An Absurd and Unworkable Result

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.