[Peace-discuss] National Review Article "Church of the Peaceniks"

Sat Feb 8 22:00:35 CST 2003

Here's what the National Review (a popular conservative paper/magazine) has
been saying about clergy who support peace.  The title is "Church of the
Peaceniks."

My response -- Yuck.  It feels important to look at some of this.

I admit I'm sensitive about this -- our local newspaper (the equivalent of the
News-Gazette only tailored to this town) just ran an article "Vets Vs.
Peaceniks," after some rather obnoxious pro-war veterans picketed our peace
coalition meetinglast Monday.  I hope they print my letter to the editor on
the
subject.

Barbara

_____________________

February 7, 2003 10:00 a.m.
Church of the Peaceniks
Religious leaders who oppose the Iraq war.

I was e-mailing earlier this week with an Episcopal priest friend in the 
military's chaplain corps, asking him how the soldiers he serves are 
bearing up these days, on the march to war with Iraq. He replied that most 
are going to the Middle East with "a resigned determination."

"Our men and women in uniform understand that we can defang this evil 
monster now, and take our licks," the chaplain said. "Or, we can defang 
him later, at a cost which is significantly higher. The odds in our favor 
decrease the longer we delay. To delay will cost Americans in body bags."
I then asked how the soldiers feel when they read of religious leaders 
denouncing war with Iraq, the same war they are going to have to fight, if 
it comes to that. 

"Betrayed. Disgusted," the chaplain replied. "They find them naïve, 
clueless. It causes a rift between the soldier and the faith group. The 
Episcopalian soldiers I serve, for example, were outraged during the Gulf 
War when they saw the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church on the 
picket lines in front of the White House."

Well, Episcopalian soldiers, here's some comfort: Peter Lee, the bishop of 
Virginia (and thus the ordinary of Colin Powell, a parishioner at St. 
John's, McLean), has issued a thoughtful, balanced statement about a 
Christian's duty in the impending conflict. 

"We pray for peace," the bishop said. "We uphold our leaders and our 
military in our prayers. And in a fallen world, we understand that one of 
the responsibilities of international leadership is to name the threats to 
peace and to participate in removing them, by diplomacy if possible, by 
measured, necessary force as a last resort."

Bishop Lee, a Korean war veteran, neither endorsed nor condemned this war, 
but said only that Christians should pray that our nation should do God's 
will even if the divine will means fighting a just war. That seems about 
right. Yet such a statement puts Bishop Lee at odds with his church's 
presiding bishop, Frank Griswold, a strident antiwar activist who recently 
said that the "world has every right to loathe us," and with the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, who has described a U.S.-led war on Iraq as 
"immoral and illegal."

Across the Tiber, the antiwar sentiment is much the same. Pope John Paul 
II has made several strong statements calling on the United States to 
stand down from war with Iraq. Top cardinals have sharply criticized 
America's march to war, saying that attacking Iraq now would violate 
just-war principles. Cardinal Francis Stafford, the top-ranking American 
in the Vatican, issued Rome's most detailed case against the war in this 
recent statement, in which he said that war can only be justified if it is 
defensive or the threat of attack is "very imminent." 

"Furthermore, the concept of a 'preventive' war is ambiguous," Cardinal 
Stafford continued.;The threat must be clear, active and present not 
future. Nor has the American administration shown that all other options 
before going to war have proven 'impractical or ineffective.'"

Though a number of U.S. Catholic bishops and heads of Catholic religious 
orders have taken hard antiwar positions, the bishops' conference last 
November issued a more balanced statement. Though they opposed military 
action, the bishops conceded that "people of good will may differ on how 
to apply just-war norms in particular cases, especially when events are 
moving rapidly and the facts are not altogether clear." 

It's the same everywhere you look. Heads of mainline Protestant 
denominations in America, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in 
America, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the 
United Methodist Church, are on record opposing the war. The National 
Council of Churches is strongly antiwar (which is like saying Homer 
Simpson is strongly pro-donut). Jewish religious leaders are divided, with 
some supporting the war and others opposed. Some Jewish peaceniks, 
however, hesitate to join the antiwar movement because it has become home 
to overt anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments. As for the Muslims 
well, do you really have to ask?

In fact, the only major American religious leaders to forthrightly back 
the president are Evangelicals. Richard Land, a top Southern Baptist 
official, joined Chuck Colson three other prominent Evangelicals in a 
supportive letter sent to the White House last fall. But the National 
Association of Evangelicals have declined to make a statement on the war, 
reflecting the ambivalence many congregations feel about attacking Iraq.
So: With the overwhelming majority of major religious leaders in the West 
either antiwar or ambivalent about military action in Iraq, what are we 
laypeople to make of all this? 

I have heard some say that priests and pastors "ought to get behind our 
president," by which they mean refuse to criticize Bush and his war plans 
as a matter of patriotism. This isn't quite right. Religious leaders have 
a prophetic role to play, speaking truth to power when civil authority is 
in the wrong. Plus, does anybody want ordained men and women uncritically 
baptizing war? The pope was right to call war, even just war, a "defeat 
for humanity." 

That said, religious authorities today are reflexively, and depressingly, 
pacifistic on this war, as if every devil can be cast out with high-minded 
talk and good intentions. Some of it has to do with the knee-jerk 
liberalism of the upper clergy in all the American churches, whose leaders 
are generally much more to the left on social matters than their 
congregations. These are the kind of hopeless naifs who take a 
fact-finding tour of Iraq, and return trumpeting news that the citizens of 
this totalitarian dictatorship don't want war. A generation ago, their 
predecessors took "peace tours" of the Soviet Union, and came home 
denouncing America for its warmongering ways.

But there are those who truly believe that the classic criteria for a just 
war have not been met. The problem, though, is that just-war theory, which 
dates from St. Augustine's fifth-century deliberations, is in need of 
updating to account for the dramatically different conditions of the 
present age. (For a more detailed discussion of this, see George Weigel's 
lengthy First Things essay.)

In an era when weapons of mass destruction are possessed by rogue states, 
the very act of having such devastating weapons can legitimately be seen 
as an act of aggression requiring a response. This is even truer when it 
is known that a government supports terrorist surrogates that have sought 
to acquire such weapons. Must America lose New York or Washington before 
she is free to wage war on those who would nuke her, if they had the 
means?

Antiwar clerics have no answer to that question, and no responsibility for 
protecting populations from that fate. History will not hold bishops 
accountable for failing to prevent the annihilation of cities. One 
suspects George W. Bush and Tony Blair wish they slept as well these days 
as peacenik vicars.

Many divines, citing the just-war criterion that insists "competent 
authority" must be in charge of a just war, say that America must not act 
without the United Nations. Leaving aside the risibility of theologians 
tutoring statesmen on the rules of international sovereignty, the United 
Nations is very near to proving its moral vacuity, its impotence, and its 
incompetence as an authority charged with keeping international order. 
We are told by Christian leaders that America and its allies haven't gone 
far enough to resolve the crisis without resorting to military means.

After 12 years of sanctions and a demonstrably useless inspections regime, 
and a year of intense diplomacy under the cloud of war, all with no effect 
on Iraq, there is simply nothing left to be done. We do not yet know how 
our religious leaders will react to the overwhelming case Colin Powell 
made this week at the U.N., in which he demonstrated conclusively that a 
dozen years of trying peaceful means of coercion has not worked with Iraq. 
But their credibility is on the line. 

One antiwar argument the peace pastors use will not be swayed by Powell's 
U.N. speech: that the Iraqi people will suffer terribly in the event of an 
American-led war. That's probably true. But all war brings suffering to 
civilian populations. It's terrible, and an army must do its best to 
minimize it. Yet many more people (including?) our own may die if 
addam is allowed to remain in power, and develop his weapons of mass
destruction. 

Barring a miracle (for which we all must pray), this nation is going to 
war. "The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of 
others," the president said to Congress. One might add: Not even bishops 
and pastors. And, considering what some of them are saying, perhaps, 
Thanks be to God.

http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher020703.asp 

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