A Massive Act of Conscience
Religious communities must stop ‘Blessing War’
By George Regas 01/10/2002
The enormity of the evil unleashed against America has weighed heavily upon my heart and the pictures of that cataclysmic tragedy of Sept. 11 with 3,000 deaths, untold human suffering, and physical devastation will be in my mind as long as God gives me a memory.
Yet, I am deeply troubled and profoundly saddened that the cries for retaliation have taken us into war. Unquestionably, we should bring to justice Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorists responsible for the horror of Sept. 11 — bring them before an international court of law. However, this does not require the devastation of war; it demands the work of justice.
Religious communities must stop blessing war! We must be the first and foremost peace advocates, always protesting the misuse of military power to settle political problems and challenging our blindness to the poverty and social despair that makes for revolution.
President Bush calls us to war and answers the violence of Sept. 11 with even more massive violence and the death of so many innocent people. This will only breed more virulent terrorism.
The strong influence of organized religion — Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians — across America needs to be focused on breaking the cycle of revenge and violence.
Mercy, love, justice, peace, forgiveness, human transformation — these are the qualities that are central to our sacred stories.
Although many call it naive, I believe this is the truest reality in the universe: Mercy brings mercy and revenge brings revenge. Tragically, the world refuses to learn this truth after so many bitter experiences in every part of the world. Gandhi was right. “If we all live by an eye for an eye, the whole world will be blind.”
Terrorism is a complex phenomenon. The building of a just world needs a brilliance in diplomacy and leadership equal to our wizardry in warfare.
If we are to be effective in the long-term against terror, we need a strategy to marginalize the terrorists by making it much harder for them to appeal to legitimate anger at the United States.
That’s not accomplished by dropping food supplies after we have devastated them with bombs. We do this by establishing justice. I believe the most effective remedy for terrorism is to celebrate our common humanity, where each person is treated as sacred and of precious worth, and then with the highest priority we go about the rebuilding of a just, equitable, and peaceful globe.
What a stunning defeat we could give Osama Bin Laden and all his band of terrorists across 60 countries if the bravery and courage seen in those firefighters at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 could be translated into a national commitment of caring for the world. Make no mistake about it — America over the past 30 years has not been a generous nation to the poor of the world. It is shocking how little we have shared of our own incomparable wealth as a nation.
Two billion people live in poverty, one billion of whom struggle with malnutrition, homelessness, and poverty-related diseases. Let us become the world’s leader in generosity and caring for others. This would be the justice our sacred traditions are built upon.
If the U.S. commits itself to this kind of justice, we will do far more to create safety for ourselves and our children than bombing Afghanistan will ever achieve.
As Rabbi Michael Lerner has written, “The ordinary citizens, firefighters, and police who risked — and in many places lost — their lives to help others survive on Sept. 11 revealed something in our culture that has often been rendered invisible: We could build a new world based on generosity, mutual caring, and heroism.” That is the justice we seek.
Unfortunately, that is not the course President Bush has put us on. We’ve gone to war. And war takes the best in a nation that could be used to save lives, and uses it instead to destroy life. I hate war for that!
War takes the courage and heroism we saw in those magnificent firefighters at the World Trade Center, qualities that could build heaven on earth, and uses them to turn earth into a living hell. I hate war for that!
Yes, I intend to support our soldiers who have been asked by President Bush to go to war, support them fully. But I for one say we need in America a massive act of conscience against war. That is the imperative of our sacred stories.
In his last Sunday morning sermon before his death, preached at the Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared: “I believe today there is a need for all people of good will to come to a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘We ain’t goin’ study war no more.’ This is the challenge facing modern men and women.”
“A massive act of conscience.” I can still remember in the late ‘60s how my conscience was seared by a poster I saw: “Dear Mom and Dad, your silence is killing me. In Vietnam, at home, on campus.”
I was so deeply moved and braced with courage for this massive act of conscience by Barbara Lee, the congresswoman from Oakland. When Congress was asked following the tragic events of Sept. 11 to authorize President Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against anyone associated with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 — 518 people in the Senate and the House of Representatives voted yes and Barbara Lee was the lone dissenting vote.
I was impressed with such courage but even more captivated when she explained how she made up her mind. She is a woman of deep faith. She was sitting in the National Cathedral on that Friday when three presidents, all of Congress, and many dignitaries gathered for prayer. Barbara Lee said, “I’m grieving and searching, in mourning, angry, trying to sort through my feelings, like everyone else. The memorial service in the Cathedral was a time to really stop and reflect on all those who so tragically died, the victims and their families, and what an appropriate testimonial to them would be ... I was listening, hoping for clarity. You know, in moments like these, when you’re agonizing, when you are uncertain of the ramifications of any serious action you’re going to take — you have to go within and use your head, your heart, and all the faculties you have, to try to make a decision.”
She listened, as so many Americans did, to Dean Baxter of the National Cathedral as he prayed that “as we act we not become the evil we deplore.” That moment, she said, “I knew what I would do ... as I thought about that one line, ‘as we act we not become the evil we deplore,’ I said, you know, this is the right vote – you’ve got to vote no.”
We need a massive act of conscience. We say no to vengeance, violence and suffering, and we say yes to that new world envisioned by all the prophets — a world where hunger is banished and everyone is able to sit under his or her own tree and no one will make them afraid.
I call you into that audacious, courageous, challenging and thrilling ministry of building a new world where terrorism is without a home any place on planet earth.
The Rev. George Regas is rector emeritus at All Saints Church in Pasadena and a convener with the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.
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