"I am a Christian, and therefore I cannot fight."

I would like to discuss the Christian attitude toward war. I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything. I’m not trying to be moderate. Let me repeat what William Lloyd Garrision said about his commitment to the fight against slavery-an important cause, to be sure, but not nearly as important as the fight against war. Here is what Garrison said (first issue of the Liberator, January 1, 1831. Garrison started out as a pacifist but later turned militarist):

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation, No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;--but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch-- AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

Why focus on war? Pacifism isn't central to the Christian faith. True, pacifism isn't central-it is merely binding and obligatory on all believers.

In writing about Christ’s attitude toward war, it ought to be sufficient to cite the Sermon on the Mount and leave it at that. One would think that any person who supports war necessarily repudiates the Sermon on the Mount, or at least is willing to give Christ’s words a twisted, Clintonian interpretation.

Honest militarists acknowledge that the Sermon on the Mount cannot be reconciled with warfare. The militarist judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, a Civil War veteran, put the matter this way in discussing whether a foreign pacifist could become a U. S. citizen: "I would suggest that the [pacifist] Quakers have done their share to make the country what it is....and that I had not supposed hitherto that we regretted our inability to expel them because they believed *more than some of us do* in the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount" [emphasis added] (dissenting opinion in U. S. v. Schwimmer, 279 U. S. 644, 655). Pacifist Christians, as Holmes acknowledged, believe more than do the militarists in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

Jonathan Dymond, a Quaker, pointed out some uncomfortable truths in his 1821 book "An Inquiry into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity" (London, 1821):

“During a considerable period after the death of Christ, it is certain that his followers believed he had forbidden war; and that, in consequence of this belief, many of them refused to engage in it, whatever were the consequences whether reproach, or imprisonment, or death. These facts are indisputable; ‘It is as easy,’ says a learned writer of the seventeenth century, ‘to obscure the sun at mid-day, as to deny that the primitive Christians renounced all revenge and war.’...

“Maximilian, as it is related in the Acts of Ruinart, was brought before the tribunal to be enrolled as a soldier. On the proconsul's asking his name, Maximilian replied: ‘I am a Christian, and cannot fight.’ It was, however, ordered that he should be enrolled, but he refused to serve, still alleging that he was a Christian. He was immediately told that there was no alternative between bearing arms and being put to death. But his fidelity was not to be shaken: ‘I cannot fight,’ said he, ‘if I die.’ He continued steadfast to his principles, and was consigned to the executioner.

“The primitive Christians not only refused to be enlisted in the army, but when any embraced Christianity while already enlisted, they abandoned the profession at whatever cost. Marcellus was a centurion in the legion called Trajana. While holding this commission, he became a Christian; and believing, in common with his fellow Christians, that war was no longer permitted to him, he threw down his belt at the head of the legion, declaring that he had become a Christian, and that he would serve no longer. He was committed to prison; but he was still faithful to Christianity. ‘It is not lawful,’ said he, ‘for a Christian to bear arms for any earthly consideration;’ and he was, in consequence, put to death. Almost immediately afterward, Cassian, who was notary to the same legion, gave up his office. He steadfastly maintained the sentiments of Marcellus, and, like him, was consigned to the executioner. Martin, of whom so much is said by Sulpicius Severus, was bred to the profession of arms, which on his acceptance of Christianity, he abandoned. To Julian the Apostate, the only reason that [w]e find he gave for his conduct was this:--‘I am a Christian, and therefore I cannot fight.’

“...the Christians who lived nearest to the time of our Saviour believed, with undoubting confidence, that he had unequivocally forbidden war; and they openly avowed this belief; and that, in support of it, they were willing to sacrifice, and did sacrifice, their fortunes and their lives....

“Let it always be borne in mind by those who are advocating war, that they are contending for a corruption which their forefathers abhorred; and that they are making Jesus Christ the sanctioner of crimes, which his primitive followers offered up their lives because they would not commit.”

Of course, after the corruption and apostasy of the Christian church, the priests and prelates, whether they called themselves Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, or any other name, became willing instruments of the powers-that-be, endorsing the wicked acts of powerful rulers, including acts of war. When priests and prelates were not waging war on their own behalf, they were sucking up to the powerful rulers who drenched Europe in blood during countless wars, many of which were allegedly fought in the name of religion. It is not surprising that the priests and prelates acted as aiders and abettors of the wicked schemes of earthly rulers, giving solace to rulers by doing the spiritual equivalent of what Lewinsky did to Clinton. What is surprising is that modern “Christians” continue to espouse the wicked doctrines of the clerical Lewinskys and continue to “suck up” (so to speak) to the warmongers in every nation.

The modern version of the Sermon on the Mount could probably be given as follows:

“The strongest instinct in every living thing is self-preservation, which brings us to the last of the seven deadly sins-anger. Is it not our instinct for self-preservation that is aroused when someone harms us, when we become angry enough to protect ourselves from further attack?...[The true motto is] ‘If a man smite thee on the one cheek, smash him on the other!’ Let no wrong go unredressed. Be as a lion in the path-be dangerous even in defeat!’...

“Our interpretation of [the Golden Rule] is: ‘Do unto others as they do unto you,’ because if you ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’ and they, in turn, treat you badly, it goes against human nature to continue to treat them with consideration. You should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but if your courtesy is not returned, they should be treated with the wrath they deserve.”

(Quotations are from Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible, Avon Books, 1969, pp. 47, 51)

The modern “Christian” view of war was satirically summarized by Mark Twain in his posthumously-published “War Prayer:”

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them - in spirit - we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, wornwith travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Sourceof Love, and Who is the ever- faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

We hear a lot, in the context of war, about gratitude and sacrifice. What about the gratitude which we should have to Jesus Christ for the sacrifice He made on Golgotha, in expiation of all our sins? Why not show our gratitude to Jesus by doing what He says to do, and abstaining from what He forbids?

Although war is forbidden by the revealed word of God Himself, it is not necessary to rely on faith alone to know the wrongfulness of war. Although author Michael Lind once said that pacifists are like Christian Scientists, relying on faith to heal the body politic (see *Vietnam: the Necessary War,* Free Press, 1999), I think that it is the militarists who are more like Christian Scientists. After all, the Christian Scientists believe that pain-from the pain of Christ on the cross to the pain of the woman in Hiroshima who ran around with her jaw destroyed-doesn’t really exist. If pain doesn’t exist, if human suffering is simply a figment of the imagination, then of course there would be no harm in firing imaginary bullets at imaginary human bodies and ripping up those imaginary bodies and causing imaginary death and mangling. It is not surprising therefore, that among the most prominent Christian Scientists in history are Richard Nixon’s infamous advisors, Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Unlike their boss, who was a marginal figure in the religious society he belonged to, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were active and faithful sons of their church, pushing to preserve the copyright on the Christian Science holy book (“Science and Health”) and advocating the “right” of Christian Scientists to deny medical care to their children. Not incidentally, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were hard-core militarists. If the suffering of sick children is only a figment of the imagination, of course the suffering of those killed and mutilated in war can likewise be dismissed without a second thought.

To show that reason as well as revelation are against war, I will examine and refute many traditional pro-war arguments. I have quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes; let me now quote Sherlock Holmes: "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" ("The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet," in Arthur Conan Doyle, The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. Secaucus: Castle, 1982, p. 164. Holmes makes a similar remark elsewhere; see "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier," in Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume II, New York: Bantam, 1986, p. 501). When we have looked at the different arguments for war, and rule out each argument, we arrive by a process of elimination at pacifism.

So let’s start with the creme de la creme of pro-war arguments:

ARGUMENT #1: What about Hitler?

REPLY: Hitler was the bastard child of the First World War. I don’t know if anyone today tries to justify World War I. As that war began, and as the fighting settled into the horrific trench warfare of the Western Front, pacifists begged the world to come to its senses and stop fighting. No-one listened to the pacifists-except to throw them in jail for hindering the war effort.

The First World War did not end war, as some propagandists maintained. Instead, the war led to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which in turn led to the rise of Stalin, Hitler’s rival in the art and mystery of mass murder. The war, and the draconian peace terms imposed on Germany, also led to economic chaos and political instability in Germany, and in this climate, a convicted traitor, an alien who managed a quickie German naturalization despite his record of treason, was able to reach supreme power. Could Hitler have become dictator if it hadn’t been for World War One? Would even the Germans have been insane enough to entrust the government to this man if it hadn’t been for the war and the humiliation of the peace treaty? It is impossible to conceive of such a thing.

How did the United States react to the rise of the two dictators, Hitler and Stalin? In 1933, after Stalin had engineered a horrific, government-created famine that caused countless peasants to die of starvation, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t go to war with the Soviet Union, although based on the propaganda you would think that Roosevelt was a crusader who wanted to send troops whenever necessary to liberate the victims of mass murder. No, Roosevelt didn’t wage a “humanitarian war” against Stalin. Instead, Roosevelt and Stalin reached an agreement which stank to high heaven-stank so much that Roosevelt didn’t even dare submit it to the Senate for ratification, this at the height of Congress’ rubber-stamp period of approving Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. The Roosevelt-Stalin deal (or Litvinov Assignment, or whatever you wish to call it) approved of the Soviet government’s theft of property from certain Russian people and companies. Private property held by Russians in the United States was confiscated on behalf of the Soviet government, and the money thus stolen-I mean seized-was, in a supreme act of chutzpah, used by the United States to pay off Americans who had had *their* property stolen by the Soviets. Although, as I said, the Senate failed to ratify this agreement (which the Constitution would seem to require), the Supreme Court upheld the agreement’s validity and gave the agreement the most pro-Soviet interpretation possible. Roosevelt didn’t try to restrain the dictator Stalin, unless we assume that Roosevelt was pursuing a killing-with-kindness strategy.

But when Hitler started persecuting the Jews, Roosevelt took decisive action. At the Evian Conference, the United States and many other nations (future Allied powers) agreed that the Jewish refugees from Hitler’s oppression ought to be given refuge-in some other country. Roosevelt didn’t want any Jewish refugees. Nothing personal-many of Roosevelt’s best friends were Jewish. Roosevelt just didn’t want to alienate anti-semitic and xenophobic voters. How anti-semitic was Roosevelt’s policy? Well, when you reflect that H. L. Mencken, an anti-semitic racist par excellence, was more liberal on Jewish immigration than was Roosevelt, you begin to get some idea of how racist the whole thing was.

But then war broke out. A mass-murdering, aggressive dictator with a moustache invaded Poland and gave evidence of wishing to conquer democratic neighbors. What was a democratic country to do? Fight back, of course, even if this meant a tactical alliance with another dictator. So the democratic country waged war against the dictatorship that threatened the democratic country’s existence, and the democratic country fought side-by-side with the other dictator.

Such was the conduct of Finland conduct during World War II. Democratic Finland fought against the Soviets and allied itself with the Germans, just as the democratic Allied powers fought against the Germans on the side of the Soviets.

You forgot about Finland? Well, Stalin didn’t. Finland had been under Moscow’s control up until World War One, and Stalin wanted to get Finland back. After signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler just before WWII broke out, Stalin started gobbling up neighboring territories-all of which had been included within the Soviet sphere of influence in a secret “protocol” to the non-aggression agreement. Stalin conquered all the territory which Hitler had agreed to leave within the Soviet sphere of influence. Eastern Poland, a slice of Romania, most of the Baltic States (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania). Stalin grabbed all of it except for Finland. Finland was listed as within the Soviet sphere of influence, but by some oversight the Finns hadn’t given their approval to this arrangement. The result was the Winter War of 1939-1940 between the Soviet Union and Finland. The Finns fought more valiantly than Stalin had expected, and the peace treaty, while giving a slice of Finnish territory to the Soviets, allowed the Finns to keep their independence. The democratic Allied powers admired “gallant little Finland,” and even considered aiding the Finns, although this aid didn’t materialize, and the democratic Allies were soon preoccupied with other matters.

Despite the peace treaty, the Finnish government didn’t have to know about the secret protocol to know that Stalin meant them no good. After the Winter War ended, Stalin bombarded the Finnish government with demands for a de facto Soviet takeover of key nickel-mining areas in Finland. Were these demands intended as ultimata? Was Stalin gearing up for another attempt to grab Finland? The Finns didn’t want to twiddle their thumbs waiting to find out.

Finland started feeling out Germany to see if the Germans could protect Finland against the Red Army. Technically, however, Finland was still a neutral country, which made it kind of aggravating that the British navy was putting a stranglehold on Finland’s maritime commerce. You know, the kinds of restrictions on maritime commerce which helped prod the United States into war with Britain in 1812. Those kinds of restrictions.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Finland allowed German army units to use Finnish territory. It was either that, or wait for the Soviets to invade. The Soviets replied by bombing Finland, and the Continuation War was begun. The Continuation War is what the Finns still call their 1941-44 fight with the Soviets-a “continuation” of the Winter War. The democratic Allies, however, were not rooting for “gallant little Finland” this time. Finland was fighting for exactly the same principles which the Allies espoused-defense of a democratic nation against an aggressive dictatorial country. However, Finland had gone to war with the wrong dictatorial country. Finland signed a humiliating peace with the Soviets in 1944, and American foreign policy experts would talk disparagingly about “Finlandization”-the process by which Finland’s government and society adopted a highly conciliatory policy toward the Soviets after World War II.

During the Continuation War, all sectors of the Finnish population fought against the Soviets, and I mean all sectors. Jewish Finns fought against the Soviets, and the bravery of the Jewish soldiers of Finland was recognized even by the Germans, who gave out decorations to these Jewish fighters.

A Jewish group called Thanks to Scandinavia was set up in the 1960s to express appreciation for Scandinavian countries-including Finland-which had resisted the Holocaust. A book called *Finland and the Holocaust,* written by a Finnish scholar but underwritten by Thanks to Scandinavia, was “dedicated to those Jewish soldiers who gave their lives fighting for the freedom of their native country of Finland in the years 1939-1944” (Hannu Rautkallio, Finland and the Holocaust: The Rescue of Finland’s Jews, New York: Holocaust Library, 1987).

So we see that the same logic which allegedly justified democratic England and democratic America in fighting Germany would also justify democratic Finland in fighting the Soviets side-by side with Germany. The same exact logic would justify fighting on either side! Maybe we need to re-examine our premises.

Meanwhile, the United States was putting out propaganda films called “Why We Fight.” These films didn’t mention the Holocaust as among the reasons the U. S. was fighting the Germans. That rationalization came after the war. Obviously, Roosevelt didn’t care for the victims of the Holocaust any more than he cared for the victims of his mass-murdering ally Stalin. As Hitler murdered about six million Jews (plus Romani, etc.), Roosevelt and Churchill refused to bomb the rail lines leading to the death camps. Instead, the Allies focused on military targets. You know, military targets like Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo.

My father grew up in Plymouth, England when the Germans were bombing the place. When my father told me about the air raids on Britain, I was outraged at the Germans. Then my father told me that Churchill was also a believer in doing to Germany as Germany had done to England. I was truly shocked. I had simply assumed that the bombing of civilians was something done by the wicked German war machine, not something done by the good guys.

Don’t forget the war with Japan. Consider the remarks of Edgar L. Jones, a British Army veteran who served in the merchant marine, served as an Army historian, and covered the Pacific theater of war for the Atlantic Monthly magazine. Jones wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in 1946: “Many of us [soldiers] had to bomb, burn, and blast into oblivion an untold number of helpless victims of total war....What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers....” (“One War is Enough,” Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 177, No. 2, Feb. 1946, pp. 48-53; see also letters to the editor in Vol. 177, No. 4, pp. 29-31).

But at least the war was fought for a Better Tomorrow, right? In 1942, the American pacifist leader A. J. Muste defied the law and refused to register for the draft (although as a minister who was above draft age, he would have run no personal risk of conscription). In a letter to Attorney-General Biddle justifying his action, Muste contrasted the noble goals of World War I with the actual results: “It sowed the seeds of revenge, disillusionment, revolution, social chaos, economic collapse, dictatorship, and deadlier wars. Since I cannot believe that the present war can accomplish any different result, participation in it would be for me a betrayal of my country and of humanity” (R. Alfred Hassler, ed., Conscripts of Conscience and Help Wanted, New York: Garland Publishing, 1971, p. 62).

Was Muste a prophet? Did he see into the future and forsee that the Allied war effort in World War II would lead to Stalin’s domination of Eastern Europe and the Allied handover of men to Stalin to be murdered; Mao’s dictatorship in China (which killed more Chinese than the Japanese ever had); the communist dictatorships in North Korea and North Vietnam, against whom the United States did indeed fight bloody wars; the Israeli/Arab conflict; and so on? No, Muste was not a prophet, he simply knew the nature of war, and he knew that war led not to peace, but to more war and suffering. Contrast Muste’s prescient words in 1942 with the hollow mockery of the U. N Charter drafted by the Allies in 1945-“to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” etc. Who was being visionary and unrealistic-Muste or the Allied powers? Who are the realists today-those who would risk the inceneration of the entire world in defense of political goals, or those who renounce war?

ARGUMENT #2: War is OK because there are wars in the Old Testament.

REPLY: That was under the old covenant, which also allowed oaths, eye-for-an-eye, polygamy, and other things which even the militaristic Christians acknowledge are forbidden under the New Covenant of Christ. War is among the things which were discarded when the New Covenant of Christ’s love replaced the old covenant of law.

ARGUMENT #3: War is OK so long as the war is "just."

REPLY: War cannot be just, because the warring government must weigh the deaths and injuries the government will cause by war against the deaths and injuries which would happen in the absense of war. Such balancing of human lives is for God, not man. In the justice system, it is immoral to wrongfully convict a single innocent man in order to prevent the freeing of 10 guilty men. Likewise, it is wrong to kill one innocent man in war, in order to prevent someone else ("the enemy") from killing ten *other* innocent men. And this is the most extreme case; the proportion will probably not be as high as 10 to 1.

The Catholic Church (which has been working on the just war doctrine longer than anyone else I know of) says that the application of the just war doctrine is for the governments concerned to decide. Thus, one country can decide that it's just to fight another country, and vice-versa. People in each country would be bound to fight each other, with each side declaring the war just. If the just war doctrine leads to such an absurd result, the doctrine is plainly wrong.

So who is to decide whether a given war is just? Not church authorities-the Protestant tradition forbids that. The only remaining alternative is to leave the "just war" issue up to the individual. Each person must decide whether the war which his government proposes to fight is "just." Also, in the analogy of a jury trial, we see that a juror can't condemn someone to prison unless the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Similarly, we can't condemn unknown foreigners and Americans to death & mutilation unless the proposed war is a just war beyond a reasonable doubt. In practice, it is not possible for the individual conscience to be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that all the elements of a just war are present. Consider the elements of the "just war" doctrine as Catholics lay it out in their Catechism:

(1) The war must be fought in defense of a country's own territory, or the territory of an ally, against invasion. This rules out real and purported “humanitarian intervention,” such as NATO’s war against Yugoslavia and Vietnam’s war against Cambodia. War being the ultimate violation of human rights, fighting a war in defense of human rights is contradictory, plus it is an easy pretext to mask other motives. We can't always ascertain the aggressor beyond a reasonable doubt. Was Iraq the aggressor in 1980 for invading Iran, or was Iran the aggressor by trying to subvert Iraq?

(2) The consequences of the aggression must be lasting, grave and certain. This requires prediction of future events. In the case of the Falklands, it was hard to see lasting grave and certain damage. It would be hard to predict lasting damage from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, because a new source of energy could have developed to replace oil, thus considerably reducing the urgency.

(3) Peaceful measures must be exhausted before resorting to war. Full knowledge of peace efforts requires access to diplomatic correspondence, intelligence reports, etc. which the average citizen can't access.

(4) There must be a serious prospect of success. Compare Vietnam. How can success be predicted in advance? In the Civil War, both sides expected a speedy victory. Same with WWI.

(5) The war must not produce evils which are greater than the evils sought to be prevented by war. It cannot be predicted in advance what the consequences of a war will be. Examples of Civil War, the two World Wars, and Gulf War.

Therefore, under the Just War doctrine, it cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to the average conscience that a proposed war is just. Therefore, the just war doctrine leads to pacifism. War is part of the “culture of death” so rightly denounced by Pope John Paul II, even though the Pope endorses a Catechism which, by endorsing war, approves of that selfsame culture of death.

ARGUMENT #4: “I have no malice in my heart.”

As long as soldiers don’t actually hate the people they’re killing, then some say it’s OK to kill. Only killing which is accompanied by anger is wrong, according to this theory.

In that case, we can let the John Travolta character off the hook in the movie Pulp Fiction. Travolta never had malice in his heart towards the people he killed. He simply blew away those people who failed to fulfill their agreements in certain business transactions. As a hit-man, Travolta was a professional who took pride in his work, but, unlike some of the real whackos in the movie, Travolta never really got off on killing people. It was just a job. Strictly business.

Am I comparing soldiers to mob hit-men? No, the comparison is unfair. Mob hitmen generally kill people who have deliberately done something to hurt the mob, whereas soldiers just kill anyone their officers tell them to kill.

Remember Alvin York, the man who was raised as a Christian pacifist household but who, like Judas, betrayed his Savior and master after falling under the influence of the adversary? Or, if you prefer, York joined the U. S. Army to do his patriotic duty in the First World War. York thought God had promised him (York) invincibility against enemy fire. Since York thought he had divine protection against harm, no wonder he was so “brave.” Why not be brave, if God has promised you that you’ll be as safe on the Western Front as if you stayed back home on the farm?

Although God allegedly threw the shield of His protection around York, God didn’t protect the lives of twenty-eight German soldiers who were mur-I mean killed in battle by the heroic York. It was October 8, 1918. The Armistice was just a month away, and if only York had stayed back in Tennessee where he belonged, the twenty-eight Germans might have survived the war and gone home to their families and loved ones. But thanks to an act of so-called heroism by York, the twenty-eight Germans would return to their families as corpses, and their mothers, sweethearts and children would never again be able to hold the warm, living bodies of their sons, lovers and fathers.

York didn’t just kill the twenty-eight Germans (like shooting turkeys back home, he said). York also captured many German prisoners. This vicious apostate, who turned away from the peaceable principles of Christ and destroyed the lives of human beings who had never offended him, was lionized as a hero. He got the full treatment-parades, a hit movie, etc.

But something strange happened. York died in 1964, but even (or especially) as he was preparing to face his maker, he thought of what he had done almost half-a-century ago. Despite all the adulation he had received, he was troubled. A militaristic Web site which glorifies York’s bloody deeds puts it this way: “Before dying, Alvin asked his son, Edward Buxton York, if what he had done on October the eighth in the Argonne Forest was right. Edward replied that the scriptures say when you have hate in your heart, then you are a murderer. He reminded his father that there had not been any hatred for the German soldiers in his heart. His father only did what had to be done. Satisfied, Sgt. Alvin Cullum York passed away a few hours later.” Satisfied or not, Sgt. York’s last-minute pangs of conscience showed that he did indeed suspect that he had done something horribly wrong. But York was “satisfied” with the same excuse the John Travolta character in *Pulp Fiction* might have used-he had no malice in his heart, he was only doing his job.

This reminds me of the entry in Ambrose Bierce’s *Devil’s Dictionary* (New York: Dover, 1958 reprint) of the term “homicide:” “The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy, but it makes no difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another-the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.” And the advantage of corrupt clerics who perform the Lewinsky on the powers-that-be.

But Christians are supposed to love their enemies, aren’t they? How do we love the soldier while condemning what he does? Why not hate the sin but love the sinner, the way Christians are supposed to deal with sinners. Only relatives and comrades-in-arms love the soldier more than the Christian pacifist does. If love means caring for another person's physical safety, pacifists love the soldier. If love means caring for someone else's soul so that he doesn't corrupt his soul by killing or wounding others, then pacifists love the soldier. Christians can invite soldiers to attend worship. Christians can evangelize among soldiers and tell them about the option of a Conscientious Objector discharge. Christians can labor with a person who joins the military and try and get him to change his mind.

At a Quaker Meeting, I heard a guy ask why Quakers were always “bashing” soldiers. I pointed out that a famous general (Green), a famous wartime official (Palmer) and a famous President (Nixon) were all Quakers, and they managed to be quite militaristic. A better reply would have been to say this: “Who says Christian pacifists bash soldiers? If you are in search of people who bash soldiers, you don’t even have to leave the confines of the military itself. When did a Christian pacifist frame a lower-ranking soldier for what a superior officer did? When did Christian pacifists send soldiers into battle and then fail to appropriately heal the wounds of the soldier? When did Christian pacifists rape female recruits? When did Christian pacifists browbeat recruits into keeping a military commitment which they made at a young age, without fully knowing what they were doing? When did Christian pacifists kill soldiers on their own side in “friendly fire?” I think you get the idea.

Christians should mourn, not celebrate, the deaths of soldiers. Instead of glorifying war under the guise of glorifying the deaths of soldiers, Christians should celebrate the lives and deaths of the great Christian martyrs. Children should be taught about the lives of these martyrs. As one example, take Jonathan Stark, a young man who, as a Jehovah's Witness, refused to take an oath to Hitler and was sent to a concentration camp. Jehovah’s Witnesses oppose fighting in the world’s wars, and in fact some American witnesses were lynched and castrated by American Legionnaires during the period when Johathan Stark was in a German concentration camp. Apart from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and a handful of German Quakers, most "Christians" competed with each other to see how much they could lick Hitler's boots. A year after Jonathan Stark awas put in a concentration camp, the Nazis hanged him. A fellow-Jehovah's Witness reported young Stark's final words directed toward the hangman: "Why do you hesitate? Bear witness for Jehovah and for Gideon!" (Annedore Leber, ed. *Conscience in Revolt.* Westport, Conn: Associated Booksellers, 1957, pp. 14-15). Let us celebrate Christian heroes like Stark. Don’t let our children be brought up to admire killers like Alvin York, who were brought up as Christian pacifists but who apostasized and betrayed their God, their Savior, their families and the whole human race by becoming soldiers.

Let Christians say, with the members of the primitive church: “I am a Christian, and therefore I cannot fight.” Remove the clerical Lewinskys from the pulpit and let us have those who teach real Christianity. To approve war is to deny the Sermon on the Mount, which is to deny the authenticity or the truthfulness of Jesus’ words, which is to deny Jesus’ divinity, which is practical atheism.

“I am a Christian, and therefore I cannot fight.”