The Case of the Christian Pacifists

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Excerpt from The Case of the Christian Pacifists: At Los Angeles, Cal A "Call for a Conference of Christian Pacifists in California, " signed by a group of ministers and laymen was somewhat widely circulated in August, 1917. It began: "The Conference of Christian Pacifists in California is called at the initiation of many Christian ministers and laymen, who notwithstanding their various religious and political beliefs, are united in open protest against the militaristic interpretation of Christianity. Grieved to note how the deep silence and confusion of the Church on this great moral issue is often broken by an open endorsement of war, they desire to meet for prayer and conference in open convention, wholly independent of denominational or political control, and eager only to seek and to do the whole will of God. In so gathering they desire to manifest the spirit of Christian love toward all who disagree with them and ask of their Christian brethren and fellowmen that kindly tolerance which is the grace of the Church of Christ upon earth." On December 8, 1917, the three leaders of this conference, Rev. Robert Whitaker, a Baptist, Rev. Floyd Hardin, a Methodist, and Harold Story, a young Quaker, were sentenced by Judge White in the Los Angeles police court to six months in prison and fines aggregating $1, 200 each. He thus described their crimes at the beginning of an elaborate address on patriotism: "You three defendants stand here for sentence after having been found guilty by a jury on three counts of a complaint charging most serious, extremely aggravated, and intensely unpatriotic charges, that is to say: 1st: Participating in an unlawful assemblage - unlawful because of the unpatriotic utterances and purposes of said meeting against the President of the United States, the conduct of the war against Germany, and the selective draft law, under the terms of which we expect in the United States to recruit soldiers and sailors (sic) to fight our battles against against the imperial government of Germany. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.