Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Mennonites / Amish →
Don Schrader
Don Schrader is a devoted tax resister and one of Albuquerque’s celebrated eccentrics.
J.A. Montalbano has written a profile of Schrader for the Albuquerque Tribune that does a good job of avoiding the freak-show “local colorful figure” clichés and letting us get to know the man and what makes him tick.
In shorthand, he’s a former Mennonite minister from rural Illinois who believes in war-tax refusal, simple living, sun worship, raw nutrition, raw bodies and raw bodies of the same sex in carnal communion.
Schrader, 61, lives his life publicly, trumpeting, in the rawest of language, his big-picture philosophy as well as the minutiae of his daily brand of asceticism — from Gandhian proclamations to a detailed discussion of his urine-drinking regimen.
He is a unique mix of local celebrity and conscience of the city.
He is a lightning rod whose letters prompt weeks-long debates, and his mere presence on Central Avenue elicits hoots and whistles, threats and epithets.
The way he lives seems like a threat to our way of life.
“What I stand for — if many people followed my example — is revolutionary but not in a violent way,” he says.
“It would undercut the structure of this entire society.”
The reporter interviewed another local activist, Chuck Hosking:
Hosking, a familiar face as prolific protester outside Kirtland Air Force Base, and [Mary Ann] Fiske were devoted to simple living , donating two-thirds of their income to people in poor countries and, like Schrader, living below the tax threshold.
When I arrive, Hosking is sitting at the table in the airy main room of his house.
His home is a veritable mansion, I point out, compared with Schrader’s one-room monastery.
“Discipline is Don’s middle name,” Hosking says.
Schrader’s extreme lifestyle, he says, makes people like Hosking seem like moderates by comparison.
“He is so far out there that he makes us look reasonable,” Hosking says with a smile.
“…He’s broadening the range of what people are willing to consider.”
Some short bits from here-and-there around the web:
The Get Rich Slowly blog recently highlighted Don Schrader, a low-income / simple-living war tax resister and Albuquerque-area local legend.
At last count, there were 56 comments from people evaluating Schrader’s eccentric and dedicated lifestyle and the principles behind them.
The Colorado Springs Independent covers the war on war tax, and includes quotes from Peter Haney and Esther Kisamore.
Expatriate satyagrahi tax resister Jeff Knaebel delivered a speech at the Gandhi Sixtieth Memorial in Pune .
The text of the speech has been reprinted at LewRockwell.com.
Excerpt:
Complete non-violence today would mean acquiescence in systematic destruction of the whole earth, and thus all of humanity with it.
Some situations demand that we defend our land, our right to livelihood, and our lives with violent defensive action.
Direct Action Today, I feel, however, is best expressed in self-restraint, in the quiet refusal to buy corporate products, in boycott, in self-reliance and in tax refusal, in refusal to report for combat in aggressive war, in refusal to accept corporate and government media propaganda as truth.
I know what “simplified” means in these contexts, and I’m highly aware of being a war tax resister who doesn’t try to live such a life, at least in some senses of “simplified,” and I’m wondering, Where exactly… is there room for me, a war tax resister , “sustainable for the long haul,” and with every expectation of continuing to do war tax resistance as long as I live?
“Simplicity” isn’t… being presented as something to deliberate over; it’s presented as something to “embrace.”
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Tax Day action reports are starting to trickle in.
This year, the TEA Party presence seemed way down, or at least the news media has gotten tired of covering it.
There were many reports of liberals engaged in various creative protests designed to shine some light on profitable corporations who somehow manage to rake in government subsidies and get away without paying taxes, and a couple of reports of anti-war activists trying to inform the public about the bloated military budget.
Some folks have taken to submitting an affidavit along with their tax returns declaring that they are only filing “under threat, duress and coercion… because I fear retaliation by the IRS… to avoid going to jail, not because I believe there’s a legitimate obligation; I am terrified of the IRS… and being attacked by them if I don’t comply with them.”
They hope to make explicit the threat of government violence that is largely implicit at tax time and to preempt silly people like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who insist we have a “voluntary” tax system.
Dave Ridley, on The Ridley Report podcast, ponders whether or not it is ethical to try to drain resources from the government in order to weaken it (for example, by filing lawsuits against it, or forcing its bureaucracy to waste time) or whether this is just adding insult to the original injury the government performed by taking the wasted funds from the taxpayer.
Protesters in Detroit, Michigan, blocked the street in front of the county treasury building to protest the fact that despite plunging property values in Detroit, many homes have not been reassessed in years (in spite of a law mandating annual reassessments), and so the owners are on the hook for artificially inflated property taxes, which is pushing some of them into tax foreclosures.
A brothel in Salzburg, Austria, has launched a free drinks and free sex promotion to protest high taxes on its receipts.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that the protest has been wildly popular with the brothel’s clientele as well as with clickbait “news” sites.
Residents of Beni, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have launched a tax strike to protest against the government’s failure to provide them with adequate security against atrocities committed by the Allied Democratic Forces rebels.
The tax resistance comes on the heels of a week-long general strike, and is being organized by “civil society” groups.
The taxes being resisted are largely business taxes, both those on larger businesses and stall-fees paid by market vendors.
Some of the organizers have reported being subjected to death threats.
As Greece prepares to bid a national “δεν πληρώνω” (“won’t pay”) to their international creditors, the domestic δεν πληρώνω movement continues to innovate — lately with a new smartphone app that tells public transit users where they can expect ticket auditors and which stations are free-and-clear.
Fines are down by ¼ to ⅓ from their numbers last year.
In addition, overall tax revenue is in a tailspin in Greece.
The government hoped to bring in €3.728 billion in May, for example, and only managed to scrape up €2.722 billion.
War Tax Resistance News
Pioneering American war tax resister Juanita Nelson, who helped found the first modern American group devoted to war tax resistance (Peacemakers) in , and who died , was honored with a festive parade in her hometown of Greenfield, Massachusetts.
The group Conscience, which had been an important voice for war tax resisters in the U.K., has been undertaking an image makeover lately, in which it has deemphasized tax resistance in favor of lobbying and, alas, lately is lobbying for a particularly pathetic “taxes for peace” bill that is a somewhat new formulation of the “peace tax”-style legislation but that has at least as many flaws as such bills usually have.
IRS Woes
I see another IRS building has been evacuated because of a “suspicious package” — this time in Andover, Massachusetts.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration identified an estimated two and a half billion dollars in previously-unnoticed fraudulently-requested tax refunds issued by the IRS for tax year .
That’s roughly the size of the budget of the National Parks Service.
Many of the payments went to addresses outside of the country, like to Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Ireland, so maybe I should have compared it to a foreign aid program: in the same ballpark as the amount the State Department gave to Israel.
Some new links of interest to war tax resisters in particular:
The next national gathering of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee will be held in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia).
Check this page for details.
Paper Money carried an article on the “Thoreau Money” banknote-like leaflets that were used by war tax resistance groups in the United States during the Vietnam War.
The article goes into unusual detail about the history and structure of the war tax resistance movement in that period.
The group Conscience, from the U.K., has finalized its version of “peace tax” legislation, which it hopes to get Parliament to consider.
It differs in some ways from other countries’ versions of this plan for implementing legalized conscientious objection to military taxation.
In more recent war tax resistance news:
Humans of New Mexico did an in-depth profile/interview with war tax resister Don Schrader.
The seed of peace, stresses this group, must be planted with coherent
actions. “This is the point where our individual consciences become a method
of social transformation, when we disobey the obligation to pay taxes for
military spending and declare this together and publicly.”
Michael McCarthy plugs war tax resistance in The Times Herald. Excerpt:
This Pentecost season when we call on the Holy Spirit to renew our faith,
let us resolve to take steps to stop giving Caesar our first fruits of
federal income tax with which to make war, and convert these monies to God’s
peacemaking purposes.
For the practical measures, risks, responsibilities and spiritual benefits
please contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating
Committee — nwtrcc.org — and seek prayerful
informed support within your faith community. Whether conservative, liberal,
tea party, radical or independent, some real investigation of national and
world affairs shows how badly our money is being spent.
This is the thirtieth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue to work through the early 1980s.
War tax resisters’ hour comes round at last in Bethlehem
On the ongoing issue of tax withholding, GB agreed to submit a resolution to delegates at Bethlehem to “authorize the officers [of the conference] to test the constitutionality of [the tax withholding] requirement… by refusing to serve as tax collectors in cases where individual employees have asked that their federal income taxes not be withheld from their wages, in order that they may conscientiously refuse to pay for war.”
The church which seeks to save her security by following only “legal, legislative and judicial avenues” to salve its war tax conscience will lose her life; the church willing to lose her security in supporting non-registrants for the sake of Christ will find life.
At the triennial sessions, the conference authorized the General Board to initiate a judicial action seeking exemption for the General Conference Mennonite Church from withholding taxes from the income of its employees.
James Gingerich, Duane Heffelbower, Larry Voth, Robert Hull, and Vern Preheim were appointed as a judicial action committee to implement the resolution.
William Ball was engaged as legal counsel.
In , Ball advised the conference that the general climate in the United States, the attitude of the present government administration, and the attitude of the Supreme Court as evidenced by some recent decisions dealing with religious conviction or conscience and taxes were such that the likelihood of the General Conference accomplishing its objectives through a judicial action was virtually nil.
The committee recommended and the General Board concurred to put the judicial action on hold and to bring the matter once again to the conference for further discernment and decision.
A more detailed report and a recommendation from the General Board to the conference that we honor the requests of employees to not withhold taxes on their wages will be sent to the congregations in advance of the triennial sessions.
Throughout , while pursuing judicial action, we also continued to encourage the enactment of World Peace Tax Fund legislation.
An editorial in the edition described the upcoming decision thusly:
At a special midtriennium conference in Minneapolis in , GC delegates voted 1,218 to 134 in favor of urging their General Board to “use all legal, legislative and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption from the legal requirement that the conference withhold income taxes from the wages of its employees.”
If no solution could be found within three years, the GB was to bring the matter back for further action.
At Estes Park in , a judicial test case on the issue was okayed by a vote of 1,156 to 353.
Bethlehem will bring GC delegates face to face with the fact that all three avenues, at present, look like dead ends.
As a result, the GB is proposing that the conference stop withholding taxes from salaries of employees who request such action in order to “assert the higher claim of Christ’s law of love.”
If approved, the resolution would take the conference one small but significant step into the sphere of divine obedience/civil disobedience.
It could become the most formidable — and challenging — business item for GCs, despite the fact that several other organizations have already taken the same action.
In advance of the Bethlehem gathering, the text of the proposed resolution was released in the pages of The Mennonite:
Among the resolutions for consideration by delegates at the General Conference Mennonite Church Triennial Sessions… is a formal action authorizing conference officers to stop withholding taxes from the salaries of its employees as required by U.S. law.
It also encourages Canadian Mennonites to obtain relief from the same requirement by Revenue Canada.
The conference’s General Board… will bring the "Resolution on Faithful Action Toward Tax Withholding" to Bethlehem delegates as their recommendation for resolving the moral dilemma which church officials feel they are facing.
If approved, the resolution could take the conference into divine obedience/civil disobedience.
Thus we urge our governments to sharply reduce military spending and use our resources for life-affirming purposes.
Furthermore, just as conscientious objectors have received exemption from military service, we also seek legislation exempting conscientious objectors from paying taxes for military purposes.
Thus we continue to work in the United States for passage for the World Peace Tax Fund Act and in Canada for the Peace Tax Fund, which would allow individuals to designate all of their federal taxes for peaceful purposes.
Both the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and Revenue Canada require the General Conference Mennonite Church to violate the consciences of its employees who are conscientious objectors to paying taxes for military purposes.
In the United States, we have thoroughly explored all legislative, administrative and judicial avenues for obtaining a conscientious objector exemption to these withholding requirements, as we resolved at the Minneapolis midtriennium conference.
Our explorations have convinced us there is no likelihood of relief in the near future for conscientious objectors to military taxes.
The time has come when, like Peter and the apostles, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
In Canada, equally thorough explorations of similar avenues for seeking a conscientious objection from withholding requirements have not yet been accomplished.
We commend the “Resolution on Security and Disarmament” of the Canadian Mennonite Conference in and the work of the Canadian Tax Task Force under the sponsorship of MCC Canada Peace and Social Concerns.
We encourage Canadian congregations to continue study of materials made available on the issue of military taxes.
As delegates to the triennial sessions of the General Conference Mennonite Church, we therefore:
Authorize the conference officers to test the constitutionality of the withholding requirements in the United States and to assert the higher claim of Christ’s law of love by refusing to serve as tax collectors in cases where individual employees have asked that their federal income taxes not be withheld from their wages in order that they may conscientiously refuse to pay for war preparations.
These employees will be treated similarly to the way General Conference treats ordained ministers, i.e. as self-employed persons, in that their earnings will be reported to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, but no federal income tax withheld.
We request that the Conference of Mennonites in Canada consider means to obtain relief from Revenue Canada withholding requirements as these apply to General Conference Mennonite Church employees.
We shall inform the U.S. government of this act of conscientious objection to their withholding requirements.
We shall again urge them to provide exemption from these requirements and exemption for people of peacemaking conscience from military use of their tax money.
At this moment of decision we commit ourselves to surround with our prayers the General Conference staff and government officials who will be involved in this action and all those individuals who refuse in conscience to pay taxes for war preparations, however costly their witness may be.
Jim Gingerich of Moundridge, Kan., chairperson of the conference’s judicial action committee, reported that the suit against the IRS approved at Estes Park was, in the opinion of constitutional lawyer William Ball, almost certain to fail.
Little progress was being made on the legislative or administrative fronts either.
In light of this, the General Board was recommending that the conference honor the consciences of its employees who request that their full salaries be paid to them, allowing the employees themselves to remit to the IRS what their consciences would allow.
After Robert Hull, secretary for peace and justice, had reviewed the experiences of other groups which had attempted similar actions, Duane Heffelbower of Reedley, Calif., outlined the points of the resolution in detail and spoke of their possible ramifications.
“We could scarcely devise a softer velvet glove to cast at the feet of the IRS,” he said.
“But the action does show our corporate willingness to stand beside our employees.
What will the government do?
We don’t know.”
What followed was probably the most vigorous interchange of viewpoints by GC delegates of the entire week.
Nearly two dozen speakers took their turns at the mikes before the vote was called for.
Viewpoints on the resolution ran the gamut from disassociation with it to praising God for it.
“We believe that the Bible says we ought to pay our taxes.
We want to be separated from and not have any part of this action,” said Paul Goossen, Wayland, Iowa.
“This resolution is creating an impossible situation for our government,” added John Voth of Meno, Okla. “We have emphasized that we love our enemy.
I wonder whether the government has become our enemy.
Have we adopted the same big-stick approach that we so often have criticized?”
Others, however, urged the conference to push ahead with the proposed action.
“Mennonites took a stand against slavery even though it was unpopular,” said Mark Winslow, Allentown, Pa.
“Today, the nuclear arms race is the primary social sin of our day.
We should take a stand regardless of the fact that it may be unpopular.”
Lois Barrett, Wichita, Kan., observed that “in the U.S., disobeying the law is the time-honored way of changing the law,” noting that the cause of civil rights in was advanced primarily through civil disobedience.
H.A. Fast of North Newton, Kan., prompted the only round of applause during the lengthy discussion.
“We refuse our selves in service, but we say nothing about our taxes,” Fast said.
“I have said to the government, ‘You can’t take my body to fight a war.’ I have said, ‘You can’t take my son.’ And now I am saying, ‘You can’t take my money, either.’ ”
When it was over and the ballots counted, the resolution passed by a 70 percent majority. [1,128 to 457]
One of the characteristic features of the discussion on tax withholding, as well as other debates during the week, was the sensitivity and willingness to listen with which delegates approached the microphones.
Several told of how they had come to the convention ready to vote one way, but were now moved to vote another.
Phrases such as “I want to respect your point of view…” or “I’m willing to learn more…” preceded many of the speeches.
And the tough debates of Bethlehem, during which emotions ran high and convictions deep, never seemed to overshadow the determination by participants to celebrate their common identity, their peoplehood, their unity.
After the convention, many attributed that prevailing unity to the moving of the Spirit.
Delegates at the conference were treated to a performance of The Plow and the Sword, a musical about American Mennonites during the Revolutionary War who disputed whether or not it was proper to pay taxes to the rebellious Continental Congress.
“The play’s content was powerfully pertinent to the delegates meeting at Bethlehem who discussed present-day responses to war taxes.”
Acting on the basis of a resolution adopted by General Conference delegates at Bethlehem , conference treasurer Ted W. Stuckey on issued the first paychecks on which federal income taxes were not withheld.
Seven employees of the denomination’s central offices made the request that the taxes not be withheld, so that they can remit to the IRS personally the amount of federal taxes their consciences will allow, given the U.S. government’s high rate of military spending.
Those making the request were Robert Hull, secretary for peace and justice; Lynn Keenan, Mennonite Voluntary Service associate director; Paula Diller Lehman, secretary for youth education; Fred Loganbill, assistant for peace and justice; John Sommer, overseas personnel secretary; Meribeth Sprunger, secretary for mission communications; and Elizabeth Yoder, general editor.
Several others have indicated that they may be willing to take part in the action at a later date.
Stuckey said that, beginning with the paychecks, the seven will have state and social security taxes deducted but be treated like self-employed persons as far as federal income taxes are concerned.
Under such a classification, they would be required to submit quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS.
The seven plan to make a portion of those quarterly payments but put the balance — the amount they feel they cannot voluntarily pay because of high U.S. military spending — into a special account at General Conference central offices.
Stuckey and general secretary Vern Preheim informed Commissioner Roscoe L. Egger, Jr., at IRS headquarters in Washington by letter of the conference’s action, the motivation of employees for requesting the procedure, the reasons for the church’s granting the requests, the identities of the seven employees and the location of the account to which the IRS may initiate collection procedures.
“We’re trying to be completely open and above board with them about this matter,” he said.
Copies of the letter were also sent to IRS offices in Wichita, Kan., and Austin, Texas, as well as to state and federal legislators.
The pay period is the first opportunity for the conference to implement the “Resolution on Faithful Action Toward Tax Withholding” adopted by delegates to a churchwide convention in Bethlehem, Pa., on .
There, conferees voted 1,128 to 457 to “authorize the conference officers to test the constitutionality of the withholding requirements in the United States and to assert the higher claim of Christ’s law of love, by refusing to serve as tax collectors in cases where individual employees have asked that their federal income taxes not be withheld from their wages, in order that they may conscientiously refuse to pay for war preparations.[”]
Miscellany
A note in the edition mentioned that the Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes had decided to go all-in on the World Peace Tax Fund bill, promoting “dunamis groups which approach congresspersons in a spirit of compassion rather than confrontation… to obtain a dozen more co-sponsors for the WPTF bill in the coming year.”
The edition noted that “MCC U.S. Peace Section has put together a War Tax Packet, designed to equip individuals and groups with a variety of resources for study on the question of paying taxes for war.
Cost is $2.”
The edition included a profile of Cornelia “Nellie” Lehn, whose war tax resistance became the focus for much of the debate that overtook the General Conference Mennonite Church.
It summarized this as follows:
Nellie was… dealing personally with the perplexing issue of war taxes.
She liked to read Bible verses that say to pay your taxes, but began to wonder why she did not concentrate equally on those saying to love your enemies and put your sword away.
Finally she felt she could not pay that part of her taxes going to war purposes and asked the General Conference office not to withhold any of her salary for taxes.
“The time comes when you have to cut through all the complexity and be obedient,” she says, reminiscent of her stand earlier in life.
At the triennium she stated her views.
The conference continues to work on this issue even today.
I’m surprised I haven’t come across this amusing example of war tax resistance outreach before:
Mennonites in Harrisonburg, Va., gathered on to attach over $300 to about 75 helium-filled balloons.
Each balloon, in addition to a five- or ten-dollar bill, carried a note from a participant explaining why he or she had withheld the money from current income taxes.
“Because we are Christians who are trying to follow the peaceful way of Jesus, we cannot support this country’s military build-up,” said many of the notes.
“Instead, we have chosen to ‘waste’ our money in a more constructive way.”
Participants read Scripture, sang, danced, prayed, confessed their sins, and clowns passed out jelly beans as the balloons rose.
The shift of focus to “Peace Tax Fund” legislation would aggravate a decline in interest in real war tax resistance in the General Conference Mennonite Church that continues to the present day.
Clearly, some Mennonites perceived this danger, as Robert Hull wrote an article to defend the push for such a law:
An argument by some war tax resisters is that any peace tax fund is a means for conscientious objectors to salve their conscience with regard to diverting their own taxes, and that this provision then will encourage such COs to be quiet and passively accept the warmaking of governments which will continue more efficiently without their dissent.
When I have explored this argument, I almost invariably discover that the war tax resister speaking is drawing upon an analogy made with the 20th-century U.S./Canadian history of conscientious objection to military service.
The Civilian Public Service camps of World War Ⅱ by and large had this “quietistic” effect.
However, it should be noted that the provision for COs in World War Ⅱ came about because the government remembered the difficulties it had encountered with historic peace church resisters in World War Ⅰ.
Similar spokespersons on the eve of World War Ⅱ stated their convictions to “draw the line” again if acceptable provisions were not made.
But even during World War Ⅱ, the legal criteria for CO classification in the United States were broadened by the Supreme Court to include all religious objectors, then during the Vietnam War to include people holding a belief equivalent to that in a Supreme Being (Seeger, ), and later to all people morally, ethically or religiously opposed to all war (Welsh, ).
In the draft registration debate in , projections by the Selective Service of future CO claimants extended to 40 percent of all registrants.
It seems reasonable to conclude that at least one cause for this large increase in the potential CO population is a result of the public visibility of thousands of young men performing alternative service during the Vietnam War.
The recent response of the U.S. Selective Service to its own projections has been to develop plans for CO alternative service which seek to once more “contain” the CO visibility by centralizing the program under direct Selective Service administration in order to meet military mobilization priorities.
This policy is in turn quite likely to produce non-cooperators who will have registered but then find that such an alternative service program is unacceptable to their conscience.
A significant number of such non-cooperators would increase the already more than 500,000 draft-eligible young men who have not registered.
Twentieth-century CO history has lodged anomalous laws within the government structures.
That is, if these laws are interpreted by relatively tolerant regulations, the CO population may grow uncontrollably large; if the laws are interpreted by repressive regulations, the number of non-cooperators may grow uncontrollably.
Now let’s pursue this analogy with regard to peace tax legislation and war tax resistance.
I am convinced that Parliament or Congress will never enact peace tax legislation until the war tax resistance movement grows so large that such laws come to be viewed as an expedient accommodation, as Civilian Public Service was viewed on the eve of World War Ⅱ.
But several differences between the two are significant.
Bear in mind that peace tax legislation provides for the taxpayer to claim he or she is a CO and that the burden of the challenge and rebuttal lies upon the government.
Additionally, peace tax legislation’s provision for income tax forms and information materials to describe the military proportion of the federal budget in some detail will ensure that a far greater percentage of the taxpayers become aware of the peace tax alternative than the percentage of draft-age men who were made aware by the government of the CO alternative from World War Ⅱ through Vietnam.
Finally, the peace tax legislation provides for the diversion of CO taxpayers’ “military taxes” into a trust fund.
This is intended to result in a direct drain out of the general treasury available for war preparations.
Thus the peace tax legislation further raises people’s consciousness.
If peace trust funds in the United States and Canada are administered as the legislation intends, many millions of people will choose to support peacemaking alternatives to conflict rather than supporting warmaking preparations, and a “democracy of defense” may develop: those who rely on military weapons can pay for them without coercing the contributions of those who place their reliance upon other alternatives.
If the CO eligibility criteria are interpreted too restrictively, or inaccurate portrayals of the military proportion of the federal budget are published, or CO taxpayers’ funds are demonstrably rechanneled into the warmaking treasury, then increased numbers of informed citizens may respond with direct tax resistance.
The government will thus have on its hands another significant anomalous law, one by which millions of citizens can measure the government’s tendency to override their democratic rights in its clearing of the path toward war.
This then is the educational strategy behind the peace tax effort as I see it.
The legislation will reach millions of people with the message that there are alternatives to paying for the war system.
It will provide a step which millions of citizens can take, and whose aggregate pressure for peacemaking will be enormous, without overwhelming risk to the individual taxpayer.
After all, it is at least in part the risk involved in war tax refusal which keeps it an infinitesimally small protest movement in the total population.
I hope that thousands of active peacemakers will heed the call to war tax refusal and that the pressure for peace upon the warmaking tendencies of government will grow.
As it does, I believe it will prove disastrous if the peacemaking community has no legislative proposal to put forward which will secure as much of the “democracy of defense” goal as possible, and to which the government can turn as an accommodation.
The Church of the Brethren has long supported members who conscientiously object to the payment of war taxes.
Some members wish to refuse to pay taxes but are unable to because the taxes are withheld by their employers.
The delegates approved a paper that gives guidance to church institutions whose employees request, for reason of conscience, that their taxes not be withheld.
The annual conference recommended that all legal possibilities be explored first but affirmed civil disobedience for both individuals and institutions when it is a matter of conscience.
A United Methodist congregation in New Haven, Conn., backing their pastor’s right to refuse paying federal taxes for military use, has declined to turn over his salary to the Internal Revenue Service.
Carl Lundbord [sic], pastor of First and Summerfield United Methodist Church, has withheld federal income taxes in both and , telling the IRS his “obligations as a Christian and as a citizen are no longer reconcilable.
The 50 percent of my taxes that support the military I cannot pay.” IRS ordered the church to withhold the pastor’s salary until the amount was paid.
But church members voted on to reject IRS’s demand.
Our ancestors migrated to the United States so that they would not be forced to participate in European wars.
Eventually this government respected their deeply held beliefs about peacemaking and granted them the right to register as conscientious objectors.
Today we find ourselves in a technological age in which our money is more useful to the military than our bodies.
So we are being forced by law to participate financially in the preparation for war, which violates the biblical command to love our neighbors as ourselves.
When Caesar’s demands conflict with God’s, we cannot blindly obey our government.
These words from John S. and Sara L. Wengerd’s letter to the Internal Revenue Service echo the convictions of nearly 60 individuals and families who chose to contribute to Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Peace Section in lieu of paying a portion of their income taxes that would have been used for military purposes.
For some, the contribution was a symbolic amount, such as $7.77.
For others, it equaled the 36 to 54 percent of their tax dollars that would have financed military activity.
That portion is commonly referred to as a “military tax” or a “war tax.”
In another case, a couple’s taxes had already been withheld by the Internal Revenue Service, so they donated an amount equal to their military taxes, which they had already paid.
In all cases, these individuals felt that silent compliance with the tax collection process would be a violation of their consciences and religious convictions against killing and participating in war in any way.
Many noted that their dilemma of conscience could be ameliorated by passage of the World Peace Tax Fund (WPTF) Act…
Meanwhile, the federal government is attempting to crack down on various types of tax protests.
People who object to paying taxes for military purposes may face stiff penalties designed to deter those trying to evade tax collection or destroy the tax system.
The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of instituted an automatic $500 penalty for individuals filing “frivolous” tax returns.
The penalty can apply to people who take unallowable deductions, credits or exemptions or give incomplete information on their tax returns.
Those taking “war tax” deductions or credits or claiming an excessive number of exemptions to reduce their tax liability could be subject to the new fine.
Several conscientious military tax resisters have received notices from the Internal Revenue Service that the penalty has been imposed, according to the May–June issue of Center Peace, the news journal of the Center on Law and Pacifism.
Robert Hull, peace and justice secretary for the General Conference Mennonite Church, suggests that conscientious objectors to military taxation take steps to distinguish their non-payment of military taxes from secular tax protests and evasion schemes.
If taxpayers correctly compute and report the amount owed and indicate in an attached letter that they cannot with a clear conscience pay the military-related portion, their tax returns will go directly to the Internal Revenue Service Collection Division instead of to the overloaded Audit Division.
Hull suggests that this action be accompanied with letters to legislators to communicate the religious and moral grounds for such action, and to demonstrate the need for remedial legislation such as the World Peace Tax Fund.
Bill Samuel, member of the WPTF steering committee, suggests that taxpayers write a contract on the back of their check to IRS stating that deposit of the check constitutes a legally binding agreement (contract) that the money will not be used for military purposes.
Courts have held that contractual checks involving private parties are legally binding, but it is uncertain whether or not IRS would abide by the contract.
John R. Dyck
A article profiled Canadian war tax resister John R. Dyck.
Excerpts:
All his life, John R. Dyck of Rosthern, Sask., has been a law-abiding citizen.
He’s never been to court.
But he expects that to change when Revenue Canada catches up with him for non-payment of taxes.
Dyck is one of a small but growing band of Canadians who are refusing to pay the portion of their income taxes they feel is designated for the military.
Instead, they are calling for an alternative “peace tax fund” which would use their tax money for peaceful purposes.
Since that alternative does not exist and Dyck withheld 10.5 percent of his taxes for and for , he expects a court order to arrive eventually.
John R. Dyck is not a young radical defying authority.
Officially he is retired (though not willingly or inactively) and has given the better part of the past two decades to service with the Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Foundation and the MCC Food Bank.
A sudden stroke forced him to slow down over a year ago, but he has recovered and calls it “a real miracle.”
Now he can go on serving, and he places military tax resistance in that category.
The decision did not come easily or hastily.
“I don’t know where it (a conviction) began,” he commented during an interview at this year’s annual meeting of MCC Canada in Saskatoon.
He had come to listen to the discussion and spend time with his brother and fellow peace-seeker, Peter J.
He remembers that “Cornelia Lehn made us sit up and think” in .
John began with his tax return, filed while the Dycks were in Jordan under MCC and able to observe firsthand the effects of military exploitation.
He sent two checks to Revenue Canada, asking that the smaller one be used only for peaceful development work.
He heard nothing further and assumed that both checks flowed into government coffers.
Along with his tax return he sent only a letter of concern.
But with his return he again enclosed two checks, one for Revenue Canada and a second made out to the Peace Tax Fund.
Revenue Canada replied that such a fund did not exist (legally) and demanded payment in full.
Dyck then sent the check to the Victoria, B.C.-based Peace Tax Fund and began correspondence with government officials to explain why.
“I want to do things correctly and openly,” he says.
Now Dyck is expecting a day in court.
It is bound to come, since Revenue Canada wants his money and must obtain a court order before garnisheeing his account at the Rosthern Credit Union.
The sooner the better, he adds, since it may help establish a right of conscience that would allow other people to divert their hard-earned tax money from bombs to working for peace.
He also hopes to find a sympathetic lawyer to handle the case.
“I think a lot of people would rather not talk to me about it,” he says, summing up the reaction to his protest.
So far, any criticism has been muted, though one friend told him, “I admire you for it, but you’re wrong.”
Paula, his wife, is supportive, but most fellow members at Rosthern Mennonite Church are either uninformed or indifferent.
John R. Dyck firmly believes, “We don’t need the military.”
The threat of nuclear war hanging over the world means Christians must resist militarism with renewed vigor.
“I see this (nuclear holocaust) coming and we’re accountable.
The handwriting is on the wall.”
Dyck adds that there is a growing network of people asking about the peace tax fund, though the actual number withholding taxes is still small.
(Ernie Hildebrand, a teacher at the Swift Current (Sask.) Bible Institute, is another Mennonite who is doing so.)
“But people must think this through carefully,” Dyck concludes.
“You can’t legislate a thing like this… I’m glad the Lord led us to this position.”
As the General Conference pushed ahead with its support of war tax resisting employees, with the blessing of the majority of conferees, the U.S. “Peace Section” seemed more reluctant to take a stand, at its meeting. From the edition:
While agreeing that the church has an important role to play in saying no to preparations for [nuclear war], the members struggled with the place of military tax resistance as a method of saying no.
Several members observed that the constituency is “not of one mind on this matter,” while Darrel Brubaker of Philadelphia, Brethren in Christ representative, urged that “here is one place we need to be leaders more than representatives.”
After the matter was tabled overnight for further reflection, the group affirmed a recommendation commending the General Conference for the serious attention it has given the issue and urging churches to work more diligently at the process of prayerful discernment of their response to this issue.
The resolution also strongly encouraged constituents to initiate further action in support of the World Peace Tax Fund bill, which would provide a legal alternative to the payment of taxes for military purposes.
War tax resister Don Schrader wrote in on to insist that Mennonites can best criticize revolutionary and other violence if they are careful not to support violence with their taxes:
Until our nonviolence becomes revolutionary, revolutions will be violent.
[A]s long as well-fed U.S. pacifists pay war taxes to support the imminent nuclear terror and mass murder of our planet and the dictatorial repression of Central America, what integrity do we have in questioning or condemning those peasants’ use of violence for survival.
To be peacemakers in this perilous age, we must refuse to pay war taxes, we must renounce all materialism which breeds militarism, and we must denounce foreign policy regardless of the risks for our community standing and employment.
Over four years ago I confronted the question “How can I speak for peace and pay for war,” and I became a war tax resister.
This is the thirty-seventh in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we hit 1991.
The issue brought the news
that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (of Quakers) had lost its court battle
against the
IRS:
On ,
U.S. District Judge
Norma Shapiro found that
PYM
is not protected by the Constitution. She wrote, however, that “it is ironic
that here in Pennsylvania, the woods to which Penn led the Religious Society
of Friends to enjoy the blessings of religious liberty, neither the
Constitution nor its Bill of Rights protects the policy of the Society not to
coerce or violate the consciences of its employees and members or to act as an
agent for our government in doing so.” The General Conference Mennonite
Church, which agreed in to not withhold
taxes from its employees who requested this, has not heard from the
IRS.
That issue also carried
a
note about the Northwest Peace Fund — an alternative fund for coordinating
war tax redirection sponsored by the Seattle Mennonite Church.
“We can’t stop war, but maybe we can stop paying for war,” says Steve
Ratzlaff, pastor at the church. The taxes that would be paid to the government
are put into the fund, and the interest earned on the money is given to peace
and justice organizations. If the Internal Revenue Service garnishees the
unpaid taxes, investors may draw the money out. The rationale behind the fund,
says Ratzlaff, is that “if enough people do it, it will become an economic
hardship for the government to collect the money.” It also allows people to
direct their money to “constructive rather than destructive programs,” he
says.
The edition again invited
readers to redirect their federal income taxes through the
Taxes for Peace Fund organized by the
MCC
U.S. Peace Section.
The funds collected in would be split among
the Peace Section itself, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and
Christian Peacemaker Teams. In ,
$3,700 had been redirected through the fund.
The relatively new Mennonite Conference of Eastern Canada
had been quickly confronted by the war tax withholding issue, and tried to
resolve it at its annual sessions. Here’s how The
Mennonite reported it:
Fred Martin: “I see this as a symbolic act that would witness to our hope in
the love of Jesus Christ.”
Next to the budget, the most debated item was the executive board’s
recommendation to “withhold no income tax from the salary of any conference
[MCEC]
employee who requests this on the basis of conscience” as well as to ask the
Canadian government to recognize conscientious objection to payment of
military taxes and to provide peaceful alternatives for use of such tax
dollars.
Fred Martin, who works with students and young adults for the conference, made
the request that led to the board’s recommendation. He said he wants to
motivate people to consider the issue. He called his act a symbolic one “that
would witness to our hope in the love of Jesus Christ.”
Several spoke in favor of the action. Doug Pritchard quoted the famous
Catholic activist Dorothy Day: “If we truly rendered unto God what is God’s,
there would be nothing left for Caesar.”
Sam Steiner said that governments listen more if they see you’re willing to
sacrifice for it. Wilmer Martin added that we need to support our members who
try to be true to their conscience.
Others opposed the idea. Victor Dorsch of Maple View Mennonite Church,
Wellesley, Ont., said that
such an action is not a positive peace witness. “Our tax dollars are also
going for abortions,” he said. Peter Epp of North Leamington
(Ont.) United Mennonite Church
was also against it and called for a secret ballot.
The moderator delayed further discussion until that evening’s session. In the
end, delegates voted down the original recommendation on tax withholding, 159
to 48. Margot Fieguth of Mississauga
(Ont.) Mennonite Fellowship
introduced an alternative resolution, which still called for the conference to
work for legislation to recognize conscientious objection to paying military
taxes and recommended hiring Martin on a contract basis so that the conference
was not liable. After more discussion delegates voted to table discussion
until the next delegate session.
A
followup, after the
MCEC
fall sessions in , read in part:
A new motion, passed almost unanimously, commits the conference “to work with
the federal government to enact legislation that recognizes conscientious
objection to military service and the payment of military taxes and to provide
peaceful alternatives.”
Originally the new motion also included a section offering contracts to
conference employees who want to redirect their taxes. That section was
removed after the conference executive learned that simply placing employees
on a contract basis — without changing job descriptions and
accountability — would not necessarily get the conference “off the hook” for
breaking income tax laws.
Don’t we already have provision for conscientious objection to war? asked
several delegates. Doug Pritchard, a peace worker with the conference, said
that such legislation was in effect during World War Ⅱ but is no longer. David
Janzen suggested that the guarantees of freedom of conscience and religion in
the Canadian Bill of Rights should be sufficient.
A
message from the General Conference’s General Board in reaction to the
Persian Gulf War went out in the
issue. It said, in part: “We repent that through our taxes we have contributed
to death and destruction… We call on Christians not to enter the military
forces and to protest or refuse the use of our taxes for military purposes.”
To avoid federal income taxes.
For 12 years I have paid no federal income taxes because I refuse to finance U.S. mass murder around the world.
How can I speak for peace while I pay for war?
Over 50 percent of every federal income tax dollar goes for war — past, present, or future.
I keep my easily traceable taxable income under the taxable level.
For a sighted, under-65-year-old single person that amount is $5,550 for .
Shrader was taken to task in a later issue by a letter
saying that his example of “[l]iving at basic sufficiency does nothing to help
the poor, many of whom are dependent upon tax dollars for their housing, food,
education, and health care.”
Titus Peachey
An article by Titus Peachey on The Blessing of Tax Resistance — imagining what would happen if war tax resistance were central to Mennonite practice — appeared in the issue:
Imagine the impossible or highly
improbable. Imagine that all Mennonite and
Brethren in Christ people refused to pay taxes for war.
Let’s not worry for the moment how this came about, except
to acknowledge that it grew out of our deep commitment
to Christ and the church.
Furthermore, let’s imagine that we cheerfully supported one another in this
refusal to pay taxes for war, so that no one need be alone in this act of
faith.
What would this do to our church? What would happen to our witness in the
world? How would God change us in the process?
We cannot know. I am convinced, however, that there are parallels to the
blessing that came when our young men chose insult and prison rather than
military service during World War Ⅰ. We still benefit from that witness.
Now it is our turn. How are we going to be faithful? What would we face as a
church if we decided that faithfulness meant the refusal to pay taxes for war?
Simple living: The first option is simple living, the legal approach.
The more-with-less approach to life would be the norm in our churches. Vast
numbers of our people would choose legal means of reducing the amount paid in
taxes for war. We would reduce our personal incomes, and give a higher
percentage of our money to the church. We would reduce our tax liability.
Our churches would encourage simpler housing and shared living arrangements.
We would help our young people avoid large, long-term mortgages. Living in
duplexes or other multiple-unit dwellings would reduce purchase and
maintenance costs and save on heat, utilities, appliances and tools. Many of
us would find inexpensive housing in low-income, multicultural neighborhoods,
maintaining a sense of stewardship so that our presence would not price others
out of the neighborhood.
As more of us moved into lower-cost housing, we would gain new skills at
cross-cultural living and relating. More of our churches would reflect the
diversity of God’s people. We would become a less segregated and exclusive
church. We would learn difficult lessons about conflict resolution, justice
and community.
More of us, in an effort to reduce expenses, would put energy into relating to
our neighbors and the community through the public school system. Alternately,
given our greater interest in tax deductions through charitable contributions,
our church schools could be more highly subsidized, less expensive and thus
more accessible to a broader spectrum of people.
A commitment to not paying taxes for war would increase resources available to
the church. It would be usual for people to give 20–50 percent of their
incomes to the church. Local congregations would have more resources to share
with the community. It would be routine for a congregation to hire one or two
people to work at community needs and concerns.
Our churches would also struggle deeply with the prevalent theology of success
and the god of materialism. The same theology that prevents us from paying
taxes for war would prohibit us from spending so much on ourselves. Our church
building and expansion programs would be reviewed in light of community and
world needs. We would become “economically non-conformed” to this world.
Refusing to pay taxes for war would expand our understanding of conscientious
objection to war. We would understand conscientious objection to include
issues related to employment, investments, taxes, and business relationships
as well as to military registration and conscription.
The U.S. Peace Tax
Fund Bill would receive all the financial support it needed. Congress members
from Mennonite or Brethren in Christ districts would frequently receive mail
and visits on the subject. Conscience against war would receive a better
hearing in the halls of government.
Tax resistance: The second option is tax resistance, the illegal
approach. A significant number of Mennonites would choose the path of tax
resistance by withholding the military portion or a symbolic amount of their
tax dollars from the
(U.S.) Internal
Revenue Service and Revenue Canada. It would be normal to find a group of
families in each congregation who seek counsel and support on this issue.
Mennonite institutions would honor employee requests not to withhold their
income tax dollars. Mennonite leaders would frequently find themselves in
IRS
offices and the courts, witnessing to their faith and conscience and the
convictions of our people.
As the public became aware of this expression of our faith, some would
perceive Mennonites as a threat. We could become the target of harassment and
community pressure. People would make nasty phone calls and vandalize us as a
result of our beliefs, particularly during times of crisis, such as the
Persian Gulf War.
Some of us would end up in jail, being used as examples to deter others from
continuing to practice tax resistance. Small Mennonite fellowships might form
in our prisons as a result of the life and witness of tax resisters.
These experiences would make it easier for us to identify with the image of a
“suffering church” that is found in Scripture, in our Anabaptist heritage and
in many parts of the world today. Our sense of unity and identity with the
worldwide church would become stronger.
We would not have to scratch our heads and wonder how to do peace education
with our youth. They would sense that our concern about Christ’s way of peace
is integral to our life and faith. They would wonder why we are going to court
and to jail, and would ask us many difficult questions over dinner and during
Sunday school.
Conclusion: Tax resistance is not the only path to the many things
mentioned above. Surely we as a church could commit ourselves to simple living
and a 10–20 percent tithe, without the burden (or the blessing) of the war tax
issue. Certainly there are other ways to grow in commitment to racial equality
or justice for the poor.
In my experience, however, war tax resistance remains one of the most relevant
ways to affirm life and peace in a world of militarized economies. For me it
has also served as the best discipline for simple living in a culture of
materialism and consumption.
Implementing this vision in our churches could lead to conflict and division.
It could also lead us to experience anew Christ’s reconciling Spirit among us.
It would not be easy. I am convinced, however, that a great blessing awaits
the church, when we agree to say yes to Christ’s way of peace by refusing to
pay taxes for war. When will it happen? What will become of us if it doesn’t?
Don Kaufman penned a letter for the edition. Excerpts:
Those who do not willingly pay find the costs of dissent high. Internal
Revenue Service penalties and fees total several hundred dollars when citizens
refuse to send their earnings to the Pentagon. This simply adds to the dilemma
of “drafted dollars” that violate conscience. With one hand citizens give
generously to life-building purposes that ease human suffering. With the other
hand they pay military taxes that effectively cancel the good they have done.
They pay to relieve suffering; they pay to increase it. They pray for peace;
they pay for war.
Today’s combat soldier is the taxpayer — the person who provides the money to
produce and deploy the push-button systems for mass annihilation.
He urged people to support a Peace Tax Fund bill.
This is the fortieth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we finish off the mid-1990s.
He established the Michael and Margarethe Sattler Foundation to distribute his
royalties from Mathematica to people in need. He thus kept his income below
the taxable level in order not to contribute tax money to the military.
Following his deeply-held personal and religious beliefs, Keiper lived in a
very simple manner. He wore simple clothes, ate simple food, and used a
bicycle as his primary means of transportation. He also felt that to be
consistent in not supporting the military, he should avoid paying taxes to the
government. For a while, this meant that he would accept almost no salary. But
in the end he worked out a scheme for donating all but a small percentage of
his salary to charity. In addition, Keiper set up a foundation, which he named
the Michael and Margarethe Sattler Foundation, after two early Mennonite
martyrs. As part of Keiper’s compensation, Wolfram Research then made
donations to this foundation. The foundation solicited proposals, and in turn
supported various colleges, giving them both funds and copies of Mathematica.
Charles Hurst’s and Maria Smith’s letter to the IRS
was reprinted in one issue. The letter announced that they were redirecting
about 40% of their taxes “to groups or projects that bring healing for our
world.”
A supplement designed for the triennial conference noted
that through the Commission on Home Ministries, “[p]eace and justice resources
have been sent to individuals and congregations on such subjects as military
draft registration, alternatives to paying war taxes in the United States and
Canada, and New Call to Peacemaking peace education resources.”
A
profile of attorney Sharon Heath in the edition briefly mentioned that shortly after joining a Mennonite
church “she decided to become a war tax resister by living below the taxable
income level.”
An
editorial by Gordon Houser in the edition urged that “In our daily affairs we must learn to stand
against the idol called Bomb” and then, somewhat vaguely, said “We will want to
ask ourselves how our tax dollars are being spent and how we should respond to
that.”
An
article by John K. Stoner in the same issue echoed this: “What does it mean
for our souls that we have become willing to call down fire from heaven and
have made the capacity to call down fire from heaven the centerpiece of our
national security doctrine? What does this do to every person who consents to
it, pays their taxes for it, and remains silent as generation after generation
of nuclear missiles and weapons are developed?”
These sort of sidewise-glances at war taxes seemed to be becoming common.
A
report on the triennial conference, for example, noted in passing:
“Meanwhile, violence occurs in our homes; people of color experience a
qualified acceptance in our churches; our tax dollars continue to support the
building of nuclear weapons.”
The triennial sessions also seemed to sidestep any official recognition of war
tax resistance, replacing this with support for a Peace Tax Fund law:
GC delegates
also passed a resolution calling one another to support the
(U.S.) Peace Tax
and the (Canadian) Peace Trust campaigns, which work to provide legal
alternatives to paying war taxes. This was the third consecutive
GC triennial
session to affirm a peace-tax resolution.
A
letter from Don Schrader appeared in the issue, in which he expanded on the theme of the hypocrisy
of praying for peace while paying for war, noted his own choice of a life of
voluntary simplicity, and concluded: “For 16 years I have paid no federal
income tax, and I am not silent. I say, Not with my money, not with my silence,
not in my name.”
The Council of Commissions met in . According to
a
report, the Commission on Home Ministries in its meeting “agreed that the
Student Aid Fund for Non-Registrants should also apply to students who cannot
get loans because they are war-tax resisters.”
In
a
editorial about baptism,
Gordon Houser made a point of casting the original theological debate about
infant baptism as in part a tax resistance issue:
Those early believers were called Anabaptists out of derision. At that time
the state church in Europe baptized infants, which not only placed them on
the church’s membership list but on the state’s tax rolls as well.
Refusing to baptize infants and baptizing adults was a political act at that
time, one that threatened the sovereignty of the state government. It served
as a form of tax refusal, since taxpayer lists came from church membership
rolls. It also served as a protest against the state’s authority to conscript
people to fight the Turks.
A
letter to the editor from David E. Ortman, printed in the
issue, explained how the
resistance landscape had changed for telephone tax resisters in the aftermath
of the breakup of the telephone service provider monopoly. It mentioned two
phone companies that had created official ways for resisters to have the
federal excise tax removed from their phone bills. The letter ended: “Now, if
church organizations only had as much courage or political muscle as phone
companies to avoid being tax collectors.”
In the edition,
Titus Peachey reported
on “[a]n informal survey of 17 Mennonite and Brethren in Christ institutions in
North America [that] has found that few have written policies related to war
taxes.”
But some do honor requests from employees not to withhold all of their federal
income taxes or the portion which would otherwise go for military-related
expenditures. Others have policies opposing Internal Revenue Service levies of
accounts of war tax resisters.
Most institutions surveyed had not fielded such requests within
.
The General Conference Mennonite Church has had a tax-withholding policy in
place and has implemented it
several times. The Mennonite Church General Board agreed in
to “honor the request of an employee who for
conscience’ sake requests that the military portion of his or her federal
income tax not be withheld.”
Mennonite Mutual Aid approved a
policy asking the Internal Revenue Service to lift levies related to war
taxes. “To the extent legally possible,
MMA supports
its members who are protesting the payment of war taxes by initially
requesting that
IRS
collection attempts or levies on MMA-controlled
assets be lifted,” the policy states.
Pennsylvania Mennonite Federal Credit Union in
adopted a similar position.
In a letter responding to an
IRS levy
on an employee’s wages, Mennonite Central Committee wrote: “We do not want to
do anything as an organization that would be an offense to the conscience and
beliefs of such individuals or that would suggest support for the world’s arms
race… We would therefore respectfully request that the levy… be withdrawn.”
Attention war tax resisters: Now you can avoid war taxes without
IRS
harassment. For free information, send SASE to:
Yoder’s Tax Information, 10630 Hiser’s Lane, Broadway,
VA 22815.
Given the Internal Revenue Service’s sullied reputation, this shouldn’t
surprise us, although it probably should offend us: After years of trying to
resolve the issue, Grace Montgomery, a Quaker war-tax resister from Stamford,
Conn., is calling for an
investigation after the
IRS
illegally cashed a photocopy of a check not even made out to the
IRS.
According to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund newsletter, Montgomery
each year places the military portion of her federal income tax in a Quaker
escrow account. The
IRS then
usually levies her bank account for the amount owed. But in
, the
IRS
cashed a photocopy of Montgomery’s check to the escrow account. Her bank
accepted it even though it was not genuine and was made out to “The Religious
Society of Friends.”
This is the forty-third in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we reach 2002.
The finally did a good job
of telling the story of John Schrag:
Mennonite John Schrag faces a mob during World War Ⅰ
by James C. Juhnke
When World War Ⅰ broke out, Mennonites discovered they were considered
enemies by their neighbors and business associates. Their German origins,
even if generations removed, their German language and culture, and their
pacifism made them suspect. In some communities, patriotic citizen groups
harassed “slackers” by throwing yellow paint on houses and meetinghouses,
committing arson, tarring and feathering pacifists and threatening death by
hanging. In this story, Swiss Volhynian Mennonite John Schrag finds himself
in the hands of such a patriotic mob.
The John Schrag espionage case was the dramatic climax to the dilemma of
Kansas Mennonites in World War Ⅰ. Schrag was chosen to be the symbol and the
bearer of the American community’s mistrust and hatred of German-speaking
pacifists in the tense days of .
Schrag was a believer in those simple and durable virtues that made Mennonites
highly prized citizens on the Kansas frontier. He was 13 years old when his
family emigrated from Volhynia, Russia, to central Kansas in
. In his teens, he helped his father build a
grain mill on the banks of the Little Arkansas River in Harvey County. From
his father he learned the value of hard work, the love of the soil and the
wisdom of careful investment.
From the Mennonite faith and tradition Schrag knew that God generously rewards
his faithful laboring servants. Schrag’s rise as a prosperous farmer with a
large family and extensive landholdings was as natural as the economic and
social success of the Mennonite community in the first decades after arrival
in the new country.
The Mennonite role as outstanding and valuable citizens received an
unforgettable jolt when the United States entered World War Ⅰ in
. It suddenly became a requirement of
acceptable American citizenship to support the war and to hate Germany. The
Mennonites failed on both counts. They could not support the war because their
religious faith taught them nonresistance, a doctrine whose practical
expression included a claim for exemption from military service. They could
not hate Germany because Mennonites themselves were of German background and
loved the German language and culture as preserved in their homes, schools and
churches.
Their sympathies in the European war had been demonstrated in their
collections of money for the German Red Cross. Mennonites could not be
acceptable citizens in America during World War Ⅰ unless they gave up their
German culture and their doctrine of nonresistance.
The war bond drives became the test of loyal citizenship in the local
community. Faced alternatively with persuasion and intimidation by local
Loyalty Leagues, many Mennonites reconciled their nonresistance with the
purchase of the bonds. After all, reasoned Henry Peter Krehbiel, member of the
Western District Committee on Exemptions, a war bond is a kind of tax, and
Jesus told us to pay our taxes. But John Schrag was not convinced. Buying
bonds was supporting the war, and he would not support the war. That was that.
Five carloads of men: On ,
a group of patriotic citizens in Burrton,
Kan., decided that the time
was ripe for a showdown. “We was out to convert these slackers into patriots,”
said one of them later. Five carloads of men drove 11 miles to the Schrag farm
to get him to join the Armistice Day festivities in Burrton. Schrag’s boys,
sensing trouble, refused to say where their father was, but the Burrton men
found him after ransacking the farmstead and forcing their way into the house.
Schrag offered neither argument nor resistance.
He went along in the hope that a measure of cooperation would help avoid
physical violence.
In Burrton, a crowd quickly gathered as the citizens confronted Schrag with
their real reason for bringing him to town. He must buy war bonds now or face
the consequences. Schrag offered to contribute $200 to the Red Cross and the
Salvation Army, but this was not sufficient.
They demanded that he salute the American flag and carry the flag through town
at the head of a parade. But Schrag quietly and firmly refused to cooperate.
The flag thrust into his hand fell to the ground. Someone shouted, “He stepped
on the flag.” The crowd became an enraged mob.
Yellow paint: They sprinkled and poured yellow paint on their victim,
rubbing it into his scalp and beard until he resembled “a big cheese or yellow
squash or pumpkin after the autumnal ripening.” They led him to the city jail.
Someone ran for a rope to hang him, but Tom Roberts, the head of the local
Anti-Horse-Thief Association, courageously stood before the jail door,
brandished a gun and said, “If you take this man out of jail, you take him
over my dead body.” Temporarily frustrated, the indignant citizens made plans
to return that night, force the jail open and hang this so-called traitor.
Meanwhile, Schrag was placed in a chair on a raised platform in the jail, so
passersby could view the humiliated man through the window in the jail door.
One repentant member of the mob later testified to Schrag’s calmness
throughout the ordeal: “If ever a man looked like Christ, he did.”
Schrag was finally rescued from the Burrton crusaders for American democracy
by the Harvey County sheriff, who came that evening to take him to the county
jail in Newton for cleaning and safe-keeping. Before he was released, Schrag
was informed that he was to be tried in court for violation of the Espionage
Act. It was against the law to desecrate the flag of the United States.
Local newspaper accounts of the incident failed to defend the rights of the
victim. The weekly Burrton Graphic on
saw in the event “a pungent and durable reminder that loyalty is a necessary
prerequisite to life in this community. We must all be Americans.”
The Hutchinson News article said that “a petition
is being circulated to have him [Schrag] deported to Germany, his native land.
This country is fast becoming an unhealthy place for ‘slackers’ of any kind.”
The Newton Evening Kansan-Republican suggested that
if a federal court would find Schrag guilty, “it would undoubtedly mean the
confiscation of his property and his deportation.” On the week of his hearing
in Wichita, the editor of the Burrton Graphic
published a list: “Some Things Residents of Burrton Should Be Thankful For.”
In the list was “that we as a people are more tolerant of others’ foibles.”
Desecration of the flag: The case against Schrag was heard in the
Wichita federal courtroom by
U.S. Commissioner
C. Shearman on .
Five Burrton citizens presented 50 typewritten pages of evidence to prove
Schrag’s disloyalty and desecration of the flag. For his defense, Schrag
retained the services of a Jewish lawyer named Schulz. Commissioner Shearman
took the case under advisement and promised that the decision would be made
shortly.
The decision, handed down on ,
was that Schrag was not guilty and should not be bound over for federal trial.
But Commissioner Shearman did say that “Schrag could not have gone closer to a
violation of the Espionage Act if he had had 100 lawyers at his side to advise
him.”
Schrag in fact had not willfully desecrated the flag. Nothing in the Espionage
Act required one to salute the flag. Schrag’s words that supposedly slandered
the flag had been spoken in German, so none of the monolingual plaintiffs
could prove any guilt.
The Newton Evening Kansan-Republican, frustrated by
the acquittal of this “bull-headed” man, suggested that the case “should
certainly make plain to any thinking person the viciousness that exists in the
encouragement of the German language as a means of communication in America…
The melting pot cannot exercise its proper functions when such things are
allowed.”
The Mennonite newspapers in central Kansas, intimidated into silence, did not
come to Schrag’s defense and did not even mention the incident or the hearing
as an item of news. After the commissioner’s decision, however, C.E. Krehbiel,
editor of Der Herold, wrote an editorial,
“Mob Power,” that clearly referred to the Schrag case, although it mentioned
no specific names or events. In cases of mob violence, wrote Krehbiel, either
the mob or the abused person is guilty. If the court of justice decides that
the victim is innocent, the only conclusion is that the mob is guilty. Readers
were to make their own applications.
Schrag’s attorney encouraged him to bring charges against his persecutors, but
Schrag declined. Such an action would have violated the Mennonite principles
of nonresistance.
Nevertheless, in the months after the Schrag affair, the nonresistant
German-Mennonites had no scruples against clamping an economic boycott on the
town of Burrton. The boycott was not organized systematically, but it was
effective in disrupting the trade of Burrton businessmen who were dependent on
the commerce of German-Mennonite farmers. The legacy of tension and hatred
generated by the event would be remembered for decades to come.
American Melting pot: The experience of the Mennonites in World War Ⅰ
hardly had a salutary effect on the processes of the American melting pot. In
the years after the war, the Mennonites were driven to a defensive
retrenchment, to a renewed awareness of their distinctiveness as Mennonites.
Though the Mennonites gradually abandoned their German language and some
German cultural traits, the war experiences forced them to a reconsideration
and reaffirmation of the doctrine of nonresistance. As long as Mennonites held
to that doctrine, they would be a thorn in the flesh of American nationalists.
The witness of John Schrag and of other Mennonites who refused to compromise
their doctrine of nonresistance during wartime can serve as a reminder of the
Anabaptist heritage of steadfastness in the face of persecution.
While reading The Earth Is The Lord’s… John Ruth’s massive history of Lancaster Conference, I discovered that this same question confronted my ancestors during the Civil War.
As their neighbors joined local militias “to preserve the Union,” many Pennsylvania Mennonites were forced to answer questions about their loyalty.
In the end, Congress passed a bill that allowed “the conscientious” to pay a commutation fee of $300 and thereby avoid the military draft.
“Mennonites, who preferred to pay anything called a tax rather than
participating in their government’s military activities, were more content
with this arrangement than were the Quakers, many of whom saw it as a moral
compromise,” writes Ruth.
That solution is the pattern that exists to this day. While we do not fight,
at least half our federal taxes support a vast military machine that no longer
needs our bodies. It needs our money to pay for high-tech weapons and for the
training for those who guide those weapons.
This reality leaves us directly supporting our country’s military with our
dollars and means that in spite of our convictions and beliefs, in practice
Mennonites are not much different from those who loudly support the current
military buildup.
This Memorial Day, we can remember and pray for neighbors who publicly mourn
the loss of a family member. We can also pray for those who were killed by our
country, which for years has used and continues to use our tax dollars to kill
in our name.
Don Schrader penned letters to the editor for the
and
editions
to describe how his simple-living, non-voting lifestyle meets his goal of tax
refusal. Excerpt:
In I lived well on $3,845 for my total
expenses: rent, food, phone, stamps,
etc. I have no
right to more than I need while others have less than they need. I love to
live simply. I write down every penny I spend for everything every day. I
always pay cash; I refuse to buy on credit and to pay interest. I enjoy
learning new ways to stretch dollars, to live healthily and responsibly on
less.
The most radical, nonviolent action that people of conscience can take in this
society is to pledge publicly to live simply, to own no car, and to pay no
federal income tax for war for the rest of their lives.
What would happen if Christians en masse decided to no
longer pay the portion of their taxes that go to war? What if Christians
mounted a mass resistance movement as an expression of our loyalty to Jesus
Christ and his way of peace? Several years ago
PBS
aired a series called A Force More Powerful. This
documentary tracked six nonviolent social-change movements in
,
including the
U.S. civil rights
struggle, the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa and the movement in
India to end British rule.
The common thread in these successful nonviolent movements was masses of
people choosing not to cooperate with forces of evil and oppression.
Oppressive powers depend for survival on the cooperation of the masses. When
that cooperation is withdrawn, these structures eventually crumble.
Ten years ago, when Linda Shelly accepted her first salaried job, she did not
want all the money. What she did made her a recipient of a Journey Award,
given by Mennonite Mutual Aid to highlight good
stewardship.
After working with Mennonite Central Committee
in Bolivia and Honduras, Shelly returned to the United States to be
MCC’s
director of Latin American and Caribbean programs. But her wages
were problematic. Shelly did not want her tax dollars to
support the
U.S. military. She
also wanted to share her money, after years of benefiting from the
generosity of Latin Americans who had so few
resources. So Shelly accepted a lower salary to
reduce her lax liability. She also loaned money to
friends, then instead of receiving taxable interest income,
shared it with people in need, both locally and internationally.
This is the forty-fourth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we reach the mid-2000s and the start of the war on Iraq.
Once again Caesar asks for more money to provide more weapons — this time to
launch a war in Iraq. Even the Pope and nearly all the major Christian
denominations in the United States, not just those in the historic peace
church tradition, have said this is not a just war. We know 25 to 35 percent
of our tax money will go to support the machines of war that have taken the
lives of our friends. In the current hi-tech war-making, Caesar covets our
dollars more than our bodies.
We agonize in our consciences. If a man were to run into our house and demand
we give him a knife because he wants to go kill our neighbor, would we give it
to him? Of course not.
Is it different if it is Caesar who asks for that knife? What shall we give
Caesar? Anything Caesar asks for? Or only what belongs to Caesar? What does
belong to Caesar? We try to seek the mind of a compassionate Christ in this
dilemma. Within our souls we feel we cannot willfully put that knife into the
hands of those who will bring harm and death to friends — known and
unknown — around the world.
Once again we fill out our 1040 Tax Form correctly, but again we write a
letter to the Internal Revenue Service — and government officials — to explain
why we cannot pay some or all the military percentage of our income tax. We
explain that we direct our monies instead to our church’s relief and
development programs. Such efforts, we believe, build sustainable, peaceful
lives for people around the world and probably do more to engender good will
and security for Americans than any war. Under biblical principles and under
the principles of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals after World War Ⅱ we know
we cannot hide behind the inhumane orders of an official or even a government.
Each of us is ultimately responsible to God and our fellow human beings for
our actions.
The IRS
sends us notices of “unpaid taxes.” Eventually they may freeze our wages or
bank account in order to seize the money. (Under the “aiding and abetting”
considerations, it feels different to us whether the man seizes the knife from
our kitchen or we give it to him without protest.) Sometimes the
IRS has
not followed through. We especially salute our friends who live under the
taxable income level as a way of affirming life and walking lightly on the
earth.
When our international friends hear there are Christians who withhold even a
token amount of the “military tax” as a cry for peace, many of
them — including friends of other faiths — have expressed appreciation that
Christians here are ready to witness in this way for a God of peace.
The April issue of Mennonite Central Committee’s A Common
Place reported that ,
MCC
has given more than $4.5 million to Afghanistan relief. According to War
Resister’s League, the United States spent $46 million in one hour of the war
on Iraq — more than 10 times the amount
MCC
gave to rehabilitate Afghanistan. If for no other reason than Christian
stewardship, we should refuse to pay the 47 percent of federal income, estate
or gift taxes that fund the current and past military budget. Redirect them
instead to do what Jesus asked of us: Care for the enemy, teach our children,
heal the sick, lend to the needy without interest.
I urge all who work and pray for peace to support the passage of the Religious
Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act, a bill that would provide that the federal tax
payments of conscientious objectors to war be used only for nonmilitary
purposes. Until that bill is passed, I urge you to use all legal and ethical
ways to lower your taxable income and to consider redirecting the military
percentage of the tax money you owe. The Mennonite Church needs to become more
proactive, prophetic and pastoral as we address the consequences of the draft
of war taxes.
The
MCC
awarded Zachary Kurtz
top honors in a “Peace Oratorical Contest” for his speech on war tax
resistance, according to the edition.
The edition noted the ongoing
court battle between the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Quakers) and the
IRS.
“The Internal Revenue Service is threatening
PYM
with a penalty of more than $20,000 for refusing to garnish the wages of
employee and war-tax-resister Priscilla Adams.
PYM
has decided to challenge the
IRS on
all possible grounds, including constitutional and statutory religious
freedom…”
Timothy Godshall’s article on death & taxes
appeared in the edition. It
pointed out the grotesquely enormous
U.S. military
budget, and the sacrifices conscientious objectors are forced to make to
reduce their complicity with it, and used this as a launching pad to plug the
Peace Tax Fund bill.
Rex
J. Rempel and Lenae K. Nofziger wrote in to the
issue to say that because
“[r]oughly 53 percent of our current income taxes” will be spent “on soldiers,
weapons, and debt from prior wars” they had decided they would be “withholding
$53 from our payment due. Obviously this is a symbolic amount, but it is a step
toward fully following God’s call for us.”
After World War Ⅱ, a Jewish rabbi in Germany said what shocked him most was
not the terror of the Nazis but the silence of the good people in Germany.
Today what disturbs me more than the horrendous atrocities of presidents Bush,
Clinton and the
U.S. Empire for
many decades is how most
U.S. peace
activists, progressives, Quakers, Mennonites and members of Amnesty
International pay
U.S. federal income
tax for these atrocities: to rob, terrorize, blind, cripple, paralyze, make
homeless and murder our sisters and brothers worldwide. We get what we pay
for.
Nothing in life is more important than refusing to pay federal income tax for
war — no matter who is president. The best way to refuse to pay federal income
tax for war, with no fines and no threats from the
IRS,
is to live simply under the taxable level. The federal income taxable level
for for a single person who is under 65 and
not blind is $7,950. I lived on
$3,390 — less than half the federal income taxable level.
I have no right to pay tax to do to other people what I do not want them to do
to me. I have paid no federal income tax for 25 years. I pledge now, at age
58, to live simply, to own no car and to pay no federal income tax for war for
the rest of my life. This is nonviolent revolution.
There was a brief write-up
about the 10th International Conference on War Tax
Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns that happened in
, in the
edition.
H.A. Penner
wrote in to the edition to
explain his symbolic withholding formula:
To express my conscientious objection to war, I am withholding from my current
federal income tax payment an amount equal to one dime for every billion
dollars in the
U.S. military
budget. I am donating that amount — $78.30 — to the National Campaign for a
Peace Tax Fund to be used in the pursuit of peace.
For a time the Bixlers withheld the
U.S. telephone tax
but found that this decision resulted only in confused correspondence. Now
their deductions are sufficiently large to cut payment of federal taxes. “When
charitable donations go up,” says Sam, “taxes go down.” One time the
IRS
asked them to show receipts.
This is the twenty-sixth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal
of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
The debate about whether or not to pay war taxes, and about whether Mennonite
institutions should be more accommodating of the requests of their employees
not to have war taxes deducted from their salaries, continued in
, and edged ever closer to the Mennonite
Church itself.
For over ten years I have openly withheld a portion of my federal income taxes
because I’m a conscientious objector to participation in war. This action has
sometimes resulted in face-to-face conversations with Internal Revenue Service
representatives. I have on several occasions written to legislators on issues
of peace and justice or facilitated similar communication by our congregation.
As I see that Christians have contributed to the injustices, my faith compels
me to speak. There are many professing Christians who are in public office who
make government policy. There are many professing Christians whose votes
helped to put them into office and whose tax dollars by the millions pay for
the administration of their policies. Because of this I want to invite my
Christian brothers and sisters to let the Prince of Peace train their
consciences and to take these trained consciences to work whether in the
private or public sector.
The board discussed a request by several staff members that
MCC
not withhold their income taxes, to allow them to withhold a portion of their
taxes as a protest of the dollars used for military purposes.
They agreed that the executive committee should appoint a task group to
consult broadly within the
MCC
constituency to review historical positions on this matter, to examine
alternative responses, and to bring a recommendation to the executive
committee and annual meeting on alternative courses of action.
This approach “moves from a simple decision of whether
MCC
should withhold taxes to stepping back and reflecting on the overall situation
before recommending any one solution for the
MCC
board to accept or reject,” it was said.
Members noted that the Mennonite Church and the Conference of Mennonites in
Canada are studying this issue, that the General Conference Mennonite Church
has completed such a study, and that efforts will be made to learn from those
studies.
John and Sandy Drescher Lehman: war tax resisters who work for
MBM
Friday evening — Case Study 3: Conscientious objection to
military taxes — a case presentation, by John and Sandra Drescher Lehman and
Paul Gingrich. — A panel— James R. Hess, Stephen Dintaman, and Bob
Detweiler.
The other case was conscientious objection to military taxes. John and Sandy
Drescher Lehman of Richmond,
Va., told how they followed
their conscience and decided a few years ago to withhold the part of their
income taxes that they figure goes for the military.
The complication now, though, is that they have become employees of Mennonite
Board of Missions in their role as codirectors of the Richmond Discipleship
Voluntary Service program. “What should an institution do when its employees
ask that we stop withholding taxes from their paychecks?” asked
MBM
president Paul Gingrich.
A panel of four attempted to answer the question, including Robert Hull, a
soldier-turned-tax-resister who is peace and justice secretary of the General
Conference Mennonite Church. He explained how his denomination, with the
instruction of its members, is now breaking the law by not withholding taxes
from the paychecks of seven of its employees who have requested that.
The tensest moment of the conference came when James Hess, a Lancaster
Conference bishop who served on the war taxes panel, was asked whether he
would have paid all his taxes in Nazi Germany even though some of it went to
kill six million Jews. He hinted that the Jews may have brought judgment on
themselves for their crucifixion of Jesus. This caused a minor uproar and led
to a public apology the next morning by Hess. He said that his statement was
speculative, trying to defend the sovereignty of God, and quoted from Jacques
Ellul that everything man does is within the global plan of God.
Energetic war tax resistance foe D.R. Yoder couldn’t stand to see his position
dragged through the mud like this, so he responded in
a letter to the editor:
I would not in any way seek to defend the position reportedly taken by James
Hess during the recent Conversations on Faith Ⅱ linking the Jewish Holocaust
with Christ’s crucifixion… Such notions are the misguided, though not
necessarily unnatural, projections of his fundamentalism.
It is hardly fair, however, that the person who posed what seems the quite
irresponsible as well as irrelevant question which provoked Hess’s intemperate
response is not also identified in the report. For this questioner should be
asked whether he/she paid (or would have paid) taxes to the United States or
Canada during World War Ⅱ.
If the questioner would not have paid, given the assumptions of tax resistance
theory, would not he/she also have been guilty of contributing to the
prolongation of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and others, just as he/she
charges a taxpaying German citizen Hess would have been?
If, on the other hand, the questioner would have paid his/her federal taxes,
again given the assumptions of tax resistant theory, wouldn’t that be
embracing the “just” war position? For how else is the “financing” of one set
of military activity, but refusing to “finance” another, to be interpreted?
We Mennonites are already rushing pell-mell along the broad way, having
sanctified “just” resistance, “just” legal suits, “just” civil disruption, and
even the “just” destruction of public and private property. It doesn’t take a
very astute reading of the winds a-blowing to expect conferences in the very
near future to consider the inherent “justice” of “defensive” wars and of wars
of “liberation.”
War tax resisters Ray and Wilma Gingerich shared their letter to the
IRS
in the issue:
Here are excerpts of a letter we sent to our regional Internal Revenue Service
officer recently. An ongoing conviction of ours is that our most significant
witness in the political-ethical arena is to the church itself. This is a
matter of policy in our local “Christians for Peace” organization. Whenever we
plan an “action,” we do it deliberately with the church “looking over our
shoulders.”
Dear Mr. Smith:
According to your records we now owe the
IRS
$1491.92 in accumulated taxes, interest, and penalties for the fiscal years
of . What you fail to
recognize is:
That the monies withheld represent the military portion of our income
taxes. (We have not withheld veterans’ benefits.)
That the amounts withheld have already been paid to church institutions
engaged in nonviolent justice-and-peace activities. (We are not seeking
to evade carrying our fair share of the public burden for a peaceable and
life-giving society.)
That we are acting out of our religious convictions fostered in the
tradition of the historic peace witness of the Mennonite Church.
You are asking us to do what in good faith we cannot do — to violate our
consciences and our understanding of obedience to Jesus Christ by paying for
murder.
I, Wilma, am a nurse dedicated to making lives whole, not to destroying them.
I find preparation to kill and destroy abhorrent and inconsistent with what
my whole life as a mother, as a nurse, as a human being, as a follower of
Jesus Christ is about.
I, Ray, am a professor of church history and ethics. In my teaching and in
everyday life I seek to underscore that if we are to become persons and
create communities of noble character and life-giving quality, we must live
lives consistent with our beliefs.
To you as a law-enforcer, and to our congressmen and senators as law-makers,
we ask: What is being done to our people and to our nation by enforcing the
practice of violence upon those whose conscience and religious convictions
are opposed to violence? Why do you insist that pacifist citizens act
contrary to their conscience by coercing them to pay for weapons of death?
Would it not be a healthier, stronger nation if these people were granted
freedom of religion and allowed to practice economic nonviolence by
channeling their funds into constructive, nonviolent, humanitarian aid?
To Mennonites war is murder. For Mennonites, and for all Christians who take
seriously the lordship of Jesus in their daily living, there is no government
that can override the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. For Mennonites,
therefore, and for all pacifist Christians, the payment of military taxes has
always posed a dilemma. Some, psychically numbed by continued
rationalization, comply with the state’s demands for death money. Others
choose the way of noncompliance, following the example of Jesus Christ that
leads to persecution — military tax penalties, confiscation of property, and
imprisonment.
Finally, Mr. Smith, allow us to address you personally. What role will you
have in all of this? All of us are in the system. And all of us are morally
obligated to say “no” to death and “yes” to life. You undoubtedly have
thought about these questions many times. We would count it a privilege to
meet with you to discuss these grave matters in a more personal way.
There were some letters to the editor
in response to this wave of articles on the topic. Joe Cross wrote that he was
generally against war tax resistance, but didn’t say anything particularly
notable. Curt Ashburn didn’t care for the put-down of taxpayers in the
Gingeriches’ letter (“psychically numbed by continued rationalization”) and
felt that they should keep such “witness” in the family rather than dragging
IRS
agents into it. He also asked if the Gingeriches refused to pay taxes to
support state-funded abortion, police violence, capital punishment, and so
forth or if they thought war was somehow special?
Exploring new territory in religious opposition to nuclear arms, a number of
major religious denominations have begun to contemplate whether they should
throw their support behind the growing movement to resist payment of taxes in
protest of the arms race. While increasing numbers of individuals within the
churches have joined the ranks of “war tax” resisters, only a handful of
denominations have encouraged or lent support to such resistance. However, as
peace activists within the churches have demanded tougher antiwar stands at
the highest church levels, denominations have begun to wrestle with the
biblical, theological, and historical questions raised by war tax resistance.
The churches are using the examination as a basis for deciding whether to
take, as corporate bodies, any of a variety of actions — both legal and
illegal — in support of the movement. What is moving churches is the growing
realization that they have been “praying for peace while paying for war,” said
Marian Franz, a Mennonite who is executive director of the Washington-based
National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. “For many people, the arms race has
just gone too far. And they’re saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m involved in it.’ ” While
several mainline denominations have begun to study the issue, the strongest
support for war tax resistance has come from the historic peace churches,
particularly Quaker and Mennonite bodies. In an unprecedented move, the
60,000-member General Conference Mennonite Church voted, in
, not to withhold federal taxes
from the paychecks of employees who are tax refusers. This is punishable by
fines and imprisonment.
Seminars on singleness and sexuality, marriage and sexuality, and silent
devotions were also well attended, indicating a rising concern among
Mennonites for personal growth and self-understanding. On the other hand,
seminars on such topics as war taxes, Central America, and church-state
relations received relatively less attention.
I heard that the conference moderator gave only six minutes of floor time to
deal with the question of the church withholding federal income tax from the
paychecks of church workers who conscientiously resist war taxes.
Perhaps to some, war tax resistance is more personally uncomfortable than
homosexuality! Remember that for any government to exploit and massacre, two
things are required from the majority of its citizens — silence and paying
taxes.
The Rhodes family (left to right): Carmen, Leanna, Rebekah, Philip, James,
Anita, Candice, and Martin.
Praying for peace while paying for war? It’s an irony that Ray and Wilma
Gingerich and James and Leanna Rhodes of the Harrisonburg, Virginia, area
refuse to accept.
Ray and Wilma are in their early 50s. He teaches theology and ethics at
Eastern Mennonite College; she is completing a master’s degree in community
health nursing at the University of Virginia and works part time at Virginia
Mennonite Home. Their four sons of college age or older no longer live at
home. One might think it’s time to slow down, settle in, go with the flow.
Not so. The Gingerichs are wrestling with an issue they believe is
increasingly urgent for Christians — how to respond to the fact that over 50
percent of all income tax monies go to pay for past and present wars and to
prepare for future wars. As one response, they began in
to withhold the portion of their federal
income tax that pays for war.
“We deduct an estimated amount for veterans’ benefits, then send a check for
the amount we are withholding to Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section or
some other church agency,” Ray explained. “We don’t try to hide anything. The
Internal Revenue Service receives a letter that outlines our position along
with a photocopy of the check being sent to the church agency.”
For the past three years, the couple has also withheld the federal excise tax
from their monthly telephone statement. This tax began during the Vietnam War
as a “quick source of revenue” for that conflict, Ray pointed out.
Slightly different tack.
Several miles southwest of Gingerich’s Harrisonburg home, in the rolling
countryside of western Rockingham County near Dayton, James and Leanna Rhodes
are taking a slightly different tack to the military tax issue.
The couple, in their mid-30s, is making a conscious effort to live at a
nontaxable income level. For them, it means trying to raise their family of
six children on $12,000–$13,000 a year.
It’s easier said than done, the couple admitted, but several things are in
their favor.
The family rents the large frame house where they’re living. They care for
dairy heifers and beef cattle for their landlord. The old station wagon they
drive is registered in Leanna’s mother’s name so the
IRS
can’t put a lien on it.
James works for his brother in a new and used farm machinery business. Leanna,
a nurse, works on and off for Homecall, a local home health care agency.
The family has no accessible bank account or other personal property that the
government could claim to satisfy unpaid military taxes. This leaves the
IRS
only one option — to go after Rhodeses themselves.
Rhodeses have refused to pay the portion of their federal income tax for
military purposes for three years in which they earned slightly over their
nontaxable limit. They have been audited and warned of collection procedures,
but nothing has come of it.
Like Gingerichs, Rhodeses refuse to pay the federal excise tax portion of
their monthly phone bill.
Acquiring peace convictions.
The families didn’t acquire their peace convictions overnight or in isolation.
Gingerichs point to a stint of mission work in Luxembourg,
, as a time when they were
confronted with the realities of war.
“We heard stories and saw photos from Vietnam that never made it into the
North American press,” Ray recalled. “We also met people who lived through the
experiences of Nazi Germany and realized that much of what happened in World
War Ⅱ was largely the result of good people following orders.”
In Gingerich enrolled at Goshen Biblical
Seminary, where he was challenged by the teachings of John Howard Yoder, a tax
resister himself. When the family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, for Ray to
pursue a doctorate at Vanderbilt University, the couple began attending a
United Methodist church that was deeply involved in urban ministry.
“I got my theology at Goshen Seminary but we saw how it could be lived out at
that church in Nashville,” Ray said. “Our time there made us realize that
peacemaking is a Christian mandate — not just a Mennonite ideology!”
Family peace initiatives have not been restricted to Ray and Wilma. When
President Jimmy Carter reinstated the military draft in
, sons Andre and Pierre both decided not to
register.
“Here’s a case of children and parents teaching each other,” Wilma said. “We
had been through a lot of painful and joyful growth experiences together. To
them, not to register was the logical way to live out the convictions we
shared.
“As the cost for not paying our military taxes increased we could only move
ahead. To do otherwise would have been a betrayal of our sons and their
convictions.”
More than lip service.
Although James and Leanna had long felt a commitment to blend personal faith
and active social concern, their awareness of the need to give more than lip
service to their beliefs was heightened during
when they helped to start a
Mennonite church in San Francisco.
In that setting James got involved with a number of peace causes and groups,
including counseling military personnel who wanted to claim conscientious
objector status.
“That was a fantastic experience,” James said of their time in the Bay Area.
“I was impressed by the aggressive and committed efforts of many peace
activists, even though many may have acted from purely humanitarian motives.”
Both couples are quick to draw on their understanding of Jesus’ teachings and
example to support their actions.
“The gospel addresses our relationship to other human beings,” Ray said.
“Salvation is a personal response but it is also communal. It means
‘wholemaking.’ War and preparation for war is the epitome of death and
destruction.”
“I hold to an evangelical faith that includes the message of peace and
nonresistance,” James added. “I believe that Jesus can save us from
militarism, hateful attitudes, and a spirit of revenge in the same way he
delivers us from other sins.”
“Our church has failed to see the logical progression from the conscientious
objector stance and Mennonites’ refusal to buy war bonds in
to the war tax resistance stance
of ,” Ray stated.
Added Wilma: “Our peace witness dare not be limited to nonconscription. Why
put most of the burden on 18-to-20-year-olds to take a
CO stand
while we middle-aged men and women go on paying for war? At the same time we
expect our young people to believe that participation in war is wrong.”
Stance is costly.
Both Gingerichs and Rhodeses have paid a price for their stance.
For the Gingerich family, it has included repeated threats from the Selective
Service System and a lien placed on all their personal property.
James Rhodes earned tuition money to attend Eastern Mennonite College and
Seminary by working as an artificial inseminator for dairy farms up and down
the Shenandoah Valley. He later lost that job as a result of local pressure,
but he “feels no animosity” toward those who called for his ouster.
James noted that the harshest criticism has come from other Mennonites at a
time when interest in Christian peacemaking and nonresistance is gaining
momentum in a number of mainline denominations.
Both couples indicated they have had “valuable and redemptive” talks with
IRS
officials. According to James, these encounters “allow us to move from systems
to individuals and open the door to exchange viewpoints.”
“A certain amount of understanding has developed,” he added. “The
IRS
people seem to empathize with our position and apparently don’t know what to
do with us.”
Gingerichs have journeyed to Charlottesville, Virginia, to meet with
IRS
officials and have encountered “extremely personable people… there’s a feeling
of mutual respect.”
The two families commend each other’s positions, but cited the need for other
people who are involved in varied forms of tax resistance to “become more
visible.” They are active in a local “Christians for Peace” group that has
about a dozen members.
“I often feel like we are pretty much going it alone,” said Wilma. “We long
for the day when the focus shifts from our having to defend our position to
the real question of how pacifist Mennonite Christians can go on paying for
war and claim to be followers of Christ. We need greater accountability to
each other in the church.”
“There’s a need to develop an open forum and network for people who are at
different places on the war tax issue to get together and learn from and
encourage each other,” Ray said. Added Leanna: “I would feel a lot more secure
in our position if we knew for certain that a dozen Mennonites in this
community would be willing to take a public stand with us if at some point
we’d be taken to court.”
The couples emphasized that their methods of war tax resistance are not the
only valid approaches, and both expressed a desire for more dialogue and sense
of solidarity with the larger Mennonite Church.
Whatever course one pursues for the cause of peace, it is important to do it
“with a sense of joy,” Ray noted. “Lose your sense of exuberance and it
becomes an overwhelming burden. At that point one must back off to gain fresh
perspective.”
Witness will continue. Ray and Wilma expect to continue withholding that
percentage of their federal income taxes that goes for direct military
purposes and to continue talking and working with individuals and within their
professions to keep the issue alive.
James and Leanna, meanwhile, “feel comfortable” with their simple living
approach, recognizing that it doesn’t allow them to confront government
officials and others as directly as Gingerichs have.
“When our children get older, we’ll need to adjust our strategy,” James said.
“For now, our fear of what could happen to us has gone from near paranoia to a
real sense of peace and freedom.
“Our response, however small, is at least a symbolic effort to say ‘no,’ to
refuse to contribute toward the ultimate destruction of God’s people and his
beautiful creation.”
“Paying a Price for Peace”… is one of the most encouraging articles you’ve
published recently. It is encouraging to see two families who take their faith
in Jesus Christ very seriously. In my mind, they are acting out the very core
of the gospel message to love, to be peacemakers, and — above all — to be
obedient.
On the other hand the article can cause one to be depressed because of the
lack of support and criticisms Rhodeses and Gingerichs have received from
fellow Mennonites. Mennonites, of all people, should be cheering these
families on, even if they are not in complete agreement with their tax
witness.
Joyce and I have also withheld portions of our federal income tax payment,
making it necessary for the Internal Revenue Service to put liens on our
checking account. It is a lonely feeling. To me, any action that lessens
another human being, lessens me. It is sin for me to sit in the safety of a
protected home and claim no responsibility for what my money buys. To tell
someone we love them and apologize for the fact that nearly half our tax
dollar is being spent in preparation to kill them, is the ultimate lie and
irony. I cannot love you if I am preparing to kill you.
On the other hand, Harry Shenk
wasn’t as thrilled.
He started off with the traditional Render-unto-Caesar line that Jesus had
never discouraged paying taxes to militaristic Rome, and then ended on this
curious note:
Jesus never challenged the state on these practices, nor did he indicate that
paying taxes implied responsibility for these heinous crimes.
I don’t think Jesus paid any war tax. I think he probably lived below a
taxable level, and I affirm anyone who chooses this path. I also pay no war
tax. Our tax checks are not divided into portions by the Internal Revenue
Service, but are thrown together into a central fund, against which huge
government checks are drawn. I simply decide in my heart which huge government
check I want my money to be a part of. For me, it’s food stamps and interstate
highways.
The former moderator of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), Lord MacLeod of
Fuinary, has called for the creation of a peace army committed to withholding
the 13 percent of income taxes which the British government spends on defense.
MacLeod hopes such an army will be able to persuade the government to allow
people to give an equivalent amount of their taxes to starving countries
instead. Even if the government refuses to go along with the idea, he said,
taxpayers should still withhold the money and spend it on famine relief.
War, MacLeod said, is no longer “a disciplined conflict between nations”;
instead it has become “mutual mass murder of women and children between
hemispheres. The church must go radical about war.”
The Mennonite Central Committee held
an executive committee meeting
in and shot down the
proposal to stop withholding war taxes from the paychecks of objecting
employees:
The committee also heard a report from a task force established after several
staff members asked
MCC
not to withhold their federal income taxes. This was to allow them to keep a
portion of their taxes as a protest of taxes used for military purposes.
Committee member Phil Rich reported that the task force had met with leaders
from eight Mennonite denominations over the past year to seek counsel on how
to respond to the tax-withholding issue. None of the denominations counseled
MCC
to honor the staff members’ request.
The Executive Committee voted 7-1, with three abstentions, to accept the task
force’s recommendation that the staff members’ request be denied. The
recommendation will go to the
MCC
annual meeting for final action.
Staff member H.A. Penner expressed appreciation for
MCC’s
serious attention to the issue, but asked if the process might be only half
done. “Have we listened to persons on the other end of our bombs and our guns?
Are we listening to the church in Central America, the Philippines, and South
Africa? What would they say?”
This is the thirty-fourth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
In the issue, Titus Peachey tried to rekindle the spark of moral urgency around the issue of war tax resistance:
As tax deadlines near in the United States and Canada, half a world away in Laos, farmers prepare for spring planting.
For northern Lao farmers, hoeing can be a deadly task because of cluster bombs, now buried, that were dropped by the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
alone, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) received news of 18 casualties in Xieng Khouang Province.
In North America, cluster bombs do not exact a toll of broken limbs and lives; rather, they appear in the guise of jobs, an expanding tax base, and protection of a way of life.
The MCC / Mines Advisory Group effort to remove bombs in Laos is not just a technical fix for the tragic consequences of war, but it is also an invitation to a spiritual journey along the paths of compassion, justice, and repentance.
The project challenges us to consider what Christ’s peace means when routine obedience to tax laws brings pain to others.
Sadly, tax dollars still fund cluster bombs.
The Human Rights Watch Arms Project estimates that some 34 million cluster bombs were dropped over Iraq and Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War.
Even a conservative estimate of a 5 percent dud rate means that some 1.7 million unexploded bomblets are strewn throughout Iraq and Kuwait.
According to the Human Rights Watch Arms Project, 1,600 civilians — Iraqi and Kuwaiti— have been killed and some 2,500 have been injured in cluster bomb accidents since the end of the war.
Taxes for peace
Each year,
MCC’s
Peace and Justice Ministries invites contributions to a special “Taxes for Peace” fund.
This fund allows people who withhold the portion of their taxes that would go for military purposes to contribute that money for a peaceful purpose.
While this is a symbolic action and not a legal alternative to paying the tax, many people find it a meaningful way to demonstrate their commitment to peace.
In the United States about 46 percent of federal income tax goes for military purposes; in Canada the figure is about 7.5 percent.
This year’s “Taxes for Peace” fund will support peace education and responses to militarism.
This will include publishing a revised edition of “Peace Education: Ideas That Work” and preparing materials to assist congregations in responding to military industries and recruitment in local communities.
Checks should be written to MCC and sent to MCC U.S. Peace and Justice Ministries…
In companies from Lancaster, Pa., to Downey, Calif., a new generation of cluster bombs is being produced.
Cluster bombs are also manufactured by other countries.
They have been used recently in the former Yugoslavia and by Russia in its battle with Chechnya.
Unlike land mines, whose export is currently banned, cluster bombs are still exported to other countries.
In , a Minnesota firm announced that Turkey had agreed to purchase 493 CBU-87 cluster bombs — a type that combines anti-armor, anti-personnel, and incendiary effects.
Human rights groups oppose the sale because of Turkey’s poor human rights record; the sale awaits approval from the U.S. State Department.
In the midst of complex political, military, and economic systems that create defense strategies and weapons such as cluster bombs, one of the church’s greatest temptations is silence and accommodation.
Lao villagers, who have lived with cluster bombs these past 20 to 30 years, are often silent also, lacking options.
They don’t have the technical expertise to address the problem.
Pressed with the demands of making a living from the soil, they have endured the outrage of cluster bombs so long that for many it has become “normal.”
In a similar way, North American Christians have become accustomed to beautifully landscaped industrial parks that produce weapons and to the annual ritual of paying a percentage of their income tax for war.
The MCC / MAG bomb removal project in Laos, along with our commitment to Christ’s peace, challenge us to imagine alternatives.
Simpler living and reduced incomes can lower tax liabilities.
Groups of people can combine withheld tax dollars and contribute to programs that support peace and life.
We can write letters of concern about the use of taxes for war and share them with legislators or submit them as letters to the editor of local newspapers.
We can also open conversation with local weapons manufacturers and discuss meaningful alternatives to the production of arms.
A question had begun to emerge in Mennonite circles about whether it was okay to accept unrepentant members of the military as bona fide Mennonites (this is how far the “nonresistant” doctrine had fallen by this time).
Lester Lind wrote a letter to the editor on this issue for the issue that touched on his war tax resistance:
I affirm conscientious objection to war that I learned in the Mennonite Church.
For me this includes nonpayment of that part of my taxes going for military purposes.
It seems to be stretching the boundaries to the breaking point to include those of us who cannot in clear conscience pay all our taxes and those who willingly serve in the military.
Another letter to the editor, this one from Dennis Brooks (), was ready to jettison entirely the idea that people who served the military were violating Christian doctrines by doing so:
Perhaps nonpayment of war taxes and other antimilitary strategies (as opposed to Jesus’s nonviolent strategies) are a result of Anabaptist culture rather than biblical theology.
I know some Christians who neither participate in war taxes or, for that matter, in an economy that requires war taxes a priori.
They are called priests, nuns, and monks in some churches.
In others they are missionaries.
Many have forsaken family, homes, lands, and generally all that is part of the American dream to pursue a life of active peacemaking.
Others invest their life in families and various careers and see no conflict with the teaching of Jesus.
We all make choices.
And Daniel Slabaugh chimed in () to say that the Mennonites might as well throw in the towel and start admitting soldiers, after all the compromising they’d been doing on their nonresistant testimony:
If honesty is a virtue, then Virginia Mennonite Conference [which apparently was considering welcoming members of the military into their congregations] should be affirmed in their attempt to live it.
The Mennonite Church has voluntarily and without protest financed (the ultimate form of approval) the American military since the beginning of the federal income tax.
To refuse membership in this church to a person who is committed to the military is therefore blatant hypocrisy.
However, the honesty of admitting that we no longer believe in “Love your neighbor as yourself” may have lost any redeeming quality.
This is another verification of the fact that when the goal of the church is numbers, then the first casualty is unpopular scriptural truth.
[P]eople stepped forward to announce their pledge to transform violence with nonviolent action in the coming year.
Pledges included withholding at least $20 from one’s income tax ($1 for every 1000 nuclear warheads in existence today)…
John Longhurst reported, in the issue, that there was some hope for a Peace Tax Fund law to be enacted in Canada, so long as the law would have no practical meaningfulness:
Winnipeg, Man. (MCC Canada) — Canadian church and peace groups have been told that the federal government is open to a proposal to allow taxpayers to legally divert their income taxes away from military spending.
That message was conveyed to a delegation comprised of representatives from the Conference of Mennonites in Canada, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Canada, Conscience Canada, the Quakers, and Nos Impots Pour la Paix during a recent meeting in Ottawa with officials from Finance Minister Paul Martin’s office.
According to Sylvain Segard, departmental assistant in the Finance Minister’s office, “the Minister is receptive” to the idea and is open to seeing “if something can be done” to accommodate the request within the current tax code.
The proposal marks a change in direction for the groups, which previously had called on the government to set up a Peace Tax Fund, an independent fund administered by a volunteer committee to which Canadians could redirect tax dollars.
Money would have been directed from this fund to government departments and agencies, as well as to nongovernmental projects chosen by the committee.
Different governments have consistently maintained that the creation of such a separate fund would be impossible since it would constrain the authority of the government to establish policy and set spending priorities.
The new proposal replaces the idea of the fund with a Peace Tax, which would be part of the income tax code.
“The government was never going to make the Peace Tax Fund legal since it created another tax-receiving body and, by putting control of the fund in the hands of a committee, impinged on Parliament’s ability to determine how taxes would be spent,” says Chris Derksen Hiebert of MCC’s Ottawa Office.
“The new proposal allows the government to maintain control of and receive redirected money.
In return, they would promise not to use redirected money for the military.”
According to the new proposal, taxpayers who wanted to direct the military portion of their taxes — 7 percent of federal spending in — could do so by checking a box on their income tax form.
Joy Newall of Conscience Canada acknowledges that the new direction is a compromise.
“We did it to get something we believe in: to have conscientious objector status recognized within the framework of the tax code,” she says.
What Conscience Canada gives up is the ability to tell the government where the money should go.
“The government will only guarantee that the money will not go to the military,” Newall explains.
Newall is hopeful that eventually the government will be open to letting taxpayers designate where they want their redirected taxes to go.
Possible programs and projects include foreign aid, research and training in nonviolent resolution of conflicts, and peace education.
“I think the government thinks that only a few people will actually take advantage of this opportunity,” she says.
“But I believe they will be hugely surprised by the large number of Canadians who will very happily divert their taxes away from military spending.”
Elwin Hermanson, Reform Party House Leader and a member of the Beachy, Sask., Mennonite Brethren Church, is sympathetic to the idea, as long is it “would not place a costly bureaucratic burden on the system.”
Copies of the Peace Tax proposal are available from the MCC Canada Ottawa Office…
The “A New Call to Peacemaking” initiative was still active, and held a conference on “Peacemaking in the Nuclear Family” in .
The group seems to have moved on from war tax resistance as a primary focus, but it still came up:
David and Sabrina Falls, Quakers from Richmond, Ind., told the story of their war tax resistance.
Jesus was active, they told the group.
Yet even when he was angry, he “employed love in the form of challenging words and nonviolent demonstrations, rather than violence.”
This is the thirty-fifth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
The Gospel Herald would cease publication as an independent magazine at the beginning of , merging with The Mennonite as the Mennonite Church merged with the General Conference Mennonite Church.
Today I’ll show some of the final mentions of tax resistance in the magazine before the merger.
The “Taxes for Peace” redirection fund gave its annual update in the edition:
Mennonite Central Committee U.S. peace and justice ministries is again inviting contributions for the “Taxes for Peace” fund.
the fund has allowed people who withhold the portion of their taxes that would go for military purposes to contribute that money to peacemaking initiatives.
In , the funds will bolster efforts to halt the production of cluster bombs and landmines and support resources on conscientious objection to military service and taxes.
Contributions made payable to MCC can be sent to “Taxes for Peace,” MCC U.S. Peace and Justice Ministries…
A report on the “Taxes for Life” group appeared in the issue.
They somewhat carelessly redirected their taxes from the federal government to the state government, for what that’s worth:
Taxes for Life delegates present a check of diverted war taxes for health needs of low-income families to the governor’s office in Harrisburg (Pa.) on .
They are (left to right): Herb Myers, Annn Marie Judson, John Stoner, and Dave Schrock-Shenk.
Lancaster, Pa. — On , the day U.S. income taxes are due, some Mennonites here diverted a portion of their war tax money toward health needs of unemployed persons.
They presented a check of $1,000 to the office of Governor Tom Ridge in Harrisburg.
The war tax objectors are part of Taxes for Life — a group that meets to support each other in seeking biblically nonviolent responses to the government’s demand for funding of war and military preparations.
Governor Ridge had threatened to cut 260,000 persons off the medical assistance rolls in Pennsylvania, arguing that the money was not available in the state to cover those needs.
“We wanted to demonstrate that if wasteful and destructive expenditures in military systems could be redirected, life-giving programs like health care to vulnerable citizens could be well-funded,” says member Earl Martin.
Speaking to government actions.
On , in a perhaps unrelated action, Governor Ridge announced his intention to compromise on his cut-back proposal.
The $1,000 gift came both from diverted federal war tax money and “sympathy money” from supportive friends, according to Martin.
For example, Sarah and Herb Myers of Mount Joy, Pa., wrote to the Internal Revenue Service, “How can we continue contributing financially toward the madness and sinfulness of our military system when we have claimed to be conscientious objectors to serving in the military?”
The Myers, Mennonite medical professionals, each withheld $28.50 from their taxes due to the IRS.
The $28.50 symbolized a dime for each of the $285 billion the United State government spends on current military expenditures.
“We realize the above action is illegal and we do not undertake it lightly,” they wrote to the IRS.
“We have taught our children that laws are to be obeyed “unless they violate one’s commitment to a higher power than the government.”
[sic] But in a democracy, they added, “we must speak clearly toward our government’s actions or we too are guilty of complicity.”
On , members of the Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster took a celebrative “second offering” in which children and adults walked forward to contribute “sympathy money” to the Taxes for Life effort.
They added $575 with that spontaneous offering.
Governor Ridge’s representative, after an extensive discussion of the issues with Taxes for Life representatives, received the check only to pass it on to the state treasurer’s office.
Whether the state treasurer will choose to cash the check marked “diverted war tax money and contributions” remains unknown.
The issue of whether a person could be a Mennonite in good standing, and be a soldier at the same time, was still being argued out in the letters to the editor column.
Here’s an excerpt from Eldon Epp’s letter in the issue in which he tries to bring the discussion back around to war taxes:
I wonder if we often limit our nonviolent witness to refusing military enlistment.
That leaves the onus for the sins of violence on military personnel.
Our witness must include the invitation to military personnel to consider Jesus’ way.
That witness has integrity when the rest of the church is also asking how to be nonviolent Christian citizens.
Mennonites paying taxes and remaining silent about an astronomical “defense” budget are also complicit in violence.
Brother Leslie Francisco Ⅲ expressed this well in Between the Rock of Peace and the Hard Place of Outreach.
A letter from Perry Keidel () began by advocating war tax resistance, but then suggested Peace Tax Fund lobbying instead:
While no war now rages that demands our sons, people of conscience in the United States are nevertheless forced into the morally unconscionable position of underwriting the continued, unchecked growth of the largest military industrial machine in history.
Mennonites have a proud and painful history of refusing to compromise on the issue of military conscription.
But given that war revenues from Mennonites are enough to at least support the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, we cannot at the same time be called uncompromising pacifists.
Perhaps the state department concedes CO status to Mennonites because we still by and large hire the soldiers that fire the bullets.
If Mennonites are unable to take responsibility for the use to which the state allocates revenues forcibly taken from them, then Mennonite understandings of separation of church and state must expand to organized refusal to cooperate in paying war taxes.
Every Mennonite congregation should send two or three letters to their U.S. Senators voicing their concern and asking that the Peace Tax Fund bill be adopted.
This bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code to provide that a taxpayer conscientiously opposed to war have tax monies spent for nonmilitary purposes.
That’s the first step.
In the issue “vsw” (Valerie Weaver) wrote about angels without wings (i.e. ordinary people who do extraordinary things), and included war tax resisters among them:
[I]f angels play wonderful, life-giving jokes on the world, then I’ve seen them… They play jokes of life on the government by refusing to pay war taxes and then giving more to mission and service agencies than the government would even require for itself.
And in the issue, J. Lorne Peachey wrote an editorial asking what makes Mennonites special or different.
In the process, he gave short shrift to war tax resisters and demonstrated how much their stars had fallen:
Larry Hauder’s questions are worth pondering: How are we different from the world?
What does it mean today to be separate?
My favorite answer is that, in addition to accepting Jesus as Savior and Lord, we believe in a lifestyle of peace and nonviolence.
Yet that’s hard to make visible when our country is not involved in a major war.
Those who try to do so through such means as refusing to pay “war taxes” we generally dismiss as too zealous in making discipleship practical.
The issue reprinted from The Mennonite a news brief about the IRS seizure of the home of war tax resisters Elizabeth Gravalos and Art Harvey.
Editor J. Lorne Peachey was back in the to ask whether one reason the Mennonite Church was stagnating might be because it wasn’t being persecuted for taking bold stands:
…comfortable North American churches aren’t growing while persecuted churches in other countries are.
How do we “stand alongside [the poor, the dispossessed, and the outcasts]”?
Some of us have answered by withholding our war taxes.
Others have joined Christian Peacemaker Teams. Some sell or give away their possessions and live in community.
Others go into dangerous parts of the world and attempt reconciliation.
Yet these are mainly individual acts.
For the most part, we as a total church have not been able to agree even on these relatively simple attempts toward faithfulness.
Can a non-persecuted, comfortable church also be a growing, faithful church?
The record has not been good.
In Mennonite history, we have the examples of churches in Russia and Europe, where, as Christians grew wealthy and accepted, their message became diluted and weak.
Even in the New Testament we read much more about the “mission outposts” that were being questioned and oppressed than we do about the more wealthy and better-accepted mother church in Jerusalem.
A faithful church that’s not persecuted?
God just may be giving North American Mennonites another chance to see if that’s possible.
We are the best-read, most-educated, and probably the wealthiest Mennonites who ever lived.
Can we catch a vision to channel that knowledge and wealth into living and proclaiming the gospel rather than in spending the majority of it on ourselves?
We… try to legally avoid federal taxes because of the large portion which supports the military.
We have some tax breaks that many others do not have because John is an ordained minister.
But, as a matter of principle, to legally avoid taxes, we have placed our savings in tax-free investments, tax-sheltered Individual Retirement Accounts, and similar 401K instruments.
These savings, with tax-free compounding, have grown to $200,000 — by saving 15 percent of our annual income with interest compounding at an average rate of 6 percent over the years.
Another international conference on war tax resistance and peace tax fund campaigns was held .
Again, the Gospel Herald coverage of the event made it out to be mostly a Peace Tax Fund legislation conference, with actual war tax resistance only a footnote:
London, England — Supporters of peace tax campaigns and war tax resistance from 16 countries met here, , to discuss the progress and importance of working corporately toward a peace tax law.
Three American Mennonites attended the conference that was hosted by British members of the Peace Tax Campaign: Marian Franz, director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund; Cesar Flores, member of the Honduran Mennonite Church, and Susan Balzer, administration committee member of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
Speakers reported on the peace tax legislation proposals in various countries and expressed the belief that if one country passes a peace tax bill, other countries would soon follow.
In , the United States became the first country to initiate peace tax bill proposals.
Current lobbying efforts are geared toward making the bill’s passage a religious freedom issue.
Keynote speaker Erik Hummels, from the Netherlands, defined peace as “a dynamic process of cooperation among people which includes human rights, economic justice, and the absence of situations that can lead to war.”
In addition to observing Prisoners for Peace Day and honoring those who have been imprisoned for conscientious objection, conference participants attended workshops on war tax resistance issues.
Meanwhile, on the 25th anniversary of the original introduction of the peace tax fund bill in the U.S. Congress, Representative John Lewis would try to attach it as an amendment to some bill that would actually see action on the floor, but his attempt was voted down.
A Clinton administration spokesperson testified against the amendment.
The bill would then be rewritten into something closer to its present form, under the title “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act.”
How can I work for peace if I pay for war?
Is paying for soldiers to murder less evil than pulling the trigger myself?
Millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Japanese, Salvadorans, Iraquis, Koreans, and Germans begged their gods to protect them as U.S. bombers destroyed their homes and crops and massacred their families.
Some of the victims prayed to Jesus.
All this happened while Christians in the United States paid taxes to build and fly the U.S. bombers and sang every Sunday about God’s love for all people.
Half of every federal income tax dollar goes for war — past, present, and future.
Tax dollars are the lifeblood of the military beast devouring the world’s poor.
In order for the U.S. or any other empire to plunder and to massacre, two things are required from many citizens — silence and paying taxes.
For 18 years I have paid no federal income tax by living under the taxable income level, and I also am not silent.
I prize living the truth as best I see it far more than unnecessary material possessions.
I say — not with my money, not with my silence, not in my name!
“If you really care about not supporting the military with your taxes, use the full charitable donations deduction allowed,” the speaker in our young adult Sunday school class challenged.
We could deduct up to 20 percent of our income for charity.
Twenty percent — the figure echoed in my thoughts.
My husband-to-be, George, and I had chosen to follow parental patterns of tithing 10 percent and giving gifts above and beyond.
I knew no one who gave even close to 20 percent.
Yet I certainly cared deeply about using my money for life-giving purposes rather than for building up an arsenal of destruction.
Was George stirred as I was?
Through discussion, George and I soon reached agreement.
We would move toward the goal of giving 20 percent.
Thus began a joyful journey of stewardship as a married couple.
In the first year of marriage, we inched toward our goal.
We used bicycles while saving for a car.
George continued graduate studies while I started my first full-time job.
Within four years, we had a fuel-efficient car and our first child.
We had managed to reach 15 percent in donations.
Even though I stayed home with our infant and we had a tight budget, we were able to eat good, nutritious food, continue with retirement savings, and buy the things most important to us.
When George finished school, we moved to the United States for a job.
We moved at the right time — housing prices had soared in our area, and we sold our small condominium for several times the price George paid a decade before.
Our household income increased dramatically.
We had major stewardship decisions to make.
Initially, I felt disoriented in the new economic terrain.
Reducing our military taxes continued to be a high priority for us.
Since interest from mortgage payments is tax deductible, we invested in a spacious house on a wooded lot.
We committed to making our home an open place for those who needed a place of retreat from the stresses of human services, overseas work, or ministry.
Buying the house reduced the need for other stewardship decisions; after donations, mortgage, taxes, and utilities, our budget was more generous but not radically different from student days.
By the time our second child was born, we had nearly reached our goal of 20 percent donations.
We started catching up to our goals for university savings for our young ones.
And, to wrap up this series of excerpts, here is an excerpt of a letter to the editor from Jacob Hubert () which is the only example I’ve seen that takes Mennonite nonresistant / pacifist principles to a logical anarchist conclusion and determines that taxation itself is a violent act that Mennonites should not countenance:
Martin Shupack asserts that the federal government, while sometimes a “violent rebel,” can be an instrument for good when used for such causes as welfare for the poor, Medicare, Social Security, and other social programs designed to help those in need (“Violent Rebel or Valuable Servant,” ).
What Shupack does not seem to realize is that all government programs are the products of violence, regardless of who benefits from them.
Taxes can be collected only if the government backs up its taxation policies with violence and threats thereof.
The question, then, is this: are Mennonites absolutely for peace and against the initiation of force?
Or is the taking of money by means of violent coercion acceptable when the money will be spent on causes they regard as worthwhile?
If the Mennonite Church is to be consistent in its opposition to the use of force, it must be opposed to it in all forms — including the form of taxation.
By , war tax resistance had almost disappeared from the Church of the Brethren’s Messenger, replaced by vain hopes that the government would pass “Peace Tax Fund” legislation to ease the consciences of troubled taxpayers.
As a supplement to its issue, the Messenger included several-page recap of the first fifty years of the Church of the Brethren General Board, which briefly mentioned the Annual Conference’s vote (754 to 103) to update its peace position in a way that affirmed “tax resistance as a legitimate expression[] of the church’s peace witness” (source).
The April 15 federal tax deadline presents a recurring religious and moral dilemma for me.
The Church of the Brethren has always taught me that “all war is sin,” and that believers should not participate in it.
Although the government no longer wants my body, it still demands my money (about 50 percent of federal income taxes) to pay for wars, past and present.
As a conscientious objector to war, I find my deeply held religious beliefs violated by being forced to pay for military activities.
But rather than say he will not go along with such a violation of his deeply held religious beliefs, the writer’s response to this dilemma is just to say that “the government… should… pass the Peace Tax Fund bill.”
A letter from Don Schrader in the issue promoted below-the-tax-line living as a tax resistance strategy (source). Excerpt:
If someone comes to my door collecting money for a local gang to rob and kill my neighbors, would I donate? Would I donate even a dollar if I knew any of the money collected went to kill my neighbors — no matter if the rest of it went to feed the homeless and to build schools?
I keep my taxable income under the taxable level.
For a sighted, single person under 65, the taxable level for is $6,800.
I lived well in on $5,700.
I am glad to have no car, no big apartment or house, no luxury vacations in order to live under the taxable level.
I prize living the truth as best I see it far more than I value unnecessary things.
In order for the US to plunder and to massacre, two things are required from many citizens — silence and paying taxes.
For 18 years I have paid no federal income tax and I sure as hell am not silent!
An article in the issue, boosting the Peace Tax Fund legislation again, recapped the history of Church of the Brethren with regards to war taxes in the following way (source):
, the Church of the Brethren has openly expressed its opposition to war.
During the Revolutionary War, recorded minutes indicate that Brethren were struggling to define what action to take with regard to government conscription and the payment of “war taxes.”
The recommendation by the Conference body was to examine one’s conscience and to act as a result of Christ’s leading, with support being given to all those who chose to pay or not to pay taxes.
Some Brethren who paid their taxes would designate the money “for the needy,” but would allow the government to decide ultimately how to use those funds.
During the Civil War, the peace churches were successful in convincing the Union to modify its approach to the use of tax revenues.
The government agreed to use monies collected as bounty from conscientious objectors for “the benefit of sick and wounded soldiers” rather than for hiring substitutes.
The Church of the Brethren has recently called for the establishment of a World Peace Tax Fund through several General Board and Annual Conference statements.
By supporting the establishment of a Peace Tax Fund, we can lift up an integral part of our Brethren heritage.
Bible Monitor included an article by Dennis St. John on “The Christian and Political Participation” in its issue.
The article touched on war tax resistance in an unusually sympathetic way, given the general conservativism of that journal.
Excerpts:
What should the Christian’s response be when his convictions conflict with governmental demands? Should Christians use the political process to encourage social betterment? What does the Bible reveal on this issue? How has the Church historically responded to such problems? In the Christian community today there is a great diversity of answers given to these questions.
Historically, there have been several issues in America in which the church has become involved.
Slavery, temperance, the peace movement, abortion, women’s rights and gay rights are examples of issues that have affected society-at-large.
The church became actively involved and in some instances is still involved.
Refusing military service, refusing to pay “war taxes”, and educational issues would be examples of concerns that have more directly involved Christians rather than society as a whole.
Two other issues the Brethren had to deal [at the time of the American Revolution] with were the hiring of substitutes to serve in the rebel militia and the matter of whether to pay taxes that supported the war.
Again, we turn to their written records to discover their response.
Inasmuch as at the great meeting in Conestoga last year, it was unanimously concluded that we should not pay the substitute money; but inasmuch as it has been overlooked here and there and some have not regarded it, therefore we, the assembled brethren, exhort in union all brethren everywhere to hold themselves guiltless and take no part in war or bloodshedding, which might take place if we would voluntarily pay for hiring men, or yet more if we became agents to collect such money.
But concerning the tax, it is considered that on account of the troublesome times and in order to avoid offense, we might follow the example of Christ (Matt. 17:24–27).
Yet, if one does not see it so and thinks perhaps, he for conscience sake could not pay it, but bear with others who pay in patience, we would willingly go along inasmuch as we deem the overruling of conscience to be wrong.
What do we learn from these Brethren?
We note their humility and willingness to be subject to “higher powers”.
We see that they gave their congregations some firm direction as to a course to follow in those troubling times.
We also see their willingness to give some room for individual conscience on the matter of “war taxes”.
For their faith and convictions they faced consequences.
They had to pay heavy fines in some instances, while others had possessions and properties confiscated by the authorities.
There were even some scattered cases of brutality.
In the end, they preserved a clear conscience before their God.
Although acts of civil disobedience and conscientious objection take varied forms in our country, few in recent memory have resulted not only in loss of freedom but of hearth and home as well.
It is perhaps the latter event which placed North Americans closest to those who lose homes through eviction, war and other forms of violence.
Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner were arrested in , after the Colrain, Massachusetts home, where they lived with their daughter Lillian, was forcibly seized by the federal government for non-payment of taxes.
Betsy was later released, while Randy remains in jail as we go to press, to serve a six-month sentence for contempt of court.
Their home was put on the auction block in , with the federal government ending up as the only bidder and subsequent “owner” of Randy and Betsy’s place, but it has taken two-and-a-half years of other legal maneuvers before they have finally been removed and charged with contempt, despite strong local support and publicity.
Betsy and Randy lease the land on which their home is situated through the Valley Community Land Trust, a non-profit corporation using land for conservation, garden and agricultural purposes, and for affordable housing.
Like many resisters who pay local and state taxes, Randy and Betsy are in disagreement with federal levies used for nuclear weapons production, military intervention and other acts deemed criminal by international law.
Despite all talk of arms reduction carried out in saw Congress giving its approval to $270 billion dollars for the military budget.
The court ruling in favor of ownership by the United States further stated that the government had the right to padlock the house since it “had proper title to, and was entitled to possession of” the home in which Randy, Betsy and Lillian have lived for the last twelve years.
When asked in their court appearance if they planned to reenter their home, Betsy agreed not to when released, and Randy added, “It is my intention neither to occupy or not occupy my house.
It is my intention to oppose the use of my tax dollars for killing and preparations for war.”
But friends, neighbors and other sympathetic supporters have, since the time of the seizure, occupied the house.
On the following morning, for instance, a group of fourteen resisters, including the indefatigable 84-year-old Wally Nelson, who has been “just saying no” to federal war taxes , removed the government’s padlocks and remained in the house for several days, risking arrest in doing so.
As of this date, these occupations continue.
The eloquent response of Betsy Corner to those who have asked if they were “nervous” about the loss of their home, illumines one method of solidarity for these hard times:
“Sure we are. We’ve lived here for over twenty years, and our twelve-year-old daughter Lillian was born here.
We love this place, and the land, and our neighbors too.
But we have to ask ourselves, is our home more important than the tens of thousands of homes that have been destroyed by our brutal bombing of civilian neighborhoods in Panama and Iraq or by the US-sponsored bombing that’s going on at this very moment in El Salvador?
More important than the hundreds of thousands of homes our country has denied to homeless people here in America?
More important than the millions of homes here and around the world that will be incinerated in a flash or irradiated forever, if we don’t stop building nuclear weapons and generating more and more nuclear waste?”
For further information on Betsy and Randy’s current status and ways of assisting their efforts, please contact:
War Tax Refusers Support Committee (WTR), c/o Traprock Peace Center, Keets Rd., Deerfield, MA 01342, (413) 774‒2710 or (413) 773‒7427.
―Jane Sammon
The same issue had an additional article about war tax resistance:
War And Taxes
The CW listed some boycotts suggested as one route to follow “the little Way" of peace.
Now, as the income-tax-returns season is in full swing, is the time to urge a further boycott — of the Internal Revenue Service.
Once we know about the military pursuits in the Persian Gulf over the past year…, surely we must say “No!" to the government as clearly and as concretely as possible.
Nor can the Persian Gulf War be seen as an isolated incident, a regrettable aberration from national policy.
The very existence, for instance, of a “School of the Americas” in Fort Benning, shows how deep-seated is the pursuit of violence in the practices of the US government.
The fact of the matter is that more than half the money collected by the IRS goes to pay for war or to prepare for war.
According to the old adage, “Death and taxes are inevitable” but, according to our faith, murder is not allowed.
True, our Lord did say, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed” (Matthew 24:6 and Mark 13:7);
He did not add though, that we should take an active part to promote them.
And, on the mundane level of financial considerations, modern warfare would be rendered well nigh impossible if nobody would foot the bill.
During the war in Vietnam, someone who promoted tax resistance was once asked what to do about the money to be withheld.
He answered, “Better to flush it down the toilet as waste-paper than to pay for the war.”
In reality, though, practicalities about the dollars and cents demanded for taxes cannot be quite so simply swept aside, nor considered only at the moment of the due date.
Peter Maurin taught a full life of voluntary poverty when he interpreted Jesus’ enigmatic reply about taxes with “The less you have of Caesar’s, the less you have to render unto him.”
Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner are now paying the price, in prison, and through the loss of their home to the IRS.
The War Resisters League has proposed the Alternative Revenue Service as a means to hold and channel monies not handed over to the government.
These are all “hard" suggestions which reveal the iron grip of taxes.
Even if success for the tax resistance movement is not imminent, any withholding of federal income taxes marks a break in the deadly power of the economic system in which we are all complicit.
It is a system whose principal “product” is war, whose motive is profit, whose organizing principle is usury.
Usury (charging interest on a loan to make money from money) is the word Peter Maurin emphasized in his discussions on economics, one we seldom hear anymore.
It is the basis for all our financial institutions, from the International Monetary Fund and the world debt to the Savings and Loan frauds (which have been described as “pure capitalism,” that is, effectively unfettered from constraints of either human labor or natural resources) to the stock market to insurance plans, right down to your local bank account.
But the guarantor of usury is the Federal Reserve System, through our taxes.
Barry Peters’ study on the ban on usury in the Hebrew Scriptures, makes it clear how this practice is violent robbery and oppression.
January 15 is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
, his memorial was eclipsed by the formal outbreak of hostilities against Iraq.
This year, let us rekindle the light of his life and martyrdom by a dedication to his ways of active nonviolence, by a refusal to render unto Caesar the ways of violence.
Instead, let us find alternative ways to render the fruits of our labor unto God, and to His children, to whom they belong.
―Katharine Temple
An Alternative Revenue Service
The Alternative Revenue Service (ARS) is a project of the War Resisters League (cosponsored by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee and the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign) designed to educate public opinion about the realities of military spending in the federal budget, and to give people a chance to redirect $1 or more of their money “owed” in federal taxes to an established alternative fund.
Last year, people who wished to practice tax resistance, to put that money towards peaceful purposes, put $12,000 into the ARS.
For further information or advice, please write to Lisa Harper, Alternative Revenue Service, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012, or telephone their “hot-line” 1‒800‒955‒7322.
Attention New York City CW Readers!
Are you interested in finding ways to channel the grief and anger felt in the aftermath of the Gulf War, while discovering alternatives to war in general?
New York City War Tax Resistance (WTR) offers support and information meetings the first Monday of each month — , , etc. — at 6:30 pm.
The meetings are held at 339 Lafayette St. (IRT Number 6, Bleeker St. station).
For more information, please contact Sallie Marx at: (212) 929‒4833.
The issue of The Catholic Worker included an article by Karl Meyer about a road-trip taken by him and Kathy Kelly.
Here are some excerpts that touch on tax resistance:
After we went on to Salina, Kansas and Newton, Kansas, where we visited with Mennonite friends in the war tax refusal movement.
Everywhere we stopped we found the peace movement vibrant, active and numerous, contradicting the falsehoods that President Bush and much of the press tell about the demise of our efforts.
In New Mexico
The same energy was evident in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we visited friends in the war-tax refusal movement.
Don Schrader in Albuquerque had arranged two television news interviews, two newspaper interviews, eight radio talk show appearances, and a lively public meeting.
We renewed acquaintances that showed us how the web of peace action stretches its stands all over North America and Central America.
Perhaps these were the very fields and ditches where Ammon Hennacy worked when he came to Phoenix in , with only a penny in his pocket.
He worked as a farm laborer in order to avoid the withholding of taxes for war.
, he picketed the IRS to let them know why he refused to pay any taxes for war.
In , he began to fast and picket one day for each year that had elapsed since Hiroshima.
(A few copies of his autobiography, The Book of Ammon, are still available from his widow, Joan Thomas, P.O. Box 25, Phoenix, AZ 85001, for $20.)
I am eager to picket with the Peace House this spring at the IRS office in Phoenix, to remind them of Ammon Hennacy, who made a radical and a tax resister out of me thirty-five years ago:
We have come back to bother you again.
This society, and each one of us personally, must put our income into servicing human needs, not into the works of war.
Only then can we rise from the economic ashes of the arms race, the Vietnam War, and our brutal indifference to the needs of the poor in the years since then.
The issue of The Catholic Worker gave an update on the Randy Kehler / Besty Corner house seizure:
War Tax Refusers Update
Although Randy Kehler, Colrain, Massachusetts war tax resister (CW ), was released from jail after a little more than two months, the occupation of his family’s home by friends and supporters continues.
The federal government seized the house for non-payment, and later arrested Randy and his wife, Betsy Corner (briefly held) for contempt after their refusal to surrender it.
Their home has been auctioned off, and is now owned by someone from a nearby town.
At press time, the new “owner” has yet to move in, while groups sympathetic to the cause of tax resistance are taking turns at occupying the home, despite threats of arrest.
For more information, please call the War Tax Refusers Support Committee at: (413) 774‒2710, or write: c/o Traprock Peace Center, Keets Road, Deerfield, MA 01342.
There were also a handful of brief passing references to tax resistance in other issues of The Catholic Worker in .
