build Christ’s church on earth.
I think we need to watch that we don’t lose our salvation in going overboard
in some subjects. I do appreciate a country where we have freedom of worship
to our God. The best way to show our appreciation is to pay our taxes. To
hold some back and refuse to pay, saying, “We don’t want to pay for war” is
not the answer. How do you know that the remaining taxes you pay can also be
put in the military? The taxes are for the government to use and it is
theirs. The responsibility of how and where it is used is theirs also.
I have become increasingly aware of the fact that the issue of payment of
war taxes is dividing the Mennonite Church. I have indeed found myself
pulling for both sides at different times and I realize that much study in
the Word of God is required.
As far as Daniel Slabaugh’s article… is concerned, he raised some very good
questions and made us more aware of our need as a church to come together on
this issue. I am not sure that our problems will go away by all of us
turning our properties over to the church but I do believe Daniel made an
honest response.
I’m not convinced that war taxes is the real issue. Right now this is the
issue that is surfacing, but somehow I believe that God is speaking to all
of us about how we use His money. We are living in an age where luxuries are
now necessities, and giving is done when it is convenient. That doesn’t add
up to the teachings in the New Testament at all.
My suggestion would be to try to live a simpler lifestyle. It is very
obvious only those that make increasing amounts of money pay taxes. Could we
lower our standard of living and give more thereby reducing our taxable
income? My suggestion would include taking a look at the Macedonian church
as Paul talks about them in 2 Cor. 8:1–7.
He tells us that they have given as much as they were able and even beyond
their ability. It would be good to learn a lesson from them. Also let’s look
at what Paul says to the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 9:6–7:
“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows
generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has
decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God
loves a cheerful giver”
(NIV).
Farrar saluted Kratz’s letter, and added: “we must first really tithe all
of our incomes… a life of voluntary simplicity… would make all talk or tax
resistance superfluous. Indeed, I believe the only radical response to
war — that which strikes at the root causes — is voluntary poverty.”
Shall we tell our Caesar that he is wrong? Peter and Paul both said that we
should submit to the authorities and that we should show them honor and
respect. Since we live under a democracy instead of a dictatorship I would
like to suggest that we show respect and honor to our president by sending
him a message. No, not just a letter or a phone call, but a money message.
You know, money speaks!
Let all Mennonites and any others that care to join them send their tax
monies to the Mennonite General Board to forward to the
IRS in
one lump payment with the message, "We, the people, request these monies be
used for people programs and none be used for military purposes.” That would
be democratic and respectful, would it not?
The implications of this statement for the Mennonite Church today are
enormous. Most Americans, believing what the popular media and the
government propaganda tells them, are not really aware of the dangerous path
we are walking as we pile up arms and simultaneously arm other nations
involved in active wars — both internal and international. Mennonites have
been well informed for years about these things but have done far too
little, even symbolically, to redress the imbalance. There is no excuse for
this. When will the church recoil from the unavoidable fact that our taxes
and our greed are destroying our brothers and sisters while we read these
lines? When will we give a strong, clear “No” to the government’s growing
demand for funds for war?
There remains but one immediate response that will suffice — that of
voluntary poverty (living below the federal tax line) and personal service
to those we have wronged. The list of places to work is staggering and
growing longer: Somalia, Cambodia, Italy, Lebanon, the Persian Gulf,
Bangladesh, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Mississippi, the inner city,
Appalachia…
Mr. Reagan proposes to cut taxes while increasing the war budget
drastically. He knows there is a real economic crisis simmering in the
U.S., yet is
blind to the fact that our military dominated economy is the single greatest
cause of inflation and unemployment. While he officially opposes the draft
he wants more sophisticated instruments of mass slaughter, costing enormous
amounts of money.
I call the Mennonite Church to stop evading responsibility and challenge her
to stand up publicly, and by word and action, witness for peace and justice
and a nation more ready to welcome the kingdom of God.
Helmuth made a long-overdue frontal assault on the traditional
interpretation of Romans 13:
Is one government ordained as much as another?
Taxes and the faithful church
Twenty years ago efforts to introduce ideas of war-tax refusal into the
Mennonite church met with little response. Times have changed and Daniel
Slabaugh’s “Testimony Regarding the Payment of War Taxes”… indicates how
deeply we are now being challenged on this issue.
No one who endeavors to live in the spirit of Christ can feel easy while
helping to finance the machinery of war. We all want to feel our lives are a
consistent witness for the truth of Christ’s love and are, therefore, made
increasingly uneasy as the testimony against war taxes gains currency within
the church.
The standard method of reasoning, to put at ease those whose conscience has
grown tender on this point, is to remind them that the government is
ordained of God and that Christians, therefore, are to obey the government.
(An exception to this reasoning is made in the case of personal military
service. Having allowed this exception we must, it seems to me, allow that
growth in moral sensitivity may well lead to further civil disobedience. )
What exactly does it mean to say “the government is ordained of God”? To
approach this question we need to distinguish two levels of ordination.
First, we hold the church to be ordained of God in a unique way, quite
distinctly different in origin, character, and mission from other social
institutions. Second, because God is the origin and sustainer of all life,
it may be said that, in general, social institutions are ordained of God.
Plainly, the idea of government being ordained of God belongs to the second
level.
Now, it seems to me, that when someone argues that I must pay my taxes
because the government is ordained of God, they are confusing the two
levels. They are talking as if the government was as uniquely and as
specifically ordained of God as the church. This is plainly not true, and a
good many of our ancestors laid down their lives to avoid this confusion.
Government is born out of a human predisposition to organize and control.
Slavery, being derived from the same human predisposition, may also be
regarded as having once been ordained of God. Slavery evidently gave the
apostle Paul no moral pause. He did not foresee that it would become
intolerable to Ghristian morality. Nor did he foresee that governments would
fall and rise through a wide variety of processes, including representative
assemblies, constitutional conventions, force of arms, and subversive
manipulation.
To regard all governments as somehow equally ordained of God is to sever the
concern for social justice from its biblical mandate. A large talent for
political naivety would be required to see the government visited on Uganda
by Idi Amin and the government of Switzerland as equally legitimate.
It is possible to argue that one’s own government is “more ordained” than
others, but such a self-serving view brings with it the whole baggage of
civil religion, and ill befits the world-servant role to which we understand
ourselves called. Governments may be ordained of God in some general
naturalistic sense, but people who care about social justice and human
well-being must judge whether they are legitimate or illegitimate.
Perhaps because Mennonites have a traditional aloofness from politics, the
matter of legitimacy in government often seems poorly understood. I have
seen it argued recently in the Mennonite press, and supported by biblical
proof texts, that opposing the government on the war-tax issue is the same
as opposing God.
It is important to understand that the political framework needed to support
this argument is something very close to the “divine right of kings.” Why
this antique political notion, deriving from ancient and medieval despotisms
and seriously confusing church and state, should be used against the
testimony of tax refusers in the Mennonite Church is, indeed, a curious
matter. Perhaps others, better equipped than I, can delve lovingly into the
motivations of this desperate argument.
Life in North America has been so good to our people that it is difficult to
imagine Mennonites becoming an outlaw church on the issue of war taxes. Yet
the teachings of Jesus and the demands of faithfulness, if taken seriously,
plainly move us in that direction. The conviction that the faithful church
must, at times, become an outlaw church should not be shocking to those
acquainted with Anabaptist origins and history.
If we don’t draw the line at paying for nuclear weapons (or conventional
weapons, for that matter), will we draw it at their use? Military planners
no longer regard nuclear weapons as of deterrent use only. They are openly
talking about a limited use of their offensive first-strike capacity.
What if a nuclear bomb had been dropped on Hanoi in an effort to end the war
in Vietnam? What if the American government uses nuclear weapons to maintain
access to Middle East oil? Would the church then draw the line and move into
a position of active tax refusal? Or will we sit tight, no matter what the
government does?
Is there any threshold of violence or oppression which the government might
cross that would cause the Mennonite Church to advocate tax refusal?
Yoder was having nothing of such scriptural revisionism:
“The teachings of Jesus and the demands of faithfulness, if taken
seriously, plainly move us in that direction [of resisting taxes which may
be used for military purposes],” writes Keith Helmuth…
Whatever teachings he has in mind, however, he neglects to identify. Of
course, that is a common omission among Mennonite writers who advocate tax,
draft, and other forms of “resistance” and “civil” disobedience. Bold
assertions, sharp reasonings, and generalized allusions to Scripture. But,
no direct quotes or citings of passages.
I feel the teachings of Jesus plainly move us in a direction radically
different from tax resistance. I find those teachings in such places as
Mt. 5:41
where Jesus is quoted as instructing those who would seriously seek the
kingdom to, if forced to go a distance, continue on an additional distance.
It is my understanding that this teaching likely referred to the practice
of the Roman army to conscript civilians, literally off the street, and
force them to carry military supplies for perhaps a mile or so. From that
it seems logical for me to conclude that Jesus did not even exclude forced
assistance of the military (such as by taxes) from the compensatory love
response he prescribed for those who are beaten, stolen from, forced to do
things against their will.
Certainly the faithful church will often also face becoming an outlaw
church. The Scripture makes that plain. But, search as I may, I can’t find
any scriptural evidence that resisting taxes is something our Lord would
call us to. Rather, I can only conclude tax resistance to be a symptom of
the philosophy of those seeking a political kingdom and a social salvation
through the exercise of earthly power.
It seems to me that it is only fair that Mennonite editors ask writers
supporting tax resistance to document all supportive references found in
Scripture for their points. I think we readers are by now quite familiar
with their reasonings and rhetoric. If they have a scriptural basis, let’s
hear it.
D.R. Yoder is correct. I cannot cite a specific teaching of Jesus on war tax
refusal.
The case for war tax refusal, however, rests not on proof texts, but on the
fact that Jesus introduced a profound moral vision, with an extraordinary
potential for growth, into the stream of human consciousness. When Jesus was
asked about the “greatest commandment” He replied: “Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it.
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Starting from this masterly summation of spiritual life, faithfulness, it
seems to me, depends on our growth in moral sensitivity and not on our
ability to correctly analyze all the cultural idiosyncrasies to which Jesus
was necessarily responding. Should we help finance the defoliation of our
neighbor’s rice fields or the massacre of her family just because Jesus
never had the occasion to comment on those situations? I think it entirely
fair to say the “teachings of Jesus” move us away from such behavior.
It was recognized by the early Anabaptists that personal military service
was seriously out of harmony with “the teachings of Jesus.” The refusal of
state ordered military service is not a specific injunction of Jesus, but
the growth in moral sensitivity which accompanied the Anabaptist movement
drew out this inherent aspect of the gospel. The same process, apparently,
kept the Anabaptist settlers in the New World from making use of readily
available slave labor, though Jesus nowhere condemns the institution of
slavery. It is this same growth in moral sensitivity, …which is now focusing
the issue.
As for “seeking a political kingdom and a social salvation through the
exercise of earthly power,” I doubt that very many who support the witness
of war tax refusal have any such aspirations. “Political kingdoms” can only
exist on the conscripted lives and resources of our communities and it is
exactly this that tax refusal opposes. The concept of “social salvation”
has, by now, lost even its nostalgia value. Our dreams are far more modest.
We hope to avoid nuclear holocaust and keep the planet habitable. We want
the resources now being wasted in military budgets to help feed, house, and
clothe the poor of the world. This is not “social salvation.” It is only
good sense and common decency.
One final note: The issue of war tax refusal is one that all persons have to
weigh in the balance against all the other important factors in their lives.
Judge not is the rule here. What makes no sense from the standpoint of a
growing family might come to make good sense after 50.
Our lofty discussion is probably beside the point. If we could see the
anguish that brings people to the point of tax refusal we would be inundated
with images of napalm and herbicides raining down on Vietnam, families
massacred in El Salvador, and the chilling vision of the neutron bomb
grinning over empty cities.
All our rhetoric, all our proof texts stagger and fall in the face of a dead
child and screaming mother with helicopters thundering overhead. The
crucifixion of Christ’s flesh is ever before us. Our sins roll across the
landscape. We do what we must and pray for strength.
In the Mennonite Board of
Congregational Ministries board of directors met.
Among their decisions:
In harmony with the General Board
action to support the General Conference Mennonite Church in their judicial
challenge of the collecting of taxes by church agencies, the board acted to
encourage staff “to publicize among our congregations the issues involved in
the judicial action and the need for funds for this purpose.”
The organizers of the Smoketown Consultation (which was in part a conservative
Eastern Mennonite backlash against war tax resistance and other innovations)
met again in in what was
called the “Berne consultation.” This time, however, according to
Gospel Herald:
“Little attention at Berne was given to war taxes, a dominant theme at Smoketown…”
…neither the Mennonite Church nor the IKV
feels comfortable with individual radical action. Example: Dirk Visser, a
Dutch Mennonite journalist working for the equivalent of the Associated Press
wire services in the Netherlands, called my attention to Willem-Jan Maas, a
Mennonite minister serving in Opeland. This minister tried to funnel what he
considered the war-taxes portion of his income tax to the Dutch Mennonite
Peace Group via the local income tax office.
This effort was fraudulently aborted by the tax officers, but even had it been
successful, the minister would not have been applauded by the IKV,
according to Visser. The IKV
has taken the political action route and with that the churches can cooperate.
In a Peace Tax Fund-boosting article
in the issue, it was noted that
war tax resisters acted as the “bad cop” to the “good cop” of lobbyists:
“[David] Bassett and others cited the ‘inconvenience factor’ of current war tax
resistance to the IRS as further incentive for change in the tax laws.”
Richerd Lewman, Jr. went back on
the offensive with a forceful rebuttal of Christian war tax resistance for the
issue:
To accept the statements that justify the nonpayment of war taxes is to accept
the statement that Jesus was a hypocrite.
After reading much about the war-tax issue and listening to much discussion,
both pro and con, I wanted to find out more about the issue, so that I could
take a stand consistent with God’s teachings. I read all that I could that
justified not paying taxes. Then I read as much as possible justifying the
payment of taxes. Both of these included much Bible reading and prayer. I then
did a lot more praying and asking God to guide me to what his truth is. He led
me to more reading and research.
After all of this, I was led to only one conclusion. If we believe Jesus
taught that we should not pay taxes to a government in the process of or
planning to slaughter people, then Jesus was a hypocrite because he paid his
taxes. If Jesus was a hypocrite, because he taught one thing and did another,
then Jesus sinned and he was not the unblemished lamb suitable to die for our
sins. So there cannot be salvation through him.
The first point made by those who would condone, even encourage, the
nonpayment of war taxes, is that income tax is voluntary, because it requires
citizen cooperation and to pay it is to agree with the government’s policies.
Using this same line of thinking we could say that all laws are voluntary, and
to obey them is to agree with them. I may not agree that I should not drive
any faster than 55 miles per hour, but if I decide not to obey the law I will
be penalized for it. If I pay my taxes I do not necessarily agree with how my
tax money is spent. But I still must pay.
A second point that is made is that the personal responsibility of loving my
neighbor comes before the law. I agree. But, I ask this question. What were
some of Jesus’ actions and how did they coincide with his teachings? Many
instances of civil disobedience and tax evasion have been justified using
Jesus’ teachings. I feel that his teachings are removed from their context if
they are not in agreement with the example of his perfect life. Do we read in
the Bible that Jesus went to Rome to picket in front of the Senate about the
atrocities committed against Jerusalem. Do we find Jesus lobbying to have the
Roman troops withdrawn from the temple, or for the exemption of the Jews from
paying the many taxes levied on them largely for the support of the
bloodthirsty Roman army? Or do we find Jesus not paying his war taxes? The
answer to each of these questions is a very clear “No!”
But wait, you say it was different back then. Was it?
They say that we must not pay our taxes, in order to make a witness, since we
as Mennonites are not drafted anymore. Well, the Jews in Jesus’ time were not
drafted either. They say they did not have conscription back then. Wrong.
Conscription dates back to the earliest civilization. They say that our
government needs our money more than our bodies. Well, the Roman government
needed money, because many of the soldiers were professionals and they fought
for the money. They say today we have the atom bomb, the most destructive war
machine ever devised by man, up to this time. Back then it was the Roman army,
the most destructive and bloodthirsty war machine ever devised by man, up to
that time.
How do we know that Jesus paid his taxes? The Tribute Coin referred to by
Jesus was a coin used to pay the poll tax which had to be paid by every male
person, ages 14–65, and by females, ages 12–65. If Jesus had not paid his tax,
would not the Pharisees and Sadducees have brought this to the attention of
Pilate when Jesus was before him, since they were looking for something to
convict him of?
If you say that Jesus’ teachings are that we should not pay our war taxes, I
cannot accept this. I believe that Jesus was the perfect example of the
Christian life and that his life was consistent with his teachings and that he
was not a hypocrite. If Jesus paid taxes to the government of his time, then I
can do no less. In fact, I must pay those taxes if I am to be in accordance
with Jesus’ life and teachings.
You say that we must follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. I agree, but how
do we discern the leading of the Holy Spirit? We must go to the Bible. If the
Bible and Jesus’ example contradict what we thought was the leading of the
Holy Spirit, then it can’t be the leading of the Holy Spirit. The leading of
the Holy Spirit, if it is authentic, will always agree with the life and
teachings of Jesus.
You ask. Why doesn’t the Mennonite Church take an official position against
payment of war taxes? I ask you. How can we take an official position
condemning something that Jesus did? I am in no position to question Jesus’
actions!
If we are to be consistent about not paying our war taxes because we disagree
with their purpose, then let’s stop paying that portion of our taxes that goes
for abortion and subsidizes the tobacco industry. But then, why not withhold
our property taxes if the schools teach evolution or sex education? Once the
pattern of nonpayment as protest is begun, there will be no logical place to
stop.
Jesus taught us to pay our taxes and his example showed us we must do the
same. If I am to be a Christian and desire Jesus to say to me someday, “Well
done, good and faithful servant,” then I can do no less than pay my taxes.
A
letter from Elvin Glick
fired just about every arrow from the traditionalist quiver: “there is no such
thing as a war tax” — “The government has a right to its armies and police
forces.” — “Governments have a right to levy taxes.” — Render unto Caesar, two
kingdoms, go the extra mile, Romans 13, Jesus & Paul never resisted their
governments, war taxes are different from military service,
etc.
[One extreme of the feedback:] In 22½ hours of business sessions, 266
delegates who answered the roll call “dragged their feet in giving women equal
leadership opportunities in the church, in speaking with a clear voice on
nuclear armaments and war taxes, and in preparing a relevant and up-to-date
confession of faith.”
In their business sessions delegates… in the longest discussion of the
week — struggled with how to realize reconciliation with a delegate who
denounced them for continuing to pay war taxes.
Most of the floor discussion centered in the letter to President Reagan…
“There’s an unfortunate philosophy behind this letter,” said James Hess,
Bethel, Pa. “It’s that
because I’m a Christian, I’m qualified to advise the government how to go
about its business. That goes against our historic doctrine of the separation
of church and state.”
Said Dan Slabaugh, Whitmore,
Mich.: “The president will
laugh when he reads this letter — if he reads it at all. He’ll laugh because
he knows that every payday we disavow what we say when we continue to pay our
taxes for war.”
A sidebar to that article read:
A prophetic voice?
How does the assembly process minority viewpoints? That became the focus in an
intense discussion engaging assembly delegates for 2½ hours beyond their
scheduled closing time in the final business session.
Impetus for the discussion came when Dan Slabaugh, Whitmore Lake,
Mich., asked permission to
make a four-minute statement on a concern of his. He confronted delegates with
their failure to back up their sentiments about peace, as stated in their
letter to President Reagan, with their actions. “Why do you continue to pay
taxes that go for war purposes?” he asked. “The religious community in America
could stop the arms buildup if it wanted to; I can’t understand why this
doesn’t excite us.”
Slabaugh reported he had wanted to put two motions on the floor but had been
advised by assembly leaders not to. (Later discussion revealed one motion
would have called delegates to acknowledge that paying war taxes was sin but
that they planned to continue doing so anyway; the other would have called for
all Mennonites to stop paying war taxes immediately.) In frustration Slabaugh
concluded: “I joined the Mennonite Church because of its stand on peace and
nonresistance. I will leave it for the same reason.” He then walked off the
assembly floor to participate in a seminar on war taxes.
In subsequent discussion, many delegates voiced concern about the incident and
called for reconciliation to be effected between Slabaugh and assembly
leaders. There was also discussion on how the assembly can hear a prophetic
word and what is the process by which it is determined whether or not a
minority opinion is prophetic.
After long discussion, delegates approved a motion which (1) made Slabaugh’s
concerns about war taxes a part of the official record of the assembly; (2)
asked the Council on Faith, Life, and Strategy to bring proposals to the next
assembly for dealing with the war tax issue and for discerning “prophetic
voices”; (3) called for immediate steps to be taken to bring about
reconciliation between Slabaugh and the assembly.
For Suzanne Polen, a part-time research microbiologist in Pittsburgh,
President Reagan’s recent decisions to increase arms spending mean that she
will no longer pay that portion of her taxes she says would fund national
defense. “The government is buying weapons which will eventually kill me,”
said the 45-year-old tax protester. Instead of paying her full tax bill to the
government, she plans to deposit about 50 percent of the money into the newly
created Pittsburgh Fund for Life, which describes itself as a peace and
justice ministry.
Since the Vietnam War ended, Wildon Fadely of the Internal Revenue Service
said, the number of those who have withheld taxes to protest Pentagon
activities has been “minuscule.” The category is so small that no separate
records are kept, he added. But he admitted his general impression was the
“protests of all kinds are on the rise.”
A conservative Anabaptist conference on “Basic Biblical Beliefs”
was held in . Among its
concerns for the church: “There is a growing alignment with ‘leftist elements’
who advocate civil disobedience, demonstrations, and nonpayment of taxes used
for military purposes.”
We call for acts of tax resistance to be undertaken since our federal income
taxes fuel the arms race. We suggest giving funds denied for use in building
nuclear weapons to groups working for peace and disarmament, and to groups
meeting human needs.
Jim Longacre, Peace Section chairman, brought a statement of concern to the
group for possible adoption. After the document was criticized for not being
specific enough, the group moved to add a paragraph on the war tax issue.
Although there was some dissent regarding the usefulness of a statement (one
person noted: “It’s easier to assent to a piece of paper than to be
accountable”), and the initial voting process was confused and had to be
repeated, the majority of the participants approved the statement.
That section of the statement read:
We were repeatedly reminded in this Assembly that the conscription of our
income supports the nuclear arms race. Moreover, we saw that the government is
increasing expenditures for nuclear and other weapons by decreasing
expenditures for human services for the poor and oppressed. We encourage
people to consider ways to witness against this evil use of the power of
taxation, such as refusing to pay the military portion of the federal income
tax.
Episcopal Bishop Robert H. Cochrane of Olympia,
Wash., while denouncing the
worldwide buildup of nuclear arms, stopped short of condoning a tax revolt as
did his Roman Catholic counterpart.
“Please know that I shall continue to pay to my government every penny of my
income tax, but at the same time every penny that I save under our president’s
new tax plan I shall give away to meet the needs of the poor and uncared for,”
Bishop Cochrane said in his annual address to the diocesan convention.
“I invite you to do the same.”
Bishop Cochrane’s diocese covers western Washington, the same area taken in by
the archdiocese of Catholic Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle. The
archbishop has become a rallying point for a growing anti-nuclear movement
among leaders of nearly a dozen denominations in the Pacific Northwest.
Archbishop Hunthausen has said that people would be morally justified in
refusing to pay 50 percent of their income taxes in nonviolent resistance to
nuclear “murder and suicide.” He also said he favors unilateral nuclear
disarmament.
Truman H. Brunk, Jr., snuck a
war tax resistance message into his article
“Disarmed by his peace”:
Neither can Christians hide their eyes from the evil insanity of the arms
race. Christ came to signal peace on earth, not preparation for war. Christ’s
peace means that we cannot participate in the crime of preparation for nuclear
war. The obedience of Christians to their government is not absolute and
unconditional. We need the courage to avoid adding even a particle of evil to
our broken creation. How long can good Mennonites pray for peace and pay for
nuclear readiness with our tax dollars?
[T]here are three things God is doing in Ames, Iowa… [including] the
formulation of guidelines for a war tax alternative fund.
[Ames Mennonite Fellowship] is taking the lead in establishing a war tax
alternative fund for persons in the Ames area who are conscientiously opposed
to paying taxes for war. In ,
AMF
took formal action to establish the fund. Since then, some $300 has been
contributed to it. On
seven persons gathered and drew up guidelines for participation in the fund.
In brief, the group determined that contributors to the fund need to pay “an
equivalent to the amount actually withheld from Internal Revenue Service.”
Participants are expected to sign a “statement of purpose and guidelines” at
the time of the first deposit. Keith Schrag, Dan Clark, and other
AMF
participants in the fund welcome questions and counsel from the broader church
in this matter.
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 17th century, but began to coalesce as a distinct organization in the late 18th century.
The original publication of this Church was called The Herald of Truth.
Another publication, Gospel Witness, began publishing in , and the two merged into Gospel Herald in .
At least in the early years, editors of these magazines had a great deal of authority in shaping and reinforcing Mennonite doctrine.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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 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 and ultimately resulted in the government making some concessions to their conscientious scruples.
In 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 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.
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 .
In , 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 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.
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 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.
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 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 , 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 , 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.
When the General Conference Mennonite Church met in its 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 , and war tax resistance was again back-burnered.
The momentum of war tax resistance was already flagging by the time the Mennonite Church general assembly met in 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.”
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 () assembly.
The board conferred with other denominations who were wrestling with the same issue, and then took testimony at a General Board meeting in 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 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 ”!
In 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 , 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 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 .
In , Cliff Kindy wrote a full-throated encouragement of war tax resistance for the Church of the Brethren Messenger, the Camp Mack / Waubee conference enlisted people to sign a war tax resistance pledge, and a “New Call to Peacemaking” conference brought representatives of the three traditional peace churches together.
Wilbur J. Stump wrote in to the issue to promote the World Peace Tax Fund bill, which he claimed “would enable me, and others who feel as I do, to have the war part of my taxes used for peace projects” and would be “a legal alternative to paying taxes for military purposes” (source).
That proposed legislation was also boosted by an article a few pages further on in the same issue (source).
That article quoted a card that the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund was asking supporters to send to Washington as saying that the bill “would allow conscientious objectors to have that portion of their taxes which would normally go for military purposes used instead for peace projects.”
The article quoted Brethren bill booster Dean M. Miller:
It is obvious that the payment of federal taxes inevitably involves us in war and preparation for war, since tax monies are not clearly differentiated into military and non-military categories…
One avenue of escape for this dilemma is to refuse to pay taxes.
However, money refused from tax payments is refused as much from the humane programs of government as from military programs.
We are not always able to make clear that we are protesting war and not taxation itself.
Furthermore, whatever taxes are withheld as an act of conscience, the government is able to collect by means of levies and confiscations.
An article in a later issue noted that an accompanying Senate bill had been introduced by bipartisan sponsors.
Another noted that the United Church of Christ had also endorsed the legislation.
And that’s it for .
All of the talk of war tax resistance that used to fill the pages of the Messenger is gone, replaced with this (ultimately fruitless) lobbying.
It’s worth noting that the “peace tax fund” legislation originally being promoted was better in many ways from the similar legislation that’s floundering today.
That said, this goes to show that from the very beginning, the “peace tax fund” movement has discouraged war tax resistance.
The issue brought the first full-throated encouragement of war tax resistance in a long time, from Brethren resister Cliff Kindy (source):
What to render unto Caesar
, 44 people from seven states gathered at Camp Mack in Northern Indiana to study and fellowship together to discern God’s will for the church as it faces requirements from the US government to pay vast sums of money for military-related purposes.
We were a mixture of Methodists, Mennonites, and Brethren who had been struggling with this issue for many years.
In the face of the fact that as church people we are paying over three times as much money in only the military-related portions of our taxes as we give for all church and charity purposes, our Bible study of the weekend focused on the clear word that Jesus is Lord of the earth.
Our time together was filled with joyful singing, unifying times of worship, meaningful moments of sharing our feelings and experiences, and deep periods of Bible study with openness to Jesus’ call changing our very lives.
The retreat was pulled together by Chuck Boyer of On Earth Peace and the BVS peace team from New Windsor.
There was a real openness on the part of the leadership (Donald Kaufman, author of What Belongs to Caesar?, and Lee Griffith from Advaita House in Baltimore) to allow the Spirit to change the agenda of the weekend to fit the call coming out of the discernment process.
Although retreats such as this are often little more than times of learning and fellowship, this gathering was an exciting exception with the potential to call the church to a fresh understanding of how total are the demands on those who profess Jesus as Lord of their lives.
On , out of moments of worship, listening for the word of the Lord, and sharing together came the Waubee Peace Pledge (named for Lake Waubee, the location of the Camp Mack retreat) and commitments to continuing activities of witness to our church and the world around us.
Although we were at different positions in our own lives, there was an amazing unity in feeling at Camp Mack that the pledge should be one written as strongly as the Word of God dictates and yet shared with the humility which the sin of our own lives necessitates.
What follows is the pledge in its final form with an invitation to each of you to join, if after deep, prayerful searching you find that you must.
Waubee Peace Pledge Ⅰ
Jesus Christ is Lord and we pledge our lives to his Lordship.
This is a pledge which we do make and we can make because the Lord fills his people with faith, hope, and love.
This is a pledge which we make with humility, but also with conviction, aware of the risks, since under all circumstances, we must obey God rather than people.
We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, knowing that it is in the resurrection that we have our life.
We need follow death no more.
Death is conquered.
God chooses life for us.
We therefore pledge ourselves to the service of life and the renunciation of death.
Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and his way is the way of peace.
We will seek to oppose the way of war.
Specifically we make this pledge to our brothers and sisters in Christ:
Since we do not give our bodies for war, neither will we give our money.
We will refuse payment of federal telephone taxes and federal income taxes which go for military purposes.
Where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also.
If our treasure is involved in making war, our hearts cannot be set toward making peace.
We will pay no taxes for war, and if that means legal or other jeopardy for any of us, we will seek to support one another as sisters and brothers.
The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.
Render unto God what belongs to God.
We further pledge ourselves to urgently communicate with brothers and sisters in our churches, urging them to join us in refusing money for war.
We will also work to have annual meetings of our churches take a firm position against payment of war taxes, and to have church agencies agree to refuse withholding of these taxes from the pay of employees.
We believe that we who are the body of Christ should not serve as a military tax collection agency.
We further pledge ourselves to keep our hearts and lives open to the movement of God’s Spirit and to follow where Christ might lead us on the path of peace.
We pray for help and guidance — that we might be instruments of God’s peace.
We invite others to join in doing the words of this covenant and we seek to support those who are struggling toward this and other means of witness against war in the world.
We want to join you in whatever ways of sharing and commitment are possible through our common life in Christ.
Peace be with you.
Because we are at different points of commitment, a second pledge came out of this conference.
There was a common understanding by participants in the conference that Jesus is the King of Peace and that it is wrong to pay taxes for war, but for some that witness to life takes a different form.
Support for the World Peace Tax Fund is the form that takes for some of us.
Overall, though, the feeling of the conference was that, as a church, God calls us much beyond that in our witness for peace and our no to war.
As signers of Waubee Peace Pledge Ⅱ, we invite you to join if you feel God’s leading in the matter.
Waubee Peace Pledge Ⅱ
We, in spirit and in conscience affirm the Waubee Peace Pledge and fully support our sisters and brothers of that covenant.
At this time in our lives we feel unable to commit ourselves to non-payment of income and phone taxes.
We do commit our time, energy, and resources to searching for alternate channels of resistance, and pledge ourselves to continued seeking of God’s will for us in acting definitively to oppose those taxes for payment of war.
We give thanks for the freedom given us through Christ which enables us in this search, and we pray for the strength and hope to use our freedom as servants of God.
Out of these pledges and the activities of the weekend came several commitments and decisions.
It was felt that there was no need for a new newsletter but that our effort should be joined with the God and Caesar newsletter (Commission on Home Ministries, General Conference Mennonite Church, Box 347, Newton, KS 67114) and be supplemented as needed by a memo from the BVS peace team.
An exciting development was the surfacing of a group interested in serious Bible study of scriptures dealing with the issue of taxes.
Tony Sayer will be coordinating that study through the mail.
Three commitments relating to the church were to 1) share with congregations and individuals on the topic of the church and taxes which are used for war; 2) ask the decision-making bodies of our churches to endorse a statement calling all our church-related institutions to stop withholding taxes for IRS when most of those go to the US military; and 3) offer ourselves if the need arises to fill (in name only) the positions of high risk which might be threatened with prosecution by IRS because of the radical nature of some of our stances for peace.
Many at the conference will be working toward a concerted witness in the spring with the institutions of the US government that are ignoring the breaking of the Kingdom of God into our midst.
Whatever our point of commitment we want to encourage each other to deeper Christian discipleship in spite of the radically scandalous nature of the kingdom as it takes shape in our world.
May God grant us the grace to travel in that way.
Following this was a list of the names of twenty-two signers of pledge #1, and five of pledge #2.
The issue went back to peace tax fund stuff, with a profile of National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund promoter Wilbur Stump (source).
Stump was an attendee at the Waubee / Camp Mack conference, and one of the signers of pledge #2.
Anita and Richard Buckwalter shared their letter to the phone company in which they announced “we are no longer going to pay ‘protection’ money (blood money) to support [Uncle Sam’s] death machine” (source):
P.S. We donate the amount of our withheld phone tax to the Peace Tax Fund at Lansing Church of the Brethren, to be used in ministries for peacemaking.
They also shared their letter to the IRS in which they explained their refusal to pay a portion of their income taxes. Excerpt:
If you check your files, you will see that our protest has been consistent and lengthy.
Our purpose was then and is now to witness to the way of the Prince of Peace and to register our conscientious opposition to the use of our taxes for war-making.
To this end, we now feel called to move one step farther in our witness.
We can not in good conscience or in good faith sign over to you that portion of our taxes — roughly 35 percent in — that goes for present military use.
We refuse to take the initiative in paying for death and the destruction of God’s creation.
Therefore, we will not willingly forward this money to you; this is our witness to the powers that be — that God’s will for peace lives on in the victory of Christ over the powers of death.
Please note that we do not argue with the government’s power to collect taxes.
We accept the legitimate taxing powers of the state and willingly submit our taxes when we conscientiously can; we will even help to pay for past sins and wars of this nation — otherwise the percentage would be much higher.
But after much study of the Bible, prayer, and dialogue, we have come to the conviction that we will make this witness to the gospel of peace as over against the insanity of planning for war and nuclear holocausts.
Unfortunately, because the World Peace Tax Fund Act has not been enacted yet by Congress, our actions mean some inconvenience to you.
We regret this, and for your sake hope for the day when that law will make our witness “legal.”
Until then, we know that you have the power to collect our money.
We will not obstruct your efforts in that direction; neither will we hide or make personal gain from the money.
We are now and always will be open and direct with you about our intentions; we don’t wish to cause offense.
And we will forward copies of this letter to our elected representatives.
If you have any questions regarding our beliefs, we would be glad to dialogue with you.
There were three queries, from three separate congregations, concerning the World Peace Tax Fund Act, on the agenda at the Annual Conference.
A Standing Committee drafted a statement in response, “urging that Brethren support the WPTF through Annual Conference communiques to the President of the United States and appropriate Congressional committees, dissemination of information from the General Offices, continued promotion by the Washington Office, and congregational and individual letter-writing to members of Congress.” (source)
But some skepticism began to emerge:
While the Standing Committee recommendation passed with negligible delegate opposition, discussion of the issue included challenging questions about means of conscientious objection to war.
Cliff Kindy asked the church to consider the link between affluent life-styles and warfare, and suggested that living below a taxable income level is one response to the tax issue.
He urged the church to grapple again with tax refusal as a form of resisting participation in war.
Another speaker warned that the WPTF is “an attempt for us to be more comfortable with what is happening in the world” by seeking government approval of our resistance rather than acting boldly regardless of legal sanction.
John Reimer, of Western Plains District, asked if the WPTF would actually reduce military spending, or merely create a fund for peace research and education by reducing civilian sectors of the federal budgets while leaving the growing military budget unchallenged.
The issue noted that the Shenandoah District Board had begun a sort of conscientious objector census, asking draft-age youth to register their conscientious objection, while “[p]ersons who are supportive of conscientious objection to the payment of war taxes may register their beliefs on a third form.” (source)
Finally, the “New Call to Peacemaking” conference was also covered in the issue (source).
That conference was the first attempt to convene for a coordinated peacemaking response from members of the three traditional peace churches.
Excerpt:
Reaching consensus on war tax resistance was not as easy.
Although it was listed third among the concerns of this section, tax resistance was clearly the most widely debated item at the conference and support for the idea came from many of the regional meetings.
Finally, in five strong statements, delegates called upon Brethren, Friends, and Mennonites to “seriously consider refusal to pay the military portion of their federal taxes as a response to Christ’s call to radical discipleship,” challenged congregations to uphold those who do resist with spiritual, legal, and material support; called upon church and conference agencies to seriously consider the requests of their employees who ask that their taxes not be withheld; suggested that alternative “tax” payments be channeled into a peace fund established by New Call to Peacemaking; and called upon the denominations, congregations, and meetings to give high priority to the study and promotion of war tax resistance.
Dale Brown of the Church of the Brethren also penned an article on “The Bible on Tax Resistance” for Sojourners magazine in .
The very different attitude toward war taxes (which usually went without mention) at The Brethren Evangelist can be illustrated by this excerpt from the convocation delivered by Ashland College dean Joseph Schultz (source).
Schultz was an ordained minister in the Brethren Church, with which Ashland College is affiliated:
One cannot visit the Strategic Air Command Headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, without experiencing a welter of conflicting emotions.
Predominant is gratitude for the sense of security which those enormously complicated defense systems can generate, and a more tolerant attitude even toward taxes.
There is, of course, a feeling of awe, mixed with a tinge of doubt as to whether man actually can master such technological refinements.
And there is also an overpowering tug of regret that so much money must be spent for such expensive gadgets which may never be used.
A still greater foreboding is that they may be used, and expanded.
The Catholic Worker reviewed Donald Kaufman’s summary of the Christian argument for war tax resistance:
The Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace, Paying for War.
By Donald D. Kaufman.
Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa. 15683. 101 pages. $3.95.
Reviewed by Lee LeCuyer.
In this book, Donald D. Kaufman discloses the long tradition of Christians refusing to pay for war.
This tradition is rooted in Jesus’ simple but difficult command, “You cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon.”
Donald Kaufman, pointing out how the early Christians interpreted Jesus’ response to the Pharisees, “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar — and to God what belongs to God” says “We do know that Christians refused to pay taxes for Caesar’s pagan temple in Rome.
For this reason, we can understand how erroneous it is to deduce from this story about the temple tax a command for the payment of all taxes.”
The dilemma of paying taxes, of praying for peace while financing war, is a clear example of conflicting duties.
Christians are to be obedient to civil authorities, yes.
But they are also to be obedient to God.
Here we observe two masters and two opposing commands.
Since World War Ⅱ, the foundation of international politics has been the “balance of power.”
The enormous human resources wasted in maintaining this precarious and deadly balance have already resulted in much human suffering and neglect.
Ultimately, this can only lead to genocide, the crime of murdering the human race.
Have we not idolized death, making its “power” the only significant foundation of our political relationships?
“You shall have no false gods before me.”
Jesus told Peter that “those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.”
Isaiah told the nations: “Arm but be crushed! Arm but be crushed!
Form a plan, and it shall be thwarted; make a resolve, and it shall not be carried out, for ‘With us is God.’
For thus said the Lord to me, taking hold of me and warning me not to walk in the way of this people:
‘Call not alliance what this people calls alliance, and fear not nor stand in awe of what they fear.
But with the Lord of Hosts, make your alliance — for Him be your fear and your awe.’ ”
This is the message we Christians have tried to bring to the nations.
Be not afraid. Do not fear death.
Fear only Him who can take away more than earthly life, and lay aside your weapons.
As individuals, the only way we have to cast aside our armaments is to stop providing for them.
Perhaps now is the time for Christians to refuse to pay for Uncle Sam’s pagan temple in Arlington, Va., the Pentagon.
Are we expected to finance the most deadly military arsenal in the history of the world?
As Christians, our allegiance is to Christ and His Word.
What is expected of us? — That is the heart of the matter.
“Give back to God what belongs to God,” our trust, our fear, our hope, our faithfulness, and our obedience.
The Introduction to The Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace, Paying for War, was written by John K. Stoner.
It clarifies the specifically Christian call for tax resistance.
We reprint it here, in the hope that Donald D. Kaufman’s brief but important book will reach a wide audience and initiate a widespread and thoughtful Christian response.
“But what can I do? I am only one person.” ―Author Unknown.
The most common response of people to the unprecedented moral crisis of the world arms race is a sense of futility.
Many people will agree that the survival of the human race itself is in jeopardy.
Few will agree as to what can be done about it.
An even smaller number believe that they personally can do anything.
Moreover, it is distressing to observe how many people attempt to absolve themselves of any personal responsibility for the situation we are in.
They blame the government, big business, fate, God, or the devil.
There is a great deal of passing the buck.
Especially, of passing the buck to Caesar. In the form of taxes, that is. War taxes.
Yes, the word is out: there is such a thing as taxes for war.
The government, if it calls it anything, calls it defense spending.
People with a commitment to speak the truth, such as Christians, have a responsibility to expose the deceptive euphemisms and call a war tax a war tax.
At which point we return to the words of our unknown author, and supply her with another quote.
“I can do something about the taxes I pay for war.”
This book is about doing that something.
But there is much more.
The book issues a challenge to a wide audience — Christian and non-Christian.
God’s claim on humankind is universal.
What does it mean for the church to be praying for peace and paying for war?
Donald Kaufman explores this contradiction from many angles and draws on many sources, but all with a view to finding the path of Christian obedience.
I have heard many Christians say that they do not engage in war tax resistance or protest because it is ineffective.
The government ultimately gets the money, the resister makes no impact, and the exercise is futile.
Apart from the fact that this appeal for success is strange talk for people whose hero and leader ended up being crucified, I hear in this an unspoken message that also doesn’t quite fit.
The general demeanor of these folks toward society and government is one of studious conformity to accepted practice and one does not have to be richly endowed with imagination to infer that tax resistance or protest looks very risky to them.
Which adds up to suggesting that their real reason for not engaging in tax resistance is that they think it would be too effective — in challenging accepted myths, clarifying the moral issue, and inviting the neighbor to take a similar stand.
In this regard, it might just be that the church should embrace tax resistance as the moral equivalent of disarmament.
It has become fairly acceptable in at least some church circles to call on government to take risks for peace in the way of disarmament.
In those circles it has not been unusual to look with some disdain on those who called for tax resistance as a form of response to the arms race.
Given the meager successes of all the disarmament talks of history, including the United Nations Special Session on Disarmament, from a purely strategic point of view it might begin to occur to us that disarmament is such an intractable problem that we shall have to appeal to the people over the heads of the politicians to do something about it.
But on a level deeper than calculating strategies for success, the church should be asking its members what is the right thing for them to do regardless of the consequences.
If the generals, presidents, and ambassadors have decided to continue the arms race, shall the Christians continue to pay for it?
For the church (indeed, for any sizeable denomination of the church) to embrace war tax resistance as a spiritual commitment and a stated policy would be the moral equivalent of a government seriously embracing a policy of disarmament.
Both would involve risk, both would be unprecedented, and both would be right.
But what government is ready to do the right thing on disarmament?
And what church is ready to do the right thing on war taxes?
There are costs and risks involved.
John K. Stoner
Copyright by Herald Press.
, this announcement appeared in that paper:
The annual New England Catholic Peace Fellowship Conference has been scheduled for .
The theme of the NECPF conference, at Mt. Alvernia High School, Newton, Mass., is “Praying for Peace/Paying for War?”
It will include a major address by Elizabeth McAllister, as well as workshops on tax refusal.
Further information on registration and materials is available from NECPF, Center of Concern, Mont Marie, Holyoke, Massachusetts 01040.
The National Catholic News Service sent out this dispatch on :
Tax Resistance Studied by Italian Pro-Lifers
Milan, Italy (NC)—
The Italian pro-life movement is studying a proposal to fight the country's liberalized abortion law through “fiscal conscientious objection,” tax resistance.
A recent communique from the coordinating committee of the Milan based Movement for Life hinted that it may urge pro-life Italians to withhold part of their taxes as a protest against the law which took effect .
The committee said the abortion law made abortion, or actually the killing of children before birth, a social service to which all (taxpayers) must contribute.
Italy’s abortion law allows state funded abortions virtually on demand in the first three months of pregnancy for adult women.
The pro-life movement is also studying ways of pressuring against the election of Simone Veil, a Frenchwoman who supports abortion, as president of the new European Parliament.
The Movement for Life is backing Emilio Colombo, an Italian, for the post.
The first anniversary of the law’s enactment last month prompted various demonstrations throughout the country.
The Movement for Life announced on that it had collected over a million signatures from supporters of a national referendum to repeal the law.
Another dispatch from the same service, dated :
Canadian pro-lifer jailed in tax refusal case
By Joann McGarry
Winnipeg, Manitoba (NC)—
While Canadian pro-lifer Joe Borowski is turning his energies to apostolic work among fellow inmates at Headingly Provincial Jail, his friends and supporters are trying to raise enough money to free him.
Borowski, chairman of the Alliance Against Abortion, has refused to pay federal income tax as a protest against Canadian laws providing federally funded abortions.
His current 90-day sentence for contempt of court arises from his refusal to supply documents on his financial status to the Canadian income tax office.
Borowski began his sentence .
Before the sentence began, Winnipeg lawyer Ernest Wehrle began a “Friends for Joe” fund to raise the money Borowski owes in back taxes.
The fund has about $7,000 in cash and pledges, said Wehrle.
“The amount owed could be anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000, he said.
Accountants for Borowski and the federal Income tax department currently are working out the figure.
Payment of the tax bill would free Borowski from jail, at least until the next tax period, said Wehrle.
“He has always said he’d rot in jail before he’d finance abortions
But I’d say he has achieved his aim and could do more if free to fight in another way,” added Wehrle.
In a letter to the Canadian Register, Catholic newspaper published in Toronto, Borowski said jails are “greatly overlooked missions” for religious work.
“The spiritual hunger is great.
It’s an old frontier that has just been overlooked or neglected,” said Borowski.
Borowski receives Communion every day, say the two priests who visit him regularly.
“You could say Joe is a very ‘apostolic’ guy.
Whenever I go to see him, he has three or four guys waiting to see me,” said Father Pat Morand, Borowski’s pastor.
Borowski has initiated a court case against the federal government in which he hopes to show that the nation’s abortion laws contravene the Canadian Bill of Rights.
The Catholic Worker included this article:
Tax Resistance
By Bill Barrett
The Christian tradition has always supported and encouraged those believers who could not, in good conscience, participate in the organized killing of war.
Though the majority of Christians in each age have not always followed this position, there have been moments in Western history when Christian pacifism substantially affected all of society.
When thousands upon thousands of lay men and women joined the Third Order of Saint Francis of Assisi, promising never “to take up lethal weapons, or bear them about, against anybody,” feudalism in Western Europe collapsed.
Feudal lords were unable to fight their wars because so many peasants had joined the Third Order.
Since their founding in , the Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren, the “historic peace churches,” have given a consistent witness of conscientious objection.
Though relatively few in number, their presence has been a continual reminder to the American conscience.
In centuries past, the main need of a warring state was soldiers; Napoleon once boasted that he “could use 25,000 bodies a month.”
Although armies still enlist thousands of youth and are eager for more, we must recognize that there is a demand today for ever-increasing monies to finance the technology of war.
War’s menace has been transformed into a spectre more horrible than ever.
Today, even more than soldiers, governments require tremendous amounts of money to develop and build their nuclear weapons systems.
The Pentagon maintains 140 different systems with the capacity to destroy every Soviet city of over 100,000 people forty times, at a cost of over 150 billion dollars.
This money must be raised by the federal government, and it is raised through our taxes.
As more people realize this and make the connection between our tax money and U.S. military spending, tax resistance grows.
Money for War
There are two main approaches to conscientious objection to war taxation, and they are not mutually exclusive.
The first of these is the more direct: refusing to pay for what one will not do.
Federal taxes are paid on many items, though not all are military related.
F.I.C.A. Social Security withholding and the federal gasoline tax, for example, do not finance military spending.
But there are other federal taxes specifically intended for military expenses.
The federal telephone excise tax was first imposed by the War Tax Revenue Act of ; it was repealed and reinstated several times until World War Ⅱ when, in , the first tax on all telephone service was enacted to underwrite that war.
Due to expire in , the tax was extended in to raise money for the Vietnam war.
Now due to expire in (unless Congress again renews it), this tax continues to pay the war debts of Vietnam.
Many people refuse to pay this tax, usually less than one dollar each month, when it appears on their phone bills.
One simply pays the balance of the bill, enclosing a note of explanation to the phone company.
Most telephone companies consider this a matter between the individual and the government, and simply inform IRS that the tax is not being paid.
In fact, as long as the telephone company is paid the money owed it for phone service, Federal Communications Commission regulations make it illegal for service to be cut off.
Though IRS occasionally sends notices of tax due and even “final notice before seizure,” no one has yet faced criminal penalties for refused telephone tax.
Besides the federal telephone tax, an important source of revenues for the Pentagon is the federal income tax.
Resisting income tax is a bit more complicated because of the withholding system, but because so much of the military’s money is generated by this source, more and more Christians are exploring ways of refusing to pay it.
One way, perhaps the simplest, is the way of voluntary poverty.
If one earns less than a certain amount ($3300 for a single person in ), the federal government claims no tax due.
Not only is nothing contributed for the building of bombs, but the choice of voluntary poverty allows one to share in a rich tradition of the Church.
Some people who do earn taxable incomes refuse a small symbolic portion of their income tax, or they pay the tax but write a letter of protest about the government’s incredible priorities which increase military spending year after year while cutting budgets in areas of human need, such as food, housing and education.
(What horrible proof that “even when they are not used, by their cost alone armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.”
Message from the Holy See to the UN, )
Some resisters withhold the portion of their taxes that would go to the military (47.3% in ), while others refuse to pay any federal income tax, realizing that a large portion of whatever they pay will be used for exactly those purposes to which they object in conscience.
Although the U.S. Tax Code does not care what is done with refused taxes (it cares only that it receive the money), most conscientious objectors to war taxes contribute the amount they have refused, whether from telephone or income taxes, to a group or project that they believe is working toward peace.
A great deal of helpful information on ways of refusing war taxes, and on the legal consequences, is available from the Center on Law And Pacifism, 300 W. Apsley St., Philadelphia, PA 19144, telephone 215: 844‒0365, especially in their publication People Pay for Peace: A Military Tax Refusal Guide for the Radical Religious Pacifist ($2.00).
Besides the direct action of tax refusal, there is also a second approach, for while the right to conscientious objection to participation in war is recognized by U.S. Selective Service law, the U.S. Tax Code makes no such provision.
Even First Amendment rights have not been acknowledged by the Tax Court system, which has ruled that IRS regulations take precedence over constitutional requirements!
There is, however, a bill in Congress that would recognize the right of conscientious objection to military taxation.
The World Peace Tax Fund Act, H.R. 4897 in the 94th Congress, would direct that portion of the taxes of conscientious objectors that would otherwise go to military spending be diverted instead to peace education and similar programs.
While the bill does have a number of co-sponsors in the House, Representatives need to hear that their constituents support the right of conscientious objectors to legally prevent their tax money from buying more nuclear weapons.
Copies of the bill, and more information, can be had from the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund, 2111 Florida Ave. NW, Washington DC 20008, telephone 202: 483‒3752.
Selective Service law presently makes some provisions for conscientious objectors to war.
Tax law does not.
But conscience must be followed, whether a government declares it legal or not.
The Second Vatican Council wrote, in its document on The Church Today (GS 16), “In the depths of their conscience, people detect a law which they do not impose on themselves, but which holds them to obedience.
Always summoning them to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience can, when necessary, speak to their hearts more specifically: do this, shun that.
For people have in their hearts a law written by God.
To obey it is the very dignity of the person; according to it they will be judged.”
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