"As United Church of Christ leaders committed to God's reign of justice and peace in the world and to the just conduct of our nation, we firmly oppose this advance to war."

"Rather than lining nations up against an 'axis of evil', our nation should engage in honest and open consultation with parties around the world and especially in the Middle East to seek a non-military solution to the threat that Iraq may pose. That solution should begin with ending economic sanctions, which have only strengthened Iraq's leader while weakening its people."

Mainstream US church leaders are surprisingly unanimous in what they say about war against Iraq, and surprisingly ready to criticize the policies of their country's government.

Leading the charge is the United Methodist Church. "President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are members of our denomination," says Jim Winkler, staff head of the UMC's church and society board. "Our silence now could be interpreted as tacit approval of war."

In a forthright statement issued on August 30, Winkler said that "with unprecedented disregard for democratic ideals and with an astonishing lack of evidence justifying such a pre-emptive attack, the president has all but given the order to fire."

"I ask United Methodists to oppose this reckless measure... Our church categorically opposes interventions by more powerful nations against weaker ones. We recognize the first moral duty of all nations is to resolve by peaceful means every dispute that arises between or among nations."

WARC member churches have taken a similar stance. An action alert from the Reformed Church in America in August said that there were "serious questions about the wisdom and justifiability of the use of military force aimed at overthrowing the government of Iraq". The general synod of the RCA in June had already voted to petition the US governing authorities "to use all possible political and diplomatic means to achieve US policy goals rather than using violence, which will only lead to further destruction and death of innocents and foment ill-will throughout the region".

In September, the general assembly council of the Presbyterian Church (USA) called on US political leaders to speak in ways that encourage peace, rather than war; oppose ethnic and religious stereotyping; guard against a unilateralism that perpetuates the perception that "might makes right", and sets the US over against the larger community of nations; and allow UN decisions regarding the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq to run their appropriate course without undue pressure or threats of pre-emptive, unilateral action.

Where's the just cause?

The Roman Catholic Church takes "just war" theology as seriously as anyone. September 13 saw a sharply-worded letter to Mr Bush from Wilton D Gregory, president of the US conference of Catholic bishops. Given the lack of "clear and adequate evidence of Iraqi involvement" in September 11 or of "an imminent attack" on the US "of a grave nature", Gregory asked him, "what is the casus belli for a military attack on Iraq?"

"We respectfully urge you to step back from the brink of war and help lead the world to act together to fashion an effective global response... that conforms with traditional moral limits on the use of military force."

Strike first?

Pre-emptive attack is a major concern in the church letters and statements.

"A pre-emptive war by the United States against a nation like Iraq goes against the very grain of our understanding of the gospel, our church's teachings and our conscience," wrote Sharon A Brown Christopher, president of the United Methodist council of bishops, in a letter to church members on October 4.

Welsey Granberg-Michaelson

"The pre-emptive use of military force by the United States... establishes a dangerous precedent... [and] heightens concern in other countries about American respect for their integrity as nations, as well as for international law," said church leaders in a letter to Mr Bush on September 12.

The letter was signed by the PCUSA moderator and stated clerk, Fahed Abu-Akel and Clifton Kirkpatrick, and the RCA general secretary, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, among many others.

Fahed Abu-Akel

Clifton Kirkpatrick

The PCUSA's Washington Report (September/October 2002) notes that in 1981, when Israeli warplanes targeted and destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, the Reagan administration called the airstrike a shocking violation of international law, compared it with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and joined with other UN Security Council members in a resolution condemning it. Israel argued that the pre-emptive action was in its own defence. The US rejected this argument.

Earlier, in 1956, the US challenged three of its closest allies - Great Britain, France, and Israel - when they invaded Egypt in an attempt to overthrow the radical nationalist regime of Gamal Abdul-Nasser. The Eisenhower administration insisted that international law and the UN charter must be upheld.

The Report sketches the debate within the US establishment between the neo-conservatives who argue that the war against terrorism requires the US to assume an aggressive and unilateral role; the realists who argue against too strong a use of power as it will ignite an international backlash; and the "Wilsonians" who argue that the US should work with other countries and within the framework of international law.

James Rubin, an assistant secretary of state under Bill Clinton, criticizes the Bush administration for breaking with decades of US policy.

The September policy statement, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Rubin says, "appears to make first strikes the rule rather than the exception" and is just "the latest in a series of actions by the administration that have been extremely controversial internationally and have raised troubling questions about our commitment to traditional norms of international politics."

"These steps include the withdrawal from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty prohibiting missile defences, the rejection of the Kyoto protocol on the environment, aggressive steps aimed at undermining the international criminal court, and the initial decision not to apply the Geneva conventions to the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay."

Sanctions and bombing

Church leaders didn't stop at rejecting war against Iraq. They also addressed the undeclared war that has been waged by the US and the UK for more than ten years.

"The most severe impact of a military assault on Iraq would be on its already suffering civilian population," says the United Church of Christ collegium. "Over a decade of containment and isolation, of crippling comprehensive sanctions, and of routine US and British bombing have created miserable conditions inside Iraq. The sanctions have induced poverty, malnutrition, and starvation on the most vulnerable of the Iraqi people, including millions of children. These civilians, innocent of the atrocities Saddam Hussein has committed, should not bear the burden of deprivation and death such a war would surely exact from them."

The UN children's fund has documented an increase in the under-five child mortality rate in Iraq from 56 to 131 per thousand in the sanction years 1990-1998. UNICEF projected that there would have been "half a million fewer deaths of children under five" in the 1990s without these economic shackles.

Humility and even-handedness

The Church of the Brethren, a historic peace church, in an October 14 statement by its general board asks the US government and people to "cultivate a deeper humility and accept more responsibility for the conflict with Iraq".

It reminds them that "during the 1980s, the US materially and diplomatically supported the government of Iraq in its brutal war against Iran; the 1991 Gulf War did not resolve our conflict with the government of Iraq; the people of Iraq continue to suffer from economic sanctions imposed by the US and other countries, with as many as one million Iraqi citizens having died of sanctions-related causes; these sanctions are unjust, and furthermore, now have little effective impact on the government of Iraq; the negative effects of the Gulf War still plague both US soldiers and Iraqi civilians; [and] the US has evidenced a degree of unevenness in pressing and desiring enforcement of UN security council resolutions pertaining to the Middle East region, which now contributes to resentment both in Iraq and among its neighbours."

The "degree of unevenness" refers to UN resolutions on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, which are routinely ignored by Israel with Washington's blessing.

There is another tactful reference to Israel in the September 12 US church leaders' letter, which calls for a "regional weapons-of-mass-destruction control initiative". Israel is the only nuclear power in the region.

Congress votes

Early in October, as Congress debated a war resolution, 450 ministers, priests and nuns from across the US fanned out on Capitol Hill in a three-day lobbying and prayer campaign. But on October 10, George Bush got the result he wanted, with the House voting 296-133 and the Senate voting 77-23 to authorize him to wage war on Iraq.

On October 11, a coalition of church leaders on both sides of the Atlantic urged Mr Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair to pull back from the spiral towards war. They reiterated that this could not be justified under the principle of a just war, but would be "illegal, unwise, and immoral".

"A congressional decision has been made, and many regard this as the end of the national debate on war with Iraq. We are here to say the vote in Congress is simply the beginning of the debate," said Jim Wallis, editor of the evangelical journal Sojourners and an organizer of the statement.

Pro-peace

The church leaders reject suggestions that they are unpatriotic, anti-American or naïve, and they have no more time for Saddam Hussein than they have for their own politicians' war fever.

"President Hussein's demonstrated behaviour leaves any thoughtful person horrified by his treatment of his own citizens and the citizens of Iraq's neighbouring countries," says the UMC's Bishop Brown Christopher.

In the end, the church leaders are driven by a double conviction that is Christian and democratic.

Jim Winkler puts it simply, so simply that even Mr Bush can't fail to understand.

Jim Winkler "The path upon which the president seeks to embark is counter to the teachings of Jesus [and] threatens the rule of law as a fundamental principle of democracy."

"It is inconceivable," Winkler says, "that Jesus Christ, our Lord and saviour and the prince of peace, would support this proposed attack."

Páraic Réamonn