Iraq war vote scheduled by Baptists

[Dover]

Iraq war vote scheduled by Baptists

HOUSTON — America should get out of Iraq, which a Baptist group says was a military campaign begun under false pretenses.

Instead, leaders of the Progressive National Baptist Convention want the United States to lead a world intervention into Sudan to stop the killing of black Muslims by Arab militias of black Muslims.

About 6,000 delegates in Houston for the denomination's annual meeting were scheduled to vote Thursday on a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, said the Rev. Major L. Jemison of Oklahoma City.

"Our nation is still burdened with the spoils and rough tirades from the smell of a war that was presented to us under false pretenses," Jemison, the convention's president, said Wednesday. "Our boys and girls are being upended as we send them out to defend a war that is seemingly pointless and endless."

The Baptist Convention represents more than 1,100 black churches and grew out of the civil rights movement. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was scheduled Thursday to address the convention's annual meeting. It continues through Friday at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

..snip..

We are still pained from the disenfranchisement we experienced in 2000 in Florida," said the Rev. Otis Moss of Cleveland, referring to voting problems in the last presidential election.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee joined Moss at the news conference in urging that electronic technology have a back-up paper trail that could resolve voting disputes...cont'd

http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/gen/ap/TX_Baptists_Iraq.html

[dbt]

1. Hell must have frozen over. I support this Baptist position!

Of course, it's our Black cousins who are speaking the Truth--as usual--while the Whites fret about gay marriage and whether bu$h can actually dance on the head of a pin.

Kudos to this group for paying attention to the examples of that Christ fellow.

:wow:
dbt
(Ex-Baptist since 1967)

[Judi Lynn]

2. Good for these Baptists. Too bad their fellow "Christians" don't see

the teachings of Christ the same way. If they did, they wouldn't have any choice but to speak out, as well.

Apparently our bloated, opinionated Ten Commandments Monument-worshipiing "Christians" imagine the standing up for what you believe means standing up for what's easy, hate-filled, and whatever allows you to throw your weight around and proclaim the unworthiness of others.

Good for the Progressive National Baptists.

[T_i_B]

3. Actually, most churches opposed the Iraq war

It's something I suspect most DU'er might have missed in their rush to proclaim all Christains as right-wing "fundies" but most churches did actually oppose the war.

Here is an article by the Bishop of Oxford explaining why the Iraq war was not a just war, written before it all started. The Christian doctrine of a just war and the incompatability of the Iraq invasion with this was a big factor in my opposition to it for one.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,768874,00.html

The threat of military action against Iraq is now beginning to dominate Western politics. So what light does the long history of Christian thinking on the morality of warfare shed on this?

Some dismiss the 'Just War' tradition as outmoded. But although the context has dramatically changed, with nuclear weapons and terrorism, the principles remain unchanged.

What it provides, however, is a set of criteria by which a potential military action might be judged morally licit or illicit. If a potential military incursion into Iraq is judged morally unjustified, it will in fact be on the basis of criteria which have long been part of Just War thinking.

(snip)

The main task of the Churches at a time like this is to put forward and press these criteria, probing and testing whether or not they might be met. In the end political and military judgments have to be made and those who hold power have the awesome task of making them. Churchmen do not hold power and do not have to make those decisions. But on the basis of what we have and know at the moment those criteria are not being met.

[Hekate]

4. Yup -- W was soundly & publicly rebuked from all sides...

...except for the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest denomination in the US I think. I kept tabs on it, because I was fascinated by the way this sanctimonious hypocrite kept invoking God as he lied us into this war, and yet completely ignored the fact that the governing boards and councils of nearly every denomination in the country were opposed. Both W and Cheney are members of the Methodist church, which also rebuked them for the rush to invade Iraq.

The Catholic Bishops were meeting in Washington DC early on; they have plenty of troubles of their own, but paused in their deliberations to publish their rebuke. In context of the current flap over whether RC politicians should be barred from receiving the eucharist if they are pro-choice, it should be clear by now that this is a right-wing divisive ploy in more ways than one: there are only 3 bishops (a tiny minority) talking this way, and officially the Church has a whole host of social justice issues it urges its members to engage with, including poverty, hunger, the death penalty, and war. Abortion and gay marriage notwithstanding, the Church is not a single-issue institution and for their own sake as well as the country's, I certainly hope they will resist the temptation to commingle with the State. They've been down that road before, and no good came of it.

The reference to the Progressive Baptists really had me going there for a moment, until I saw that it has only 1,100 churches and that they are black. That makes more sense. Once again, our African American siblings speak for the hearts of many of the rest of us, and for that I thank them.

Hekate

[gratuitous]

6. Add in the Church of the Brethren

Tiny and usually overlooked, not nearly as flashy (joke!) as our Mennonite and Quaker friends, this year's Annual Conference took up and adopted this resolution (from the Church of the Brethren website):

The General Board’s resolution on Iraq was adopted with minimal discussion as well. The resolution called on members and congregations to be “a constant witness to Christ as a living peace church of today against all war and the violence of its nature.” The resolution also called on the US administration and Congress to take responsibility for their involvement in the war.

[murielm99]

15. My husband was raised Brethren.

He is a MacPherson grad, too.

We went to the Church of the Brethren for fourteen years. After our local congregation became very conservative, we left.

We go to a United Methodist church now. The United Methodist church has also condemned the war in Iraq. They are not a pacifist church, like the Brethren, but they think this particular war is unjustified.

* does not know very much about what his own denonimation believes. They were supporters of the March for Women's Lives, and have a rather open policy toward abortion.

They not only condemned the war, but also are puzzled that * has not received a delegation from the church so far. Apparently, it is customary for presidents to receive a delegation from the United Methodists.

[Dover]

5. "The Baptist Convention represents more than 1,100 black churches

and grew out of the civil rights movement".

[CO Liberal]

7. WHEW!! I Thought The Baptists Were Gonna Declare War On Irag!!!

My wife was raised as a Baptist, and I wouldn't want to see her drafted.....

:-)

[bobthedrummer]

8. In truth it is Sudanese Christians being killed, raped and sold by the

extremist Islamic Arabs.

[Moderator]

9. Dover

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
copyrighted news source.


Thank you.


DU Moderator

[Joanne98]

10. Finally. The REAL Christians are standing up

Give these people a hand.......

[cthrumatrix]

11. what would Jesus do...? bush obviously can't hear that well

[0007]

12. Oh my God, they killed Kenny!

[struggle4progress]

13. Jesse Jackson blames Bush for Iraq becoming 'losing predicament'

HOUSTON

... Reverend Jesse Jackson ... criticized the politics of President Bush today for getting America stuck in a "tragic losing predicament."

Jackson says he favored the idea of Bush's Democrat challenger in the November elections, Senator John Kerry.

He says Kerry ... advocates "mobilizing the international community to help us get out gracefully and quickly as possible" ...

http://www.team4news.com/Global/story.asp?S=2139186

[struggle4progress]

14. Iraq war vote in Houston

HOUSTON
<snip>

... leaders of the Progressive National Baptist Convention want the U-S to lead a world intervention into Sudan to stop attacks on black Muslims.

About six-thousand delegates are in Houston for the denomination's annual meeting.

They approved a resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of U-S forces from Iraq.

The Baptist Convention represents hundreds of black churches and grew out of the civil rights movement.

Copyright 2004 Associated Press.
http://www.wkrn.com/Global/story.asp?S=2138759

[struggle4progress]

16. Speech follows Baptists passing a resolution calling for Iraq war's end

Aug. 5, 2004, 10:40PM
Jackson: Hard-won civil rights victories in danger
Speech follows Baptists passing a resolution calling for Iraq war's end
By SALATHEIA BRYANT
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

In a speech that was both a sermon and a political call to arms, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. told members of the Progressive National Baptist Convention here Thursday that Republicans should not take black voters as fools.

Jackson — who also promoted his effort to create a network of 1,000 churches in 50 markets to defend civil rights — accused the Bush administration of operating on a closed-door policy, locking out groups such as organized labor, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and environmental organizations.

"We face giants. We've been led to think these giants are invincible and we are impotent," said Jackson. "We're living in perilous times. We must overcome this inferior minority complex. Hard-earned victories are now in jeopardy. I say it's raining and the water is rising for such a time as this God told Noah to build an ark."
<snip>

"We were calling for America to come back home from Vietnam. Now we're calling for America to come home from Iraq," said Moss. "School budgets are getting cut, yet we are spending billions and billions of dollars in Iraq."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/2721964