The choice as to whether to fight or not to fight is often complex. Peer pressure, propaganda and the ‘rightness’ of the cause on the one side, the respect of human life and biblical principles of conflict resolution on the other. Seventh-day Adventists are certainly not unique in struggling with this problem, but generally came down on the side of pacifism. The many reasons for that decision can principally be summarised as follows:
1. Seventh-day Adventists respect the 10 commandments including the 6th, “thou shalt not kill” and the 4th, “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” and expand those principles with Jesus words to ‘love your enemies’.
2. Many Adventists saw WWI as a sign that the end of the world was nigh – and if that was the case, they needed to be sharing their faith, not killing people.

Origins of Adventist Pacifism
The Adventist pacifist stance dates back as far as the American Civil war. Many Adventists saw this as a ‘just war’ because it was abolitionist, fighting against the abhorrent practice of slavery. Despite this, they chose not to fight, citing reasons such as the difficulty of Sabbath observance, God’s moral law commanding, “Thou shalt not kill”, that God calls his followers to be people of peace, that our kingdom is not of this world, and that we are commanded to love even our enemies.(1)

Just two years after being officially formed as a church, at their third General Conference Session in May 1865, Adventists resolved that while they recognised civil government as ordained of God, and that while they would respect civil power and “cheerfully render to Caesar the things which the Scriptures show to be his, we are compelled to decline all participation in acts of war and bloodshed as being inconsistent with the duties enjoined upon us by our divine Master toward our enemies and toward all mankind.” (2)

Adventist Conscientious Objectors in the UK
As the signs of war approached European shores, Adventists in the UK reviewed the lessons learnt from their American cousins and consciously chose to take a similar stand. Church leadership contacted the Prime Minister and requested that church members be assigned to non-combatant duties such as “the care for the sick and wounded, either at home or at the front.” (3) However, the best the government would offer, via the central tribunal, was that Adventist young men should be enrolled in the army for non-combatant work. (4)

Some managed to avoid conscription because they were involved in work of national importance. Even so, they regularly had to attend tribunals.(5) Regular ministers of recognised religious bodies were also exempt.

So strong was church support for Adventist Conscientious Objectors who either served as non-combatants, or who spent the war in prison or government work centres, that the President of the Adventist Church in the UK at the time, W. J. Fitzgerald, was forced to resign as he advocated combatant service for church members.(6)

Theological arguments and the tribunals
William George Chappell from Brynmawr, South Wales, made his living selling Christian books. He was summoned to a local tribunal in March 1916 where he was refused exemption. He appealed.
“As I am a Seventh-day Adventist I am opposed to war. I believe the personal second coming of Christ is near by the many signs that [are] fulfilling the Bible tells that the spirits of devils are going forth to the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them to the last great battle of Armageddon.”(7)

Adventists today might look slightly askance at his interpretation of prophecy, including in the next paragraph where he tells the tribunal that “Events are leading up to the driving out of the Turk in fulfilment of Daniel 11:45 and the finishing up of all things.”

The fulfilment of prophecy were Chappell’s primary arguments, but he also listed secondary reasons, principally that Christ taught his followers “not to fight with weapons, even in defence of the Gospel (John 18:36),” and then quoting the example of the Levites in the Old Testament who were exempted from war because, as priests, they were serving God. As a seller of Christian books, he saw himself in that same category. He wrote, “I feel I should not be taken from the work of warning people to prepare to meet their Saviour to engage in worldly warfare when so many are perishing bodily and spiritually.”

Claiming he had college training for the work he was doing he stated that he should be treated as a minister.

On 20 April his appeal was dismissed as his work was not seen to be of national importance. The appeal states, “Certificate of Exemption from Combatant service only to be granted.

Chappell’s appeal reflected what he read in Church publications. Connecting the current situation with Rev. 16:18, 14, the editor of Present Truth wrote in 1914 “that war was a devilish thing and that demonic spirits were influencing the different nations to wage war against each other.(8) Quoting from the American Review and Herald the editor claimed that all governments involved, including his own, were being war mongers.(9) The following week he wrote that what was needed was “a good degree of resistance to remain free from the infection . . . [of this] unholy exultation over the sufferings and slaughter of the country’s enemies.”(10)

Once Adventist men were conscripted, albeit as non-combatants, the tone changes. The Missionary Worker, a weekly newsletter of the Adventist church in the UK, provides accounts of Adventist non-combatants serving in France and other areas who held to their moral view of preserving life, who managed to keep the seventh-day, Saturday, as the Sabbath, and in many cases, claimed to be a positive Christian witness to those they were working with.(11)

Sadly, that more positive experience was not always there. Some were treated very harshly for their refusal to work on the Sabbath including court martial, hard labour, the dreaded ‘crucifixion’ punishment, severe beatings, and being made to march at double pace while carrying concrete blocks strapped to their back and chest.(12) These accounts emphasise how important both the fourth and sixth commandments were to these men, keeping the Sabbath – and staying calm, even in the midst of the utmost provocation by the guards. It also tested their conviction to ‘love your enemy’ – in this case not the German troops, but the guards who, they claimed in typical understatement, “were not blessed with the milk of human kindness.” (13)

Current non-combatant status
The results of the strongly pacifist stance, together with the positive attitude these men held during WWI, led to much better understanding and outcomes for Adventist men in WWII and beyond. Harold Lowe, one of those who was very badly treated during WWI, was invited to the war office in 1937 where a lawyer stated that “H.M. Government did not want those experiences repeated.” (14) While Adventists would still have to attend tribunals the lawyer stated, "I think that military officers do not understand religious convictions such as your people hold sincerely, and that the best thing would be for us to make it possible for your men to serve the country in time of emergency in some capacity outside the armed forces." (15)

The positive result is that those sincerely held biblical views on the sanctity of life, along with the moral value to be found in the 10 commandments and Jesus teachings, were respected in WWII and Adventist men undertook roles of national importance such as working on the land, as medics, or in industry, rather than in the military.
While some Adventists can be found serving in today’s modern military, the official position of the church is still one of non-combatancy.(16) Writing exactly one-hundred years on from the start of WWI, Pastor Ted Wilson, Seventh-day Adventist World Church president, reminded members of that position by quoting part of the official voted church statement: “Genuine Christianity manifests itself in good citizenship and loyalty to civil government. The breaking out of war among men in no way alters the Christian’s supreme allegiance and responsibility to God or modifies their obligation to practice their beliefs and put God first. This partnership with God through Jesus Christ who came into this world not to destroy men’s lives but to save them causes Seventh-day Adventists to advocate a non-combatant position.” (17)

1.Condensed from George W Amadon, Review and Herald, 7 March 1865
2.Review and Herald, 23 May 1865
3.Minutes of the British Union Conference, January 12, 1916, quoted in Wilcox, Seventh-day Adventists in Time of War, 256, 257.
4.Ibid 259 - 260.
5.For example, John Benefield, a baker, was exempt but, according to his grand-daughter, was required to attend a tribunal every few months, walking 13 miles from his home to attend. If called up, he would not have been able to return home, but would have been immediately conscripted. http://adventist.uk/wwi/ww1/comments-on-wwi
6.Nigel Barham, “The Progress of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Great Britain, 1878-1974, p 122
7.William Chappell exemption refusal, copies archived at the Roy Graham Library, Newbold College of Higher Education, Binfield, UK.
8.Editor, “The Outlook,” Present Truth, August 20, 1914, 539.
9.See George W Amadon, Review and Herald, 7 March 1865
10.Editor, “[Notes],” Present Truth, August 27, 1914, 560
11.See, for instance, a letter from Worsley Armstrong regarding Sabbath difficulties in France published in Missionary Worker Vol 20, No 7, pp 75-76. July 1916.
12. See various accounts and records at http://adventist.uk/wwi/ww1 including a documentary video, ‘A Matter of Conscience’.
13.H W Lowe, Valiant for Truth, British Advent Messenger, 28 December 1973, p 3
14.ibid, p 4.
15.Ibid.
16.www.adventistbiblicalresearch.org/sites/default/files/pdf/Noncombatancy.pdf
17. https://archives.adventistworld.org/2014/august/the-battle.html

Victor Hulbert