Conscientious objectors choose alternative service

A conscientious objector is someone who refuses to perform military service on the grounds that such service runs counter to his convictions. Often, these convictions stem from the conscientious objector?s religious beliefs about non-violence. Three Christian churches are officially pacifist, and they are the Church of the Brethren, the Quakers (The Religious Society of Friends) and the Mennonites.

Before the United States abolished the draft in 1973, the federal government required conscientious objectors to perform alternative service in lieu of military service. This meant spending two years in a shore-side civilian position, or spending those two years helping people in another country. On Saturday, a group of conscientious objectors belonging to the Mennonite faith gathered at the Kalona Mennonite Church to share their beliefs, experiences and lessons-learned from their alternative service.

David Koerner grew up in Bloomington, Ill. but has lived in Washington County for the past 32 years. He was raised in a Mennonite Church and registered as a conscientious objector when he turned 18 in the late 1960s. To obtain conscientious objector status, Koerner had to appear before a county board and convince the board of his religious convictions against fighting in war.

The board members asked Koerner about his beliefs about war and also asked him if he was aware of non-combative positions in the military.

?They asked me the age-old question, ?If someone came into your house with a gun and threatened you or your loved ones, what would you do??? recalled Koerner.

Koerner was prepared for this sort of question because he talked about it with his Mennonite counselors prior to his hearing.

?I said I?m not naïve enough to say I wouldn?t defend myself, but I would hope and pray that with God?s strength I wouldn?t have to,? said Koerner.

Koerner was granted conscientious objector status. His draft number was never called and the government did not require him to do alternative service. Nevertheless, Koerner volunteered for two years of service through the Mennonite Central Committee, which sent him to Canada where he helped care for elderly people in urban areas.

John Blosser Yoder, who lives north of Wellman, remembers that the Vietnam War was a trying time for the peace churches.

?I was aware that the way we as Mennonites believed about war defined how we related to our neighbors in the 1960s,? said Yoder. ?We believe that God is above government, above nations. When I lived overseas, it made sense to me.?

Yoder has spent nearly 11 years on voluntary assignments, including 8 ½ years working with the Mennonite Central Committee in Africa. In 1988, he and his wife moved to Zambia, located in southern Africa.

?I taught school in a struggling little village school that wanted to be a high school,? said Yoder. ?We lived in a grass-thatched house and had very little water.?

Ed V. Miller is from Crystal Springs, Kan., but has lived in Kalona for the past 40 years. Miller graduated from high school in 1963. He went to two different colleges for a total of five years. When he graduated from Colorado State University, he received his draft notice.

?The draft board said, ?You?ve been off for five years. We want you,?? remembered Miller.

Miller registered as a conscientious objector. He knew that other Mennonites had done their alternative service in Denver, and that gave him an idea.

?I wrote to the draft board and said, ?If it?s all right with you, I won?t even come back for my physical. I?ll go down to Denver and try to find a job in a hospital there. I?ll put in two years of service,?? said Miller. ?Lo and behold, they wrote back and said, ?Go ahead. Do it. We?ll count that as your time of alternative service.??

Several of Miller?s friends from high school were not Mennonites and they were drafted into the military.

?I thought, why should I not do something, too?? said Miller. ?I still think every young person in this country or any country should do service work.?

Miller went to the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver with no medical training. He assumed he would fulfill menial, non-technical tasks.            When his supervisors saw that he had a degree in wildlife biology, they knew he could shoulder much more responsibility. They trained Miller to work in a heart catheterization lab. Miller worked in that hospital for over two years and enjoyed it so much that he went on to have a career in the medical field.

Susan See, one of the organizers of the gathering, mentioned that the Mennonites played a crucial role in reforming the way mentally handicapped people are treated through their work in alternative service.

John Mark King was the only conscientious objector at the gathering who performed alternative service during the Korean War. In 1951, he applied for conscientious objector status, and asked the draft board to allow him to perform his alternative service outside the country. King participated in the Mennonite Central Committee?s PAX Program (?pax? is latin for ?peace?) in West Germany from 1951 to 1953. He and other American Mennonites helped build homes for refugees from the communist bloc countries.

As many as 700 or 800 refugees lived in one large building divided into small sections with curtains. Americans such as King donated their labor to building homes for them on the edge of town.

?It was hard work, and we lived in primitive conditions,? said King. ?One project was to raise the elevation of an old shooting range 2 ½ feet. There were mounds of dirt 9 feet high. We leveled the ground with shovels and wheelbarrows. We didn?t have any heavy machinery.?

King was moved by the devastation he saw when he toured German cities, which were still recovering from a war that ended six years prior.

?We went to Hamburg quite a bit,? he said. ?There was a guy who sat on the street. His legs were off right below his knees. He had two square wooden blocks. It reminded me of that saying, ?I felt sorry because I had no shoes, and then I met a man who had no feet.??

Roger Farmer, who lives south of Washington, was not raised in a historic peace church but applied for conscientious objector status in 1970. When he appeared before the draft board, he explained why he was a conscientious objector. To his surprise, the board did not ask him any questions. He soon learned that his application for conscientious objector status was denied.

Farmer elected to join the Peace Corps that year. It was not technically a deferment, neither was it alternative service. However, it did postpone his enlistment for the duration of his Peace Corps term, which was two years. When he returned in 1972, American participation in the Vietnam War was winding down, so the military no longer needed him.

Farmer taught math in a teachers college in Belize, which was then known as British Honduras. Communicating with the students was not always easy because English was not the first language of many of them. Many children spoke Spanish or an indigenous language.

?We didn?t have hot water, just cold water,? said Farmer. ?We were told to boil it, which we did for the first six months, but we got tired of doing that. By the end, we drank it. I rode a bicycle everywhere. We got along OK. The local people were happy to have us there.?

Tim Widmer of Washington has done five years of service work for the Mennonite Central Committee. Widmer enrolled in the PAX Program in 1974, the last year it was available. He went to Brazil, where he helped farmers use fertilizers and helped them raise livestock. This was right up Widmer?s alley since he was a farm boy.

?I benefited so much from living outside the United States,? said Widmer. ?One has a totally different perspective seeing the U.S. from the outside. It was an eye-opening experience.?

Twenty years later, Widmer got the urge to go on another mission trip. He and his wife Cindy spent three years in Jamaica, where they helped farmers market their crops through a co-operative.            Widmer was inspired to volunteer in other countries in part because both of his parents performed mission work in Europe immediately after World War II.

Caleb Detweiler grew up in Iowa and just recently graduated from Goshen College in Indiana. He served in Bolivia for a year through the Mennonite Central Committee?s program called SALT (Serving and Learning Together). He worked in a rural library and later in an urban library in the country.

Detweiler said that his desire to serve in Bolivia grew out of his interpretation of the Bible.

?We live in a global community,? said Detweiler. ?It?s not just the U.S.?

Michael Swartzendruber said at the gathering that the Bible is the source of his belief in non-violence.

?I look at the broad spectrum of passages in the New Testament and how Jesus lived non-violently,? he said.

Warren Yoder said his father was a conscientious objector who worked in a veterans? hospital in Chicago.

?Hearing his stories had an impact on me,? said Yoder. ?When you think of peacemakers, you have to look on a global scale because we?re all brothers and sisters.?

Tim Detweiler, Caleb?s father, remarked, ?Jesus calls us to come and follow him, and calls us to live in God?s kingdom. And it?s a kingdom that knows no national boundaries.?

Larry Detweiler lives in the area but could not attend the gathering. He was not raised a Mennonite but became one later in life, partly because he married a Mennonite and partly because of his experience in Vietnam. Detweiler went to Vietnam in 1971 to serve as a veterinary technician. While stationed in Da Nang, he visited an orphanage with rooms full of unattended crying babies and little children crammed into tiny sleeping quarters. He referred to the children as the war?s ?living casualties.? He has spoken regularly about that orphanage and his experiences in Vietnam at Iowa Mennonite School.