How does one step away from warism?

Ted Grimsrud—September 26, 2025

When I began college in the Fall of 1972, I had recently registered for the draft. I knew I’d go willingly if called. I accepted my place in the American warist environment—the willing conscript. By the time I finished college in the Spring of 1976, I rejected warism. I considered myself a pacifist and knew I would never go to war or support war in any way. This post will describe what led to this radical change. In the Fall of 1972 turmoil reigned in the United States. At that point I remained mostly oblivious to the currents that swirled as Richard Nixon wrapped up his presidential campaign and won a landslide victory—and planted the seeds that led to his fall with the Watergate break-in. I knew that the Vietnam War seemed to be winding down, though when I started my freshman year the draft remained a possibility.

I started at Oregon College of Education (OCE) in Monmouth, a small town about 15 miles west of Salem. OCE mainly focused on training schoolteachers, but it had evolved to be a general liberal arts college. About 3,000 students attended, mostly from small Oregon towns. Even though I knew hardly any other students, I felt surrounded by people like me. I found it to be a pleasant place to be, and I enjoyed my two years there. I felt fine with my classes. I could get by pretty easily, though nothing really caught my attention. Sports, not ideas or big questions, provided the connecting point with my new friends. In general, I experienced my first two years in college as a relaxed and congenial time. However, I did feel uneasy about my faith. I only cautiously brought up faith convictions with others. I had no luck in finding a church or fellowship group. I visited a few places but found nothing that seemed interesting or nurturing.

The ironic 1972 presidential election

I had exulted when Richard Nixon won the 1968 election. As far as I remember, I felt positive about Nixon during his first term. I certainly sympathized with him far more than his antiwar opponents. I rejoiced when the law changed to set the voting age at 18. I had long wanted to vote. I delighted that the first presidential election after the law changed would happen when I was 18. I proudly cast my ballot for Nixon and celebrated his resounding victory.

That I would have so unthinkingly supported Nixon indicates that my embedded theology of uncritical nationalism remained operative. I later learned of deeply problematic Nixon warist policies as well as of his many character flaws. Those flaws played out in ways that would have been in tension with the values of my familial embedded theology, but at the time I remained ignorant of them. Ironically, Nixon’s opponent, George McGovern, had more compatibility with most of my values. His integrity, genuine Christian faith, and convictions about helping life be better for vulnerable people should have rung true for me. In relation to the peace convictions I would later embrace, McGovern stands as the most attractive major party candidate in the entire 20^th century. The mainstream media did not give McGovern a fair shake, but even if they had, I would not at that time have been attracted to the policies he advocated.

The 1972 presidential election marks an important point in my theological and political evolution. At the age of 18: I accepted the orientation toward life provided by my society and reinforced by my church community. I supported the candidate whose warist policies wreaked terrible havoc in Southeast Asia and in many other places in the world. I simply did not know better. I remained oblivious to the mainstream political leader who more than any other offered an alternative to the warist momentum that characterized the United States since the end of World War II. My views would change over the next several years, decisively and rather quickly.

A couple of quiet years

I got more comfortable at OCE as my first year proceeded. Each quarter my academic performance improved though I still did not get excited about my learning. The big problem remained keeping my faith hidden and inactive. My struggle followed from the kind of Christianity I had been taught by the fundamentalists that had little relevance to my life. Plus, I did feel ashamed in my environment to be seen as a Christian—a category of person my friends tended to scorn. The pressure I felt to evangelize remained impossible for me in face of my reserved personality and my feeling ashamed of being a Christian.

Many of the currents in the broader American society at this time—the Vietnam War protest movement, hippies, Black Panthers—frightened me. However, for a college campus, OCE remained safe. I do not remember noticeable turmoil or unrest on campus. I remained committed to transferring to the University of Oregon for my junior year. I wanted to be a journalist, and OCE did not offer a journalism major. The most influential events of my OCE years actually happened during the summer after my second year, just before I moved to Eugene.

I decided to stay in the Monmouth area and worked in the woods. I also joined a summer league softball team. I got to know several Vietnam War vets and had my complacency about my blank check nationalism shaken for the first time. A co-worker had fought in Vietnam. I liked him but he lived with a lot of pain. He had had many traumatic experiences while in Vietnam and clearly suffered from the consequences of what he had seen and done. Some of his stories frightened and sobered and enlightened me. They sure made me glad I hadn’t had to go.

My softball team consisted mainly of vets returning from the war. They shared many negative consequences of their time in Vietnam. I heard quite a few stories and saw how they struggled in their lives and how hurt they seemed to be from their experiences. The experiences of being around these folks greatly impacted me. I perceived that this war had a deeply problematic impact on those who fought in it. For the first time, I began to question many of the assumptions I had about my country and about war.

More of the same—at first

In my first term at the UO, I did fine but was not very engaged with my classes. Near the end of the term, I found a church. A friend from high school had just moved to Eugene in order to be part of Riverview Street Church. I decided to go with him. Riverview helped prepare me for the major changes I would soon undergo. In many ways, Riverview echoed Elkton Bible Baptist—though significantly more moderate. Riverview fit well for that moment in my life. I found the sense of low-key seriousness about the implications of faith to be attractive.

However, after about six months, I decided to switch to a sister congregation, Orchard Street Church. Orchard was much closer to the UO campus with a more college student-oriented membership. Before I left Riverview, I met with a teacher who provided my first encounter with theology as an intellectual endeavor. One particular theme stood out. The teacher introduced me to the term “eschatology,” the doctrine about the culmination of human history. I had not thought before about doctrines. I did not realize that I had been taught theological doctrines. I had assumed that in sermons and Sunday classes and the readings and taped lectures, I had been given a straightforward description of the one way all Christians looked at things.

It shook me up to realize that I had been given just one particular view of the End Times (the constant emphasis on Jesus returning at any moment). I had had no idea of other possible views. In fact, the teacher said, while he believed in the particular view I had been taught, most Christians had different views. Learning that people had different views shocked me. But it immediately became fascinating to me. I sensed that theology could have a lot more appeal than I had ever imagined. For the first time I thought of the theological task as involving discernment, choices, new thinking, engaging a diversity of perspectives, debates with conversation partners, and a sense of discovering new things and not simply repeating what one is told.

A community of discernment

At Orchard, I immediately joined a new study group focused on Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer. I loved the class. Reading and talking about Schaeffer had a huge impact on me. He actually stood far to the right, both theologically and politically. However, during the summer of 1975, Schaeffer’s conservatism remained muted. He had become known for his sympathy toward the counterculture. Many saw him as a guru-like figure for student-types asking big questions. Even though he offered conventional answers, Schaeffer emphasized the validity of question-asking. All questions should be on the table. I had not imagined this kind of openness before.

Schaeffer’s conservatism made him seem safe and reliable. He said we should ask questions, but he also offered assurances that those questions could be answered in ways that would confirm the core truths of orthodox evangelical Christianity. Along with Schaeffer’s assurances about truth and his affirmations of the basic beliefs of true Christianity, Orchard also provided safety and security for engaging new questions. Orchard’s theology still resided in the mainstream of evangelical Christianity. I felt safe to move ahead in my adventure of becoming a thinking Christian and willingly face all the questions and follow the truth wherever it led me.

So, I began my senior year in college with energy to work on my intellectual questions in my classes. I took a couple of provocative philosophy classes. I read more and more about faith and the modern world. I still had a long way to go, but I moved ahead quickly. Someone had subscribed for the church to a new magazine put out by politically leftist evangelicals called Post American. I discovered a pile of recent issues and devoured them. Here finally I found people who spoke from the perspective of faith to the nagging questions I had had since my encounters with the Vietnam War vets. I had not yet made a pacifist commitment. But it would not be long. New people joined our Orchard community who had interests in thinking about politics and other social issues in light of our Christian convictions. We all continued to talk.

A small group in the congregation decided to buy a house together in order to live as an intentional community. One element of our hopes was to find ways to witness for peace in face of the American Empire. As I came to the end of my college program, I decided that I could not see myself pursuing a career in journalism. I wanted to devote my energies to the life of faith, not to being a sportswriter. The influence of Post American and Schaeffer and some of his colleagues undermined my uncritical nationalism. I learned more about the injustices of American intervention in Vietnam. I also grew in my interest in understanding and applying the teaching of Jesus and the Bible to current issues.

I came to see that the message of the gospel and the message of the American Empire stood in tension, even in conflict. To imagine such a conflict opened doors in my mind to new possibilities. My actual college classes played only a secondary role as I stepped away from warism. Hearing about the Vietnam War shook me up. And the exciting new world of radical evangelical theology I learned about helped me to see American warism as it is, not through the lens of my embedded theology of uncritical nationalism.

I still had one final crucial step to take as I transitioned from being a college student to being a full-time church activist—self-consciously and overtly to affirm Christian pacifism. This next step ended up being extraordinarily important for the future of my life. It provided an organizing principle for my Christian faith—even as it would, within a few years, lead me (and my new wife, Kathleen) away from Orchard Street Church.

[This is the eighth of a long series of blog posts, “A Christian pacifist in the American Empire” (this link takes you to the series homepage). The seventh post in the series, “Competing embedded theologies,” may be found by clicking on this link. The ninth post, “A second conversion” may be found by clicking on this link.]