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Monday, October 07, 2002 |
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Sharon A. Brown Christopher |
President of United Methodist Bishops Counsels Bush to Avoid ‘Preemptive Strike’
In a pastoral letter to 8.4 million United Methodists in the United States, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the President of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, Bishop Sharon A. Brown Christopher, said the U.S. should act with restraint in dealing with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. [Read the letter]
6:59:06 PM 
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From the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church:
"We, leaders of American churches and church-related organizations, are alarmed by recent statements by yourself and others in the Administration about pre-emptive military action against Iraq for the expressed purpose of toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. Understanding that Mr. Hussein poses a threat to his neighbors and to his own people, we nevertheless believe it is wrong, as well as detrimental to U.S. interests, to take such action. "
Thanks, Lauren ( a fellow Church member) for sending the link to the Bishop's letter and I found this link on that page.
6:53:06 PM
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IN this article, Hauerwas expresses the concerns I have for the integrity of Christian spirituality during these times of "War on Terror". It is appalling to me how so many in this "Christian nation" of ours are so absolutely quick to "bless the rhetoric of revenge" and give support for returning grievance for grievance. An eye for an eye. We say we are not taking revenge, and yet we turn around and react with much the same kind of "diplomacy" of action which precipitated the feelings which motivated the act of war against the US by the terrorists.
From the article:
"Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics at the Duke Divinity School, is an avowed pacifist who argues that the United States should construe its reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks as a police action in which the goal is not to kill but to arrest the perpetrators. Mr. Hauerwas said he had been "absolutely dumbfounded" at the ease and haste with which Christian leaders in the United States adopted a belligerent stance that in his view is at odds with the teachings of their religion. "Christians have a very hard time in America distinguishing themselves from the assumption that we are on board whatever America wants to do," he said. "Most American Christians are blank check people who believe we should go kill whoever the democratically elected American president says we should kill.""
I agree that the attacks were "an act of war", but by whom? It was a cell, a group, a fundamentalist sect. It was not done by Afganistan, or by Muslims.
6:30:50 PM
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