Before we had an all-volunteer Army, the United States government historically made provisions for conscientious objectors in the military draft procedure known as the Selective Service System. A conscientious objector was either classified as 1-A-O and served in the military as a non-combatant, or was classified as 1-O and served in an alternative service capacity, such as an orderly in a VA hospital.
But the government only recognized people who objected to military service based on religious grounds, not moral or philosophical grounds. This tended to favor Christians from the historic peace churches such as the Mennonites and Quakers who include pacifism as part of their religious training. Accordingly, the Christian had to be opposed to all wars to be a conscientious objector.
During the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court widened the definition of religious grounds to include any Christian with sincere beliefs regarding military service. But the court did not extend the privilege to those who opposed specific wars on the basis of moral or philosophical grounds. It was thus impossible for a Christian who opposed a specific war on the grounds that it was unjust or immoral to be classified as a conscientious objector.
a just war
Most churches embraced what is known as the Just War Theory. But they usually failed to apply it to any conflict. Governments were regularly given the benefit of the doubt that their cause and their actions are just. The just-war criteria were generally ignored and, as a result, Christians frequently march off to kill one another in service to the state without a second thought. As churches, we engaged in no serious dialogue, no discussion, and no concrete debate. In practice the just-war theory was not taken seriously by anyone—church or state.
But there is another viewpoint, and that is one that I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer was faced with in World War II. Participating in military service as an armed combatant requires the Christian to be ready to take human life. Therefore the basic stance of the individual Christian and the church should be that participation in warfare is always fundamentally wrong and that non-participation should be the norm. This I think was Bonhoeffer’s view. Participation in war is sinful and unjust.
But, from Bonhoeffer’s viewpoint, if the individual Christian believes that by participating in this sinful activity a greater good may be gained—the protection of innocent people or the control of aggressive states—then the individual has a right to make that ethical decision—one of conscientious participation in violence. The individual must assess the situation and the alternatives and must determine what is the just, right, and compassionate thing to do.
nonviolence and conscientious participation
Bonhoeffer provides a case study for conscientious participation in violence. Bonhoeffer was a pacifist. He believed that nonviolence was the way of Jesus. As it became apparent that Germany would go to war, he was asked what he would do. He replied, “I pray that God will give me the strength not to take up arms.”
Bonhoeffer wanted to travel to India to study nonviolence with Gandhi and learn Gandhi’s methods first hand so that he could introduce these techniques to the Confessing Church in Germany. He was eager to know if nonviolent resistance could still be possible and effective in Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, he never made the trip.
For Bonhoeffer, nonviolent resistance was the realization of the ideas Jesus expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. Bonhoeffer explored the implications of these teachings in his book The Cost of Discipleship. He believed that the Sermon on the Mount may have been an early catechism that reflected what the Jesus movement attempted to practice as an alternative form of life: nonviolence, love of enemy, justice, and fulfillment of human community not by the letter of the law, but by the spirit of God’s commands. He did not see these teachings as unrealistic ideals, but instead as the fundamentals of discipleship.
Not wanting to remain on the fringes of the struggle in Germany, Bonhoeffer joined the underground resistance. His brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, secured him a position in the Abwehr, the military intelligence arm of the German army. The Abwehr was a center of the resistance against Hitler. Bonhoeffer used his ecumenical contacts to communicate secret information about resistance plans to the Western nations. This position also enabled him to avoid bearing arms.
In the end, Bonhoeffer became involved in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He believed that if Hitler were killed, fellow plotters within the military leadership of Germany would approach the Allies and ask for a peace settlement. Bonhoeffer believed this must be done to stop the continued destruction of the war. The plot to kill Hitler failed (twice).
nonviolence requires a widespread resistance
Bonhoeffer never rejected nonviolence as ineffective or impractical. Nonviolent resistance to Nazi authority was successfully used in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Bulgaria. Bonhoeffer never believed that violence was the only recourse against evil. But nonviolence on a large scale requires an army of people; the same way violence requires an army. And in Germany the tools of nonviolence were not available to Bonhoeffer. There was no widespread dissent, not even in the churches. The Nazi dream of a 1,000-year Reich was too powerful a force in the minds of the German people. The leaders of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Roman Catholic churches had not trained people to be the troops of nonviolent action. Instead, they had prepared their young men for war, told them to do their duty, and blessed them on their way.
Bonhoeffer prayed that the churches would speak out against war. In a 1934 sermon he called on the larger church to rise up with these words:
“How will peace come? Who will call us to peace so that the world will hear, will have to hear? Only the one great ecumenical council of the holy church of Christ over all the world can speak out so that the world, though it gnash its teeth, will have to hear, so that the peoples will rejoice because the church of Christ has taken the weapons from the hands of their sons, forbidden war, proclaimed the peace of Christ against a raging world.”
nonviolence must be our fundamental stance
Bonhoeffer never claimed that his actions were justified—in the sense of being made right due to the rightness of his cause. He always believed that the action to take a human life, even Hitler’s life, was wrong. Bonhoeffer declared he was personally willing to make an attempt on Hitler’s life. But before doing so he would deliberately have to leave the church. He believed he was committing a sin—and he threw himself on the mercy of God. When Bonhoeffer chose this path he realized he was no longer following Jesus.
Bonhoeffer believed that our fundamental stance as Christians must be one of nonviolence. Yet his conscience told him that if a limited act of violence could save many other lives, he would commit that act, even if it were wrong. He wrestled with the decision. And then he accepted the consequences of his action.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested, not for the assassination plot, but for helping Jews escape from Germany. While in prison, his involvement in the plot was discovered and he was executed.
a conscientious struggle
When one chooses to participate in an activity leading to death, it must be based on a struggle with the conscience. The answer cannot be predetermined by a set of rules unless the Christian resolves to renounce all violence and all life-ending activities regardless of the situation. That is perhaps the only rule that can possibly apply to those who want to follow Jesus. Even then, the Christian must accept responsibility for the consequences that result from that decision.
We can have no easy way out.
