"Witness for Peace in Iraq"

by the Rev. Stuart Taylor

Co-pastor, St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church

The following message was delivered at a Christian service in protest of the Iraq war, held at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church on March 16.

Greetings. Where are we in this moment of time? What does it mean that we have gathered this evening? And what are we as people of faith called to do? The Bush administration sent American troops into Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction. They were not there. The President said that Saddam Hussein regime had given help to Al Qaeda, but it had not. The goals of the war have constantly shifted from getting rid of a vicious dictator to spreading democracy. But it has always been about oil.

Our nation was taken to war on the basis of falsehoods. This administration says that the torture of Abu Graib and elsewhere has been the work of a few bad apples whereas in fact abuses were sanctioned at the highest levels of the executive branch in secret memos. The President has stated flatly that all wiretaps of Americans were pursued in legal means but there is evidence that he was repeatedly authorizing wiretaps without warrants in a specific violation of the law.

We know that the financial costs of this venture have been enormous. Billions and billions of dollars that could have been used so many places in our nation and across the world. But as significant as are the financials, the human costs go far beyond that which can be quantified. Here we are in a moment when tens of thousands of US wounded service men and women have had their lives shattered. The military estimates that a third of our returning veterans will have full blown Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Walter Reed scandal raises the moral question of whether this nation will truly provide the resources necessary for a lifetime of rehabilitation for shattered souls and bodies.

Thirty-one hundred US service men and women have died. Each with a story, each with a family that grieves them. Each with a future that is no more. Furthermore, we cannot begin to comprehend the scale of death injury and suffering being inflicted on the Iraqi people. The number of Iraqi’s estimated to have been killed ranges from 58,000 to 665,000.

What does it mean to speak the truth to power in such a moment as we are living in the United States? Speaking truth to power means first of all that the church reclaim its prophetic voice and speak out clearly, authoritatively for peace and for justice. We must return to our radical roots in the historical Jesus and his Gospel of non-violence.

That nonviolence was at the heart of Jesus' message and ministry is clearly demonstrated by the practice of the early church. For 3 centuries following the death and resurrection of Jesus, the early church practiced radical non-violence. For three centuries Christians were virtually unanimous in denouncing Christian participation in warfare. But then came that historic moment for the church when the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the officially sanctioned religion of the Holy Roman Empire. In a little over a century a transformation took place regarding the church's fundamental stance toward war and violence. Walter Wink writes "Christianity's weaponless victory over the Roman Empire eventuated in the weaponless victory of the empire over the Gospel. No defeat is so well disguised as a victory." There is nothing in our history as a church that has had a more dramatic impact on the gospel of Jesus Christ than this historic moment when the church moved from the margins of society to the center of power. Faithfulness to the Gospel was subordinated to maintaining the strategic interests of the empire.

Now we live in one of those historical moments when as people of faith we need to reaffirm and recommit to the church’s prophetic role in society. As US citizens we have a responsibility to put God first. We must never succumb to the idea that God and nation are synonymous. Only God can claim our absolute loyalty. Any state or government that seeks absolute loyalty or unquestioning obedience is idolatrous. We must say no to a form of patriotism that says my country right or wrong.

Our loyalty to our country runs deep in all of us whatever our political persuasion but this loyalty must always be a critical loyalty. Listen to NYU historian Stephen Cohen. "We must say in every way that we can that our country, the United States of America does not have the right, the wisdom or the power to invade and occupy another country, still less an ancient civilization with the ultimate purpose of redirecting that nation. Such a mission will never result in any kind of victory, only the morally toxic political and humanitarian catastrophes that we are witnessing. We must bring the troops home.

It is right to be thinking about our moral responsibility to the Iraqi people. Now that we have created this chaotic catastrophe for them, would it be moral to withdraw? And there are other policy concerns as well. Would a US exit result in a failed Iraqi state that would become a breeding ground for terrorists? It already has become that. The US is discovering about its military occupation in Iraq what many Israeli’s are discovering about their military occupation of Palestine. As long as there is a foreign military occupation, the cycle of violence cannot and will not be broken. Widespread violence in Iraq will not end until the US military occupation ends.

A recent cover story of the Nation said the following: "World opinion is against the US escalation in Iraq. The American people are against it. Congress is against it. The Iraqi people are against it. The Iraqi government is against it. Can a single man force a nation to fight a war it does not want to fight, expand a war it does not want to expand? If he can, is that nation any longer a democracy in any meaningful sense? If not, how can democratic rule and the republican form of government be restored? That is the moral question before us as US citizens, and as people of faith. The determined and complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq is now a moral imperative. – the only way to redeem our nation for its role in the death and destruction of Iraq. The time for political evasions and ambiguities on the part of our government leaders every month that this war continues, more than 3,000 Iraqi’s and 100 Americans are likely to die, each new death darkening the stain on America’s honor and on the conscience of its true patriots."

In 1967, Martin Luther King’s words spoke at Riverside Church, his first address against the war in Viet Nam. His words have never been more relevant. "We still have a choice today: non-violent coexistence or violent co-annihilation." His prophetic call to life and death decisions is once again pressing us to action. It is, now as then, the time to resist the powers of war-making as a solution to human conflict.