Bin Laden killing prompts uncertain church response
By Alan F.H. Wisdom, Special to The Layman, May 26, 2011
Oldline Protestant church officials, torn by pacifist and quasi-pacifist misgivings, gave a slow and mixed response to the May 1 killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. While boisterous crowds rapidly gathered outside the White House and at Ground Zero in New York, officials of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the National Council of Churches (NCC) did not release their comments until two and three days later.
Those comments notably refrained from agreeing with President Barack Obama’s assertion that “justice has been done” in the U.S. military raid against bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Neither did they condemn the raid; however, they laid heavy emphasis on non-violent alternatives. PCUSA and NCC leaders rebuked the celebrating crowds. They also used the occasion to reiterate longstanding criticisms of U.S. foreign and military policies. Even when it was a liberal Democratic president who had secured a significant triumph for America, the left-leaning church leaders found it hard to say a word of gratitude for that American victory.
On May 4 the PCUSA posted a web page of “resources for prayer and reflection … [i]n light of Osama bin Laden’s death.” The materials on that page did not deliver any evaluation of whether the Abbottabad strike was a legitimate use of U.S. military force. The page featured instead a “prayer for the reign of peace.” The prayer remembered how “Jesus taught us to love one another, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and even to love our enemies.”
“In times of violence and fear,” the PCUSA website prayer asked, “let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, so that we may not be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good.” It petitioned God to “[p]ut away the nightmares of terror and awaken us to the dawning of your new creation” of peace and justice. There was no suggestion that, in this time when evil grows alongside the good, governments might sometimes need to use force to restrain the evil and uphold the good.
Warning against the dangers of U.S. militarism
Further down the page was a statement from the PCUSA Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP). The statement recalled the admonition in Romans 12:17, “Repay no one evil for evil,” and the injunction in Proverbs 24:17, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls” – verses used implicitly to criticize the Abbottabad operation and the celebration of its success.
On the other hand, ACSWP conceded some credit: “Partly in line with the approach to terrorism recommended by the 2004 Assembly, the action to kill bin Laden reflected careful intelligence work and, as reported, did not itself inflict death to civilians or non-combatants.” The PCUSA committee insisted on “addressing terrorism as a crime and not a cause for war.” It asserted, “In a more ideal context, capture and trial by duly constituted authorities remain the way to hold evil persons to account.”
ACSWP added that “[t]he death of bin Laden does not itself mean an end to terrorism.” It remarked that in the Middle East “both tyrannies and violent interpretations of jihad will continue to exist, as will resentment of Western influence and use of military power.” ACSWP seemed to share that suspicion of U.S. power: “General Assemblies have warned about the dangers of militarism linked to religion, even our own Christianity, and have pointed to the shadow of empire that does not inspire confidence around the world. May this death [of bin Laden] free our nation to look forward but not forget the costly lessons of being provoked by terrorists, and may we resist the illusion that violence in itself provides easy answers.”
The committee repeated General Assembly calls “for the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.” It pointed to “[t]he full costs of two ongoing wars” in Iraqi and Afghan and other lives lost and the massive expense of reconstruction. ACSWP also saw “moral costs” that it laid to America’s account: “The Assembly has, in its statements on torture, focused on the violation of Christian and national principles, the damage to the reputation and credibility of the United States, and the dangers of an expanded security and surveillance apparatus, including Guantanamo Bay, endangering privacy and civil liberties.” There were no offsetting praises for anything that U.S. military and intelligence agencies had accomplished since 9-11.
The PCUSA web page recommended materials from the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program to “help study and practice nonviolence.” These voluminous materials included essays by Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mohandas Gandhi, as well as a book entitled Ain’t Gonna Study War No More. Amidst all this promotion of pacifism, a stance held by only a small minority of Presbyterians, there was no presentation of the majority view that Christians may sometimes advance the cause of peace and justice by serving in the military.
Ducking the questions
PCUSA Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons signed a May 3 NCC statement that ducked questions about the just use of force against bin Laden. “The National Council of Churches deplores and condemns the extremism he [bin Laden] personified, the twisted illusions that wrought years of violence and evil in the world,” according to the statement. But it did not say whether the Navy SEAL team did well in bringing an end to those “years of violence and evil.”
The NCC minimized any benefits from the Abbottabad raid: “It does not eradicate the scourge of terrorism nor does it bring closure to the grieving and pain the world has endured since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001….” The council instead appealed, “[L]et us turn to a future that embraces God’s call to be peacemakers, pursuers of justice and loving neighbors to all people.”
The NCC recalled a statement it issued in November 2001 urging U.S. Christians “to make real in these days the call of Jesus, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44).” That earlier statement had denounced the U.S.-led military intervention to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that had shielded bin Laden. Indeed, the council’s interpretation of Jesus’ instructions to His disciples in Matthew 5 seemed to be quasi-pacifist, not leaving any room for governments to defend their people against declared enemies such as bin Laden.
The NCC rejected any rejoicing in the death of an enemy: “Just as Christians must condemn the violence of terrorism, let us be clear that we do not celebrate the loss of life under any circumstances.” NCC General Secretary Michael Kinnamon was harsher in a blog entry: “If we dance at Bin Laden’s death, we proclaim that violence is a proper response to violence. But that is the message of al Qaeda; it has no place in our faith traditions.” Kinnamon seemed to recognize no moral difference between al Qaeda’s violence on 9-11 and the violence of the SEALs who later killed the al Qaeda leader.
A majority perspective, unexpressed
Many other Christians would recognize a moral difference. They would turn for guidance to a passage such as Romans 13:1-7, which went unmentioned by the NCC and was quoted without any further commentary on the PCUSA web page. That passage affirms that rulers “bear the sword” as “the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.” The mainstream of the Christian tradition – the vast majority o
f members in both the PCUSA and the NCC – has understood that passage to teach that while individual Christians are under Jesus’ command, “Do not resist an evildoer” (Matthew 5:38), the state by contrast has a divinely imposed duty to resist the evildoers.
Many U.S. Christians would see what the SEALs did in Abbottabad as a fulfillment of precisely that duty. Osama bin Laden had harmed, and was threatening to harm, large number of law-abiding U.S. citizens. It was the U.S. government’s solemn obligation to stop him – by lethal force, if necessary. And the SEALs stopped him. Most U.S. Christians, including this author, did not dance in the streets at that news. But they were grateful.
Yet PCUSA and NCC officials did not seem able to express that simple gratitude. Even though most of them come out of “just war” traditions, and they may still affirm the theoretical possibility of a “just war,” in practice they are functional pacifists. They have condemned a long list of U.S. involvements – Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, the First Persian Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan – as violating the criteria for a “just war.” But they have never found a U.S. military action that they could certify as satisfying the criteria. It seems that they construe the “just war” criteria so strictly that no actual war in the messiness of the real world could ever meet those exalted criteria.
Perhaps in some cases, though, these church officials individually might back some military actions. But because the PCUSA and NCC contain vocal and influential pacifist minorities, the organizations may find it impossible ever to reach consensus on a statement in support of military action. The pacifists, who will never consent to any use of force, have in effect been granted a veto within the PCUSA and the NCC. Even though they are a small minority, they have succeeded in making these church bodies functionally pacifist: always ready to criticize any U.S. use of force, never prepared to say that force might be justified. The result is that these church bodies can no longer speak for most of their members, who continue to believe that governments have the right and the duty to use force – as in the case of bin Laden.