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Even in peacetime conscientious objectors to war are often labeled as unpatriotic. In times of war they are called cowards, traitors, or worse. But in good times and bad, in peace and even during war, we must protect the rights of people whose honest beliefs, for whatever reason, place them out of kilter with national sentiment.
In post-September 11 America, voices of dissent to the government’s military policies are not generally welcome. Amid the understandable patriotic fervor, pacifists and conscientious objectors sound like off-key tenors in the choir. In a September 26, 2001, piece entitled “Pacifist Claptrap,” Atlantic Monthly editor Michael Kelly labeled the pacifist’s position as “evil.”1 In case his message wasn’t clear, a week later he called pacifists “liars. Frauds. Hypocrites.”2
Throughout world history, depending on geography, conscientious objectors have been ridiculed, imprisoned, and persecuted. A quick glance at America’s history shows even here the spirit of tolerance ebbing and flowing with
circumstance. So when prominent throught leaders start labeling pacifists as evil, it’s not hard to imagine why conscientious objectors should feel uneasy.
Writing in the Washington Post in 1965 at the height of the Vietnam War, journalist Murray Marder referred to the “national tendency to convert every conflict where numerous American lives are at stake into a holy war.”3 Since the events of September 11, 2001, the holy war rhetoric seems alive and well, and it’s a sentiment that complicates matters for those who, for whatever reason, have a conscientious objection to war. The extent to which the government makes provision for such people is a barometer of its commitment to the rights of individual conscience.
The religious war rhetoric today starts at the highest levels. President George Bush has called America “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world,” defending “freedom and all that is good and just in our world.” “We will rid the world of the evildoers,” he has promised.
Best-selling Christian author Hal Lindsey describes the current conflict as a war between America and Satan: “America sees his [Satan’s] face in clouds of smoke, sees his fingerprints all over New York and Washington and has decided to take him on in open combat.” For Lindsey and many other fundamentalist Christians, the God-fearing thing to do is “use our military power in an unrestricted way.”4
In the United States, many of the calls for a strong military come from fundamentalist Christians. Speaking soon after September 11, Stanley Hauerwas, a Christian ethicist in the Duke University Divinity School, accused American Christians in general of being “blank check people.” He explained, “They go kill whomever the democratically elected leaders ask them
to kill.”5
On the other hand, many are offended by talk of a holy war and urge that God should be kept out of the equation. Spy novelist John Le Carré made this plea from his cliff house on Britain’s Cornish coast: “Please, Mr. Bush—on my knees, Mr. Blair—keep God out of this. To imagine that God fights wars is to credit Him with the worst follies of mankind. God, if we know anything about Him, which I don’t profess to, prefers effective food drops, dedicated medical teams, comfort and good tents for the homeless and bereaved.”6
Naturally governments can wage war with greater vigor, authority, and purpose if they and their constituents believe God is on their side. But the relation between God and war, religion and the military, is and always has been more complex and difficult.
Early in its history the Christian church faced the issue of how to relate to government and war. How could Christians reconcile the “turn the other cheek” teaching of Jesus with the pressing need to defend themselves from foreign armies?
The early church took a largely pacifistic approach to war, but this changed as its political and social influence increased, and the Roman Empire became increasingly Christian.7 During the fourth and fifth centuries leaders and theologians such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas developed views and arguments that came together in what we know today as “just war” theory.
In its classic form this theory has two dimensions. First, that Christians can and should discriminate between just and unjust wars (jus ad bellum). Second, there should be moral limitations on the way war is conducted (jus in bello). Under each category there are specific examples—for example, all nonviolent options must be exercised first; it can be waged only by legitimate authority; it can be only in self-defense; it must have a reasonable chance of success; it must discriminate between combatants and civilians; violent action must be proportional.8
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement after the events of September 11, 2001, that was firmly within this tradition. “As our nation undertakes military action, our Bishops’ Conference calls for continued prayer, resolve and restraint in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11,” it said. “We renew our call that our military response must be guided by the traditional moral limits on the use of force. Military action is always regrettable, but it may be necessary to protect the innocent or to defend the common good.”9
Just-war theory is severely flawed. Dumbed down, it can easily give a religious or ethical licence for governments to wage war with whomever they want. All they have to do is clearly differentiate themselves—the “goodies”—from their enemies—the “baddies.”
In calling for proper discrimination, just-war theory demands a knowledge we don’t and can’t have. In the complex and hazy climate of international terrorism, most civilians simply don’t have a proper knowledge of “the enemy,” and must assume their leaders do. As for limitations on the way war is conducted, the military doesn’t send out a list of weapons it plans to use so that the people can vote on them before they are used. Even if they did, by what criteria would we be proficient to judge if they fit the category of “legitimate force”?
Cluster bombs, for example, are notorious for causing civilian casualties and were used extensively during the attacks on Afghanistan. The 15,000-pound Daisy Cutters, also used by America in Afghanistan, incinerate everything within a half-mile radius. “This is an awesome device,” says terrorism expert Michael Yardley. “It immediately kills everything within range, and anyone nearby will be left psychologically traumatized.”10 By what standard is the legitimacy of such weapons judged within the just-war tradition, and how, when, and by whom would such judgment take place?
In the face of such considerations, some Christians respond somewhere along the axis of pacifism to noncombatancy. “The feeling that bloodshed and killing are fundamentally opposed to love runs deep in the Christian conscience,” writes Louis Swift, “and any claim that is made for the legitimacy of force has to be reconciled with this conviction.”11 Lawrence Minear points out that the roots of American conscientious objection to war were religious in nature, even though today most American Christians support the military. He adds: “The Old Testament commandment against killing and the New Testament injunctions against returning evil for evil have led American Christians from Colonial days to eschew, in varying degrees, military service, alternate service, and taxation for military purposes.”12
Another deeply rooted tradition in America is political and legal accommodation of the rights of Americans to be conscientious objectors. Some of America’s founders were pacifists who were persecuted for their beliefs in Europe. The framers of the Constitution omitted a clause on conscientious objectors only because they didn’t envision any need for a standing army.13
At the onset of the Revolutionary War, George Washington issued a draft order, which was a call to “all young men of suitable age to be drafted, except those with conscientious scruples against war.” A Massachusetts act of 1757 exempted “the people called Quakers from the penalty of the law for nonattendance on military musters.” This was not practiced in all the American colonies, but by the time of the Revolution Quakers had won exemption in many of them.14
During the Civil War a Northern law of 1863 “excused ‘members of religious denominations’ who personally as well as by their sect’s articles of faith were ‘conscientiously opposed to the bearing of arms.’”15 The following year Congress amended the draft law to provide some accommodation for conscientious objectors. Options for the objector included service in hospitals or elsewhere, or paying a commutation fee of 0.16Some 4,000 men served as unarmed legal conscientious objectors.17
In times of peace and in times of war with a surplus of military personnel, governments can afford to be generous with conscientious objectors. The real test comes when there is a shortage of personnel, as happened during World Wars I and II. The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 required all males aged 21 to 36 to register for the draft, but exempted from military service those who “by reason of religious training and belief” opposed war. This meant that the government gave exemption to those belonging to traditionally pacifist religious groups such as the Quakers, but made no allowance for conscientious objectors outside of these groups.
In place of bearing arms the government substituted unpaid service of some kind—either directly related to the military effort or some kind of general community service. Those conscientious objectors who failed the religious test, or objected for other reasons, fared worse, and some 5,000 were imprisoned in the U.S. between 1940 and 1945.18
Until 1965 the U.S. government continued to make provision for only conscientious objectors whose objections were religious in nature. This changed after a watershed case involving Daniel Seeger, a conscientious objector who was agnostic as to the existence of God and whose religious faith was limited to a “purely ethical creed.”19This case led the Supreme Court to widen its scope to include the world-views of conscientious objectors who have “a sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualifying for the exemption.”20 In 1970 accommodation became even broader for those whose objection was expressed in philosophical rather than religious terms.21
Although the United States makes broad-ranging provisions for conscientious objectors, these rights and privileges are at best precarious. This can be seen in the case of those who choose to become conscientious objectors after they have enrolled in the military. Father Michael Baxter, associate professor of theology at Notre Dame University, worked in Germany with military personnel who changed their minds and became conscientious objectors during the Gulf War. He says many of the soldiers came from disadvantaged homes and entered the military naïve to the realities of war.
“The military was to them an opportunity for employment,” he adds. “They weren’t just-war people, they weren’t pacifists, they weren’t anything when they enlisted. They were just out of a job.” He says that during the Gulf War, conscientious objectors were forcibly deployed to the Middle East, some in handcuffs and leg irons. Many were arrested and not even given the right to receive letters from their families.
According to Baxter some 2,500 conscientious objector applications were submitted, but “during the Gulf War no CO applications were processed, even though military regulations provided for the rights of COs.”22
In 2003 talk of reintroducing the draft is on the American agenda, and there’s no reason for confidence that conscientious objectors will be better treated in the future. Republican representative Nick Smith sponsored the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 2001 that would require conscientious objectors to “participate in basic military training and education,” even though they would be exempt from “any combatant training component.”23 Although not expected to pass, it reflects an environment in which tolerance for those out of step with “ridding the world of evildoers” may be sorely tested.
Dissent to war in modern-day America ranges from full-blown pacifism to noncombatancy (which is really conscientious cooperation, ready to accommodate the military as far as possible, short of actually carrying a gun). The dissenters range from highly committed religious people (such as Mennonites) to thoroughly secular atheists.
Whatever the hue or stripe of the dissenters and their dissent, it’s the duty and privilege of a civilized democracy to respect and accommodate their right to act in accordance with their beliefs. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how holy we think the war. 
Gary Krause is an Australian who writes from Burtonsville, Maryland. He has long had an interest in this topic. While studying at the University of Newcastle, in New South Wales, Australia, he wrote an honors paper on the attitude of the Christian churches toward war.
1 Washington Post, Sept 26, 2001.
2 Ibid, Oct. 3, 2001.
3 From “No Holy War,” Washington Post, July 16, 1965, quoted in Lawrence Minear, “Conscience and the Draft,” Theology Today 21, no. 1 (April 1966): 71. Richard Falk echoed this view in 2001: “The U.S. temperament has tended to approach war as a matter of confronting evil. In such a view, victory can be achieved only by the total defeat of the other, and with it, the triumph of good” (“Defining a Just War,” The Nation, Oct. 29, 2001).
4 WorldNetDaily, Sept. 26, 2001.
5 Duke University Forum, “The Morality of War in Islamic and Christian Perspective,” Oct. 9, 2001. See www.duke.edu/web/forums.
6 John Le Carré, “A War We Cannot Win,” The Nation, Nov. 19, 2001.
7 Mark Edward DeForrest, “Just War Theory and the Recent U.S. Air Strikes Against Iraq,” Gonzaga International Law Journal 8 (1997).
8 J. T. Johnson points out that the modern just-war viewpoint is the secular derivative of a split in the classic just-war theory that took place after the Reformation. It replaced war for religion as a just cause with causes that could be put in natural law or political terms. See J. T. Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts 1200-1740 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 8, 9, cited in Alan Johnson, “The Bible and War in America: An Historical Survey,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, June 1985.
9 “Catholic Bishops’ Conference President Issues Statement on Military Action,” press release from United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Oct. 9, 2001.
10 Quoted in Annette McCann, “Cluster Bomb Row Has Blair on Back Foot,” The Herald (Glasgow) Nov. 8, 2001.
11 J. Swift, The Early Fathers on War and Military Service (M. Glazier, 1983), p. 79, quoted in Alan Johnson.
12 Minear, p. 60.
13 See “History of Pacifism in the U.S.”, www.pbs.org/itvs/thegoodwar/american_pacifism.html.
14 Minear, p. 61.
15 Ibid.
16 Note, however, that those who refused or could not afford that option were treated harshly under military law.
17 “History of Pacifism in the U.S.”
18 “Conscientious objector,” Columbia Encyclopedia, sixth edition (2001).
19 Minear, p. 63.
20 United States v. Seeger 380 U.S. 163 (1965).
21 Welsh v. United States 398 U.S. 333 (1970).
22 Quoted in Liz Zanoni, “Baxter Speaks on Conscientious Objection in Gulf War,” Online Observer, Feb. 1, 2001.
23 HR. 3598.
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