Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” → Brethren → John Forbes

Here are a handful of artifacts relating to the American war tax resistance movement circa 1967.

First, some relics that were filed alongside a letter from Herbert Sonthoff to W. Walter Boyd (though I think this filing may be arbitrary and that the letters are not related to each other):

An Open Letter ^*

At this late date it is pointless to muster the evidence which shows that the war we are waging in Vietnam is wrong. By now you have decided for yourself where you stand. In all probability, if you share our feelings about it, you have expressed your objections both privately and publicly. You have witnessed the small effect these protests have had on our government.

By April 15^th, every American citizen must decide whether he will make a voluntary contribution to the continuation of this war. After grave consideration, we have decided that we can no longer do so, and that we will therefore withhold all or part of the taxes due. The purpose of this letter is to call your attention to the fact that a nationwide tax refusal campaign is in progress, as stated in the accompanying announcement, and to urge you to consider refusing to contribute voluntarily to this barbaric war.

Signed:

Prof. Warren Ambrose	Mathematics, M.I.T.
Dr. Donnell Boardman	Physician, Acton, Mass.
Mrs. Elizabeth Boardman	Acton, Mass.
Prof. Noam Chomsky	Linguistics, M.I.T.
Miss Barbara Deming	Writer, Wellfleet, Mass.
Prof. John Dolan	Philosophy, Chicago University
Prof. John Ek	Anthropology, Long Island University
Martha Bentley Hall	Musician, Brookline, Mass.
Dr. Thomas C. Hall	Physician, Brookline, Mass.
Rev. Arthur B. Jellis	First Parish in Concord, Unitarian-Universalist, Concord, Mass.
Prof. Donald Kalish	Philosophy, U.C.L.A.
Prof. Louis Kampf	Humanities, M.I.T.
Prof. Staughton Lynd	History, Yale University
Milton Mayer	Writer, Mass.
Prof. Jonathan Mirsky	Chinese Language and Literature, Dartmouth College
Prof. Sidney Morgenbesser	Philosophy, Columbia University
Prof. Wayne A. O’Neill	Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
Prof. Anatol Rapoport	Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan
Prof. Franz Schurmann	Center for Chinese Studies, University of Calif., Berkeley
Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgy	Institute for Muscle Research, Woods Hole, Mass.
Harold Tovish	Sculptor, Brookline, Mass.
Prof. Howard Zinn	Government, Boston University

^* Institutions listed for informational purposes only

P.S. The No Tax for War Committee intends to make public the names of signers, hence if you wish to add your signature, early return is desirable. Contributions are needed, and checks should be made payable to the Committee.

The following page, dated 11 March 1967, shows a mock-up of the intended public advertisement showing the signers’ names:

The committee will publish the above statement with names of signers at tax deadline — April 15.

Send signed statements to: NO TAX FOR WAR COMMITTEE, c/o Rev. Maurice McCrackin, 932 Dayton St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45214.

For additional copies of this form, put number you will distribute and name and address on the following lines:
No. _____ Name ____________________
Address _________________________

Signers So Far

• Meldon and Amy Acheson
• Michael J. Ames
• Alfred F. Andersen
• Ross Anderson
• Beulah K. Arndt
• Joan Baez
• Richard Baker
• Bruce & Pam Beck
• Ruth T. Best
• Robert & Margaret Blood
• Karel F. Botermans
• Marion & Ernest Bromley
• Edwin Brooks
• A. Dale Brothington
• Mrs. Lydia Bruns
• Wendal Bull
• Mrs. Dorothy Bucknell
• John Burslem
• Lindley J. Burton
• Catharine J. Cadbury
• Maris Cakars
• Robert and Phyllis Calese
• William N. Calloway
• Betty Camp
• Daryle V. Carter
• Jared & Susan Carter
• Horace & Beulah Champney
• Ken & Peggy Champney
• Hank & Henry Chapin
• Holly Chenery
• Richard A. Chinn
• Naom [sic] Chomsky
• John & Judy Christian
• Gordon & Mary Christiansen
• Peter Christiansen
• Donald F. Cole
• John Augustine Cook
• Helen Marr Cook
• Jack Coolidge, Jr.
• Allen Cooper
• Martin J. Corbin
• Tom & Monica Cornell
• Dorothy J. Cunningham
• Jean DaCosta
• Ann & William Davidon
• Stanley F. Davis
• Dorothy Day
• Dave Dellinger
• Barbara Deming
• Robert Dewart
• Ruth Dodd
• John M. Dolan
• Orin Doty
• Allen Duberstein
• Ralph Dull
• Malcolm Dundas
• Margaret E. Dungan
• Henry Dyer
• Susan Eanet
• Bob Eaton
• Marc Paul Edelman
• Johan & Francis Eliot
• Jerry Engelbach
• George J. Etu, Jr.
• Mary C. Eubanks
• Arthur Evans
• Jonathan Evans
• William E. Evans
• Pearl Ewald
• Franklin Farmer
• Bertha Faust
• Dianne M. Feeley
• Rice A. Felder
• Henry A. Felisone
• Mildred Fellin
• Glenn Fisher
• John Forbes
• Don & Ann Fortenberry
• Marion C. Frenyear
• Ruth Gage-Colby
• Lawrence H. Geller
• Richard Ghelli
• Charles Gibadlo
• Bruce Glushakow
• Walter Gormly
• Arthur Goulston
• Thomas Grabell
• Steven Green
• Walter Grengg
• Joseph Gribbins
• Kenneth Gross
• John M. Grzywacz, Jr.
• Catherine Guertin
• David Hartsough
• David Hartsough
• Arthur Harvey
• Janet Hawksley
• James P. Hayes, Jr.
• R.F. Helstern
• Ammon Hennacy
• Norman Henry
• Robert Hickey
• Dick & Heide Hiler
• William Himelhoch
• C.J. Hinke
• Anthony Hinrichs
• William M. Hodsdon
• Irwin R. Hogenauer
• Florence Howe
• Donald & Mary Huck
• Philip Isely
• Michael Itkin
• Charles T. Jackson
• Paul Jacobs
• Martin & Nancy Jezer
• F. Robert Johnson
• Woodbridge O. Johnson
• Ashton & Marie Jones
• Paul Jordan
• Paul Keiser
• Joel C. Kent
• Roy C. Kepler
• Paul & Pauline Kermiet
• Peter Kiger
• Richard King
• H.A. Kreinkamp
• Arthur & Margaret Landes
• Paul Lauter
• Peter and Marolyn Leach
• Gertrud & George A. Lear, Jr.
• Alan and Elin Learnard
• Titus Lehman
• Richard A. Lema
• Florence Levinsohn
• Elliot Linzer
• David C. Lorenz
• Preston B. Luitweiler
• Bradford Lyttle
• Adriann van L. Maas
• Ben & Sue Mann
• Paul and Salome Mann
• Howard E. Marston, Sr.
• Milton and Jane Mayer
• Martin & Helen Mayfield
• Maurice McCrackin
• Lilian McFarland
• Maureen & Felix McGowan
• Maryann McNaughton
• Gelston McNeil
• Guy W. Meyer
• Karl Meyer
• David & Catherine Miller
• James Missey
• Mark Morris
• Janet Murphy
• Thomas P. Murray
• Rosemary Nagy
• Wally & Juanita Nelson
• Marilyn Neuhauser
• Neal D. Newby, Jr.
• Miriam Nicholas
• Robert B. Nichols
• David Nolan
• Raymond S. Olds
• Wayne A. O’Neil
• Michael O’Quin
• Ruth Orcutt
• Eleanor Ostroff
• Doug Palmer
• Malcolm & Margaret Parker
• Jim Peck
• Michael E. Pettie
• John Pettigrew
• Lydia H. Philips
• Dean W. Plagowski
• Jefferson Poland
• A.J. Porth
• Ralph Powell
• Charles F. Purvis
• Jean Putnam
• Harriet Putterman
• Robert Reitz
• Ben & Helen Reyes
• Elsa G. Richmond
• Eroseanna Robinson
• Pat Rusk
• Joe & Helen Ryan
• Paul Salstrom
• Ira J. Sandperl
• Jerry & Rae Schwartz
• Martin Shepard
• Richard T. Sherman
• Louis Silverstein
• T.W. Simer
• Ann B. Sims
• Jane Beverly Smith
• Linda Smith
• Thomas W. Smuda
• Bob Speck
• Elizabeth P. Steiner
• Lee D. Stern
• Beverly Sterner
• Michael Stocker
• Charles H. Straut, Jr.
• Stephen Suffet
• Albert & Joyce Sunderland, Jr.
• Mr. & Mrs. Michael R. Sutter
• Marjorie & Robert Swann
• Oliver & Katherine Tatum
• Gary G. Taylor
• Harold Tovish
• Joe & Cele Tuchinsky
• Lloyd & Phyllis Tyler
• Samuel R. Tyson
• Ingegerd Uppman
• Margaret von Selle
• Mrs. Evelyn Wallace
• Wilbur & Joan Ann Wallis
• William & Mary Webb
• Barbara Webster
• John K. White
• Willson Whitman
• Denny & Ida Wilcher
• Huw Williams
• George & Lillian Willoughby
• Bob Wilson
• Emily T. Wilson
• Jim & Raona Wilson
• W.W. Wittkamper
• Sylvia Woog
• Wilmer & Mildred Young
• Franklin Zahn
• Betty & Louis Zemel
• Vicki Jo Zilinkas

Following this was a page explaining how to go about resisting:

Some Methods of Nonpayment

1. For those owing nothing because of the Withholding Tax.
   
   Such persons write a letter to the Internal Revenue Service, to be filed with the tax return, stating that the writer cannot in good conscience help support the war in Vietnam, voluntarily. The writer therefore requests a return of a percentage of the money collected from his salary.
   
   Note: Of course, the IRS will not return the money. However, the writer has refused to pay for the war voluntarily and has put it in writing. This symbolic action is not to be belittled since anybody who does this allies himself with those who will withhold money due the IRS.
2. For those self-employed or owing money beyond what has been withheld from salary.
   
   Such persons write a letter to be filed with the tax return, stating that the writer does not object to the income tax in principle, but will not, as a matter of conscience, help pay for the war in Vietnam. The writer is therefore withholding some or all of the tax due.

Note: In all cases, we recommend that copies of these letters be sent to the President and to your Senators.

Remarks:

The Internal Revenue Service has the legal power to confiscate money due it. They will get that money, one way or another. However, to obstruct the IRS from collecting money due (by not filing a return at all, for example) seems less important to us than the fact that each is refusing to pay his tax voluntarily. With this in mind, many of us are placing the taxes owed in special accounts and we will so inform the IRS in our letters.

Willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail, together with the costs of prosecution. So far, the IRS has prosecuted only those who have obstructed collection (by refusing to file a return, by refusing to answer a summons, etc.). Usually, the IRS has collected the tax due plus 6% interest and possibly an added fine of 5% for “negligence”. The fact that the IRS has rarely, if at all, prosecuted tax-refusers to the full extent of the law does not mean they will not do so in the future.

Finally, an article from the December 1967 edition of The Capitol East Gazette:

Tax Refusal Urged by Group

Two thousand anti-war leaflets on telephone tax refusal were distributed in Capitol East on Saturday, Nov. 18, by members of CHOICE, a group of local residents who are withdrawing their support for the Vietnam war.

The leaflet explains that the 10% phone tax was enacted in April 1966 specifically to raise money for the Vietnam war.

According to CHOICE, the phone company will not remove a person’s telephone if he refuses to pay the tax. The company asks refusers to state why they are withholding the tax and then turns the matter over to the Internal Revenue Service.

According to CHOICE, there are presently 25 known tax refusers in the Capitol Hill area.

Those desiring CHOICE’s leaflet are asked to call LI 6‒9836.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Considerations.

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

Possibilities for protest.

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

In the late 1950s, the Gospel Messenger covered the war tax resistance of Maurice McCrackin, and the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference took on the issue of war taxes and decided to try to work out some form of legalized conscientious objection to military taxation with the government.

The 27 December 1958 edition of Gospel Messenger introduced Maurice McCrackin’s war tax resistance:

Pacifist Clergyman Indicted

A Presbyterian pacifist minister who has refused for ten years to pay part of his federal income tax he felt was for war purposes, was indicted by a grand jury in Cincinnati, Ohio, for failing to answer a summons from the Internal Revenue Service. He is the Rev. Maurice McCrackin of West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas church, a racially integrated mission congregation jointly supported by the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio and the Cincinnati Presbytery. Recently twenty-eight ministers requested the two groups not to yield to pressure for the minister’s removal from his church.

This follow-up comes from the 17 January 1959 issue (source):

A Presbyterian pacifist minister who refused to pay part of his federal income tax he felt would be used for war purposes has been sentenced to serve six months in a federal prison camp in Pennsylvania. Following his conviction thirteen clergymen appealed to President Eisenhower to intervene in the sentence.

A somewhat more in-depth news brief appeared later in the same issue (source):

Pacifist Minister Jailed for Contempt

Maurice F. McCrackin, a pacifist minister who has refused to pay the part of his federal income tax he felt would be used for war purposes, was convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to jail for an indefinite period after ignoring a summons from the Internal Revenue Service.

Mr. McCrackin is pastor of the West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas church, a mission congregation jointly supported by the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio and the Cincinnati Presbytery. He has refused to pay income taxes for the past ten years because some of the money goes for military purposes.

And this update comes from the 31 January issue (source):

Clergymen Ask President’s Intervention for Imprisoned Minister

Thirteen clergymen appealed to President Eisenhower to intervene in the “persecution” of a Presbyterian pacifist minister who has refused to pay part of his federal income tax he felt would be used for war purposes. In a message sent by the Fellowship of Reconciliation the clergymen asked the President to bring Mr. McCrackin’s case immediately to the attention of the Justice Department and urged that he be freed of the contempt conviction so the charges may proceed “in orderly fashion” to try him on the tax charges.

W. Harold Row, secretary of the Brethren Service Commission, was one of the twelve Protestant ministers who signed the appeal. The message stressed that the signers were not associating themselves with the position Mr. McCrackin had taken or with the means he employed to appeal to the conscience of his fellow citizens to renounce war.

A letter-to-the-editor in the 28 March 1959 issue took inspiration from McCrackin’s stand (somewhat mangled source):

Objection to War Taxes

In the Jan. 17 issue, you questioned the way the tax dollar is spent, and in another section you mentioned the plight of Rev. Maurice McCrackin, imprisoned for not paying the war taxes. To me it seems that McCrackin and others like him are pointing the way out of a basic dilemma for all who profess to be pacifists, namely how to effectively oppose war when tax dollars are taken from us that go four fifths for war.

It is time that the Church of the Brethren and the other peace churches come out in favor of conscientious objection to war taxes and alternative service for the dollars we get for our labors in the form of giving an identical amount or more than the amount of taxes to the Brethren Service Commission, CARE, and other such organizations that are doing the needed job that the war-minded government of the U.S. refuses to do: help the needy and suffering and undeveloped people all over the world.

The early Brethren did not pay taxes for war, and we are a poor shadow of our forebears if we let our dollars be spent to maintain the cancerous military machine of the United States. ―John Forbes, Castañer, Puerto Rico

Jeanne Jacoby of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was in turn inspired by Forbes, in her letter in the 2 May issue (source): “I sincerely believe that we Brethren should oppose war taxes. If we oppose war and preparation for war, why should we pay money for war.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the war tax issue came up at the Annual Conference that year, though the focus seemed to be on trying to convince the government to accommodate conscientious objection to military taxation rather than on taking action in the here and now. From the 18 July 1959 issue (source):

From the Brethren Service Commission came a recommendation to the Board urging that the Church of the Brethren begin making explorations with agencies of government in order to find some acceptable alternative for persons who, because of religious training or belief, are conscientiously opposed to the payment of the portion of their income taxes that goes for military defense. It was pointed out that there is a growing interest among Brethren in finding such an alternative and that there is an increasing concern with regard to the large amount of tax money that is used for war preparation and various forms of military defense. The Board recognized this interest and approved the recommendation that came to it. It was pointed out that the difficulties confronting such a proposal would be extensive, but that a start should be made. The church will attempt to work with other organizations having a similar concern, but if necessary, the church will proceed by itself to try to find some alternative to paying war taxes.

This evidently gave the editor of the Messenger permission to be somewhat more forthright about advocating war tax resistance. In an 1 August 1959 editorial (source), Kenneth Morse wrote:

August 6, the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb, should not pass without every Christian deciding to take personal responsibility for some form of protest or non-violent action against the continuing arms race. Some concerned persons have kept vigil at launching bases, others have demonstrated against policies by engaging in “walks for peace,” others have refused to pay taxes for war purposes.

W.A. Ogden of Grace Seminary (Indiana) wrote an article on “Separation” for the 12 September 1959 issue of The Brethren Missionary Herald in which he set out his idea of the Brethren orthodoxy on how the Christian ought to behave toward the state. When it comes to war bonds: “We recognize that there are many areas, such as purchasing bonds, war stamps, and so forth, which the individual must settle alone with his God.”

In the 12 July 1958 issue of The Brethren Evangelist, Percy C. Miller reviewed the chapter on the Civil War from Rufus Bowman’s The Church of the Brethren and War (source). He summarized the Brethren position on war taxes and related issues this way:

In the early days of the war, some of the Brethren hired substitutes. The church members preferred to pay fines instead of using the system of substitutes. But the records do not indicate that the Brethren clearly recognized the inconsistency with their peace position of employing substitutes or paying heavy war taxes to keep free from participation in armed conflicts. The Society of Friends protested continually against war taxes. The Brethren and Mennonites took the position that they [sh/c?]ould pay what the government required. The brethren felt that the gospel required the payment of fines and taxes. They based their opposition to war upon the teachings of Jesus but related their opposition more to the overt acts of war than to the whole war system. They felt that the Brethren Church, for Biblical reasons, [sh/c?]ould not use the sword, but that the civil government, likewise because of Biblical reasons — “for the punishment of evildoers” (Ⅰ Peter 2:14) — might have to use material force.

In 1961, suddenly Brethren couldn’t stop talking about war tax resistance.

By 1961 war tax resistance had gone from heresy to something that was considered one possible appropriate Christian response to runaway militarism. Take, for example, this mention in passing from Ralph E. Smeltzer’s long essay on “The Church and the World” in the 21 January issue of Gospel Messenger:

When the Christian conscience and the demands of the state conflict, as many feel in the case of military service, taxes for military purposes, and defense jobs, the Christian must follow his conscience.

A lengthy war tax resistance letter-to-the-editor on war tax resistance led off that column in the 25 February issue (source). The page scan (here and elsewhere in this volume) is difficult to read in parts, but I’ll try to restore it as best I can:

Taxes for War Purposes

The three of us, two ministers and a layman, have come to the conclusion that we can no longer pay Federal income tax for war. This may seem an astonishing stand; but much more astonishing is our general Brethren complacency about paying income tax.

In colonial times and during the Revolutionary War there was much tax refusal by Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren. An irate critic of the Church of the Brethren charged, “They not only refused to take up arms to repel the savage marauders and prevent the inhuman slaughter of women and children, but they refused in the most positive manner to pay a dollar to support those who were willing to take up arms to defend their homes and their firesides, until wrung from them by the stern mandates of the law. They did the same when the Revolution broke out. They might at least have furnished money. But no; not a dollar!” It is not certain whether this writer referred to taxes or only to the substitutionary sum paid in lieu of the militia draft. In either case the Brethren then had an alert ethical sensitivity about turning over their money for war.

In the belief that many Brethren are becoming troubled about paying income tax, we submit for fraternal consideration the following statement on income tax refusal.

Because the per capita U.S. military expenditure rose from less than $8 in 1938 to $268 in 1958,

Because approximately 75% of the Federal budget for the past several years has been annually appropriated for military purposes,

Because the government has been spending less than one million dollars yearly on the problems of disarmament, in contrast to $47 billion on arms, a ratio of one to forty-seven thousand,

Because there is so little national conscience about what nuclear war would mean for man, what it would be under God,

We find ourselves constrained by the love of Christ to refuse paying Federal income tax and instead are giving a corresponding amount, plus no less than 20%, to UN or other peacemaking programs.

We reject, as blasphemy against Christ, the prevailing readiness to exterminate hundreds of millions, or even all mankind, in order to “defend our values, our faith.” Since modern technological warfare is much more dependent on huge amounts of money than on manpower, we believe that refusal to turn over our bodies is not enough; we can no longer turn over our dollars for the present rush t[o our] mass annihilation. Let West an[d East] really take total disarmament a[s our] goal, and not merely toy with it [under] the pressure of world public o[pinion] as till now.

We do not discount the cons[tructive] aspects of Federal activity, a[nd we] welcome governmental endeavo[rs that] do make for peace. But with t[he best] prospects for disarmament fadi[ng fast] and the population of East and [West] mostly unaware of the imminen[ce of] and the certainty of disaster if [these] policies continue, we are impe[lled to] income tax refusal as a way of [calling] others to hear God’s warning: [“I have] set before you this day life and [good, and] death and evil. Therefore choo[se life,] that you and your descendant[s may] live, loving the Lord your God, [obey]ing his voice, and cleaving to [Him.”]

Those interested in discussi[ng this] difficult issue should write Dal[e] [Auk]erman, Bechlinghoven bei [?] Glueckstrasse 3, Germany. [Dale] Aukerman, John Forbes, and [Jerry] Royer.

That letter got an enthusiastic reply from Dale Rummel in the 22 April issue (source):

Church Should Take a Stand

I read the letter on “Taxes for War Purposes,” by Dale Aukerman, John Forbes, and Jerry Royer in [the] Gospel Messenger for Feb. 24[. I] feel that they are trying, const[ruc]tively, to reach the answer [to the] problem that has been plaguing Christians since the two world wars. I would like to see Annual Conference take action along the line[s of] their statement.

Our government can crush individuals when they take a stand which is “illegal.” But if an organization like our whole Brotherhood took this stand and backed up [the] individuals who carried it out, [there] is much more chance for its [doing] some lasting good. I believe, [also] that if we take this stand [other] denominations will join us in it[.]

This is no time for the Brethren to become fearful and cowardly [and] be afraid to step forward and [go] where we know it is right to [go]. Let us, with God’s guidance, go [for]ward, regardless of the phy[sical] consequences, in what we know [is] right.

A note in the 5 March issue (source) said that the Michigan district conference had asked the Annual conference to “study the possibilities of making the pacifist movement a political force in our country” by, among other means:

Attempting to work out a proposal for an alternative tax arrangement, so that the taxes of those who object to war on conscientious grounds may be used for peaceful and constructive goals of government.

In the 25 March issue, J. Robert Boyer encouraged his readers to take more courageous stands for their faith, and not like Peter deny Christ three times before the cock crows. One example he gives of when one might take a stand: “Will you send your tax money to Cape Canaveral, where missiles are launched to kill the enemy?”

The following letter from Charles E. and Cleda P. Zunkel appeared in the 27 May issue (source):

No Tax for War Purposes

In keeping with our pronouncements concerning war, the last of which was made at the 1957 Annual Conference at Richmond, Va., we Brethren have encouraged our young men to seek alternative service, in lieu of military service. Our young men, who have followed our teaching, have borne most of the brunt of this course of action. Have we, their parents, kept faith with them, as we have continued to pay our income tax money, 75% of which has gone for the support of military preparedness and war? I think we have not.

Some of our young men have challenged us to action, by appealing to us to cease paying the 75% of our income tax which goes to military purposes. It seems high time that we oldsters make our witness for peace, as we have asked our youth to make theirs.

My wife and I have been spurred to action by this appeal of our youth, and by the recent appeal of our President for $2 billion more to be added to an already staggering sum for military might.

The accompanying letter was sent to the Internal Revenue Service and to our President to clarify our position. It seems to us that we are called upon to make clear our faith and our action, in keeping with our historic understanding of the life and teachings of our Lord.

---

Director of Internal Revenue,
Richmond, Virginia.

President John F. Kennedy
White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Sirs:

Since the late 1920’s we have been conscientious objectors to war, in the settlement of international disputes. We believe in the historic faith of our church, The Church of the Brethren, that “all war is sin. We, therefore, cannot encourage, engage in, or willingly profit from armed conflict at home or abroad. We cannot in the event of war accept military service or support the military machine in any capacity.”

Believing as we have, we have had guilty consciences as we have seen our nation increase its military preparedness. We have been aware that approximately 75% of all our income tax money has been spent for war, preparation for war, or mainten[ance] of military might. In 1938 the [total] military expenditure was $8 [per] capita; in 1958 it had risen to [$268] per capita.

From time to time, as we [have] filed our income tax returns, we [have] in letters to the government, [pro]tested this use of our money. [We] suggested that there be some [pro]vision whereby these funds now [used] for military expenditures be used [for] peaceful pursuits, such as the fee[ding] of the hungry of the world [and] the aid to underprivileged [people] through technical assistance.

Thus far, our protests have [not] been regarded. On Wednesday, March 29, 1961, our local newspaper carried the notice that you, President Kennedy, were asking for $2 [billion] more than the amount already [pro]posed for military defense, ma[king] a total asking of $43,794,300,000[.]

Recently, we learned that two [nu]clear scientists warned the Nat[ional] Education Association in its co[nven]tion that we in the United States already have enough manufact[ured] fissionable material to blot ou[t all] life from the face of the entire [earth] and leave it pock-marked and vo[id like] the face of the moon.

In all good conscience, we ca[n no] longer give 75% of our income [tax] money for the support of mil[itary] might. We are not opposed to pa[ying] tax, but rather, to paying tax for [that] purpose. We feel as guilty as if [we] were giving our lives in the pro[gram] of the military method of settling international disputes.

Therefore, we are filing our income tax report as usual, paying [the] full tax for 1960, but paying [only] 25% of the tax due for the first [quarter] of 1961. The other 75% of our [income] tax will be given in quarterly [install]ments to the church, in addition [to] the 15% or more we already [give.]

We hope the time may [speedily] come when such vast military expenditures may cease, and the [money] so spent may be used to relieve [the] suffering and need in our world. [We] hope, further, that in the [mean] time some alternative tax plan [may] be worked out whereby conscientious objectors may give their [tax] money to peaceful pursuits, just [as] young men may serve in alternative service in lieu of the military service.

The Gospel Messenger editor, Kenneth Morse, endorsed peace protest in general in his editorial, and war tax resistance as one possible protest: “Consider also the personal decision of the moderator of Annual Conference and his wife with regard to taxation for war purposes… It is always easy to criticize the stand that others take. But please note that some have at least taken a stand.”

A response from Jack Kline, however, in the 15 July issue, took issue with tax resistance on the usual render-unto-Cæsar grounds (source): “I think it well to protest the high military expenditure. But the type of letter that was written to Mr. Kennedy and to the Internal Revenue Department I think does not show good grace. I am a bit embarrassed that leaders in our own church would write that type of letter and refuse to pay taxes which our Lord distinctly told the Jews, under a military occupation, they should pay.”

There was another dissent, from John L. Mohler, in the 22 July issue (source). His objection was more on the grounds of democratic political theory: “[B]y participating on the economic life of our national community and accepting our incomes from it, we obligate ourselves to payment of the tax which, by democratic procedures, a majority of our citizens have imposed upon us.” Mohler felt that if you were going to conscientiously object to the taxes on your income, you should do so by refusing the income in the first place: “It seems to me that, in the case of refusal to pay taxes, the removal [of the dissenter from the democratically-chosen endeavors] should precede and prevent acceptance of the income on which the tax is paid.” But he didn’t think that was such a great idea either. He felt that the tax resister’s quest to morally isolate himself from the decisions of the democratic polis was futile, and that he should instead accept his share of guilt for those decisions and begin from there.

On the other hand, Virgil Rose, in a letter in the 16 September issue (source) “was moved with deep spiritual elation” by the news of Brethren war tax resisters. Rose tried to contradict some of the arguments against war tax resistance. For example, the individual contribution to the modern war budget, he says, dwarfs the tiny head tax in Judea that Jesus spoke of, and so they cannot be directly compared; and the idea that he straightforwardly counseled the payment of a tax to Rome contradicts the whole point of the render-unto-Cæsar parable. Rose also wasn’t impressed with Mohler’s democratic theory, though as I interpret it, it seems they were talking past each other on this point (Mohler responded in the 28 October issue). His conclusion:

Let us not shrug off the pricks of conscience that disturb us as we witness the courageous decisions these Brethren are marking. What defense have we before God if knowingly and without protest we supply money to buy instruments for the destruction of our fellow men?

Russ Montgomery also chimed in, in the 30 September issue (source). “I would like to congratulate [Charles Zunkel] on the courage to take such a stand. When such bold action is taken by leaders it seems to make them worthy of the name.”

The 24 June issue brought an update about Maurice McCrackin (source):

Presbytery Suspends Minister Who Refused to Pay Income Tax

The Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, pacifist Presbyterian minister who for some twelve years has refused to pay a major portion of his income taxes, has been suspended indefinitely by the Cincinnati Presbytery from his ministry. Mr. McCrackin has been pastor of the West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas church, a racially integrated mission congregation supported jointly by the Cincinnati Presbytery and the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio.

A spokesman for the Presbytery explained that Mr. McCrackin was suspended not for his stand on income taxes but for disobeying the law by ignoring a summons from the Internal Revenue Service, an offense for which he served a six-month prison sentence. Many of the minister’s parishioners were reported sympathetic with his refusal to pay most of his income taxes on the ground that they were used for military purposes and that war is a sin.

The lead editorial in the 8 July issue (Morse again) again promoted conscientious tax resistance:

Make Some Concessions to Conscience

Just about the time that Valentine Byler, an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania, was ready to start his spring plowing, the Interal Revenue Service seized his three work horses and sold them at auction. The reason was that Byler, who is conscientiously opposed to Social Security, had refused to pay a self-employment tax for that purpose.

Many members of the Amish sect regard Social Security as a form of insurance, and they are opposed to it. They have consistently refused to accept its benefits and do not take a Social Security number. While agreeing to the normal taxes on their property, they object to paying the Social Security tax required of farmers.

Thus we have another of those ironical situations in which the government finds itself [ba]nishing some of its most thrifty and self-reliant citizens. Fortunately, as a result of the Byler case, several bills have now been introduced in Congress which would allow persons who are conscientiously opposed to Social Security to be excused from participating either in its support or its benefits.

We hope that some legal provision can be made for the benefit of those independent persons who have such scruples. Many of us who would argue in favor of Social Security and even urge that it become available to more people still recognize the rights of conscience. We respect the integrity of citizens who, like the Amish, may have some unique ideas as to how they contribute to the general welfare.

At the same time, is it not just as reasonable for the federal government to give some consideration to the scruples of citizens who are conscientiously opposed to paying taxes for war purposes? A friend who is employed in the Treasury Department tells us it should not be too difficult for Congress to set up a general fund for nonmilitary purposes to which the tax payments of peace-minded citizens could be directed. This would not satisfy all the concerns raised by taxprotesters, but it might at least provide an alternative more acceptable than the present arrangement.

A wise government should be able to find some way of conserving the conscientious contributions of citizens who cannot conform to policies they regard as wrong but who still desire to serve in constructive ways.

In the 2 December issue, an S. Mohler (no idea if there’s any relation to the John Mohler referred to above) wrote in (source). This letter began by saying that “in recent years I have read about a few Brethren suffering imprisonment for refusing to pay income taxes, because of the government’s military use of them.” I think this cannot be factually correct, as there were not very many Brethren war tax resisters at this point, and I don’t know of any who had yet been imprisoned for it. Be that as it may, Mohler continues by saying that such “imprisonment for nonpayment of income taxes can be honorably and approvedly avoided” by increasing tax-deductible charitable contributions to the point where you do not owe taxes. Mohler suggests that this is the method he or she has been using for “the past ten or fifteen years.”

Andrew R. Shelly, of the Board of Missions in the General Conference Mennonite Church, wrote in to second that suggestion, in the 30 December issue (source). “Why should we not adjust our lives so that we can give very much more and at the same time materially reduce that which we pay directly to the war effort?” (See ♇ 5 September and 9 September 2018 for Shelly’s contributions on this theme to the Mennonite Gospel Herald.)

The Brethren Evangelist was much more restrained in its coverage. They did publish this wire service piece about Maurice McCrackin in the 5 August issue (source):

Presbytery Suspends Minister Who Wouldn’t Pay Income Taxes

Cincinnati, O. (EP)— A pacifist Presbyterian minister who for some 12 years has refused to pay a major portion of his income taxes, has now been suspended indefinitely by the Cincinnati Presbytery. The move not only halts his ministry but prevents his receiving communion in the church.

The Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin has been pastor of the West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas Church, a racially integrated mission congregation supported jointly by the Cincinnati Presbytery and the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio.

An Episcopal diocese spokesman explained that although the mission is a co-operative project in its religious program, disciplinary jurisdiction rests with the Presbytery since Mr. McCrackin is an ordained Presbyterian clergyman.

A spokesman for the Presbytery said that Mr. McCrackin has appealed this suspension to the Presbyterian Synod of Ohio, but it was reported unofficially that his only hope for reinstatement would be a formal declaration to the Presbytery that he would pay his income taxes in the future.

It was explained that Mr. McCrackin was suspended not for his stand on income taxes, but for disobeying the law by ignoring a summons from the Internal Revenue Service, an offense for which he served a six-month prison sentence.

Presbytery has been studying the case for nearly a year.

I did not notice any mentions of war tax or war bond refusal in The Etownian, The Pilgrim, the Brethren Missionary Herald, or Bible Monitor in 1961.

The war tax resistance debate raged in the letters-to-the-editor column of the Gospel Messenger in 1962 (though other Brethren periodicals ignored the issue entirely so far as I could see).

In one of the letters from 1961 that I noted yesterday, an S. Mohler had recommended that people who had conscientious scruples about contributing their taxes to military spending should increase their charitable giving to the point where they no longer owe taxes. In the 13 January 1962 issue, Rollin E. Pepper threw some cold water on that suggestion (source), noting that the law limits the amount of charitable deductions that a taxpayer can claim.

The debate continued in the letters column of the 20 January issue, in which Charles W. Wampler said “it would be impossible to run a government allowing such action [tax resistance] by its citizens” (source).

I expect that if the government would allow people to pay tax only for the things that they approve the majority of the people would pay much less tax. Some might even find excuses not to pay any tax.

Certainly no good Brethren would want to follow a course that would destroy our government even though it is not perfect.

A 27 January editorial from editor Kenneth Morse tried to put the critics of tax resistance on the defensive:

[Regarding] the stand taken several months ago by a Brethren minister who refuses to pay taxes to be used for war purposes. Several of our readers were quick to disagree with him, but hardly any one came forth with a more constructive way of witnessing against the use of tax money for destruction.

You say you do not like the idea of tax refusal, mass demonstrations, or such public protests against the drift toward annihilation? Then show us a better way to witness.

O.E. Gibson wrote in to the 17 February issue to promote civil disobedience against military taxation as a way of pressuring the government to accommodate such conscientious objection (source):

One Way God Works

May I sum up my thinking about one’s refusal to pay tax money to our government for the support of the big military build-up (one half to three fourths of the total of one’s income taxes assessed)?

Men bearing arms were the essential part of a war machine in all history up to within a few years ago. But recently money has become the essential in plans using guided missiles, etc.

The government came to recognize the consciences of men who were unwilling to bear arms to take life only after some fearless ones were willing to defy the government and accept imprisonment to prove their convictions. These men caused our laws to be changed. What had been considered wrong came to be recognized as right. For similar reasons it can hardly be expected that our government will change its laws to exempt money (allow it to be held back) without being morally forced to do so by conscientious objectors being willing to bear the consequences — probably imprisonment.

History, both Biblical and secular, has borne out this general principle — at critical times governments must be disobeyed if truth is to be vindicated and right standards more generally accepted. This is one way that God works in history.

In the 24 March 1962 issue, a reader (whose name is unfortunately obscured in the page scan) wrote in to recommend that conscientious objectors to military taxation try voluntary simplicity instead (source). Excerpts:

I believe those who wish to withhold income tax would admit that their “way of life,” materially speaking, is supported by the military economy.

I think a more constructive way, and the only consistent practice of withholding such money, is to reduce the standard of living, individually and voluntarily, to more of a subsistence level. This would mean such a drastic reduction in salary that there would be no income tax due. It would also mean revising our standards of living, materially speaking, such as mode of travel and home conveniences to what would be necessary if the military preparations and expenditures were suddenly and drastically curtailed.

The writer said that he himself lived economically, but he did not personally practice nor actually advocate this living-below-the-tax-line procedure. He merely put it forward as being in his opinion more consistent than war tax resistance.

The debate continued to rage. In the 14 April issue, [Jeanne?] Lee Jacoby wrote (source):

On Tax Refusal

I am a firm believer in the refusal to pay war taxes or, more appropriately, the percentage of income taxes which is used for war. How many Brethren can conscientiously sit back and look at the missiles going up, wasting millions of our hard-earned dollars when there are so many other worthwhile projects for which we ought to be putting our money?

For example, why couldn’t the government use our percentage of the tax for the Peace Corps? To me this is a wonderful experiment which I hope will continue for a long time. Also, there are millions of tons of surplus food stored in our warehouses going to waste, and all that is needed is the money to send it to the starving people of the world. Besides, if America needs allies so badly, there is no better way of obtaining them.…

How great is our concern? Should we stand for something we know is wrong? We refuse to bear arms. Ought we consent to doing something like this which may prove to be even more destructive?

The General Brotherhood Board put forward a report on “the church’s historic peace position” in 1962 (source). It tiptoed around the war tax resistance issue this way:

During the last few years, several voluntary agencies have been exploring with the government the possibility of an alternative tax arrangement. The Brethren Service Commission has been working with the Friends and the Mennonites in the preparation of such a proposal. We urge the Brethren Service Commission to continue its efforts to develop an acceptable proposal for an alternative tax arrangement.

Ralph Detrick announced his resistance in a letter published in the 16 June 1962 issue (source):

Caesar’s Due Portion

Following are excerpts from a recent letter I sent to President Kennedy, Senator William Proxmire, and the Internal Revenue Service.

I did not pay the $7.20 balance due on my income tax this year.… I protest the payment of a tax which supports the military machine and its false security. There is nothing positive about the level of military involvement to which our country has devoted itself. It is time to reverse this trend. I take my stand in opposition to the direction our country is going and instead give my support to a peace-making organization. I am sending $9.00 to the World Health Organization of the United Nations.… My voice may be small, but it is only when many such voices respond openly to the higher loyalty of God’s supreme law of love, that we as a nation may become a leader in peace rather than in weapons of war.

I often question the wisdom of this action. I am ignorant of the long-range implications of this witness. But where does the Christian draw the line at compromise? Christians compromise out of necessity, and in some cases perhaps the ends justify the means. Yet, there is also a great need for the person who tries to hold compromise at a minimum on certain issues in order that the plumb line of Christ may bring these issues into focus and reveal their evils. When the federal budget is pitted against this plumb line, its evils — nuclear testing, the “military-industrial complex,” the waste created by Pentagon pressure — are revealed, creating an issue with which I do not wish to compromise.

Should the day arrive when Caesar’s budget becomes more in tune with God’s law of love, I shall be more than happy to render him his due portion.

A report on the annual conference, from the 28 July issue, reported (source):

William Smith, a representative on Standing Committee from Pennsylvania, expressed disappointment that the [General Brotherhood] board had not offered more help to persons who were disturbed by some of the issues involved in paying taxes to be used for war purposes. Yet with one amendment, largely editorial in nature, the original statement [see above] was adopted by the delegate body.

In the 18 August issue, Charles Zunkel wrote in with an update on his family’s war tax resistance, and how they had backed out of it into more of a mild symbolic protest:

Witness by Designation

A little over a year ago, my wife and I decided we should refuse to pay the 75% of our federal income tax which was used for purposes of war. We so announced to the Internal Revenue Department, the President of the U.S., and to our church through the Gospel Messenger. [see yesterday’s Picket Line]

Following that announcement, we had communication from the U.S. Treasury and the Department of Internal Revenue, and much with members of our own church and some other denominations. All of the communications from the federal government were most considerate and courteous, a thing we did not always experience with our own Brethren.

The Department of Internal Revenue carefully acknowledged our conscientious scruples but reminded us that Mr. A.J. Muste had lost his case of conscientious tax refusal in the federal tax court, and urged us to pay ours. In continuing correspondence we reaffirmed that we were not opposed to the payment of tax, but rather to the use to which it was put. We asked if we might designate it for United Nations, Peace Corps, or Food for Relief, all of which are in the federal budget. We were told that Internal Revenue did not have authority for the use of the tax money, but rather for its collection.

In discussing the matter with many friends and members of our families, we decided to test out the Internal Revenue on the designation of the tax money. Accordingly, in paying our third quarter’s payment, we made one check for the 25% undesignated and for the 75% for three quarters, designated in the lower left-hand corner of the check — “For Peaceful purposes: U.N., Peace Corps, etc.” The checks were cashed without any communication or question. Since that, we have continued to write two checks, each quarter, designating the one in the fashion indicated.

We took this course of procedure, realizing that eventually the tax would be collected and with an additional 6% penalty. The federal government will withdraw the tax due from the checking account, if funds are sufficient, or will confiscate property and sell it to secure the amount due. Rather than make more money available for war purposes by confiscation and penalty, we decided to witness our protest by designated check. Thus far, we have not tried to probe to discover whether the designated money was channeled as designated for United Nations, Peace Corps, etc. That we may still do at a later date.

We believe the witness can made by designation, at least until we can find some more effective way.

The 25 August issue reported on the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., including its decision to uphold the suspension of war tax resisting minister Maurice McCrackin (source).

I. Wayne Keller wrote in to the 22 September edition to decry the lawlessness of war tax resistance, and the Messenger’s “tacit, if not expressed approval” of it (source). He wasn’t too fond of protests either: “Carrying placards and walking in a public place are the methods of radicals, pressure groups, rioters, and anarchists. Because they are, the Christian should not use them.”

Keller was joined by L. Wade Bollinger in the 6 October, who said that in a democracy “we the people are indeed ‘Caesar’ ” and so we should not be resisting our taxes but exercising our democratic franchise to help direct them (source).

Robert Fritter penned a lengthy rebuttal to these points of view in the 20 October issue (source). Excerpt:

So aware were the early Christians of their primary loyalty to the laws of God rather than man’s laws when the two conflicted that for 300 years they were persecuted for disobeying the laws of the land.

They would not worship the emperor, nor would they take part in war. They would not bow down to the military state because they knew that it was a stupendous and terrifying god of destruction which froze men into fearsome obedience while proclaiming to be their only salvation. Those who refuse to pay income tax which feeds the insatiable hunger of this false god of 20^th century America also refuse to pay homage to the same god.

A brief report on the Mennonite World Conference from the same issue (source) noted:

A Mennonite professor closed the conference with a speech in which he suggested that Christians who oppose the world power struggle and nuclear weapons might consider withholding payment of taxes which would be spent for military purposes. Dr. Edward G. Kaufman, professor of religion and philosophy at Bethel College in Kansas, said this would be an effective means of preventing nuclear war, but he conceded most people would not adopt his plan.

Harley J. Utter, in the 10 November issue, thought that war tax resisters were disregarding all of the nice non-military things the government spends our taxes on. He also wasn’t a fan of protests: “show-off demonstrations are wrong, that is walks for peace and the like.” (source) John Forbes wrote in to the same issue, saying in part: “Thanks be to Bro. Charles Zunkel, whose witness against paying taxes for military purposes should inspire all of us to go and do likewise.”

Today I’ll look at war tax resistance among American Brethren in 1963 by hunting through the archives of Brethren periodicals.

In the 2 February 1963 issue of the Gospel Messenger, John Forbes introduced the idea of a form of tax resistance as a symbolic protest, rather than as a conscientious imperative (source):

Suggestions for Taxpayers

For the benefit of the readers of the Messenger and all others across the Brotherhood interested in the peace position, I would like to quote three statements and make a suggestion.

“We urge the Brethren Service Commission to continue its efforts to develop an acceptable proposal for an alternative tax arrangement” (Report of GBB to 1962 Annual Conference, adopted).

“My feeling has been that the initiative on this has to come from taxpayers around the country rather than from any organized effort here in Washington… that until there is widespread nonpayment of taxes by those opposed to war, there will be no change in government policy” (Edward F. Snyder, Friends Committee on National Legislation, letter to the undersigned Dec. 10, 1962).

“I am as convinced as ever that all those who are opposed to preparations for nuclear extermination and who will owe any federal income tax next April 15 should refuse some token amount. I suggest holding back $10, an amount large enough to be noticed but small enough to avoid excessive penalty. When Internal Revenue took $14.49 last August from my bank account, the ‘statutary addition’ was only 21 cents. The year before, when I owed $5.90, it did not bother to collect at all.

“This ‘token ten’ could be given to some constructive project, and IRS so informed in a letter explaining the objection to over half of it being otherwise used for destruction. Enough pacifists are interested in this, I feel, to make it become a significant force for peace” (Franklin Zahn to editor of the Peacemaker, Dec. 22, 1962).

I think everyone in the Church of the Brethren with a concern for peace should take up this suggestion and apply it when income tax is due in April, if they can. I am willing to act as coordinator of this project, if one is needed and someone in Elgin doesn’t want the job. If enough Brethren and others take this action now, we shall surely see action in Congress or in the Treasury Department before long.

In January a “Brethren Ministers’ Peace Retreat” was held. The Church teachings on pacifism and peacemaking were given a thorough going-over. Dale Aukerman reported on the retreat in the 16 March issue (source). Aukerman had himself come out as a war tax resister (see ♇ 31 May 2020), so he would likely have been attuned to any mention of it, but except for one mention of Civil War-era refusal to hire substitutes for military service (but payment of tax), his article on the Retreat is silent on the issue of taxes.

The 18 May issue published a brief dispatch about Quaker war tax resister Arthur Evans (source), but a more in-depth dispatch appeared in the Brethren Evangelist so I’ll save it for that section, below.

The following comes from the 25 May issue:

Minister Deducts Defense Share From Federal Income Tax

The minister of the Unitarian Universalist church in San Anselmo Calif., has declined to pay sixty-one percent of his federal income tax on the grounds that it would go for “carefully planned machinery to kill millions of human beings.”

The Dutch-born pastor, Karel F. Botermans, who was a leader in the Netherlands underground during the Nazi occupation, sent the remaining thirty-nine percent of his tax to the Internal Revenue Service.

In the protest letter he sent to President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara he asserted the belief that he had international law on his side. He referred to the Nurnberg trials, “where it was stated by our Allied judges that, in actions of genocide, every person in that society involved in those actions is to be held responsible.”

The pacifist clergyman points out that he would gladly pay the withheld sixty-one percent of his tax if the U.S. pledged to spend the money for other methods of settling international differences.

In the 15 June issue, O.E. Gibson raised a series of questions about conscientious objection, suitable for consideration by Brethren. Several of these concerned war funding, and the others seemed designed to guide the consideration of those (source). Excerpt:

5. Is there a difference in principle in supporting one’s government as a soldier and supporting its war plans with money?
6. Are those persons in the U.S. (some forty or fifty) who are openly refusing to give their money in tax to support the military plans of our government more radical or less realistic than the conscientious objectors who would not submit to the draft in World War Ⅰ?
7. Allowing that refusal may mean much more than a few months in prison — that it may mean a complete change in one’s way or standard of living as is the case with most of those who are refusing, should we condemn or should we uphold them?
8. Would history or reason suggest that a law allowing that one might divert his tax money into religious or peace work be passed by our Congress without a comparable amount of suffering as that endured to get our “alternative service” law?

The 8 June 1963 issue of The Brethren Evangelist printed a wire service article about Quaker war tax resister Arthur Evans:

Quaker Deducts “Military” Cut from His Federal Taxes

Colorado Springs, Colo. (EP)— A Colorado Quaker who long has refused voluntary payment of that portion of his federal taxes earmarked for military spending plans the same course of action this year.

For 20 years, Dr. Arthur Evans, a Denver physician, has donated the amount of money equal to his tax burden of military spending to a charity and has sent the receipt to the Internal Revenue Service.

Every year the IRS attaches his bank account, collects the amount due and adds a 6 per cent interest charge.

Last year, because the IRS was “using the information I was voluntarily giving for evil purposes,” Dr. Evans did not file any federal return.

To make up for his tax liability, the physician sent the IRS five checks for $200 each — payable to the United Nations, the Peace Corps, and the AID Program.

Dr. Evans contends he is meeting his obligation by contributing to organizations such as the United Nations, which are supported at least in part by the U.S. government. The IRS, in returning the checks, stated “they have no connection with any tax liability and cannot be accepted by this office.”

The Quaker, who terms military spending as a “Doomsday Machine,” continues to pay his state income taxes because they have no military spending connection.