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BECAUSE We believe that order louis vuitton 45 Christians are forbidden by the commandments of God from taking human life directly or order louis vuitton 45 indirectly, and that bearing arms is contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we believe that order louis vuitton 45 Christians should not voluntarily become engaged in military service. If they are order louis vuitton 45 involuntarily engaged in military service, we believe they should refuse conscientiously to order louis vuitton 45 bear arms and, to the extent possible, refuse to come under military authority.

THUS: We call the order louis vuitton 45 General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists to repent of their current position regarding involvement in war, and order louis vuitton 45 return to the original Adventist position of non-involvement. We call for order louis vuitton 45 individuals to take a decided stand for Christ and His principles of life. Editors. See SDA’S IN TIME OF WAR–1 through 3; Part 1 article below:

A Brief HISTORY of Seventh-day Adventists IN TIMES OF WAR
By Ronald Osborn

The Seventh-day Adventist Church was founded by New England pacifists with intellectual and order louis vuitton 45 spiritual roots in the Radical or Anabaptist Reformation. In the first 60 years of the movement’s histor, from order louis vuitton 45 its organization in 1863 until the death of its prophetess, Ellen White, in 1915, Adventism may thus be order louis vuitton 45 seen as part of the same tradition of social and political dissent that order louis vuitton 45 gave rise to Quakers, Mennonites, and other religious communities committed to order louis vuitton 45 the ethics of nonviolence.

This commitment was both formally stated and order louis vuitton 45 rigorously practiced by early Adventists, many of whom believed that order louis vuitton 45 even touching a weapon was sinful. On May 23, 1865, the order louis vuitton 45 Review and Herald published a order louis vuitton 45 General Conference resolution as a truthful representation of the views held by us from order louis vuitton 45 the beginning of our existence as a people, relative to order louis vuitton 45 bearing arms. The document, composed in the order louis vuitton 45 aftermath of a war that had caused many abolitionists to abandon their earlier pacifism, affirmed a order louis vuitton 45 legitimate role for the civil government, but declared that Adventists, as a order louis vuitton 45 people, are compelled to decline all participation in acts of war and order louis vuitton 45 bloodshed as being inconsistent with the duties enjoined upon us by our divine Master toward our enemies and order louis vuitton 45 toward all mankind.

During the order louis vuitton 45 Spanish-American War of 1898-1899, Adventists thus emerged as outspoken critics of America’s imperial foreign policy. In opposition to order louis vuitton 45 other prominent churches that embraced the war as a Christianizing and order louis vuitton 45 civilizing campaign, they pointed to the glaring inconsistency of linking the order louis vuitton 45 cross with militarism of any sort. “Christian love demands that order louis vuitton 45 its possessor shall not make war at all. ‘Put up again they sword into his place,’ is order louis vuitton 45 the word of the Author of Christianity, the embodiment of Christian love,” thundered former army sergeant A. T. Jones. “Christianity is order louis vuitton 45 one thing; war is another, and far different thing. Christians are order louis vuitton 45 one sort of people; warriors are another and different sort of people.”

Percy Magan’s The Peril of the Republic, rushed to order louis vuitton 45 print in 1899, similarly denounced American actions in the Philippines as mere colonial greed and order louis vuitton 45 rapacious lust. Better, Magan argued, for order louis vuitton 45 a few missionaries to lose their lives at the hands of heathen savages than order louis vuitton 45 for heathen savages to lose their lives at the hands of those calling themselves Christians.
The Adventist commitment to nonviolence during this period of the church’s history was based not primarily upon concern for order louis vuitton 45 personal moral purity, but upon a systematic critique of America’s revered institutions of power. According to order louis vuitton 45 the Adventist reading of the books of Daniel and Revelation, the order louis vuitton 45 United States could not fail as a nation so long as it order louis vuitton 45 remained true to its Republican and Protestant heritage. Yet the order louis vuitton 45 fact that America would eventually fail was a foregone conclusion. No nationalistic project could replace the order louis vuitton 45 divine plan to redeem humanity once and for all. The creedalism and intolerance of the emerging Protestant empire “intent upon a new union of church and state,” coupled with the order louis vuitton 45 social injustice implicit in the economic order, revealed the seeds of corruption eating at the order louis vuitton 45 heart of the American experiment. The United States, Ellen White, Joseph Bates, A. T. Jones and order louis vuitton 45 other Adventist pioneers declared, was the beast of Revelation 13, a order louis vuitton 45 morally contradictory amalgamation of dragon and lamb-like qualities, who “doeth great wonders, so that order louis vuitton 45 he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth, and order louis vuitton 45 deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles.” Even the order louis vuitton 45 best government in human history, these prophetic agitators insisted, had feet of clay.

II

From Ellen White’s death in 1915 on, however, the order louis vuitton 45 Anabaptist ethos of the early church rapidly eroded. This was true in matters of ecclesiastical authority and order louis vuitton 45 biblical hermeneutics, but particularly with regard to the military and bearing arms. Following World War I the order louis vuitton 45 Adventist commitment to not taking life remained largely intact, yet church leaders increasingly described Adventists not as conscientious objectors but as “conscientious cooperators”. The consensus of the order louis vuitton 45 new generation was that it was no longer the church’s role to order louis vuitton 45 question the rightness of US military adventures or foreign policy so long as Adventist soldiers were allowed to order louis vuitton 45 continue in their peculiar commitment to Sabbath observance.

It was in this order louis vuitton 45 spirit of patriotic cooperation with the government that the Adventist Medical Cadet Corp was created in 1942. The Corp sought to prove that good Adventists were also “good Americans,” eager and order louis vuitton 45 willing to serve in the military, albeit in noncombatant roles. The Corp thus helped to order louis vuitton 45 instill in a generation of young Adventists a love for the order louis vuitton 45 military jack-boot and bivouac, and the belief that it is honorable to order louis vuitton 45 serve power for the sake of order. Unfortunately, these lessons could not be order louis vuitton 45 confined to one side of the Atlantic. During World War II Adventists proudly answered the order louis vuitton 45 call to duty in the United States, but also, and more disconcertingly, in Nazi Germany. While Protestant leaders of other denominations resisted fascism at considerable cost, there was no order louis vuitton 45 Adventist “Confessing Church”, and order louis vuitton 45 up to the outbreak of the war Adventists even in the order louis vuitton 45 United States spoke of Hitler in positive terms as a fellow vegetarian concerned with matters of bodily hygiene.

Whereas Adventist complicity in the order louis vuitton 45 Nazi onslaught, as well as the horrors of the Allied bombing campaign, might have order louis vuitton 45 sparked a recommitment to the nonviolent principles of the church’s pioneers, Adventists from order louis vuitton 45 the 1950s on generally saw World War II as a vindication of violence for order louis vuitton 45 a just cause. The idea that order louis vuitton 45 loyalty to God and loyalty to the military were fully compatible became powerfully entrenched in the order louis vuitton 45 minds of many Adventists, particularly in North America. Pockets of believers in Germany and order louis vuitton 45 other European countries retained the older ethics of nonviolence; and order louis vuitton 45 Russia’s True and order louis vuitton 45 Free Adventists heroically resisted Soviet totalitarianism in defense of freedom and order louis vuitton 45 human rights. But these pacifists, whose convictions placed them firmly in the order louis vuitton 45 tradition of the church’s founders, were disavowed and marginalized by presiding church officials. With a order louis vuitton 45 burgeoning network of health and educational institutions, and ambitious evangelistic campaigns around the order louis vuitton 45 world, maintaining good relations with government authorities now took precedence over prophetic and order louis vuitton 45 politically dangerous brands of dissent.

With more and order louis vuitton 45 more Adventist chaplains rising in military rank, the church was also already too deeply invested in the order louis vuitton 45 military as an institution to seriously question the logic of violence, or order louis vuitton 45 the rightness of American foreign policies abroad. The title of the Adventist chaplaincy’s newsletter, For God and Country, revealed just how far pietism and order louis vuitton 45 patriotism had come to be wedded in the thinking of church leaders, and order louis vuitton 45 how far Adventists had come since Magan’s Peril of the Republic.

III

By the order louis vuitton 45 time of the Vietnam War the Adventist position had thus fragmented into incoherency. Some Adventists evaded the order louis vuitton 45 draft, others entered as noncombatant medics, and others avoided direct military action by volunteering as human guinea pigs in Project White Coat, a order louis vuitton 45 research program with links to the US biological weapons laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland. During the order louis vuitton 45 war in Vietnam significant numbers of Adventists, encouraged by church officials to order louis vuitton 45 perform their patriotic duty according to “the dictates of their conscience”, also picked up guns and, for order louis vuitton 45 the first time, began to kill according to the dictates of government planners.

In view of the order louis vuitton 45 vociferous Adventist response to the Spanish-American war, the silence of the order louis vuitton 45 church during the war in Indochina, and particularly the silence of those chaplains closest to order louis vuitton 45 the unfolding catastrophe, marked a stunning reversal in Adventism’s historic identity, from order louis vuitton 45 fearless agitators to acquiescent mandarins of the state. Religious leaders of other faiths, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Merton, and order louis vuitton 45 Abraham Joshua Heschel, decried the war in unequivocal language. But through the order louis vuitton 45 carpet-bombing with napalm of hundreds of thousands of defenseless villagers; through the order louis vuitton 45 countless acts of brutality and depredation against unarmed civilians; through the order louis vuitton 45 dumping of millions of gallons of arsenic-based herbicides on Vietnamese crops and order louis vuitton 45 people, through all of this Adventists spoke not a word. In a order louis vuitton 45 tragically ironic twist, even as America acted increasingly like the beast Adventists had order louis vuitton 45 long proclaimed it to be, the prophetic movement proved an increasingly timid and order louis vuitton 45 sycophantic page at the dragon’s side.
In the order louis vuitton 45 post-Vietnam era, thousands of Adventists voluntarily joined the US armed forces as full combatants. Adventist chaplains were recruited to order louis vuitton 45 minister to these fighters “without passing judgment”, which in turn encouraged more Adventists to enlist. With large numbers of Adventists on active duty, it order louis vuitton 45 is therefore not surprising that there was not a murmur of disapproval from order louis vuitton 45 the church in the 1970s and 1980s as the US military abetted Latin American juntas in the order louis vuitton 45 slaying of tens of thousands of impoverished peasants calling for land reform, many of them Christians who order louis vuitton 45 first heard about the Sabbath Jubilee from socially conscious Catholic priests.

During the order louis vuitton 45 1990s and at start of the 21st century, the collapse of the order louis vuitton 45 historic Adventist ethic of nonviolence became apparent in other embarrassing ways. Early Adventist apocalyptic had order louis vuitton 45 led the movement to reject all acts of violence and bloodshed, but in Waco, Texas in 1993 one-time Adventists played out a order louis vuitton 45 new and violent apocalyptic nightmare on a compound bristling with weapons. In 1994 significant numbers of Adventist Hutus in Rwanda participated in the order louis vuitton 45 genocide of their Tutsi countrymen, including an estimated ten thousand Seventh-day Adventists. Through the order louis vuitton 45 1990s, as Buddhist Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ang San Suu Kyi, attracted world attention in her nonviolent struggle against Burma’s military dictatorship, hundreds of Karen Adventists, whose great-grandparents had order louis vuitton 45 been evangelized by legendary missionary Eric B. Hare, engaged in a order louis vuitton 45 campaign of guerrilla warfare against the Burmese army with the order louis vuitton 45 goal of creating an autonomous Karen nation. And in 2002 rival militias comprised largely of Adventists fought for order louis vuitton 45 control of the government of the Solomon Islands.

Yet while Adventists were quick to order louis vuitton 45 dismiss these events as tragic aberrations in the faith, they did not pause to order louis vuitton 45 consider the church’s romance with more devastating forms of violence sanctified by the order louis vuitton 45 state. In 2002 a order louis vuitton 45 group of students from Oakwood College were arrested for gun-running between New York and order louis vuitton 45 Alabama. But the church saw no reason to disavow the voting records of Adventism’s two most prominent gun-runners: US Congressmen Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland and order louis vuitton 45 Bob Stump of Arizona, who through the 1990s collected hefty sums from order louis vuitton 45 the National Rifle Association and military manufacturing lobbyists for helping to order louis vuitton 45 grease weapons sales at home and abroad.

The September 2001 terrorist attacks in the order louis vuitton 45 United States saw the final denouement of Adventism as a prophetic movement that order louis vuitton 45 could not be co-opted by nationalistic crusades. Amid the many heartfelt and order louis vuitton 45 sincere expressions of grief following the tragedy, churches from coast to order louis vuitton 45 coast reflexively wrapped themselves in the flag, no different from the order louis vuitton 45 rest of evangelical America. Sligo Church in Washington, DC featured a Veteran’s Day service in which a order louis vuitton 45 military honor guard marched down the center aisle with bolt-action rifles gripped to order louis vuitton 45 their chests. At a order louis vuitton 45 camp-meeting in Northern California, a patriotic song service was followed by a order louis vuitton 45 21 gun salute with live ammunition. And near the order louis vuitton 45 end of the American bombing campaign in Afghanistan, the General Conference organized a order louis vuitton 45 special weekend to honor the US military and send care packages overseas, not care packages to order louis vuitton 45 the afflicted Afghanis, but stuffed animals to US bomber crews stationed at Diego Garcia Air Force Base in the order louis vuitton 45 Pacific Ocean. Little thought was given by the order louis vuitton 45 planners of the event to the history of American policy in the order louis vuitton 45 Middle East, or the estimated 3,400 Afghani civilians killed by US bombs, four hundred more innocent people than order louis vuitton 45 perished on September 11. Where Adventists once venerated those Protestant martyrs who order louis vuitton 45 died rather than betray their religious convictions, they would now honor US soldiers who order louis vuitton 45 kill at the bidding of their political masters. As President George W. Bush promised to take his war against America’s enemies to order louis vuitton 45 far-flung corners of the globe, one thing was certain: many Adventists would soon be order louis vuitton 45 shipping out to exotic lands, not as missionaries, but as warriors, assault rifles in hand.