wfn.org | ELCA presiding bishop, NCCC leaders urge Clinton to build peace

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

CHICAGO, Feb. 19, 1998 (elca/lwi) - Pledging to pray for President Clinton,
U.S. church leaders counseled him: "Pursue diplomacy. Urge Iraqi
compliance. Resist the military option. Offer aid and healing. Build
peace." The Rev. H. George Anderson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Feb. 17 joined other Christian leaders
in signing the letter.

Writing to Clinton, leaders of the National Council of Churches of Christ
in the U.S.A. (NCCC) called for Iraqi compliance with the United
Nations-mandated dismantling of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and full
cooperation with U.N. inspectors. They urged the United States to provide a
massive humanitarian response "to relieve the undeserved suffering of the
Iraqi people" and joined the US Catholic Conference in emphasizing that the
embargo against Iraq was "an only partially effective strategy at the cost
of needless human suffering."

Anderson said, "The ELCA shares a concern for the innocent victims of the
conflict the most vulnerable, the men, women and children who suffer
greatly, whom God loves greatly. Through our ecumenical family and its
ministries we know them as friends, as brothers and sisters."

Anderson expressed concern that military action against Iraq would
"discourage Iraq from compliance with U.N. resolutions, undermine the
international consensus with regard to Iraq as well as the regime of
disarmament controls in place, and damage the credibility of the United
States with the people of Iraq and other countries."

The NCCC letter to President Clinton maintained that "the key lies in
allowing the Iraqi people to see the United States and the community of
nations as compassionate friends, not agents of injury, threat and pain."

Signing the letter Feb. 16 were NCCC officers the Right Rev. Craig B.
Anderson, president; the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary; the
Rev. Will L. Herzfeld, vice president for Church World Service and an
executive of the ELCA's Division for Global Mission, and others.

Bishop Anderson and the heads of 13 other NCCC member churches added their
signatures Feb. 17.

The ELCA's social statement, "For Peace in God's World," adopted in 1995,
calls the church "a reconciling presence" that serves reconciliation by
"challenging stereotypes of 'the enemy,' and by encouraging imaginative
solutions to conflicts."

The statement affirms "that governments should vigorously pursue less
coercive measures over more coercive ones: consent over compulsion,
nonviolence over violence, diplomacy over military engagement, and
deterrence over war."

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Lutheran World Information
Editorial Assistant: Janet Bond-Nash
E-mail: jbn@wcc-coe.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/