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IRAQ WAR | ANTIWAR MOVEMENT
Faith-based groups speak out
From Vietnam and Panama to the Gulf War and Afghanistan,
faith-based opposition to U.S. intervention in foreign wars has been the
backbone of the peace movement.
Iraq 2002 is no different.
Over the past month, as the Bush administration ratcheted up its
war rhetoric and planning, the religious left responded with petitions,
protests, and pleas for peace:
More than 13,000 people have signed a “peace pledge”
whose sponsors include the American Friends Service Committee, Fellowship of
Reconciliation, Lutheran Peace Fellowship, and Pax Christi USA. A separate
“pledge of resistance” commits signatories to “join with others
to engage in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience at U.S. federal facilities,
congressional offices, military installations and other appropriate
places.”
Gathered for a late August meeting of the World Council of
Churches, 38 representatives of U.S., Canadian and British Christian churches
urged “restraint” even “as the calls for military action to
remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq have grown louder.” Those issuing
the statement included National Council of Churches General Secretary Bob
Edgar, and leaders of the United Methodist Church USA, the Anglican Church of
Canada, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Episcopal Church USA, the
Disciples of Christ, the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church
(USA). In a separate statement, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson said, “We must stand unequivocally for
peace.”
Since Sept. 1, three Dominicans and a Catholic lay minister have
been fasting for peace. Their daily vigils in Union Square Park have drawn
support from the approximately 150 people who engage the fasters on any given
day, said Dominican Fr. Brian Pierce. “No one has been belligerent, and a
small number tell us we’re wasting our time, but 98 percent have been
supportive,” said Pierce.
More than 700 School Sisters of Notre Dame signed a letter to
President Bush voicing their “strong opposition to the planned invasion of
Iraq as an immoral and illegal action.”
Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, auxiliary of Detroit, has
visited Iraq and has consistently spoken out against both the sanctions imposed
against that country and any plans to invade. However, the U.S. Catholic
bishops have yet to offer their collective view of war with Iraq. In a
statement issued to commemorate the anniversary of Sept. 11, the bishops’
administrative committee urged that the war on terrorism “be fought with
the support of the international community and primarily by nonmilitary
means.”
In December 1998, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, then chairman of
the conference’s International Policy Committee, said the “use of
military force against Iraq is deeply troubling and raises serious moral
concerns.”
-- Joe Feuerherd
National Catholic Reporter, September 20,
2002
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