It’s no longer in the churches but in the professional military.

In the age of the professional military, it’s hard to know how to offer a relevant peace witness. We’re no longer called before draft boards. We don’t have to do anything to avoid military service. We just have to avoid signing up. In the meantime, we continue to fund wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with our tax dollars. Does an all-volunteer military make our witness obsolete? Definitely not. The truth is, our peace stance is still relevant and is a gift we can offer professional soldiers, if we don’t keep it to ourselves.

Robert Weiss, a U.S. soldier stationed in Germany, is one example of someone inspired by what he learned about Mennonites. When he started to question his participation in the military, he turned to the writings of Mennonite theologians and historians such as John Howard Yoder and John D. Roth for a new Christian outlook on the issues of war and peace. What started as a Google search for “Christians and nonviolence” led to a reading list that could have come straight out of a theology or peace and justice course at a Mennonite college.

Unfortunately for the Army, Weiss didn’t stop with reading. In June 2007, he applied for discharge from the military on the grounds of conscientious objection. As he wrote to his commanding officer, “It is my deeply held belief that participation in warfare is immoral. This is built upon my feeling that war—and furthermore killing—is against the will of God.” He had come a long way from loving his job as a combat soldier in his Stryker Brigade.

In August 2007, with his claim for conscientious objection still pending, Weiss was deployed to Iraq with his unit. While in Iraq, he refused to do any combat-related duties but was told that if his claim were denied, he would be expected to go back to his normal job, doing patrols and “soldiering on,” as they say.

Weiss made it clear, though, that soldiering on was not an option. In November 2007, he wrote: “As it stands, I am left with two possible options. The first is that my application is accepted and I will have my discharge. The second is that my application is rejected, they order me back to combat duties, I refuse orders [and] I am incarcerated.” He had made up his mind. He would go to jail before returning to combat operations.

One month after writing those words, he was informed that the Department of the Army had denied his request for discharge for conscientious objection. With no remaining legal option to avoid returning to combat, Weiss went AWOL (absent without leave). In February, he turned himself back in to military control and is now awaiting court martial in Vilseck, Germany.

Weiss is not the only professional soldier to come to this radical decision. Others have also been transformed by war and training for war. Soldiers like Weiss are helping make the argument that the front line of peace witness is no longer in the churches but in the professional military. And we have a lot to offer on the subject—if we don’t compromise on our convictions.

The current trend seems to be that we are separating ourselves from such phrases as “principled pacifism” in order to be taken seriously in the wider debate on issues of war and peace. In our need to seem modern, we are engaging such ideas as our “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) and are coming out with less-than-faithful conclusions. In a recent Mennonite Central Committee Peace Office Newsletter (Vol. 36, No. 4), one Mennonite leader went so far as to call for a “radically flexible Christian pacifism” (emphasis mine). I’m not sure how flexible pacifism strengthens our peace witness, but I know guys like Robert Weiss aren’t inspired by our forefathers because they were selective or flexible in their pacifism.

It’s true that we live in a different context from that of our spiritual ancestors, but that doesn’t mean we need to abandon the basic tenets of our faith to continue having an effect on society. It means we need to be creative about the ways we go about it. We must find new ways to apply those convictions.

Growing up in a Mennonite home, I learned what a conscientious objector was. My father and grandfather were Mennonite pastors, and I learned from them that COs don’t go to war, don’t bear arms and don’t join the military. Objectors understand Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount to be a guide for our lives today, not for some time in the future. They understand Jesus’ life to be normative. I am among these people who learned these lessons and refused to fight, but my experience over the last three years has taught me to look outside my historical roots for allies.

While we often see military personnel as our opposites, I’ve learned that every soldier is a potential conscientious objector. Every servicemember is a potential voice for peace, speaking not just from a theological or academic perspective but from firsthand knowledge of the tragic effects of war.

I am grateful to be part of a tradition of peaceful witness in a violent world. I have had many opportunities to tell the stories of our forbears, and I know from experience that those stories inspire others. But let’s make it more than our history. God is moving among some service members today as vibrantly as God moved among the early disciples and early Anabaptists. Our task is to help meld our historical understanding of Jesus’ call to peace with the fresh awakenings among those who once wielded weapons of war.

We have opportunities today to apply this tradition and present an alternative understanding of Jesus’ message. It’s relevant, even if some call it inflexible; it’s responsible, even if it doesn’t use force to protect; and most importantly, it’s inspirational to soldiers like Robert Weiss, who are seeking a nonviolent Christian example.

Michael J. Sharp has been working for the last three years with the Military Counseling Network in Germany, where he counsels American troops who are seeking discharges from the military for reasons such as conscientious objection. MCN is supported by the German Mennonite Peace Committee, Mennonite Mission Network and Mennonite Central Committee.