Editors note: John Howard Yoder first dealt personally with the question of war taxes in 1962. He then wrote an account of his response in the Gospel Herald (January 22, 1963). Because his counsel and experience seem all the more relevant in 1977, an adapted version of that original account is shared on these pages.
As I grew in my late teens and my early twenties into my earliest under standings of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, one of the deeply significant aspects of it which I sought to understand was what my teachers called nonresistance. I came to understand this word as pointing not to a social theory or a set of legal principles, but to one of the ways in which personal fellowship with Jesus Christ through his Spirit will normally work itself out in the life of the believer.
Two things stood out in this understanding of discipleship in nonresistance which came from my teachers and grew stronger in my own further study and experience. First of all, to follow Christ on this path involved being enough different from the surrounding world to be considered unlikable or undesirable by certain powerful people and groups in the world. As a result of this opposition, the way of nonresistance may be called the way of the cross; it involves suffering. The acceptance of such suffering is the test of the disciple’s sincerity and faithfulness to Christ.
Secondly, this position should be a witness. A witness should show the world that the way it operates, through interplay of selfishness against selfishness and violence against violence is subject to the condemnation of God and destined, even in this age, to ultimate judgment.
One other thing my teachers told me was that, according to God’s will, the assignment of civil government is to keep the peace. The apostle Paul instructs Christians to offer “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings. . . for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life...” (1 Timothy 2:1). Obviously, we pray for a “quiet and peaceable life” not because we wish to be left alone but in order that the church may carry on its ministry so that all people should find salvation and “come to the knowledge of the truth” (verse 4). The church’s task is to bring people to know the truth; just as clearly, the place of the state in God’s purposes is that disorder be kept to a minimum and peace maintained.
Now when I entered into life with these convictions, holding them sincerely as I had been taught, deepening them in my own study and experience, and sometimes even finding opportunities to share them with other Christians, I was increasingly struck by the fact that there was precious little in my own experience or that of the church that I knew that corresponded to this description.
The governments under which I lived, including the one whose passport I carried when I went overseas, were making a major contribution to the terror which threatens all the nations of the world. They were taking the greatest initiative in poisoning the outer atmosphere of the globe and the inmost springs of heredity with nuclear tests. Statesmen were making their bids for election primarily on the basis of how “firm” they were prepared to be in threatening the other half of the world with nuclear destruction.
Not only Christians, but also intelligent unbelievers in other parts of the world asked me what testimony was being given in America by nonresistant Christians, and at the cost of what suffering, in order to proclaim the judgment of God upon this development of weapons which can be used only to break and not to defend the peace.
I was reminded that there is one point at which almost every citizen, or at least every family, once a year does make a personal contribution to the moral and financial support of the military monster. This gesture of support is carried out each spring when almost every wage earner forwards to the Federal government a share of his earnings, more than half of which will not be used to keep the peace.
For a number of years, I had no chance to exercise responsibility over this use of a share of my income, since my employer withheld the amount involved from my earnings. In the spring of 1962, for the first time, it fell to my personal responsibility and initiative to forward to the United States government Internal Revenue Service an additional amount, going beyond what had been withheld. This additional amount was significantly less than the proportions of my total taxes which I knew were being used for nonpeaceful purposes.
I therefore submitted to the Director of Internal Revenue a full and conscientious report of my income, but wrote that I could not take the moral responsibility of forwarding to his government funds which I knew would be used for a purpose contrary to that which government is supposed to be serving. I told him that I had no intention of profiting personally from my “tax objection.” I was therefore forwarding an equivalent payment to the Mennonite Central Committee for use in overseas war sufferers’ relief.
In time, I received an answer to this letter in the form of a conversation with a local Internal Revenue Service inspector. In a very polite and gentlemanly way he informed me that he could not consider my donation acceptable in lieu of payment to the Director of Internal Revenue. He therefore drew from my bank account the amount which I had not forwarded in the routine way.
The idea is not to avoid involvement in the evils of this fallen world, to “keep my hands clean.” No one can avoid involvement in one form or another, and I would not be avoiding it if I had no taxes to pay. My concern is not to be morally immaculate by making absolutely no contribution to the war effort, but to give a testimony to government concerning its own obligation before God.
The cost of this witness was paid in the form of a gift for relief. The way present tax laws operate, this approach would cost the most for those who are most able bear it because of their greater income. This is significant in contrast to the sacrifice involved in being a conscientious objector. The duty to take arms or object is laid upon teenagers who are not chosen with a view to their being most qualified to bear it. If action something like my own were taken by a significant number of Christian wage earners, this would be the first time in the history of our nation that the testimony to nonresistance was given primarily through the initiative of and at a cost to the most mature and responsible people in the church.
One question remains, which both the Internal Revenue Service inspector and other Christians have already asked: Does not the New Testament instruct us to pay our taxes? Certainly it does; and I want to pay my taxes, and do pay them willingly as far as the functions of the United States government resemble what Jesus and Paul and Peter were talking about. The lesson of the entire New Testament is that Christians should be subject to political authority because in the providence of God the function of these authorities is to maintain peace. This is what I, in accordance with the instructions of the New Testament, am asking the American government to do.
I am in fact even willing to pay for a certain amount of waste and fraud and incompetence. But the one thing I am not prepared to support voluntarily is something which Jesus and Paul did not have in mind because it did not exist in the time of the New Testament.
The government of Rome was not spending more than half of its resources on preparations to destroy the rest of the world. The authority which Jesus and Paul recognized was in that entire age much more comparable to the police function than to the modern economy for international war.
It is not often noticed that Romans 13 provides textual grounds for questioning any government on the propriety of the requirements it makes of its citizens. Romans 13:7 says specifically, not that we are to render to government what it asks for, but that we are to give to each what is due: tax to whom tax is due, toll to whom toll, worship to whom worship.
There is no easy discharge from the duty to test which of the demands of “Caesar” are really “the things that are Caesar’s” and which are not his due. It is not my purpose to agitate for others to follow my example. At the same time I am asking whether others have found more appropriate ways to render a worthwhile testimony against their nation’s trust in the sword.
When this article appeared, John Howard Yoder was a contributing editor to Sojourners and is the author of The Politics of Jesus as well as numerous other articles and books. Much of Yoder's theological work came under review in 2014 after evidence surfaced indicating years of predatory behavior by Yoder and sexual abuse of women. (See "The failure to bind and loose: Responses to Yoder’s sexual abuse" by Rachel Waltner Goossen in The Mennonite magazine.)
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