Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 2, 1994 TAG: 9404020072
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
With an invocation often heard at Christian liturgies, a proposed social statement on peace from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ends by encouraging the faithful to go into the world and be peacemakers.
"Peace: God's Gift, Our Calling" is the latest in a series of religious efforts to enter into the issues of war and peace in the post-Cold War era, where a world free of nuclear weapons is envisioned but the proliferation of regional conflicts illustrates the challenges of building a world where the lion will lie down with the lamb.
"We are calling the world to life, rather than the horrendousness of war and conflict that has marked this last century," said the Rev. Carl Mau, a drafter of the Lutheran statement.
In the fall, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a follow-up statement to their historic 1983 peace pastoral declaring the United States is the world's keeper in Somalia, the Balkans and Central America.
"After the Cold War, there has emerged an understandable but dangerous temptation to turn inward, to focus only on domestic needs and to ignore global responsibilities. This is not an option for believers in a universal church or for citizens in a powerful nation," the bishops said in "The Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace."
Among their recommendations, the bishops called on the United States to keep a ban on nuclear testing, to stop being the world's leading arms peddler and to increase its humanitarian aid to countries where it once fought proxy wars against communism.
Last month, the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church voted to refer to the church's annual meeting in June a report calling on the government to curtail weapons sales to nations that violate human rights.
The report from the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program - "Toward Diminishing International Violence" - also asks the church to renew its support for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons by 1995.
In a statement released this month, the first draft of a proposed social statement from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America contains the caveat that "our faith does not provide us with uniquely Christian international policies or a divine or biblical politics for earthly peace."
But the report calls on Lutherans to work for peace in their homes, workplaces, families and churches, as well as on the national and international level.
Individuals are encouraged to understand other points of view, whether the differences are among siblings, ethnic groups, neighborhoods or nations, said Carol Schersten LaHurd, a professor of biblical studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.
"We wanted to address every level of unpeace," she said.
Still, pacifist voices arguing against any possibility of a "just war" in a nuclear age are found to be less compelling than those who support the other Christian theological tradition that armed intervention may be necessary under limited conditions.
With the specter of an unwinnable nuclear confrontation between superpowers no longer dominating the debate, attention has turned to more complex moral dilemmas such as in Somalia, where mass starvation appeared to be the alternative to armed intervention; and in the Balkans, where reports of "ethnic cleansing" have stirred cries for an outside military response.
"Evil abounds in this world and we're going to have to at times jump in, but we're going to do it with great care," said Mau, former executive director of the Lutheran World Federation.
Even as the moral questions of when force is justified have never been more challenging, there has been no lessening in the challenge to people of faith to help work toward a future envisioned in the Book of Isaiah, when the nations "shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more," according to the Lutheran statement.
In their reflections during the two years of drafting the statement, Mau said that committee members kept coming back to the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew.
"All of us are always hearing the voice of Jesus saying: `Blessed are the peacemakers."'
by CNB