NCC Assembly Asks Clinton's
"Restraint" in Dealing with Iraq
Report of Other Business During Nov. 11-13 Annual Meeting Follows
CHICAGO, Nov. 13, 1998 -- The General Assembly of the National Council of Churches has agreed unanimously to send a letter to President Clinton asking for restraint in dealing with Iraq. The letter asks Clinton to pursue non-military solutions to Iraq’s non-compliance with United Nations resolutions while lifting current sanctions against the Middle East nation.
Earlier in its meeting, Nov. 11-13, the Assembly received a report clarifying the NCC’s understanding of sanctions. The report from Church World Service commended World Council of Churches guidelines for evaluating the ethical use of economic sanctions, including that humanitarian exemptions be made for food, medicine, basic school supplies and agricultural needs.
The team that drafted the letter corresponded with the Middle East Council of Churches and consulted another document of the Assembly that listed seven "pillars of peace" that supported the work of the United Nations to ensure "peace rooted in justice."
The text of the letter follows:
November 13, 1998
Dear Mr. President,
The General Assembly of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., meeting in Chicago November 11-13, has heard with apprehension the reports of the escalating crisis between Iraq and the United Nations and of the threat of the use of U.S. military force against Iraq. We call upon you to seek every way to avoid the use of force and to resolve the matter of this conflict by peaceful means. In doing so, we join our voices with those of our brothers and sisters in the churches of the Middle East, who through our sister organization, the Middle East Council of Churches, have stated their opposition to the use of military force against Iraq.
As in previous confrontations between Iraq and the United States, this one involves the issue of United Nations weapons inspections and the continuation of sanctions against Iraq. The NCCCUSA has called upon and still calls upon Iraq to comply fully with United Nations resolutions and cooperate with United Nations weapons inspection teams. At the same time, we are acutely aware of the immorally massive level of suffering that the economic sanctions have imposed upon the people of Iraq, especially the most vulnerable among them, including children, women, the elderly and the sick. According to the United Nations and other studies, in the past eight years, as many as 1 million people have died as a result of these sanctions. Many more have experienced severe deprivation and disruption of their lives. In partnership with the churches in the region, the NCCCUSA has provided humanitarian relief to alleviate their suffering. During Holy Week this year, members of our body have visited Iraq and seen first hand the human devastation that the sanctions have wrought. Having seen such visions, the depiction of Iraqis in the media as enemies is repugnant to us.
Last February, when military conflict then seemed imminent, the NCCCUSA and its member churches called upon you not to attack Iraq, but instead to seek a new policy that would end economic sanctions against Iraq, end the unconscionable and fruitless suffering of the Iraqi people, and seek new ways to return Iraq to the community of nations. We repeat that call now. Seek peace, and pursue it.
AMBASSADOR YOUNG BRINGS CHINA DELEGATION REPORT
The Honorable Andrew Young, president-elect of the National Council of Churches of the USA (NCC), shared reflections of a recent trip to China with delegates of the General Assembly meeting here Nov. 11-13. Young was a part of an NCC delegation that visited China earlier this year.
"Just listening to the news and thinking of myself as fairly well informed, I thought I was going into a rather hostile and dangerous situation, going to China as a Christian minister, representing the National Council of Churches of Christ. I was filled with fears even though I had gone to China on two other separate occasions," said Young.
"My fears about the religious situation in China were shaped by the conventional wisdom of the United States. I was shocked to find that I was invited to preach and some 4,000 people showed up," he said.
"Once we finished preaching and the music stopped, the other preachers came down we knelt in prayers and in tears, spoke with the kind of authenticity that I did not expect to see. I felt very much at home in that church. It was a post-denominational church, and I do not know what the heritage and history was, but they came together and represented a vibrant spiritual force that was truly a resurrection church," Young said.
"Prior to the cultural revolution there were less than a million Christians in China. The people’s spirit sought to curtail a radical old relentlessness that not only sought to destroy the church but sought to destroy anything modern and visionary," he said.
"The church came through that largely because the church acted like Christians under persecution. They did not turn in their neighbors. When their neighbors were put in prison, they took care of the children and expressed the love of God that they had known," said Young. "They acted like Christians."
IN OTHER BUSINESS, THE NCC GENERAL ASSEMBLY…
This proposed document – to become a new NCC policy statement on the United Nations -- will update "Six Pillars of Peace" the Federal Council of Churches studied in the midst of World War II. The Federal Council of Churches was a predecessor body to the NCC. "All six of those pillars of peace, bar none, were included in the charter of the United Nations," said Mia Adjali, executive secretary for global concerns of the Women’s Division of the United Methodist Church, introducing the proposed document. She said the update will address concerns that were not necessarily the priorities they are today: the environment, women, human rights, non-military threats to society, and poverty.
"A new world vision is needed, a vision of peace rooted in justice," says the document. "The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA renews its support for the United Nations, calls upon the United States government to fully support the United Nations and affirms the following principles." The document will return to the NCC’s 1999 General Assembly for adoption. In the coming year, the NCC’s member communions will study it with the help of a study guide and video the council is producing. They will be available at the beginning of 1999. The nation-wide study will examine requirements for global peace and the international institutions that are needed to carry out these requirements.
The seven pillars are: International Political Framework for Continuing Collaboration; International Economic Accountability; Comprehensive International Legal System; Liberation and Empowerment; Conflict Resolution and Building a Culture of Peace; Human Dignity and Rights; Protection and Preservation of the Environment..
Former WCC General Secretary Emilio Castro, in his sermon, described an ecumenical movement "extended to the breaking point" over differences in belief and behavior. "What’s natural and normal for some is out of touch totally for others." He expressed his hope that participants in the WCC’s Eighth Assembly, to take place in Harare, Zimbabwe, in December, will use the occasion "to build relationships, recognizing others as trying to be as faithful a Christian as I am trying to be." He also challenged ecumenists "to work to build a little more justice in a world where people are trying to convince us how to be a better consumer day by day."
First United Methodist’s senior minister, the Rev. Dean Francis, welcomed the Assembly and the representatives of Northern Illinois judicatories who took part in the celebration. The service included liturgical elements from resources prepared for the Harare Assembly and testimonies to the WCC’s witness to unity by the Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, Orthodox Church in America and a former NCC president; Rev. Dr. Joan B. Campbell, NCC General Secretary, and Bishop Vinton Anderson, African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first WCC President from an historic Black church.
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