Editor,
I applaud Colin Donoghue's column in last Friday's Daily Lobo, "Jesus was no Republican," and Ralph Arellanes Jr.'s letter in Monday's Lobo.
Jesus taught us to love our enemies and to do good to them. During the first 200 years after Jesus, no followers of Jesus became soldiers. Maximilian refused to become a soldier, saying, "I am a Christian, and cannot fight." He stood firm to his convictions and was executed. Marcellus was a centurion soldier. When he became a follower of Jesus, he resigned as a soldier. He was imprisoned and executed for his stand against war. The soldiers Martin and Tarachus became Christians and were soldiers no longer. The early followers of Jesus knew it was never right for them to injure and kill in war.
For more than 70 years in the early history of the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania, almost all the Quakers stayed true to their faith. They refused to own any weapons. They refused to have soldiers defending them. They refused to flee to forts for safety, despite the wars between other European settlers and the Indians. Not a single man or woman of those Quakers who refused to resort to weapons or to forts for defense was killed by the six American Indian nations around them. They respected the Quakers' non-violence. These Quakers believed followers of Jesus must never go to war or own weapons. We conquer evil only with good - not with more evil.
Gandhi said the only people on earth who do not realize Jesus was non-violent are most Christians. Gandhi said the difference between him and most Christians was that he believed Jesus meant what he said.
Father George Zabelka was a Roman Catholic military chaplain in 1945 for the United States pilots who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After his discharge in 1946, Zabelka changed from a military chaplain who had never preached a sermon against killing civilians and children to a strong pacifist. He realized following Jesus meant opposing all war. Zabelka said, "Until membership in the church means that a Christian chooses not to engage in violence for any reason and instead chooses to love, pray for, help and forgive all enemies, until membership in the church means that Christians may not be members of any military, until membership in the church means that the Christian cannot pay taxes for others to kill others, until the church says these things in a fashion which the simplest soul could understand - until that time, humanity can only look forward to more dark nights of slaughter on a scale unknown in history."
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I have paid no federal income tax for war for almost 27 years, and I pledge I never will.
Don Schrader
UNM staff
