Category: conscientious objection

Trying to figure out peace theology

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 5 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—October 4, 2025

In the Fall of 1980, Kathleen and I looked forward to our year at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries with little idea what to expect. We hoped for inspiration and to understand better our Christian pacifist convictions. We learned more than we imagined we could. And by the end of the school year, I had a new goal I had not imagined before—to study for a PhD in peace theology. When we returned home to Oregon, we began a fifteen-year period that would include more education for both of us, culminating in my doctorate from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. I would also spend about ten years as a pastor in three settings. This period culminated when I became a college professor in peace theology. Those fifteen years proved to be a time of learning what peace theology would mean to me.

Taking the first steps

In 1981, I could imagine three different directions. I could focus on the intellectual arena and become a professor, teaching and writing. Or I could turn toward direct action and be a full-time peace activist. I found both options attractive but unlikely to be possible. A third option seemed a more realistic way to combine intellectual and on-the-ground work—to serve as a pastor. We planned for Kathleen to return to college for a couple of years. I would complete my work for a masters degree in peace studies from AMBS.

As it turned out, a couple of unexpected developments caused us to adapt our plans. An unplanned, and joyful, pregnancy meant Kathleen would have her hands full with her college classes and becoming a new mother. Also, I was offered an interim pastorate when the Eugene Mennonite Church pastor took a sabbatical. So, my hands were full, too, with my coursework, the arrival of our son Johan, and serving as a half-time pastor. This left little time for peace activism work, so it fell to the side.

Kathleen loved her studies. Each class gave her an opportunity to learn new things and to work on integrating her peace convictions, philosophical inclinations, and her rapidly evolving faith convictions. Johan arrived midway through the first of Kathleen’s two years as a full-time student. We struggled to find time and energy for everything. The baby’s presence required numerous choices of priorities that meant our lives did not unfold quite like we had expected. However, we generally successfully managed to juggle all the elements of our lives.

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Resistance to the American Empire

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 6 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—September 16, 2025

As the US embarked on a quest for world dominance after World War II, leaders’ quest for “full spectrum dominance” did not meet with total support from Americans. Opposition to newly expansive US warism received little media attention, though. It rarely effected policy makers. I knew nothing of the dissenters as a youth in my little corner of the world. For the story I tell in this series of posts, though, we should note the small pockets of dissent—both to indicate that American warism was not unanimous (people did dissent) and to recognize that the peace efforts that did shape my convictions beginning in the mid-1970s had important antecedents. 

Antiwar voices

In the late 1930s, many spoke in opposition to the US joining the War. Congress, which would not support a war declaration proposal from the president, did pass legislation for a draft in 1940, but only narrowly. Large movements of anti-war sentiment arose both from the right (the America First movement of traditional American isolationism) and the left (the popular antiwar movement that had arisen in the early 1930s after disillusionment with World War I). However, this war opposition almost immediately evaporated after the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese on December 7, 1941. With the Japanese attack the “America first” conservatives quickly jumped onboard in favor of what was widely perceived to be a war of national defense.

During negotiations in Congress on the draft, representatives from the various peace churches (led by the Quakers) managed to get alternative service for conscientious objectors included. With the popularity of the war and the government’s prowar propaganda, though, only a tiny fraction of draftees took the CO option. Most of the 12,000 draftees who performed alternative service were traditional, somewhat apolitical pacifists. Only a few thousand would have been opposed politically to the war effort. In addition to the legal COs, about 6,000 war opponents went to prison as draft resisters—though the large majority of those were Jehovah’s Witnesses whose refusal to cooperate with the draft had to do with the government refusing them ministerial exemptions, not their political opposition to the war effort.

Out of the tiny handful of COs that we could understand to be anti-empire did come important leadership for the resistance that found expression in years following. Imprisoned COs such as Dave Dellinger and Bayard Rustin developed their ideas about war resistance and nonviolent social change while spending the war years in prison and emerged afterwards as important peace movement leaders. It was also the case that the experience of many of the COs during the War had a significant formative impact. For example, numerous Mennonite COs shaped educational, service, and antiwar efforts among Mennonites and in the wider society in postwar years. Mennonite pacifism tried more to influence the wider world toward peacemaking.

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Pacifism and saying no to the state: Various motives for refusal [Pacifism today #7]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 4 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—April 15, 2022

With a breathtaking rapidity, the United States in the last couple of months has moved decisively in a militaristic direction. As historian Andrew Bacevich recently wrote, many American leaders “welcome the Ukraine War as the medium that will reignite an American commitment to the sort of assertive and muscular approach to global policy favored in militaristic quarters…. Putin … has handed the United States ‘a historic opportunity to regroup and reload for an era of intense competition’—with not only Russia but also China meant to be in our crosshairs.”

The delight of these militarist leaders and the arms dealers who also are profiting so greatly from the new conflict should give people who actually care about peace on earth pause before believing the spin our government and corporate media are giving things right now. We will almost certainly face a continued ratcheting up of militaristic dynamics in our society for the foreseeable future. The warism of our culture has always been bubbling just below the surface even as other crises have demanded attention. For it to move front and center hopefully will clarify that militarism is the problem that must be resolved if we are to make progress in overcoming the climate crisis, the curse of white supremacy, the violence of our policing and mass incarceration regimes, environmental collapse, the functioning of our democracy, and many others.

Effective opposition to the warism seems far from possible at this moment, though. The one single issue that seems to unite Democrats and Republicans is expansion of our war-making capabilities. The apparent impossibility of opposition does not diminish what may be a fact—we turn from warism as a society, or we all go down.  

In face of all this, the witness of pacifism seems more relevant than ever. When there is such uncritical support for pouring weapons of war into Ukraine, Germany greatly expanding its military spending, and the dynamics of confrontation rather than reconciliation with Russia and China, it seems pacifists are some of the few who voice opposition. One hope we might have is that with our nation’s warism so front and center, more people will question whether we actually do want our nation to be so committed to military “solutions” after all. Maybe this will lead to more interest in pacifism.

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