An excellent programme by Ian Hislop on Channel 4 last night about those who would not fight for reasons of conscience in the First World War. None of the 6 men whom Ian Hislop focused on could be accused of cowardice; all had very clear religious convictions about the morality of warfare. Some were "alternatists", that is those who would not fight, but who would do something else of importance, providing medical care - often at the front line, and where they were just as likely to be gassed or die. Others were "absolutists" to whom anything that might help the war effort was an act of complicity.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/3407520/Ian-Hislop-on-what-really-makes-a-man.html
Often Methodists or Quakers, they took the commandment Thou Shall Not Kill to mean Thou Shall Not Kill Ever, Under Any Circumstances. Ninety years on, Hislop asks whether these conchies were "cowards and shirkers" or whether they were courageous in their refusal to fight. "Some 16,000 men applied for exemption when conscription was introduced in 1916," he says.
"Most of the ones trying it on soon gave it up. They went before a tribunal where they would be asked: 'What would you do if a German was going to kill your mother?' Most buckled at that point and enlisted. The ones who held out despite the intimidation were incredibly brave in their way. Their single-mindedness was extraordinary."
One of the leading "conchies" that Hislop mentions was a methodist lay preacher who asked in a sermon "Would Jesus bayonet a German?" "Can you imagine Jesus with a machine gun?" Uncomfortable questions for those with whom Christianity and warfare often sit too easily side by side. I certainly can't; it is like those images of Jesus riding a dinosaur. Mohammed, if he lived today, might have found a use for a machine gun, as warfare and Islam went together from the early days, but the only occasion Jesus displayed any real violence, it was overturning the tables of the moneylenders. Which does not bode too well for bankers either!
Conscientious objection seemed to stem from religious convictions, but interestingly, Time Magazine reported one modern case in the USA where an atheists convictions, formed against a religious culture, were sufficient to allow him to claim exemption from the draft.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,844701,00.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/3407520/Ian-Hislop-on-what-really-makes-a-man.html
Often Methodists or Quakers, they took the commandment Thou Shall Not Kill to mean Thou Shall Not Kill Ever, Under Any Circumstances. Ninety years on, Hislop asks whether these conchies were "cowards and shirkers" or whether they were courageous in their refusal to fight. "Some 16,000 men applied for exemption when conscription was introduced in 1916," he says.
"Most of the ones trying it on soon gave it up. They went before a tribunal where they would be asked: 'What would you do if a German was going to kill your mother?' Most buckled at that point and enlisted. The ones who held out despite the intimidation were incredibly brave in their way. Their single-mindedness was extraordinary."
One of the leading "conchies" that Hislop mentions was a methodist lay preacher who asked in a sermon "Would Jesus bayonet a German?" "Can you imagine Jesus with a machine gun?" Uncomfortable questions for those with whom Christianity and warfare often sit too easily side by side. I certainly can't; it is like those images of Jesus riding a dinosaur. Mohammed, if he lived today, might have found a use for a machine gun, as warfare and Islam went together from the early days, but the only occasion Jesus displayed any real violence, it was overturning the tables of the moneylenders. Which does not bode too well for bankers either!
Conscientious objection seemed to stem from religious convictions, but interestingly, Time Magazine reported one modern case in the USA where an atheists convictions, formed against a religious culture, were sufficient to allow him to claim exemption from the draft.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,844701,00.html
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