Moving From Conscientious Objector to War Resister

 

The Day I Moved from Conscientious Objector to War Resister by Steve Clemens 9/15/22

 

I’m not sure which Nixon speech it was. It happened near the end of 1971 or early in 1972. Once again, the President called for an escalation of the war on Vietnam. That day I had received in the mail a letter from the Selective Service Administration (my draft board) asking me, I assume, to update my mailing address since I had just graduated early from Wheaton College and my II-S Student deferment had just expired. I looked at the letter, remembered Nixon’s speech and took it into the bathroom of my parents’ home.

 

Three years earlier, when I turned 18 in the fall of 1968, I chose to register as a Conscientious Objector. Looking back on that time, it wasn’t a political statement against the War on Vietnam; rather, it was a religious statement that my commitment to the words of Jesus to “love my enemies” took precedence over the demands of my government. For almost a year after filing my claim as a CO, I took no part in anti-war demonstrations in my college town just outside of Chicago. However, in the Spring of 1969 I was invited to attend a “Black Power Symposium” at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL and my carefully constructed conservative white world was turned upside down. That weekend was followed by a week of (compulsory) chapel services at Wheaton led by a former NY street gang member who “got saved, turned his life over to Jesus” and became one of a minuscule few Black, evangelical evangelists, Tom Skinner (https://www.skinnerleaders.org/our-history). Tom recommended that I spend my summer break working in the inner city (aka the Black community) of Philadelphia, just 30 miles south of my childhood home.

 

That summer introduced me to how the predominately white Philadelphia Police Force (under the direction of a very racist Frank Rizzo) responded to both Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. It was a wake-up call which forced me to consider the intersections between my religious identity and my political and social views. When I returned to my Illinois campus that fall, I joined a local Maryknoll priest in his weekly demonstrations outside the DuPage County Draft Board office in Wheaton. I started attending the weekly Operation Breadbasket services led by Jesse Jackson in Chicago. I chose an African American roommate. And I started reading Ramparts and other “leftist” magazines which were stridently against the war. I helped lead a campus anti-war group named after the pacifist, abolitionist founder of the college, the Jonathan Blanchard Association. I learned about my Anabaptist ancestors in a Bible History course. I met Jim Wallis as he was founding The Post American – which was re-named a few years later, Sojourners Magazine and was reading John Howard Yoder, Daniel Berrigan, and other faith-based peacemaking activists.

 

I knew there were people in these movements who were “draft resisters” and/or “draft card burners” – but I didn’t know any of them personally. But I also knew the consequences faced by those prosecuted for such: often 2-5 years in prison. So, when I went into my parents’ bathroom after the Nixon speech, I took the Draft Card from my wallet (we were required by law to carry them) and burned it, letting the ashes go down the drain. I knew doing so privately was a bit cowardly, so I then decided to up the risk level. I crossed my name and address off my un-opened Selective Service letter and wrote above it – “Refused, obscene material! - Return to Sender” and put it back in the mailbox.

 

[Fast-forward 8 years later when President Carter, trying to win re-election against Ronald Reagan, re-instated mandatory draft registration for males between the ages of 18-26. Never mind that I was 30 at the time. I wrote to the President, telling him I refused to resister for reasons of conscience. After numerous threatening letters over the next year, finally two FBI agents showed up at my workplace to inquire about my act of resistance. After politely refusing to tell them my Social Security number, my mother’s maiden name, or my birthplace and age, they decided amongst themselves that I was probably “older than 26” so they said they were closing my case.]

 

It still took me another 3 years after my burnt draft card for me to embrace “active” nonviolent resistance rather than just reacting to what our government was doing after the fact. Liz McAlister became a friend and mentor along with Phil Berrigan, her husband. She gently pushed me to embrace active nonviolence and see war resistance as a logical outcome if one takes conscientious objection seriously. Then she got arrested with me and 59 others at the White House in the last major demonstration against the Vietnam War in late March 1975. Dan Berrigan, the author who had inspired me and Dick Gregory who challenged me at the Black Power Symposium, were placed in handcuffs alongside me.

Remarks given at Mennonite Heritage Center on my Peacemaking Journey

 

Peacemaking Journey Story for Mennonite Heritage Center Gathering- Steve Clemens – June 17, 2022

 

I was Born in October 1950, the third of three sons to Lester Stauffer Clemens and Kathryn Hockman Clemens and lived for the first 15 years of my life in a farmhouse by the entrance to Hatfield Packing Company in Hatfield Township. For those first 7 years we shared the house with my cousin Butch, his wife Arlayne, and the first 3 of their children. Across the street was the Arthur Hackman family dairy farm and I later connected with the oldest son, Walton, who had a pivotal role in my faith journey.

 

Our family was one of the founding members of what was then called “Calvary Mennonite Church” and I understood that I was the first infant to be “dedicated” in their new church building on Route 113 on the outskirts of Souderton. Bill Anders was the pastor for my first 10 years or so; followed by Art Malles for the following five years. I knew Bill was from a Mennonite background and I came to understand Art was from a Baptist background who came with at least some appreciation for the Anabaptist heritage. It never dawned on me that we were not affiliated with any of the Mennonite Conferences – Franconia, Eastern Board, or General Conference – but I was aware that we were “different” in that our church emphasized “missions” and expressed ourselves in more “evangelical” terms. I remember my mom wore a head covering in worship at least until I was about 7 and then it kind of disappeared. I also believed our church taught the “Truth” and only a few other churches did so – none of them being “Mennonite”.

 

The two centers of my life were Calvary Mennonite and Hatfield Packing. Virtually all my friends were connected with one or the other, including most of our relatives. On the Clemens side, only 6 of the surviving 10 children of my father’s generation remained “Mennonite” with 4 of them initially or eventually ending up at Calvary (“Mennonite”). We never missed a service (as I recall), even being sure we attended a church service on Sunday mornings while away on vacation. Most of our vacations were to Highland Lake Bible Conference in upstate New York. “Christian Service Brigade” was our replacement for Boy Scouts. We attended Sunday School, worship, and Sunday evening services, Boys Brigade on Monday evening, Wednesday evening prayer meeting, and “evangelistic” services or “missionary conferences” whenever they were held in our area – or we traveled to Philadelphia or New York if someone like Billy Graham was holding services.

 

I “accepted Jesus as my Personal Savior” at age 7 when my mom convinced me that I didn’t want to “go to Hell” and later was baptized as an “adult” at age 12 at Calvary. I identified as a “Bible-believing, born-again Christian” -clearly distinguishing myself from my peers at public school and/or the workers at the meat packing plant. However, that neat world began falling apart in 6^th grade when I was sexually molested repeatedly by my male teacher. I never told my parents about this on-going trauma, believing this happened to me because I was guilty of some sin – after all, “All things work together for good to them that love God” – was one of many Bible verses I had memorized as a young child. So, when my parents presented me with the opportunity to choose to go to a “Christian school” for grades 10-12, I jumped at the prospect. Note: Christopher Dock was NOT one of the options presented to me.

 

At the Stony Brook School For Boys on Long Island, NY, I was now away from the very narrow understanding of who was a “true Christian” since the school’s chaplain came from an Anglican background and the Headmaster was
Presbyterian (and I even later learned he was a Democrat!). I learned the Apostles’ Creed, saw others “reading” their prayers, and even had classmates who were Jewish or certainly not “born again”. However, I was so convinced by my upbringing that I needed to choose the “straight and narrow way” and that “secular education” could tempt me to “drink, dance, smoke, and play cards”, I choose the safe option of going to the “evangelical Harvard”, Wheaton College after my Christian Prep School. I was only 17 when I graduated in June of 1968, mostly oblivious to world events – especially the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. All my classmates were going on to college, so the military draft wasn’t even on my radar.

 

In September 1968, en route to Wheaton, we stopped in Fort Wayne, IN to visit my dad’s youngest sister, Betty, who had been widowed several years before. My cousin Jon was home that weekend from his Alternative Service (1-W) assignment as an orderly at a local hospital and I was somewhat stunned to realize he was a Conscientious Objector. I knew there were some who chose that route but didn’t personally know them. My dad and his older brother, Ezra were drafted and both participated in WWII. My oldest brother, Jerry was drafted in 1967 into the Army and served in Korea.) Two days later, when registering for my classes at Wheaton, I was handed a rifle, military uniform, and was told I was now enrolled in the compulsory Army ROTC classes for all freshman and sophomore male students. We had military drill at 7AM two days a week and Military Science classes three days a week. It wasn’t until I took my rifle up to the 3^rd floor of a women’s dormitory for our shooting practice on the campus rifle range that the cognitive dissonance began: the targets were round circles with a bull’s eye but subconsciously I realized that, in reality, they were Vietnamese soldiers.

 

My dad would take my brothers and me hunting each fall since I was at least 10, always instructing us as we were “sighting in” our guns that “we were never to point our guns at something we didn’t wish to shoot, we ate what we killed, and we were never, ever, to point our guns at a human being.” The gun my dad gave me at age 12 for deer hunting was a German Mauser rifle he had picked up on a European battlefield when he was in the US Army infantry and had disassembled it and mailed it home. Although he had the bayonet with the swastika on it, we didn’t attach it to the rifle for deer hunting. My dad never talked about the war or his “service” in it – only telling us “I did some things I wasn’t proud of, and I promised the Lord that if I made it home safely, I’d turn my life around and go to church.”

 

So, a month later as I was approaching my 18^th birthday and was required to register for the Military Draft, I was approached by the Resident Assistant for my dormitory floor, and he asked me if I would like to pray and/or talk with him before I registered for the Draft. He was one of only a handful of Mennonites at Wheaton. We talked, prayed, and I decided that Jesus really meant what he said when he told us to “love our enemies” and I decided that I would register as a Conscientious Objector. My Draft Board wouldn’t rule on my application right away since I had an educational deferment as a college student, but I knew this decision to choose a different path might have some consequences.

 

Briefly, demanding that I be released from the ROTC requirement put me at odds with the Wheaton administration and I quickly began associating with the campus “rebels” – members of the Student Government and the few Black and LatinX students on campus. It led me to attend a Black Power Symposium that Spring at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL followed by a summer working with street gangs in Philadelphia with the evangelical organization, Teen Haven. When I returned to Wheaton in the fall, I started participating in peace marches led by a local Catholic priest at the Wheaton Draft Board. I travelled many Saturday mornings to the southside of Chicago to attend Operation Breadbasket services led by Jesse Jackson. Later I took a few courses at the nearby Maryknoll Seminary and helped lead a campus peace group at Wheaton named after its founder, Jonathan Blanchard who was a pacifist and abolitionist. It took longer for my theology to change than my politics but a Church History course my junior year (led by a dissident professor) educated me about the Anabaptist movement I never learned at Calvary; and then John Howard Yoder was (surprisingly) allowed to preach in chapel (but only once!). Just before graduating early in December 1971, I met Jim Wallis as he was just beginning as editor of The Post American, later to be re-named Sojourners Magazine) and we began a long friendship. He introduced me to Art Gish and Ron Sider in the coming year and I devoured The Politics of Jesus and The New Left and Christian Radicalism.  

 

After a year of grad school in Social Work at Temple University School of Social Administration, I decided to drop out and do my “voluntary service”. In December 1969, the Military Draft switched to a lottery system as a way to tone down a lot of the growing anti-war sentiment. My birthdate gave me the lottery number 254 so I was almost certainly not going to be drafted in 1970 or whenever I left college but I felt a moral obligation to “serve my country” as a conscientious objector. I called up my former neighbor, Walton Hackman, who I discovered was now the Secretary of the MCC Peace Section in Akron, PA to inquire about doing service. He recommended that I consider going to the deep South with a joint MDS/MCC project in rural Mississippi. (He didn’t tell me then about his own experience there during Freedom Summer.) Just before leaving for Glen Allan, Mississippi, he invited me to supper and after discussing with him my excitement about The Politics of Jesus, he handed me a copy of William Stringfellow’s An Ethic For Christians and Other Aliens In A Strange Land. After some adventures in Mississippi, including 2 weekends in Philadelphia, MS, Walton asked if I would be willing to serve a year in Washington, DC at the Peace Section DC office.

 

At our MCC VS orientation in Akron for that assignment I met Ladon Sheats and heard about Koinonia Farm for the first time. Ladon showed a multi-media presentation on “Values” – comparing and contrasting the values of our American culture and the values of the Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Jesus - and that planted seeds for me to travel to south Georgia after that year. Meanwhile, in Washington, DC I lived in the home of a former VS couple, John Swarr and Eva Beidler, because there was no VS house for MCC volunteers. John invited me to be part of a Monday Night Bible Study Group at the Community For Creative Nonviolence where I was blessed to be part of a group led by Phil Berrigan and Liz Macalister. I was now a long way from my anti-Catholic youth at Calvary Mennonite! We studied Abraham Heschel’s The Prophets and I was further initiated in the growing anti-nuclear movement after the Vietnam War ended. After several forays into quasi-legal protest at the White House, Liz encouraged me to take the next step and risk arrest more directly during the last major demonstration against the Vietnam War in March 1975. I told Delton Franz at the Peace Section office that I felt called to do this and he (somewhat reluctantly -as we were only an office of 3) agreed that I could act on my conscience.

 

It was my letter to the editor of the Souderton Independent about my arrest that caused John Ruth to call Walton to inquire about me. Walton later told me John was somewhat chagrined that I was someone from a break-away group rather than one of the Mennonites who remained in that tradition. My visits with Walton after moving to Koinonia in the fall of 1975 often led to discussions about my own family history with the Mennonites that I never knew. While only in jail for 6 hours at that first arrest, I was shocked to learn that a few of my 61 fellow arrestees refused release “on their own recognizance” because, they said, it wouldn’t have been offered to them if they were Black, uneducated, or poor. I thought I had taken a major step – only to realize there were many harder and deeper challenges ahead.   

 

At Koinonia I learned about active peacemaking in the context of a residential community. One could choose to act as a “lone wolf” but if you wanted to last for the long haul, you needed others to challenge and support you. After a week of risky protests inside the Pentagon at the beginning of September 1980, Ladon Sheats approached me in about a possible Prayer Pilgrimage to the plant where all US nuclear weapons are assembled - it took me a while before saying “yes”. (I did not know at that time about the plans for the first Plowshares witness which would occur in the next few days but Ladon, now living at Jonah House, did.)

 

Fortunately, Christine and two other Koinonia friends were able to join me in the trip to Amarillo and the Pantex Plant in early February 1981. Gail, 8 months pregnant, and Christine chose to watch from a ½ mile away in case we were shot by the armed guards, but Edwin rode in the car with me and helped me get out the folding ladder we constructed to get over the first 12’ fence. As we entered the grounds of the huge Pantex plant, I definitely noticed the increase of adrenaline – but surprisingly I didn’t feel fear. Our group had spent the previous 3 days talking, praying, and even practicing climbing the ladders. Christine and I talked about the possibility of being shot at this heavily guarded facility. But when my faith overcame my fear, I felt truly free! I was moved to tears when a Resident Partner from Koinonia mailed me a photo of the whole community standing behind a banner reading, “Hang in there!” that they took on Easter Sunday morning as they prayed for me in jail. I felt a lot of support from my community over the 6 months during arraignment, trial, sentencing, while remaining in the county jail and then on to Federal prison.

 

After release from the Texarkana Federal Prison, I took the Greyhound bus back to Georgia and my waiting community. Four years later, and with quite a lot of discussion, 2 other community members joined me as we sat on the railroad tracks when the White Train loaded with nuclear warheads destined for the submarine base in Charleston, SC came through a town that was about 20 minutes from Koinonia. We realized we faced a possible 1-year sentence (assuming the train would stop – and we took precautions to clearly inform both law enforcement and the railroad security personnel of our intent) but ended up with only 5 days in jail before public pressure forced our judge to have a hearing on our unusual charges- contempt of court! While we fasted in jail, the Resident Partners of our community skipped their weekly Partners Meeting on Sunday night to travel to the jail and sing to us from outside its walls!

 

I now see as providential that my parents had a huge, bound copy of The Martyr’s Mirror in our home. We didn’t have a TV until I was 13 so I spent a lot of time exploring what books we had. I learned at an early age that following my faith could have serious consequences.  I owe much of my peacemaking desires to the nurturing I received from the Anabaptist tradition: The history of conscientious objection, taking the Scriptures seriously about loving ones enemies, books and stories of Peace Church people challenging the war machine and injustice, Walton, the Sojourners folk, Ladon Sheats and the teaching and witness of Clarence Jordan, Vincent Harding and his influence on Martin King, Mary Sprunger-Froese and her husband Peter who were part of the Pantex 6, Walter Wink, Ched Myers and Elaine Enns, … the list goes on. Some identified as Mennonites, others as Anabaptists, still others as “disciples” or “followers of the way”. It is somewhat ironic that it took a Church History course at an evangelical college to help guide me back to my own (squandered) heritage. 

 

Being part of Peace Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan and later returning to Iraq were rare privileges to stretch my peacemaking skills and muscles. Many friends have helped me broaden my peacemaking to recognize the intersections with climate justice, racial reconciliation, interfaith cooperation, correcting economic disparities, re-learning history from the view of the underclass, marginalized, and oppressed, … When I first declared myself a conscientious objector, it was primarily a personal position – what I wouldn’t do. It hadn’t affected my politics, my lifestyle, or my theology. I was primarily a passivist. It took me a while to learn that to be a pacifist, one had to address the root causes that created the conflicts – one had to actively engage the issues and struggles of others – not be content in remaining “pure” (I wouldn’t do that!). And so, my journey into peacemaking continues … 

 

Christine and I were married in May of 1978 and our sons, Micah and Zach, were born in 1983 and 1986.

[discussion followed].

My Dad and Prayer

Grandsons carry the casket to the gravesite

Praying To Lester? by Steve Clemens

He approached me at the end of the luncheon after the burial of my father. We had a time of sharing after the meal and many of those who took the microphone were members of Christian Business Men Connection, CBMC, an organization my dad had participated in and financially supported for dozens of years. This man, however, had a different message. I had spoken about how my dad's courage in traveling unarmed to the capital city of our national enemy  was one of several things that inspired me to choose the path of conscientious objector to the Vietnam War and my own later travel to Iraq and Afghanistan. The man, appearing to be in his 80s, told me how my dad had looked him up at a CBMC gathering after hearing he was a pacifist (and a distinct minority among that evangelical group).

"I'm committed to nonviolence too", he exclaimed to me and then told him how my dad shared with him that he had a son in prison for his protest against war. He told me my dad wasn't real clear about understanding "why" I had chosen that path and wanted to talk with others who shared his faith but also chose nonviolence as well. He told me he wore a shirt with a picture of a former nun who was protesting nuclear weapons and I smiled broadly and told him about my year-long Bible Study group with her and her husband, Liz McAlister and Phil Berrigan and how helpful they were to me on my own journey.

It got me thinking about my many radical Catholic friends.

When I was growing up, I was taught to shun Roman Catholics because they "prayed to Mary" and many also prayed for their dead friends and relatives in order to shorten their time in "purgatory". As I got to know Catholic believers for myself as an adult, I discovered that many suggested that we should also pray to saints who have gone before us to intercede on our behalf with the Divine. I had been taught to always pray " in Jesus' name" as he was the only intercessor "between God and man[sic]".

Well, Jesus calls all of us to join him as "sons and daughters of God" and we are called to " be like him".

My dad told me several weeks ago when I traveled east to say my goodbyes that "every morning I pray for Micah and Andrea and Zach". In fact, many of the CBMC men who spoke at the luncheon noted how "long" my dad's daily prayer list was - not only my sons but all his sons, their children and great grandchildren, missionaries, and many others. So why should I think he'd stop praying for all of us when his heart stopped beating?

It brings a smile to my face just thinking that dad continues to intercede on my behalf as he, according to his own vision and dreams before he passed, converses with "Jesus and his disciples". He'll even get a chance to meet with the Berrigan brothers and get more clarity on the attempts at faithful nonviolent witness of his youngest son.

Lester, please keep me and Christine and our families on your list.

My Dad, The Diplomat

Remembering a Hog Butcher Diplomat by Steve Clemens

Not many years had passed since the demagoguery of Senator Joe McCarthy when President Eisenhower embarked on what he called “People-to-People” diplomacy. I don’t know the details because it happened before my teenage years but my father set aside his butcher’s apron and knife to travel with a group of other business leaders to East and West Berlin and Moscow.

Dad returned home with photos and stories of the stark contrasts between grocery stores from “the East and the West” but what I remember most from that trip was not the bravery it must have taken for my Dad to travel to the capital city of our “national enemy” but rather the fact that he brought home seal-skin hats that we had seen many Russians wore in the winter in the National Geographic photos we looked at as kids.

I sit amazed nowadays at the courage he embodied to take such risks. We regularly read the virulent anti-Communist propaganda tracts put out by the John Birch Society so to be seen by others as one who would travel to meet “the enemy” was in reality, my Dad’s embodiment of the Jonah story. Nineveh was the Moscow for Jonah and I’m sure my Dad’s theology probably included Jonah’s “repent or risk divine destruction” message even though in those days I think it was forbidden for him to take his Bible “behind the Iron Curtain”.

I do remember our church supported some missionaries who “smuggled Bibles” to the people ruled by “godless Communists” but wonder now how my father’s friends and work colleagues reacted to his willingness to travel to the enemy’s home turf unarmed as a people-to-people diplomat. I wore that beautiful seal-skin hat with pride – after all, it was a novelty and it fit in well with the “coon-skin Davy Crockett” hats my brothers and I wore a few years before.

Dad left school after the tenth grade to help in the family butchering business. He was very proficient with the knife – from boning out hams at work to showing his sons how to skin a rabbit or gut a deer on our hunting adventures. It is easy to remember those typically “macho” scenes of a father and sons bonding together while fishing or hunting but from my vantage point now of fifty-five plus years later, it is his willingness to stretch out his hand to embrace an enemy is a memory I want to cherish.

Rest in Peace, Dad. Your lessons to me as we sighted-in our shotguns or rifles before going hunting in my teen years always came with your proviso: “never, ever, point your gun at a human being; never shoot anything you don’t wish to kill; and eat what you kill.”

It was those messages in the back of my mind when I turned 18 and registered for the military draft and fired the rifle assigned to me on the Wheaton College ROTC rifle range that caused me to declare I was a Conscientious Objector as it dawned on me that my targets were no longer pheasants, deer, or rabbits but rather “Viet Cong”.

You never bragged about your role as part of what our culture deems “the Greatest Generation” as you followed General Patton’s troops through France and into Germany trying to recover the bodies of dead and wounded GIs off the battlefield as German snipers aimed at the spotlight you operated. I never got the message from you about the heroism of going to war – even against the Nazis. Granted, you were only in your early 20s and I remember how invulnerable I felt at that age. But real courage was modeled for this son by your un-armed attempt at diplomacy to those you saw as “trapped behind the Iron Curtain.”

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It is my prayer that I, too, have found ways to model such leadership for my own sons in some small way to help heal the wounds of war and division.

Daniel Berrigan: Mentor and Inspiration

Dan Berrigan: Mentor and Inspiration by Steve Clemens, May 3, 2016

I don’t think I heard about the draft file burning at Catonsville, MD until a year or two later. After all, our high school baseball team was hoping to win its second straight Ivy Prep League title (we fell one game short with me in the on-deck circle with bases-loaded and two outs) and I was caught up in Senior Weekend and my up-coming graduation. Even Dr. King’s assassination the month before didn’t register in my sheltered life at an all-boys college prep school on Long Island. My life of privilege allowed me to virtually ignore the increasing carnage of the Vietnam War because it was assumed all 41 of our graduating class of 1968 would be attending college and receive “student deferments” as long as we maintained a decent grade-point average.

I do remember thinking that the destruction of property, coupled with the fact that most of the actors of the Catonsville 9 were Roman Catholic, was not an appropriate act of dissent when I became aware of it about a year after the May 17, 1968 occurrence. At the time of their trial, I was wrestling with the momentous decision of registering for the military draft. A month earlier I was issued a rifle and a uniform as part of my registration at Wheaton College; all male students were required to enroll in U.S. Army ROTC unless they had an honorable discharge from military service or a 4-F (physically or morally unfit for service) or 1-O (conscientious objector) status from their draft board. I was scheduled to register for Selective Service on October 16 when I turned 18 years old.

It was not an easy decision; my father had left his Mennonite heritage and entered the U.S. Army when drafted in World War II. He never talked to me (or to my brothers, I assumed) about his experience in France and Germany as a radioman in the infantry as his unit followed General George Patton’s soldiers. Only after his 80^th birthday did he share any details with us about this period of his life and then mostly to say he wasn’t proud of the things he had done but he had “promised the Lord that if he got home safely”, he’d return to the church and “follow the Lord.” Even though the Mennonite Church my Dad helped found in 1950 never affiliated with any of the Mennonite conferences and did not stress the traditional “peace witness” expected of Mennonites, I was aware that some of my relatives were pacifist or conscientious objectors even if my parents weren’t.

After prayer, reading scripture, and talking with a Resident Assistant on my college dorm wing, I decided that I must register as a conscientious objector – to all wars, not just the current one in Vietnam. But it was a personal decision – a moral stand as an individual – rather than a social or political decision at that point. I couldn’t in good conscience take up a gun to kill the Vietnamese but I also wasn’t sitting in judgment on those who did go or my government’s “foreign policy”. I knew little about what was happening in “the far East” other than what my parent’s copies of US News and World Report stressed: those “godless Communists” were killing our “Christian missionaries” and wanted to force their atheism on all of southeast Asia.

So Father Daniel Berrigan, his brother Phil Berrigan and the other actors of the drama at the Draft Board office in Catonsville, Maryland didn’t register. A year after becoming a conscientious objector, I started participating in anti-war marches on the Wheaton, Illinois Draft Board, led by “Father Tom”, a Maryknoll order priest from nearby Glen Ellyn. Sometime that fall or early winter I came across Dan’s book about their trial, The Trial of The Catonsville Nine. I was struck by Dan’s poetic description of the draft files – they were cast as “hunting licenses for human beings.” That made me re-think what was really going on. As I spent more time with Father Tom and other “radical Catholics” at anti-war marches or taking courses at the Maryknoll Seminary where he taught, I was struck by their vibrant Christian faith and was jolted from my anti-Catholic upbringing.

That was a good thing as the books of Dan Berrigan fed my soul and spirit in a way that few others did. No Bars to Manhood, The Dark Night of Resistance, Night Flight to Hanoi, They Call Us Dead Men, The Raft is Not the Shore, America is Hard To Find, To Dwell In Peace, We Die Before We Live,  …. The list could go on and on, especially his commentaries on the Psalms (Uncommon Prayer), the Prophets, Lamentations, Exodus, … Again, insight, challenge, humor, conviction. I didn’t understand probably half of his poetry – but what I did understand, wow! Especially “No and Yes and the Whole Damned Thing” that was published in Sojourners Magazine in 1976.

I only met Dan Berrigan a few times – the first being at my first arrest for civil disobedience a month before the Vietnam War ended. He was one of the 62 of us who refused to leave the grounds of the White House in March 1975, demanding that we meet with President Ford to reject the continued funding of the South Vietnamese military and in rejecting what we called his “punitive clemency” program for Vietnam War draft resisters. I was much closer to his brother Phil and his partner in resistance, Liz McAlister, having joined their Bible study group the year before. In 1980 I heard Dan speak at a national Fellowship of Reconciliation gathering at Berea College and then in the mid-1980s Dan came to our Georgia communities gathering at Koinonia Farm to lead a weekend Bible study on the book of Revelations. I saw him again briefly at larger gatherings or demonstrations but his inspiration and challenge to me was much greater than my personal contact with him.

What stands out most vividly was his claim that our [Christian] baptism is an embracing of the life and crucifixion of Jesus, and, when we are raised out of the water, our resurrection to new life means that there is nothing the state can do to threaten us if we’ve already chosen to “die with Christ”. The state has no power over us since it’s most harsh sanction, death, has already been embraced in our choosing to follow Jesus. The state can jail us – but we’ve already “died to Christ.” They Call Us Dead Men – if we can excuse the pre-feminist exclusionary language – was Dan’s call to me to act out of my faith rather than my fears. Dan didn’t just write about faith and resistance, he embodied it. He incarnated his faith by standing in the street, hammering warheads, ministering to other fellow prisoners, and sharing the Eucharist with all who gathered.

Dan, I love you, I thank you, I miss you. But I know your spirit is still with us every time we gather to say “No” and “Yes” – not too soon, not too quickly, not too easily, not too cheaply. Until our “No” is swallowed up in [Christ’s] “Yes”. We are called to continue on the path you trod for the past 50+ years.

No and yes and the whole damn thing … A poem by Daniel Berrigan. 1976

   What is the point in saying no,

What is the point in not saying no?

   The questions make sense as long as there is a point toward which the questions are moving.

   If I say no, and there is a point at distance, at which someone is saying yes, then it makes sense to say no; for my no is transfigured, hastening into that yes.

   If I do not say no, and there is a point at distance at which someone is saying yes, then my not saying no also makes sense, as long as I am attentive to that yes, and want my not naysaying to echo and be included in that yes.

   I may however say no in a void, just as I may refuse to say no, in a void. In which case my no saying and my non no saying are lost in a void.

   We look for land marks, we look for sea marks.

   “When we are seated in a moving vessel and our eyes are fixed upon an object on the same vessel, we do not notice that we are moving. But if we look further, upon something that is not moving along with us, for instance upon the coast, we notice immediately that we are moving. It is the same with life. When the whole world lives wrongly we fail to notice it, but should only one person awake spiritually, the life of all others becomes immediately apparent. And the others always persecute those who do not live like them.”

                                    (Pascal)

   We must come from somewhere if we are to go somewhere.

   We must go somewhere if we are to remember that we come from somewhere.

   There is only one word in all creation. ‘Jesus is the YES of God.’ (Paul)

   We however dwell on the other side of that yes; the grave side, the dark side, the death side, the underside.

   So it is important not to say yes too soon, too easily, too often, too cheaply. This would be to debase the currency of life itself which is not a money, but the blood of our brothers and sisters, the blood of Christ.

   Just as it is important not to say no in a void. This would be to join our voices to the despairing wail of the damned.

   It is important to say no in view of, in the direction of, a yes which is forever distant, forever nearing.

   Because we are hungry for fullness, for non death, for life, for non suffering.

   Because we cannot merely stand by  or bystand or spectate or grandstand or freeload or grimace.

   Because a because joins us, life to lifeline, to the cause of goodness, of love, of truth in deed.

   Because the distance between the no we insist on and the yes that insists on us, is constantly narrowing, reaching, almost touching.

   Therefore our word to all systems of this world, right, left, center, imperial, colonial, fascist, racist, capitalist, Marxist, maoist, castroist, reformist, is

   Not yet, not enough, not quite, not at all, not by a half, not by a long shot.

   Ours being an ethic of the promise, implying that we keep our promise; to say no until the day when our no is swallowed in His yes; until then we await and press forward and trust to His keeping of the promise which is to say a payment no power or form or arrangement of this world can estimate or hand over to mint or hoard or bribe us with

a war payment but more

a blood sacrifice and more

a livid stigma and more

   His payment coming due on His day; nothing less than the substance of his promise which is our rising from the ‘body of this death’

Life unimaginable

to the degree that our misery, our moral stagnation, our spiritual and corporal and social plague, is beyond healing

any healing but one; maranatha, come Lord Jesus.