Spirit in Action
John Lamoreau - Waging Peace/Biblical Pacifism
John Lamoreau has a Master of Arts in Peace Studies and is the co-author of Waging Peace: A Study In Biblical Pacifism, written 26 years ago with about 25 reprintings since then. John is an Evangelical Friend/Quaker, with deep concern for faithfulness to Jesus and to the life Jesus directed that we live. He has the peculiar distiction of being perhaps the only avowed pacifist to be endorsed by the National Rifle Association.
- Broadcast on:
- 01 Oct 2010
- Audio Format:
- other
I have no hands but yours to tempt my sheep. No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep. I have no arms but yours with which to hold. The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old. I have no hands but yours with which to see. To let my children know that I am out and out is everything. I have no way to feed the hungry souls. No clothes to give and make you the ragged and the morn. So be my heart, my hand, my tongue, through you I will be done. The enders have I none to help I'm done. Welcome to Spirit in Action, my name is Mark Helps me. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all I'll seek out light, love and helping hands being shared between our many neighbors on this planet hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. My guest today on Spirit in Action is John Lamero. John is co-author of a book Waging Peace, a study in biblical pacifism. He is an evangelical Christian Quaker and spans a lot of worlds. He's just finishing his term as a Republican Party County Commissioner and perhaps he is the only pacifist ever to have been endorsed by the National Rifle Association. John, thanks for joining me today for Spirit in Action. It's an honor to be with you, really an honor to be invited. I met you out there in Oregon and that's where you're talking to me today from. Are you a lifetime Oregon resident? No, I grew up in Central California about 60 miles from San Francisco, moved up to Oregon in 1969 from my freshman year at the University of Oregon. And religiously, how were you raised? I know you're Quaker now, but what were your roots religiously? My family would be, I would say, marginally Christian. I mean, we would say we were Christians but we did not attend a church so there was really no real faith in our home, in fact I kind of smiled about it if somebody wanted to take my brother and sister I had to church, they could stop by, pick us up and we'd go to church so we ended up at quite a few different churches as we were growing up, but no particular denomination. In fact, when I first became a Christian and I told my mother about that, her first response was, "Oh God, not that," and so I kind of smiled about that because she was a bit concerned that I might become too fanatical about it. And does she still feel that way these days? She has still maintained her non-Christian roots and so she's come to accept my belief standards in what I believe in and has admired them from afar, though she has decided not to join any church. I'm asking this at least in part because you've gone on to be somewhat of a leader, some of an inspirational force in actually living out visible faith and so these roots seem important to me. When you say you became a Christian, was this denomination specific? How old were you at the time? How did this happen? Well, it's an interesting story, at least it's interesting to me on how it happened. Some of the background, in 1968 between my junior and senior years in high school, I had a wonderful opportunity to travel through Europe for three months and it was an exciting time. 1968 was a year but it was also a very turbulent time. Just days before I left, Bobby Kennedy was killed in California, Martin Luther King was killed that prior April. Of course, the Vietnam War was raging. I was in Paris when the communist students took over the Sorbonne and all the mass transit was shut down. I was in the Soviet Union when they invaded Czechoslovakia. It was just a dramatic, dramatic summer of seeing events and that was the first start of my Christianity. By that, what I mean is I did not look at becoming a Christian then but what I noticed was as I was traveling through Europe and seeing all the different beliefs that various people had and the different nations I went to and it was 17 countries and I visited, was that I started to think, you know, if I was born in this country, I'd probably be very nationalistic and very supportive of that country and if these people were born in our country, they'd probably be pretty pro-American. When I was in the Soviet Union, that really struck them. I was very impressed with the Soviet people but realized the people I was traveling with had a real dislike for the Soviet people and the Soviet people had a real dislike for the American people. I was only 17 but I thought, you know, if I was born in Russia, was there press, I'd probably be a proud Russian and if these Russians were born in America, I'd have a feeling with the American press, it'd probably be proud Americans and I thought that there had to be something, somewhere, somehow, that would want to take away the hatred I was feeling between the two cultures because we were at the height of the Cold War then and I just thought there had to be something that would take this hate away that would cause people not to want to hate someone just because of place of birth and where they grew up. I had no clue that could be Christianity because every Christian I knew, at that time supported what I viewed as kind of the war mentality that was so prevalent and when I spoke to Christians about it, that was the attitude I received. About five years later, I was visiting a friend, ended up picking up a New Testament, reading the first letter of John and realized, oh my goodness, this is what I've been seeking and so it was five years after the summer of 1968 that I became a Christian and started jumping in to the Bible quite extensively. When you say you became a Christian, was this kind of a gradual intellectual realization or was it kind of the dramatic, born-again Christian type experience? No, yeah, I would say more of the born-again. It was very dramatic in the sense that my heart literally leapt when I read first John. I had pretty much dismissed the Bible in Christianity and then reading the word, it became dramatically obvious that this is what I had been seeking. When you say that you started studying the Bible, do you mean that you took some kind of formal study course or went to seminary or something? Well, on my own, what I found at first is that I would read it, I would have questions, I would go to somebody and ask them to help me with my questions and then I would receive an answer back. Most of the time I would receive an answer back that would tell me part of the story but not all of the story and you get that with a lot of different denominations, especially questions about peace and justice. And so what I did for a year is I decided not to read anything other than the Bible, pray about what I was reading and then supplement it with as much history that I could find on the early church. In other words, trying to find the setting in life in which the teachings occur, to try to get away from the filter of 2,000 years of society interpreting different verses. I tried to go back to the very beginning and look at it historically, what the intentions were when the words were first spoken. And then after a year, then I went out and started having more conversations with other people and bringing people in. But what I found, and this is something that missionaries often talk about when they go overseas and go to a culture that the culture they go to typically tries to meld the belief of the culture with the new Christianity that's brought to them. And what I found was, is that throughout society, and some people have written about it, as our culture has tried to blend what we have as a pagan society to meld it and mash it and converge it with the Christian belief, and you get kind of a mixed pot that way. And so what I was trying to do is to try to find the historical Jesus, so to speak, and not so much the contemporary Jesus. The contemporary Jesus, does that bear any resemblance to the living Christ? No, what I would say when I refer to it is, for example, if you take the story of the Good Samaritan, to most people today you hear the story of the Good Samaritan and you just instantly think of somebody who does good, and that helps someone. If you put it in the historical context, to realize that Jesus as a Jewish teacher was talking about a Samaritan who was absolutely hated by the Jewish people, and was saying that a Jewish person was waylaid on a trip, and people of his faith ignored him, and yet a Samaritan came by and helped him. Today in our society, that would be similar to us as a Christian, giving a parable of the good Muslim. The Christians let the guy on the roadside and didn't help, but the Muslim came by and helped him. It was such a radical teaching when Jesus said, "Go and do likewise. Love your neighbor as yourself, and then how do I do it?" Well here's a parable of Good Samaritan, love everybody. When you put in the historical context, it really comes to life. Through the eyes of our society, I think the word is diluted quite a bit. So you did some study on your own for an extended period, and then did you go try and find out some group that matched what you believed, what insights you had had? Well not really. What was interesting is I was convinced that the way a peace was the way that Jesus taught. Now I had no clue how the early church felt about it, and I had no clue how it was accepted for the first 300 years of Christianity. All what I knew was that every Christian that I knew said that I was wrong, and I was interpreting the Bible wrong. And yet the more that I read, the more I saw Jesus teaching, and how he lived, and what the apostles taught, and how they lived, it was obvious that they taught peace. Love your neighbor, love your enemy, do good to those who persecute you, feed those who persecute you when you look at the entirety of it was overwhelming. And so I at one point knew of no other Christian who held similar beliefs, none. And so it was kind of lonely to say the least. I took a couple years off from school, came back to the University of Oregon 1973, and just literally as I went up to finish my senior year there, just prayed Lord, let me find people I can fellowship with. Literally the day after I prayed that, I got lost, I was trying to find my way to a farm house I had rented, stumbled upon the French church and met Don Lam, who was the pastor of the Eugene French church. It was a Wednesday morning that I went by, he invited me to a Wednesday night service. I went and was that night that I met my friend Ralph Beebe, who I co-authored, Waging Peace But I'm assuming that in the meantime you had been checking out other places, other churches, other fellowships. Actually there wasn't much time in between, because in '68 is when I knew there had to be something out there, it was five years later that I started reading the New Testament. So it was within the first year that I then met Ralph. I attended churches, but none of them as far as a membership basis. I visited quite a few different churches actually. That was when I was in California, but then when I moved back to Oregon, that's when I met with the friends and then became part of their church. And what was it that was so different about your arrival there at the Eugene French church? Well for the first time in my life, I met other Christians who shared a similar belief on peace, that the teachings of Jesus truly were intended for us to live our lives non-violently. So that was the biggest difference. The biggest similarity, the other similarity was that we were the Eugene French church and myself. We were evangelical Christians. And so for me it was a natural fit to blend with the evangelical French church in Eugene. Well let's start talking a bit about your book, Waging Peace, A Study in Biblical Pacifism. I've done some search for quite a time to find good study guides about war and peace in the Bible and without finding much in the way of good resources. Would you describe how your book came about? Well sure. After I graduated from the University of Oregon, my friend Ralph Beebe had just received a professorship at George Fox University, then known as George Fox College, that I was in Newburg, Oregon about a hundred miles from Eugene where the University of Oregon is. He invited me to move up to Newburg. I followed him and I was just actually doing a Bible study because I too had trouble finding books that really highlighted the passages and the peace teachings. And so what I was doing is just simply another one of my little Bible studies where I was putting the verses down together and I started correlating them in the following manner which is in the back of the book and that is what Jesus said could happen to his disciples. What happened to his disciples, you know what the apostles said could happen to believers, how Jesus and the apostles said to respond to them and they just started lining it out and Ralph came up, looked at what I was doing and he said John I think we should put this into a book and I laughed at him because I could just remember all the English teachers who used to bleed red on my papers and said Ralph I'm not sure anyone would buy it and he said no I really think we need to do this. He talked to the publishers at Barkley Press which is a Quaker Press. They came back and asked if we would do it and so we created the little book called Waging Peace. And how did that go? You know I've never published a book did you just front some money and have them make a thousand copies and then hand them out to your best friends? How did that process go? Well what happened it was real interesting both Ralph and I felt very strongly that we wanted no financial reward if they sold copies so we told the press you know if you publish it we really don't want anything in return just please keep the cost low so they did. And one of the things though in the first editions I was a little disappointed they took it out because we really wanted to see this message out. In the first editions what they had in it and I insisted it be put in is that any part of this book may be reproduced without permission which is usually just the opposite of what you find in most books and they changed that at first to any part the book may be reproduced without permission as long as it's not resold but they've eventually taken it out. I've tried to get them to put it back in but to our surprise it was a small printing at first if I remember right it was about a thousand copies might have been fifteen hundred but since then it's been reprinted I believe now approximately twenty five times it keeps going so we're just very happy very thankful that there has been interest in it. Have you ever kicked yourself and said hey if I had five cents for every copy that's sold I could put my son through college now? Oh no not once we really believe that the message is so important and when you look at this world and the violence you see on a local to a state to a national to a world level I think the more people that can access it and then go back to the Bible and we want people to test it with the Bible to go back and pray about it read about it to see that there is a different way than the way of war and it was presented to us two thousand years ago and it's still valid today. We do not regret for one moment that we've never received any funds for it. One of the points that you make in the book is that the early church was clearly pacifist. Could you just outline what you say about that in the book? Well sure that's the second chapter of the book and one of the things when I became an early Christian you know again I tried to find what the setting in life was of Jesus teaching then the next situation I put myself in was to do as much research that I could find in the early church and what's amazing with the early church and this is what we explain in the second chapter is if you look at the early church there is a lot of division there's a lot of teaching, false teachings you know people are going with each other even among the church but one of the things that they are firm about is the message of peace and for the first 300 years there exists no writing from anywhere that suggests that Christians could be violent for any reason and that's an amazing history when you think for 300 years that this group of people who were often severely persecuted led a life of peace even so much so that the pagans recognized it you know you had one emperor saying you know these Christians will be no benefit to us they won't even defend themselves much less the emperor to which one of the Christian leaders replies back no with our prayers will do more good for you than your armies and so we wanted to highlight that that this belief that we talk about we find in the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the apostles and also the teachings of the early church for the first 300 years and why does it stop after 300 years when you look at it you have now went at the time some Christians thought it was great the emperor Constantine becoming a Christian but at that moment in time you went from the church being persecuted and growing to the church now becoming the official religion and if you're not a Christian now you might face persecution so the Christians now become the persecutors and it was almost as if you opened the doors for masses of non committed people which we believe was just the delusion of the church and the delusion of the Christian message and is that the state that we still find ourselves in today we yes I mean I think if you look at my situation and growing up I'm in a Christian home but it's a Christian home that does not have Christ that makes no sense but yet that's how we find much of the Christian world today you have millions and millions of people identifying themselves as Christians yet I would guess the majority of them rarely read the Bible or try to understand the teachings that occurred in the Bible or try to leave truly spiritual life one of the thoughts I've had or maybe one of the feelings I've had is that a lot of people are driven away from Christianity because people who are calling themselves Christians are not very Christ like are not very Christ following did you have that experience growing up or didn't that hit you at all well it didn't hit me so much I mean because as I grew up I'm growing up as I'm assuming I'm a Christian because my family says we're Christians if you took a survey what faith do you put yourself down as Christians well do you attend church no do you read the Bible no do you pray no answer no to all of them but yet you're still saying you know I'm a Christian you know I just didn't really even think about Christians much because they were so blended into the world there was no difference I mean if I looked at somebody that was totally pagan would look like where I was growing up in so the pagans and the Christians all to me for the early part of my life look very similar I didn't really look at them in the sense that you know I'm disappointed in how they're acting because I looked at the way I was acting you know I was probably somebody if they looked at me and how I was living say oh my goodness if he calls themselves a Christian that's an interesting lifestyle I've talked to quite a few people people who take the Bible seriously and they tell me that the Bible really isn't pro-peace when you look at it as a whole and particularly they say there's a lot of passages of the Old Testament which clearly indicate that God is not a peaceful God that God is not anti-war God tells Moses for example go kill 3000 people God tells the Israelites go into Canaan and wipe out every man woman child and beast of theirs and so they say you know God is not pro-peace how do you deal with that when you're talking to Christians well I don't have much difficulty with that at all and the reason being the most important thing that we can do as Christians is to follow Christ and whatever Christ is telling us what God is telling us to do in this moment is that is what we need to follow and I really enjoy speaking you know I'm an evangelical Christian so most of the time I'm meeting with evangelical Christians I realize I'm in a minority with my peace beliefs but I'm not afraid to share them and I bring them to them not as a bat over the head that seems somewhat hypocritical but what I try to do is bring it to them to get them to sit down and to look into an exam and I am convinced that if people open up their hearts go into the Bible and start reading it and just praying about it that they will come to the conclusion that the way of peace is what Jesus has taught I'm often asked about the Old Testament but if you look at the Old Testament you go from the very beginning to the very end you don't have a life for a life and an eye for an eye you know Cain kills Abel there's no death penalty at that time in fact it's just the opposite and you know you have the word from the Lord that if anybody hurts Cain you know a worst faith is going to happen to them then what happened to Cain you know you have the death penalty coming after you know the flood but why did you have the flood if you go back and read the scripture one of the saddest verses in Genesis the world was filled with violence and the Lord was grieved in his heart that he had ever created man and then you have the flood and now you have Noah coming off the ark with the word whoever sheds blood shall have his blood shed and it's God working with people but then you have Jesus coming and you have the teachings of Jesus which were just not the opposite of what was taught in the Old Testament but the continuation of what was taught in the Old Testament and Jesus says you know he talks about in the old it was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth well the next verse is a life for a life and he says I say to you no more there is no doubt that the question you posed to me was a question that was posed to Jesus people knew he taught peace they knew that he would not be killing or advocating the killing of the people around him and that's why when you bring and you look in the gospel of John in chapter eight with the deltros woman they bring him to him to test him well what's the test they knew that Jesus was not going to condemn this person yet the Old Testament law said you know you have to kill somebody like this and so when you're looking at it I have no doubt that Jesus calls us into the perfection before the fall and to live a life before the fall and so if God was calling me to war today I would go to war but God's calling me to peace today and that's what we need to follow we can't say that because God called somebody else to war in a past time that that's our calling today we briefly touched upon it in the book in numbers when you have the people being called into the promised land and they come back with a report that is filled with the land of giants and God is saying go I want you to have this land and the people refuse to go they're too scared of the giants and then God says okay you shall never have and then they realize what they've done wrong and they try to go against God will and they're destroyed the important part is that you have to follow God's will if God's calling you to warn you don't go you sin and if God's calling you to peace and you don't go you're sinning just as much and today when you look at the New Testament and the teachings of Christ God has called us to peace and we clearly need to follow see the plane in the distance see the flame in the sky see the young ones are running for cover the old ones wondering why the tell us that the world is a dangerous place we live in a terrible time but in promotion on a york or in Baghdad it's the innocent to die for the crime not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name witnesses watch through the window their hearts lock in horror and pain let the man lying strapped to a gurney the poison has come through his face and i'm wondering who are the prisoners who was the lock and the key who has the power over life over death when we finally be free not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name we stray and we stumble in seeking the truth wonder why it's so hard to find but i for it i am a tooth or a tooth need the whole hungry and blind so so today as i have watched all your holy wars the g-hots york are safe i have been used as inspiration i've been used as an excuse for the murder and the misery you've made i thought i made it clear in the bible in the Torah in the coronavirus what is it in my teaching about loving your enemies that you people don't understand not in my name not in my name not in my name don't know not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name not in my name that was john McCutchen and his song not in my name you're listening to an interview with john lamaro an evangelical christian quaker a member of northwest july meeting and co-author of the book waging peace a study in biblical pacifism now in its 25th printing you have a chapter in the book where you deal with the problem versus of the bible versus that christians frequently have used to justify why it was okay to be violent things like jesus says he comes not to bring peace but a sword that jesus goes into the temple and he's using violence there that jesus or paul say that we should obey the government could you give me an overview why these verses don't mean that it's okay for christians to use violence well when you look at Romans 13 and that's the part where paul talks about the the government does not bear the sword in vain there's two things that you have to understand with it one you have to look at the setting of life in which it occurred when paul is referring to that government you have to understand that it's a pagan government and to the early church it made perfect sense for the pagans to use violence in the sense that the early christians believed that jesus was the way in the path and that the pagans really didn't have salvation within them and so it made sense if you know if a pagan was going to lose his life well he better defend his life because he doesn't have anything else to live for when paul writes Romans 13 of course we look at it we have it as different chapters and we have the various chapters the early rites didn't have the chapters in it that's something that we've inserted you know over time but if you look at the end of chapter 13 and you look at the end of chapter 12 then you get a whole different light on what paul's talking about now he fully understands that the Romans he's talking about and the Roman government the christians at that time could never participate with that government the reason being there's no possibility that they would view Caesar as lord which was part of the life of being in the roman army and if you look at the end of Romans 12 and i just turned to it paul writes "beloved never avenge yourselves believe the way open for god's wrath for his written vengeance of mine i will repay as a lord" and then he writes "but if your enemy is hungry feed him if he is thirsty give him drink for by doing so you'll heap burning cold upon his head do not let yourself be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good" and then he writes the very next verse on chapter 13 verse 1 "let every person be subject to the governing authorities" and he's talking about the possibility of christians being persecuted and he's saying if jesus said love your enemies do good to those who persecute you he's saying the same thing that jesus taught and he's saying to do it in response to the government even governments that might not be the best and then if you look at the end of chapter 13 he again talking about how to live our lives and the love in verse 8 of 13 "keep out of debt and oh man anything except to love one another for he loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law meeting all the requirements" and so for someone to take the end of 12 and the end of 13 and to say that paul is saying now for christians to pick up the sword and go to war it's wrong the early church did not interpret it that way they did not follow it that way and to say now two thousand years later that's what we must do the part with jesus and the temple most scholars agree that what he did is he went into chase animals out of the temple he did knock over tables but again with the adulterous woman jesus said the person who's not sent throw the first stone there was one person there that could have thrown the first stone he chose not to the sword jesus says who it doesn't have a sword get one the apostles replied back we have to and if you look at the little translation jesus says enough of this almost is to say you don't understand what i'm talking about you know he said that's enough i mean obviously he's not saying you know we have two swords go ahead now go to war it's an early church writer wrote you know when jesus disarmed peter he disarmed all of us peter took one of the swords and used it and jesus severely rebuked him to get behind me satan i think the most important part of that message of what jesus did with peter when peter did use the sword it's simply when he healed the person who was taking him to the cross we never know if that person became a christian we have to wonder what was going through that man's mind as he is there to take somebody to torture he is attacked he is cut and the person he is taking to be tortured now heals him we never know if you became a christian we can only wonder what must have gone through his mind and we have a similar situation with paul and silas and the book of acts where they're arrested for doing nothing wrong but they're beaten with rods they're thrown into a dungeon they're chained and when you look at that when you're beaten with rods that's not something that is painless it is painful dungeons and prisons you know we we tend to think of them in today's society which aren't very good but back then you don't have restrooms you don't have can i have a bandaid or some ointment for my wounds you're sitting there in pain you're chained and what happens well they're doing just as jesus taught they're singing psalms are giving praises even though they're being punished by the government for doing nothing wrong exactly as jesus taught exactly as paul taught in Romans 13 and then when the earthquake happens and they're freed from the chains they're in the shadows the jailer thinks they've gone he's about to commit suicide now i would submit that most of us would do one or two things in the same situation we would see the jailer we would jump them say the lord wanted us to kill him so we could get out or we would stand in the shadows let the guy commit suicide and then escape saying we had nothing to do with his shed blood paul and psalus do something different they see a person they want a witness to them and they say don't harm yourselves we're right here they had no clue what this guy was going to do with them he might say you try to escape you're going to be punished more but that person to the witness of paul and psalus became a member of the church has did his family that evening and that is part of this exciting living witness of living a non-violent life you might get beat up you might die that's not the point our time on earth is short it's following the will of god is the most important thing we can do what you say is persuasive to me but then again i'm a quaker like you even though i'm part of this very different branch of the quaker society what i just do not understand is given the very clear message in the bible how can the mass of christianity have not received this message have forgotten it it's as if there is this gaping hole in the bible that they're just somehow not seeing well it is and when you look at the totality of the new testament and you go through all the teachings how people cannot accept this cannot see this it is absolutely amazing but yet when you go to most of your mainstream churches you know this is the greatest story never told how many times have you ever been in a church where somebody has given a sermon on love your enemies and i do good to those who persecute you and instead we received just the opposite and what i believe we've done you know in switzer wrote a book on it any call it in search of historical jesus is that every society recreates jesus in their own image we are i think by nature sometimes a violent people and we've recreated jesus in that image i too am shocked at how little acceptance does have i am shocked at how few people have a similar belief but yet i am never amazed that when you sit down with people and you find a christian who is willing to read the bible to examine the history of the early church and to pray about it that you see amazing conversions taking place because it becomes so blatantly obvious that this is what was taught and this is what was led and this is how we need to respond as well the other thing i find you know about a year ago i went down to equator and just had an absolutely wonderful time the only problem i had is i don't speak spanish and that made things a little bit difficult because everybody there spoke spanish and i spoke english well i am convinced that most of us don't speak the word of god or don't arm ourselves with the weapons of god but if i spent time learning spanish i would have had a much better time down there i think if most christians because the questions i get asked what happens if i get attacked i'm going to need to use a gun they put all their faith in the worldly possessions around them to protect them they don't look at the bible to find the teachings for protection that are within it when you look at the armor of god their prayer life and so when they're in a time of emergency it's similar to me in equator i didn't speak spanish so i'm trying to pull out a phrase out of a book and i'm mispronouncing everything most of christians today spend very little time understanding the armor of god and the protection that god can give us and so they don't want to use it they don't know how to use and they don't want to trust it instead they'll just trust that which is around them you know i think that's part of our downfall is that we have so much we just don't want to give it up and the thought that somebody might take it from us leads us into a police system where we must do everything we can to protect it when you look at it what are we protecting it's mostly material things it's things that are short-term if not things i really believe are meaningful for eternity you know you speak very persuasively and with such reflected authority from a lot of people's point of view that might make you good material for being a pastor of a church is this an area that you've pursued did you do some kind of religious training to be able to give a good sermon and to speak persuasively on the bible do you have some kind of a degree in that direction well my graduate degree is from a minute night seminary which was a master of arts and peace study but i've never thought about becoming part of what would be normally called a pastoral ministry but i've not felt called in that direction where i have felt called is to the testimony of peace it's something that i take wherever i go i am not embarrassed about it i'm not ashamed about it i'm not shy about it if you saw my friends and you saw the lifestyles that my friends lead some of my friends are in the military they're all over but yet i take my message of peace to them and i'm not bashful about it there's a respect that we have with each other they know i'm trying to convert them but they have no doubt about it i'll just keep bringing the verses to them i'll keep bringing a lifestyle to them and i'll keep praying that they will examine it as well but then i leave it up to them to make the decision sometimes it takes just weeks sometimes it takes years one of my closest friends i can remember almost 20 years ago when i moved to the community i'm now living it i brought him a copy of waging peace we talked about it and he was an evangelical Christian but definitely not on the peace side and he looked at me like i was absolutely crazy and just within the last year and a little conservative church that he goes to a neighboring community i went out to visit him and i was at church with him and of course the height of the arachie war is going on he even had a son that was serving in iraq at the time and they're praying for our countries are praying for the soldiers and this man stood up and said we also have to pray for our enemies in iraq as well now that is exciting this is a man who has a son over there but yet he's sincere he's looking at the gospel and the lord is leading him and he has an amazing witness now an absolutely amazing witness and i think as christians that's what we need to do is to continually bring this before people and give them the opportunity to see it being lived but also then to reach search it for themselves and to test it out and to trust it into their hearts john i think i want to do a little bit more to draw out the essentials of your faith now again you're part of this branch of quakerism known as evangelical friends whereas i'm associated with this large group of quakers known as friends general conference sometimes referred to as liberal friends and there's the question where you and i and everybody stands with regard to this just generic class may be called evangelical christians so what are the essentials of what you believe and what you think makes you similar to or different than evangelical christians or maybe these liberal quakers what's your understanding of what defines you and makes you part of the evangelical friends church for me when i became a christian i really had no concept of quaker if you said what's the difference between a quaker and a friend well a friend somebody that lives down the street you know i had no knowledge of quakers of the society of friends when i met the friends church in Eugene which was evangelical one of the first things i ended up doing was getting a copy of the journal of george fox and reading about fox and i found incredible similarity between what i was going through and what fox wrote about and i looked at the power of his writings and the power of his teachings especially when he comes to this country and visits with william pen but the way he refers to native americans as noble kings and queens and princes and princesses of the general spirit which is quite a bit different than what you find for most christian writings of the time who viewed the native americans as the brutal savage and so you know my understanding i have been with both the silent meeting friends the evangelical friends i have friends in both circles i see our common bound more times than not is the call to peace a lot of times with evangelical friends i haven't found i called a piece to be very strong and so when i was with the evangelical friends that was something i felt i was always encouraging them to accept that which they came from there is a lot of non-belief in that area and i'm happy to say at least in the northwest we're seeing now a bigger drive to bring people into the life of peace i saw with the non evangelical friends a much greater witness in peace not as much of the evangelical fervor that i have with the evangelical friends but i also see non-evangelical friends being called to a ministry and i've learned to accept other ministries and to be supportive of them at the same time being willing to share my belief in my belief system with them well if it's okay with you john i'd like to ask you a little bit more about your life what do you do for a living and how do you earn your daily bread well that's when i'll probably lose a lot of credibility with your audience i am a county commissioner which is an elected official though i did lose my bid for reelection i am a republican ran for reelection lost by 46 votes in a republican primary and one of the issues that was brought up and probably was the deciding thing was that people were bringing up waging peace and that i was a pacifist and how could i and with some interest that i saw that becoming an issue in this day and age because a county commissioner really has little to do with armies but it was something that i found very fascinating that that was an issue that was brought up what was the attack on you was it that you were not patriotic oh yes if you're a pacifist and a christian pacifist that is the attack that will be leveled on you that you cannot be patriotic my response you know is similar to turtellians is that no i think with my prayers i can do more for you than you can with your armies and there's a certain irony though is i had a lot of support from military we have a national guardian that went to iraq and i had a lot of strong support within that group where i did lose some support was with a lot of world war ii veterans it was an interesting phenomenon watching it but it's something that over the years that i've just grown to be accustomed to if you stand up for peace you will be attacked there is no doubt about it but you have to take an attitude of who cares you know i mean let people attack you just have to smile and respond in love and take the message of Christ do one more thing about your election i believe you were endorsed by the n r a y i know that's one i believe i'm not certain but i believe i'm the first pacifist ever endorsed by the n r a and part of that was simply a local individual had a hunting bill that he was trying to promote and he was getting no traction with and he came to me asked me about it i said i'd be glad to help him i thought it was a great bill that would promote wildlife habitat which that's the whole purpose of it is promoting increased habitat better habitat you know i went to bat for him we did a lot of trips together in promoting it he's a good member of the n r a and actually high standing with them and he was the one that recommended that they endorsed me they realized that while i'm a pacifist i'm not anti-hunting and i'm not anti-gun ownership and so i was really honored when i had their support now one of the things that i found interesting though is that when the topic was made that i'm a pacifist and how dare they endorse a pacifist they stood behind me i was very proud of them for that there's a lot of people that won't stand behind you in tough times and would have been very easy for them to disassociate themselves but they said no this guy stood up for a good hunting bill we're going to stand up behind him so it's one of the more interesting endorsements i've ever had but it was one that i truly can say that i was honored to receive so now that you didn't get reelected what are you going to do for livelihood for income interesting say that because i honestly don't know at this time when i graduated from the University of Oregon i was trying to decide where i wanted to go and what i wanted to do i knew i wanted to serve god but the question was how well i did a lot of praying i did a lot of thinking and the message kept coming to me it's out of a verse in james what is true religion taking care of widows and orphans well through that i kept thinking you know what am i being told here where am i being led i ended up applying to be a nurse's aide at a nursing home back in 1975 which didn't make a lot of sense for a college graduate because nursing home age were actually paid below minimum wage we were federally exempted for minimum wage and so they have a college graduate walking into a field that was normally not male dominated and paid below minimum wage people thought i was absolutely crazy but i learned so much at that nursing home both about serving both about faith we ended up having more bible studies and at nursing home things just changed and i ended up spending five years there working with the frail elderly and had an incredible time so now i'm trying to put myself back in the same situation and not saying well lord i i know you must have a good high paying job for me out there that you want me to be super rich i'm just saying lord where do you want me to go now i'm still waiting up on that i'm not quite sure what it's going to be but more and more i feel the leading that i need to take the message of peace to more people and what form that will take i'm not sure but right now that's where i feel like i'm being called have you authored anything else besides the book waging peace no outside of just a few articles Ralph and i did an article for an evangelical friends magazine that article relates to the subject and going back in time to the stoning of steven the overseer of it was who became our apostle paul and in our short story is this peter takes the sword comes out and kills paul for killing steven and had done nothing wrong and your message was you never know who's going to become a christian and who might accept the faith and that's part of the reason why we need to become peace people done a few things like that also a couple smaller things with friends back in philadelphia one was a small book a handbook on military taxes and conscience where Ralph and i wrote a chapter on it about your contribution to the handbook on military taxes and conscience what kind of contribution did you have for that what was the substance of what you had to contribute to that and is this something that actually interests you or that you practice when ralph first asked me to he was the one who called me he had been approached by uh linden coffin who was the editor of this book and he asked me he said john would you you know be interested in doing this and i said well ralph yeah i'd be interested in taking a look at it but i said i'm not sure ralph was a vortex resistor i was not so i said i'm not sure we're going to come out in the same belief but let's see what we come up with is i did more research on it one of the things that i found because most of the time when you look at the passage for paying taxes about rendered a caesar you know what a caesar's and we have this as part of the book is that clearly when you look at it jesus intention we made that comment on tribute was that this was not to become part of a new legal tax but he clearly intended his work to become part of a new living tax whose meaning is fully revealed by the living ever present holy spirit and i think that is something that we need to examine the other issues within that and this is another part of it when you look at war tax resistance in a lot of other issues and i think back to john wollman who was in one of the quakers primarily responsible for leading quakers against the slavery movement he wrote that those of us to say we're against slavery should look and examine our possessions to see if the seeds of slavery are contained within and if so what obtaining them and i think for a lot of us too i think the same way when we look at our lifestyles and then living a consistent life we need to really look at our possessions and see if the seeds were contained within them and try to do with as little of them as possible and that goes from all sorts of things from living a life that doesn't use a lot of resources you know if we say we're concerned about what's happening in iraq because we're only after there for oil but we're driving an SUV and using a lot of oil i think we need to be really consistent in all these areas you know when you talk about peace and you talk about mindfulness about resources you don't really sound very much like at least the stereotype of a republican a lot of people wonder why in the world are you with a republican political party and in Oregon we're a little bit differently and in Oregon we've had some wonderful people who have served us one with senator mark antfield who was a republican pro-life anti-war senator one of the things that's interesting is i am a pro-life pro-peace person and i'm mostly republican in the sense that it was difficult for me to have a pro-life belief with the democrats and see some changes especially with jim wallis and sojourners magazine but that was primarily the main reason i joined the political party but i think more and more that political parties really don't mean much i think it's religious how we live our lives that's the most important thing most of the christians i know who are pro-life are upset with me because of my peace beliefs most of the christians i know who are peace people are usually pro-choice i'm pro-life and i keep telling them look i'm the only consistent one i would just like to have no killing anywhere i don't suppose that your abhorrence of killing extends all the way to being a vegetarian no i would i look at that as i'm not a vegetarian one of the interesting verses of jesus is when he's talking about john the baptist who apparently was a vegetarian it did not drink strong drink there's one part where jesus says john the baptist came neither eating or drinking and you said he was possessed and of course we know we ate something we drank something but you know it's believed that's a reference that he was a vegetarian and that he didn't drink alcoholic beverages then jesus says i came both eating and drinking which they believe is a reference to the eight meat and he drank alcoholic beverages and you say i'm a drunken and glutton and we said that no matter how we present the gospel to you you're going to reject it the part that i find interesting is that jesus supported john and john supported jesus and that both lifestyles were very acceptable in the promotion of the gospel and so i have a lot of friends who are vegetarians vegans and i'm always trying to challenge them one of the things i always like to ask my friends for vegans because most of my friends are vegans are pro-choice and i always say so the chicken egg is sacred but the human egg is not and typically they never thought about it that way and so it gives them some pause for thought that's really powerful to ask people to look at the consistency of their beliefs and their actions i guess there's one more thing i should ask you about and that is if some of our listeners are interested in getting your book waging peace the book that you and ralph bebe co-wrote how would they go about doing that they can go online to bark we press and that is the best place to get it barkly presses as b-a-r-c-l-a-y press you do an internet search that will come right up and you can order directly from the publisher and if people want to learn more about evangelical friends is their good website for them to look at i would encourage them to go to barkly press which has links you know i'm a member of the northwest evangelical friends meeting if you do an internet search on northwest yearly meeting you will come up with various websites from various churches as well as the yearly meeting and then also if anybody is interested in contacting me directly i welcome that as well in my email address is colcane one which is c-o-l-e k-a-n-e with the numeral one at yahoo dot com those are the middle names of my two sons erin and keison so colcane one at yahoo dot com and i would enjoy anybody whether they are in favor of what i speak about or against it i would love to have the dialogue i better let you head back to work now john i want to thank you for sticking up your head taking some chances of flak and you know going beyond the comfort zone speaking to a population who maybe haven't heard this message and are really being called to greater faithfulness because of your work when you believe in something in your heart you've got to take it forward and this is something that i believe in my heart we find ourselves in a world of so much violence the message needs to be heard and spoken more than ever thanks for doing that well thanks for inviting me i really enjoyed it in the spirit we are born in the world we are born in the spirit we are born in the world let me pray that all units of the economy may be stored let them all be our christians by our love by our love yes and all we are christians by our love we will walk with each other we will walk and in and we will walk with each other we will walk and in and and together we'll spread the news that not is enough and we'll hold we are christians by our love why our love yes and all we are christians by our love we are born in the spirit we are born in the spirit we are born in the world we are born in the spirit we are born in the world and we pray that all units of the economy may be stored and they'll hold me our christians by our love why our love is that all we are christians by our love that was we are one in the spirit a contemporary worship song earlier you heard John McCutchen singing not in my name you've been listening to a spirit in action interview with John Lamero an evangelical christian Quaker and co-author of the book Waging Peace a study in biblical pacifism you can hear this program again via my website northernspiritradio.org and you can find other programs and links and information on that site as well the theme music for spirit in action is i have no hands but yours by carol johnson thank you for listening i welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit you can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net may you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light this is spirit in action i have no higher call for you than this to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness to love and serve your neighbor enjoy selflessness (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) [MUSIC PLAYING] (gentle music)