ASKS RECOGNITION AS CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS OF PACIFISTS ON NONTHEISTIC GROUNDS

Ethical Societies are religious fellowships. As such we recognize the right and duty of our members to follow the dictates of their own conscience and religious convictions in all matters including the non-pacifist or pacifist positions.

Further we maintain that those rights which are provided in law entitling members of theistic religious fellowships to recognition of their status as conscientious objectors shall be available to those who hold the pacifist conviction on non-theistic grounds.

Whereas the Selective Service Act of 1955 is narrowly constricted in these areas

It is hereby resolved that the Congress of the United States be petitioned to amend the Act so that the restrictive definition of I religious training and belief, be stricken from the present Act and that the wording of the 1940 Act be restored with the addition 'or personal conviction' immediately following 'religious training and belief', and that 'military' be substituted for 'combatant', to read as follows:

"Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to require any person to be subject to military training and service in the armed forces of the United States, who, by reason of religious training and belief or personal conviction, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form."

Source: Whereas ... 1962

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