THE CHRISTIAN AND WAR

THE CHRISTIAN AND WAR
John 18:36

1. The Brethren Church has believed in non-resistance in war from its very beginning. This was a reaction from the policy of the state churches in central Europe during the period of the reformation and immediately thereafter. The founders of the Brethren Church were members of the state churches and in their efforts to harmonize the violent ex­cesses of the state churches with the scripture they came to the conviction that the Bible teaches something alto­gether in contrast for the believer.

2. It was this conviction concerning the Christian and war along with other matters relating to the Christian that led Alexander Mack and seven others to establish the Brethren Church. From the beginning believers who identified them­selves with the Brethren Church for over 300 years have affirmed and reaffirmed non-resistance as the pattern for Christian living in times of war. No other doctrine of the Christian faith has been more often restated in National and District conferences than this article of the Christian faith.

3. Non-resistance is not to be identified with pacificism as it is known today. Nor is it to be concluded that non-resistance denies the right of human government to wage war. It does not insist that the Christian may not support the government in war, when it is clear that the war being waged is an effort to use force for the protection of that which is right. Non-resistance insists that the individual Christian believer on the basis of the scripture has a right to exercise conscientious objection in the taking of life.