wfn.org | UCC president protests military action against Iraq

[BARBARA_POWELL.parti@ecunet.org (BARBARA POWELL)]

      TITLE: UCC president protests military action against
      Iraq
      Dec. 18, 1998
      Office of Communication
      United Church of Christ
      Barb Powell, press contact
      (216) 736-2217
      powellb@ucc.org
      
      On the Web: <http://www.ucc.org>
      
      United Church of Christ president protests
      military action against Iraq
      
           CLEVELAND -- On the heels of the start of the
      bombing of Iraqi military targets, the president of the
      1.4-million member United Church of Christ has released 
      a statement protesting the attack.
           The Rev. Paul H. Sherry today (Dec. 18) released
      a statement saying that the church has a "sacred
      responsibility" to protest such military action and
      challenge the logic of war.
           "There is no real logic to a war whose victims are
      preponderantly children, women and the elderly," said
      Sherry.  
      
           Here is the complete text of the statement:
      
           "It is the sacred responsibility of the church
      always to challenge the logic of war.
           "It is the sacred responsibility of the church
      always to speak on behalf of those whose voices have not
      been heard or heeded in the corridors of power, whether
      in Baghdad, Washington or New York.
           "It is the sacred responsibility of the church
      always to lament and protest the death of innocents, of
      those whose only crime seems to be the accident of their
      place of residence.
           "The logic of war has already claimed the lives of
      hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, victims of their
      own government's criminality and the inhuman economic
      sanctions imposed by the United Nations.  For the most
      vulnerable people of Iraq, the prosecution of a 'remote
      control' war by missiles and bombers is but a more overt
      form of the war they have been experiencing for the past
      eight years.
           "There is no real logic to a war whose victims are
      preponderantly children, women and the elderly.
           "We must, as a sacred responsibility, protest."
      
           The United Church of Christ,
      with national offices in Cleveland, has more than 6,000
      local churches in the United States and Puerto Rico.  It
      was formed by the 1957 union of the Congregational
      Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed
      Church.
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