“Goshen College has never been anti-American.”
“You could argue that the degree to which Mennonites today, perhaps more often today, critique U.S. government policy than, say, may have been the case in 1910, a hundred years ago, is evidence that Mennonites feel more of an interest in and a responsibility for their country.”
So says Steve Nolt, professor of Mennonite history at Goshen College, as quoted in an Elkhart Truth article about the college’s reversal last week of its decision last March to begin playing an instrumental version of the Star Spangled Banner before sporting events. Before that, the college didn’t play the national anthem at all, and it’s now resuming that policy. (However, although the college has now stopped playing the “Star Spangled Banner,” it apparently still flies the Star Spangled Banner.)
The Mennonites, along with the Church of the Brethren and the Quakers, are one of the three historic “peace churches”:
The peace churches agree that Jesus advocated nonviolence. Whether physical force can ever be justified, either in defending oneself or others, remains controversial. Many believers adhere strictly to a moral attitude of nonresistance in the face of violence. But these churches generally do concur that violence on behalf of nations and their governments is contrary to Christian morality.
I note that according to the Gospels Jesus chased the money-changers from the temple with a whip. I’m convinced that the use of physical force against another human being is subhuman, but that the use of such force is obviously sometimes necessary and justified. Physical force (which includes, obviously, imprisonment) should only be used as a last resort. There should be a very strong presumption against its use, whether by individuals or by groups of individuals or by self-styled “governments.” (A father whose daughter has been raped probably shouldn’t shoot and kill the rapist, but if he does, we probably shouldn’t put him in prison for doing so.)
But the peculiar historic “pacifism” of the Quakers, for example, which forbade Quakers to take up “carnal weapons” themselves but approved of the “magistrate” doing so, is hopelessly lacking in integrity, as illustrated by this anecdote from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography:
Mr. Logan . . . told me the following anecdote of his old master, William Penn, respecting defense. He came over from England, when a young man, with that proprietary, and as his secretary. It was war-time, and their ship was chas’d by an armed vessel, suppos’ed to be an enemy. Their captain prepar’d for defense; but told William Penn, and his company of Quakers, that he did not expect their assistance, and they might retire into the cabin, which they did, except James Logan, who chose to stay upon deck, and was quarter’d to a gun. The suppos’d enemy prov’d a friend, so there was no fighting; but when the secretary went down to communicate the intelligence, William Penn rebuk’d him severely for staying upon deck, and undertaking to assist in defending the vessel, contrary to the principles of Friends, especially as it had not been required by the captain. This reproof, being before all the company, piqu’d the secretary, who anser’d, “I being thy servant, why did thee not order me to come down? But thee was willing enough that I should stay and help to fight the ship when thee thought there was danger.”
David Gross, a tax resister, highlights another related incoherence to which Quakers and other religious “pacifists” are sadly prone:
It still perplexes me when I talk to people from the substantial pacifist contingent in the war tax resistance movement and find that for many of them, while they’re not convinced violence or the threat of violence would be an appropriate response to the aggression of, say, a Nazi Germany, or even to an armed intruder trying to break into your home — the government using violence to force people to contribute to education, the arts, scientific research, and other such nice things is peachy keen. Would they go door-to-door taking donations for the National Endowment for the Arts at gunpoint, I wonder?
Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court, of all people, has grasped a necessary distinction that eludes many pacifists:
Willingness to use force in self-defense, in defense of home and family, or in defense against immediate acts of aggressive violence toward other persons in the community, has not been regarded as inconsistent with a claim of conscientious objection to war as such.
That is, it’s not violence per se which is everywhere and always intrinsically evil. It’s the State.
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Mahatma Gandhi, perhaps the internationally best known paragon of the political use of non-violence, said that if he had been faced with a regime such as the fascist states of Europe (as opposed to the ‘gentler’ british colonialists) would have been likely to raise arms in defence of his loved ones. Non violence to him was a tactic, strategy as well as way of life. As a tactic, it would have been useless against (say) the nazis in an anti-colonial struggle.
Of course, non violent tactics *were* used against the nazis by various resistance groups in occupied Europe with varying degrees of success, and almost always at a great cost.
The state’s monopoly of armed force is directed at its subject citizens, and tends to be maintained by force of arms if challenged. The activist must take this into account when mounting a challenge. Sometimes (mostly) non violence if used smart will have effect. Sometimes, however, it won’t. Everyone who has made a big difference when facing the empire, from JC to Ghandi, seems to have recognised this and, as all successful political actors must, have been prepared to vary their tactics to suit the situation.
Of note regarding the temple incident, a week later was the execution. The usual fate of armed revolutionaries.
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