Talk to 9th International Conference of War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns

Rosa Covington Packard

As part of a panel presentation on Personal Witness:
Friday September 13, 2002, Hirschlau, Germany

Ten years ago, I joined other Quakers who were planning the work of Friends Peace Teams. Our meeting was facilitated by two British Quakers: John and Diana Lampen.

John Lampen spoke to us of the ministry of John Woolman an eighteenth century Quaker who refused military taxes for war. Woolman said his ministry was like walking into a muddy ground with mist all around and he was able to see only one stepping stone forward at a time. If he took that step, as inwardly led by God, only then would the next step become clear. Like many others, my experience with tax witness, has been like that—a step at a time.

At the same consultation, Diana Lampen to us spoke of peace work as being like a spider web: each strand having a different point of origin and running its own path, but each converging on a common goal and lending strength to the web. My experience with tax witness as a member of a Quaker Meeting and the wider community gathered here at this international conference has been like that.—a complex web that is becoming stronger over time.

So I'll tell some stories of how my own strand in the web has been strengthened by other strands and what it has felt like to take some steps out into the mud and mist.

In April of l981 I received a telephone call from a friend active in her church. She said she could no longer pay her income taxes for war. She had discussed this with her minister and decided, with his approval, to give the military portion of her taxes to the Quakers because of their work for peace. It was a week before taxes were due. I had I felt nauseated when I tried to work on my tax form. During that phone call, the meaning of that nausea was clear to me. It came from the disease of cooperating with war. I told my friend that I would join her in this witness. This gut reaction—was what counselors call a crystallization of conscience.

That was one step. I took the next step the next day.

We wanted to establish an Escrow Account under the care of local Quakers. Our tax money could be held in trust for the government until the government recognized the right of religious freedom by providing for our tax money to go for peaceful purposes. I was afraid of rejection if I did this but went down to my local bank anyway about noon. As I arrived vice-president who had been kind about opening accounts for my children came out the door. He was on his way to lunch. I greeted him and told him I was a conscientious objector to paying for war and wanted to put my taxes in escrow rather than sending them to the IRS. To my surprise, his face lit up and he said "That's terrific—I'm the man here that deals with the IRS—come on in and I'll arrange the escrow account for you." He turned right around and escorted me back into the bank. Since an angel of the Lord had appeared to me as a banker and said "Fear Not! "— of course, I didn't feel much fear after that.

Another stepping stone:
About 12 years later. An experienced Quaker told me it was the practice of early Quakers to record in their minutes the amount of assets seized from Friends because of their faithfulness to our testimonies. These were called sufferings for conscience sake. So when the Internal Revenue Service next levied my bank account, as they do at regular intervals, I wrote the clerk of my Friends Meeting to report the amount of interest and penalties levied. I asked Friends to consider whether that amount should be recorded as sufferings for conscience sake. Again a surprise for me! At Meeting for Business, as Friends approved a minute to record and they entered into a time of worship. In that deep silence the experience of being victimized became a blessing. I felt in unity with a crowd of witnesses in many times and places who have acted upon a similar truth.

Another stepping stone: I have an unconscious habit of humming under my breath—I usually don't know what I am humming until someone is irritated enough by it to tell me to quit. But a few years ago, the day came when I told my lawyer I would go ahead with a legal appeal to test on the courts whether, as a matter of religious freedom, the US Government could penalize religious conscience., After I hung up the telephone, I noticed myself humming. I asked myself what my soul was singing. It was the Ode to Joy, from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

But tax witness is more than an individual spiritual journey—it is also a corporate journey.—and here Diana Lampen's image of a spider web helps me.

In the early days of the escrow account we contributors met regularly to support each other. We went together to the IRS when we faced collection summonses and audits. We provided counsel, verification and formal protests on behalf of depositors. We visited with different attorneys to seek legal clarity. We provided background information to the press and granted press interviews. We wrote to Congress and spoke to employers when portions of wages were taken by the IRS. We visited with bank officials and bank attorneys when portions of individual accounts were taken. We were present on the telephone with a Friend while his truck was seized by the IRS, and with him again in worship when the truck was released from a local garage two months later. Financial aid was offered. Minutes written. Accounts kept. Each of us had different financial and social circumstances and each had a different understanding of their faith and practice in approaching tax witness. So the IRS responded to each of us differently. What would have overwhelmed me didn't overwhelm another. What confused another didn't confuse me. We each were presented with opportunities we could handle. We learned and grew from watching and helping each other.

In later years when the adventure of the test case was in progress we learned how individual witness became corporate witness and corporate spiritual discipline. The religious freedom issues at stake in Packard vs. the United States were eloquently supported by two separate legal amicus sent to the courts by New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. The responsibility for research, discernment and then approval of the briefs were given to a committee approved by New York Yearly Meeting. Serving on this committee was the clerk of New York Yearly Meeting, the clerk of NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee, and the clerk of Purchase Quarter which oversees the Quaker escrow account into which, along with other Quakers, I place my income taxes every year. The attorney was a member of my monthly meeting. These and other Friends attended the oral argument for my appeal to the Second Circuit in New York City in May 1999.

The judge in the lower court rejected by appeal in part because he said my witness was not compelled by my religious organization. Quakers were offended by this because he had misconstrued the very nature of Friends beliefs and practices. The committee worked with historians and theologians and attorneys to clarify the question for the judges. How is Quaker corporate witness possible when not all Quakers make the same choice about the payment of taxes in the mix?

This question is well answered by the NYYM amicus brief which you can read on the web (cpti.ws). Even though it didn't convince the appellate court, it has helped Friends in New York grapple with the issues of corporate tax witness and has been used in Quaker study groups. I'll read one paragraph from the brief:

"Unlike virtually all other Western religions, Quakers' concept of authority and doctrine flows upward from the individual to the group, rather than down from an ecclesiastic authority to the laity. Quakers ask if the act flows from the Inner Light and, if so, acknowledge it as dictated by the individual's religious conscience.For Friends, the ultimate authority governing the individual is the Spirit of God, or the Spirit of Truth, as she or he feels it and tests it and seeks to be obedient to it.

The earliest Quakers recognized what each generation of Quakers relearns: responsibility for discerning the truth and learning how to live by it rests with each individual. Each is responsible for discerning how she or he is called to act, but each person is also part of a fellowship of faith, responsible to and supportive of one another. There are institutions and forms which may help each find how she or he is led to live and act, including the authorities of Scripture, Quaker tradition (as expressed through Books of Discipline and Quaker history) the examples of people of good will and integrity in all traditions, and corporate discernment in official gatherings of Friends, such as Monthly and Yearly Meeting."

The question has also been well answered by actions of New York Yearly Meeting Friends:

In addition to recording the penalties and interest seized by the IRS as sufferings for conscience sake my meeting appointed a Friend to counsel those troubled by participation in war.

The Regional Meeting oversees the escrow account.

The clerk of the NYYM Peace Concerns committee arranged Meeting for Worship during the time the lawyers argued before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

NYYM's Fund for Suffering helped with legal expenses.

The clerk of the Witness Coordinating Committee arranged regular reports on the issue to the Yearly Meeting.

When the US Supreme court announced it would not hear the case on Tax Day in 2000, the clerk of Witness Coordinating Committee promptly circulated a carefully prepared press release sent to major national media and to every Monthly Meeting in New York Yearly Meeting.

During the Vietnam War, New York Yearly Meeting honored the conscience of staff who could not pay for war by refusing to act as a tax collector for the government and by refusing to pay the telephone tax.

And New York Yearly Meeting has repeatedly supported the legislation now called the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill.

New York Yearly Meeting appoints a representative to the board of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.

Monthly Quarterly and Yearly meetings have approved statements of support. The advices and queries in our New York Yearly Meeting books of discipline confirms that tax witness is an expression of our Peace Testimony.

Now: What's next:

On Monday as I was preparing to come to Germany, I read a report of a meeting that I had not been able to attend. Some Quakers in New York Yearly Meeting which spent a weekend in worship and sharing concerned by the threat of war that the US administration is now testing us with. A group on war tax witness explored an idea called the coordinated approach to resisting war taxes. This envisions a few persons directly resisting paying war taxes. Then it envisions about ten persons supporting the needs of that witness. All are helped by many others who support the witness through networks and media. Thinking of the US court system, they dreamed such witnesses, could be organized in each of the 11 Federal Circuit Districts—Now there is a spider web for you—and of course they are busy working on a web page.

Other webs of course are our national organizations and the work of Conscience and Peace Tax International. CPTI has recently helped to found a working group at the United Nations in New York of Non governmental Representatives interested in conscientious objection. Participation in this work has given me new energy and a new focus. Of course this conference itself is another model of Diana Lampen's image of a web.

As I pursued this adventure, I read the New Testament with new understanding.

I noticed that Jesus was born in Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor required of Jews a census for tax purposes to pay for Roman military occupation.

I noticed that Jesus invited Matthew, a publican and tax collector working for the Roman occupation to be a disciple and insisted that he get along with another discipline invited by Jesus to follow him, Simon who was a counterrevolutionary against the Roman occupation.

I learned that the denarius the coin that prompted Jesus' response: "Render Unto Caesar that which is Caesar and unto God that which is God's" was minted for tax purposes only and had Caesar's image graven upon it with inscriptions and symbols attributing divinity to Caesar. The two Jewish questioners understood that the first and second commandments were violated by possession of the coin. Jesus' response was therefore not a recommendation to pay military taxes—it was a side step that went to the central issue of idolatry.

Luke reports in 12:1-2 that when Jesus was led off to Pilate he was accused by his own faith community: "We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a King."

Later many Christians, out of their experience of the crucifixion and resurrection refused both military service and taxes for Caesar's wars and died as martyrs.

The enemy is not the soldier or politician. It is not the IRS or a threatening nation. It is the spirit of war itself within us and without us. We all are enmeshed in it. No one is pure. We are all in need of transformation. We can allow ourselves, like John Woolman, to make decisions out of this danger as if we were walking on stepping stones one at a time into the unknown. And, as Jesus taught, even our persecutions can be transformed into blessings.