Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → Shane Claiborne

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

In The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, Shane Claiborne tells the story of how he scavenged through all of the rubbish of American Christianity to find his best guess as to what Christ really called on his followers to believe and to do.

He thinks that many of the more extreme and difficult-to-swallow parts of the gospels are meant to be taken seriously: that the rich really should sell what they have and give the money to the poor, that Christians should hold everything in common and treat everyone as a brother or sister, that you should love your enemies, that you can have faith that God will provide for your needs.

He tries to live as though that were all good advice, and has helped to invent a sort of new, urban, service-oriented, community-focused, quasi-monasticism and evangelism, a bit in the Catholic Worker mode. Pursuing the “give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for life” proverb, he writes: “We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.”

The book is very much about what it means, or ought to mean, to be a Christian, and what form the Christian church ought to take. As a non-believer (to me, Christianity seems pernicious balderdash), I lacked the foundation necessary to appreciate much of this. That said, if Christianity were as Claiborne describes, it really would be a nice thing to have around, so I wish him luck.

Why does a nonbeliever like me end up poring through the writings of Christian seekers like Martin Luther King, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Ammon Hennacy, Augustine, Pierre Ceresole, and Shane Claiborne? At their best, such Christian writers have a desperate urgency to sculpt their lives according to their highest ideals, something that is rare enough in Christian circles but rarer still, it seems, in the secular world. In this way they can be pathfinding or pathmaking and worth paying close attention to even if you don’t share their faith.

Most Christianity I come across seems to be of two varieties: the church as a social club and the church as a comfortable validation of the congregation’s superiority. You go to church because that is where your friends and business associates and parents of your children’s friends go; or you go there to get fed the comfortable bullshit that confirms you’re on the right team and have the divine blessing for the life you wanted to live anyway. But then occasionally Christians like Hennacy, Ceresole, and Claiborne pop up who don’t fit in these categories but seem to be genuinely in awe of their God, challenged and compelled and frightened by the task ahead of them, and eager to learn how to get right even if taking Jesus at his word is uncomfortable and unpopular in the pews.

Amongst secular activists the same division seems to hold — but how few people fall in that small third category! Maybe this is partially because there are more Christians out there, so the small slice of that bigger pie looks bigger. But I think also there is more of a tradition of this sort of all-in transformation in Christianity, and also more structure to nurture it: Christians who are on a path of radically transforming their lives form communities of encouragement and mutual criticism and guidance — secular people on a similar path are usually on their own.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

  • Cindy Sheehan reminds us that Peace is not for Wimps:

    I did an interview with the BBC. I don’t like the BBC and I usually have distasteful experiences, but it has such a huge audience, I try to swallow my distaste and just do the interviews. Seamus, the host, didn’t disappoint me — he was just like all the rest — combative and sensationalist.

    At one point he asked me something like this: “Cindy, given the fact that the Military Industrial Complex is so large and powerful, what kind of impact do you think not paying your taxes has on it?”

    Well, at least I can read the latest act of horror committed by my country or its adjuncts and think to myself, “at least I didn’t fund that.” How can one say he/she is against war and other atrocities, yet pay for them? And Seamus was right, withholding my money and using it for good rather than evil doesn’t seem to be slowing down the war machine even a little bit, but what if conscientious war tax resistance were a movement and not a statement by just a few?

    After that interview with Seamus and the meeting at the Peace House in war-torn, but healing Belfast, I received an email from one of my attorneys who is helping me with my tax issues telling me that my hearing before a magistrate to try and force me to comply will probably be on in Sacramento.

    At the meeting at the Peace House, a gentleman asked me if I would go to prison rather than pay my taxes.

    I don’t want to go to prison in the U.S.A. — that’s one of the last things in the world I want to do. I don’t think that it will come to that, but my answer to the gentleman was, “Yes.” This is one of the multitude of reasons why:

    The other day, I saw a video report from the BBC, not some left wing anti-Semitic, radical news source, that told about an Israeli soldier that lined three sisters ages four to eight up against the side of their home in Gaza and shot them — killing two and crippling the four year old. By conservative estimates, the U.S. gives Israel ten million per day for military aid. Would I rather go to prison than fund the murder of these young girls and millions more?

    That’s not a hard choice for me.

    In Belfast, the British troops finally left, forced out by a combination of non-violent protest and armed struggle.

    Tax resistance is one of the most non-violent forms of resistance that I can think of: One that can make a profound difference.

    I hope we can Occupy Peace and grow the tax resistance movement to really and non-violently make a difference.

    We must ask ourselves if funding the execution of babies is something that our moral center is comfortable with.

  • War tax resister Vickie Aldrich reports that she’s getting some help from students at the University of New Mexico law school in her fight against an IRS “frivolous filing” penalty:

    They will argue it not in terms of my position on war taxes or the IRS regulations but in terms of “case law” and in relation to how the penalty was applied. I’ll know more as time goes by. I was surprised at how much I was relieved at this news. I was a bit disappointed that they suspect it will take more than one semester. I fantasized that it was like a western movie scene when the cavalry would come riding in to the rescue, the IRS would look up from their desks and drop everything and run shouting “look look it’s New Mexico law students!,” “we give up.” Evidently, this is not the case, we are not at the end, just beginning a new chapter.

  • New war tax resister Chris Gaunt explains what led her to take her stand, in Iowa’s Your Weekly Paper.
  • Kelly Denton-Borhaug, author of U.S. War Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation, Christian activist Shane Claiborne, Jack Payden-Travers of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and Pat Hostetter Martin, are leading a public forum in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Stories of Conscience and Taxes in a Culture of War.

The issue of More than a paycheck, NWTRCC’s newsletter, is now on-line. Contents include:

In other war tax resistance news:

  • Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame, was at Mount Holyoke college recently to address the more recent Wikileaks action and the government retaliation against accused whistleblower Bradley Manning. According to one account:

    While in the area, Ellsberg said he planned to visit with Randy Kehler, an old friend and tax resister whose refusal to pay taxes led to a much-publicized confrontation with federal authorities that forced Kehler and his wife, Betsy Corner, from their Colrain home.

    Ellsberg said he first heard Kehler speak at an anti-war, draft resisters event in when Kehler talked about being willing to go prison rather than go to war.

    “He made a very strong impression on me,” Ellsberg said. So strong, he said, that he got up and left. “I went by myself to a men’s room at the back of the auditorium, just by myself, and sat there on the floor and cried.”

    It was that moment, Ellsberg said, that he realized he would have to act on his own already strong feelings about the waste and folly of Vietnam.

    Without Kehler’s example, he said, “I wouldn’t have copied the Pentagon Papers.”

  • War tax resisters Jack Herbert and S. Brian Willson appeared recently on the Veterans For Peace Forum:

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

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.

The Mennonite

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.”

The “Turning toward peace” initiative was still in operation at least as late as .

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.