The Conscientious Objectors, Part 1
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Our Guests
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Until recently, Dr. Layton Friesen was the Conference Pastor of the Evangelical Mennonite Conference (EMC). He is now the Academic Dean at Steinbach Bible College and is the author of Secular Violence and the Theo-Drama of Peace.
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Dr. Ronald J. Sider was the founder and President Emeritus of Evangelicals for Social Action and was the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary. He was the author of numerous books, including the Early Church on Killing and the bestselling book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. We interviewed Dr. Ronald Sider a few months before his passing in 2022.
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Cyndy Warkentin is the pastor of Saturday Night Church in Landmark, Manitoba.
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After studies at Fresno Pacific University, Mennonite Brethren Bible College, University of Manitoba (BA Hons), and Harvard University Divinity School (MDiv, ThD), Tom served as hospital and prison chaplain in Winnipeg, as well as pastor in Thompson, MB, and Boston, MA. He served on the MCCanada Christian Formation Council and is presently chair of the Faith and Life Commission of the Mennonite World Conference. His teaching and preaching have taken him beyond North America to Europe, Asia, and Africa. Tom is author numerous articles, both popular and scholarly, as well as books such as Guilt and Humanness: The Significance of Guilt for the Humanization of the Judicial-Correctional System, 1982; Put on the Armour of God! The Divine Warrior from Isaiah to Ephesian, 1997; Ephesians (Believers Church Bible Commentary), 2002); Christus ist unser Friede: Die Kirche und ihr Ruf zu Wehrlosigkeit und Widerstand, 2007; Recovering Jesus: the Witness of the New Testament, 2007; and Killing Enmity: Violence and the New Testament, 2011. Tom and his wife Rebecca are members of First Mennonite Church, Kitchener, ON.
Links and Resources
Books
Secular Nonviolence and the Theo-Drama of Peace, by Layton Friesen
The Early Church on Killing, by Ronald J. Sider
Nonviolent Action: What Christian Ethics Demands, but Most Christians Have Never Really Tried, by Ronald J. Sider
If Jesus is Lord, by Ronald J. Sider
Killing Enmity, by Dr. Thomas Yoder Neufeld
Music
First Communion, Dane Joneshill
(Spotify | YouTube Music)
Peace Prayer, Steve Bell
(Spotify | YouTube Music | Apple Music)
Notable Quotes
The Theology of Conscientious Objection
Whenever you as a Christian look at the world and see what the world is asking you to do, and then you look at what Scripture teaches, and you say, in this area I cannot do what my society or my parents, or my school, or my workplace, is asking me to do, you are a conscientious objector. ~ Dr. Layton Friesen
This is what Christians seek to live out while the world still has to use its kind of bloody violence to restrain its bloody violence. But in this way, the church, at least according to the Mennonite view, is always going to be living out of step with the world. We just have been given a different mission. We've been given a different job to do. Our job is to point to the final reconciliation—to the final healing, and to show the world that that's coming—that there is actually something in the air initiated by Jesus Christ on the cross and his love for his enemies that is going to finally do away with all of this bloody mess that we have to put up with in this world. ~ Dr. Layton Friesen
In fact, it's very interesting that it used to be not so much pacifism, but in German the term already all the way back to the Anabaptist beginnings in Switzerland was wehrlosigkeit—defenselessness. And there are still some conservative Mennonite groups who call themselves defenseless Mennonites. That's a very telling take on this. That means when harm is done to us, we will not defend ourselves. ~ Dr. Thomas Yoder Neufeld
I find it very telling, if I can go back to Ephesians, that the last image in Ephesians is “put on the armour of God,” which is about as fighting an image as you can get. What do you wield? Truth, the gospel, the promise of salvation, prayer, and then you realize once again, we've got a different logic going on here as to what constitutes powerful activity. But in order for us to understand that and to transform our nonresistance into a form of active, peaceable, loving resistance requires deep roots in the gospel. ~ Dr. Thomas Yoder Neufeld
Maybe even though we are called to a peace position, it's more complicated than just understanding that the entire world was supposed to behave in this way, and maybe we need to recognize that there is a place for war in a broken world, even as we hold fast to our call to be proclaiming nonviolence and peace. ~ Jesse Penner
