War Exposes Church Weakness

by Dan Webster

It is troubling. The leadership of nearly every major Christian church publicly opposed the war in Iraq. But according to a Gallup Poll last February most of those sitting in the pews were more likely to support the war.

In Austin, Texas, a Methodist pastor — whose church is just blocks away from the governor’s mansion where President Bush resided when in office there — speaks against the war in an April sermon. A man rises to announce he’s heard enough and storms from the sanctuary.

A parish priest at a Utah Episcopal church confides to a colleague the tension felt between prophetic and pastoral preaching on the war. The pastoral always seems to win out, says the priest.

An article in The New York Times features a Catholic parish in McLean, Va., wrestling with obeying the pope’s opposition to the war and their patriotic support of the president.

The divide between the pulpit and the pew in some denominations is cavernous. Is this a wake-up call for the church? Is it too late?

The conflict within the church leadership is also apparent. A Roman Catholic pastor in protest of the war removes the American flag from the pole in front of his suburban San Antonio, Texas. His archbishop orders him to replace it.

"When pulpits are silenced because of fear the Church’s integrity is at stake," said Dr. Walter Wink, biblical interpretation professor, at an April spiritual formation conference.

"It would be a tragedy if churches were not part of the non-violent revolution," he said. Dr. Wink said the most important ethical challenge of our time is to grow a spirituality of non-violence.

"Violence has become the spirituality of the modern world," said Prof. Wink, an author and scholar from Auburn Theological Seminary, New York, N.Y. Our culture believes "violence saves" and that "only violence can rescue us from the violence of our enemies."

The church has an important and vital role "to ask the right questions about root causes and to make a voice known. A voice of peace," former Iran hostage Terry Waite said in May. "Not a voice that gives way to everything, not a voice that appeases, but a voice that speaks out clearly and confidently with the message of Christ," said Waite, a former envoy and hostage negotiator for the Archbishop of Canterbury.

"Peace never comes from the barrel of a gun," said retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu in an interview for Trinity Television last April. The former recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace spoke out against the war in many public appearances in recent months.

So why do so many churchgoers pack the churches where Archbishop Tutu preaches but disagree with him when it comes to the issue of war?

"A morally relativistic American culture was shaping Christians more than Christians were shaping the culture," said Barna, in an interview last August with Christianity Today. Barna is social researcher who has studied the American church for many years. His opinion, based on his research, was that many of those in the pews "didn’t seem to have any real understanding of the Bible’s distinctive message."

American Christianity was being reshaped by President Bush in many of his speeches. He has drawn on selected biblical quotes and contemporary Christian songs in his speeches, news conferences and addresses in order to rally support for his war effort.

"This goal of a free and peaceful Iraq unites our coalition," the president told troops in April at MacDill AFB, Fla. "And this goal comes from the deepest convictions of America. The freedom you defend is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity."

The president has raised American society, its values and our way of life to the level of a gift from God entrusted to this country to share with others even at the point of a gun.

I’m not going to speculate on President Bush’s motives. That is being done elsewhere. But I am concerned for the church. If leaders of national religious organizations are at such odds with the wider membership then we as educators of people of faith have truly failed.

Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians need to revisit their catechisms and their new member education class curricula. Leaders in those faiths who spoke out against war need to explain to their membership how they arrived at their decision. At the same time they need to be examining how they train those who sit in the pew week after week.

I hope Christians will follow the advice of Walter Wink. He suggests leaders really study Matthew 5:38-41, the story about turning the other cheek, giving up your cloak as well as your undergarments and carrying the pack the extra mile.

"This text has become a way of making people subservient," he said, when it is quite the opposite.

Speaking at that April conference he said turning the other cheek would have meant claiming your equality against your aggressor. It would have been understood as a challenge. Giving up your garments until you are naked was a defiant act protesting the economic system of the time that oppressed people.

Being naked in public was not a shaming thing for the naked person, he said, by Jewish law it would have shamed those who looked upon the naked person. Carrying the pack of a soldier the extra mile was not an act of generosity on the part of the follower of Christ. That act would have forced a soldier to break the law and could get him in trouble with his superior. Wink called it a kind of "spiritual aikido," a martial art that uses an aggressor’s force against themselves.

"Nonviolence is the heart of the teachings of Jesus," he said. "It is the breaking in of the Kingdom of God."

If the church does not find ways to empower the prophets within it, then the prophets will find other ways to get the message out of peace and nonviolence.

The message will get out. The Holy Spirit will not be denied. But she may have to seek an alternate form of communication to do that. When she does, the church will have only itself to blame when it sees the message coming from those who are not its members.

The Rev. Dan Webster is an Episcopal priest in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is a member of the National Executive Council of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. Dan may be reached by email at dwebster@episcopal-ut.org

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