Church Leaders Return from Middle East Peace Pilgrimage Urging Peaceful Solution in Gulf
Episcopal News Service. January 11, 1991 [91002]
In the face of an increasing likelihood of war in the Persian Gulf, a group of 18 church leaders in mid-December went to the Middle East on a peace pilgrimage to consult with church and government leaders on ways to avoid war and address wider issues in the region.
In a message to the American people, released at a news conference in New York, December 21, the church leaders said that their trip "utterly convinced us that war is not the answer. We believe the resort to massive violence to resolve the Gulf crisis would be politically and morally indefensible."
The statement argued for an international Middle East peace conference because "there will be no lasting peace in the region until interrelated issues are dealt with in a comprehensive framework." The statement concluded that the United Nations "should be given the opportunity to provide a framework for an Arab contribution to the resolution of the Gulf crisis." (See full text in Newsfeatures section.)
The peace pilgrimage emerged from a growing sense of alarm among U.S. church leaders that the military build-up in the Persian Gulf was making war inevitable. Before their trip, the leaders wrote to President Bush, pleading for a "negotiated political solution to the crisis," contending that "war as a means of settling international disputes is in conflict with the teachings of our faith" (See ENS, November 29.)
Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning released a statement on October 5 in which he challenged the morality of a military solution to the Persian Gulf crisis. Browning then joined other Protestant and Roman Catholic church leaders at an October 10 press conference in Washington, D.C., to press the case for a peaceful solution. The idea for the December peace pilgrimage developed from a subsequent conference call Browning arranged with the church leaders who had joined him in expressing resistance to war in the Middle East.
President George Bush had earlier expressed an openness to a meeting with some of the church leaders, and Browning returned early from the peace pilgrimage to meet with Bush and Secretary of State James Baker for a 40-minute private conversation on December 20. At the press conference the next day, Browning said he told Bush and Baker that "war was not an option that would serve anyone" and would "find its victims among the poor and voiceless." The presiding bishop told the president that "we are at a moment of kairos, facing either a tragedy or a new order -- and that only he had the power to prevent war."
Bush was "clearly uncomfortable" with an attempt by the church leaders to link the Persian Gulf crisis to other conflicts in the Middle East, according to Browning.
Members of the peace pilgrimage gathered in Cyprus, December 14, for two days of briefings before splitting into three groups -- one going to Beirut and Damascus, another to Amman and Baghdad, and the third to Israel and the occupied territories.
"In a world where war has come to be accepted as a way of life, it is refreshing and inspiring and a source of hope that the church cares about the prospect and danger of war and is willing to work for peace," said the president of Cyprus, George Vassiliou, in welcoming the group. He said the island nation, divided by a Turkish invasion almost 20 years ago, is an example of an unresolved conflict that destabilizes the whole region. Like the Arab-Israeli conflict, "it is a situation that breeds desperation, violence, intolerance and further conflict," he said.
The foreign secretary of Cyprus told the delegation said that the divided island is a "forgotten issue," a "stable problem" that the United States can afford to ignore indefinitely. And yet, in violation of international law, Turkey expelled 200,000 Greek Cypriots from their homes and is systematically destroying any vestiges of Christianity from the occupied area. During a question-and-answer period, he said that a war would "revise all our assumptions" because the Middle East, and the world, would never be the same.
"We are in a transition period -- on our way to an uncertain future, threatened by war and a whole new geopolitical situation," Gabriel Habib, head of the Middle East Council of Churches and host of the delegation, said in an interview. The image of Christianity in the region "must be corrected" because of what he called a "Crusader mentality," an occasional urge to go to war with Islam. Most people in the Middle East also believe that American Christians have an "uncritical solidarity" with the Jews, Habib observed.
In a press conference at the end of their visit, the Rev. Joan Campbell, new general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said that the delegation was in the region "to learn and to find a way to stand in solidarity with all those who would like the people of the Middle East to live in peace."
"The whole Middle East is in crisis and turmoil -- and has been since World War II," Bishop Samir Kafity said in welcoming eight members of the delegation to Jerusalem. Kafity, Episcopal bishop in Jerusalem and one of the presidents of the Middle East Council of Churches, said the people of the Middle East are still emerging into "responsible nationalism," but the search for independence is more difficult "when others make our decisions for us." He described the Middle East as a place of "fanatic confrontation. God save us from the fanatics -- Jews, Muslims, and even some Christians," he said.
Kafity, a Palestinian who has gained an international reputation as a spokesman for the aspirations of his people, described how painful it was for him to watch "American bullets, made in Pennsylvania, extracted from the bodies of our teenagers."
The delegation received a firsthand lesson in the tensions of the city when an appointment with members of the Supreme Islamic Council was physically blocked by Israeli police, guarding the Temple Mount area. After an angry confrontation, the group was allowed to pass onto Temple Mount where they were shown bullet holes in Al Aqsa Mosque and dried blood on the pavement where 18 Muslims were killed during a riot in October, precipitated by ultra-right-wing Jews who announced their intention to lay a cornerstone for Judaism's third temple on the site of the mosque.
Members of the council argued forcefully that the Arabs are looking for peace, that "Israel is a fact -- and we recognize their right to exist." Several members of the council contended that the United States "is the only superpower left" so it has a special obligation now to settle the regional disputes. U.S. foreign policy, however, is "blind on Israel," and so "we are waiting for an even-handed policy," they said.
Speaking for the group, Bishop Herbert Chilstrom of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America said, "I dream of the day when all three religions can stand beside each other and pray together."
In the next few days the delegation visited the Armenian, Greek, and Latin patriarchs of Jerusalem, who expressed deep appreciation for the concern expressed by the American churches. The most passionate and articulate voices, however, belonged to those involved most deeply in the struggle for a solution to the conflict.
"The dreams and obstacles of both sides are an obstacle to any negotiation," Faisal Husseini, a leading Palestinian intellectual, told the group during a meeting at St. George's Hostel. "We must begin to look at each other realistically. After all, we are fighting not only for a Palestinian state but for a whole new future in the Middle East."
Husseini's words were echoed the next day by Rabbi David Rosen, who said there is no real dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis "because each thinks he is right." It is difficult to move beyond perception because "we are dealing with two highly traumatized peoples." One startling contradiction in the situation, Rosen contended, is that Israel has the power but thinks of itself as powerless, while the Palestinians think of themselves as powerless but actually have more power than they realize.
"If we could break through this cycle of violence and suspicion, we have the possibility of something wonderful here," Rosen continued. He sees some hope in grass-roots peace efforts, "especially those including Israeli Jews," but does not see much possibility of a Palestinian state on the West Bank "outside of an overall peace settlement." In the meantime, "traumatization continues daily, pushing people farther apart," he said. "The only good thing about the Gulf crisis is that it may be creating some new possibilities."
Several Palestinians provided the group with a broader understanding of the intifada, now entering its fourth year. "It represents the collective will of the Palestinian people, born in deep frustration," said a lawyer. Someone else described the current conflict as "a very significant period in our lives because, for the first time, we are speaking for ourselves."
The group spent the final day of its visit in the Gaza Strip, a former Egyptian-administered territory seized by Israel in the 1967 war. Traveling in United Nations vehicles, the group visited the Jabalia refugee camp, where 75,000 people are jammed into a dusty concentration camp. It is the birthplace of the intifada, and the group was nearly dragged into the conflict when a handful of young boys began to pelt Israeli military vehicles with rocks as the group pulled up to a medical clinic.
In a series of heartrending conversations, members of the group heard the angry questions of a man who recently lost his son: "Aren't we human beings too? All we want is what you have in America -- our own flag flying over our heads. Why is your country standing in the way of a solution?"
"We are cheap victims -- but our children will continue the struggle with stones in their hands," yells another man. The children chanted, "We will redeem Palestine by our souls, by our blood," while even the youngest toddlers flashed the victory sign and smiled. A woman described her efforts to claim the body of her son and showed the stab wounds she received from Israeli soldiers as a result.
Eight members of the peace pilgrimage took a message to Baghdad, calling on the government of Saddam Hussein to "withdraw immediately its troops and occupation troops from Kuwait," in the words of a National Council of Churches (NCC) resolution that was distributed by all the peace teams.
The NCC resolution called for the "continuous rigorous application of sanctions against Iraq authorized by the United Nations Security Council." At the December 21 press conference, several members of the team said they saw evidence that the sanctions were working.
The Baghdad team was frustrated by some misunderstandings in local arrangements and finally was not able to see Hussein, despite what Joan Campbell of the NCC called "noble and forceful attempts." She described an "extremely bureaucratic society" that made the team's movements difficult. "But we have no doubt that Hussein received our message that we strongly object to his occupation of Kuwait."
The delegation stopped in Amman, Jordan, on the way to and from Baghdad, where the teams met with Crown Prince Hassan and Foreign Minister Marwan al-Qassam, who thanked the church leaders for their interest in regional issues and urged that Arab peace initiatives be given an opportunity.
"Our visit made a very great deal of difference to Christians in those countries, who are increasingly anxious as the war build-up continues," said Presiding Bishop Browning.
The team also visited with evacuees from Kuwait who were living in a tent city on the outskirts of Amman. Crews were working against the January 15 deadline to build prefabricated, insulated barracks for possible use by refugees if war breaks out.
The third team of the peace pilgrimage went to Beirut and Damascus, where church leaders reminded them that Christianity has been a continuous and uninterrupted presence in the region for 2,000 years. The patriarch of Beirut pleaded that American Christians remember the ancient Christian communities of the region when they deal with questions of war and peace and justice.
"We were reminded that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are religions of the children of Abraham and called by the God whom they worship to ways of peace and compassion," said a statement released by the three who went to Lebanon and Syria -- Father Leonid Kishkovsky, a Russian Orthodox priest who is president of the NCC; Dr. James Andrews, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA); and Dr. Paul Sherry, president of the United Church of Christ.
The team said church leaders yearned for a peaceful solution, but agreed with the international community that Iraq must withdraw. "At the same time, we were clearly told that the threat to peace in the region has at its very heart the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that the Lebanese civil war has been an expression of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the division of Cyprus resulted from the dynamics of the Cold War," said their statement.
Andrews said there was an air of pessimism in Beirut and Damascus, a feeling that war "with massive destruction" is inevitable. And the Christian community "will be hurt, paying the price in renewed repression."
"Our work is only beginning," said Campbell at the December 21 press conference. There was a determination by members of the peace pilgrimage, which she described as "one of the highest-level delegations ever pulled together around an issue," to continue the campaign for peace. As a first step, the group's message became an ad in the New York Times and several members announced intentions to participate in a peace vigil and march in Washington, D.C.
Although admittedly exhausted by the trip, and shaken by the fear and pessimism they encountered during the trip, the church leaders resisted the inevitability of war and vowed, as people of faith, to "mobilize on behalf of a peaceful alternative." In their final statement, they said, "Having seen the faces of victims and potential victims, we believe that there must be an alternative to war."
- The Most Rev. Edmond L. Browning, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church
- The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, General Secretary-elect of the National Council of Churches
- The Rev. Milton Efthimiou, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America
- The Rev. Fred Lofton, Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.
- The Rev. Edwin Mulder, General Secretary, Reformed Church in America
- Bishop Melvin Talbert, United Methodist Church
- Jim Wallis, Editor, Sojourners
- Bishop Herbert Chilstrom, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
- Bishop Vinton Anderson, Moderator, Black Church Liaison Committee of the World Council of Churches
- The Rev. Mac Charles Jones, National Baptist Convention of America
- The Rev. Donald Miller, General Secretary, Church of the Brethren
- Dr. Patricia Rumer, General Director, Church Women United
- The Rev. Robert Stephanopoulos, Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas
- The Rev. Angelique Walker-Smith, National Baptist Convention USA Inc.
- The Rev. James Andrews, Stated Clerk, Presbyterian Church (USA)
- The Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, President, National Council of Churches
- Dr. Paul Sherry, President, United Church of Christ
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