COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
Offering another way: Countering military recruiters
Mennonite Central Committee
November 21, 2006
Organizers and participants in a November counter-recruitment conferencesponsored by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) U.S. say they hope that the
event will inspire churches to work together to further develop strategies
for countering the lure of military recruiters.
About 75 people attended the Nov. 3-5 conference in San Antonio, Texas.
There were military veterans, pastors, church youth and student activists
who are organizing campaigns countering the promises of military recruiters.
Each year, about 180,000 young people enlist in the U.S. military.
Titus Peachey, director of peace education for MCC U.S., said the
conference intended to provide a forum where churches could learn more
about the realities of military recruiting, become familiar with some
models for countering the lure of the military and, perhaps most
importantly, begin to share with other churches some of their own
grassroots strategies.
We now have a lot of information to take home to our church members, people
in our community, and the other youth who did not come to the conference,
reported Verel Montauban, of a Haitian Church of the Brethren congregation
in Brooklyn, N.Y. The commitment I found here is to help other people how
to stay away from the military and teach them that their body belongs to
God, not to the military. I believe we have to live for the glory of God
not live to kill each other.
Another participant from the congregation, Sandra Beauvior, reported that
she walks away from the conference believing that war is not an option.
She, like others in the group, said they want to talk with other teenagers
to help them commit not to join the military.
On many high school campuses, military recruiters have a strong presence.
Students talked of how they circle during lunches and at the career center.
One Army veteran said that the military recruitment was so heavy at her
school that she didnt realize until later that colleges too recruited
students. At the high schools I went to ... I never saw colleges ever, Mari
Villaluna said.
The military is passionate about enticing young people in and spends an
enormous amount of money on recruiting including paying scores of
recruiters who are dedicated only to figuring out how to best entice more
young people to join, said former Marine recruiter and Mennonite pastor
Ertell Whigham.
Anabaptist church leaders and members may talk passionately about helping
people avoid the military, Whigham said. But rarely does that translate
into a paid position.
Just as the military has people who are dedicated to recruitment, we ought
to be putting into place people who are counters to that, Whigham said.
Norristown (Pa.) New Life, where Whigham serves as an associate pastor, has
appointed a full-time minister of youth and community outreach who works to
identify opportunities for education and training that youth in the church
can tap into. He dreams that more congregations will put money into such
positions or that churches would join together to hire a person who could
pinpoint resources for their youth.
In the urban setting, he said, the decision to go into the military is
often spontaneous and driven by immediate needs of the family or by a
strong desire for education. When youth begin to ask, How can I make things
better for me? How can I make things better for my family? the military has
a ready answer. The church, too, needs to have an answer ready for them,
Whigham said.
That includes setting the stage for alternatives years before students
start to ask.
I think we need to be working with young people long before they get to
high school, Whigham said. And the focus needs to be not so much on
avoiding the military as on building a strong foundation of beliefs in
peace and justice. Ideally, he said, when they get to high school, the
military will be the last option on their list.
Whigham said he and Norristown plan to work at creating a manual of ideas
and resources that can undergird area churches efforts to counter military
recruiters. In addition, he hopes to contact people interested in
replicating Norristowns model of providing a staff person to research and
talk with youth about alternatives to the military.
Peachey said MCC U.S. will continue to develop resources related to
countering the lures of military recruiters and that he hopes local groups
will begin to build networks to carry out this work at a grassroots level.
Counter-recruitment provides a great opportunity for congregations to make
the way of peace practical inlocal communities, Peachey said. It was
exciting to see the conference bring together both the people and resources
needed to help this work growamong the Anabaptist family of churches.
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