Anti racism trainers for the Episcopal Church, Lelanda Lee (also a member of the Executive Council, representing Province VI of The Episcopal Church) and JoKatherine Holliman Page undertook a special training challenge recently in Denver for a group working for democracy in Southern Sudan.
Fear undercuts friendship. Fear makes us xenophobic, anti-Islamic, anti-Republican (or anti-Democrat). Fear exults in the sloppy labels we paste on our enemies – Socialist! Fascist! Revisionist! Fundamentalist!
2001: Friday watching our President on TV preach his call to war from the pulpit of our Cathedral in Washington fueled my anger: ‘Our responsibility is clear’ he said, ‘to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil…this nation is peaceful but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.’
The reality of what I was experiencing was, altogether, eviscerating. I had never felt so incredibly impotent in my life, and for all of our strength that day – we were surrounded by armored vehicles, tanks, perimeters of roving infantry, and helicopter gunships all meant to protect us – for all of our showing of force, we were unable to stop the violence.
Even as I struggled with my call to ordained ministry during my last year of college, I was walking across the street to the Naval Officer Recruiting station having coffee with the recruiter, coming close on several occasions to signing the forms to enter the Navy to become a Flight Officer. The dream of jets was on the tip of my tongue, and yet I struggled with God’s call to ordination.
It was still dark, but bitterly cold. February in Iraq is a miserable month, with rain and coldness seeping into every nook and cranny, making your bones cold. I put on every layer that seemed practical and necessary before putting on my bulletproof flack jacket and heading over to the convoy briefing.
As the detention center reaches its eighth year this month, we ask others to join with America’s religious community to work to end U.S.-sponsored torture.
The Vatican said Wednesday that Pope Benedict XVI’s decision moving the wartime pope Pius XII closer to sainthood was not a “hostile act” against those who believe Pius did not do enough to stop the Holocaust.
EPF believes that intensified hostilities undermine the function of international law in the struggle against terrorism and generate a cycle of violence, chaos and evil that is antithetical to the teachings and example of Jesus.
Obama’s invocation of a morally justifiable war in Afghanistan recalls some fairly recent history.