A second conversion and a new community

Ted Grimsrud—September 30, 2025

War and peace concerns filled the air during my college years (1972-76). I had to face the possibility of being drafted. I would have gone if called but did not like the idea. The draft ended the year I turned 19 and saved me from that. Then, I learned to know several returning Vietnam War vets. Those encounters showed me how traumatic their experience had been. I never had any kind of discussion in any of my churches about a principled opposition to war. No one ever said in my presence, to quote a John Prine song of the time, “Jesus don’t like killing, no matter what the reason for.” I am not sure I could have said what “pacifism” even meant. But the idea of going to war did weigh on my mind.

A decisive step

All of a sudden, though, something clicked for me. I took a decisive step, once and for all, and decided against war. I realized that I could never take up arms, and that in fact Jesus always opposed violence no matter how it might be justified. I did not make this move due to careful, thorough conversations with like-minded friends. I simply, at the right moment, accepted this conviction. That move set the direction of the rest of my life.

Though my turn toward pacifism meant a decisive turn away from Francis Schaeffer, he had pointed me toward an influence that became the catalyst for my pacifist conversion. I had discovered that Schaeffer had interesting colleagues such as a British scholar, Os Guinness. Guinness’s book, The Dust of Death, offered a wide-ranging and sympathetic critique of the American counterculture of the 1960s. He did note with respect the problems with American culture that protesters cried out against. He recognized the need for social change as advocated by the civil rights movement, the emerging feminist movement, and the antiwar movement. He affirmed many countercultural concerns but brought into the picture a Christian sensibility.

In the Spring of 1976, I read Guinness’s chapter, “Violence: Crisis or Catharsis?” He critiqued of the counterculture’s advocacy of violent revolution. He drew heavily on a French sociologist, Jacques Ellul, whose book, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, gave a good critique of the self-defeating nature of violent revolutions. It came clear to me—Yes, violence does not work! I immediately thought of war. I realized that I could never go to war. I realized I was in principle opposed to all war, a pacifist. Happily, I was so unfamiliar with that term that I did not recoil against it. I accepted it, found it helpful, and still do.

Ironically, when I went back to read Guinness’s chapter again a few years later, I realized then that he did not argue for pacifism. His believed in a positive role for the military. In The Dust of Death, he opposed the revolutionary left, not the need to fight “just wars.” However, Ellul actually did critique military violence in principle. He criticized state-sponsored violence as much as revolutionary violence. His book Violence argued against all forms of violence.

My initial understanding of pacifism had simply to do with an intuitive sense that I could never participate in war. The thinking and feeling I had been doing for several years about the draft and the Vietnam War clicked into an all-encompassing emotional clarity, if not a detailed logical rationale. I had not thought in terms of principled non-participation in war before, but suddenly I saw it with perfect clarity. I began quickly to expand the relevance of my new insight. The clarity I felt concerning war led to a conviction to link this rejection with my Christian convictions. I saw that Christian truths are truths about the whole world. If it would be wrong as a Christian to fight in war, it would be wrong for everyone. I never had a sense that some moral conviction could be normative for me as a Christian and not normative for all people.

Because I did not know about Christian pacifism when I chose to embrace it, I knew nothing of arguments about biblical bases for it. However, I had been reading materials that emphasized Jesus’s life and teaching as bases for social change advocacy. I would have expected that if, indeed, pacifism is true, it must be compatible with Jesus’s message for how we should live. Though I had not been in conversations that directly engaged pacifism before my conversion, I soon would be. I delightedly learn that several of my friends also had been thinking about these issues. I hit the ground running in trying to broaden my understandings to figure out how to read the Bible and think theologically from a pacifist perspective.

Enter the Mennonite tradition

Within a few weeks of my pacifist conversion, I took a road trip to Montreal to attend the Olympics. On the way, I visited a radical community in Illinois, Reba Place Fellowship. I ate up all they told me and asked me to read. For the first time, I learned of the Mennonite tradition. I learned that ever since the 16^th century Reformation, Mennonites had sought to practice Jesus’s message in a direct way. Reba Place existed as a 20^th century expression of those ideals. The teaching I heard, the conversations I had, and the reading I did at Reba Place introduced Mennonite emphases on living in community, sharing possessions, living simply, and mutual aid. My teachers introduced me to an important Mennonite theologian, a seminary professor named John Howard Yoder. I read a few of his articles about decision making and gift discernment. After I got home, I would learn of other writings by Yoder that would interest me even more.

I returned to Eugene in late August 1976, ready for the next big adventure in my life. My buddy Clyde had traveled up to Vancouver, BC, to take theology classes at Regent College. Clyde took a class on Christian pacifism from the very same John Howard Yoder that I read at Reba Place. He entered class a believer in war and came out a convinced pacifist. I immediately read Yoder’s books, The Original Revolution and Nevertheless. They gave me just what I had been looking for. They explained Jesus’s message that supports pacifism. They also offered a beginning answer to the problem of war in the Old Testament and surveyed various ways that Christian pacifists justify their convictions. Happily, the beautiful member of my new household who became my wife, Kathleen, shared my convictions about pacifism—though she didn’t need a conversion experience. Her rejection of war had been a life-long belief.

Pacifism as a catalyst to turn away from blank check nationalism

My embrace of Christian pacifism provided clarity for me to turn from the embedded theology of my youth. That theology made me willing to go to war for my country. I was not willing due to careful consideration of the value of the US or of my engagement in war. I simply had never thought through my almost instinctive acceptance of nationalism. I just grew up with it as an assumption. When I became a Christian at the age of 17, without realizing it, I accepted a rival to the nation-state as the determiner of my moral convictions. I believed that God was most important. However, my first Christian guides taught me that we actually faced no tension between what God would want and what our country would want. In fact, I learned that since America was a Christian country, God’s will and the country’s were the same. So, I experienced no tension between my new Christian faith and my lifelong uncritical support for the US and its military. As I learned more about the Vietnam War, though, cracks in my nationalism arose.

Then, in the summer of 1976, my leap to pacifism ended the notion that God and nation could harmoniously co-exist. They no longer agreed as sources of moral guidance in relation to issues of war and violence. In my initial embrace of pacifism, I believed my pacifism to be grounded in my Christian faith and to be based on the Bible. My sense of certainly that God wanted me to reject war made it easy to turn from my embedded acceptance of nationalism.

I felt no hesitation to critique the Vietnam War and US foreign policy priorities. From the moment of my second conversion on, I have believed the call to love leads directly to a call to not kill and takes priority over any contrary expectations from my country. From the start, I found my path as a Christian pacifist in the American Empire to be clear. I would seek from then on to understand the message of peace, and to understand how the policies and practices of my nation of birth have contradicted that message.

Finding Mennonites and other pacifists

In the Spring of 1978, President Carter sought to show his resolve to the Soviets by reinstituting registration for the draft. Kathleen called the pastor of the local Mennonite church we had just learned of and asked him if people in the congregation were protesting Carter’s action. Pastor Harold invited us to a great meeting with several people from their congregation. I became good friends with Harold. He introduced me to various writings of Mennonite peace theologians. Kathleen and I loved the Mennonite ideals. We especially embraced the seemingly unqualified view of God as a God of peace, of Jesus’s message of love even for enemies, and the rejection of present-day wars.

We discovered that a few other Christian traditions emphasized pacifism. Quakers and the Church of the Brethren had long worked with Mennonites during times of war to protect the rights of conscientious objectors and become known as the “Historic Peace Churches.” These groups started New Call to Peacemaking to further the peace message. It involved national and regional conferences, local chapters, and publications. Folks from peace churches in our area wanted to establish a local group. We eagerly joined. As it turned out, our local New Call to Peacemaking group was one of the most active and longest-running ones in North America.

We found New Call to be a great opportunity to meet peace church activists. We learned to know some fascinating and inspiring people, most quite a bit older than us with long histories of peace advocacy. Kathleen and I found it enormously affirming to learn to know these impressive older people. They showed that people may remain committed to pacifism their entire lives and that Christian faith and peacemaking indeed could go together.

Kathleen and I decided we wanted more theological education. We headed to Indiana in August of 1980 to Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in Elkhart. Our experience during the next year surpassed our high expectations and changed our lives. It opened up the world of academic theology. Each class introduced us to thinkers and arguments and traditions we knew little about. We also deeply engaged the social life of the seminary. Our time at AMBS became an extraordinary introduction to the Mennonite world. We spent time with students from across the US and Canada, from Switzerland and France, and from India and Latin America. The entire experience happened in an environment that embraced Christian pacifism. That dimension made our year especially exciting. We thought about doctrinal theology and Christian history in light of pacifism. We wrestled with difficult parts of the Bible in light of pacifism. I simply loved the opportunity to think about issues with those core convictions as part of all the conversations.

A talk with New Testament professor Willard Swartley particularly struck me. We discussed a paper I wrote for his “New Testament Theology and Ethics” class. Willard said, offhandedly, “When you get to your dissertation in your PhD program, you might want to think about the topic we were discussing.” That comment stunned me. I didn’t say anything then, but I had never before imagined doing a PhD. Now, Willard’s comment set my imagination on fire. We reluctantly returned to Eugene when the school year ended but took with us two strong ideas about our future we had not had when we started the school year. We wanted to become Mennonites, and I wanted to pursue a doctorate in theology.

[This is the ninth of a long series of blog posts, “A Christian pacifist in the American Empire” (this link takes you to the series homepage). The eighth post in the series, “How does one step away from warism?” may be found by clicking on this link. The tenth post, “What is peace theology?” may be found by clicking on this link.]