Religion: Conscientious Cooperators

In an abandoned CCC camp near Beulah, Colo, last week, 150 young Seventh Day Adventists were winding up an intensive two-weeks’ course of training for duty with the armed services. Because of the Adventist injunction against taking human life, none of them would shoulder a rifle or man a gun. But they hoped to serve their country as “conscientious cooperators” in the Medical Corps or some other noncombatant branch.

Of the 12,000 Seventh Day Adventists who saw service during World War II, 10,000 were trained by the church in similar schools. Early this year the Adventists decided it was time to get going again. To head the program they picked husky, Kansas-born History Professor Everett Newfon Dick, 52, and sent him off to Washington to work out a training program with the Surgeon General’s Office.

The response from Adventist youth was immediate and enthusiastic. The first 150 left their work at home, paid their own transportation, bought their own uniforms ($8), paid for their beds (50¢ a night) and their cafeteria-style meals (30¢to 60¢). “Colonel” Dick (who served in the Marines during World War I) worked and drilled them from 6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. each day. The course was heavy with subjects like first aid, military sanitation, treatment of chemical warfare casualties. But it also included large doses of combat intelligence, map reading and military courtesy. In addition, there was “character guidance” under such headings as “Beware of Delilah’s Charms,” and “The Christian Soldier—All God, Not a Gold Bricker.”

Approximately 50 of “Colonel” Dick’s first group are ministers, teachers and youth workers who will go home to set up other branches of the noncombatant training program. The rest will stand by for military service. Explained Adventist Executive Carlyle B. Haynes:

“We despise the term ‘conscientious objector’ and we despise the philosophy back of it … We are not pacifists, and we believe in force for justice’s sake, but a Seventh Day Adventist cannot take human life.”