Baptist and Pacifist

Chris Gehrz has an exceptional post on Swedist Baptists and pacifism, and there is much more at the blog link [HT: JS]

During World War II, nearly 12,000 Americans registered as conscientious objectors and joined the Civilian Public Service (CPS). Unwilling to take human life, they instead served their country by doing everything from fighting forest fires to serving as test subjects for medical experiments. Most came from historic peace churches: Mennonite, Brethren, or Quaker. But Christians from over 200 denominations participated in the CPS, including a Baptist from Stromsburg, Nebraska named Curtis Johnson.

I came across his story while researching the history of my employer, Bethel University. Throughout the war Bethel president Henry Wingblade and college dean Emery Johnson regularly corresponded with service members from the Swedish Baptist General Conference. Curtis Johnson had spent two years as a member of the reserve officer training corps (ROTC) at the University of Nebraska. But after receiving Emery Johnson’s letter in late 1943, he wrote back to explain that he had long since

resolved that so long as life lasts, I would not permit myself to be enrolled in such an organization whose sole purpose is that of forcing a brother man to concede to our collective will, under penalty of death at our hands. The practice of war is, to put it but mildly, no more than government-sanctioned mass murder; and of course, one that has as his sole guide (poorly tho he may follow it) the example and teaching of such a one as Christ, finds it difficult to reconcile these entirely opposite behaviors in his thinking.

By that point, Curtis Johnson was at CPS Camp 27 in northern Florida, digging latrines for a project to combat the spread of hookworm. “They label us variously,” he told the Bethel dean, “conscientious objectors – pacifists – conchies – C.O.’s, religious objectors — and others that shouldn’t be printed. 1700 of us are in prison for the heinous crime of refusing to kill our fellow-man. 7000 are in camps such as this, serving out the duration in manual-labor, without pay of any kind, for the same reason.” After a long statement of Christian pacifism, he encouraged Emery to continue the conversation — “but I ask of you, back up everything you say by the example of teaching of Jesus, in whose Name I write, and seek to serve.”

Both that letter and the dean’s response a few weeks later are remarkable documents, all the more so because both Johnsons appealed so explicitly to their shared Baptist heritage. First, Curtis:

As I understand it, the Baptists have no creed save the Bible, or particularly as the New Testament portrays Christ’s plan for the life of an individual. You know, Mr. Johnson, Christ did set a tremendously difficult course for his followers to take. Suppose He were here now, walking along with you and me, suggesting to us a course of action in days such as these. Truthfully, can you conceive of Him giving His o.k. to your taking the life of some man, perhaps a German or a Japanese, some man that He died to save? Can you conceive of Him along side you in an airplane, dropping tons of explosive on helpless women and children, even tho your intention is to hit only munitions plants? Would He man the trigger on them occasionally for you, and show you how to do it more accurately? Did you ever try to imagine Commando Jesus Christ, private, first class, armed with every sort of knife, or club, or revolver, violently bringing the Kingdom of God here to men, and forcibly making them believe in Him as the all-powerful by physical process and military might?

…Perhaps I have a different version of the Bible than you have, but somehow, I don’t find anything like that picture of Christ in, for instance, the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of Matthew.

Indeed, nine years earlier his denomination had resolved that “War in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ and of human experience is a matter of hell.” Delegates to that meeting were convinced that “all Christians should absolutely refuse to take up arms against fellow men…”

But such attitudes were hard to find among Swedish Baptists after Pearl Harbor. And Curtis Johnson could hardly have picked a less sympathetic correspondent than Bethel’s dean. A few months later Emery Johnson complained to an alumnus serving in the Army Air Force that too many Bethel students were entering the school’s seminary as a way of dodging the draft: “We have among us very many Christian softies…”

But much as he disagreed with Curtis’s utter rejection of war, Emery nonetheless affirmed his freedom to come to that conclusion — and hinted that the war was being fought to preserve that Baptist distinctive:

The Baptists have always maintained that freedom of conscience is fundamental, and have insisted that man be allowed to make his own interpretation of the Master’s teachings under the leadership of the Spirit. Baptists have always insisted that church and state be separated. Baptists continue to hold these convictions and are always ready to fight to maintain these fundamental concepts.