At 5:15 one afternoon last week, Norman Morrison, 31, his clothing doused in kerosene and his youngest child, 18-month-old Emily, cradled in his arms, stood outside the river entrance to the Pentagon and burned himself to death. As hundreds of departing officers and civilian workers watched—no photographers were on the scene—Army Major Richard Lundquist grabbed the child away from the flames. Army Lieut. Colonel Charles Johnson, who had seen two Buddhists incinerate themselves on the streets of Saigon, and two Air Force sergeants tried to smother the flames with coats and jackets. By the time an ambulance arrived, 70% of Morrison's body was burned. He was declared dead on arrival at Fort Myer Army Dispensary.
Morrison's self-immolation, his wife Anne soon explained, expressed "his concern over the great loss of life and human suffering caused by the war in Viet Nam. He was protesting our Government's deep military involvement in this war." The suicide ended a life centered on religion since boyhood. Morrison was born in Erie, Pa.; when he was 13, his widowed mother moved the family to Chautauqua, N.Y., where he became the first youth in the county to win the Boy Scouts' God and Country Award. He was raised a Presbyterian, but gradually became interested in Quaker beliefs, particularly pacifism, while a student at Wooster College. He later studied at a Presbyterian seminary in Pittsburgh and at the University of Edinburgh, and joined the Society of Friends in 1959. Since 1962 he had been executive secretary of the Stony Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore. In recent months, Morrison had. been deeply disturbed about U.S. bombing in Viet Nam, although colleagues detected no outside sign of a psychosis that might explain his death.
Thou Shalt Not Kill. For other Quakers, Morrison's act raised questions both as a suicide and as a pacifist protest. Although the Friends profess deep reverence for human life, their doctrine includes no specific condemnation of suicide; most Quakers were content to let God judge Morrison's self-slaughter. And while they could quarrel with his grisly form of martyrdom, there was no disputing that the vast majority of Friends shared Morrison's misgiving about the Viet Nam war, or any other war. Along with the Brethren movement and the Mennonites, the Friends have been the most ardent spokesmen for the pacifist movement within Christianity, calling upon men to accept literally God's commandment: "Thou shalt not kill."