Anti-war pronouncements ignore people in the pews
The Layman April 2003 Volume 36, Number 2, April 21, 2003
Some American church leaders, including Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, long have opposed war in Iraq, even going so far as to propose a “third way” to resolve the crisis – characterizing it as “a war against the people of Iraq ” and not, contrary to their own admission, an effort to dislodge “the brutal regime” of Saddam Hussein.
Presbyterians, long familiar with “third way” dissembling on the issues tearing apart the Presbyterian Church (USA) – silence in the face of defiance of judicial rulings and constitutional standards, funding boycotts rather than missionaries, removing any qualm of conscience from late-term abortions – recognize such a canard for what it is. Instead, more than 60 percent of those who say religion is “very important” in their lives support military action.
This overwhelming stance stands in stark contrast to the public proclamations of denominational leaders who, as part of their (reportedly more than $400,000) anti-war campaign, participated in a National Council of Churches-sponsored delegation to Europe to press their position, implying that they spoke for more than 50 million American churchgoers in 36 denominations.
The polling evidence suggests otherwise, leading the Association for Church Renewal to criticize the group’s statements as “ludicrous” and “simply untrue.”
Regardless of how well-intentioned statements by Kirkpatrick and his allies are meant, or how out of step they are with the members of their churches, their “third way” flies in the face of logic. They continually contradict themselves, decrying the sanctions against the Iraqi regime and then calling for strengthening them; bemoaning the use of force and then calling for “coercive disarmament;” opposing the use of force in Iraq but encouraging “reinvigorating and sustaining the war against terrorism” elsewhere; calling for a U.N. civil administration to foster democracy in a “post-Saddam Iraq,” but relying on Hussein to voluntarily leave the country; urging a “massive humanitarian effort to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people,” but ignoring the U.N.’s seven-year-old oil-for-aid program that the Iraqi regime systematically has siphoned off into weapons programs.
No, statements like these are simplistically wrong and seek to avoid – if, in fact, they even recognize – that the right way often is difficult. The right way doesn’t deny the brutality of the Iraqi regime, as Kirkpatrick and his allies do. Instead, it recognizes the despot in Baghdad for who he is, what he has done to his people and the dangers his regime poses to others. It acknowledges that weapons inspections, sanctions, diplomatic maneuvering and all the other efforts over the past 12 years have failed and that “the last resort” of force was the only viable alternative.
The “third way,” on the other hand, naively celebrates its right to voice an ill-formed opinion – pretending all the while that such an opinion represents 50 million churchgoers. G.K. Chesterton had the proper response to this sort of nonsense: “To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”