Task force hopes for 1,000 at rally in Concord today
By Shira Schoenberg
Monitor staff
September 30. 2006 8:00AM
Link to story in the Concord Monitor
Don Booth is used to sitting alone, but soon he may not have to. The 89-year-old Quaker has sat in front of the State House every weekday lunchtime for five years demonstrating against the Iraq War, often with a single companion, he said. His painted banner calls for “peace, justice and hope.” But in recent months, more people have stopped by to support him, he said, and not only Quakers.
New Hampshire’s Christian community is slowly becoming a voice in peace activism. The Peace With Justice Task Force, a faith-based peace organization founded by a United Church of Christ pastor, hopes to attract 1,000 people to today’s antiwar rally in Concord. The rally was endorsed by the New Hampshire Council of Churches, which represents 10 Christian denominations and 650 congregations, and by social justice or peace wings of several other churches.
“Now is the time for the faith community to be visible,” said David Lamarre-Vincent, executive director of the New Hampshire Council of Churches. “There’s been plenty of opportunity to be pastoral, but little opportunity to be prophetic, to engage in a public conversation about the direction the nation’s heading.”
But while peace activists say they represent Christian values, some in the community say endorsing specific politics should not be the role of leaders of faith.
“I think it’s important to not say, ‘This is the church’s position,’ ” said the Rev David Jones of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Concord. “We have within the congregation people of every possible range and variety.”
The task force
The Peace with Justice Task Force was founded in the fall of 2004 by the Rev. Gordon Crouch of the First Congregational Church of Hopkinton, as a vehicle for UCC clergy and laity who wanted to provide leadership within their churches to oppose the Iraq war. The group aims to articulate a Christian philosophy that supports nonviolence.
An idealistic and charismatic pastor who enjoys widespread support from a congregation that is divided over the war, Crouch hopes to be a unifying force among antiwar activists in the church. He said his own views on peace have evolved, and he took a sabbatical last winter to study nonviolence.
“We were not hearing much about the philosophy of nonviolence, a philosophy we wanted to give voice to, particularly among UCC churches in New Hampshire,” Crouch said. “It’s not something we’ve focused on in seminaries, not something you hear from the pulpit or in classes.”
Although UCC affiliates account for only 5.6 percent of the state’s total religious adherents, according to the North American Religion Atlas, Crouch hopes his denomination can spearhead a larger movement.
Its first event, an April conference on nonviolence and the Iraq war, attracted 80 people and gave Crouch the idea for the march. This summer, the group began circulating the Declaration of Peace, a petition calling for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Today’s march is scheduled for the conclusion of a national week of action. It is billed as an effort of the faith and peace communities to call for an end to the war in Iraq, an immediate return of troops and opposition to any future military invasions.
“The outreach going on to Christian churches is like nothing we’ve ever seen in the state,” said Anne Miller, director of New Hampshire Peace Action, which is cosponsoring the march. “The UCC task force has blossomed.”
A political awakening
For some churches, like the Quakers, antiwar activity is old hat. Before the war started, the American Friends Service Committee, founded on the basis of nonviolent conflict resolution, had protesters in the street and members calling elected officials, said Martha Yager, economic justice project coordinator for AFSC’s New Hampshire office.
Yager explained that one of the Quaker faith’s core beliefs is peace; they do not believe in the concept of just war. “There’s that of God in every human being and everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity,” she said. “No one thinks Saddam Hussein’s a good person, but that doesn’t mean we have the right to go in, especially when it costs the lives of thousands of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers.
But the local Quaker community is small - fewer than than 50 people attend regular meetings in Concord and Henniker. Because they have been consistently vocal against the war, some outsiders may dismiss the Quakers as radical, Yager said.
Today’s rally is significant more for the other voices expected to join - representatives of mainline Protestant churches.
Lamarre-Vincent of the Council of Churches said that until now, clergy have cared for soldiers and families rather than discussing their views publicly. “When we’re told repeatedly we should be united, any voice that calls for discussion is considered to be encouraging terrorists,” he said.
Crouch added, “We all had trouble articulating concerns. There was no theology, no philosophy around it. We’re coming late, three years down the road.”
Most leaders say the upswing in religious activity is directly connected to the increase in national antiwar fervor.
The Rev. William Exner, chairman of the social outreach ministries of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire, said the local Episcopal church started a peace fellowship about three years ago. Today, it has about 30 members who reach out to parishes. Exner estimates that today, up to 70 percent of Episcopal churchgoers in the state are “progressive, liberal peacemaker-type people.” But he said that has grown little by little. “There was a small but growing voice, and in the last year a very substantive change.”
He attributes the increase to the war’s growing cost in money, troops and longevity, and to new political intelligence. “People were willing to trust there were good reasons for doing this, now it turns out they were contrived,” he said.
According to Mark Silk, director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, Christian peace activism in this century started after World War I, when many churches, which had supported the war, felt guilty for stirring up war fever, he said. Pacifism resurfaced after World War II when religious leaders protested the use of the atomic bomb. An anti-nuclear bomb movement led by peace churches became the root of an organized opposition by clergy and laity against the Vietnam War.
Debating Christian values
But the faith-based movement has a quality missing from other protesters. Many adherents believe their political activity is divinely inspired. “The Christian heart is just a little bit left of center,” Lamarre-Vincent said.
Crouch takes inspiration from Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Jesus, who is sometimes referred to as the Prince of Peace. He cited statements by Jesus in the gospel including the famous beatitude “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
But many pastors say that there is no one interpretation of Christian scripture.
“The Bible’s a multifaceted document when it comes to war and peace,” said the Rev. David Keller of First Congregational Church in Concord. He noted that in Joshua and Judges in the Old Testament, leaders tried to kill all the Canaanites, in what Keller calls “holy genocidal war,” and the Bible did not criticize their actions.
Historically, he said, Christianity has been used to take sides in conflicts, noting the religion’s complex relationship with apartheid in South Africa and with the Civil War. “Tradition suggests Christianity has looked at specific conflicts and evaluated their worthiness based on issues of justice and mercy,” Keller said.
Politics in the pulpit
Whatever their personal views, local pastors must also decide whether the pulpit is a place for politics. Nationally, several denominations have spoken out. The U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops, whose followers make up 70% of New Hampshire’s religious adherents, earlier this year called for a “responsible transition” out of Iraq, urging the government to pull out sooner rather than later, but only once certain goals have been met, such as establishing rule of law. A spokesman for the diocese of Manchester said the bishop upholds those statements and has called for prayers for peace.
At the Episcopal church’s general convention this year, delegates passed a resolution, supported unanimously by the New Hampshire delegation, to call on the government to stabilize Iraq, promptly withdraw U.S. troops, and transfer peacekeeping functions to an international force.
Federal law prohibits church officials who want to retain tax-exempt status from endorsing candidates or parties, but they can discuss politics. Some parishioners, though, question whether they should.
“Its wise to keep politics out of the pulpit,” said Doug Payne, 79, who worships at Crouch’s church. “You can give a moral message, but leave political opinions out of it.”
“A pastor needs to speak about peace, and right and wrong, but I don’t think they should specifically say this isn’t the way it should be,” said Jeannine Aucoin, 67, who prays at a Roman Catholic church in Henniker. “We’re all given free will and intelligence. We can make our own decision.”
Jones, of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, said he does not believe the war is achieving its goals, but he would not say that from the pulpit. “The way to address politics and culture wars is when there could be a dialogue. In the setting of a sermon, no one can speak back,” he said. “You want to make people in your congregation of different opinions feel at home.”
But others disagree. Louise Dartnell, 67, one of Crouch’s congregants, said of her minister, “Some will march with him, some will sit in the pews, but all will do more thinking about the world situation.”
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By SHIRA SCHOENBERG
Monitor staff
