Monthly Archive for January, 2010

At Turner, Ore­gon, in August 1969, in the midst of the divi­sive Viet­nam War, the Gen­eral Con­fer­ence of the (old) Men­non­ite Church adopted a res­o­lu­tion declar­ing that non-cooperation with the mil­i­tary draft was a valid and legit­i­mate wit­ness for Men­non­ite young men.  Although con­ser­v­a­tive crit­ics feared that non-cooperation with the draft would jeop­ar­dize the hard-won gov­ern­ment recog­ni­tion of alter­na­tive ser­vice for con­sci­en­tious objec­tors, prophetic dis­sent to the war pol­icy of the United States now gained offi­cial church accep­tance along­side the tra­di­tional non­re­sis­tant posi­tion. The group of resisters who brought that con­cern to the con­fer­ence was led by three Goshen Col­lege students—Doug Baker, J. Devon Leu and Jon Lind.  Ini­tially under sus­pi­cion as rebel­lious “hip­pies,” these three and their col­leagues from the impro­vised tent colony on the edge of the con­fer­ence grounds engaged in seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion with church lead­ers and even­tu­ally secured endorse­ment for their abso­lutist anti-draft com­mit­ment, some­what to their own sur­prise.  - J. R. Burkholder

When the August 1969 events in Turner, Ore­gon occurred I was liv­ing in Wash­ing­ton D. C.  It would still be three years until I met my Cana­dian wife, Dorothy Friesen so my con­nec­tions to Canada were lim­ited to nor­mal Amer­i­can blun­der­ing.  I had moved there from Viet Nam in Decem­ber 1967 after I resigned from my work with Inter­na­tional Vol­un­tary Ser­vices in order to speak out more boldly about the war.  In 1968 and 69 I trav­elled the coun­try speak­ing in uni­ver­si­ties, ser­vice clubs, churches, and com­mu­nity groups about Viet Nam.  By 1969 after orga­niz­ing and speak­ing for two years about Viet Nam where I had worked for about five years, I was dis­cour­aged because our efforts seemed to have brought only deri­sion from the White House and more troops for Viet Nam.  In my despair I enter­tained thoughts that maybe the world would always be this way and would go on in a con­stant state of war and killing.

The events of Turner, Ore­gon came to me by way of the Gospel Her­ald which I read usu­ally at some­one else’s house because I didn’t have money to sub­scribe.  The tent colony at the edge of the con­fer­ence grounds was the best news I received that sum­mer.  It told me that I was not alone.  It told me that there were peo­ple out there who would insist against the odds that a life lived by con­science was worth try­ing.  I rec­og­nized the rest­less­ness of the resisters.  It told me that we Men­non­ites still had some life in us and that we might not lose our way in the jun­gle of war mak­ing or the safe houses of with­drawal.  Most of all I felt the con­ti­nu­ity with the peo­ple at Goshen, in the church and par­tic­u­larly the resisters who made this event happen.

I remem­ber the late sum­mer of 1969 to be a par­tic­u­larly low point.  Troop lev­els had sur­passed 500,000. Bomb­ings were intense.   Vil­lages were wrecked.  Body counts recited daily in Saigon brief­ings and repeated on the evening news were too much to watch.  I learned not to believe the num­bers.  I had friends who had been killed there.  More would die.  Where was the hope? In those days Canada was the prin­ci­pal refuge for Amer­i­cans seek­ing a safe place from the war front.  Many of us kept lists of Cana­dian tele­phone num­bers that peo­ple flee­ing mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion might use in case of urgent need.

When I tried to sleep at night a recur­ring dream would jolt me from my sleep.  Pres­i­dent John­son (by then Nixon) and Ho Chi Minh were in Viet Nam jun­gle.  They couldn’t find each other.  There were bombs and smoke, burn­ing embers and fallen trees.  Air planes dropped bombs and flares shot from how­itzers lit the night sky.  Noth­ing worked the way it was sup­posed to work and my job was to get Lyn­don John­son and Ho Chi Minh together.  I tried push­ing, cajol­ing and lead­ing and noth­ing worked.  Just as I would get the two lead­ers into a gen­eral area where they might meet, the oppor­tu­nity would slip away because of bombs or groups of mean­der­ing sol­diers.  On many nights the dream ended my sleep.  I was exhausted from the jun­gle.  The news from Turner gave me one night of decent sleep.

Remem­ber­ing events at Turner is impor­tant because we can still learn from them.

1.  The tent mak­ers who went to Turner may have had mixed feel­ings about their actions and may never have expected suc­cess.  You see most of us are a lit­tle ambiva­lent about suc­cess in our truth exper­i­ments.  Some of us aren’t sure we deserve suc­cess.  Suc­cess would mean we need to take respon­si­bil­ity.  No good hippy wants to take very much responsibility.

It takes the great gift of cen­tered con­vic­tion to enter into a con­tro­ver­sial, risky, dan­ger­ous oper­a­tion that might fail or suc­ceed.  We eas­ily for­get that there is no fail­ure in truth work.  The result that we seek can not be described with words like suc­cess or fail­ure.  The result we seek is a reli­able rep­re­sen­ta­tion of God’s  truth for the time.  But, being human it also feels good to be suc­cess­ful and get what we want.  Good events usu­ally have sur­prises, and might even be suc­cess­ful.  Turner was one of those times.

The sym­bol of hippy like char­ac­ters in a tent near the Men­non­ite con­ven­tion site must have been dra­matic for the hun­dreds and thou­sands of par­tic­i­pants who had once attended their own tent meet­ings.  Some may have seen it as a call to revival.  A few may have seen it as quaint or down­right stu­pid, off putting and embar­rass­ing.  The first objec­tive of a good action is to get atten­tion.  The longer term intent of the sym­bol is to draw atten­tion to a larger truth.  The tent was bril­liant, timely and appro­pri­ate for the crowd.   There may still be some tent work to be done.

2.  The stu­dents were the pri­mary actors but they were backed by Goshen pro­fes­sors and maybe even the col­lege admin­is­tra­tion.  They also had allies spread through­out the church and they prob­a­bly knew it.  In addi­tion, the tent lead­er­ship was aware that the church as a body was the car­rier of a spe­cial tra­di­tion of peace.  The church did not yet use the term peace­mak­ing although it was part of its most sacred scrip­ture.  The church lead­ers knew that this could not be treated lightly and per­haps at least a few of them were aware that the expres­sion of rejec­tion of mil­i­tary ser­vice through the cen­turies had taken a vari­ety of forms.  The peace posi­tion itself was not up for ques­tion­ing.  If there was a ques­tion it related to the cur­rent appli­ca­tion of the prin­ci­ple.  Finally the request for sup­port for non reg­is­tra­tion was not directly or inher­ently polit­i­cal although it inferred changes in long term rela­tion­ships with the national polit­i­cal order.  There was room for the gath­ered church to nego­ti­ate with the “ten­ters”. Church lead­ers’ grasp of hard earned non­re­sis­tant priv­i­leges nego­ti­ated and evolved in Wash­ing­ton over the pre­vi­ous cen­turies gave courage for the chang­ing times.

3.  Turner was a key time when the gath­ered church spoke to itself and shifted its bound­aries to accom­mo­date and expand its wit­ness within itself and the world.  The old I W, CO sys­tems needed renewal.   By 1969 there were more sol­diers who were anti war, and anti killing at least in Viet Nam, anti draft or young men and women who were just anti war than there were Chris­t­ian paci­fists with mem­ber­ship in any of the peace ori­ented church. A sit­u­a­tion like this had never existed before.  Selec­tive paci­fist think­ing, Chris­t­ian paci­fism and anti war think­ing inter­min­gled inside and out­side the church. A church that had spent 450 years try­ing to find a safe place to prac­tice a non­re­sis­tant ethic of enemy lov­ing had sud­denly been leap frogged to the front of a social move­ment.  Although the draft was still on, the abil­ity of the US gov­ern­ment to apply it was slip­ping away in the face of the explo­sion of con­science among draftees.  Who would pro­vide space for resisters?  Must they all flee to Canada?  Would the church be at that table or lead?  And what would its pres­ence look like?

By sig­nalling an open­ness to non reg­is­trants the church rec­og­nized the dawn of a new era.  Men­non­ite con­gre­ga­tions through­out the land were often con­tacted by sol­diers, and young peo­ple fac­ing the draft, GIs and all kinds of peo­ple seek­ing escape from war and killing.  Many con­gre­ga­tions were not ready for this although there were fel­low­ships where the light shone.  As I trav­elled the coun­try in my peace work I often met indi­vid­u­als who had sought out Men­non­ite churches for per­sonal sup­port and com­mu­nity.  They were not always wel­comed.  Church mem­bers and even pas­tors were ambiva­lent about peo­ple with long hair who had con­nec­tions in the peace move­ment or the mil­i­tary and believed that good peace peo­ple did not break the law .  The road to adjust­ment of the gospel wit­ness in the new order was just beginning.

Look­ing back we can see that Turner was one of sev­eral hints that the decades that fol­lowed could birth a fam­ily of peace endeav­ours, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, non­vi­o­lent peace­mak­ing, medi­a­tion, restora­tive jus­tice, peace edu­ca­tion and so many local ini­tia­tives. Their arrival awaited  vision, space, finan­cial sup­port, train­ing and stead­fast­ness.  The non reg­is­trants and their sup­port­ers on the road to Turner helped to pre­pare the way.

Gene Stoltz­fus