__,
CHRISTIAN OBEDIENCE IN TIME OF WAR A dialog sermon preached in the Duke University Chapel Sunday, 11:00 a. m. May 5, 1968 by Ninian Beall, Jr. Trinity College Senior 1967-68 Chairman, Duke University Christian Movement 1967-68 Chairman, United Campus Christian Fellowship and The Reverend Dr. Howard C. Wilkinson Chaplain to the University Matthew 5:38-48 ------Wilkinson: One of the most famous and successful military men in American history, General William T. Sherman, said: "War is cruel and you cannot refine it ... War at best is barbarism ... ! am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine ... War is hell." That last sentence has been quoted around the world because it puts . in vivid terms a true description of war, and because its author was an authority on the subject. Beall: Chaplain, most men today agree with Sherman's evaluation. The opening sentence on the application form for conscientious objector status with the Selective Service system is, "I am by reason of my religious training and belief conscientiously opposed to part icipation in war in any form." Probably Lyndon Johnson, William Westmoreland and many people on the other side ~f the present con flict could subscribe to that statement. We're almost all opposed to war. It's a horrible, dirty, bloody business and an activity which few enjoy. }'liJ_Jrin!3on: Whatever may be the ultimate goal of a given war, the i~neaiate purpose of almost every war is to kill, to maim and to destroy. This is, when we pause to reflect on it, the exact opposite of the purpose of every other honorable profession and vo cation in the world. The activities of individual criminals, such as Clyde Barrow, are the only ones which parallel war. Physicians attempt to save lives and improve health, but war is a deliberate action which results in killing, wounding, and burning the flesh of chiloren, women and men. Contractors build homes, churches, schools, warehouses and factories, for mankind to use for its welfare, but war is an organized attempt to destroy what con tractors have built and what people are using for their welfare. Farmers and ranchers have the vocation ~f growing food to nourish -2- mankind and of growing cotton and wool to clothe humanity. War, however, seeks to deprive people of food and clothing, it attempts to defoliate plants and to poison the livestock. If often involves a policy of 11 Scorched earth. 11 War does on an organized basis and on a grand scale what the individual criminal seeks to do in civ111zed society, and for which we always try to get him locked up or even executed. Beall: As you have said, Chaplain, war is an organized attempt to destroy man and what he has built. And certainly the suffer ing of civilian populations is one of the more cruel aspects of modern warfare. But I'd like for us to look at killing and war from a specifically Christian point of view for a moment. Christianity is biased towards peace and against war. Jesus summed up God's commandments to us in this way: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." (Matt. 22:37-40). Love is at the center of Christian ethics. It involves regarding other men as "brothers." Ideally it means that we are to have concern for their welfare equal to our concern for our own. Jesus' love was thorough-going; it extended even to enemies. Jesus would not even allow His disciple to use the sword in order to re scue his Master from arrest and probable execution. We are to love in response to God's love, not because other men love us. Every human being is understood as God's creation and precious in His sight. For the Christian, life is much more important than the concept of property or other ideas, which are man's own creation. To extinguish human life must be understood as the furthest thing from God's intent. The Christian understands that power or coercion is in one sense 11 the name of the game" in this world, and that the achievement of some approximation of justice depends in part on the use of coercion. But killing, if it is to be done at all, is the last resort and is only done after all other means of settling con flict have been exhausted. The whole thrust of Jesus' style of life was for love and peace, and against hatred and war. This is the attitude the Christian adopts in his own life, and it should be very difficult to dissuade him from it. Wilkinson: Ninian, it occurs to me that you and I have been saying that there is general agreement among people that war is bad and that peace is good. But is the Christian Church completely agreed on the subject of war? Beall: Most Christians agree that war is a very great evil, but they would also insist that it is sometimes necessary. Two main positions toward war have been taken by the followers of Christ One is pacifism and the other is the 11 just war" position. The two approaches result from two different ways of making ethical decision~ Pacifism comes from the method of following absolute moral principle£ derived from the New Testament. The "just war" theory depends on the method of making decisions with reference to the probable con sequences of alternate courses of action. -3- Wilkinson: Ninian, would you elaborate this latter method of making ethical decisions and say how it relates to the question of war?
Beall: I'll try. The Christian takes love as the only absolu~e _ principle and as the attitude in which all our decisions are made. Guidelines or rules-of-thumb for conduct are derived from the Bible, f~om the experience of the Church, and from one's personal experiefteeB of the consequences of certain actions taken in part icular situations. Responsible decisiomin difficult situations where our normal guidelines for action conflict-- where we must choose the "lesser of two evils"-- can only be made after study of the facts and calculation of the probable results of any possible action. In these situations we depend not simply upon historical norms, but also upon the present guidance of the Holy Spirit. There are obviously great dangers in this method of decision-making. We must predict the future-- a really impossible task. We must depend upon our limited reasoning capacities. We intentionally do evil-- in the case of war, killing-- in hopesaf preventing greater evil, with no guarantee of success. Even given all the ambiguities of this type of decision-making, it seems to me that this is the way we are responsible to Christ's call to us to act in the world. We also are free to act this way. Christ has freed us from legalistic approaches to ethics. He has demonstrated the ascendency of love over law. The history of war as an instrument of achieving justice and peace has obviously not been very good. World War I sowed the seeds of World War II, and the fall of fascism in Asia and in Europe by armed force has been followed by the rise of communism, sometimes equally totalitarian. The world seems to move closer and closer to a nuclear holocaust. Still, I cannot say for sure that there could not be a situation at some time, in some place, in which some person has it as his responsibility as a Chr~stian and as a human being, to kill people in order to prevent the death or torture of other people. Therefore I admit the conceivability of a "just war" and am not an absolute pacifist. I stillbelieve we are free and responsible to make decisions with reference to conditions andconsequences, but I remember that even as we do so we are involved in sin. The gap be tween the commandment to love and our performance is part of the meaning of sin, and we live in the context of our continuing need for forgiveness. Wilkinson: Okeh, you have said that many Christians feel that, in a given set of circumstances, they must reluctantly part icipate actively in a particular war. To round out the picture, we should acknowledge that, along with these Christians, stand other Christians who believe that if they are to be obedient to Christ, (which is the meaning of Christian discipleship) participating in war is never for them a live option. This is because they believe that the teachings of Christ are completely opposed to the whole thrust of war. Beall: Chaplain, you are saying that the pacifist Christian believes Christianity prohibits participation in killing and other cruel acts which war involves. Do you think this view of Christian ethics deals realistically with the presence of evil in the world, with the fact that there are people around who might seriously want m do us or others in? -4- Wilkinson: Well, I don't know of any serious New Testament scholar who thinks it is enough for a Christian to say that war is wrong, that he will have nothing to do with it, and then7 -so to speak--hang up the phone. Indeed, that is really not the teach1nf1: of Jesus, as reflected in the New Testament. As a matter of in teresting fact, it is in studying what Christ said about the treat ment of enemies and oppressors that we see His teaching about peace and love! This is what people like Reinhold Niebuhr forget when they say that the love ethic of Christ "undertakes to overe•me evil by failing to take cognizance of it." (Love and Justice, p.242) Con trary to that, it is true that our Lord~eaching against hatred, killing, returning evil for evil, and so on, come out principally in what He said we should do when confronted by a long list of "bad guys." The Master taught us what we should do about people who have something against us, about enemies, about people who unjustly accuse us, about people who areevil, people who strike us on the cheek, people who snatch away our coats, who compel us to go a mile out of our way, who persecute us, and about people who despitefully use us. No, I do not think it is really true that Christ undertook to over come evil by failing to notice it. Beall: Chaplain, you say that Christ taught us what we should do about enemies. How does a pacifist interpretation of Christ's ethics go beyond the prohibition against killing?
~~lkinson: Well, Jesus taught both a negative and a positive ethic, and the teaching was both a strategy and an ethic, and attempts to separate the ethic from the strategy have succeeded only in distorting the teaching of Christ. The Master taught us that we must not merely refrain from hating and killing, but we must have a positive program of good will toward our enemies. He pointed out that God sends His rain on good and bad alike, and He said that we must be equally non-discriminating in our good will. Beall: In preparing for this sermon, I read Reinhold Niebuhr's case against pacifism. He seems to agree fully that pacifism is the teaching of Jesus, but he says that it is an ethic of perfection applicable only at the end of history and not to the present, sinful world. How do you respond to that? Wilkinson: I would say that the most obvious thing which Dr. Niebuhr has overlooked at this point is that at the end of history1 in heaven, there will be no persecutors, no enemies, no people de spitefully using you, no people smlting you on the cheek, and so on. Christ was manifestly descrlbing our kind of world when He gave the Sermon on the Mount, and the only chance any of us ever will have in all of eternity to practice His teaching about loving one's enemies is in a world where they~ enemies.
Beall: Chapla~n, the biggest question I have about non-violent good will is, will it work? That is, can it prevent war and ach ieve a just society? Do you believe that pacifism is guaranteed a victory over evil in this world? -5- Wilkinson: The answer to that question has to be a clear-cut nega- tive. No. There is no guarantee that non-violent good will is going to be "successful" in this world. Even as you pointed out earlier, the so-called "just war" cannot guarantee to establish justice or peace, so love in action cannot guarantee to make~ery- thing turn out all right either. However, inview of the failure thus far of our military expenditure of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives to end communism in Vietnam, and in view of the report of some of our Duke graduates who are now fighting there that communism is as strong in Vietnam now as at the beginning of the war, it does sound reasonable to say that if American money and manpower had been poured into Vietnam as expensively for welfare as they have been for destruction, we might have overthrown communism, establish ed peace and made friends all around. At least it is true that the leaders of many neutral nations have repeatedly said that this is the case. Beall: Speaking of the Vietnam War, it might be well for us to move directly to that arena from the more generalized discussion we have had thus far in this dialog. After all, we are living in 1968 and young people today are confronted by the specific choices of the Vietnam War. First, I want to mention a dangerous myth which I believe the draft system has helped to put over on the American people and the American Church. That is the belief that it is the responsibility of the individual citizen to participate in war unless he can show reason why he should not-- that is, unless he can prove he is a "conscientious objector." This idea is perverted. I have already described the Christian bias towards peace and against war. A Christian should be a "conscientious objector" to a war until and unless he can be shown or has convinced himself that the killing and suffering involved in the pursuit of the war will be less than the killing and suffering which will occur if the war is not fought. Now to the question of the Vietnam War. Have any of us been convinced by the arguments of our government and by our own study of the problem that this is a justwar? I'm afraid most of us have simply assumed it was right unless we could be shown otherwise, which is a rather peculiar position for the followers of the Prince of Peace to take. An increasing number of American churchmen join churchmen around the world in condemning this war as an abomination that can in no way be justified. We see the destruction of the lives and livelihood of the Vietnamese people, both North and South, and the destruction of the lives of American soldiers. We see the war earning America the suspicion and hatred of people of the poor nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, who will have so much to do with the future of our own nation and the world. We know that the Vietnam War is using up resources in terms of lives and money which should be used to deal with the crises of racism and poverty in this country. We wonder what is this great evil that it is worth all of this to prevent? Are the Vietnamese people really better off dead than Red? From whose point of view? Even if this is a war to stop the spread of international communism, do we have the right to fight our battles in someone's else homeland? Fin~lly, have we really resorted to war as a last resort in this situation? Has the United States exhausted all other means of combatting the -6- rise of totalitarian regim~s? Are not the failure of the United States to achieve social reform in Vietnam from the time of the Diem regime, and the reluctance of Congress to give foreign aid to countries attempting to develop their economies and raise the liviug standards of their poeple just two symptoms of the present American tendency to attempt military solutions to problems before other avenues are explored-- a tendency becoming increasingly evident in our attempts to deal with our problems in the American ghettoes? Having confronted these questions, more and more Christians believe that this war must be stopped now. Wilkinson: Whatever interpretation young American Christians make of the war, once they have made their decisions about the rightness or wrongness of the Vietnam War, they are still confronted with the question, "What am I going to do about it?" This trans lates itself into the question, "What am I going to do about the draft?" There are five choices which I see Christians making with re spect to the present draft. (1) Some are saying that, while they wish peace could exist now, they believe the conditions of peace, justice and love will be established better if they shoulder a gun at present and personally aid the South Vietnamese government to win a military victory over the Viet-Cong and North Vietnam. They be lieve such a victory would teach other communists that they cannot win in the world. {2) A second group are saying that, although they are not pacifists in the sense that they are unwilling to participate in any conceivable war, they consider the American military involvement in Vietnam so morally repulsive that they cannot participate in it. Since they cannot honestly claim to be c.o. 's, they will refuse to go to Vietnam, or will refuse induction into the armed forces, or in some other illegal way decline to participate in the Vietnam con flict.
(3) A third group finds neither of these two options agreeable and so elects one of several courses of action which might be called "dodges"-- if you'll promise not to think of that as a pejorative word! They could neither fight in Vietnam in good conscience nor break the law in good conscience. They are not c.o. 's to all war, and so what do they elect? They choose to do something useful which will give them a legal draft deferment, or at least which will not compel. them to slaugher the Vietnamese, hoping that before their legal "dodge"expires, the war in Vietnam will be stopped. (4) I see Christians taking a fourth option, that of applying for a classification as a c.o. to war, under the Selective Service law. They cannot kill, but they choose to do work of benefit to the nation, under a c.o. classification. {5) A fifth group, like the fourth, believes a Christian should never go to war, but unlike the fourth group, they believe they can not in good conscience cooperate in any respect with any system rela ted to war. Therefore, in spite of the fact that the Selective Service law makes provision for the c.o., these people see it essentially as an integral part of the war system and will have no thing to do with it. Like the second group, they choose an illegal option. -7- Beall: Chaplain, I want to comment on the question of war "dodgers" who are within the law, which includes me with my 2-S class ification. I believe that authentic Christian concern involves more than holding the right opinions. It acts for what it perceives as the good, and acts against what it perceives as the evil. If we really believe the Vietnam War is right, we must justify to our selves spending our time on Duke campus while other men are killing and dying for our cause in Vietnam. If we are really opposed to fue war, can we justify not working hard to stop it? It is very easy for us to hide behind our roles and to think that this excuses us from acting. From this perspective, most of the deferments or ex emptions our draft boards give us as "dodgestt to participation in the military are not constructive and responsible from the point of view of either the supporter or the opponent of the war. There are perhaps deferments which are "constructive dodges." People may ·make use of the freedom which their "dodge" provides them to work for peace directly, or indirectly by attacking America's other priority problems of racism and poverty. Of course, Chaplain, there are people who baieve that the most effective way to work for peace is to resist the draft. What do you think of this type of law-breaking? Wilkinson: Without laboring the point unduly, Ninian, I think it is important in a genuine democracy to obey the law. This is because of what the law represents. In a dictatorship such as exist ed in Nazi Germany, law was essentially the whim of the dictator, and it often was the duty of Christians to disobey the law for con science's sake. The preacher who will stand in this pulpit next Sunday, Pastor Martin Niemoller, was one who defied Hitler's law and rotted in a concentration camp for years, never knowing when the hangman would come for him. But in a nation where law represents the will of the majority, with builtin guarantees for minorities and with liquid opportunities fur legal change, I believe the disadvantages of fundamental legal disobedience are greater than the advantages of illegal protest. I wish all Christians in America would seek to obey the basic Consti tutional law of the land. Beall: You know, Chaplain, that many of those who refuse induction into the military and accept subsequent imprisonment, dD so because they oppose the present war, they are not pacifists, and they are thus faced only with the options of disobeying their con sciences or dinobeying the law. Pacifists refused c.o. status by their draft boards are in the same position. There are no "built- in guara~tees" for these minorities, and we must question the exis.t- _ ence of liquid opportunities for legal change" in this area, since the 1967 version of the draft law was substantially unchanged from the old version and the draft was extended to 1971. Thus men con fronted with induction today or tomorrow and for a long time to come may have to decide between obeying their consciences and obeying the law. The trials of Japanese and German war criminals after World War II were perhaps the first recognition within the secular sphere that an individual bears a responsibility for his acts to a higher authority than his nation. The Church has from its inception re cognized an Authority higher than the state, or any other human .. -8- authority. Jesus, His apostles, and thousands of His followers down to this day have run afoul of the law because they put obed ience to God first. The Christian must "obey God rather .than men." From this perspective, civil disobedience in relation to the Vietnam War and the draft may constitute a Christian obedience in this time of war. I do not advise anyone as to what position he should take re garding the War and the draft. I have had a hard enough time deciding for myself. I do not believe a Christian should surrender his conscience to the state. He should not allow someone else to make his decision for him. I do believe that the Word of God to us in this hour is that we as individuals and as a people stand before Him free and responsible to act His will as He gives us to see it, and that we can fall on His mercy and forgiveness when we fail to achieve that calling.