In the earlier
scripture passage (Acts 16:16-34), we heard how Paul and Silas were thrown in prison as a
result of what appears to be a mob mentality. They cast a demon out of a
prophesying woman, causing them to be at odds with the surrounding crowd, who
then turned on them and demanded that they be thrown in prison. For whatever
reason, the town magistrates agreed. Maybe they were new in town, and looking
to prove themselves. Maybe they wanted an excuse to put away the men who had
been causing such a stir. Maybe they didn’t want a riot. The writer of Acts
never specified, so we are left to come up with our own reasons to fit our particular
narrative.
Regardless of
the exact reason, it does appear that Paul and Silas were jailed as a direct
consequence of living out their beliefs. They disturbed the social order, upset
the wrong people, and then were beaten and tossed in a dungeon to think about
what they’d done. Instead of falling into despondence, however, they sang
hymns, subverting the darkness and bringing light to their fellow prisoners. Most
of the teaching on this story centers about what happens next – an earthquake,
a midraculous freeing of the prisoners, a staying of a sword-holding hand, and
the conversion of an entire household. While divine action is always fun to
discuss, this week, I’d like to focus on other stories involving men and women
jailed as a consequence of living out their beliefs.
In 1918, towards
the end of the first World War, Chicago Mennonite John Neufeld received his
draft summons. At that time, the Midwestern Mennonites of Kansas and Nebraska
were still relatively new to the United States, having only arrived in the
1870s from Russia, where they had been exempt from conscription. The various
Mennonite conferences of the time met and declared to the War Department their
intention to refuse military service in any form. The United States had a provision for
conscientious objectors, allowing them to serve in uniform in a noncombatant
role, but that wasn’t good enough. The War Department, likely a little busy
with a world war, decided that Mennonites could refuse service, after which
they would be segregated until their cases could be decided. The intention was
that the COs would be treated well and their status respected. In many cases,
that occurred. In Camp Cody, New Mexico, it did not.
Camp Cody was
well-known for a history of abuse and torture of CO conscripts who refused to
participate in military exercises. Additionally, unlike many of the Midwestern
camps, such as Fort Funston in Kansas, Camp Cody was far away from the Mennonite
Meccas of the Midwest and East, making it difficult for customary visits to COs
by Mennonite pastors. When Neufeld got off the train in New Mexico, he intended
to make his pacifist stance clear to the commanding officer. The officer
refused him an audience, and forced him to put on the uniform, drill, and obey
commands. Initially, Neufeld refused, but after officers pretended to hang
another Mennonite CO, telling him he would experience the same if he continued
to disobey, Neufeld agreed to follow orders and participate in drills. He hoped
that eventually, the officers would recognize and respect his CO status. Soon,
however, it became clear that would not be the case. So Neufeld and another
Mennonite decided they would stop obeying any orders from any superior at Camp
Cody, starting during drill. Immediately upon disobeying, he was attacked and
beaten by officers, then placed under arrest and imprisoned, and put before a
military tribunal at Camp Cody, charged with disobeying orders. For his insubordination,
tribunal judges sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor at Fort Leavenworth.
While at Fort
Leavenworth, his work crew once received orders to report to a work site on a
Sunday. Now, I don’t know about your families, but my own parents refused to so
much as get gas on a Sunday, because it meant they were causing someone else to
have to be at work, and the thought of doing anything other than making a quick
meal and napping for the entire Sabbath afternoon was an anathema. Neufeld felt
much the same way, and along with 13 other inmates from Leavenworth, he refused
to show up for the work detail. Prison guards chained the disobedient men to
those who had shown up, and forced them all out to the work site. Neufeld and
his men were then chained to posts while the others worked. Within an hour,
however, the farm machinery began to break down. Soon, every single machine was
broken and unable to be fixed. The inmates couldn’t work, and so the guards had
to take them home. Neufeld writes that he believed this was a miracle, that God
had broken the machines used to do work on a Sunday to show the guards that the
men who honored the Sabbath were in the right.
In January of
1919, the War Department finally began to reverse the sentences of the
conscientious objectors incarcerated during the war, including that of John
Neufeld. For many, however, it was too late. The Spanish flu, diphtheria, and
filthy living conditions already took their toll, and many of the prisoners and
COs at Fort Leavenworth and Camp Funston did not survive.
The first World
War gave Mennonites and the United States War Department an opportunity to come
up with something of a truce – Mennonites and other conscientious objectors
would be required to register for the draft, but could register as COs. They
were allowed to participate in Civilian Public Service and given assignments of
national importance in areas such as land conservation, firefighting, and
mental health reform, all without pay, and without support from the federal
government. While the United States no longer uses the draft system, and has
exceptions for conscientious objectors in place, other countries do not.
Israel, in particular, with its 2-year mandatory service in the Israeli Defense
Force, has had to deal with many conscientious objectors over the years.
In 2016, two
Jewish women, Tamar Alon and Tamar Ze’evi were arrested following their refusal
to enlist in the IDF. They cited their objections to the IDF’s activities
towards Palestinians in the West Bank, saying that “We will only get out of
this cycle of fear and violence when we open our hearts and minds, look at what
is happening around us, and allow ourselves to feel the pain suffered by the
people who live in this land. Once we all understand and accept this reality, I
want to believe empathy, tolerance and compromise will be our only choice.” The
two were arrested and imprisoned. They are part of a broader trend of refusal
to enlist in the IDF. Typically, this response is met with a prison term of up
to a month. At the end of the month, the conscriptee is given a new enlistment
date, and an opportunity to accept or refuse. Further refusals lead to further
prison terms, the cycle of which is repeated until the IDF grants an official
discharge. A year prior to Alon and Ze’evi, Tair Kaminer, another Israeli
woman, spent 5 months in military prison, the longest period for a female CO in
Israel.
The popular
notion of the IDF is that it is “the people’s military,” a melting pot of
service to the nation. Men serve 3 years, women, up to 2 years. The enlisted
are from all walks of Israeli life, with exceptions for Israeli Arabs, Orthodox
women, and those who are physically unable to participate. The result is a codependent relationship with
the Israeli population of the country, and a passive complicity in the havoc
wreaked by the IDF upon the Palestinian minority. Conscientious objectors,
however, challenge the link between the IDF and Israeli citizens, helping to
disassociate the IDF from the people, and thus allowing it to be perceived as
an individual organization subject to critique, and less of a
citizen-sanctioned necessity.
Statistics from
the IDF show that an increasing number of young people are refusing to enlist
for military service. More than 25% of men and 43% of women have resisted in
recent years. Previously, if a person refused conscription, they would be
ostracized from society, but now, it is becoming more popular to resist, and
younger generations are feeling less and less like they have to do it. These changing trends and changing expectations pose
a direct threat to the legitimacy of the IDF and Israel’s occupation of
Palestine, and by extension, delivering a blow to the very foundation of the
occupation itself.
In the cases of
Ze’evi, Alon, Kaminer, and other COs, refusal to serve due to opposition to the
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is viewed as a political dissent, and an
act of civil disobedience. Alon confirmed the political nature of her stance
when she declared that “I can’t accept the claim that the oppression of another
people, the denial of basic human rights and racism and hatred are necessary
for the existence of the state of Israel.” She was eventually released from
mandatory service after spending 130 days in military prison. She promised to
continue to fight to end the occupation, saying that “the price I paid is small
compared to the price millions of Palestinians have been paying for 50 years,
whose basic rights are violated on a daily basis and whose freedom has yet to
be returned to them like mine was returned to me.”
Recently,
another woman, this time in America, was jailed for fighting for human rights.
In this case, she was imprisoned for refusing to testify in a death penalty
case. Earlier this year, Greta Lindecrantz, a Mennonite and a defense
investigator in Colorado, was jailed for contempt of court. She had previously
been part of the defense team for Robert Ray, a Black man on death row. While I
don’t want to focus overmuch on the reasons behind Ray’s death penalty sentencing,
it is worthwhile to point out that Black and Hispanic men are vastly
overrepresented on death row in the United States, as well as being the
majority in prisons around the country. For more on this subject, “The New Jim
Crow” is a great read.
Regardless of
how he ended up in his situation, Ray and his current legal team were
challenging his death sentence by arguing that he did not have good
representation during his first trial. As an investigator associated with his
first defense team, Lindecrantz worked as a mitigation specialist, collecting
information intended to persuade the jury not to hand down a death sentence. She
did not succeed in her endeavor, and at the appeal, was subpoenaed by the
prosecution to support their argument that Ray’s defense team had been
competent. She was concerned that her testimony could be used to deny the
appeal and, in essence, sentence Ray to death again. Her attorney filed motions to keep her off
the stand, but the judge in the case, Judge Michelle Amico, denied all of them,
stating that using religious grounds to allow people to refuse to participate
in death penalty cases would disrupt the justice system, creating an absurd and
unworkable result. That is kind of the point, though, for those opposed to the
death penalty.
In the
courtroom, Lindecrantz refused to answer questions, citing a religious
opposition to the death penalty. She told the judge that she refused to be a
cog in the state’s machinery of death, saying “I feel like I was handed a gun
and I was told to point it at Mr. Ray, and the gun might or might not have
bullets in it, but I’d have to fire it anyway. I can’t shoot the gun. I can’t
shoot the gun.” At that point, Judge Amico found her to be in contempt of court
and ordered her sent to jail until she complied with the prosecution’s request
to testify. There was the possibility that she would remain there for up to 6
months. While in jail, members of Lindecrantz’s church, Beloved Community,
visited her and sang hymns outside the courthouse, and the Mountain States
conference issued a statement of solidarity in their monthly newsletter.
Lindecrantz, her pastor, and her attorney worked together to try to find ways
of obeying the law while not compromising her convictions. Their requests were
denied by the court.
After 2 weeks in
jail, however, Ray’s new defense team made it known to Lindecrantz that her
actions could possibly hinder their arguments for appeal. That, and an
awareness of the effect of her continued imprisonment on other defense cases
assigned to her, persuaded her to testify. A statement from her attorney read
that Lindecrantz’s testimony was now considered by Ray’s current counsel to be
necessary to secure an appeal that might spare his life. In keeping with her
religious beliefs honoring human life, she agreed to speak in court, in hopes
that her words might save a man’s life.
We do not know
what happened to the woman from whom Paul cast a demon. Maybe she was free of
the men who owned her. Maybe not. Maybe she went on to find happiness and live
a normal life. Likely not. We are left to entertain ourselves with speculation,
as the writer of Acts chooses to focus on the heroics of Paul and Silas and
their steadfast commitment to their faith, and the divinely miraculous acts
that resulted in the acceptance of Christianity by an entire family.
As with the fate
of the woman from whom Paul cast a demon, we do not know what happened with
Robert Ray’s case. I spent quite a bit of time trying to find out. It was only
a couple of months ago, and the justice system moves slowly, so perhaps nothing
has been handed down. We do, however, know what happened to some of the
Palestinians against whom Alon, Ze’evi, and Kaminer refused to enlist. On March
30, thousands of Palestinians marched to the border wall in Gaza to call for
the right of return for refugees. Despite being an unarmed movement, the
Israeli army fired live ammunition, rubber bullets, and tear gas at the crowd,
injuring 1,400 and killing 30. The international outcry has been predictable,
and likely nothing will be done.
But just like
the woman, imprisoned by her demon possession and forced into a life she never
thought she’d live, and freed from bondage by divine action from the faithful,
perhaps we can be hopeful that there will be change. Like Paul and Silas,
singing hymns of praise despite the dark of a dungeon, we can bring light and
break chains.
