And then there are those who seek discharge as conscientious objectors from the military having discovered that killing people and wounding the earth is neither service to country nor defense of country nor God's will.

All of these people give me experience of the living church.

I would like to ask all of you who have experimented in your own lives with these forms of witness to stand.

Thank you - it is a blessing to all of us to know we are not alone.

To explain my particular spiritual discipline with tax witness, I will read you this year's epistle to the IRS and to Friends everywhere. I send such a letter to the IRS with my tax form each year. It is an annual renewal, involving revisiting the leading and revising details. I am aware that tax day is often close to the day that that others celebrate as Passover and as Easter. This annual letter is for me a liturgical practice.

An Epistle to Employees at the IRS and to Friends everywhere
March 22, 2000

Attached is my U.S. tax return for l999 income, sent certified mail, return receipt requested. Because of my religious beliefs against participation in war, I have paid these taxes in full and on time into escrow. The Peace Tax Escrow Fund, under the care of Purchase Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) will hold these funds in trust for the government. Under the terms of the escrow contract, when my right to free exercise of religion is respected by using the money for such nonmilitary purposes as Congress may decide, the moneys will be released from escrow to the government.

I receive no financial benefit from this religious witness. I pay my state and local taxes and wish to cooperate with taxes for peaceful, life affirming purposes. I try to give my time and material resources to constructive ends according to the measure of Light granted me.

The US government imposes penalties and interest each year. Because I trust in the living Spirit of Christ, suffering such penalties brings me deeper clarity and is not a deterrent. My Quaker meeting supports this witness and records these penalties as sufferings for conscience sake, turning them into a blessing.

I am presently disputing in court the government's right to penalize me for my religious refusal to have my taxes pay for the killing and destruction of war and for preparations for war. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment states that Congress shall pass no law prohibiting free exercise of religion. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act states that when the government burdens my religion it must prove with evidence that it is using the least restrictive means. IRS regulations are not currently consistent with these laws. New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) of which I am a member, has supported my appeal with an amicus brief, affirming that my action is an expression of our Peace Testimony and consistent with advices in our book of religious discipline.

Please keep this letter of explanation with my IRS form and in my file. I have noticed over the nineteen years that I have followed this religious imperative, that when the collectors levy my bank account they have no knowledge of my religious position and that the federal judge in my appeal assumed I had sent no letter of explanation, contrary to facts stated in the appeal and to my practice. Apparently my letter of explanation has been tossed. Please rectify this.

The Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill (HR1446) introduced into Congress by John Lewis of Georgia would give an administrative way to respect the position of conscientious objectors to paying for war. The bill has been determined by congressional review to be constitutional and revenue producing. The Coalition for Free Exercise of Religion, a broad-spectrum group, supports it. I enclose a copy of the bill. I have worked on the national level toward the passage of this bill.

In all this, I affirm that the Spirit of Christ commands me to love enemies rather than to kill them, and to seek to reach that of God in every person, placing love and truth above success or status in joyful obedience towards God. Exercise of religion is a different order from expressing the changeable opinions or personal preferences that are appropriate to democratic decision making. It is nonnegotiable. I gladly join many others in different times and places that are led to similar witness.

Rosa Covington Packard

I have experienced a number of Quaker disciplines, or practices, over the past three years while I have been engaging the issue of religious freedom for conscientious objectors to paying for war in the courts. These give me a broader and deeper view of Gods purpose, God's gospel and God's way of working in the world. As I have followed specific guidance to do specific tasks, Openings come, and way opens. Being given my own piece of work to do is for me sacramental.

For example: I have an unconscious habit of humming under my breath - I usually don't know what I am humming. But that afternoon when I hung up the telephone after telling Jim Feldman, one of my lawyers, that I would go ahead with the test case, I noticed my humming and asked myself what my soul was singing. It was the Ode to Joy, from Beethoven's Ninth.

What was the test case about? It asked the government, as a matter of free exercise of religion, to stop applying discretionary penalties to me as a Quaker conscientious objector to paying for war.

Packard vs. the United States challenged the government to change the IRS policy that is inconsistent with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Constitution. That policy is clearly worded in the IRS's internal manual for its employees.

"As provided in Reg. 601.106(b), Statement of Procedural Rules, the administrative appeal procedures do not extend to cases involving solely the failure or refusal to comply with the tax laws because of moral, religious, political, constitutional, conscientious or similar grounds. Such arguments will be given no weight in settlement."

This is an upfront 1998 wording of the underlying position that the government, the courts and the IRS have been taking for years. This position conflicts with the Constitution's free exercise clause, which the courts have interpreted over the years in so twisted a manner as to deactivate it. The IRS wording also conflicts with international law on war and on human rights, which the courts refuse to consider in their deliberations.

John Noonan, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has written a book: The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom. The chapter "Durkeim's Dilemma" is directly related to this point. Noonan examines the tension between seeing religion as worship of the transcendent, and seeing religion as society's creation. He thinks both are true. He points out that the courts have held three aspects of our society sacred, as an expression of our "national religion" - Sacred taxation, Sacred military power and Sacred judiciary. Our courts have consistently held these idols to be superior to the claims of conscience. But then Noonan, who discusses in the following chapters the abolition and civil rights movements and reminds us that martyrs and crusaders can ultimately influence the courts.

This year the US Supreme Court denied certiorari, that is refused to hear, each of the three Quaker appeals that gave the government an opportunity to correct its errors. Priscilla Adams of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Gordon and Edith Browne of New England Yearly Meeting, and Rosa Packard of New York Yearly Meeting all had cases before the courts. We spoke and emailed and telephoned and met and learned and worshiped together during this time. These three cases all tested the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to the IRS policy. They had some differing arguments and facts but all asked for the IRS not to apply discretionary penalties when levying Quaker witness.

RFRA was Congress's way of eldering the Supreme Court because of its decision in the Smith case. Smith had changed the standard with regards to free exercise by holding that laws of general applicability cannot be discriminatory. Faith groups were shocked, by the Smith decision and formed the broad spectrum Coalition for Free Exercise of Religion. Congress responded to the Coalition's concern by passing RFRA by a large majority. RFRA returned the standard to the Court's pre Smith position.

As Peter Goldberger, one of my attorneys, remarked: "The result of the decision of the courts in the Quaker cases is effectively to exempt the Internal Revenue Service from compliance with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in its decisions whether to waive discretionary penalties. None of the courts' decisions address RFRA in a serious way, that is, by considering the actual language of the statute and applying the standards that it establishes. Voluntary compliance with tax collection is not the least restrictive means for a conscientious objector who cannot voluntarily pay."

Now it is important to understand that US courts don't yet recognize conscientious objection as a human right even though the United Nations now does. In the United States legal protection depends on what is called legislative grace. - Acts of Congress. Religious liberty has been interpreted to protect talking the talk but does not protect walking the walk. We Quakers are called to rely on God's grace and protection. However we still want the government to be under God and to mean what it engraves on our money "In God we trust.." No government should confuse itself with God.

This spring I attended a conference at the Center for Conscience and War which is the new name of the National Interreligious Service Board of Conscientious Objectors which is the old name of the even older World War II NISBRO. J. E. McNeil of Florida Avenue Meeting is the current director of the Center for Conscience and War. She is a tax lawyer and represented Gordon and Edith Browne in their test case. At that conference, Mary Lord, of Adelphi Meeting described the role of conscientious objectors as unmasking the hidden structures of violence.

Mary's comment helped me see in hindsight, why I was guided to agree to this test case on religious freedom. Unmasking the government's idolatry and religious discrimination in connection with religious pacifism has been a useful work. And it's been part of making conscientious objection more visible, which is a continuing work.

This adventure has been an experience of corporate witness and corporate spiritual discipline. The religious freedom issues at stake in Packard vs. the United States were eloquently supported by two separate amicus briefs filed by New York Yearly Meeting. The attorney for those briefs was Fred Dettmer of Purchase Monthly Meeting. His clarity and eloquence make clear that lawyers can provide ministry.

The responsibiity 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, Vicki Cooley, who also served on the committee of the American Friends Service Committee that approved the AFSC amicus brief in Priscilla Adams case. Also serving was Karen Reixach, clerk of NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee, who arranged regular reports on the issue to the Yearly Meeting and promptly circulated a carefully prepared press release from New York Yearly Meeting to major national media and to every Monthly Meeting in New York Yearly Meeting. The third member of the committee was Henry Elkins, clerk of Purchase Quarter which oversees the Quaker escrow account into which, along with other Quakers, I place my income taxes every year. These and other Friends attended the oral argument for my appeal to the Second Circuit in New York City in May 1999.

I was pleased to see that the coverage of the Supreme Court's denial of certiorari in the three Quaker cases in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Boston Globe and the Greenwich Times treated the issue as a Quaker concern even though they were brought by individuals.

When we make ourselves visible in this witness as Quakers we affirm publicly that tax witness is an expression of our Peace Testimony. How is this possible when not all Quakers make the same choice about the payment of taxes in the mix? The federal judge asked this same question in his dismissal of my case. It is well answered in and by the NYYM amicus 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 or body to the laity. Friends historically rejected the role of clergy; no ecclesia renders dogma which must be adhered to upon pain of excommunication or other sanction. Rather, Quakers ask if the act flows from the Inner Light and, if so, acknowlege 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. Under these circumstances, the District Court's rejection of Rosa Packard's acts as not compelled by her religious organization misconstrues the very nature of Friends beliefs and practices...

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."

In addition to these words and their further elaboration in the amicus brief, Judge Goetell's question is well answered by actions of New York Yearly Meeting Friends:

It is well answered by Purchase Monthly Meeting when it records the penalties and interest seized by the IRS as sufferings for conscience sake and their appointment of a Friend to counsel those troubled by participation in war.

It is well answered by Purchase Quarterly Meeting's oversight of the Peace Tax Fund escrow account. And by the dedicated support of its appointed treasurer, John Randall.

It was well answered when Marjorie Cornwall, clerk of the NYYM Peace Concerns committee arranged Meeting for Worship during the time of the oral arguments before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in both my case and the Brownes case.

It was well answered when NYYM's Fund for Suffering helped with legal expenses.

It was well answered when Purchase Quarterly Meeting invited Priscilla Adams, Gordon and Edith Browne and myself to speak at Quarterly Meeting.

It was well answered when, 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 against the conscience of its employees and by refusing to pay the telephone tax.

It was well answered when New York Yearly Meeting over twenty five years repeatedly supported the versions of legislation first called The World Peace Tax Fund Bill, then called the US Peace Tax Fund Bill and now called the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill.

It was well answered when a few years ago, New York Yearly Meeting appointed John Randall, a representative to the board of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. It was well answered when in that role John Randall helped get consultative status at the United Nations for Conscience and Peace Tax International and became one of its representatives at the United Nations in New York.

It was well answered when about a week ago; NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee approved a charge for a Task Group on Tax Witness and appointed Karen Reixach as its convenor.

It is explicitly answered in Monthly Quarterly and Yearly meeting minutes of support and by the advices and queries in our New York Yearly Meeting discipline.

Many other Friends and Friends institutions join us in this witness. All of these practices require corporate as well as individual discernment as well as public words and deeds.

I want to celebrate here the recent work of our Friend David Bassett who is here tonight - David Bassett of Ann Arbor spoke to you about tax witness several years ago at FGC. He is one of the founders of the Peace Tax Fund Bill movement in this country and is currently one of the organizers of the Eighth International Conference of War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns that is being held this week in Washington DC. Over a hundred people from eighteen countries will work together on this concern. David Basset is also responsible for getting language on conscientious objection into the Millennium Forum Declaration this May. Without this, conscientious objectors would have remained invisible in that Declaration. Now there is an item, number eight, under the section entitled "The Universal Realization of Human Rights" which reads:

"In the context of the right not to be complicit in killings, we call for full legal recognition of the rights of conscientious objectors."

Secretary General Kofi Annan will deliver the full declaration to all heads of States and to all UN delegates prior to the Millennium Assembly and the Millennium Summit September 6-9,2000.

Many of you, probably most of us, explore various forms of tax witness - Conscientious objection is not a cookie cutter phenomenon -Like all of God's creation we are one and we are diverse.

Some seek to live below the taxable level.

Some practice what Howard Brinton called self-taxing - the giving of ones resources to remove the occasion of war in various ways.

Some refuse to file, even though a refund may be due them from withholding.

Some withhold the military percentage of what they owe based on the research of Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Some place withheld taxes in alternative funds which give donations and loans to groups that create a peace culture.

Some place withheld taxes in escrow accounts to demonstrate that they are willing to pay taxes for peaceful purposes and to seek negotiation with the government for accommodation of their inalienable right to religious freedom.

Some give careful consideration to whether the seeds of war lie in the getting and spending of their money.

Some support the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill, which would allow accommodation for conscientious objectors to paying for war by having their taxes go for nonmilitary purposes.

Some participate in committee and meeting appointments to support this witness.

Tax witness is not a new idea for Friends either. It has deep roots.

Larry Ingles in "The Politics of Despair: a Continuing Journey" observes that William Mucklow criticized Fox and the other signers of the Declaration to King Charles in 1660 which we quote so often for not explicitly ruling out the payment of taxes for war in that Declaration.

In the French and Indian Wars, John Woolman and other Friends refused taxes for war.

In the Revolutionary War, Friends refused to allow hunting weapons to be seized for soldiers - even throwing them in the sea so they would not be used to kill.

In the Civil War Friends would not pay the $300 dollars to avoid conscription because the money went to the military. The government finally accommodated them by allowing the money to go for medical care.

In the first WW Friends suffered because they refused to buy Liberty Bonds -

You can read of the rich experience of Friends in the Second World War and in the Viet Nam War in the recent Pendle Hill publications documenting three major conferences in recent years.

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, thanks to the late Sandra Cronk, 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 from Marian Franz 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. Placing our lives in God's hands and paying attention to God's guidance will transform us. Then we can walk through the wilderness sustained by manna like the Israelites. We can follow the North Star like Harriet Tubman. We can allow ourselves, like John Woolman, to make decisions as if we were walking on stepping stones one at a time into the unknown mist (tery.) And, as Jesus realized, even our persecutions can be transformed into blessings.

The divine orchestration is available. What new song are we led to sing in the symphony?