Joseph Judson Taylor: Baptist Pacifist By Laurence M. Vance
March 18, 2015
Since the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, two words that have rarely been seen together are “Baptist” and “pacifist.” We have instead been subject to things like high-profile Baptist leader Jerry Falwell writing a defense of the Iraq war titled “God Is Pro-War,” Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, writing to President Bush that his “policies concerning the ongoing international terrorist campaign against America” were “both right and just,” and the Southern Baptist Convention passing resolutions expressing appreciation for President Bush, U.S. troops, military chaplains, and the war effort.
I have stood against this nonsense from the very beginning. At times virtually alone. I recently discovered a kindred spirit in the Baptist pacifist Joseph Judson Taylor.
Taylor was born in 1855 in Henry County, Virginia. He was named for his maternal grandfather, Joseph King, who had served in the Virginia Legislature, and Adoniram Judson, the famous Baptist missionary to Burma who died five years before Taylor’s birth.
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