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When being a Conscientious Objector was not enough
Isaiah 2: 4 “He will judge the nations and will settle disputes
for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their
spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against
nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”
This is a vision we can only envision.
Evil still walks the land. Canada, during our time, has become one of
the biggest exporters of arms and ammunition. We must pray and act to oppose
our country’s adoption of the evil economics of war.
I became eligible for the US military draft in July 1965, just
at a time when the American invasion and war in Vietnam was heating up.
I was registered for the military draft in Dawson County Montana as a Conscientious
Objector and was therefore eligible for ‘Alternate Service,’ in a hospital,
a Voluntary Service project or some other non-combatant role.
However, I knew I would never be drafted – no Mennonite men had
been drafted in that county since 1940, because an attempted lynching of
a Mennonite Minister in Dawson County had brought great shame – and, because
the Mennonite people in the County were now a powerful economic force.
This Alternate Service agreement for Mennonite draftees had been
negotiated between the US government and Mennonite leaders during the first
great war and again during the second great war. It was believed to be
a great victory and a cornerstone agreement for the church.
Though we did not realize it at the time, the war was to expand
dramatically over the next four years and would carve the American people
in two as well as to severely strain the Mennonite church in the United
States.
When I went to Hesston College in the fall of 1965, I joined the
little “peace club.” We did educational events, attended meetings
and studied the church’s position on peace and war. We did not go in marches,
let alone lead them or challenge the church in any way – we supported our
church’s position. We felt privileged.
The Vietnam War continued to expand and heat up. It was also becoming
a war on College campuses and the streets of the USA. By the time
I went to Goshen College in 1967, many thousands of Vietnamese were dying
by bombing, burned to death by napalm and murdered in the open markets.
Body counts were the measuring stick of success for the US Army. Americans
too were dying – thousands each year.
The temperature was going up amongst the American people and around
the world. Young people were demanding change – all across the world –
and the powerful in America were totally confounded.
I joined the Goshen College Peace Society. While many College
campuses were in chaos (being taken over by various movements, for example
the Students for a Democratic Society), our campus was a supportive haven.
Our professors challenged us to do more. Our chapel services were a place
of free expression of anger towards the war and towards American duplicity
in mass murder in a foreign land. Our coffee houses were alive with movement
talk. We prayed for the peace and civil rights movements to drop their
differences and bring themselves together.
We marched through the city of Goshen and experienced the very
hostile jeers and taunts from city residents. We marched on Washington,
invaded Washington and during a meeting of Mennonite College Peace Clubs
in Washington we attended the Senator Fulbright Hearings on the war, joining
others in cheering to the point of being driven from the room. We became
part of a great big movement.
In 1968, as the American election was approaching, many of became
politically active. Goshen students fought that election street to street
across many cities in many states that were holding primary elections—
Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Oregon. We left school
en mass to work for political candidates who were against the war.
We were part of the great victory and experienced the flood of satisfaction
when the sitting president Lyndon Johnson announced on March 31 that he
wouldn’t be running again.
Many of us worked for Eugene McCarthy, a strongly Catholic Christian,
who called us to work. We wanted him to become president. And, as
we did that, our professors were cheering us on and giving us passing grades
even while we never went to classes – they were our friends and supporters.
Then came the fateful days of that spring and summer of 1968. Here are
five events that stick in my mind:
We began to see that we were complicit in the war. Our Goshen
College Peace Society became more focused. We studied our roots and held
late night conversations with professors. By the spring of 1969 we set
out a plan to confront our church on its “Peace position” – the core of
that position being the agreement for Alternate Service for Mennonite draftees.
We felt it was wrong to
We decided to confront Mennonite Church directly at its conference
at Turner, Oregon in August of 1969. We hoped to get the support
of the Conference for our position that non-co-operation with the military
draft is an acceptable position. Later, Fred Lamar Kniss described
the confrontation like this:
External and internal polarization (in the Mennonite church) came together
most dramatically at the Mennonite general conference meeting in 1969.
A number of Mennonite draft resisters hitchhiked to the conference in Turner,
Oregon, and camped in tents outside the auditorium. They were there to
introduce a resolution that non-co-operation with the draft would be officially
recognized as a legitimate alternative to institutionalized Alternate Service
program. Ultimately they were successful. There was however, significant
opposition to the countercultural style of their dress and grooming.
Draft resistance was seen by the traditionalists as allied with other,
more threatening countercultural lifestyle practices.
Yes, some of us were a bit bizarre, by any standard. No, we were
not all righteous – some not very righteous at all. But we were all, in
our own ways, carrying the values of Christ’s love and non-resistance.
We had many failings but we were searching for a place, in a world gone
seemingly insane, for a supportive home.
The powerful Brunk brothers, George and Truman, spoke passionately
against our resolution. A local Bishop openly decried the “negative publicity”
being generated by these invading, “sinful,” outsiders. The speakers against
were loud and long; the speakers for were meek and mild.
But a healing did occur in that conference. Mediation, a powerful
foot-washing and communion service made that conference seem like home.
The resolution passed. There was celebration. We went home.
Response to Conscription and Militarism (Mennonite Church Resolution,
1969)
We reaffirm our position statements of the Mennonite General Conference
made in 1937 and 1951 with regard to peace, war, military service, and
positive Christian service according to the Church’s interpretation of
the life and teachings of Christ.
The regenerated do not go to war, nor engage in strife. They are children
of peace who have ‘beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning forks, and know no war’ (Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3). ... Our weapons
are not weapons with which cities and countries may be destroyed, walls
and gates broken down, and human blood shed in torrents like water. But
they are weapons with which the spiritual kingdom of the devil is destroyed.
... Christ is our fortress; patience our weapon of defense; the Word of
God our sword. ... Iron and metal spears and swords we leave to those who,
alas, regard human blood and swine’s blood of well-nigh equal value.
Menno Simons
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