American Christian pacifism, by Thomas Holsinger
Thomas has a first-hand perspective in his guest posting:

I can only speak for my own church's experience of Quakers living in a frontier society. I'm one of the Brethren - effectively German Quakers closely related to Amish, Mennonites and German Baptists. See http://www.cob-net.org/folder.htm. Theologically we're close enough to straight Baptist to exchange emergency pastors with them but are quite different socially.

The true roots of pacifist theology lie in individual salvation - the objection to war is not so much that war is evil but that it is evil to kill anyone who doesn't deserve it. People should refrain from killing other people to save their own souls, not to save others or to make society better. True religious pacifists deem any killing or use of force by themselves as a mortal threat to their own souls because they might be mistaken about the moral consequences of such acts. Use of force is wrong in its own right as well as being the start of a slippery slope which might lead to killing.

So religious pacifists won't use any force at all, let alone kill, to save their own souls. The early history of the Brethren in America included one ghastly Indian massacre in which most of a German village in Pennsylvannia was hacked down while lined up and praying, en mass, "Gott mit uns" (God is with us) over and over. The survivors high-tailed it east to the protection of the "English" militia.

It was a tough world. Holsingers and other Brethren came here because the penalty for refusing conscription in many German states was the murder of one's children. My grandmother told me folk stories about 17th-18th century soldiers crying while turning baby carriages over so they wouldn't have to look at the babies' faces while running them through with bayonets.

But there are ranges of opinion. The more morally confident are today called "conscientious objectors" who object to killing in war. They will use force and even kill to improve a situation when they feel it is morally justified. They just won't kill under orders from somebody else. Each individual must make his own calls and answer on Judgment Day for mistakes.

Indian encounters such as the one detailed above produced changes necessary for community survival, i.e., of course there were "enforcers". Some Brethren would fight to defend their communities, or even property. There is a wonderful passage in my great-uncle Paul's family history about young Jacob Holsinger (born in 1732 on a ship anchored off Philadelphia) doing the latter about 1750. Few Holsingers have been pacifists since. One who was ended up as the chief printer for General Clinton in New York City during the Revolution - it was the most a loyal pacifist could do for his King (I think he got 2000 or 6000 pounds compensation upon resettling in England after the war for his health). The King was the one who protected us from the Indians - few German settlers were Rebels.

Civil War draft officials in Lancaster County, Pennsylvannia, learned the hard way about the distinction between pacifists and the 19th Century equivalent of "conscientious objectors". Consider the term "dry gulch" used as a verb. The only way to learn which Brethren were pacifists and which weren't was to go to church with them for twenty years.

We're pretty well assimilated now. It started in the Civil War when the quite abolitionist Brethren had some hard calls to make. Frank Holsinger lost the use of an arm in the Crater commanding a company of the 13th Colored Infantry. He is pretty tough-looking in the family history photo. My father's name is Galen and his brother's was Virgil (both were Army officers in WWII - Pop was an infantry lieutenant in the 96th Division on Okinawa), but all their children & grandchildren have English names. My older cousin Dave was 1A-O during the Vietnam War and volunteered as a Navy hospital corpsman when he got his draft notice - he decided he'd rather serve with people who knew what they were doing than be drafted, and somehow ended up in a VA hospital instead of assigned to the Marines.

I am most definitely neither a pacifist nor a conscientious objector (CO), but my church experience made me familiar with the theology. I have not seen any justification for pacifism or CO status other than individual salvation. All the other justifications seem quite fuzzy-minded. My church has given this much thought for centuries and, IMO, gotten it right.

As for your example, Jacob Holsinger would not have hesitated. But we were always trouble-makers.

IMO a distinction should be drawn between religious and philosophical objections to war and killing. The latter's objective is always improving this world. Old-style religious pacifism/objections to war focus on getting to the next world; their concern is their personal salvation. Since about 1965 a lot of people with so-called religious objections to war have equated religion with philosophy - they don't see a difference, but there is one. They think spirituality is the same as salvation. Attitudes towards personal responsibility have a lot to do with this.

It is easy to refute the opinions of those whose pacifism and/or objections to war are based on this world. It is much more difficult, if not impossible, to refute such when it is based on personal salvation as that is a matter of personal faith, but those people are really rare even in my church.

I personally doubt it is possible to justify pacifism or objections to war based on this world.

Some history at http://www.cob-net.org/timeline.htm:

1882 Progressive leader Henry Holsinger, publisher of The Progressive Christian having been reprimanded by the 1882 Annual Meeting to refrain from 'slanderous and schismatic articles' is disfellowshiped from Annual Meeting

1883 The Brethren Church founded in Dayton, Ohio, by Henry Holsinger and other Progressive sympathizers, official voice of publication The Progressive Christian is renamed Brethren Evangelist

1908 Church of the Brethren is the new denominational label of the former German Baptism Brethren, officially adopted at it's bicentennial celebration on June 9 at the Des Moines, Iowa, Annual Conference. In the wake of the 1880 schism's of the Progressive Brethren Church and the Old German Baptist Brethren, this change now reflected the need of the very large central group to establish their own identity. The General Missionary and Tract Committee also became known as the General Mission Board.

by Donald Sensing, 2/13/2003 06:43:45 AM. Permalink |