The Conscientious Objectors, Part 2
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Our Guests
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Until recently, Dr. Layton Friesen was the Conference Pastor of the Evangelical Mennonite Conference (EMC). He is now the Academic Dean at Steinbach Bible College and is the author of Secular Violence and the Theo-Drama of Peace.
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Dr. Ronald J. Sider was the founder and President Emeritus of Evangelicals for Social Action and was the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary. He was the author of numerous books, including the Early Church on Killing and the bestselling book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. We interviewed Dr. Ronald Sider a few months before his passing in 2022.
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Cyndy Warkentin is the pastor of Saturday Night Church in Landmark, Manitoba.
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After studies at Fresno Pacific University, Mennonite Brethren Bible College, University of Manitoba (BA Hons), and Harvard University Divinity School (MDiv, ThD), Tom served as hospital and prison chaplain in Winnipeg, as well as pastor in Thompson, MB, and Boston, MA. He served on the MCCanada Christian Formation Council and is presently chair of the Faith and Life Commission of the Mennonite World Conference. His teaching and preaching have taken him beyond North America to Europe, Asia, and Africa. Tom is author numerous articles, both popular and scholarly, as well as books such as Guilt and Humanness: The Significance of Guilt for the Humanization of the Judicial-Correctional System, 1982; Put on the Armour of God! The Divine Warrior from Isaiah to Ephesian, 1997; Ephesians (Believers Church Bible Commentary), 2002); Christus ist unser Friede: Die Kirche und ihr Ruf zu Wehrlosigkeit und Widerstand, 2007; Recovering Jesus: the Witness of the New Testament, 2007; and Killing Enmity: Violence and the New Testament, 2011. Tom and his wife Rebecca are members of First Mennonite Church, Kitchener, ON.
Links and Resources
Books
Secular Nonviolence and the Theo-Drama of Peace, by Layton Friesen
The Early Church on Killing, by Ronald J. Sider
Nonviolent Action: What Christian Ethics Demands, but Most Christians Have Never Really Tried, by Ronald J. Sider
If Jesus is Lord, by Ronald J. Sider
Killing Enmity, by Dr. Thomas Yoder Neufeld
Music
First Communion, Dane Joneshill
(Spotify | YouTube Music)
Psalm 27, Poor Bishop Hooper
(Spotify | YouTube Music | Apple Music)
Notable Quotes
The Theology of Conscientious Objection
[Using the state’s action is] just God in his infinite wisdom, using the sin and evilness of this world for his own purposes and if God chooses to do that, we shouldn't reject the good that comes out of that. ~Dr. Layton Friesen
If it really is the case that only people enrolled in the military and going off to fight wars, if it really is the case that those are the only people who are suffering for the good of the world, well, yeah, that is a serious problem then for the church. But if the church is also suffering, out of love, through its mission work, in evangelism and through its feeding the poor, through its standing with people who are oppressed and abused around the world, through its intervention in places of conflict in peaceful means, you know if the church is also suffering and loving along with its neighbours in ways that we can do, in ways that we are encouraged to do. If we are suffering along with the world, then I don't think that the charge has quite as much sticking power. ~Dr. Layton Friesen
We have been more sensitive to that one than we have about the fact that we have benefited from the violence of others. Whenever we went on migration, we've usually come to places where indigenous peoples have been removed, often violently so that we can live in peace. ~Dr. Thomas Yoder Neufeld
Deep within us, none of us thinks it's morally right to benefit from somebody else securing our security at great cost to themselves and where we just benefit… I think we benefit constantly from the work others are doing without always feeling that moral burden. It's just that wartime raises that to a very, very high degree. ~Dr. Thomas Yoder Neufeld
There are so many different ways that I can think about that we live a life that has benefited from all types of violence on many other people around the world. Think about the way we choose to consume, the things we choose to buy and the ethics behind those kinds of choices as well. There is potential in many ways for us to feed off of violence done to other people. ~Jesse Penner
Case Study:
Countless men died in World War II, and their families often were not able to maintain their farms and properties. Some small towns lost many people in the war, which meant there was suddenly a large number of properties available. With increased supply and limited demand, these farms sold for a fraction of what they were worth. Who was left to purchase these properties? In some communities it was Mennonite conscientious objectors. This led to tension – these farms were lost by those who had fought and died in the war to secure the freedom of their nation, and then purchased by those who refused to fight for a fraction of what they were worth. We asked how we should view such events.
A proper Christian, Jesus-centred approach would have been for those conscientious objectors and their congregations to say, ‘we will walk with you. We will work with you. We will, in fact, not take economic advantage of this situation. We'll help you get your property back and get on your feet.’ That would have been, it seems to me the proper response and that would have changed the dynamic in an enormously powerful way. ~Dr. Ron Sider
What does it actually mean to treat people who disagree with us as better than ourselves, as worthy of more care than ourselves, as deserving more love and attention than ourselves? I think that's where we have to think of loving our enemies, not just in terms of kind of fulfilling a command, but of getting down into the very heart of Jesus's posture towards his enemies. ~Dr. Layton Friesen
I think to believe that we have it all figured out and we have a clear picture of exactly how things have happened and should happen is not a good way to go through life. ~Jesse Penner
I think the ideal would have been in the first place that the leaders of all the world nations could have gotten together and ironed out their problems before war would have ever happened. That would have prevented all of these things from happening in the first place. What do we do in the absence of perfection and how do we deal with it and how do we think about the imperfections of the past? I think it's important not to just justify everything, acknowledge that it's messy, there were mistakes, there were tangential benefits, there were tangential failures, and that's okay. We can make mistakes. We can repent of them and hopefully do better in the future. Fall forward as I say. ~Kevin Wiebe
