The Making of a Conscientious Objector

December 14th, 2007

How does one become a conscientious objector?  The Army and Air Force say that you can claim to be a conscientious objector on a secular basis only through "through training, study, contemplation, or other activity comparable in rigor and dedication to the processes by which traditional religious convictions are formulated."

I became a conscientious objector very gradually.  I can point to a day in 1966 in a history class where we were debating the Vietnam War when I took my first step.  I concluded that day that the war in Vietnam was wrong. 

That was a new concept for me then.

It really was decades later, as a Quaker, that I concluded that all wars were wrong.  There was no such thing as a just war.  And a few years later, before I understood that not only wars were wrong, they did not do the things that they claimed—make the world safe; bring peace; serve justice.   But I cannot fairly state that I came to this position through anything approaching “rigor and dedication” since it took me more than 40 years.

I have talked to COs who became COs through study which changed their beliefs, and subsequently their actions. And COs who studied war and theology and then realized that what they were doing was not in sync with what they then believed.

I have talked with COs who became COs in an instant.  They stood by ground zero, saw Hiroshima, spoke with a prisoner of war, were ordered to shoot at a child, and the next instant became clear and fixed in their belief that they could not participate in war.

I have talked with COs who became COs without knowing it.  Rather than suddenly having a change of heart, they suddenly saw what was in their heart that they were ignoring.  They found themselves praying to God that they not kill anyone and realized what they had become.

There is no one way to becoming a CO.  We each walk our own paths and we are each at a different point on the path.

But each of us is on the path which will someday lead to the end of war.