I am convinced that our thinking in these matters is often distorted.
What God calls men and women to, fundamentally, is to “be fruitful and
multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion” over
the animal creation—to sow the grain, weave the cloth, build homes and
temples to the Eternal. That is what most people should be doing most of
the time. In fact, unless they did, even the armies would all soon have
to stop in their tracks! War comes along and breaks into this normal life
of human beings. That it does this is one of the gravest indictments of
war. To resist this breaking up of orderly family and community life—not
to yield to the subtle and insistent pressure to do something different
under the tacit assumption that the normal cannot be meaningful—is
one of the great services the people who believe in non-violence and
reconciliation may render. “In returning and rest shall ye be saved, in
quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.”
To look at the matter from another angle, it is sometimes said that it is
important that pacifists should make it clear that they can face hardship
and danger and are ready to suffer, if need be, on behalf of their
convictions. Granted that this is true, it by no means automatically
follows that draft-age youths should submit to conscription or that
other pacifists should on the advent of war or conscription leave what
they are doing for other work. It may well be that the most challenging
opportunity to display courage, hardihood and readiness to suffer will
be found precisely in the community in which one has been living and
in trying to do the ordinary things about which we have been speaking.
There is reason to think that some Congressmen may have been influenced
in supporting the “deferment,” or virtual exemption, for COs under the
original 1948 United States Selective Service Act because they were
convinced that few who claim to be COs would have the nerve to stand up
against the pressure to which one would be subjected as he tried to
go his normal way in his home town or college, when others were being
drafted and forced to leave home or college. Obviously, only a pacifist
who was leading, not a self-indulgent but a disciplined life, who was
ready to face danger and suffering and who deeply loved his fellows,
could follow such a course. It is possible that some leave the home or
college environment not because they wish to face hardship but because
they yield to the temptation to try to avoid it.
Let us, after these preliminary observations, try to determine how—from
the standpoint of the concept of Christian vocation—the pacifist may
judge the action of a government which requires so-called alternative
conscript service of him or of his children or fellow-pacifists. There
are, so far as I can see, only three possible verdicts. One possibility
is to say that the government is demanding that these conscripts shall
at least temporarily _abandon_ their Christian or true vocation for work
to which they clearly are _not_ “called.” A second possibility is to
say that the government is competent in these special circumstances to
determine, and has correctly determined, that the alternative service
to which it assigns COs constitutes their Christian vocation for the
time being. The third possibility is to reason that when the government
thus forces a Christian into another occupation, it is performing an
unwarranted and sinful act but that the Christian’s duty in such a
situation is to practice non-resistance. It, therefore, becomes his
vocation to undertake the work which is imposed upon him, not because it
is in itself somehow good but because non-resistance to evil constitutes
Christian behavior.
The first case is easily disposed of. If the individual is convinced
that he is being forced out of his Christian or human vocation into
something which, therefore, requires him to disobey God or conscience,
he has no alternative but to refuse to comply with the State’s demand,
perhaps resist it non-violently, and take the consequences. He will
still probably be forced out of his accustomed place and work but his
non-conformity or non-cooperation with the State’s demand at this point
becomes his true vocation.
The second possible attitude listed a moment ago is to hold that, in the
context of conscription and provided it does not require service in the
armed forces, the State may determine what one’s Christian vocation is.
Some of the Mennonite statements and those of some other pacifists seem
to me to fall under this head. The position seems to me a very precarious
one and I question whether Mennonites, for example, can maintain it as
consistent with their own theology and Christian ethics.