Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Mennonites / Amish →
Jacob J. and Joan Veston Enz
This is the eighth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was
reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we
find ourselves at the beginning of the Atomic Age.
One of the main arguments for the continued existence of the Mennonite
denomination is its belief in non-resistance. Therefore it was particularly
fitting that the Mennonite World Conference gave so much time at choice places
in the program to emphasize non-resistance.
Dutch Leader for Definite Separation
F[elix]. van der Wissel of Leeuwarden, Holland, surprised his American
brethren by his hesitancy in regard to paying taxes to a state that uses so
much of them for war. Such heart-searching is in place. However, his radical
emphasis upon nonparticipation in government might suggest that Mennonites
should believe that government is of God but that unbelievers should run it.
Personally, I take a more critical attitude toward all state activities than
do most Mennonites, even the American Mennonites, in general. It is
increasingly a matter of fact that not only in war but also in peace
everything in the state is used for the interest of the state. For instance,
education is very often used to stimulate a bad type of patriotism. In these
cases I believe that we should refuse to give our co-operation. In paying
taxes we should also draw a sharper line than we generally do. We should seek
the solution more in the manner of Tolstoy than in that of a quiet Mennonitism
that sometimes pays its taxes only too willingly. I am convinced that it is
tenable, at least theoretically, that we should refuse to pay certain taxes.
However, in reality it happens, as a rule, that the state in that case takes
even more than its part by force, so that, practically speaking, such a
refusal does not have sense. Nevertheless, we must consider which stand we
take in this question. This confirms once more the importance of the refusal
to use force, because it is also by organic force that one can be compelled to
pay taxes. It is my opinion that we do not give enough attention in our
Mennonite life to the idea of non-cooperation and social effects of refusal of
service. This non-co-operation should not be used as a means to some political
goal, as was often the case with Gandhi, but only as a testimony that we
cannot give our co-operation for evil things.
This was perhaps an idea whose time had come. By this time, a nonsectarian
war tax resistance movement was congealing outside of the traditional peace
churches. Ernest Bromley, one of the organizers of this new movement, gave
his thoughts in the issue:
One interesting fact which ought to be of current interest to Mennonites is
their own history in regard to refusing to pay war taxes. Though tax refusal
was a potent witness of earlier Mennonites, today it is little recognized that
such a testimony ever existed.
From Guy Franklin Hershberger’s Mennonite history entitled War, Peace and Non-Resistance () we have the following information, summary:
Two questions arising out of the American Revolution were easily and
definitely answered by the Mennonites. The first was, Shall we take up arms?
The answer to this was a positive “No.” The second question was, Shall we give
aid to the suffering? This time the answer was a positive “Yes”. But there was
also a third question not so easily answered. This was the question of war
taxes. The Mennonites, with little objection, seem to have paid their fines
for not joining military associations, at least in localities where they were
strictly and regularly collected. In addition to the fine the Pennsylvania
Assembly levied a special war tax on all inhabitants. Should a non-resistant
Christian pay this tax?
Hershberger goes on to tell what they did:
The war tax issue became a serious issue in
. Some of the ministers said that they could
not conscientiously pay the tax, but Bishop Christian Funk said it should be
paid. Funk said: “Were Christ here he would say, ‘Give to congress that which
belongs to congress and to God that which belongs to God.’ ” Bishop Andrew
Ziegler, the spokesman for the opposite group, said, “I would as soon go to
war as to pay the three pounds and 10 shillings.”
In regard to what the Mennonites actually did, he said: “It seems that the
Quakers generally refused to pay the tax, then when the government came and
seized their property in payment of the tax they let them take it without
resistance. What the Mennonites did is not so clear. Apparently most of them
objected to the tax and followed the same plan which the Quakers did.”
That Mennonites did refuse is confirmed by Margaret Hurst in her detailed and
accurate history of the Quaker entitled, The Quakers in
Peace and War:
It is true that in Virginia the early draft laws of the war exempted Quakers
and Mennonites. But they endured every distraint and their general refusal to
use Continental paper money or to pay war taxes involved them in great
difficulty.
Some Mennonites are now becoming particularly sensitive to the import of
sending their tax dollars to the
U.S. Treasury when
they know that 75 cents of every dollar is for financing past present and
future wars. They realize that they are directly contributing to the
stockpiling of bacterial and atomic weapons and the rapid growth of militarism
in almost every area of the national life.
Ernest R. Bromley — of Nassau, New York, is active as a member of the
Peacemaker group. He has learned of Mennonite and Hutterite activities and
submits a thought which we Mennonites have shelved, for the most part.
The Selective Service Act of brought back
registration for military conscription. An article in the
issue (in the “Mennonite
Youth” section) urged Mennonites to refuse to register. But:
The question is raised, “Why draw the line at registration? How about taxes,
food for the armed forces,
etc.?” I think it
is essential to distinguish between what is given to Caesar, and entering into
active participation ourselves. Caesar is responsible for how he spends the
money received. Even Christ paid taxes to Rome, which had one of the largest
military machines of ancient history.
However another article on the topic in the same section of the
issue said:
One of the most difficult of the pacifist’s problems is the task of removing
himself from those aspects of his society which tend to destroy the
individual. In this case it is war and warmaking. The consistent pacifist
should refuse war taxes, personal services,
etc.
Walter C. Longstretch [sic], Philadelphia lawyer, said, in
notifying the Internal Revenue Department that he and his wife would refuse to
pay 34.6% of their income tax which “was
used for preparation for war.” “In the Nuremburg trials, the
U.S. maintained the
principle that a citizen of Germany should refuse to obey his government when
his government orders him to do an evil act. The principle is equally valid
for the citizens of the United States including myself.”
We haven’t read what happened to the lawyer and his wife! ―From the Salem
Mennonite Church Bulletin, Freeman, South Dakota
The following filler bit
appeared without attribution or further comment in the
issue:
“Mennonites… generally refused to pay taxes during the Revolutionary War. They
too relaxed, and few of them today realize tax refusal was significant in
their history. The Hutterite confession allowed the payment of no taxes for
‘warfare, destruction of life, and shedding of blood.’ ”
“Tax refusal is in itself… powerful enough to have changed the course of
history many times; for example, the movement led by Wat Tyler in ⅩⅣth Century
England, and the Indian independence movement.”
Clearly there was something in the air.
A board of Associate Editors was appointed to help form the editorial policy
of The Mennonite for the first time in
. One of those editors, Jacob J. Enz, took
over as acting editor in , which is about
when this flurry of tax resistance notices broke the post-war logjam of several
years when the subject was hardly mentioned. Enz wrote a book on
The Christian and Warfare, arguing for pacifism’s
roots in the Old Testament, so he seems to have been especially attracted to
the non-resistance philosophy. Maybe that explains it.
This is the ninth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we watch as The Mennonite participates in the birth of the modern war tax resistance movement.
In our last episode, I speculated that the arrival of new editor Jacob J. Enz may have been the catalyst for a new interest in war tax resistance at the magazine.
Two brief editorials in the issue seem to confirm my suspicion:
…And speaking about transparent honesty, what about our income tax returns, many of which are in the process of being made out?
The government has gone to considerable trouble to help people to keep their taxes as low as possible within the law.
Yet, how many sell out their souls on a piece of paper on or around March 15!
―JJE
Others who are ready to pay every penny of their tax are asking the question as to whether they may be contributing consciously and directly to the next war when it is known that 60 cents out of every tax dollar goes to military purposes and that the major portion of all government income is from income taxes.
They feel it is a matter of personal responsibility.
Some have actually taken that percentage of their taxes which will be used for defense and have sent it to relief agencies, notifying the government accordingly.
―JJE
Another such editorial
appeared in the issue in which Enz complains that people demand too much conformity from the church to their own opinions before giving the church their support.
Excerpt:
The Reformation emphasis on individualism in the Church brought untold blessing, but where pressed to its logical conclusion it makes people do the completely irrational thing of denying their gifts or their interest and prayers to a part of the body of Christ because of some complaint while at the same time uncritically giving large sums in tax money to earthly organizations of a much more questionable nature.
The support of the Church is much less optional than the support of these other organizations if comparisons are in order.
Yet there are literally thousands of Christians who religiously pay every cent of their taxes knowing that part of it will go for such unquestionably wrong uses as buying whiskey to help the State department entertain foreign diplomats while they draw up agreements that will lead the world straight to war; at the same time they refuse to give to the Church… because some aspects are not quite in line with their own conceptions, and (in this area for some unknown reason) God holds them responsible for every penny.
―JJE
Enz is back with an editorial in the issue.
Excerpts:
The almost dogged determination with which our leaders of state are encouraging an arms-for-Europe program is clear evidence of the moral insanity of our age.
The way in which Britain is egging on this program is indication of the universality of this spirit.
All of this makes it a bit more clear why a number of individuals in this country are putting themselves in awkward positions by refusing to pay income tax, the larger portion of which inevitably goes for war — past, present, and future.
It raises the question anew as to the exact nature of a Christian’s relation to the state.… When governments tend to produce chaos rather than order — the kind of order as revealed in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ and in His teachings — then our subjection as Christians will be one of obeying God rather than man and human governments and accepting the suffering that may come as the result of our higher obedience.
Just how this higher obedience is to express itself raises a number of questions.
In many of our circles non-registration and non-payment of war taxes is questioned as an effective method.
It would seem quite obvious that if enough people used this method this wickedness of war would be seriously hindered.
It would seem however that something much more fundamental is needed…
The darkening picture of world events is calling for radical solutions to the world’s deep problems. Our leaders of state are leading us into policies of foreign entanglements heretofore unknown as their radical answers.
The world again needs an Amos, an Isaiah, and a Jeremiah to stand up and speak to his country concerning the inevitable doom that will come when we trust in man and his reliance upon treaties and covenants with man apart from God.
At this point the idea of “the universal prophethood of believers” ought to come into play.
This will be an extremely costly process as is evidenced by some few who have chosen the method of refusing to pay part or all of their income tax the larger portion of which goes for war.
Most people reject this method, but one inevitably hastens to raise the question as to where and how we should take our stand and say “no further!”
Is it enough to send resolutions and letters to Congress and preach and talk against a system to whose continued operations we contribute.
―JJE
“It is difficult to conceive of a point where a person has the opportunity of a more powerful projection of his beliefs than at this point where he meets the government in the person of the tax collector, and say ‘No!’ ”
“The use of tax money in preparation for war completely overshadows the consideration of the manner in which taxes are obtained.
If one favors paying taxes, no matter for what they are asked… he may just as well favor conscription which is equally democratic in its impressment of men.”
Toledo. In one of the “longest and most spirited meetings in its history,” the Toledo Ministerial Association adopted a set of resolutions supporting the right of Dr. Aleck D. Dodd to follow the dictates of his conscience in refusing to pay a portion of his taxes, and sharply criticized the Toledo Council of Churches for dismissing Dr. Dodd as director of Pastoral Relations.
The Council’s action followed the Internal Revenue Bureau’s garnishee of Dr. Dodd’s salary to collect $150.47, the portion of his taxes comparable to the part of the budget which he feels goes for war purposes.
The statement of the Ministerial Association read in part: “While we have not felt impelled to take the step Mr. Dodd has taken in refusing to pay that part of his income tax which he feels is devoted to furthering the cause of war, yet we are of the opinion that he should follow the dictates of his conscience.”
―Fellowship
“For Lent,” in the issue, Jesse Zigler wrote up “A Heart-Searching Confession” in the form of a confession by the “People” to God, with a minister periodically interjecting a prayer for mercy.
Among the confessions:
We have been participants in war-making society.
We tried to stay out of participation, but thou knowest how far we failed.
We helped to maintain high morale, we paid taxes on income, on railroad fares, and in many other hidden places.
Our hearts sank when we heard of reverses to our armies and we secretly felt hope when our armies were winning.
We had our expenses paid in college or seminary or C.P.S. with profits of war making.
And then we looked at the fellows in the army and thanked thee that we were better than they while closing our eyes to our own participation.
Enz, who as “Acting Editor” had reintroduced debate about war tax resistance to The Mennonite readers, stepped aside as a new Editor, J.N. Smucker, came on board in .
The “Young Peoples Union” met at Freeman, South Dakota, in .
Among the things they did was to ratify a set of recommendations.
Number six on the list was this:
[We recommend] that, in view of the critical and complex problems in the social, economic, and political spheres on both the national and international levels… that a resolution be introduced into the current session of the General Conference calling on the Board of Christian Service to appoint a study group to study the relations and implications of Mennonite principles to such current problems as the Christian position on conscription, registration and cooperation with the draft, payment of war taxes, attitudes toward Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism, church-state relations, etc.
On the basis of present tax laws, in every man, woman, and child in the United States will pay on the average $461 in Federal taxes, of which $267 will be required for military services.
The best estimate of benevolent per capita giving for our entire population for the same period is $23.33. In other words, Caesar gets twenty times as much as God, and ten times as much for military services.
So for every dollar you give to share the Gospel of peace and express your love for your fellow-man, Caesar demands his ten dollars to run his war machine.
Caesar is ahead twenty to one, and Mars, his war-god is ahead ten to one!
Will we be content at this inequality?
Will God be satisfied with us if we are?
The issue included an article about the sorts of questions draft boards ask people who are applying for conscientious objection status as a way of determining whether their objections are sincere enough to pass the legal test.
One of these was: “Do not your taxes indirectly aid the war effort?”
The common people of the world do not want war.
They are rightly alarmed by the tremendous build-up in military power.
They distrust the leaders who seem to think the only way to peace is by preparation for war.
They object to giving their eighteen-year-old sons to be trained as killers.
But what can we do?
People answer this question in various ways.
Some refuse to pay income tax, reasoning that, since much of this money goes for war purposes; this is one way to show our disapproval of war.
Some young men refuse to register, regarding this as a first step into the military way of life.
Some see little hope in continuing the present major political parties, since both seem drifting towards war.
Perhaps our Peace Committee could give us some directive as to how to best make our strength felt for the cause of peace.
We have worked hard to help overthrow Universal Military Training, now let us work even harder for the cause of a Christian peace.
A “Perplexed Reader” wrote in to the issue as follows:
The Mennonite is emphasizing Christian education, relief, and missions, and is advocating tithing to finance these projects.
We agree, that is good.
We think God will look with favor on such a program.
Another thing The Mennonite is stressing is peace; that war cannot be justified with Christianity; war does not settle problems, only create more.
That also, we think is sound reasoning and is in harmony with the spirit and teaching of Christ.
Many of us feel the best contribution we can make to Christianity is to finance these above-named projects.
In order to finance these projects we have to earn money; and if we earn money we have to pay income tax, and very little of that money is used for other than war purposes.
In the writer made contributions to these above-named projects.
He tried to do his part, but after the year was over, mailed his check to the internal revenue collector, he found that he had contributed more to the god of war than to all church contributions combined.
If a couple without dependents and without any other deductions has a net income of $1,325, they use that money for family living.
Many use more.
If they have a net income of 52,325, the tithe would amount to $232.50, and the income tax $184. If they have an income of $4,999, the tithe is $499.90 and the income tax is $669. If the net income increases the tithe is higher also, but the income tax increases faster than the tithe.
Shall we arrange our financial affairs so that our income will be so low that there is no income tax to pay and discontinue all mission.
Christian education, and relief?
Or shall we refuse to pay income tax and have the government confiscate our property?
Or shall we give all of our property to these good causes and go on relief, or if we are old enough, ask for old-age pension?
Or shall we continue to build with one hand and tear down with the other?
What shall we do?
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 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.
