The Canadian Church Connection to Mel Gibson's New Movie, Hacksaw Ridge

People who see Mel Gibson’s new movie, Hacksaw Ridge, might be surprised to learn that not only Mennonites were opposed to that war. They would be surprised to learn that the movie would never have been made if not for the dogged determination of a Canadian—my friend Stan Jensen.

When it comes to conscientious objection in Canada, Mennonites tend to get the most attention. 

With over 60% of the 10,700 men who did alternative service during the war coming from Mennonite churches, that's to be expected. 

But the ranks of those who did alternative service to being in the military during that war included Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Quakers—groups that also teach against participation in war—together with men from many other denominations.

Unlike those conscientious objectors who served at lumber camps, building roads, or working in mental health facilities, the hero of Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond Doss, chose a different route. He decided to join the military as a medic.

As he put it in an interview, he was not a conscientious objector but a “conscientious collaborator,” believing that America’s involvement in that war was right and just. He just refused to kill.

Shipped to the Pacific theatre, Doss saved the lives of 75 wounded comrades during the fierce and bloody battle of Okinawa, winning the Congressional Medal of Honour—America’s highest military medal for valour.

It’s an amazing tale of courage, both on the battlefield and in basic training. The movie is the story of how someone could stay true to his conscience, despite being scorned and bullied by the same soldiers whose lives he later saved.

But Doss’ story would never have become a major Hollywood movie if not for Stan Jensen, 63, Communications Director for the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Canada.

In 1974, Jensen read a book about Doss titled The Unlikeliest Hero, published in 1967. “I developed a passion to see it told more broadly,” he says.

In 1996, he left Canada and moved to Los Angeles to manage a bookstore. He hoped being closer to Hollywood would help him meet someone who could turn Doss’ story into a movie.

And that’s exactly what happened. During a special event at his store, one of the attendees was Gregory Crosby, a well-connected screenwriter in the movie industry.

At the time, Crosby was working on a TV series about Medal of Honour recipients.

“I told him, I have the perfect story for you,” says Jensen, who gave him a copy of The Unlikeliest Hero.

After reading it, Crosby was so moved by Doss’ story that agreed to try to make it into a Hollywood movie.

“I never really had the desire to produce anything until Stan Jensen brought me the amazing story,” he said in an interview. “I knew right away I wanted to be involved with the project from beginning to end.”

But before that could happen, they first needed to convince Doss—he didn’t go to movies, and didn’t like Hollywood.

“He was afraid that if they made a movie about his life, they’d change his character, Jensen says—that a movie would show him smoking, drinking and chasing women. “He didn’t want to risk that.”

When Jensen and Crosby assured him that wouldn’t happen, Doss gave his permission.

“You can just imagine how I felt that day,” Jensen says.

It took many more years of discussions and negotiations before Mel Gibson signed on as a director in 2014. The movie was released in November in Canada.

For Jensen, seeing Doss’ story on the big screen is the fulfillment of a dream that goes back over 40 years. He hopes many people will go see it and also be inspired—just as he was when he first encountered it so long ago.

“In this day, when the hero of so many movies is the person who kills the most people, Hacksaw Ridge shows that someone can be a hero by saving lives,” he says.

And what does he think Doss—who died in 2006—would think of Hacksaw Ridge?

“It’s truly a stellar movie,” he says. “I think he would be pleased with how his story has been told.”

From the Nov. 12, Winnipeg Free Press.

Is There a Non-Violent Alternative to the War on Terror?

Is the war on terror working? Not according to Scott Taylor, editor and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine. 

“Bombing Syrian villages does not make Canadian streets safe, and it is impossible to wage war against a tactic,” says the former Canadian solider and war correspondent.

Attacking Daesh’s forces in Syria and Iraq “will in no way impact the actions of the Daesh fanatics who are launching attacks in Europe,” he adds.

Taylor is not alone. Others say it is impossible to defeat terrorism with war. So what’s the alternative?

For George Lakey, it is non-violence.

In a year-old blog post that was making the rounds on Facebook recently, the Quaker activist and academic proposes eight non-violent techniques to address terror.

The first technique is economic development. “Poverty and terrorism are indirectly linked,” he says. “Economic development can reduce recruits and gain allies.”

Second is reducing cultural marginalization. “As France, Britain and other countries have learned, marginalizing a group within your population is not safe or sensible; terrorists grow under those conditions,” he says.

Third is nonviolent protest and unarmed civilian peacekeeping. He points to the success of the civil rights movement in the U.S., which overcame terror by the Ku Klux Klan and other groups through non-violence.

He also points to contemporary examples such as Peace Brigades International, which puts unarmed civilians between warring groups in places like Central America, Africa and Asia.

Fourth is what he calls “pro-conflict education and training.” 

Terror, he says, “often happens when a population tries to suppress conflicts instead of supporting their expression.” Teaching people “skills that support people waging conflict to give full voice to their grievances” can reduce the urge to lash out violently.

Fifth is post-terror recovery programs. 

“Not all terror can be prevented, any more than all crime can be prevented,” he states. 

“Terrorists often have the goal of increasing polarization. Recovery programs can help prevent that polarization, the cycle of hawks on one side ‘arming’ the hawks on the other side.”

Sixth is seeing the police as peace officers. 

“Police work can become far more effective through more community policing,” he says. “In some countries this requires re-conceptualization of the police from defenders of the property of the dominant group to genuine peace officers.”

Seventh is calling on governments to check their impulse to respond violently every time terror occurs.

“Governments sometimes make choices that invite—almost beg for—a terrorist response,” he writes, noting that “to protect themselves from terror, citizens in all countries need to gain control of their own governments and force them to behave.”

The last technique is negotiation. 

“Governments often say ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists,’ but when they say that they are often lying. Governments have often reduced or eliminated terrorism through negotiation, and negotiation skills continue to grow in sophistication.”

According to Lakey, “each of these tools have indeed been used in real-life situations in one place or another, with some degree of success.” The problem, he says, is “persuading a government to take such a bold, innovative leap.”

For Paul Redekop, who teaches conflict resolution studies at Menno Simons College, Lakey’s ideas “make a lot of sense.” But while he believes the ideas are viable, he isn’t optimistic they will be accepted.

“They fall into the realm of prevention rather than reaction,” he says. “Preventive action always seems to be a harder sell than reaction, whether it involves a response to crime or health care or public safety like fire prevention, even though it is always more effective in the long run.”

Governments “often react to what they think the public wants, and a strong reaction is more dramatic,” he notes. “We can make governments take such an approach more seriously when we can make the broader public more aware of the effectiveness of non-violent responses.”

Will non-violence work against groups like Daesh or Al-Qaeda or any of the home-grown terrorist groups in Europe and other places? We won’t know until someone tries.