Whenever war looms on the horizon, political certainty has a way of rising, and honest ambivalence tends to be pushed aside. Those sounding the call to war speak in stark terms of “good vs. evil.” They seek to discredit dissenters or even suppress them. Dissenters, for their part, often resort to similar tactics, cloaking their opposition in terms of absolute truth, shouting down those who disagree.

Last week I attended a very exciting event at the Arlington Street Church, on Unitarian and Universalist defense of civil liberties. It was a terrific meeting! It included eye-witness testimony from the McCarthy era, the school prayer case, and the Vietnam era, including the decision to publish the Pentagon Papers.

The session included a segment on civil liberties concerns of the present day, including concerns for dissenters to war in Iraq. In my view, this was thoroughly appropriate. What was troubling was the climate of moral certainty about the war itself. Speakers seemed to assume that of course everyone in the audience was against the war. I found myself wondering if it would be safe in that gathering for anyone to speak in favor of intervention. The one moderating voice was that of Bill Sinkford, the UUA president. He spoke of how many congregations had been torn apart over the war in Vietnam War, and pleaded with us not to let it happen again.

Speaking for myself, I must confess to deep skepticism about the proposed war against Iraq. My doubts are of several different varieties. I don’t believe the President has yet made a sufficient case for war. I don’t believe he has exhausted all possible alternatives. I disagree that weapons inspections have always failed in the past, or that future weapons inspections would be meaningless. I’m troubled by news reports that “cooked” intelligence information is making its way into government statements, or that - as USA Today reported this week - “intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports” supporting the war.

Furthermore, I’m concerned about the long-term consequences of an attack on Iraq. So far, it seems to me that war with Iraq is as likely to jeopardize our security as it is to protect it - by further destabilizing the Middle East, by aligning Arab and Muslim countries against us, by making us even more vulnerable to attack than we are already.

Beyond this, I have my doubts about the government’s new doctrine of “preemptive war.” I fear what it might mean for the world if it becomes a general rule of statecraft. Finally, I’m troubled philosophically by the black-and-white, Manichean cast of some of President Bush’s positions. Yes, I agree - Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator But dividing the world into “good” and “evil” forces obscures more than it illumines. It makes it difficult accurately to assess the motives and interests of our adversaries, and it also blinds us to the knowledge that we, too, are capable of evil acts.

But despite all these misgivings, I’m not prepared to say that opposition to war in Iraq is the only possible moral position. Although I respect people who are pacifists, and try to live nonviolently, I believe there are times in which military intervention is justified, or even morally necessary.

Journalist Chris Hedges names some of them in a new book. I knew Chris at divinity school. Since graduation, he has gone all over the world as a witness to war, reporting for the Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and the New York Times. “Even as I detest the pestilence that is war and fear its deadly addiction,” he says, “I, like most reporters in Sarajevo and Kosovo, desperately hoped for armed intervention.” ¹ Chris also writes about the world’s genocides, the places where the Western industrialized world “had the power to intervene and did not” - Rwanda being a prime example.

And so, although I’m not yet persuaded that war against Iraq is either justifiable or a good idea, I understand how people of good will could disagree. Furthermore, I can imagine sets of circumstances under which I would be persuaded, too. So much of it is empirical: What evidence do we believe? What do we discard?

As emotions run high about the war - as they are likely to do - I hope First Parish remains a safe place for diversity. And I hope its safe, not because we void discussing great issues of war and peace, but because we speak and listen to one another openly and respectfully. I hope we can continue to come together “in the love of truth - and in the spirit of Jesus Christ.”

As religious people, what kinds of perspectives can we bring to the conversation? What religious principles can inform our reflection about the war?

One, it occurs to me, is a sense of Biblical prophecy. This always involves a sense of history, and what our times demand in light of it. In the Bible, the true prophets are the ones who can read history accurately - who, in Jesus’ words, can “discern the signs of the times.” False prophets are the ones who try to apply blanket formulas to every situation, preaching “peace, peace” when there is no peace, or preaching war when peace would be the wiser course.

James Fallows, in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly, writes about how debates about Iraq can be paralyzed by inaccurate appeals to history. On the one hand, clarity can be obscured by “the Vietnam syndrome”, which makes us fearful of any military involvement, ever again.

On the other hand we have analogies to World War Two - Nazi and Holocaust analogies, which “have a trumping power in many arguments” making doubters seem weak. Fallows suggests that although Saddam Hussein resembles Hitler in his ruthlessness, he is not positioned for destruction in the same way Hitler was. “Iraq, unlike Germany, has no industrial base and no military allies nearby. It is split by regional, religious, and ethnic differences . . .Hitler’s Germany constantly expanded, but Iraq has been bottled up, by international sanctions, for more than ten years.” ²

Fallows suggests that a better analogy to govern our thinking about Iraq is World War One. It is, he says, “a powerful example of the limits of human imagination - specifically, imagination about the long-term consequences of war.” ³ It set off a chain of events that no one could foresee: the collapse of three empires, the cresting of another, the U.S. rise to dominance, the eventual rise of fascism - and the drawing of strange new borders in the Middle East. Today, we need to be asking: what are the long-term consequences we can expect from a war with Iraq?

A second set of principles that comes to mind to inform the discussion is “just war” theory. It’s one of the classic Christian positions on war, dating back to St. Augustine and having its roots in the Bible. Perhaps you’ve seen or heard some of the recent conversations about “just war.” I commend to you especially a symposium presented by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life specifically about “Iraq and Just War.” A transcript is available on the internet. ⁴

The very idea of a “just war” may strike some as an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. It may sound a little like the term “jumbo shrimp.” But “just war” theory, despite its name, doesn’t automatically assume war is justified. Far from it, in fact, it carries a strong Christian presumption against war. At the same time, it acknowledges that Christians live in a state of tension, between “the world as it should be” and “the world as it is.” And so it tries to bring moral reasoning to war, just as it would to other human enterprises.

“Just war” theory isn’t the only possible religious position on war. At the Pew Forum, the moderator pointed out that there are four basic ways of thinking about war. We might ask ourselves which position is closest to our own view.

Are we realists, believing that war is a matter of power and self-interest, with moral or religious analysis essentially irrelevant? Or do we subscribe to a theory of holy war, the belief that killing infidels or evildoers has divine authorization? Are we pacifists, believing that all war is immoral? Or do we believe in the just war theory, believing there are times that the use of force is not only justifiable, but morally necessary?

If we subscribe to the idea of “just war”, then we have further questions to ask about a specific war - questions such as these: Is this a just cause? Is there a real and certain danger - a threat to the lives of innocent people or a violation of basic human rights? Are the rights or values at stake serious enough to justify war, and are the means proportionate to the ends? Does the party declaring war have appropriate authority? Will it avoid unnecessary destruction? Will it do everything possible to protect noncombatants?

In placing strict limits on the conduct of war, the just war tradition tries to follow the Second Great Commandment of Jesus - which of course is also found in the Old Testament - “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus, remember, had a very expansive concept of the neighbor. Our enemies are our neighbors, as well as our friends. And so even at war, we treat other noncombatants as we ourselves would hope to be treated. We exercise the same care toward “the other” as we would if they were our own loved ones.

Alongside the Second Great Commandment is the first, of course: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This brings up a third religious consideration as we think about war with Iraq. Appropriately for Reformation Sunday, it’s what Paul Tillich has called “the Protestant principle”, which he defines as “the divine and human protest against any absolute claim made for a relative reality,⁵ ” - even if the claim happens to be made by a Protestant church.

In other words, if we love God first, then we have to be very careful about what we worship - and about what we try to put in place of God. This applies in spades when we talk about war. Even if we believe that a particular war is “just” - maybe especially when we do that - we run the danger of worshipping the “gods of war”, rather than the living God. Chris Hedges puts it this way: “We must guard against the myth of war and the drug of war that can, together, render us as blind and callous as some of those we battle.”⁶

God speaks through Moses: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life.” “Choosing life” is a complicated business in our beautiful and violent world. But even when “choosing life” seems to lead us to war, may we never lose sight of the vision of deep and lasting peace - which is God’s dream for all the earth.

1. Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (New York: Public Affairs 2002) p. 16.
2. James Fallows, ‘The Fifty-First State?”, The Atlantic Monthly, November 2002, pp. 53-54.
3. Ibid. p. 54.
4. “Iraq and Just War: A Symposium”, http://pewforum.org/events/print.php?EventID=36.
5. Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era (Abridged), (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1948, 1957) p. 163.
6. Hedges, op. cit., p. 17