Latter-day Satyagraha

President Gordon B. Hinckley’s General Conference addresses “The Times in Which We Live” and “War and Peace” coincided respectively with the launching of the campaign against Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. In fact, the October General Conference 2001 Satellite broadcast was interrupted by George W. Bush’s declaration of war on certain channels in Utah. The April 2003 General Conference address was held a week into the war on Iraq. Hinckley’s addresses are perceived as important markers, ‘both in terms of reflecting the tone and shaping the direction of both current and and future discourse within the Church’.

Gordon B. Hinckley said in his address War and Peace: “…as citizens we are all under the direction of our respective national leaders. They have access to greater political and military intelligence than do the people generally. Those in the armed services are under obligation to their respective governments to execute the will of the sovereign. When they joined the military service, they entered into a contract by which they are presently bound and to which they have dutifully responded. One of our Articles of Faith, which represent an expression of our doctrine, states, “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law” (A of F 1:12). But modern revelation states that we are to “renounce war and proclaim peace” (D&C 98:16). What Gordon B. Hinckley acknowledges here in this address is the inherent’contradictions of the peace of the gospel and the tides of war’.

Patrick Mason, in his article Possibilities of Mormon Peacebuilding, published in the Spring 2004 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought observed that Hinckley followed a Mormon tradition developed in the twentieth century, where ‘LDS Genergal Authorities reconcile [...] the inherent immorality of war with the Saints’ civic duty to participate as combatants for their respective sovereign nations by saying that so long as they fulfilled their duty and did not violate the agreed-upon [international] codes of war, they would not be held accountable before God for the people they killed’.

The following excerpt from the First Presidency Statement on War answers to this. It was read by President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., Councilor in the First Presidency, at the final session of the 112th Annual Conference, Monday, April 6, 1942:

The members of the Church have always felt under obligation to come to the defense of their country when a call to arms was made; on occasion the Church has prepared to defend its own members. [...] The Lord Himself has told us to “befriend that law which is the constitutional law of the land”: “And now, verily I say unto you concerning the laws of the land, it is my will that my people should observe to do all things whatsoever I command them. And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me. Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land; And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this cometh of evil.” (D&C 98:4-7.)

While by its terms this revealed word related more especially to this land of America, nevertheless the principles announced are worldwide in their application, and they are specifically addressed to “you” (Joseph Smith), “and your brethren of my church.” When, therefore, constitutional law, obedient to these principles, calls the manhood of the Church into the armed service of any country to which they owe allegiance, their highest civic duty requires that they meet that call (see mormongandhi article on mormon civil disobedience). If, hearkening to that call and obeying those in command over them, they shall take the lives of those who fight against them, that will not make of them murderers, nor subject them to the penalty that God has prescribed for those who kill, beyond the principle to be mentioned shortly. For it would be a cruel God that would punish His children as moral sinners for acts done by them as the innocent instrumentalities of a sovereign whom He had told them to obey and whose will they were powerless to resist.

In this terrible war now waging, thousands of our righteous young men in all parts of the world and in many countries are subject to a call into the military service of their own countries. Some of these, so serving, have already been called back to their heavenly home; others will almost surely be called to follow. But “behold,” as Moroni said, the righteous of them who serve and are slain “do enter into the rest of the Lord their God,” and of them the Lord has said “those that die in me shall not taste of death, for it shall be sweet unto them.” (D&C 42:46.) Their salvation and exaltation in the world to come will be secure. That in their work of destruction they will be striking at their brethren will not be held against them. That sin, as Moroni of old said, is to the condemnation of those who “sit in their places of power in a state of thoughtless stupor,” those rulers in the world who in a frenzy of hate and lust for unrighteous power and dominion over their fellow men, have put into motion eternal forces they do not comprehend and cannot control. God, in His own due time, will pass sentence upon them.

Leo Tolstoy recounts his experience in his book The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893):

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“I have often asked different soldiers: ‘How can you kill people when the law of God says “Thou shalt not kill”?’, and my question has always caused the man uneasiness and confusion by reminding him of what he would like to forget. He knew that there is an obligatory law of God: “Thou shalt not kill”, he knew too that there is an obligatory military service, but he had never considered the contradiction between the two.

The drift of the timid replies I received to that question was always approximately this: that to kill in war and to execute criminals on the order of the Government is not included in the general prohibition of murder. When I said that this limitation is not made in the law of God, and reminded them of the teaching of brotherhood, forgiveness of injuries, and love – which cannot be reconciled with killing – they usually agreed, but in their turn set me a question. ’Why is it’, they asked, ‘that the Government’ (which according to their precepts cannot do wrong) ‘sends the army to war when necessary, and orders the execution of offenders?’ When I replied that the Government does wrong when it acts so, they were thrown into still greater confusion and either broke off the conversation or grew angry with me.  ’They must have found such a law, and I expect the bishops know better than we do’, one of them said to me. And by saying this he evidently set his mind at rest and felt fully convinced that his spiritual leaders had discovered the law under which his forefathers had to serve the Tsars and the Tsars’ heirs and which compelled him and millions of other men to serve. [...]

Everyone knows that if murder is a sin, it is always a sin whoever may be murdered, just as it is with the sin of adultery, robbery, or anything else. Yet at the same time, from their childhood and youth up, people see that murder is not only permitted but even blessed by those whom they are accustomed to regard as their spiritual leaders, appointed by God. They see their civil leaders, too, organizing murder with assurance, carrying instruments of murder themselves and being proud of them, and in the name of the law of the country, and even of God, demanding participation in murder from everybody. Men, (thus drafted), see that there is some contradiction here, but being unable to unravel it involuntarily assume that this contradiction is only the result of their own ignorance. The very grossness and obviousness of the contradiction confirms them in this conviction.

They cannot imagine that the learned men who instruct them could so confidently preach two propositions so obviously contradictory as the law of Christ and murder. An unperverted child or youth cannot imagine that those who stand so high in his estimation, and whom he regards as holy and learned men, could mislead him so shamefully for any purpose whatever. But that is just what has been and is constantly being done. It is done, first, by instilling by example and by direct instruction from childhood to old age into all the working people who have no time to examine moral and religious questions themselves, that torture and murder are compatible with Christianity, and that for certain purposes of State they are not only allowable but even necessary; and, secondly, by instilling into certain people – enlisted, conscripted, or hired – that the perpetration of torture and murder with their own hands is a sacred duty, and even a glorious exploit worthy of praise and reward’.