Traditionally, Congregational churches had no central council or board, no hierarchy of decision making. Park Church inherited that tradition. Who then would decide whether or not to allow Baez and Harris to hold the concert in its sacred precincts? Surely the membership of the congregation at that time would not have held a homogenous view on the prosecution of the Vietnam conflict. What to do? This is how I remember it.
The Senior Minister, Rev. McKenney called the Trustees together. They voted by a narrow margin to disallow the event. Why? The ostensible reason involved fear of damage to the building, either from disruption inside or brick bats outside in the street. One must keep in mind the fact that pro and anti–war feelings ran high in those days.
The Board of Deacons also met. After all, they too had influence over events held in the sanctuary, the spiritual center of the church. After deliberation, the Deacons voted narrowly to allow the Baez/Harris protest event to take place.
What to do? Though I served as Associate Minister in the church, and one assigned with primary emphasis toward youth who soon would face the draft, Rev. McKenney gave me no invitation to attend these meetings. In an unusual process, the Trustees and Deacons came together for a joint decision. They concluded that as long as the sponsors of the event put up a bond, the protest concert could take place in Park Church.
As Baez and Harris swept into the right–hand front door of the church, I merely observed. But given the prominence of this folk musician and partner in the protest movement, one felt Park Church caught up in the current of the history of the time.
Why should the Trustees, apart from ideology or attitudes toward the “war,” have been apprehensive? Central to their legitimate concern—the sanctuary windows. These twelve large, blue– toned, authentic Tiffany windows from the turn of the century were irreplaceable. How horrible to think of bricks or stones hurled at them, even though they were protected by translucent plexiglass. Any Trustee, given the time of protest and counter protest, might well have had second thoughts.
All took place in peace.
Opposing War Selectively
In 1968, when I took up the role of Associate Minister at Park Church in Grand Rapids, the opportunity to preach from that ornate, uplifted pulpit from time to time presented itself. On August 11, 1968, I spoke from the text, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25).
In almost defense attorney–like mode, I sought to present a Christian case for Selective Conscientious Objection to war. I argued in my opening sentence, “Mainstream Christianity has stood for the past fifteen centuries as a selective conscientious objector to war.” I chose not to attack the morality of the Vietnam conflict per se or to take up the cudgels for the pacifist tradition in the faith. I claimed this text from St. Luke differs both from, “Resist not an evil doer” (Matt 5:39) and from, “Let every person be subject to the governing authority” (Rom 13:1).
The context in that moment included young men facing their local draft boards and seeking “conscientious objector” status from the ugly Vietnam war. Many boards took the stance that unless the alleged objector held conscience against all war their rejection of that particular conflict did not hold water, since that amounted to a political judgment, not a moral conviction about killing in general.
I noted that the tradition of selective objection to armed conflict in the history of the church found itself borne out in the situation at hand. I remarked, “It is fair to say that the large majority of organized resistance to the Vietnam War is not inspired by an ideological pacifism, but rather by specific moral objections to this particular undeclared and bloody war.”
I continued to press the point. Is the only decision for a Christian person or community to salute and march off or to say, “By God, never!”? Pointing to the “just war” theory that grew up in the Catholic tradition, as distinguished from the vow of Stephen Decatur Jr., “Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”13 I invoked the German martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who forsook his pacifist stance to involve himself in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
The Old Testament reading for the day came from 1 Chronicles in which we learn that David, who wanted to build the temple, heard God say, “You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood in my sight on the earth” (1 Chr 22:8). Would God have been less displeased if David had shed less blood? Selectively?
In closing, I noted a statement issued by the World Council of Churches, meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, on July 16, 1968, enlisting the “spiritual care and support” of those in military action, as well as for those who found themselves conscientiously opposed to a particular conflict or who believed themselves under God unable to bear arms in any military campaign.
On Being Selective in One’s Service
During the late 1960s and into the 1980s the conflict in Vietnam caused the National Selective Service System to operate at full bore. Commonly known as “the draft,” young men, eighteen years of age and older, were vulnerable to being “called up.” Having registered as required, any day the letter might arrive indicating the recipient’s number in the lottery had been drawn.
Given the nature of the conflict—its undeclared status and its questionable ethical legitimacy—many young people and their advisors sought to discover their status as possible “conscientious objectors” (CO).
During ministry in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I associated with colleagues in learning about the vagaries of the system. We learned that most draft boards demanded proof of a peace orientation prior to age eighteen, not allowing that as a “Johnny–come–lately” one could be a CO. We learned that some five–member draft boards frequently provided for CO status, while others scarcely ever did so. We learned about various avoidances of the draft, e.g., go to Canada, etc. With this and related knowledge we offered counseling. We became aware that having a background with “peace churches”—Brethren, Quaker, Mennonite—gave one an advantage in claiming CO status.
When arriving in Pullman, Washington, in 1971, this subject continued to demand attention. The Peace Discussion Group of the church joined in seeking to understand the Selective Service System “so that it might support people interested in the CO status “and others needing information as to their legal options” (Church Newsletter, February 1972).
Later on a local and tangible fulfillment of this learning process came to fruition. In 1973 a Conscientious Objector Committee was formed. Working alongside the ecumenical Common Ministry on the WSU campus, we hired a young man to complete four months of his two–year alternative service term. Authorized by Lieutenant W. R. Orr of the Washington State Selective Service System, David Richard of Tacoma, Washington, came among us to do “facility improvement of churches” and “person to person work with local agencies.” The nature of the work? “Community service.”
In order to supervise David Richard’s work, a committee—the Ecumenical Committee to Employ a Conscientious Objector—was formed, including persons from our congregation and other like–minded churches in the community. One newsletter from July 1973 stated that David “is hard at work on the third floor of Koinonia House, the location of WSU’s Common Ministry.” He worked on improvement of local church properties, volunteered at a convalescent home and engaged in several other community projects.
Those in the parish concerned about providing young people legitimate, legal options to actual participation in the Vietnam conflict found satisfaction in playing a role in fulfilling this objective.
As late as 1981 I wrote
