by the Synod of the Waldensian (Reformed) and Methodist Churches in Italy,
Torre Pellice, 22-23 March 2003

Statement on Iraq
"WE IMPLORE YOU TO ABANDON THIS PATH"

Never before from across the globe has there been such broad opposition to war as manifested this time concerning Iraq. Never has there been such a broad anti-war consensus across the confessions worldwide. And yet war has been unleashed by leadership whose very force of will serves to humiliate the UN and trample international law.
Confronted by the decision for war and the attendant isolation of its proponents, we want to reaffirm our solidarity with the people of the USA. We have not forgotten 9/11, the day a deep wound was inflicted upon the West. Nor have we forgotten 6 June 1944, when for everyone's freedom thousands came to die on the beaches of our continent. We have not forgotten, either, the cultural, religious and political roots which indissolubly bind our two continents.
It is in light of just this solidarity, asserted in these lacerating days, that we wish to direct an appeal to the people and political leadership of the US, and particularly to those who too easily connect God's name to the business of war. Many of you, and of us, have learned from the Bible (Matt. 5) that Jesus pronounces "blessed" the humble, those who hunger and thirst for justice, and those who struggle for the practice of peacemaking; and that Jesus teaches reconciliation with the adversary as the prerequisite for worship, love for the enemy being the extraordinary hallmark of Christian behavior.

Be careful, therefore, in the passage from individual ethics to national conduct, that you not turn Jesus' teaching on its head by cooking up a mission to overcome evil through preemptory violence, hailing a "God who takes sides" as cause for short-circuiting the distance, beyond all telling of it, between humanity's ways and God's ways (Is. 55).
Leaving God talk out for the moment, we implore you to abandon the path upon which you have embarked. You have dissipated the capital of solidarity which accrued to you after 9/11. Your pretensions to override the collective judgment of the world community with the hegemony of a power which decides what is good and what is evil are just this: a blind alley. This dangerous, tragic, profoundly erroneous religio-political concoction which would impose its decision with force can only produce a growing global instability whose yield is war and more war.

Yes, the Iraq dictator is among the most brutal of those who keep their people chained to tyranny. Others are equally odious and maybe even more dangerous. Same recipe for them?
With concern as your sisters and brothers in our common humanity, we beseech you to convert your hearts; to listen to the voice of your churches, strongly opposed to this war mentality; to change direction; to look to the consensus of the nations, returning to the point where you abandoned them, and aim to contribute to the renewal and building of a multilateral, global foundation for governance with justice, and thus, stability.
In addressing this appeal to you we are painfully aware of our own not inconsiderable shortfall: we all, in fact, have failed in working for peace, and all of us, on both sides of the Atlantic, have contributed to seeding resentment and hate in two-thirds of the world by old colonial policies and newer ones still bent on theft and exploitation. May this sense of inadequacy, brought before God responsibly in prayer, now for our nations and churches be translated
into a serious commitment to Iraq: that is, a halt to the fighting, caring for the victims, and reconstruction upon the silencing of the guns.