Fall Meeting of the Metro and Suffolk Associations
New York Conference, United Church of Christ

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Garden City Community Church
245 Stewart Avenue
Garden City, NY 11030

Recognizing that those gathered must have widely differing opinions about the War in Iraq , we also recognized that our faith affects these opinions. In small groups we discussed our faith and the war from three perspectives:

• Just War
• Deitrich Bonhoeffer
• Bible Study

Caithlin Baker and Cliff Frasier set the scene for our small group discussions.

Setting the scene for our discussions were Cathlin Baker, Cliff Frasier and Tom Martinez. They reminded us that the UCC Synod 22 in 1999 had supported the National Council of Churches "Decade to Overcome Violence" from 2001 through 2010. This was in the tradition of the United Church of Christ whose Synod in 1985 had declared the UCC to be in the Just Peace Tradition. This was reinforced by Synod 23 in 2001 which recognized that Just Peace is a multi-cultural, multi-issue concept - not just military wars.

Online resources which help us understand the concepts of Just Peace include:

"For the Peace of the World: A Christian Curriculum on International Relations"from the National Council of Churches on its web site www.ncccusa.org/peace

"Building a Peace with Justice Movement in the United Church of Christ," a resource manual for congregations available by calling 800-537-3394

Those interested in justice and witness issues may also wish to sign up for the local UCC listserv which is at www.uccmetrosuffolk.org/justice/justice.htm#listserv .

Tom Martinez led the sharing of themes which emerged from the small group discussions.

Each group was asked to begin their time together with prayer and to conclude by identifying one eye-opening theme they would be willing to share with the whole group. Some of the themes shared included:

Are we (the US ) now the Holy Roman Empire? The churches need to take back more integrity.

Is this a Just War? We don't know all the facts. We rely on our faith as Christians, but do we speak up? We need to speak louder.

The church is on the sidelines. We seem to fear that taking another position will be deemed "unpatriotic". We aren't listening to one another. We need to make our voices heard. One way is to write personal (not form) letters to the decision-makers.

We need the war to end now. We want heads of US churches to develop a plan and enter into a respectful dialogue with the decision makers - a dialogue of love and Christianity.

The scriptures ask us to turn the other cheek. It is hard to have the self-control to do what God has called us to do.

One of the people in our group recently visited with the heirs of Deitrich Bonhoeffer. There are many similarities between his time and ours. What are we going to do now? We should go to the United Nations, explain it is time to get out, and volunteer to support this leave-taking with US dollars.

There are many wars - Iraq , Katrina, poverty. Prayer is important to all of us as we seek to deal with these wars.

We in the churches have great challenges as we seek to live in the two kingdoms - the kingdom of this world, the heavenly kingdom. Yet most of our churches have difficulty talking within the congregation about contentious issues.

Is it necessary to conquer evil, or does the process of seeking to conquer evil perpetuate evil?

We closed this time of sharing by singing This Is My Song , sung to the tune of Finlandia. It includes these words:

O hear by prayer
O God of all the nations.
Myself I give to you.
Let your will be done.

Reported by Lucy Werner