The Reformed Pastor

You may have heard about this thing called “The Response,” which is being held in Houston in August. According to its web site, The Response is “a call to prayer for a nation in crisis.” Based on the call to a “solemn assembly of prayer and fasting” in Joel 2, it’s a one day event that is no more revolutionary than Thanksgiving Day. But to the Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, it is no less than a constitutional crisis. See, the “initiator” of The Response is the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, and That Spells Trouble:

“Rick Perry is sounding more like a TV preacher than a governor,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “He needs to stop meddling in religion and focus on things like the budget and job creation. His reckless mixture of religion and government is as insensitive as it is reckless.”

In a letter faxed to Perry today, Lynn wrote, “To be blunt, you have overstepped your constitutional bounds. I am a Christian minister and would like to remind you that it is not the job of government officials to call people to pray, recommend that they fast or prod them to take part in other religious activities. That job belongs to me and my fellow clergy. We are capable of doing it without government ‘help’ or interference. We are offended when you attempt to usurp our role.”

Now, keep in mind that Perry has used no government offices or resources to do this. He has made no official proclamations, sent out nothing on state letterhead. While he does have his title on his name at the Response web site, all of the people involved with this are private citizens motivated by a desire to seek God’s help for a troubled nation. But the real problem is the brand that involved:

The Response’s website includes a statement of faith that reflects fundamentalism. It states several times that the event is designed to promote Christian principles.

Lynn noted that the event is being promoted by several extreme Religious Right leaders and organizations, among them the American Family Association, evangelist Lou Engle and Pastor Jim Garlow.

I’ve never been a great fan of the American Family Association, and I don’t know the other two guys. But I have read The Response statement of faith, and it’s about what you’d expect out of generic evangelicalism:

The Response is a non-denominal, apolitical Christian prayer meeting and has adopted the American Family Association statement of faith.

1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
2. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
4. We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
5. We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
6. We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost;  they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
7. We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

I invite my fellow Texans to join me on August 6 at Reliant Stadium in Houston, as we pray for unity and righteousness – for this great state, this great nation and all mankind. I urge Americans of faith to pray on that day for the healing of our country, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of enduring values as our guiding force.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s call to prayer may not be unconstitutional, but it raises serious questions about the governor’s commitment to represent all Texans. Unlike most “prayer proclamations” by government officials – a staple of political pandering in many parts of the country – Perry’s prayer plan includes co-hosting a major Christian worship event to be held in a Houston stadium on August 6.

Even as many priests and laypeople of the Church of England are heading to Rome, this guy is headed in the opposite direction, according to the Shropshire Star (UK):

A former Ludlow priest today revealed he is turning his back on the Church of England so he can lead the weddings of gay and mixed-religion couples.

Mark Townsend, from Leominster, said he had grown tired of the “creakiness and backwardness” of the church so he will join the Open Episcopal Church.

He wants to be able to express his pagan-leaning beliefs in the new role and a druid chief and goddess priestess have been invited to his induction at 3pm on June 18 at the Lion Ballroom, Leominster.

Mr Townsend, 43, who preached at Ludlow’s St Laurence’s Church in the 1990s, said: “I still see myself as a progressive Christian priest but I’m aware this decision and the induction will raise a few eyebrows.

“But I’ll be able to be myself finally and do things like gay ceremonies, unusual baptisms and marriages between Christians and Buddhists. I still love the Church of England but I got tired of the creakiness and backwardness of it all.

Now, obviously this is an extraordinarily confused person engaged in do-it-yourself religionizing. But he’s not the most interesting part of the story. The really interesting part has to do with the Church of England. See, the headline indicates that he “abandoned” the church in order to join this other vaguely religious organization (which claims to be a member of the World Council of Churches, but doesn’t show up anywhere on the WCC web site). The real question, then, is this:

Why was a priest who professes to hold “pagan-leaning beliefs” not booted out of the priesthood with a swift kick to the chasuble? 

(Via MCJ.)

I was almost an Episcopal priest, and now I don’t call myself a Christian. How did that happen? In the writing of the book I realized that the story I had been telling about what happened was not the whole story. I had been telling people that I left institutional Christianity because the church was sexist—which is true—but I also left institutional Christianity because my faith in God had changed dramatically. I no longer believed what I had once believed. I also told people that I lost faith in God, but I realized that isn’t exactly right either. I didn’t lose my faith. I left it….

People assume I’m an atheist, but I’m not. I don’t know what I am, but if I had to choose a label I’d choose agnostic. When I say that people usually ask me if I think God exists, and I usually give them the answer that my teacher, Gordon Kaufman, used to give me: The question of God’s existence isn’t the right question because it won’t get you very far. It’s a question human beings can’t answer. If we take God’s mystery seriously, then we can never know. I think there are better questions that we can be answering: What does a particular vision of God do to those who submit to it and to those who won’t submit to it? What difference is my version of God making? Who is it harming? In one of his books, Kaufman writes, “The central question for theology… is a practical question. How are we to live? To what should we devote ourselves? To what causes give ourselves?” He argues that theology that does not contribute significantly to struggles against inhumanity and injustice has lost sight of its point of being.

I can’t know if God exists, but I do know the word God is operating in the world, running around doing all kinds of work, good and bad, and I think, as a theologian, I have a responsibility to think critically about the kinds of gods we make and worship and to try to come up with versions of god that might make the world a more just and life-giving place for everyone.

–Sarah Sentilles, author of Breaking Up with God: A Love Story

Provocative, penetrating, honest and real. Sentilles, in chronicling her own story, chronicles the journey that all of us must take in search of our own humanity. Would that institutional religion were big enough to embrace and affirm her work.

–Atheist Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, in a blurb for Sentilles’ book

At his blog “Wallwritings,” Christian Century contributing editor James Wall continues his descent into anti-Semitic paranoia in his latest screed entitled “Why Was This Man Standing At A Podium Before the US Congress?” In it, he rants about the supposed control of the United States government by Israel, and offers some whoppers along the way:

This picture of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu laying down the law to the US Congress is not just a portent of things to come. It is, in fact, a portrait of who really runs US foreign policy.

While many Americans were watching Oprah or worrying about steroids ruining baseball, Israel assumed control of our government. The picture (above) of Bibi lecturing Congress was orchestrated by Republican House Speaker John Boehner with the help of all those other Zionist politicians we elected to office in campaigns financed by the Israel Lobby.

It’s certainly true that Boehner would have had to agree to have Netanyahu address a joint session, just as he does when any foreign leader addresses such a session. Back in March, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia did so. Does that mean that Australia runs U.S. foreign policy in the South Pacific? Of course not. But that’s why Wall uses sinister-sounding words and expressions like “orchestrated,” “Zionist politicians,” and “campaigns financed by the Israel Lobby” (that last being especially laughable, considering that the biggest givers to last year’s congressional candidates were labor unions).

In case you were watching American Idol during the speech, you should know that this intruder to the podium of our Congress was actually cheered when he asserted that:

There is no occupation of Palestinian land because “in Judea and Samaria [better known except to biblical literalists, as the West Bank], Israelis are not foreign occupiers”. They are, Bibi obviously wants us to believe, the native inhabitants.

Wall sneers at Netanyahu’s statement at the same time that he misquotes it. This is what the Israeli Prime Minister actually said:

Now, this is not easy for me. It’s not easy, because I recognize that in a genuine peace, we’ll be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland. And you have to understand this: In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers.

We’re not the British in India. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one god, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw his vision of eternal peace. No distortion of history — and boy am I reading a lot of distortions of history lately, old and new — no distortion of history could deny the 4,000-year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land.

Unless Wall buys into the anti-Semitic trope that most modern Jews aren’t really descendants of ancient Israel (they’re supposed to instead be the descendants of a Turkic people called the Khazars), or believes that the Old Testament history is a fabrication to create an ancient Jewish connection to the West Bank, then his rejection of Netanyahu’s argument is simply incomprehensible. And the stupidest thing is that the PM offers this defense of Jewish connection to the West Bank in the context of a recognition that the Palestinians “should enjoy a national life of dignity as a free, viable and independent people living in their own state.” But when the anti-Semite is convinced of some Jewish evil, nothing–not truth, not reality, not even correct quotations–will stand in their way. Wall goes on:

Would that explain Israel’s building of that Great Wall to separate Israel Proper from the land of Judea and Samaria? That wall looks biblical. Bibi cited Abraham in his speech to the Congress as a rationale for Israel’s claim on occupied land. Could that Wall come tumbling down with a few well placed toots on a horn?

I have no idea what he’s talking about, but to answer his question: it is terrorism, plain and simple, that explains the building of a separation barrier. It’s prevented terrorist infiltration into Israel, and reduced Israeli casualties from terrorism by 95%. I’m sure he’s terribly disappointed by that.

The sight of a right-wing Zionist leader standing at the podium normally reserved for American presidents, and harshly repudiating the current president, was sad in the extreme.

Of course, we all know that conservative Israelis have no place “standing at the podium normally reserved for American presidents.” It is true that over the last ten years Congress has been addressed from the “podium normally reserved for American presidents” by the presidents of Mexico, France, Latvia, Liberia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Spain, the prime ministers of Australia, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Iraq, Italy, and India, as well as the King of Jordan. The “right-wing Zionist leader” of one of America’s strongest allies, however, has no place there.

Wall then rambles on about a book of revisionist Israeli history he’s read, and then comes back to the theme of Israeli control of America:

Of course, since Bibi is not a native-born American citizen, he cannot be elected president of the United States. But there are a few notable candidates from both American political parties ready to swear their dual allegiance to the US and Israel and run for the office of the Leader of the Free World.

There is Sarah Palin, who is easily manipulated by advisors. She loves Israel. And there is a more serious Democratic candidate, the newly-elected Mayor of Chicago, a fellow named Rahm Emanuel, whose parents are native-born Israelis. Emanuel, himself, has a American birth certificate, so he is good to go in 2016.

Rahm Emanuel, the most unlikable man in American politics, is going to run for president? In what alternate reality?

I ran across Emanuel one day in Washington while he was still President Obama’s chief of staff. I was walking on the north side of the White House, going to meet my brother, when I spotted Emanuel coming the other way. Being the good citizen that I am, I looked at him, smiled, and nodded. He glared at me with an expression that said, “who gave you permission to walk past my place of business?” At that moment, I realized that there is one place, and one place only, where a guy like Rahm Emanuel could run for public office and win, and that’s Chicago. There is less likelihood of Rahm Emanuel running for president, and far less likelihood of him winning, than Oprah Winfrey.

James Wall, however,  has convinced himself that, since the Israelis would love to see one of their own in the big chair, it just might come to pass because of the almighty influence of the Israel Lobby:

[A recent Emanuel column in the Washington Post] will serve as a reminder to those generous donors who share his love for Israel. Those names are, no doubt, nestled safely in Emanuel’s Blackberry. It was in 1983 that I first saw an early version of those names. Rahm kept them in an ancient device we called the Rolodex.

At the time, I was Paul Simon’s campaign manager in his first US Senate primary race.  Rahm was our campaign’s resident AIPAC representative, paid, not by AIPAC (which, as a non-profit organization, does not make direct financial political contributions) nor by the Simon campaign, since I had refused to authorize payment, but by some of those generous donors whose names were in that Rolodex.

And now, just think, the journey that started in the Simon 1983-84 campaign office, could finally end with Rahm Emanuel standing where Bibi Netanyahu stood during the 2011 surrender ceremonies.  Ain’t history grand?

Ain’t bigotry and paranoia ugly?

Remember the bizarre anti-circumcision referendum that is going to be voted on in San Francisco? I thought it was being pushed by a bunch of sexually obsessed nuts with no regard for the First Amendment. Turns out that MGMbill.org, the outfit behind this effort, is actively, viciously anti-Semitic. Their campaign includes a comic book hero called–I kid you not–Foreskin Man, who’s mission in life is to battle those determined to scar infant boys for life, including evil rabbis who thirst for baby blood. The drawings and dialogue look like something out of an edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, except instead of political power or economic wealth, what the Jooooooos want more than anything else is to mutilate little boys:

In volume 2 of this opus (warning: very slow load time), a family is celebrating a bris when in breaks the mohel with a couple of goons. Turns out the wife didn’t want their son circumcised, but the husband did. As the mohel is preparing to do the dirty deed, Our Blonde Blue-Eyed Nordic Body-Building Hero, clad in the obligatory tights, bursts in to stop the atrocity. The mohel says that he won’t be stopped, and he’ll come back and bag his coveted foreskin at another time. So what does Our Hero do? He kidnaps the child, and delivers him to an Amazon-looking “Intactivist” (clever, huh?) who says, “we’ll raise him as one of our own.” (Check here and here for further frames from this dreck.) In other words, there are more than enough anti-Semitic tropes here to make Julius Streicher beam with pride at what his disciple has brought forth.

Matt Hess, the dunce behind the campaign and the comic book,  when asked if this trash was anti-Semitic, told Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle that “A lot of people have said that, but we’re not trying to be anti-Semitic. We’re trying to be pro-human rights.” Riiiiiiiight. And Hamas was just trying to help some Jewish kids into heaven when it bombed that bus back in April.

Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice notes that it is possible for reasonable people to disagree about the advisability of circumcision from a medical standpoint. One can make an argument against it because it deprives the individual of choice, or because it hurts the baby. But no: MGMbill.org decided instead that they could best persuade the voters of San Francisco to side with them by putting out a piece of propaganda that a rabid ferret would recognize as anti-Semitic.

I can’t wait until they put out one where the villain is The Insatiable Imam.

(By the way, it seems that Hess has followers on Facebook who are trying to argue that this isn’t anti-Semitic, that it’s a work of art in defense of helpless babies, and that anyone who says otherwise is a dopey poopyhead. One idiot even used the line that “Foreskin Man is no more ‘anti-Semitic’ than Andres Serrano’s ‘Piss Christ’ is ‘anti-Christian.’” Yeah, that’s a real effect defense. Check it out, and see how low political and social discourse has sunk in this country.)

Two news stories this week illustrate the potential danger to religious freedom posed by secularist judges and politicians. The first comes from New York City, and the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The court, in a decision certain to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that the city could refuse to rent school facilities to religious organizations without running afoul of the First Amendment. According to the New York Times:

New York City may again block religious groups from using school facilities outside of regular school hours for “religious worship services,” a federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled on Thursday.

Deciding 2 to 1, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the city had “a strong basis to believe” that allowing the religious services to be conducted in schools could be seen as the kind of endorsement of religion that violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

“When worship services are performed in a place,” Judge Pierre N. Leval wrote for the majority, “the nature of the site changes. The site is no longer simply a room in a school being used temporarily for some activity.”

“The place has, at least for a time, become the church,” he wrote, adding that the city’s policy imposed “no restraint on the free expression of any point of view.” Rather, it applied only to “a certain type of activity — the conduct of worship services — and not to the free expression of religious views associated with it.”

This reasoning is straight out of the Soviet approach to dealing with religion. “You may hold any opinion you like, but you may not do anything that can be seen as living out those opinions.” This, however, is even more restrictive than the Soviet Union’s. There, the church was prohibited from a variety of activities, including educating children (which was deemed “indoctrination”) and works of mercy (which was seen as impinging on state prerogatives), but was allowed to conduct the defining function of the organization, namely worship. Here, Leval denies the church even that modicum of freedom.

Some might say, “well, why don’t they just go somewhere else?” Two responses: 1) They may not have anywhere else to go. As a church planter, I can testify to the fact that many churches meet in schools, despite the less than optimal conditions, because they are affordable and available (especially in a place like New York, commercial space is going to be prohibitively expensive for many small congregations, and many commercial landowners won’t rent to churches). 2) Because they have a right to use those facilities if they are available and the city rents to any other outside groups (which it does all the time). The fatuous notion that the presence of religious believers engaged in an organized activity somehow changes the ontological status of a school building while they are there is as ridiculous an excuse to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion as I’ve ever heard. But Leval wasn’t done:

Judge Leval, in his ruling, distinguished the Bronx Household of Faith from the Bible study group involved in the Supreme Court decision. The Bronx church and others using the city’s schools, he wrote, “tend to dominate the schools on the day they use them.”

“They use the largest rooms and are typically the only outside group using a school on Sunday,” he wrote.

So if they used smaller rooms and ensured that there was a group of bird watching enthusiasts using the biggest rooms on Sunday, then it would be OK?

The other example may be, if anything, even more egregious, and comes from Texas, of all places, where a federal district court judge has decided to regulate a high school graduation ceremony, right down to banning the use of certain words. According to Fox News Radio:

A federal judge has ordered a Texas school district to prohibit public prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery’s order against the Medina Valley Independent School District also forbids students from using specific religious words including “prayer” and “amen.”

Judge Biery’s ruling banned students and other speakers from using and religious language in their speeches. Among the banned words or phrases are: “join in prayer,” “bow their heads,” “amen,” and “prayer.”

He also ordered the school district to remove the terms “invocation” and “benediction” from the graduation program.

“These terms shall be replaced with ‘opening remarks’ and ‘closing remarks’,” the judge’s order stated. His ruling also prohibits anyone from saying, “in [a deity’s name] we pray.”

Should a student violate the order, school district officials could find themselves in legal trouble. Judge Biery ordered that his ruling be “enforced by incarceration or other sanctions for contempt of Court if not obeyed by District official (sic) and their agents.”

Once again, we see the totalitarian impulse in the imperial judiciary. He’s going to toss school officials in jail if anyone has the nerve, the gall, the cohones, to use the word “prayer,” even if the person isn’t actually praying, but is, say, just quoting from a popular song. And why is this black-robed tyrant spitting in the face of free speech?

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Christa and Danny Schultz. Their son is among those scheduled to participate in Saturday’s graduation ceremony. The judge declared that the Schultz family and their son would “suffer irreparable harm” if anyone prayed at the ceremony.

They would suffer “irreparable harm” if anyone even mentioned the word “prayer,” or asked attendees to “bow their heads,” say for a moment of silence for fallen troops from the school? So these people have never, ever been exposed to such words in any public setting before? They’ve never watched a presidential inauguration? Seen the opening of a session of Congress? They are unaware that the U.S. Supreme Court opens its sessions with a bailiff calling, “God save the United States of America and this honorable Court”? (The same “prayer” would have opened the district court session during which this inane decision was announced, so if the Schultzes were present for the announcement, they have no doubt been scarred for life.) Are the Schultzes sensibilities really so delicate that they had to get a federal judge to prevent them from hearing certain words? Do they plan on living under a rock their entire lives?

Make no mistake about it, folks. There are people out there who are convinced that the world would be a better place if people of any religion–but especially conservative Christians–could be permanently silenced, and they will use whatever means they have available to them to shut down our speech, our churches, and our ministry to the world.

One of America’s foremost advocates of legalized murder “assisted suicide” has himself been harvested by the Grim Reaper. According to Reuters:

Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, known as “Dr. Death” for helping more than 100 people end their lives, died early Friday at age 83, his lawyer said.

Figures that it was his lawyer that put out the news.

Kevorkian, recently found to have liver cancer, died from a pulmonary embolism, said Neal Nicol, a longtime friend who aided him in nearly all of his 130 admitted assisted suicides.

So the man who was so quick to kill people, even those who were physically healthy but suffering from depression, didn’t kill himself in the face of liver cancer. What a surprise.

A pathologist, Kevorkian was focused on death and dying long before he ignited a polarizing national debate over assisted suicide by crisscrossing Michigan in a rusty Volkswagen van hauling a machine to help sick and suffering people end their lives.

That’s the propaganda line. In fact, many of the people he killed were suffering from a variety of chronic illnesses, and in at least a few instances were not ill at all except in mind. Only a small number of them were actually terminal.

Some viewed him as a hero who allowed the terminally ill to die with dignity, while his harshest critics reviled him as a cold-blooded killer who preyed on those suffering from chronic pain and depression. Most of his clients were middle-aged women.

In other words, people he could prey on in service to his obsession with death.

“Dr. Jack Kevorkian was a rare human being,” his longtime attorney Geoffrey Fieger told reporters Friday.

Thank God for that.

“It’s a rare human being who can single-handedly take on an entire society by the scruff of its neck and force it to focus on the suffering of other human beings.”

Right. Because no one else cared a lick about suffering until Jack Kevorkian started bumping off people with treatable illnesses.

“People have taken a long hard honest look at death and I think that is probably his legacy,” his friend Nicol said. “He would have liked to have done more, but those eight years in prison just took it out of him.”

Right. Because no one had ever given much thought to death before Jack Kevorkian came along to make pikers (at least in terms of numbers) out of people like Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson.

As a doctor, (one who never treated live patients until he started helping them become dead patients), Jack Kevorkian was a solipsistic, cold-blooded, death-obsessed ghoul in the mold of Joseph Mengele. As a human being, he has now fallen into the hands of a God in whom he did not believe, according to his repeated public statements. He can only hope that God has more mercy on him than he had on his victims.

I wasn’t able to get to this last week when it appeared (and I’ve been away from Internet access so I haven’t been able to get to much of anything the last few days), but I didn’t want it to slip by without notice. Seems the World Council of Churches held a “peace convocation” last week to mark the end of the Ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence (I know, you probably missed it, but then so did Moammar Qaddafi, Bashir Assad, Hezbollah, the criminals running northern Sudan, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jung-il, the mullahs of Tehran, the generals of Burma, the Chinese Communist Party, and lots of other folks whose violence has escaped the WCC’s notice while it was hammering away at Israel and the United States). Anyway, the WCC put out a press release about the shindig, and there were a few things about it that struck me. It begins:

What does “God’s security” look like?

As a 10-year-old schoolgirl, on August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., Setsuko Thurlow, then Nakamura, suddenly saw a brilliant bluish light flash outside her schoolroom window. “I remember the sensation of floating in the air. When I regained consciousness, in the total darkness and silence, I found myself in the rubble.”

She began to hear her classmates’ faint voices: “Mom, help me. Dad, help me.”

Thurlow is a “hibakusha,” a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, one of two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan by the United States toward the end of World War II. She is also a lifelong advocate against armaments.

Her vivid and painful memory washed over participants at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) May 23 in Kingston, Jamaica, on a day when a panel discussion explored the theme of Peace among the Peoples, examined critical concerns about obstructions to peace at the international level, and considered what real security looks like.

I would never want to minimize or take issue with the suffering of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They experienced something that no human being should ever have to undergo, and they stand as testimonies to man’s inhumanity to man. But when we start talking about security in the context of international relations (as opposed to personal security or individual conduct), we have to ask the question: where do Japan’s actions in starting and fighting World War II come into the equation? At the same time the WCC participants were shuddering at the memory of Hiroshima, should they not also have have taken some time to shudder over the rape of Nanking? Pearl Harbor? The Bataan Death March? Japanese medical experiments? The use of Korean and other Asian women as sex slaves? Where was their security? And might it be possible that a stronger international response to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, one that didn’t simply involve League of Nations resolutions and diplomatic tut-tutting, might have dissuaded Japan from continuing with its plans for conquest, plans that eventually led to the first and only use of atomic weapons? These questions lead directly to this:

Even though Thurlow’s presentation was a recorded video, as she was unable to attend the convocation in person, it remained a stark reminder of how recent the use of the atomic bomb really was. It was only a generation ago and since then the major world powers have developed and proliferated nuclear arsenals that are, at best, mutually destructive.

That is simply, totally, and willfully, ignorantly, wrong. The nuclear arsenals of the major world powers have not been “mutually destructive.” They have, in fact, likely prevented enormous destruction since 1945. I think it would have been a virtual certainty that the Soviet Union would have invaded and sought to forcibly impose friendly regimes in Western Europe within ten years of the surrender of Germany if it weren’t for the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Yes, that deterrent, and the Soviet nuclear forces, threatened mutual destruction, but that didn’t happen, now, did it?

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has become a more dangerous place, one where nuclear weapons are now in the hands of people who may turn out to be suicidal enough to use them. That means that we need to think long and hard about the ways that such weapons are deployed under new and potentially horrendous circumstances. But wishing them away, and acting as though the world would be a safer place if the relatively sane people disarmed and left the crazies in sole possession of nukes, is not the mark of a serious politics or ethics.

Governments tend to attempt to justify large-scale military action – at its worst, nuclear warfare – in the name of “security,” pointed out Dr Lisa Schirch, professor of peace-building at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., United States. She called into question what security should mean to Christians.

“Jesus doesn’t use the word ‘security.’ The language of the church is much more about justice and peace than about security,” she said.

That’s true. Jesus does not use the word “security.” And guess what? He also didn’t speak about international relations in a multilateral world (which makes sense since He lived in a world empire of then unprecedented scope and power). When He spoke of “justice and peace,” He was addressing the way His followers were supposed to live in every aspect of their lives. At no point does He address Augustus or Tiberius and tell him how they ought to run the Roman Empire.

“Security does not land in a helicopter.”

This is a favorite phrase of Dr. Schirch, whom I’ve quoted saying this before. Yet the truth is that security does land in a helicopter sometimes. The use of force sometimes does bring security–as well as peace and justice–in the face of evil. Just not when the United States or Israel employs such force. Keep in mind that the WCC is an organization that loves United Nations peacekeeping missions, and puts out pleas for support for them whenever they are authorized. Last time I checked, UN peacekeepers generally aren’t social workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, agronomists, etc. (which is not to say that there isn’t a place for any of them in the establishing and keeping of peace). Rather, the guys in the blue helmets tend to be [undermanned, underarmed, and undertrained] members of the armed forces of nations that volunteer them. Canada–hardly one of the world’s hegemonic powers–has been one of the countries most willing to see its military used in this way. I suppose they may all arrive on the scene, wherever it may be, in rowboats, gondolas, and minivans, but you’d better believe that they arrive with weapons in hand, and that the locals will welcome their presence, if they can keep their hands off the local women and children and actually do what they’ve been tasked to do.

So, the long and the short of it is that the WCC held confab at which it was agreed that everyone should be nice to everyone else, and that if they did God would be pleased. That’s a great sentiment, folks. Tell it to Bashir Assad or Kim Jung-il, and see what kind of reception you get.