David Finke Repsonds to My Post: "On Quaker Life and the Peace Testimony"

Below you will find David Finke's response to my post on "Quaker Life and the Peace Testimony" and some of the comments (notably by Jeremy Mott and myself). Since David does not blog and posted this as a series of comments (limited by the word length parameters that Blogger imposes) I offered to post it (unedited) as one, seamless article so that readers could gain the full effect of his writing. I offer my response in the comments section.

From David:

I am very much enjoying reading Jeremy's pointed challenges (he never has been mealy-mouthed or half-way about anything). He addresses the question that has been central to his life and mine: namely, how does discipleship to the Prince of Peace square with the demands of the war-making State? My testimony to J.M.'s steadfast integrity first had occasion to be public when he called me as a character witness (yes, he was a character!) in his federal trial in Chicago (1968?) for draft noncooperation -- a high honor in my life.
He and I both come from family traditions which honored the much-misunderstood and maligned positions both of conscientious objection and also conscientious non-cooperation with an institution determined to be fundamentally evil. My father was a legally-recognized C.O. during W.W. II, while my uncle was imprisoned for failing to take the ministerial exemption the draft board insisted upon rather than consider his C.O. claim. Jeremy has described how he had functioned -- in good consciences but at different times -- both within and outside of the institution of conscription. For myself, there was both the legal recognition at age 18, and then at age 26 (when I became "over age" because I'd never sought a deferment) I sent back my draft card -- inspired by the moral consistency and sacrifices of Jeremy and his comrades from 1967 when the draft was revived to provide fodder for the cannons of Vietnam.
So I write not with the assumption that there is only one, self-evident, way in which a dedicated Christian may respond in good conscience to the demands of the war-making and conscripting State. I try very hard to understand and have respect for people whose choices are other than mine. I submit in humility to the only One who Jesus says we may consider Good.
However, I want to get in my own friendly licks here in this discussion, knowing that Brent welcomes creative and forthright dialogue, and that we may pursue with respect whatever disagreements we may apparently have.

First, I challenge his use of the phrase "national service" when referring to the choice to enter the military (or to accept it when thrust upon one, under penalty of law.) You mention that your son-in-law "felt led to serve." I trust you saw that the choice made by Bob (if not yourself) was also a leading to serve.

Although "serving" is the dominant, common way of referring to being in the military -- and builds on noble, self-giving, altruistic impulses which young people may have for wanting to help and protect their fellow human beings -- I will actively resist the equation of preparation for killing with the concept of "service."

It is a slick illusion, a swindle perpetrated upon our youth. It is an elusive euphemism, undergirded by the cult of the National Religion and its ceremonies. It is not consistent with Truth. My view of the primary role of the military is not altered by the fact that occasionally they are mobilized for humanitarian disaster relief, or peddled to the desperate and gullible as "job training" or "being all you can be."

The ability to demolish villages, blast apart bodies, destroy families... all these are to be done without question to those giving the orders, if one properly follows ones indoctrination, discipline, and preparation. The most effective counter-recruiters that I have known over the decades are the soldiers/sailors/marines who have been out there doing the dirty-work of the warmakers (who, legendarily, sit in posh offices sending others to their death.)

They know that warfare is not about "freedom" or "service" or glory. At the least, it is about trying to stay alive, and then doing what one can to protect one's comrades. Let the honest veterans make this case, if we will listen to them. (Most of them I've known adamantly refuse to talk about what they had to do when in combat; I cannot blame them.)

Secondly, there is the tendency in your narrative, Brent, to imply that at least for your friends if not for yourself, there were equally good, moral, justifiable decisions made about the military -- all consistent with Christian principles. I find that only slightly distant from moral relativism. I suspect that it arises from charity, respect, and not wanting to seem "judgmental." But concerning how many other social evils are you willing to simply say, "That's not my choice; that's not what I am led to do"? No, I think you as a follower of Christ can be very clear-cut as to what is required of you and what is forbidden to you, and that you understand this teaching of the Way of Love to be universal rather than selective. Such a position, of course, goes against the dominant Individualism of our era and culture.

We may well have heard -- whether in main-line East Coast "liberal" Quakerism, or in the Evangelical branch -- that it's all up to the individual, and the "peace testimony" is whatever a person decides to do, if they are sincere. "Wear thy sword as long as thou canst" (whether Fox actually said this or not) is the easy way in which we comfort ourselves in believing this is The Quaker Way.

Within the past 150 years, the bulk of our Religious Society decided we would settle for a peace testimony that was optional, or at least "advisory," rather than normative and expected. In this country, I believe this was probably because in the crisis over slavery: A preponderant number of Quaker young people decided to take up arms either to preserve the Union or to have some part in liberating their enslaved brothers and sisters. Those must have been agonizing choices! Those who enlisted or were drafted at least knew they were going against our Peace Testimony, and were readmitted to Quaker membership after making an acknowledgment of that plain fact.

For me, this in no way is to point a finger at those of the Evangelical heritage from which you came. I believe it was Jeremy who first pointed out to me that in W.W. II there was a higher percentage of young men in Oregon Yearly Meeting than in Philadelphia YM who took a position of conscientious objection to military participation.

The central part of your narrative/essay seems to be that Christ will teach us, in God's Time, what we are called to do, according to our being teachable. I have no quarrel with that. But it shouldn't be mysterious as to what Our Teacher's lessons were the first time around -- both in his behavior and his precepts. Jesus makes manifestly clear how we are instructed to deal with those who oppress us. (In the Middle Ages, of course, those who believed that the Sermon on the Mount might require something of them personally were given the monastic life as an alternative, while the "realists" lived in a world of moral compromises.)

It is no accident that for the first 3 centuries after Jesus' earthly ministry, it was NOT an open question as to whether one could be both a follower of Jesus and a soldier. Was that taught in most of our First Day Schools? Or church history classes? The way of martyrdom in faithfulness was what Christians were called to, rather than helping Caesar maintain his empire through the brutality that required soldiers to nail people to crosses. Yes, I know that a lot of the soldiers simply were engaged in road building and what we might call "civil service," even as modern armies have more people behind desks than in foxholes. But the purpose of the military has never changed, and we should not let ourselves be fooled. It is about destroying human life and property, to impose the Will of the sovereign State.

How has it happened that of the historic "Peace Churches" we Quakers have slipped into something where we think that war refusal is just a matter of personal preference, and all options are on the table? Was it when we became so acculturated that we didn't want to be seen as "a peculiar people" any longer? Were we embarrassed that we might be confused with the Amish? Did the "seeds of war" in our ever-increasing material goods lead us to welcome that the war-making State would fend off those who might challenge our society's rapacity in gobbling up the resources of this world? I don't have clear answers to this, and I acknowledge that I am at least as much "part of the problem" as "part of the solution," given the society into which I was born and whose benefits I usually accept without much challenge.

Your mention of Lutheranism reminds me that a "two kingdoms" theory hasn't been peculiar to that particular denomination. It certainly has roots in Augustine's formulations ("The City of God and the City of Man"). Luther was, if I recall, an Augustinian friar. The basic sickness, though, I believe goes back to what our Anabaptist brethren rightly denounce as "The Constantinian Captivity of the Church"--in contrast to which they were called to re-establish the True Church... much as Quakers claimed "Primitive Christianity Revived."

Caesar took over the church, welcomed its blessings on whatever policies he deemed expedient, gave them their protected realm in which to rule themselves so long as they stayed out of his way, and won the game. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" was co-opted to say--quite contrary to Jesus' intention--"Whatever he claims, he can have."

But his Jewish hearers, when Jesus was given that entrapment question, would have known that "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof..." And in the face of Divine Sovereignty over our lives, Caesar can make no ultimate claims. So long as it serves the public weal (the "common wealth") there is a justifiable place for civil government, and to that we should be subject and obedient. Thus, Penn's "Holy Experiment." But the power over life and death? No! "Vengeance is mine, said the Lord, *I* will repay." So far as we have any control over it, we are to live at peace with all.

Unless there's a declaration of war? An Imperial Edict? A call to arms for the militia? Friends faced these challenges, and had a resounding corporate testimony against such an intrusion of Caesar into God's realm. How could we have missed that?

One more thing about Lutheranism's "two kingdoms." Look how that played out in the Third Reich. The Church was told to stay out of the way--actually, was coopted to bless the racism and give an ideological integration to the fanaticism: "German Christianity"--which can only be upheld by a systematic lie as to our faith's Jewish origins! Fortunately, there was the underground "Confessing Church" (Read the Barmen Declaration) which understood "the cost of discipleship" and that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church."

Not that Bonhoeffer's movement was pacifist; they were willing to apply "just war" criteria and strike a blow against tyranny. But how many Christians in our acquaintance either understand the rigorous criteria for a war being "just," or have courageously applied it to whatever the government wants them to kill for?

Anyway, I hope this conversation continues within classic Quaker understandings of what we are called and empowered to be and do. It takes some of us Christians longer rather than sooner. But if we pay attention, there really *is* a corporate witness, which may prevent each of us having to re-invent the wheel. Having listened to the Light Within, the Spirit of the Living Christ--and knowing that it is not the subjective "MY light"--we may be truly guided in His Ways. He has come to teach his people himself.

And it's not, "Whatever...."

Love to all who read this,
-DHF