Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church-Unitarian Universalist

“War, Faith and Justice”

Rev. Leslie Takahashi Morris

March 30, 2008 

When talking about the upcoming presidential election at the Republican Governors Association meeting in February, President George W. Bush said, “We must elect candidates who understand that this nation is involved with an ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who would like to do us harm again; and that we better be strong and resolute in the face of this enemy…”  A little later, he said:  “One of the principles by which I have been operating is this: I believe in an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to every man, woman and child is freedom. And I believe it is in the interests of the United States of America to free people from disease and hunger and want and tyranny. It is in our interests to make sure that we defeat the ideologues of hate with an ideology that has worked throughout the centuries. I believe 50 years from now, people will look back at this period of time, and say, thank God the United States of America did not lose its faith in the transformative power of liberty to bring the peace we want for our children and our grandchildren.” 

So I stand here today to say that I believe we will NOT ultimately be thankful.  As a religious person, I am horrified to realize the hard truth:  that a holy war is being fought in our name—a conflict in which one of the casualties has been the moral integrity of our nation. 

Today I want to talk about what it means to be religious liberals living in the shadow of a conflict which however it was sold when launched, is anything but a just war, which has become a religious war—and I want to warn you, this is not a topic that lends itself to amusing anecdotes or light-hearted interludes.  The fact is the very idea of talking about war is hard, to talk about a war with a religious agenda has been anathema to many since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and that is part of what leaves us powerless in the face of something we find so incomprehensible.  As Kip described so well, the very idea of how to think about war has been connected with religion for millennia.   And as our Peace Conversations Group readers reminded us, if we ignore the dirty realities of the violence being perpetrated in our name, we are in danger of trying to hide in what Dietrich Bonheoffer, who tested his theology against the Nazis and paid with his life, called contemptuously “the sanctuary of private virtuousness.” 

What is happening in Iraq is a struggle that has become as much about values as about economics.  It is about determining what human rights and national sovereignty will mean in a globalized, interdependence-shrunken world in which the rights of the multinational corporation are less hindered than the rights of the states. And increasingly, it is about religion and a bloody debate over whether religious pluralism will be part of the new world order. 

Harvard scholar Louise Richardson notes that “if one were to make a list of the known terrorist groups operating 30 years ago, for example, one would find none have religious motives, or even a mixture of political and religious motives.”   She notes that our encounters with those with religious frameworks different than ours leaves us relying on stereotypes and negative typecasting:  “We have replaced communism with Islamic fundamentalism,” she writes.  What, she wonders, would happen if we stopped trying to argue with religious leaders whose fuel is casting us as the enemy and instead tried to understand the political, psychological and religious motivations of their followers? 

She notes that when the fatalities in the United States on September 11, 2001 included the lives of 500 people from 80 countries, 160 countries responded immediately to the cry to freeze the assets of the terrorists—it was a time when the United States of America had the moral edge—and since then, in her words:  “We have acted in a manner far easier to square with the terrorists explanation of ourselves than with our own.  We have, moreover, created a self-fulfilling prophecy by mobilizing waves of new recruits for the terrorist movement of the region.”

Five years into a war started in our name and in the name of the values we hold most dear as a nation—freedom and liberty, the International Rescue Committee has recently issued a report which says that “the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq five years ago and its violent aftermath have produced one of the largest humanitarian crises of our time, yet it is hidden from the public and largely ignored by the international community.” 

I am personally ashamed at how easily I lose the thread of this war—it is so remote, so polished-media, so controlled.  I regret that I have to create times, like the silent hour each Thursday, to force myself to think about the war.

Yet face it we must and some hard truths at home as well.  The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee tries to capture this connection by pointing out that the dollars that have gone into the war could have gone into pressing domestic needs, including the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, still decimated years after Hurricane Katrina.  This is a bit too simplistic for my taste:  from my public policy days, I know that choosing between competing priorities in a world of scarce resources is never that cut and dry, it is more like the agony of choosing among your children.  Still, these unaddressed tragedies do place our nation’s instigation of this war farther in the moral deficit column.  For all the endless news coverage of the flap over Barack Obama’s former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the debate has largely failed to capture the fact that those video clips of Wright give us a glimpse into the despair that many in our citizenry feels. 

Jeremiah Wright was the featured guest of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers last summer at our meeting before General Assembly and it was one of the greatest honors David and I have had in our short ministerial careers to be in the presence of someone who was so knowledgeable about religion, culture and the social justice history of this nation.  What the media has missed is that the minister in the black-church tradition is the prophetic voice of the people he serves.  If you want to see the future of this country, watch those YouTube video clips—not the cheap commentary the post-ers have typed to stream across Wright’s face, denouncing him as an America-hater, watch, instead, behind Wright, the people standing up in response to their truths as he names them, dancing, praising, exchanging high fives, exhilarated to hear their truths told.  When he talks about God damning the country, he is evoking the Old Testament sense of God damning the corrupt nations.  With us as a nation unable to acknowledge the costs of this war or to provide the resources needed to open opportunities for those systematically denied them, we need all fear damnation—a worldly damnation where we live with the horrendous consequences of the choices our nation has made and those we have failed to make.

 

Faced with war of any kind, Unitarian Universalists are at a disadvantage because we don’t have a single position from which to act:  we have a spectrum that embraces peace advocated, just war advocates and more.  The paralysis which can result is a problem because as the Chinese tale Kip read showed, the many ways our interests conflict with each other are deep and biologically based.  In the current issue of the UU World magazine, the magazine which goes to all members of Unitarian Universalist congregations in this country, UU theologian Paul Razor writes about the current debate within our Association which pivots around the question of whether the Unitarian Universalist Association should “reject the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between peoples and nations and adopt a principle of seeking just peace through nonviolent means.” 

Our history has been a complex one, one that ultimately comes down in the area of war to at best a moderate position.  As Mid-East observer Shibley Telhami notes, “Passion is power in American politics….This often means more extreme positions exist on issues than a simple public opinion poll may reflect.  It is hard to be passionately moderate and thus effectively moderate in American politics.” 

The fact is, if inter-religious dialogue will be important in solving the long-term problems of our shrinking world as many sage observers believe, we could be contributors.  Our religious ancestors were part of the first efforts to build worldwide religious dialogue back before the advantages of electronic technology.  We were present at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 and at the founding of the International Association of Religious Freedom in 1900.  With all due respect to our President, we are a faith that knows that more than one ideology has worked through the centuries.  For a while, our values were in sync with the approaches to worldwide understanding.  The UN Declaration of Human Rights, enacted in 1948, defined the conditions in which sovereignty could be violated and said that it was “grounded in a conviction about the unity of the human family.”  That unity is our religious birthright.

Shibley Telhami also notes, “There is a difference between a state’s using its power and influence to shape or change international institutions and norms and employing this power to completely disregard the very norms it helped shape originally.” Perhaps part of our work in the world is to remind this nation of its ideals and the commitments it has made. 

Yet as Unitarian Universalists, we are generally left speechless in the face of war because of the diversity of philosophical opinions we contain. Rasor suggests we might not be as far apart as we think.  He writes, “Many people assume that just war and pacifism are opposing positions, but they actually have much in common. Properly understood, both are anti-war traditions. Both seek to limit the use of violent force, and they will be on the same side in nearly all cases.” 

Though Rasor has concluded that Unitarian Universalists as a whole have always “affirmed peace as among our most basic values,” he does believes that for us to become a “peace church” such as the Quakers, would require “a radical difference in self-understanding.”  He also notes that the just war model grounded as it is, “in reason, not in revelation” is consistent with our religious culture. He believes these times call for something new, writing:

Razor also reminds us that we have always been an engaged religion.  In light of the news this week—nearly 300 dead now in the fighting in Basra, I invite each of you to discern for yourself what actions make sense, to keep up with what is happening in this war waged in our name, to consider seeing Edith Good after the service or going on-line later and joining the UUSC, despite my squabbles with some of their message, I believe in them as the humanitarian face of Unitarian Universalism in the world. 

Our Peace Conversations Group is already involved in many ways, from lobbying to sending comfort to soldiers, to assisting Iraqi refugees in our community to planning for a major event at the end of May to be held on the downtown mall.  And as we approach this election, hold our candidates accountable on this war.  Question them.  Probe them. About their position on the war, about what resources they are truly giving to our soldiers, about what aid is available for the rebuilding of Iraq and the rebuilding of lives of Iraqis who will never return to the life they knew before, about their commitment to investing in the communities that need rebuilding as well. 

This is an issue of the next election and it is an issue that goes beyond the next election.  We need to commit to the long haul.  I am a Universalist at heart and I believe that no one is beyond redemption and yet a point comes when one must be accountable for one’s actions, when one’s actions may, in fact, move beyond the bounds of “forget and forgive.” Our nation’s moral duty for generations will be to find ways to make reparations for the actions done in our name.   

We are a faith that can hold multiple truths and the world needs us to demonstrate that capacity.  We are the faith of reason and the world needs our reason.  We are a faith of engagement and the world desperately needs our engagement.  As much as we value discernment, we cannot THINK our way into action—we can only act in faith, the faith that is our best attempt to do no harm and increase the world’s unity.  This morning’s is not a message of comfort, still it is a message of hope. As a religious people, our efforts make a difference when we join them to others working to reclaim a moral position for our nation in this world.  As a movement, a religious movement, may we all have the courage to meet the moral and ethical obligations of our time, in the name of the generations to come.  May we be the ones to make it so.  Amen.