wfn.org | Religious activists call for alternatives to aggression

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

March 12, 2002        News media contact: Joretta Purdue7(202)
546-87227Washington     10-21-71BP{101}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this report.

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - On the six-month anniversary of Sept. 11, a United
Methodist bishop joined his voice to those of Roman Catholic, Jewish and
Muslim leaders in urging the United States to rethink its retaliatory
response to terrorism.

The four speakers and the moderator stressed that they were not condoning
the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, but they were critical of the United States'
world leadership. At their legislative briefing in a Senate hearing room
March 11, the religious activists urged more discussion on policy and how
the national budget portrays the nation's priorities.

"All wars are civil wars," said Bishop C. Joseph Sprague, leader of the
United Methodist Church's Chicago Area.

He rejected terming the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan as a "just
war," citing failure to meet the basic criteria by which Christians
recognize a war as just.  First and foremost, he noted, war is to be
embraced only after all other options have been exhausted. Other options,
such as international court action, were not pursued, he and the other
speakers said.

"When the only option that is lifted is war, that creates a myopic vision,"
he commented. What if the United States had observed a 40-day period of
listening and exploring? he asked. Once a country moves down the road to
war, other doors start to close, he added. "Monstrous situations create
monstrous deeds."

Sprague said two criteria apply to the conduct of a just war after the
preliminary criteria for entering such a war have been met. These are
"proportionality and discrimination." The response should be in proportion
to the damages suffered, and discrimination means avoiding actions that kill
or injure the innocent, he explained. Yet, he noted, according to U.S. media
accounts, the death toll in Afghanistan already exceeds that experienced in
the United States on Sept. 11. 

"There has been a bastardization of the just war theory," Sprague declared. 

"We are citizens of a great nation ... but we are also world citizens," said
Sister Kathleen Pruitt, president of the Leadership Conference of Women
Religious and Pax Christi USA's ambassador of peace. 

"Violence will only beget violence," she asserted. Military action does not
end terrorism. "The only path to world unity is peace grounded in justice." 

Pruitt said that raising one's voice for peace in the midst of war is being
termed unpatriotic, but it "is the most prophetic and patriotic" action one
can take. People must consider ways other than violence to address what
happened, she said. 

"Every day, people around the world experience what we experienced on Sept.
11," she observed. "We must find other ways to address aggression rather
than more aggression."

As the U.S. military budget has expanded, the country's poor become poorer
and health care becomes less attainable for millions of people, Pruitt
remarked.

 "We have globalized militarism," she declared. "Are we a nation of the
free, or are we free because we bomb others? Let us not just pray for peace,
but let us work for peace."

Ibrahaim Ramey, a member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship and Fellowship of
Reconciliation, asserted that the U.S. budget is a moral document
accountable to moral principles. The way a nation allocates its resources
reflects its values, he commented. 

At a time when 36 percent of the children in the U.S. capital are living in
poverty - more than in any of the states, where the average runs to almost
one of every five - the Bush administration's plans for the 2003 budget
would eliminate funding for the Temporary Assistance to Families (welfare),
community block grants to the states and vocational training programs, Ramey
reported. Yet the administration is advocating the allocation of more than
$15.8 billion for nuclear weapons and $7.8 billion for space-based weapons.
Neither kind of weapon would have altered what happened Sept. 11, he said,
adding that such choices destabilize the fabric of society.

"People who allocate resources are morally responsible," Ramey insisted. 

The United States is complicit in what it has condemned others for, he said.
"We have been purveyors of violence against others," he said, naming weapons
sales, the School of the Americas and the support of terrorist organizations
as examples.

"It is the responsibility of people of faith to somehow come to the table
with another vision," said Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak. He is a founding member of
Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel and a board member of the Los Angeles
coalition Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. He posed the
question, "Is there an opportunity to turn away from ... the cycle of
violence?"

Increased spending is not the answer, he said. "None of the weapons being
proposed will make us more safe." He advocated looking more at the root
causes of terrorism.

"Pursuing justice abroad requires us to pursue justice at home," he said. He
spoke of hotel and restaurant workers who have lost their work and exhausted
their benefits or who didn't qualify for aid because they were not U.S.
citizens. He spoke of corporations that are using the recession as an excuse
to destroy employment contracts and wipe out benefits. He disavowed the
"erosion of civil rights" in the United States.

Beliak also objected to the shaving of beards and inhumane treatment of
detainees in the war on terrorism. The inherent attitude in the United
States is that the country has the right to respond with unlimited force, he
said.

"The pursuit of this war is not a success," he declared. "The pursuit of
this war is immoral." He urged examining "the war-making system and what it
is doing to us."

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