Even without the draft, congregation leaders already encounter young women considering the military who need counsel since women are now sent into combat.  Still, few congregation leaders with whom I have spoken either know the main points in biblical studies about women and the military, or that everyone who enlists agrees to go into combat.

Provisions to register women for military conscription were included in the original versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2022 that passed in both the House and Senate. The provisions were removed in the committee process that reconciled the two versions, so they were not included in the final NDAA. The Supreme Court is expected to hear a case arguing that excluding women from draft registration is discriminatory. Whether by legislation or litigation, efforts to register women for the draft will continue.
Many Protestant denominations (links below) that take a complementarian position about gender have prepared studies that oppose assigning women to combat and/or conscripting women. In 2002, for example, the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) 30th General Assembly concluded (in part): “This Assembly declares it to be the biblical duty of man to defend woman and therefore condemns the use of women as military combatants, as well as any conscription of women into the Armed Services of the United States” (Minutes, pp. 282-9). In 2014, the Presbyterian and Reformed Commission on Chaplains and Military Personnel extended such conclusions by describing the high risk that military women face of being raped by military men.
Six Biblical objections to using women as combatants appear in denomination studies.

The Lord assigned Adam to “keep” the Garden of Eden, where “keep” includes protecting it. Adam failed by standing aside while Eve faced Satan (Genesis 2:15; Genesis 3:1-6).
Husbands are to protect wives (I Peter 3:7) as Christ protects the church (Ephesians 5: 22-3).
Women should not put on the things special for men; the language suggests men’s things for war (Deuteronomy 22:5).
Throughout the Old Testament, the Lord always sent men and never women to attack enemies (e.g., Joshua 1:14; Judges 4:6-7; Nehemiah 4: 14).
In the one instance where Israel’s military leader, Barack, rebelled against the Lord by demanding that a woman, Deborah, accompany him into battle, he is rebuked (Judges 4: 8-9).
A woman can be pregnant even before being aware; military women, then, can take an unborn baby into combat risking its death (Jeremiah 1:5; Psalm 139:13).

Some General Assembly minutes include minority arguments that women should be encouraged to volunteer for combat. No recorded denomination discussion, however, has ever supported registering women for military conscription.
Even without the draft, congregation leaders already encounter young women considering the military who need counsel since women are now sent into combat.  Still, few congregation leaders with whom I have spoken either know the main points in biblical studies about women and the military, or that everyone who enlists agrees to go into combat (Enlistment/ Reenlistment Document C 9. a. (4)).
Rather than repeat the extensive explanations, objections, and responses in the denomination studies (links below), I will describe personal experiences over 10 years to disseminate their points. These experiences include conversations with pastors, elders, presbyteries, Stated Clerks, seminary faculty, chaplains and chaplain endorsers, parachurch ROTC group leaders, senior staff of Senators, and Congressional committee members. They also include preparing and distributing a booklet adapting for Christian girls the theological language of denomination studies.
The most common response to draft registration that I receive is that we need not do anything because we can still rely on conscientious objection. Doing so, however, provides a thin hope.
Conscientious objection to being drafted has been possible, but not to registering. Also, conscientious objection policy traditionally recognizes pacifist opposition to war in any form (notably by Anabaptists), but not to Reformed just war views supporting some wars but not others, like wars fought by conscripted women.
Conscientious objection policy today is designed for military people who come to the conviction that they can no longer fight. The acceptable rationale, however, has shifted from religious affiliation to demonstrated, well-articulated personal conviction. A Chaplain Colonel advises me, however, that even chaplains who carefully articulate conscientious objection for exemption from Covid vaccination policy are being declined.
Given current policy, it seems unreasonable to expect 18-year-old women to convince draft boards that they should be exempt from draft registration. As legal adults, the burden to convince is on them personally, not on their parents or pastors. Even with a lawyer’s help, that burden seems especially challenging when a woman’s local church, presbytery/ synod, or denomination shows ambivalence about whether women should agree to combat by enlisting and has not confirmed its opposition to draft registration.
Why now?
When a war lacks sufficient voluntary enlistment to require a draft, draft boards will be overloaded with intermixed genuine and ingenuous appeals for exemption. It would be to our shame to wait until our daughters are involuntarily carrying weapons and our sons are ordered to send them into combat before beginning the slow process of building church consensus and appealing for government exemptions.
What to consider doing?
Parents – consider reading the denomination studies before advising your children and asking your elders to take a stand.
Elders – consider working with your colleagues to create appropriate congregation policy. Perhaps contact Elders in nearby congregations to do likewise, or ask your regional leader (e.g., Stated Clerk, Bishop) to raise the issue in your area.
Regional leaders – consider contacting your congregation leaders to address this issue and contacting regional leaders of other denominations to offer joint support. I have successfully promoted interdenominational cooperation among Bible-believing churches to influence a Senator.
Public Christian leaders (authors, bloggers, publishers, radio/ television hosts, Christian educators, women’s ministry leaders) — consider expanding your vision; take courage; recognizing government sin can be a way to introduce repentance and the Gospel of grace.
What may not be helpful?
Waiting for denomination leaders. For many denominations, studies like the one supporting the PCA’s 2002 resolution await local and regional confirmation that may be delayed until a catastrophe prompts belated, ineffectual action. Silence tells denomination leaders that we do not care. One chaplain who faithfully raised the issue of women and the military for many years wrote to me about our negligence in supporting denomination studies by saying, “Members of our churches love their daughters, they just do not love them in this way.”
We are leaving our children on the edge of adulthood to deal with problematic government decisions to the children themselves without adult guidance, without adult protection. We dare not repeat Adam’s sin by letting our children and young people face the Enemy alone.
Mark Peterson is a member of Redlands Community Church in Homestead, Fla.; he is in the process of moving his church home near to his new residence in central Florida. He was ordained a PCA Deacon in 1984. He is a semi-retired business professor, author, and editor.

Studies
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, 2016, pp. 405-408, 449.
Associated Gospel Churches, 2013, fourth Mandated Policy. (AGC is the chaplain endorsing agency for many independent, non-denominational Bible churches)
Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, 2018.
Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2001, pp. 258-282.
Presbyterian Church in America, 2001, pp. 258-320. Sections 29-53 to 29-57; 2002, pp. 283-290. Sections 30-57 to 30-60.
Reformed Presbyterian Church of the United States, 1996 (no link available)
Reformed Episcopal Church, third (2017) and fourth (2021) Resolutions
Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, 2004.
Southern Baptist Convention, 1998, 2016.

The Left may want your compliance, but it wants your children’s minds and hearts. They consume your children by keeping them away from you and immersing them in an education and culture soaked with their ideology. Your responsibility as a parent is to remove them from the jaws of this monster and place them on the solid foundation that you create, with your family, in your home, defended by your community.

The Left desperately needs to convert your children. While the Right is open to children and supportive of large families, the Left is increasingly anti-childbirth (“Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children,” writes the Guardian’s Damian Carrington). So unless our new woke Left finds young converts to fill its ranks, it will die. They are working hard at this conversion project everywhere. Leftism is rampant in public schools, of course, but also in many private schools, religious institutions, youth programs, social media, movies, advertisements, music, billboards, and likely even in the minds of your kids’ friends.
How can parents protect their children against this all-consuming indoctrination? In a hostile society, one of the most viable options is homeschooling—as a lifestyle. Homeschooling makes parents into their children’s primary educators, as they should be. Hence homeschooling grows ever more popular as the Left grows ever more aggressive.
Sure, your kids might turn out alright in school—but why take the risk? It might be more difficult than the drop-off/pick-up ritual, but if you care about your kids’ formation, don’t let logistics be the thing that stands in the way. With this in mind, here are a few practical tips for how and why to make it happen.
Taking Charge as Your Children’s Primary Educator
Homeschooling doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to design a curriculum from scratch or teach every subject to your child. What it does mean is that you are free to choose your child’s curriculum and who teaches it. With a little research you can find plenty of good resources to help you form a curriculum and instructions on how to get started homeschooling. The key is that you’re the one in charge. As school principal, dean, and teacher, you have the power to replace problematic textbooks, discipline your children, and indoctrinate them in the way you see fit. You don’t have to go through a bureaucracy to make any necessary adjustments.
In the early years, being your child’s instructor—the one with the answers—builds your child’s instinct to come to you with their questions, doubts, and problems. As your children get older, they increasingly learn to take responsibility for their own education—planning out their own school (and work) schedule and learning to learn without someone holding their hand every step of the way. All this takes place within the environment of the home—where it is safe to fail and learn from mistakes without suffering the worst consequences.
Functioning as a Family
Of course, education is about much more than just academics. The education a child receives involves how they learn to live life—whom they associate with, what they believe, and how they behave. The freedom that comes with homeschooling allows parents to center their schedule around their family life. Your children need to know how to put family before themselves. Doing this isn’t only a tool for educating them: it’s a valuable life lesson.
Do not underestimate the importance of doing things together as a family. My parents continue to make sure we do as many things as possible together—going to church, shopping, taking walks and hikes, and prioritizing events that every member of the family can attend. My mother leads us in morning prayer before we all eat breakfast. Our family has an hours-long evening routine, beginning with dinner, then flowing into stories for the younger kids, prayer time, and finally some time for the older children to listen to and discuss a book or two with my mother (currently it’s Rod Dreher’s Live Not By Lies).
When your actions make it clear that your priority is your family, your children, too, see that your principles and priorities should be theirs. By learning to sacrifice personal pleasures for the good and unity of the family in small ways, your children learn to become better husbands and fathers, wives and mothers.
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Christ has “ordained..his system of doctrine, government, discipline and worship.” All of these good things (and how to use them) are “either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary inference may be deduced therefrom.” From the means the men learn the method; from the oracles the officers learn the ordinances. The method and the means sweetly agree. Indeed they are inseparable, as medium and message almost always are.

The wonderful Preface to the Presbyterian Church in America’s Book of Church Order is an overlooked masterpiece of piety and practice—an especially helpful resource:
Christ, as King, has given to His Church officers, oracles and ordinances; and especially has He ordained therein His system of doctrine, government, discipline and worship, all of which are either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary inference may be deduced therefrom; and to which things He commands that nothing be added, and that from them naught be taken away.– Section I, The King and Head of the Church
These words provide remarkable encouragement for both church members and officers, and they place a considerable responsibility on those ordained men who lead and care for the church. In this foundational paragraph, we learn that the ascended Christ (Eph. 4:8), the reigning king, has provided the church with the men, the means, and the method for accomplishing her mission.

The men are (for the first-century church) “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists,” and (for the church since) those who hold the continuing office of elder—“the shepherds and teachers.”1 (Eph. 4:11)
The means2 are given by the Holy Spirit through the “the apostles (and) the prophets”—the oracles of God which are the inspired Holy Scriptures, the authoritative Word objectively existing, perfect and eternal.
The method is the employment of the ordinances—the divinely-ordained delivery system of grace and truth, including “the reading, but especially the preaching, of the Word”3 and the administration of the sacraments. It is worth noting that these are uniquely of the church and occur primarily (and best) in the church’s public worship on the Lord’s Day.

This is encouraging for church members because it means all necessary provision has been made for their souls in the ministrations of the church. It is good news, as 19th-century presbyterian Stuart Robinson understood when he titled his great book “The Church of God as an Essential Element of the Gospel.”
This is good news for church officers, too, who are not left to their own devices, creativity, or whims in ordering and caring for the church.
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