[Peace-discuss] Fw: U.S. Christian Leaders Apologise For Iraq War

Tue Feb 28 07:59:09 CST 2006

> U.S. Christian Leaders Apologise For Iraq War
>
> By Ximena Diego
>
> February 24, 2006, Inter Press Service New Agency
>
> http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32288
>
> NEW YORK - Christian leaders from the United States lamented
> the war in Iraq and apologised for their government's current
> foreign policy during the 9th Assembly of the World Council
> of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which ended Thursday.
>
> "We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq, launched in
> deception and violating global norms of justice and human
> rights," the Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, the moderator of
> the U.S. Conference for the WCC, told fellow delegates from
> around the world.
>
> Kishkovsky is the rector of Our Lady of Kazan Church in Sea
> Cliff, New York, and is an officer in the Orthodox Church of
> America.
>
> Taking an unusual stand among U.S. Christian leaders, the
> United States Conference for the World Council of Churches
> (WCC) criticised Pres. George W. Bush's actions in response
> to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
>
> "We are citizens of a nation that has done much in these
> years to endanger the human family and to abuse the
> creation," says the statement endorsed by the most prominent
> Protestant Christian churches on the Council.
>
> "Our leaders turned a deaf ear to the voices of church
> leaders throughout our nation and the world, entering into
> imperial projects that seek to dominate and control for the
> sake of our own national interests. Nations have been
> demonised and God has been enlisted in national agendas that
> are nothing short of idolatrous."
>
> The message, written like a prayer of repentance and backed
> by the 34 Christian churches that belong to the WCC, mourns
> those who have died or been injured in the Iraq war and says,
> "We confess that we have failed to raise a prophetic voice
> loud enough and persistent enough to deter our leaders from
> this path of preemptive war."
>
> Among the attendees was the Rev. Bernice Powell- Jackson,
> North American President of the World Council of Churches. A
> civil rights activist for more than 25 years, Jackson
> previously served as executive director of one of the Justice
> and Witness Ministries predecessor bodies, the Commission for
> Racial Justice.
>
> The U.S. Conference of the WCC also criticised the
> government's position on global warming. "The rivers, oceans,
> lakes, rainforests, and wetlands that sustain us, even the
> air we breathe continue to be violated... Yet our own country
> refuses to acknowledge its complicity and rejects
> multilateral agreements aimed at reversing disastrous
> trends," reads the message.
>
> Earlier this month, a group of more than 85 U.S. evangelical
> Christian leaders called on Congress to enact legislation
> that would reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, which most
> scientists believe contribute to global warming.
>
> The U.S. Conference of the WCC message also said,
> "Starvation, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the treatable diseases
> that go untreated indict us, revealing the grim features of
> global economic injustice we have too often failed to
> acknowledge or confront."
>
> "Hurricane Katrina," it continues, "revealed to the world
> those left behind in our own nation by the rupture of our
> social contract. As a nation we have refused to confront the
> racism that infects our policies around the world."
>
> The statement comes days after the National Council of
> Churches (NCC), the United States chapter of the WCC,
> endorsed a U.N. report on the situation of detainees at the
> Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
>
> Separately, in a letter addressed to Secretary of State
> Condoleezza Rice, NCC General Secretary Robert W. Edgar
> called on the U.S. to bring the detainees to trial, release
> them, or to "close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility
> without further delay". It also asked Rice for access to the
> Guantanamo facility "to monitor the physical, spiritual and
> mental conditions of the detainees".
>
> At the Brazilian conference, the Rev. John Thomas, president
> of United Church of Christ, was quoted as saying: "An
> emerging theme in conversation with our partners around the
> world is that the U.S. is being perceived as a dangerous
> nation."
>
> He called the Assembly "a unique opportunity to make this
> statement to all our colleagues" in the ecumenical movement.
> The statement says, "We come to you seeking to be partners in
> the search for unity and justice."
>
> Thomas acknowledged that not all church members would agree
> with the thrust of the statement, but said it was their
> responsibility as leaders to "speak a prophetic and pastoral
> word as we believe God is offering it to us".
>
> The final WCC event featured a candlelit march for peace
> through downtown Porto Alegre with up to 2,000 people --
> including two Nobel Prize-winners -- taking part.
>
> Organised by local churches as part of the World Council of
> Churches' Decade to Overcome Violence, it was accompanied by
> Latin American music from Xico Esvael and Victor Heredia.
> Young people carried banners highlighting peace and justice
> issues. One, depicting the world held in God's hand, read
> "Let God change you first, then you will transform the
> world."
>
> WCC president Powell-Jackson urged the crowd to commit
> themselves to overcoming violence. Prawate Khid-arn of the
> Christian Conference of Asia told them, "If we do not take
> the risk of peace, we will have to take the risk of war."
>
> Israel Batista of the Latin American Council of Churches
> spoke of poverty, injustice and abuse of women and children
> and asked, "How are we to speak of peace?" Still, he said,
> "In spite of violence, we will persist in the struggle for
> peace."
>
> After an address by Julia Qusibert, a Bolivian indigenous
> Christian, the marchers sang the Samba of the Struggle for
> Peace and the Taiz chant Ubi Caritas, among other songs. The
> march paused while Nobel prize- winner Adolfo Prez Esquivel
> improvised a poem and addressed the crowd at the Esquina
> Democrtica or Democratic Corner.
>
> The evening was brought to a climax with an address by the
> second Nobel Prize-winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He began
> his impassioned speech by saying, "We have an extraordinary
> God. God is a mighty God, but this God needs you. When
> someone is hungry, bread doesn't come down from heaven. When
> God wants to feed the hungry, you and I must feed the hungry.
> And now God wants peace in the world."
>
> The WCC is the largest Christian ecumenical organisation,
> comprised of 340 Christian denominations and churches in 120
> countries, and said to represent 550 million Christians
> throughout the world. The U.S. Conference of the World
> Council of Churches alone represents 34 Christian churches,
> including Orthodox, Evangelical, Lutheran and Anglican
> churches, and four million members throughout the country.
>
> The Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the WCC but has
> worked closely with the Council in the past. Since its
> origins in 1948, the WCC gathers in an Assembly every seven
> years with each member church sending a delegate.
>
>
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