World Council of Churches targets U.S. 'violence' By Mark Tooley The Layman Online Monday, January 19, 2004 The World Council of Churches (WCC) has made the United States its target country of concern in 2004 as part of the WCC's "Decade to Overcome Violence" (DOV). Throughout this year, the WCC will convene events around America to spotlight U.S. complicity in violence and oppression. Over 300 denominations worldwide belong to the Geneva-based WCC, including the Presbyterian Church (USA) and over 30 U.S. communions. "If ever there was a part of the world where work for peace is important, it is the USA," said PCUSA Stated Clerk the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, in an August 2003 press release. "We live in a nation where the cause of peace needs a much greater emphasis," he said. It is mainly the war in Iraq that inspired the WCC to pick the United States as a nation that is especially prone to violence. But the kick-off event for this year's WCC campaign showed that the WCC is troubled about plenty else regarding the United States. "We find it a hopeful sign that many Christians in the United are mobilized against the death penalty, are supportive of international climate treaties, and oppose the way prisoners are currently being treated in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," said one German pastor at a New York meeting of the WCC's anti-violence advisory committee. Besides war in Iraq, the U.S. war against terrorism, and U.S. refusal to sign international treaties about Global Warming and land mines, the WCC is angry about the U.S. supposed role in promoting poverty, racism, "cultural imperialism," and inequality in education and unemployment. Also of concern are domestic violence and the lack of gun control in the U.S. When deciding in September 2003 to make the U.S. the focus of the WCC's anti-violence work in 2004, the WCC Central Committee bemoaned that the "ideals of democracy and freedom, of economic success, have been comprised [in the U.S.] by injustice, [and] a too arrogant and unilateral approach to international concerns." The WCC Central Committee also implied that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be charged with war crimes for their war in Iraq. Such specificity about U.S. misdeeds contrasts with the WCC's approach towards last year's country of concern for the DOV, which was Sudan. The WCC said nary a word of criticism against Sudan's Islamist government, which has waged a 20-year long war against the non-Muslim south, resulting in 2 million deaths. There is no mention of ethnic cleansing, the imposition of sharia (slavery) or deliberate bombardment of civilian targets. Instead, the WCC focused abstractly upon the tragedy of war and commended Sudanese churches for their role in peace negotiations. That those very churches have been the primary targets of Islamic jihad was not evidently a reason for concern by the WCC, which preferred not to fault anybody specifically for the horrific conflict in Sudan. Evidently the WCC was reserving its ire for the U.S., both its government and many of its churches. "In Europe, the media portrays the church in America as conservative, evangelical, and connected to right-wing parties," agonized the Rev. Fernando Enns of the Ecumenical Institute at the University of Heidelberg. "This is puzzling to European Christians." Enns was part of the WCC's international anti-violence committee, which met concurrently in New York in January 2004 with a parallel U.S. committee, with support from the National Council of Churches (NCC). "Many Europeans perceive Americans a merely focused on individual, private religious life," rather than being involved in public policy or corporate dimensions of faith, Enns was reported as saying in a WCC news release. "It is important for us to know that there are different voices in the American church." By those "different voices," Enns was referring to the leadership of U.S. mostly mainline Protestant denominations that belong the WCC and NCC. He further complained that the U.S. war in Iraq had "shaken the relationship of Europe to the United States." "If the United States would only live up to its own values in its treatment of Guantanamo prisoners, that would be a witness in itself," Enns asserted. NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar told the WCC guests that the NCC has a lot of "energy and enthusiasm" for the U.S. focus of the anti-violence campaign. He also announced that the NCC will soon be filing a court brief on behalf of the prisoners at Guantanamo. Mark Tooley is a research associate for the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

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