Howard C. Wilkinson and Ninian Beall - "Christian Obedience in Time of War" (May 5, 1968)
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Transcript
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- | Christ have taught us we pray together saying, | 0:03 |
"Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, | 0:08 | |
"thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth | 0:13 | |
"as it is in heaven. | 0:17 | |
"Give us this day, our daily bread | 0:19 | |
"and forgive us our trespasses, | 0:22 | |
"As we forgive those who trespass against us. | 0:25 | |
"And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil | 0:28 | |
"for thyn is the kingdom, | 0:34 | |
"and the power and the glory forever. | 0:36 | |
"Amen." | 0:39 | |
- | One of the most famous and successful military men | 0:53 |
in American history, general William Tecumseh Sherman said, | 0:58 | |
"War is cruel and you cannot refine it. | 1:05 | |
"War at best is barbarism. | 1:10 | |
"I am tired and sick of war. | 1:14 | |
"Its glory is all moonshine. | 1:18 | |
"War is hell." | 1:21 | |
This statement has been quoted around the world | 1:25 | |
because it puts in vivid form a true description of war, | 1:29 | |
and because its author was an authority on the subject. | 1:32 | |
- | Chaplain, most men today agree with Sherman's evaluation. | 1:37 |
The opening sentence on the application form | 1:41 | |
for conscientious objector status | 1:43 | |
with the selective service system is, | 1:45 | |
I am by reason of my religious training and belief, | 1:48 | |
conscientiously oppose to participating in war in any form. | 1:51 | |
Probably Lyndon Johnson, William Westmoreland, | 1:56 | |
and people on the other side of the present conflict | 1:58 | |
could subscribe to that statement. | 2:01 | |
We're almost all opposed to war. | 2:03 | |
It's a horrible, dirty, bloody business | 2:05 | |
and an activity which few enjoy. | 2:08 | |
- | Whatever may be the ultimate goal of any given war, | 2:11 |
the immediate purpose of almost every war is to kill, | 2:14 | |
to maim and to destroy. | 2:19 | |
Now, this is when we stop to reflect on it, | 2:22 | |
the exact opposite of the purpose | 2:24 | |
of every other honorable profession and vocation | 2:27 | |
in the world. | 2:30 | |
Every other. | 2:32 | |
The activities of individual criminals such as Clyde Barrow | 2:34 | |
are the only ones which parallel war. | 2:37 | |
Physicians attempt to save lives and improve health. | 2:41 | |
But war is a deliberate attempt to kill, to wound, | 2:46 | |
to burn the flesh of children and women and men. | 2:50 | |
Contractors build homes and churches and schools, | 2:54 | |
and warehouses and laboratories, and factories, | 2:59 | |
for mankind to use for its welfare. | 3:01 | |
War on the other hand is an organized attempt to destroy | 3:05 | |
what contractors have built | 3:08 | |
and what people are using for their welfare. | 3:10 | |
Farmers and ranchers have the vocation of growing food | 3:14 | |
to nourish mankind and of growing cotton | 3:17 | |
and wool to cloth humanity. | 3:19 | |
War, however, seeks to deprive people of food and clothing. | 3:22 | |
It attempts to defoliate the plant growth | 3:26 | |
and to poison the livestock. | 3:28 | |
It often involves a policy of scorched earth. | 3:30 | |
War does on an organized basis and on a grand scale, | 3:34 | |
what the of individual criminal seeks to do | 3:38 | |
in a civilized society, | 3:40 | |
and for which society tries to get him locked up | 3:42 | |
and even put to death. | 3:46 | |
- | As you have said, Chaplain, war is an organized attempt | 3:48 |
to destroy man and what he has built. | 3:51 | |
And certainly the suffering of civilian populations | 3:54 | |
is one of the more cruel aspects of modern warfare. | 3:57 | |
But I'd like to look at killing and war | 4:00 | |
from a specifically Christian point of view for a moment. | 4:02 | |
Christianity is biased towards peace and against war. | 4:06 | |
Jesus summed up God's commandments to us in this way. | 4:10 | |
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart | 4:13 | |
and with all your soul and with all your mind. | 4:16 | |
This is the great and first commandment. | 4:20 | |
And a second is like it. | 4:23 | |
You shall love your neighbor as yourself, | 4:24 | |
on these commandments depend all the law and the prophets. | 4:27 | |
Love is at the center of Christian ethics. | 4:31 | |
It involves regarding other men as brothers. | 4:34 | |
Ideally, it means that we are to have concern | 4:37 | |
for their welfare equal to our concern for our own. | 4:39 | |
Jesus' love was thorough going, it extended even to enemies. | 4:43 | |
Jesus would not even allow His disciple to use the sword | 4:48 | |
in order to rescue his master from arrest | 4:51 | |
and probable execution. | 4:53 | |
We are to love in response to God's love, | 4:55 | |
not because other men love us. | 4:58 | |
Every human being is understood as God's creation | 5:01 | |
and precious in His sight. | 5:04 | |
For the Christian, life is much more important | 5:06 | |
than the concept of property or other ideas or ideologies, | 5:08 | |
which are man's own creation. | 5:12 | |
To extinguish human life must be understood | 5:15 | |
as the furthest thing from God's intent. | 5:17 | |
The Christian understands that power or coercion | 5:20 | |
is in one sense, the name of the game in this world, | 5:24 | |
and that the achievement of some approximation of justice | 5:27 | |
depends in part on the use of coercion. | 5:29 | |
But killing, if it is to be done at all, is the last resort | 5:32 | |
and is only done after all other means of settling conflict | 5:36 | |
have been exhausted. | 5:39 | |
The whole thrust of Jesus style of life was for love | 5:41 | |
and peace, and against hatred and war. | 5:43 | |
This is the attitude that Christian adopts in his own life, | 5:47 | |
and it should be very difficult to dissuade him from it. | 5:50 | |
- | In any and it occurs to me that you and I | 5:53 |
have been saying that there is general agreement | 5:55 | |
among people that war is bad and that peace is good. | 5:58 | |
But is the Christian Church completely agreed | 6:02 | |
on the subject of war? | 6:04 | |
- | Most Christians agree that war is a very great evil, | 6:07 |
but they would also insist that it is sometimes necessary. | 6:10 | |
The two main physicians towards war | 6:14 | |
have been taken by the followers of Christ. | 6:15 | |
One is pacifism and the other is the just war position. | 6:18 | |
The two approaches result | 6:22 | |
from two different ways of making ethical decisions. | 6:23 | |
Pacifism comes from the method | 6:26 | |
of following absolute moral principles | 6:28 | |
derived from the New Testament. | 6:30 | |
The just war theory | 6:32 | |
depends on the method of making decisions | 6:33 | |
with reference to probable consequences | 6:35 | |
of alternate courses of action. | 6:37 | |
- | Would you elaborate in this latter method | 6:40 |
of making ethical decisions, | 6:42 | |
and say how it relates to the question of war? | 6:44 | |
- | I'll try. | 6:47 |
The Christian takes love as the only absolute principle | 6:49 | |
and the attitude in which all our decisions are made. | 6:52 | |
Guidelines or rules of thumb for conduct | 6:56 | |
are derived from the Bible, | 6:59 | |
from the experience of the church | 7:00 | |
and from one's personal experiences of the consequences | 7:02 | |
of certain actions taken in particular situations. | 7:05 | |
Responsible decisions and difficult situations | 7:09 | |
where our normal guidelines for action conflict, | 7:12 | |
where we must choose the lesser of two evils, | 7:15 | |
can only be made after a study of the facts | 7:18 | |
and calculation of the probable results | 7:21 | |
of any possible action. | 7:23 | |
In these situations, | 7:25 | |
we depend not just upon historical norms, | 7:26 | |
but also upon the present guidance of the Holy Spirit. | 7:29 | |
There are obviously great dangers | 7:33 | |
in this method of decision making. | 7:34 | |
We must predict the future, a really impossible task. | 7:36 | |
We must depend upon our limited reasoning capacities. | 7:40 | |
We intentionally do evil, in the case of war, killing. | 7:44 | |
In hopes of preventing greater evil | 7:48 | |
with no guarantee of success. | 7:50 | |
Even given all the ambiguities | 7:53 | |
of this type of decision making, | 7:55 | |
it seems to me that this is the way we are responsible | 7:57 | |
to Christ's call to act in the world. | 7:59 | |
We are also free to act in this way. | 8:03 | |
Christ has freed us from legalistic approaches to ethics. | 8:05 | |
He has demonstrated the ascendancy of love over law. | 8:09 | |
The history of war | 8:13 | |
as an instrument of achieving justice and peace, | 8:14 | |
has obviously not been very good. | 8:17 | |
World War I sowed the seeds of World War II. | 8:20 | |
And the fall of fascism in Asia and in Europe by arm force | 8:22 | |
has been followed by the rise of communism, | 8:26 | |
sometimes equally totalitarian. | 8:29 | |
The world seems to move closer and closer | 8:32 | |
to a nuclear Holocaust. | 8:34 | |
Still, I cannot say for sure | 8:36 | |
that there could not be a situation at some time, | 8:37 | |
in some place, in which some person has it | 8:40 | |
as his responsibility as a Christian and as a human being, | 8:43 | |
to kill people in order to prevent the death | 8:47 | |
or torture of other people. | 8:49 | |
Therefore, I admit to conceivability of just war | 8:51 | |
and I'm not an absolute pacifist. | 8:54 | |
I still believe we are free and responsible | 8:56 | |
to make decisions | 8:58 | |
with reference to conditions and consequences. | 8:59 | |
But I remember that even as we do so, | 9:02 | |
we are involved in sin. | 9:04 | |
The gap between the commandment to love | 9:07 | |
and our performance, is part of the meaning of sin. | 9:09 | |
And we live in the context of our continuing need | 9:12 | |
for forgiveness. | 9:15 | |
- | Okay, you've said that many Christians feel | 9:17 |
that in a given set of circumstances, | 9:20 | |
they must reluctantly participate actively | 9:22 | |
in a particular war. | 9:25 | |
To round out the picture, we should acknowledge | 9:28 | |
that along with these Christians, | 9:30 | |
stand other Christians who believe | 9:32 | |
that if they are to be obedient to Christ. | 9:34 | |
Which is the meaning of Christian discipleship, | 9:37 | |
participating in war is never for them, a alive option. | 9:39 | |
This is because they believe that the teachings of Christ | 9:44 | |
are completely opposed to the whole thrust of war. | 9:46 | |
- | Chaplain, you we're saying | 9:50 |
that the pacifist Christian believes | 9:51 | |
Christianity prohibits participation in killing | 9:52 | |
and other cruel acts which war involves. | 9:55 | |
Do you think this view of Christian ethics | 9:58 | |
deals realistically with the presence of evil | 10:00 | |
in the world, with the fact that there are people around | 10:02 | |
who might seriously want to do us or others in? | 10:05 | |
- | Well, I'll respond by saying | 10:08 |
that I don't know of any serious New Testament scholar, | 10:10 | |
who thinks it is enough for a Christian to say, | 10:14 | |
that war is wrong. | 10:17 | |
That he will have nothing to do with it, | 10:19 | |
and then so to speak, hang up the phone. | 10:21 | |
Indeed, that is really not the teaching of Jesus | 10:24 | |
as reflected in the New Testament. | 10:26 | |
As a matter of interesting fact, | 10:29 | |
it is in studying what Christ said | 10:31 | |
about the treatment of enemies and oppressors, | 10:33 | |
that we see His teaching about peace and love. | 10:37 | |
This is what people like Reinhold Niebuhr forget, | 10:41 | |
when they say that the love ethic of Christ, | 10:44 | |
and this is a direct quote, | 10:47 | |
"Undertakes to overcome evil | 10:48 | |
"by failing to take cognizance of it." | 10:51 | |
Unquote. | 10:54 | |
Contrary to that, | 10:56 | |
it is true that our Lord's teaching against hatred, | 10:57 | |
against killing, against returning evil for evil and so on, | 11:01 | |
come out principally in what He said we should do | 11:06 | |
when confronted by a long list of bad guys. | 11:09 | |
The master taught us what we should do | 11:14 | |
about people who have something against us. | 11:16 | |
About enemies, about people who unjustly accuse us, | 11:20 | |
about people who are evil. | 11:25 | |
People who strike us on the cheek. | 11:28 | |
People who snatch away our coats, | 11:30 | |
who compel us to go a mile out of our way, | 11:33 | |
who persecute us and about people who despitefully use us. | 11:36 | |
No, I don't think it's really true | 11:41 | |
that Christ undertook to overcome evil doers | 11:43 | |
by failing to notice them. | 11:45 | |
- | Chaplain, you said that Christ taught us | 11:47 |
what we should do about enemies. | 11:49 | |
How does a pacifist interpretation of Christ ethics | 11:51 | |
go beyond the prohibition against killing? | 11:54 | |
- | Well, Jesus taught both a negative and a positive ethic | 11:58 |
and the teaching allows both a strategy and an ethic. | 12:01 | |
And attempts to separate the ethic from the strategy | 12:05 | |
have succeeded only in distorting the teaching of Christ. | 12:08 | |
The master taught us that we must not merely refrain | 12:11 | |
from hating and killing, | 12:14 | |
but that we must take a positive program of goodwill | 12:15 | |
toward our enemies. | 12:18 | |
He pointed out that God sends His reign | 12:19 | |
on good and bad alike. | 12:22 | |
And He said that we must be equally non-discriminating | 12:24 | |
in our goodwill. | 12:26 | |
- | In preparing for this sermon, I read Reinhold Niebuhr | 12:28 |
case against pacifism. | 12:31 | |
He seems to agree fully | 12:33 | |
that pacifism is the teaching of Jesus. | 12:35 | |
But he says that it is an ethic of perfection | 12:37 | |
applicable only at the end of history, | 12:39 | |
and not to the present sinful world. | 12:42 | |
How do you respond to that? | 12:44 | |
- | Well, I would say that the most obvious thing, | 12:46 |
which Dr. Niebuhr has overlooked at this point, | 12:48 | |
is that at the end of history, | 12:51 | |
that is what he means in heaven. | 12:54 | |
There will be no persecutors, no enemies, | 12:57 | |
no people despitefully using you. | 13:00 | |
No people smiting you on the cheek, and so on. | 13:02 | |
Christ was manifestly describing our kind of world | 13:06 | |
when He gave the sermon on the Mount. | 13:09 | |
The only chance that any of us will ever have | 13:12 | |
throughout all eternity to practice | 13:14 | |
His teaching about loving one's enemies, | 13:16 | |
is in this world where there are enemies. | 13:19 | |
- | Chaplain, the biggest question I have | 13:23 |
about nonviolent goodwill is, will it work? | 13:25 | |
That is, can it prevent war and achieve a just society? | 13:28 | |
Do you believe that pacifism | 13:32 | |
is guaranteed a victory over evil in this world? | 13:33 | |
- | In any and the answer to that question | 13:37 |
has to be a clear cut negative. | 13:38 | |
No, nyet. | 13:41 | |
There is no guarantee that nonviolent goodwill | 13:45 | |
is going to be successful in this world. | 13:48 | |
Even as you pointed out earlier, the so-called just war | 13:51 | |
cannot guarantee to establish justice or peace. | 13:54 | |
So love in action cannot guarantee to make everything | 13:58 | |
turn out all right either. | 14:01 | |
However, in view of the failure, | 14:04 | |
thus far of our military expenditure of billions of dollars | 14:05 | |
and tens of thousands of lives, | 14:10 | |
to end communism in Southeast Asia. | 14:12 | |
And in view of the report of some of our Duke graduates | 14:15 | |
who are now fighting there, | 14:17 | |
that communism is as strong in Vietnam now, | 14:19 | |
as it was at the beginning of the war. | 14:22 | |
It does sound reasonable to say | 14:24 | |
that if American money and manpower | 14:27 | |
had been poured into Vietnam as expensively for welfare, | 14:29 | |
as they have been for destruction, | 14:33 | |
we might very well have overthrown communism, | 14:36 | |
established peace and made friends all around. | 14:38 | |
At least it's true that the leaders of many neutral nations | 14:42 | |
have repeatedly been saying that this is the case. | 14:45 | |
- | Speaking of the Vietnam War, | 14:50 |
it may be well for us to move directly to that arena | 14:51 | |
from the more generalized discussion | 14:54 | |
that we have had thus far in this dialogue. | 14:56 | |
After all, we are living in 1968 | 14:59 | |
and young people today are confronted | 15:02 | |
by the specific choices of the Vietnam War. | 15:04 | |
First, I wanna mention a dangerous myth | 15:07 | |
which I believe the draft system has helped to put over | 15:09 | |
on the American people in the American church. | 15:13 | |
That is the belief | 15:16 | |
that it is the responsibility of the individual citizen | 15:17 | |
to participate in war, | 15:20 | |
unless he can show reason why he should not. | 15:22 | |
That is unless he can prove he is a conscientious objector. | 15:25 | |
This attitude is perverted. | 15:28 | |
I have already described the Christian bias towards peace | 15:31 | |
and against war. | 15:34 | |
A Christian should be a conscientious objector to war | 15:36 | |
until, and unless he can be shown or has convinced himself, | 15:39 | |
that the killing and suffering involved | 15:43 | |
in the pursuit of the war | 15:44 | |
will be less than the killing and suffering, | 15:46 | |
which will occur if the war is not fought. | 15:48 | |
Now to the question of the Vietnam War. | 15:51 | |
Have any of us been convinced by the arguments | 15:54 | |
of our government, | 15:57 | |
and by our own study of the problem that this is a just war? | 15:58 | |
I'm afraid most of us have simply assumed it was right | 16:03 | |
unless we could be shown otherwise. | 16:05 | |
Which is a rather peculiar position | 16:08 | |
for the followers of the Prince of Peace to take. | 16:09 | |
An increasing number of American churchmen | 16:13 | |
joined churchmen from around the world | 16:15 | |
in condemning this war, | 16:17 | |
as an abomination that can in no way be justified. | 16:19 | |
We see the destruction of the lives | 16:22 | |
and the livelihood of the Vietnamese people, | 16:24 | |
both North and South. | 16:27 | |
And the destruction of the lives of American soldiers. | 16:29 | |
We see the war earning America the suspicion and hatred | 16:33 | |
of the people of the poor nations of Asia, | 16:37 | |
Africa, and Latin America. | 16:39 | |
Who will have so much to do with the future | 16:41 | |
of our own nation and the world. | 16:43 | |
We know that the Vietnam War is using up resources | 16:46 | |
in terms of lives and money, | 16:49 | |
which should be used to deal with the crises of racism | 16:51 | |
and poverty in this country. | 16:54 | |
We wonder what is this great evil | 16:56 | |
that it is worth all of this to prevent. | 16:58 | |
Are the Vietnamese people really better off dead than read, | 17:01 | |
from whose point of view? | 17:05 | |
Even if this is a war | 17:08 | |
to stop the spread of international communism, | 17:09 | |
do we have the right to fight our battles | 17:12 | |
in someone else's homeland? | 17:14 | |
Finally, have we really resorted to war as a last resort | 17:17 | |
in this situation? | 17:21 | |
Has the United States exhausted all other means | 17:23 | |
of combating the rise of totalitarian regimes? | 17:25 | |
Are not the failure of the United States | 17:29 | |
to achieve social reform in Vietnam | 17:31 | |
from the time of Diem regime, | 17:33 | |
and the reluctance of Congress to give foreign aid | 17:35 | |
to countries attempting to develop their economies | 17:38 | |
and raise the living standards of their people, | 17:40 | |
just two symptoms of the present American tendency | 17:43 | |
to attempt military solutions | 17:46 | |
to problems before other avenues are explored? | 17:48 | |
A tendency becoming increasingly evident | 17:51 | |
in our attempts to deal with our problems | 17:53 | |
in the American ghettos? | 17:55 | |
Having confronted these questions, | 17:58 | |
more and more Christians believe | 18:00 | |
that this war must be stopped now. | 18:01 | |
- | On any and whether young American Christians | 18:04 |
are pacifists or not, once made they've made their decisions | 18:06 | |
about the rightness or the wrongness of participating | 18:09 | |
in the Vietnam War, | 18:12 | |
they're still confronted with the question, | 18:13 | |
what am I going to do about it? | 18:16 | |
This translates itself into the question, | 18:18 | |
what am I going to do about the draft? | 18:20 | |
There are five choices which I see Christians making | 18:23 | |
with respect to the present draft. | 18:26 | |
Some are saying, while they wish peace could exist now, | 18:29 | |
they believe the conditions of peace, | 18:33 | |
conditions of justice and of love will be established better | 18:36 | |
if they shoulder a gun at present, | 18:40 | |
and personally aid the South Vietnamese government | 18:42 | |
to win a military victory | 18:46 | |
over the Viet Cong and North Vietnam. | 18:47 | |
These Christians believe such a victory | 18:51 | |
would teach other communists | 18:53 | |
that they cannot win in the world. | 18:54 | |
A second group of Christians are saying | 18:58 | |
that although they are not pacifists | 19:00 | |
in the sense that they're unwilling to participate | 19:01 | |
in any conceivable war, | 19:04 | |
they consider this American military involvement in Vietnam | 19:06 | |
so morally repulsive, that they cannot participate in it. | 19:10 | |
Since they cannot honestly claim to be COs, | 19:14 | |
they will refuse to go to Vietnam, | 19:18 | |
or will refuse induction into the armed forces, | 19:20 | |
or in some other illegal way, | 19:22 | |
declined to participate in that conflict. | 19:24 | |
A third group finds neither of these two options agreeable, | 19:28 | |
and so elects one of several courses of actions, | 19:33 | |
which might be called dodgers. | 19:37 | |
Now, if you promise not to think of that | 19:40 | |
as a pejorative word. | 19:42 | |
They could neither fight in Vietnam in good conscience, | 19:44 | |
nor break the law in good conscience. | 19:47 | |
They're not COs to all war and so what do they elect? | 19:50 | |
Well, they choose to do something useful, | 19:56 | |
which will give them a legal draft deferment, | 19:58 | |
or at least which will not compel them | 20:02 | |
to slaughter the Vietnamese. | 20:04 | |
Hoping that before their legal dodge expires, | 20:06 | |
the war in Vietnam will be stopped. | 20:11 | |
I see Christians also taking a fourth option | 20:14 | |
to which earlier reference was made, | 20:17 | |
that of applying for a classification as a CO to war | 20:19 | |
under the Selective Service law. | 20:23 | |
These Christians cannot kill | 20:26 | |
but they choose to do work of benefit to the nation | 20:27 | |
under a legal, Conscientious Objector classification. | 20:30 | |
A fifth group, like the fourth, | 20:35 | |
believes a Christian should never go to war. | 20:37 | |
But unlike the fourth group, | 20:40 | |
they believe they cannot in good conscience | 20:41 | |
cooperate in any respect with any system related to the war. | 20:43 | |
Therefore, in spite of the fact | 20:48 | |
that the Selective Service law makes provision for the CO, | 20:49 | |
these people see it essentially as an integral part | 20:52 | |
of the war system and will have nothing to do with it. | 20:55 | |
And so like the second group of the just war people, | 20:58 | |
they choose an illegal option. | 21:02 | |
- | Chaplain, I wanna comment on the question of war dodgers | 21:05 |
who are within the law, | 21:08 | |
which includes me with my 2-S classification. | 21:10 | |
I believe that authentic Christian concern | 21:14 | |
involves more than holding the right opinions. | 21:16 | |
It acts for what it perceives as the good | 21:19 | |
and acts against what it perceives as the evil. | 21:22 | |
If we really believe the Vietnam War is right, | 21:25 | |
we must justify to ourselves spending our time | 21:28 | |
on Duke campus, while other men are killing | 21:31 | |
and dying for our cause in Vietnam. | 21:33 | |
If we are really opposed to the war, | 21:37 | |
can we justify not working hard to stop it? | 21:39 | |
It is very easy for us to hide behind our roles | 21:42 | |
and to think that that excuses us from acting. | 21:46 | |
From this perspective, most of the deferments | 21:49 | |
or exemptions our draft boards give us | 21:52 | |
as dodgers to participation in the military. | 21:54 | |
Are not constructive and responsible | 21:57 | |
from the point of view of either the supporter | 21:59 | |
or the opponent of the war. | 22:01 | |
There are perhaps deferments which are constructive dodgers. | 22:04 | |
People may make use of their freedom, | 22:07 | |
which the dodge provides them to work for peace directly | 22:09 | |
or indirectly by attacking America's other priority problems | 22:13 | |
of racism and poverty. | 22:17 | |
Of course, Chaplain, | 22:19 | |
there are people who believe that the most effective way | 22:20 | |
to work for peace is to resist the draft. | 22:22 | |
What do you think of this type of lawbreaking? | 22:25 | |
- | Well, without taking time | 22:28 |
which we obviously do not now have | 22:29 | |
to labor the point unduly (inaudible). | 22:31 | |
I think it is important in a genuine democracy | 22:33 | |
to obey the law. | 22:37 | |
This is because of what the law represents. | 22:39 | |
In a dictatorship such as existed in Nazi, Germany, | 22:43 | |
the law was essentially the playing of the dictator. | 22:46 | |
And it often was the duty of Christians | 22:50 | |
to disobey the law for conscience sake. | 22:51 | |
The preacher who will stand in this pulpit next Sunday, | 22:55 | |
pastor Martin Niemeller, was one who defied Hitler's law | 22:59 | |
and rotted in a concentration camp for years, | 23:03 | |
never knowing when the hangman would come for him. | 23:05 | |
But in a nation where the law represents | 23:09 | |
not the whim of a dictator, but the will of the majority | 23:11 | |
with built in guarantees for minorities | 23:15 | |
and with liquid opportunities for legal change. | 23:17 | |
I believe the disadvantages | 23:21 | |
of fundamental legal disobedience, | 23:23 | |
are far greater than the advantages of illegal protest. | 23:26 | |
And I wish all Christians in America | 23:29 | |
would seek to obey the basic constitutional law of the land. | 23:31 | |
- | You know, Chaplain that many of those who refuse | 23:36 |
induction into the military | 23:38 | |
and accept subsequent imprisonment, | 23:40 | |
do so because they oppose the present war. | 23:42 | |
They are not pacifist | 23:45 | |
and they are thus faced only with the options of disobeying | 23:47 | |
their consciences or disobeying the law. | 23:50 | |
Pacifist refuse CO status by their draft boards | 23:53 | |
are in the same position. | 23:56 | |
There are no built in guarantees for these minorities. | 23:58 | |
And we must question the existence of liquid opportunities | 24:01 | |
for legal change in this area, | 24:04 | |
since the 1967 version of the draft law | 24:06 | |
was substantially unchanged from the old version. | 24:10 | |
And the draft was extended to 1971. | 24:13 | |
Thus men confronted with induction today or tomorrow | 24:17 | |
and for a long time to come, | 24:20 | |
may have to decide between obeying their consciences | 24:22 | |
and obeying the law. | 24:25 | |
The trials of Japanese and German war criminals | 24:27 | |
after World War II were perhaps their first recognition | 24:30 | |
within the secular sphere, | 24:34 | |
that an individual bears a responsibility | 24:35 | |
for his acts to a higher authority than the state. | 24:38 | |
The church has from its inception | 24:41 | |
recognized an authority higher than the state, | 24:43 | |
or any other human authority. | 24:46 | |
Jesus, His apostles and thousands of His followers | 24:48 | |
down to this day, have run a foul of the law | 24:51 | |
because they put obedience to God first. | 24:54 | |
The Christian must obey God rather than men. | 24:58 | |
From this perspective, civil disobedience | 25:01 | |
in relation to the Vietnam War and the draft, | 25:04 | |
may constitute a Christian obedience in this time of war. | 25:07 | |
I do not advise anyone as to what action he should take | 25:13 | |
regarding the war and the draft. | 25:16 | |
I have had a hard enough time deciding for myself. | 25:18 | |
I do not believe a Christian | 25:21 | |
should surrender his conscience to the state. | 25:23 | |
He should not allow someone else | 25:26 | |
to make his decision for him. | 25:28 | |
I do believe that the word of God to us in this hour | 25:31 | |
is that we as individuals and as a people, | 25:34 | |
stand before Him free and responsible to act His will, | 25:37 | |
as he gives us to see it. | 25:41 | |
And that we can fall on His mercy and forgiveness | 25:43 | |
when we fail to achieve that calling. | 25:46 | |
- | Almighty God, our heavenly Father. | 25:52 |
Each one of us needs thy guidance, thy truth, | 25:55 | |
especially thy personal presence. | 26:00 | |
Give us the guidance of the Holy Spirit | 26:03 | |
as we seek to make our own decisions. | 26:06 | |
And we pray for thy sustaining grace | 26:09 | |
to be upon all thy sons and daughters in this world, | 26:12 | |
who are seeking conscientiously to do thy will. | 26:17 | |
Who do not always act alike, who do not always think alike. | 26:22 | |
But granted, all of us may come at last to thy mercy | 26:27 | |
and to thy grace, and to thy person. | 26:32 | |
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 26:36 | |
Amen. | 26:38 | |
("Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah") | 26:42 | |
(congregation singing) | 27:20 | |
(soothing organ music) | 29:33 |
Item Info
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