wfn.org | Two leaders with congressional experience reflect on attacks

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Oct. 2, 2001 News media contact: Joretta Purdue 7(202) 546-87227Washington
10-21-71BP{439}

NOTE: Photographs of Rep. Ted Strickland and the Rev. Robert Edgar are
available.

By Joretta Purdue*

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - In the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedies, people throughout
the nation and world have turned to their faith for comfort and strength.
Two United Methodists bring to the situation training and experience as
United Methodist clergy and the perspective of holding congressional office.

Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, is in his fourth term in the U.S. House of
Representatives. His district stretches across the southernmost part of
Ohio, roughly from the suburbs of Cincinnati to Marietta on the Ohio-West
Virginia border.

The Rev. Robert W. Edgar heads the staff of the National Council of Churches
(NCC) of Christ in the U.S.A., with offices in New York and Washington. He
served six terms in Congress beginning in 1974.

In interviews with United Methodist News Service, Edgar and Strickland said
they were speaking as individuals, not as representatives of any
organization. "I strongly believe in the tradition of our country of
maintaining a strong separation between government and religion or church
and state," Strickland explained.

The period following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and
Washington is similar in some ways to the time after the 1941 bombing of
Pearl Harbor, but they are also different in many respects, Edgar said.
"This is a time that is unique." 

He sees tension in society among efforts at peace making, preparing for
conflict and showing concern for "our brothers and sisters who happen to be
Muslim," he said.

"My sense is that people within the faith communities are generally
supporting the administration efforts but calling upon the administration to
recognize that blunt force is not appropriate in this situation," Edgar
said. He spoke of people waving the flag during the day and lighting candles
at night.

"An unintended consequence - that may be positive - of what took place on
Sept. 11 is that it forced the administration to begin to think
internationally and globally," Edgar said. The Bush administration tended to
be isolationist until then, he said. He voiced hope that the nation's
leaders will regard the current conflict as a campaign against terrorists
living in 40 or 50 different countries. 

Edgar said he is struggling to find a word to use instead of "war," which he
defined as a fight among nations or governments. Images from earlier wars
are inappropriate to this situation, which is more a campaign against
terrorist gangs, he said. 

While considering an appropriate response, Strickland said he has found
himself referring to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who died at
the hands of the Nazis. Bonhoeffer did not believe in taking life, but as a
result of seeing what Hitler was doing, "came reluctantly" to participate in
an effort to assassinate the dictator, Strickland said.

"I think there may be some very legitimate differences between what a
community of faith perceives to be an appropriate reaction to what has
happened to our country and what the responsibilities of a civil government
may be," he said. 

"Those kinds of conflicts, I think, are perhaps heightened in this current
situation, but I think they exist on a continuing basis across nearly every
consideration of public policy, such as how we are going to allocate our
resources, what polices are going to benefit what individuals or interest
groups," he remarked.

At the same time, he said, there is "an understandable human tendency here
to want and to seek vengeance." He has told his office staff to listen
sympathetically to all callers without attempting to clarify or instruct.
"People need, right now, an opportunity to just express themselves, whether
that expression is sorrow or grief or anger or whatever. 

"I do not believe what's happened here is, in any meaningful way, related to
failures of our nation to seek a more just and peaceful world," he said. "I
think what's happening here is basically the result of a terribly distorted
religious belief system." 

Because of that, Strickland sees this crisis as different from most others
that the country has faced, and potentially more dangerous. Had the people
who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks had nuclear, chemical or biological
weapons, they would have felt no remorse in using them, he said. He believes
others with similar beliefs are plotting future attacks. 

"I think they believe they are right and justified and doing the will of
God, and that makes them very dangerous," he said.

Those attacks could be even more destructive, he said. "To me, that means
that we face a continuous threat of horrendous proportions, that ... could
involve hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths." 

Some action, "aimed not at seeking revenge but at preventing future death
and destruction," must be taken that probably will involve a military
response, Strickland said. "It is my hope that it will be directed in such a
way that innocent civilians will be protected."

Edgar noted that several religious organizations, including the NCC and the
World Council of Churches, have called for restraint in responding to the
attacks so that more innocent lives are not taken. For some, like the
Quakers and the Church of the Brethren, restraint does not go far enough, he
noted.

He expects Methodists to be split at least three different ways, he said,
with one group "almost blindly following" administration positions, another
group calling for restraint and tolerance, and the middle group being
"whipsawed back and forth" between wanting revenge and trying to devise a
way of attacking the evil without killing the innocent.

"This is going to be a time of struggle for Methodists to weave between
their feelings of anger and frustration over the attacks and their rational
views on how to respond to this kind of evil," he predicted.

One positive suggestion, Edgar said, is to bring bin Laden before an
international court and try him for crimes against humanity. "That would be
a much more thoughtful, theological and Christian response," he said.

He also urged economic assistance to laid-off workers and concern for how
"poor people will become even poorer."

Both men were ordained in the 1960s. A resident of Lucasville, Ohio,
Strickland was ordained deacon in what is now the West Ohio Annual
(regional) Conference and elder in the Kentucky Conference during the '60s.
He held church-related assignments before going to graduate school to work
for a doctorate in psychology.

While a clergyman in Pennsylvania, Edgar co-founded Philadelphia's first
shelter for battered women and children, and worked to reduce gang violence.
He headed the Committee for National Security, an arms-control think tank,
for two years before becoming president of Claremont (Calif.) School of
Theology in 1990.

Donations can be made to UMCOR Advance No. 901125-3, "Love in the Midst of
Tragedy," and dropped in church collection plates or mailed to 475 Riverside
Dr., Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Credit-card gifts can be made by calling
(800) 554-8583. 
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*Purdue is news director in United Methodist News Service's Washington
office.

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United Methodist News Service
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