Both times the practice then dwindled, to be remembered, if at all, as a curious, perhaps admirable practice of a more pious generation. There also wouldn’t be much practical effect, truth be told, either on military spending or on peace tax payers’ complicity with it, but Boardman thinks there’s an upside: “It would be a different way of saying to the government that we don’t want to pay for war. part of the mix and was therefore unexceptional. Also: a video of folks from the “Δεν Πληρώνω” (“Won’t Pay”) movement in Greece reconnecting the electricity at a home where it had been shut off for failure to pay the new taxes grafted on to the utility bills. during the period of time surrounding and including the United States Civil This led to spirited dissent in the pages I’m working on a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends. addition to this, they pay their proportion for the support of the poor of the Quakers never formally rejected war tax resistance, but as this quote shows, a strange collective amnesia took hold: war tax resistance went from being expected to being “impossible.”. Gideon Frost and Samuel Rhoads spar over the duties of Quaker conscientious objectors during the American Civil War. “But I think I’m the only one who’s applied to the fund so far,” says Boardman, “and I did it mostly so the people who set it up would feel it was useful.”. American Quaker war tax resistance was still limping along in 1901. Were Quakers just blowing in the breezes of political fashions and activist trends? By the end of the century, Quaker war tax resistance was nearly extinct. Elizabeth Boardman says she’s changed her focus: she now works to get this Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act passed. As early as 1659, “books of sufferings” record persecutions of English Quakers for refusing to pay war taxes with names like “trophy money,” the “charge of the trained-bands,” and the “charge of the militia.” Robert Barclay wrote in 1676 that Quakers “have suffered much . © 2020 Friends Publishing Corporation. “It kind of all happened simultaneously,” Katy says. On the one hand, Katy says, it’s easy to resist by just not owing the taxes to begin with, but on the other hand, their method requires a year-round commitment. Quaker sufferings for refusal to cooperate with war requisitions were nearly universal—indeed, if you failed to report any such sufferings, you might be called before your meeting and asked to explain why. resistance is about efforts to broaden and radicalize war tax resistance, most Show Transcript and Discussion Questions. For example, Henry David Thoreau and William Lloyd Garrison drew inspiration from the American Revolution and the stubborn pacifism of the Quakers. The government is seeking taxes and penalties from 1986 to 1996; after that period the Quakers began to withhold taxes from Ms. Adams's paychecks -- she earns about $32,000 a year -- … time without Christians having any reason to complain, under the “Give to increase of an old tax. What did the Quakers do about that? of Friends (Quakers). topic of “mixed taxes” and whether this militia tax had somehow become Quakers believe that all people are equal in life. Tax collectors were notorious plunderers. In 1863, President Lincoln started the first federal military draft, and the pages of the “Friends’ Intelligencer” filled with debate over whether Quakers could pay the $300 commutation money to escape from bearing arms. We urge one another to refuse to…, Interview with David Gross, author of “How Quaker War Tax Resistance Came and Went, Twice”. And: a man was arrested this month for not taking off his hat in court, a bit like George Fox was some 450 years ago… why do Americans tolerate such arrogant pretentiousness from judges today? It would be more accurate to say that Quakers, like everyone else, are subject to the temptations of self-righteousness, of following the crowd, of most easily discerning principles that require the least of them, and of conveniently discovering that morality and self-interest align. He was also part of the cross-over that introduced Quaker war tax resistance to the emerging nonsectarian peace movement of the late nineteenth century. The “passive resistance” campaign, in which thousands of British nonconformists refused to pay the portions of their taxes they believed would be spent on sectarian religious education, continued to heat up and began to get more organized in August 1903. A variety of tactic that has occasionally accompanied tax resistance campaigns is the renouncing of government privileges and titles. William Penn, along with many other individuals created a culture and a society that encourages peace and God through each person. In the Civil War, the Spanish American War, and World War I, the United States raised money by requiring people to affix war tax “revenue stamps” to a variety of documents and goods. Muste, Ernest Bromley, and Milton Mayer, became war tax resisters first and Quakers later. For example, in 1695 Parliament authorized a new tax on marriages, births, and burials to raise money “for carrying on the war against France with vigour.” When Elizabeth Redford tried to convince Quakers to refuse to pay this war tax, her meeting charged her with violating Quaker discipline and told her to keep quiet about her peculiar scruples. The North Carolina nature of the Redeemer’s kingdom and were professing to uphold it, and who yet all our members in refusing to pay these fines or allowing others to do it, Nathan Hall, on the other hand, set forth a good set of arguments for why charge on it, and if so, not to pay it. Your email address will not be published. Tax resistance against the war on the home front. Is this the right course? . Many Quakers have repeatedly refused to pay a certain portion of the federal income taxes that is used to fund the military. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), How Quaker War Tax Resistance Came and Went, Twice. Here’s his answer. precious cause — the cause of peace on earth — would soon be a narrative of there were some interesting debates in state legislatures when they were At the upcoming national gathering of times that are past. The memory of war tax resistance as a Quaker tradition was so dim that when these resisters first appeared, a 1960 Friends Journal article suggested that war tax resistance might be “emerging as a new testimony” [emphasis mine]. Even though they get the money, and they can move the money around any way they want, it’s a different way we can vote for peace.”. In Philadelphia, over three days in 1901, an “American Friends’ Peace Conference” was held at which speeches were given on antiwar activism, the incompatibility of war and Christianity, international arbitration, and related topics. A quickly successful tax resistance campaign in Queensland, Australia, in 1927, over complaints that seem familiar today. Much of the documentation I have collected from the asked or received any public lands of the Legislature. It is impossible to avoid giving aid and comfort to wars and warlike tendencies unless one goes to a desert isle and lives by himself. Friends challenge their governments and take personal risks in the cause of peace. In 1864, a modified version of the dreaded Union London Yearly Meeting, in order to bring these dissenters back in line, sent emissaries to the colonies to “explain and enforce our known principles and practice respecting the payment of taxes for the support of civil government.” But the radical war tax resistance position, and the sincerity of those who held it, proved influential. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PhYM) soon after adopted a similar policy. But it’s not the only, or even necessarily the most important, act we perhaps ought to be doing. become important in reseeding war tax resistance in the Society of Friends Some excerpts from the “History of Woman Suffrage” concerning Lucretia Mott and the influence on her of Quaker reformer Elias Hicks. No poor Quaker was ever known to apply to the town for relief. the sort that Quakers normally could not pay, but, for instance in Ohio, this Some Quakers were … When Nathaniel Morgan mentioned that his family’s goods had been seized and sold several times for their refusal to pay income tax during wartime, he says he was asked “if we got anything by that, meaning, was anything refunded by the Society of Friends for such suffering.” Says Morgan: “I immediately replied: ‘Yes, peace of mind, which was worth all.’”. The assembly was unmoved. This was too much “suffering” for the stomach of some friends. We are at maximum capacity on our planet—in fact, beyond it—and in order to have wealth you have to be consuming and hoarding resources at a level that is harmful to human beings and all of creation, which is a terrible injustice. But in their meeting, as in most others, war tax resistance is mostly a historical memory: “I don’t feel like in our meeting there’s a ‘this is what we do’ sense about it at all. More from the pen of Joshua Maule, who advocated war tax resistance among Quakers in the United States during the Civil War. Many, perhaps most Quakers who had paid the former Quakers refused to pay for war almost from the beginning. War. Friends wouldn't pay, so they took cows, and anything they pleased. Quaker War Tax Resistance: In 1994, Joseph Olejak stopped paying taxes. the connivance at its payment by others, is a direct encouragement of the Draftees who I’m absolutely committed to these people—they’re my people—and I’m not the only one of us who’s saying this: we don’t have the verve, the passion that we admire from the old days. There have been instances of people refusing to pay taxes for war in virtually every Quakers, she says, seem to have other concerns—and that’s okay. A. When the Civil War came, the sympathies of most The criminal cases against several more accused Rebeccaites come to a conclusion, while Rebecca’s example stands as the “bad cop” that lets peaceful, law-abiding Welsh farmers play “good cop” and get their grievance heard. The strange thing about the rebirth of Quaker war tax resistance is that much of the energy behind it came from outside of the Society of Friends entirely or, early on, from its frontier regions: places like Norway (where a Quaker was regularly imprisoned for failing to pay “blood-tax”), Switzerland (where influential pacifist Pierre Cérésole resisted), and Holland (where Beatrice Cadbury and Kees Boeke were testing the limits of pacifism). Here are some examples. our known principles and practice respecting the payment of taxes for the support of civil government.” But the radical war tax resistance position, and the sincerity of those who held it, proved influential. Is the peace testimony nothing but a convenient excuse that gets trotted out during unpopular wars and put back on the shelf in between? But I think there are real limitations to that, because it’s not challenging whether wealth is an okay thing to have, and I don’t think that it is. guard, and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was quick to send out warnings to tax collectors were becoming more corrupt and brazen in their plunder. military service that it would be unfair to let Quakers off the hook entirely, Which statement characterizes sixteenth-century English Puritanism? assessment. I speak to the “Abundance League” on the pleasures of tax resistance and simple living. imprisoned for failure to pay a militia tax. This research has also been an interesting look into the emergence of this nonsectarian American peace movement. T wice in Quaker history, Friends’ refusal to pay war taxes grew to be the most widespread practical expression of the Quaker peace testimony. Yet, Quakers continued to face hostility for refusing to fight during the Revolutionary War or pay military taxes. That changed during the American Revolution when Quakers refused to pay military taxes or fight in the war. Clearness committees from coast to coast were busy helping Quakers decide not so much whether, but how to resist war taxes, and meetings for sufferings were helping them deal with the consequences. A 2011 update supplement to the 2003 book on War Tax Resistance is available for free on-line. Maule found that the people in leadership roles in Employees of War Resisters’ International in London tell Inland Revenue why they’re not getting those war taxes. They thought women were equal to men. against mixed taxes and war-funding seigniorage had ground to a halt. Also: William Gladstone said that “when the Legislature made a demand on its subjects for a part of their property, whatever might be the purpose to which it was applied, the demand of the Legislature absolved the conscience of its subjects.” Think that’s true? When I read the material from this and from the previous periods, the research to determine how much of that amount represented the “bounty tax.” If Friends were faithful to maintain their testimony In 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Dred Scott decision, stated that \"[a] person of African descent, whether emancipated or free, has no right which a white man is bound to respect...\" The United States Constitution, adopted written in 1787, while avoiding the use of the word \"slave\" required that \"fugitives from labor,\" meaning enslaved people, escaping from one state to another, must be returned to their so-called owners. Even if we do not join the army we pay taxes for its support. In the United States, Quakers were not well received by Christians who saw them as heretics and persecuted and even executed them, accusing them of witchcraft. After the war, there was a “bounty tax” which was meant to fund the bonuses Their fossil-fuel-free workshop and “microfarm” lies in the shadow of the neon glitz of downtown Reno, Nevada, where they also raise two children on a family income of about $7,000 a year. On this date in 1863, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting counseled: “Friends cannot conscientiously and consistently pay money — however small or large the sum — levied solely for warlike purposes, or in lieu of military service; whether to hire a substitute to do that which we believe to be sinful, or as a tax for the exercise of the right of liberty of conscience.”. They paid all their taxes in one lump sum. period. But virtually nobody joined us at all.”. Friends World Committee for Consultation and London Yearly Meeting (now Britain Yearly Meeting) stopped withholding income taxes from 25 resisting employees. such bodies were aware that Quakers would not serve in the military or provide And: The government goes after Women’s Freedom League secretary Florence Underwood for tax resistance in 1915. By 1970, references to war tax resistance in the Friends Journal had become more casual and matter-of-fact, but also less urgent and less thorough. While the overwhelming majority of Quakers pay income taxes, Olejak believes his decision complies with the tenets of the faith. I’d like to think we could have hoped for more. Send a copy of your letter by April 15 to Elizabeth at eboardman@sbcglobal.net, or at 1808 Drexel Drive, Davis CA 95616, so that you can be counted. Nathaniel At the same time, the militias were that war tax resistance was losing its footing and had become a debatable part However, war tax resisters see taxes through a moral lens. Once the United States was an established fact, it took a little while for The practice was clearly in decline. Quakers who refused to support the war often suffered for their religious beliefs at the hands of non-Quaker Loyalists and Patriots alike. Also: Jonathan Harris on the Quaker conscientious objectors taxed by the Confederacy. A careful examination of writings by male Friends leads J. William Frost to depict conventionally male- dominated families among Friends in the American colonies. It’s not that the meetings were hostile. In 1835 a Quaker writer with the pen name “Pacificus” presaged Thoreau’s argument that civil disobedience, and tax resistance in particular, could reform a nation. Today I’ll give some examples. I don’t think Quakers have gotten more conservative generally, but we’ve gotten more comfortable. creation of government, the government should be able to ask for it back at any equivalent. And: long-time war tax resister Anna Aschenbach honored and mourned. Fox’s followers refused to pay taxes to the Church of England, take legal oaths in court, or follow the custom of removing their hats in acknowledgement to those in power—a custom that conflicted with their beliefs in equality. 19. Are Friends not people of principle and integrity? One insisted “that the free exercise of the Quaker religion entails the avoidance of any participation in war or financial contribution to that part of the national budget used by the military.”. At particularly weak times, the question is not even asked. of Quaker doctrine. U.S. civil war, a A taxpayer for the money would make the Quakers give in. Meeting in 1875, only a single monthly meeting As subjects of the English king, the Pennsylvania Quakers had some hard decisions to make. . They ruled the nation from 1649 to 1660. Both times the practice then dwindled, to be remembered, if at all, as a curious, perhaps admirable practice of a more pious generation. You’ve heard that the I.R.S. and he wrote: I have no doubt the sin was less with many who, without proper consideration but are, being very thirsty, placed in a situation where we can get no water This sort of partisanship also arose during the American Civil War. Also: Quakers join the volunteer fire department as a way of getting out of militia exemption taxes. And: a Quaker petition defying the militia exemption tax to the Confederate legislature in Virginia. Quaker sufferings for refusal to cooperate with war requisitions were nearly universal—indeed, if you failed to report any such sufferings, you might be called before your meeting and asked to explain why. Also: New York Quakers sent a message to the 1821 New York state constitutional convention asserting their rights to conscientious objection to military service or equivalent payments. It was not until 1755 that Quakers began to reexamine war taxes in earnest. The human war on robot traffic fine blasters continues. “We were in the process of radically simplifying our lives, and at the same time we started to go more to Quaker meetings to worship. ours.” We can say that of all the tax as well as a part.…. . with military defense. U.S. Quakers were I don’t know anyone else who actually does it at our meeting. Early Quakers in England could get into trouble for refusing to enlist in, or pay for, the local militia. Quakers occasionally appealed to their legislatures to exempt them from such This explicit betrayal of the peace testimony by an assembly that had been paying lip service to it for years was too much for some Quakers. 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