Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Peace Ethics and Federal Taxes

Shane Claiborne (Christian speaker, author, urban minister, and outspoken pacifist) has shared an open letter to the IRS with his convictions about the payment of his federal taxes this year along with his protest of the government's use of tax dollars to fund the military.

Claiborne's position is that since he objects to the US government's use of federal tax dollars, his Christian pacifist convictions compel him to withhold a percentage of the taxes he owes in protest.

Carson T. Clark, an evangelical Anglican pastor and writer, has written a response. It is not an attack on Claiborne himself, or even on his convictions. It does however raise several good points, that I thought would make for good discussion fodder.

Also, Clark makes the very humorous comparison of Claiborne's approach to a scene from a Will Ferrel movie (below).

"TAXMAN!!!"

1 comment:

  1. definitely an interesting article! we had a brief convo about this one night at t2t and i thinks it's a worthwhile conversation to continue having. thanks for posting this my friend.

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