'You Must Arrest Us Too': William Sloane Coffin, 1925-2006
Following, part of a speech given by the Rev. William Sloane Coffin on the occasion of the mass draft card turn-in of October 16, 1967, at Arlington Street Church in Boston. The speech was “Overt Act #4” in an indictment charging Coffin, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, and Marcus Raskin, dubbed “The Boston Five,” with conspiracy to “counsel, aid, and abet” the violation of the Universal Military Training and Service Act. The speech is reprinted in full in The Trial of Dr. Spock by Jessica Mitford. William Sloane Coffin died on April 12, 2006 at the age of 81 after decades of civil rights and peace activism.
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Most words are dispensable. They can perish as though they had never been written or spoken. Some few, however, must forever remain alive if human beings are to remain human. “I love my city, but I shall not stop preaching that which I believe is true: you may kill me, but I shall follow God rather than you.” And: “We must obey God rather than men.”
Why are these words of Socrates and St. Peter so indispensable? Because in the first place they tell us that the most profound experience of the self is the experience of the conscience, and not as frequently suggested today the experience of private sensations and interior visions. And secondly, they tell us that because there is a higher and hopefully future order of things, men at times will feel constrained to disobey the law out of a sense of obedience to a higher allegiance. To hundreds of history’s most revered heroes, not to serve the state has appeared the best way to love one’s neighbor. To Socrates, St. Peter, Milton, Bunyan, Gandhi, Nehru, it was clear that sometimes bad subjects make good neighbors.
And how can Americans as quickly forget their own heritage? Our Puritan forefathers came to these shores precisely because they would not surrender their consciences to the state! The Quakers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were not only imprisoned but executed because they refused to obey the law. In Pennsylvania in 1750 John Woolman refused to pay taxes when Pennsylvania decided to arm against the Indians.
If only Americans could remember their own heritage they could at least applaud the spirit, even if they do not share the views, of those who here today are refusing to surrender their consciences to the state.
The issue is one of conscience. Let us be blunt. To us the war in Vietnam is a crime. And if we are correct, if the war is a crime, then is it criminal to refuse to have anything to do with it? Is it we who are demoralizing our boys in Vietnam, or the Administration which is asking them to do immoral things?
I have the highest sympathy for our boys in Vietnam. They know what a dirty, bloody war it is. But they have been told that the end justifies the means, that the cleansing water of victory will wash clean the hands of the blood and dirt. No wonder they hate those who say “There must be no cleansing water.” But they must strive, hard as it is, to understand that there can be no cleansing water if military victory spells moral defeat.
I have the highest sympathy too for those who back the war because their sons or lovers or husbands have died in Vietnam. But they must understand that sacrifice in and of itself confers no sanctity, that even if half a million of our boys died in Vietnam that would not make the cause one whit more sacred. (But how hard that is to understand when one’s husband is numbered among the sacrificed.)
When an issue is one of conscience then surely it is one we may not wish to seek but it is one we cannot properly avoid — particularly the synagogues and churches. The churches must not shirk their responsibility in deciding whether or not a man’s objection is conscientious. But should a church declare itself a “sanctuary for conscience” this should be considered less a means to shield a man, more a means to expose a church, an effort to make a church really be a church.
For if the state should decide that the arm of the law was long enough to reach inside a church... church members could then say: “If you arrest this man for violating a law which violates his conscience then you must arrest us too, for in the sight of that law we are now as guilty as he.”
You stand now as Luther stood in his time. May you be inspired to speak, and we to hear, the words he once spoke in conscience and in all simplicity: “Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.”
We apologize for the inaccuracies in this piece due to William Sloane Coffin’s use of sexist language. — Eds.
