The Peace Page

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will join a group of religious leaders and community based organizations speaking out against domestic violence this week on Capitol Hill

The national Interfaith Domestic Violence Coalition, launched by Jewish Women International (JWI), will hold its inaugural briefing on Feb. 13 in Washington, D.C. Recognizing the role of religious communities in supporting, counseling and advocating for victims of abuse, the coalition of more than 20 organizations will gather under the theme "Policy & Persuasion: How Faith-Based Communities Can Work Together to Advance Domestic Violence Laws."

The Presbyterian-founded, church-backed National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is speaking out against a new executive order from President Bush that broadly outlines the limits of how suspects may be questioned in the CIA's terror interrogation program.

The order, which Bush signed last month, bans torture, cruel and inhumane treatment, sexual abuse, acts intended to denigrate a religion or other degradation "beyond the bounds of human decency." It pledges that detainees will receive adequate food, water and medical care and be protected from extreme heat and cold.

It does not, however, say what techniques are permitted during harsh questioning of suspects.

Calling the war in Iraq "an offense against God" and warning that America is in danger of losing its soul, speakers at an ecumenical "Christian Peace Witness for Iraq" in Washington, D.C., March 16 drew thunderous applause.

Some 4,000 people from 48 states braved rain, sleet, snow and bitter cold to participate in the event - a prayer service in the National Cathedral marking the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, followed by a candlelight procession to the White House.

Scores of Christians from around the country, including numerous Presbyterians, are expected to descend on Washington D.C. this week to demand an end to the war in Iraq.

The Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, to be held on Friday (March 16), will include worship, public prayer, and a candlelight vigil outside the White House that could land some demonstrators in jail.

More than 3,500 Protestants and Catholics, including clergy and other church leaders, have already registered for the one-day, nonviolent, anti-war witness. The event will begin with an ecumenical worship service at the Washington National Cathedral at 7 p.m.

The National Council of Churches in the USA (NCC), a long-standing critic of U.S. military involvement in Iraq, has criticized President George W. Bush's call for additional U.S. troops to be sent to the region.

"Sending more troops is not a change in policy, nor is it even a change in strategy; it is more of the same," the NCC said in a statement about the president's declaration that he wants to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by 21,500.

Congress adjourned for the year in mid-December, leaving many major issues unresolved, including the federal budget for Fiscal Year 2007, which began October 1. Any legislation not passed by Congress and signed by the President must be reintroduced in the 110th Congress if action is to be taken on it...

Former Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly moderator Rick Ufford-Chase and four Presbyterian ministers were among 71 people arrested in Washington, DC, during a series of peaceful protests against the Iraq war on Tuesday (Sept. 26).

"This one is really personal," said Ufford-Chase, an elder at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, AZ. "It just feels like I've spent three years trying to find proactive ways to insist on our (Christian) values about war and the situation in Iraq is getting worse. I finally decided it's time I have to do something to say no."

"Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest ideals, hold dear," a group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders say in a statement published as a paid advertisement in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call on Tuesday (Sept. 19).

Originally published in the New York Times on June 13, the full-page ad is part of a new initiative by the Presbyterian-founded National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), which says it is working "for the immediate cessation of torture by the United States, whether direct or by proxy, within our territory or abroad."

"We have tried to identify the likely major issues of the national campaigns and to lay alongside them the guidance as voted by the commissioners at various Presbyterian General Assemblies over the years. These policy statements are based on a Reformed Theological understanding of the biblical message and a belief that God works through the assembled commissioners of the Church. General Assembly policy statements are to be seen as advice and counsel to Presbyterians as we contemplate our action on these issues in an election year."

The National Council of Churches USA described yesterday's Supreme Court's 5-3 ruling preventing the Bush administration from using military tribunals to prosecute prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention center as "a reasoned affirmation of what people of faith have been trying to communicate to the White House for years."

"Any effort to deny the rule of law to accused individuals, no matter how grievous the charges, is a denial of the most fundamental expression of American democratic ideals," the NCC statement said.

"Peacemaking is putting your heinie on the line," the Rev. Mark Lomax declared to a full house gathered Monday night for the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program's 25th anniversary celebration dinner.

The Rev. Mark Lomax, founding pastor of First Afrikan Church in Lithonia, Ga. and assistant professor of homiletics at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, speaks at the Presbyterian Peacemaking 25th Anniversary Celebration and Dinner on Monday. Photo by Joseph Williams.

"We are engaged in a fight," said Lomax, founding pastor of First Afrikan Church in Lithonia, GA. "You can't get in a fight and not come out bloodied."

What is the church to do?

"We really do have to go to the cross. We have to become the gospel," Lomax said. "We have to live it out in our daily walk."

Julia Ward Howe is best remembered by history buffs as the woman who wrote the words that became "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," the fiery Civil War anthem first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. Not so widely known is that eight years later, the woman who wrote "Let us die to make men free" wanted to end war forever. Having seen and survived the violence and economic devastation of the Civil War, Howe dreaded the gathering storm of the Franco-Prussian war. In Boston 1870, she delivered a "Mother's Day Proclamation for Peace," 274 words in which she envisioned "a great and earnest day of counsel" in which mothers of all nationalities would arrive "at the means the great human family can live in peace."

Nearly 46 million Americans are living without health coverage, including more than 8 million children. During May 1-7, 2006, thousands of activities will take place in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to tell Congress that health coverage for Americans must be their top priority. Activities include press conferences, health and enrollment fairs, business leader summits, interfaith activities, small business seminars, campus outreach and more.

Coretta Scott King is best known as the driving force behind the memorialization of her late husband, slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. She was the chief architect of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, and was instrumental in getting a federal holiday to honor him. But Mrs. King was not just the guardian of her husband's legacy. She was a committed activist in her own right, a forceful, courageous, and visionary woman who was determined not just that her husband's achievements be remembered, but that his philosophy of nonviolence continue to be taught.

Miami conference registers 'outrage' at U.S. mistreatment of terror suspects

Martin Luther King, Jr., warned America about the danger of unquestioning national pride. How far have we come?

"God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now," King thundered from his Atlanta pulpit exactly two months before his death at the hands of a cowardly racial terrorist. "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war." Here, of course, King referred to the Vietnam War, and he took a lashing in public for his dissenting views. He was accused of being unpatriotic. He was charged with moral treason. Other black leaders like Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young lambasted him (though they later came to acknowledge, as did the nation, that King's views were courageous and correct). And yet, King was one of the greatest patriots this nation has produced. He proved it by giving his life in a fight to defend this country's best side against its worst.

Our Father in heaven

Lord, sometimes we forget that you created us, and that you watch over us from above, and from within our hearts. Is there any doubt as to why we sometimes go astray?

Hallowed be your name.

Holiness is something foreign to our everyday reality, Lord. Perhaps this started when we began to abuse the earth you gave as a gift to sustain us, and in which we once readily beheld your wonder. How do we recover this sense of awe?

Put your sword back! These are the last words the disciples hear from Jesus before they run away. If ever there was a moment in God's eyes when violence would be justifiable, this is it! But Jesus is clear: His followers are not allowed to respond with violence. They are not allowed to kill. Why? Because all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Violence begets violence. Killing begets killing. Death begets death.

Put your sword back! The command goes to the heart of Jesus' message. But after he issues it, his disciples turn and run away. They know where an unarmed response will lead - and who can stomach such craziness? The Gospels do not cover up their rejection: All the disciples left him and fled. And Jesus, alone, is led away to be slaughtered.

- Vernon Broyles III, associate director for social justice ministries in the PCUSA's National Ministries Division

- Dilu Nicholas, Conference Registrar for the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program

" It is both peculiar and chilling to find oneself discussing the problem of American torture. I have considered support of basic human rights and dignity so much a part of our national identity that this feels as strange as though I'd suddenly become Chinese or found Fidel Castro in the refrigerator.

One's first response to the report by the International Red Cross about torture at our prison at Guantanamo is denial. "I don't want to think about it; I don't want to hear about it; we're the good guys, they're the bad guys; shut up. And besides, they attacked us first."

But our country has opposed torture since its founding. One of our founding principles is that cruel and unusual punishment is both illegal and wrong. Every year, our State Department issues a report grading other countries on their support for or violations of human rights.

In the name of Jesus Christ Almighty, why are people representing our government, paid by us, writing filth on the Korans of helpless prisoners? Is this American? Is it Christian? What are our moral values? Where are the clergymen on this? Speak out, speak up. "

" In just six months, the historically strong relationship between Presbyterians and the American Jewish community has been pushed to the brink of absolute enmity. Sadly, much of the disintegration of friendship and goodwill is the result of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and anger over something that never happened.

There were four separate Presbyterian votes that caused concern in the Jewish community, but most of the furor has been focused upon the issue of divestment from Israel. Both secular and religious media have reported that the Presbyterian Church voted to divest from all companies doing business in Israel, calling to mind the broad economic boycotts of South Africa that helped to bring about the end of Apartheid. Even the Presbyterian church's own news service described the General Assembly's action as a "divestment from Israel" and likened the action to the Church's participation in the South African boycotts.

But no such action was taken by the Presbyterian Church's General Assembly. "

- Rick Ufford-Chase, Moderator of the 216th General Assembly, PC(USA)

" I have been increasingly troubled by our continued reliance on the "just war" theory as a path toward credible peacemaking. In the last three years, my chagrin has grown to an almost visceral discomfort with the rhetoric and the reality of the "war on terrorism." Our belief that there is such a thing as redemptive violence is deeply problematic on both a theological and a pragmatic level.

I find I can no longer nuance the use of violence. It's increasingly difficult to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. The defining characteristic of all kinds of warfare in our time is that civilians are the overwhelming majority of those who are killed. That's true whether they are the victims of terrorist attacks or well-executed military campaigns.

What if the Church stood against all forms of violence: the war in Iraq, the Israeli Occupation, and the violence and tactics of asymmetric warfare, or what we call terrorism? Equating God with the cause of the domination of one people over another is morally abhorrent, whether it's we who do it in the United States or Osama Bin Laden who does it in the name of Allah. "