Mennonite Church Peace Resources for Youth

Yeah, that's me, a long-haired hippie, playing drums in L.A. at 19 years old. It was 1968 (almost 40 years ago! Man, I'm getting' old) and I was groovin' and trippin' out to the music (to hear samples of my group Beauregard Ajax CD Deaf Priscilla (search at http://www.cduniverse.com ). It was a time of the Beatles, Sgt. Pepper, psychedelic music (Jimi Hendrix rules!), pop art, long hair, bell bottom jeans, go-go boots, free love, acid, turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. I hadn't totally dropped out. I was an art student at L.A. City College and playing music around L.A. An older college friend, who had studied for the priesthood (now Father Richard Gant ), was dragging me all over the Los Angeles area to encounter Jesus Freaks in Hollywood, monks in the California desert, cloistered nuns, wild tongue-speaking Pentecostal revivals, Teen Challenge (where I met Andraé Crouch ), and faith healers, like Kathryn Kuhlman , who knocked me to the floor with the power of the Spirit on the stage of the Shrine auditorium in L.A., where I saw Hendrix play! (Far out, man!) I was rediscovering the faith of my childhood in a strange new way.

A world away the Vietnam War was raging and taking the lives of thousands of young men my age. Like most young men, especially in the counter culture, I was against the war, but I wasn't in any protests like some radicals of the day. I had registered for the draft, as was required, at the age of 18. I didn't burn my draft card or head north to Canada. Since I was in college I was able to avoid the draft. The draft meant you didn't have a choice to go to war or not. If they called up your name, you were headed off to boot camp, basic training, and then shipped off to the jungles of Vietnam to kill or be killed for your country and to "save the world from Communism" (Same old rap today, just with new enemies to fight).

Well, I screwed off and got some bad grades, which meant I lost my deferment from the draft. The next thing I know I get a letter in my mailbox, greetings from "Uncle Sam." It was a draft notice to report for duty in the U.S. Army. I knew what that meant. I was going to become a foot soldier, given a gun, sent a world away from my home and music and art and friends and family and school and ordered to shoot and kill someone I didn't even know and who wasn't my enemy. I hardly knew where Southeast Asia was located on a map! Jeeeezz Louise! What a thing to face as a 19 year old. Killing someone for your country! In good conscience, I couldn't do that. Maybe it was all that stuff I had been hearing as a child in Sunday School and around L.A. about that radical, peace loving Jesus.

I scrambled fast to try and get out of going into the army. I sent for a do-it-yourself minister's license from the Universal Life Church (ministers could be exempt from the draft, an odd kind of hold over from a day in the early church when no a Christian went to war). I prayed hard! I also had my pastor and friends write letters to the draft board telling them that as a Christian I felt I could not go to war and kill another human being (WWJD? What Would Jesus Do?). There were few evangelical Christians in that day (and still today) who were saying they could not kill because of their faith in Jesus. I guess I had become a Jesus Freak!

Well, I did get drafted into the army in the fall of 1969 as a "conscientious objector". All it took was some bad grades, the loss of a college draft deferment, and I was faced with a life and death decision. Could I kill someone for my country? As a Jesus Freak, I had to say, "No way, José!"

At present there is no draft and young men and women are not forced to face that kind of life and death question. Although some who go into the military to get an education end up facing the life or death question as they are sent to the war in Iraq. Then, reality sets in. Can I kill someone for my country? What would you do if you were faced with that kind of decision as a young person? All I can do is give you my old school rap about what I did as a Jesus Freak. Or I can tell you what that old, old, old school "freak" (Jesus) said against a world that wanted to suck him into its violence: "Love your enemies, man." That word is still far out!

Tune in for some more old school rap in the next column.

Leo Hartshorn

Minister of Peace and Justice

Mennonite Mission Network

Cofounder of Drumming for Peace