Finding a Thoughtful Post on Iraq

The Daily Kos sometimes talks about how some of the better posts on the diaries can easily get lost in the business of the day; they try to repost some of those better ones from time to time. I notice sometimes I get caught up in my own business of the day. Terrell of Alone on a Limb posted an excerpt from the Questing Parson the other day and at first I ignored it and went on to other things. But later I came back, clicked on the link and read a long, thoughtful post on Iraq, religion and war. Here's a couple of excerpts:

The Reverend Dr. Gregory A. Boyd, founder and senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, garnered some attention back in April, 2004. A conservative evangelical pastor, he shattered the traditional image of such folk by preaching a series of sermons on why his church should not be involved in the chorus of right-wing political activity so prevalent that year. Twenty percent of his congregation walked out.

From that experience, Dr. Boyd has written a book, The Myth of A Christian Nation, How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church. It is a timely work. He states his thesis in the Introduction.

My thesis, which caused such an uproar, is this: I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry. To a frightful degree, I think, evangelicals fuse the kingdom of God with a preferred version of the kingdom on the world (whether it’s our national interests, a particular form of government, a particular political program, or so on). Rather than focusing our understanding of God’s kingdom in the person of Jesus – who, incidentally, never allowed himself to get pulled into the political disputes of his day – I believe many of us American evangelicals have allowed our understanding of the kingdom of God to be polluted with political ideals, agendas, and issues.

(snip)

In a previous posting on the 108th Armored National Guard troops returning to my town from Iraq, I wrote of Major Chaplain John Morris. He served two tours with the Minnesota National Guard, and talked with Krista Tippett on the American Public Media show Speaking of Faith. The show was titled, “The Soul of War.” In this program, Major Morris relates:

There’s a spiritual dynamic that I think often we, and I’m speaking of American military forces, fail to take into account and it’s to our demise … in this fight we call the Global War on Terrorism. We say we understand that the people we’re fighting are motivated by an ideology that’s an aberrant view of religion. That’s a great line, but I’ve often had to really be forceful with commanders that “You don’t understand. These people are tapping into something in the spiritual realm and if you fail to take it seriously it doesn’t matter how long we fight we will not defeat them.

I’m going to be blunt. And I don’t say this for effect; it’s just reality. We’re in a war, but this is a war where you cannot kill enough people to win. … We have to take seriously religious leaders; we have to take seriously the religious worldview of people. We have to think that when we fire that weapon and we miss, that round goes somewhere, and when it hits somebody else that’s innocent, it has a ripple effect of a culture that takes seriously life and death, clan and family. . . .

There's a lot of anger in the country right now. A lot of that anger is on the right and there are people who have deliberately stoked that anger for their purposes. But those on the right aren't the only ones who are angry. Anger clouds judgment and a country whose collective intelligence is marred by clouded judgment is going to continue to make mistakes. It's time to take a deep breath and look where we are. And it's time to change before we dig a deeper hole.