Howard C. Wilkinson and Ninian Beall - "Christian Obedience in Time of War" (May 5, 1968)
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Transcript
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| - | Christ have taught us we pray together saying, | 0:03 |
| "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, | 0:08 | |
| "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth | 0:13 | |
| "as it is in heaven. | 0:17 | |
| "Give us this day, our daily bread | 0:19 | |
| "and forgive us our trespasses, | 0:22 | |
| "As we forgive those who trespass against us. | 0:25 | |
| "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil | 0:28 | |
| "for thyn is the kingdom, | 0:34 | |
| "and the power and the glory forever. | 0:36 | |
| "Amen." | 0:39 | |
| - | One of the most famous and successful military men | 0:53 |
| in American history, general William Tecumseh Sherman said, | 0:58 | |
| "War is cruel and you cannot refine it. | 1:05 | |
| "War at best is barbarism. | 1:10 | |
| "I am tired and sick of war. | 1:14 | |
| "Its glory is all moonshine. | 1:18 | |
| "War is hell." | 1:21 | |
| This statement has been quoted around the world | 1:25 | |
| because it puts in vivid form a true description of war, | 1:29 | |
| and because its author was an authority on the subject. | 1:32 | |
| - | Chaplain, most men today agree with Sherman's evaluation. | 1:37 |
| The opening sentence on the application form | 1:41 | |
| for conscientious objector status | 1:43 | |
| with the selective service system is, | 1:45 | |
| I am by reason of my religious training and belief, | 1:48 | |
| conscientiously oppose to participating in war in any form. | 1:51 | |
| Probably Lyndon Johnson, William Westmoreland, | 1:56 | |
| and people on the other side of the present conflict | 1:58 | |
| could subscribe to that statement. | 2:01 | |
| We're almost all opposed to war. | 2:03 | |
| It's a horrible, dirty, bloody business | 2:05 | |
| and an activity which few enjoy. | 2:08 | |
| - | Whatever may be the ultimate goal of any given war, | 2:11 |
| the immediate purpose of almost every war is to kill, | 2:14 | |
| to maim and to destroy. | 2:19 | |
| Now, this is when we stop to reflect on it, | 2:22 | |
| the exact opposite of the purpose | 2:24 | |
| of every other honorable profession and vocation | 2:27 | |
| in the world. | 2:30 | |
| Every other. | 2:32 | |
| The activities of individual criminals such as Clyde Barrow | 2:34 | |
| are the only ones which parallel war. | 2:37 | |
| Physicians attempt to save lives and improve health. | 2:41 | |
| But war is a deliberate attempt to kill, to wound, | 2:46 | |
| to burn the flesh of children and women and men. | 2:50 | |
| Contractors build homes and churches and schools, | 2:54 | |
| and warehouses and laboratories, and factories, | 2:59 | |
| for mankind to use for its welfare. | 3:01 | |
| War on the other hand is an organized attempt to destroy | 3:05 | |
| what contractors have built | 3:08 | |
| and what people are using for their welfare. | 3:10 | |
| Farmers and ranchers have the vocation of growing food | 3:14 | |
| to nourish mankind and of growing cotton | 3:17 | |
| and wool to cloth humanity. | 3:19 | |
| War, however, seeks to deprive people of food and clothing. | 3:22 | |
| It attempts to defoliate the plant growth | 3:26 | |
| and to poison the livestock. | 3:28 | |
| It often involves a policy of scorched earth. | 3:30 | |
| War does on an organized basis and on a grand scale, | 3:34 | |
| what the of individual criminal seeks to do | 3:38 | |
| in a civilized society, | 3:40 | |
| and for which society tries to get him locked up | 3:42 | |
| and even put to death. | 3:46 | |
| - | As you have said, Chaplain, war is an organized attempt | 3:48 |
| to destroy man and what he has built. | 3:51 | |
| And certainly the suffering of civilian populations | 3:54 | |
| is one of the more cruel aspects of modern warfare. | 3:57 | |
| But I'd like to look at killing and war | 4:00 | |
| from a specifically Christian point of view for a moment. | 4:02 | |
| Christianity is biased towards peace and against war. | 4:06 | |
| Jesus summed up God's commandments to us in this way. | 4:10 | |
| You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart | 4:13 | |
| and with all your soul and with all your mind. | 4:16 | |
| This is the great and first commandment. | 4:20 | |
| And a second is like it. | 4:23 | |
| You shall love your neighbor as yourself, | 4:24 | |
| on these commandments depend all the law and the prophets. | 4:27 | |
| Love is at the center of Christian ethics. | 4:31 | |
| It involves regarding other men as brothers. | 4:34 | |
| Ideally, it means that we are to have concern | 4:37 | |
| for their welfare equal to our concern for our own. | 4:39 | |
| Jesus' love was thorough going, it extended even to enemies. | 4:43 | |
| Jesus would not even allow His disciple to use the sword | 4:48 | |
| in order to rescue his master from arrest | 4:51 | |
| and probable execution. | 4:53 | |
| We are to love in response to God's love, | 4:55 | |
| not because other men love us. | 4:58 | |
| Every human being is understood as God's creation | 5:01 | |
| and precious in His sight. | 5:04 | |
| For the Christian, life is much more important | 5:06 | |
| than the concept of property or other ideas or ideologies, | 5:08 | |
| which are man's own creation. | 5:12 | |
| To extinguish human life must be understood | 5:15 | |
| as the furthest thing from God's intent. | 5:17 | |
| The Christian understands that power or coercion | 5:20 | |
| is in one sense, the name of the game in this world, | 5:24 | |
| and that the achievement of some approximation of justice | 5:27 | |
| depends in part on the use of coercion. | 5:29 | |
| But killing, if it is to be done at all, is the last resort | 5:32 | |
| and is only done after all other means of settling conflict | 5:36 | |
| have been exhausted. | 5:39 | |
| The whole thrust of Jesus style of life was for love | 5:41 | |
| and peace, and against hatred and war. | 5:43 | |
| This is the attitude that Christian adopts in his own life, | 5:47 | |
| and it should be very difficult to dissuade him from it. | 5:50 | |
| - | In any and it occurs to me that you and I | 5:53 |
| have been saying that there is general agreement | 5:55 | |
| among people that war is bad and that peace is good. | 5:58 | |
| But is the Christian Church completely agreed | 6:02 | |
| on the subject of war? | 6:04 | |
| - | Most Christians agree that war is a very great evil, | 6:07 |
| but they would also insist that it is sometimes necessary. | 6:10 | |
| The two main physicians towards war | 6:14 | |
| have been taken by the followers of Christ. | 6:15 | |
| One is pacifism and the other is the just war position. | 6:18 | |
| The two approaches result | 6:22 | |
| from two different ways of making ethical decisions. | 6:23 | |
| Pacifism comes from the method | 6:26 | |
| of following absolute moral principles | 6:28 | |
| derived from the New Testament. | 6:30 | |
| The just war theory | 6:32 | |
| depends on the method of making decisions | 6:33 | |
| with reference to probable consequences | 6:35 | |
| of alternate courses of action. | 6:37 | |
| - | Would you elaborate in this latter method | 6:40 |
| of making ethical decisions, | 6:42 | |
| and say how it relates to the question of war? | 6:44 | |
| - | I'll try. | 6:47 |
| The Christian takes love as the only absolute principle | 6:49 | |
| and the attitude in which all our decisions are made. | 6:52 | |
| Guidelines or rules of thumb for conduct | 6:56 | |
| are derived from the Bible, | 6:59 | |
| from the experience of the church | 7:00 | |
| and from one's personal experiences of the consequences | 7:02 | |
| of certain actions taken in particular situations. | 7:05 | |
| Responsible decisions and difficult situations | 7:09 | |
| where our normal guidelines for action conflict, | 7:12 | |
| where we must choose the lesser of two evils, | 7:15 | |
| can only be made after a study of the facts | 7:18 | |
| and calculation of the probable results | 7:21 | |
| of any possible action. | 7:23 | |
| In these situations, | 7:25 | |
| we depend not just upon historical norms, | 7:26 | |
| but also upon the present guidance of the Holy Spirit. | 7:29 | |
| There are obviously great dangers | 7:33 | |
| in this method of decision making. | 7:34 | |
| We must predict the future, a really impossible task. | 7:36 | |
| We must depend upon our limited reasoning capacities. | 7:40 | |
| We intentionally do evil, in the case of war, killing. | 7:44 | |
| In hopes of preventing greater evil | 7:48 | |
| with no guarantee of success. | 7:50 | |
| Even given all the ambiguities | 7:53 | |
| of this type of decision making, | 7:55 | |
| it seems to me that this is the way we are responsible | 7:57 | |
| to Christ's call to act in the world. | 7:59 | |
| We are also free to act in this way. | 8:03 | |
| Christ has freed us from legalistic approaches to ethics. | 8:05 | |
| He has demonstrated the ascendancy of love over law. | 8:09 | |
| The history of war | 8:13 | |
| as an instrument of achieving justice and peace, | 8:14 | |
| has obviously not been very good. | 8:17 | |
| World War I sowed the seeds of World War II. | 8:20 | |
| And the fall of fascism in Asia and in Europe by arm force | 8:22 | |
| has been followed by the rise of communism, | 8:26 | |
| sometimes equally totalitarian. | 8:29 | |
| The world seems to move closer and closer | 8:32 | |
| to a nuclear Holocaust. | 8:34 | |
| Still, I cannot say for sure | 8:36 | |
| that there could not be a situation at some time, | 8:37 | |
| in some place, in which some person has it | 8:40 | |
| as his responsibility as a Christian and as a human being, | 8:43 | |
| to kill people in order to prevent the death | 8:47 | |
| or torture of other people. | 8:49 | |
| Therefore, I admit to conceivability of just war | 8:51 | |
| and I'm not an absolute pacifist. | 8:54 | |
| I still believe we are free and responsible | 8:56 | |
| to make decisions | 8:58 | |
| with reference to conditions and consequences. | 8:59 | |
| But I remember that even as we do so, | 9:02 | |
| we are involved in sin. | 9:04 | |
| The gap between the commandment to love | 9:07 | |
| and our performance, is part of the meaning of sin. | 9:09 | |
| And we live in the context of our continuing need | 9:12 | |
| for forgiveness. | 9:15 | |
| - | Okay, you've said that many Christians feel | 9:17 |
| that in a given set of circumstances, | 9:20 | |
| they must reluctantly participate actively | 9:22 | |
| in a particular war. | 9:25 | |
| To round out the picture, we should acknowledge | 9:28 | |
| that along with these Christians, | 9:30 | |
| stand other Christians who believe | 9:32 | |
| that if they are to be obedient to Christ. | 9:34 | |
| Which is the meaning of Christian discipleship, | 9:37 | |
| participating in war is never for them, a alive option. | 9:39 | |
| This is because they believe that the teachings of Christ | 9:44 | |
| are completely opposed to the whole thrust of war. | 9:46 | |
| - | Chaplain, you we're saying | 9:50 |
| that the pacifist Christian believes | 9:51 | |
| Christianity prohibits participation in killing | 9:52 | |
| and other cruel acts which war involves. | 9:55 | |
| Do you think this view of Christian ethics | 9:58 | |
| deals realistically with the presence of evil | 10:00 | |
| in the world, with the fact that there are people around | 10:02 | |
| who might seriously want to do us or others in? | 10:05 | |
| - | Well, I'll respond by saying | 10:08 |
| that I don't know of any serious New Testament scholar, | 10:10 | |
| who thinks it is enough for a Christian to say, | 10:14 | |
| that war is wrong. | 10:17 | |
| That he will have nothing to do with it, | 10:19 | |
| and then so to speak, hang up the phone. | 10:21 | |
| Indeed, that is really not the teaching of Jesus | 10:24 | |
| as reflected in the New Testament. | 10:26 | |
| As a matter of interesting fact, | 10:29 | |
| it is in studying what Christ said | 10:31 | |
| about the treatment of enemies and oppressors, | 10:33 | |
| that we see His teaching about peace and love. | 10:37 | |
| This is what people like Reinhold Niebuhr forget, | 10:41 | |
| when they say that the love ethic of Christ, | 10:44 | |
| and this is a direct quote, | 10:47 | |
| "Undertakes to overcome evil | 10:48 | |
| "by failing to take cognizance of it." | 10:51 | |
| Unquote. | 10:54 | |
| Contrary to that, | 10:56 | |
| it is true that our Lord's teaching against hatred, | 10:57 | |
| against killing, against returning evil for evil and so on, | 11:01 | |
| come out principally in what He said we should do | 11:06 | |
| when confronted by a long list of bad guys. | 11:09 | |
| The master taught us what we should do | 11:14 | |
| about people who have something against us. | 11:16 | |
| About enemies, about people who unjustly accuse us, | 11:20 | |
| about people who are evil. | 11:25 | |
| People who strike us on the cheek. | 11:28 | |
| People who snatch away our coats, | 11:30 | |
| who compel us to go a mile out of our way, | 11:33 | |
| who persecute us and about people who despitefully use us. | 11:36 | |
| No, I don't think it's really true | 11:41 | |
| that Christ undertook to overcome evil doers | 11:43 | |
| by failing to notice them. | 11:45 | |
| - | Chaplain, you said that Christ taught us | 11:47 |
| what we should do about enemies. | 11:49 | |
| How does a pacifist interpretation of Christ ethics | 11:51 | |
| go beyond the prohibition against killing? | 11:54 | |
| - | Well, Jesus taught both a negative and a positive ethic | 11:58 |
| and the teaching allows both a strategy and an ethic. | 12:01 | |
| And attempts to separate the ethic from the strategy | 12:05 | |
| have succeeded only in distorting the teaching of Christ. | 12:08 | |
| The master taught us that we must not merely refrain | 12:11 | |
| from hating and killing, | 12:14 | |
| but that we must take a positive program of goodwill | 12:15 | |
| toward our enemies. | 12:18 | |
| He pointed out that God sends His reign | 12:19 | |
| on good and bad alike. | 12:22 | |
| And He said that we must be equally non-discriminating | 12:24 | |
| in our goodwill. | 12:26 | |
| - | In preparing for this sermon, I read Reinhold Niebuhr | 12:28 |
| case against pacifism. | 12:31 | |
| He seems to agree fully | 12:33 | |
| that pacifism is the teaching of Jesus. | 12:35 | |
| But he says that it is an ethic of perfection | 12:37 | |
| applicable only at the end of history, | 12:39 | |
| and not to the present sinful world. | 12:42 | |
| How do you respond to that? | 12:44 | |
| - | Well, I would say that the most obvious thing, | 12:46 |
| which Dr. Niebuhr has overlooked at this point, | 12:48 | |
| is that at the end of history, | 12:51 | |
| that is what he means in heaven. | 12:54 | |
| There will be no persecutors, no enemies, | 12:57 | |
| no people despitefully using you. | 13:00 | |
| No people smiting you on the cheek, and so on. | 13:02 | |
| Christ was manifestly describing our kind of world | 13:06 | |
| when He gave the sermon on the Mount. | 13:09 | |
| The only chance that any of us will ever have | 13:12 | |
| throughout all eternity to practice | 13:14 | |
| His teaching about loving one's enemies, | 13:16 | |
| is in this world where there are enemies. | 13:19 | |
| - | Chaplain, the biggest question I have | 13:23 |
| about nonviolent goodwill is, will it work? | 13:25 | |
| That is, can it prevent war and achieve a just society? | 13:28 | |
| Do you believe that pacifism | 13:32 | |
| is guaranteed a victory over evil in this world? | 13:33 | |
| - | In any and the answer to that question | 13:37 |
| has to be a clear cut negative. | 13:38 | |
| No, nyet. | 13:41 | |
| There is no guarantee that nonviolent goodwill | 13:45 | |
| is going to be successful in this world. | 13:48 | |
| Even as you pointed out earlier, the so-called just war | 13:51 | |
| cannot guarantee to establish justice or peace. | 13:54 | |
| So love in action cannot guarantee to make everything | 13:58 | |
| turn out all right either. | 14:01 | |
| However, in view of the failure, | 14:04 | |
| thus far of our military expenditure of billions of dollars | 14:05 | |
| and tens of thousands of lives, | 14:10 | |
| to end communism in Southeast Asia. | 14:12 | |
| And in view of the report of some of our Duke graduates | 14:15 | |
| who are now fighting there, | 14:17 | |
| that communism is as strong in Vietnam now, | 14:19 | |
| as it was at the beginning of the war. | 14:22 | |
| It does sound reasonable to say | 14:24 | |
| that if American money and manpower | 14:27 | |
| had been poured into Vietnam as expensively for welfare, | 14:29 | |
| as they have been for destruction, | 14:33 | |
| we might very well have overthrown communism, | 14:36 | |
| established peace and made friends all around. | 14:38 | |
| At least it's true that the leaders of many neutral nations | 14:42 | |
| have repeatedly been saying that this is the case. | 14:45 | |
| - | Speaking of the Vietnam War, | 14:50 |
| it may be well for us to move directly to that arena | 14:51 | |
| from the more generalized discussion | 14:54 | |
| that we have had thus far in this dialogue. | 14:56 | |
| After all, we are living in 1968 | 14:59 | |
| and young people today are confronted | 15:02 | |
| by the specific choices of the Vietnam War. | 15:04 | |
| First, I wanna mention a dangerous myth | 15:07 | |
| which I believe the draft system has helped to put over | 15:09 | |
| on the American people in the American church. | 15:13 | |
| That is the belief | 15:16 | |
| that it is the responsibility of the individual citizen | 15:17 | |
| to participate in war, | 15:20 | |
| unless he can show reason why he should not. | 15:22 | |
| That is unless he can prove he is a conscientious objector. | 15:25 | |
| This attitude is perverted. | 15:28 | |
| I have already described the Christian bias towards peace | 15:31 | |
| and against war. | 15:34 | |
| A Christian should be a conscientious objector to war | 15:36 | |
| until, and unless he can be shown or has convinced himself, | 15:39 | |
| that the killing and suffering involved | 15:43 | |
| in the pursuit of the war | 15:44 | |
| will be less than the killing and suffering, | 15:46 | |
| which will occur if the war is not fought. | 15:48 | |
| Now to the question of the Vietnam War. | 15:51 | |
| Have any of us been convinced by the arguments | 15:54 | |
| of our government, | 15:57 | |
| and by our own study of the problem that this is a just war? | 15:58 | |
| I'm afraid most of us have simply assumed it was right | 16:03 | |
| unless we could be shown otherwise. | 16:05 | |
| Which is a rather peculiar position | 16:08 | |
| for the followers of the Prince of Peace to take. | 16:09 | |
| An increasing number of American churchmen | 16:13 | |
| joined churchmen from around the world | 16:15 | |
| in condemning this war, | 16:17 | |
| as an abomination that can in no way be justified. | 16:19 | |
| We see the destruction of the lives | 16:22 | |
| and the livelihood of the Vietnamese people, | 16:24 | |
| both North and South. | 16:27 | |
| And the destruction of the lives of American soldiers. | 16:29 | |
| We see the war earning America the suspicion and hatred | 16:33 | |
| of the people of the poor nations of Asia, | 16:37 | |
| Africa, and Latin America. | 16:39 | |
| Who will have so much to do with the future | 16:41 | |
| of our own nation and the world. | 16:43 | |
| We know that the Vietnam War is using up resources | 16:46 | |
| in terms of lives and money, | 16:49 | |
| which should be used to deal with the crises of racism | 16:51 | |
| and poverty in this country. | 16:54 | |
| We wonder what is this great evil | 16:56 | |
| that it is worth all of this to prevent. | 16:58 | |
| Are the Vietnamese people really better off dead than read, | 17:01 | |
| from whose point of view? | 17:05 | |
| Even if this is a war | 17:08 | |
| to stop the spread of international communism, | 17:09 | |
| do we have the right to fight our battles | 17:12 | |
| in someone else's homeland? | 17:14 | |
| Finally, have we really resorted to war as a last resort | 17:17 | |
| in this situation? | 17:21 | |
| Has the United States exhausted all other means | 17:23 | |
| of combating the rise of totalitarian regimes? | 17:25 | |
| Are not the failure of the United States | 17:29 | |
| to achieve social reform in Vietnam | 17:31 | |
| from the time of Diem regime, | 17:33 | |
| and the reluctance of Congress to give foreign aid | 17:35 | |
| to countries attempting to develop their economies | 17:38 | |
| and raise the living standards of their people, | 17:40 | |
| just two symptoms of the present American tendency | 17:43 | |
| to attempt military solutions | 17:46 | |
| to problems before other avenues are explored? | 17:48 | |
| A tendency becoming increasingly evident | 17:51 | |
| in our attempts to deal with our problems | 17:53 | |
| in the American ghettos? | 17:55 | |
| Having confronted these questions, | 17:58 | |
| more and more Christians believe | 18:00 | |
| that this war must be stopped now. | 18:01 | |
| - | On any and whether young American Christians | 18:04 |
| are pacifists or not, once made they've made their decisions | 18:06 | |
| about the rightness or the wrongness of participating | 18:09 | |
| in the Vietnam War, | 18:12 | |
| they're still confronted with the question, | 18:13 | |
| what am I going to do about it? | 18:16 | |
| This translates itself into the question, | 18:18 | |
| what am I going to do about the draft? | 18:20 | |
| There are five choices which I see Christians making | 18:23 | |
| with respect to the present draft. | 18:26 | |
| Some are saying, while they wish peace could exist now, | 18:29 | |
| they believe the conditions of peace, | 18:33 | |
| conditions of justice and of love will be established better | 18:36 | |
| if they shoulder a gun at present, | 18:40 | |
| and personally aid the South Vietnamese government | 18:42 | |
| to win a military victory | 18:46 | |
| over the Viet Cong and North Vietnam. | 18:47 | |
| These Christians believe such a victory | 18:51 | |
| would teach other communists | 18:53 | |
| that they cannot win in the world. | 18:54 | |
| A second group of Christians are saying | 18:58 | |
| that although they are not pacifists | 19:00 | |
| in the sense that they're unwilling to participate | 19:01 | |
| in any conceivable war, | 19:04 | |
| they consider this American military involvement in Vietnam | 19:06 | |
| so morally repulsive, that they cannot participate in it. | 19:10 | |
| Since they cannot honestly claim to be COs, | 19:14 | |
| they will refuse to go to Vietnam, | 19:18 | |
| or will refuse induction into the armed forces, | 19:20 | |
| or in some other illegal way, | 19:22 | |
| declined to participate in that conflict. | 19:24 | |
| A third group finds neither of these two options agreeable, | 19:28 | |
| and so elects one of several courses of actions, | 19:33 | |
| which might be called dodgers. | 19:37 | |
| Now, if you promise not to think of that | 19:40 | |
| as a pejorative word. | 19:42 | |
| They could neither fight in Vietnam in good conscience, | 19:44 | |
| nor break the law in good conscience. | 19:47 | |
| They're not COs to all war and so what do they elect? | 19:50 | |
| Well, they choose to do something useful, | 19:56 | |
| which will give them a legal draft deferment, | 19:58 | |
| or at least which will not compel them | 20:02 | |
| to slaughter the Vietnamese. | 20:04 | |
| Hoping that before their legal dodge expires, | 20:06 | |
| the war in Vietnam will be stopped. | 20:11 | |
| I see Christians also taking a fourth option | 20:14 | |
| to which earlier reference was made, | 20:17 | |
| that of applying for a classification as a CO to war | 20:19 | |
| under the Selective Service law. | 20:23 | |
| These Christians cannot kill | 20:26 | |
| but they choose to do work of benefit to the nation | 20:27 | |
| under a legal, Conscientious Objector classification. | 20:30 | |
| A fifth group, like the fourth, | 20:35 | |
| believes a Christian should never go to war. | 20:37 | |
| But unlike the fourth group, | 20:40 | |
| they believe they cannot in good conscience | 20:41 | |
| cooperate in any respect with any system related to the war. | 20:43 | |
| Therefore, in spite of the fact | 20:48 | |
| that the Selective Service law makes provision for the CO, | 20:49 | |
| these people see it essentially as an integral part | 20:52 | |
| of the war system and will have nothing to do with it. | 20:55 | |
| And so like the second group of the just war people, | 20:58 | |
| they choose an illegal option. | 21:02 | |
| - | Chaplain, I wanna comment on the question of war dodgers | 21:05 |
| who are within the law, | 21:08 | |
| which includes me with my 2-S classification. | 21:10 | |
| I believe that authentic Christian concern | 21:14 | |
| involves more than holding the right opinions. | 21:16 | |
| It acts for what it perceives as the good | 21:19 | |
| and acts against what it perceives as the evil. | 21:22 | |
| If we really believe the Vietnam War is right, | 21:25 | |
| we must justify to ourselves spending our time | 21:28 | |
| on Duke campus, while other men are killing | 21:31 | |
| and dying for our cause in Vietnam. | 21:33 | |
| If we are really opposed to the war, | 21:37 | |
| can we justify not working hard to stop it? | 21:39 | |
| It is very easy for us to hide behind our roles | 21:42 | |
| and to think that that excuses us from acting. | 21:46 | |
| From this perspective, most of the deferments | 21:49 | |
| or exemptions our draft boards give us | 21:52 | |
| as dodgers to participation in the military. | 21:54 | |
| Are not constructive and responsible | 21:57 | |
| from the point of view of either the supporter | 21:59 | |
| or the opponent of the war. | 22:01 | |
| There are perhaps deferments which are constructive dodgers. | 22:04 | |
| People may make use of their freedom, | 22:07 | |
| which the dodge provides them to work for peace directly | 22:09 | |
| or indirectly by attacking America's other priority problems | 22:13 | |
| of racism and poverty. | 22:17 | |
| Of course, Chaplain, | 22:19 | |
| there are people who believe that the most effective way | 22:20 | |
| to work for peace is to resist the draft. | 22:22 | |
| What do you think of this type of lawbreaking? | 22:25 | |
| - | Well, without taking time | 22:28 |
| which we obviously do not now have | 22:29 | |
| to labor the point unduly (inaudible). | 22:31 | |
| I think it is important in a genuine democracy | 22:33 | |
| to obey the law. | 22:37 | |
| This is because of what the law represents. | 22:39 | |
| In a dictatorship such as existed in Nazi, Germany, | 22:43 | |
| the law was essentially the playing of the dictator. | 22:46 | |
| And it often was the duty of Christians | 22:50 | |
| to disobey the law for conscience sake. | 22:51 | |
| The preacher who will stand in this pulpit next Sunday, | 22:55 | |
| pastor Martin Niemeller, was one who defied Hitler's law | 22:59 | |
| and rotted in a concentration camp for years, | 23:03 | |
| never knowing when the hangman would come for him. | 23:05 | |
| But in a nation where the law represents | 23:09 | |
| not the whim of a dictator, but the will of the majority | 23:11 | |
| with built in guarantees for minorities | 23:15 | |
| and with liquid opportunities for legal change. | 23:17 | |
| I believe the disadvantages | 23:21 | |
| of fundamental legal disobedience, | 23:23 | |
| are far greater than the advantages of illegal protest. | 23:26 | |
| And I wish all Christians in America | 23:29 | |
| would seek to obey the basic constitutional law of the land. | 23:31 | |
| - | You know, Chaplain that many of those who refuse | 23:36 |
| induction into the military | 23:38 | |
| and accept subsequent imprisonment, | 23:40 | |
| do so because they oppose the present war. | 23:42 | |
| They are not pacifist | 23:45 | |
| and they are thus faced only with the options of disobeying | 23:47 | |
| their consciences or disobeying the law. | 23:50 | |
| Pacifist refuse CO status by their draft boards | 23:53 | |
| are in the same position. | 23:56 | |
| There are no built in guarantees for these minorities. | 23:58 | |
| And we must question the existence of liquid opportunities | 24:01 | |
| for legal change in this area, | 24:04 | |
| since the 1967 version of the draft law | 24:06 | |
| was substantially unchanged from the old version. | 24:10 | |
| And the draft was extended to 1971. | 24:13 | |
| Thus men confronted with induction today or tomorrow | 24:17 | |
| and for a long time to come, | 24:20 | |
| may have to decide between obeying their consciences | 24:22 | |
| and obeying the law. | 24:25 | |
| The trials of Japanese and German war criminals | 24:27 | |
| after World War II were perhaps their first recognition | 24:30 | |
| within the secular sphere, | 24:34 | |
| that an individual bears a responsibility | 24:35 | |
| for his acts to a higher authority than the state. | 24:38 | |
| The church has from its inception | 24:41 | |
| recognized an authority higher than the state, | 24:43 | |
| or any other human authority. | 24:46 | |
| Jesus, His apostles and thousands of His followers | 24:48 | |
| down to this day, have run a foul of the law | 24:51 | |
| because they put obedience to God first. | 24:54 | |
| The Christian must obey God rather than men. | 24:58 | |
| From this perspective, civil disobedience | 25:01 | |
| in relation to the Vietnam War and the draft, | 25:04 | |
| may constitute a Christian obedience in this time of war. | 25:07 | |
| I do not advise anyone as to what action he should take | 25:13 | |
| regarding the war and the draft. | 25:16 | |
| I have had a hard enough time deciding for myself. | 25:18 | |
| I do not believe a Christian | 25:21 | |
| should surrender his conscience to the state. | 25:23 | |
| He should not allow someone else | 25:26 | |
| to make his decision for him. | 25:28 | |
| I do believe that the word of God to us in this hour | 25:31 | |
| is that we as individuals and as a people, | 25:34 | |
| stand before Him free and responsible to act His will, | 25:37 | |
| as he gives us to see it. | 25:41 | |
| And that we can fall on His mercy and forgiveness | 25:43 | |
| when we fail to achieve that calling. | 25:46 | |
| - | Almighty God, our heavenly Father. | 25:52 |
| Each one of us needs thy guidance, thy truth, | 25:55 | |
| especially thy personal presence. | 26:00 | |
| Give us the guidance of the Holy Spirit | 26:03 | |
| as we seek to make our own decisions. | 26:06 | |
| And we pray for thy sustaining grace | 26:09 | |
| to be upon all thy sons and daughters in this world, | 26:12 | |
| who are seeking conscientiously to do thy will. | 26:17 | |
| Who do not always act alike, who do not always think alike. | 26:22 | |
| But granted, all of us may come at last to thy mercy | 26:27 | |
| and to thy grace, and to thy person. | 26:32 | |
| Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 26:36 | |
| Amen. | 26:38 | |
| ("Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah") | 26:42 | |
| (congregation singing) | 27:20 | |
| (soothing organ music) | 29:33 |
Item Info
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