NEWS STORY: Seventh-day Adventist Who Objected to Combat Training Sentenced by Marines

c. 2004 Religion News Service (UNDATED) A Seventh-day Adventist U.S. Marine was sentenced to seven months in the brig at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Tuesday (Dec. 14) for his refusal to take part in combat-related activities. According to Adventist church officials, military leaders rejected religious reasons cited by Joel David Klimkewicz _ who also was demoted […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) A Seventh-day Adventist U.S. Marine was sentenced to seven months in the brig at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Tuesday (Dec. 14) for his refusal to take part in combat-related activities.

According to Adventist church officials, military leaders rejected religious reasons cited by Joel David Klimkewicz _ who also was demoted from his rank of corporal to private. But a spokeswoman for his Marine division said he was imprisoned for disobeying an order.


Church attorney Mitchell Tyner called the imprisonment “extremely” unusual and said Seventh-day Adventist officials are asking the Marines to reconsider the sentence.

“In looking back through our history, I cannot find a time when Adventists or others have been imprisoned under circumstances like this since World War II,” Tyner told Religion News Service on Thursday.

“This was a situation where the Marine Corps was determined to send a message … that you can’t get out of going to Iraq by becoming a conscientious objector.”

Tyner, who is based in denominational headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., traveled to the Marine base for the one-day court-martial that ended with the sentencing, the demotion and a bad conduct discharge.

A spokeswoman for the Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune differed with the church on why the 24-year-old Marine is in prison.

“He wasn’t put in the brig because he requested conscientious objector status,” said 1st Lt. Kate VandenBossche in an interview. “He was charged with … disobeying a lawful order from a superior commissioned officer.”

VandenBossche said the Marine twice refused an order to pick up his weapon at an armory and begin training with it.


She said Klimkewicz was charged because he refused the order twice before stating religious reasons for his objection to it.

Like church officials, VandenBossche characterized the case as out of the ordinary, but for different reasons.

“It’s unusual that a Marine would claim conscientious objector status after being in the Marine Corps and knowing that there’s a war going on,” she said. “I think that’s what took everyone off guard at first.”

Tyner described Klimkewicz as a convert who came to the faith after participating in on-ship Bible studies with a Seventh-day Adventist chaplain. He inquired about the chaplain’s denomination and later began attending a Seventh-day Adventist congregation in Jacksonville, N.C.

But Tyner said the combat engineer did not learn until after he applied for re-enlistment in the fall of 2003 about the Seventh-day Adventist belief that one should not be involved in combat _ a tenet that is not held by all Adventists in the military.

The Adventist lawyer provided Religion News Service with a report from an officer investigating the case who said “the charge is not serious enough to warrant trial by court-martial” and recommended an honorable discharge instead.


Tyner said he has sent a letter to officials of the Second Marine Division asking them to review that recommendation. He believes Klimkewicz should be released from prison and given a general discharge so he can return to his wife _ a Japanese native who speaks limited English _ and 3-year-old child, who no longer have his salary to support them.

“There is nothing to be gained by keeping this guy in prison,” Tyner said. “He does not need to be rehabilitated. His wife needs him.”

VandenBossche said she could not speculate on how the general who would receive that request will respond.

“It’s a decision he’s going to have to make,” she said.

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