| NATIONAL DESK | September 28, 2002, Saturday
Beliefs; Churches and ethicists loudly oppose the proposed war on Iraq, but deaf ears are many. By Peter Steinfels (NYT) 1037 words
Given that the United States is repeatedly said to be a religious country and that over 80 percent of its citizens are reported to be Christians, it is interesting how little has been made of the declarations by so many Christian leaders and ethicists that the Bush Administration's proposed war against Iraq is unjust and immoral. The administration was greatly bent out of shape by the very public refusal of the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, to support a war in Iraq. But for all its reputed piety, the White House shows no sign of concern about the moral objections swelling up from an imposing portion of American church leadership. How many divisions does the Pope have, Stalin is supposed to have sneered. Karl Rove can much more reasonably ask, how many voters does the United Methodist Church have? Or, for that matter, the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), the Orthodox Church in America, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and the United Church of Christ - to name some of the bodies whose top officers or other leaders have recently joined in questioning a war against Iraq? Then there are the National Council of Churches, the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops and various bodies overseas like the World Council
of Churches, the Anglican Consultative Council (leaders of 70 million Anglicans),
the
Many of these church bodies are habitual critics of American foreign policy and military actions, and people in their pews, as Mr. Rove certainly knows, do not necessarily pay much heed to their leaders' statements. But some of these groups, the Catholic bishops, for instance, offered a degree of support for the war in Afghanistan that they are distinctly withholding now. Something similar can be said of the more than 100 Christian ethicists from seminaries and universities who released a simple statement on Wednesday affirming a "moral presumption against a pre-emptive war with Iraq by the United States." Some of them are well-known pacifists, like Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University's Divinity School, but others are proponents of just-war theory, like the Rev. John Langan of Georgetown University, who have argued for American military actions in the past. The day before, when Church of England bishops in the House of Lords debated Tony Blair's report on Iraq, Bishop Richard Harries of Oxford said that the evidence presented did not justify a war, particularly without United Nations authorization and "if the war aims include a regime change." The intervention of Bishop Harries, who in the 1980's wrote extensively on issues of morality and nuclear warfare, was noteworthy because he identified himself as "a longstanding opponent of the crypto-pacifism which has infiltrated too many church statements." There are a few American voices aligned with the administration, most notably Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and George Weigel, the former president and now senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. They are cogent but, so far, pretty lonely. The latest issue of Christianity Today, the leading evangelical journal, quotes Mr. Weigel and rejects the argument of many administration critics that a pre-emptive action against Iraq would necessarily be unjust. Not only might it be just, the magazine editorializes, it might "perhaps be an act of Christian charity and duty." But only, the magazine says, "if all the prudential and practical questioning points to the conclusion that Iraq or its proxies are about to use weapons of mass destruction - and that military action would not create catastrophe and chaos." The pacifists aside, almost all the religious thinkers are couching their arguments in traditional categories of just-war theory: Among other things, a war must be declared by a legitimate authority for a just cause and as a last resort. There must be reasonable prospects of not simply producing more evil than one hopes to repair. Is preventing a very grave but still not imminent danger a just cause for invading a nation and overthrowing its government? Is the United States the legitimate authority to carry out such an action? Does it require Congressional or United Nations approval? Can any pre-emptive action be called a last resort? Are the consequences apt to be a quick victory, a Middle East conflagration, widespread civilian casualties or an unsustainable long-term commitment? Those questions give a good idea of where the moral objections arise. They parallel the political and military doubts quietly floating in many corners. Religious opponents of Washington have called for renewing rigorous arms inspection in Iraq and taking military action only under United Nations auspices. But few have owned up to the reality that it is only because of Washington's war plans that inspections and firm United Nations enforcement are on the table at all. In reprinting the letter that the American bishops sent President Bush, The Tablet, a venerable Catholic weekly published in London, noted that the letter "urges Mr. Bush to rely on diplomacy rather than war because the latter would (in this case, it judges) be morally wrong. But Mr. Bush is entitled to reply that the diplomacy they commend is only likely to work because the threat of war lies in the background." But where does The Tablet itself stand? Even while noting the "paradox" facing religious leaders like the bishops, The Tablet has steadily pleaded for Tony Blair to put the brakes on the American-led movement toward attacking Saddam Hussein. It, too, is part of a rising chorus that may prove more significant than the administration realizes. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company |