ZGram - 11/1/2002 - "Australian Professor: 'On Iraq, the churches must speak out'"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

November 1, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

This one comes from Australia but it has universal application for 
all the Western Faithful.  Critical mass seems to be building - and 
if only we gain enough time, the (mostly Jewish) war hawks might not 
get their war after all.

[START]

On Iraq, the churches must speak out

October 31 2002

One after the other, Australia's major churches - Uniting, Roman 
Catholic and Anglican - have spoken out against the proposed war 
against Iraq in recent weeks.

Moderators, archbishops, synods have all tossed their contribution 
into the pot. They have claimed to speak for ordinary Australians. 
The Uniting Church in Victoria has even courted the idea of civil 
disobedience and of encouraging its members not to pay any war levy.

Why so? Why are the churches drifting into this oppositional stance?

Few church members are pacifists. Nor are they soft on terrorism. 
However, they are affronted at the apparent willingness of the 
government to sweep aside the legal framework of the United Nations 
and to support a pre-emptive military strike. Unsurprisingly, there 
are some distinctive moral and religious notes about their protests, 
which flow from their prayers, their worship, their reading of 
scripture. But they are getting political. Most church members have 
already been profoundly alienated by the shameful treatment of asylum 
seekers. Now this discontent is coming to a head. Ordinary church 
people have had enough.

It's not just the leaders. A senior layman said to me the other day: 
"I have never been on a protest march in my entire life. I have never 
even contemplated civil disobedience. I have always paid my taxes 
conscientiously. But I am increasingly ready to consider radical 
action."


Church people note that the West's naive trust in military might is 
coupled with a mind-boggling display of self-righteousness. Complex 
issues are being personalised and opponents demonised. The overblown 
rhetoric about a war against terrorism has all the hallmarks of a 
crusade, with George Bush and Tony Blair as the clean-limbed angels 
of justice. They see this as dangerous nonsense. Political leaders 
with messianic pretensions overstep their God-given limits. Given the 
shameful crusades waged in the name of Christianity a millennium ago, 
church people are highly sceptical about crusades.

So the Australian churches, like most others across the world, 
including the US, are asking: What is just about this proposed war? 
Would we permit bombs to rain down indiscriminately on innocent 
Australians if a Saddam Hussein and his henchmen were at large in 
this country?

 From a Christian perspective the proposed war against Iraq is on the 
moral level of a Sicilian vendetta. Anything goes. The Geneva 
conventions governing civilian casualties will be spurned. Every 
principle of a just war is to be violated.

That is why many church people have had a gutsful, and are steeling 
themselves for resistance, saying quietly but firmly that they cannot 
and will not be silent in the face of this looming catastrophe. In 
doing so they believe they speak not only for themselves, but also 
for middle Australia. They are getting into dialogue with Islamic 
neighbours, most of whose leaders and theologians have been speaking 
out, largely unheard, in support of peaceful, just and long-term 
solutions. They do not believe a pre-emptive war can be justified. 
More poignantly, they doubt that it will be a war at all, but a 
massacre.

It is an ancient tenet of the entire Judeo-Christian tradition that 
there will never be security without justice. Our current world order 
is grotesquely unjust. Such injustices do not in the least excuse 
atrocities, still less the despicable fanatics who inspire young 
people to commit them. But church members point to the gross 
imbalances in privilege and destitution that create such breeding 
grounds for terrorism.

So church leaders are refusing to be pushed into the sacristy. They 
have a duty to remind those in power that innocent civilians will pay 
the price for their glib rhetoric of death. As a universal faith, 
Christianity also has to remind the white tribe that it is only one 
part of God's family. Who gives the West a divine right to 
restructure the world according to its preferences?

The nub of the problem is how the barbaric evil of terrorism is to be 
overcome. The overwhelming conviction of the Australian churches is 
that there are no quick fixes, certainly not demagoguery and the 
brandishing of military hardware. They ask the West to take a sober 
look at its own motivations. There are tough questions to be asked 
about the real motivation for launching this war. The key forum 
remains the UN, where the very difficulty in achieving a consensus is 
the guarantee that, when won, it will stick.

The Pope, notoriously, has no battalions. As things stand, the 
churches seem powerless to stop this juggernaut. But, as the 
Moderator of the Uniting Church in Victoria and Tasmania has said, if 
they represent the views of many ordinary Australians, John Howard 
would do well to listen carefully to what they are saying.

Reverend Dr Peter Matheson lectures in church history at the United 
Faculty of Theology, Melbourne University.

[END]

This story was found at: 
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/30/1035683473405.html